PHILADELPHIA, December 4, 2015 - Immune dysfunction is increasingly recognized as a cause of drug-resistant epilepsy but how or why the immune system attacks nerve cells - and the consequences on seizure control - are not well understood. Two studies presented at the American Epilepsy Society's (AES) 69th Annual Meeting explore how different types of autoimmune response elicit markedly different responses in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy.
Culture
Cutting benefits for teachers or other public-sector workers may not save taxpayers as much as one might think, according to a new University of Illinois at Chicago study.
"Rising health insurance costs don't translate into dollar-for-dollar increases in the costs of public education" or in taxes, says Darren Lubotsky, UIC associate professor of economics. The study is published in the December issue of the Journal of Health Economics.
New Rochelle, NY, December 3, 2015-The shooting in San Bernardino, CA yesterday marked the 355th mass shooting in the United States in less than as many days in 2015. As details emerge regarding yesterday's events, it is clear that these types of crimes are morphing and not abating.
Public trust and confidence in the police have remained flat for several decades despite a declining crime rate in the U.S., a problem that has become especially salient in the wake of recent police shootings of unarmed black men. A new report brings psychological science to bear on policing, providing an in-depth analysis of the factors that drive public trust and law-related behavior.
While the emergence of free online educational courses may seem like an advantage to all, students of lower socioeconomic backgrounds are less likely to enroll in such programs and earn a certificate than their peers of higher socioeconomic backgrounds, a new study finds. The results are in contrast to the theory that the free and easy-to-access nature of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) may close the gap between students from different backgrounds.
WASHINGTON - Because fish, wildlife, habitats, and cultural resources extend beyond political boundaries, there is a national need to develop resource management strategies across jurisdictions and sectors, says a new congressionally mandated report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs), initiated by the U.S. Department of the Interior in 2009 and coordinated by the department's Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), were created to address this national need and can point to many early accomplishments.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY'S HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS -- In the late 1990s, investor emotion played a significant role in inflating the dot-com bubble and ultimately, making a lot of people rich. Emotional excitement not only creates stock market bubble but research shows that the frenzy actually causes them to grow.
For the study's experiment, participants' emotions were stimulated by watching popular action films -- such as Mr. and Mrs. Smith with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie playing married assassins -- prior to making buying or selling stocks.
New research from North Carolina State University finds that mental health courts are effective at reducing repeat offending, and limiting related jail time, for people with mental health problems - especially those who also have substance use problems.
New York, NY, December 2, 2015 - More left ventricular assist devices (LVADs), a mechanical heart that helps pump blood, are now implanted annually than hearts transplanted in patients with advanced stages of heart failure. Evidence-based data indicate that LVADs have saved many lives, whether as a bridge to heart transplantation or as a permanent therapy for heart failure. However, starting in 2011 device failures due to clots forming inside these pumps (pump thrombosis) appeared to rise dramatically.
PHILADELPHIA - Many Western countries including England and the United States have come to rely on nurses trained abroad in times of nurse shortages. Yet little is known about how such practices affect quality of care and patient satisfaction. A novel study published today by the prominent research and policy journal BMJ Open concluded that the employment of nurses trained abroad to substitute for professional nurses educated at home is not without risks to quality of care.
CHICAGO - Feeling high levels of distress, fear and hostility prior to undergoing an angioplasty or other interventional radiology procedure may lead to a poor outcome, according to new research presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).
"I was surprised by this result," said study author Nadja Kadom, M.D., currently acting associate professor of radiology at Emory University School of Medicine and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. "Prior to this study, I did not believe patient mood could have an effect on outcome."
Washington D.C., 3 December, 2015 - A new report gives the first ever picture of global investment in Ebola research and development (R&D), reporting that this investment might have come at the expense of efforts to develop drugs, vaccines and diagnostics for other neglected diseases, which collectively cause more than six million deaths every year in developing countries.
Charisma may rely on quick thinking, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
The research shows that people who were able to respond more quickly to general knowledge questions and visual tasks were perceived as more charismatic by their friends, independently of IQ and other personality traits.
Heart failure, the leading cause of hospitalization for Americans over the age of 65, accounts for more than one million hospitalizations in the US each year. Nearly six million Americans have heart failure, about half of whom have the reduced ejection fraction form, a reduced capability to pump blood from the heart. Heart failure patients with a reduced capability to pump blood from the heart have a marked increased risk for further cardiac events and death.
ANN ARBOR, Mich. - University of Michigan researchers have identified an accessible, non-invasive way to identify patients at risk for progression of kidney disease.
Together with the European Renal cDNA Bank and the Joint Institute for Translational and Clinical Research (a collaboration between Peking University Health Sciences Center and U-M), the U-M team found a simple, new test to identify one of the nation's fastest growing chronic illnesses.