The city of New York is at it again…they were the first to ban trans fat and lead the fight for restaurant labeling of calories on menus. Now they have an ad campaign that is grossing some people out. Read more »
This post, Pouring on the Pounds: NYC’s New Anti-Obesity Campaign, was originally published on Healthine.com by Brian Westphal.
Two recent studies concerning the prevalence of autism in the US have been getting a lot of attention, because they indicate that autism prevalence may be higher than previously estimated. This, of course, fuels the debate over whether or not there are environmental triggers of autism.
One study was conducted by the CDC but has yet to be published. The results were announced ahead of publication by the US Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to the autism community. She reports that the new prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is now estimated at 1% or 100 in 10,000 children. This is an increase over the last few years. In 2002 the prevalence was estimated to be 66 per 10,000.
The second study was published in the journal Pediatrics and is a phone survey of 78,037 parents. They asked if they had any children who had ever been diagnosed with an ASD. Here are the results: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
Even though we intuitively think that a particular color looks the same to different people, researchers from The University of Chicago and Vanderbilt University have uncovered that the brain plays a critical role in color perception. The brain actually assigns colors to objects and with a bit of tinkering one can fool the brain to assign the wrong color to an object being viewed. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
I’ve recently come across AcaWiki, an interesting project focusing on academic research and web 2.0.
Today, representatives from the new nonprofit project AcaWiki announced the opening of their website to the public. AcaWiki’s semantic-wiki based website allows scholars, students, and bloggers to easily post summaries, and discuss academic papers online. All content posted to the site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
AcaWiki’s mission is to make academic research more accessible and interactive by creating a “Wikipedia for academic research.” “Cutting-edge research is often locked behind firewalls and therefore lacks impact,” founder Neeru Paharia explains, “AcaWiki turns research hidden in academic journals into something that is more dynamic and accessible to have a greater influence in scholarship, and society.” AcaWiki enables users to easily post and discuss human-readable summaries of academic papers and literature reviews online. AcaWiki also helps users to share and organize summaries through the use of tags and RSS feeds.
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
EMS/ED frequent fliers are both a bane and (supposedly) another cost of doing business for EMS systems. Maybe not.
My city of Fort Worth is trying to do something about it, proactively and correctly (emphasis mine):
MedStar program sends paramedic to homes of some repeat callers before they dial 911 | Fort Wor…
FORT WORTH — Last year, MedStar was called more than 800 times by 21 people.Those “frequent fliers” weren’t necessarily facing life-threatening emergencies. Some may have needed primary care but didn’t have a regular doctor or transportation. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at GruntDoc*
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…
