Culture

Nearly half of black males and almost 40 percent of white males in the U.S. are arrested by age 23, which can hurt their ability to find work, go to school and participate fully in their communities, according to a paper in the journal Crime & Delinquency which outlines how the risk of arrest varies across race and gender, says Robert Brame, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina and lead author of the study.

Expectant women with prenatally diagnosed fear of childbirth are at an increased risk of postpartum depression, according to a study of over 500,000 mothers in Finland. Women with a history of depression are at the highest risk of postpartum depression. The fact that fear of childbirth puts women without a history of depression at an approximately three times higher risk of postpartum depression is a new observation which may help health care professionals in recognising postpartum depression. The results were published recently in BMJ Open.

CHICAGO (January 2, 2014): Electronic health records (EHRs) have become standard practice throughout hospitals in North America, but in countries with fewer resources many front-line clinicians are still collecting data on paper, if they are collecting it at all. But now, surgeons from Vancouver, British Columbia, have developed a way for their peers at a Level I trauma center in South Africa to accurately collect and analyze trauma care data via an iPad app. The study is published in the January issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

Guide dogs lend their eyes to blind people, enabling them to find their way around in an environment they cannot see. Guide dogs require about four years of training and fully trained animals can cost over 30,000 Euro. It is thus important for financial reasons as well as because of animal welfare considerations to ensure that guide dogs are comfortable in their work.

PHILADELPHIA - A new study from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has found no significant difference in adjusted overall survival rates between gunshot and stabbing (so-called penetrating trauma injuries) victims in Philadelphia whether they were transported to the emergency department by the police department or the emergency medical services (EMS) division of the fire department.

"It is OK to drink a little bit of alcohol during pregnancy" or "a pregnant woman should not touch alcohol at all during her pregnancy". These statements represent the contradictory conclusions that large population studies on pregnancy and alcohol can reach. Psychologist Janni Niclasen has just defended her PhD thesis on the subject at the University of Copenhagen.

BOSTON (Jan. 1, 2014) – Ocular trauma causing open globe injury, or a breach in the wall of the eye, remains an important cause of vision loss, with more than 200,000 open globe injuries occurring worldwide each year. In many cases, retinal detachment follows the traumatic injury, causing significant vision loss or blindness.