Culture

BOSTON – Sports-related knee injuries in children and adolescents seem to be increasing at an alarming rate. Researchers at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia noted a more than 400 percent increase in these injuries at their institution over the last decade, according to new research presented on Sunday, Oct. 16, at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference and Exhibition in Boston.

Montreal, October 13, 2011 -- A neighborhood's raw, edgy atmosphere is an essential feature in attracting designers, according to new research from Concordia University and the University of Toronto. The study focused on Mile End, a multicultural district just north of downtown Montreal, long envied for its staple bagel shops and often depicted as the epicentere of all things Jewish by the late Canadian novelist, Mordecai Richler.

BOSTON -- Less than half of pediatric car passengers suffering injuries from motor vehicle crashes were restrained, with the lowest rates among blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans, according to a research abstract presented Saturday, Oct. 15, at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference and Exhibition (NCE) in Boston.

Many contend the lawsuit industry is out of control and certainly it is to blame for ballooning health care costs but one academic feels like more lawyers would be better.

One in six mobile phones in Britain is contaminated with faecal matter, according to new research released ahead of Global Handwashing Day.

Experts say the most likely reason for the potentially harmful bacteria festering on so many gadgets is people failing to wash their hands properly with soap after going to the toilet.

The findings of the UK-wide study by scientists from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Queen Mary, University of London also reveal a tendency among Britons to lie about their hygiene habits.

Researchers know that alcohol impairs coordination and the ability to perceive and respond to hazards, and that hangovers impair neurocognitive performance and psychomotor vigilance. This study closely examined alcohol-related injuries admitted to hospital, finding that alcohol greatly increases risk for serious injury.

New assessments by researchers using the latest high-tech tools to study the diets of early hominids are challenging long-held assumptions about what our ancestors ate, says a study by the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Arkansas.

Recent studies have shown that chimpanzees possess many of the cognitive prerequisites necessary for humanlike collaboration. Cognitive abilities, however, might not be all that differs between chimpanzees and humans when it comes to cooperation. Researchers from the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the MPI for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen have now discovered that when all else is equal, human children prefer to work together in solving a problem, rather than solve it on their own.

The classic figure of a distant, career-focused father who spends lots of time at the office and who has little time for his kids might be getting outdated, a new study shows.

In a nationwide survey that examined Americans' feelings on fatherhood, 77 percent of U.S. men rated being a good father as very important, while just 49 percent said the same about having a successful career.

CORAL GABLES, FL (October 13, 2011) — Previous studies have found that health outcomes improve during an economic downturn. Job loss means less money available for potentially unhealthy behaviors such as excessive drinking, according to existing literature on employment and alcohol consumption. A new study by health economist Michael T. French from the University of Miami and his collaborators has concluded just the opposite--heavy drinking and alcohol abuse/dependence significantly increase as macroeconomic conditions deteriorate.

Despite significant improvements in stroke prevention over the past decade, and a fall in incidence and deaths, UK doctors are still undertreating one of the major risk factors - atrial fibrillation - reveals research published in BMJ Open.

Atrial fibrillation, or AF for short, describes abnormal heart rhythms. Its treatment has been prioritised in the NHS in a bid to cut preventable deaths and disability from stroke.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Television ads featuring cute chimpanzees wearing human clothes are likely to distort the public's perception of the endangered animals and hinder conservation efforts, according to a team of primatologists and a marketing professor at Duke University.

Doctors may be sending too many patients by helicopter, an expensive choice that may not impact patient outcome

When a patient needs to travel between hospitals and time is of the essence, helicopter transport is generally assumed to be faster and more desirable than taking a ground ambulance, but a paper published today in the online journal PLoS ONE refutes this common assumption, revealing that the actual times to treatment for patients transported by helicopter may not justify the expense relative to ground ambulances.

BOSTON – Physicians who once only grappled with learning the language of medicine must now also cope with a health care world that has turned hospitals into factories and reduced clinical encounters to economic transactions, two Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center physicians lament.

"Patients are no longer patients, but rather 'customers' or 'consumers'. Doctors and nurses have transmuted into 'providers,' Pamela Hartzband, MD and Jerome Groopman MD, write in the Oct. 13 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.