Did you know that there have been lengthy delays at North Carolina's State Crime Laboratory? The waiting period for test results has been so lengthy that prosecutors have dismissed criminal cases. Local news sources suggest that a budget reduction and fewer lab employees have resulted in at least a year-long delay in criminal cases. Reasons for Delays According to The Herald Sun, multiple factors are contributing to the problem. First, caseloads are increasing, which means more lab submissions. The North Carolina State Attorney General's office notes the crime lab ...

Ohio recently passed new distracted driving laws that may have implications for vehicular negligence, injury and even homicide cases. For individuals accused of vehicular negligence, injury or homicide, these new laws may help prove that the accused did not intend to injure the victim, by allowing them to more readily point to the victim's own distracted behavior. Ohio's New Distracted Driving Laws It is currently illegal for Ohio drivers to use their cell phones to text while driving. For adults, the new law is a secondary offense, meaning that drivers must be committing ...

A recent study from a team of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine researchers have found that more than one in four intensive care unit (ICU) patients who died suffered some degree of misdiagnosis. While the number of deaths (over 40,000) is quite sizeable, because of the variability of of the cause of death, this issue has received little study. The lead author of the report, Bradford Winters, M.D., Ph.D., comments that, "Our study shows that misdiagnosis is alarmingly common in the acute care setting." The study found that 28 percent of patients ...

Many people don't realize that when they pay into the Social Security fund through payroll deductions, they not only invest in future retirement benefits, but also in the Social Security Disability Insurance program. SSDI benefits are monthly cash payments to people who are unable to work, meet the official definition of disability and who meet the federal government's other eligibility requirements. Eligibility requirements are very exact and detailed. In general terms, to be insured under the program and eligible for SSDI payments upon disability, a person must ...

This month marks the fiftieth anniversary of New York's Family Court. As the system passes this milestone, a family court judge recently reflected on its progress and the new programs available to help Long Island families navigate difficult issues. Family Courts are equipped to handle the particular challenges involved in divorces, like child custody disputes. In the judge's experience, Family Court has allowed the justice system to respond to changes in society like more frequent divorces and complex custody arrangements. In response to long-standing family problems ...

The Holiday Inn Express & Suites Newberry SC Hotel offers convenient lodging to Newberry College alumni and guests attending the 2012 Homecoming celebration. Homecoming will take place Tuesday, October 9 - Saturday, October 13. The Alumni Association at Newberry College is sponsoring a variety of events during Homecoming, which include: - Women and Men's Soccer vs. Anderson - Class of 1962 - 50th Class Reunion Dinner - Homecoming Carnival, Dance, and Fireworks - Homecoming Parade - Football - Newberry vs. Wingate Tickets are required for entry into some Homecoming ...

The Rezidor Hotel Group, one of the fastest growing hotel companies worldwide and a member of the Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group, announces the very first Park Inn by Radisson hotel in Senegal: The Park Inn by Radisson Dakar. It features 122 guest rooms and is scheduled to open in Q4 2014. This signing brings Rezidor's total African hotel portfolio to 49 hotels with 11,000 rooms in operation and under development, and further strengthens the group's position as one of the leading international operators on the continent. "Park Inn by Radisson is our young and ...

A new report from Experian, the global information services company, has revealed European businesses risk losing billions of Euros as a result of failure to tackle simple payment errors. The move to a single SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) payment system - designed to simplify and streamline processing operations for domestic and international payments - will expose out-of-date account data and other errors that were previously overcome through a patchwork of locally implemented fixes. SEPA becomes mandatory in February 2014 for Eurozone countries and 2016 for businesses ...

Starfire Cigs has met high marks like My 7's and V2 in the industry on all fronts and has made the top tier of requirements to get the bronze medal for a combination of quality in products, customers service, price, warranty, and selection. Smokers who are looking to switch from the known deadly effects of tobacco smoking need to know that they are spending their hard earned money on a product and company that will provide quality, service and selection. E cigarettes are known to save smokers over 50% on the cost of smoking tobacco, but if they choose a bad company ...

Rare earth and precious metals will not disappear any time soon, and many valuations are now very reasonable, it could be time to take a closer look at owning property that produces these valuable assets. Britannia Wealth has a unique way for its clients to own these tangible mining commodities that have the potential for an extremely robust future. Their program offers a more diversified way to target Precious metals and rare earths while doing so at a reasonable cost and less risk. One such tangible commodity segment that Britannia Wealth has been dealing with is the ...

LIVERMORE, Calif. -- One of the unsolved mysteries of contemporary science is how highly organized structures can emerge from the random motion of particles. This applies to many situations ranging from astrophysical objects that extend over millions of light years to the birth of life on Earth. The surprising discovery of self-organized electromagnetic fields in counter-streaming ionized gases (also known as plasmas) will give scientists a new way to explore how order emerges from chaos in the cosmos. This breakthrough finding was published online in the journal Nature ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – About five miles from Chicago O'Hare International Airport, scientists have located the smallest known coyote territory ever observed. For at least six years, a coyote community has maintained its existence within about a third of a square mile. "That's an indication that they don't have to go far to find food and water. They're finding everything they need right there, in the suburbs of Chicago," said Stan Gehrt, an associate professor of environment and natural resources at Ohio State University who has led the tracking of coyotes around Chicago for ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Warming temperatures in Ohio are a key driver behind changes in the state's landscape, and non-native plant species appear to be responding more strongly than native wildflowers to the changing climate, new research suggests. This adaptive nature demonstrated by introduced species could serve them well as the climate continues to warm. At the same time, the non-natives' potential ability to become even more invasive could threaten the survival of native species already under pressure from land-use changes, researchers say. The research combines analyses ...

Atmospheric aerosol particles have a significant effect on climate. An international team of researchers has now discovered that a chemical process in the atmosphere called aging determines to a major extent the concentration and the characteristics of aerosol particles. To date, this aspect has not been accounted for in regional and global climate models. In the Muchachas [Multiple Chamber Aerosol Chemical Aging Experiments] project, the team has not only managed to demonstrate the effects of aging but has also been able to measure these. Their findings have been published ...

A new study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden demonstrates that a change in the ECG wave called the QRS prolongation is associated with a higher rate of heart-failure mortality. According to the team that carried out the study, which is published in the scientific periodical The European Heart Journal, the discovery suggests that more heart-failure cases than the most serious could be helped by pacemakers. Heart failure, which takes a multitude of forms, is one of the most common causes of hospitalisation and death in the West. While there are several effective treatments ...

Researchers from the University of Exeter Medical School have for the first time identified the mechanism that protects us from developing uncontrollable fear. Our brains have the extraordinary capacity to adapt to changing environments – experts call this 'plasticity'. Plasticity protects us from developing mental disorders as the result of stress and trauma. Researchers found that stressful events re-programme certain receptors in the emotional centre of the brain (the amygdala), which the receptors then determine how the brain reacts to the next traumatic event. These ...

The results from comparative analysis of this population demonstrate the risk of developing dementia increased by 50% for subjects who consumed benzodiazepines during the follow-up period, compared with those who had never used benzodiazepines. Although this study does not confirm a cause and effect relationship, as is the case for all epidemiological research, the researchers recommend increased vigilance when using these molecules, which remain useful in the treatment of insomnia and anxiety in elderly patients. The results of this research are available online on ...

This press release is available in Spanish. One of the critical moments in the final quality of the potato occurs during its storage, as there exists the risk of sprouting or rotting due to pathogenic agents such as bacteria and fungi. In order to avoid this, agricultural engineer David Gómez Castillo carried out research for his PhD on the possibility of substituting the current use of chemical products by treating the tuber with essential oils of mint, caraway, coriander, eucalyptus and clove, "which have proved to be great potential inhibitors in the main problems detected". The ...

These proteins are required for melanocyte stem cell self-maintenance and, as such, correct pigmentation throughout the mice's life span. Without these two proteins, the mice's fur turns white. Their research is published in the review 'Cell Report' and paves the way for serious possibilities in terms of stopping the formation of melanomas, tumours that originate from melanocyte cells. Melanocytes are cells in the organism used for skin, fur and hair pigment. This pigmentation function provides protection from the sun and lends organisms their colour. Malfunctions in ...

An African mosquito species with a deadly capacity to transmit malaria has a perplexing evolutionary history, according to discovery by researchers at the Fralin Life Science Institute at Virginia Tech. Closely related African mosquito species originated the ability to transmit human malaria multiple times during their recent evolution, according to a study published this week in PLoS Pathogens by Igor Sharakhov, an associate professor of entomology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and Maryam Kamali of Tehran, Iran, a Ph.D. student in the department of ...

This press release is available in German. Deep below the silicon surface, the SPRIE method produces regular structures in the micrometer range that refract light. (Photo: KIT/CFN) In modern telecommunications, light carries digital information over kilometers within seconds. Adapted optical materials control the light signals. In the AFM journal, researchers from Berlin, Louvain, and from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology present a method to produce photonic crystals. Their optical properties are adjusted by structures of micrometer size. The method is rapid, cheap, ...

CHICAGO (October 5, 2012) – Vaccinations for flu, tetanus and other common vaccines are increasingly taking place in non-medical settings such as supermarkets and drug stores. This added responsibility for pharmacists increases the risk of needlestick injuries (NSIs), puncture wounds often suffered while preparing or after use of a needle. NSIs can transmit bloodborne pathogens, including hepatitis C and HIV, from an infected patient to the person administering the vaccine. A new report published in the November issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the ...

CHICAGO (October 5, 2012) – Researchers from East Carolina University used a new technique of genotyping to identify the source of a hematology clinic outbreak of Mycobacterium mucogenicum, a gram-positive, acid-fast bacteria found in tap water. This is the first outbreak of M. mucogenicum in an ambulatory care setting; five other outbreaks have been reported in hospital settings since 1995. The study was published in the November issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. Using repetitive ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Ask adults from the industrialized world what number is halfway between 1 and 9, and most will say 5. But pose the same question to small children, or people living in some traditional societies, and they're likely to answer 3. Cognitive scientists theorize that that's because it's actually more natural for humans to think logarithmically than linearly: 30 is 1, and 32 is 9, so logarithmically, the number halfway between them is 31, or 3. Neural circuits seem to bear out that theory. For instance, psychological experiments suggest that multiplying the ...

California, Nevada, and Florida have already made driverless cars street-legal, and continuing advances in the technology have led many to predict that the commercialization of automated vehicles is a real possibility in the not-so-distant future. As driverless vehicles become more commonplace, it is important to understand how humans interact with this new technology. The Human Factors special issue on automation, featuring the latest articles on designing automated vehicles with the driver in mind, is now available online. The October 2012 issue may be found at http://hfs.sagepub.com/content/current. ...