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 ...

Deep learning has revolutionized the way we perceive and utilize data. However, as datasets grow and computational demands increase, we need more efficient ways to handle, store, and process data. In this regard, optical computing is seen as the next frontier of computing technology. Rather than using electronic signals, optical computing relies on the properties of light waves, such as wavelength and polarization, to store and process data. Diffractive deep neural networks (D2NN) utilize various properties of light waves to perform tasks like image and object recognition. Such networks consist of two-dimensional pixel arrays as diffractive layers. Each pixel serves as an adjustable ...

Many gig workers experienced financial hardships during the COVID-19 pandemic, including food insecurity and trouble paying bills, according to a recent study published in Work and Occupations. “In a nutshell, our study shows gig workers were harmed more by the COVID-19 pandemic than any other workers,” said Dr. Mathieu Despard, a co-author on the paper and faculty member in UNC Greensboro’s Department of Social Work. Despard – who collaborated closely with first author Daniel Auguste ...

AURORA, Colo. (Nov. 27, 2023) – Using laboratory engineered tissue, scientists at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus have created a full thickness, biodegradable patch that holds the promise of correcting congenital heart defects in infants, limiting invasive surgeries and outlasting current patches. The findings were published this week in the journal Materials Today. “The ultimate goal is to make lab-grown heart tissue from a patient’s own cells that can be used to restructure the heart to correct for heart defects,” said the ...

Recent advances in generative artificial intelligence have spurred developments in realistic speech synthesis. While this technology has the potential to improve lives through personalized voice assistants and accessibility-enhancing communication tools, it also has led to the emergence of deepfakes, in which synthesized speech can be misused to deceive humans and machines for nefarious purposes. In response to this evolving threat, Ning Zhang, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University ...

What if a single one-dollar dose could cure cancer? A multi-university team of researchers, supported by federal funding, is developing a highly efficient bacterial therapeutic to target cancer more precisely to make treatment safer through a single $1 dose. Traditionally, cancer therapies have been limited in their efficacy in treating patients. Some, like radiation and chemotherapy, cause harmful side effects, while others tend to result in low patient responsiveness, not to mention the cost it takes to receive treatment. Findings from the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network recorded ...

A new study by Tulane University has uncovered a previously unknown molecular pathway that could be instrumental to halting lung cancer in its tracks. Lung cancer is one of the most common cancers and the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the world.  The research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could lead to the development of a new anti-cancer drug and more personalized lung cancer treatment, said senior study author Dr. Hua Lu, the Reynolds and Ryan Families Chair in Translational Cancer at the Tulane University School of Medicine. The study found ...

MADISON, Wis. — COVID-19 caused an alarming surge in premature births, but vaccines were key to returning the early birth rate to pre-pandemic levels, according to a new analysis of California birth records. “The effect of maternal COVID infection from the onset of the pandemic into 2023 is large, increasing the risk of preterm births over that time by 1.2 percentage points,” says Jenna Nobles, a University of Wisconsin–Madison sociology professor. “To move the needle on preterm birth that much is akin to a disastrous ...

All animals start out as a single-celled organism and then start growing. At some point, of course, they need to stop getting bigger, but the process by which this happens is poorly understood.  New research from Alexander Shingleton at the University of Illinois Chicago and colleagues identifies a potential trigger that makes fruit flies stop growing, which has implications for understanding human development. The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  In humans, the body’s signal to stop growing happens around puberty, though it takes several more years before growth actually ceases. It is important to better ...

During the first two years of the pandemic, a COVID-19 infection during pregnancy increased the risk of preterm birth and NICU hospitalizations. However, by 2022, when COVID-19 vaccines were readily available in the United States, this effect disappeared – suggesting that vaccination against the coronavirus may have prevented thousands of preterm births, according to a new study led by Stanford sociologist Florencia Torche. The study’s findings, published Nov. 27 in the journal Proceedings of the National ...

Wireless devices consume more than just the hours users spend scrolling through social media, streaming podcasts and TV shows, and playing games. The networks used to connect these devices also consume a large amount of energy – up to a few thousand terawatt-hours annually worldwide, which is enough to power 70,000,000 homes for one year. UCF researcher Kenle Chen aims to enhance the energy efficiency of these systems with the support of a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Addressing Systems Challenges through Engineering ...

A cell nucleus is a busy place. Cellular proteins twist and pull DNA, folding the genome into intricate 3D structures that support functioning of its coding parts.  This choreography is essential for cell development, and the exact steps vary wildly between cell types. Establishing proper communication between genes and far-away control switches at the right time in the right cell is not a small feat. In fact, very few proteins have the right combination of features to organize the genome into the right structures. In ...

Health care organizations are looking to artificial intelligence (AI) tools to improve patient care, but their translation into clinical settings has been inconsistent, in part because evaluating AI in health care remains challenging. In a new article, researchers propose a framework for using AI that includes practical guidance for applying values and that incorporates not just the tool’s properties but the systems surrounding its use. The article was written by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, The Hospital for Sick Children, the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Columbia University, and the University of Toronto. It is published in Patterns. “Regulatory ...

1. A materials research team consisting of NIMS and Nagoya University has designed a novel two-step thermal aging schedule (i.e., non-isothermal aging or unconventional heat treatment) capable of fabricating nickel-aluminum (Ni-Al) alloys that are stronger at high temperatures than Ni-Al alloys fabricated using conventional thermal aging processes. This was achieved by using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to identify several dozen different thermal aging schedules potentially effective in increasing alloys’ high-temperature strength. The mechanisms ...