In today’s stressful world, mindfulness – a type of popular spirituality that strives to focus on the present moment – promises to soothe away the anxiety and stress of modern life. The Internet is full of popular cure-all mindfulness apps targeting everyone from busy urban professionals to dieters, those suffering from insomnia and even children....
Wastewater-based epidemiology is a rapidly developing scientific discipline with the potential for monitoring close to real-time, population-level trends in illicit drug use. By sampling a known source of wastewater, such as a sewage influent to a wastewater treatment plant, scientists can estimate the quantity of drugs used in a community from the measured levels of...
In the 1970s, doctors in the United States performed sterilizations on an estimated 25 to 42% of Native American women of childbearing age, some as young as 15. Even the lower estimate—one quarter of Native women—is a whopping statistic. The federal government subsidized the sterilizations, which often took place without consent or under great duress....
Despite the dire need for primary health care providers in California’s Central Valley, workplace discrimination and harassment can cause them to change practices or leave the region entirely. These insights are reported in a pilot study published in JAMA Network Open and led by UC Davis health policy expert Michelle Ko. Study participants’ experiences with colleagues,...
About 15% of hospitalized older adults will be readmitted within a month of discharge. However, a new University of Michigan study found that a disproportionately high number return for preexisting, or linked infections–infections presumably treated during the first hospital stay. Further, patients discharged home or to home care were more likely to return with a...
New research suggests that, under the United States’ Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), expanded Medicaid coverage has provided greater improvements in health insurance coverage for married people, especially women, than for unmarried people. Jim Stimpson of Drexel University, Pennsylvania, and colleagues present these findings in PLOS ONE. Medicaid is a U.S. government program...
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From predicting who will be a repeat offender to who’s the best candidate for a job, computer algorithms are now making complex decisions in lieu of humans. But increasingly, many of these algorithms are being found to replicate the same racial, socioeconomic or gender-based biases they were built to overcome. This racial bias extends to...
A breakthrough has been made in understanding a rare genetic skin disease that causes progressively enlarging skin tumours over the scalp, face and body. For the first time, scientists at Newcastle University, UK, have identified changes in the DNA of the tumour cells in those with CYLD cutaneous syndrome (CCS) that may help them grow....
Adding to what is known about the growing crisis of suicide among American teens, a team led by researchers at the McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research at New York University have uncovered several troubling trends during the period of 1991-2017, among Black high school students in particular. The findings are published in the...
Fresh evidence has revealed that major tobacco companies in the UK have made attempts to continue to market their products despite the introduction of plain packaging for cigarettes nearly three years ago. The plain packaging policy was designed to rid tobacco companies of their last remaining method for tobacco advertising. No branded packets could be...
