Culture | Page 2113 | Science Codex

CSI La Brea -- Tiny traces reveal big secrets of the tar pits

Alexandria, VA – Saber-tooth tigers, dire wolves and woolly mammoths conjure up images of a past when large beasts struggled against the elements, each other, and even against humans for survival. Thousands of these creatures met their demise in the muck of the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles, where they slowly sank into the tar and were fossilized.

Now, scientists are using traces from hungry, bone-eating insects on these fossils to investigate how long it took for the giant beasts to be swallowed up by the sticky, oozy substance.

AGA publishes tool to help GIs manage HCV patients

Bethesda, MD (Nov. 5, 2013) — The American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Clinical Decision Tool for the Screening and Evaluation of Hepatitis C (HCV) will help gastroenterologists in the early management of HCV-positive patients, according to a new paper in Gastroenterology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. Chronic HCV has a significant impact on the adult population and is a disease for which much progress has been made in its treatment.

Transgender patients have special needs in the ER

WASHINGTON — While approximately one-third of transgender (trans) patients needed emergency care in the previous year, only 71 percent of those with self-reported need indicated they were able to obtain care, which researchers theorize may be due to "perceptions and previous experiences of trans-related discrimination or poor care." The Canadian study, the first to analyze emergency department avoidance, use and experience by trans people, was published online Friday in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("Reported Emergency Department Avoidance, Utilization and Experiences of Transgender

New discovery could dramatically reduce leishmaniasis treatment doses and side effects

The Amphotericin B (AmB) is the main active ingredient in the most effective drug used to treat leishmaniasis, a disease which in the Western world mainly affects dogs, but in developing countries affects over 12 million people, with more than 70,000 deaths per year. The cost of treating humans with AmB surpasses $5,000 per patient, the treatment is extensive (2-hour sessions every day during 21 days), and the side effects are frequent and many times patients must be hospitalised.

The UK is more dangerous than the US, and muggings more than double in London after dark

British psychologists may trumpet that they have fewer suicides and deaths due to guns than the US, but the UK countries of Scotland, Wales and England hold the top three spots for the most violent in the developed world.

Cane Sugar Not Detected In Mexican Coke Samples

While soda reigns as the single largest contributor to America’s rapidly expanding waistlines, research released today shows that the high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) used to sweeten America’s most popular beverages is delivering a megadose of fructose (a sweeter and more harmful form of sugar), far higher than previously thought.

Women who adhere to Mediterranean-type diet in midlife have greater physical and mental function in old age

Women who follow a healthy diet during middle age have approximately 40 percent greater odds of surviving past the age of 70 with no chronic illnesses and no physical or cognitive impairment, according to a study published in Annals of Internal Medicine. As life expectancy increases, maintaining health and well-being into older age becomes a major challenge. Habits in midlife may affect how people age.

20 percent of Medicare's graduate medical education funds go to New York; 29 states get less than 1 percent

Science and education funding have gotten a lot more political. New York state, overwhelmingly Democratic voters, received 20 percent of all Medicare's graduate medical education (GME) funding while 29 states, including Mississippi, among the reddest of red states and severely lacking in doctors, got less than 1 percent.

Women and African-Americans at higher risk of heart attack from atrial fibrillation

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., – Nov. 4, 2013 – Doctors have known for years that atrial fibrillation (AF), or irregular heartbeat, increases the risk for stroke, but now researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have shown that it also increases the risk for heart attack. In fact, for women and African Americans, it more than doubles the risk.

The study is published in the Nov. 4 issue of JAMA Internal Medicine.

Electronic and Internet health tools may decrease in-person physician visits

Will the growing use of health information technology (IT) and electronic-health (e-health) applications impact the future demand for physicians? Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and The Commonwealth Fund think so. Based on their analysis of recent trends in digital health care and a review of the scientific literature, the authors conclude that patients' future use of physician services will change dramatically as electronic health records and consumer e-health "apps" proliferate.

UCSF researchers offer solutions to looming health-care provider shortage

Thanks to a wave of aging baby boomers, epidemics of diabetes and obesity, and the Affordable Care Act, which aims to bring health care coverage to millions more Americans, the United States faces a severe shortage of primary health care providers.

In a series of papers published in the November 2013 issue of Health Affairs, researchers at UC San Francisco advocated a number of potential solutions to the problem.

MU researcher finds way to reduce unnecessary lab tests, decrease patient costs by modifying software

COLUMBIA, Mo. – When patients undergo diagnostic lab tests as part of the inpatient admission process, they may wonder why or how physicians choose particular tests. Increasingly, medical professionals are using electronic medical systems that provide lists of lab tests from which medical professionals can choose. Now, a University of Missouri researcher and her colleagues have studied how to modify these lists to ensure health professionals order relevant tests and omit unnecessary lab tests, which could result in better care and reduced costs for patients.

Race and romance online

Usually, research findings on the state of U.S. race relations are pretty bleak. But a study of online dating by UC San Diego sociologist Kevin Lewis suggests that racial barriers to romance are not as insurmountable as we might suppose.

Published Nov. 4 in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, "The Limits of Racial Prejudice" analyzes, over a two-and-a-half month period, the interaction patterns of 126,134 users in the United States of the popular dating site OkCupid.com.

Imaging studies may predict tumor response to anti-angiogenic drugs

Advanced imaging techniques may be able to distinguish which patients' tumors will respond to treatment with anti-angiogenic drugs and which will not. In patients newly diagnosed with the dangerous brain tumor glioblastoma, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers report, those for whom treatment with the anti-angiogenic drug cediranib rapidly 'normalized' abnormal blood vessels around their tumors and increased blood flow within tumors survived significantly longer than did patients in whom cediranib did not increase blood flow. The report appears in PNAS Early Edition.

A better way to track your every move

CHICAGO --- Physical activity tracking apps on smartphones are a potentially important tool for doctors who want to collect data and create treatment or intervention plans to improve the health of patients who struggle with activity and movement -- such as those with Parkinson's disease.

A new Northwestern Medicine® study has found a way to make these apps more accurate -- no matter where patients carry their phones. The study was recently published online in the Journal of Neuroscience Methods.