Applying for and receiving Social Security Disability (SSD) benefits can take time. For those with serious, life threatening conditions, a delay can mean the difference between life and death. For this reason, the Social Security Administration (SSA) offers compassionate allowances, which allow the agency to target obviously disabled individuals for expedited benefits consideration based on readily available medical information. The SSA recently held a series of public hearings to determine the necessity of adding cardiovascular disease to its list of compassionate allowance ...

In March, a team of surgeons at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital announced the results of the amazing case of Dallas Wiens, a construction worker from Fort Worth, Texas, who received the most complete face transplant in the United States to date. The 25-year-od construction worker suffered extreme injures from severe burns to his head, when the boom lift he was operating struck a power line. The horrific construction site accident left him in a coma for three months. In the following two and a half years, he underwent 22 surgeries. The damage to his face was ...

Wheezy toddlers who have a sensitivity to house dust mites are more at risk of developing asthma by the age of 12, a University of Melbourne led study has shown. Children aged one – two years with a family history of allergy, who had a positive skin prick test to house dust mites, had a higher risk of developing asthma later in life. Results showed 75 per cent of these children had asthma at aged 12 compared to 36 per cent of children without a positive skin prick test. Lead author Dr Caroline Lodge from the University of Melbourne's School of Population Health said ...

What Google is attempting for books, the University of California, Berkeley, plans to do for the world's vertebrate specimens: store them in "the cloud." Online storage of information from vertebrate collections at the Smithsonian Institution, American Museum of Natural History, National Museum of Natural History in Paris, UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ) and from hundreds of other animal collections around the world – or at least, all collections that include animals with backbones – will make them readily available to academic researchers and citizen ...

Most industries now examine systems, rather than individuals, for ways to improve performance. However, in a June 2011 article in Radiology, researchers reported that the American College of Radiology continues to rely on the outdated practice of peer review, a procedure that could put patients at risk for inadequate or unnecessary treatment and increase the risk of medical malpractice errors. The Downsides of Peer Review Programs In radiology's peer review system, radiologists examine peer reports for reading errors or misdiagnosis. Cincinnati radiologist David B. ...

Florida has a strong legal history of protection of home ownership via tax policy, probate laws and debtor's rights. The foundation of this is the Florida Constitution, which protects homeowners from the forced sale of or lien encumbrances on homestead property by creditors, except for three specific reasons: - Unpaid homestead property taxes and assessments - Mortgages for the purchase, improvement or repair of the homestead - Liens for maintenance, repairs or improvements to the homestead A recent change to one aspect of Florida's homestead law affects a surviving ...

PITTSBURGH—The classic symptoms of schizophrenia – paranoia, hallucinations, the inability to function socially—can be managed with antipsychotic drugs. But exactly how these drugs work has long been a mystery. Now, researchers at Pitt have discovered that antipsychotic drugs work akin to a Rube Goldberg machine— that is, they suppress something that in turn suppresses the bad effects of schizophrenia, but not the exact cause itself. In a paper published in this week's Journal of Neuroscience, they say that pinpointing what's actually causing the problem could lead to ...

TORONTO, Ont., Aug 23, 2011— Hearing dietary advice twice is enough for patients to get the significant benefits of lower cholesterol, according to a new study led by doctors at St. Michael's Hospital and the University of Toronto. "We're seeing more and more people want to take their health into their own hands," said Dr. David Jenkins, the lead author of the study and director of the hospital's Risk Factor Modification Centre. Dr. Jenkins is also Canada's Research Chair in Nutrition and Metabolism at U of T's Department of Nutritional Sciences. Jenkins and his team ...

It may come as no surprise to construction workers, but a new study indicates that the construction industry has the highest number of traumatic brain injuries of all sectors of the U.S. workforce. For a variety of work-related injuries, construction workers may be able to make claims for workers' compensation benefits. The study, The Epidemiology of Fatal Occupational Traumatic Brain Injury in the U.S., analyzed data from the Census of Fatal Occupational Injury and the Current Population Survey, and it was performed by investigators from the National Institute for Occupational ...

TORONTO, Ont., Aug. 23, 2011—Patients often do not renew prescriptions for their chronic diseases after they are released from hospital. The number is even lower if the patient spent time in an intensive care unit, according to a new study by researchers at St. Michael's Hospital and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Studies. "If you don't continue your medication after hospital, that can have consequences, such as hospital readmissions, visits to the emergency department and, in rare cases, death," said Dr. Chaim Bell, the lead researcher. Dr. Bell examined ...

Employing technology that reads the entire DNA code, researchers led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute and the Technical University of Denmark have pinpointed the source of a cholera outbreak in Haiti that killed more than 6,000 people and sickened 300,000. Paul Keim, Regents Professor of biology at Northern Arizona University and director of the TGen Pathogen Genomics Division, served as senior molecular biologist on the study, and NAU's Center for Microbial Genetics and Genomics also contributed. Using whole genome sequencing, which spells out the ...

California Among the Toughest States for Motorcyclists Although motorcyclists in California enjoy great weather and beautiful scenery, the state is still among the most dangerous for bikers, according to a recent survey conducted by Progressive Insurance. According to Dan Kamionkowski, the company's Motorcycle Product Manager, California ranked 42nd in the country for motorcyclists because of the state's high gas prices, population density and motorcycle accident rates, as well as the poor road conditions throughout the state. Thanks to these factors, California is ...

Toronto, Canada – Canadian researchers have found the first evidence that older brains get more benefit than younger brains from learning information the hard way – via trial-and-error learning. The study was led by scientists at Baycrest's world-renowned Rotman Research Institute in Toronto and appears online Aug. 24, 2011 in the journal Psychology and Aging, ahead of the print edition. The finding will surprise professional educators and cognitive rehabilitation clinicians as it challenges a large body of published science which has shown that making mistakes while ...

It is well established that a mood disorder can increase an individual's risk for substance abuse, but there is also evidence that the converse is true; substance abuse can increase a person's vulnerability to stress-related illnesses. Now, a new study finds that repeated cocaine use increases the severity of depressive-like responses in a mouse model of depression and identifies a mechanism that underlies this cocaine-induced vulnerability. The research, published by Cell Press in the August 25 issue of the journal Neuron, may guide development of new treatments for mood ...

The hippocampus is a brain structure that plays a major role in the process of memory formation. It is not entirely clear how the hippocampus manages to string together events that are part of the same experience but are separated by "empty" periods of time. Now, new research published by Cell Press in the August 25 issue of the journal Neuron finds that there are neurons in the hippocampus that encode every sequential moment in a series of events that compose a discrete experience. "The hippocampus is critical for remembering the flow of events in distinct experiences ...

The Eyes are about 50 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo (The Virgin) and are some 100 000 light-years apart. The nickname comes from the apparent similarity between the cores of this pair of galaxies -- two white ovals that resemble a pair of eyes glowing in the dark when seen in a moderate-sized telescope. But although the centres of these two galaxies look similar, their outskirts could not be more different. The galaxy in the lower right, known as NGC 4435, is compact and seems to be almost devoid of gas and dust. In contrast, in the large galaxy ...

A former payroll manager is suing the Princeton Club in a $10 million age discrimination and race discrimination lawsuit. As reported by the New York Daily News, 51-year-old Jo-Ann Garcia was forced out of job in favor of a younger, English-speaking employee by club management. She was fired in March after spending nearly 30 years working at the W. 43rd St. clubhouse. "Racial harassment or race discrimination in the workplace by anyone or against anyone is wrong and illegal," said New York civil rights violations lawyer David Perecman, founder of The ...

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania… A remarkably well-preserved fossil discovered in northeast China provides new information about the earliest ancestors of most of today's mammal species—the placental mammals. According to a paper published August 25 in the prestigious journal Nature, this fossil represents a new milestone in mammal evolution that was reached 35 million years earlier than previously thought, filling an important gap in the fossil record and helping to calibrate modern, DNA-based methods of dating the evolution. The paper by a team of scientists led by Carnegie ...

This research was funded by a grant from the New England Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases (NERCE) at Harvard Medical School. Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) is a 793-bed nonprofit teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School and a founding member of Partners HealthCare, an integrated health care delivery network. BWH is the home of the Carl J. and Ruth Shapiro Cardiovascular Center, the most advanced center of its kind. BWH is committed to excellence in patient care with expertise in virtually every specialty of medicine ...

In the first study of its kind, researchers have linked a natural global climate cycle to periodic increases in warfare. The arrival of El Niño, which every three to seven years boosts temperatures and cuts rainfall, doubles the risk of civil wars across 90 affected tropical countries, and may help account for a fifth of worldwide conflicts during the past half-century, say the authors. The paper, written by an interdisciplinary team at Columbia University's Earth Institute, appears in the current issue of the leading scientific journal Nature. In recent years, historians ...

August 24, 2011 — (Bronx, NY) — Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University (http://www.einstein.yu.edu/home/default.asp) have helped identify a cellular protein that is critical for infection by the deadly Ebola virus. The findings, published in today's online edition of Nature, suggest a possible strategy for blocking infection due to Ebola virus, one of the world's most lethal viruses and a potential bioterrorism agent. The study was a collaborative effort involving scientists from Einstein, the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, ...

Tampa bankruptcy firm Clark & Washington invites individuals experiencing financial difficulties to come in for a free, no-obligation consultation with a Tampa bankruptcy attorney, as part of Clark & Washington's ongoing commitment to provide its clients with quality service and honest, helpful legal advice. In addition to offering a no-obligation consultation, Clark and Washington want to make the public aware of misleading forms of advertising in conjunction with bankruptcy, especially online. If an ad states absolute pricing, then it is probably not accurate. ...

Researchers have used next generation sequencing to trace the source and explain the spread of the latest (seventh) cholera pandemic. They have also highlighted the impact of the acquisition of resistance to antibiotics on shaping outbreaks and show resistance was first acquired around 1982. Whole genome sequencing reveals that the particular cholera type responsible for the current pandemic can be traced back to an ancestor that first appeared 40 years ago in the Bay of Bengal. From this ancestor, cholera has spread repeatedly to different parts of the world in multiple ...

Adding a common antibiotic to the usual daily treatment regimen for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) can reduce the occurrence of acute exacerbations and improve quality of life, reports new results from a clinical trial funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health. The study will appear in the Aug. 25 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. "Acute exacerbations account for a significant part of COPD's health burden," said Susan B. Shurin, M.D., acting director of the NHLBI. "These promising ...

BOSTON, MA (August 24, 2011)—In separate papers published online in Nature, two research teams report identifying a critical protein that Ebola virus exploits to cause deadly infections. The protein target is an essential element through which the virus enters living cells to cause disease. The first study was led by four senior scientists: Sean Whelan, associate professor of microbiology and immunobiology at Harvard Medical School; Kartik Chandran, assistant professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine; John Dye at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious ...