Researchers

Psychiatrists spent an estimated 1 million hours on the phone getting insurance authorizations to admit people to hospitals - time the lead author of a study on the matter says could be better spent helping patients. And perhaps time the patients might be suffering needlessly. Researchers tallied over three months the time it took to get insurance OKs for patients in the emergency department of Cambridge Health Alliance in Massachusetts to see whether that time added to the overall time the patient spent waiting.

Spending adolescence in the “stroke belt” of the southeastern United States could make people more vulnerable to stroke later in life - even if they eventually move elsewhere, a study published Wednesday suggests. What researchers call the “stroke belt” has been associated with higher rates of death from stroke than other parts of the country, but it hadn't been known if living there during any particular stage of life had an effect. Researchers led by Virginia Howard of the University of Alabama looked at 24,544 black and white people ages 45 and older who were part of a national study that considered geographic and racial differences in the incidence of stroke.

Doctors increasingly treat people using tiny cameras, and some patient-safety experts are urging physicians to hit the record button. Marty Makary, a surgeon at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and author of a bestselling book on patient safety, said two examples of video recording show the potential benefits for both patients and doctors. At Indiana University, he said, researchers recorded 98 colonoscopies performed by seven gastroenterologists. They were unaware that they were being filmed and researchers found wide variations in quality.

New York City officials, with the blessing of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, announced Monday that they will seek to raise the minimum age to buy tobacco products in the city's five boroughs from 18 to 21 years of age.  Although the proposed rule might seem to target the older teenagers who will no longer be able to buy cigarettes, much of its effect would trickle down to high school students 14 to 17 years old, said John Billimek, a health policy researcher...

Have you loved R2-D2 and C-3PO since you were a kid? Do you have a soft spot in your in your heart for WALL-E? Did you used to play with Furbies and care for a Tamagotchi digital pet? Can the sight of a Roomba roaming your living room bring a tender smile to your face? Attention all you robot lovers: Scientists are here to tell you that your affection for these machines is normal. In fact, when we see people interacting with robots, our brains react in much the same way as when we see people interacting with each other.

Washington's tug of war over the federal budget has many wonders, but the biggest one of all must be the lengths to which politicians and pundits will go to deprive Granny and Grandpa of $30 a month. That's the amount by which benefits for the average Social Security retiree would be reduced by 2023 under a provision in President Obama's new budget. It might not sound like much to the president or fans of the proposal in both parties and the Washington commentariat. For the retiree trying to stretch an average monthly check of about $1,200 to cover housing, healthcare and every other necessity under the sun, it looms rather larger.

Loma Linda University officials have solved the mystery of some human skulls and other bones that were unearthed at a nearby construction site. Construction workers dug up several skulls and limbs, but an investigator from the coroner's office who looked at the remains determined that they didn't belong to victims of foul play. Instead, they were the remains of bodies that had been used in medical research at the university back in the 1930s or '40s. “What we found when we got down there today was several skulls and primarily some limb bones - mostly legs, a few arms” said Dr. Brian Bull, chair of the Loma Linda Pathology Department.

Think of the adage that if you want something done, get the busy person to do it. People who change their diet and start exercising at the same time - as opposed to doing them one at a time - were more successful, researchers at Stanford School of Medicine found. Few studies have looked at dietary change and exercise together, and the few studies that look at how to introduce more than one healthy change into people's lives are conflicting, the researchers said in the journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine.

Hilary Koprowski, a Polish-born researcher who developed the first successful oral vaccine for polio, has died. He was 96. Koprowski died of pneumonia April 11 at his Philadelphia home, said his son, Dr. Christopher Koprowski, a radiation oncologist. In 1950, Hilary Koprowski showed that it was possible to use his live-virus oral vaccine against polio, which had plagued the United States and other countries for decades. Another researcher, Dr. Albert Sabin, would win the race to get an oral vaccine licensed in the U.S. while Jonas Salk would develop an injectable vaccine that eliminated much of the disease in the country.

Going to college can be a rough transition, full of new faces and schedules and freedoms. And parties. Lots of parties. Lots of chances to drink. And that gives plenty of parents pause. But a new study offers parents this encouraging news: Teenagers will still listen to you. Parents can still have an effect on their college-bound children -- if they act while the kids are still at home, according to the paper, which will be published in the September issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.