High school graduation ceremonies are typically called "commencement" for a good reason. Life goes on after high school. The pomp and circumstances marks an end, but also a beginning. A transitional moment like this involves more than just putting on a nice reception. It is a good time for parents to review the status of their graduates' health care arrangements. This starts with making sure there is coverage under an appropriate insurance policy. But you should also realize that, once your child turns 18, you will not have the same ability to direct his or her medical ...

This release is available in Spanish and French. Women feel their emotions more intensively than men when a conflict arises within the couple. Conversely, it is men –who mostly express "powerful emotions" as wrath or despise– who cause conflicts more frequently. This is the conclusion described in an article published in the journal Intervención Psicosocial prepared by professors from the Department of Social Psychology of the University of Granada, Inmaculada Valor Segura, Francisca Expósito y Miguel Moya. This study analyzed the type of interpersonal emotions than ...

Boston, MA - Some 25 million people in the United States alone suffer from rheumatoid arthritis or its cousin osteoarthritis, diseases characterized by often debilitating pain in the joints. Now researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) report an injectable gel that could spell the future for treating these diseases and others. Among its advantages, the gel could allow the targeted release of medicine at an affected joint, and could dispense that medicine on demand in response to enzymes associated with arthritic flare-ups. "We think that this platform could ...

President Obama recently acknowledged he is willing to contemplate reforms to the medical malpractice structure and look at options other than the repeal of his health care bill to bring down health care costs. He has placed medical malpractice reforms on the table in order to "rein in frivolous lawsuits," says the LA Times. Previously, House Republicans proposed legislation with a $250,000 cap on pain and suffering damages caused by "any health care goods or services or any medical product." Damage Caps vs. Addressing Medical Errors Many patients' rights advocates ...

A newly discovered magnetic phenomenon could accelerate data storage by several orders of magnitude. With a constantly growing flood of information, we are being inundated with increasing quantities of data, which we in turn want to process faster than ever. Oddly, the physical limit to the recording speed of magnetic storage media has remained largely unresearched. In experiments performed on the particle accelerator BESSY II of Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, Dutch researchers have now achieved ultrafast magnetic reversal and discovered a surprising phenomenon. In magnetic ...

A Short Comparative Genomic Hybridisation (CGH) method has been developed to carry out preimplantation genetic screening (PGS) by analysing all chromosomes and transferring selected embryos to the recipient uterus in the same in vitro fertilisation cycle. This eliminates the need to freeze them. The technique has been applied to the screening of chromosomal anomalies in cases of advanced maternal age, recurrent miscarriages or repeated implantation failures. Short-CGH achieved, as part of a PGS programme, the pregnancy of a woman whose partner is carrier of two chromosomal ...

The most serious consequences of a motor vehicle accident, construction accident or other traumatic event can leave a family facing steep financial challenges. Traumatic brain injuries, horrific burns or other catastrophic injuries can require a lifetime of expensive medical treatment and lost income. One common result of the violent forces that accompany a serious accident is a spinal cord injury. Injuries to the spinal cord, the body's central conduit for delivery of pain and mobility impulses, frequently result in paraplegia or quadriplegia. The disabling harm caused ...

ESA's Herschel space observatory has revealed that nearby interstellar clouds contain networks of tangled gaseous filaments. Intriguingly, each filament is approximately the same width, hinting that they may result from interstellar sonic booms throughout our Galaxy. The filaments are huge, stretching for tens of light years through space and Herschel has shown that newly-born stars are often found in the densest parts of them. One filament imaged by Herschel in the Aquila region contains a cluster of about 100 infant stars. Such filaments in interstellar clouds have ...

Surgical approaches that reduce incision size and recovery time from thyroid surgery work well in children, physician-scientists report. "It brings parents comfort to know it's going to be a small incision, an outpatient surgery with no drains or staples on the skin. We just use some glue for the skin and the recovery is very rapid," said Dr. David Terris, Chairman of the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Georgia Health Sciences University. The results should bring comfort as well with complication rates of minimally invasive thyroid surgery on par ...

The central role in the probate administration process after a person's death is the personal representative, often referred to as an executor or administrator. The personal representative has a series of fiduciary responsibilities, from initiating probate to paying creditor claims and distributing assets as outlined in a will. But a personal representative's duties do not extend to people not named in the decedent's will. Florida law allows for interested parties, including family members and creditors, to file "caveats" with the probate court to ensure that the estate ...

PHILADELPHIA—A widely-available yet expensive radiotherapy technique used to treat prostate cancer patients after surgery has promising benefits—higher dose and less damage to the rectum and bladder—compared to a less precise technique, Thomas Jefferson University researchers document for the first time in a new study published in Practical Radiation Oncology. A team of radiation oncologists and medical physicists, including lead author Amy Harrison, M.S., the medical physics clinical supervisor at Jefferson, show that intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) allows a ...

In low-risk pregnant women, high induction and first-cesarean delivery rates do not lead to improved outcomes for newborns, according to new research published in the April issue of The Journal of Maternal-Fetal and Neonatal Medicine. The finding that rates of intervention at delivery – whether high, low, or in the middle – had no bearing on the health of new babies brings into question the skyrocketing number of both inductions and cesarean deliveries in the United States. "Like virtually all medical therapies and procedures, these interventions entail some risk for ...

Tiny crustaceans called copepods rule the world, at least when it comes to oceans and estuaries. The most numerous multi-cellular organisms in the seas, copepods are an important link between phytoplankton and fish in marine food webs. To understand and predict how copepods respond to environmental change, scientists need to know not only how many new copepods are born, but how many are dying, say biological oceanographers David Elliott of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), and Kam Tang of ...

Driving while under the influence doesn't just mean that you've exceeded the allowable blood-alcohol threshold. In Arizona, you can be arrested even if you had a drink but are not legally intoxicated. Typically, a driver can be charged with a DUI offense if his blood-alcohol content (BAC) is .08 percent or higher. In Arizona, however, two provisions in the state's criminal traffic law allow police to charge drivers with DUI even if their BAC is less than the legal limit. According to the provisions, a driver can be charged with lower BAC levels if seen driving erratically. ...

TORONTO, April 13, 2011 – The role of family in ending youth homelessness is largely ignored in Canada, according to a report released today by York University, though there is evidence that family reconnection works in Australia and the United Kingdom and in one exceptional program in Toronto. Some 65,000 young people are homeless or at risk of homelessness across Canada. In Toronto, approximately 1,700 youth are on the streets on any given night, about half of them in emergency shelters. "In Canada, we really need to radically reform our approach to youth homelessness," ...

Door2Tour.com, the website tour consolidator, has released new figures that show 'staycations' are likely to be around for a long time to come as they report a sales increase of 65% in bookings for UK coach breaks. This could be down to the surge in Internet searches for UK coach holidays and day trips proving that more customers are opting for staycations rather than European coach tours, as they are likely to get a much better deal and possibly avoid unnecessary travelling hassle. The popularity for UK coach breaks is significantly high for the first three months ...

A combination of forest byproducts and crustacean shells may be the key to removing radioactive materials from drinking water, researchers from North Carolina State University have found. "As we're currently seeing in Japan, one of the major health risks posed by nuclear accidents is radioactive iodide that dissolves into drinking water. Because it is chemically identical to non-radioactive iodide, the human body cannot distinguish it – which is what allows it to accumulate in the thyroid and eventually lead to cancer," says Dr. Joel Pawlak, associate professor of forest ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – A new study from Rhode Island Hospital researchers shows that obese individuals with social anxiety related only to their weight may experience anxiety as severe as individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD). The findings directly conflict with the criteria for SAD in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV). The study is now published online in advance of print in the journal Depression and Anxiety. The DSM-IV indicates that an individual with a medical condition should only be diagnosed with social anxiety ...

Thistle has announced the appointment of Paul Watson as general manager of its Thistle London Heathrow hotel. Having worked for the company for almost three years, Watson has proved to be a respected and highly capable manager, and has ambitious plans for the Heathrow airport-based hotel. After finishing university, Watson began his hotel career as Food & Beverage manager at Stapleford Park and quickly developed a passion for the hotel industry. Over the proceeding five years, he has worked his way up to take on a number of senior roles, including operations manager ...

Northern Rock has enhanced its interactive new savings website with an animated video guide to help savers steer their way through the ISA maze. To coincide with the beginning of the new tax year, when the individual tax-free* Cash ISA subscription limit increased to GBP5,340 for this tax year, Northern Rock has now added the informative four minute guide to its recently revamped savings and investment website. The guide is designed to help customers make the most of their money in an accessible way, by highlighting the benefits of tax-free* savings accounts and telling ...

OTTAWA, ONTARIO, CANADA — Canada needs better regulation and oversight of food safety to protect Canadians as the current system is lax, states an editorial in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/doi/10.1503/cmaj.110453. "Canada's public and private sectors are not doing enough to prevent food-borne illnesses," writes Dr. Paul Hébert, Editor-in-Chief with coauthors. "Among the major failings are inadequate active surveillance systems, an inability to trace foods from "farm to fork" and a lack of incentives to keep food safe along the "farm ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- When one cloud of gas meets another, they normally pass right through each other. But now, MIT physicists have created clouds of ultracold gases that bounce off each other like bowling balls, even though they are a million times thinner than air — the first time that such impenetrable gases have been observed. While this experiment involved clouds of lithium atoms, cooled to near absolute zero, the findings could also help explain the behavior of similar systems such as neutron stars, high-temperature superconductors, and quark-gluon plasma, the hot ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- For most of the 20th century, the paradigm of wireless communication was a radio station with a single high-power transmitter. As long as you were within 20 miles or so of the transmitter, you could pick up the station. With the advent of cell phones, however, and even more so with Wi-Fi, the paradigm became a large number of scattered transmitters with limited range. When a user moves out of one transmitter's range and into another's, the network has to perform a "handoff." And as anyone who's lost a cell-phone call in a moving car or lost a Wi-Fi ...

The National Trust has predicted an early and fantastic display of bluebells this year following the mild and dry start to 2011. After an exceptionally cold December, the coldest for more than a century, bluebells are beginning to bloom a couple of weeks earlier than usual following the mildest February in nearly a decade* and the driest March for 40 years that had higher than average sunshine levels**. In 2010 bluebells were emerging up to three weeks late in some parts of the country - the latest for fifteen years - after the coldest winter for more than 30 years. Matthew ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Last year's $2 billion shutdown of European airspace following a volcanic eruption in Iceland alerted everyone to the danger that ash clouds can pose to aircraft engines. Now, researchers have discovered that a new class of ceramic coatings could offer jet engines special protection against volcanic ash damage in the future. For a study published online in the Early View edition of the journal Advanced Materials, the researchers tested two coatings that were originally developed to keep airborne sand from damaging jet engines, and found that the coatings ...