Culture

First ever comprehensive studies of life expectancy, causes of death, and child mortality at provincial level in China suggest that localisation of policies will be crucial to government health reforms

In the Middle Ages only wealthy town people could afford to eat and drink from beautiful, colored glazed cups and plates. But the glazing was made of lead, which found its way into the body if you ate acidic foods. This has been revealed by chemical investigations of skeletons from cemeteries in Denmark and Germany.

Being wealthy in the Middle Ages was not all benefits: Wealthy people were more exposed to the toxic heavy metal lead than the poor.

Who we become only marginally correlates with our birth position amongst siblings. Psychologists from the universities of Mainz and Leipzig, Germany, came to this conclusion in a study recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

The annual congress of the South African Heart Association is being held in Rustenburg from Oct. 25-28, 2015. Experts from the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) will present a special programme.1

Professor Brink said: "LQTS is a cardiac disorder associated with blackouts (syncope). It is a treatable cause of sudden death but unfortunately blackouts, being common and most often not serious, are often ignored and the small group with serious events are then missed. When presenting to medical services the underlying cause may also be misdiagnosed."

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced this week a new climate change action plan that rejects calls from activists to divest its endowment from the fossil fuel industry.

Doctor and patient decide together which treatment to perform--this ideal is now anchored in the Law on Patient Rights and the Professional Code for Physicians in Germany. Shared decision making, in which doctor and patient exchange knowledge concerning the patient's disease and its treatments, discuss treatment options, and jointly choose one, is the gold standard. This edition of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International, which focuses on patient involvement, contains two original articles investigating the following questions: Do patients benefit from shared decision making?

A world-first study by QUT's Sleep in Early Childhood Research Group has revealed pre-schoolers exposed to more light earlier in day tend to weigh more.

Cassandra Pattinson, a PhD student and her colleagues studied 48 children aged three to five from six Brisbane childcare centres over a two week period, measuring each child's sleep, activity and light exposure along with their height and weight to calculate their BMI.

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• Black race, lower neighborhood household income, older age, and Medicaid/Medicare insurance status were each linked with less use of an electronic health record portal by kidney disease patients.

Washington, DC (October 22, 2015) -- Disparities exist in kidney disease patients' access to e-health resources, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN). Such disparities may reinforce or widen existing health-related inequities that relate to race and income.

There is a common belief that Asians are naturally gifted at maths.

Asian countries like Singapore and Japan lead the ranks in first and second position on maths performance in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tables – an international survey that ranks education systems worldwide – while Australia sits around 12th.

What is the secret to being good at maths? Are you simply born clever, or is it the result of a lot of hard work?

Newsroom unions are back. In newly found solidarity, journalists in American digital newsrooms are getting organised. As “new” digital news outlets are turning “old" - or rather maturing and delivering profits, it’s not surprising journalists are demanding better pay and working conditions, and greater transparency from their management.

PHOENIX -- Stepping down asthma medicines can be done safely and at less cost for patients says a new Mayo Clinic study published this week in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. It is common for patients and doctors to test out if taking less daily asthma medicine is safe -- primarily because of the high cost of asthma medicine. However, deciding when to step down daily asthma medicines can be challenging, and it would be helpful to understand the risks involved.

MAYWOOD, Ill. - Evidence is mounting that drugs used to treat depression and Alzheimer's disease also can help patients recover from strokes.

But there are conflicting findings from studies of these and other drugs given to recovering stroke patients. Large, well-designed studies are needed before any drug can be recommended routinely for stroke recovery, according to a study in the journal Drugs and Aging by neurologists Xabier Beristain, MD, and Esteban Golombievski, MD, of Loyola University Medical Center and Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.

Dermal leishmaniasis is an ulcerous skin disease caused by a tropical parasite, all forms of which can be treated with the drug miltefosine. Researchers from the National Institute of Pathology, Indian Council of Medical Research and Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi studied the responses of 86 patients treated with miltefosine over 18 months that indicated a developing parasitic resistance to the drug, supporting a growing evidence base showing the rise of miltefosine resistance.

Neuherberg, October 22, 2015. Gestational diabetes is one of the most common conditions that can occur during pregnancy. Although the symptoms generally disappear after delivery, women suffering from gestational diabetes are at increased risk of developing postpartum diabetes in the following years. Researchers at the Helmholtz Zentrum München have now developed an accurate method of predicting the probability of developing this progressive disease following childbirth. Their findings were published recently in 'Acta Diabetologica'.