The Libertarian Angle: The Cuban Embargo
Each week, FFF president Jacob Hornberger and FFF vice president Sheldon Richman discuss the hot topics of the day. This week: the Cuban embargo. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the...
By: The Future of Freedom Foundation
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Banda Islands Indonesia - Best Travel Destination
The Banda Islands are a volcanic group of ten small volcanic islands in the Banda Sea, about 140 km south of Seram Island and about 2000 km east of Java, and are part of the Indonesian province...
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ISLANDS UNDER FIRE Book Trailer
It was such a rewarding experience returning to the island of Culebra and diving among its spectacular coral reefs to make this video. The island today is truly an eco-tourism paradise. But...
By: Kevin McCarey
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The MIND of a SOUL WINNER
http://www.harvestarmy.org - - SUBSCRIBE FOR PREDICTIONS THAT MAY AFFECT YOU - - WORLD VISION DAY - JAN.3,2015 The Event: Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QENO3fRuIg0 ...
By: HarvestArmy
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Let #39;s Play DayZ [Asso #39; - unFriendly Islands] - Ep.11 : Pris en sandwich
N #39;hsitez pas laisser un commentaire et/ou un pouce, a fait toujours plaisir Abonne toi si a te plat : https://www.youtube.com/user/AssoGamingTV?sub_confirmation=1...
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Let's Play DayZ [Asso' - unFriendly Islands] - Ep.11 : Pris en sandwich - Video
Canary Islands Wind forecast: 2015-01-05
Prediccin automtica de Viento en Islas Canarias. Los datos son obtenidos mediante ejecuciones del modelo WRF utilizando el superordenador TeideHPC. Este trabajo ha sido realizado en ...
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Rising seas around the Torres Strait Islands could leave part of the region uninhabitable within a few decades, a report warns.
The Torres Strait Regional Authority created a climate change strategy to prepare for the possibility that some of the region's islands would be inundated by projected sea level rises of between 50 and 100 centimetres over the next century.
Chairman Joseph Elu said fresh water supply and housing were also under threat.
"Some of our islands are fairly low lying and communities are built on the foreshores," he said.
"With the predictions that are being made now, they will all be under water in 100 years.
"But obviously the high tides that are happening this time of year, some of them are being inundated now."
Mr Elu said a joint federal and state government project rebuilding sea walls around six of the region's inhabited islands was helping, but a more comprehensive plan for the region's future was needed.
"On a couple of our islands the tides rise over the sea walls onto the beachfront and it flows under the houses and out the other end," he said.
"The strategy at the moment is to try and save the infrastructure that is there now, which means trying to raise sea wall levels.
"But in the long run there has to be a long-term plan that we'll hopefully develop in the next few months."
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Calls for Torres Strait Islands to prepare detailed climate change plan to combat projected sea rise
Rising seas around the Torres Strait Islands could leave part of the region uninhabitable within a few decades, a report warns.
The Torres Strait Regional Authority created a climate change strategy to prepare for the possibility that some of the region's islands would be inundated by projected sea level rises of between 50 and 100 centimetres over the next century.
Chairman Joseph Elu said fresh water supply and housing were also under threat.
"Some of our islands are fairly low lying and communities are built on the foreshores," he said.
"With the predictions that are being made now, they will all be under water in 100 years.
"But obviously the high tides that are happening this time of year, some of them are being inundated now."
Mr Elu said a joint federal and state government project rebuilding sea walls around six of the region's inhabited islands was helping, but a more comprehensive plan for the region's future was needed.
"On a couple of our islands the tides rise over the sea walls onto the beachfront and it flows under the houses and out the other end," he said.
"The strategy at the moment is to try and save the infrastructure that is there now, which means trying to raise sea wall levels.
"But in the long run there has to be a long-term plan that we'll hopefully develop in the next few months."
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Calls for detailed climate change plan for Torres Strait Islands amid projected sea level rises
Art of Living Uma Maheshwari over Agriculture Health Care - Chenu Chelaka
Watch T News LIVE the 24/7 Telugu news channel now on youtube. The first Telangana news channel featuring best news from all around the world. We deliver breaking news, live reports, exclusive...
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Art of Living Uma Maheshwari over Agriculture & Health Care - Chenu Chelaka - Video
Leadership and Vision in Primary Healthcare- Dr Minnie Bodhanwala, CEO, Wadia Hospitals
Dr Minnie Bodhanwala, CEO Wadia Hospitals, speaking on Leadership and Vision in Primary Healthcare at the South Asia E-Health Summit Awards 2014. Also It gives us immense pleasure to share...
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Leadership and Vision in Primary Healthcare- Dr Minnie Bodhanwala, CEO, Wadia Hospitals - Video
Choosing the Healthiest Diet - BEXLIFE
CONNECT WITH MIKE PERRINE: http://everydaydetox.org SIGN UP FOR FREE GOODIES: http://bit.ly/BlissNotes ------- GET MORE GOOD STUFF BELOW ------- You asked: I #39;ve been doing...
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While reporting on the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, journalist Steven Brill was diagnosed with a life-threatening condition that required heart surgery.
"There I was: A reporter who had made hospital presidents and hospital executives and health care executives and insurance executives sweat because I asked them all kinds of questions about their salaries and about their profit margins," Brill tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "And now I was lying on a gurney in a hospital in real fear of my life."
Brill had a bubble on his heart that the doctors said had a 15 to 17 percent chance of bursting each year, he says. If it did, he would die. The experience, Brill says, helped him analyze health care from a patient's perspective.
"At that moment I wasn't worried about costs; I wasn't worried about a cost benefit analysis of this drug or this medical device; I wasn't worried about health care policy," Brill says. "It drove home to me the reality that in addition to being a tough political issue because of all the money involved, health care is a toxic political issue because of all the fear and the emotion involved."
Brill's surgery happened not long after he had written a special report for Time magazine investigating the inflated charges in hospital bills. The article Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us won a National Magazine Award. After winning the award, Brill ended up with pages and pages of his own inflated and confusing hospital charges.
"A patient in the American health care system has very little leverage, has very little knowledge, has very little power," Brill says.
Now Brill has written the book America's Bitter Pill about the political fights and the medical and pharmaceutical industry lobbying that made it difficult to pass any health care overhaul and led to the compromises of the Affordable Care Act. The law enables millions more people to afford health insurance, he writes, but it also adds new layers of bureaucracy and many confusing new regulations.
Brill had health insurance that helped him pay for his surgery. His total bill was about $190,000, he says. He paid about $12,000 of it.
"I exhausted the deductible on the policy that my wife and I had," he says. "Once I paid the $12,000, I was indifferent to all the costs because I was paying zero. Once I achieved my maximum out of pocket, as they say, nothing mattered to me."
Steven Brill is a journalist who also founded Court TV, American Lawyer magazine, 10 regional legal newspapers and Brill's Content Magazine. He teaches journalism at Yale. Courtesy of Random House hide caption
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'America's Bitter Pill' Makes Case For Why Health Care Law 'Won't Work'
The university is adopting standard features of most employer-sponsored health plans: Employees will now pay deductibles and a share of the costs, known as coinsurance, for hospitalization, surgery and certain advanced diagnostic tests. The plan has an annual deductible of $250 per individual and $750 for a family. For a doctor's office visit, the charge is $20. For most other services, patients will pay 10 percent of the cost until they reach the out-of-pocket limit of $1,500 for an individual and $4,500 for a family.
Previously, Harvard employees paid a portion of insurance premiums and had low out-of-pocket costs when they received care.
Michael E. Chernew, a health economist and the chairman of the university benefits committee, which recommended the new approach, acknowledged that "with these changes, employees will often pay more for care at the point of service." In part, he said, "that is intended because patient cost-sharing is proven to reduce overall spending."
Read More Job health insurance costs rising faster than wages
The president of Harvard, Drew Gilpin Faust, acknowledged in a letter to the faculty that the changes in health benefits though based on recommendations from some of the university's own health policy experts were "causing distress" and had "generated anxiety" on campus. But she said the changes were necessary because Harvard's health benefit costs were growing faster than operating revenues or staff salaries and were threatening the budget for other priorities like teaching, research and student aid.
In response, Harvard professors, including mathematicians and microeconomists, have dissected the university's data and question whether its health costs have been growing as fast as the university says. Some created spreadsheets and contended that the university's arguments about the growth of employee health costs were misleading. In recent years, national health spending has been growing at an exceptionally slow rate.
In addition, some ideas that looked good to academia in theory are now causing consternation. In 2009, while Congress was considering the health care legislation, Dr. Alan M. Garber then a Stanford professor and now the provost of Harvard led a group of economists who sent an open letter to Mr. Obama endorsing cost-control features of the bill. They praised the Cadillac tax as a way to rein in health costs and premiums.
Dr. Garber, a physician and health economist, has been at the center of the current Harvard debate. He approved the changes in benefits, which were recommended by a committee that included university administrators and experts on health policy.
Read MoreOne 'buck' a day for keeping the MD away
In an interview, Dr. Garber acknowledged that Harvard employees would face greater cost-sharing, but he defended the changes. "Cost-sharing, if done appropriately, can slow the growth of health spending," he said. "We need to be prepared for the very real possibility that health expenditure growth will take off again."
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Top Health Care Stocks
JNJ -0.52%
PFE -0.38%
ABT +0.49%
MRK +1.96%
AMGN -0.76%
Health care stocks were falling, with the NYSE Health Care Sector Index down nearly 0.8% and shares of health care companies in the S&P 500 decreasing 0.4% as a group.
In company news, Stereotaxis Inc. ( STXS ) spiked Monday after U.S. regulators approved the medical device company's Vdrive with V-CAS catheter advancement system, the third Vdrive product to be cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The newly clear device was first released in Europe in 2011 and allows physicians to remotely control the advancement, retraction and rotation of a transseptal sheath together with a magnetic ablation catheter.
The maker of robotic devices used to treat abnormal heart rhythms also said its Odyssey product line recently was approved for use by the Japan Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency.
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The opening of a new hospital in Prairie du Chien will be one of the major health care developments in the Coulee Region this year.
The 25-bed, 137,000-square foot Crossing Rivers Health Center being built across from the municipal airport is targeted to open in June, CEO Bill Sexton said.
When the current facility was built in the mid-50s, the standard was for bedside care, Sexton said. Today, its more for people who come in for treatment and are sent home.
Those who do need inpatient care will be in private rooms, he said, adding, Back in the day, rooms were semi-private. Weve learned over the years that outcomes are better with private care.
The rooms will have three zones one for the caregiver, one for the patient and another for the patients family, including a pull-out couch where relatives can watch TV and stay overnight, Sexton said.
The $37 million building, which is part of a $50 million project including land, amenities and equipment, is rising on Hwy. 18 across from the municipal airport.
It replaces a landlocked facility in town that has been renovated 11 times since it was built on grounds so cramped that emergency helicopters are forced to land on a church parking lot across the street.
The new hospital includes not only a much larger emergency department but also a helipad, the CEO said. Ambulances at the current building park outside and staffers brave the elements to bring patients in, but the new hospital will include a two-bay ambulance garage with closing doors, he said.
We have a good surgery department now, but we will have two operating rooms and a procedure room and can expand (operating rooms) to three, Sexton said.
Among the more than 60 services available at the hospital are general, orthopedic, ophthalmologic and podiatric surgery; obstetrics; rehabilitation, and other specialty offerings that will be expanded, he said.
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DARIEN, IL - A new study of twins suggests that insomnia in childhood and adolescence is partially explained by genetic factors.
Results show that clinically significant insomnia was moderately heritable at all stages of the longitudinal study. Genetic factors contributed to 33 to 38 percent of the insomnia ratings at the first two stages of the study, when participants had an average age of 8 to 10 years. The heritability of insomnia was 14 to 24 percent at the third and fourth follow-up points, when the average age of participants was 14 to 15 years. The remaining source of variance in the insomnia ratings was the non-shared environment, with no influence of shared, family-wide factors. Further analysis found that genetic influences around age 8 contributed to insomnia at all subsequent stages of development, and that new genetic influences came into play around the age of 10 years.
"Insomnia in youth is moderately related to genetic factors, but the specific genetic factors may change with age," said study author Philip Gehrman, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. "We were most surprised by the fact that the genetic factors were not stable over time, so the influence of genes depends on the developmental stage of the child."
Study results are published in the January issue of the journal Sleep.
Insomnia involves difficulty initiating or maintaining sleep, or waking up earlier than desired, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Children with insomnia may resist going to bed on an appropriate schedule or have difficulty sleeping without intervention by a parent or caregiver. An insomnia disorder results in daytime symptoms such as fatigue, irritability or behavioral problems.
According to the authors, the results suggest that genes controlling the sleep-wake system play a role in childhood insomnia. Therefore, molecular genetic studies are needed to identify this genetic mechanism, which could facilitate the development of targeted treatments.
"These results are important because the causes of insomnia may be different in teens and children, so they may need different treatment approaches," said Gehrman.
The study group comprised 1,412 twin pairs who were between the ages of 8 and 18 years: 739 monozygotic pairs, 672 dizygotic pairs and one pair with unknown zygosity. Participants were followed up at three additional time points. Average ages at each of the four waves of the study were 8, 10, 14 and 15 years. Results were interpreted in terms of the progression across time, rather than differences between discrete age groups. Clinical ratings of insomnia symptoms were assessed by trained clinicians using the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Assessment and rated according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3rd Edition.
###
The study was supported by funding from the Mid-Atlantic Twin Registry and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health. Additional support was provided by the Virginia Retirement System and the U.S. Department of Social Security. Data analyses were performed at Northumbria University in the U.K., and data were collected at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine in Richmond.
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Twin study suggests genetic factors contribute to insomnia in children, teens
TIME Health Infectious Disease Health Workers See Promise in Software to Tackle Drug-Resistant Bacteria Getty Images New software may predict genetic changes in bacteria before they occur
Researchers have developed a new software that predicts changes in bacteria that can make them drug-resistant.
Drug resistance happens when disease-causing bacteria adapts to antibiotics and becomes less responsive to treatment. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria cause at least 2 million infections and 23,000 deaths in the United States each year, but because the bacteria are constantly reproducing, its hard to determine what changes and mutations will occur.
Concern about drug resistance has caused doctors to prescribe bacteria-killing drugs more sparingly.
Now a team of researchers at Duke University may have alighted on a solution. In a recently published study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers software, OSPREY, was able to predict the most likely mutations to come out of certain bacteria.
Researchers were able to then test treatment with drugs that are still in the experimental phase. Identifying the most likely mutations while drugs are still under development, the team believes, means the medicine is better positioned for success when it hits the market.
If we can somehow predict how bacteria might respond to a particular drug ahead of time, we can change the drug, or plan for the next one, or rule out therapies that are unlikely to remain effective for long, said study co-author Pablo Gainza-Cirauqui in a statement.
The scientists looked specifically at a common drug-resistant bacteria called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSAa common cause of infections in health care settings like hospitals. They used their software to successfully predict that genetic changes that would occur in the bacteria when treated with drugs.
The researchers are now testing their software on other bacteria, but have made the software open for use by any researcher. The hope is that with time and practice the software algorithm will be able to predict genetic changes more than one mutation ahead.
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Health Workers See Promise in Software to Tackle Drug-Resistant Bacteria
Its first attempt to develop genetically engineered grass ended disastrously for Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. The grass escaped into the wild from test plots in Oregon in 2003, dooming the chances that the government would approve the product for commercial use.
Yet Scotts is once again developing genetically modified grass that would need less mowing, be a deeper green and be resistant to damage from the popular weedkiller Roundup. But this time the grass will not need federal approval before it can be field-tested and marketed.
Scotts and several other companies are developing genetically modified crops using techniques that either are outside the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Department or use new methods like genome editing that were not envisioned when the regulations were created.
The department has said, for example, that it has no authority over a new herbicide-resistant canola, or over a corn that would create less pollution from livestock waste, or switch grass tailored for biofuel production, or an ornamental plant that glows in the dark.
The trend alarms critics of biotech crops, who say there can be unintended effects of genetic modification, regardless of the process.
"They are using a technical loophole so that what are clearly genetically engineered crops and organisms are escaping regulation," said Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at Consumers Union. He said the grass "can have all sorts of ecological impact, and no one is required to look at it."
'Obsolete' regulation
Even some people who say the crops are safe and the regulations overly burdensome have expressed concern that because some crops can be left unregulated, the whole oversight process is confusing and illogical, in some cases doing more harm than good.
In November's Nature Biotechnology, plant researchers at the University of California, Davis wrote that the regulatory framework had become "obsolete and an obstacle to the development of new agricultural products."
But companies using the new techniques say that if the methods were not labeled genetic engineering, novel crops could be marketed or grown in Europe and other countries that do not readily accept genetically modified crops.
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CHOP gene therapy expert fine-tunes protein signals, improves motor function and reduces brain shrinkage in a neurological disorder
IMAGE:Beverly L. Davidson, Ph.D., a gene therapy expert, is the director of The Center for Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. view more
Credit: The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
By adjusting the levels of a key signaling protein, researchers improved motor function and brain abnormalities in experimental animals with a form of Huntington's disease, a severe neurodegenerative disorder. The new findings may lay the groundwork of a novel treatment for people with this fatal, progressive disease.
"This research shows the intricate workings of a biological pathway crucial to the development of Huntington's disease, and is highly relevant to drug development," said study leader Beverly L. Davidson, Ph.D., director of The Center for Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). "Our results in animals open the door to a promising potential therapy, based on carefully manipulating the dysregulated pathway to treat this devastating human disease."
She added that restoring proper balance to these delicate biological processes may offer even broader benefits in treating other neurological diseases, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), fragile X mental retardation and autism.
The study team published its results online Dec. 31 in the journal Neuron.
Huntington's disease is an incurable, inherited disease entailing progressive loss of brain cells and motor function, usually beginning in midlife. A defective gene produces repeated copies of a protein called huntingtin, or HTT. The mutant HTT protein (mHTT) particularly damages a brain region called the striatum, where it interferes with normal cell growth and other fundamental biological events. The resulting disease includes involuntary movements and severe cognitive and emotional disturbances. About 30,000 Americans have Huntington's disease (HD).
Neuroscientists already knew that a signaling protein called mTORC1 that regulates cell growth and metabolism plays a major role in HD. Many researchers have proposed that inhibiting or shutting off the mTORC1 pathway, which interacts with the deleterious mHTT proteins, could help treat HD.
The current study contradicts those assumptions. "We show that the mTORC1 pathway is already impaired in Huntington's disease, and that improving how the pathway functions actually has a protective effect," said Davidson. "However, restoring that pathway must be done very carefully to avoid further harm. It's a 'Goldilocks effect.' You need to restore the mTORC1 level; either too much or too little is detrimental."
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The classic picture of the manufacturing industry is that of conveyor belt upon conveyor belt of identical, mass produced products on the inside and large chimneys belching smoke into the atmosphere on the outside.
But this years list of 30 Under 30 in Manufacturing shows that the present and future of manufacturing is something altogether different. Its a world of custom products, 3D printing, nanoscale chemistry and a green outlook.
Consider Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre, the 29 year-old founders of Ecovative. These two friends use an environmentally-friendly process to grow mushrooms that they then turn into packaging materials to replace the styrofoam protecting, say, a Dell laptop. Best of all, their packaging costs the same or even less than traditional materials.
Other examples of green thinking in the manufacturing list include Max Winograd, 27, the cofounder of NuLabel, which designs adhesive labels for products without those annoying paper backs that you just end up throwing away. Then theres Jeremiah Chapman, 24, whose company Crisp creates products that extend the life of oil in deep fryers for restaurants; and Gabe Blanchet and Jamie Byron, whose company Grove Labs will be selling mass produced indoor gardens for people to easily grow their own fruits and vegetables.
Another theme that emerged in this years list was the big impact of 3D printing to make customized products. For example, theres Nikki Kaufman, 28, whose company Normal produces 3D printed earbuds that are custom fitted to your ear. Or Kegan Schouwenburg, 29, whose company Sols creates insoles for shoes that are customized for its customers feet.
Also innovating with 3D printing are Aaron Kemmer, Jason Dunn, Mike Chen, and Michael Snyder of the company Made In Space. They developed a 3D printer thats capable of working in zero-gravity. Their first printer is already making custom tools for astronauts on the International Space Station, and a bigger one is going up later this year.
Another theme in manufacturing this year was robotics. The list includes Antoine Balaresque and Henry Bradlow, whose Lily Robotics has developed a drone that can follow you around and take pictures like a flying GoPro; Jordi Muoz, 28, who cofounded 3D Robotics, the worlds second largest commercial drone manfacturer; Blake Sessions and Arron Acosta, whose company Rise Robotics builds parts for bigger robots and Natalie Panek, 29, who helps design robotic systems that will be used in outer space.
As for future iterations of the list? We might start looking for them among the kids currently playing with Roominate toys. This company, cofounded by Alice Brooks, 26, makes building toys that employ basic engineering principles from pulleys to electric circuits, allowing kids to learn STEM concepts while they play.
The FORBES 30 Under 30 in Manufacturing list was created using nominations from a variety of sources, and was reported by Joann Muller, Dan Alexander, and Alex Knapp. The judges for this category were Ted Duclos, President of Freudenberg-NOK Sealing Technologies; Jenny Lawton, the CEO of Makerbot; and John Nottingham, cofounder of Nottingham Spirk. Thanks to all of them and to everyone who nominated candidates.
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30 Under 30 Reinventing Manufacturing In A Greener, Tech-Savvier World