For years, estate-planning attorneys had the headache of dealing with various legislative changes that constantly altered the disposition of estate inheritances. Fortunately, in early 2013, the American Taxpayer Relief Act was enacted into law. This resulted in major taxation changes, which will probably affect estate planning indefinitely. The Act brings ample clarity for estate taxes and makes estate planning much easier and less dependent on the year someone passes. The major changes create permanency in laws relating to the estate tax exemption, creating solid benefits ...

While the dangers of distracted have been well-publicized, it seems that the message is not sinking in for many. A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration newsletter revealed that at any given moment about 660,000 drivers are using cell phones or hand-held electronic devices on U.S. roads. In an effort to call attention to the continuing public safety threat of distracted driving, public safety officials have declared April National Distracted Driving Awareness Month. In conjunction with the public safety campaign, an insurance company has analyzed national motor ...

If you're like most motorists, you probably don't spend a lot of time thinking about your tires. When you have your vehicle serviced, you expect to leave the service station with tires that will keep you and your passengers safe. Nonetheless, defective tires are the cause of numerous car accidents. A pair of bills working their way through the Maryland legislature aim to help improve tire safety. If House Bills 122 and 1110 become law, they will impose stricter requirements on service shops that repair and replace tires. Bills seek stronger tire repair standards, ...

Financing higher education with student loans seems like a wise investment. Getting more education is supposed to make a person's overall financial situation improve because the job prospects are broader for those with post-secondary education than for those without it. However, many graduates know the difficulty of paying back student loans after graduation. A recent economic analysis revealed that student loan delinquencies have dramatically increased from 2012 to 2013. Troubles repaying student loans Consumer credit reporting agency Equifax issues a monthly National ...

With the February deadline to introduce new bills in the California legislature passed, it is a good time for California workers to begin thinking about potential changes to the law that could affect them in the coming year and beyond. If they become law, there are several bills that will have an important impact on employment law. Wage issues, employee privacy online and flexible schedules key in proposals Minimum wage issues have been highlighted across the nation recently, and California is no exception. Under AB 10, the California minimum wage would increase to ...

A recent single-vehicle bus accident on the President George Bush highway in Irving, Texas, has already claimed the lives of two bus passengers and left nearly 20 more fighting to survive in area hospitals. Witnesses say that the bus was heading down the roadway as usual when it began to weave, veered sharply off course, struck a roadway crash barrel (a form of accident "cushioning" put in place by the Texas Department of Transportation to help deflect the forces acting in traffic accidents), slid into the grass median and came to rest on its side. Since the ...

A recent study conducted by the National Center for Family & Marriage Research found that among individuals who got divorced in 2009, one in four was over the age of 50. This rate has more than doubled since 1990, when it was one in ten, and with the U.S. population aging, the trend is not expected to change anytime soon. Getting divorced is never easy, and if you are over the age of 50, divorce can come with some special challenges. Yet, with an experienced family law attorney by your side and a little knowhow under your belt, you can make the process as painless ...

When we have a family member that needs to go into a nursing home, we will spend a lot of time studying the residences to determine which facility will offer the best care. We may take tours and speak with staff to learn more about the attention that our loved ones will receive. We have all heard stories about nursing home abuse that can sometimes occur at these facilities. Even if we carefully examine each location, we still may not be able to observe any mistreatment that may be happening. It is important to be aware of some of the signs of abuse that may be present. Some ...

Many modern couples are getting savvier about their relationships and finances. While it may not seem particularly romantic, prospective spouses often find it advantageous to come to an understanding before marriage about financial goals individually and as a couple, including what should happen to wealth, property and debts should the marriage end in separation, divorce or death. A binding solution When an understanding is reached, the unique desires of the parties can be made legally binding by entering into a valid premarital, or prenuptial, agreement. A prenuptial ...

Dear President Obama: It is about time that our education experts realize why the most important human factor is the mind factor and that we now have enough knowledge of what the mind is. Did you know that there is no topic mind in High School psychology text books? The mind is the pure self, the 'I' of each and every human being. The face of the mind is what each person takes his own self to be. The mind is the self image. By improving the self image one improves the mind. By making the self image pure we make the mind pure. A pure mind/self-image is projected by the ...

Nicaragua is currently present at the 25th Edition of the Special Coffee Association of America (SCAA) event, the largest coffee trade association in the world, held in the Boston Convention Center, Massachusetts from April 11th to the 14th. The highlight of the country's participation is its unique booth (#271), whose theme is "Sustainable Coffees of Nicaragua" and where participants are able to taste Nicaraguan premium coffee, prepared on the spot by skillful baristas. The Nicaraguan public-private delegation attending the event includes representatives ...

Thirteen tracks fill this expertly crafted journey. Each track is a unique delve into the classic storytelling and musical artistry that her listeners have come to expect. Few artists can deliver this without gimmicks. Recorded from March 2012 to February 2013, at EME Studios in Sacramento, CA, O'Mally has produced a great sounding CD. The title track, Easy Money is a fun, vibrant track that draws the listener in with bright horns, strong harmonies, top notch mandolin playing and an instantly recognizable intro. You'll find yourself in the El Camino on the way to Vegas ...

Florida's must-attend Homeland Security conference, now in it's 8th year, promises to be the most important conference since its founding bringing together up to 400 Intelligence, Law Enforcement, Fire, Emergency medicine and Emergency medical personnel as well as military in three days of intense information exchange. "We are proud of the speaker line-up and the quality of information that will get out to this year's participants," states Sol Bradman CEO of SSI. It was a sell-out last year with people coming from all over Florida and from many other States ...

Polaris Financial Technology Ltd, a leader in products, solutions and services that enable unprecedented operational productivity for the global Financial Services industry, launched its 8012 FT Design Center - the world's first Center dedicated to Financial Technology. The Center was inaugurated by Michael Harte, Group Executive, Enterprise Services and Chief Information Officer, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, in Chennai recently. He also delivered the first FT Thought Leadership series lecture as part of the inaugural program. The event was attended by banking and ...

Stem cells can be coaxed to grow into new bone or new cartilage better and faster when given the right molecular cues and room inside a water-loving gel, researchers at Case Western Reserve University show. By creating a three-dimensional checkerboard—one with alternating highly connected and less connected spaces within the hydrogel—the team found adjusting the size of the micropattern could affect stem cell behaviors, such as proliferation and differentiation. Inducing how and where stem cells grow—and into the right kind of cell in three dimensions—has proven a ...

Like finally seeing all the gears of a watch and how they work together, researchers from UCLA and UC Berkeley have, for the first time ever, solved the puzzle of how the various components of an entire telomerase enzyme complex fit together and function in a three-dimensional structure. The creation of the first complete visual map of the telomerase enzyme, which is known to play a significant role in aging and most cancers, represents a breakthrough that could open up a host of new approaches to fighting disease, the researchers said. "Everyone in the field wants ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – American adults who prepare their own meals and exercise on the same day are likely spending more time on one of those activities at the expense of the other, a new study suggests. The research showed that a 10-minute increase in food preparation time was associated with a lower probability of exercising for 10 more minutes – for both men and women. The finding applied to single and married adults as well as parents and those who have no children. Researchers analyzed nationally available data on more than 112,000 American adults who had reported their ...

Rochester, MN, April 12, 2013 – L-carnitine significantly improves cardiac health in patients after a heart attack, say a multicenter team of investigators in a study published today in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. Their findings, based on analysis of key controlled trials, associate L-carnitine with significant reduction in death from all causes and a highly significant reduction in ventricular arrhythmias and anginal attacks following a heart attack, compared with placebo or control. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. Although many of the ...

LOS ANGELES – The company you keep in junior high school may have more influence on your smoking behavior than your high school friends, according to newly published research from the University of Southern California (USC). The study, which appears in the April 12 issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, identifies how friends' and parental influence on cigarette smoking changes from junior high to high school. The research indicates that intervention targets to counteract friends' influence may have more of an effect in junior high than in high school, and that ...

According to the analysis, carbon dioxide removal could be used under certain requirements to alleviate the most costly components of mitigation, but it would not replace the bulk of actual emissions reductions. "Carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere allows to separate emissions control from the time and location of the actual emissions. This flexibility can be important for climate protection," says lead-author Elmar Kriegler. "You don't have to prevent emissions in every factory or truck, but could for instance plant grasses that suck CO2 out of the air to grow ...

Large helpers (nannies) in a cichlid fish allow the dominant male and female to reduce their personal contribution to their offspring and territory, according to new research published today in Functional Ecology. By removing the large helper for 30 days – which corresponds to one breeding cycle in this species – a team from the University of Bristol and the University of Bern (Switzerland) studied the investment strategies of the dominant pair and the survival of their brood, while checking for immigration of new helpers. Dr Rick Bruintjes, NERC Science & Business ...

Durham, NC —Evolution skeptics argue that some biological structures, like the brain or the eye, are simply too complex for natural selection to explain. Biologists have proposed various ways that so-called 'irreducibly complex' structures could emerge incrementally over time, bit by bit. But a new study proposes an alternative route. Instead of starting from simpler precursors and becoming more intricate, say authors Dan McShea and Wim Hordijk, some structures could have evolved from complex beginnings that gradually grew simpler — an idea they dub "complexity by subtraction." ...

(Philadelphia, PA) – A major factor in the advance of heart disease is the death of heart tissue, a process that a team of scientists at Temple University School of Medicine's (TUSM) Center for Translational Medicine think could be prevented with new medicines. Now, the researchers are one step closer to achieving that goal, thanks to their discovery of a key molecule in an unexpected place in heart cells – mitochondria, tiny energy factories that house the controls capable of setting off cells' self-destruct sequence. The study is the first to identify the molecule, ...

A new technique based on atomic force microscopy was developed at the Institute of Food Research to help 'read' information encoded in the gut lining. The lining of our gut is an important barrier between the outside world and our bodies. Laid out, the gut lining would cover the area of a football pitch. It must let nutrients from our foods through, but prevent invasion by disease-causing bacteria, at the same time hosting the trillions of beneficial bacteria needed for proper digestion and immune function. At the forefront of the defensive system is a layer of mucus ...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Researchers at Mayo Clinic in Florida participated in a nationwide study that found minor differences between genes that contribute to late-onset Alzheimer's disease in African-Americans and in Caucasians. The study, published April 10 in The Journal of the American Medical Association, was the first to look at the genetics of a large number of African-Americans diagnosed with this common form of Alzheimer's disease (1,968 patients) compared to 3,928 normal elderly African-American control participants. The Alzheimer's Disease Genetics Consortium ...