A simple nine-question tool could help emergency physicians uncover the dangerous hidden conditions that make some people faint, according to a study published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Fainting is fairly common - 35 to 40 percent of people faint at least once in their lives. But for about ten percent of people who visit the emergency room for fainting it can be a symptom of a potentially life-threatening condition like arrhythmia, or heart rhythm disturbance.

In the modern schism between religion and science promoted by militants, it may not seem like theology is a friend to ecology. But, like in all other areas of science, that is just modern spin created by people who need to promote that culture war for their own ends. Including in environmentalism, where religion is portrayed as a conservative trait.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is useful in detecting breast tumors and in cancer evaluation but its current pre-operative use in breast conserving surgery isn't helping patients as it should. 

Traditionally, patients who are scheduled to undergo breast-conserving lumpectomy for breast cancer undergo a breast MRI prior to surgery to help inform the surgeon about the size, shape, and location of the tumor. The issue is that MRIs are performed with the patient lying face down, but then the surgery is performed with the patient lying face up. 

From protecting our most valuable works of art to enabling smartphone displays, glass has become one of our most important materials. Making it even more versatile is the next challenge. Developing new glass compositions is largely a time-consuming, trial-and-error exercise. But now scientists have developed a way to decode the glass "genome" and design different compositions of the material without making and melting every possibility. Their report appears in ACS' journal Chemistry of Materials.

An experimental drug prevented learning deficits in young mice exposed repeatedly to anesthesia, according to a study led by researchers from NYU Langone Medical Center and published June 22 in Science Translational Medicine.

The study results may have implications for children who must have several surgeries, and so are exposed repeatedly to general anesthesia. Past studies have linked such exposure to a higher incidence of learning disabilities, attention deficits and hyperactivity.

New research suggests that higher late life cognitive reserve--an ability to offset the losses associated with age- and disease-related changes in the brain--may help prevent delirium.

In a study of 142 older surgical patients, greater participation in cognitive activities was linked with lower incidence and lower severity of delirium; however, higher literacy was not. Among individual leisure activities, reading books, using electronic mail, singing, and playing computer games were associated with lower dementia incidence and severity.