Culture | Page 1837 | Science Codex

New guidelines aim to enhance accuracy of medical tests

Seeking to improve the reliability of medical testing, an international team of top experts is releasing new guidelines for doctors and scientists on how to best report their assessments of new and existing diagnostic tests.

"This is really the question of how do you know the test to diagnose disease really does diagnose disease?" said David E. Bruns, MD, of the University of Virginia School of Medicine's Department of Pathology. "It sounds like such a simple question to ask, but like most simple questions, it turns out it's not so easy."

Better, More Effective Tests

Could your job be making you obese?

Amsterdam, October 28, 2015 - Your job could be having an effect on your waistline, suggests new research published in Social Science & Medicine - and it could be bad or good news depending on the sort of control you have over your work.

The new study, by researchers at the University of Adelaide, Central Queensland University and the University of South Australia, shows that having skills and the freedom to use them at work is linked to lower BMI and smaller waist size, whereas needing to make a lot of decisions is linked to bigger waist size.

Life cycle assessment combines environmental, economic factors to determine greenhouse gas reductions

Amsterdam, October 28, 2015 - A study published in the journal Biomass & Bioenergy sets out to calculate the true costs and benefits associated with replacing fossil fuels with bioenergy in varying forms for numerous s applications. The life cycle assessment (LCA) approach takes into account entire bioenergy systems, including every step along the supply chain.

The study led by Patricia Thornley of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester has been selected for Elsevier's Atlas Award.

Homeowners like money-saving benefits of smart irrigation controllers

GAINESVILLE, FL - Smart irrigation controllers, technologies used to decrease landscape water applications, are catching on in Florida. Incentivized by governmental agencies and water utilities in an effort to reduce public-supply water demand and conserve water resources, the controllers are becoming more popular with homeowners in this high water-use state. A new study evaluated homeowners' satisfaction with evapotranspiration (ET)-based and soil moisture sensor (SMS)-based smart technologies, and recommends strategies to promote consumers' use of the controllers.

Entrepreneurial spirit can help communities better withstand trade shock

Communities with more self-employed workers can better withstand economic shifts caused by imports than communities that have fewer self-employed people, according to Penn State economists.

Vital statistics on American politics 2015-2016

Los Angeles, CA (October 28, 2015) Ahead of an important election year, many are turning to political data for insight on the American political system--data that is vast and at times, complex. SAGE today announces the release of Vital Statistics on American Politics 2015-2016, containing easy-to-understand, statistical data about many topics in American politics in one volume.

Twitter offers valuable insights into the experience of MRI patients

Philadelphia, PA, October 28, 2015 - Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) can be a stressful experience for many people, but clinicians have few ways to track the thoughts and feelings of their patients regarding this procedure. While the social networking site Twitter is known for breaking news and celebrity tweets, it may also prove to be a valuable feedback tool for medical professionals looking to improve the patient experience, according to a new study published in the December issue of the Journal of Medical Imaging and Radiation Sciences.

Singing calms baby longer than talking

In a new study from the University of Montreal, infants remained calm twice as long when listening to a song, which they didn't even know, as they did when listening to speech. "Many studies have looked at how singing and speech affect infants' attention, but we wanted to know how they affect a baby's emotional self-control," explained Professor Isabelle Peretz, of the university's Center for Research on Brain, Music and Language.

UK children play instruments as part of family tradition, not to boost social status

British parents encourage their children to play musical instruments as part of a family tradition and not to boost their social status as Americans do, research says.

Dr Aaron Reeves, of the University of Oxford, found that UK parents did not see musical achievement by their children as character building or useful in getting university places or jobs.

Instead, it was usually only those parents who played instruments who encouraged their children to follow suit, he says in an article in the journal Cultural Sociology.

Negative publicity reduces police motivation

WASHINGTON - Recent negative publicity surrounding police after several shootings of unarmed civilians appears to have diminished some officers' motivation to be in law enforcement but does not decrease willingness to carry out their duties, according to a study published by the American Psychological Association.

Negative publicity reduces police motivation but does not result in depolicing

WASHINGTON - Recent negative publicity surrounding police after several shootings of unarmed civilians appears to have diminished some officers' motivation to be in law enforcement but does not decrease willingness to carry out their duties, according to a study published by the American Psychological Association.

Two studies investigate health impacts of continuous piped water supply

This week's issue of PLOS Medicine features two separate studies, each of which investigates the importance of uninterrupted piped water supplies to health outcomes. In a matched cohort study in Hubli-Dharwad, India, Ayse Ercumen of the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues compared health outcomes for households that had been upgraded to receive continuous piped water to households with intermittent water supply.

From science fiction to reality -- sonic tractor beam invented

A team of researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Sussex in collaboration with Ultrahaptics have built the world's first sonic tractor beam that can lift and move objects using sound waves.

Tractor beams are mysterious rays that can grab and lift objects. The concept has been used by science-fiction writers, and programmes like Star Trek, but has since come to fascinate scientists and engineers. Researchers have now built a working tractor beam that uses high-amplitude sound waves to generate an acoustic hologram which can pick up and move small objects.

Driving with glaucoma? Some patients increase scanning to adapt for impaired vision

October 27, 2015 - Some people with glaucoma-related binocular (both eyes) vision loss can pass a standard driving test by adopting increased visual scanning behavior, reports a study in the October issue of Optometry and Vision Science, official journal of the American Academy of Optometry. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.

One hundred cancer patients a year in Manchester benefit from new scan technology

Researchers in Manchester have used recent advances in PET scanning technology to reduce the radiation dose for both patients and staff by up to 30%, allowing an addition of an annual 100 scans a year at Central Manchester University Hospitals.

PET imaging is widely used in the management of cancer patients. Most commonly, an FDG PET scan is carried out to identify areas with high glucose metabolism, such as tumours. These images are useful for diagnosis, staging and monitoring treatment.