Despite a twenty-five year old law that bans "patient dumping" the practice continues to put uninsured Americans at risk, according to a national team of researchers led by a professor at the George Washington School of Public Health and Health Services. Patient dumping is the practice of turning away or transferring uninsured patients with emergency medical conditions. The study, which appears in the August issue of Health Affairs, suggests that hospitals still practice "patient dumping" which is in violation of the law. The researchers investigate and present five ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A study from University of Illinois economics professors demonstrates a new method to analyze the relationships among voters' issue preferences, the candidates' policy positions and voter behavior. Estimating the distribution of voter preferences and the extent of policy divergence between the candidates' platforms, economics professors Stefan Krasa and Mattias Polborn are able to separate observed changes in voter behavior into those driven by voter radicalization versus those caused by increased policy differences between the two parties. "We have ...

Health coverage for the poorest Americans could be in jeopardy in many states as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling last month on the Affordable Care Act, according to a new legal analysis. The report examines federal and state Medicaid options following the United States Supreme Court's ruling in NFIB v Sebelius and appears in the August issue of the journal Health Affairs. "Some states will use the court's decision as an excuse to delay or refuse to participate in the expansion of Medicaid as outlined in the Affordable Care Act," says lead author of the report, ...

URBANA – The trade in ivory was largely outlawed in 1989, but poaching continues and remains a serious threat to the African elephant. Seizures of large amounts of ivory, sometimes over a ton, continue to occur. Research by Alfred Roca, an assistant professor at the university, could be the basis for the development of new law enforcement tools. Roca has found a way to determine where the ivory comes from. With funding from the Division of International Conservation of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, he and his collaborators have sampled elephants at 22 locations ...

ZURICH — Though sophisticated three-dimensional imagery is abundant in computer-generated games and movies, a group of researchers from Disney Research, Zürich, University of California, San Diego, Limbic Software, and RWTH Aachen University say they have gained insights to improve the rendering of those images by envisioning a flat, two-dimensional world. The fundamental physics of light is easier to understand in that 2D world than in a 3D environment, they said, and enabled them to develop simplified equations for governing the behavior of light. This in turn allowed ...

VIDEO: An animation of satellite observations shows the progression of Tropical Storm Ernesto from Aug. 4-6, 2012. The animation begins when Ernesto was south of Jamaica and ends when the storm... Click here for more information. Tropical Storm Ernesto continues to track through the Caribbean and satellite data and NOAA hurricane hunter aircraft revealed a strengthening storm mid-day on Monday, August 6. NASA infrared data revealed strong thunderstorms on August 5 that ...

When NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared view of the northwestern Pacific's latest tropical storm, Tropical Storm 13W, the data revealed the bulk of the heavy rainfall on the northern side of the center. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm 13W on August 6 at 0205 UTC (Aug. 5 10:05 a.m. EDT). The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument captured an infrared image of the cloud temperatures that showed the strongest storms (purple) and heaviest rainfall north and east of the center of circulation. Infrared imagery shows temperature and the higher ...

Microbes, sponges, and worms—the side effects of pollution and heavy fishing—are adding insult to injury in Kenya's imperiled reef systems, according to a recent study by the Wildlife Conservation Society and the University of Azores. The authors of the study have found that pollution and overfishing on reef systems have an ecological cascading effect—the proliferation of microbes, sponges, and worms—that further degrade corals, a discovery that underlines the complexity of reefs and possible solutions. The study appears in the online edition of Marine Ecology Progress ...

The sixth tropical storm of the Atlantic Ocean hurricane season formed over the past weekend, and NASA kept an on its progression. Tropical Storm Florence was born in the eastern Atlantic and weakened when it interacted with dry air. On Friday, August 3, the low pressure area known as "System 90L" was being watched for development. It was located south of the Cape Verde Islands off the African coast. By the early evening (Eastern Daylight Time) it quickly organized. System 90L strengthened and became Tropical Storm Florence in the eastern Atlantic. Over August 4 and 5 ...

ZURICH — Scientists have yet to fully unravel the mysteries of rainbows, but a group of researchers from Disney Research, Zürich, UC San Diego, Universidad de Zaragoza, and Horley, UK, have used simulations of these natural wonders to unlock the secret to a rare optical phenomenon known as the twinned rainbow. Unlike the more common double-rainbow, which consists of two separate and concentric rainbow arcs, the elusive twinned rainbow appears as two rainbows arcs that split from a single base rainbow. Sometimes it is even observed in combination with a double rainbow. ...

"Pants on fire" isn't the only problem liars face. New research from the University of Notre Dame shows that when people managed to reduce their lies in given weeks across a 10-week study, they reported significantly improved physical and mental health in those same weeks. Funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, the "Science of Honesty" study was presented recently at the American Psychological Association's 120th annual convention. "We found that the participants could purposefully and dramatically reduce their everyday lies, and that in turn was associated ...

Two NASA satellites have captured data on the activity of Typhoon Haikui as it nears the China coast. NASA's Terra satellite provided a visible look at the storm, while NASA's Aqua satellite investigated it in infrared light. Both showed some strong thunderstorms within that were likely packing heavy rainfall. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Typhoon Haikui on August 5. The AIRS instrument captured an infrared image of the cloud temperatures that showed the strongest storms and heaviest rainfall in all quadrants of the storm except the northern area. The strongest storms ...

ZURICH – Computer graphic artists often struggle to render smoke and dust in a way that makes a scene look realistic, but researchers at Disney Research, Zürich, Karlsruhe Technical Institute in Germany, and the University of Montreal in Canada have developed a new and efficient way to simulate how light is absorbed and scattered in such scenes. "Our technique could be used to simulate anything from vast cloudscapes, to everyday 'solid' objects such as a glass of orange juice, a piece of fruit or virtually any organic substance," said Dr. Wojciech Jarosz of Disney Research ...

Leslie Henderson is concerned about steroid abuse, not necessarily by sports luminaries like Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire, but rather by adolescents. "There is this disconnect among young people that somehow your emotions, your thought processes—things that have to do with your brain—are separate and different from what steroids may be doing to your body—your muscles, your heart, or your liver, or anything like that," says Henderson, a professor of physiology and neurobiology, and of biochemistry at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. She is also the senior associate ...

MAYWOOD, Il. -- When a patient undergoes a cardiac catheterization procedure such as a balloon angioplasty, there's a slight risk of a stroke or other neurological complication. While the risk is extremely small, neurologists nevertheless may expect to see catheterization-induced complications because so many procedures are performed, Loyola neurologists write in the journal MedLink Neurology. Cardiac catheterizations include diagnostic angiograms, balloon angioplasties and stent placements. More than 1.4 million procedures are successfully performed each year. Cardiac ...

Childhood obesity is on the rise in China, and children and parents there tend to underestimate body weight, according to Penn State health policy researchers. "Because many overweight Chinese children underestimate their weight, they are less likely to do anything to improve their diet or exercise patterns," said Nengliang Yao, graduate student in health policy and administration. "If they don't make changes, they are likely to be obese and have a lot of health problems in the future -- as we often see in the United States already." Children between the ages of 6 and ...

A new study conducted by researchers at the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital and The Ohio State University compared medically attended noncccupational and occupational injuries among U.S. workers with and without disabilities. The study, appearing online in the American Journal of Public Health, found that workers with disabilities are significantly more likely to experience both nonoccupational and occupational injuries than those without disabilities. Rates of nonoccupational and occupational injuries ...

BOSTON – Healthcare providers should take into account differences among racial groups when using hemoglobin A1C levels to diagnose and monitor diabetes, new research from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center suggests. In a study published Aug. 7 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers analyzed National Health and Nutrition Survey data from 2005 to 2008 to examine the association between hemoglobin A1C levels in black and white adults and the risk for retinopathy, an eye complication of diabetes that is detectable early in the disease and can ultimately lead to ...

The first controlled studies of extremely hot, dense matter have overthrown the widely accepted 50-year old model used to explain how ions influence each other's behavior in a dense plasma. The results should benefit a wide range of fields, from research aimed at tapping nuclear fusion as an energy source to understanding the inner workings of stars. The study also demonstrates the unique capabilities of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray laser at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. While researchers have created extremely ...

Scientists have discovered a biological marker that may help to identify which depressed patients will respond to an experimental, rapid-acting antidepressant. The brain signal, detectable by noninvasive imaging, also holds clues to the agent's underlying mechanism, which are vital for drug development, say National Institutes of Health researchers. The signal is among the latest of several such markers, including factors detectable in blood, genetic markers, and a sleep-specific brain wave, recently uncovered by the NIH team and grantee collaborators. They illuminate ...

By some estimates, a third of Earth's organisms live in our planet's rocks and sediments, yet their lives are almost a complete mystery. This week, the work of microbiologist James Holden of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and colleagues shines a light into this dark world. In the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), they report the first detailed data on methane-exhaling microbes that live deep in the cracks of hot undersea volcanoes. "Evidence has built that there's an incredible amount of biomass in the Earth's subsurface, in ...

PULLMAN, Wash.—Forests hammered by windstorms, avalanches and wildfires may appear blighted, but a Washington State University researcher says such disturbances can be key to maximizing an area's biological diversity. In fact, says Mark Swanson, land managers can alter their practices to enhance such diversity, creating areas with a wide variety of species, including rare and endangered plants and animals. "The 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens, for example, has created very diverse post-eruption conditions, and has some of the highest plant and animal diversity in the ...

SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 7, 2012 – Compared with open farmland, wooded "shade" plantations that produce coffee and chocolate promote greater bird diversity, although a new University of Utah study says forests remain the best habitat for tropical birds. The findings suggest that as open farmland replaces forests and "agroforests" – where crops are grown under trees – reduced number of bird species and shifts in the populations of various types of birds may hurt "ecosystem services" that birds provide to people, such as eating insect pests, spreading seeds and pollinating ...

A program designed to encourage more healthful food choices through simple color-coded labels and the positioning of items in display cases was equally successful across all categories of employees at a large hospital cafeteria. In an article appearing in American Journal of Preventive Medicine, a team of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers report that the interventions worked equally well across all racial and ethnic groups and educational levels. "These findings are important because obesity is much more common among Americans who are black or Latino ...

San Diego, CA, August 7, 2012 – Despite the fact that car crashes are the leading cause of death for children older than three years in the U.S. and send more than 140,000 children to the emergency room each year, new research has found that low proportions of U.S. children are using age-appropriate safety restraints and many are placed at risk by riding in the front seat. The research is published in the September issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. The American Academy of Pediatrics issued new Guidelines for Child Passenger Safety in 2011. They ...