Monthly Archives: May 2017

How apps can support people to moderate their drinking

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With smart phones constantly at our finger tips, apps that promote and support health related behavioral changes, such as reducing alcohol intake, are a popular way for people to work towards a healthier lifestyle. But are these apps actually effective? This blog reports findings from a study, published today in BMC Public Health, of the Drinkaware: Track and Calculate Units app which is specifically designed to help people wanting to monitor and cut down on their drinking.

Health Technology

Nuptial gift content regulates sex opportunities in South American spiders

Spider blog 1

In many spider species, males provide gifts to females to encourage them to mate. Usually these gifts are food, providing an obvious nutritional benefit to females. However in the South American spider Paratrechalea ornata, male gifts are mostly worthless, with no nutritional value. In this guest blog Maria Albo discusses her new research, published today in BMC Evolutionary Biology, investigating how mating behaviour is affected when males come bearing false gifts.

Biology

Excellence at ECCMID

Sheep purple on Flickr

BMC Infectious Diseases has returned from the 27th European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID), held this year in Vienna, and with over 12,000 attendees and more than 200 talks we barely scratched the surface! Below we discuss some of our highlights.

Health Medicine

International Nurses Day – A Day in the Life of Our Nurses

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International Nurses Day marks the anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale. Known as the ‘Lady with the Lamp,’ and considered as the founder of modern nursing, she still stands as an example of the importance of the profession today.
On this day we celebrate the hard work and contributions of our nurses by exploring some of their daily challenges and what can be done to help. We delve into a few articles recently published in BMC Nursing, BMC Obesity, and BMC Research Notes to better understand the concerns at hand.

Health Medicine

How data can save lives: Informatics for Health 2017

#datasaveslives

BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making attended Informatics for Health 2017 in Manchester at the end of April. Combining Medical Informatics Europe 2017 (from the European Federation for Medical Informatics) with the Farr Institute International Conference 2017, the congress provided a platform for talks and sessions covering a wide range of topics in health informatics from the use of linked data in health research to information technology from the patient perspective. Here we look back at some of the highlights.

Health Medicine