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News | Archive (June 2010)
Counselling increased mammography use among low-income women with health insurance
— 30 Jun 2010 | HealthEven with health insurance, low-income women had lower rates of mammography screening than middle-class women, but a counselling program increased the likelihood of screening…
Is your left hand more motivated than your right hand?
— 30 Jun 2010 | HealthMotivation doesn't have to be conscious; your brain can decide how much it wants something without input from your conscious mind. Now a new study shows that both halves of your brain don't even have to agree. Motivation can happen in one side of the brain at a time…
Key component identified that helps plants go green
— 30 Jun 2010 | BiologyA team of researchers from Duke University and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies has found a central part in the machinery that turns plants green when they sense light…
Ovarian transplantation restores fertility to old mice and also lengthens their lives
— 30 Jun 2010 | HealthScientists have discovered that when they transplant ovaries from young mice into aging female mice, not only does the procedure make the mice fertile again, but also it rejuvenates their behaviour and increases their lifespan. The question now is: could ovarian transplants in women have the same effect?…
Researchers suggest new paradigm for breast cancer screening
— 30 Jun 2010 | HealthShould we spend more money urging women to use mammography screening on a regular basis or should those dollars and effort be used for discovering and developing better early detection tests?…
WWF welcomes bid for international agreement on oil spills
— 30 Jun 2010 | EnvironmentAs oil continues to spill into the Gulf of Mexico more than two months after the explosion and fire from the site of BP's Deepwater Horizon rig, WWF has welcomed a Russian proposal for an international mechanism for preventing, dealing with and cleaning up oil spills…
Pay-for-performance for hospitals
— 30 Jun 2010 | HealthPay-for-performance initiatives - in which health care providers are rewarded with more funds for meeting clinical targets - have been adopted in the UK and Australia. The approach has been piloted in the US by the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which is responsible for government-sponsored health insurance. The first wave of implementation across the US is slated for 2013, when hospitals will have some revenues withheld and then returned if they meet clinical targets. However, pay-for-performance assumes that hospitals have the economic and human resources they need to meet the targets despite the current inequalities in resources in the health care system. Jan Blustein, of New York University, and colleagues tested this assumption in a new study published this week in PLoS Medicine by examining the association between local economic and human resources and hospital performance for two common heart conditions…
Key mechanism in the brain's computation of sound location identified
— 30 Jun 2010 | HealthAnimals can locate the source of a sound by detecting microsecond (one millionth of a second) differences in arrival time at their two ears. New York University researchers have identified a mechanism the brain uses to help process sound localisation. This group of scientists found that one reason these neurones are able to perform such a rapid and sensitive computation is because they are extremely responsive to the input's 'rise time' - the time it takes to reach the peak of the synaptic input. The findings will publish next week in the online, open access journal PLoS Biology…
Closing the science-to-policy gap in maternal and child health in Africa
— 30 Jun 2010 | HealthIn the third of five papers in the PLoS Medicine series on maternal, neonatal, and child health in sub-Saharan Africa, Sara Bennett and Freddie Ssengooba this week discuss the challenges of getting science into policy in Africa. Dr Bennett, from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore USA, and Dr Ssengooba from Makerere University in Uganda argue that that the technical basis for improving maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH) in sub-Saharan Africa is largely known, but too often policy and practice are not well informed by science. Developing better policy networks in MNCH, mainstreaming the use of science in maternal, neonatal, and child health, and investing in innovative approaches to develop and applying such science are key, the authors say…
Community-based education strengthens campaign for elimination of lymphatic filariasis
— 30 Jun 2010 | HealthCommunity-based lymphatic filariasis education in Orissa State, India, increased treatment compliance from around 50% to up to 90%, according to a study published June 29 in the open-access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. In their study, researchers from the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, in partnership with the Church's Auxiliary for Social Action, an India-based non-governmental organisation, and IMA World Health, a US-based non-governmental organisation, identified barriers to compliance with India's MDA program for LF, and suggest that timely educational and lymphoedema management programs can reverse this trend…
A nearby galactic exemplar
Study identifies critical 'traffic engineer' of the nervous system