Doctors paid on a fee for service basis write more prescriptions for antibiotics than their salaried counterparts, according to recently published Canadian research. Researchers found Newfoundland’s 322 fee paid general practitioners were much more likely to prescribe at rates in excess of the provincial median 1.5 prescriptions per patient annually. In addition, the busier the doctors’ practic...

There is a paucity of data on incidence, prevalence and mortality associated with non-cystic fibrosis bronchiectasis.Using the Clinical Practice Research Datalink for participants registered between January 1, 2004 and December 31, 2013, we determined incidence, prevalence and mortality associated with bronchiectasis in the UK and investigated changes over time.The incidence and point prevalenc...

Global climate change, especially extreme drought events, presents a complicated challenge to humanity and Earth’s system in the 21st century. As an extremely important carbon sink region China, Southwest China has encountered frequent disasters recent decades. It is critical explore frequency, duration, severity, other associated characteristics of events as well their spatial temporal pattern...

The origin of the major ice-sheet variations during the last 2.7 million years is a long-standing mystery. Neither the dominant 41 000-year cycles in δ18O/ice-volume during the late Pliocene and early Pleistocene nor the latePleistocene oscillations near 100 000 years is a linear (“Milankovitch”) response to summer insolation forcing. Both responses must result from non-linear behavior within t...

A paucity of empirical non-marine data means that uncertainty surrounds the impact of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems in tropical regions beyond the last glacial period. The sedimentary fill of the Bosumtwi impact crater (Ghana) provides the longest continuous Quaternary terrestrial archive of environmental change in West Africa, spanning the last 1.08 million years. Here we explore th...

AIMS Potassium homeostasis is essential for normal myocardial function, and low serum potassium may cause fatal arrhythmias. However, the association of low potassium and long-term mortality and morbidity in heart failure (HF) is largely unknown. METHODS AND RESULTS We studied 6845 HF patients in the Digitalis Investigation Group trial with serum potassium levels < or =5.5 mEq/L. Of these, 11...