A new paper in the Review of Economic Studies, published by Oxford University Press, finds that a generous parental leave policy nurses enjoyed in Denmark caused nursing shortages, which resulted in a decline in the quality of hospital and nursing home care. The study estimates a large increase in nursing home mortality. Beginning in 1994 a parental-leave program in Denmark offered any parent the opportunity to take up to a full year off work, paid, for every child under the age of nine. The researchers find that many nurses in Denmark took advantage of this program. Nurses, however, could not be replaced on net despite the Danish government's efforts to expand education and immigration ...

If you look deep into the eyes of a fish, it will tell you its life story. Scientists from the University of California, Davis, demonstrate that they can use stable isotopic analysis of the eye lenses of freshwater fish -- including threatened and endangered salmon -- to reveal a fish's life history and what it ate along the way. They conducted their study, published today in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution, through field-based experiments in California's Central Valley. The study carries implications for managing floodplains, fish and natural resources; prioritizing habitat restoration efforts; and understanding how landscape disturbances impact fish. The technique had previously been used in marine environments, ...

Worldwide, over one billion people live with a disability. Historically, they have been discriminated against and stigmatized by society. To improve their rights, they should be included in political decision-making, yet there is a lack of political representatives who are known to have a disability. This under-representation may be due to several factors, including how voters perceive a political candidate with a disability. However, a new study published in Frontiers in Political Science, found for the first time that voters do not apply negative stereotypes when evaluating candidates with a disability. Rather, voters tend to perceive candidates with a disability as capable, ...

Prescription drug prices in the United States are significantly higher than in other nations, with prices in the U.S. averaging 2.56 times those seen in 32 other nations, according to a new RAND Corporation report. The gap between prices in the U.S. and other countries is even larger for brand-named drugs, with U.S. prices averaging 3.44 times those in comparison nations. The RAND study found that prices for unbranded generic drugs -- which account for 84% of drugs sold in the U.S. by volume but only 12% of U.S. spending -- are slightly lower in the U.S. than in most other nations. "Brand-name drugs are the primary driver of the higher prescription drug prices in the U.S.," said Andrew Mulcahy, lead author of the study and a senior health policy researcher at RAND, a ...

SINGAPORE, 28 January 2021 - One in three adults, particularly women, younger adults, and those of lower socioeconomic status, are experiencing psychological distress related to COVID-19, researchers at Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore, reported in the journal PLOS ONE. COVID-19 continues to pose serious threats to public health across the globe, and interventions such as lockdowns, quarantine and social distancing are having an adverse impact on the mental well-being of populations. The pandemic has escalated the burden of psychological distress, including anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress and insomnia. However, the factors associated with increased susceptibility to psychological distress among adults in the general population during COVID-19 ...

Results of study by Children's Hospital Colorado, presented at the Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine's Annual Meeting, show a third of patients not needing narcotic pain pills after c-section Aurora, Colo. (Jan. 28, 2021) In a retrospective analysis of cesarean deliveries from 2015 through 2020, a team of doctors from the Colorado Fetal Care Center at Children's Hospital Colorado (Children's Colorado) found that using a wound infusion pump in combination with enhanced recovery efforts such as removing urinary catheters earlier and walking around the same day of surgery can reduce opioid use by more than 80%. Also notable, ...

Researchers from Western University, Indiana University, and Washington State University published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that uses the idea of psychological distance as a way to leverage qualities of existing consumer-brand relationships. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "They're Just Not That Into You: How to Leverage Existing Consumer-Brand Relationships through Social Psychological Distance" and is authored by Scott Connors, Mansur Khamitov, Matthew Thomson, and Andrew Perkins. Marketing managers want ...

Our genetic codes control not only which proteins our cells produce, but also - to a great extent - in what quantity. This ground-breaking discovery, applicable to all biological life, was recently made by systems biologists at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, using supercomputers and artificial intelligence. Their research, which could also shed new light on the mysteries of cancer, was recently published in the scientific journal Nature Communications. DNA molecules contain instructions for cells for producing various proteins. This has been known since the middle of the last century when the double helix was identified as the information carrier ...

Running a successful business has its challenges, but the COVID-19 pandemic has required many owners to pivot and look for new ways to operate profitably while keeping employees and consumers safe. Research from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business found that emotional intelligence - the ability to understand, use and manage emotions to relieve stress - may be more vital to a business' survival than previously thought. "We found that entrepreneurs benefit much more from emotional competences than other competencies -- such as IQ -- due to high uncertainty and ambiguity that comes with the world of entrepreneurship and ...

MIT researchers have developed a type of neural network that learns on the job, not just during its training phase. These flexible algorithms, dubbed "liquid" networks, change their underlying equations to continuously adapt to new data inputs. The advance could aid decision making based on data streams that change over time, including those involved in medical diagnosis and autonomous driving. "This is a way forward for the future of robot control, natural language processing, video processing -- any form of time series data processing," says Ramin Hasani, the study's lead author. "The potential is really significant." The research will ...

Philadelphia, January 28, 2021 - A collaborative study from the Center for Injury Research and Prevention (CIRP) and the Center for Autism Research (CAR) at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) found that compared with their non-autistic peers, young autistic drivers have lower rates of moving violations and license suspensions, as well as similar to lower crash rates. The findings were recently published online by the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Obtaining a driver's license is an important milestone for adolescents and young adults. One-third of autistic individuals without intellectual disability obtain ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - An improved extraction method involving chia seeds may provide new options for nutritional foods, medicine capsules and anti-aging products. A Purdue University team has developed and patented the method to separate mucilage from chia seeds, yielding a protein-rich chia seed flour with improved bioactivity and functionality compared with conventional methods. This work was supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Hatch Act formula funds project 1019794. Mucilage is a thick and gluey substance that surrounds chia seeds and can make processing the seeds for food or pharmaceutical uses much more difficult or nearly impossible. "We are excited about our ...

King's College London researchers have found evidence that minocycline, a widely used antibiotic with anti-inflammatory properties, gave greater improvement in depressive symptoms in patients with treatment resistant depression with low-grade peripheral inflammation. Improvement in depressive symptoms In a four-week randomised clinical MINDEP (MINocycline in DEPression) trial, 39 patients with major depressive disorder were recruited from services linked to South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) and via public advertisement. The trial took place at the NIHR / Wellcome Trust King's Clinical Research Facility at King's College Hospital. The patients, who were taking their routine antidepressant treatment, were split into two ...

New research suggests that a higher dietary intake of long chain omega-3 fatty acids in childhood may reduce the risk of developing subsequent asthma, but only in children carrying a common gene variant. The study, led by Queen Mary University of London, is in collaboration with the University of Bristol and University of Southampton, UK, and Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. In the UK, 1.1 million children (1 in 11) are currently receiving treatment for asthma and most adult asthma begins in childhood. The NHS spends around £1 billion a year treating and caring for people with asthma. Senior author, Professor Seif Shaheen from Queen Mary ...

Helping people to self isolate after testing positive for covid-19 must now be a top priority for the UK government, argue experts in The BMJ today. Dr Muge Cevik at the University of St Andrews and colleagues say the focus should be on those working in high exposure occupations, living in overcrowded housing, or without a home, and should include free and safe accommodation alongside adequate income support, job protection, and help with caring responsibilities. Most countries have used testing as a tool to interrupt transmission chains by encouraging ...

Access to legal cannabis stores is associated with a reduction in opioid related deaths in the United States, particularly those linked to synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, finds a study published by The BMJ today. Opioids are 'morphine-type' drugs that relieve short-term (acute) pain and pain at the end of life. There is little evidence that they are helpful for long-term (chronic) pain, but they are often prescribed for this reason. This has led to widespread misuse and a sharp rise in overdose deaths, particularly in the United States. In 2018, there were more than 46,000 fentanyl related deaths, representing over two thirds of all US opioid related deaths that ...

A new study has shown that, while there is limited evidence for overall increased mortality in patients with atopic eczema, those with severe atopic eczema may have a greater risk of dying from several health issues compared with those without eczema, according to a new study in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. The research team, led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and funded by the Wellcome Trust, compared the risk of dying in over 500,000 adults with atopic eczema with more than 2.5 million without eczema. Patients with severe atopic eczema had a 62% higher risk of dying compared to ...

27th of January, Wednesday, Hong Kong - Deep Longevity, a fully-owned subsidiary of Regent Pacific (HKEX: 0575), specializing in the development and the application of next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) for aging and longevity research, today announced the publication of an article in END ...

The thought of eating insects is stomach turning for many, but new Edith Cowan University (ECU) research is shedding light on allergy causing proteins which could pose serious health risks for those suffering from shellfish allergy. The research, published in the journal Food Chemistry, identified 20 proteins found in cricket food products which could cause serious allergic reactions. The project was led by Professor Michelle Colgrave from ECU's School of Science and the CSIRO. Professor Colgrave said crickets and other insects could be the key to feeding ...

DALLAS (January 26, 2021) - Many people believe that they can't change their brains, or that their brain health will inevitably decline as they age. But the Strategic Memory Advanced Reasoning Tactics (SMART) training protocol, created by researchers and clinicians at the Center for BrainHealth®, has been demonstrated over the past two decades to improve cognitive function and psychological well-being in laboratory participants. Recent research suggests that SMART can even make long-lasting improvements to people's brain health when given outside of the lab in short, informal training sessions. A paper detailing these findings was recently published in Military Medicine. The research was a collaboration between Leanne R. Young, PhD, of Applied Research Associates, ...

The widespread use of cashless payments including credit cards, debit cards, and mobile apps has made transactions more convenient for consumers. However, results from previous research have shown that such cashless payments can increase consumers' spending on unhealthy food. "Why Do Cashless Payments Increase Unhealthy Consumption? The Decision-Risk Inattention Hypothesis," a newly published article in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, explains this phenomenon by showing how changes in bodily responses to cashless payments influence consumers responses. Authors Joowon Park, Clarence Lee, and Manoj Thomas propose that cash and cashless payments elicit different levels of negative arousal when making shopping ...

The development of small hydropower dams is widespread throughout Brazil and elsewhere in the world, vastly overshadowing large hydropower projects. The proliferation of these smaller dams is a response to growing energy and security needs. Their expansion, however, threatens many of the remaining free-flowing rivers and biodiverse tropical regions of the world -- interrupting the migrations of freshwater fishes, on which millions of peoples' livelihoods depend. A new University of Washington paper published Jan. 11 in Nature Sustainability quantifies these tradeoffs between hydroelectric generation capacity and the impacts on river connectivity ...

Popular folklore and anecdotal evidence suggest that people in a hypnotic or suggestible state can experience sensory hallucinations, such as perceiving sounds and sights that are not actually there. Reliable scientific evidence of these experiences, however, has been notoriously challenging to obtain because of their subjective nature. New research published in the journal Psychological Science provides compelling evidence that hypnotic suggestions can help highly susceptible people "see" imaginary objects, equipping them with the missing details needed to solve an otherwise challenging visual puzzle. "Hypnosis holds intriguing effects on human behavior," said Amir Raz, a researcher at McGill University and coauthor on the paper. "The careful, systematic study of hypnotic phenomena can ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. - A new study led by a University at Buffalo researcher has identified how specific communication among different brain regions, known as brain connectivity, can serve as a biomarker for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The research relied on a deep architecture using machine-learning classifiers to identify with 99% accuracy those adults who had received a childhood diagnosis of ADHD many years earlier. "This suggests that brain connectivity is a stable biomarker for ADHD, at least into childhood, even when an individual's ...

Amid a sharp economic downturn in 2008, police departments around the United States experienced budget shortfalls that required them to enact cutbacks. A new study examined the effects on crime of budget shortfalls in two New Jersey cities--one of which laid off more than 10 percent of its police force while the other averted layoffs. The study found that the police layoffs were associated with significant increases in overall crime, violent crime, and property crime. The study, by researchers at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Rutgers University, appears in Justice Evaluation Journal, a publication of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. "Our study suggests that sudden and drastic reductions in the size of a police force via layoffs of police officers ...