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BOSTON -- The temptation to rely on media screens to entertain babies and toddlers is more appealing than ever, with screens surrounding families at home, in the car, and even at the grocery store. And there is no shortage of media products and programming targeted to little ones. But a new policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) says there are better ways to help children learn at this critical age. In a recent survey, 90 percent of parents said their children under age 2 watch some form of electronic media. On average, children this age watch ...

Public health experts writing in this week's BMJ say the prime minister was wrong to claim they support the government's health reforms. Last week over 400 public health doctors, specialists, and academics from across the country wrote an open letter to the House of Lords stating that the Health and Social Care Bill will do "irreparable harm to the NHS, to individual patients and to society as a whole," that it will "erode the NHS's ethical and cooperative foundations and that it will not deliver efficiency, quality, fairness or choice." The Prime minister claimed that ...

Whole communities in Africa could be protected from pneumococcus by immunising young children A study led by the Medical Research Council in The Gambia in collaboration with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and published in this week's PLoS Medicine shows for the first time in Africa, that vaccinating young children against the pneumococcus (a bacterium that can cause fatal infections) causes a herd effect in which the entire community is protected against this infection. In a randomised, controlled trial involving 21 villages in rural Gambia, the authors ...

Using outbreak data from 2003-2010, Kathleen O'Reilly of Imperial College London, UK and colleagues develop a statistical model of the spread of wild polioviruses in Africa that can predict polio outbreaks six months in advance. The authors' findings, published in this week's PLoS Medicine, indicate that outbreaks of polio in Africa over the study period resulted mainly from continued transmission in Nigeria and other countries that reported polio cases, and from poor immunization status. The authors highlight how the geographical risk of polio is changing over time in ...

In this week's PLoS Medicine, Francesca Celletti from the WHO, Geneva, Switzerland and colleagues argue that a transformation in the scale-up of medical education in low- and middle-income countries is needed. Such a transformative approach would require inter-sectoral engagement to determine how students are recruited, educated, and deployed and would assign greater value to the impact on population health outcomes as one of the criteria used for measuring excellence in educational initiatives. The authors say: "strategies to improve retention and increase student numbers ...

Young genes that appeared after the primate branch split off from other mammal species are more likely to be expressed in the developing human brain, a new analysis finds. The correlation suggests that evolutionarily recent genes, which have been largely ignored by scientists thus far, may be responsible for constructing the uniquely powerful human brain. The findings are published October 18 in the online, open access journal PLoS Biology. "We found that there is a correlation between new gene origination and the evolution of the brain," said senior author Manyuan Long, ...

Researchers from Sweden have uncovered an association between shift work and increased risk of multiple sclerosis (MS). Those who engage in off-hour employment before the age of 20 may be at risk for MS due to a disruption in their circadian rhythm and sleep pattern. Findings of this novel study appear today in Annals of Neurology, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the American Neurological Association and Child Neurology Society. Previous research has determined that shift work—working during the night or rotating working hours—increases the risk of ...

New research into evolutionary psychology suggests that physical stature affects our preferences in political leadership. The paper, published in Social Science Quarterly, reveals that a preference for physically formidable leaders, or caveman politics, may have evolved to ensure survival in ancient human history. The paper, published by Gregg R. Murray and J. David Schmitz, from Texas Tech University, focuses on evolutionary psychology, the study of universal human behavior which is related to psychological mechanisms which evolved to solve problems faced by humans in ...

Virginia Tech released today results from the first study ever to instrument child football helmets. Youth football helmets are currently designed to the same standards as adult helmets, even though little is known about how child football players impact their heads. This is the first study to investigate the head impact characteristics in youth football, and will greatly enhance the development of improved helmets specifically designed for children. The Auburn Eagles, a local, Montgomery County, Va., youth team consisting of 6 to 8 year old boys, has participated in ...

Customers are a business' best asset. They provide opportunities for new sales and act as an endorsement to products and services when everything's going well. But businesses could be losing sales, customers and their reputation if they're not maintaining a positive relationship by using an effective business CRM system. "As National Customer Service Week demonstrates, customers are the key to good business and growth. CRM systems such as webCRM ensure a business maintains a proactive relationship with its customers," said Stephen Todd of Leicestershire-based ...

Higher surgical costs for adult congenital heart patients is associated with higher rates of inpatient death compared to surgical admissions that incur lower costs, according to a study in Circulation: Quality and Outcomes, a journal of the American Heart Association. In the study, researchers sought to understand resource use by adults undergoing congenital heart surgery in pediatric hospitals, analyze the association between high resource use and inpatient death, and identify risk factors for high resource use. They found that although the number of adults undergoing ...

Los Angeles County Mayor and Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich has endorsed Bruce Fortine's bid to serve another term on the Santa Clarita Community College District Board of Trustees. Fortine is running for re-election to Seat 4. "For more than 25 years, Bruce's leadership on the Santa Clarita Community College District Board has had a very positive impact on the students and faculty of College of the Canyons," Antonovich said. "With his experience, knowledge and passion, he will be a superb representative for our Santa Clarita Valley residents attending ...

Young genes that appeared since the primate branch split from other mammal species are expressed in unique structures of the developing human brain, a new analysis finds. The correlation suggests that scientists studying the evolution of the human brain should look to genes considered recent by evolutionary standards and early stages of brain development. "There is a correlation between the new gene origination and the evolution of the brain," said Manyuan Long, PhD, Professor of Ecology & Evolution at the University of Chicago and senior author of the study in PLoS ...

CHICAGO - Between 1998 and 2008, heart-failure related hospitalizations declined substantially among Medicare patients, but at a lower rate for black men, according to a study in the October 19 issue of JAMA. Also, 1-year mortality rates declined slightly during this period, but remain high. "Heart failure (HF) imposes one of the highest disease burdens of any medical condition in the United States with an estimated 5.8 million patients experiencing HF in 2006. The risk of developing HF increases with advancing age, and as a result, HF ranks as the most frequent cause ...

CHICAGO – A review and analysis of 26 validated hospital readmission risk prediction models finds that most, whether for hospital comparison or clinical purposes, have poor predictive ability, according to an article in the October 19 issue of JAMA. "An increasing body of literature attempts to describe and validate hospital readmission risk prediction tools," according to background information in the article. "Predicting hospital readmission risk is of great interest to identify which patients would benefit most from care transition interventions, as well as to risk-adjust ...

CHICAGO – Patients who had undergone hemodialysis using dialyzers that had been sterilized with the use of electron beams were more likely to develop thrombocytopenia (an abnormally low platelet count in the blood, associated with increased risk of bleeding), according to a study in the October 19 issue of JAMA. "Adverse device reactions to hemodialysis treatments are uncommon but can still occur in today's era of hemodialysis membranes and technology. During hemodialysis treatment, patients are exposed to a variety of components of the dialysis circuit and could have ...

New York, NY, October 18, 2011—The U.S. health care system scored 64 out of 100 on key measures of performance, according to the third national scorecard report from the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System, released today. The scorecard finds that—despite pockets of improvement—the U.S as a whole failed to improve when compared to best performers in this country, and among other nations. The report also finds significant erosion in access to care and affordability of care, as health care costs rose far faster than family incomes. At the same ...

Scientists have successfully demonstrated that they can build some of the basic components for digital devices out of bacteria and DNA, which could pave the way for a new generation of biological computing devices, in research published today in the journal Nature Communications. The researchers, from Imperial College London, have demonstrated that they can build logic gates, which are used for processing information in devices such as computers and microprocessors, out of harmless gut bacteria and DNA. These are the most advanced biological logic gates ever created ...

Ecologists are a step closer to understanding one of nature's most extraordinary sights – the 'arribada' or synchronised mass nesting of female olive ridley sea turtles. The new study, published today in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Animal Ecology, is the first to combine three different approaches – genetics, demography and behaviour, and the results should help conserve these vulnerable marine creatures. The study, lead by Virginie Plot of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, gathered three sets of data. First, to get an accurate ...

Antineoplastic agents such as immunotherapies and targeted therapies that specifically target signaling pathways in cancer cells are associated with thyroid dysfunction in 20%-50% of cancer patients taking them, which can adversely affect patients' quality of life, according to a study published Oct. 18 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Over the past two decades, novel antineoplastic agents have been introduced that inhibit specific cellular processes to limit cancer cell growth. Some of these agents cause thyroid dysfunction, which physicians often overlook ...

AUDIO: Professor Geraint Rees and Dr Ryota Kanai explain their findings about the link between number of Facebook friends and the size of certain brain regions. Click here for more information. Scientists funded by the Wellcome Trust have found a direct link between the number of 'Facebook friends' a person has and the size of particular brain regions. In a study published today, researchers at University College London (UCL) also showed that the more Facebook friends a person ...

Women with high blood pressure (hypertension) in the early stages of pregnancy are more likely to have babies with birth defects, irrespective of commonly prescribed medicines for their condition, finds new research published on bmj.com today. The finding suggests that it is the underlying hypertension, rather than the use of antihypertensive drugs in early pregnancy, that increases the risk of birth defects. Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors are a type of antihypertensive medication commonly prescribed to tackle hypertension. It is already known that they ...

Best Lawyers, a national directory published by Woodward/White, Inc., has named Daniel L. Clayton as Best Lawyers' 2012 Nashville Medical Malpractice Law - Plaintiffs Lawyer of the Year. Only one lawyer in each practice area in a given community is being honored in this way in 2012. The selections are based upon extensive peer-review surveys involving confidential evaluations submitted by many thousands of lawyers. Those who were selected as Lawyers of the Year obtained especially high peer ratings. In short, the Lawyer of the Year award reflects a high degree of ...

Male bowel cancer patients are very likely to suffer from erectile dysfunction (ED) after treatment and yet the majority are not receiving adequate information about the condition, according to a study published on bmj.com today. Bowel cancer affects over 38,000 people every year in the UK with around half of patients surviving for more than five years after treatment. This figure is set to increase, says the study. Men are more likely to develop bowel cancer and many will suffer from ED after their treatment, say the authors, led by Professor Sue Wilson at the University ...