Tech

In this week's PLoS Medicine, K. Srinath Reddy from the Public Health Foundation of India discusses new research published last week by Malavika Subramanyam, S V Subramanian, and colleagues that found no link between economic growth and child undernutrition rates in India, concluding that direct investments in appropriate health interventions may be necessary to improve child health in India.

TEMPE, Ariz – People with diabetes could be helped by a new type of self-monitoring blood glucose sensor being developed by Arizona State University engineers and clinicians at Mayo Clinic in Arizona.

More than 23 million people in the United States have diabetes. The disease is the fifth leading cause of death in the United States. It contributes to a higher risk for heart disease, blindness, kidney failure, lower extremity amputations and other chronic conditions.

A model of health care developed by a Queen's University doctor should be studied and copied as a way to reform health care in the U.S.

The U.S. is facing a problem of adding 40 million people to its health care system if President Obama's health care reforms are passed and Ontario's Family Health Team Model (FHT) could help ease the burden.

Irrigation is one of the most controversial aspects in the sustainable management of golf courses. Researchers from the Canary Islands have spent 25 years analysing the practices relating to reclaimed water at one of the oldest golf courses in Spain. The results show that plants on the course receive 83% more water than they need.

Alexandria, VA - Black carbon - fine particles of soot in the atmosphere produced from the burning of fossil fuels or biomass - a major contributor to the thick hazes of pollution hovering over cities around the world, has been known to be a health hazard for decades. But over the last decade, scientists have been examining in increasing detail the various ways in which these particles contribute to another hazard: heating up the planet.

London, UK (March 15th, 2011) – WikiLeak's disclosures highlight longstanding problems of the overclassification of information and failure of transparency laws, says David L Sobel.

Improving land management and farming practices in Australia could have an effect on global climate change, according to a study published in the International Journal of Water.

A new laser device created at the University of Central Florida could make high-speed computing faster and more reliable, opening the door to a new age of the Internet.

Professor Dennis Deppe's miniature laser diode emits more intense light than those currently used. The light emits at a single wavelength, making it ideal for use in compact disc players, laser pointers and optical mice for computers, in addition to high-speed data transmission.

SALT LAKE CITY, March 15, 2011 - University of Utah researchers built "spintronic" transistors and used them to align the magnetic "spins" of electrons for a record period of time in silicon chips at room temperature. The study is a step toward computers, phones and other spintronic devices that are faster and use less energy than their electronic counterparts.

Heavy drinking is not associated with one of the two most common types of gullet (oesophageal) cancer, suggests research published online in Gut.

Gullet cancer is the sixth leading cause of cancer death worldwide and occurs as one of two main types: squamous cell carcinoma or adenocarcinoma.

But while rates of gullet adenocarcinoma have soared in many Western countries over the past three decades, those of squamous cell carcinoma have been falling. The squamous cell variety is strongly linked to alcohol consumption.

HILO, Hawaii—A team of scientists from the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Global Ecology and the USDA Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station (PSW) has developed new, more accurate methods for mapping carbon in Hawaii's forests. Their research appears in an online issue of the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

(Boston) - Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have found that for the majority of patients with opioid addiction, collaborative care with nurse care managers is a successful method of service delivery while effectively utilizing the time of physicians prescribing buprenorphine. The findings, which appear in the March 14 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, serve as a model of service delivery for facilitating access and improving outcomes in patients with opioid addiction.

Boston, MA – With 180,000 men diagnosed with prostate cancer each year, it is one of the most common types of cancer in the country. For this reason, it has been cited as a good marker for health care spending in general, reflective of the greater trends across the United States.

A new report shows that older people who receive Guided Care, a new form of primary care, use fewer expensive health services compared to older people who receive regular primary care. Research published in the March 2011 edition of Archives of Internal Medicine found that after 20 months of a randomized controlled trial, Guided Care patients experienced, on average, 30 percent fewer home health care episodes, 21 percent fewer hospital readmissions, 16 percent fewer skilled nursing facility days, and 8 percent fewer skilled nursing facility admissions.