Health

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...

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....

Studies show there is a major link between personality traits and personal body image, but the relationship between personality and attitudes toward others’ bodies has gone largely unexplored. Now, Florida State University researchers suggest that the specific alchemy of an individual’s personality — their distinct blend of conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness, neuroticism and extraversion — is...