Past human factors/ergonomics studies have shown that some in-vehicle technologies intended to help with driving tasks are actually competing for drivers' attention and undermining driving safety. Human factors/ergonomics studies over the past 10-plus years have examined a variety of distractors. The December 2015 special section of Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society leads off with research proposing a method for assessing cognitive distraction while driving and elicits pro and con responses from experts in the field.

An analysis of more than 1.3 million emergency department visits found an increase in patient length of stay of approximately 5 minutes associated with the presence of medical students in the emergency department, which was statistically significant but likely too small to be of clinical relevance, according to a study in the December 8 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on medical education.

OTTAWA, Canada - December 8, 2015 - Scientists from the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) Research Institute participated in several peer-reviewed articles that published today in the International Journal of Obesity Supplements. The series (including 16 original contributions) was prepared by the International Study of Childhood Obesity, Lifestyle and the Environment (ISCOLE) research group, a global collective of leading obesity research experts from 12 countries located on five continents.

(Boston ) -- In the majority of cases, hip x-rays are not reliable for diagnosing hip osteoarthritis (OA), and can delay the treatment of this debilitating disease.

These findings are the first to evaluate the diagnostic performance of an x-ray in patients with clinical signs and symptoms of classic OA. The study appears in the British Medical Journal.

People are less willing to rely on their knowledge and say they know something when they have access to the Internet, suggesting that our connection to the web is affecting how we think.

Professor Evan F. Risko, of the Department of Psychology at the University of Waterloo, led a recent study where the team asked about 100 participants a series of general-knowledge questions, such as naming the capital of France. Participants indicated if they knew the answer or not. For half of the study, participants had access to the Internet. They had to look up the answer when they responded that they did not know the answer. In the other half of the study, participants did not have access to the Internet.

It used to be that poor people did not have enough food, and sometimes we are still told that they don't, but instead it is the case that poor people are far more likely to belief, and then the claim was that poor people had plenty of food, but it was the wrong kind.

This gave rise to the notion of "food deserts", areas in dense urban areas where large grocery stores are too expensive or regulations are too onerous to stay in business and instead only small bodegas can survive. Get rid of the food deserts and poor people would be less obese, but a new paper in PLOS Medicine disputes the notion that making another change without any evidence will cure obesity.