The presentation can be downloaded HERE (pdf)

STUDY INSIGHTS:

Key Findings about Radio and Digital Platforms:

Nearly one in four Americans has listened to audio from an iPod or other MP3 player connected to a car stereo: Although consumers often have to deal with myriad adapters and other barriers to in-car listening, 54 percent of iPod/MP3 player owners have listened to their device in their car; this equates to 24 percent of all persons age 12 and older having listened to an iPod, iPhone or other MP3 player while connected to a car stereo.

Three in ten 12 to 24s are "very interested" in online radio in the car and on mobile devices: Among those age 12 to 24, 30 percent are "very interested" in listening to online radio in-car, while 28 percent are "very interested" in listening to online radio on mobile devices.

Consumers say radio station Web sites are improved but TV and print sites are leading the local battle: Nearly half of people age 12 and older give credit to radio for improvements in their Web sites. Forty- eight percent say that radio station Web sites have gotten more interesting compared to 17 percent believing them to be worse or less interesting. However, monthly visitation to radio station Web sites (16 percent) among persons 12+ lags visitation to local TV and local newspaper Web sites.

Other key findings:

The Internet passes TV as most essential medium in Americans' lives: For the first time, more Americans say the Internet is "most essential" to their lives when given a choice along with television, radio, and newspapers; 42 percent chose the Internet as "most essential," with 37 percent selecting television, 14 percent choosing radio, and 5 percent said newspapers. While television still leads among those over the age of 45, Internet dominates among younger persons age 12 to 44.

More than six in ten households with Internet access have a Wi-Fi network at home: Sixty-two percent of homes with Internet access have wireless network set-ups in their homes, more easily enabling the consumption of digital media in any room of their home, as more and more devices feature built-in Wi-Fi such as the new Apple iPad.

Texting has become a daily activity for nearly half of all mobile phone owners: Nearly half of mobile phone owners (45 percent) age 12 and older text multiple times a day. Three quarters of teens (75 percent) and persons age 18 to 24 (76 percent) text multiple times a day compared with nearly two thirds (63 percent) of 25 to 34s; and four in ten (42 percent) 35 to 44s and 45 to 54s (37 percent).

Broadband access has leveled and growth has stabilized for some digital platforms: Growth of residential broadband has leveled off, with 84 percent of homes with Internet access having broadband connections. The slower growth of residential broadband is associated with little year over year change in weekly usage of online radio (17 percent) and online video (29 percent). The study suggests that expanded use of use of mobile devices and in-car Internet may spark the next wave of growth.

How the study was conducted

A total of 1,753 people were interviewed to investigate Americans' use of digital platforms and new media. From January 25 to February 22, 2010, telephone interviews were conducted with respondents age 12 and older chosen at random from a national sample of Arbitron's Fall 2009 survey diarykeepers and through random digit dialing (RDD) sampling in certain geographic areas where Arbitron diarykeepers were not available for the survey. Diarykeepers represent 51% of the completed interviews and RDD sampled respondents represent 49% of the completed interviews. The study includes a total of 371 cell phone interviews.

via edisonresearch.com

In the survey, respondents were asked to rate their perceptions of the importance of each of 16 government actions related to health care and to rate their perceptions of the government’s performance on each of those actions. Actions with the largest gap between importance and performance are the areas in which the government has the greatest opportunity for improvement. Actions with the smallest gap between importance and performance are the areas in which government is strongest.

Outcomes

• On average, just fewer than six in 10 U.S. respondents rated Outcomes actions as essential or very important.

• They placed the most importance on government ensuring that health providers coordinate efforts with different public services to address wider health needs.

• That is also the Outcomes action with the largest performance gap.

Balance

• U.S. respondents assigned the most emphasis to government ensuring that support is provided to respondents who may have difficulties so they can gain easier access to care.

• Yet, only about one in five think government is performing that action well.

Engagement

• U.S. respondents identified Engagement as the most important component of their relationship with government.

• More than six in 10 rate each of the actions as essential or very important.

• However, government is falling short in a number of areas—especially seeking respondents’ views when determining priorities for health and health services.

Accountability

• U.S. respondents perceive government performance is weakest in this component.

• They placed heavy emphasis on government provide clear explanations of how spending priorities are determined.

• They also called for government to provide evidence of how health care policies are improving respondents' health and to take prompt, effective action to resolve issues that respondents experience with health services.

The radar chart above provides a visual depiction of how respondents in the United States rated the importance and performance of the 16 government actions listed below.

Outcomes

• Focus on delivering real improvements in the overall health of the nation.
• Target health services to help people with the highest level of need.
• Coordinate their efforts with different public services (e.g., social services, schools) to ensure that people’s wider health needs are met.
• Coordinate their efforts with different nongovernment organizations to ensure that people’s wider health needs are met.

Balance

• Provide fair and equal access to health services for everyone in the country.
• Provide people with treatment and care that is more tailored to their individual health needs.
• Make health information and services easily available to people through a variety of different methods, such as telephone and Internet, as well as in person.
• Help people who may have difficulties using health care services, e.g., the elderly, to gain easier access.

Engagement

• Provide reliable and trustworthy information and advice about health and health services.
• Provide a clear and easy way for people to access health information and information on health services quickly and easily.
• Seek people’s views when deciding on the priorities for health services.
• Encourage and educate people to take more personal responsibility for improving their health and that of their families.

Accountability

• Provide clear explanations of how spending priorities on health services are decided.
• Provide the public and patients with clear evidence of how health care policies are improving people’s health.
• Take prompt and effective action to resolve problems or difficulties that patients and the public experience with health services.
• Create regular opportunities for patients and the public to take part in discussions about the quality of health services.

How do children learn? It's a question researchers have been trying to solve for as long as people have existed.

Now there's a project at the University of Washington that lets researchers see what's going on in the minds of babies.

The University of Washington's Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS) opened its new brain imaging center with the world's first brain imaging machine calibrated to study infants and young children.

The magnetoencephalography (MEG) machine is able to map the brain activity of children, even as young as only a few days old as they think, feel, act and listen to languages.
 
Dr. Pat Kuhl, co-director of I-LABS, talks more about the center and its Mind Developing Project

via king5.com

New software and hardware opens a window into babies' developing brains.

A maelstrom of neural connections develop in a child's brain during the first five years of life. Understanding how interconnected circuits develop, and how babies think, could lead to a host of new insights into everything from autism to language acquisition. But gathering such information has been tricky: infants can't be ordered to stay motionless, which is required for most advanced neuroimaging techniques. Now a system that works in concert with existing imaging machinery can account for head movement and, for the first time, let researchers see detailed activity in an active baby's brain.

Deciphering young minds: Magnetoencephalography (MEG) (bottom) scans provide precise information on where neuron clusters are firing in the brain. A new setup at the University of Washington that combines a cap to monitor head position (top)lets researchers use it on infants and young children, such as the six-month-old pictured here. Credit: University of Washington Institute of Learning and Brain Sciences

Magnetoencephalography (MEG), a technology used to study brain function and to pinpoint diseased areas of the brain, capitalizes on the very weak magnetic fields created whenever a cluster of neurons fires at once. A helmet, resembling a salon hair dryer, with 306 sensors hovers over the subject's head and detects where the magnetic pulses are occurring. Unlike magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines--which only show snapshots of data and require people to lie still inside a noisy, narrow tunnel while subjected to a powerful, rotating magnetic field--the MEG is pin-drop quiet and open, allowing subjects to interact with their surroundings. The resulting data can show researchers precisely where activity is occurring in the brain in real time.

Many standard antibiotics and anti-cancer drugs block the enzymes that snip the kinks and knots out of DNA — DNA tangles are lethal to cells — but the drugs are increasingly encountering resistant bacteria and tumors.

A new discovery by University of California, Berkeley, biochemists could pave the way for new research into how to re-design these drugs to make them more effective poisons for cancer cells and harmful bacteria.

"The development of the anti-bacterial and anti-tumor agents that target these enzymes thus far has been done entirely in the absence of any visualization of how these drugs actually interact with the protein itself. And they have done remarkably well," said James Berger, UC Berkeley professor of molecular and cell biology. "But we have increasing problems of resistance to these drugs. Being able to see how these drugs can interact with the enzyme and DNA is going to be critical to developing the next generation of therapeutics that can be used to overcome these resistance problems."

Berger and colleagues at Emerald BioStructues of Bainbridge Island, Wash., and Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., report their new findings in a paper to be printed in the journal Nature and made available this week as an advance online publication.

Berger's group has worked out the mechanics of how the enzyme Type II topoisomerase binds a broken DNA strand and stitches it back together before releasing it.Colored portions highlight different structural elements of the enzyme needed for DNA cleavage and movement. (Berger lab/UC Berkeley)

The tangles in DNA, like those in a string of holiday lights, are a result of packing some six feet of DNA into a cell nucleus so small that it is invisible to the naked eye. Every time a cell divides, it has to unpack, duplicate and repack its DNA, generating about a million tangles among the newly-copied chromosomes in the process.

As Berger has shown in previous work, enzymes called topoisomerases home in on the sharp turns in a knot and then progressively snip the DNA, unloop it, and restitch it flawlessly. If, however, the enzyme slips up, that one snip can turn into a potentially mutagenic or cell-killing DNA break.

While the protein structure of these topoisomerases is known, the details of the chemical reactions that take place between the enzyme and DNA, and their reaction with the drugs that bind both, remain a mystery, Berger said. In fact, one of the main puzzles is why antibiotics like ciprofloxacin (Cipro) and anticancer drugs like etoposide, which vary widely in structure, have the same effect: jamming the enzyme and causing a break in the double-stranded DNA helix.

Berger and his colleagues found a way to obtain a picture that shows the interaction of the protein bound to DNA. The next step is to do the same for a drug bound to the protein/DNA complex, getting an image of exactly how these drugs interfere with the knot elimination machinery.

"The technique we used to trap this complex so that we could actually crystallize it and image it we think now gives us a handle on how to go after drug-bound complexes of human topoisomerases that have long eluded the field," said Berger, who also is a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL).

The scientists' new picture of the enzyme bound to DNA also turned up something totally unexpected. Most enzymes that bind DNA to snip or stitch it together use two metal ions — typically two magnesium ions — to catalyze the reaction. Berger found that type II topoisomerases, which target double-stranded DNA, make use of only one of their two magnesium ions and instead use the amino acid arginine as their second catalytic center. The second magnesium merely provides structural integrity to the protein.

"We stumbled upon a new kind of cleavage mechanism for DNA, an example of a protein that uses a completely new approach for the same mechanism," Berger said. "It speaks to the evolutionary plasticity and adaptability of nature that continuously amazes us with finding new ways to carry out reactions that it needs to perform."

Berger now plans to use his trick to trap the enzyme on a short segment of DNA, allowing him to collect enough to crystallize and analyze in an X-ray beam from LBNL's Advanced Light Source, to trap both drug and enzyme on DNA. Once crystallized and imaged, he will have the first full picture of a topoisomerase interacting the way it does in a real cancer cell or microbe.

Berger's coauthors are UC Berkeley graduate student Bryan H. Schmidt; chemist Alex B. Burgin of Emerald BioStructures; and biochemists Joseph E. Deweese and Neil Osheroff of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. The X-ray crystallography of the protein/DNA complex was conducted in Stanley Hall at the UC Berkeley branch of the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), with which Berger is affiliated.

The work was funded by grants from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health, including some funds administered through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009.

A new study from Karolinska Institutet presents a new technique that makes drug testing possible through exhaled air for the first time. By examining people who had received emergency care for an amphetamine overdose, the researchers found that in all cases there were traces of amphetamine and metamphetamine in the exhaled breath.

"Traditionally, drugs tests have been carried out using urine and blood samples," says Professor Olof Beck, who led the study. "In recent years we've been trying to find simpler alternatives using saliva, which, unfortunately, has proved difficult. Our results open the way for a new kind of drugs test, which is simple and safe to conduct and that requires no integrity-violating monitoring or medical staff."

Drug abuse is a huge social problem and drugs tests are used widely and comprehensively by the healthcare and social services, the legal system, at workplaces and schools. Reliable drugs tests are important for making correct diagnoses and for keeping tabs on drug users to ensure that they are following prescribed treatment. Alcohol can easily be checked in a breathalyser, and the technology is available for conducting measurements in a way that doesn't violate a person's integrity. Measurements of other substances in the exhaled breath are available for diagnosing diseases such as asthma and diabetes.

In this present study, which is published in the latest issue of The Journal of Analytical Toxicology, scientists at Karolinska Institutet have developed a new and unique method for collecting narcotic substances from the exhaled breath. This they did by asking subjects to breathe into a specially designed mask for ten minutes, whereupon the exhaled air was collected and passed through a filter, which trapped the narcotic substances. These filters were then analysed using combined liquid chromatography and tandem mass-spectrometry, techniques that are highly sensitive and reliable.

The researchers took samples from 12 patients who had been admitted into emergency care with toxic symptoms after having taken amphetamines. The samples were taken after the effects of the drug had worn off and with the permission of the regional ethical review board in Stockholm. The ingestion of the drug was confirmed in the patient group through urine and blood samples. In all cases, the researchers were able to ascertain the presence of amphetamine and metamphetamine (a narcotics-classed central-stimulating substance similar to amphetamine) in the exhaled breath as well. The measured excretion rate was between 0.2 and 139 pg/min, which is very low compared to the blood and urine. No amphetamine or metamphetamine were detected in samples from healthy controls.

"The results are convincing and very promising," says Professor Beck. "The study is the first to report the possibility of measuring drugs in the exhaled breath, and represents a unique, unexpected finding. We now have to move on to other drugs that are of interest for this type of breath test, and to develop the sampling and analysis methods. An instrument like a breathalyser for drugs would be the optimal solution for the efficient control of drug use by motorists, for example."

The study was conducted by researchers at the clinical pharmacology division of the Department of Medicine, Solna and at the Psychiatry Unit at the Department of Clinical Science, Karolinska Institutet, and was financed by Vinnova (the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems), the Stockholm County Council and the Swedish Research Council.

Publication:

People with diabetes have an increased risk of blindness, yet nearly half of the approximately 23 million Americans with diabetes do not get an annual eye exam to detect possible problems.

But it appears that cost-effective computerized systems to detect early eye problems related to diabetes can help meet the screening need, University of Iowa analysis shows.

The UI team compared the ability of two sets of computer programs to detect possible eye problems in 16,670 people with diabetes. Each of the two programs (known as EyeCheck and Challenge 2009) are based on technology developed at the UI and the programs performed equally well, achieving the maximum accuracy theoretically expected. The study was published online April 16 by the journal Ophthalmology.

The systems require a trained technician to use a digital camera to take pictures of the retina, located inside the eye. The images are then transferred electronically to computers, which can automatically detect the small hemorrhages (internal bleeding) and signs of fluid that are hallmarks of diabetes damage.

"It is an important question: whether a computer can substitute for a human to detect the initial signs of diabetic eye disease," said Michael Abràmoff, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences at the UI Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine and an ophthalmologist with UI Hospitals and Clinics.

"Our analysis shows that the computerized programs appear to be as accurate and thorough as a highly trained expert in determining if these initial signs of an eye problem are developing in someone with diabetes. Once the initial problems are found, an eye specialist can treat the patient," added Abràmoff, who also is an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering in the UI College of Engineering.

To explain the system's efficiency, Abràmoff said that among a group of 100 patients with diabetes, 10 people would likely have diabetes-related eye problems. An ophthalmologist (eye doctor) would have to check the eyes of all 100 patients to find out who had problems. The computer programs, when given photos of the eyes of the same 100 patients, flag, on average, 20 people as possibly having diabetes-related eye problems. Thus, an ophthalmologist would need to see only the 20 people prescreened by the computer program instead of the original 100.

"The computerized programs are accurate and allow ophthalmologists to spend time on patients who actually need care and provide better care to those patients. Also, through this technology, people with diabetes can have an opportunity for screening that they might not otherwise have," Abràmoff said.

Abràmoff noted the study had some limitations. For one, the images were prescreened to ensure the computers could analyze them. However, his research group has already developed the tools to automatically ensure adequate image quality before proceeding.

In addition, the number of people in the study who actually had diabetes-related eye problems was lower than what might be seen in other populations, such as people whose diabetes is not under control. Thus, Abràmoff said, it will be important to test the systems in other, larger groups. Lastly, the computer-based assessments were compared to assessments done by only one human reader at a time, which may not reflect a comparison to assessments by multiple readers.

"A computer alone will never be a substitute for the care of a good doctor, but it's exciting to think that computers can be partners in finding the patients at risk of blindness who should see an ophthalmologist," said study author Vinit Mahajan, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences.

"In the United States alone, between 40 and 50 percent of people with diabetes are not getting the eye screening exams they need. We think these detection programs can meet this critical need very cost-effectively," Mahajan added.

The study was supported by grants from the National Eye Institute, Research to Prevent Blindness and the Netherlands Organization for Health-Related Research.

Abràmoff holds a patent, as well as patent applications, on the technology used in the study, and is one of the owners of the EyeCheck project. Study authors Meindert Niemeijer, Ph.D., UI research scientist, and Gwénolé Quellec, Ph.D., UI adjunct research scientist, hold patent applications on this technology, as well.

STORY SOURCE: University of Iowa Health Care Media Relations, 200 Hawkins Drive, W319 GH, Iowa City, Iowa 52242-1009

MEDIA CONTACT: Becky Soglin, 319-356-7127, becky-soglin@uiowa.edu