Monthly Archives: January 2014

Breaking the Shackles of Apartheid in Medicine: Frank Lipman at TEDxLowerEastSide – Video

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Breaking the Shackles of Apartheid in Medicine: Frank Lipman at TEDxLowerEastSide
Dr. Frank Lipman is the acclaimed Integrative Physician who has worked with Donna Karan, Kevin Bacon and Gwyneth Paltrow, to name just a few. From a very you...

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Breaking the Shackles of Apartheid in Medicine: Frank Lipman at TEDxLowerEastSide - Video

Tweaking MRI to Track Creatine May Spot Heart Problems Earlier, Penn Medicine Study Suggests

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Newswise PHILADELPHIA A new MRI method to map creatine at higher resolutions in the heart may help clinicians and scientists find abnormalities and disorders earlier than traditional diagnostic methods, researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania suggest in a new study published online today in Nature Medicine. The preclinical findings show an advantage over less sensitive tests and point to a safer and more cost-effective approach than those with radioactive or contrasting agents.

Creatine is a naturally occurring metabolite that helps supply energy to all cells through creatine kinase reaction, including those involved in contraction of the heart. When heart tissue becomes damaged from a loss of blood supply, even in the very early stages, creatine levels drop. Researchers exploited this process in a large animal model with a method known as CEST, or chemical exchange saturation transfer, which measures specific molecules in the body, to track the creatine on a regional basis.

The team, led by Ravinder Reddy, PhD, professor of Radiology and director of the Center for Magnetic Resonance and Optical Imaging at Penn Medicine, found that imaging creatine through CEST MRI provides higher resolution compared to standard magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), a commonly used technique for measuring creatine. However, its poor resolution makes it difficult to determine exactly which areas of the heart have been compromised.

Measuring creatine with CEST is a promising technique that has the potential to improve clinical decision making while treating patients with heart disorders and even other diseases, as well as spotting problems sooner, said Reddy. Beyond the sensitivity benefits and its advantage over MRS, CEST doesnt require radioactive or contrast agents used in MRI, which can have adverse effects on patients, particularly those with kidney disease, and add to costs.

Today, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based stress tests are also used to identify dead heart tissuewhich is the warning sign of future problems (coronary artery disease, for instance)but its reach is limited. MRI is often coupled with contrast agents to help light up problem areas, but it is often not sensitive enough to find ischemic (but not yet infarcted) regions with deranged metabolism, said Reddy.

After a heart attack, different regions of the heart are damaged at different rates. This new technique will allow us to very precisely study regional changes that occur in the heart after heart attacks, enabling us to identify and treat patients at risk for developing heart failure before symptoms develop, said study co-author Robert C. Gorman, MD, professor of Surgery, and director of Cardiac Surgical Research at Penn Medicine.

To demonstrate CESTs ability to detect heart disease, the researchers applied the creatine CEST method in an MRI scanner, in healthy and infarcted myocardium (muscle tissue in heart) in large animals. In the process, the nuclear magnetization of amine (NH2) creatine protons is saturated by a radiofrequency pulse from the MRI. After the exchange with water, the degree of saturation is observed as the water signal drops, and thus the concentration of creatine becomes apparent. (In the body, creatine is converted to creatinine, which can be measured through blood and urine tests and is an important tool for assessing renal function.)

The team showed that the creatine CEST method can map changes in creatine levels, and pinpoint infarcted areas in heart muscle tissue, just as MRS methods can. However, they found, CEST has two orders of magnitude higher sensitivity than MRS. That advantage could help spot smaller damaged areas in the heart missed by traditional methods, the authors say.

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Tweaking MRI to Track Creatine May Spot Heart Problems Earlier, Penn Medicine Study Suggests

KC osteopathic medical school starts expansion

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The Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences is in the first phase of a $60 million, five-year expansion plan.

It's a step forward for a university that is recovering from controversy that began in 2009, when then-president Karen Pletz was fired and several administrators resigned. Pletz was later charged with embezzling more than $1.5 million, engaging in money laundering and falsifying tax returns. The university sued Pletz and she countersued before she committed suicide in November 2011.

All litigation involving the school and Pletz has been settled, The Kansas City Star reported ( http://bit.ly/1aHOFHC).

The new construction "demonstrates that we are committed to move forward," said Marc B. Hahn, the osteopathic medical school's president and CEO. "The only thing that we can control is what we do now. We have a great story to tell."

Work began two months ago to convert Weaver Auditorium into an academic center, and the administration building is being renovated. Other upgrades, which have not been fully detailed, are planned for the Strickland Education Pavilion and classrooms in Smith Hall. And in the future, the clinical training center at Kesselheim Hall is expected to be replaced by a 33,000-square-foot medical simulation building and clinical training facility.

Hahn, who began his job last July, said he also plans to improve the university's relationship with the city, particularly in the northeast area where the university has been located since 1916.

The university recently agreed to allow seven of its professors to treat patients at the Samuel U. Rodgers Health Center, a clinic for low-income residents, said university spokeswoman Lisa Cambridge. Faculty and medical students also work with neighborhood residents to tend a community garden that produces 2,000 pounds of fruit and vegetables a year.

With nearly 1,000 medical students, the university is the 14th largest medical school by class size in the country. It is the largest in Missouri or Kansas and is the second leading producer of primary care physicians in the two states.

The university also hopes to increase its enrollment by 50 percent or more through its two bioscience master's programs, additional bioscience programs and the possible opening of satellite campuses.

"As we do well, so does the neighborhood," Cambridge said.

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KC osteopathic medical school starts expansion

Sweet land of… conformity?

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Americans like to see themselves as rugged individualists, a nation defined by the idea that people should set their own course through life. Think of Clint Eastwood rendering justice, rule-bound superiors be damned. Think of Frank Sinatra singing My Way.

The idea that personal liberty defines America is deeply rooted, and shared across the political spectrum. The lifestyle radicals of the 60s saw themselves as heirs to this American tradition of self-expression; today, it energizes the Tea Party movement, marching to defend individual liberty from the smothering grasp of European-style collectivism.

But are Americans really so uniquely individualistic? Are we, for example, more committed individualists than people in those socialist-looking nations of Europe? The answer appears to be no.

For many years now, researchers worldwide have been conducting surveys to compare the values of people in different countries. And when it comes to questions about how much the respondents value the individual against the collective that is, how much they give priority to individual interest over the demand of groups, or personal conscience over the orders of authority Americans consistently answer in a way that favors the group over the individual. In fact, we are more likely to favor the group than Europeans are.

Surprising as it may sound, Americans are much more likely than Europeans to say that employees should follow a bosss orders even if the boss is wrong; to say that children must love their parents; and to believe that parents have a duty to sacrifice themselves for their children. We are more likely to defer to church leaders and to insist on abiding by the law. Though Americans do score high on a couple of aspects of individualism, especially where it concerns government intervening in the market, in general we are likelier than Europeans to believe that individuals should go along and get along.

American individualism is far more complex than our national myths, or the soap-box rhetoric of right and left, would have it. It is not individualism in the libertarian sense, the idea that the individual comes before any group and that personal freedom comes before any allegiance to authority. Research suggests that Americans do adhere to a particular strain of liberty one that emerged in the New World in which freedom to choose your allegiance is tempered by the expectation that you wont stray from the values of the group you choose. In a political climate where liberty is frequently wielded as a rhetorical weapon but rarely discussed in a more serious way, grasping the limits of our notion of liberty might guide us to building Americas future on a different philosophical foundation.

The image of America as the bastion of libertarianism is a long-established one. Our Founding Fathers stipulated a set of personal rights and freedoms in our key documents that was, by the standards of that day, radical. The quintessentially American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, in Self-Reliance, extolled the person who does not defer to outside authority or compromise his principles for the sake of any collectivity family, church, party, community, or nation.

This quality in the American character struck observers from overseas, including Alexis de Tocqueville, who in his 1830s book, Democracy in America, famously tied the relatively new word individualism to what seemed so refreshingly new about the Americans. Popular culture today reinforces this image by making heroes of men (its almost always men) who put principle above everything else, even if perhaps especially if that makes them loners.

But in modern America, when you look at real issues where individual rights conflict with group interests, Americans dont appear to see things this way at all. Over the last few decades, scholars around the world have collaborated to mount surveys of representative samples of people from different countries. The International Social Survey Programme, or ISSP, and the World Value Surveys, or WVS, are probably the longest-running, most reliable such projects. Starting with just a handful of countries, both now pose the same questions to respondents from dozens of nations.

Their findings suggest that in several major areas, Americans are clearly less individualistic than western Europeans. One topic pits individual conscience against the demands of the state. In 2006, the ISSP asked the question In general, would you say that people should obey the law without exception, or are there exceptional occasions on which people should follow their consciences even if it means breaking the law? At 45 percent, Americans were the least likely out of nine nationalities to say that people should at least on occasion follow their consciences far fewer than, for example, the Swedes (70 percent) and the French (78 percent). Similarly, in 2003, Americans turned out to be the most likely to embrace the statement People should support their country even if the country is in the wrong.

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Sweet land of... conformity?

D.C. Notebook: Lee gives Paul a drone for his birthday

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D.C. Notebook: Lee gives Paul a drone for his birthday

What do you get the libertarian senator who has just about everything? That was the conundrum facing Sen. Mike Lee with his tea party buddy Sen. Rand Pauls birthday fast approaching. Lee decided to go with a gag gift, buying a tiny, addictively fun, drone.

Lee and Paul have been tight since they both were elected to the Senate in 2010 and given Pauls concern with drones used to target terrorists the senator held the floor for 13 hours last year lambasting the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to kill people domestically without due justice Lee thought his birthday surprise would elicit a laugh. It did.

"My good friend, Senator Mike Lee from Utah, gave me a drone," Paul said Wednesday night on Fox Newss On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.

The Kentucky Republican said he hadnt yet figured out what to do with his new toy thats the size of his hand but he had one idea.

"You may wonder, what am I going to do with a drone? Well, its got a laser. And Ive been trying to get invited to the Democrat lunch for about a year now and they wont invite me. So you know what? I think Im going to send my drone in."

Of course, Senate rules probably wouldnt permit a senator using a drone to spy on the other side of the aisle, but Paul said he was planning to "check" to see if its possible.

Go Weber Utahs federal delegation was all over the celebration of Weber State Universitys 125 anniversary. Lee turned his weekly Jell-O with the Senator event into a tribute, featuring purple gelatin with white whipped cream in homage to the schools colors. Lee posed for an Instagram shot holding a cup of Utahs favorite dessert.

And Lee made sure to celebrate the schools history in a speech to the Senate, even though hes a Brigham Young University graduate.

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D.C. Notebook: Lee gives Paul a drone for his birthday

The Virgin Islands Daily News – Official Site

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ST. THOMAS - The owner of the Sapphire Beach Resort erected barricades Thursday to prevent the public from parking on the resort's property, raising the question of public beach access in the territory.

The new restriction is the latest action taken by the property's new owner, Dean Morehouse of Beachside Associates.

For years, the gravel parking area to the left of the main entrance has been used by locals and visitors coming to enjoy Sapphire Beach.

ST. THOMAS - With a new chief executive officer at the helm, Innovative is poised to take on the competitors that soon will enter the marketplace with the launch of the territory's V.I. Next Generation Network.

The V.I. Next Generation Network was formed after the territory was awarded $107 million in federal grants to build the territory's first open access broadband network.

When the government project was awarded, Innovative already was working on its own project to upgrade the old telecom system to a hybrid coaxial cable and fiber-optic network. The Next Generation Network is expected to be completed in the next six months.

ST. THOMAS - A New Jersey woman was jailed early Thursday morning after police said she pulled a police officer's hair and scratched her face.

Ritika Mehta, 31, was arrested at 2 a.m. Thursday and charged with aggravated assault and battery of a police officer. Her bail was set at $25,000.

V.I. Police Officer Kira Browne responded to another officer's request for assistance with a drunken couple fighting near "Quiet Mon Pub" in Cruz Bay, St. John, according to the probable cause fact sheet.

ST. CROIX - An employee who was shot during a robbery at a metal works in Estate Glynn on Thursday morning was the second person shot on the island in two days.

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The Virgin Islands Daily News - Official Site

Islands hit hard by storms now waiting for help

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Islands hit hard by storms now waiting for help

Monday, January 13, 2014

WE all know Christmas is a time for catching up with friends and family, even those spending the festive period abroad.

CFFAM rainn Mhr (Comharchumann Forbartha & Fostaochta) is a community group that manages a number of services for the 500-plus islanders, from library books to youth activities.

During the week the CCFAM twitter account tweeted that Eircom customers may ring the Customer Charter on 1800 40 00 00 and can ask to get a refund of line rental for the days that they were without phone service over Christmas and New Year following the recent storms.

Phone services to some homes on the island were knocked out long before Storm Christine came and caused yet more damage. The logistics of getting crews out to islands for repairs can be tricky ferries to and from rainn (also called Arranmore) were cancelled or cut some days.

Its a hazard and a fact of life for many islanders who live away from the mainland, but the ferocious winds and the damage caused by huge waves has meant many inhabitants of islands from Bere to Inishbofin and beyond are totting up the cost and waiting for repairs.

Writing on her Aran Islands Ireland Blog, Elisabeth Koopmans posted photographs of iche na gCoinnle beaga (Night of the little candles) and outlined how because of the ongoing chain of storms afflicting Inis Mein, the past four weeks were more or less coloured by agitation and unrest.

Living on an island there always will be vivid memories too of loved ones who lost their lives because of the sea. Therefore this whole period of time kept being characterised as one of fear and insecurity.

Over on Inishbofin, the island worst hit by the recent storms, the extent of the hammering dished out by the gales was best illustrated by the destruction of the lighthouse, a literal and metaphorical beacon for life on the islands.

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Islands hit hard by storms now waiting for help

Strong cyclone hits Tonga in South Pacific, killing at least 1 person amid widespread damage

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NUKU'ALOFA, Tonga Authorities were searching remote islands for cyclone victims on Sunday after the most powerful storm to hit Tonga in decades cut a swathe of destruction through this South Pacific archipelago, leaving at least one person dead and several injured.

Relief efforts following Saturday's storm were concentrating on the Ha'apai islands one of Tonga's three island groups between the main island of Tongatapu in the south and the Vava'u islands to the north, Tonga's Director of Emergencies Leveni Aho said.

Cyclone Ian hit Tonga with gusts up to 287 kilometers (178 miles) per hour. The storm was later downgraded from the top of five-scale destructive cyclones to category four, with gusts of up to 250 kph (155 mph). On Sunday, the cyclone was tracking southeast away from Tonga.

Two navy patrol boats carrying tarpaulins, tents and other emergency supplies left Tongatapu to bring help to victims who were cut off in the Ha'apai islands.

Aho said authorities have been unable to make telephone contact with 23 islands, which account for most of the inhabited islands in the Ha'apai group.

"The patrol boats are still out there, going from island to island to scout for information," Aho said.

Ha'apai islands are home to 8,000 people, most of whom live on the devastated islands of Lifuka, where one person died, and Foa.

Aho estimated that hundreds of people on the two islands were taking shelter in church buildings that were being used as evacuation centers.

A New Zealand air force P3 Orion plane made a surveillance flight over the disaster area on Sunday, taking pictures showing the extend of the damage that surprised officials.

Aho said up to 70 percent of the homes and buildings in some areas had been flattened.

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Strong cyclone hits Tonga in South Pacific, killing at least 1 person amid widespread damage

Tonga slammed by Category 5 cyclone, 1 killed

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Tonga, a South Pacific archipelago of 176 islands, was hit by Cyclone Ian Saturday, with winds up to 178 miles per hour. At least one person was killed, and authorities are still searching remote islands for more victims.

Authorities were searchingTonga'sremote islands for cyclone victims Sunday after a powerful storm cut a swath of destruction through this South Pacific archipelago, killing one person and destroying most of the homes in some areas.

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Relief efforts following Saturday's cyclone were concentrating on the Ha'apai islands one ofTonga'sthree island groups between the main island of Tongatapu in the south and the Vava'u islands to the north,Tonga'sDirector of Emergencies Leveni Aho said.

Cyclone Ian hitTongawith gusts of up to 178 miles per hour. The storm was later downgraded from Category 5 the most destructive level to Category 4, with gusts of up to 155 mph. On Sunday, the cyclone was tracking southeast away fromTonga.

Two navy patrol boats carrying tarpaulins, tents and other emergency supplies left Tongatapu to bring help to victims who were cut off in the Ha'apai islands.

Authorities have been unable to make telephone contact with 23 islands, which account for most of the inhabited islands in the Ha'apai group, Aho said.

"The patrol boats are still out there, going from island to island to scout for information," he said.

The Ha'apai islands are home to 8,000 people, most of whom live on the devastated islands of Lifuka, where the person died, and Foa.

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Tonga slammed by Category 5 cyclone, 1 killed

Contact made with Tonga’s isolated islands as relief efforts get underway after Cyclone Ian

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ABC A church with extensive damage in the town of Pangai on Lifuka island, Ha'apai, Tonga.

Tongan authorities say they have made contact with most of the smaller islands battered by Cyclone Ian.

Contact with small northern islands of the Ha'apai group, home to about 8,000 people, was lost when the category five storm packing winds of more than 200 kilometres per hour swept through the area over the weekend.

There's been extensive damage to the islands and at least one person was killed.

Communication and power is still limited in some areas and there is concern for the well-being of residents on low-lying islands.

The director of Tonga's Disaster Management Team, Leveni Aho, says it appears some smaller islands were lucky to escape serious damage.

"The path of the cyclone was very narrow indeed, so it hit some islands, and yet the neighbourhood about 40 to 50 kilometres away was almost untouched," he said.

Mr Aho, who is co-ordinating the emergency response to the disaster, says he's surprised there are not more casualties.

"We haven't had any further reports of any deaths, which is very good indeed, and looking at the amount of devastation it was a miracle that not more than one person has a loss of life."

He says residents on some of the low-lying islands are being moved to higher ground after a sea surge left flooded some of their homes.

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Contact made with Tonga's isolated islands as relief efforts get underway after Cyclone Ian

Four years after passage of Obamacare, health care system remains in crisis

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ST. LOUIS When federal lawmakers agreed in 2010 to pass the Affordable Care Act, they recognized that the U.S. health care system was in desperate straits.

Not only was the cost of health care significantly higher than in other industrialized nations, but Americans were among the unhealthiest populations in the Western world.

Nearly four years later, the system remains in crisis. While the growth of health care spending has slowed, it is still climbing. And despite higher costs, Americans health outcomes have not significantly improved.

Other wealthy nations achieve longer lives, lower infant mortality, better access to care, and higher care quality while spending far less, states a January 2013 report by the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund.

The Affordable Care Act was never intended to immediately halt these basic trends; improving health outcomes and quality of life while cutting costs is a tall order. But the nations volatile, partisan debate over what is popularly known as Obamacare seems to have missed that point.

The tech-savvy Obama administration was expected to deliver a user-friendly website that would increase Americans access to health care by subsidizing insurance coverage. But HealthCare.gov was a bug-ridden disaster. And many consumers have voiced sticker shock over the higher monthly premiums and higher deductibles of insurance plans for 2014 both on and off the online marketplaces, also known as health exchanges.

The stalled rollout has bolstered the new laws opponents, including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, whose quasi-filibuster helped trigger a federal government shutdown last fall. Cruz has blasted the federal mandates on health insurance policies and vowed to repeal every syllable of every word of Obamacare.

The most simple rule of economics is there aint no such thing as a free lunch, Cruz told the Texas Tribune in 2012 when he was running for Senate. Everything you mandate that an insurance policy cover drives up cost, which means there are more and more people that cant afford to get insurance.

But where does that leave us? Regardless of how you view the overall merits, regulatory strictures, or societal costs of Obamacare, consider these facts:

In the United States, health care spending eats up nearly 18 percent of the gross domestic product, which is the sum of all goods and services produced in the country. This figure could reach 21 percent by 2023.

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Four years after passage of Obamacare, health care system remains in crisis

Spanish Speakers Frustrated By Federal Health Care Website

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MIAMI (CBSMiami) People who have tried to sign up for insurance on the Spanish version of the federal health care website have run into their own set of difficulties.

First off the site, CuidadoDeSalud.gov, launched more than two months late.

Another problem, a Web page with Spanish instructions linked users to an English form. Also, translations were so clunky and full of grammatical mistakes that critics say they must have been computer-generated the name of the site itself can literally be read for the caution of health.

When you get into the details of the plans, its not all written in Spanish. Its written in Spanglish, so we end up having to translate it for them, said Adrian Madriz, a health care navigator who helps with enrollment in Miami.

The issues with the site underscore the halting efforts across the nation to get Spanish-speakers enrolled under the federal health care law. Critics say that as a result of various problems, including those related to the website, many people whom the law was designed to help have been left out of the first wave of coverage.

Federal officials say they have been working to make the site better and plan further improvements soon. Also, administrators say they welcome feedback and try to fix typos or other errors quickly.

We launched consumer-friendly Spanish online enrollment tools on CuidadoDeSalud.gov in December which represents one more way for Latinos to enroll in Marketplace plans, said Health and Human Services Department spokesman Richard Olague in an email. Since the soft-launch, we continue to work closely with key stakeholders to get feedback in order to improve the experience for those consumers that use the website.

Still, efforts to enroll Spanish-speakers have fallen short in several states with large Hispanic populations, and critics say the translated version of HealthCare.gov could have helped boost those numbers.

In Florida, federal health officials have not said how many of the states nearly 18,000 enrollees for October and November were Latino, but that group accounts for about one-third of the roughly 3.5 million uninsured people in the state. About 1.2 million people in the state speak only Spanish.

Across the U.S., about 12 percent of the 317 million people in the country speak only Spanish, but federal officials have said less than 4 percent of calls to a national hotline were Spanish-only as of last month.

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Spanish Speakers Frustrated By Federal Health Care Website