MEDICINE
Tomorrow’s doctors will practice more-personalized medicine, not because they’ll be friendlier, but because they’ll have access to more-detailed genetic information about their patients. Such changes will affect how medicine is taught.
“A curriculum in genetics is so important to the future of medicine,” says Aaron Michelfelder, associate professor of family medicine at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. Loyola’s genetics course used to be completed in the first year of medical school, but now it has been expanded and incorporated into the entire four-year curriculum.
Another major change Michelfelder foresees is more specialties and sub-specialties to handle new and emerging medical technologies and innovations.
Source: Loyola Medicine, www.loyolamedicine.org.
HABITATS
Architects may soon be able to design more conversation-friendly rooms by mapping “hot spots” for potential noise.
Sound-mapping software developed by engineers at Cardiff University in Wales shows where conversations would be unintelligible if a room were busy. The architect could then alter room shapes and materials to cancel out noise that would make conversation difficult.
Acoustic engineering is already well developed for theaters and concert halls, but more attention is needed for acoustic design of indoor meeting spaces, notes research project leader John Culling, a professor at Cardiff’s School of Psychology. The new software could be used where large numbers of people gather to interact, such as open-plan offices, cafés, and reception halls.
Source: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, www.epsrc.ac.uk.
HEALTH
Population aging may be behind a recent upsurge in gluten intolerance in Finland, report nutrition researchers at the Academy of Finland. Sufferers of the digestive disorder have increased from 1% of adult Finns in the early 1980s to 2% by the 2000s. Among the elderly, the rate is 2.7%.
Intolerance to gluten — a blend of proteins found mainly in wheat — is difficult to catch early, as patients may be symptom-free until later stages, when the condition can be identified from tissue samples. The principal symptom may be anemia due to iron deficiency or folic acid deficiency.
Researchers are seeking new and better markers for gluten intolerance that will allow easier diagnosis without need for endoscopy. Patients also hope for an “anti-gluten” pill with enzymes that break down gluten — a treatment that may prove feasible in the future, the researchers believe.
Source: Academy of Finland, www.aka.fi.
LIFESTYLES
Fashions are changing faster than ever because clothing is becoming relatively cheaper. In fact, twenty-first-century clothes are 70% cheaper than the mod outfits of the Sixties, reports University of Kent sociologist Julia Twigg.
One outcome of this trend is that fashion is, well, fashionable for a wider age group, as new markets extend to the very old and very young. Women over age 75 are shopping for clothes more frequently now than they did as youths in the Sixties — and far more than their elders did at the time..
Despite a reputation for nonconformity, aging baby boomers are adopting the latest mainstream fashion trends, Twigg notes. Boomer women are neither accepting the “frumpy” look of previous generations of middle-agers nor making their own fashion statements, as they have throughout their lives.
“Although the baby boomers are indeed increasingly engaged with fashion in the twenty-first century, it’s a myth that they are different,” says Twigg. “It is just that they are responding to the mood of the times — like everyone else.”;
Source: University of Kent, www.kent.ac.uk.
WORDBUZZ
More people are becoming conscious consumers or even unconsumers, reports social entrepreneur Halle Tecco in the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog (April 7). She credits the convergence of recession-driven frugality and the green movement for the rise of this trend.
“Unconsumption describes the now savvy and respectable trend of reducing, reusing, and recycling,” writes Tecco.
Source: Stanford Social Innovation Review, www.ssireview.org.