Times are tough, and as the economy slowly rebounds from the economic meltdown, many people are still having a difficult time making ends meet -- and unfortunately, in some cases, tax obligations cannot always be met. In order to make it easier for people to pay their tax obligations, the Internal Revenue Service created the Fresh Start program, which is designed to allow taxpayers to pay their accounts in full by negotiating a reduced rate -- known as an offer in compromise. In order to benefit from the program, the IRS looks at criteria that determine the taxpayer's ...

When you must undergo surgery, you have to place a certain amount of trust in the knowledge and ability of your physician. When surgeons act negligently and do not comply with a proper standard of care, the consequences can be severe and even fatal. Such was the case in an incident involving a Fayetteville surgeon, which tragically resulted in the death of a patient. Recently, the doctor was ordered to pay over $6 million to the patient's family. The patient was a woman with cancer, who required surgery to remove a portion of the cancer. While in the operating room, ...

New Jersey recently adopted a tough new law to fight distracted driving. The legislation was named in honor of people who had been seriously hurt or killed in motor vehicle accidents caused by distracted drivers. Legislators pushed to strengthen New Jersey's distracted driving law after three tragic accidents drew public attention to the problem. In one, an 89-year-old woman was hit by a driver who was using a cellphone. Similar accidents took the lives of a pregnant woman and her unborn son and seriously injured a Dover Township couple. Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno ...

Talk about being kicked while you're down. A beloved senior receives the devastating diagnosis of dementia, breaks a hip or has a debilitating stroke, and can no longer be cared for by loved ones. Luckily, the family purchased long-term care insurance to cover just such a situation, so that there would be financial assistance with in-home medical care, assisted living, adult day care or a nursing-home placement. And then the insurance company wrongfully refuses to pay for the care and the medical bills multiply. Unfortunately, too many elders and their families are ...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that each day, approximately 1,200 people are injured in car accidents involving distracted driving. According to the Department of Transportation, distracted driving has become a serious problem in the United States--especially since the proliferation of cellphones. In 2010, more than 3,000 people were killed in distracted driving crashes, which included texting, talking on a cellphone, eating and drinking and other similar activities. Transportation agencies are particularly concerned with mobile devices. Texting ...

Massive building materials. Power tools. Electricity, gas, chemicals and explosives. High temperatures. Soaring heights and underground depths. Heavy industrial vehicles. Wind. Complex engineering. Deadlines. Negligence. Human error. Financial pressures. Fatigue. These are some of the ingredients in the recipe for disaster that is the construction-site accident. This year the densely populated Northeast U.S. has seen its share of construction mishaps. For example: - In September, a 29-year-old construction worker died after being hit by a 2,000 pound concrete barrier ...

The New York Medical Indemnity Fund was created by Governor Cuomo to eliminate the obligation of proven wrongdoers who cause serious injuries to children at birth from the responsibility to pay for the medical care that these children require because of the harm done to them. Yes, you read that correctly! Though it is difficult to believe, it is the fact that hospitals and doctors whose negligent care resulted in a lifetime of enormous care expense and suffering--and even more perversely their megawealthy insurance companies who received premiums to assume the risk and ...

Essex seems to have been home to the best sellers - perhaps because of the fan club surrounding The Only Way is Essex - where it was recorded that 2,500 were sold in the region in the week towards the end of November. To fuel the flames of the onesie's popularity, Britain's Got Talent dance troop, Flawless has also brought some positive attention to the unique wardrobe item, by working a routine around the wearing of the onesie. The trend has been growing in stages for some time. Mostly in part to the pull of celebrity power that has given the kooky one-off credible ...

Highlighting the compositions of four American composers, the abiding spirit of our nation resonates in The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia's American Masters program on December 16 and December 17. A founding resident company of The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, the Chamber Orchestra's program features its own Principal Trumpet Rodney Mack and Principal Oboe Geoffrey Deemer, who will perform on english horn, as soloists. The December 16 2:30 p.m. and December 17 7:30 p.m. concerts will be performed in the Kimmel Center's intimate Perelman Theater. Tickets ...

Christmas has arrived early at Winner Casino! With a little help from Santa, the top rated online casino has 3 special gifts for players around the world. The newly released Ghosts of Christmas is the Winner's Game of the Month. Every spin of the slot game earns players double comp points! Comp points can be exchanged for free playing money. This is how Winner slot spinners extend their hard-earned cash. Ghosts of Christmas is based on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. The game stars Ebeneezer Scrooge and Ghost Marley, who takes Scrooge on a journey with the Ghosts ...

Antidepressants are the most widely used treatment for people with moderate to severe depression. However, up to two thirds of people with depression don't respond fully to this type of treatment. New findings, published in The Lancet, have shown cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)*, provided in addition to usual care, can reduce symptoms of depression and help improve patients' quality of life. This is the first large-scale trial to test the effectiveness of CBT — a type of talking psychotherapy — given in addition to usual care that includes antidepressants. The National ...

A first-of-its-kind antidepressant drug discovered by a Northwestern University professor and now tested on adults who have failed other antidepressant therapies has been shown to alleviate symptoms within hours, have good safety and produce positive effects that last for about seven days from a single dose. The novel therapeutic targets brain receptors responsible for learning and memory -- a very different approach from existing antidepressants. The new drug and others like it also could be helpful in treating other neurological conditions, including schizophrenia, ...

Durham, NC — Scientists say they have pinpointed genetic changes that allow some Ethiopians to live and work more than a mile and a half above sea level without getting altitude sickness. The specific genes differ from those reported previously for high-altitude Tibetans, even though both groups cope with low-oxygen in similar physiological ways, the researchers report. If confirmed, the results may help scientists understand why some people are more vulnerable to low blood oxygen levels caused by factors other than altitude — such as asthma, sleep apnea, heart problems ...

The largest living organisms on the planet, the big, old trees that harbour and sustain countless birds and other wildlife, are dying. A report by three of the world's leading ecologists in today's issue of the journal Science warns of an alarming increase in deathrates among trees 100-300 years old in many of the world's forests, woodlands, savannahs, farming areas and even in cities. "It's a worldwide problem and appears to be happening in most types of forest," says lead author Professor David Lindenmayer of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions ...

December 7, 2012 - Being a good partner may make you a better parent, according to a new study. The same set of skills that we tap to be caring toward our partners is what we use to nurture our children, researchers found. The study sought to examine how caregiving plays out in families – "how one relationship affects another relationship," says Abigail Millings of the University of Bristol, lead author of the work published online this week in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. "We wanted to see how romantic relationships between parents might be associated ...

PHILADELPHIA — Obese women might be able to eliminate their increased risk for postmenopausal breast cancer by taking measures during perimenopause to prevent weight gain and to therapeutically control the metabolic effects of their obesity, according to the results of a preclinical study published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "Obese postmenopausal women have increased risk for breast cancer and poorer clinical outcomes compared with postmenopausal women who are lean," said Paul S. MacLean, Ph.D., associate professor of ...

More patients can benefit from highly effective breast cancer drugs that are already available, according to DNA sequencing studies by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and other institutions. The investigators found that some women with the HER2 negative subtype may benefit from anti-HER2 drugs even though standard tests don't indicate they are candidates for the drugs. "These patients are going to be missed by our routine testing for HER2 positive breast cancer," says Ron Bose, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine. "Currently ...

SAN ANTONIO, TX (December 7, 2012)—Blocking a specific protein renders tumors more vulnerable to treatment in mice, suggesting new therapies could eventually achieve the same in humans, according to new research from Fox Chase Cancer Center to be presented at the 2012 CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium on Friday, December 7, 2012. "Hopefully, with further testing, this research could one day result in a new therapy that blocks the effect of this protein and, in turn, boosts the effects of cancer drugs," says study author Elizabeth Hopper-Borge, PhD, Assistant ...

(Lebanon, NH, 12/7/12) — Results from a phase III clinical trial comparing a newer chemotherapy agent called eribulin mesylate with capecitabine, a standard drug used for chemotherapy today in women with previously treated metastatic breast cancer, showed that eribulin demonstrated a trend toward improved overall survival. This study was presented today by Peter A. Kaufman, M.D., during the 2012 CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. "We didn't show a statistically significant superiority of eribulin over capecitabine, which was our goal," said Peter A. Kaufman, ...

Alexandria, VA — Patients with head and neck cancer receiving radiation treatment at an academic center have a higher survival rate than those receiving treatment at a community center, according to a study in the December 2012 issue of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery. "Despite similar rates of treatment completion and rate of treatment breaks between groups, patients treated in academic centers had more advanced cancer but better survival," the authors state in their conclusion. The study evaluated differences in patient characteristics, treatment, and cancer ...

PASADENA, Calif.—As technology advances, it tends to shrink. From cell phones to laptops—powered by increasingly faster and tinier processors—everything is getting thinner and sleeker. And now light beams are getting smaller, too. Engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have created a device that can focus light into a point just a few nanometers (billionths of a meter) across—an achievement they say may lead to next-generation applications in computing, communications, and imaging. Because light can carry greater amounts of data more efficiently ...

"We believe that this knowledge may be important for the further understanding of complex interactions in some major public health issues, that modern science still hasn't been able to explain fully", says Antonio Barragan, researcher at the Center for Infectious Medicine at Karolinska Institutet and the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control. "At the same time, it's important to emphasize that humans have lived with this parasite for many millennia, so today's carriers of Toxoplasma need not be particularly worried". The current study, which is published ...

Electronic cigarettes are experiencing somewhat of a boom at the moment. An estimated two million people in Germany have already turned to the vapor cigarette, which many view as a healthy alternative to conventional smoking. However, a number of voices, primarily from the political sphere, are warning of possible health risks, claiming that the long-term consequences cannot yet be foreseen. Studies to date have come to mixed conclusions. There is a general lack of substantiated facts, fuelling an ongoing battle between supporters and opponents. By carrying out a new, independent ...

The health benefits of 'water clubs' in care homes for the elderly, where residents gather together regularly to drink water , owe as least as much to the social nature of the activity as to the value of drinking water itself, an investigation by psychologists has shown. The study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), supports other findings that interventions aimed at improving individuals' wellbeing and quality of life can be far more effective if they are carried out among groups of people in ways that generate a strong sense of group identity. A ...

A team of astronomers led by the University of Leicester has uncovered new evidence that suggests that X-ray detectors in space could be the first to witness new supernovae that signal the death of massive stars. Astronomers have measured an excess of X-ray radiation in the first few minutes of collapsing massive stars, which may be the signature of the supernova shock wave first escaping from the star. The findings have come as a surprise to Dr Rhaana Starling, of the University of Leicester Department of Physics and Astronomy whose research is published in the ...