Category Archives: News
Health And Aging: U.S. Will Need 33,000 Geriatricians By 2025, Only Has 7,000 Now
From a New York Times online article:
If one geriatrician can care for 700 patients with complicated medical needs, as a federal model estimates, then the nation will need 33,200 such doctors in 2025. It has about 7,000, only half of them practicing full time. (They’re sometimes confused with gerontologists, who study aging, and may work with older adults, but are not health care providers.)
Geriatrics became a board-certified medical specialty only in 1988. An analysis published in 2018 showed that over 16 years, through academic year 2017-18, the number of graduate fellowship programs that train geriatricians, underwritten by Medicare, increased to 210 from 182. That represents virtually no growth when adjusted for the rising United States population.
“It’s basically stagnation,” said Aldis Petriceks, the study’s lead author, now a medical student at Harvard.
Air Travel: Electric Planes From “Eviation” Could Be Flying In UK In 2 Years
Electric planes could soon fly commuters from city to city, a transport minister has disclosed. George Freeman, minister for transport and innovation, told The Telegraph’s “Chopper’s Brexit Podcast” that there was “a whole opportunity for short-haul transport at low altitude” that the country was yet to grasp.
In an episode of 2020 predictions, Mr Freeman said: “This will be the year where we begin to see a whole new world of low level aviation, Velocopters, electric planes. We already run the world’s first commercial electric plane service and Boris and I have been looking at how we can develop UK leadership in electric plane technology.” Mr Freeman said the planes could take eight passengers and fly at 2,500ft and could be used for “short hops between cities that take you an hour or two in the car, pumping out carbon monoxide.”
“At the moment the electric plane seats eight. But you know what the aerospace industry is like – eight soon becomes 18, and that soon becomes 28. We are determined to lead in the revolution of clean transport.”
To listen to the podcast in full, head here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/…
2020 Auto Trends: “VinFast” Electric Cars From Vietnam Will Start At $17K
Even in the U.S., VinFast faces stiff competition from Toyota, Ford and Hyundai. VinFast hopes its low prices — starting at $17,000 — will give it an edge.
Top New Science Podcasts: Latest Trends In Research, Carnivorous Plant Traps
We start our first episode of the new year looking at future trends in policy and research with host Joel Goldberg and several Science News writers. Jeffrey Mervis discusses upcoming policy changes, Kelly Servick gives a rundown of areas to watch in the life sciences, and Ann Gibbons talks about potential advances in ancient proteins and DNA.
In research news, host Meagan Cantwell talks with Beatriz Pinto-Goncalves, a postdoctoral researcher at the John Innes Centre, about carnivorous plant traps. Through understanding the mechanisms that create these traps, Pinto-Goncalves and colleagues elucidate what this could mean for how they emerged in the evolutionary history of plants.
Studies: New Protein Therapy Improves Cardiac Function, Scar Formation After Heart Attack
From a New Atlas online article (Jan 1, 2020):
“This is an entirely new approach with no current treatments able to change scar in this way,” says Associate Professor James Chong who led the research. “By improving cardiac function and scar formation following heart attack, treatment with rhPDGF-AB led to an overall increase in survival rate in our study.”
The research centers on a protein therapy called recombinant human platelet-derived growth factor-AB (rhPDGF-AB), which had previously been shown to improve heart function in mice that had suffered a heart attack. In a new study aimed at bringing the treatment closer to human trials, a team set out to discover if it produced similar results in large animals, namely pigs.
The researchers from the Westmead Institute for Medical Research (WIMR) and the University of Sydney found that when pigs that had suffered a heart attack received an infusion of rhPDGF, it did indeed prompt the formation of new blood vessels in the heart and led to a reduction of potentially fatal heart arrhythmia.
Top Science Podcasts: Soles And Calluses, Far Side Of The Moon & Nobel Prize Winner Q&A (Nature)
The podcast team share some of their highlights from the past 12 months: A sole sensation, The make up of the far side of the Moon, Growth Mindset, ‘Manferences’ and Q&A with Nobel Prize winner John Goodenough.
In this episode:
00:33 A sole sensation
A study of people who do and don’t wear shoes looks into whether calluses make feet less sensitive. Nature Podcast: 26 June 2019; Research article: Holowka et al.; News and Views: Your sensitive sole
08:56 The make up of the far side of the Moon
Initial observations from the first lander to touch down on the far side of the Moon. Nature Podcast: 15 May 2019; Research article: Li et al.
15:43 Growth Mindset
How a one hour course could improve academic achievement. Nature Podcast: 07 August 2019; Research article: Yeager et al.
27:44 ‘Manferences’
Nature investigates the prevalence of conferences where most of the speakers are male. Nature Podcast: 11 September 2019; News Feature: How to banish manels and manferences from scientific meetings
34:02 Q&A with Nobel Prize winner John Goodenough
We talk to John Goodenough, who was jointly awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his role in the development of the lithium-ion battery. Podcast Extra: 09 October 2019
Medical Technology: New Artificial Intelligence (AI) Model Predicts Breast Cancer More Accurately
A new Artificial Intelligence (AI) model predicts breast cancer in mammograms more accurately than radiologists, reducing false positives and false negatives, reports a large international study from Google, Northwestern Medicine and two screening centers in the United Kingdom (U.K.).
Heart Studies: Alcohol Abstinence For Atrial Fibrillation Reduces Arrhythmia (NEJM)
Abstinence from alcohol reduced arrhythmia recurrences in regular drinkers with atrial fibrillation.
January 2, 2020 Atrial fibrillation is the most common sustained arrhythmia,1 and alcohol is consumed by a majority of U.S. adults.2 The current study showed that among regular drinkers, a substantial reduction in alcohol consumption by patients with symptomatic atrial fibrillation was associated with a reduction in recurrence of atrial fibrillation and a reduced proportion of time spent in atrial fibrillation. Earlier meta-analyses showed that alcohol was associated with a dose-related increased risk of incident atrial fibrillation, with increased risk observed even among drinkers who consumed as few as 7 drinks per week.8 Current trends show a rise in alcohol consumption among adults older than 60 years of age,2coupled with greater prevalence of atrial fibrillation in this age group. The present study, with participants having an average intake of approximately 17 drinks per week at baseline, suggests that consumption at these levels may contribute to atrial fibrillation.
Profiles: 79-Year Old NBA Commissioner David Stern Has Died (1942-2020)
From an NBA.com online release:
“It was David Stern being a marketing genius who turned the league around. That’s why our brand is so strong,” said (Magic) Johnson, who announced he was retiring because of HIV in 1991 but returned the following year at the All-Star Game with Stern’s backing.
“It was David Stern who took this league worldwide.”
NEW YORK — David Stern, the basketball-loving lawyer who took the NBA around the world during 30 years as its longest-serving commissioner and oversaw its growth into a global powerhouse, died Wednesday. He was 77.
Stern suffered a brain hemorrhage on Dec. 12 and underwent emergency surgery. The league said he died with his wife, Dianne, and their family at his bedside.
Stern had been involved with the NBA for nearly two decades before he became its fourth commissioner on Feb. 1, 1984. By the time he left his position in 2014 — he wouldn’t say or let league staffers say “retire,” because he never stopped working — a league that fought for a foothold before him had grown to a more than $5 billion a year
industry and made NBA basketball perhaps the world’s most popular sport after soccer.
Boomers Daily 