People who receive for Social Security retirement and disability benefits all have one thing in common: they are generally among those Americans who must get by on a fixed income. Nonetheless, Social Security benefits are subject to annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs), and increases for 2013 have been announced by the Social Security Administration (SSA). The SSA revealed in October that the more than 60 million Americans who receive Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and retirement benefits will see a 1.7 percent boost ...

Over the course of your lifetime, you've likely accumulated a broad array of possessions. When your time comes, your property will be distributed to your heirs. But will it go where you want it to? "Probate" is the court supervised administration of a person's "estate" (everything you own at the time of your death). If you die in the state of Nevada without a will, you are said to have died "intestate." If you do have a will, a probate court will do its best to respect your wishes, albeit with a degree of discretion and interpretive power. With ...

Of course, grandparents and grandchildren can form extremely tight emotional bonds. Grandparents can be as important as parents for some kids, depending on the family situation. When divorce or separation happens, or other circumstances prevent contact between grandchildren and their grandparents, it can naturally be hard on both the children and grandparents. In these types of situations, many states have laws governing what kinds of rights grandparents have to having their grandchildren live with them or to being able to visit with them. The Texas Practice Guide ...

Ohio homeowners know that today's housing market has diminished the equity in their most important investment. As a result of the housing crisis, many Ohio homeowners are "under water" on their homes, meaning they owe more on their home than it's worth. Still more people with second mortgages or home equity lines of credit have such severe negative equity that their homes are worth less than the amount owed on their primary mortgages. If a homeowner files for a Chapter 13 bankruptcy, money owed on a junior mortgage can be treated as unsecured debt. In that ...

Medication errors cause serious problems for many people every year. Medication errors include combining medications that cannot mix together, being prescribed the wrong medication or taking the wrong dose of a medication. These errors can have major effects on patient health and can make a sick person even sicker. The medical profession sometimes tries to come up with ways to prevent medication errors, and one of these ways is to use electronic medication checklists. New study shows electronic records enhance medication reconciliation Some doctors handwrite medication ...

Many Illinois communities take very aggressive approaches to dealing with the issue of drunk driving. Law enforcement will often publicize DUI campaigns in advance, so that the public is aware of increased patrols in the region. Officials then use this arrest information to determine where to look for drunk drivers in the future, hoping that certain trends can be discovered that can lead to safer roadways. Young motorists often learn about drunk driving laws as soon as they begin to learn how to drive. Illinois, like many other jurisdictions, is a zero tolerance state. ...

Addiction has a crippling effect on one's life. A study performed by a research group based out of Cambridge, Massachusetts, found that many physicians do not properly monitor injured workers after prescribing painkillers. By ignoring treatment guidelines, many injured workers become addicted to drugs such as Oxycontin or Vicodin after long-term use. Another study done by the Workers Compensation Research Institute has shown that one in 12 injured workers that are prescribed painkillers were still using these opioids three to six months after their injury and many of ...

The operating company of Tenaya Lodge near California's Yosemite National Park settled an employee complaint of sexual harassment and retaliation, according to a November 2012 news release by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, called the EEOC. Following an investigation by the Fresno Local Office of the EEOC, the company settled the complaint for $195,000 without admitting any liability. Role of the EEOC The EEOC is the federal agency charged with enforcing federal discrimination in employment laws. With more than 50 field offices across the country ...

Crashes between cars and commercial trucks are particularly devastating because of the sheer size differences between the vehicles. These crashes often involve serious injury or even death. In an attempt to address the problem, Louisiana has put the Department of Public Safety in charge of truck safety. The issue used to be the responsibility of the Department of Transportation. Since the change, fatal truck accidents in Louisiana have dropped by 44 percent. In addition, a new federal law has spurred truck companies to pay more attention to their safety requirements. ...

According to the Veterans Administration, suicide rates among veterans are nearly twice as high as the general population, and account for 20 percent of the suicides nationwide. In an effort to combat the high veteran suicide rate, the VA, the Medical University of South Carolina and the National Institutes of Health have launched a joint investigation into whether omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oil can lower suicide risks. Omega-3s are the primary fats in the brain and are necessary for neural function and brain development; previous studies have shown that omega-3s ...

The Hilton Garden Inn Atlanta Airport Hotel (North), located near Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, recently named Anil Patel their new General Manager. The premier Hartsfield hotel is pleased to welcome Mr. Patel to this position, in which he brings over 20 years of hospitality experience to the property. Patel is an experienced professional whose background includes asset management, hospitality operations, and financial analysis. Prior to joining the Hilton Garden Inn team, Patel most recently served as an Asset Manager for DCT Group and before that ...

The weather outside may be frightful, but that shouldn't keep anyone from enjoying their pool year round. The Atlanta pool repair professionals at Pinnacle Pool Services recommend that Atlanta residents who want to swim despite the weather consider converting their pools into heated pools. Though Atlanta winters are relatively mild in comparison to much of the country, Atlanta residents know that the weather still inevitably gets too cold to use an unheated pool. Converting your pool to a heated pool can considerably increase your available swimming season. Even during ...

The Automotive Recyclers Association (ARA) and the Ohio Auto and Truck Recyclers Association (OATRA) expressed their deep concern with an untenable amendment to Senate Bill 273 that was passed by the Ohio House Insurance Committee this week. The amendment, introduced by Representative Anthony DeVitis, endangers Ohio citizens and further weakens the ability of Ohio law enforcement to access critical information on salvage-titled vehicles and opens salvage auctions to an increasingly large pool of unlicensed and unregulated buyers from in and out of the country. The two ...

Concurrency, Inc., the 2012 Microsoft Central Region Partner of the Year, announced today three upcoming educational events for business and IT managers in the Milwaukee, Madison, and Chicago areas. The presentations will cover how cloud technologies can help cut costs and optimize IT functions across organizations. Nathan Lasnoski, Concurrency's Infrastructure Practice Manager and Microsoft MVP, will share details of Microsoft's new Azure Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering. On the Azure platform, companies can stretch their IT budgets by leveraging Microsoft's ...

The Counter Terrorist Magazine's 28th issue will be available at several events including the NRA Life of Duty ATACTV Law Enforcement & Military Range Day and the 3 Gun Nation Pro Series Event. In addition to these key shooting events you can pick up your copy on the show floor at exhibitor booths throughout the Shot Show. As part of the continuous commitment to make sure that The Counter Terrorist Magazine has the best distribution in the industry, we've partnered with some of the best names in the business to have free copies of the magazine available at their ...

Simplify360, the leading Social Media Management Platform for Social Business Analytics and Multichannel Engagement announces its entry into the Korean market with Vibenet, Korea as a strategic business partner. The company launched the Korean version of its website site followed by the Analytics Engine in the local language. It became one of the few global tools providing Sentiment Analytics in Korean. "Korea is a really interesting market for us to explore. Unlike in India or the US, Korea has many popular local networking sites, which have added new dimensions ...

Countless marketing articles circulate on the web and in business magazines, giving many useful tips on how to market your business. However, many of them don't identify the root cause of many marketing plans' failures. So many marketing plans fail to get off the ground because people don't actually sit back and take the time to consider to WHOM they are marketing. Identifying your ideal client - and therefore finding out your target market - is a necessary step in setting up any business, as it helps to ensure you waste no resources or time in marketing to the wrong ...

US Residential Asset Fund, LLC (http://usresifund.com/), implemented a unique strategy by launching as an REO- (real estate-owned) to-Rental fund. Christopher J. Crippen, the Fund's manager, announced, "We put together a strategy that allows us to capitalize on the tremendous opportunities available in the REO-to-Rental markets and to support the communities we invest in. US Residential Asset Fund's investment strategy is focused on acquiring, renovating, leasing, managing, and exiting distressed single-family properties in multiple U.S. metropolitan areas. Tenants ...

People are able to detect, within a split second, if a hurtful action they are witnessing is intentional or accidental, new research on the brain at the University of Chicago shows. The study is the first to explain how the brain is hard-wired to recognize when another person is being intentionally harmed. It also provides new insights into how such recognition is connected with emotion and morality, said lead author Jean Decety, the Irving B. Harris Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at UChicago. "Our data strongly support the notion that determining intentionality ...

By following certain rules, scientists can prepare architectural plans for building ideal protein molecules not found in the real world. Based on these computer renditions, previously non-existent proteins can be produced from scratch in the lab. The principles to make this happen appear this month in Nature magazine. The lead authors are Dr. Nobuyasu Koga and Dr. Rie Tatsumi-Koga, a husband-and-wife scientific team in Dr. David Baker's lab at the University of Washington Protein Design Institute. The project benefited from hundreds of thousands of computer enthusiasts ...

A study dating the age of more than 1 million single-letter variations in the human DNA code reveals that most of these mutations are of recent origin, evolutionarily speaking. These kinds of mutations change one nucleotide – an A, C, T or G – in the DNA sequence. Over 86 percent of the harmful protein-coding mutations of this type arose in humans just during the past 5,000 to 10,000 years. Some of the remaining mutations of this nature may have no effect on people, and a few might be beneficial, according to the project researchers. While each specific mutation is ...

Fly larvae fed on alcohol-spiked food for a period of days grow dependent on those spirits for learning. The findings, reported in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, on November 29th, show how overuse of alcohol can produce lasting changes in the brain, even after alcohol abuse stops. The report also provides evidence that the very human experience of alcoholism can be explored in part with studies conducted in fruit flies and other animals, the researchers say. "Our evidence supports the long-ago proposed idea that functional ethanol tolerance is produced by ...

By using noninvasive stimulation, researchers were able to temporarily improve the ability of people with spinal cord injuries to use their hands. The findings, reported on November 29th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, hold promise in treating thousands of people in the United States alone who are partially paralyzed due to spinal cord injury. "This approach builds on earlier work and highlights the importance of the corticospinal tract—which conducts impulses from the brain's motor cortex to the spinal cord and is a major pathway contributing to voluntary ...

This press release is available in German. Now, scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) have looked into the origin of Tregs and uncovered a central role played by the protein IkBNS. Armed with this knowledge, the researchers hope to manipulate Tregs in order to either inhibit or activate the immune system. Biochemist Prof. Ingo Schmitz and his team have now published their findings in the scientific journal Immunity. The immune system is a complex network of different types of cells and chemical messengers. The regulatory cells and other immune ...

MADISON – In efforts to understand what influences life span, cancer and aging, scientists are building roadmaps to navigate and learn about cells at the molecular level. To survey previously uncharted territory, a team of researchers at UW-Madison created an "atlas" that maps more than 1,500 unique landmarks within mitochondria that could provide clues to the metabolic connections between caloric restriction and aging. The map, as well as the techniques used to create it, could lead to a better understanding of how cell metabolism is re-wired in some cancers, age-related ...