0001). Conclusion: Telemedicine care by a hospital specialist through selleck products videoconferencing was comparable to hospital referral for face-to-face medicine. Teleconsultations managed by

nurses had a positive impact on the QoL of rural patients. They did not have to travel and thus diagnoses and examinations to start treatment were initiated faster.”
“Objective: Overweight was regarded as one of the risk factors for poor outcome after gastrectomy, but its influence on the surgical and postoperative outcomes of gastrectomy was unclear. Methods: Comprehensive searches were conducted to include cohort studies which evaluated the influence of overweight on the surgical and postoperative outcomes of gastrectomy. Data was analyzed by RevMan 5.0. Results: Twenty-five cohort studies (18 518 patients) were included. Overweight patients were associated with longer operation time (mean difference 20.88, 95% confidence interval 14.07, selleck 27.69), more intraoperative blood loss (mean difference 35.45, 95% confidence interval 9.24, 61.67), and less retrieved lymph nodes (mean difference -2.17, 95% confidence interval -3.51, -0.83) than

normal patients undergoing laparoscopy-assisted gastrectomy. And overweight patients were associated with longer operation time (mean difference 26.31, 95% confidence interval 21.92,

30.70), more intraoperative blood loss (mean difference 130.02, 95% confidence interval 75.49, 184.55), less retrieved lymph nodes Semaxanib ic50 (mean difference -3.18, 95% confidence interval -4.74, -1.61), longer postoperative hospital stay (mean difference 2.37, 95% confidence interval 0.03, 4.70) and more postoperative complications (risk ratio 1.53, 95% confidence interval 1.29, 1.80) than normal patients in open gastrectomy. Conclusions: Overweight might affect the clinical results of both laparoscopy-assisted and open gastrectomy, especially for open gastrectomy.”
“The “attention schema” theory provides one possible account of the biological basis of consciousness, tracing the evolution of awareness through steps from the advent of selective signal enhancement about half a billion years ago to the top-down control of attention, to an internal model of attention (which allows a brain, for the first time, to attribute to itself that it has a mind that is aware of something), to the ability to attribute awareness to other beings, and from there to the human attribution of a rich spirit world surrounding us. Humans have been known to attribute awareness to plants, rocks, rivers, empty space, and the universe as a whole. Deities, ghosts, souls-the spirit world swirling around us is arguably the exuberant attribution of awareness.