Dr. Joseph Coscino, Romeoville podiatrist, is excited to be maintaining a Facebook account to increase the online communication with his patients. He hopes that patients will interact with the page and take advantage of the information it provides. "I am excited that our practice is jumping into the social media world with our Facebook page. I know that many of our patients use this service on a daily basis and I'm glad that we are able to join the conversation. I hope that many of our patients will 'like' our page and start receiving updates from our office," ...

There is no national cap on damages sought in a medical malpractice lawsuit. Instead, each state sets its own caps limiting the amount of compensation a victim can receive following medical malpractice or negligence. In the state of Texas, all medical malpractice lawsuits filed after September, 2003 are limited by the following caps: - $250,000 from doctors and healthcare providers - $250,000 from all hospitals and related institutions, not to exceed $500,000 combined The exception to these caps is when a healthcare provider or institution engaged in criminal ...

Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) was developed as a treatment for sleep apnea over two decades ago. CPAP devices are machines placed next to your bed that pump a steady flow of oxygen into your lungs while sleeping. Oxygen from CPAP machines in delivered through a series of tubes and masks which must be worn at all times to ensure optimal airflow. The delivery mechanisms with CPAP machines are bulky and uncomfortable. Many studies have shown that CPAP machines are ineffective due largely to noncompliance from users. These machines can interfere with sleep due ...

Liposuction offers a number of aesthetic benefits, many of which you may not be aware of. With liposuction, up to ten pounds of excess fatty tissue can be removed from nearly any part of your body, allowing your natural contours and muscle tone to become more visible. In addition, liposuction can smooth lumpy, uneven skin caused by cellulite, resulting in a smooth and youthful appearance. Many types of modern liposuction encourage skin shrinkage and collagen production. These techniques not only remove fat and cellulite, they prompt skin to firm to your muscles, providing ...

A mammogram is a low-dose x-ray taken of breast tissue to detect abnormalities. This method of breast cancer screening has proven particularly effective and is recommended for all women over the age of 50. If you have a family history of breast cancer or other risk factors, your doctor may recommend mammography as early as your 30s or 40s. Other methods of detecting breast cancer include hands-on evaluations and diagnostic tools such as MRIs. The best way to detect breast cancer should be determined by your doctor. Breast Augmentation If you have had breast augmentation, ...

Glaucoma is an eye disease that involves increased pressure within your eyeball, usually caused by fluid build-up. This pressure can eventually damage to your eye's optic nerve, leading to progressive vision loss. Glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness in the United States. Treatment can take a variety of forms, depending on the type and extent of your glaucoma. Types of Glaucoma Eye Drops The most common treatment for glaucoma involves specialized eye drops that are designed to decrease the amount of fluid (called "aqueous humor") in your eye ...

In what one attorney called the "most important change to patent laws since Thomas Jefferson wrote patent laws into the Constitution," the first portion of the America Invents Act, or AIA, went into effect in September 2012. The AIA's major component will go into effect in March 2013. While the AIA had bipartisan support, including that of the Obama administration, only time will tell the true impact of these sweeping changes. A patent is an exclusive property right granted to an inventor by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, known as the USPTO. ...

Many Los Angeles residents are all too familiar with the sight of drivers who are more focused on their cellphones than on the road. In a busy metropolitan area like Los Angeles, the risks of texting while driving are particularly high -- and yet the phenomenon remains alarmingly common. Distracted Driving by the Numbers According to a study by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, distracted driving plays a role in 80 percent of U.S. traffic crashes and 65 percent of near-misses. While all types ...

Risk prediction models developed from an ancillary study of the Prostate Lung Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial (PLCO) may be useful in the public health sector for identifying individuals who are at risk for adverse smoking outcomes, such as relapse among former smokers and continued smoking among current smokers, and those who may benefit from relapse prevention and smoking cessation interventions according to a study published October 26 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. With a projected 226,160 new cases of lung cancer and 160,340 lung ...

VIDEO: An animation of NOAA's GOES-13 satellite observations from Oct. 24-26, 2012, shows Hurricane Sandy crossing eastern Cuba and moving through and exiting the Bahamas. This visualization was created by the... Click here for more information. NASA's TRMM satellite revealed Hurricane Sandy's heavy rainfall and the storm is expected to couple with a powerful cold front and Arctic air to bring that heavy rainfall to the Mid-Atlantic and northeastern U.S. Some forecasters ...

MIAMI, FL – OCTOBER 26, 2012 – A study found several benefits in using the radial artery in the arm as the entry point for angioplasty or percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) compared to the femoral artery in the leg. Results of the STEMI-RADIAL trial were presented today at the 24th annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) scientific symposium. Sponsored by the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF), TCT is the world's premier educational meeting specializing in interventional cardiovascular medicine. Recent data have demonstrated better clinical ...

There are thousands of silver artifacts in museum collections around the world, and keeping them shiny is a constant challenge. So scientists are using new technology to give conservators a helping hand. A team of researchers led by Ray Phaneuf, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, has partnered with The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore to investigate less labor-intensive ways to protect silver artifacts from tarnishing. The new techniques, which might keep silver surfaces shiny for longer than traditional methods, ...

It may sound like a post-season football game for very tiny players, but the "nanobowl" has nothing to do with sports and everything to do with improving the way biofuels are produced. That's the hope of a team of scientists from the Institute for Atom Efficient Chemical Transformations (IACT), an Energy Frontier Research Center led by Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), and including Northwestern University, the University of Wisconsin and Purdue University. The team is using a layering technique developed for microchip manufacturing to build nanoscale (billionth of a meter) ...

Research shows newly developed solar powered cells may soon outperform conventional photovoltaic technology. Scientists from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have demonstrated the first solar cell with external quantum efficiency (EQE) exceeding 100 percent for photons with energies in the solar range. (The EQE is the percentage of photons that get converted into electrons within the device.) The researchers will present their findings at the AVS 59th International Symposium and Exhibition, held Oct. 28 — Nov. 2, in Tampa, Fla. While traditional semiconductors ...

As child reality TV star Honey Boo Boo continues to capture the attention of audiences with her boisterous personality and her own show about life on the child beauty pageant circuit, a new paper published today in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry takes a critical look at the very types of pageants in which she and thousands of other children compete in America every year. The paper, authored by Martina M. Cartwright, a registered dietician and adjunct professor in the University of Arizona's department of nutritional sciences, suggests ...

Scientific research has provided us with a fundamental understanding of how light (via photons) and electricity (via electrons) move within and between materials at the micrometer or nanometer levels, making possible a wide variety of miniature devices such as transistors, optical sensors and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). However, man's knowledge of micro- and nanoscale heat flow is rudimentary at best. Now, a research team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) has developed a novel system for examining and measuring nanoscale thermal conductance ...

Photovoltaic cell efficiency may soon get a big boost, thanks to next-generation antireflection coatings crafted from nanomaterials capable of cutting down on the amount of light reflected away from a cell's surface. Materials boasting a "tunable" refractive index have been developed within the past few years, and they show tremendous potential for photovoltaic applications. Professor E. Fred Schubert, of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering, is investigating ways to exploit this newly gained controllability and ...

Baltimore, MD— The ability of embryonic stem cells to differentiate into different types of cells with different functions is regulated and maintained by a complex series of chemical interactions, which are not well understood. Learning more about this process could prove useful for stem cell-based therapies down the road. New research from a team led by Carnegie's Yixian Zheng zeroes in on the process by which stem cells maintain their proper undifferentiated state. Their results are published in Cell October 26. Embryonic stem cells go through a process called self-renewal, ...

When talking to the key immune system fighters known as T-cells, it helps to speak their language. Now researchers from Columbia University in New York, N.Y., and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia have discovered two new conditions for communication that may help scientists one day harness the power of T-cells to fight diseases such as cancer. The team will present its findings at the AVS 59th International Symposium and Exhibition, held Oct. 28 – Nov. 2 in Tampa, Fla. T-cells flow freely throughout the body and communicate with their partner T-cells, in ...

Silicon is the workhorse of the electronics industry, serving as the base material for the tiny transistors that make it possible for digital clocks to tick and computers to calculate. Now scientists have succeeded in creating near-atomically flat silicon, of the orientation used by the electronics industry, in a room temperature reaction. The flat silicon might one day serve as the base for new biological and chemical sensors. The researchers will present their work at the AVS 59th International Symposium and Exhibition, held Oct. 28 – Nov. 2 in Tampa, Fla. "In essence, ...

When surgeons operate to remove a tumor, determining exactly where to cut can be tricky. Ideally, the entire tumor should be removed while leaving a continuous layer of healthy tissue, but current techniques for locating the tumors during surgery are imprecise. Now a multidisciplinary team from the University of California, San Diego, is developing an alternate means of precisely tagging breast cancer tumors for removal or targeted destruction. They will present the results of their investigations at the AVS 59th International Symposium and Exhibition, held Oct. 28 – Nov. ...

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) are incredibly tiny devices, often built on the scale of millionths of a meter. Conventional MEMS structures tend to be made out of silicon-based materials familiar to the micro-electronics industry, but this ignores a suite of useful materials such as other semiconductors, ceramics, and metals. By using a variety of materials not commonly associated with MEMS technology, a team from Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah has created stronger microstructures that can form precise, tall and narrow 3-D shapes – characteristics ...

BOSTON – Maintaining a healthy body weight may be difficult for many people, but it's reassuring to know that our brains and bodies are wired to work together to do just that—in essence, to achieve a phenomenon known as energy balance, a tight matching between the number of calories consumed versus those expended. This careful balance results from a complex interchange of neurobiological crosstalk within regions of the brain's hypothalamus, and when this "conversation" goes awry, obesity or anorexia can result. Given the seriousness of these conditions, it's unfortunate ...

Alexandria, VA – Much has been written about the court decision passed down earlier this week by an Italian judge, convicting seven members of the Italian Serious Risks Commission to six years in prison. The "L'Aquila Seven" were convicted for inadequate warnings to residents of L'Aquila, Italy, before a magnitude-6.3 earthquake struck the region on April 6, 2009, killing more than 300 people. Though the story has received international attention and ignited tensions throughout the scientific community, little attention has been paid to the exact roles each of the ...

A tragic accident in Connecticut resulted in the hospitalization of five after an Audi A4 crossed a double yellow line on Route 67. The Audi was attempting to navigate a curve in the highway when it lost control and crossed the center line. After entering oncoming traffic the Audi crashed head on with a Honda Civic. The Jaws of Life were needed to help free the driver and a passenger from the Honda before transporting them to the hospital for further treatment. The driver of the Audi and two young passengers were also hospitalized. No charges have been filed for the ...