New York Times (May 2)

Exploring Group Checkups for Diabetes, Parkinson’s

What’s in it for the doctor? A neurologist found he learned more about how his Parkinson’s patients were faring by watching them interact with others than when he had them one-on-one. “I can see if you’re getting worse over the course of the visit, your ability to eat, to walk, to converse and to think,” says Dr. Ray Dorsey, who led a pilot study of group checkups for Parkinson’s patients at the University of Rochester Medical Center.  (Also Reported in: Forbes, Boston Globe, Miami Herald, Huffington Post, CNBC, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Wall Street Journal, Seattle Times, Chicago Tribune, Salon.com, USA Today, Newsday, Fox News, MSNBC, ABC News, CBS News, NPR, and others)

New York Times (May 16)

Latino Music, From Tango Back to the 16th Century

Mr. [Carlos] Sanchez-Gutierrez incorporated the shakuhachi, a traditional Japanese flute, in his piece, whose string timbres and colors reflected the sound world of the flute. Eastman BroadBand, conducted by Juan Trigos, offered Mr. Sanchez-Gutierrez’s “Five Memos,” inspired by “Six Memos for the Next Millennium” by the Italian writer Italo Calvino. The five movements veered from densely scored and dark to a lighter section of iridescent sonorities. The Colorado Quartet teamed up with the Quintet of the Americas for Mario Lavista’s colorful “Suite de Gargantúa.”

NBC/Today Show (May 24)

Airlifted patients left with sky-high bills

The Today Show’s Tom Costello speaks with patients who claim needless, expensive helicopter transport for non-life-threatening injuries left them with massive bills. … Costello also interviews Mark Gestring, director of adult trauma at the University of Rochester’s Strong Regional Trauma Center.

Huffington Post (May 3)

The Secret to a Life of No Regrets:  Live Before You Die

There’s no room for anything but external results, or what Edward Deci of the University of Rochester calls “instrumental thinking.” Everything has to lead to some external gain. Anything that doesn’t – living, for instance – gets eliminated from the agenda. And you wind up with a nag you could do without, regrets. Researchers have found that what we really regret are the things we don’t do. It’s called the “inaction effect.” The taboo against living your life creates plenty of those.

U.S. News & World Report (May 1)

Low Vitamin D Levels Linked to More Aggressive Breast Cancers

In the study, to be presented Friday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Breast Surgeons, a team from the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) tracked 155 women who had surgery for breast cancer between January 2009 and September 2010.  (Also Reported in: Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Yahoo! News, Newsday, MSN)