Electronics that can be bent and stretched might sound like science fiction. But Uppsala researcher Zhigang Wu, working with collaborators, has devised a wireless sensor that can stand to be stretched. For example, the sensor can measure intensive body movements and wirelessly send information directly to a computer. The findings are now being presented in the journal Advanced Functional Materials. Robots of liquid metal, as in the Terminator movies, are probably the best-known cases of deformable electronic systems. But so far this only exists in our imagination. Twisting, ...

Every disability insurer is wary of fraud, and a significant part of their business is ascertaining the legitimacy of disability claims. Sometimes, however, insurance companies take their investigations too far. As increasing numbers of claimants are discovering, some insurance companies use invasive claim-investigation techniques and utilize evidence out of context to unfairly deny claims. Claim Investigation When an insured individual files a claim under a private disability insurance policy, the insurance company conducts an investigation to determine whether the ...

Pregnant women who screen positive for depression are unlikely to receive consistent treatment, researchers say. That may translate to women spending more time in the hospital before babies are even born. The Obstetric Clinics and Resources Study, published in General Hospital Psychiatry, tracked 20 health care providers in six Michigan clinics and revealed a lack of uniformity in addressing perinatal depression. "There are a lot of barriers to translating information into everyday practice situations," said Dr. Christie Palladino, an obstetrician/gynecologist with ...

Even after a U.S. Court of Appeals blocked the enforcement of parts of Arizona's controversial immigration reforms last year, the Florida Legislature attempted to pass similar legislation in their recent session. Neither the House nor the Senate bill addressing immigration reform passed by the end of session in early May, however. So, until the next Florida Legislature session commences, both proponents and protestors of stricter immigration laws in Florida will have to await the fate of the proposed changes. House and Senate Bills Florida House Bill 7089 sought to ...

Children as young as ten are making themselves vomit in order to lose weight and the problem is more common in boys than girls, according to a study of nearly 16,000 school pupils published online early, ahead of print publication, by the Journal of Clinical Nursing. The findings have prompted researchers to issue a warning that self-induced vomiting is an early sign that children could develop eating disorders and serious psychological problems, such as binge eating and anorexia. They also believe that self-induced vomiting can be tackled by making sure that children ...

An international research team led by Japan and that includes the University of Colorado Boulder may have taken a significant step in discovering why matter trumped antimatter at the time of Big Bang, helping to create virtually all of the galaxies and stars in the universe. The experiment, known as the Tokai to Kamioka experiment, or T2K, included shooting a beam of neutrinos underground from the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex, or J-PARC, on the country's east coast to a detector near Japan's west coast, a distance of about 185 miles. Elementary particles ...

The summer holidays are prime opportunities for police to step up driving under the influence (DUI) enforcement, and Memorial Day was no exception. Across the country, DUI checkpoints were in place over the long weekend to deter and catch drunk drivers. But, a new software application, or app, widely available for cell-phone users has some rethinking the efficacy of DUI checkpoints. Early Warning for Drivers DUI checkpoints are temporary sites set up on roads and highways where law-enforcement officers stop every vehicle to check for signs of driver intoxication. ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – One in 10 women experience depression during pregnancy or shortly after giving birth. Although the problem has received increased attention in recent years, little is known about the causes or early-warning signs of pregnancy-related depression. In a study published in the June 2011 issue of Journal of Women's Health, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine offer new clues to help doctors identify at-risk patients and refer them to treatment early on. The researchers surveyed 158 pregnant and postpartum women ...

A cancer diagnosis is not necessarily a death sentence. There are now quite a number of possibilities to treat cancer. In addition to radiotherapy and chemotherapy, so-called radionuclide treatment has also become an important component in the fight against the mutated cells. It involves injecting radioactive elements, so-called nuclides, into the patient's circulatory system. Bonded to special molecules which preferentially attach themselves to cancer cells, the nuclides are pumped through the body by the heart until they finally find their target: a cancer cell. Having ...

If you were injured in a car accident or other serious accident and Medicare paid some of your health bills, your personal injury lawsuit may include reimbursing Medicare for those payments. This is because Medicare has a legal right to reimbursement for the "conditional payments" it provides to injured Medicare recipients. If Medicare is not reimbursed, the government can take legal action against the defendants (insurance companies), the plaintiffs and even the plaintiffs' attorneys. That is exactly what happened in U.S. v. Stricker, a federal court action ...

Calculating child support during a divorce or custody proceeding can be a challenge. The Oregon Child Support Guidelines use each parent's gross income to establish the child support amount ordered in each case. Often, such as in cases where a parent is self-employed, there may be a dispute about how much income a parent actually earns each year. A recent Oregon Court of Appeals case, In Re: Matter of Marriage of Mathews, illustrates the challenge a court can face when presented with this issue. The Administrative Law Judge's Calculation of Gross Income In this ...

The new tool allows users to perform a self-assessment against the Principles and Criteria of the RSB and a self-risk assessment. The online tool also calculates greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of biofuels for each lifecycle production step, from farming to final fuel distribution; this calculation can be done according to various methodologies. The development of the new tool, which is directly accessible (free of charge) at http://buiprojekte.f2.htw-berlin.de:1339/, took about two years and was supported by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO). The ...

A breakthrough in genetic research has uncovered the defect behind a rare hereditary children's disease that inhibits the body's ability to break down vitamin D. This discovery has led researchers to develop the first genetic and biochemical tests that positively identify the disease. Idiopathic Infantile Hypercalcemia (IIH) is among the top ten most common inherited diseases. The researchers estimate that one in every 47,000 people – around 600 Canadians and 6,000 Americans – may suffer from IIH, but there was no way until now of confirming the diagnosis. "Developing ...

Access Legal from Shoosmiths, the national consumer legal services provider, has announced it has hired Nicholas Tubb as its new partner in the medical negligence team. Tubb has joined Access Legal from Challinors' clinical negligence department and will be based in Access Legal's Birmingham office. Tubb has considerable experience in the sector and has specialised in medical negligence claims on behalf of patients and their families for more than 10 years, with a particular interest in complex cases and a wide experience of claims involving surgical errors and ...

Bethesda, Md. (June 16, 2011) – Coaches, physiologists and athletes alike will attest to the importance of warming up before athletic competition. Warming up increases muscle temperature, accelerates oxygen uptake kinetics and increases anaerobic metabolism, all of which enhance performance. However, the question of how long and strenuous a warm-up should be is more contentious, with some in the sports community advocating longer warm-ups and others espousing shorter ones. Now researchers at the University of Calgary Human Performance Laboratory in Calgary, Alberta, Canada ...

RICHMOND, Va., (June 16, 2011) – According to new data published in Clinical Therapeutics, the way a medication is packaged can have a significant impact on whether patients take it as prescribed. The study showed that Shellpak® calendar blister packaging from MeadWestvaco Corp. (NYSE: MWV), a provider of pharmaceutical packaging solutions, was associated with improvement in prescription adherence behavior in patients when compared with traditional pill vials. According to the researchers, a Shellpak-based adherence strategy could provide a substantial cumulative public ...

Voyages Jules Verne has announced the introduction of scheduled flights to its popular programme of escorted tours in Jordan. Replacing the charter arrangement from Gatwick to Aqaba, clients will now fly from Heathrow to Amman with British Midland International (bmi), enjoying a number of additional benefits that include Saturday departures, an extended season (which means a wider choice of departures over a longer period), free connecting bmi flights from Manchester (supplement for other regional airports) and an upgraded flight option where customers can fly in even ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – More than half of the women in a recently published survey reported that near the end of their pregnancies, they took it upon themselves to try to induce labor, mostly by walking, having sex, eating spicy food or stimulating their nipples. Of the 201 women who responded to the survey at a Midwestern hospital, 102, or 50.7 percent, used these or other unprescribed methods to try to bring on labor. Other techniques they tried included exercise, laxative use, acupuncture, masturbation and herbal supplementation. Women who tried these techniques tended ...

FAIRFAX, Va.—Evaluating patients with multiple sclerosis who have narrowed jugular and azygos veins—and the value of widening those veins with angioplasty—warrants careful, well-designed research, noted members of a Society of Interventional Radiology Foundation's Research Consensus Panel. And, the multidisciplinary panel indicated that while specific parameters for a large-scale, pivotal multicenter trial are not now available, that type of study is the "mandatory goal" in exploring a condition called chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency (or CCSVI). "Much work ...

Access Legal, the consumer legal services provider, has announced it will be sponsoring motorcycle racer Leon Hunt in this season's Metzeler National Superstock Championship. Access Legal will be backing the 22-year-old from Brighton in all 12 rounds of the series, which began at Easter, at Brands Hatch. This is the first time that Access Legal has sponsored a rider. Leon is racing for Lincoln-based team AP Kawasaki in the Superstock 1000cc class, which supports the popular MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship. He will be riding a brand new Kawasaki ZX-10R. ...

Building upon previous efforts producing a high-quality de novo genome assemblies of deadly 2011 E. coli O104:H4 outbreak strain (http://www.genomics.cn/en/news_show.php?type=show&id=651), the BGI and their collaborators at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf have now released the first complete map of the genome and plasmids without any assembly gaps. (genome publicly available at ftp://ftp.genomics.org.cn/pub/Ecoli_TY-2482/Escherichia_coli_TY-2482.chromosome.20110616.fa.gz and plasmids at ftp://ftp.genomics.org.cn/pub/Ecoli_TY-2482/Escherichia_coli_TY-2482.plasmid.20110616.fa.gz) BThis ...

Old trees must be protected to save the homes of more than 1,000 different bird and mammal species who nest, says a new study from the University of British Columbia. Most animals can't carve out their own tree holes and rely on holes already formed. The study found that outside of North America, most animals nest in tree holes formed by damage and decay, a process that can take several centuries. The study, published this month in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, examined the holes birds and mammals were using for nesting around the world. The research ...

How researchers classify and quantify causes of death across a population has evolved in recent decades. In addition to long-recognized physiological causes such as heart attack and cancer, the role of behavioral factors—including smoking, dietary patterns and inactivity—began to be quantified in the 1990s. More recent research has begun to look at the contribution of social factors to U.S. mortality. In the first comprehensive analysis of such studies, researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health found that poverty, low levels of education, poor ...

Northern Rock has reduced mortgage rates, making its range even more competitive. As well as reducing selected rates across its core mortgage range by up to 0.50%, it has improved its 2-Year Fixed rate deal available exclusively through Northern Rock's intermediary partners. The product is now available at 2.99% for those with a 30% deposit (70% LTV). All of the remaining reduced deals are available to both purchase and remortgage customers, the latter benefiting from Northern Rock's usual incentive of a free basic valuation and free standard legal costs. Northern ...

As everyone knows, the pharmaceutical industry is struggling to deal with bacteria that have become resistant to common antibiotics. Less well known is the similar struggle in agribusiness to deal with weeds that have become resistant to a herbicide that is widely used in farming practice. The herbicide, first introduced in 1974, is glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup products and also in herbicides produced by other manufacturers. The first case of glyphosate resistance was documented in 1997, and today more than 20 weed species globally are reported ...