Employee misclassification can take place in several situations, including when a worker who should be classified as an employee of a business is illegally and improperly treated as a self-employed independent contractor. While some cases of misclassification are the result of honest mistakes or misapplication of employment laws, many businesses deliberately misclassify workers in order to avoid the taxes, benefits and other expenses that employers are legally obligated to pay for their employees. Companies that engage in this practice save money for themselves at the ...

A seven-member federal judicial panel in Idaho recently heard arguments about which jurisdiction is best suited for a consolidation of more than 300 lawsuits against BP and other companies involved in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. According to the Associated Press, some of the nearly two dozen attorneys argued that it might be unfair to move a consolidated case to Houston, where BP would like the proceedings to take place. Most of the plaintiffs appeared to favor New Orleans, as does the Justice Department. No matter where the case is finally heard, it's clear that ...

During the 2010 session, the Florida legislature considered two bills aimed at making significant changes to Florida's alimony and child support laws. Eventually, the two bills were merged into one and the new bill passed both the Senate and House before being signed into law by the Governor. While the alimony modifications became effective July 1, 2010, the child support changes begin to take effect on October 1. The yet-to-be-tested child support requirements include several major changes. For parents affected by the new law, these changes will add more wrinkles to the ...

Each year in the United States, it is estimated that between 44,000 and 98,000 patients die as a result of a preventable medical error, making it the 8th leading cause of death in the country. Medical errors also are responsible for causing injury to one out of every 25 hospital patients and cost the U.S. economy between $17 and $29 billion every year. This fall, five New York City-area hospitals are set to begin a pilot program focused on improving patient safety and reducing preventable medical mistakes, and by doing so reducing costs. During the pilot, the hospitals ...

With the economy sputtering, seeking to recover from the Great Recession that followed the financial meltdown of 2008, Congress worked for more than a year to develop comprehensive financial reform legislation. The result was the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which President Obama signed on July 21. Dodd-Frank contains many features intended to require more transparency in financial transactions, so that elaborately packaged products do not create and disguise excessive risk that can harm unwary investors and consumers. The concerns that ...

Tesco has announced that it is launching its first ever shopping app for iPhone. The Tesco grocery app joins the family of hugely successful Tesco apps, including Clubcard and the Winefinder, which together have now reached over one million downloads. The announcement represents a landmark moment for the supermarket, as this is the first time that Tesco has created a shopping portal that is specifically optimised for the iPhone. Laura Wade-Gery, CEO for tesco.com comments: "We're always looking for ways to make life easier for customers. The iPhone app creates a ...

For the first time ever, riders competing in The Tour of Britain for Team Sky will be raising awareness of deforestation in the Amazon by wearing a Sky Rainforest Rescue inspired kit. The tour kicks off in Rochdale on Saturday 11th September and ends in London the following weekend. Sky Rainforest Rescue is a three year campaign between Sky and WWF to help save a billion trees in the state of Acre, northwest Brazil. Deforestation is now responsible for roughly 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions and an area the size of three football pitches is destroyed every minute ...

Topshop has welcomed a number of collections and collaborations from new designers to be introduced online and at the company's flagship Oxford Street store. While new clothing projects will launch throughout the year, September sees the arrival of new collections from Ashish and Michael Van Der Ham. Michael Van Der Ham will be creating a range of multi-coloured silk scarves which will feature trompe d'oeil patchwork and fringe detailing. This is the first time Topshop has worked with Michael Van Der Ham, and follows his recent NEWGEN sponsorship win. Ashish will ...

Displaysense, the UK's leading supplier of display products, has recently seen a surge in customers ordering display items with the intention of using them for small, short-term projects within empty high street lots. The company first noticed the wave of customers using empty sites when large orders of mannequins and vintage busts were ordered for 24 hour exhibitions set up in these vacant, yet premium high street sites. A rising number of people organising fashion and art exhibitions have been ordering from the UK based display company after securing deals with ...

The multi-talented Italian Bass Player Alessandro Bottura has released a remix of his CD entitled "Morning Grooves," which features his RadioIndy chart-topping single "MayDay Mayhem RMX." The album contains eleven smooth fusion songs of rock, jazz, and pop instrumentals, including another radio favorite "Stern Memories RMX" that has listeners mesmerized when they hear the hard hitting bass playing reminiscent of the Jaco Pastorius masterpieces of early 70's. "Morning Grooves Special Digital Edition" was recorded in Modena, Italy and co-produced via the internet through ...

The popular portal Best Casino Online (www.bestcasinoonline.com) has partnered with Go Casino (www.gocasino.com) to offer their readers an exclusive casino bonus worth up to $21,000 - the largest casino bonus currently available on the Internet. The ground breaking deal was confirmed today and is expected to be hugely popular with casino gamers around the world. "Go Casino is generally regarded as the best online casino out there, so we're delighted to come to agreement with such a high quality establishment" a spokesman for Best Casino Online said yesterday. "We ...

deVere became a corporate member of the CISI in 2009 and was the first international financial advisory group to gain membership since the Institute received its Royal Charter. deVere has encouraged its consultants worldwide to take the CISI (Foundation International Introduction and International Certificate in Wealth Management) exams as part of their ongoing training and career development. "To date, we are delighted to say that over 600 exams have been sat," commented Nigel Green, CEO of the deVere Group. "This industry moves at a fast pace and it is important for ...

The event, which was held in London from 5th to 7th September, was attended by 90 advisers from the Western Europe region. Some of deVere's partners including RBS, Close, Skandia, Jupiter, Generali, Irish Life and Castlestone sponsored the conference and shared their invaluable market insight and expertise with the group's financial advisers. Mike Coady, deVere's Regional Manager for Western Europe said, "The now annual event was a massive success and I am delighted with the outcome. It is important to support our consultants ongoing professional development and we ...

MADISON, WI, September 9, 2010 – That swine manure sprayed on to fields adds valuable nutrients to the soil is well known. But what is not known is whether all that manure is bringing harmful bacteria with it. A new study looks at the levels of nutrients and bacteria in soils of fields that have been sprayed with manure for fifteen years or more. The research team, composed of scientists from the USDA-ARS Crop Science Research Laboratory at Mississippi State, tested soils inside and outside fields of five farms on twenty different soils types. Their results are reported ...

New York, NY, September 9, 2010 – The use of stem cells for research and their possible application in the treatment of disease are hotly debated topics. In a special issue of Translational Research published this month an international group of medical experts presents an in-depth and balanced view of the rapidly evolving field of stem cell research and considers the potential of harnessing stem cells for therapy of human diseases including cardiovascular diseases, renal failure, neurologic disorders, gastrointestinal diseases, pulmonary diseases, neoplastic diseases, ...

A team of University of Oklahoma researchers studying neurobiology in fruit flies (Drosophila) has developed a new method for understanding brain function with potential applications in studies of human neurological diseases. The work is carried out in the laboratory of Bing Zhang, a professor in the OU Department of Zoology, using fruit flies as a model for understanding what happens in the human brain because they share thousands of the same genes with a human. Zhang and his students use a 'reverse engineering' approach to understand how the brain works. "If we ...

The San Diego Supercomputer Center and Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) at the University of California, San Diego, in a collaboration with researchers from Universitat de Barcelona in Spain and the University of Cyprus, have created the first geometric "atlas" of the Internet as part of a project to prevent our most ubiquitous form of communication from collapsing within the next decade or so. In a paper published this week in Nature Communications, CAIDA researcher Dmitri Krioukov, along with Marián Boguñá (Universitat de Barcelona) and Fragkiskos ...

There may be no simple one-size-fits-all approach to improving end-of-life care in ICU settings, according to a recent study from some of the world's leading researchers in palliative care. The study, which will be published online ahead of the print edition of the American Thoracic Society's American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, showed that an intervention designed to improve doctor-patient communication and overall satisfaction of families whose loved ones died in critical care settings failed to improve family satisfaction after the death of ...

Researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine have found that bisphenol A (BPA) released from some plastic resins used in pediatric dentistry is detectable in the saliva after placement in children's mouths. BPA is a widely used synthetic chemical that has been associated with changes in behavior, prostate and urinary tract development, and early onset of puberty. The findings are published in the current issue of Pediatrics. Reins containing BPA are commonly used in preventive and restorative oral care. Children often have their teeth sealed with a dental resin containing ...

Videoconferences may be known for putting people to sleep, but never like this. Dr. Thomas Hemmerling and his team of McGill's Department of Anesthesia achieved a world first on August 30, 2010, when they treated patients undergoing thyroid gland surgery in Italy remotely from Montreal. The approach is part of new technological advancements, known as 'Teleanesthesia', and it involves a team of engineers, researchers and anesthesiologists who will ultimately apply the drugs intravenously which are then controlled remotely through an automated system. This achievement is ...

Small intravenous devices (IVDs) commonly used in the hand or arm do not need to be moved routinely every 3 days. A randomized controlled trial comparing regular relocation with relocation on clinical indication, published in the open access journal BMC Medicine, found that rates of complications were the same for both regimens. Claire Rickard, from Griffith University, Australia, worked with a team of researchers to carry out the study with 362 patients at Launceston General Hospital, Tasmania. She said, "Recommended timelines for routine resite have been extended over ...

The renowned Journal of Biological Chemistry has selected the report of these research findings as one of two "papers of the week" for its September 10, 2010 issue and has chosen the structural model as cover image. Using NMR spectroscopy, Professor Michael Sattler and his team elucidated the spatial structure of the Qua1 region of Sam68, which is responsible for the dimerization of the protein. In collaboration with the research group of Professor Ruth Brack-Werner of the Institute of Virology, the authors showed that this region is essential for the biological function ...

Since their discovery in 2008, a new class of superconductors has precipitated a flood of research the world over. Unlike the previously familiar copper ceramics (cuprates), the basic structure of this new class consists of iron compounds. Because the structure of these compounds differs from the cuprates in many fundamental ways, there is hope of gaining new insights into how the phenomenon of superconductivity arises. In cooperation with an international research group, researchers from Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) have now discovered a magnetic signature that occurs ...

Researchers at New York University's Center for Neural Science have identified a new neurological deficit behind amblyopia, or "lazy eye." Their findings, which appear in the most recent issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, shed additional light on how amblyopia results from disrupted links between the brain and normal visual processing. Amblyopia results from developmental problems in the brain. When the parts of the brain concerned with visual processing do not function properly, problems ensue with such visual functions as the perception of movement, depth, and fine ...

A creative version of a classic engineering technique may improve decisions about building and using supplies of important pediatric vaccines, potentially leading to lower public health costs and healthier children. The United States maintains a six-month supply of common pediatric vaccines to ensure protection from deadly diseases, such as the flu, polio, and diphtheria, despite interruptions in vaccine production. The stockpiles must be replenished as the vaccines are used or expire, and, because the manufacture of vaccines is a laborious and unreliable process, health ...