Culture

A survey of California doctors found that a majority of the 525 who responded believe the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA, nee Obamacare) will steer the country's health care in the right direction.

The twin towers, Madrid, July 7, Charlie Hebdo… the list of terrorist political acts and their victims feels endless. When people are killed and lives threatened for political motivations, demands for immediate reprisals and military counter-measures usually follow suit.

Military force and policing is our default tactic – and talking to terrorists, by contrast, feels counter-intuitive. After all, surely talking to murderers, criminals and fanatics will only legitimise their aims and tactics.

When Seattle man, Jason Padgett, walked into a bar for a drink a few years ago, he was an ordinary man with seemingly average intelligence leading an unremarkable life. He worked contentedly in his father's furniture shop and had never done well academically or ever cared to do so. On exiting the bar that night, he was viciously mugged, hit on the head and knocked out. After a hospital evaluation for a concussion, he was sent him home with typical instructions. When he awoke the next morning, he noticed something both disturbing and enthralling.

Monica Eaton-Cardone, founder and CIO of Global Risk Technologies, most known for Chargebacks911, says women are at risk for getting pushed out of an ever-increasing amount of STEM jobs due to ong-standing gender bias.

Though some estimates are that 80 percent of jobs next decade will require technology skills(1), the chance for a future generation of women to occupy and excel in these positions is being impeded by social perceptions that STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) are “male industries”, says Eaton-Cardone.

While a debate was raging between scientists and government regulators on how best to explain to patients the risks of participating in clinical research studies that compare standardized treatments, a team of bioethicists boldly went where no experts had gone before -- to the public.

What the respondents said surprised them: Keep it simple, but always ask permission, even when the research only involves gathering data from anonymized medical records.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) simultaneously forced young people to have health insurance and then forced insurance companies to allow them to stay on their parental policies until age 26 but the young people least likely to have it before still don't, according to a paper in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

In 2012, PennFuture issued a report identifying fossil fuel tax credits in Pennsylvania totaling $2.9 billion, at the time roughly 10 percent of the state budget.

The environmental lobbying group has updated that report and the current dollar amount of tax incentives for the highly-profitable, mature fossil fuel industry continues to balloon at a time when the state faces a $1.5 billion budget shortfall and investment in emerging renewable energy industries are at fractional levels.

The new Senate looks to be no better than when Democrats were in charge, they note.

Broader use of standardized psychological testing for applicants submitting disability claims to the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) should improve the accuracy and consistency of disability determinations, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine. Some proponents of mandatory psychological testing, in particular validity testing, for SSA disability applicants argue that it would result in a significant reduction of individuals allowed onto the benefits rolls and a substantial cost savings.

A recent study on university-going young adults, by researchers from the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore (Duke-NUS), is the first ever to show an association between meals eaten away from home and high blood pressure. These findings highlight lifestyle factors that can affect hypertension and emphasise the importance of being aware of the salt and calorie content in food, to facilitate better meal choices when eating out.

The adoption of farming has completely and definitively changed the relation between humans and nature. For the first time, by putting nature at their service through the development of a production economy, humans became the masters of their own destiny. It is one of the major economic shifts that occurred in the human evolution but also, by the adoption of a sedentary lifestyle, a complete cultural transformation.

Deep cuts in health spending by the Indian government will lead to continued inadequate health services and delays in achieving universal access to healthcare, argue experts in The BMJ this week.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, elected to power in 2014, promised to increase access to health, improve quality and lower costs. But in 2014-2015, the central government spent much less than it had budgeted for - 20% less in current spending and as much as 50% less in capital spending.

Facial rejuvenation surgery may not only make you look younger, it may improve perceptions of you with regard to likeability, social skills, attractiveness and femininity, according to a report. The relationship between facial features and personality traits has been studied in other science fields, but it is lacking in the surgical literature, according to the study background.

wealth of studies have shown that violent video games contribute to antisocial and aggressive behavior. But what makes those games appealing in the first place? One possibility is that storytelling plays a role, particularly if it lets players engage in meaningful choices. A new study suggests that non-violent video games that capitalize on such storytelling have prosocial benefits that could ultimately be helpful to clinical disorders such as autism.

Recognizing and giving thanks for the positive aspects of life can result in improved mental, and ultimately physical, health in patients with asymptomatic heart failure, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

The U.S. Federal government is working to make all of health care more like Medicare but that may not be a good thing if you have cancer.