A recent study published in the public policy journal Health Affairs provides important information about the costs of medical malpractice litigation and defensive medicine in comparison to the total cost of U.S. health care. Several researchers from Harvard University authored the study, which reveals that the medical liability system, a vital means for holding health care professionals accountable to accepted standards, amounts to only 2.4 percent of American health care expenditures. In light of Health and Human Services (HHS) data showing that we spent $7,681 per ...

The Second National Distracted Driving Summit revealed some important and creative ideas to combat the deadly problem of distracted driving in the U.S. A variety of lawmakers, lobbyists, state and federal officials, law enforcement officers and safe-driving advocates attended the Washington, D.C. summit to share potential solutions to the dangers that distracted drivers create on our nation's roadways. Many Illinois residents trekked east for the event, including attentive-driving advocate Jennifer Smith. The Deadly Distracted-Driving Problem Smith, of Oak Park, ...

After being fired and prosecuted for anonymously alleging improper medical treatment by a doctor to the state medical board, two Texas nurses agreed to settle a lawsuit against their former employer for $750,000. Nurses Anne Mitchell and Vickilyn Galle began expressing concern about Dr. Rolando G. Arafiles, Jr. to their supervisors in 2008. After their concerns were ignored, nurses Mitchell and Galle filed an anonymous complaint with the Texas Medical Board alleging Dr. Arafiles had: - Failed to diagnose a case of appendicitis - Conducted a skin graft in the emergency ...

The 2005 changes to the U.S. Bankruptcy Code were designed to make it more difficult for Americans to file for bankruptcy. Specifically, the changes were intended in part to push more individuals away from Chapter 7 Bankruptcy and toward Chapter 13 Bankruptcy. The 2005 changes, however, seem to be no match for the current economic realities facing many Americans. Nor have the changes in the law substantially altered an individual's ability to file for bankruptcy protection. In passing the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA), Congress ...

Lloydspharmacy has announced the publication of a new study that reveals 35 per cent of 16-34 year olds had high blood pressure readings. The study, which involved 8568 people over the age of 16, showed that only one in four had an ideal or normal blood pressure reading. Alarmingly, four per cent of those under the age of 34 had readings which showed severe or very severe hypertension. The average blood pressure for the UK gives cause for concern, with a reading of 140/86, pushing the country into the hypertensive category. Across the UK various pressure points were ...

The National Trust has put together a new online guide detailing the best places to enjoy and celebrate autumn, the season of mellow fruitfulness and one of the most dramatic of the four seasons. The new guide, called Awesome Autumn, includes information on everything to do with the season, from where to spot elusive red squirrels to tips on the best places to see autumn leaves and capture the rich gold, orange and red shades on camera. It is available on the National Trust's website. National Trust wardens, rangers and gardeners will be providing regular updates and ...

Experian, the global information services company, has revealed that family frequently comes under suspicion in cases of fraud and that one in three victims claim to know the identity of their fraudster. Those with the easiest access to personal details are amongst the most likely to be accused in cases of identity fraud. More than 5,000 identity fraud victims sought help from Experian in reclaiming their identities in 2009. Experian's analysis shows that one in three fraud victims (31%) claimed to know who hijacked their identity and of those, over two thirds (69%) ...

On October 24, 2010, those attending the Sparrowbush Fire Department's penny social may win a truly unique prize. PersonalizedStoryTimeBook.com will be donating personalized children's books to Sparrowbush Fire Department's penny social event to help them reach their fund-raising goal. "When Danielle Glynn approached us to see if we were interested in donating, without hesitation, we offered to help the local fire house to meet its goal," said Kevin Andersen, owner of www.PersonalizedStorytimeBook.com. "We're more than pleased to help Daniel and the fire house in their ...

The recent DePuy hip recall has already spurred hundreds of DePuy hip lawsuits alleging that the manufacturer made a defective product and knew about heavy metal toxicity issues, but waited far too long to institute a recall. As a result, thousands of product liability lawsuits are expected to be filed against DePuy Orthopedics and its parent company Johnson & Johnson (J&J). DePuy ASR Hip Replacement Systems Are Defective The August 2010 DePuy hip recall of its ASR Hip Resurfacing System and ASR XL Acetabular System has caused countless numbers of injuries to the ...

Rug Pad Corner knows people want the best protection for their hardwood floors. Superior rug pad is a 100% recycled felt rug pad that has been rated as safest rug pad for use under rugs on hardwood floors. Since Superior rug pad does not contain any chemicals, latex, glues or adhesives, it is completely safe for hardwood floors of all finishes. "We are always concerned about our rug pads protecting rugs and floors," states Luis, managing member of Rug Pad Corner. "Customers call with bad experiences with their current rug pad sticking to their hardwood floor. They want ...

The Terminator. The Borg. The Six Million Dollar Man. Science fiction is ripe with biological beings armed with artificial capabilities. In reality, however, the clunky connections between living and non-living worlds often lack a clear channel for communication. Now, scientists with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have designed an electrical link to living cells engineered to shuttle electrons across a cell's membrane to an external acceptor along a well-defined path. This direct channel could yield cells that can read and respond to electronic ...

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- A dozen new epilepsy drugs are giving doctors and patients more options, but making treatment decisions more complex, a Loyola epilepsy specialist reports in the journal Neurologic Clinics. "Clinicians practice in an era of abundance of anti-epileptic drugs," Dr. Jorge J. Asconapé wrote. The new drugs provide "an opportunity to better meet the needs of more patients." Asconapé's article will appear in the November issue of Neurologic Clinics, now available online. Since 1993, the Food and Drug Administration has approved 12 new anti-epileptic drugs: ...

Settling decades of scientific debate, researchers from UCLA and the British Antarctic Survey have discovered the final link between electrons trapped in space and the glow of light from the upper atmosphere known as the diffuse aurora. The finding will help scientists better understand space weather and how space storms affect the Earth's atmosphere from the top down, with potential benefits for the satellite, power-grid and aviation industries, the researchers said. Their research appears Oct. 21 in the journal Nature. Scientists have long known that the diffuse ...

Medical researchers at the University of New South Wales have for the first time shown a link between a father's weight and diet at the time of conception and an increased risk of diabetes in their offspring. The finding, reported in the prestigious journal Nature, is the first in any species to show that paternal exposure to a high-fat diet initiates progression to metabolic disease in the next generation. "We've known for a while that overweight mums are more likely to have chubby babies, and that a woman's weight before and during pregnancy can play a role in future ...

An international CSIRO-led team of astronomers has developed a new way to weigh the planets in our Solar System – using radio signals from the small spinning stars called pulsars."This is first time anyone has weighed entire planetary systems – planets with their moons and rings," said team leader Dr David Champion from Germany's Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie. "And we've provided an independent check on previous results, which is great for planetary science." Measurements of planet masses made this new way could feed into data needed for future space missions. Until ...

WASHINGTON, D.C., (Oct. 21, 2010) -- Over the past decade, Christine Mahoney and a team of scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Maryland have been working to stop the threat of terrorist-based attacks in the form of explosives or explosive-based devices, by providing a sound measurement and standard infrastructure. "Our program encompasses many different aspects of explosives research, from development of measurement standards for trace explosives detection at airports, to the development and application of new metrology for the direct ...

Measuring three biomarkers in a single blood sample may improve physicians' ability to identify patients at high risk of developing chronic kidney disease (CKD), according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. "Our results identify biomarkers that can improve CKD risk prediction," comments Caroline S. Fox, MD, MPH of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's Framingham Heart Study, Framingham, Mass. The study included more than 2,300 participants in the Framingham Offspring Study, a long-term follow-up ...

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and its sophisticated suite of instruments have determined that hydrogen, mercury and other volatile substances are present in permanently shaded soils on the Moon, according to a paper published today in Science. The Lunar Crater Remote Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), which launched with LRO, was intentionally crashed onto the Moon's surface Oct. 9, 2009, while LRO instruments watched. About 90 seconds after LCROSS hit the Moon, LRO flew past the debris plume raised by the impact, while the Lyman Alpha Mapping Project ...

AMES, Iowa – The flu virus uses a shuttle mechanism to relay protons through a channel in a process necessary for the virus to infect a host cell, according to a research project led by Mei Hong of Iowa State University and the Ames Laboratory. The findings are published in the Oct. 22 issue of the journal Science. Hong, an Iowa State professor of chemistry and an associate of the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory, said her research team used solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to determine the structure and workings of the proton channel ...

Beating the flu is already tough, but it has become even harder in recent years – the influenza A virus has mutated so that two antiviral drugs don't slow it down anymore. Reporting their findings in the journal Science, researchers from Florida State and Brigham Young move closer to understanding why not, and how future treatments can defeat the nasty bug no matter how it changes. The two drugs, amantadine and rimantadine, are no longer recommended by the CDC for use against flu. They used to work by blocking a hole in the influenza A virus called the "M2 channel," ...

(Embargoed) Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have reported the exact molecular structure and mechanisms of a major cell signaling pathway that serves a broad range of functions in humans. Up to half of drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration directly or indirectly target G protein-coupled receptors. These receptors, which are proteins that live in the outer membranes of cells, take molecular signals from outside the cell and convert them into responses within – and those responses help control behaviors as ...

Research led by Klaus Stark and Christian Hengstenberg of the University of Regensburg identified a common variant of the cardiovascular heat shock protein gene, HSPB7, which was found to increase risk for dilated cardiomyopathy by almost 50%. Their paper appears on October 28 in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics. Per year, about 6 in 100,000 individuals develop dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), with a higher prevalence in men. This disease is characterized by an enlarged, weakened heart, subsequently affecting the pumping capacity and often leading to chronic heart failure. ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Most marathon runners know they need to consume carbohydrates before and during a race, but many don't have a good fueling strategy. Now, one dedicated marathoner -- an MD/PhD student in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology -- has taken a more rigorous approach to calculating just how much carbohydrate a runner needs to fuel him or herself through 26.2 miles, and what pace that runner can reasonably expect to sustain. The result is a new model, described in the Oct. 21 issue of the journal PLoS Computational Biology, which allows ...

VIDEO: Peter Schultz and graduate student Brendan Hermalyn analyzed data from bits of the Moon’s surface kicked up by a NASA-engineered collision. They found unexpected complexity -- and traces of silver.... Click here for more information. PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Scientists led by Brown University are offering the first detailed explanation of the crater formed when a NASA rocket slammed into the Moon last fall and information about the composition of the ...

STANFORD, Calif. — In a study to be published online Oct. 21 in PLoS Genetics, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have implicated the lack of a protein important in hooking our skin cells together in the most common variety of skin cancer. Depletion of this protein, called Perp, could be an early indicator of skin cancer development, and could be useful for staging and establishing prognoses. These findings' significance may extend beyond skin cancer, as Perp is found in the linings of many of our internal organs, where it plays the same role it ...