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Despite Past History of Drugs, Longevity Award Goes to Charlie Wilson

Posted on March 12, 2012 by ev1

Uncle Charlie admits that at one point, cocaine was the love of his life

*Charlie Wilsons career was built to last. Who knew, given his wild past?

The rejuvenated R&B singer has proven to the world hes got what it takes to evolve and stay alive in the industry.

With his foundation as the lead singer of the Gap Band, the singers success wasnt without its trying moments.

And in the wake of Whitney Houstons death, Wilson who knew her, opened up about his drug of choice.

I try real hard, Wilson tells The BoomBox. First of all, I left alcohol and drugs behind me and that was one of the things that weighs a lot on your shoulders. Its been 18 years [of sobriety] for me, nothing but water. It allowed me for all these years to just focus on music.

He added that drugs were also a huge part of his life. It took him on a ride that he does not think about going back to, admitting that his love was cocaine. He ended up homeless, desperate for rescue.

He made it though.

Throughout the years, Wilson has worked with artists like Mystikal, Kanye West, and Snoop Dogg.

And since his return to music, hes leading the charts with his latest project Just Charlie. It doesnt stop there.

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Despite Past History of Drugs, Longevity Award Goes to Charlie Wilson

DNA tests approved in Gonstead murder case

Posted on March 12, 2012 by ev1

Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne approved a new round of DNA testing in a 1994 murder case the Wisconsin Innocence Project says could prove Penny Brummers innocence.

The project seeks to test victim Sarah Gonsteads clothes, swabs from her body, fingernail scrapings, a tissue found near the body and a Taco Bell cup. Ozanne said his office will make the evidence available for testing at Brummers expense.

Gonstead, 21, of Madison was found April 9, 1994, near Mineral Point Road west of Pine Bluff three weeks after she disappeared. She was last seen the night of March 14, 1994, when she went bar-hopping with Brummer, then 25. Brummer testified she dropped Gonstead off around 11 p.m. behind a bar on East Washington Avenue and last saw her standing near a group of people in a nearby Taco Bell parking lot.

According to the motion filed in Dane County Circuit Court, the clothes and underwear worn by Gonstead contain never-before-tested blood stains that do not appear to have come from the .22-caliber bullet wound to the head that killed her.

The case against Brummer was circumstantial. Prosecutors argued that after a night of drinking, Brummer, of Spring Green, killed Gonstead because of jealousy or because Gonstead had been advising Brummers ex-girlfriend to start dating men again.

Suspicion grew when a .22-caliber revolver that belonged to Brummers father couldnt be found during a search of the family home, and after Brummer and Gonstead were identified as having been at a bar that night near where the young womans body was found. Brummer earlier denied the two had been at the bar but later conceded to police she may have blacked out from a night of heavy drinking.

The defense maintains Gonstead met her killer after Brummer dropped her off. At trial, Brummers side produced a witness who said he saw a man two nights after Gonstead disappeared with a bright pink object on the side of Mineral Point Road close to where Gonsteads body clad in a purple and pink jacket was later found.

The state produced no physical evidence, confession or eyewitnesses to the murder, Innocence Project attorney John Pray argued in the motion. Evidence that a persons DNA is on multiple pieces of evidence and this DNA not belonging to Brummer would strongly suggest that someone other than Brummer was the perpetrator of this crime.

Ozanne said state law requires him to turn over evidence for DNA testing at the defendants expense in cases in which the results could be relevant to a claim of innocence.

Excerpt from:
DNA tests approved in Gonstead murder case

Investigators using 'touch DNA' to solve property crimes

Posted on March 12, 2012 by ev1

A thief wearing gloves walks into a parking lot, perhaps using the cover of night, smashes a car window and takes what's inside the vehicle, all in a matter of minutes.

It's the general technique for many car burglaries, and thousands of them occur in Harris County every year. Besides shattered glass, often there's not much visible evidence left at the scene, leaving investigators with few clues to catch the culprits.

But sometimes it's what investigators cannot see that helps solve many of these types of crimes.

For the last few years, the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences aided area law enforcement in solving property crimes by testing evidence for "touch DNA" - microscopic skin cells containing DNA that naturally rub off when an object, like a car steering wheel, is touched. The technology can be used even if the suspect is wearing gloves because there's a high likelihood the skin cells were transferred onto the gloves when the perpetrator was slipping them on.

"It was a pretty incredible tool for us to have to identify some of these suspects," said Sgt. Terry Wilson, of the Harris County Sheriff's Office auto-theft division. "These (burglary of a motor vehicle) cases are some of the hardest cases for law enforcement to solve because there's almost never any eyewitnesses. There's very rarely any good evidence left behind, fingerprint evidence and things like that, and once we started recovering some of this DNA, it was pretty exciting there for a while."

DNA testing is a practice typically reserved for personal crimes like rape and murder. However, the forensic institute, formerly the medical examiner's office, has also been performing DNA testing on evidence - containing either skin cells or bodily fluids, like blood and saliva - from property crime cases such as car break-ins and home invasions.

Thousands of matches

Since January 2008, the forensic institute made more than 3,000 matches to crime suspects in the FBI's Combined DNA Index System database, or CODIS, a national database used to store DNA profiles. Of those, about 75 percent were for property crime cases.

Dr. Roger Kahn, director of the forensic genetics laboratory at the institute, said the crime lab is one of the few equipped to handle DNA testing for property crimes. The lab has no testing backlog on personal crime cases, so it can focus on property crimes, he said.

Kahn noted that when the forensic institute moves to its new expanded facility in the fall, the lab will have the capabilities to perform DNA testing in property crime cases for not only law enforcement agencies in the county, but the entire region.

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Investigators using 'touch DNA' to solve property crimes

DNA is solving property crimes

Posted on March 12, 2012 by ev1

A thief wearing gloves walks into a parking lot, perhaps using the cover of night, smashes a car window and takes what's inside the vehicle, all in a matter of minutes.

But sometimes it's what investigators cannot see that helps solve many of these types of crimes.

Thousands of matches

See original here:
DNA is solving property crimes

Anti-cancer fungus found to naturally eat away plastic waste

Posted on March 11, 2012 by ev1

by: Jonathan Benson

What if it was possible to eliminate much of the world's otherwise very-slowly-biodegrading plastic waste using a natural Amazonian fungus? Well, it just might be, thanks to research conducted by Jonathan Russell and colleagues from Yale University's Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, who recently discovered that Pestalotiopsis microspora effectively eats away polyurethane (PUR) plastics, and is capable of using plastic as its sole food source in both aerobic and anaerobic environments.

Entitled Biodegradation of Polyester Polyurethane by Endophytic Fungi, the study aimed to find new potential plant sources of bioremediation, also known as the use of microorganisms to biodegrade and eliminate pollutants that otherwise persist in the environment. Several students attending Yale's annual Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory course collected various samples from the Yasuni National Forest in the Amazon basin, and took them home for testing. Read more...

AyurGold for Healthy Blood

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Histology replacement? Beckman Institute Researchers Develop Low Cost, Stain-free Optical Technology

Posted on March 11, 2012 by ev1

Courtesy of Dark Daily:

Pathologists would gain new tool to diagnose cancer faster and more accurately, based upon stain-free analysis of tissue

Reading tissue biopsies with a new stain-free method could eventually help pathologists achieve faster and less subjective cancer detection. Should this technology prove viable, it would also displace many of the longstanding tissue preparation methodologies used today in the histopathology laboratory.

Credit a research team from the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois (UI) Christie Clinic and at the UI campuses in Urbana and Chicago, with developing this new technology.

They call the technique Spatial Light Interference Microscopy (SLIM). According to a story reported by Futurity.org, the technique uses two beams of light.

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Welcome to Pathology Malpractice Blog

Posted on March 11, 2012 by ev1

A former colleague of mine at Mayo Clinic has started an excellent blog entitled Pathology Malpractice Blog that covers issues related to lessons to be learned from pathology suits and business practices affecting laboratories and pathologists nationwide.

With about a month under his belt, there are almost 40 posts (and many more on the way) dealing with court rulings, judgements, references to scholarly articles, interesting media stories and commentary to help pathologists successfully navigate the medicolegal world of pathology. In addition, he has a special interest in client billing and pod labs and would like to use his blog to help pathologists become more informed on these issues, so as to be better positioned to protect patients and themselves from these fraudulent billing schemes.

To my knowledge, the Pathology Malpractice Blog is the first and only blog dealing specifically with these issues.

I think that you will find the content informative written in an easy prose that is relevant to the pathology and laboratory community.

Check out Pathology Malpractice Blog. Link provided on my sidebar to the right. You can also follow on Twitter @pathmalblog.

Welcome to the blogosphere!

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DoD could open huge military tissue archive

Posted on March 11, 2012 by ev1

The real question here is what is the value of these archives? What condition are the blocks and tissue in with what I suspect has been suboptimal storage conditions for decades for minable RNA. There may be some potential but add to the poor quality of the preserved tissue is the issue of likely scant clinical documentation, minimal or no long term follow up information and lack of longitudinal data short of a few registries.

By Patricia Kime - Staff writer Army Times

SILVER SPRING, Md. — Like the vast government warehouse in the closing scene of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” the 32,000-square-foot repository at the Joint Pathology Center holds thousands of treasures — cardboard boxes stacked floor to ceiling on shelves, containing 32 million tissue samples from ill and injured service members dating to 1917.

That trove of medical detritus could soon be accessible to federal and civilian researchers.

Officials at the Joint Pathology Center, the Pentagon’s main laboratory, research facility and learning institute for pathology, said Tuesday they are working with the Institute of Medicine to determine how to open their tissue repository — the largest in the world — to some scientists.

Considered a national treasurer by researchers, the catalogue of samples holds clues that could lead to medical advancements, said JPC Interim Director Col. Thomas Baker.

“Twenty to 25 years ago, there probably wasn’t a lot of use for this tissue,” Baker said. “But now with molecular studies we can do now, the genoming sequencing … it will allow us to test these samples that will ultimately affect treatment and patient care.”

The paraffin-encased samples include bits and bobs from service members who breathed mustard gas in World War I, contracted the Spanish Flu in 1918, were exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam and encountered depleted uranium in the sands of Iraq.

There are samples from troops who contracted extremely rare diseases as well as thousands of common diseases — specimens Baker feels should be made available to researchers of other federal agencies if not academia.

“There’s a lot of potential,” he said.

A panel from the Institute of Medicine, the arm of the National Academies that makes recommendations to the federal government on science and health matters, is reviewing the pathology center’s policies and procedures to determine who should have access to the material, how the samples should be used and tested and the ethical considerations of granting access to patients’ biopsies and surgical jetsam.

The report should be out in June, Baker said.

The Joint Pathology Center was created by the 2008 Defense Authorization Act to replace the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, shuttered as a result of the 2005 round of base closures and realignments.

AFIP was housed on the grounds of Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.; the JPC is located in Silver Spring. Md., near the soon-to-be-opened National Museum of Health and Medicine and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

JPC has an annual operating budget of about $21.7 million, beyond funding from hospitals and the Defense Department’s Centers of Excellence. Its 36 pathologists and 46 support staff provide pathology consultations for military and Veterans Affairs Department health facilities and military veterinary clinics, as well as electron microscope services and pathology education and research.

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Brain of a Pathologist

Posted on March 11, 2012 by ev1

Courtesy of The 1x Objective. Word cloud of pathologist brain/pathology reports.

For the past several months have reviewed 100s if not thousands of pathology reports for various purposes, research, education, clinical, LIS configuration, etc... Have to agree with Karl on this. Outside of "carcinoma" (this likely includes terms such as "negative for carcinoma", cell(s), tumor, words such as "may", "typically" and "case often" are commonly used terms on the very product we produce - a report.

These vagaries are often very commonly seen and used without reproach and may be seen in many cases in textbooks of cytology, such as statements that begin with "The cells may show features of overall cellular enlargement or be of relatively normal size or mildly enlarged; nuclei may show hyperchromasia or appear normal; nucleoli may or may not be seen".

Good thing pathology and its accompanying reports are so clear, transparent, direct, easy to quantify and without qualifiers or adverbs...

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Pathologists: Embrace the Tumor Board

Posted on March 11, 2012 by ev1

Dr. Tom Wheeler over at his Medscape blog entitled Lab Line by the Doctor's Doctor has a great note on tumor boards. The paragraph below pretty much says it all. It is tumor board, not tumor bored and pathologists need to be more of an integral part of these meetings than what I have seen as typical pathologists' roles and reactions to these conferences.

"A number of pathologists that I know view these conferences as a burden and an interruption of their regular work by an activity that is not reimbursed, not to mention the frustration of having cases added at the last minute making it difficult to put together an orderly presentation within time for the meeting. My view is somewhat different - this is not an interruption of your work it is your work."

The Future of Clinical Laboratory Courier Services: Technical and Economic Solutions for the Medical Courier Business

Posted on March 11, 2012 by ev1

FREE Special Edition White Paper

Download Your FREE Special Report Today!
Simply Complete the Form Below

If you consider a million physicians sending patient samples to a quarter million laboratories, and larger hospitals and health systems having multiple laboratories, clinics, and hospitals, as well as from patient service centers (PSCs) to laboratories, it’s easy to understand just how vital the medical courier system is to the healthcare system in general and the clinical laboratory industry specifically.

If you envision the travel of patient specimens as a very complicated web of time and condition-dependent medical samples in constant motion, then the challenges, both technical and economic, become obvious. Here are some common questions…

How do you track samples? How are samples handled? How do you keep costs down? How do you operate an efficient courier system if, on any given day, you don’t know the number and types of samples that will be transported?

The Dark Report is happy to offer our readers a chance to download our recently published FREE White Paper “The Future of Clinical Laboratory Courier Services: Technical and Economic Solutions for the Medical Courier Business” at absolutely no charge. This report will address these issues above, provide solutions, and include case studies that show how it is currently being handled.

—

Among other topics, this FREE White Paper specifically addresses:

The economics and fees of a medical lab courier service
Case study, Yale Pathology Labs
Courier transparency and visibility… and much more

For more about closing the medical data gap in your lab, please CLICK HERE.

Table of Contents

Introduction — Page 3

How do you track samples?
How are samples handled?
How do you keep costs down?
How do you operate an efficient courier system?

Chapter 1: Medical Laboratory Courier Logistics — Page 4

Physician Ordering
Sample Collection & Labeling
Sample Delivery
Sample Processing
Reporting

Chapter 2: Laboratory Specimen Handling and Tracking — Page 7

Medical Security
- HIPAA
- CAP
- OSHA
- TSA

Chain of Custody
In Transit Tracking

Chapter 3: The Economics of Medical Laboratory Courier Services — Page 11

Flat Fee
Charge Per Mile
Charge per Pickup

Chapter 4: Courier Visibility/Transparency — Page 13

Training
Uniforms
Route Analysis
Volume Analysis
Logistic Experts

Chapter 5: Case Studies — Page 18

Yale Pathology Labs (Yale University)
LMC Pathology Services (Las Vegas, NV)

Conclusion — Page 24

Appendices

A-1 About Walter J. Humphrey and Susan M. Uihleiny — Page 26

A-2 About Medifleet — Page 27

A-3 About DARK Daily — Page 28

A-4 About The Dark Intelligence Group, Inc., and THE DARK REPORT — Page 29

A-5 About the Executive War College on Laboratory and Pathology Management — Page 30

A-6 About Mark Terry — Page 32

Terms of Use — Page 36

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AccelPath Collaborating With Scanner Manufacturers

Posted on March 11, 2012 by ev1

GAITHERSBURG, MD and WESTWOOD, MA, Mar 06, 2012 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- AccelPath, LLC ("AccelPath" or the "Company"), a wholly-owned and operating subsidiary of Technest Holdings, Inc., conducts ongoing discussions with several scanner manufacturers.

AccelPath is in discussions with several slide scanner manufacturers to provide their equipment to clinics and hospitals. Scanner deployments will allow the Company to further digitize all aspects of pathology services, allowing advancement of its strategy of providing efficient, timely, fully automated, digital pathology services using existing electronic information technologies. AccelPath will also utilize these relationships to further advance clinics and hospitals with worksite planning, technical services (including software interfaces and scanner operations), network engineering, professional pathology services and post implementation support.

"We are excited about the significant progress being made toward implementation of digital pathology. This would complete a fully digital loop between treating physician and trained pathologist," said Shekhar Wadekar, the Company's Chief Executive Officer. "We are gaining customer acceptance of our workflow solution and this will increase customer awareness and confidence in the Company's product offerings."

About AccelPath AccelPath provides technology solutions that play a key role in delivering information required for diagnosis of diseases and other pathologic conditions with and through its associated institutional pathologists. The medical institutions, with whom the Company partners, prepare comprehensive diagnostic reports of a patient's condition and consult with referring physicians to help determine the most appropriate treatment. Such diagnostic reports enable the early detection of disease, allowing referring physicians to make informed and timely treatment decisions that improve their patients' health in a cost-effective manner. The Company seeks out referring physicians and histology laboratories in need of high-quality pathology interpretations and manages HIPAA-compliant digital case delivery and reporting while developing comprehensive solutions for managing medical information.

AccelPath is currently focused on the $14 billion anatomic pathology market in the US. The Company's business model builds upon the expertise of experienced pathologists to provide seamless, reliable and comprehensive pathology and special test offerings to referring physicians using conventional and digital technologies. The Company establishes longstanding relationships with the referring physicians as a result of focused delivery of its partner's diagnostic services, personalized responses and frequent consultations, and its proprietary flexible information technology, or IT, solutions that are customizable to the referring physicians or laboratories as well as the pathologists' needs. Such diagnostic reports often enable the early detection of disease, allowing referring physicians to make informed and timely treatment decisions that improve their patients' health in a cost-effective manner. AccelPath's IT and communications platform enables it to efficiently and securely deliver diagnostic reports to referring physicians. In addition, AccelPath's IT platform enables close tracking and monitoring of medical statistics.

Technest focuses on the design, research, development and integration of three-dimensional imaging devices and systems primarily in the healthcare industries. The Company also develops solutions and intelligent surveillance devices and systems, as well as three-dimensional facial recognition systems for security and law enforcement agencies. Historically, the Company's largest customers have been the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense. The Company's solutions leverage several core proprietary technology platforms, including 3D imaging technologies.

Additional Company information may be found on the Internet at:

http://www.accelpath.com

Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains certain "forward-looking statements" relating to the business of the Company, which can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may," "will," "expect," "anticipate," "intend," "estimate," "believe," "project," "continue," "plan," "forecast," or other similar words, or the negative thereof, unless the context requires otherwise. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements about the Company's current discussions with scanner manufacturers, the Company's expected future performance and the acceptance of the Company's product offerings. The results anticipated by any or all of these forward-looking statements may not occur. In addition, these statements reflect management's current views with respect to future events and are subject to numerous risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in or implied by these forward-looking statements. Factors that could affect those results include, but are not limited to, our ability to conclude our discussions with these manufacturers on favorable terms, the acceptance of our solutions in the marketplace, the efforts of our sales force, general economic conditions, and those described in the Company's reports on Forms 8-K, 10-Q and 10-K and proxy statements and information statements, which have been or will be filed by the Company with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), including without limitation under the caption "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K filed on October 13, 2011. Many of the factors that will determine the outcome of the subject matter of this press release are beyond the Company's ability to control or predict. The Company undertakes no obligation and expressly disclaim any obligation, to revise or publicly update any forward-looking statements, or to make any other forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Source: Marketwatch

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Downside of Digital Medicine

Posted on March 11, 2012 by ev1

There’s a lot of excitement over the rise of electronic health records — and with good reason. Digital record keeping could make it easier for doctors, hospitals and other providers to share patient information and coordinate care. And that, health policy wonks hope, will reduce costs. Providers will be less likely to order a duplicate test, for instance, if they know a doctor has already performed it. One recent study estimated that wide-scale adoption of electronic medical records could save $8.3 billion annually just by reducing use of medical imaging.

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iPad helps saves man’s life

Posted on March 11, 2012 by ev1

Think the iPad is just for e-mail, eMagazines and Angry Birds? Even before the anticipated release of iPad3 very shortly with a higher resolution monitor, the iPad has been credited with helping to save a man's life.

Still think it couldn't work for digital pathology? Read an eSlide, make an eDifference? Get the right diagnosis for the right patient at the right time?

Still think Pathology 2.0 doesn't have a place along side Medicine 2.0?

Keep reading...

The world-renowned Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota has been issuing iPads to physicians for a while, and now one of the Apple tablets is credited with helping to save the life of a man who suffered an arterial blockage at the facility.

As reported in the Post-Bulletin newspaper, 48-year-old Andy McMonigle was working out with his cycling club at the clinic's Dan Abraham Healthy Living Center when he began to feel intense pressure in his arm. McMonigle has a history of heart trouble, so he immediately went to the locker room and asked a man for help. That man was Mayo Clinic internal medicine resident Dr. Daniel Leuders, who stayed by the side of McMonigle and yelled loudly for assistance.

Two other Mayo residents (brothers Daniel and Christopher DeSimone) were literally just around the corner, so when they arrived Leuders reached into his backpack and pulled out his iPad. Within seconds, Leuders was connected to the Mayo's electronic medical record system, where he was able to pull up McMonigle's medical history.

The history showed that McMonigle had a heart stent installed after a previous heart attack four years ago, which made the physicians suspect that he was suffering from a blockage in the stent. When an ambulance crew arrived, Leuders and the other physicians held the iPad record of McMonigle's previous EKG alongside the strip chart that was being printed in real time. What they saw further confirmed their suspicions about the blockage.

The physicians made a choice based on the EKG records that probably saved McMonigle's life. Rather than wait upwards of three hours to run a blood test to verify the clotting, the doctors rushed McMonigle to the cardiac catheterization lab where a team (alerted by activating an emergency code) was waiting. They removed the clot from his artery, which was about 90 percent blocked.

Within three days, McMonigle was released from the hospital and after four more days, he was working out again at the Healthy Living Center.

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Dr. Gerald E. Jackson Tells How to Prolong True Love in New Book

Posted on March 11, 2012 by ev1

Jonathan Erik Veal

Dr. Gerald E. Jackson

*Though Valentines Day has passed, it does not mean true love between two people stops.

It is more so about the longevity of the relationship; and how to keep the bond with your significant other.

Dr. Gerald E. Jackson, founder and chairman of G.E. Jackson & Associates Inc., is here to help. Not only is he does he provide readers with a strategic planning disciplines; but, he offers couples the opportunity to keep the relationship alive as well as a way to enhance their love for each another.

Dr. Jackson, a Southern California native served six years in the Special Forces within the United States Navys Nuclear Powered, Ballistic Missile Submarine Service as a navigation electronic technician; so, you may wonder what he would know about writing about true love?

I am a romantic at heart, said Jackson. I love all of my life and over the 20 plus years, Ive had some interesting experiences; and the people that I have shared my story with have benefited from it.

Dr. Jacksons new book, True Love & Longevity: Romance Guide andWorkplan provides a road map to the heart and soul of loving, long-lasting fulfillment within each one of us. Additionally, it was helps those in a relationship who have experienced long days, hard work, and a great deal of heartbreak attempting to make their commitment bond healthy and vital.

There are four keys to true love in my opinion which would help anyone who is and who is not in a relationship, said Jackson. He describes the four keys for individuals to genuinely have an understanding of each other, truly bring out the best of each other, speaking to the interpersonal that directs to an establish and encouragement to an abiding relationship with God and his word and to establish the importance of knowing that they truly love each other. My personal definition of true love is the souls recognition of its counterpoint in another, said Jackson.

More here:
Dr. Gerald E. Jackson Tells How to Prolong True Love in New Book

Joint replacement gives seniors leg up on activity, longevity

Posted on March 11, 2012 by ev1

A lifetime of wear and tear on his joints caused Dick Pryor, a 77-year-old retired landscape architect, to undergo not one but two surgeries to replace his knees.

Neither slowed him down for long.

"With one knee replacement, I was back skiing three months later," said Pryor, a Sacramento resident who began skiing a half-century ago. "I could have gone skiing sooner, but the snow wasn't any good."

Like Pryor, many of his 130 fellow members of the local 49er Ski Club average age 72 have dealt with chronic knee and hip problems, and many remain athletically active after joint replacement surgery.

Pryor also walks every day to stay in shape. Bill Anthony, 83, a retired Roseville family physician who had both hips replaced and, most recently, recovered from a broken back, likes to bike three times a week and lift weights when he's not skiing.

"And we kayak in the summer," said Anthony.

"We also do a lot of hiking," said ski group member Judy Agid, 73, a hip replacement veteran and retired Sacramento State fencing coach who has hiked hundreds of miles through Spain and biked across America twice.

While that level of activity might sound unusual, experts on aging say it hints at a new norm. For more energetic seniors today, knee and hip replacements provide a break from vigorous physical activity, not the end of it.

In part, that's because older adults have learned a key lesson: They expect to maintain a good quality of life, because they know that age does not equal infirmity and illness.

"I'd say that age is irrelevant," said Pat Beal, 74, Senior Center of Elk Grove executive director.

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Joint replacement gives seniors leg up on activity, longevity

Students at Diamond Bar’s Brahma Tech debate genomic engineering ethics

Posted on March 11, 2012 by ev1

DIAMOND BAR - Is it appropriate to use emerging synthetic genomic engineering technology to build new forms of "life"? Should genetic engineering techniques and processes be used in agriculture?

These were some of the issues debated by Brahma Tech students at Diamond Bar High last week. The great debate was part of a week of competition for the Technology Student Association.

The Brahmas recently became the first high school in California to join the national organization, according to technology teacher Alina Gallardo.

More than 150,000 middle and high school students throughout America belong to the association. Members learn about technology through competitions, events and conferences.

Sophomore Alice Jin spearheaded the effort to join the Technology Student Association.

"I found out about it on the Internet, then talked to my classmates about forming a local chapter," the 16-year-old explained.

Diamond Bar has more than 400 students in the Brahma Tech Academy. The academy is a specialized math, science and technology program with four career paths.

"Students also have to do 150-hour internships with high-tech companies," Gallardo explained.

It attracts students like 17-year-old Drew Liu. "I want to major in bioengineering in college," the senior said.

Liu was one of the group of students competing in technology week. Earlier, the techies made videos. Participants had to write, shoot and edit

ROCK DOC: Basic biology implicated in wild spending spree

Posted on March 11, 2012 by ev1

It's pretty common for us "little peanuts" to feel some envy about the wealthy and better-known citizens among us. Who, after all, wouldn't want to be a millionaire?

But recently the news carried a piece about Ed Bazinet, 68, a wealthy New Yorker who went on a wild spending spree that ran through the millions of dollars. His problem, it turns out, is the brain malady known as manic depression, otherwise known as bipolar disorder.

According to ABC News, Bazinet spent five days buying millions of dollars worth of furniture, art and knickknacks before he realized his behavior was owing to mania and he checked himself in for treatment.

Medical science has long recognized that wild spending is a classic sign of the manic phase of mood and energy that people with bipolar disorder must sometimes contend with.

Such sprees can be disastrous to a person's finances, obviously, and they can also be deeply embarrassing. While an American in more typical circumstances than Bazinet may go through a modest spending spree, say racking up thousands of dollars of bills on a credit card, the scale of Bazinet's spending and his fame in New York meant that his personal problem became a public news item.

Still, it could be that some good can flow from Bazinet's difficult experience. As his publicist put it, "There is no shame with seeking help for this treatable illness, and we hope that this opens a dialogue to educate others."

Manic depression is not a disease of just modern times. Going back all the way to ancient Greece, there are medical descriptions of people with strongly alternating periods of energy and moods. Early doctors noted that a person could be "high" and then "low" in quick succession, with alternating periods of tears and euphoria.

Indeed, in what are now called mixed states, people can experience ups and downs that are strongly interlaced with each other. The bipolar brain, if you will, can run the "upside" as well as the "downside" chemistry at pretty much the same time.

Like schizophrenia, bipolar tends to show up in adolescents and young adults. It cuts down people including some very able ones just as they are really coming into their own. The good news is that doctors are now more likely to recognize bipolar symptoms earlier than they once did. And early treatment can lead to better outcomes for the individual.

But that's hardly to say everything is rosy in the bipolar world. Some manic-depressives experience more than just highs and lows. In extreme cases, patients can suffer psychotic symptoms such as visual or auditory hallucinations. That fact makes the disease deeply scary, both for the person experiencing it and for friends and family members.

'Anatomy of Injustice' review: Looking at capital punishment

Posted on March 11, 2012 by ev1

ANATOMY OF INJUSTICE Raymond Bonner Knopf $26.95, 298 pages

When George W. Bush was running for president in 2000, he said he was confident that "every person that has been put to death in Texas under my watch has been guilty of the crime charged and has full access to the courts."

Bush signed the death warrants for more than 150 people when he was governor of Texas, about one every nine days and the most in history at that time. (His successor, Rick Perry, has presided over many more.) Texas is far and away the most likely place to be executed in the U.S.: 37 percent of all executions since 1976 have occurred in Texas. It again led the nation with 13 executions last year, more than the two closest states (Alabama and Ohio) combined but a much lower rate than the previous decade.

After Bush's comments, The New York Times assigned Raymond Bonner and another reporter to research and write about capital punishment. One of their articles was cited by the majority and the dissent in a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court case that resulted in a ban on executing people who are "mentally retarded."

Another case, involving the 1982 murder of an elderly woman in South Carolina, attracted Bonner's attention because he believes it "raises nearly all the issues that mark the debate about capital punishment: race, mental retardation, bad trial lawyers, prosecutorial misconduct, 'snitch' testimony, DNA testing, a claim of innocence."

Bonner's short book "Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong" covers all those bases while telling the story of Edward Lee Elmore, an African American who was convicted by three different juries and spent 11,000 days in jail, most of them on death row, before being released a few days ago (after the book was published) for a crime Bonner, a lawyer and a Pulitzer Prize winner, and many others believe he did not commit.

Capital punishment is an issue of fierce, passionate debate, in Oregon and around the country. Gov. John Kitzhaber placed a moratorium on executions two weeks before a convicted murderer was scheduled to die by lethal injection. Kitzhaber was governor in 1996-97, when Oregon's only two executions since 1976 took place, and said he regretted allowing them. He did not, however, commute the sentences of Oregon's 37 death row inmates, something he has the legal authority to do. Josh Marquis, the Clatsop County district attorney, said when Kitzhaber declared the moratorium that the governor should carry out the law. Marquis will join Bonner for what is sure to be a lively discussion at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Powell's City of Books.

The Elmore case, as Bonner noted, touched on many of the most important issues in capital punishment:

Race: More than 75 percent of the victims in capital punishment cases are white, compared with about 50 percent of murder victims overall. About 34 percent of those executed since 1976 are African American; 13 percent of the overall population is African American. More than 250 African Americans have been executed for killing a white; 18 whites have been executed for killing an African American.

Mental disability: Elmore dropped out of school in the fifth grade and does not understand the concept of north, south, east or west or winter, spring, summer and fall. H e could not do the math necessary to maintain a checking account. His IQ tested at a level of mental disability.

Excerpt from:
'Anatomy of Injustice' review: Looking at capital punishment

Intermittent fasting promotes brain health

Posted on March 10, 2012 by ev1

By Michelle Bosmier

According to a new study carried out at the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, fasting for one or two days each week may help improve the condition of individuals suffering from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Researchers have found that stopping nearly all food intake for short periods of time triggers a protection mechanism within the brain which also works against the effects of neurodegenerative disorders.

Calorie intake impacts the brain

Professor Mark Mattson, lead author of the study and professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, explained at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver that "reducing your calorie intake could help your brain, but doing so by cutting your intake of food is not likely to be the best method of triggering this protection. It is likely to be better to go on intermittent bouts of fasting, in which you eat hardly anything at all, and then have periods when you eat as much as you want. In other words, timing appears to be a crucial element to this process." Read more...

AyurGold for Healthy Blood

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