Great News Research Articles

ECG for non-competitive sports in childhood: strengths and disputes

Sport is very important for health promotion and conservation. Active lifestyle and regular exercise reduce cardiovascular disease incidence. The Italian Ministry of Health issued the Law Decree no. 243 (10/18/2014) concerning "guidelines for certification about non-competitive sports" to promote safety in sports. This regulation defines the activities for which a certificate is required, the professional actors involved and the clinical exams to be performed according to the patient's health status. In particular, the Law Decree recommends to perform an electrocardiogram (ECG) "at least once in a lifetime", introducing much greater news into pediatric practice. We proposed a survey evaluating frequency of ECG implementation for non-competitive sports and cardiovascular diseases incidence was administered to 7 Ligurian pediatricians. The number of ECG/year for pediatrician increased from 10 ECG/year to 50 ECG/year with an indication of suitability to non-competitive sports. One case of QT prolongation and 2 cases of type 1 Brugada ECG pattern were diagnosed. In addition, 3 patients had an atrial septal defect and 3 children had a ventricular septal defect. Forty-three percent of the pediatricians considered useful performing the ECG. ECG in children has enhanced the positive effects on the community health. However, it remains to be defined in agreement with scientific societies the age at which to perform ECG, the sports for which ECG is required and the cost-benefit ratio for the National Health System and families.

Cryptic Journalism

In light of Edward Snowden’s global surveillance disclosures, this article examines news discourses about online communication security and surveillance circumvention practices. It analyses 1249 news reports mentioning encryption in The Guardian and The New York Times, covering a three-year period from June 2012 to June 2015 (one year before and two years after the Snowden revelations). Whilst there was a marked increase in the volume of news articles mentioning encryption post-Snowden, the context in which encryption is discussed has since shifted from an initial emphasis on “surveillance” towards “security” issues. However, the research found that greater news coverage of encryption did not necessarily mean an increase in depth of coverage, with most mentions of encryption vague and non-descript. In terms of source usage, the research finds an emphasis on private corporations in both publications analysed. This is problematic when many of the organisations allowed to speak on encryption were those accused of colluding with the US and UK Governments to aid covert mass surveillance—the likes of Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and so forth—thus providing them with a platform to exonerate themselves from the accusations. This contradictory depiction of communication security serves the status quo and prevents advancement of the “encrypted by default” communication practice called for by Snowden. This, by extension, has serious implications for both journalistic freedom and civil liberties since it helps to perpetuate the ability of nation states and corporations to conduct indiscriminate mass surveillance.

The substrate strain mediated magnetotransport properties of surface states in topological insulators

Recent experiments reveal that the strained bulk HgTe can be regarded as a three-dimensional topological insulator (TI). We further explore the strain effects on magnetotransport in HgTe at magnetic field. We find that the substrate strain associated with the surface index of carriers, can remove the surfaces degeneracy in Landau levels. This accordingly induces the well separated surface quantum Hall plateaus and Shubnikov–de Haas oscillations. These results can be used to generate and detect surface polarization, not only in HgTe but also in a broad class of TIs, which would be very great news for electronic applications of TIs.

Don't worry, be funded!

Wilson et al. provide great news: “the current status of cultural evolutionary theory and evolutionary religious studies, both of which have become centered on group-level functional organization,”...

The tone of financial news and the perceptions of stock and CDS traders

This paper applies novel sentiment analyses to Reuters news to study stock and CDS traders' differential interpretations of financial news. We construct sentiment measures to identify which news content influences investors' behavior and create dynamic word lists that reflect the divergent viewpoints of CDS and equity investors. We find that (1) equity and CDS traders focus on different content within the same news; (2) traders particularly disagree with respect to news concerning debt topics, especially regarding M&A activity; (3) the Great Recession impacted debt news content and altered the typical inverse relationship between equity and CDS markets on news days.

Presentation of the Distinguished Public Service Award of the Mineralogical Society of America for 2015 to J. Alexander Speer

Mr. President, Honorees, Members of MSA: Twenty years ago, our Society confronted an array of challenges. The severity of the situation can best be described by reference to that illustrious American philosopher, Donald Rumsfeld. We faced the “known knowns”—the challenges we knew we knew. These included a plunge in membership from a high of 2900 in the early 1980s down to 2200 in the mid-1990s—a 25% reduction. Next, the Society faced the known unknowns. In 1995, the financial prospects for MSA were murky. Our endowment was recovering from a steep recession, but income from membership fees and journal subscriptions was steadily dropping. Finally, MSA faced the unknown unknowns—the challenges we didn’t know we didn’t know. Could any of us at that time have imagined that the internet would allow people to download MSA’s intellectual property with the click of a mouse? The good news—or more accurately—the great news, is that we found someone to navigate our way past these obstacles. We hired J. Alexander Speer—Alex to everybody. Alex …

Doves and Cowboys

‘Your father was taken by police because he writes books,’ my uncle told my brother and me, in the way that adults break not so great news by seemingly simplifying everything. It didn't make sense....

The power of three.

Last month, the Executive Committee of the International Union of Crystallography approved the appointment of Dr Zbigniew Dauter as joint Section Editor of Acta Crystallographica Section F: Structural Biology Communications. This is great news for our journal, our authors and readers. Zbyszek is renowned in the field of macromolecular crystallography. He has been active in crystallography for more than 40 years. He started out investigating structures of small organic compounds with potential medical applications and obtained his PhD in 1975 from the Technical University of Gdansk, Poland, for the dissertation titled The structure of 1-nitro-9-(3′-dimethyl-aminopropylamino) acridine (C283). In time his scientific interests shifted to macromolecular crystallography and he has since been involved in the structure elucidation of over 70 proteins, among them electron-transfer metalloproteins such as rubredoxin and ferredoxin; proteinases from the subtilisin and trypsin families and their inhibitors; various other enzymes such as dUTPases, dehydrogenases, glycosyl hydrolases, aldolases, HIV reverse transcriptase; and larger complexes such as photosystem II or carnation mottle virus. In addition to these achievements, Zbyszek is probably best known for his seminal contributions to the optimization of diffraction data collection especially using synchrotron radiation. He has published several texts on this topic, presented numerous lectures and seminars, and served as a tutor in many, many data collection workshops. He participated in the development of the protocols for analysis and validation of protein structures at atomic resolution, and he is investigating how the weak resonant signal from anomalous scatterers, present or introduced into crystals of macromolecules, can be utilized most effectively for phasing purposes. He is the inventor of the quick soaking method using halides (bromide and iodide), a method which is now widely known as dauterization of macromolecular crystals. More recently, he has developed an interest in exploiting radiation-damage signals for the phasing of macromolecular structures. In 2010, his work was recognised when he was awarded the highest science award from the Polish Academy of Sciences. In total, Zbyszek has authored or co-authored about 330 papers in international journals and he is one of only a few crystallographers who have published in all six Acta journals. Up to now he has published three papers in Acta A, eight in Acta B, 15 in Acta C, 102 in Acta D, eight in Acta E and eight in Acta F. He has been a Section Editor of Acta D from 2003 until 2015 and we are very fortunate that he has agreed to join us now as a Section Editor of Acta F. We welcome him to our team very warmly. Let’s keep up the good work, Zbyszek!

Opioid Use Found to Be Decreasing, While Opioid-Related Deaths Increase

To reverse adverse outcomes associated with the illicit use of prescription opiates, guidelines are needed to address prescription practices for such drugs, experts say.

Wyllie's treatment of epilepsy: principles and practice

The 6th edition of Wyllie's Treatment of Epilepsy: Principles and Practice is available: great news! This classic textbook about epilepsy has long been considered an unequaled reference for all who care for patients with epilepsy, and this new edition brings its lot of novelties and improvements.

The Key’s To Hypnotic Success

But the great news is that when an individual is helped to discover ways to expand their horizons, try new things, gain a sense of achievement, given a chance to grow as a person and starts to realize that there are better options available for them and that a brighter future is a possibility for them then this can work wonders in helping them to positively impact and develop their: Self-Confidence, Self-Esteem, Self-Image and/or SelfControl (Willpower)

Early palliative care: philosophy vs. reality.

In the April issue of Annals of Palliative Medicine ( APM ), we were excited to pass along the great news that APM is now fully indexed in PubMed/MEDLINE (1). Due to the open-access policy of the journal, the information shared in APM is now readily available for those who are looking for sophisticated reviews and original articles on clinical and research topics from the field of palliative care. Such unhindered access along with the quality and relevance of the articles may have contributed to the widespread reception of the journal and its contents.

Boycott, resistance and the role of the deviant voice

I recently logged onto the Home Office Research Development and Statistics (RDS) website and was greeted with a large flashing announcement that read; “economists we want you”. This appeal echoed the views of a senior RDS person I recently interviewed who stated; “We recruit quite a lot of people and it's very rare that we employ people who have degrees in criminology because they don't have any skills… We're employing all sorts of people and the most obvious are those with psychology, economics and physics because they have more skills” (Walters, 2003) – great news for all those criminology students! But what can be said about the trajectory of Home Office criminology and the construction of criminological knowldege?

Top stories: 'Hellboy' the dinosaur, why humans are the fat primate, and great news for hypochondriacs

Top stories: 'Hellboy' the dinosaur, why humans are the fat primate, and great news for hypochondriacs

This staffing model is great news for nursing.

Imagine working in an NHS organisation that enforces a 70:30 split between registered and unregistered staff, and that ensures ward sisters and those in similar roles are wholly supervisory; where hospital managers guarantee there will be between 1.25 and 1.8 nurses per bed. Well, this is exactly what is being promised by the five NHS trusts in Northern Ireland, as you can discover by reading a feature in this week's Nursing Standard.

2015 Match Finds Big Jump in Students Choosing Psychiatry

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Education and TrainingFull Access2015 Match Finds Big Jump in Students Choosing PsychiatryMark MoranMark MoranSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:9 Apr 2015https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2015.4b15AbstractNeuroscience advances and the increasing perception of psychiatry as integral to the “house of medicine” may be attracting more graduating medical students to the specialty.The number of U.S. senior allopathic medical school students entering psychiatry through the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) increased by 13 percent this year, compared with 2014, with 774 U.S. graduating seniors choosing to enter psychiatry training.Anita Everett, M.D., chair of the APA Board of Trustees Work Group on Health Care Reform, summarizes the work group’s report at the Board’s meeting last month in Arlington, Va. The work group made a series of recommendations to strategically position APA and American psychiatry to promote and influence U.S. health care reforms.David HathcoxThe outcome for psychiatry in this year’s match is unusually good: the percentage of seniors selecting psychiatry rose from 4.2 percent in 2014 to 4.6 percent in 2015—a larger percentage increase than any other specialty in the match.The increase of 89 students selecting psychiatry this year compared with last year (see chart on page 10) exceeds that of family medicine, emergency medicine, and general surgery—all of which have many more residency positions than psychiatry. (Only internal medicine—which experienced an increase of 150 students over 2014—had a larger jump in numbers than psychiatry.)“This is great news,” said Tristan Gorrindo, M.D., APA’s director of education, in comments to Psychiatric News. “In my own experience of working with medical students, I see two potential contributors. First, as we include more neuroscience in medical student education, students see the promise of new and exciting treatments. There is a general sense that we are on the verge of a number of breakthroughs and that the treatments we will have in 10 years will be much more advanced than what we have now. And it’s exciting to be part of this revolution in medicine. “Additionally, as psychiatry begins to work in closer collaboration with primary care through new models like the patient-centered medical home, I think students like the idea of seeing themselves remaining within the ‘house of medicine,’ ” Gorrindo said. “The ability to be part of a primary care team but to offer specialized expertise on some of the problems that so vex our primary care colleagues allows students to feel as though they are making a valuable contribution to the overall care of patients.“My hunch is that we’ll see this trend continue with more students going into psychiatry each year,” he said.The annual match, in which the choices of graduating medical students are paired with those of residency programs seeking trainees, is typically watched as an indicator of workforce size and makeup of the various medical specialties for the coming years.Sidney Weissman, M.D., a former APA trustee who has long held an interest in workforce issues, said he believes that increasing competition for slots has led many medical students to seek out positions in more than one specialty. “Psychiatry did well in this year’s match, as senior medical students aware of the limited number of residency positions in the most sought-after specialties are considering more options as they plan their medical careers,” he said. “This is why many of us have interviewed applicants matching in more than one specialty. This response from an expanding pool of U.S. graduates is likely to continue into the foreseeable future.”Weissman noted that in 2018, unless the present cap on Medicare funding for new positions is lifted, U.S. medical schools will graduate 21,000 allopathic and 8,000 osteopathic students. “This number will approximate the number of available PGY-1 positions,” he said. “As the decade progresses, I would predict for these reasons that we will have 1,000 U.S. graduates entering psychiatry, by combining allopathic and osteopathic graduates by 2018.” ■This year’s match results can be accessed here. ISSUES NewArchived

Annals of Palliative Medicine is indexed in PubMed.

We are excited to pass along the great news that Annals of Palliative Medicine (APM) will now be fully indexed in PubMed/MEDLINE. All accepted articles of future issues of APM will be indexed and available on PubMed, and all previously published APM articles will also be searchable in PubMed as soon as the indexation process is finished, which is expected to be completed within the month.

Transfer RNA comes of age.

Transfer RNA comes of age.

Choice of place of birth: Is it really that simple?

British Journal of Midwifery • January 2015 • Vol 23, No 1 On 3rd December 2014, the much awaited updated National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines on intrapartum care were published (NICE, 2014). The guidelines focus on the care of healthy pregnant women in labour who have had a straightforward pregnancy. New recommendations have been added in a number of areas, including choice of place of birth, care during the latent first stage of labour, transfer of care, fetal assessment and monitoring during labour (particularly cardiotocog‐ raphy compared with intermittent auscultation) and management of the third stage of labour. Some of the key priorities regarding choice of place of birth include advising ‘low‐risk multiparous women that planning to give birth at home or in a midwifery‐led unit is particularly suitable for them because the rate of interven‐ tions is lower and the outcome for the baby is no different compared with an obstetric unit.’ The advice for nulliparous women is slightly different regarding homebirth as the guidelines state there is a ‘small increase in the risk of an adverse outcome for the baby’. Much of the advice on place of birth comes from the 2011 Birthplace Study (Birthplace in England Collaborative Group, 2011), which found that for low‐ risk women giving birth is generally very safe. It also endorsed a woman’s right to chose where she has her baby. Women must know that they have a choice in their care and be able to access and understand the evidence‐ base in order to make an informed decision. However, as Cathy Rogers et al (page 42) point out, changing current perceptions around the safety of giving birth in midwifery‐led settings is challenging. This is apparent as 4 years after the Birthplace Study was published, only 10% of women give birth in a midwife‐led setting. The authors set about changing this and their paper discusses new initiatives focusing on improving informed choice and the knowl‐ edge and confidence of midwives in one large maternity unit. The strategies have been successful with approximately 30% of local women planning to give birth in a midwifery‐led setting. This is great news and something that could be implemented in other Trusts. The authors do acknowledge that these initiatives need to be supported by a national strategy for a cultural shift in birthplace to take place. On page 22 Soltani et al explored the local impact of a Cochrane review that demonstrated that midwifery‐led continuity models of care provide explicit benefits for mothers and babies compared with other models of maternity care alongside other midwifery‐led care evidence and guidelines. Again, neither the women nor the health professionals had much of an awareness of the supporting evidence. How are women expected to make informed decisions if those caring for them are unaware of all the options and evidence available to them? BJM

Aging in rural America.

For older Americans, accessing high-quality care can be a challenge. For those in rural communities, it's even harder.