Culture

LAWRENCE -- City department supervisors would benefit from training roughly every eight to nine months on conceptual leadership skills, like strategic planning and conflict resolution, according to a study that includes two University of Kansas professors.

The old adage says practice makes perfect, but a new study from the University of Cambridge has shown that personality also plays a key role in musical ability, even for those who do not play an instrument.

In a study published this week in the Journal of Research in Personality, a team of psychologists identified that the personality trait 'Openness' predicts musical ability and sophistication. People who score highly on Openness are imaginative, have a wide range of interests, and are open to new ways of thinking and changes in their environment.

Firearm-related injuries (FRIs) in the USA are major sources of public health concern. Annually, FRIs result in thousands of deaths and thousands more injuries. In 2013 alone, over 32 000 people in the USA died as a result of FRIs. In 2009 it was estimated that there were 310 million firearms in the USA, not including weapons owned by the military, which is more than one firearm for every citizen.

BOSTON, MA - Risk factors for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and the development of subsequent cardiovascular (CV) complications differ by sex, but it is not clear from prior research whether the effects of sleep apnea on heart disease is similar for men and women.

Nearly four in ten older adults say that managing their health care needs is difficult for them or their families, that medical appointments or tests get delayed or don't get done, or that all of the requirements of their health care are too much to handle, new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research suggests.

The findings are published in the October issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

More than half of hospitalizations due to influenza pneumonia could be prevented by influenza vaccination, according to a study led by investigators at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"We estimated that about 57 percent of influenza-related pneumonia hospitalization could be prevented through influenza vaccination," said Carlos Grijalva, M.D., MPH, associate professor of Health Policy.

It's no secret that a housing bubble kicked off the financial crisis that began in 2007, rippling through institutions caught holding subprime mortgages. But a fresh look suggests much of the lingering damage was caused by the forced sale of corporate bonds at below-market prices, starting a chain reaction that cascaded through the supply chain.

New research from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston indicates that diabetic patients who got their primary care from nurse practitioners did not have an increase in potentially preventable hospital admissions.

The American College of Physicians (ACP) today said that retail health clinics - now commonly present in drugstores and/or big box retailers - are best used as a backup alternative to a patient's primary care physician for the diagnosis and treatment of episodic minor illnesses. "Health care delivery models are changing and our patients are embracing and exploring alternatives to the traditional office practice," said Wayne J. Riley, MD, MPH, MBA, MACP, president of ACP.

(Philadelphia, PA) - A NIH-sponsored double-blinded, randomized clinical trial entitled Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes (ACCORD study) came to a halt seven years ago after patients receiving more intensive diabetes therapy were found to have a higher mortality rate, compared to the standard therapy. In 2008, the results were released, puzzling researchers.

A Johns Hopkins surgeon and prominent patient safety researcher is calling on hospitals to reform emergency room, surgical and other medical protocols that sicken up to half of already seriously ill patients -- in some cases severely -- with preventable and potentially dangerous bouts of food and sleep deprivation.

A group of electricity corporations picture of a future high-tech enabled world energy mix that would help nations meet climate-related CO2 reduction pledges and the expanding demand for electricity. In a report for the upcoming world climate summit (COP21, Paris, Nov. 30 - Dec. 11), the 11-member Global Sustainable Electricity Partnership catalog innovations and technologies in development industry-wide for the generation, distribution and storage of energy, as well as to reduce its use.

Nearly one-third of women, without a prior cesarean, reported that they were told by their maternity care providers that their babies might be ''quite large," leading to higher rates of medically-induced labor or planned cesarean deliveries that may not be warranted, a new study co-authored by Boston University School of Public Health and Medicine researchers shows. The study in the Maternal and Child Health Journal found that only a fraction (one in five) of the expectant mothers who were told their newborns might be large actually delivered babies with excessive birth weights - a c

The majority of adolescents in grades 7-12 would prefer to know the results of unanticipated findings found in whole exome sequencing genetic testing, even if the findings are not medically actionable until adulthood, according to survey data presented at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) 2015 Annual Meeting in Baltimore. The survey addressed secondary findings - genetic findings unrelated to the initial indication that prompted the test - gleaned from sequencing the protein-coding regions of a person's genome.

A course on critical thinking at the University of California, Berkeley, co-taught for the past three years by a public policy expert and a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, has generated a new proposal to remove sources of bias in research and improve confidence in published studies.