Culture

Sex differences in risk seeking behavior, emergency hospital admissions, and mortality are well documented: Males are more likely to be admitted to an emergency department after accidential injuries, more likely to be admitted with a sporting injury, and more likely to be involved in a fatal road traffic collision.

Fed up with complaints about the lack of up to date magazines in the waiting room of his general practice, Professor Bruce Arroll and colleagues set out to answer the question of why magazines in waiting rooms are always old. Their findings are published in the Christmas issue of The BMJ, so yell at them if you don't think this is funny.

Inspired by the story of King Canute - the 11th century king who tried to command the tide to turn back - Westgate Medical Practice in Dundee decided to stop fighting the tide and let patients have appointments when they wanted. Their findings are published in the Christmas issue of The BMJ.

Each morning, all patients telephoning for soon, immediate, or urgent care were invited to attend a daily appointment "pool" at 10.30am.

Highlights

Agricultural decisions made by our ancestors more than 10,000 years ago could hold the key to food security in the future, according to new research by the University of Sheffield.

Scientists, looking at why the first arable farmers chose to domesticate some cereal crops and not others, studied those that originated in the Fertile Crescent, an arc of land in western Asia from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf.

A CEO's natural sunny disposition can have an impact on the way the market reacts to announcements of company earnings, according to research from the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business.

The study shows that leaders' inclinations to express themselves with optimism carries over into their tone when disclosing company performance - a tendency that can create an uptick in stock price.

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. - December 11, 2014) Toddlers who undergo total body irradiation in preparation for bone marrow transplantation are at higher risk for a decline in IQ and may be candidates for stepped up interventions to preserve intellectual functioning, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital investigators reported. The findings appear in the current issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

In the hunt for better knowledge on the aging process, researchers from Lund University have now enlisted the help of small birds. A new study investigates various factors which affect whether chicks are born with long or short chromosome ends, called telomeres.

Parkinson's disease sufferers have a different microbiota in their intestines than their healthy counterparts, according to a study conducted at the University of Helsinki and the Helsinki University Central Hospital (HUCH).

"Our most important observation was that patients with Parkinson's have much less bacteria from the Prevotellaceae family; unlike the control group, practically no one in the patient group had a large quantity of bacteria from this family," states DMSc Filip Scheperjans, neurologist at the HUCH Neurology Clinic.

The drive for energy efficient homes could increase asthma risks, according to new research.

Led by a team at the University of Exeter Medical School, the research has found that a failure by residents to heat and ventilate retrofitted properties could lead to more people developing the respiratory condition.

December 11, 2014--(BRONX, NY)--Sleep-related breathing problems and chronic lack of sleep may each double the risk of a child becoming obese by age 15, according to new research from Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. The good news is that both sleep problems can be corrected. The study, which followed nearly 2,000 children for 15 years, published online today in The Journal of Pediatrics.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- A study of more than 12 million acute care hospitalizations over a five-year span found that as quality improved on each of 17 measures so did racial and ethnic equity. Nine major disparities evident in 2005 had mostly or totally disappeared by the end of 2010.

Despite recent significant gains in health care access throughout the nation, people of color continue to grapple with a disproportionate burden of chronic disease. Two studies in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) indicate that differences in how care is delivered to patients in various racial or ethnic groups have narrowed nationally, but health outcomes remain worse for blacks than for whites.

Eczema, an itchy chronic inflammatory disease of the skin, was not associated overall with short stature in an analysis of data from several studies, although a small group of children and adolescents with severe eczema who do not get enough sleep may have potentially reversible growth impairment, according to a study published online by JAMA Dermatology.

Surgery to remove all or part of the pancreas and then transplant a patient's own insulin-producing islet cells appears to be a safe and effective final measure to alleviate pain from severe chronic pancreatitis and to help prevent surgically induced diabetes, according to a report published online by JAMA Surgery.