Most everyone understands that the Social Security Administration (SSA) provides disability benefits for physical injuries and disabling diseases, from paralysis or traumatic brain injury to chronic painful conditions such as carpal tunnel or back pain. However, the range of conditions covered by Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) includes many debilitating mental disorders. People who cannot work because of major depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, panic or other mental health conditions should understand their eligibility ...

For years, as cash-strapped hospitals have slashed staffing budgets to pad the bottom line, nurses have protested that fewer of them translates into more hospital errors. A new study seems to back up this reasoning, although perhaps not for the reasons you may expect. Nurse Burnout Causes Infections in Thousands of Pennsylvanians Every Year In the past, low hospital staffing has simply been thought of as a numbers game -- fewer caregivers provide a lower standard of care. But, the recent research shows that the effect of subpar staffing levels runs much deeper: it ...

In blazing heat or bitter cold, the Twin Cities has a reputation as one of the most bike-friendly areas in the country. But with motorists, bicyclists and motorcyclists all trying to share the road, building a transit system that is safe for all concerned remains a work in progress. After all, there are still far too many bike accidents in which cars or trucks hit bicyclists. Those accidents are often serious and sometimes fatal. There are also far too many close calls, as well as too many pedestrian accidents. The Minneapolis - St. Paul area may be better than most ...

Blitz USA, recently announced that it is closing its doors after nearly fifty years in operation. The company claims the reason for bankruptcy is unwarranted products liability litigation. News sources across the nation have attacked trial lawyers for the "frivolous lawsuits" that caused the company to close. Lawyers make a politically expedient scapegoat for people with a vested interest in ignoring problems. Here are the facts: More than seventy-five people were horribly burned by Blitz gas cans and many burned to death; all because the company failed ...

To use a basketball analogy, the IRS is increasingly putting on the full-court press when it comes to collecting money from Americans with offshore accounts. This article will discuss how the IRS may use the Foreign Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) to turn up the pressure on Americans with foreign bank accounts to disclose more information and pay more taxes. OVDI and FATCA Since 2009, the agency has already offered two rounds of an Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Initiative (OVDI) aimed at increasing compliance with the reporting requirements on foreign accounts. The ...

In an "equitable distribution" state like Oregon, marital property is divided fairly between the parties to a divorce. The key word in property settlements is "fair." The law does not mandate that each spouse get an exactly equivalent share of the property dollar-for-dollar, only that any marital assets be split fairly between the parties. The fairness of any given property settlement is a fact-specific determination that depends on the types of property in the marital estate, the length of the marriage, the preference for one or both parties to keep ...

The National Skin Care Institute warns consumers of the risk toxic products poise where dry skin treatments are used and how such skin care treatments affect overall general health. When looking for the best lotion for dry skin, there is not enough transparency being seen from big brand names. The fact is, most people are often unaware of the harmful chemical ingredients contained in the products they are bringing into their homes and exposing their families to; many of these dry skin remedies are being marketed as safe for use on the smallest and most vulnerable of us ...

Nancy Reif is proud to announce her participation in the New Jersey Marathon. She feels succeeding in this undertaking will create a stronger degree of self-confidence in her personal and professional life that is hard to match. Nancy plans to follow a strict training regimen in order to prepare for the marathon. She knows that marathons require months of preparation and is ready to make the necessary commitments. "I'm very excited for this marathon. Just like in business, if you approach a challenge with the right mindset and lots of preparation you will succeed," ...

LA JOLLA, CA, August 9, 2012 ¬– Many of us are familiar with prion disease from its most startling and unusual incarnations—the outbreaks of "mad cow" disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) that created a crisis in the global beef industry. Or the strange story of Kuru, a fatal illness affecting a tribe in Papua New Guinea known for its cannibalism. Both are forms of prion disease, caused by the abnormal folding of a protein and resulting in progressive neurodegeneration and death. While exactly how the protein malfunctions has been shrouded in mystery, scientists ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Researchers at Oregon State University have discovered, for the first time in any animal species, a type of "selfish" mitochondrial DNA that is actually hurting the organism and lessening its chance to survive – and bears a strong similarity to some damage done to human cells as they age. The findings, just published in the journal PLoS One, are a biological oddity previously unknown in animals. But they may also provide an important new tool to study human aging, scientists said. Such selfish mitochondrial DNA has been found before in plants, but ...

A Johns Hopkins review of more than 38,000 patient records finds that older adults who sustain substantial head trauma over a weekend are significantly more likely to die from their injuries than those similarly hurt and hospitalized Monday through Friday, even if their injuries are less severe and they have fewer other illnesses than their weekday counterparts. The so-called "weekend effect" on patient outcomes has been well documented in cases of heart attack, stroke and aneurism treatment, Hopkins investigators say, and the new research now affirms the problem in ...

Experimenting with human prostate cancer cells and mice, cancer imaging experts at Johns Hopkins say they have developed a method for finding and killing malignant cells while sparing healthy ones. The method, called theranostic imaging, targets and tracks potent drug therapies directly and only to cancer cells. It relies on binding an originally inactive form of drug chemotherapy, with an enzyme, to specific proteins on tumor cell surfaces and detecting the drug's absorption into the tumor. The binding of the highly specific drug-protein complex, or nanoplex, to the ...

Investigators are well aware of how difficult it is to trace an unlawful act to its source. The job was arguably easier with old, Mafia-style criminal organizations, as their hierarchical structures more or less resembled predictable family trees. In the Internet age, however, the networks used by organized criminals have changed. Innumerable nodes and connections escalate the complexity of these networks, making it ever more difficult to root out the guilty party. EPFL researcher Pedro Pinto of the Audiovisual Communications Laboratory and his colleagues have developed ...

Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center who surveyed employees and patients about a ban on outdoor smoking at the cancer center found that 86 percent of non-smokers supported the ban, as did 20 percent of the employees who were smokers. Fifty-seven percent of patients who were smokers also favored the ban. The study appeared in a recent issue of the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice. "Policies restricting indoor worksite tobacco use have become common over the last 10 years, but smoking bans have been expanding to include outdoor smoking, with hospitals ...

ATLANTA – Scientists from Georgia State University and the Georgia Institute of Technology have found a new way to examine certain properties of electrons in graphene – a very thin material that may hold the key to new technologies in computing and other fields. Ramesh Mani, associate professor of physics at GSU, working in collaboration with Walter de Heer, Regents' Professor of physics at Georgia Tech, measured the spin properties of the electrons in graphene, a material made of carbon atoms that is only one atom thick. The research was published this week in the ...

We're often told to 'count our blessings' and be grateful for what we have. And research shows that doing so makes us happier. But will it actually change our behavior towards others? A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that thinking about what we've given, rather than what we've received, may lead us to be more helpful toward others. Researchers Adam Grant of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Jane Dutton of The Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan wanted ...

Chevy Chase, MD—The Endocrine Society has made revisions to its 2007 Clinical Practice Guideline (CPG) for management of thyroid disease during pregnancy and postpartum. The CPG provides recommendations for diagnosis and treatment of patients with thyroid-related medical issues just before and during pregnancy and in the postpartum interval. Thyroid hormone contributes critically to normal fetal brain development and having too little or too much of this hormone can impact both mother and fetus. Hypothyroid women are more likely to experience infertility and have an ...

This press release is available in German. From protozoans to mammals, evolution has created more and more complex structures and better-adapted organisms. This is all the more astonishing as most genetic mutations are deleterious. Especially in small asexual populations that do not recombine their genes, unfavourable mutations can accumulate. This process is known as Muller's ratchet in evolutionary biology. The ratchet, proposed by the American geneticist Hermann Joseph Muller, predicts that the genome deteriorates irreversibly, leaving populations on a one-way street ...

Scientists of the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine have breathed new life into a forgotten technique and so succeeded in detecting resistant tuberculosis in circumstances where so far this was hardly feasible. Tuberculosis bacilli that have become resistant against our major antibiotics are a serious threat to world health. If we do not take efficient and fast action, 'multiresistant tuberculosis' may become a worldwide epidemic, wiping out all medical achievements of the last decades. A century ago tuberculosis was a lugubrious word, more terrifying than 'cancer' ...

Of course scientists like it when the results of measurements fit with each other. However, when they carry out measurements in nature and compare their values, the results are rarely "smooth". A contemporary example is the ocean's nitrogen budget. Here, the question is: how much nitrogen is being fixed in the ocean and how much is released? "The answer to this question is important to predicting future climate development. All organisms need fixed nitrogen in order to build genetic material and biomass", explains Professor Julie LaRoche from the GEOMAR | Helmholtz Centre ...

DURHAM, N.C.-- Duke researchers may have found a promising stem cell therapy for preventing osteoarthritis after a joint injury. Injuring a joint greatly raises the odds of getting a form of osteoarthritis called post-traumatic arthritis, or PTA. There are no therapies yet that modify or slow the progression of arthritis after injury. Researchers at Duke University Health System have found a very promising therapeutic approach to PTA using a type of stem cell, called mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), in mice with fractures that typically would lead to them developing ...

CAMBRDIGE, Mass. — For decades, academic and industry researchers have been working on control algorithms for autonomous helicopters — robotic helicopters that pilot themselves, rather than requiring remote human guidance. Dozens of research teams have competed in a series of autonomous-helicopter challenges posed by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI); progress has been so rapid that the last two challenges have involved indoor navigation without the use of GPS. But MIT's Robust Robotics Group — which fielded the team that won the last ...

Boston, MA—Migraines currently affect about 20 percent of the female population, and while these headaches are common, there are many unanswered questions surrounding this complex disease. Previous studies have linked this disorder to an increased risk of stroke and structural brain lesions, but it has remained unclear whether migraines had other negative consequences such as dementia or cognitive decline. According to new research from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), migraines are not associated with cognitive decline. This study is published online by the British ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – August 10, 2012) A faulty gene linked to a rare blood vessel disorder has led investigators to discover a mechanism involved in determining the fate of possibly thousands of proteins working inside cells. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists directed the study, which provides insight into one of the body's most important regulatory systems, the ubiquitin system. Cells use it to get rid of unneeded proteins. Problems in this system have been tied to cancers, infections and other diseases. The work appears in today's print edition of the journal ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Why, after millions of years of evolution, do organisms build structures that seemingly serve no purpose? A study conducted at Michigan State University and published in the current issue of The American Naturalist investigates the evolutionary reasons why organisms go through developmental stages that appear unnecessary. "Many animals build tissues and structures they don't appear to use, and then they disappear," said Jeff Clune, lead author and former doctoral student at MSU's BEACON Center of Evolution in Action. "It's comparable to building ...