Agence France-Presse (AFP) is reporting that a new robot, designed to help people lose the pounds, will soon be available on the U.S. market.
The Autom from Intuitive Automata was designed to act like a personal coach, talking you through a personalized diet and helping you to stick with it. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
What role has the birth control pill played in human sexuality? Dr. Jon LaPook looks at the evolution of sex as the pill turns 50 and discusses the effect of the pill on female sexuality with sex therapist and educator Miriam Baker.
Does The Pill Lower Sex Drive?
The pill that ushered in the sexual revolution may have also thrown cold water on women’s libido. Fifty years ago, on May 9th, 1960, the FDA announced the approval of oral contraception.
The birth control pill has allowed women to control their reproductive cycle, delay childbearing, and develop careers. But it also may have the potential to disrupt sexuality by blocking normal hormonal surges that occur in a woman’s cycle. Here’s how. Read more »
In the medical blogosphere, we talk a lot about medical community sites such as Sermo.com, Ozmosis.com or Doctors.net.uk and we always mention these as huge communities.
While Sermo has over 110,000 physician members, the Chinese dxy.cn has over 1.4 million professionals on its site. It has a blog, a conference site, a pharmacy channel, biomedical business information platform, it covers more than a 100 specialties, and offers thousands of jobs. I tried to translate the mission statement with Google Translate:
Lilac Garden Biomedical Science and Technology Network ( DXY.CN ) was established in July 23, 2000, and since its inception has been committed for the majority of medical professionals to provide a specialized life science platform. With professionalism and strong accumulation and the deepening and development of professional exchange, Lilac Garden has grown into the largest and most popular group of pharmaceutical industry professionals to network media platforms.
Now I’m looking for Chinese doctors who would help us create a Chinese section for PeRSSonalized Medicine, the easiest medical information aggregator that features only selected resources. If you know someone, please let me know.
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
Professor Mark Kendall of the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology and his team have been investigating a novel way to deliver vaccines.
Their method makes use of nanopatches, which are fingernail-sized dermal patches with microscopic projections on their surface that hand vaccine off directly to the antigen-presenting cells just below the surface of the skin.
The scientists’ recent work in mice has shown that an immune response equivalent to that achievable by needle and syringe can be reached using 100 times less vaccine. Not only does the nanopatch appear to be a more effective delivery method, it’s also cheaper to produce and doesn’t require refrigeration, adjuvants or multiple doses. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
Babies born between the 34th and 36th week have more complications and cost the U.S. $26 billion annually. These children have more risk of death, cerebral palsy, cognitive impairment, or respiratory problems.
In the United States, nearly 13% of infants are born before they reach 37 weeks gestation. According to the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM), that rate is much higher than other developed nations, and physicians may be partially to blame for the early deliveries.
Some of the reasons may be older moms or the increased use of artificial reproductive technology and multiple births, but some physicians are choosing to deliver between 34 and 37 weeks even when there is no clear medical indication. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
