In Professor Richard Foulds’ freshman design class, students perform angioplasty on pasta, amniocentesis on jelly donuts and surgery on hot dogs.

Foulds, along with other professors at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), is pioneering a new way to educate engineers. Professors who use the method, called studio learning, demonstrate the fundamentals of engineering not by lecture and recitation but by active, hands-on, experiment-based learning. “Our students love studi

“Sit-down” medical rounds, during which a health care team meets to review a patient’s medical record and discuss short- and long-term needs, are associated with better outcomes for kidney dialysis patients, a Johns Hopkins-directed study has found.

Patients treated at clinics that conducted sit-down rounds at least once a month were more likely to have healthy levels of the blood proteins albumin and hemoglobin than those seen at clinics that performed only walking rounds,

Cites complex and distracting work environment

A University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing study provides the first detailed description of the nature and prevalence of errors by hospital staff nurses. During a 28-day period, 393 registered nurses kept a detailed journal of their errors and prevented errors, referred to as near-errors. Thirty percent of the nurses reported at least one error during the 28-day period, and 33 percent reported a near-error. Although the majority

Imaging studies of the brain when it is under the influence of alcohol reveal that different areas of the brain are impaired under high and low levels of alcohol, according to a Yale study published in Neuropsychopharmacology.

Godfrey Pearlson and Vince Calhoun, researchers in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, used a statistical method to sort areas of the brain affected when persons were administered a placebo or two different doses of alcohol. The seven

Motorcycle-related injuries and deaths have been on the rise since 1997, and urban teaching hospitals are bearing the brunt of caring for those injured, according to a new nationwide study.

Charges incurred at these hospitals accounted for nearly 70 percent of the $842 million in total hospital charges for motorcycle-related cases in 2001, say Jeffrey Coben, M.D., of Allegheny General Hospital, and colleagues. Their analysis appears in the December issue of the American Journal o

Highly obese women are 12 times more likely to have diabetes or knee replacement surgery, and five times more likely to have high blood pressure than women who are at a normal weight, says a new study.

Men in the highest weight categories are eight times more likely to have diabetes, and six times more likely to have a knee replaced or have high blood pressure than are their normal-weight peers, say researchers for the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. The rese

Advances in science and engineering increasingly require the collaboration of scholars from various fields. This shift is driven by the urgent need to address complex problems that cut across traditional disciplines, and the capacity of new technologies to both transform existing disciplines and generate new ones. At the same time, however, interdisciplinary research is impeded at many institutions by policies on hiring, promotion, tenure, and resource allocation that favor traditional disciplin

Most older people are healthier, wealthier, and better educated than previous generations, but these gains have not been equal among today’s older Americans.

In 2003, there were almost 36 million people age 65 and over living in the United States, accounting for just over 12 percent of the total population. Most of these older Americans reported better health, greater wealth, and higher levels of education than older people in the past. However, some groups of older Americans are

A recent trial, published in the Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology, shows that women with abnormal heart rhythms benefit from implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) as much as men, stressing the importance of including females in future research. Previous studies have raised the concern of possible gender bias, in favor of men, in the evaluation and treatment of heart disease.

The Multicenter UnSustained Tachycardia Trial (MUSTT) studied the influence of gender

Nearly nine out of ten seniors switch their primary care physicians because they are forced to – not by choice. That’s the finding of research published in the November edition of The Journal of the American Board of Family Practice.

Analyzing survey data from nearly 800 patients 65 and older, researchers found that 14 percent of seniors changed physicians in a single year. Of those, almost nine out of 10 changed their physicians involuntarily. Insurance-related reasons acc

Humans evolved from ape-like ancestors because they needed to run long distances – perhaps to hunt animals or scavenge carcasses on Africa’s vast savannah – and the ability to run shaped our anatomy, making us look like we do today.

That is the conclusion of a study published in the Nov. 18 issue of the journal Nature by University of Utah biologist Dennis Bramble and Harvard University anthropologist Daniel Lieberman. The study is featured on Nature’s cover.

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In a study to be published Nov. 18 in The New England Journal of Medicine, Stroke Team doctors at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston say they may have discovered a new tool to use in the treatment of strokes.

Physicians in Houston and three other centers used a hand-held extracranial ultrasound device to target stroke-causing blood clots during the pilot study. The sound waves are believed to seek out the clot and deliver a heavy dose of the clot-busting drug tPA t

Two new Penn State studies show that people who pursue a healthy, low-fat, low-energy-density diet that includes more water-rich foods, such as fruits and vegetables, consume more food but weigh less than people who eat a more energy-dense diet.

Dr. Barbara Rolls, who holds the Guthrie Chair of Nutrition in Penn State’s College of Health and Human Development, directed the studies. She says, “In one of the studies, we looked at the eating patterns of 7,500 men and women who c

Dangerous side effects, ASPS study says

Flip through any women’s magazine and you are sure to find advertisements hawking pills to enlarge women’s breasts. But do these pills actually work? Probably not, says the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). Not only are breast enhancement pills unproven, they could be dangerous, according to a study published in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery® (PRS), the official medical journal of the ASPS. “There are upward of 30 different h

Less livestock wealth, means less chance of access to arable land, grain production and friends. Kenyan and Dutch researchers Adano Roba and Karen Witsenburg have discovered that this is the hard truth faced by poor households in North Kenya. They therefore argue that poverty alleviation measures should also focus on guaranteeing better prices for livestock and a broader approach to developing drylands.

Between 1997 and 2000, Adano Roba and Karen Witsenburg studied the life and

Study presented in the November issue of the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology

Drinking Concord grape juice significantly increased HDL–the good cholesterol–and significantly lowered two markers of inflammation in people with stable coronary artery disease, according to results of a study presented in the November issue of the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology. “In addition to HDL levels increasing, we saw significant decreases in t