Page 17 - Open Access News Today

Today's holiday culture wars continue an ancient struggle, as Nat Parry explores in this adaptation from his book, How Christmas Became Christmas: The Pagan and Christian Origins of the Beloved Holiday. By Nat Parry Medium By focusing their wrath on what they perceive as “creeping secular

The Broken Trust and Mailbox Conspiracy scandals are now history, but valuable lessons remain unlearned.

He appointed a third of the Justices but has the worst record before them in modern history.

Open access notables From this weeks government and NGO section, Flaws in EPA’s Monitoring and Verification of Carbon Capture Projects, Preet Bains, Environmental Integrity Project (pdf):

Objective To investigate the behaviour of common healthcare related objects in a 3 tesla (T) MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scanner, examining their ability to self-propel towards the scanner bore and their potential for tissue penetration. Design Prospective in situ experimental study. Setting Clinical 3 T MRI scanner. Customised rig designed and built to guide objects towards the scanner bore. Participants 12 categories of objects commonly found in hospitals, or on patients or healthcare pro...

Objective To determine the health benefits and harms of various ingredients in Christmas desserts from The Great British Bake Off. Design Umbrella review of umbrella reviews of meta-analyses of observational studies. Data sources The Great British Bake Off website, Embase, Medline, and Scopus. Inclusion criteria Umbrella reviews of meta-analyses of observational studies evaluating the associations between Christmas dessert ingredients and the risk of death or disease. Main outcome measures Propo...

Objective To estimate the increase in sales of emergency contraception following the New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day holiday. Design Time series analysis using autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model. Setting Traditional (that is, “bricks and mortar”) retail outlets—grocery stores, drug stores, mass merchandisers, club stores, dollar stores, and military outlets—in the United States from 2016 to 2022. Data source Marketing data on weekly aggregated sales of items classif...

Objectives To identify Barbie brand dolls that had medicine and science themed professions in comparison with other career dolls and to determine their accuracy in meeting clinical and laboratory safety standards. Design Descriptive quantitative study. Setting Visual and data analysis of web searches. Main outcome measures To identify the kinds of medical and scientific subspecialties that the Barbie dolls (and a comparison doll group) worked in; and to determine whether these medical profession...

Objective To examine the effect of a (fictional) doctor working during the festive period on population health. Design Natural experiment. Setting England, Wales, and the UK. Main outcome measures Age standardised annual mortality rates in England, Wales, and the UK from 1963, when the BBC first broadcast Doctor Who , a fictional programme with a character called the Doctor who fights villains and intervenes to save others while travelling through space and time. Mortality rates were modelled in...

A rise of 40pc in people over the age of 55 seeking support for homelessness and addiction has been reported by a charity.