Culture

CHICAGO – Use of a personal digital assistant (PDA) and telephone coaching appears to enhance short-term weight loss when used in conjunction with an existing physician-directed weight loss treatment program, according to a report posted Online First by Archives of Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication.

STANFORD, Calif. — Efforts to help overweight patients avoid diabetes through lifestyle changes need not rely on intensive, one-on-one focused programs, a new clinical study from the Stanford University School of Medicine and the Palo Alto Medical Foundation Research Institute has found.

The study, to be published Dec. 10 in the Archives of Internal Medicine, opens up a practical way for primary care physicians to help their patients at high risk for developing diabetes.

Patients with terminal cancer who viewed a three-minute video demonstrating cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) were less likely to indicate a preference for receiving CPR in the event of an in-hospital cardiac arrest than were patients who only listened to a verbal description of the procedure. The study that will appear in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and is being released online today is a follow-up to a smaller, 2009 study and includes a more diverse group of patients with many forms of cancer.

Violent acts in James Bond films were more than twice as common in Quantum of Solace (2008) than in the original 1962 movie Dr No, researchers from New Zealand's University of Otago have found.

The researchers analysed 22 official franchise films, which span 46 years, to test the hypothesis that popular movies are becoming more violent (The latest Bond film, Skyfall, was not included as it was unreleased at the time of the study).

Rockville, MD — Better strategies are needed to help glaucoma patients cope with difficulty reading. According to a new scientific study published in Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, adults with glaucoma read slower when reading silently for long periods of time and are more likely to have their reading speed decrease over time, possibly a result of reading fatigue.

HERSHEY, Pa. -- Overweight women are not receiving proper advice on healthy weight gains or appropriate exercise levels during their pregnancies, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers.

Depressed elderly men have a twofold risk of admission to hospital, found a new study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). This finding could have potential for helping identify at-risk men to prevent admissions.

"Men with depression had a twofold increase in the mean number of hospital admissions, and these lasted on average twice as long as for men without depression," writes Dr. Matthew Prina, Institute of Public Health, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK, with coauthors.

A new oral agent under review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is safe and effective in treating relapsed and treatment-resistant multiple myeloma, according to a multicenter, Phase II study presented by Mount Sinai School of Medicine researchers at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting. The meeting is taking place December 8-11, 2012 in Atlanta.

Primary care physicians Johannes Hauswaldt, Eva Hummers-Pradier, and Ulrike Junius-Walker address the question of how frequently different patient groups attend doctor's appointments in this issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2012; 109[47]: 814–20).

Current estimates for Germany are of 18 doctor's appointments per patient per year. However, until now there has been no further information on, for example, age groups or whether frequent contact with doctors is particularly noticeable in particular patient groups.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- It's the medical resource behind discoveries that have affected patients around the globe, treasured by researchers and funded by the National Institutes of Health for nearly 50 years: the Rochester Epidemiology Project. This comprehensive medical records pool makes Olmsted County, Minn., one of the few places in the world where scientists can study virtually an entire geographic population to identify trends in disease, evaluate treatments and find factors that put people at risk for illness — or protect them.

The National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) yesterday released a report titled Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities: 2010 that unveils important trends in U.S. doctoral education.

The report calls attention to the changing characteristics of U.S. doctorate recipients over time, including the increased representation of women, minorities and foreign nationals; the emergence of new fields of study; the time it takes to complete doctoral study; the expansion of the postdoctoral pool; and employment opportunities after graduation.

Seniors in long-term care experienced a significant reduction in emergency room visits and depression when receiving palliative care services, according to a recent collaborative study by researchers at Hebrew SeniorLife's Hebrew Rehabilitation Center (HRC) and Institute for Aging Research, both affiliated with Harvard Medical School (HMS).

The results of the study, published today in The Gerontologist, demonstrate the potential for improved end-of-life quality of care when palliative services are implemented in a long-term care setting.

Patients with sickle cell disease rely more on the emergency room as they move from pediatric to adult health care, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

An analysis of Medicaid data of more than 3,200 patients with sickle cell disease shows that emergency room visits tripled from age 15 to age 24. The research is reported Dec. 10 at the American Society of Hematology's annual meeting, in Atlanta.

(ATLANTA, December 10, 2012) – Research unveiling key gaps in continuity of care for sickle cell patients transitioning from pediatric to adult care will be presented this week during the 54th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH).

The electronic properties of graphene films are directly affected by the characteristics of the substrates on which they are grown or to which they are transferred. Researchers are taking advantage of this to create graphene p-n junctions by transferring films of the promising electronic material to substrates that have been patterned by compounds that are either strong electron donors or electron acceptors.