Culture | Page 1779 | Science Codex

UT Dallas study: NCAA athletes need more coaching on academics and career options

NCAA athletes need more coaching on the long odds of playing professionally and the importance of academics to their future success.

That was the bottom line of a new UT Dallas study that analyzed surveys of 19,000 male and female student-athletes at more than 1,100 colleges and universities in all three NCAA divisions to determine how various factors impacted their academic performance. The study, by two School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences (EPPS) faculty members, was published in the journal Social Science Quarterly.

Cardiologists use 3-D printing to personalize treatment for heart disease

University of Melbourne doctors and engineers are using supercomputers to create 3D models from patients with heart disease, with photos from a camera thinner than a human hair.

The images, gathered during a routine angiogram, are fed into a supercomputer. Within 24 hours, a model of a person's artery is 3D printed. This gives cardiologists crucial information about the behaviour of blood flow and the precise structure of the artery from the inside.

Innovative collaboration leads to improved discharge outcomes for children with asthma

BOSTON - A new study demonstrates that pediatric patients with asthma who left the hospital with their prescription medications made fewer emergency department (ED) visits after they were discharged than if they were discharged still needing to go to a pharmacy to pick-up their medications.

More hands-on training for doctors required if policy changes

Research into views on whether doctors should be fully registered to practise on graduation has highlighted scope for improvements in the medical education training system. Students would benefit from more hands-on training and responsibility, research carried out at the Universities of Exeter, Cardiff, Dundee and Queen's University Belfast indicates.

Negative citations important to scientific progress should be tracked, says new study.

Toronto - Having your work mentioned in somebody else's research is an important way for scholars to build their academic reputations. Citing others' work is also important to the credibility of new research.

But what happens if a researcher makes a citation in order to point out flaws or weaknesses in a previous study?

Old data may provide new insights on honey bee populations

Over the past decade, beekeepers in the U.S. and other countries have had problems keeping their bees healthy. Some of the potential causes of their problems include the Varroa destructor mite, pesticides, pathogens, and the reduction of floral resources due to land development or conversion.

To make matters worse, there has been a lack of useful, long-term datasets on the size of honey bee populations. This lack of data makes it difficult to quantify actual changes in honey bee abundance, and to determine what causes population declines.

Visualizing the emotional power of music

WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb. 23, 2016 -- Musical styles and genres differ around the world, but the emotional power of music is universally felt. To understand this evocative force, researchers in many fields, including information science, neural perception, and signal processing, investigate music's underlying structure, examining features such as the tone, timbre, and auditory and rhythmic features of a piece.

Everyday mindfulness linked to healthy glucose levels

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] --Dispositional, or "everyday" mindfulness is the inherent trait of being aware of one's present thoughts and feelings. In a new study of 399 people that measured health indicators including dispositional mindfulness and blood glucose, researchers found that those with higher scores for mindfulness were significantly more likely than people with low scores to have healthy glucose levels.

Specialist treatment delivery at university hospitals

A new study by researchers from Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin compares the true cost of treating patients with chronic inflammatory bowel disease with costs recoverable under the current German DRG-based system. The treatment of these conditions, which include Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, is usually complex, and generally requires the multidisciplinary care approach primarily offered by academic health care organizations. The study shows that the actual costs incurred are not currently reflected by the fixed-priced schedule used for cost recovery.

Shock Trauma model for critically ill patients cuts transfer time in half

Baltimore, February 23, 2016--A novel unit to care for critically ill patients significantly speeds access to specialized care, according to a new study by physician scientists at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) and the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC).

Critical care resuscitation unit speeds up transfer of critically ill patients

CHICAGO: A team of surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) has developed a program that utilizes its Shock Trauma Center (STC) model to direct critically ill non-trauma patients to the appropriate treatment location and get them into an operating room and hospital intensive care unit (ICU) bed as quickly as possible. Before this program was implemented, its fast intake and treatment strategy had existed only for patients critically injured in automobile crashes or catastrophic events.

Eco-friendly food packaging material created by NUS researchers doubles shelf-life of food products

Singapore, 23 February 2016 - Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have successfully developed an environmentally-friendly food packaging material that is free from chemical additives, by fortifying natural chitosan-based composite film with grapefruit seed extract (GFSE). This novel food packaging material can slow down fungal growth, doubling the shelf-life of perishable food, such as bread.

Television exposure directly linked to a thin body ideal in women

For the first time experts have been able to eliminate external factors and specifically pinpoint television as having a direct link with female body ideals.

It is known that the perception of a woman's perfect body shape is influenced by images of celebrities and models seen in the media.

However, in the past, there has been little attempt to control variables in order to isolate the effects of media exposure from other cultural and ecological factors.

Researchers use Botox-like injection to treat runners and cyclists with knee pain

A painful knee condition that affects more than one in eight active people has been treated effectively with a botulinum toxin injection and physiotherapy.

Researchers from Imperial College London and Fortius Clinic carried out a trial involving 45 patients with what they term lateral patellofemoral overload syndrome. Sufferers, often runners and cyclists, experience pain in the front and side of the knee joint.

Some distractions while driving are more risky than others, researchers say

Drivers more than double their crash risk for more than half of their trips when they choose to engage in distracting activities, according to Virginia Tech Transportation Institute researchers writing in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.