Scottish GPs could save 26m by changes in prescribing

Drug prescribing by GPs in Wales and in England.

There is a large excess in prescribing costs by GPs in Wales compared with England. This excess amounts to about 30%, equivalent at present to over pounds 11 m a year. The pattern of drug prescribing by GPs and of patient consultation was studied in random samples of electors in Cardiff and Bristol. Overall, more subjects in Cardiff had received prescriptions, and the average number of scripts...

Could Your Pet Save Your Life?

Could shame and honor save cooperation?

Shame and honor are mechanisms that expose behavior that falls outside the social norm. With recent six-player public goods experiments, we demonstrated that the threat of shame or the promise of honor led to increased cooperation. Participants were told in advance that after ten rounds two participants would be asked to come forward and write their names on the board in front of the fellow gro...

Wi-Fi Could Augment GPS

Labs at Microsoft, test projects at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, and companies such as Quarterscope Solutions (www.quarterscope.com) are moving forward with projects that will bring real-time mapping and location data to portable-equipment users. Once they've gained market acceptance, these mobile products will be able to pick up signals from a few base stations and then triangulate to d...

How new heart-scanning technology could save your life.

http://ww ckelma rol was just passed a stress test with flying colors. So last November, when a gist at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation Hospital asked the then 49-year-old ed nurse to help demonstrate an experimental new cardiac scanner, neither the n nor Fackelmann expected to see anything out of the ordinary. The idea was to slide Fackelmann through the machine and show what finely detailed o...