Magnitude 5.6 Quake, FIJI ISLANDS REGION
More information is available at: http://global.shakemovie.princeton.edu/event.jsp?evid=C201503172016A. This video from Princeton Global ShakeMovie illustrates the up-and-down velocity of the...
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An expedition to the Galpagos Islands to view the wildlife and scenery that inspired Charles Darwin is, by almost any measure, a trip of a lifetime. But despite the time and expense involved in getting there, travelers in search of luxurious accommodations have had, until recently, to settle for less than fabulous.
The Ecuadorean government is tough on development in this remote, ecologically fragile archipelago some 600-plus miles west of Ecuador's mainland. But last October, Pikaia, a 14-room lodge, opened its high-end, eco-friendly doors on Santa Cruz Island, quietly transforming the landscape. I booked a weeklong stay for December, keen to discover how it might be possible to revel in hedonism while immersing myself in the legendary treasure chest of the natural world.
Darwin spent five weeks in the Galpagos in 1835, and it was during that time that he noticed how the islands, each with its distinct topography, supported distinct species of animals as well. Those observations inspired him to ponder the mystery of how those species evolved, leading, eventually, to his theory of natural selection and survival of the fittest. The rest is science history.
It's not easy to get to the Galpagos from California, but I kept reminding myself that its off-the-beaten-path location has ensured that the islands remain pristine and inhabited by the likes of blue-footed boobies, giant tortoises, Darwin's finches and land iguanas.
My journey took me first to Miami, where I connected for a 41/2-hour flight to Guayaquil, Ecuador. There, I overnighted at Hotel Oro Verde, one of the few five-star hotels in the country's largest city and main port.
Early the following morning, I took a 90-minute flight to Baltra Island, the primary gateway to the Galpagos. I was met by Veronica Maruri, my sporty Pikaia guide who would accompany me for the rest of the week. We were driven from the airport to a ferry, which we boarded for a 10-minute ride to Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island. There we were met by a van and driven one hour to the Pikaia Lodge, which sits on the edge of an extinct volcano and offers sweeping views of the cerulean Pacific Ocean.
My spirits soared as the van snaked up the tree-lined driveway to the hilltop lodge. Although Pikaia, designed by Ecuadorean architect Humberto Plaza, is considered too modern by some local old-timers, I loved it. Its aesthetic is unlike anything else in the Galpagos. Set on a private, 77-acre property, the buildings were created from concrete, glass, recycled steel, bamboo and sustainably grown South American teak.
When I asked at the front desk about Plaza's influences, Andrew Balfour, the general manager, said, "Evolution was the main influence, and we wanted to use recycled and ecological materials, knowing how priceless the environment here is and the desire of the owner to have the lowest impact. He wanted a minimalist design so that nature would be the predominant art."
Pikaia features an infinity lap pool with a 180-degree view over the now-forested crater, a spa, a gym, the Evolution restaurant, the outdoor DNA Bar and an inviting library where nature documentaries about the Galpagos are shown nightly.
Guest rooms are all large. The 880-square-foot Pool Suite comes with its own plunge pool, sitting room, terrace and breathtaking view of the ocean. The non-suite rooms are 650 square feet, and the upstairs Terrace Rooms have floor-to-ceiling glass walls on two sides that give you the impression that you are floating between earth and sky. It's a spiritual awakening every time you open the blinds.
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Galpagos Islands see an evolution in luxury with Pikaia Lodge
People wait for the start of a total solar eclipse from a hill beside a hotel overlooking the sea and Torshavn, the capital city of the Faeroe Islands, Friday, March 20, 2015. For months, even years, accommodation on the remote Faeroe Islands has been booked out by fans who don't want to miss an almost three-minute-long astronomical sensation. Now they just have to hope the clouds will blow away so they can fully experience Friday's brief total solar eclipse. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)(The Associated Press)
A visitor waits for the start of a total solar eclipse on a hill beside a hotel overlooking Torshavn, the capital city of the Faeroe Islands, Friday, March 20, 2015. For months, even years, accommodation on the remote Faeroe Islands has been booked out by fans who don't want to miss an almost three-minute-long astronomical sensation. Now they just have to hope the clouds will blow away so they can fully experience Friday's brief total solar eclipse. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)(The Associated Press)
People watch as a solar eclipse begins over the Eden Project near St Austell in Cornwall, England Friday March 20, 2015. An eclipse is darkening parts of Europe on Friday in a rare solar event that won't be repeated for more than a decade. (AP Photo/PA, Ben Birchall) UNITED KINGDOM OUT: NO SALES: NO ARCHIVE:(The Associated Press)
The total solar eclipse seen from Svalbard, Norway Friday March 20, 2015. An eclipse is darkening parts of Europe on Friday in a rare solar event that won't be repeated for more than a decade. (AP Photo/Haakon Mosvold Larsen, NTB Scanpix) NORWAY OUT(The Associated Press)
People wear protective glasses to watch the solar eclipse at the Kalemegdan citadel in Belgrade, Serbia, Friday, March 20, 2015. Clouds moving over the city allowed only brief views of the partial eclipse. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)(The Associated Press)
TORSHAVN, Faeroe Islands Thousands of sky-gazers on the Faeroe Islands are hoping for the clouds to part so that they can get a clear view of a total solar eclipse.
The tiny island group in the North Atlantic and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard are the only places on land where the sun will be completely obscured by the moon during Friday's eclipse.
Clouds are covering the sky over the capital, Torshavn, but with the sun occasionally breaking through, as the big moment nears.
More than 11,000 tourists, eclipse chasers and scientists with telescopes, cameras and glasses for safe direct solar viewing have invaded the Faeroes for the almost three-minute-long astronomical sensation.
The phenomenon will later be seen in Svalbard, more than 2,000 kilometers (1,270 miles) to the northeast.
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Faeroe Islands and Svalbard get ready for total solar eclipse
Bad weather disrupted the Madeira Islands Open for a second straight day on Friday as organizers were forced to suspend the first round again.
Play was stopped after heavy rain flooded the greens on the Clube de Golf Santo da Serra course, with Denmark's Joachim B. Hansen holding the clubhouse lead after a 4-under 68. He was one shot ahead of England's Andrew Marshall and French pair Adrien Saddier and Jean-Baptiste Gonnet. The four were among roughly half the field able to complete the first round.
Play is scheduled to resume on Saturday.
On Thursday, heavy winds sweeping the Portuguese archipelago kept play from starting and led to organizers reducing the event to 54 holes.
Last year, heavy fog during the first three days of the event forced organizers to reduce it to 36 holes.
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A Beautiful Life. Highline Medical Center Cancer Survivors.
One local ladies inspiring story of overcoming cancer with a team of supportive family members and caring health care professional at High Medical Center, Burien, Washington.
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A Beautiful Life. Highline Medical Center Cancer Survivors. - Video
Expanded Health Care Options Coming To Long Beach
Steps are being taken to replace a hospital ruined by Superstorm Sandy. The plan for Long Beach is a state-of-the-art 24-hour emergency room. CBS2 #39;s Jennifer McLogan reports.
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Nurse practitioners hope for changes in health care laws
Nurse practitioners hope lawmakers will take their side for proposed changes to health care delivery. Subscribe to WYFF on YouTube now for more: http://bit.ly/1mUvbJX Get more Greenville...
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Nurse practitioners hope for changes in health care laws - Video
OPKO Health shares a #39;buy #39; despite high risks?
FBN #39;s Charles Payne, BNP Paribas Cash Equity Trading Head Darren Wolfberg A G Capital CIO Hilary Kramer, NewOak Capital President James Frischling and Penn Financial Group founder Matt...
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Cure Heart-Brain weakness by Gooseberries
SUBSCRIBE OUR CHANNEL FOR REGULAR UPDATES: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=f3healthcare Amla is considered very beneficial for heart. It strengthens heart muscles ...
By: F3 Health Care - Cure yourself with Home Remedies
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VCU TeleMedicine: Care Without Borders
With real-time interactive video and advanced medical software, the Virginia Commonwealth University TeleMedicine Center offers long-distance clinical health care, as well as patient and profession...
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Save Time with Navigate 2 Assessments: Delivering Health Care in America, 6th Edition by Shi Signh
How much time do you spend outside of class? Grading assignments? Helping students? Preparing for class lectures? Save Time with Navigate 2 Assessments.
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Richard T Lee on health care
Part 3 of street interview with Burnaby North MLA Richard T. Lee. Here he is talking about long wait times at Burnaby North Hospital. He briefly tried to blame them on the surgeons, but sort...
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St. Mary #39;s Health Care System - 2015 Women #39;s Choice Award
St. Mary #39;s Heath Care System has earned the 2015 Women #39;s Choice Award as one of America #39;s Best Hospitals for Obstetrics for three consecutive years.
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St. Mary's Health Care System - 2015 Women's Choice Award - Video
Sisode health care
Dr Rajan patil.
By: drrajan patil
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One of the most consequential unknowns in health care is whether the slow growth in spending over recent years will pick up as the economy recovers. Data suggest that in 2014 growth in health-care spendingaccelerated,rising 5% compared with 3.6% growth in 2013.
The largest cost driver in health care is labor, which representsthree-quarters of ambulatoryand two-thirds of in-patient costs. Patterns in health-care employment and wages may offer insight into future patterns in health-care spending.
Growth in health-care jobs has been constant over the past 25 years: from about 8.2 million in 1990 to 14.8 million in 2014. Even the Great Recession did not stop growth in health-care employment. In the 21stcentury, health care has created about as many jobs as the entire non-health-care economy. Between 1990 and 2013, health care became the dominant source of employment in 35 states. Wages have also grown faster in health care than in most other sectors of the economy in recent years.
But the health-care sector cannot continue to add well-paying jobs without eventually passing on those costs. Its something of a mystery to economists why this hasnt occurred in recent years. One possibility is that other, non-labor expenses decreased dramatically, partially buffering the impact of rising labor costs. This has occurred with spending on pharmaceuticals, which has fallen in recent years. But drugs account for only about 10% of total U.S. health spending and are not enough on their own to explain the magnitude of the overall spending slowdown. In addition, drug costs are rising again because of powerful, and expensive, specialty pharmaceuticals: They were up13.1% in 2014. With both labor and pharma costs rising, national health expenditures are likely to rise as well.
Growth in health-care employment has helped to ease the pain of the Great Recession. Eventually, however, something has to give, and that is likely be the pocketbooks of those who pay for care.
David Blumenthal, who was the national coordinator for health information technology from 2009 to 2011, is president of the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that researches health and social policy issues. He is on Twitter: @DavidBlumenthal. David Squires is senior researcher to the president at the Commonwealth Fund.
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TALLAHASSEE The Florida House and Senate rolled out vastly different health care spending plans Thursday, putting the two chambers on a collision course over the state's $77 billion budget.
The dueling health care proposals are $5 billion apart more than the entire budget for the state of Vermont.
The Senate version includes $2.8 billion in federal money to pay for expanded health care coverage, something the House adamantly opposes. It also includes a $2.2 billion program known as the Low Income Pool (or LIP) that helps hospitals treat uninsured, under-insured and Medicaid patients.
Reaching consensus on the two issues will be difficult and could require an extended or special legislative session. For now, leaders in both chambers are holding firm.
"Those are the Senate's priorities," Senate Health and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Ren Garca, R-Hialeah, said Thursday.
The stakes are high. The final budget could expand coverage to nearly 1 million poor Floridians or result in dramatic cuts to safety-net hospitals across the state.
Building the health care budget is more complicated than usual this year because the LIP program is set to end on June 30. The federal government has said it may be willing to approve a replacement program, but no deal has been reached.
There's also the issue of Medicaid expansion, a provision of the federal Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
For the past two years, House Republicans have rejected billions of federal dollars to extend health care coverage to the poor. The Senate is hoping to tap into the money this year, saying it would help hospitals pay for uncompensated care if LIP disappears.
The Senate's proposed $35.2 billion health care budget includes $2.2 billion in LIP money. It also includes a LIP replacement program that would distribute the money to all hospitals based on the services they provide, rather than targeting a few select hospitals.
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Officials highlighted a number of initiatives that have helped both prevent health-care fraud and recoup federal money. Those steps included increased funding to expand the Medicare Fraud Strike Force to nine geographic territories.
Authorities said efforts by the strike force and other initiatives led the Justice Department to open 924 new criminal health-care fraud probes in fiscal 2014. Federal prosecutors actually filed criminal charges in nearly 500 cases, involving more than 800 defendants, and 734 defendants were convicted of health-care-related fraud that year.
Read MoreThe kids aren't all right: 3.3M may lose insurance
Officials also noted how the Affordable Care Act requires the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to use new screening requirements to revalidate all 1.5 million Medicare suppliers and providers.
"As a result of this and other proactive initiatives, CMS has deactivated 470,000 enrollments and revoked nearly 28,000 enrollments to prevent certain providers from re-enrolling and billing the Medicare program," officials said. "Both of these actions immediately stop billing."
CMS also continued a temporary moratorium on the enrollment of new home health and ambulance service providers in six metropolitan areas considered "hot spots" for health fraud: Miami, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Detroit and Philadelphia.
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WASHINGTON With more than 50 congressional repeal votes, a near-death Supreme Court experience and a botched marketplace debut to its credit, the Affordable Care Act has had a tortured five-year existence as the Republican Partys legislative enemy No. 1.
And since President Barack Obama signed the health care measure into law on March 23, 2010, its troubled legislative history isnt close to being fully written.
Yet another Supreme Court case threatens to topple one of the laws main pillars, theres bipartisan support in Congress to eliminate the tax on medical devices one of the laws primary funding mechanisms and a slight majority of Americans still have negative views of the sprawling legislation.
But despite the political head winds, experts say Obamas legacy-defining law is quietly accomplishing the goals it was created to achieve.
The nations uninsured rate has plummeted as more Americans enroll in Medicaid or in federal and state marketplace coverage.
The laws consumer protections and insurance-benefit requirements have improved the quality of coverage for millions of people who get health insurance outside the workplace.
Premiums for marketplace health insurance have largely been reasonable and have increased only moderately thus far. Long-term cost estimates for providing coverage under the law have been falling.
Early Congressional Budget Office projections showed the law would trim the federal budget deficit by $124 billion from 2010 to 2019, while its repeal would increase the deficit by more than $100 billion from 2013 to 2022. The CBO cant update the laws projected impact on the deficit because of forecasting difficulties.
While its too soon to declare a summary judgment on the law, its early success usually would quiet most naysayers.
Most of the dire predictions made by the critics of the ACA have not come to pass, said Drew Altman, president and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation.
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Officials highlighted a number of initiatives that have helped both prevent health-care fraud and recoup federal money. Those steps included increased funding to expand the Medicare Fraud Strike Force to nine geographic territories.
Authorities said efforts by the strike force and other initiatives led the Justice Department to open 924 new criminal health-care fraud probes in fiscal 2014. Federal prosecutors actually filed criminal charges in nearly 500 cases, involving more than 800 defendants, and 734 defendants were convicted of health-care-related fraud that year.
Read MoreThe kids aren't all right: 3.3M may lose insurance
Officials also noted how the Affordable Care Act requires the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to use new screening requirements to revalidate all 1.5 million Medicare suppliers and providers.
"As a result of this and other proactive initiatives, CMS has deactivated 470,000 enrollments and revoked nearly 28,000 enrollments to prevent certain providers from re-enrolling and billing the Medicare program," officials said. "Both of these actions immediately stop billing."
CMS also continued a temporary moratorium on the enrollment of new home health and ambulance service providers in six metropolitan areas considered "hot spots" for health fraud: Miami, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Detroit and Philadelphia.
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Top Health Care Stocks
JNJ +0.70%
PZE +0.29%
MRK +0.06%
ABT +0.55%
AMGN +0.50%
Health care stocks were notching strong gains Friday with the NYSE Health Care Sector Index climbing more than 0.9% and shares of health care companies in the S&P 500 also rising almost 0.9% as a group.
In company news, Celgene ( CELG ) shares climbed to an all-time high Friday after the drugmaker reported that patients with plaque psoriasis maintained improved symptoms over the long term.
The company said improvements in the severity of preexisting nail, scalp and palmoplantar psoriasis achieved at week 16 were maintained in Otezla responders through week 52. Long-term safety profile for up to 104 weeks in ESTEEM 1 was consistent with previously reported data from Otezla clinical trial programs, with no new safety signals and no clinically meaningful changes in laboratory values.
CELG was up 1.5% at $127.26 each in late trade, earlier topping out at a new all-time high of $129.06 a share.
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