Vital signs: when twin bliss doesn't measure up

To What Extent Vital Signs Are Important to Medical Toxicologists When Conflicts Arise in Defining Toxidroms

When Ignorance is Bliss

It is commonly-accepted wisdom that more information is better, and that information should never be ignored. Here we argue, using both a Bayesian and a non-Bayesian analysis, that in some situations you are better off ignoring information if your uncertainty is represented by a set of probability measures. These include situations in which the information is relevant for the prediction task at...

Vital signs.

9 15 36 Nerve center: I told the neurologist, 'I'm having a stroke. These are my symptoms.' I wasn't all upset about it. Needle and the damage done: In my 25 years of doing substance abuse research here I've never seen anything like this… Age old question: How old is your skeleton? It seems like a simple question. As old as you are, right? Not exactly. In this edition of Vital Signs, we tackle ...

Vital Signs: Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae

BACKGROUND Enterobacteriaceae are a family of bacteria that commonly cause infections in health-care settings as well as in the community. Among Enterobacteriaceae, resistance to broad-spectrum carbapenem antimicrobials has been uncommon. Over the past decade, however, carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) have been recognized in health-care settings as a cause of difficult-to-treat inf...

Vital Signs: Foodborne Norovirus Outbreaks

Introduction: Norovirus is the leading cause of acute gastroenteritis and foodborne disease in the United States, causing an estimated one in 15 U.S. residents to become ill each year as well as 56,000–71,000 hospitalizations and 570–800 deaths, predominantly among young children and the elderly. Whereas noroviruses often spread through person-to-person contact, foodborne transmission can cause...