PHILADELPHIA--Patients of doctors who are more empathic have better outcomes and fewer complications, concludes a large, empirical study by a team of Thomas Jefferson University and Italian researchers who evaluated relationships between physician empathy and clinical outcomes among 20,961 diabetic patients and 242 physicians in Italy. The study was published in the September 2012 issue of Academic Medicine, and serves as a follow up to a smaller study published in the same journal in March 2011 from Thomas Jefferson University investigating physician empathy and its ...

A problem faced by patients seeking medical attention is often getting a clinic appointment at a time convenient to them. Conversely, cancellations and more crucially "no-shows" by patients can disrupt the day-to-day scheduling of a medical practice leading to frustration for patients and staff alike as well as affectively efficiency in a negative manner and leading to lost revenue. Raid Al-Aomar of Abu Dhabi University in United Arab Emirates and colleague Mahmoud Awad of ALHOSN University, also in Abu Dhabi have now developed a computer model that could help practice ...

Pregnant women who have had prior preterm births may avoid a subsequent early birth if given progestogens, which are natural or synthetic forms of progesterone, a female hormone that naturally increases during pregnancy, a Vanderbilt analysis shows. Women who have had prior preterm births and are given progestogens while expecting a single child show some benefit from additional hormone, Vanderbilt researchers reported in a systematic review released on Thursday in Obstetrics & Gynecology, the official publication of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, ...

Montreal, September 10, 2012 – By the time older adults are diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, the brain damage is irreparable. For now, modern medicine is able to slow the progression of the disease but is incapable of reversing it. What if there was a way to detect if someone is on the path to Alzheimer's before substantial and non-reversible brain damage sets in? This was the question Erin K. Johns, a doctoral student in Concordia University's Department of Psychology and member of the Center for Research in Human Development (CRDH), asked when she started her research ...

This press release is available in Spanish. A U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientist is showing growers how to combat whiteflies and other crop pests by using plants as storehouses for predatory insects that can migrate to cash crops and feed on the pests attacking those crops. Cindy L. McKenzie, an entomologist in the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Subtropical Insects Research Unit at Fort Pierce, Fla., has done extensive work showing how papaya, corn and ornamental peppers can serve as "banker plants" for a range of insect parasitoids and predators. ...

The decision has been taken by the German government to transform the energy system and phase out nuclear energy power. The transition process is gaining impetus but much remains to be done. During the course of which, the production of wind energy is to be dramatically expanded – not only through costly offshore facilities, but onshore as well. "There is still immense potential inland that remains to be tapped, such as in the low mountain ranges," says Tobias Klaas, scientist at the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology IWES in Kassel. Klaas ...

AT A GLANCE Most throat infections are not caused by Group A streptococcus, or "strep," but by viruses, and therefore don't need antibiotics, according to new guidelines released by the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). For confirmed strep infections, penicillin or amoxicillin are the antibiotic of choice, except for those who are allergic. Children who suffer from strep throat and have recurrent throat infections should not have their tonsils surgically removed for that reason alone. 15 million people see the doctor every year complaining of sore ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- The suicide rate in the U.S. Army now exceeds the rate in the general population, and psychiatric admission is now the most common reason for hospitalization in the Army. These concerning trends are described by Timothy Lineberry, M.D., a Mayo Clinic psychiatrist and suicide expert for the Army, in the September edition of Mayo Clinic Proceedings. In the article, he also outlines steps to assess and address military suicide -- an issue he calls a major public health concern. Dr. Lineberry proposes greater use of gun locks, improving primary care for ...

Warmer air temperatures since the 1980s may explain significant increases in zinc and other metal concentrations of ecological concern in a Rocky Mountain watershed, reports a new study led by the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Colorado Boulder. Rising concentrations of zinc and other metals in the upper Snake River just west of the Continental Divide near Keystone, Colo., may be the result of falling water tables, melting permafrost and accelerating mineral weathering rates, all driven by warmer air temperatures in the watershed. Researchers observed a ...

Ann Arbor, Mich. — Tight blood sugar control in the intensive care unit for pediatric cardiac surgery patients does not improve patients' infection rate, mortality, length of stay or organ failure when compared to standard care, new research shows. The research, conducted at the University of Michigan's C.S. Mott Children's Hospital and Boston Children's Hospital, will be published Online First in the New England Journal of Medicine Sept. 7. "Post-operative complications for infants and young children who have cardiac surgery remains common, so we want to identify risk ...

Hip and knee replacements are now a common surgical procedure with more than 700,000 total joint arthroplasties (TJAs) performed in the US every year. Due to the reduction in pain and increases in mobility experienced after having a TJA, it could be expected that weight loss may occur as a by-product of the surgery. But is this the case? This is the question posed by Maria Inacio, a doctoral candidate from the San Diego State University/University of California, San Diego, who is employed at Kaiser Permanente, and her colleagues at those institutions. They conducted ...

URBANA - A University of Illinois microbial engineer has synthesized a sugar in human milk that is thought to protect babies from pathogens. That's important because 2FL, the shorthand scientists use to describe this human milk oligosaccharide (HMO), has not been added to infant formula because HMOs are incredibly expensive. "We know these oligosaccharides play a vital role in developing a breast-fed baby's gut microbiota and in strengthening their immunity. 2FL (2-fucosyllactose) is the most abundant HMO in breast milk," said Michael Miller, a U of I professor of food ...

Ben W. Strowbridge, PhD, Professor of Neurosciences and Physiology/Biophysics, and Robert A. Hyde, a fourth year MD/PhD student in the neurosciences graduate program at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, have discovered how to store diverse forms of artificial short-term memories in isolated brain tissue. "This is the first time anyone has found a way to store information over seconds about both temporal sequences and stimulus patterns directly in brain tissue," says Dr. Strowbridge. "This paves the way for future research to identify the specific brain ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Researchers report that myxoma – a pox virus that afflicts rabbits but not humans, dogs or any other vertebrates so far studied – infects several different types of canine cancer cells in cell culture while sparing healthy cells. The study adds to the evidence that viruses or modified viruses will emerge as relatively benign cancer treatments to complement or replace standard cancer therapies. The new study, reported in the American Journal of Veterinary Research, is unique in that it focused on spontaneously occurring cancers in dogs. This allowed the ...

In the search for alternative energy, scientists have focused on the sun and the wind. There is also tremendous potential in harnessing the power of the ocean's waves, but marine energy presents specific challenges that have made it a less promising resource. It's a challenge to tune Wave Energy Converters (WECs) so that they are able to harvest the maximum energy from waves, which differ in terms of their size and force. This unpredictability leads to intermittent energy collection. WECs also need to withstand the harsh winds and storms to which they are subjected in ...

LIVERMORE, Calif. --Though there is enough power in the earth's winds to be a primary source of near-zero emission electric power for the world, large-scale high altitude wind power generation is unlikely to substantially affect climate. That is the conclusion of a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory climate scientist and collaborators who studied the geophysical limits to global wind power in a paper appearing in the Sept. 9 edition of the journal, Nature Climate Change. "The future of wind energy is likely to be determined by economic, political and technical constraints ...

Joking around can land us in hot water. Even the professionals often shoot themselves comedically in the foot. Last month, comedian Jeffrey Ross's routine at a roast of Rosanne Barr was censored when he joked about the shooting in Aurora, Colorado. "Too soon!" everyone said. And yet, it's not quite as simple as certain topics being "too soon" to joke about. Two weeks after 9/11, The Onion was able to successfully publish a satirical issue about the terrorist attacks. So the question is: When are tragedies okay to joke about -- and when are they not? According to ...

Genetic variations that are linked with the onset of Barrett's oesophagus (BE), a pre-cancerous condition of the lower end of the gullet, have been identified for the first time. The discovery of variations in regions on two chromosomes makes it possible to develop screening tests for people at high risk of developing the disease. Although it's been thought for some time that there may be genetic causes for BE as well as environmental ones, such as drinking alcohol and eating fatty food, so far researchers have not found any genetic variations that are associated with ...

Researchers have newly identified three genetic regions associated with primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC), the most common autoimmune liver disease, increasing the number of known regions associated with the disorder to 25. The team used a DNA microchip, called Immunochip, to survey more thoroughly regions of the genome known to underlie other autoimmune diseases to discover if they play a role also in PBC susceptibility. By combining the results from this survey with details of gene activity from a database called ENCODE, they were able to identify which cells types are ...

A new survey suggests that the chamber of molten rock beneath Santorini's volcano expanded 10-20 million cubic metres – up to 15 times the size of London's Olympic Stadium – between January 2011 and April 2012. The growth of this 'balloon' of magma has seen the surface of the island rise 8-14 centimetres during this period, a team led by Oxford University scientists has found. The results come from an expedition, funded by the UK's Natural Environment Research Council, which used satellite radar images and Global Positioning System receivers (GPS) that can detect movements ...

PORTLAND, Ore. — For decades, a successful HIV vaccine has been the Holy Grail for researchers around the globe. Yet despite years of research and millions of dollars of investment, that goal has still yet to be achieved. Recent research by Oregon Health & Science University scientists explains a decades-old mystery as to why slightly weakened versions of the monkey AIDS virus were able to prevent subsequent infection with the fully virulent strain, but were too risky for human use, and why severely compromised or completely inactivated versions of the virus were not effective ...

A nationwide consortium of scientists has reported the first comprehensive genetic analysis of squamous cell carcinoma of the lung, a common type of lung cancer responsible for about 400,000 deaths each year. "We found that almost 75 percent of the patients' cancers have mutations that can be targeted with existing drugs -- drugs that are available commercially or for clinical trials," says one of the lead investigators, Ramaswamy Govindan, MD, an oncologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and co-chair of the lung cancer group of The Cancer Genome ...

An international team of scientists have shown at an unprecedented level of detail how cells prioritise the repair of genes containing potentially dangerous damage. The research, published in the journal Nature and involving academics from the University of Bristol, the Institut Jacques-Monod in France and Rockefeller University in the US, studied the action of individual molecules in order to understand how cellular repair pathways are triggered. The genetic information that forms the "instruction booklet" for cells is encoded in the molecular building blocks of DNA, ...

Mercury, when dumped in lakes and rivers, accumulates in fish, and often ends up on our plates. A Swiss-American team of researchers led by Francesco Stellacci at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and Bartosz Grzybowski at Northwestern University has devised a simple, inexpensive system based on nanoparticles, a kind of nano-velcro, to detect and trap this toxic pollutant as well as others. The particles are covered with tiny hairs that can grab onto toxic heavy metals such as mercury and cadmium. This technology makes it possible to easily and inexpensively ...

In the September 9, 2012 early online edition of Nature, scientists with The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) report that they have characterized the lung squamous cell carcinoma genome. Squamous cell carcinoma is the second most common form of lung cancer, a disease that kills more Americans than any other type of cancer. The national team of scientists examined tumor samples from 178 patients with untreated lung squamous cell carcinoma and completed genetic analysis of the tumors, work that paves the way for developing better, more targeted therapies to treat the cancer. ...