Over the past 22 years, wildfires in the United States have caused damages exceeding $100 billion, and as climate change continues to intensify wildfire frequency and severity, research is essential to protect lives, property, and ecosystems—and to help communities adapt to these changing conditions. To this end, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has added Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) to its Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center (WIRC), a collaboration between universities and industry. Supported by a three-year, $450,000 grant with additional direct funding from industry partners, WPI will build upon its longstanding expertise ...

Doctor and Pharmacist Revamp Standard Processes for Ordering and Documenting Mifepristone Use Clinical researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School partnered with the university health system’s compliance department to create standard processes for ordering and documenting mifepristone administration, which adhere to the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) requirements. They established a single prescriber account to represent all system prescribers who met REMS requirements, ...

Screening for Adverse Childhood Experience Can Improve Trauma-Informed Care, Though Time Constraints and Limited Referral Resources Present Challenges Researchers conducted a qualitative evaluation in five clinics in Los Angeles County to understand physician and clinical staff perspectives on the implementation of routine Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) screening in pediatric primary care. The researchers employed focus group discussions with 125 clinic staff involved in ACE screening, including frontline staff who administer ...

Understanding Parents’ Care Expectations for a Child With Gastroenteritis Could Prevent After-Hours Care Requests Researchers from the Netherlands conducted a qualitative study to explore parental motivations, expectations, and experiences of off-hours primary care contacts for children with acute gastroenteritis. They conducted 14 semistructured interviews with parents who contacted primary care physicians outside of normal operating hours seeking medical attention for their children. Parents were more likely to contact their primary care physician after hours when their ...

Learning Collaborative Promotes Mifepristone Education and Utilization Training in Federally Qualified Health Centers Researchers created a learning collaborative that included implementing an intervention titled, “Excellence in Providing Access to New Directions in Mifepristone Use (ExPAND Mifepristone)” in two Chicago-area Federally Qualified Health Centers with a focus on enhancing educational and training support services for primary care doctors and staff to use mifepristone for miscarriage management and abortion provision. Prior to program implementation, clinicians and staff had little knowledge of mifepristone. After program ...

Men Who Trust Their Doctors, Receive Adequate Time and General Information About Prostate Cancer Screening Are More Likely to Have Productive Discussions Members of the University of Ottawa Department of Family Medicine conducted a scoping review to understand men’s communication preferences when they discuss prostate cancer screening with their doctors. Researchers analyzed a total of 29 studies and identified four main themes: men preferred that their doctors use everyday language; men wanted more information; men wanted the doctor to spend adequate time with them to explain prostate cancer; and desired a trusting and respectful relationship with their doctor. Three additional themes ...

Study Identifies Patient and Clinician-Level Characteristics Associated With Sexual History Screening Administration Researchers conducted a mixed methods study that investigated patient- and clinician-level characteristics associated with a sexual history screening (SHS). Participants included 53,246 patients and 56 clinicians from 13 clinical sites. Less than half (42.41%) of patients had any SHS documentation. Gay and lesbian patients; patients who were cisgender women; and patients whose doctors were cisgender women had significantly higher odds of having any SHS documented in their medical chart. Conversely, older patients; patients whose doctors have more patients on their ...

Researchers Identify Important Strategies for Diabetes Care and Quality Improvements in the Primary Care Setting This qualitative study considers how the strategies used by high-performing primary care practices to improve diabetes care might play a role in successfully managing practice change. The research team conducted semistructured interviews at 10 Minnesota primary care practices (rural and urban) ranked in the top quartile of diabetes care improvement per their Optimal Diabetes Care (ODC) scores. (Minnesota’s ODC scores are calculated based on mandatory ...

Attentiveness to Resting Leg Cramps May Afford Greater Insight Into Advancing Age and Declining Health Researchers developed and conducted a cross-sectional survey to examine the prevalence and characteristics of leg cramps in 294 primary care patients (with a mean age of 46.5 years), with 51.7% reporting leg cramps. Patients who experience resting or exercise-induced leg cramps were more likely to be older (mean age 49.1 years) and female (which comprised 69% of surveyed participants and 72% of the ...

Researchers aimed to identify factors leading primary care practice personnel to decline participation in quality improvement (QI) projects, and strategies to improve the feasibility and attractiveness of QI projects in the future. Representatives from 31 practices agreed to participate in the study. Overwhelmingly, respondents said that staff turnover, staffing shortages, and general time constraints, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, prevented participation in QI projects. Challenges with electronic health records (EHR); an expectation for greater financial compensation for participation; and confidence in the practices’ current care ...

Primary Care Investigators, Clinicians, Patients and Community Members Reflect on NAPCRG’s 50 Years of Leadership and Service A team of primary care investigators, clinicians, learners, patients, and community members reflected on the North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) as it passed a 50-year milestone at its 2022 meeting. NAPCRG was started in 1972 by a small group of general practice researchers in the US, Canada, and the UK. It has evolved into an international, interprofessional, interdisciplinary, and intergenerational group devoted to improving health and health care through primary care research. The authors of the special report write that NAPCRG provides ...

Transgender Persons Face Challenges When Seeking Clinical Care, Including Decisions About What Information to Disclose and Risk of Substandard Care Researchers conducted a qualitative study to investigate transgender people’s experiences with sharing health information in clinical encounters. They held seven qualitative focus groups with 30 transgender adults living in North America. Four themes emerged: 1) Transgender people often perceive clinicians’ questions as voyeuristic, stigmatizing, or self-protective; 2) Patients describe being pathologized, denied, given substandard care, or harmed when clinicians ...

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine have discovered that radiation therapy combined with two types of immunotherapy—one that boosts T cells, and another that boosts dendritic cells—can control tumors in preclinical models of triple negative breast cancer, a cancer type that’s typically resistant to immunotherapy alone. Immunotherapy activates the body’s own immune system to fight cancer but isn’t effective for difficult-to-treat “cold” tumors, like this. The findings were published Aug. 24 in Nature Communications. Though radiation therapy has previously been combined with T-cell boosting immunotherapy, it rarely succeeds ...

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning tools have received a lot of attention recently, with the majority of discussions focusing on proper use. However, this technology has a wide range of practical applications, from predicting natural disasters to addressing racial inequalities and now, assisting in cancer surgery. A new clinical and research partnership between the UNC Department of Surgery, the Joint UNC-NCSU Department of Biomedical Engineering, and the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center has created an AI model that can predict whether or not cancerous ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — In a recent Mayo Clinic study, researchers found that most patients prescribed fewer opioids after surgery were able to maintain satisfactory comfort levels without requiring more prescription refills later. Under new evidence-based guidelines, patients undergoing various surgeries received fewer opioid pills, and 88% reported feeling "very" or "somewhat" satisfied with their pain management. Researchers worked with the Mayo Clinic Survey Research Center to survey patients undergoing a range of elective surgeries. The survey investigated their post-surgery experiences, overall pain management approach and opioid use. The study’s ...

Irvine, Calif., Sept. 25, 2023 — Wildfires in California, exacerbated by human-driven climate change, are getting more severe. To better manage them, there’s a growing need to know exactly what fuels the blazes after they ignite. In a study published in Environmental Research Letters, Earth system scientists at the University of California, Irvine report that one of the chief fuels of wildfires in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains is the decades-old remains of large trees.    “Our findings support the idea that large-diameter fuel build-up is ...

Images EAST LANSING, Mich. – The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, or DOE-SC, has awarded $115 million for the High Rigidity Spectrometer, or HRS, project at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, or FRIB, at Michigan State University. The HRS instrument will enable scientists to characterize the properties of isotopes that are created in rare-isotope reactions produced at about 50% of the speed of light. With the ability to measure properties such as the mass, charge and velocity of rare isotopes produced in those conditions, HRS will be a centerpiece experimental instrument ...

A University of Texas at Arlington research team has received a $450,000 grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to use statistical machine learning to review patient data and better predict which patients will need additional treatments. “With recent advances in screening, diagnosis and treatment, many diseases like cancer or cardiovascular disease can be identified in an early stage,” said Suvra Pal, associate professor of statistics in the Department of Mathematics. “Fortunately, a significant proportion of patients living ...

A brand-new kind of drug, tested in mice, shows promising new results that could lead to the development of a new weight-loss drug that mimics exercise. The new compound, developed and tested by a University of Florida professor of pharmacy and his colleagues, leads obese mice to lose weight by convincing the body’s muscles that they are exercising more than they really are, boosting the animals’ metabolism. It also increases endurance, helping mice run nearly 50% further than they could before. All without the mice lifting ...

Scientists have discovered a simple and reliable test for signs of past or present life on other planets – “the holy grail of astrobiology.” In the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a seven-member team, funded by the John Templeton Foundation and led by Jim Cleaves and Robert Hazen of the Carnegie Institution for Science, reports that, with 90% accuracy, their artificial intelligence-based method distinguished modern and ancient biological samples from those of abiotic origin. “This routine analytical method has the potential to revolutionize ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Wind energy is, by far, the most common type of clean energy. And transitioning to clean energy is critical to addressing the climate crisis. Yet local opposition poses a significant barrier to the deployment of wind energy projects.  A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by researchers from UC Santa Barbara, the University of Michigan and Gallup Inc. examined wind energy projects throughout the United States and Canada to determine how common opposition is and what factors predict it. The study found that nearly one in five projects faced opposition ...

Enforcement is one of the biggest challenges to international cooperation on mitigating climate change in the Paris Agreement. The agreement has no formal enforcement mechanism; instead, it is designed to be transparent so countries that fail to meet their obligations will be named and thus shamed into changing behavior. A new study from the University of California San Diego's School of Global Policy and Strategy shows that this naming-and-shaming mechanism can be an effective incentive for many countries to uphold their pledges ...

Humankind is looking for life on other planets, but how will we recognise it when we see it? Now a group of US scientists have developed an artificial-intelligence-based system which gives 90% accuracy in discovering signs of life. The work was presented to scientists for the first time at the Goldschmidt Geochemistry Conference in Lyon on Friday 14th July, where it received a positive reception from others working in the field. The details have now been published in the peer-reviewed journal PNAS (see notes for details). Lead researcher Professor Robert Hazen, of the Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical ...

In a new study published in PNAS, researchers have extracted the first ancient DNA from Caribbean parrots, which they compared with genetic sequences from modern birds. Working with fossils and archaeological specimens, they showed that two species thought to be endemic to particular islands were once more widespread and diverse. The results help explain how parrots rapidly became the world’s most endangered group of birds, with 28% of all species considered to be threatened. This is especially true for parrots that inhabit islands. On ...

One of the most impressive and mysterious natural formations that we can observe in the arid areas of our planet are the fairy circles. These are enigmatic circular patterns of bare soil surrounded by plants generating rings of vegetation, which until now had only been described in Namibia and Australia. Over the years, multiple hypotheses have been proposed to explain their formation, which have given rise to numerous discussions about the mechanisms that give rise to them. However, until now, we did not know the global dimension of this type of phenomena and the environmental ...