When personal injury clients consult with a Chicago injury attorney claiming that they were injured by an object, product or other property the first question they are asked is who possesses the item that caused the injury. Often the answer will be I do not know or it was thrown away. Illinois law recognizes a principal called "Spoliation of Evidence" which is a form of negligence. If a defendant destroys physical evidence which the plaintiff needs to prove his case, the law provides relief under the following special circumstances: Where the defendant ...

When clients hire Chicago injury attorneys to represent them in auto accident, workers compensation, and medical malpractice claims, they often fail to realize that the filing of a lawsuit turns their lives into an open book. Perhaps a worker claims that as a result of an injury to their leg they can never work again? They sit for a deposition or other interview under oath describing the pain and suffering they continue to sustain and their inability to run or engage in other physical activities. At the same time they post statements, photographs or video on their social ...

The Illinois Supreme Court recently amended its rules to permitting personal injury attorneys and others to serve legal documents using e-mail. Most Chicago injury attorneys welcome this time and expense saving tool. These attorneys typically work on a contingent fee basis where "time is money". Rather than wait days for "snail mail" to be delivered the internet shortens the time frame to "now". For the first time a trial court has permitted the testimony a party to a lawsuit to occur using the popular internet video conferencing program ...

Government-led proposals to force personal injury cases to be decided in the small claims court have been slammed by lawyers throughout the UK. Now, the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers has declared the proposed moves to be unfair and have questioned whether the Government has taken the interests of the victims into consideration. The President of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, Karl Tonks, revealed: "Government proposals to force claims through the small claims court will result in injured people on their own in court against a defendant insurer. ...

As British Summer Time approaches, at least a third* of New Year's Resolutions have been broken - and there is little doubt that this is a common trend every year. New research,* however, reveals that when your resolutions impact on and help others, you're far more likely to succeed. The study - commissioned by Foresters, the international financial services organisation - wanted to see what resolutions Brits are focusing on this year, as well seeing how determined they are to stick to them! Saving pounds and dropping them are the top two goals, but people also are ...

Experian has announced a renewal of its strategic partnership with Nationwide Building Society for the provision of credit reference and electronic authentication services. The new three-year, multi-million pound contract cements Experian as the primary credit bureau for Nationwide. Nationwide will use Experian's credit bureau data, to better assess new applications for credit, manage existing customers' access to credit and lend responsibly throughout. The building society will continue to use Experian's Delphi for Customer Management (DCM) software, Delphi for New ...

British Airways' has announced Los Angeles as the inaugural destination for its first Airbus A380, with tickets for the flight now on sale. The first A380 to be operated by a UK airline will fly on the "Red Carpet Route" to Los Angeles from October 15 2013, following the delivery of the double-decker superjumbo to British Airways in July. London-based actress Gemma Arterton said: "Working in film means that I spend a lot of time travelling around the world, often to Hollywood. It's essential to arrive feeling fresh and ready for the day ahead, as I ...

Most of the time, when we write about our business, or we are making a request for something of direct concern to us, we know exactly what we are taking about and what we want to say. The problem is that the recipient of your writing does not have this knowledge - our readers cannot read our thoughts, only our words. Clarity, therefore, is paramount. Anything that could be open to misinterpretation will be misinterpreted, at least 50% of the time. Dates and times are a simple, but important, example. 'This Friday', 'tomorrow morning', etc. rely on the reader reading ...

The acceleration of the pace and value of research aboard the International Space Station makes for a lively discussion. A panel of investigators making strides in fields ranging from biotechnology and fundamental physics to astronaut health sat down to talk the topic of station research with colleagues gathered for the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston last month. The AAAS, a non-profit organization open to the world's top scientists, is respected for its ability to help governments formulate science policy, ...

Looking for a miracle is a good thing, but working for it is more efficient. If you wish to know everything about your own website to make it really popular or try to study the niche you are interested in to become really successful in your field, you will require a lot of accurate and up-to-date data and figures to make strict statistics work for you. Cooperating with StatNames.com you will finally be able to analyze the site's merits and weak points to make it as favorable and frequented as possible. Online business is a tricky thing - commercial sites should be able ...

How much of the United States' newfound bounty of natural gas should stay at home, keeping prices low for domestic customers? How much should be earmarked for export in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG), at the risk of making natural gas pricier? Those questions are the topic of the cover story in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. C&EN's Jeff Johnson and Alexander H. Tullo explain in the story that hydraulic fracturing and other technologies ...

Predictability is often used synonymously with "boring," as in that story or that outcome was soooo predictable. For practioners of synthetic biology seeking to engineer valuable new microbes, however, predictability is the brass ring that must be captured. Researchers with the multi-institutional partnership known as BIOFAB have become the first to grab at least a portion of this ring by unveiling a package of public domain DNA sequences and statistical models that greatly increase the reliability and precision by which biological systems can be engineered. The DNA sequences ...

Malala Yousafzai, the teenaged advocate for Pakistani girls' education, was released from the hospital earlier this month. Most of the world's girls don't have to fight as hard as Yousafzai for their education. However, even in countries with high gender equality, sex differences in math and reading scores persisted in the 75 nations examined by a University of Missouri and University of Leeds study. Girls consistently scored higher in reading, while boys got higher scores in math, but these gaps are linked and vary with overall social and economic conditions of the nation. ...

When someone has a stroke, time equals brain. The longer a stroke is left untreated, the more brain tissue is lost. Since the only proven treatment — a clot-busting drug — works in less than half of patients, stroke physicians had high hopes for a mechanical device that could travel through the blocked blood vessel to retrieve or break up the clot, restoring blood flow to the brain. But in a recently completed multi-site trial in which UCLA served as the clinical coordinating center, researchers found there was no overall recovery benefit to patients treated with clot-removal ...

Two innovative programs designed to improve the availability of emerging medical technologies that can help patients receive more effective, efficient and personalized health care are advanced in a commentary written by a team of scientists and policy experts, including seven from Arizona State University, and published today in Science Translational Medicine. The March 13 article, "Regulatory and Reimbursement Innovation," explores the benefits of coverage with evidence development (CED) and parallel review for the regulation and reimbursement of molecular diagnostics. ...

Geneva, 13th March 2013 --- According to WHO, liver cirrhosis accounts for 1.8% (i.e. 170,000) of all deaths in Europe. In recent years liver cirrhosis has become a serious health threat in some Western European countries such as Ireland and the United Kingdom, where over the last 10 years the associated mortality has increased . The European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) urges the UK government to press ahead with its proposed implementation of the minimum unit pricing of alcohol. EASL's most recent publication The burden of liver disease in Europe: ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – For those with irritable bowel syndrome who wonder if stress aggravates their intestinal disorder, a new University of Michigan Health System study shows it's not all in their head. Researchers revealed that while stress does not cause IBS, it does alter brain-gut interactions and induces the intestinal inflammation that often leads to severe or chronic belly pain, loss of appetite and diarrhea. Stress has a way of suppressing an important component called an inflammasome which is needed to maintain normal gut microbiota, but probiotics reversed ...

Biologists since Aristotle have puzzled over the reasons for mass strandings of whales and dolphins, in which groups of up to several hundred individuals drive themselves up onto a beach, apparently intentionally. Recent genetic research has shed some light on whether family relationships play a role in these enigmatic and often fatal beachings of otherwise healthy whales. One hypothesis regarding the reason for strandings is that "care-giving behavior," mediated largely by family relationships, plays a critical role. In this scenario, the stranding of one or a few whales, ...

MADISON — For the first time, scientists have transplanted neural cells derived from a monkey's skin into its brain and watched the cells develop into several types of mature brain cells, according to the authors of a new study in Cell Reports. After six months, the cells looked entirely normal, and were only detectable because they initially were tagged with a fluorescent protein. Because the cells were derived from adult cells in each monkey's skin, the experiment is a proof-of-principle for the concept of personalized medicine, where treatments are designed for each ...

NEWPORT, Ore. – Pilot whales that have died in mass strandings in New Zealand and Australia included many unrelated individuals at each event, a new study concludes, challenging a popular assumption that whales follow each other onto the beach and to almost certain death because of familial ties. Using genetic samples from individuals in large strandings, scientists have determined that both related and unrelated individuals were scattered along the beaches – and that the bodies of mothers and young calves were often separated by large distances. Results of the study ...

PHILADELPHIA - Brown fat is a hot topic, pardon the pun. Brown fats cells, as opposed to white fat cells, make heat for the body, and are thought to have evolved to help mammals cope with the cold. But, their role in generating warmth might also be applied to coping with obesity and diabetes. The lab of Patrick Seale, PhD, at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, studies what proteins guide the development, differentiation, and function of fat cells. Seale and postdoctoral fellow Sona Rajakumari, PhD, along with Jun Wu from the Dana-Farber Cancer ...

Scientists already knew that some social bee species warn their conspecifics when detecting the presence of a predator near their hive, which in turn causes an attack response to the possible predator. Researchers at the University of Tours (France) in collaboration with the Experimental Station of Arid Zones of Almeria (Spain) have now demonstrated that they also use chemical signals to mark those flowers where they have previously been attacked. Researchers at the University of Tours (France) and the Experimental Station of Arid Zones of Almeria (EEZA-CSIC) conducted ...

Mountain View, Calif. – March 14, 2013 – In the largest ever genome-wide association study on myopia, 23andMe, the leading personal genetics company, identified 20 new genetic associations for myopia, or nearsightedness. The company also replicated two known associations in the study, which was specific to individuals of European ancestry. The study included an analysis of genetic data and survey responses from more than 50,000 23andMe customers and demonstrates that the genetic basis of myopia is complex and affected by multiple genes. Myopia is the most common eye ...

A new research technique, pioneered by Dr. Maria Angela Franceschini, will be published in JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiments) on March 14th. Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School have developed a non-invasive optical measurement system to monitor neonatal brain activity via cerebral metabolism and blood flow. Of the nearly four million children born in the United States each year, 12% are born preterm, 8% are born with low birth weight, and 1-2% of infants are at risk for death associated with respiratory distress. The result ...

Bangkok, 14 March 2013. CITES plenary today accepted Committee recommendations to list five species of highly traded sharks under the CITES Appendices, along with those for the listing of both manta rays and one species of sawfish. Japan, backed by Gambia and India, unsuccessfully challenged the Committee decision to list the oceanic whitetip shark, while Grenada and China failed in an attempt to reopen debate on listing three hammerhead species. Colombia, Senegal, Mexico and others took the floor to defend Committee decisions to list sharks. "We are thrilled with this ...