The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates there are over 16,000 nursing homes in the United States. While the Nursing Home Reform Act was passed in 1987 to establish standards of care for nursing homes across the United States, allegations of substandard care, abuse and neglect still persist in long-term care facilities. A New York Times report notes that over 90 percent of nursing homes were cited for violations of federal health and safety regulations in 2007. In an effort to help the elderly and their families select the right nursing home, Medicare.gov ...

With the rise in the use of wireless communication, there have been numerous accidents and studies detailing the dangers of texting while driving. According to the Governor's Highway Safety Association, 30 states have laws that ban texting for all drivers. Over one-third of those laws took effect in 2010. While the bans in those 30 states affect all drivers, including operators of commercial motor vehicles, the lack of laws and regulations in the 20 other states lead the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Association to act. As of October 27, 2010, a federal rule will prohibit ...

With the advent of social networking and social media sites, staying connected online has become a major part of people's lives. This is especially true for teenagers. Statistics indicate that over 95 percent of teenagers have an email account and 97 percent of teens report using the Internet at home for personal or school purposes. Though online activity has many positive effects, unfortunately, the incidence and effects of bullying are also felt on the web. According to a report by the National Crime Prevention Council, 43 percent of teens have experienced some form ...

By some estimates, anywhere from 25 to 30 million Americans undergo surgery every year. Over one third of those surgeries require at least one night in the hospital and even more can involve a significant amount of recovery time. However, an increasing number of surgeries are performed on an outpatient basis each year, requiring no hospital stay and leaving it up to the patient to manage their own recovery. The Institute for Safety in Office-Based Surgery (ISOBS), an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing public awareness and improving the safety ...

M&S Money has revealed the results of its latest study which shows that family meetings are back in vogue with Brits who have turned their focus on finances, instead of just the traditional family politics. The new 'family finance' study shows families across the UK are coming together to discuss everything from holidays and TVs to credit cards and broadband. The research found that the majority of family households discuss, research and plan how they spend their money together. 59% of families make all their financial decisions together before buying anything. The ...

The National Trust's carriage museum at Arlington Court is now generating its own income following one of the UK's largest installations of photo-voltaic (PV) cells on a historic building.   The 113 m2 installation near Barnstaple in Devon will generate up to 6.3 megawatt hours (mWh) of energy each year, saving the museum about GBP600 from its electricity bill and generating income of around GBP2,270 per year by feeding energy back into the grid.   The project has been funded by sales of National Trust Green Energy which is supplied by the charity's energy partner, ...

2entertain has announced the release of The Michael Parkinson Collection. The DVD will feature Parkinson's personal choice of the best moments from over 2000 interviews from the entire back catalogue of Parkinson. With a career spanning over 40 years, Michael Parkinson is the most successful and recognised interviewer in the country and one of the nation's favourite television personalities. For the first time ever BBC DVD offers The Michael Parkinson Collection DVD available from 22nd November. The DVD allows viewers to watch Parkie's career, all hand-picked and ...

Littlewoods Europe has announced it will be launching a #wordless Wednesday competition on its blog in the weeks leading up to Christmas. The competition will run weekly on the Littlewoods Europe blog, and customers can enter by simply following the blogs and leaving a comment. Wordless Wednesday sees Twitter and blog users posting pictures to their accounts which require no words as way of an explanation. Wordless Wednesday is similar to other Twitter themed days such as Travel Tuesday and Follow Friday. As part of the competition, Littlewoods Europe will be posting ...

British Airways celebrates the one-year anniversary of the London to New York, business class-only flights to New York. To mark this occasion, the airline took a two-man film crew from BBC's Fast Track programme, which broadcasts on BBC World and the BBC news channel, to film the service from beginning to end. A British Airways spokesman was onboard together with a British Airways gold card holder and frequent flier, who provided interviews from the customer's perspective. British Airways launched the first ever long-haul Club World service from London City airport ...

2entertain has announced the release of 'Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story' on DVD. The DVD features a feature length documentary which shows clips from Eddie's comedy shows, such as 'Dressed to Kill' and 'Sexie', alongside backstage moments as Izzard brainstorms his latest comedy act from scratch. This new Eddie Izzard DVD gives the viewers insight into the much loved comedian's life, and will be available on DVD and from iTunes from 22nd November. Director Sarah Townsend revisits Izzard's remarkable life by weaving a multi-layered tapestry around Eddie's own confessions ...

As I, David Saunders, have been serving on the ATA CSA 2010 Task Force Committee, I have come across a reoccurring issue that has me troubled. Facts show Motor Carrier industry leads FMCSA by a score of "60" to "Zero" and the Public Citizens are in disbelief as the watch these scores unfold. Ordinarily in sports the higher the score, the more you are winning, but with CSA, the higher the score, the more you are losing, and no one likes a losing team, especially the fans, known as the public. As I continue to almost read daily in any given press release or article ...

In an age where so many self-help books are focused on pointing out women's flaws, one author is using her writing to highlight their many strengths. Lindy Hughes' It Never Stays in Vegas offers a fresh take on the mid-life experiences of women that sits in stark contrast to many of the texts lining the self-help sections of bookstores today. In her debut novel, Hughes' focuses on providing a realistic portrayal of one woman's middle years' experience that will resonate with many readers. Her characters show the real-life resilience and strength of women, while staying ...

Icanbuy the leading provider of mortgage rates comparison shopping website today announced that Safa Rashtchy, former Managing Director at Piper Jaffray, was appointed to Icanbuy' s Board of Directors. "Safa has tremendous insight into what consumers are looking for on the Internet. We are very excited to welcome him to Icanbuy's board," said Alex Aydin, Icanbuy's CEO. "I believe that Icanbuy's innovative technology can transform the way consumers shop for the lowest mortgage rates," said Rashtchy. "I am very thrilled to serve on the board of such an exciting startup ...

Since graphene was first isolated in 2004 with the help of Scotch tape, researchers have excitedly turned to the material to discover its potential applications. A single layer of carbon atoms whose applications range from ultrafast electronics to biosensors to flexible displays, graphene is strong, light, transparent, and a conductor of heat and electricity. But what can we do with this new material? As researchers across the globe peel away layer after layer of potential application, Milan Begliarbekov, a doctoral candidate at Stevens Institute of Technology, has found ...

University of Alberta researchers have unearthed a mysterious link between bones of an ancient lizard found in Africa and the biggest, baddest modern-day lizard of them all, the Komodo dragon, half a world away in Indonesia. Biologists Alison Murray and Rob Holmes say the unique shape of the vertebrae links the 33-million-year-old African lizard fossil with its cousin the Komodo, which has only been around for some 700,000 years. "The African fossil was found on the surface of a windswept desert," said Holmes. "It's definitely from the lizard genus Varanus and there ...

1. Early Dialysis Recommendations May Cause More Harm than Good Starting Dialysis when Kidney Function is High Increases Risk of Premature Death Recent guidelines that recommend that kidney disease patients start dialysis before their kidney function has significantly declined may potentially cause harm to patients. When William Clark, MD (Scientist at Lawson Health Research Institute and Professor at The University of Western Ontario, in London, Canada) and his colleagues studied 25,901 patients who started dialysis in Canada between 2001 and 2007, they found that ...

Patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) who are admitted to the hospital during the weekend are at increased risk of death, according to a study presented at the American Society of Nephrology's 43rd Annual Meeting and Scientific Exposition. "Our study highlights poor outcomes for patients with ESRD admitted over the weekend," comments Ankit Sakhuja, MD, a third year resident in internal medicine at The Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. "Further research is needed to identify the reasons for this 'weekend effect' and to institute appropriate interventions." Using ...

Studies in recent years have claimed multiple health benefits of pomegranate juice, including that it is a good source of antioxidants and lowers both cholesterol and blood pressure, especially in diabetic and hypertensive patients. A preliminary study now suggests that it can ward off a number of complications in kidney disease patients on dialysis, including the high morbidity rate due to infections and cardiovascular events, according to a paper being presented at the American Society of Nephrology's 43rd Annual Meeting and Scientific Exposition in Denver, CO. Batya ...

"We were able to show that the benefit of social bonding accrues through 'the manipulation of ones' own and others' social relationships,' which is one definition of politics," said Oliver Schülke of Georg August University Göttingen in Germany. "The bond does not directly affect access to desirable resources but helps males to climb up the social ladder and to stay up there at the cost of other males that lose their status." Earlier evidence had shown that female animals live longer and have more offspring when they form strong bonds with other females. The benefit of ...

TAAD causes thousands of deaths in the United States each year. Although timely surgical repair of aneurysms can prevent death, thoracic aneurysms are often asymptomatic until dissection (tearing of the vessel wall), and there are few recognized risk factors that can be used for screening. "Prospective identification of patients at risk for TAAD using a genetic strategy will be critical to prevent sudden deaths from this treatable disease," explains senior study author Dr. John W. Belmont from Baylor College of Medicine. To begin to unravel the genetic origins of TAAD, ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- The review process being used by the Food and Drug Administration to assess the safety of a faster-growing transgenic salmon fails to weigh the full effects of the fish's widespread production, according to analysis by a Duke University-led team in this week's Science. The salmon, whose genome contains inserted genes from two other fish species, could become the first genetically modified animal approved for human consumption in the United States. The FDA held two days of hearings in September to assess the fish's human and environmental health risks. ...

The pathogen Shigella flexneri invades the cells that line the gut and causes Shigellosis, a disorder characterized by diarrhea and sometimes even death in humans. S. flexneri subverts the normal immune response of the host by interfering with the ability of the infected cell to secrete chemicals called chemokines that stimulate inflammation. Inflammation is a complex response to pathogens that attracts white blood cells to destroy the bacteria. Despite the documented ability of S. flexneri to suppress inflammation in infected cells, intestinal cells do secrete large amounts ...

Researchers have uncovered a fundamental link between the two defining properties of quantum physics. Stephanie Wehner of Singapore's Centre for Quantum Technologies and the National University of Singapore and Jonathan Oppenheim of the United Kingdom's University of Cambridge published their work today in the latest edition of the journal Science. The result is being heralded as a dramatic breakthrough in our basic understanding of quantum mechanics and provides new clues to researchers seeking to understand the foundations of quantum theory. The result addresses the ...

Panama Canal, PanNew data suggest that the Limon and Pedro Miguel faults in Central Panama have ruptured both independently and in unison over the past 1400 years, indicating a significant seismic risk for Panama City and the Panama Canal, according to research published today by the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (BSSA). The Panama Canal is undergoing expansion to allow for greater traffic of larger ships, scheduled for completion by 2014. As part of a seismic hazard characterization for the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) expansion project, Rockwell, ...

Over the last 15 years, astronomers have detected nearly 500 planets orbiting stars in our cosmic neighbourhood, but none outside our Milky Way has been confirmed [1]. Now, however, a planet with a minimum mass 1.25 times that of Jupiter [2] has been discovered orbiting a star of extragalactic origin, even though the star now finds itself within our own galaxy. It is part of the so-called Helmi stream — a group of stars that originally belonged to a dwarf galaxy that was devoured by our galaxy, the Milky Way, in an act of galactic cannibalism about six to nine billion years ...