Pinpointing the brain's arbitrator
We tend to be creatures of habit. In fact, the human brain has a learning system that is devoted to guiding us through routine, or habitual, ...
Study untangles divergent US job-tenure patterns
WASHINGTON, DC, February 5, 2014 — Have American jobs become less stable? Do workers change ...
Predicting cardiovascular events in sleep apnea
Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) generally is associated with increased risk for cardiovascular (CV) disease. OSA is usually measured using the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI), the number of times that breathing pauses or severely slows per hour of sleep. ...
Educational toolkit did not improve quality of care or outcomes for patients with diabetes
An educational toolkit designed to improve care of patients with diabetes was not effective, Baiju R Shah and colleagues (University of Toronto) found in a cluster randomized trial conducted in 2009-2011. ...
Pattern of higher blood pressure in early adulthood helps predict risk of heart disease
In an analysis of blood pressure patterns over a 25-year span from young adulthood to middle age, individuals who exhibited elevated and increasing blood pressure levels ...
Study shows potential usefulness of non-invasive measure of heart tissue scarring
Scarring of tissue in the upper chamber of the heart (atrium) was associated with recurrent rhythm disorder after treatment, according to a study in the February 5 issue of JAMA. ...
Pre-term infants with severe retinopathy more likely to have non-visual disabilities
In a group of very low-birth-weight infants, severe retinopathy of prematurity was associated with nonvisual disabilities at age 5 years, according to a study in the February ...
Do you have a sweet tooth? Honeybees have a sweet claw
New research on the ability of honeybees to taste with claws on their forelegs reveals details on how this information is processed, according to a study published in the open-access journal, Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.
Insects ...
Clearer labels needed on drugs containing animal products
Dr Kinesh Patel and Dr Kate Tatham say most medications prescribed in primary care contain animal derived products and it ...
Is institutional racism happening in our hospitals?
Dr Nadeem Moghal, from George Eliot Hospital in Warwickshire, draws on the Macpherson report (the police ...
Time to act on mobile phone use while driving, say experts
Charles and Barry Pless argue that, with a quarter of crashes in the United States now attributed to mobile phone use, "we can't wait for perfect evidence before ...
Largest evolutionary study of sponges sheds new light on animal evolution
Sponges are an important animal for marine and freshwater ecology and represent a rich animal diversity ...
Orca's survival during the Ice Age
In the ocean, the killer whale rules as a top predator, feeding on everything from seals to sharks. Being at the apex of the food chain, ...
How your memory rewrites the past
CHICAGO --- Your memory is a wily time traveler, plucking fragments of the present and inserting them into the past, reports a new Northwestern Medicine® ...
Mediterranean diet linked with lower risk of heart disease among young US workers
Boston, MA -- Among a large group of Midwestern firefighters, greater adherence to Mediterranean-style diet was associated with lower risk factors for cardiovascular disease ...
Heart disease warning at age 18
CHICAGO – –Elevated blood pressure as young as age 18 is a warning sign of cardiovascular disease developing later in life and the time ...
MRIs help predict which atrial fibrillation patients will benefit from catheter ablation
MAYWOOD, Il. – A new type of contrast MRI can predict which heart patients with atrial fibrillation are most likely to benefit from ...
Sucker-footed fossils broaden the bat map
DURHAM, N.C. -- Today, Madagascar sucker-footed bats live nowhere outside their island home, but new research shows that hasn't always been the case. The ...
New drug treatment reduces chronic pain following shingles
A new drug treatment has been found to be effective against chronic pain caused by nerve damage, also known as neuropathic pain, in patients who have had shingles.
The researchers hope that the drug ...
'Severe reduction' in killer whale numbers during last Ice Age
Whole genome sequencing has revealed a global fall in the numbers of killer whales during the last Ice Age, at a time when ocean productivity may have been widely reduced, according to researchers ...
How states can encourage web-based health care in hospitals
ANN ARBOR—In the first national look at how broadly web-based technologies are being used to provide health care, a University of Michigan researcher has found that 42 percent of U.S. hospitals use some ...
Study finds dramatic rise in skin cancer among middle-aged adults
ROCHESTER, Minn — Feb. 3, 2014 — A new Mayo Clinic study found that among middle-aged men and women, 40 to 60 years old, the overall incidence of skin cancer increased nearly eightfold between 1970 and 2009, ...
Off-the-shelf materials lead to self-healing polymers
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Look out, super glue and paint thinner. Thanks to new dynamic materials developed at the University of Illinois, removable paint and self-healing plastics soon could be household ...
Personal experience, work seniority improve mental health professionals' outlook
One might think that after years of seeing people at their worst, mental health workers would harbor negative attitudes about mental illness, perhaps associating people with mental health ...
Telemedicine can reduce hospitalizations for nursing home residents
LEBANON, NH (Feb. 4, 2014) – Telemedicine used at nursing homes during hours when doctors are not typically present is a viable way to reduce avoidable ...