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Researchers found that among more than 1,200 5- to 9-year-olds, those with some of the most common childhood ills were no less happy with their lives than other kids. They said the findings highlight an important point: Kids aren’t “defined” by their medical issues. “This can help broaden our perspective of what ‘health’ is,” said lead researcher Courtney Blackwell, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

“The group that does is the `army of the willing’ and likely early adopters in the quality movement,” Arora, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email. “More robust uptake would likely require mandatory reporting, financial incentives, and also improved ease of reporting using electronic health records to avoid adding increased burden to physician practices.” Currently, there are no meaningful, publicly available data for patients to use in assessing physician performance and quality, said Dr. Karl Bilimoria, director of the Surgical Outcomes and Quality Improvement Center.at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago.

When she agreed to be a participant in the study, it was a way to reach out for help. She knew she couldn’t change her circumstances, but she wanted to learn to cope better. “When you’re experiencing a lot of stress, it’s easy to head into a downward spiral,” says Judith Moskowitz of Northwestern University. She is trained as a psychologist and studies the ways positive emotions can influence people’s health and stress. She developed the program taught to the caregivers. As part of her research, hundreds of stressed-out people have taken the five-week skills class, including women with breast cancer, people newly diagnosed with HIV, people managing Type 2 diabetes and people with depression.

“Absolutely, there is a generational piece to this,” said Hans Breiter, a Northwestern University psychiatry professor and one of the world’s leading experts on how cocaine stimulates the human brain. Today’s narcotics abusers may be turning to cocaine in part “because there’s been a lot of bad press about other drugs,” Breiter said. Just like the generation that dealt with the horrors of AIDS was followed by another that was less afraid of the scourge and thus more likely to have unprotected sex, today’s drug users aren’t afraid of cocaine like they should be, he said.

In a randomized, controlled trial, researchers showed that a six-session online training program produced modest improvements in caregiver anxiety and depression, according to results published in Health Psychology. “Caregivers have high rates of burden and distress and depression,” said the study’s lead author, Judith Moskowitz, a professor and director of research at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago. “There are programs out there to help them but those usually have to do with education on how to deal with the actual care activities.”

The truth may be that our preferences for caffeine or alcoholic beverages — or indeed sugary sodas — derive not so much from the way they taste but how they make us feel, according to a new study by genetic scientists at Northwestern University that was published in Human Molecular Genetics on Thursday. In her latest work, Marilyn Cornelis, who has published previously on the genetics of coffee consumption, set out to determine which taste genes are responsible for what we drink, she told AFP. But to her and the team’s surprise, people’s preferences weren’t based on variations in taste genes but rather the genes that are related to the beverages’ mind-altering effects.

A team of researchers from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago found that the taste preferences for bitter or sweet beverages aren’t based on variations in taste genes, but rather in genes that are involved with emotional responses. The results of the study are published in the journal Human Molecular Genetics. “The genetics underlying our preferences are related to the psychoactive components of these drinks,” said Marilyn Cornelis, co-author of the study and assistant professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “People like the way coffee and alcohol make them feel. That’s why they drink it. It’s not the taste.”

A 2017 report in the journal Circulation spelled out many additional possible influences, ranging from cultural attitudes toward exercise; the unhealthy parts of the traditional Southern diet, which is high in added fats, sugars and sodium; and the health issues that come from stress and perceived discrimination. Black Americans are also more likely to live in poverty, statistics show. And that’s another factor, said Dr. Clyde Yancy, a professor of medicine and chief of cardiology at Northwestern University. “In the diet that people eat, which is all they can afford — one especially represented by fast foods and high sodium intake — the risk of high blood pressure is exaggerated and the onset is much earlier in life,” Yancy said.

Still, the disease itself didn’t come out of the blue. The evidence has been building for years, including reports of patients who didn’t quite fit the mold for known types of dementia such as Alzheimer’s. “There isn’t going to be one single disease that is causing all forms of dementia,” said Sandra Weintraub, a professor of psychiatry, behavioral sciences and neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She was not involved in the new paper. Weintraub said researchers have been well aware of the “heterogeneity of dementia,” but figuring out precisely why each type can look so different has been a challenge.

By installing 16 pods, Northwestern Memorial officials say, the hospital has been able to more than double its ER’s capacity, and reduce waiting times and crowding in the process. Michael Schmidt, assistant professor of emergency medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, says that patients with less-acute problems can be tended to in the chairs, as opposed to patients with more serious problems who need beds. This helps give pods their smaller footprint—an orientation more vertical than horizontal.