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America’s sleep deficiency: Resolving the nightmare
Bob Kowalski Mental HealthcareRealizing that Americans are suffering from a lack of sleep is no eye-opener. Just look around classrooms, offices, the car next to you in traffic — the yawns and bleary eyes give it away. In a previous article, we discussed the issues that result from sleep deficiency and the research into the problem plaguing America. The path to our long national nightmare has been complicated, but solutions may be available.
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Is too much technology a bad thing for kids?
Brian Stack EducationDoes this story sound familiar to you? It is a typical weekday evening at home. Our family has just finished eating dinner together. The kitchen has been cleaned up, lunches have been packed for school the next day, and my wife Erica and I both sit down and start to scroll through the many notifications that have popped up on our phones from both email and social media over the past couple of hours.
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HAI Air Medical Services Committee grapples with drones in their zones
Julie Bernhard Medical & Allied HealthcareIt’s a bird, it’s a plane…no…it’s a drone. What was once a popular theme song for a famous superhero is now signifying another mysterious object in the sky, concerning many EMS helicopter operators and air medics industrywide. At a recent meeting of the HAI Air Medical Services Committee at the 2017 HAI Heli-Expo in Dallas, the group convened to talk publicly about current safety issues, with drones taking front and center.
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More informatics experience means more money for nurses
Scott E. Rupp Medical & Allied HealthcareOne of the great things about the HIMSS Annual Conference and Expo is the amount of research and revelations to come from the organization each February or so. For those who track the day-to-day happenings of healthcare, HIMSS provides a cornucopia of information and an Easter basket full of goodies in regard to data that’s ready for consumption. New research from HIMSS' analytics arm shows a bit more insight into the working world of caregivers throughout the world’s health systems.
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Are fitness trackers doing more harm than good?
Noelle Talmon Sports & FitnessFitness trackers from Fitbit, Garmin, and other manufacturers are big business. Millions of the devices are sold each year to help people monitor their physical activities and their number of calories burned. But how effective are they in actually improving an individual's health? According to Dr. Greg Hager, an expert in computer science at Johns Hopkins University, users should be particularly aware of devices that track people’s steps and advise them to walk 10,000 steps a day, which equals about five miles.
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America’s sleep deficiency: When you can’t snooze, you lose
Bob Kowalski Mental HealthcareAmericans seem to be closing their eyes to a problem that's growing, despite exhaustive research into the ramifications. It's time to wake up and smell the coffee: We don't get enough sleep. Insufficient sleep has been declared a "public health problem" by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which attributed an increased risk of chronic conditions such as diabetes, depression, cancer and reduced productivity to a shortage of shut-eye.
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Urban challenge: Cities and climate change
Lucy Wallwork Civil & GovernmentWhen it comes to climate change, cities occupy the role of both hero and villain. On the one hand, cities consume over two-thirds of global energy and are responsible for 37-49 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. On the other, cities are also a key part of the solution. Even when it must happen without support at the federal level, cities are taking action on climate change.
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A surprising new use of virtual reality — Teaching empathy
Sheilamary Koch Education"It is exciting to consider what could be accomplished if the power of virtual reality were harnessed for education rather than gaming; if developers turned their resources away from creating games that teach children how to steal cars and kill people and toward allowing them to explore history, science, art and other subjects in innovative new ways," wrote Charles Sahm, director of education policy at the Manhattan Institute, in US News and World Report back in October.
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Is this the death of the PLSS?
Jason Foose Science & TechnologyAlaska's PLSS survey is still in its infancy. Freshly placed monuments are still steaming, and some 35 million acres of state lands are yet unsurveyed — that's about the size of the state of New York. I caught wind that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is proposing to transfer the balance of state land to Alaska through the Direct Point Positioning Survey (DPPS) method.
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Could animals grow human organs in the near future?
Chelsea Adams Medical & Allied HealthcareFor the first time, scientists have demonstrated that growing humans organs in other species could be possible. In a study published the journal Cell this month, researchers successfully injected human stem cells into a pig embryo. While the developing embryo was "highly inefficient," the stem cells developed into the precursors of heart and liver cells. A portion of the developing embryo was comprised of human cells.
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