Kevin G. Volpp, M.D., Ph.D., of the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center and University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and colleagues conducted a study to determine whether a protected sleep period of 5 hours is feasible and effective in increasing the time slept by interns on extended duty overnight shifts. In 2009, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published a report on resident work hours and work schedules to improve patient safety that recommended a protected sleep period of 5 hours during any work shift longer than 16 hours to reduce the risk of fatigue-related ...

Peter Yeates, M.B.B.S., M.Clin.Ed., of the University of Manchester, United Kingdom, and colleagues conducted a study to examine whether observations of the performance of postgraduate year 1 physicians influence raters' scores of subsequent performances. "The usefulness of performance assessments within medical education is limited by high interrater score variability, which neither rater training nor changes in scale format have successfully ameliorated. Several factors may explain raters' score variability, including a tendency of raters to make assessments by comparing ...

Brian P. Lucas, M.D., M.S., of the Cook County Health and Hospitals System and Rush Medical College, Chicago, and colleagues conducted a study to compare the effects of 2- vs. 4-week inpatient attending physician rotations on unplanned patient revisits (a measure to assess the effect on patients), attending evaluations by trainees, and attending propensity for burnout. "Trainees learn inpatient medicine on the job, providing clinical care to patients as members of ward teams led by attending physicians. Although the structures of these ward teams vary by local educational ...

Kevin W. Eva, Ph.D., of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and colleagues conducted a study to determine whether students deemed acceptable through a revised admissions protocol using a 12-station multiple mini-interview (MMI) would outperform rejected medical students when they later took the Canadian national licensing examinations after completing medical school. The MMI process requires candidates to rotate through brief sequential interviews with structured tasks and independent assessment within each interview. "Modern conceptions of medical practice ...

Children with implanted heart-rhythm devices and their parents suffer from a lower quality of life compared with their healthy counterparts and may benefit from psychotherapy according to new research in Circulation: Arrhythmia & Electrophysiology, an American Heart Association journal. Researchers at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center studied 173 children with either a pacemaker (40 patients) or implanted defibrillator (133 patients) to assess their quality of life compared to other children with congenital heart disease and to healthy children. The children, ...

HOUSTON – (Dec. 4, 2012) –The ability of the eye of a fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) to respond to light depends on a delicate ballet that keeps the supply of light sensors called rhodopsin constant as photoreceptors turn on and off in response to light exposures, said researchers from Baylor College of Medicine (www.bcm.edu) and the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute (http://www.nri.texaschildrens.org/) at Texas Children's Hospital in an article that appears online in the journal PLOS Biology (http://www.plosbiology.org/home.action). The gene Crag ...

Training human volunteers to control their own brain activity in precise areas of the brain can enhance fundamental aspects of their visual sensitivity, according to a new study. This non-invasive 'neurofeedback' approach could one day be used to improve brain function in patients with abnormal patterns of activity, for example stroke patients. Researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL used non-invasive, real-time brain imaging that enabled participants to watch their own brain activity on a screen, a technique known as neurofeedback. During the ...

New research shows that the concentration of sperm in men's semen has been in steady decline between 1989 and 2005 in France. In addition, there has been a decrease in the number of normally formed sperm. The study is published online today (Wednesday) in Europe's leading reproductive medicine journal Human Reproduction [1]. The study is important because, with over 26,600 men involved, it is probably the largest studied sample in the world and although the results cannot be extrapolated to other countries, it does support other studies from elsewhere that show similar ...

Poor women who drank tea were viewed as irresponsible as whisky drinkers in early 19th-century Ireland, new research by Durham University has unearthed. Critics at the time declared that the practice of tea drinking – viewed as a harmless pastime in most past and present societies – was contributing to the stifling of Ireland's economic growth, and was clearly presented as reckless and uncontrollable. Women who drank tea wasted their time and money, it was said, drawing them away from their duty to care for their husbands and home. It was felt this traditionally female ...

Research published on bmj.com today suggests that although more babies survived shortly after extreme preterm birth in England in 2006 compared with 1995, the number with major conditions on leaving hospital remained largely unchanged. A second study, also published today, shows some improvement in the number of extremely preterm children who survived without disability at 3 years of age, but no change in the rate of serious health and developmental problems over the same 10-year period. Taken together, these two large studies (known as the EPICure studies) suggest ...

Health inequalities between England's richest and poorest areas have widened in the ten years between 1999 and 2008. Researchers warn, in a study published today on bmj.com, that over the next ten years, we may experience smaller increases in life expectancy than in the past decade and health inequalities may rise at an even faster rate. Studies have shown that economic decline is associated with long term negative health impacts and the current climate has raised concerns about this. Between 1999 and 2008 the target (set by the government) for reducing the gap in life ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Inside the brains of mice and men alike, a relatively big football-shaped region called the thalamus acts like a switchboard, providing the prefrontal cortex, the part that does abstract thinking and decision-making, with most of its information. The thalamus's responsibility even includes helping the prefrontal cortex to maintain consciousness and arousal. Essential as this "thalamocortical" partnership is, neuroscientists have understood very little about the connections coming from a matrix of cells in the so-called "nonspecific ...

PHILADELPHIA – New research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia VA Medical Center indicates that the implementation of protected sleep periods for residents who are assigned to overnight shifts in a hospital represent a viable tool in preventing fatigue and alleviating the physiological and behavioral effects of sleep deprivation among these doctors in training. The new results will be published in the December 5th edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). "Within the last two years, we've ...

University of Leicester scientists will present groundbreaking new evidence about how a chemical found in red wine can help prevent cancer on Wednesday, December 5. Experts from around the world are set to attend Resveratrol 2012, a major conference at the University which will assess the latest advances in the study of resveratrol – a compound found in the skins of red grapes. The conference will feature new findings based on the last two years of research, which show how the chemical can help prevent cancer, heart disease and diabetes. The event follows the first ...

Researchers have discovered what may be the earliest dinosaur, a creature the size of a Labrador retriever, but with a five foot-long tail, that walked the Earth about 10 million years before more familiar dinosaurs like the small, swift-footed Eoraptor and Herrerasaurus. The findings mean that the dinosaur lineage appeared 10 million to 15 million years earlier than fossils previously showed, originating in the Middle Triassic rather than in the Late Triassic period. "If the newly named Nyasasaurus parringtoni is not the earliest dinosaur, then it is the closest relative ...

VIDEO: Eurasian jays change strategies to prevent others from stealing food and to improve their chances of absconding with other birds’ caches. Click here for more information. In order to prevent other birds from stealing the food they are storing for later, Eurasian jays, a type of corvid, minimizes any auditory hints a potential pilferer may use to steal their cache (food that is buried for later use). The new research was published today, 05 December, in the journal ...

ST. PAUL, Minn., December 4, 2012 – Trees, water and lawn clearly matter to urban dwellers. For city planners balancing green space with other demands, the question has been just how much green space matters to residents. Working with lead author Heather Sander of the University of Iowa, economist Robert Haight of the U.S. Forest Service's Northern Research Station estimated how much home buyers are willing to pay for more scenic vistas, better access to outdoor recreation, and greater neighborhood tree cover. Their study, "Estimating the economic value of cultural ecosystem ...

PHOENIX — Researchers have found that using telemedicine to deliver stroke care, also known as telestroke, appears to be cost-effective for rural hospitals that do not have an around-the-clock neurologist, or stroke expert, on staff. The research, published today in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, is intended to help hospital administrators evaluate telestroke. In telestroke care, the use of a telestroke robot allows a patient with stroke to be examined in real time by a neurology specialist elsewhere who consults via computer with an emergency room ...

Using a new method for estimating greenhouse gases that combines atmospheric measurements with model predictions, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) researchers have found that the level of nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas, in California may be 2.5 to 3 times greater than the current inventory. At that level, total N2O emissions—which are believed to come primarily from nitrogen fertilizers used in agricultural production—would account for about 8 percent of California's total greenhouse gas emissions. The findings were recently published in a ...

Evanston, Ill. (December 4, 2012) – In 2008, research showed that expressing support for Barack Obama increased people's comfort in subsequently saying or doing things that might be considered racist. Researchers argued that endorsing a black political figure made people feel as if they had "non-racist credentials" that reduced their concern about subsequently seeming prejudiced. Now this same research group has identified a mental trick that people play to convince themselves that they have these same non-racist credentials: convincing themselves that they were presented ...

The study, by IIASA Evolution and Ecology Program postdoctoral fellow Tatsuya Sasaki, provides a simple new model that ties punishment by social exclusion to the benefits for the punisher. It may help explain how social exclusion arose in evolution, and how it promotes cooperation among groups. "Punishment is a common tool to promote cooperation in the real world," says Sasaki. "And social exclusion is a common way to do it." From reef fish to chimpanzees, there are many examples of animals that promote cooperation by excluding free riders. Humans, too, use social exclusion ...

Philadelphia, PA, December 4, 2012 – A new study of working women has identified factors during pregnancy and postpartum that can predict pain in the joints that comprise the pelvic girdle. While 90 percent of working women in the Netherlands return to work after the birth of their first child, health issues during the postpartum period often require sick leave. Chief among these health issues is pelvic girdle pain (PGP). "It is important to identify predictors for postpartum PGP, because physicians, obstetricians, midwives, and employers could use them to identify women ...

UC Davis chemists have been using a Japanese synchrotron to get a detailed look at enzymes that could help power the green economy. The work was published online Nov. 8 by the journal Angewandte Chemie and is featured on the cover of the Nov. 26 issue. One option for powering clean, environment friendly vehicles is to run them on hydrogen fuel rather than carbon-based fuels. Cheap catalysts to prepare hydrogen gas (H2) are key to this future "hydrogen economy." Current man-made catalysts are based on the rare and precious metal platinum. But living cells contain enzymes ...

December 4, 2012 – About 60% of infectious diseases are caused by viruses, bacteria and other pathogens that make the jump to humans from other species. This includes some of the most devastating disease outbreaks of the past 30 years, including HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and SARS. Despite the huge and rising toll of such diseases, many gaps remain in our understanding of how these "zoonoses" evolve, develop, and spread—gaps that must be filled if we are to succeed in preventing or at least reducing the impact of a next pandemic. A new paper published in the Lancet by Stephen ...

Scientists using NASA satellite data and climate models have projected drier conditions likely will cause increased fire activity across the United States in coming decades. Other findings about U.S. wildfires, including their amount of carbon emissions and how the length and strength of fire seasons are expected to change under future climate conditions, were also presented Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. Doug Morton of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., presented the new analysis of future U.S. fire ...