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Patients and clinicians must share healthcare decisions, say experts

Clinicians have an ethical imperative to share important decisions with patients, and patients have a right to be equal participants in their care, say a group of experts today.

In December 2010, 58 people from 18 countries attended a Salzburg Global Seminar to consider the role patients can and should play in healthcare decisions. Today, they publish a statement urging patients and clinicians "to work together to be co-producers of health."

It comes as the government in England finalises plans to give people more say and more choice over their care than ever before.

Health bill spells the end of the NHS in England, warn experts

The Health and Social Care Bill amounts to the abolition of the English NHS as a universal, comprehensive, publicly accountable, tax funded service, free at the point of delivery, warn experts today.

In a paper published on bmj.com, Professor Allyson Pollock and David Price examine the proposed changes and argue that the government's duty to provide a comprehensive health service in England is abolished.

Plant buffers can slow runoff of veterinary antibiotics

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Field tests by University of Missouri scientists have backed up laboratory research indicating that buffer strips of grass and other plants can reduce the amount of herbicide and veterinary antibiotics in surface runoff from farm plots.

Vegetative buffer strips have already proven effective in limiting erosion as well as reducing sediment and nutrients in runoff.

WSU proves extracellular matrix tugging creates come hither stimulus for cancer migration

DETROIT – Ninety percent of cancer deaths resulted from metastasis, the spread of cancer to different areas in the body, yet scientific exploration of the possible mechanical factors that promote metastasis has been limited. A Wayne State University researcher, however, is expanding the scientific understanding of what makes malignant tumors spread, and the answer lies within the dense, fibrous matrix that surrounds cancer cells.

Only the weak survive?: Pitt team adds more give for stronger self-healing materials

PITTSBURGH—Conventional rules of survival tend to favor the strongest, but University of Pittsburgh-based researchers recently found that in the emerging world of self-healing materials, it is the somewhat frail that survive.

Protein associated with allergic response causes airway changes in asthma patients

Changes that occur in the airways of asthma patients are in part caused by the naturally occurring protein interleukin-13 (IL-13) which stimulates invasion of airway cells called fibroblasts, according to a study conducted by researchers at Duke University.

Cheap catalyst made easy

Catalysts made of carbon nanotubes dipped in a polymer solution equal the energy output and otherwise outperform platinum catalysts in fuel cells, a team of Case Western Reserve University engineers has found.

The researchers are certain that they'll be able to boost the power output and maintain the other advantages by matching the best nanotube layout and type of polymer.

But already they've proved the simple technique can knock down one of the major roadblocks to fuel cell use: cost.

Simulating tomorrow's accelerators at near the speed of light

As conventional accelerators like CERN's Large Hadron Collider grow ever more vast and expensive, the best hope for the high-energy machines of the future may lie in "tabletop" accelerators like BELLA (the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator), now being built by the LOASIS program at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). BELLA, a laser-plasma wakefield accelerator, is remarkably compact.

A new system has been developed for an ID in a mobile phone

Sign language users read words and see signs simultaneously

People fluent in sign language may simultaneously keep words and signs in their minds as they read, according to an international team of researchers.

EARTH: Rise of community remote sensing

Alexandria, VA – If you ask someone involved in community remote sensing to define the emerging field, the most likely response will be a chuckle followed by "That's a hard question to answer…" At its core, the movement is about remote sensing - collecting data from afar. Remote sensing has revolutionized science and Earth monitoring, but it fails to collect data at the hyper-local level. And that's where the community comes in.

Gaps in health care limit options for older adults, MU expert says

COLUMBIA, Mo. – There are 50 million family members providing care to older adults in the United States, according to the MetLife Foundation and national caregiving associations. When older adults are hospitalized and discharged, their families face numerous choices about where they will go and how they will receive care. A University of Missouri nursing expert says the complexity of this process will intensify with increasing demands for health care and workforce shortages.

NASA infrared satellite imagery shows Cyclone Cherono dwindling

Three days of NASA infrared satellite imagery provides a clear picture to forecasters of the effect wind shear has had on former Cyclone Cherono. Wind shear increased near Cyclone Cherono this weekend and weakened it down to a remnant low pressure area in the Southern Indian Ocean. Today, March 21, Cherono's remnants are moving away from Mauritius and still causing ocean swells.

Melanoma diagnosis in women associated with higher socioeconomic status

The incidence of melanoma appears higher in non-Hispanic white adolescent girls and young women living in higher socioeconomic neighborhoods than those living in lower socioeconomic areas, according to a report posted online today that will appear in the July print issue of Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Trauma patients protected from worse outcomes associated with so-called 'weekend effect'

PHILADELPHIA -- Patients who've been hurt in car or bike crashes, been shot or stabbed, or suffered other injuries are more likely to live if they arrive at the hospital on the weekend than during the week, according to new University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine research published in the March 21 issue of Archives of Surgery.