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Research Blogging Awards Now Open For Nominations

ResearchBlogging Awards 2010

Seed Media Group’s Research Blogging Awards honor the outstanding bloggers who discuss peer-reviewed research. With over 1,000 blogs registered at ResearchBlogging.org and 8,500 posts about peer-reviewed journal articles collected, it is time to recognize the best of the best.

Any blog that discusses peer-reviewed research is eligible for nomination, and the winners will be determined by votes from their peers in the Research Blogging community. All finalists will be highlighted on ResearchBlogging.org, and winners will receive cash prizes totaling $2000.

Here’s how the awards will be chosen: Read more »

Dr. Jon LaPook On CBS News: What Happened To Healthcare Reform?


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Why aren’t Americans in the streets, demanding reform of a health care system that is providing inadequate care for millions, wildly inefficient, and gradually bankrupting our country? A major reason: proponents of reform have lost control over the message because people think it’s too complicated to understand. Confused about important details of the proposals, the public is susceptible to misrepresentations by opponents. Read more »

Could Sugar Pills Improve Smoking Cessation Rates?

Professor Robert West, at University College London, has an interesting theory which suggests that glucose tablets can help smokers to quit. It is well known that when smokers quit smoking they put on weight, and that nicotine appears to act like a mild anorectic drug…it dulls the appetite. It has also been noted that smokers often crave high carbohydrate foods when they quit smoking. So it seems as though smoking dulls the hunger for carbohydrates. The glucose theory (or at least one version of it) suggests that when an addicted smoker quits smoking they experience a strong hunger/craving sensation, sometimes located in their stomach. When trying to interpret that sensation they think, “what am I craving? I just gave up cigarettes, it must be that.” Read more »

This post, Could Sugar Pills Improve Smoking Cessation Rates?, was originally published on Healthine.com by Jonathan Foulds, Ph.D..

42% Of Obese College Students Open Spam Emails About Weight Loss Products

Most people automatically filter out spam e-mails, or delete them without ever opening them up.

But a surprising number of people actually take the time to read them, which is probably why annoying spam will continue unabated. From the New York Times’ Well, Tara Parker-Pope writes points an interesting study looking at who actually read health-related spam e-mails.

Looking at college students who were overweight, a study showed that an astounding 42 percent opened unsolicited e-mails touting weight loss products, and 19 percent actually ordered the product. And, perhaps more concerning, among those where were normal weight, 5 percent still bought what the spam was selling.

The effectiveness of spam e-mails, in this admittedly small study at least, certainly surprised me. I remember reading somewhere that it takes a success rate of 1 in 100,000 to make it worthwhile to a spam marketer.

But if they’re achieving success rates like these, it’s no wonder that the degree of spam, estimated to be 73 percent of all e-mails, will only rise.

That’s depressing.

*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*

Brain Size Does Matter: When It Comes To Video Games

To the delight of video game enthusiasts, a new study coming out of MIT has discovered a relationship between the size of certain structures in the brain and the ability to perform in video games. The researchers analyzed the size of specific brain regions of the participants using high-resolution MRI. They then had participants play Space Fortress, (pictured) a game that makes Asteroids look like a technological marvel.

Here is more from the press release:

Half of the study participants were asked to focus on maximizing their overall score in a video game while paying equal attention to the various components of the game. The other participants had to periodically shift priorities, improving their skills in one area for a period of time while also maximizing their success at the other tasks. The latter approach, called “variable priority training,” encourages the kind of flexibility in decision-making that is commonly required in daily life, according to Kramer. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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