Younger doctors are more likely than older generations to train and work in the same region as their home before entering medical school. New research published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine investigating the geographical mobility of UK-trained doctors, reveals that 36% attended a medical school in their home region. 34% of hospital consultants and GP partners settled in the same region as their home before entering medical school. The geographical distribution of doctors is an important factor in the equitable distribution of health services. Trevor ...

Earth is the only known planet that holds water in massive quantities and in all three phase states. But the earthly, omnipresent compound water has very unusual properties that become particularly evident when subjected to high pressure and high temperatures. In the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a German-Finnish-French team published what happens when water is subjected to pressure and temperature conditions such as those found in the deep Earth. At pressures above 22 MPa and temperatures above 374°C, beyond the critical ...

Plain-looking but inherently strange crystalline materials called 3D topological insulators (TIs) are all the rage in materials science. Even at room temperature, a single chunk of TI is a good insulator in the bulk, yet behaves like a metal on its surface. Researchers find TIs exciting partly because the electrons that flow swiftly across their surfaces are "spin polarized": the electron's spin is locked to its momentum, perpendicular to the direction of travel. These interesting electronic states promise many uses – some exotic, like observing never-before-seen fundamental ...

Following several years of study, investigators have found more evidence that viral therapy to treat solid tumors can be enhanced by blocking the body's natural immune response. Oncolytic viruses have shown promise as anticancer agents, with variations of the herpes simplex virus (HSV) among the most commonly used. However, many studies have shown that the effectiveness of viral therapy to eradicate tumors has not been as successful with patients as it has been in the lab. These results have led researchers to examine the body's immune system response to determine what ...

EAST PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Newly released findings from Bradley Hospital published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry have found that autism spectrum disorders (ASD) affect the brain activity of children and adults differently. In the study, titled "Developmental Meta-Analysis of the Functional Neural Correlates of Autism Spectrum Disorders," Daniel Dickstein, M.D., FAAP, director of the Pediatric Mood, Imaging and Neurodevelopment Program at Bradley Hospital, found that autism-related changes in brain activity continue into adulthood. ...

We say that time flies, it marches on, it flows like a river — our descriptions of time are closely linked to our experiences of moving through space. Now, new research suggests that the illusions that influence how we perceive movement through space also influence our perception of time. The findings provide evidence that our experiences of space and time have even more in common than previously thought. The research, conducted by psychological scientist Eugene Caruso of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and colleagues, is published in Psychological ...

Why do innocent people go to jail in the United States every year for violent crimes they did not commit? It's a serious question representing the ultimate miscarriage of justice—taking away the freedom of a factually innocent person while also allowing the guilty person to remain free. The U.S. Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice (NIJ) wanted to learn answers to prevent wrongful convictions in the first place. Jon B. Gould, J.D., Ph.D., a professor and the director of the Washington Institute for Public and International Affairs Research at American ...

The stick can work just as well as the carrot in improving our performance, a team of academics at The University of Nottingham has found. A study led by researchers from the University's School of Psychology, published recently in the Journal of Neuroscience, has shown that punishment can act as a performance enhancer in a similar way to monetary reward. Dr Marios Philiastides, who led the work, said: "This work reveals important new information about how the brain functions that could lead to new methods of diagnosing neural development disorders such as autism, ADHD ...

An iron imbalance caused by prion proteins collecting in the brain is a likely cause of cell death in Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have found. The breakthrough follows discoveries that certain proteins found in the brains of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's patients also regulate iron. The results suggest that neurotoxicity by the form of iron, called redox-active iron, may be a trait of neurodegenerative conditions in all three diseases, the researchers say. Further, the role of the normal prion protein ...

A joint expedition of scientists led by Chapurukha M. Kusimba of The Field Museum and Sloan R. Williams of the University of Illinois at Chicago has unearthed a 600-year-old Chinese coin on the Kenyan island of Manda that shows trade existed between China and east Africa decades before European explorers set sail and changed the map of the world. The coin, a small disk of copper and silver with a square hole in the center so it could be worn on a belt, is called "Yongle Tongbao" and was issued by Emperor Yongle who reigned from 1403-1425AD during the Ming Dynasty. The ...

Scientists from various Australian universities in collaboration with the University of Barcelona have compared the effects of mobile use while driving with the effects of alcohol using a simulation. Their experiment demonstrates that using a handsfree kit or sending text messages is the same as being above the legal alcohol limit. The Australian universities of Wollongong, Victoria, Swinburne of Technology, the Institute for breathing and sleep and the University of Barcelona have measured the reaction capacity behind the wheel of twelve healthy volunteers who participated ...

The immune system's T cells, while coordinating responses to diseases and vaccines, act like honey bees sharing information about the best honey sources, according to a new study by scientists at UC San Francisco. "In the morning, each bee goes looking individually for a sugar source, then comes back to the hive and does a dance in front of the other bees describing the location of what it's found, which helps the hive decide collectively where the best source is," said senior scientist Matthew Krummel, PhD, a UCSF professor of pathology. They don't bust the same ...

KNOXVILLE—Despite overwhelming evidence about the benefits of physical activity for children, most American youngsters are not meeting the federal recommendation of 60 minutes a day. A new study by a team of University of Tennessee researchers has identified specific ways—and estimated minutes for each approach—that can help children achieve the recommended daily physical activity goal. The results of various approaches, ranging from mandatory physical education in school to changes in playground designs, were published recently in the American Journal of Preventive ...

KANSAS CITY, MO—A seemingly obscure gene in the female fruit fly that is only active in cells that will become eggs has led researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research to the discovery of a atypical protein that lures, traps, and inactivates the powerful Polo kinase, widely considered the master regulator of cell division. Its human homolog, Polo-like kinase-1 (Plk1), is misregulated in many types of cancer. Stowers Investigator and senior author R. Scott Hawley, Ph.D., hopes that this highly selective kinase trap might give drug developers, who are working ...

Substantial regional variation in Medicare spending for patients with advanced cancer is not linked to differences in survival, according to a study published March 12 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Cancer care accounts for approximately 10% of Medicare spending, and costs are highest for cancer patients with late-stage disease. Prior research studies have shown that there are large regional differences in spending within the Medicare program, however it is unknown if higher average regional spending for advanced cancer is linked to improved survival ...

SAN DIEGO – Brain imaging soon after mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) or mild concussion can detect tiny lesions that may eventually provide a target for treating people with mTBI, according to a study released today and that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 65th Annual Meeting in San Diego, March 16 to 23, 2013. Studies of brain tissue once a person has died have shown that different types of lesions are associated with more severe TBI. "Our study suggests that imaging may be used to detect and distinguish between these lesions in a living ...

An HIV prevention strategy in which people at risk of becoming exposed to HIV take antiretroviral drugs to reduce their chance of becoming infected (often referred to as pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP), may be a cost-effective method of preventing HIV in some settings, according to a study by international researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine. In an analysis of 13 modelling studies led by Gabriela Gomez from the Department of Global Health, Academic Medical Centre, University of Amsterdam/AIGHD in The Netherlands, the authors evaluated the impact of pre-exposure ...

A study published this week in PLOS Medicine finds that while antipsychotic medications are associated with small-to-moderate improvements in depressive symptoms in adults, there is little evidence for improvement on measures of quality of life and these medications are linked to adverse events such as weight gain and sedation. The results of the study, conducted by Glen Spielmans of Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minnesota and colleagues, have potential implications for the treatment of depression by providing clinicians with a better understanding of the ...

Participant-led research, such as studies conducted via social networks, are increasingly common and have several advantages over more standard research but there are some concerns about their ethical oversight, according to experts writing in this week's PLOS Medicine. Effy Vayena from the University of Zurich in Switzerland and John Tasioulas from University College London argue that the distinctive nature of such participant-led research means that the standards of ethical oversight should be adapted to strike a balance between protecting the interests of research ...

In low-income countries a substantial challenge in planning and delivering healthcare is the accurate assessment of disease burden. In this week's PLOS Medicine, Miguel SanJoaquin from the University of Malawi College of Medicine and colleagues describe their experience of implementing an electronic patient record system in a large referral hospital in southern Malawi. The system, known as Surveillance Programme of IN-patients and Epidemiology (SPINE), is used to record patient details during consultations and this data can be used to monitor changing patterns of disease ...

In laboratory studies, Johns Hopkins researchers say they have found that stem cells from a patient's own fat may have the potential to deliver new treatments directly into the brain after the surgical removal of a glioblastoma, the most common and aggressive form of brain tumor. The investigators say so-called mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have an unexplained ability to seek out damaged cells, such as those involved in cancer, and may provide clinicians a new tool for accessing difficult-to-reach parts of the brain where cancer cells can hide and proliferate anew. The ...

Among adults without diabetes, quitting smoking, compared with continuing smoking, was associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease despite subsequent weight gain, according to a study appearing in the March 13 issue of JAMA. "Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable mortality in the United States and a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD). Smoking cessation substantially reduces the risks of CVD; however, quitting smoking is associated with a small number of adverse health consequences, weight gain being one of smokers' major concerns," ...

In research that included nearly 14,000 healthy infants in Belarus, an intervention that succeeded in improving the duration and exclusivity of breastfeeding during infancy did not result in a lower risk of overweight or obesity among the children at age 11.5 years, according to a study appearing in the March 13 issue of JAMA. Observational studies suggest that greater duration and exclusivity of having been breastfed reduces child obesity risk. "However, breastfeeding and growth are socially patterned in many settings," and observed associations between these variables ...

Among patients who were identified as likely having moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, treatment based in primary care was not clinically inferior to treatment at a specialist sleep center for improvement in daytime sleepiness scores, according to a study appearing in the March 13 issue of JAMA. "Obstructive sleep apnea with accompanying daytime sleepiness was estimated during the early 1990s to affect between 2 percent and 4 percent of middle-aged adults. With growing awareness of the public health implications of untreated disease and rising obesity rates ...

In a study that included 3.3 million percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI; procedures such as balloon angioplasty or stent placement used to open narrowed coronary arteries) procedures, major bleeding after PCI was associated with significantly increased in-hospital mortality, with an estimated 12 percent of deaths after PCI related to bleeding complications, according to a study appearing in the March 13 issue of JAMA. "Bleeding represents the most common noncardiac complication of PCI. Postprocedural bleeding is associated with short- and long-term death, nonfatal ...