New York, NY, October 18, 2011—The U.S. health care system scored 64 out of 100 on key measures of performance, according to the third national scorecard report from the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System, released today. The scorecard finds that—despite pockets of improvement—the U.S as a whole failed to improve when compared to best performers in this country, and among other nations. The report also finds significant erosion in access to care and affordability of care, as health care costs rose far faster than family incomes. At the same ...

Scientists have successfully demonstrated that they can build some of the basic components for digital devices out of bacteria and DNA, which could pave the way for a new generation of biological computing devices, in research published today in the journal Nature Communications. The researchers, from Imperial College London, have demonstrated that they can build logic gates, which are used for processing information in devices such as computers and microprocessors, out of harmless gut bacteria and DNA. These are the most advanced biological logic gates ever created ...

Ecologists are a step closer to understanding one of nature's most extraordinary sights – the 'arribada' or synchronised mass nesting of female olive ridley sea turtles. The new study, published today in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Animal Ecology, is the first to combine three different approaches – genetics, demography and behaviour, and the results should help conserve these vulnerable marine creatures. The study, lead by Virginie Plot of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, gathered three sets of data. First, to get an accurate ...

Antineoplastic agents such as immunotherapies and targeted therapies that specifically target signaling pathways in cancer cells are associated with thyroid dysfunction in 20%-50% of cancer patients taking them, which can adversely affect patients' quality of life, according to a study published Oct. 18 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Over the past two decades, novel antineoplastic agents have been introduced that inhibit specific cellular processes to limit cancer cell growth. Some of these agents cause thyroid dysfunction, which physicians often overlook ...

AUDIO: Professor Geraint Rees and Dr Ryota Kanai explain their findings about the link between number of Facebook friends and the size of certain brain regions. Click here for more information. Scientists funded by the Wellcome Trust have found a direct link between the number of 'Facebook friends' a person has and the size of particular brain regions. In a study published today, researchers at University College London (UCL) also showed that the more Facebook friends a person ...

Women with high blood pressure (hypertension) in the early stages of pregnancy are more likely to have babies with birth defects, irrespective of commonly prescribed medicines for their condition, finds new research published on bmj.com today. The finding suggests that it is the underlying hypertension, rather than the use of antihypertensive drugs in early pregnancy, that increases the risk of birth defects. Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors are a type of antihypertensive medication commonly prescribed to tackle hypertension. It is already known that they ...

Best Lawyers, a national directory published by Woodward/White, Inc., has named Daniel L. Clayton as Best Lawyers' 2012 Nashville Medical Malpractice Law - Plaintiffs Lawyer of the Year. Only one lawyer in each practice area in a given community is being honored in this way in 2012. The selections are based upon extensive peer-review surveys involving confidential evaluations submitted by many thousands of lawyers. Those who were selected as Lawyers of the Year obtained especially high peer ratings. In short, the Lawyer of the Year award reflects a high degree of ...

Male bowel cancer patients are very likely to suffer from erectile dysfunction (ED) after treatment and yet the majority are not receiving adequate information about the condition, according to a study published on bmj.com today. Bowel cancer affects over 38,000 people every year in the UK with around half of patients surviving for more than five years after treatment. This figure is set to increase, says the study. Men are more likely to develop bowel cancer and many will suffer from ED after their treatment, say the authors, led by Professor Sue Wilson at the University ...

New research successfully reverses epilepsy-associated pathology by using a sophisticated single-cell modeling paradigm to examine abnormal cell behavior and identify the optimal modulation of channel activity. The study, published by Cell Press in the October 18th issue of Biophysical Journal, describes a procedure that may be useful for rescuing function in organs with excitable cells, such as the heart and pancreas. Ion channels regulate the flow of ions into and out of the cell and are absolutely critical for a wide range of biological processes, including transmission ...

Ottawa, Ontario – October 18, 2011 – Oncolytic virology uses live viruses to sense the genetic difference between a tumor and normal cell. Once the virus finds a tumor cell, it replicates inside that cell, kills it and then spreads to adjacent tumor cells to seed a therapeutic "chain reaction". As reported in today's issue of Cancer Cell, Dr. David Stojdl, a scientist from the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute at the University of Ottawa has found a way to trick resistant cancer cells into committing suicide following oncolytic virus therapy. When ...

Saranac Lake, N.Y. – New research from the Trudeau Institute may help in the ongoing fight against tuberculosis. Dr. Andrea Cooper's lab has discovered a connection between the development of new lymphoid tissue within the lung and protection against the disease. The new data will be published in the November 1 print issue of The Journal of Immunology (Vol. 187, Num. 10) and is available now online ahead of print. Tuberculosis (TB for short) is a deadly infectious disease caused by infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis that affects many people throughout the world. ...

The term "sex offender" conjures different images or meanings for different people. For those accused of sex crimes, it might bring to mind thoughts of lifetime registration on local sex-offender registries and social stigma. For others, the term might mean older adults who have had inappropriate contact with minors or of people who have committed forcible sex crimes against other adults. The term sex offender, however, rarely brings to mind teenagers who have engaged in consensual sexual relations. Until recently, teenagers or young adults convicted of sex ...

NAIROBI, KENYA (14 October 2011)— On a continent battered by weather extremes, famine and record food prices, new research released today from the World Agroforestry Centre documents an exciting new trend in which hundreds of thousands of poor farmers in Southern Africa are now significantly boosting yields and incomes simply by using fast growing trees and shrubs to naturally fertilize their fields. The analysis of two decades of work to bring the soil-enriching benefits of so-called "fertilizer trees" to the nutrient-depleted farms of Africa was published in the most ...

Volcanologists from the Universities of Leicester and Durham have forensically reconstructed the impact of a meteorite on Earth and how debris was hurled from the crater to devastate the surrounding region. New research by Mike Branney, of the University of Leicester's Department of Geology, and Richard Brown, University of Durham, shows that some aspects of giant meteorite impacts onto Earth may mimic the behaviour of large volcanic eruptions. Meteorite impacts are more common than is popularly appreciated – but what happens when the meteorite hits? Direct observation ...

Since 1990, health care expenditures in the United States have increased by more than 300 percent, reaching an annual total of approximately $2.5 trillion. This is more than eight times the $253 billion spent on health care in 1980. Considering the aging American population, no one expects these costs to go anywhere but up. It is more important than ever to plan well for the possibility of a major health event later in life. With adequate forethought, and the proper help, Medicaid planning can help you hang on to the assets you have worked your whole life to collect. Legal ...

On September 20, 2011, seventeen people were injured when a building scaffold collapsed onto a city bus in Harlem. Fortunately, the injuries of the scaffolding accident were minor, because the people waiting at the bus stop got on the bus moments before the collapse. The Department of Building had issued a stop-work order and will be issuing violations to the demolition contractor. Not only can innocent bystanders be injured in scaffolding accidents, those who work in construction are also at risk. Construction is physically demanding and dangerous work. In 2009, 29 ...

Vampires on the True Blood television series are already enjoying the advantages of synthetic blood. While this may seem to be only the imagination on the big screen, the true benefits of blood manufactured from embryonic stem cells may be less than a decade away. It is unclear however whether society can develop an acceptance of cultured blood - or an appetite for synthetic meat produced by related technology. For this reason it is vital the public has every opportunity to get involved with the latest developments in stem cell research, say researchers from the Economic ...

Young adults who were born prematurely show multiple biological signs of risks to future health, research from Imperial College London has found. The scientists, reporting their findings tomorrow in the journal Pediatric Research, say that the research indicates that urgent work is now needed to monitor preterm babies into adulthood to improve the detection of early signs of disease. The study of 48 volunteers aged 18-27 found that those who were born at 33 weeks of gestation or less had higher blood pressure, more fat tissue despite having a normal Body Mass Index, and ...

A new study has shown that racehorses are extremely sensitive to changes in daily light and, contrary to humans, can adapt very quickly to sudden shifts in the 24-hour light-dark cycle, such as those resulting from a transmeridian flight, with unexpected benefits on their physical performance. The research led by academics in the University of Bristol's Faculty of Medical and Veterinary Sciences is published in the Journal of Neuroendocrinology. This is the first study of its kind to investigate the effects of jetlag on the physiology and performance of racehorses ...

Despite substantial reductions in the hospital death rates for heart attack patients across all age groups, there are still worrying inequalities in heart attack management for the elderly, a new study has shown. The research, carried out by the University of Leeds, UK and funded by the British Heart Foundation, showed that the risk of a heart patient dying in hospital almost halved across all age groups between 2003 and 2010. Specialist treatments – such as coronary angioplasty – to open blocked or narrowed arteries that supply blood to the heart are also much more widely ...

The research program AQUA Palawana has been exploring the unique freshwater biodiversity of the Philippine Island and biosphere reserve of Palawan for more than a decade. Scientists from the Senckenberg Museum of Zoology Dresden and the Bavarian State Collections of Zoology in Munich have now described larvae and a new species of the curious Spider Water Beetles (Ancyronyx) from this biodiversity hotspot. Their study was realized in cooperation with the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development and the De La Salle University Manila. The scientists conducting this study, ...

The relationship between personal injury law and workers' compensation law requires careful explanation. The New Jersey Superior Court, Appellate Division's decision in McDaniel v. Lee shows how the court applied the State's Workers' Compensation Act in a motor vehicle accident case to bar a third-party lawsuit against the plaintiff's co-worker. This is known as the fellow-servant rule, which provides an injured employee's co-workers with immunity from personal injury lawsuits. Although workers' compensation claims are handled differently than personal injury lawsuits, ...

As planktonic organisms the larvae of the marine annelid Platynereis swim freely in the open water. They move by activity of their cilia, thousands of tiny hair-like structures forming a band along the larval body and beating coordinately. With changing environmental conditions the larvae swim upward and downward to their appropriate water depth. Scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Germany have now identified some signalling substances in the larval nervous system regulating swimming depth of the larvae. These substances influence ...

DURHAM, N.H. – Persistent high poverty is most prevalent among children, with those living in rural America disproportionally impacted, according to researchers from the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. "Nearly 22 percent of America's children live in poverty, compared with 14 percent of the total population. Poverty is scattered and geographically concentrated, and it ebbs and flows with economic cycles. However, in some parts of the country, poverty has persisted for generations," the researchers said. Areas with persistent high child poverty are ...

When you are in debt and fail to make timely payments, creditors may take steps to collect money directly from your paycheck. Known as wage garnishment, this legal tool can take a substantial bite out of your earnings. The Wage Garnishment Process Before wage garnishment occurs, a court must authorize it. A creditor will ask for a court order to compel payment. If you have stopped repaying the debt, the court can issue a judgment against you. Next, the creditor will place the judgment and an accompanying garnishment order in the hands of your local sheriff's department. ...