Michiel Kanis The future of human health care – Innovation Technologie Revolution (HD) – Video

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Michiel Kanis The future of human health care - Innovation Technologie Revolution (HD)
This movie is a project of the SAM 2012 minor. Do you want to take a look in to the future. The gnoes group will show you the consumer insights For more info...

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Michiel Kanis The future of human health care - Innovation Technologie Revolution (HD) - Video

Health care law affects those with insurance through work, too

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Health

Carla K. Johnson and Tom Murphy The Associated Press

18 hours ago

The health care overhaul's reach stretches far beyond the millions of uninsured Americans it is expected to help. It also could touch everything from the drug choices to doctor bills of people who have insurance through work.

The law isn't expected to prompt sudden, radical changes for workers. So you probably won't lose your job due to the overhaul, despite claims by the law's opponents. But benefits experts say there are several other ways the law can leave fingerprints on the benefits of the roughly 149 million people who are covered through their jobs.

Charles Rex Arbogast / AP

David Borris has offered insurance for full-time workers since 1990 and believes the law has stabilized what he pays for insurance premiums.

IS MY JOB SAFE?

Republicans have called the overhaul the "Job-Killing Health Law." This is in part because of the law's requirement that companies with 50 or more workers offer full-time workers defined as those working 30 hours or more health coverage.

Some companies have said they are cutting part-time workers' hours to keep them below that threshold. Texell Credit Union in Temple, Texas, is one.

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Health care law affects those with insurance through work, too

Genetic counseling via telephone as effective as in-person counseling

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

21-Jan-2014

Contact: Karen Teber km463@georgetown.edu Georgetown University Medical Center

WASHINGTON Genetic counseling delivered over the telephone is as effective as face-to-face counseling, finds the largest randomized study to date comparing the two methods. The multi-center study, led by researchers at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, was reported today in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

The landscape of genetic testing has broadened to include a range of diseases, and demand for testing and counseling has greatly increased because of direct-to-consumer marketing, says the study's lead investigator, Marc Schwartz, PhD, co-leader of Georgetown Lombardi's Cancer Prevention and Control Program.

"It's important that all people interested in testing have access to thorough information so they can consider the implications of test results and interpret them in the context of family history," says Schwartz, who is also co-leader of the Fisher Center for Familial Cancer Research at Georgetown. "Counseling on the phone reduces costs and expands genetic counseling and testing access to rural areas, where counseling isn't always available."

While this study was conducted with women considering testing for mutations in the breast or ovarian cancer genes BRCA1 and/or BRCA2, the findings "may extend to genetic counseling for other hereditary cancers and complex conditions in adults such as heart disease," says co-author Beth N. Peshkin, MS, CGC, a professor of oncology and senior genetic counselor at Georgetown Lombardi.

Researchers at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Vermont Cancer Center, Dana Farber Cancer Institute and the Huntsman Cancer Institute participated in this study, which randomized 669 women to receive telephone or in-person genetic counseling. However, of women approached about participating in the study, about one-third declined because they did not want to receive phone counseling.

"In-person conversations can be intimidating and there's a lot to process," says Angela Smith, of Burlington, Vermont, who participated in study.

Smith's counseling for BRCA mutation testing was done via telephone. She says talking to a genetic counselor from home was comfortable. "I'm a bit introverted so for me, talking about something so personal was easier with the 'protection' of the phone."

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Genetic counseling via telephone as effective as in-person counseling

What Happens When Monsanto, the Master of Genetic Modification, Decides to Take Nature’s Path?

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Monsantos new veggies are sweeter, crunchier, and more nutritiouswith none of the Frankenfoods ick factor.

In a windowless basement room decorated with photographs of farmers clutching freshly harvested vegetables, three polo-shirt-and-slacks-clad Monsanto executives, all men, wait for a special lunch. A server arrives and sets in front of each a caprese-like saladtomatoes, mozzarella, basil, lettuceand one of the execs, David Stark, rolls his desk chair forward, raises a fork dramatically, and skewers a leaf. He takes a big, showy bite. The other two men, Robb Fraley and Kenny Avery, also tuck in. The room fills with loud, intent, wet chewing sounds.

Eventually, Stark looks up. Nice crisp texture, which people like, and a pretty good taste, he says.

Its probably better than what I get out of Schnucks, Fraley responds. Hes talking about a grocery chain local to St. Louis, where Monsanto is headquartered. Avery seems happy; he just keeps eating.

The men poke, prod, and chew the next course with even more vigor: salmon with a relish of red, yellow, and orange bell pepper and a side of broccoli. The lettuce is my favorite, Stark says afterward. Fraley concludes that the pepper changes the game if you think about fresh produce.

Changing the agricultural game is what Monsanto does. The company whose nameis synonymous with Big Ag has revolutionized the way we grow foodfor better or worse. Activists revile it for such mustache-twirling practices as suing farmers who regrow licensed seeds or filling the world with Roundup-resistant superweeds. Then theres Monsantos reputationscorned by some, celebrated by othersas the foremost purveyor of genetically modified commodity crops like corn and soybeans with DNA edited in from elsewhere, designed to have qualities nature didnt quite think of.

So its not particularly surprising that the company is introducing novel strains of familiar food crops, invented at Monsanto and endowed by their creators with powers and abilities far beyond what you usually see in the produce section. The lettuce is sweeter and crunchier than romaine and has the stay-fresh quality of iceberg. The peppers come in miniature, single-serving sizes to reduce leftovers. The broccoli has three times the usual amount of glucoraphanin, acompound that helps boost antioxidant levels. Starks department, the global trade division, came up with all of them.

Grocery stores are looking in the produce aisle for something that pops, that feels different, Avery says. And consumers are looking for the same thing. If the team is right, theyll know soon enough. Frescada lettuce, BellaFina peppers, and Benefort broccolicheery brand names trademarked to an all-but-anonymous Monsanto subsidiary called Seminisare rolling out at supermarkets across the US.

But heres the twist: The lettuce, peppers, and broccoliplus a melon and an onion, with a watermelon soon to followarent genetically modified at all. Monsanto created all these veggies using good old-fashioned crossbreeding, the same technology that farmers have been using to optimize crops for millennia. That doesnt mean they are low tech, exactly. Starks division is drawing on Monsantos accumulated scientific know-how to create vegetables that have all the advantages of genetically modified organisms without any of the Frankenfoods ick factor.

And thats a serious business advantage. Despite a gaping lack of evidence that genetically modified food crops harm human health, consumers have shown a marked resistance to purchasing GM produce (even as they happily consume products derived from genetically modified commodity crops). Stores like Whole Foods are planning to add GMO disclosures to their labels in a few years. State laws may mandate it even sooner.

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What Happens When Monsanto, the Master of Genetic Modification, Decides to Take Nature’s Path?

How the genetic blueprints for limbs came from fish

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Jan. 21, 2014 The transition from water to land is one of the most fascinating enigmas of evolution. In particular, the evolution of limbs from ancestral fish fins remains a mystery. Both fish and land animals possess clusters of Hoxa and Hoxd genes, which are necessary for both fin and limb formation during embryonic development.

Denis Duboule's team, at the UNIGE and the EPFL, Switzerland, compared the structure and behavior of these gene clusters in embryos from mice and zebrafish. The researchers discovered similar 3-dimensional DNA organization of the fish and mouse clusters, which indicates that the main mechanism used to pattern tetrapod limbs was already present in fish. However, when inserted into transgenic mouse embryos, the fish Hox genes were only active in the mouse arm but not in the digits, showing that the fish DNA lacks essential genetic elements for digit formation. The study, published in the January 21, 2014 edition of PLoS Biology, thus concludes that, although the digital part of the limbs evolved as a novelty in land animals, this happened by elaborating on an ancestral, pre-existing DNA infrastructure.

Our first four-legged land ancestor came out of the sea some 350 million years ago. Watching a lungfish, our closest living fish relative, crawl on its four pointed fins gives us an idea of what the first evolutionary steps on land probably looked like. However, the transitional path between fin structural elements in fish and limbs in tetrapods remains elusive.

An ancestral regulatory strategy

In animals, the Hox genes, often referred to as 'architect genes', are responsible for organizing the body structures during embryonic development. Both fish and mammals possess clusters of Hoxa and Hoxd genes, which are necessary for fin and limb formation. The team of Denis Duboule, professor at the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the Ecole polytechnique fdrale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, had recently shown that, during mammalian development, Hoxd genes depend on a 'bimodal' 3-dimensional DNA structure to direct the development of the characteristic subdivision of the limbs into arm and paw, a division which is absent from fish fins.

'To determine where the genetics behind this subdivision into 'hand' and 'arm' came from during evolution, we decided to closely compare the genetic processes at work in both fin and limb development', says Joost Woltering, researcher at the Department of Genetics and

Evolution of the UNIGE Faculty of Science and lead author of the study. Surprisingly, the researchers found a similar bimodal 3-dimensional chromatin architecture in the Hoxd gene region in zebrafish embryos. These findings indicate that the regulatory mechanism used to pattern tetrapod limbs probably predates the divergence between fish and tetrapods. "In fact this finding was a great surprise as we expected that this 'bimodal' DNA conformation was exactly what would make all the difference in the genetics for making limbs or making fins" adds Joost Woltering.

that just needs to be modernized

Does this imply that digits are homologous to distal fin structures in fish? To answer this question, the geneticists inserted into mice embryos the genomic regions that regulate Hox gene expression in fish fins. 'As another surprise, regulatory regions from fish triggered

Hox gene expression predominantly in the arm and not in the digits. Altogether, this suggests that our digits evolved during the fin to limb transition by modernizing an already existing regulatory mechanism', explains Denis Duboule.

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How the genetic blueprints for limbs came from fish

Play about futurist, inventor R. Buckminster Fuller to open at San Jose Rep Theatre

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The beauty of great ideas is that they never go out of style. Richard Buckminster ("Bucky") Fuller--futurist, inventor and many other egghead-y titles--was on constant boil with them. Consequently, this tireless thinker's observations on everything from technology to ecology remain as significant today as when he pronounced them during his life, which ended in 1983 at age 87.

"His ideas are frighteningly contemporary and relevant," says D.W. Jacobs, who wrote and directs a play titled R. Buckminster Fuller: The History (and Mystery) of the Universe. Opening Jan. 30 and running through Feb. 23, Jacobs' creation makes its bow at the San Jose Repertory Theatre, 101 Paseo de San Antonio, San Jose. The one-man show stars Ron Campbell, who also introduced the role when Fuller had its world premiere at the San Diego Repertory Theatre, fittingly, in Y2K.

"I don't try to cover the range of his inventions. I wrote the play more about how he reinvented himself as a model for others to follow--to ask, 'Why am I here?' " Jacobs says. "It's a very 19th-century New England way of thinking. Each individual has a perspective on the universe that's a concept of democracy. There's collaboration, but each person has to own up to what he knows and what he can contribute to society."

Meanwhile, Campbell hasn't taken on the Bucky persona for almost a decade, which meant he "had to relearn it from the bottom up" for SJ Rep. No matter. A veteran of several one-man shows (among other film, TV and stage roles), the artist who once played the King of Clowns in Cirque du Soleil's Kooza is full of Fuller wisdom now.

"It's very interesting to be inside his mind for two hours," he says of a part that is "a Mount Everest climb every night." "Bucky was one of the few people on Earth for whom nothing was off topic. It's a joy to inhabit somebody who had that breadth of mind."

The actor finds it appropriate that Fuller at long last is being staged in Silicon Valley; it ran in San Francisco in 2000. "I would hope the people who are tech movers and shakers would see the show and then send their employees to see it. I think Bucky would be most pleased that the show is here."

Of Fuller's famous, never-ending lectures--in 1975 he expounded for a 42 hour series called Everything I Know--Campbell calls them "thinking out loud. It can go in any tangent because of his ravenous curiosity. That was another thing that attracted me to this role. He was childlike in the best sense of the word."

Fuller's life, however, did have its share of tragedies. His older daughter died from illness just before she turned 4, and he felt some responsibility for it. He also contemplated suicide following a host of other personal setbacks. But fate seemingly, literally, spoke to Bucky and set him on a wholly transformative path. It's a stimulating and thoughtful course that we all benefit from now.

Tickets are $29 to $74; all tickets for individuals 30 and under, as well as for full-time students, are 50 percent off the regular ticket price. Available at 408.367.7255, SJRep.com or at the box office at 101 Paseo de San Antonio in downtown San Jose.

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Play about futurist, inventor R. Buckminster Fuller to open at San Jose Rep Theatre

Introducing Kanye West’s Astronaut Family

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Director Steve McQueen spoke with Kanye West for themost recent issue of Interview. West, the well-known taciturnascetic, was prepared to discussall things personal, mental, spiritual, visual, fashionable, familial,futuristic, subconscious, and conscious. The interview covered a totality of things, including West's new life as a father with his "little space family."

When McQueen asked whether West ever feels lonely, he provided some insight into the Kimye Komplex:

Well, I've got my astronaut family. You know, becoming famous is like being catapulted into spacesometimes without a space suit. We've seen so many people combust, suffocate, get lost in all these different things. But to have an anchor of other astronauts and to make a little space family ... I mean, it's not like I'm the guy in The Hunger Games [2012] begging for people to like me. I'm almost the guy with the least amount of "likes." I wanted a family.

West, whose most recent self-bestowed title is "broadcaster for futurism," also addressed his demands on the world of fashion. He lists several fashion leaders (Renzo Rosso, Bernard Arnault, and Franois-Henri Pinault; the heads of Diesel, LVMH, and Kering, respectively) and reports that he told them: "Come tomy show and look at the mountain I made. Look at these 20,000 people screaming, and then tell me I don't deserve to design a T-shirt." He wasdisappointedwith their response.

The whole interview is worth readingit manages to touch on all of Kanye's projects while tying them together in a sort of cohesive way.He also tells McQueen that he has a new phrase to describe what the media refers to as "meltdowns" he calls them "turn-ups." A practical phrase for your everyday life, from the kreator Kanye.

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Introducing Kanye West’s Astronaut Family

GTA 5 Online FIB Building fun- Operation Rockstar freedom (GTA 5 Funny moments) – Video

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GTA 5 Online FIB Building fun- Operation Rockstar freedom (GTA 5 Funny moments)
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GTA 5 Online FIB Building fun- Operation Rockstar freedom (GTA 5 Funny moments) - Video