Letting doctors use mobile phones in hospital cuts the clinical error rate, thanks to quicker communication, and rarely causes electronic magnetic interference in medical equipment, say Yale School of Medicine researchers in Anesthesia & Analgesia (Feb). Their survey of 4,018 medics concluded that hospital equipment rarely suffers interference because modern digital phones use safer, higher frequencies.
Technology has brought a new threat to the home: paper shredders. The security devices have led to a wave of injuries among children, say New York University researchers in Pediatrics (Feb). The article says that 22 under-12s suffered home-shredder injuries and that half of the victims were under 3. Several of the injuries involved amputated fingers.
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People who have a life-long history of depression are much more likely to develop malformations in the brain, such as plaques and tangles in the hippocampus region, says a study in the Archives of General Psychiatry (Feb). They also tend to decline more rapidly into Alzheimer’s, says the study of 95 people by the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
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People with a specific HIV subtype, called subtype D, have shorter survival rates than those with the A subtype, say researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The study, announced in a university news release last week, compared 326 Ugandans who had either the A or D strains, or a combination of the two. Those with A lived on average 8.8 years post-infection, those with D, 6.9 years, and those with AD, 5.8 years.
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Children whose parents refuse to use corporal punishment are far less likely to get involved in violence than children whose parents smack them, says a Minnesota University study. Almost 40 per cent of the 130 parents in the study accepted violence as an acceptable disciplinary or defensive measure, say researchers in Pediatrics (Feb). The more strongly they advocated corporal punishment, the more likely the child was to engage in violent scuffles.