Context-driven communication during deep-sea foraging in a social toothed whale.

Social deep-diving odontocetes face the challenge of balancing near-surface proximity to oxygen and group members with foraging in the deep sea. Individuals rely on conspecifics for critical life functions, such as predator defence, but disperse during foraging to feed individually. To understand the role of social acoustic mediation during foraging in deep-diving toothed whales, we investigated the context of social burst-pulse call production in Risso's dolphin () using biologgers.

Prevention of lung cancer: the key is to stop smoking.

Objectives: To review current approaches to primary prevention of lung cancer and to screening for precarcinogenic or preclinical asymptomatic disease.

Data Sources: Research studies, review articles, and government reports relating to prevention of lung cancer and strategies for smoking cessation.

Conclusions: Because almost 90% of lung cancer cases can be attributed to tobacco, reduction of smoking is the appropriate focus of lung cancer prevention efforts.

Adding spirometry, carbon monoxide, and pulmonary symptom results to smoking cessation counseling: a randomized trial.

Smokers are often advised to quit in a discussion of future health risks. The authors tested whether adding information about personal effects of smoking would motivate hospital outpatients to stop smoking more than advice about potential hazards would. Ninety smokers in a general screening clinic were randomized to receive education alone or education plus an additional motivational intervention that contained immediate feedback about the smoker's exhaled carbon monoxide (CO) values, spirometry results, and pulmonary symptoms.

The accuracy of tuberculin skin tests: self-assessment by adult outpatients.

Tuberculin skin testing is an accurate, inexpensive screening procedure for detecting tuberculosis infection. The return visit needed to interpret the reaction is inconvenient, costly, and may contribute to under-utilization of the test. Although some clinicians ask patients to read their own purified protein derivative (PPD) test results, patient accuracy and the degree of teaching needed to learn this skill are unclear.

Development of an instrument to measure patient satisfaction with nurses and nursing care in primary care settings.

An instrument that evaluated patient attitudes toward nurses and nursing care in a primary care setting is described. The tool consists of 25 items, subdivided into three subscales--1) technical-professional area, 2) interpersonal educational relationship, and 3) interpersonal trusting relationship--to which respondents indicate agreement to disagreement in five Likert-type steps. Items, developed from interviews with patients, literature review, and other similar scales, were submitted to two sequential trials and to application of criteria such as variability, representativeness of content definition, ability to discriminate between respondents, and internal consistency.