Since 1996, Pennsylvania Act 57 has authorized the use of compromise and release (C&R) settlement agreements for all workers' compensation claims. The main idea is to expedite the claims adjudication process by avoiding litigation and allowing the parties to resolve contested issues without overburdening the workers' compensation system. While C&R agreements play an important role in the workers' compensation settlement process, they are not one-size-fits-all and may not be appropriate in every case. Pennsylvania C&Rs specifically allow the release of both ...

A variety of problems can lead to truck accidents with smaller vehicles, from unbalanced loads to poor maintenance or faulty brakes. Regardless of whether any mechanical causes of a truck accident are detected, a personal injury attorney must also consider whether the driver's actions or condition played a role in the crash. A recent study looked at one troubling cause of driver fatigue: failing to report symptoms of sleep apnea because truckers are worried about losing their jobs. While truck drivers face strict hours-of-service rules and other trucking safety regulations ...

Looking at a large metropolitan area, whether New York City or Los Angles, at the incredible, intertwining network of roads, bridges, tunnels, overpasses and other structures that make up the transportation infrastructure, a natural assumption may be to assume that all that mass of streets and highways would lead to more traffic accidents. A recent report released by the Allstate Insurance Company indicates that you would also be wrong. The report, entitled the "Allstate America's Best Drivers Report," ranks cities by frequency of car accidents. Their numbers ...

The Connecticut Supreme Court recently upheld the criminal conviction of Brady Guilbert, who was found guilty in the shooting deaths of two New London residents in 2004. In sustaining the conviction, it also ruled on the ability for the defense to call experts to testify on the defendant's behalf to challenge eyewitness accounts. At trial, Guilbert's defense wanted to call Charles A. Morgan III, a professor of psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine and an expert on eyewitness identifications. Dr. Morgan would have testified about how stress can alter a ...

Two major studies of the current state of workers' compensation benefits across the country found startling inadequacies in the amount of benefits the average injured worker receives from his or her employer's workers' compensation insurance company. Experts believe that it is time to reform the system to make it work in the best interests of the worker, not the insurance company. Report Finds Payments to Workers Have Been Falling Over Time The IAIABC Journal is the semi-annual publication of IAIABC, an association of government agencies that regulate workers' compensation ...

A study found 86 percent of high school students claim their classmates are drinking, smoking and using drugs in and around their school, according to a story in the Christian Science Monitor. The survey, authored by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASAColumbia), has followed teen drug, alcohol and tobacco use for 17 years, and the rate had remained relatively stable at 60 percent for the last half-dozen years, but this year showed a significant increase. The survey does not indicate any reason for the increase, but Joseph ...

If you are in the midst of a divorce, or are seriously considering filing for divorce, you should take a moment and reconsider your relationship with some of your friends. Especially your relationship with Facebook, as it may not prove to be much a friend during your divorce. For many people, Facebook and other types of social media, such as Twitter, are an essential part of keeping up with and communicating with friends and family. You post important information and pictures, view posts from your friends, and use it as a means of tying together that sometimes far-flung ...

It seems to go without saying, but the consequences associated with trucking accidents are quite severe - and in some cases, deadly. After all, other motorists on the road are at an obvious size disadvantage if they face a several-ton truck bearing down on them. These dangers are all too well-known to drivers in Chicago, given that the Windy City is a major transportation crossroads. Every day, thousands of trucks traverse the interstates in and around the Chicago-land area - interstate highways such as 90, 94, 80, 88 or 55. Tragically, with such trucking activity, interstate ...

Ohio law enforcement recently concluded their latest crackdown on impaired driving and drunk driving, and motorists across the state were put on notice with billboards and other ads announcing the "Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over" campaign. Checkpoints and targeted enforcement of certain highways were intended to increase drunk driving arrests leading up to and through the Labor Day holiday. The U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) coordinated the campaign nationwide to warn drivers that DUI/OVI charges await ...

Ever since the Tennessee General Assembly enacted a tough Driving Under the Influence Statute (DUI) 1982, Summers and Wyatt has probably handled as many DUI, vehicular homicides, and vehicle assault cases in the trial and appellate courts in Tennessee as any other law firm as part of its general criminal law practice. Upon increasing pressure from politicians, law enforcement and special interest groups such as the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and the National Highway Safety Council (NHSC) and others, ...

Ben is a licensed attorney in the states of Tennessee, Massachusetts and New York, beginning in 2002 and is a graduate of Northeastern School of Law in Boston, Massachusetts with undergraduate degrees in New York University and the University of the South at Sewanee. He will be working primarily in the firm's criminal law defense and complex civil litigation section. He has formerly worked as an Assistant Public Defender and has been counsel to the firm of Cavett and Abbott since coming here to Chattanooga in 2006. He is married to the former Cara Gavin and they have ...

Global Banking And Finance Review has rewarded those banks and financial institutions who have exceptionally achieved results and who stand out in their particular area of expertise in the banking and finance industry. The Publisher and Editor want to congratulate the award winners and look forward to their continued success. The award winners were selected using a wide range of criteria and recognize innovative Banking, Investment strategies, achievement, challenge, progress and inspirational change within finance globally. Global Banking & Finance Review will promote ...

It was not a big surprise, but definitely a welcome move. The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) cut rates by a quarter of a basis point to 3.25% on Tuesday, the first rate movement since June's 0.25% drop. The cut is the RBA responding to global uncertainty and a slowing Chinese economy which impacts on our mining sector. Economists are also watching the US money markets closely as they haven't recovered as quickly as predicted. "I hope this rate cut boosts people's confidence as I believe we are nearing the bottom of the housing market, and the next few months ...

As October approaches, a dark, unsettling feeling is creeping through the South Snohomish back roads. As nighttime falls, numerous drivers on the Old Snohomish Monroe Road have reported it. Shivers run down their spine as they lose themselves in the fog. Heading south, their eyes widen as they become more alert to the possible dangers ahead. Little do they know that an accidental right turn at the Y in the road could be their last! After dark this October, innocent family fun takes a backseat at Snohomish's original pumpkin patch. For the first time ever, Craven Farm ...

As one of the most prestigious dry cleaners in the Albany New York area, we want your clothes to be treated like royalty. That's why we are introducing new machinery into our company to help give your clothing the extra love and attention that they need. We have invested in the new Lightning Series LS2 to make your shirts get that "Regal" care. The Lightning LS2 is specifically designed to press the sleeve pleats and vent areas without flattening the cuffs and also features formed bucks, contoured chests, side airbags, PVP Pleat Vent Press, and Automatic Pull-Down ...

The which/that conundrum continues to confuse many writers. If you are tired of Word producing green wiggly lines under your use of which read on! Simply put, that introduces a restrictive clause whereas which introduces a non-restrictive clause. The non-restrictive clause may contain information that is not essential to the sentence. For example: My car, which I just bought, has a leak in the radiator. The clause, which I just bought, is non-essential; it qualifies the subject, my car, but is non-restrictive; it provides additional information but the sentence ...

At EverydayActors.com the main goal is to link everyday people (our actors) with video content producers. Times have changed, budgets have been reduced, and content producers are looking for local everyday people to star in or work as background talent in films, commercials, corporate training videos, music videos and other productions. This isn't about becoming a star or having lofty Hollywood ambitions. For EverydayActors' members it is about getting work in the business just being oneself. A network of agency members use EverydayActors.com to find the specific ...

Three weeks of healing touch treatments, combined with listening to a guided imagery CD, provides significant clinical reductions in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms for combat-exposed, active duty Marines, according to a study released in the September issue of Military Medicine. The report finds that the 68 Camp Pendleton Marines who were randomly assigned to 6 sessions of the combined intervention within a three-week period also showed significant improvement in quality of life, as well as reduced depression and cynicism, as compared to the 55 subjects ...

Rockville, MD – A new study suggests caffeinated coffee drinkers should limit their intake to reduce their chances of developing vision loss or blindness. According to a scientific paper in Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, heavy caffeinated coffee consumption is associated with an increased risk of developing exfoliation glaucoma, the leading cause of secondary glaucoma worldwide. The study, The Relation between Caffeine and Coffee Consumption and Exfoliation Glaucoma or Glaucoma Suspect: A Prospective Study in Two Cohorts, is the first to examine the link ...

NORMAN, Okla. – Move over money, a new currency is helping make the world go round. As increasing volumes of data become accessible, transferable and, therefore, actionable, information is the treasure companies want to amass. To protect this wealth, organizations use cryptography, or coded messages, to secure information from "technology robbers." This group of hackers and malware creators increasingly is becoming more sophisticated at breaking encrypted information, leaving everyone and everything, including national security and global commerce, at risk. But the threat ...

DENVER (Oct. 4, 2012) – A skull fragment unearthed by anthropologists in Tanzania shows that our ancient ancestors were eating meat at least 1.5 million years ago, shedding new light into the evolution of human physiology and brain development. "Meat eating has always been considered one of the things that made us human, with the protein contributing to the growth of our brains," said Charles Musiba, Ph.D., associate professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado Denver, who helped make the discovery. "Our work shows that 1.5 million years ago we were not opportunistic ...

Researchers at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine have developed the first animal model that duplicates the human response in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), an important step that may enable scientists to discover better medicines to treat the disease. Corresponding and senior author Harris Perlman, associate professor of rheumatology at Feinberg, introduced his team's new prototype mouse model in a recent online issue of the Journal of Translational Medicine. "This is the first time human stem cells have been transplanted into mice in order to find RA ...

CHICAGO — Surgeons are making progress toward preventing initial and recurrent episodes of clostridium difficile colitis (C. difficile or C. diff), a vicious bacterial infection that is estimated to affect about 336,000 people each year, typically patients on antibiotics. Using mouse models, researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Boston, found that an oral medication may prevent C. difficile infections (CDI). Also, surgeons at Penn State University College of Medicine, Hershey, PA, examined human patients to detect a genetic mutation that could steer ...

VIDEO: This is a direct observation of neuronal reprogramming of PDGFR-sorted pericyte-derived cells from the adult human brain by continuous live imaging in culture. Note the change in morphology of a cell... Click here for more information. Researchers have discovered a way to generate new human neurons from another type of adult cell found in our brains. The discovery, reported in the October 5th issue of Cell Stem Cell, a Cell Press publication, is one step toward cell-based ...

VIDEO: For newborn mice to suckle for the very first time and survive, they depend on a signature blend of scents that is unique to their mothers. The findings, published online... Click here for more information. For newborn mice to suckle for the very first time and survive, they depend on a signature blend of scents that is unique to their mothers. The findings, published online on October 4 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, reveal that mom's natural perfume consists ...