Tech

A recent review in Faculty of 1000 Medicine Reports, a publication in which clinicians highlight advances in medical practice, suggests regional pain relief could be used during abdominal surgery. In this review, Michael Schaefer recommends a new approach that can be performed without the need for general anaesthetics.

The spread of malicious software, also known as malware or computer viruses, is a growing problem that can lead to crashed computer systems, stolen personal information, and billions of dollars in lost productivity every year. One of the most insidious types of malware is a "rootkit," which can effectively hide the presence of other spyware or viruses from the user – allowing third parties to steal information from your computer without your knowledge.

Holidays and tables full of delicious food usually go hand in hand, but for nearly half of the children in the United States, this is not guaranteed.

"49 percent of all U.S. children will be in a household that uses food stamps at some point during their childhood," says Mark R. Rank, Ph.D., poverty expert at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. "Food stamp use is a clear sign of poverty and food insecurity, two of the most detrimental economic conditions affecting a child's health."

A fire aboard a Navy ship can quickly become a deadly cauldron. The grim reminders of this would be the deadly fires that took place aboard the USS Forrestal in 1967 or the USS Enterprise in 1969.

Washington, November 2, 2009 – The American College of Physicians (ACP) today sent a letter to House leaders voicing the College's support for key policies in the Affordable Health Care for America Act.

Nearly half of American children – including 90 percent of black children and 90 percent of children who spend their childhoods in single-parent households – will eat meals paid for by food stamps at some point during childhood, reports a Cornell researcher.

Healthy pregnant women mount a robust immune response following just one dose of 2009 H1N1 influenza vaccine, according to initial results from an ongoing clinical trial sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health.

The legendary "man-eating lions of Tsavo" that terrorized a railroad camp in Kenya more than a century ago likely consumed about 35 people--far fewer than popular estimates of 135 victims, according to a new analysis led by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The study also yields surprises about the predatory behavior of lions.

La Jolla, CA—The search for the holy grail of regenerative medicine—the ability to "grow back" a perfect body part when one is lost to injury or disease—has been under way for years, yet the steps involved in this seemingly magic process are still poorly understood.

Researchers at Rush University Medical Center and Argonne National Laboratory are collaborating on a study to determine if an imaging technique used by NASA to inspect the space shuttle can be used to predict tissue damage often experienced by breast cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy. The study is examining the utility of three-dimensional thermal tomography in radiation oncology.

Preliminary results from the study are being displayed during the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting in Chicago, being held from November 1 – 5, 2009.

PITTSBURGH, Nov. 2 – Inhaled nitric oxide (iNO), a therapy used in the treatment of premature newborns with respiratory failure that had shown promising results in short-term studies, does not significantly improve long-term outcomes, according to a national study led by critical care researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC.

HOUSTON -- (Nov. 2, 2009) -- Rice University scientists today unveiled a method for the industrial-scale processing of pure carbon-nanotube fibers that could lead to revolutionary advances in materials science, power distribution and nanoelectronics. The result of a nine-year program, the method builds upon tried-and-true processes that chemical firms have used for decades to produce plastics. The research is available online in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

(Boston) – A team of researchers from Boston University School (BUSM), Carney Hospital, Cambridge Health Alliance and Tufts University School of Medicine, have found that widespread poor compliance with regular cleaning of public restrooms on cruise ships may predict subsequent norovirus infection outbreaks (NoVOs). This study, which appears in the November 1st issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, is the first study of environmental hygiene on cruise ships.

A wireless digital 'plaster' that can monitor vital signs continuously and remotely is being tried out with patients and healthy volunteers at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, in a new clinical trial run by Imperial College London researchers.

Toumaz Technology Ltd's Sensium™ digital 'plaster' or 'patch' is a disposable device that sticks to a patient's chest. It is designed to allow patients to have their health monitored continuously without being wired up to bulky, fixed monitoring machines, potentially freeing some patients from their hospital beds.

A telemedicine system based on a modified version of the Bluetooth wireless protocol can transfer patient data, such as medical images from patient to the healthcare provider's mobile device for patient assessment almost four times as fast as conventional Bluetooth and without the intermittent connectivity problems, according to a paper in the forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics.