A change may be coming to Louisiana's laws concerning cell phone use by drivers. State law already bans texting while driving, but the capabilities of smart phones allow other uses of these devices that could be distracting to drivers. A loophole in current law exists, say lawmakers. Accordingly, the state legislature is working on a bill that would forbid drivers to interact with social media sites, whether posting, reading or otherwise accessing sites like Facebook and Twitter. The proposed change comes at a time when research suggests that cell phone use is far more ...

Among the serious injuries a fall can cause, traumatic brain injury may be one of the worst a person can experience. Recovery from a TBI can be lengthy and may never restore the victim fully back to health. What is TBI? According to the Mayo clinic, a blow to the head may result in a mild, moderate or severe TBI. Some people who experience a TBI will display symptoms immediately, but many symptoms do not appear until weeks after the injury. If the TBI is mild, the victim could lose consciousness briefly or not at all. Even without losing consciousness, the person ...

California is well-known for its congested traffic conditions. In an attempt to speed their commutes, many Californians choose to ride motorcycles, hoping that a more maneuverable vehicle will be able to cut through traffic jams. California is the only state in the country to allow the practice of "lane splitting," whereby a motorcyclist rides between stopped or slowed lanes of vehicle traffic. Lane splitting is not specifically authorized by state law. However, there is not a law prohibiting it, either. Accordingly, the California Highway Patrol and other ...

San Diego offers numerous bike paths, roads and trails for all types of riders, from competitive cyclists to mountain bicyclists, road cyclists and casual cyclists. Because of its positive cycling culture and beautiful weather, San Diego is host to many bicycling races, including the San Diego Century 2013, which takes place June 1. The city also hosts riders from the popular Race Across America, which starts in Oceanside, California, in June. Yet, because so many people bike for sport, leisure and commuting in San Diego, the city also has its fair share of bicycling ...

Since its inception in 1994, New Jersey's Megan's Law has been used to register and track countless individuals convicted of certain sex crimes. However, some believe that Megan's Law may go too far when it comes to the registration of a particular group of offenders - namely, teenagers convicted of sex crimes following consensual sexual acts with a partner below the legal age of consent. Interestingly, a New Jersey bill was introduced earlier this month that would alleviate many of these concerns. If passed, the bill would eliminate sex offender registration under New ...

Goldberg Weisman Cairo partner, Michael D. Fisher, settles case for injured Ironworker for $1,500,000.00. On September 17, 2007, Robert Rodriguez, a 54-year old union ironworker fell 18 feet off a steel beam after unhooking his lanyard from a perimeter safety cable to retrieve a tool. Mr. Fisher was able to prove that the general contractor, Smithfield Construction Company and the steel fabricator, Ozark Steel Fabricators, Inc., were in overall charge of the construction project and responsible for safety of the ironworkers on the project. Mr. Fisher established that ...

A Los Angeles judge recently upheld an $8.3 million verdict against Johnson & Johnson arising out of its defective ASR hip implants. The verdict was awarded last March to Loren Kransky, who suffered serious injuries from a defectively designed hip implant manufactured by J&J's DePuy Orthopaedics division. San Francisco attorneys Michael Kelly, Matthew Davis and Khaldoun Baghdadi tried this case. The attorneys are partners at the law firm of Walkup, Melodia, Kelly & Schoenberger, which is at the forefront of the DePuy hip implant litigation. Mr. Kransky's ...

The Atlanta phone repair firm, Lifeline, would like to take a moment to discuss the screen repair service they offer to iPhone 5 owners. The Apple iPhone product line has exploded in recent years; they continue to release stylish smartphones that are equipped with a wealth of features. Sleek, stylish and powerful, there is little wonder why the iPhone has become a household name. The only downside to these products, however, is the price tag they bear. The Atlanta phone repair company notes that the price of these phones ranges from $650 to $850, depending on the hard ...

Your house is your haven. Taking care of it properly not only protects your investment, it also secures your home from unexpected and unpleasant emergencies that may damage your house or disrupt your life. Your sewer system is probably something you don't give a lot of thought to when considering which maintenance services you may need to schedule regularly for your house. And yet, a sewer line emergency can be a nerve-wracking experience. You want a knowledgeable Atlanta plumber who can get the job done right as quickly as possible. Plumb Xpress is just the company ...

How do you write? Say you have a press release, blog post, or business report to do for the next day. Do you just sit down, throw your thoughts out into your Word document and hope for the best? Planning is essential for high-quality, ordered writing. You CAN just throw down your thoughts, but then it's best to pay an editor to shape those thoughts into something professional looking, easy to read and more presentable (that's what we're here for - click here to send us your draft for editing!). However, if you're looking to create an effective and successful piece ...

Avantium, a renewable chemicals company, and ALPLA Werke Alwin Lehner GmbH, one of the world's leading plastic converters, today announced their Joint Development Agreement for the development of PEF bottles. After The Coca-Cola Company and Danone, ALPLA is the third company to collaborate with Avantium on PEF, a bioplastic based on Avantium's proprietary YXY technology. The goal of these collaborations is to bring 100% biobased PEF bottles to the market by 2016. "Avantium is very excited to have ALPLA enter the Joint Development Platform for PEF bottles," ...

Meck Product has released a new automatic chicken waterer nipple that allows for clean water to be delivered to chickens or other poultry without hassle. The new chicken waterers simply screw into a bucket, pail or PVC pipe to create a hands off chicken watering system. Many people raising chickens or other poultry have struggled to find a way to deliver clean water to their chickens on demand and without hassle. The new chicken nipples solve this problem by providing water to chickens whenever they want it. The chicken drinkers create a homemade chicken watering ...

Taking a shower or bath is a time of relaxation and cleansing for most of us and we couldn't imagine not having this luxury. For those who are disabled or aging, however bathing can be a time of anxiety. Bathtubs and showers can be slippery environments with hard surfaces and sharp corners. For those in wheelchairs, the transfer process can be difficult and has the potential for falls and other injuries. United Disabilities Services is now offering a Caregiver Half Height Door for showers that allows a caregiver to assist the user in showering or bathing, while controlling ...

Lies, cheat, deceit, distortion, games, hype, empty promises, a blind pursuit of profit at any price and a complete neglect of all negative externalities has poisoned the planet and humanity. The destruction of the planet, its ecosystems and the alienation of human's from their soul and genuine inner human needs and the ongoing exponential increase of pollution, contamination, climate change, poverty, unemployment, social unrest, economic instability as well as regional conflicts and war has taken over. Leaders around the world have failed. The so-called globalization and ...

Using germ-killing soap and ointment on all intensive-care unit (ICU) patients can reduce bloodstream infections by up to 44 percent and significantly reduce the presence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in ICUs. A new Department of Health and Human Services-funded study released today tested three MRSA prevention strategies and found that using germ-killing soap and ointment on all ICU patients was more effective than other strategies. "Patients in the ICU are already very sick, and the last thing they need to deal with is a preventable infection," ...

A fresh look at the environmental impacts of dams on an ecologically diverse and partially protected river in China found that small dams can pose a greater threat to ecosystems and natural landscape than large dams. Although large dams are generally considered more harmful than their smaller counterparts, the research team's surveys of habitat loss and damage at several dam sites on the Nu River and its tributaries in Yunnan Province revealed that, watt-for-watt, the environmental harm from small dams was often greater—sometimes by several orders of magnitude—than from ...

Leading world climate change experts have thrown cold water on the idea that planting trees can offset carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels. Professor Brendan Mackey of Griffith University Climate Change Response Program is the lead author of an international study involving researchers from Australia and the U.K. Their findings are reported in "Untangling the confusion around land carbon science and climate change mitigation policy", published in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change. "While protecting and restoring natural forests is part of the solution, ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have found that a naturally occurring protein secreted only in discrete areas of the mammalian brain may act as a Valium-like brake on certain types of epileptic seizures. The protein is known as diazepam binding inhibitor, or DBI. It calms the rhythms of a key brain circuit and so could prove valuable in developing novel, less side-effect-prone therapies not only for epilepsy but possibly for anxiety and sleep disorders, too. The researchers' discoveries will be published May 30 in Neuron. "This ...

Through careful study of an ancient ancestor of modern turtles, researchers now have a clearer picture of how the turtles' most unusual shell came to be. The findings, reported on May 30 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, help to fill a 30- to 55-million-year gap in the turtle fossil record through study of an extinct South African reptile known as Eunotosaurus. "The turtle shell is a complex structure whose initial transformations started over 260 million years ago in the Permian period," says Tyler Lyson of Yale University and the Smithsonian. "Like other ...

People in most cultures view women with small feet as attractive. Like smooth skin or an hourglass figure, petite feet signal a potential mate's youth and fertility. Because they signal reproductive potential, a preference for mates with these qualities may have evolved in the brains of our Pleistocene ancestors and are viewed by evolutionary psychologists as evidence that the preference is hard-wired into our genetic makeup. But in new research published May 30 in the journal Human Nature, Geoff Kushnick, a University of Washington anthropologist, reports that the ...

While occupational homicides continue to decline in the U.S., law enforcement remains one of the deadliest jobs in America. A new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health The report found documents that 93 percent of homicides of law enforcement officers between 1996 and 2010 were committed with firearms. Among those homicides, 10 percent were committed using the officer's own service weapon. The findings, published May 30 by the journal BMJ Injury Prevention, could help develop new procedures to reduce risk to officers. "Law enforcement ...

Unique among Earth's creatures, turtles are the only animals to form a shell on the outside of their bodies through a fusion of modified ribs, vertebrae and shoulder girdle bones. The turtle shell is a unique modification, and how and when it originated has fascinated and confounded biologists for more than two centuries. A Smithsonian scientist and colleagues recently discovered that the beginnings of the turtle shell started 40 million years earlier than previously thought. The team's research is published in the May 30 issue of Current Biology. The oldest known fossil ...

Bethesda, MD—Would you be more likely to try a diet and exercise regimen if you knew in advance if it would actually help you lose weight? Thanks to a new report published in the June 2013 issue of The FASEB Journal, this could become a reality. In the report, scientists identify five epigenetic biomarkers in adolescents that were associated with a better weight loss at the beginning of a weight loss program. Not only could this could ultimately help predict an individual's response to weight loss intervention, but it may offer therapeutic targets for enhancing a weight ...

Scientists have long been unable to fully explain how infections attack the body, but now a team of researchers, including one from the University of Central Florida, has taken a step closer to understanding how the process works in HIV-1. The results mean that one day that knowledge may prevent infection. The result of the team's work appears in the May 30 online edition of Nature. Peijun Zhang, an associate professor in the department of Structural Biology at the University of Pittsburgh led the team. Others are: Gongpu Zhao, Xin Meng, Jiying Nig, Jinwoo Ahn and ...

Cameras fitted with a new revolutionary sensor will soon be able to take clear and sharp photos in dim conditions, thanks to a new image sensor invented at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). The new sensor made from graphene, is believed to be the first to be able to detect broad spectrum light, from the visible to mid-infrared, with high photoresponse or sensitivity. This means it is suitable for use in all types of cameras, including infrared cameras, traffic speed cameras, satellite imaging and more. Not only is the graphene sensor 1,000 times more sensitive ...