Montreal, February 21, 2013 – Nobody can foresee disaster, but changing climate conditions are prompting smart communities increasingly to prepare for them with solid emergency response plans and protocols. Images as recent as those from the 2011 wildfire in Slave Lake, Alberta or as distant as those from the 1998 ice storm in Eastern Ontario and Quebec are distressing reminders that no area is immune from devastation, and reinforce the need to be prepared.
Kyoto, Japan – Working with a group from Nagasaki University, a research group at the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA) at Japan's Kyoto University has announced in the Feb. 21 online publication of Cell Stem Cell has successfully modeled Alzheimer's disease (AD) using both familial and sporadic patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), and revealed stress phenotypes and differential drug responsiveness associated with intracellular amyloid beta oligomers in AD neurons and astrocytes.
Researchers at the University of Warwick and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust have completed a study that may lead to clinicians being able to more accurately predict which patients will suffer from the side effects of radiotherapy.
In the future police will be able to predict the spread of riots, and how they impact on cities, thanks to a new computer model.
Developed by researchers at UCL, the model highlights the importance of considering the layout of cities in order for police to suppress disorder as quickly as possible once a riot is in progress.
Philadelphia, Pa. (February 21, 2013) - The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is aiming to become a leader in using health information technology (HIT) to change the way patients experience medical care, to decrease medical mistakes, and to improve health outcomes. A special March supplement of Medical Care highlights new research into the many and varied types of HIT projects being explored to improve the quality of patient care throughout the VHA system.
IRVINE, Calif. (February 20, 2013) – New analysis of data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) , a program of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), indicates that consuming avocados may be associated with better diet quality and nutrient intake level, lower intake of added sugars, lower body weight, BMI and waist circumferences, higher "good cholesterol" levels and lower metabolic syndrome risk. These results were published in the January 2013 issue of Nutrition Journal.
DENVER (Feb. 21, 2013) – A new study from the University of Colorado Denver shows that the earliest human burial practices in Eurasia varied widely, with some graves lavish and ornate while the vast majority were fairly plain.
Sophia Antipolis, 21 February 2013: Over eating, sedentary lifestyles, cultural attitudes, and lack of prevention programmes are to blame for the rising epidemic of obesity in the Asia Pacific region. Overweight and obesity has quadrupled in China and societies still label people of healthy weight as poor.
Prevention will be an important theme at the 19th Asian Pacific Congress of Cardiology held 21-24 February 2013 in Pattaya, Thailand. Experts from the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) will lead a one day collaborative programme on 23 February.
The satisfaction levels among a hospital's staff are closely linked to the quality of healthcare it provides, say a team of doctors from Imperial College London.
In the first study of its kind, Dr Richard Pinder and colleagues at Imperial found that hospitals in England with lower mortality rates were more likely to have members of staff satisfied with the quality of care they provide.
People with disabilities are at a greater risk of being the victims of violence and of suffering mental ill health when victimized, according to research published February 20 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Hind Khalifeh and colleagues from University College London and King's College London.
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Gun violence in the United States can be substantially reduced if Congress expands requirements for background checks on retail gun sales to cover firearm transfers between private parties, a new report by the director of the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program concludes.
Status updates, patient forums, blog comments – among the incredible amount of personal information on the Web is a potential trove of health data. Bioethicists writing in Science Translational Medicine acknowledge the value of this resource but argue that to be ethically acceptable for use in research, traditional models of informed consent must be adapted to suit the dynamic online environment.
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Two major health reform laws, enacted 25 years apart, both try to meet an ethical standard to provide broad access to basic health care. Neither quite gets there -- but it's not too late for modern health care reform to bring the nation closer to a goal of comprehensive and coordinated care for all.
That's the conclusion of a commentary published in the new issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association by a team of University of Michigan Health System physicians.
New Rochelle, NY, February 20, 2013–Reducing financial barriers to medication access—a strategy known as value-based insurance design (VBID)—can improve medication adherence and management of chronic diseases such as diabetes. The economic and patient-perceived benefits of eliminating co-payments for diabetes-related medications and supplies are described in a trend-setting study published in Population Health Management, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.