Culture

Primary care physicians are at the heart of health care in the United States, and are often the first to diagnose patients and ensure those patients receive the care they need. But researchers from North Carolina State University, East Carolina University (ECU) and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York have found that many students are choosing to pass up a career in primary care because those physicians make substantially less money than specialists, such as dermatologists or radiologists.

In a preliminary clinical trial, investigators at Johns Hopkins have shown that even partially-matched bone marrow transplants can eliminate sickle cell disease in some patients, ridding them of painful and debilitating symptoms, and the need for a lifetime of pain medications and blood transfusions. The researchers say the use of such marrow could potentially help make bone marrow transplants accessible to a majority of sickle cell patients who need them.

Moving from a high-poverty to lower-poverty neighborhood spurs long-term gains in the physical and mental health of low-income adults, as well as a substantial increase in their happiness, despite not improving economic self-sufficiency, according to a new study published in the Sept. 20 issue of Science by researchers at the University of Chicago and partners at other institutions.

Walking to a beat could be useful for patients needing rehabilitation, according to a University of Pittsburgh study. The findings, highlighted in the August issue of PLOS One, demonstrate that researchers should further investigate the potential of auditory, visual, and tactile cues in the rehabilitation of patients suffering from illnesses like Parkinson's Disease—a brain disorder leading to shaking (tremors) and difficulty walking.

Mathematical modeling being tested by researchers at the School of Science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) and the IU School of Medicine has the potential to impact the knowledge and treatment of several diseases that continue to challenge scientists across the world.

CAMDEN — These days, gamers aren't just saving the virtual world, they're creating it.

Video games have evolved into a fully immersive, customizable experience in which gamers not only play, but also create new content. Players are encouraged to contribute their creativity by designing their own maps, customizing characters, and adding new material to games.

But user-generated content has the potential to infringe upon copyright law, which is casting a shadow on the legality of gamer authorship.

OTTAWA, ON – September 20, 2012 – A study of how chronically ill teenagers manage their privacy found that teen patients spend a great deal of time online and guard their privacy very consciously. "Not all my friends need to know": a qualitative study of teenage patients, privacy and social media, was published this summer in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association and co-authored by Norwegian and Canadian researchers.

Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) experience poorer sleep quality than people of a similar age without COPD, according to research published in the journal Respirology.

Researchers also found an independent relationship between how well patients with COPD slept and the oxygen levels in their arterial blood.

"Patients with COPD frequently report fatigue, sleepiness and impaired quality of life," says Professor Walter McNicholas from the Department of Respiratory and Sleep Medicine at St. Vincent's University Hospital, Dublin, Ireland.

A study at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili and the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) reveals that humans from the Upper Palaeolithic Age recycled their stone artifacts to be put to other uses. The study is based on burnt artifacts found in the Molí del Salt site in Tarragona, Spain.

Team Great Britain is only likely to bring home 46 medals from the Olympic Games in Rio in 2016, say researchers who used a mathematical formula three years ago to predict performance for London 2012 and came up with a medal haul of 63.

In the end, Great Britain won 65 medals, so the prediction was only off by two. The formula, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine is based on all cities and countries that have hosted the Olympic Games since World War II and the number of medals awarded to competitors from each country.

Childhood vaccines do not cause autism. Barack Obama was born in the United States. Global warming is confirmed by science. And yet, many people believe claims to the contrary.

OAK BROOK, Ill. – September 19, 2012 – A new study from researchers at the Mayo Clinic Arizona showed that system-wide implementation of a split-dose preparation as the primary choice for colonoscopy significantly improved both polyp detection rates and adenoma (precancerous polyp) detection rates, overall quality of the preparation, and colonoscopy completion rates. The study appears in the September issue of GIE: Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, the monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE).

BOSTON – A new postage stamp-sized, paper-based device could provide a simple and reliable way to monitor for liver damage at a cost of only pennies per test, say researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Diagnostics For All (DFA), a Cambridge, MA nonprofit dedicated to improving the health of people living in the developing world.

Spinal injuries are among the most disabling conditions affecting wounded members of the U.S. military. Yet until recently, the nature of those injuries had not been adequately explored.

KNOXVILLE—Shoppers — particularly women — who take the time to read food labels are thinner than those who don't.

These findings are from a recently released study authored by Steven T. Yen, a University of Tennessee professor in the Institute of Agriculture's Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, in conjunction with researchers at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, the University of Arkansas and the Norwegian Institute for Agricultural Finance Research.