Japanese researchers have developed a computer program which may be able tell from an emergency call if you are about to die. Research published in the open access journal BMC Emergency Medicine shows that a computer algorithm is able to predict the patient's risk of dying at the time of the emergency call.
Tech
For patients with severe knee pain, supervised exercise therapy is more effective at reducing pain and improving function than usual care, finds a study published on bmj.com today.
Patellofemoral pain syndrome is a condition in which pain occurs at the front of the knee during or after exercise and is a common reason to visit the doctor. Women are more likely to be affected than men, and symptoms usually start during adolescence when participation in sporting activities is high.
WASHINGTON—Diverting sediment-rich water from the Mississippi River below New Orleans could generate new land in the river's delta in the next century that would equal almost half the acreage otherwise expected to disappear during that period, a new study shows.
PHILADELPHIA –- Physicists, chemists and engineers at the University of Pennsylvania have demonstrated a novel method for the controlled formation of patchy particles, using charged, self-assembling molecules that may one day serve as drug-delivery vehicles to combat disease and perhaps be used in small batteries that store and release charge.
Residents in southern Baja California, Mexico still haven't recovered from last month's Hurricane Jimena, and Tropical Storm Rick is now bringing rains to southern tip of the Baja. The National Hurricane Center revised its forecast track at 11 a.m. EDT and it keeps Rick's center over open waters with a landfall in western mainland Mexico.
INDIANAPOLIS - Emergency medical responders typically know very little about the patients they treat at mass disasters, accident scenes, or other sites where an ambulance is dispatched for rapid response. That's true everyplace in the United States except Indianapolis, the capital of the most health-wired state in the nation.
COLLEGE PARK, Md.—Maple tree seeds (or samara fruit) and the spiraling pattern in which they glide to the ground have delighted children for ages and perplexed engineers for decades. Now aerospace engineering graduate students at the University of Maryland's Clark School of Engineering have learned how to apply the seeds' unique design to aerial devices that can fly, hover and perform surveillance in defense and emergency situations.
North Carolina State University engineers have created a new material that would allow a fingernail-size computer chip to store the equivalent of 20 high-definition DVDs or 250 million pages of text, far exceeding the storage capacities of today's computer memory systems.
Since a failed terrorist attack in 2006, plane passengers have not been able to carry bottles of liquid through security at airports, leaving some parched at the airport and others having expensive toiletries confiscated, but work by a group of physicists in Germany is paving the way to eliminate this necessary nuisance.
Logged rainforests can support as much plant, animal and insect life as virgin forest within 15 years if properly managed, research at the University of Leeds has found.
Because trees in tropical climates soak up large amounts of carbon dioxide, restoring logged forest through planting new trees could also be used in carbon trading, according to Dr David Edwards, from University's Faculty of Biological Sciences.
New York, NY, October 20, 2009 – Depression, anxiety disorders and sexual trauma have all been implicated as risk factors in lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) such as incontinence and overactive bladder. The exact nature of these associations is unknown. In a study published online in The Journal of Urology, researchers from the Division of Urology, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine and the Hunter Holmes McGuire Veterans Affairs Hospital, Richmond, Virginia, explored the possible association of LUTS with those factors.
Waltham, MA—As the national conversation about healthcare reform engages millions of Americans, a new Brandeis study sheds light on the values of medical faculty who train the nation's physicians and lead in health care and research in the U.S. The study, published this week in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, shows that faculty values regarding clinical care, education, community service and research correlate well with the stated missions of their institutions, but that in some instances, the institutions fall short of "practicing what they preach."
A new computerised approach to airport operations is being developed that will reduce delays, speed up baggage handling and decrease pollution.
The project is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and led by researchers at The University of Nottingham.
Philadelphia, October 17, 2009 – Data presented at the 73rd Annual Scientific Meeting of the American College of Rheumatology highlight effects of baseline characteristics on achievement of serum uric acid (sUA) levels to <6.0 mg/dL and the frequency of flares with ULORIC® (febuxostat) treatment.
A subset of subjects from the CONFIRMS trial who received prior urate-lowering therapy for up to five years achieved sUA <6.0 mg/dL more often, and had a lower rate of acute gout flares than patients who had not received prior long-term urate-lowering therapy.
Most of the technology needed to shift the world from fossil fuel to clean, renewable energy already exists. Implementing that technology requires overcoming obstacles in planning and politics, but doing so could result in a 30 percent decrease in global power demand, say Stanford civil and environmental engineering Professor Mark Z. Jacobson and University of California-Davis researcher Mark Delucchi.