A groundbreaking study co-authored by Rachita Sumbria, associate professor in the Chapman University School of Pharmacy, has uncovered a new contributor to the formation of brain hemorrhages. Contrary to previous beliefs that such hemorrhages were solely linked to blood vessel injuries, the research reveals that increased interactions between aged red blood cells and brain capillaries can lead to brain microhemorrhages. This discovery not only enhances new understandings of the mechanisms behind these microhemorrhages but also opens up new possibilities ...

A new study zooming in on how smartphones influence our photography habits found Australians aged 20 to 40 years old take more selfies than teenagers and older Australians.  The research, from RMIT University and the Pathshala South Asian Media Institute, studied over 1,200 smartphone photos taken during a two-week period by 30 participants and found older participants overall took more photos than teenage participants.   Research lead and RMIT Senior Lecturer Dr TJ Thomson said older participants often used their smartphone cameras in more functional ways, such as capturing information ...

It’s well-known that when those around us get sick, there’s a good chance we’ll catch what they have, but new research reveals that simply observing a sick individual triggers a biological response.   Patricia Lopes, an assistant professor of biology at Chapman University, is studying how the body anticipates the possibility of infection just by witnessing someone else's symptoms. This phenomenon raises questions about the interconnectedness of individuals within a social group and how the perception of sickness can influence the health and behavior of others.    Her recent work showed that when healthy ...

Life on Earth is facing the greatest rate of extinction in history – and humans are the disruptive force, according to a leading ecologist. Protecting biodiversity, according to consultant ecologist Nigel Dudley who has worked with international organizations including WWF International and UNESCO, does not mean prioritizing animal lives at all costs or focusing narrowly on nature’s economic values. The author defines biodiversity rights here as ‘the right of all species to continue their natural span of existence within a functioning ecosystem’. Dudley says the failure of some governments to respect biodiversity ...

University of Oxford News Release Oxford Internet Institute Strict Embargo until 00.01 GMT Tuesday, 28 November 2023    No ‘smoking gun’ mental health harm from internet: landmark Oxford survey   Study of two million individuals’ psychological well-being from 2005 to 2022 in 168 countries, in relation to country-level internet-use and mobile broadband statistics Negative and positive experiences had increased on average, but little to no evidence suggesting (mobile) internet use was associated with these changes Links between internet adoption ...

Advertising content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) is perceived as being of higher quality than content produced by human experts – according to a new research paper in Judgment and Decision Making, a journal published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making and the European Association for Decision Making.  In the first study of its kind, the findings challenge the view that knowing a piece of content is generated with AI involvement lowers the perceived quality of content – known as algorithm aversion. ChatGPT4 outperforms human experts in generating advertising content for ...

The first published evidence from humans that semaglutide specifically reduces the symptoms of Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) has been published in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry and details a recent collaboration between clinicians and scientists at the University of Oklahoma School of Community Medicine and Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences. The paper outlines the outcomes of six patients who received semaglutide during treatment for weight loss, demonstrating a significant and noteworthy decrease in their Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) scores. The paper is titled "Significant ...

Researchers assessed Veterans Affairs participants’ patterns of coping strategies, as well as the stability and change in strategies, at three timepoints (December 2020-March 2021) when COVID-19 vaccines became widely available. Two thousand and eighty-five participants completed surveys at any time point during the specified time frame and 930 participants completed all three surveys. Researchers identified three distinct coping styles: Adaptive, Distressed, and Disengaged. They then assessed stability and change ...

Researchers studied communication about erectile dysfunction (ED) between doctors and 120 Asian male patients with diabetes in a primary care clinic in Kedah, Malaysia. At the outset of the study, all participating physicians received a brief introduction to the fundamentals of ED treatment. Prior to a regular consultation, 60 men (the intervention group) were given a simple prompt sheet on which they could indicate whether they wanted to discuss, or were already discussing, ED with their doctor; physicians in the intervention group were provided with a knowledge translation flipchart developed by the researchers to ...

Adults and older children with asthma can take objective measures of symptoms such as peak expiratory flow (PEF), the volume of airflow in one forced exhalation, at home. This provides a more complete picture of their disease and helps them detect asthma exacerbations or negative changes to their condition at the onset. However, a 2022 report by the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) identifies continuous respiratory sounds such as wheezes, rhonchi, as the best indicators of asthma exacerbation, especially in children under 5 years of age. Assessment of these symptoms, still primarily done by doctors using ...

Researchers from around the United States collaborated on a clinical trial to test the effectiveness of a practice intervention for improving outcomes for patients with both physical and mental health problems by enhancing integrated behavioral health (IBH) activities. The research team recruited 42 primary care practice sites in 13 states, including internal medicine, family medicine, small and large groups, for-profit, academic, and safety-net clinics. Each site had a co-located behavioral health provider (a psychologist, social worker, or licensed counselor ...

International Group of Research Experts Establish Checklist Detailing Key Consensus Reporting Items for Primary Care Studies   In an effort to fill the need for primary care–focused guidelines, an international group of top researchers has developed the Consensus Reporting Items for Studies in Primary Care (CRISP) Checklist, which outlines 24 items that describe the research team, patients, study participants, health conditions, clinical encounters, care teams, interventions, study measures, settings of care, and implementation of ...

Embargoed for release until 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday 27 November 2023 Annals of Internal Medicine Tip Sheet @Annalsofim Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of the organization they represent. ---------------------------- 1. Unfiltered ...

In Ontario, Canada, most COVID-19 vaccinations were administered by public health organizations and pharmacies rather than by family physicians. Researchers devised a practice facilitation intervention program to help family physicians proactively engage with their patients who were not yet vaccinated for COVID‐19. Six trained practice facilitators helped 90 family physicians identify unvaccinated patients and offered resources to address COVID‐19 vaccine hesitancy, scripts and email templates for patient outreach, and connections to trained medical student volunteers to work as physician‐delegates by conducting patient telephone outreach and motivational interviewing. ...

For more than a century, American cities have been sliced and diced by high-traffic roadways. Interstate highways and wide arterials are now a defining feature of most metropolitan areas, their constant flow of cars spewing pollution into nearby neighborhoods.   Researchers have only just begun to understand the health risks posed by all that pollution. Long-term exposure to traffic-related air pollution — a complex mixture of exhaust from tailpipes, brake and tire wear, and road dust — has been linked to increased rates ...

Canadian researchers examined how the rapid shift to using virtual care during the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted primary care doctors’ well-being at work. They utilized a self-determination theory (SDT) lens to examine how autonomous (vs. controlled) motivation among family physicians impacted their well-being when shifting to virtual care, and whether satisfaction (vs. frustration) of their basic psychological needs at work mediated that relationship. The researchers gathered qualitative data by surveying 156 family physicians ...

Some patients choose to voluntarily stop eating and drinking (VSED) as a way of hastening death. Researchers from the Amsterdam University Medical Centre conducted a study to describe patients’ motives for doing so, how they decide to voluntarily stop eating and drinking, and the way in which they prepare to do so, along with how they involve others. The researchers conducted qualitative interviews with 29 patients living in the Netherlands. Among 29 cases, 24 started VSED and 19 died. Thirteen cases were included before and ...

Researchers performed an analysis to assess the proportion of accredited U.S. family medicine residency programs and trainees in states with abortion restrictions. Of 693 accredited family medicine residency programs in the U.S., 201 programs (29%) were in states where abortion was banned or heavily restricted as of August 2, 2023. Fourteen of the 17 states in this category had complete abortion bans. While most (63.8%) family medicine residency programs were in states with at least some abortion restrictions, 251 ...

In an effort to fill the need for primary care–focused guidelines, an international group of top researchers has developed the Consensus Reporting Items for Studies in Primary Care (CRISP) Checklist, which outlines 24 items that describe the research team, patients, study participants, health conditions, clinical encounters, care teams, interventions, study measures, settings of care, and implementation of findings and results in primary care. The CRISP Working Group conducted a scoping review of literature on the state of primary care research reporting as well as several rounds of online surveys to assess ...

Researchers have discovered that a part of the brain associated with working memory and multisensory integration may also play an important role in how the brain processes social cues. Previous research has shown that neurons in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) integrate faces and voices—but new research, in the Journal of Neuroscience, shows that neurons in the VLPFC play a role in processing both the identity of the “speaker” and the expression conveyed by facial gestures and vocalizations. “We still don’t fully understand how facial and vocal information is combined and what information is processed by different ...

New research from McMaster University has found that not only is virtual care a safe way to hold medical appointments, but that patients and physicians were able to use it appropriately and effectively with minimal guidance. The study, published in Healthcare Quarterly on Nov. 27, was led by Shawn Mondoux, an emergency physician and associate professor in the Department of Medicine at McMaster. Mondoux and his team wanted to find out just how safe virtual care is when compared to an in-person assessment. To do this, researchers keyed in specifically on virtual ...

Parents who send their children to child care can breathe a little easier – research published in JAMA Network Open from experts at Michigan Medicine, the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh shows that children in daycare were not significant spreaders of COVID-19.  The study found that transmission rates of SARS-CoV-2 within child care centers was only about 2% to 3%, suggesting that children and caregivers were not spreading COVID at significant rates to others ...

To reach the world’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, there must be a fundamental change in electronic materials to create a more reliable and resilient electricity grid. A diamond might be a girl’s best friend, but it might also be the solution needed to sustain the electrification of society needed to reach carbon neutrality in the next 30 years. Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed a semiconductor device made using diamond, that has the highest breakdown voltage and lowest leakage current compared to previously reported diamond devices. Such a device will enable more efficient technologies needed as the world transitions to renewable energies. It ...

Publications on sugarcane have increased exponentially since 2006 worldwide, and Brazil has had more articles published on the topic than any other country in the period, according to a review in BioEnergy Research. The number of articles on the subject averaged about five per year between 1999 and 2006 but had reached 327 by 2021. Brazil has twice as many articles on sugarcane as the United States, which ranks first in the world for scientific publications in general. Brazil is also ahead of Australia, China and India, which are also major sugarcane growers. According to the authors of the review, who are affiliated with the Laboratory of Plant Physiological Ecology (LAFIECO) ...

Messenger bubbles produced by human cells can pick up bacterial products and deliver them to other cells, University of Connecticut researchers report in the Nov. 16 issue of Nature Cell Biology. The discovery may explain a key mechanism by which bacteria, whether friendly or infectious, affect our health. Extra-cellular vesicles (EVs) are like a postal service for our cells. Cells produce the EVs, tiny bubbles with a water-resistant shell made of fatty substances called lipids, and send them into the bloodstream. When another cell comes across an EV, it takes it inside itself ...