Winter is in full swing in Washington. The state's lush green forests and bustling commuter areas are alight with the twinkle of ice and snow. Ice is lovely to look at, but a nightmare to walk on; that is why in some areas the numbers of traumatic brain injuries spike in the winter months. There are ways to lessen your chances of being hurt, though, if you know what steps to take to protect yourself. Raising awareness of injury triggers So, how do wintertime traumatic brain injuries occur? One obvious source of potential injuries is on ice-coated bridges, overpasses ...

A tragic bus accident on December 30, 2012, has brought nationwide attention not only to the Canadian company that operated the bus and the actions of commercial drivers across the company. That accident happened when a tour bus owned and operated by Mi Joo Tour & Travel hit an icy patch of Interstate 84 outside of Pendleton, Oregon, slid through a guardrail and rolled down an embankment. Nine people lost their lives in the crash, and nearly 40 more were injured. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) - a division of the United States Department ...

Using a cellphone while driving is extremely dangerous behavior. Even if the driver is making a call with a hands-free device, using a cellphone takes attention off the task of driving, making it more likely that the driver will be involved in a serious accident. Indeed, according to research from Carnegie Mellon University, using a cellphone behind the wheel reduces a driver's focus on the road by approximately 37 percent. Because of this risk, Michigan legislators have been taking steps to limit drivers' abilities to use cellphones while operating their vehicles. Statewide, ...

On Jan. 15, 2013, New York became the first state to enact a gun control measure following the Newtown, Connecticut, massacre. The measure, signed into law by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, significantly enhances the state's ban on assault weapons. It is being called "the most restrictive set of gun laws in the nation" (Saugerties Times), and critics worry that it will lead to unconstitutional weapons arrests. In particular, the new gun laws: - Ban assault weapons: Assault weapons may no longer be sold in New York state. New York gun owners who own semi-automatics ...

Tax season brings up worries for those who cannot pay a large looming tax bill. Alternatively, tax liabilities may have compounded over several years with penalties and interest making it impossible to pay off the debt. Some may wonder if a bankruptcy filing can remove past due income tax debts. If the taxes meet the following requirements, they are dischargeable along with all the regular unsecured debts in either a Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy. Timing rules The year of the tax debt is important when reviewing whether a Chapter 7 bankruptcy might help. Because ...

David S. Lipschultz of Goldberg Weisman Cairo has filed a civil rights lawsuit in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, on behalf of Diangelo Beasley against three former Schaumburg Police Officers currently being charged with multiple felonies in DuPage County. On June 27, 2012, Mr. Diangelo Beasley was falsely arrested and beaten by former Schaumburg Police Officers John Cichy, Matthew Hudak and Terrance O'Brien. Mr. Diangelo was not committing any crimes or bad acts whatsoever. Instead, Mr. Beasley was the victim of these police officers' long-running ...

Imagine the pain of discovering you may not really be the father of a child you thought was yours and for whom you are legally the parent. In Texas, the law provides a way for such a man to learn the truth through the court system and set things right. The Texas court proceeding is one for "mistaken paternity," sometimes called "paternity fraud." The only person with the right to bring a mistaken paternity action is a legal father who is questioning his parentage when no DNA testing was ever done. This law addresses the particular situation when a ...

If a person experiences an injury or illness that requires medical care, he or she will often schedule an appointment with a familiar doctor or physician. These relationships lead patients to trust the decisions made by their doctors, in the hopes that the treatment will cure the injuries or illnesses. However, mistakes in hospitals are an all-too-frequent occurrence. A recent study discussed the rate of medication errors happening in hospitals across the country. Some of these errors even led to the death or serious injury of the patient, which could potentially subject ...

As wars in Afghanistan and Iraq come to an end, soldiers from these war zones are returning home to thankful communities. These men and women, away from their families for long periods of time, strive to get back to their normal, everyday lives. Some of these soldiers have sustained injuries or illnesses while on duty. These injuries can make it difficult for veterans to adjust or find and maintain employment. In some cases, these individuals will need medical treatment in order to recover. Veterans benefits are supposed to help members of our armed forces get the care ...

February Fondue month takes on a special meaning at Artisanal Fromagerie, Bistro and Wine Bar. On Tuesday, February 26th, from 10 to 11 a.m., our award-winning restaurant will host 50 students from Public School 30 Hernandez/Hughes in East Harlem to experience fondue for the first time. For these 5-year-old students, many whom live in high-risk areas or have even lived in homeless shelters and domestic shelters, it will be their first time eating fresh produce and cheese. Artisanal's vast cheese selection will provide these children an opportunity to taste a cheese that's ...

When Janet Galla ended her tour of duty in Iraq as a Navy hospital corpsman in 2005, she turned to making jewelry as a hobby. That hobby turned into a lucrative career, and eight years later, under the name Trinkets 'N Whatnots, an array of her dazzling Swarovski crystal rings and one of her signature mother-of-pearl button necklaces will be on showcased at the GBK Gift Lounge for the 2013 Academy Awards on February 22-23 in Beverly Hills, California. What will no doubt surprise visitors to the gift lounge, one of Hollywood's most popular celebrity events of the awards ...

Experian announced it has further enhanced Hunter, its industry-leading data-sharing fraud prevention software, improving its performance and efficiency for anti-fraud operations. The upgrade goes live in the UK this week and allows banks, insurance companies, and other financial services and credit granting organisations to manage and investigate organised fraud more effectively. Providers are now able to group several applications into a single 'case', allowing investigation of all 'linked' applications and identify whether they are linked to earlier fraudulent ...

New research from Diamond has revealed women in the UK spent around GBP3.35billion* on shoes in 2012 but still leave two thirds of their collection of high heels, boots and sandals in the wardrobe. Diamond revealed the average woman owns 19 pairs of shoes but regularly wears just seven pairs of them. The study of 2,000 women across the UK also revealed one in twenty women are true shoe devotees and own more than 50 pairs while 7% buy 10 or more pairs each year. Natalie Grimshare, spokesperson for Diamond said: "According to our study, the average woman owns ...

University of Adelaide researchers have provided new evidence on the long-debated authorship of two famous texts – the US Federalist Papers and the Letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament. The results of a 10-year project led by Professor Derek Abbott, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, was published today in the prestigious journal PLOS ONE. The team has developed an automatic authorship detection system, using advanced software techniques to analyse author style based on commonly used words. "We applied our new authorship detection technique to ...

New Rochelle, NY, February 21, 2013—By targeting the specific mutation that causes the hereditary neuromuscular disease myotonic dystrophy, it is possible to neutralize the mutant RNA toxicity and minimize or even eliminate the disabling symptoms of the disease. New classes of drugs called antisense oligonucleotides are being designed to achieve this. Innovative work to develop a modified antisense drug that can be administered intravenously and achieve the desired therapeutic effect is described in an article in Nucleic Acid Therapeutics, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary ...

DENVER – The median age of patients diagnosed with advanced non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has steadily increased over the recent years and is presently 70 years. Despite this, the elderly are significantly underrepresented in clinical trials. A recent study published in the March 2013 issue of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer's (IASLC) Journal of Thoracic Oncology, investigated the degree to which exclusion or underrepresentation of elderly occurs in practice-changing clinical trials in advanced NSCLC. Researchers conclude that greater representation ...

DENVER – Local therapy is not commonly utilized in metastatic lung cancer. Researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center investigated the efficacy of local therapy with continued EGFR TKI therapy specifically in patients with acquired resistance to EGFR TKIs. A recent study published in the March 2013 issue of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer's (IASLC) Journal of Thoracic Oncology, found that EGFR- mutant lung cancers with acquired resistance to EGFR TKI therapy are amenable to local therapy to treat oligometastatic disease when used in ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– For over a century, the rubber tappers of Acre, Brazil collected the valuable sap of the rubber trees from the forests of the western Amazon. As the demand for natural rubber declined, however, the Brazilian government sought to stimulate the economy in the 1970's by encouraging southern ranchers to bring their cattle to the isolated state and convert the forests to pastureland. During the dramatic land conflicts that ensued, rubber tappers captured international media attention by arguing that their harvesting of rubber and other products from ...

The first scientific examinations of data recorded during a record-setting expedition have yielded new insights about the diversity of creatures that live and thrive in the cold, dark, and highly pressurized habitats of the world's deepest points and their vastly unexplored ecosystems. Natalya Gallo of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego will present preliminary findings from the DEEPSEA CHALLENGE expedition, a project led by James Cameron in collaboration with Scripps, and supported by National Geographic and Rolex, on Feb. 22 (GS09: Community Ecology ...

Weighing the costs and benefits of plastic vegetable greenhouses The economic benefits of intensive vegetable cultivation inside plastic greenhouses, particularly for small-holders, have driven a rapid mushrooming of long plastic tents in farmlands worldwide – but particularly in China, where they cover 3.3 million hectares and produce approximately US $60 million in produce (2008 figures). The method conserves water, binds up carbon, shrinks land use, protects against soil erosion and exhaustion, and mitigates problematic dust storms. But this change from conventional ...

The new drug has been proven to be effective in preventing the spread of different strains of influenza in laboratory models – including resistant strains of the virus. The breakthrough is the result of a global collaboration between scientists from CSIRO, the University of British Columbia and the University of Bath. In order to infect cells, flu viruses bind onto sugars on the cell surface. To be able to spread they need to remove these sugars. The new drug works by preventing the virus from removing sugars and blocking the virus from infecting more cells. It is hoped ...

Pulmonary fibrosis is a scarring or thickening of the lungs that causes shortness of breath, a dry cough, fatigue, chest discomfort, weight loss, a decrease in the ability of the lungs to transmit oxygen to the blood stream, and, eventually, heart failure. Cells known as myofibroblasts normally secrete materials that are required for wound healing; once the wound has closed, the cells disappear. In pulmonary fibrosis, the myofibroblasts stick around, continuing to secrete wound healing factors that cause fibrosis in the lungs. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, ...

How to mend a broken heart: advances in parthenogenic stem cells Parthenogenesis is a form of asexual reproduction during which unfertilized eggs begin to develop as if they had been fertilized. It occurs naturally in many plants and a few invertebrate (some bees, scorpions, parasitic wasps) and vertebrate animals (some fish, reptiles, and amphibians), but does not occur naturally in mammals. In 2007, researchers were able to chemically induce human egg cells to undergo parthenogenesis. The resulting parthenogenote has properties similar to an embryo, but cannot develop ...

Parthenogenesis is a form of asexual reproduction during which unfertilized eggs begin to develop as if they had been fertilized. It occurs naturally in many plants and a few invertebrate (some bees, scorpions, parasitic wasps) and vertebrate animals (some fish, reptiles, and amphibians), but does not occur naturally in mammals. In 2007, researchers were able to chemically induce human egg cells to undergo parthenogenesis. The resulting parthenogenote has properties similar to an embryo, but cannot develop further. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, ...

Washington, DC (February 19, 2013) – Parents know that one day they will have to talk to their children about drug use. The hardest part is to decide whether or not talking about ones own drug use will be useful in communicating an antidrug message. Recent research, published in the journal Human Communication Research, found that children whose parents did not disclose drug use, but delivered a strong antidrug message, were more likely to exhibit antidrug attitudes. Jennifer A. Kam, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Ashley V. Middleton, MSO Health Information ...