Defining the new normal in aging

Public release date: 27-Feb-2013
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Contact: Bryan Alary
bryan.alary@ualberta.ca
780-492-0436
University of Alberta

Diana McIntyre approaches her 80th birthday later this year with the same energy and zest for life of friends decades her junior. Aside from back surgery years ago, she's never been sick and, through a busy volunteer schedule, never seems to slow down.

McIntyre's good health feels normalat least to heralthough she recognizes not all seniors are so fortunate. But when it comes to terms like "normal," "healthy" or "successful" aging, she shakes her head.

"I don't know what would be considered normal aging," said McIntyre, past president of the Seniors Association of Greater Edmonton. "What's normal for a 45-year-old? What's normal for an 80-year-old? Those are really irrelevant terms as far as I'm concerned. My own philosophy is I would like to do as much as I can, for as long as I can, as well as I can."

Hannah O'Rourke, a PhD student and Vanier scholar in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Alberta, says terms such as normal or healthy aging are commonly used by health-care professionals to describe or influence how seniors should age. Often they emphasize personal lifestyle choices in staying healthy, such as eating well, staying active and not smoking.

Chronic disease might be the norm, but doesn't have to be the focus

But those terms can fall short of the experiences of most older Canadians, and how they're used affects how a society views older generationsespecially seniors living with chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease, says O'Rourke.

"Normal aging is not something we can easily define," she says. "There are many older adults with chronic disease who report they still enjoy life. When aging is just defined as 'healthy' and 'devoid of disease,' it doesn't leave a place for what to do with all of these older adults who are still aging with chronic illnesses.

"Cures for chronic illnesses are not always around the corner, and health-care teams have patients to care for now. We need to find ways to support older adults with chronic disease to live well according to their own definitions of health and normality."

O'Rourke, a registered nurse whose research focuses on quality of life for people with dementia, points out that many Canadian seniors are well enough to live at home, yet 80 per cent have some form of chronic disease. With that large a majority, putting the onus on individual choices to age successfully sends the wrong message.

"The implication is that if you have a chronic illness as an older adult, you've somehow failed in this goal of aging without chronic disease, which is perhaps not that realistic a goal."

Sound the alarm, a grey wave is here

O'Rourke says much of the policy work, research and teaching about aging also relies on statistics to describe Canada's greying population, such as estimates that, by 2026, one-fifth of the country will be over the age of 65. But those statistics frame aging as a problem to be fixed, she says, and that affects how we view seniors.

McIntyre feels these implications, and not in a positive way.

"When people think of seniors, they think of their limitations instead of their capabilities," she says. "The huge majority of us are doing very well on our own, thank you."

O'Rourke points out that an aging society can also be viewed as a success story because it means the majority of us are living well into our older years.

"Just because something requires resources doesn't necessarily mean it's a huge problem."

###

O'Rourke's research was funded by Knowledge Translation Canada, Alberta Innovates Health Solutions and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The findings will be published in the March issue of Nursing Inquiry.

---

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 27-Feb-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Bryan Alary
bryan.alary@ualberta.ca
780-492-0436
University of Alberta

Diana McIntyre approaches her 80th birthday later this year with the same energy and zest for life of friends decades her junior. Aside from back surgery years ago, she's never been sick and, through a busy volunteer schedule, never seems to slow down.

McIntyre's good health feels normalat least to heralthough she recognizes not all seniors are so fortunate. But when it comes to terms like "normal," "healthy" or "successful" aging, she shakes her head.

"I don't know what would be considered normal aging," said McIntyre, past president of the Seniors Association of Greater Edmonton. "What's normal for a 45-year-old? What's normal for an 80-year-old? Those are really irrelevant terms as far as I'm concerned. My own philosophy is I would like to do as much as I can, for as long as I can, as well as I can."

Hannah O'Rourke, a PhD student and Vanier scholar in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Alberta, says terms such as normal or healthy aging are commonly used by health-care professionals to describe or influence how seniors should age. Often they emphasize personal lifestyle choices in staying healthy, such as eating well, staying active and not smoking.

Chronic disease might be the norm, but doesn't have to be the focus

But those terms can fall short of the experiences of most older Canadians, and how they're used affects how a society views older generationsespecially seniors living with chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease, says O'Rourke.

"Normal aging is not something we can easily define," she says. "There are many older adults with chronic disease who report they still enjoy life. When aging is just defined as 'healthy' and 'devoid of disease,' it doesn't leave a place for what to do with all of these older adults who are still aging with chronic illnesses.

"Cures for chronic illnesses are not always around the corner, and health-care teams have patients to care for now. We need to find ways to support older adults with chronic disease to live well according to their own definitions of health and normality."

O'Rourke, a registered nurse whose research focuses on quality of life for people with dementia, points out that many Canadian seniors are well enough to live at home, yet 80 per cent have some form of chronic disease. With that large a majority, putting the onus on individual choices to age successfully sends the wrong message.

"The implication is that if you have a chronic illness as an older adult, you've somehow failed in this goal of aging without chronic disease, which is perhaps not that realistic a goal."

Sound the alarm, a grey wave is here

O'Rourke says much of the policy work, research and teaching about aging also relies on statistics to describe Canada's greying population, such as estimates that, by 2026, one-fifth of the country will be over the age of 65. But those statistics frame aging as a problem to be fixed, she says, and that affects how we view seniors.

McIntyre feels these implications, and not in a positive way.

"When people think of seniors, they think of their limitations instead of their capabilities," she says. "The huge majority of us are doing very well on our own, thank you."

O'Rourke points out that an aging society can also be viewed as a success story because it means the majority of us are living well into our older years.

"Just because something requires resources doesn't necessarily mean it's a huge problem."

###

O'Rourke's research was funded by Knowledge Translation Canada, Alberta Innovates Health Solutions and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The findings will be published in the March issue of Nursing Inquiry.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-02/uoa-dtn022713.php

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Big spending cuts mark tea party success, and risk

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The pending $85 billion in federal spending cuts would seem like a tea partyer's dream. Why, then, are tea party activists and other conservatives so wary on the eve of the big reductions, which Congress and the White House seem unable or unwilling to stop?

It's because even ardent cost-cutters see the so-called "sequester" as a ham-handed and unpredictable way to reduce federal spending. While a few tea party activists are claiming all-out victory, others are keeping their distance, calling the across-the-board cuts the least-bad of several unpleasant options.

"I think it's a crazy idea," said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a tea party favorite. "The only thing crazier than sequester is to walk away from the cuts that it guarantees."

Rubio's remarks reflect Republicans' nervousness about how the public might react to the domestic and military spending cuts scheduled to begin Friday.

But in many ways, the sequester marks the tea party movement's maturation into a virtually mainstream role in the Republican Party. Cutting the Pentagon's budget once was unthinkable for most Republican lawmakers. But now it is trumped by the drive to keep taxes down while reducing costs wherever possible.

Congressional Democrats and Republicans agreed to the sequester in 2011 only as a consequence so unpalatable that it would goad them into finding a deficit-reduction compromise. The compromise never materialized, however, and now the nation is about to swallow what lawmakers once called a "poison pill" of their own making.

Republicans fear a possible backlash against program cuts and furloughs of government workers and contractors, especially at military bases. They also worry that the cuts will have an economic domino effect, eliminating thousands of private-sector jobs and possibly pushing the nation back into recession.

If that happens, and if voters decide Republicans are chiefly to blame, then the tea party movement could further divide an already roiling GOP.

President Barack Obama and other Democrats say Republican intransigence on tax increases is the sequester's main cause. And public polls indicate Americans are more inclined to fault the GOP if things go badly, although some Republicans believe they can change that.

For now, the approaching cuts are testament to the power of anti-tax sentiment ? and, to a less proven degree, anti-spending sentiment ? in the Republican Party. The tea party movement is strongly associated with these sentiments. But it certainly can't take all the credit.

Long before the tea party's birth in 2009, anti-tax activists such as Grover Norquist were pushing the Republican Party to take inviolable stands against new taxes, even as the deficit soared and the federal tax burden approached historic lows.

Obama won re-election after calling for new taxes on the wealthy. He achieved some of them in January. But Republican lawmakers now say "no more," contributing to the sequester impasse.

The tea party has lost much of its exotic flavor that was punctuated by noisy rallies with costumed activists in 2009 and 2010. Its influence, however, appears larger now. "It has melted into the GOP base," said John J. Pitney, Jr., a former Republican staffer who teaches political science at Claremont McKenna College in California. "Anti-tax voters make up a large share of the vote in GOP primaries," he said, "so Republican lawmakers support tax increases at their peril."

But Republicans could face another kind of peril, Pitney said, if the sequester lasts for months and begins to erode "visible, popular programs."

Duke University political scientist David Rohde said the tea party has become "the populist conservative faction of the Republican Party." It drew well-deserved credit for fueling the Republicans' big congressional and gubernatorial wins in 2010, he said, even though some tea party-backed Senate nominees lost key races.

The movement's future, Rohde said, depends on whether tea party activism is seen as helping or hurting Republican candidates in 2014 and beyond. Fallout from the sequester could play a big role in those elections.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is typical of Republican lawmakers who grudgingly accept the sequester and worry that tea party ideals can go too far.

"I believe that the cuts in defense are ill-conceived and will do a lot of damage," said Graham, whose state includes several military installations. "Some of these tea party folks don't mind losing their bases; others will."

The tea party drive to reduce federal spending at almost every level is potent in GOP circles. Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia, eyeing a Senate race that will draw several hard-right Republican rivals, says the sequester appears inevitable, but it will extract an economic and political price.

Referring to military bases in his Savannah-based district, Kingston said, "my people will take it on the chin." But in constituent feedback about the sequester, he said, "the overwhelming number of people are saying, "Let it happen." They want to see that we are serious about cutting spending."

Even some tea party leaders say the movement's take-no-prisoners approach has its costs.

"Our brand is tarnished, but that's what happens when you get beat up," said Sal Russo, a founder of the California-based Tea Party Express. "It's not the brand" that counts, he said, "it's the ideas."

In the long run, Russo said, the benefits of reducing deficit spending will overshadow any short-term hits to the economy this year. If that happens, he said, the tea party's status will rise in the Republican Party and the nation at large.

The movement "is quite alive and well," he said.

But some question the tea party's willingness to embrace domestic and military cuts that don't touch the greatest causes of deficit spending: the popular but costly "entitlement" programs of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

"They're amputating the wrong limb," said Rutgers University political scientist Ross Baker. If the tea party movement is to achieve its goal of undoing the government's borrowing habits, he said, it must prove it can blaze a political path to reductions in entitlement spending.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/big-spending-cuts-mark-tea-195151299.html

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Swimming in Sperm and Eggs

Sea anemone in?Carrie Bow Cay, Belize, during the 2012 spawning season

Courtesy of Abby Wood

The Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, a narrow band of coral stretching from the Yucatan to northern Honduras, hugs the Belizean coastline like a giant parenthesis. In a few places, the main spine of the reef rises above the surface, forming low islands exposed to the wind and waves of the open sea.

One of these islands, 13 miles offshore, houses the Smithsonian Institution?s Carrie Bow Cay Marine Field Station. When I stepped ashore one sweaty evening, the station had an air of cheerful dereliction. Researchers in bikinis and half-zipped wetsuits circled in and out of the bare-bones laboratories. A hand-lettered wooden sign near the station house entry read ?FREE BEER TOMORROW.?

The evening?s task would be delicate, however, and tension was building. It was three days after the full moon, and some of the corals near Carrie Bow were expected to begin their annual spawn once night fell. A team of aquarists and marine scientists had gathered on the island in hopes of collecting sperm and eggs released into the water by endangered coral species.

If all went well, the scientists would each return home with a supply of coral larvae ready to be raised in captivity?and, perhaps, serve as an insurance policy for the Caribbean?s fast-declining reefs. If not ? well, they were trying not to think about that possibility. When it comes to coral, they know they can?t count on much.

On the sandy back steps of the research station, Mary Hagedorn of the Smithsonian sat in front of a picnic table piled with equipment. ?OK, everyone, let?s rehearse,? she said. She turned to Abby Wood, a professional actor who volunteers in the invertebrate department at the National Zoo. ?So I?m a coral,? Hagedorn said, sticking her hands over her head and laughing. ?You?re going to slip the bag over me ??

Wood, a dark-haired 30-year-old with a big, deep voice?she played Tybalt in an all-female production of Romeo and Juliet?pantomimed what Hagedorn and the aquarists hoped would soon happen in the water.

Divers would hitch the silk bags over a few branches of spawning coral, catching the sperm and egg bundles as they floated upward and collecting them in plastic vials attached to the tops of the bags.

Underwater in Carrie Bow Cay, Belize, during the 2012 spawning season

Courtesy of Abby Wood

When the spawn petered out?spawns last only a few minutes?the divers would carefully cap the vials and hand them to a snorkeler, who would ferry them back to the research boat. Wood mugged her way through the demonstration. It was part practice, part ritual.

Coral sex is more complicated than one might imagine. Corals can reproduce asexually?that is, coral fragments can grow into clones of their parent. But corals can also reproduce through the fertilization of eggs by sperm. Sexual reproduction preserves genetic diversity, and with it a species? ability to withstand and adapt to change.

But coral sex probably doesn?t happen as much as it used to. In the Caribbean, warming water, disease, overfishing, and other problems have killed 80 percent of the region?s coral, turning many reefs into rocks and seaweed. Similar foes are killing coral in the Pacific, where the extent of living coral is thought to have shrunk by half in recent decades. These smaller, weaker, and more diffuse populations seem to be less likely to spawn?and when they do, their sperm and eggs are less likely to meet in the water.

In 2006, a group of European and U.S. aquarists, experts in aquatic plant and animal husbandry, were concerned about the ongoing declines in coral worldwide and decided to try raising sexually reproduced coral in captivity. They knew it would be a challenge: They would have to collect coral sperm and eggs in the wild during infrequent, never-quite-predictable coral spawns, fertilize the eggs in the laboratory, and, once they had young, living corals, figure out how to keep them alive through adolescence. They hoped that sexually reproduced captive coral could be used to revitalize or restore wild coral populations damaged by overfishing, climate change, or other forces.

The aquarists managed to bring some endangered staghorn coral larvae back to their aquaria, where they varied water temperatures, water chemistry, flow rates and feeding regimes, trying to find the optimal conditions for each species. ?We were basically trying to re-create the ocean in a box,? says Michael Henley, an invertebrate curator at the National Zoo.

Each year, as the techniques improved, a few more coral larvae survived and grew. The largest captive-grown staghorn coral colony, which lives at a research station in southern Florida, is now as broad as a dinner plate. In the summer of 2010, the aquarists began releasing young captive-grown corals on a reef near Cura?ao, and many are still alive?an encouraging sign for larger-scale restoration efforts.

Now, on the coast of Belize, the aquarists wanted to try their techniques with elkhorn coral, another gravely endangered coral species in the Caribbean.

Just after sunset, the crew loaded a boat with gear and set off for a half-submerged atoll near Carrie Bow with some large, healthy-looking specimens of coral. Lightning flashed in the distance, over the open sea, and the moon began to rise, huge and orange.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=43c3a69ffa75f43c03ba1762020a8043

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Why America?s Charities Are So Uncharitable

Nastia Liukin (right) visits with Emily Crowley at Boston Children's Hospital in 2010. The charitable hospital was recently cited in a government report for its high charges despite sitting on $2.6 billion in investment assets.

Photo by Gail Oskin/Getty Images for Boston Children's Hospital

In the 2009 movie Whip It, Ellen Page plays Bliss Cavendar, a 17-year-old from Bodeen, Texas. Bliss is a social misfit yearning to break out of the constraints of small-town culture. After spotting a flier on a trip to Austin, she finds refuge in the speed, violence, and vaguely illicit appeal of Roller Derby. Skating under the name of ?Babe Ruthless,? she becomes a star, a vision of youth and purity amid the tattoos and beer-soaked sexuality of the sport. But her passion for skating quickly collides with her mother?s view of feminine propriety. Mom is horrified to discover her daughter?s love of Roller Derby and tries to bar her from the championship match.

What Bliss needed was a better strategy. She should have argued that her Roller Derby competitions were a socially sanctioned charitable activity, akin to the Red Cross or?better yet?the Junior League. Meet the Renegade Roller Girls of Bend, Ore. Like their fictitious Texas cousins, they promise violence and scantily clad action in the ?hottest show in town, with our no holds barred play,? and they display the same affection for in-rink violence. But unlike the league in the movie, they do not operate in the shadows of abandoned warehouses; instead, they are registered as a 501(c)3 organization, approved as a public charity by the Internal Revenue Service.

The Renegade Rollers are hardly alone. In 2008, the same year that the roller-skating outfit received its charitable status, the IRS approved, along with 50,000 other new charities, the applications of the All Colorado Beer Festival and the Grand Canyon Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. In fact, the IRS routinely approves more than 99.8 percent of the applications it receives for public charity status, often in very short order. In truth, starting a charity takes little more than a stamp, $400 for the filing fee, and a passing facility for filling out government forms.

There are more than 1.1 million charities in the United States, and it is perhaps not surprising that some cases slip through the crack. But the story of the Renegade Roller Girls reveals something more basic about our system for identifying what is or is not a charity. Roughly put, we don?t have one. The failure of the IRS and other regulators to act as gatekeepers has consequences that go beyond a few amusing anecdotes. There are substantial economic costs in the form of lost income tax and property tax revenue from organizations that hardly qualify as charities (as well as the deductions taken by their donors). It also means that more and more charities are competing for a finite amount of money from public and private donors, diminishing the effectiveness of real charities. And when people become aware of this problem, it?s understandable that they come away feeling that many charities are downright uncharitable.

Charitable hospitals are perhaps the best example. They are a linchpin in the American medical system, accounting for about two-thirds of all Medicare beds in this country. And while they are only about 1 percent of the country?s charities, charitable hospitals collect 43 percent of all charitable revenue, about $650 billion a year.

The phrase charity hospital may still conjure up images of scruffy floors, Jell-O-laden dinner trays, and volunteer nuns, but that isn?t the reality anymore. Charitable hospitals can be extraordinarily luxurious. Witness the Greenberg Pavilion at the New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, which advertises its hotel-like amenities such as Frette bed linens and original works of art. (A hospital room there can run $2,400 a night.) And they can be extraordinarily profitable, too. Leaders of charitable hospitals routinely are paid into the seven figures, even more on some occasions. In fact, charitable hospitals are far more likely to make money: 77 percent of charitable hospitals are profitable compared to 61 percent of for-profit institutions. Some are immensely profitable, such as Boston Children?s Hospital, which was recently cited in a government report for its high charges despite sitting on $2.6 billion in investment assets.

The purpose here is not to demonize charitable hospitals; they are the product of a changing business, regulatory, and health care system. Charitable hospitals are not worse than for-profit hospitals; they are, in fact, fundamentally the same. In 2006, the Congressional Budget Office compared for-profit and charitable hospitals across various critical service criteria and found only the smallest differences between them. The CBO study found the charitable hospitals to be slightly more likely to provide uncompensated and specialized services; on the other hand, for-profit hospitals were modestly more likely to provide Medicare or Medicaid services and to serve economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. It is hard to come away from the CBO study with the view that there are any significant business differences between the two, which makes the lucrative charitable tax exemption that charitable hospitals receive all the more puzzling. Illinois, for one, has tried to strip several of its charitable hospitals of their tax exemptions for just this reason.

It?s hard to understand why some organizations receive charitable status and others do not. One of our core, and fairly obvious, organizing principles is that a charity must dispense a public service rather than a private good. But many of our most prominent civic charities would struggle to meet that basic test. Tickets to symphonies, operas, and the like are often so prohibitively expensive that their primary services effectively exclude everyone but the well-off.

Private schools are perhaps an even better example, not only because they charge enormous tuition fees but also because they are of questionable social value. Average costs at prep schools exceed $10,000 a year?a figure that has skyrocketed in recent years?and can reach more than $40,000 in some cases. Not surprisingly given these costs, private school students tend to be wealthy, white, and from much better educated families than their public school peers. Nevertheless, we grant these institutions of privilege charitable and tax-exempt status, even though they unquestionably lead to greater social and economic stratification through the hollowing out of the public school system. Private schools are of course largely supported by their tuition fees, but the benefits they receive from their charitable status are substantial. Indeed, sometimes it is that very status that leads the superwealthy to make incredible gifts to some very fortunate schools. Take, for example, the $49 million Ethel Allen left the Hackley School in Tarrytown, N.Y., last year, or the $50 million gift by casino magnate Sheldon Adelson to support the Adelson Educational Campus in Las Vegas.

It may seem that changing the charitable status for private schools is unthinkable. Perhaps, but it has been tried before. In 2009, the British Charity Commission revoked the charitable charters for two private schools, finding that they provided too little in the way of financial aid to needy students. While the commission?s ruling was ultimately overturned by the courts, the commission?s position still stands for the common sense notion that charities should demonstrate a public benefit in order to maintain their charitable status. When so much of the American charitable sector seems so uncharitable, it is perhaps time we remind ourselves what a charity is really supposed to be.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=71500e841601a43cd7a3f6842eb7324c

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Pain can be a relief

Feb. 26, 2013 ? When something causes less pain than expected it is even possible for it to feel pleasant, a new study reveals. These findings may one day play a key role in treating pain and substance abuse.

If you accidently kick your toe against a doorframe you are probably going to find it very painful. As a purely intellectual experiment, imagine purposefully kicking a doorframe hard enough to potentially break your toe. When it turns out your toe has been battered but not broken, the pain may be interpreted more as a relief.

"It is not hard to understand that pain can be interpreted as less severe when an individual is aware that it could have been much more painful. Less expected, however, is the discovery that pain may be experienced as pleasant if something worse has been avoided," explains Siri Leknes, Research Fellow at the Department of Psychology at the University of Oslo.

The lesser of two evils

When working as a research fellow at Oxford University, Dr Leknes became curious about what can be called the "it could have been worse" phenomenon. How is the experience of pain affected by a feeling of relief from realising that it was not as bad as expected?

Dr Leknes recruited 16 healthy subjects who prepared themselves for a painful experience. They were repeatedly exposed to heat of varying intensity applied to their arm for four seconds.

The experiments were carried out in two different contexts: in the first, the heat was either not painful or only moderately painful -- about the same as firmly holding a coffee cup that is slightly too hot. In the second, the heat was either moderately or intensely painful. In this context, moderate pain was the lesser of two evils.

The research subjects reported how they interpreted the pain. In addition, while they were exposed to the stimuli their brain activity was measured by MRI.

Comforting pain

"As expected, the intense heat triggered negative feelings among all subjects whereas the non-painful heat produced positive reactions," explains Siri Leknes.

What intrigued the researchers was the subjects' response to moderate pain. In the experiments where moderate pain was the worst alternative, the pain felt was unpleasant. In the instances where it was the best alternative, the subjects experienced the moderate pain as positive -- even comforting.

"The likely explanation is that the subjects were prepared for the worst and thus felt relieved when they realised the pain was not going to be as bad as they had feared," states Dr Leknes.

"In other words, a sense of relief can be powerful enough to turn such an obviously negative experience as pain into a sensation that is comforting or even enjoyable."

The MRI examinations revealed that the brain changed how it processed moderate pain according to the context and what the alternative was. When the pain was comforting, there was more activity in the areas of the brain associated with pleasure and pain relief and less activity in the areas associated with pain.

A future in treating pain?

Dr Leknes believes that the study illustrates that exposure to one and the same stimulus is interpreted very differently among individuals and that the experience is connected to expectation and context. Some individuals like the burning sensation of eating chili peppers, for example, while others enjoy sadomasochistic sex.

Also, envisioning that an even worse alternative exists than what is actually experienced may even help a person to interpret involuntary pain as something agreeable.

Nevertheless, Dr Leknes points out, pain is generally a highly unpleasant experience and current pain alleviation treatments are inadequate for many people.

"That is why it is so important to find out how and to what degree the brain can control pain on its own. We are currently carrying out basic research, but we hope that this knowledge will one day be applied to develop improved methods for treating pain," she says.

Would it always be advisable then for a doctor to inform a patient that a procedure or treatment is going to be very painful?

"In some situations this may be a good approach, but not always," replies Dr Leknes. "Doctors observe that their patients react very differently to the information they are given; certain patients are likely to experience a genuine sense of relief if they prepare for the worst only to find it not so bad after all, whereas others prefer to avoid worrying beforehand and want to know as little as possible about what they will be undergoing," she explains.

Substance abuse -- from pleasure to relief

The study has been partially funded under the Programme on Alcohol and Drug Research (RUSMIDDEL) at the Research Council of Norway. "Relief is also likely a vital factor in substance abuse," asserts Dr Leknes.

"Over time, the effect of alcohol and drugs will change from triggering feelings of pleasure to primarily alleviating the discomfort of addiction. The brain's regulatory processes change, causing substance abusers to experience a shift; at some point, they use alcohol and drugs in order to achieve a neutral state and avoid feeling awful," explains Dr Leknes.

"By studying relief in order to understand how this process works, we can come up with new ideas for treating substance dependence more effectively. From our pain research, we know that the relief mechanisms in the brains of patients with chronic pain become disrupted. This may be something shared by patients suffering from pain and alcohol and drug addiction alike," she concludes.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by The Research Council of Norway.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/lgn5R2v6_NI/130226081021.htm

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Titanic II blueprints unveiled, but don't call it 'unsinkable'

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Australian mining entrepreneur Clive Palmer on Tuesday unveiled blueprints for Titanic II, a modern replica of the doomed ocean liner, although he stopped short of calling the vessel unsinkable.

The ship will largely recreate the design and decor of the fabled original, with some modifications to keep it in line with current safety rules and shipbuilding practices, and the addition of some modern comforts such as air conditioning, Palmer said at a press conference in New York.

The three passenger classes, however, will be prevented from mingling, as in 1912, Palmer said.

"I'm not too superstitious," Palmer said when asked whether recreating a ship best known for sinking was tempting fate.

White Star Line, the operator of the original ship, had said the Titanic was designed to be unsinkable. Some 1,500 people died on Titanic's maiden voyage in 1912 from Southampton to New York after the ship collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic.

Palmer, who created the company Blue Star Line last year, declined to make a similar boast.

"Anything will sink if you put a hole in it," Palmer said. "I think it would be very cavalier to say it."

Unlike the original, Titanic II will have more than enough space in its lifeboats for every person on board and will have additional escape staircases. Markku Kanerva, sales director at Deltamarin, the Finnish company designing the ship, said it would be the "safest cruise ship in the world."

Palmer declined to answer questions about the project's cost. Although the Titanic was the world's largest ship in her time, she would be smaller than many of today's modern cruise ships.

"It's not about the money," Palmer said. "I've got enough money for it, I think that's all that matters."

Forbes estimated Palmer's net worth to be $795 million in 2012. He describes himself as a billionaire.

Titanic II will be built by Chinese state-owned CSC Jinling Shipyard, which is already building four ore carriers for Palmer's mining business, he said. The contract to build Titanic II has not yet been signed, Palmer said.

"Oh, probably next week, something like that," Palmer said, when asked when that would happen. "Most things I say I'll do I do."

He hoped construction would begin later this year, and that the maiden voyage, recreating the trans-Atlantic crossing of the original, would take place in 2016, he said.

"But if it takes longer, it takes longer," he said. "But we'll do it. We've got a big pile of money."

Jaime Katz, an analyst who tracks the cruise industry, said Titanic II may find it difficult to compete with established cruise lines, particularly the economies of scale of their larger fleets. She said the Titanic II could be marketed to wealthier passengers and could draw repeat business by varying its routes rather than focusing on trans-Atlantic crossings.

"People are going to be really cautious or superstitious regarding getting on a second version of the Titanic, or it could be a really compelling idea for history buffs who really want to live the story or the legend behind it," Katz said.

"There's an audience for all sorts of cruises," she said.

Titanic II will operate as a cruise ship, and passengers will find 1912-style clothing in their rooms should they wish to dress up and pretend they are living in an earlier era as they visit facsimiles of the original gilded first-class dining and smoking rooms, if they have the appropriate ticket.

Although the classes will be kept largely separate, Palmer said he was considering offering ticket packages that would allow passengers to experience all three classes during a typical six-day Atlantic crossing.

Prices for the tickets will be announced later.

Helen Benziger, a descendant of Titanic survivor Margaret Brown, better known as the Unsinkable Molly Brown, said at the press conference that the ship would be a chance to experience the sort of grace and civility she said was sometimes lacking in the modern world.

"I think it's a chance to go back in time," said Benziger, who has joined the project's advisory board.

Palmer said he plans to travel in third class on Titanic II's maiden voyage.

"I'll be looking forward to it as you bang the drum and play the fiddle, twirling around like Leonardo does," he said, meaning actor Leonardo DiCaprio, in one of the repeated references he made to the 1997 James Cameron film ?Titanic.'

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Phil Berlowitz)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/titanic-ii-blueprints-unveiled-dont-call-unsinkable-195203971.html

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Source: http://ffeathers.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/horse-meetup-found-in-technical-writers-blog-post/

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Bela Tarr swaps film making for running unique school

SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Revered Hungarian director Bela Tarr's famously uncompromising approach to cinema will now be passed to future generations as he begins a new course for budding filmmakers in Sarajevo.

The 57-year-old retired from directing after the release in 2011 of "The Turin Horse", a bleak, black-and-white portrayal of a peasant and his daughter abandoned by man and God in their remote, windswept cottage.

Its long takes and sparse dialogue and narrative were trademarks of Tarr, who won over critics around the world and is perhaps most famous for his seven-hour epic "Satantango" based on a novel by compatriot Laszlo Krasznahorkai.

It will come as little surprise to hear Tarr speak not of commercial success in cinema, but artistic integrity at a time when independent filmmakers are struggling to raise money to make movies that have limited box office potential.

"Film is different - you cannot teach, you can do only one thing which is to develop young filmmakers -- give them freedom, tell them they can be brave, they can be themselves, do what they really want," Tarr said in an interview.

Last week classes began at his newly launched Film Factory at the Sarajevo University School for Science and Technology, offering a three-year programme which Tarr and his associates said would adopt a fresh approach to filmmaking.

"It started when I decided not to make any more movies," Tarr said of his idea to launch an international PhD-level film programme for mature directors.

"I had the feeling this was the next step in my life because I want to share what I know, and I want to protect young filmmakers, give them the protection to be free," he told Reuters in his offices in the Bosnian capital.

ART BACK INTO FILM

Accommodated in a building located in the old part of Sarajevo, his Film Factory is now home to 17 students who have come from as far as Japan and Mexico to explore the secrets of filmmaking.

"It's a unique attempt to really work artistically in film, and to bring film to the level of art again," said Fred Kelemen, a German cinematographer and director who runs a camera workshop at the school.

"I think it's very important because it's something that many film schools around the world do not do any more," he added before mentoring students in capturing light against a dark backdrop on camera.

Kelemen has worked with Tarr on several films, and has been branded by critics as the "maestro of black and white silence".

The programme includes a theoretical section based on analyzing films as well as practical workshops which will be run by independent cinema stars including Gus Van Sant, Jim Jarmusch and Tilda Swinton.

Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas, French director Thierry Garrel, Icelandic producer Fridrik Thor Fridriksson will also be among the lecturers, and possibly Aki Kaurismaki.

Students are expected to produce four films over the first two years and a feature in the final year.

"It looks like a menu," Tarr said of his programme. "In the end you have to cook your own food. The third part, when they are making their own movies, is where the real cooking is done, and that is my responsibility."

Most students said they applied for the school because of its unconventional approach to film and its roster of prominent figures from the film industry.

"After 110 years of cinema we are at the point where everything is undone," said Keja Ho Kramer from France, who has worked in the film business for the past 12 years.

"So to have an opportunity to rethink where the future is with all these amazing people is what interests me most."

Tarr is confident the course will achieve its goal of promoting freedom of art and expression, and produce some "good, strong movies.

"We are here, we have cameras, we have lights, we have fantasy, they have time, they are young, full of energy, full of hope - I do not see a problem. We just have to work, work, work, work."

(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Paul Casciato)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/bela-tarr-swaps-film-making-running-unique-school-130023576.html

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Spanish Test: Mediterranean Diet Shines In Clinical Study

Don't hold back on the olive oil, a Spanish study concludes.

hiphoto40/iStockphoto.com

Don't hold back on the olive oil, a Spanish study concludes.

hiphoto40/iStockphoto.com

Pour on the olive oil in good conscience, and add some nuts while you're at it.

A careful test of the so-called Mediterranean diet involving more than 7,000 people at a high risk of having heart attacks and strokes found the diet reduced them when compared with a low-fat diet. A regular diet of Mediterranean cuisine also reduced the risk of dying.

The findings, published online by The New England Journal of Medicine, come from a study conducted right in the heart of Mediterranean country: Spain.

A group of men and women, ages 55 to 80 at the start of the study, were randomly assigned to a low-fat diet or one of two variations of the Mediterranean diet: one featuring a lot of extra-virgin olive oil (more than a quarter cup a day) and the other including lots of nuts (more than an ounce a day of walnuts, almonds and hazelnuts).

The Mediterranean diet is rich in fish, grains, nuts, fruits and vegetables. The diet is low in dairy products, red meat and processed foods.

In this study, funded mainly by the Spanish government, the researchers made sure people got regular training sessions in the particulars of each diet. They also checked people's actual consumption of olive oil and nuts with lab tests.

One thing the researchers didn't do was set any limits on calories or targets for exercise.

While lots of research has found benefits from the Mediterranean diet, many of the studies have observed what people have eaten and looked for associations. One of this study's strengths is that it randomly assigned people at high risk of developing cardiovascular disease to diets that stood to help them.

The study was stopped early (after a median follow-up of 4.8 years) because the benefits from the Mediterranean diet were already becoming apparent. Overall, the people consuming the diets rich in olive oil or nuts had about a 30 percent lower risk of having a heart attack, stroke or dying from a cardiovascular cause.

In absolute terms, there were about 8 of those problems for every 1,000 person-years in the Mediterranean diet groups compared with 11 per 1,000 person-years in the low-fat diet group.

How does the Mediterranean diet work? The prevailing theory is that it lowers bad cholesterol and triglycerides while increasing protective good cholesterol. It may also also help the body's ability to process sugar.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/02/25/172872408/spanish-test-mediterranean-diet-shines-in-clinical-study?ft=1&f=1007

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Fragments of continents hidden under lava in Indian Ocean: New micro-continent detected under Reunion and Mauritius

Feb. 22, 2013 ? The islands Reunion and Mauritius, both well-known tourist destinations, are hiding a micro-continent, which has now been discovered. The continent fragment known as Mauritia detached about 60 million years ago while Madagascar and India drifted apart, and had been hidden under huge masses of lava.

Such micro-continents in the oceans seem to occur more frequently than previously thought, says a study in the latest issue of Nature Geoscience.

The break-up of continents is often associated with mantle plumes: These giant bubbles of hot rock rise from the deep mantle and soften the tectonic plates from below, until the plates break apart at the hotspots. This is how Eastern Gondwana broke apart about 170 million years ago. At first, one part was separated, which in turn fragmented into Madagascar, India, Australia and Antarctica, which then migrated to their present position.

Plumes currently situated underneath the islands Marion and Reunion appear to have played a role in the emergence of the Indian Ocean. If the zone of the rupture lies at the edge of a land mass (in this case Madagascar / India), fragments of this land mass may be separated off. The Seychelles are a well-known example of such a continental fragment.

A group of geoscientists from Norway, South Africa, Britain and Germany have now published a study that suggests, based on the study of lava sand grains from the beach of Mauritius, the existence of further fragments. The sand grains contain semi-precious zircons aged between 660 and 1970 million years, which is explained by the fact that the zircons were carried by the lava as it pushed through subjacent continental crust of this age.

This dating method was supplemented by a recalculation of plate tectonics, which explains exactly how and where the fragments ended up in the Indian Ocean. Dr. Bernhard Steinberger of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences and Dr. Pavel Doubrovine of Oslo University calculated the hotspot trail: "On the one hand, it shows the position of the plates relative to the two hotspots at the time of the rupture, which points towards a causal relation," says Steinberger. "On the other hand, we were able to show that the continent fragments continued to wander almost exactly over the Reunion plume, which explains how they were covered by volcanic rock." So what was previously interpreted only as the trail of the Reunion hotspot, are continental fragments which were previously not recognized as such because they were covered by the volcanic rocks of the Reunion plume. It therefore appears that such micro-continents in the ocean occur more frequently than previously thought.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Helmholtz Centre Potsdam - GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Trond H. Torsvik, Hans Amundsen, Ebbe H. Hartz, Fernando Corfu, Nick Kusznir, Carmen Gaina, Pavel V. Doubrovine, Bernhard Steinberger, Lewis D. Ashwal, Bj?rn Jamtveit. A Precambrian microcontinent in the Indian Ocean. Nature Geoscience, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/NGEO1736

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/OaIWm9jLxY4/130224142725.htm

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Jennifer Lawrence -- Independent Spirit Awards 2013

Just Jared:

Jennifer Lawrence dons a back-revealing top while attending the 2013 Independent Spirit Awards at Santa Monica Beach on Saturday (February 23) in Santa Monica, Calif.

The 22-year-old actress wore a skirt, top, and necklace by Lanvin, Giuseppe Zanotti shoes, and carried a Bottega Veneta bag.

Read the whole story at Just Jared

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/23/jennifer-lawrence-independent-spirit-awards-2013_n_2750727.html

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Planets Deserve Better Names

Kepler-20e aka Beyonc??

Courtesy of NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

Fed up with dull names for exoplanets, Alan Stern and his company, Uwingu, have asked the public for help. Stern is the former head of science missions at NASA. He and a group of fellow scientists and educators launched Uwingu's hunt for names last year at uwingu.com.

Stephen P. Craft: How did you come up with the idea for a list of potential names for exoplanets?
Alan Stern: The number of planets in the Milky Way was recently estimated at more than 100 billion. We realized that that's far, far too many names for astronomers to supply, that it would take the general public, too. We also realized how much fun this could be for people.

SC: How do people submit names?
AS: For 99 cents, anyone can put in a name, as long as it isn't already nominated and isn't profane or pejorative. People can also vote on which names they like best. We only have a few hundred now, but the idea is that we will have hundreds of thousands of names in the database. We will take the thousand most popular, which will correspond to the thousand or so exoplanets that we already know about, and hand those to exoplanet scientists.

SC: What kinds of names are people suggesting?
AS: It is pretty interesting. People are putting in names of friends, spouses. They are putting in lots of science-fiction names like Alderaan and Yuggoth, names of authors such as Heinlein and Asimov, and even politicians like Obama and Romney. As this gets out to the general public, we expect there to be a lot of interesting contests going on?maybe Lady Gaga versus Madonna.

SC: What's wrong with the existing names?
AS: There are none?just "license plate" designations like 2M 0746+20b or OGLE235-MOA53b!

SC: Isn't it a problem that your company, Uwingu, has no formal ties to the International Astronomical Union's naming committee?
AS: I think most people get that this is for fun and engagement. It's not meant to be official. In a sense, it's a social experiment. Naming celestial objects is usually done by astronomers and professionals. Other people who are interested in space never get the opportunity to do that kind of thing. What if they did? What would the people of Earth choose? What would their imagination do that we wouldn't do, as astronomers?

SC: What else is Uwingu trying to accomplish?
AS: The mission of the company is two-fold. Priority one is to better connect the general public with space and the sky. Two is to operate a fund for space research, exploration, and education.

SC: What is the Uwingu fund?
AS: It comes from revenues generated by people nominating and voting for their favorite exoplanet names, and it goes toward needy space projects, such as SETI's Allen Telescope Array.

SC: Why should the public trust you with their money?
AS: People in the research and education community recognize our names, so they will come to us in ways that they wouldn't otherwise. We are professional scientists and educators, and we will do the quality control. Our intent is to be worldwide, not only in our revenue, but in our expenditures. Uwingu is the only thing around like this; nobody else has thought of anything similar.

This article originally appeared in New Scientist.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=8240920308c6c2a32abadc056ddc5a27

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Former EWU football player sentenced for assault

by KREM.com

KREM.com

Posted on February 21, 2013 at 3:36 PM

Updated yesterday at 3:38 PM

CHENEY, Wash.--- The Eastern Washington University football player accused of rape plead guilty Wednesday to second degree assault.?

Dalis Burce ws sentenced to 9 months and will have a restitution hearing on September 1.

EWU announced back in August that Bruce was suspended from the athletic program pending investigation into a sexual assault arrest. Bruce faces charges of second degree rape and residential burglary.

Court documents say the incident took place in Pearce Hall, right behind Roos Field.

Saturday night, the 17-year-old victim and three friends drank a large bottle of vodka according to court documents. The victim became intoxicated, and witnesses said she started vomiting, collapsed and passed out.

Friends put her in bed according to witnesses. Bruce allegedly entered the victim's room, found her unconscious, removed her clothes from waist down, and had sex with her.
?
The victim?s friends claimed she was unconscious until after the assault took place.

Witnesses say they interrupted Bruce having sex with the unconscious girl, and told him to leave.

Officers found the victim on the bed and unresponsive. Officers shook her several times to get a response. Officers gave the victim a preliminary breath test around 7 a.m. and she registered at .080.

The victim gave police the suspect name of "Dalis" and said she did not remember what happened.

Bruce said he met the victim through friends earlier that day. Bruce originally denied seeing her asleep in her room but later admitted he found her asleep sometime after midnight. Bruce stated that he assumed she was drunk because she was asleep and admitted to fondling the victim, but claimed he did so with her assistance. Bruce also admitted to having sex with the victim and claimed they did not talk to each other the entire time.

Bruce posted $25,000 bail and was released.

Eastern officials said in a press release they will follow the standard practices for student discipline, conducting a thorough review.?

University officials said they respond to reports of criminal incidents with student disciplinary interventions to ensure campus safety as well as the rights of the accused.

The administration is receiving regular updates about the developments in this case. The campus cannot divulge individual information about Bruce.

Source: http://www.krem.com/news/local/EWU-football-player-accused-of-raping-unconscious-teen-is-sentenced-192380991.html

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Paloma Ford - Menage A Trois [Female Unsigned Artist]

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CTA rail union chief: If riders are allowed to pack heat, arm train operators, too

By ROSALIND ROSSI Transportation Reporter February 21, 2013 7:48PM

File Photo

storyidforme: 45054679
tmspicid: 12464105
fileheaderid: 5666792

Updated: February 21, 2013 9:13PM

If passengers are allowed to carry guns on CTA rail lines, train operators should pack weapons ? and be paid extra for doing so, the head of the union that represents CTA rail workers said Thursday.

Robert Kelly, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 308, said he is ?totally opposed?? to any legislation that would allow Illinois residents to carry concealed weapons.

His members don?t want to carry guns, Kelly said, but if the law passes, ?[Do] you want a train full of people to carry guns and tell the operator, ?You?re on your own??

?You have to make it fair. You?ll have to arm our people,?? Kelly said.

CTA rail workers should get special training if they have to carry guns and should be paid extra for doing so, Kelly said.

The Illinois House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing on the concealed carry issue at 10 a.m. Friday in Room 600 of the Bilandic Building, 160 N. LaSalle.

A federal appeals court in December tossed out Illinois? prohibition on carrying concealed weapons and ordered lawmakers to draw up a law by early June on the issue.

CTA President Forrest Claypool said Thursday that allowing guns on CTA buses and trains would be ?disastrous.?? Buses can involve ?crowded conditions?? where gun-carriers could be bumped or jostled, causing a weapon to discharge, he said.

The close and enclosed quarters of a bus or train are clearly different than an open street, said Claypool.

CTA, Metra and Pace have all urged the General Assembly to ban guns on public transit but earlier this week, a National Rifle Association lobbyist told a legislative hearing that transit passengers shouldn?t be prohibited from exercising their Second Amendment rights.

Source: http://www.suntimes.com/18389929-418/cta-rail-union-chief-if-riders-are-allowed-to-pack-heat-arm-train-operators-too.html

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Scientists make older adults less forgetful in memory tests

Feb. 21, 2013 ? Scientists at Baycrest Health Sciences' Rotman Research Institute (RRI) and the University of Toronto's Psychology Department have found compelling evidence that older adults can eliminate forgetfulness and perform as well as younger adults on memory tests.

Scientists used a distraction learning strategy to help older adults overcome age-related forgetting and boost their performance to that of younger adults. Distraction learning sounds like an oxymoron, but a growing body of science is showing that older brains are adept at processing irrelevant and relevant information in the environment, without conscious effort, to aid memory performance.

"Older brains may be be doing something very adaptive with distraction to compensate for weakening memory," said Ren?e Biss, lead investigator and PhD student. "In our study we asked whether distraction can be used to foster memory-boosting rehearsal for older adults. The answer is yes!"

"To eliminate age-related forgetfulness across three consecutive memory experiments and help older adults perform like younger adults is dramatic and to our knowledge a totally unique finding," said Lynn Hasher, senior scientist on the study and a leading authority in attention and inhibitory functioning in younger and older adults. "Poor regulation of attention by older adults may actually have some benefits for memory."

The findings, published online February 21 in Psychological Science, ahead of print publication, have intriguing implications for designing learning strategies for the mature, older student and equipping senior-housing with relevant visual distraction cues throughout the living environment that would serve as rehearsal opportunities to remember things like an upcoming appointment or medications to take, even if the cues aren't consciously paid attention to.

The study

In three experiments, healthy younger adults recruited from the University of Toronto (aged 17- 27) and healthy older adults from the community (aged 60 -- 78) were asked to study and recall a list of words after a short delay and again, on a surprise test, after a 15-minute delay.

During the delay period, half of the studied words occurred again as distraction while people were doing a very simple attention task on pictures. Although repeating words as distracters had no impact on the memory performance of young adults, it boosted older adults' memory for those words by 30% relative to words that had not repeated as distraction.

"Our findings point to exciting possibilities for using strategically-placed relevant distraction as memory aids for older adults -- whether it's in classroom, at home or in a long term care environment," said Biss.

While older adults are watching television or playing a game on a tablet, boosting memory for goals (such as remembering to make a phone call or send a holiday card) could be accomplished by something as simple as running a stream of target information across the bottom of their tablet or TV.

The study was supported by a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. R. K. Biss, K. W. J. Ngo, L. Hasher, K. L. Campbell, G. Rowe. Distraction Can Reduce Age-Related Forgetting. Psychological Science, 2013; DOI: 10.1177/0956797612457386

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/4h0AXX1deF4/130221143946.htm

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Unnecessary Medical Procedures and the Dangers of Robot Surgery

Hugh Pickens writes "The LA Times reports that in a new report aimed at improving healthcare and controlling runaway costs, a coalition of leading medical societies has identified nearly 100 medical procedures, tests and therapies that are overused and often unnecessary. The medical interventions ? including early cesarean deliveries, CT scans for head injuries in children and annual Pap tests for middle-aged women ? may be necessary in some cases, but are often not beneficial and may even cause harm. 'We are very concerned about the rapidly escalating cost of healthcare,' says Dr. Bruce Sigsbee. 'This is not healthy for the country, and something has to be done.' Each of the specialty medical societies has provided a list of five procedures that physicians and patients should question about the overuse of medical tests and procedures that provide little benefit and in some cases harm. A 2012 report from the independent Institute of Medicine estimated total waste in the system at 30%, or $750 billion a year. 'Millions of Americans are increasingly realizing that when it comes to healthcare, more is not necessarily better,' says Dr. Christine K. Cassel." According to pigrabbitbear, it's the robots we should be wary of. He writes "'We are committed to helping victims of robot surgery receive the medical care and compensation they deserve. As both a lawyer and a licensed medical doctor, Dr. Francois Blaudeau has made it his mission to fight for the victims of traumatic complications as a result of botched robot surgery.' That's the opening salvo from the medical malpractice lawyers who run the slick fear factory of a website, BadRobotSurgery.com. According to the doctor-lawyers behind it?doctor-lawyers like Francois Blaudeau, MD, JD, FACHE, FCLM?'thousands of people have suffered severe and critical complications at the hands of surgical robots. In fact, 'robotic surgery has been linked to many serious injuries and severe complications, including death.'

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/QvB-ak2hmMk/story01.htm

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Video: Possible gubernatorial candidate slams GOP for extremism

>>> not unusual to hear someone say the republican party has become to extremely and unwilling to compromise. millions of voters said that on election day . but when an elected republican off holders says it it's news. enter virginia 's lieutenant governor bow billing. he said not every government program is bad and not everyone who receives a public benefit is a free loader . it's just a challenging time for the republican party when a conservative mainstream guy like me doesn't really feel comfortable with his party. the party has moved too far and it's become too extreme and too ideological. that's from the lieutenant governor of virginia . that's comments don't seem as surprising when learn bill bolling is considering a run as an independent. right now former clinton adviser teri mcauliffe is tied with virginia attorney general ken cuccinelli at 38% even. if bolling runs as an independent, he starts out with 13% to start with and could go higher, of course, much higher. but what makes his remarks so remarks is he's saying the republican party is becoming too extreme for even conservative republicans. tom davis is a former u.s. congressman from virginia who also ran the republican congressional campaign committee, and chris cillizza is managing editor of post politics.com and an msnbc political analyst . i want to go to chris for the tight political analysis right now. this guy bolling gave a great interview to the post and just to put it in context, he slam banged his republican party as everything you hear on this show a lot of times. too far over, too intransigent, everything bad, won't negotiate, won't do anything for the country. is that to set himself up as a centrist or slightly center right candidate as a general election independent candidate or is that just what he believes and he's angry?

>> well, look, i take him at his word. i'm not going to question his motives. i think --

>> that's all we do here. go ahead.

>> i think it is what he probably believes. 's more establishment guy but context matters. look, this is a guy who in 2009 got pushed out of the race for governor by bob mcdonnell because bob mcdonnell was more conservative and better positioned to win the race. he stepped aside with the expectation from everyone in the republican party that in 2013 he'd be the guy. well, among comes ken cuccinelli and the reality is it's a convention there, a very small group of people, activists, conservatives by and large that pick the nominee. even in a primary i'm not sure bill bolling beats ken cuccinelli . so i think some of it is that he's kind of angry at the way in which his political fortunes have played themselves out but i think part of it, too, is an expression of the kind of establishment for lack of a better word within the republican party who looks at some of the folks in a more conservative wing and says these folks are pushing us to a place that is going to get us losing elections, never getting the hispanic vote, and going to relegate us to minority party status nationally for the future and we got to speak out. so i think it's a little bit of what he plefs and a little bit of his own circumstances that have made him more willing to speak ut 37.

>> i always see you as more of a middle of the road republican. the question is what happened to your state and you may lose an easy one. you could beat terry mcauliffe . he's a democrat.

>> should beat him. nine straight times our governor has come from the opposite party of the president. right now it's a close race but if history is any judge, republicans should win it.

>> they tend to reverse.

>> these are nationalized elections for governor. and mcdonnell has problems with his thesis. it just didn't take. voters were more interested in taking a message to washington. that's been the repeated theme in virginia gubernatorial races. ?

>> i keep thinking it'squestion of politic s. to go to your intensive hardline base risking losing some of the softer republicans in the middle and independents but knowing your crowd will show up or you bring on a guy that's considered too watery a republican or democrat and risking the fact your base won't show up.

>> i think the calculation this time is the fact that this is an off-year election and you want to intensify your base and bring it out in virginia .

>> because it's not the general electorate.

>> if everybody shows up, we know there are more democrats than republicans. obama has proven that twice. but if you look at the off-year turnout models, it's been much more republican.

>> so work your base hard makes sense. so kuch nellie makes more sense. for you that's an odd thing to say. i'm just talking about the raw political calculation. you still need to holgd your party together. the last poll only showed 3% of republicans defecting. there will be so much money going back and forth.

>> how does this vaginal thing, that crazy thing about requiring things to have abortion how is that working in this state?

>> i'm sure it's going to be in a lot of tv ads but kuch nellie didn't vote on that. he was the attorney general but a lot of legislators will have to defend that.

>> bill bolling also told the post, the lieutenant governor of virginia who says he's not going to run in the primary, it seems these day that is caroms is a four-letter word in many people's eyes. they view it as a signs of weakness but in real it's the essence of a workable democracy. chris , you and i cover this all the time. he's talking the way the most middle of the road journalists call it, not knocking the right but saying you have to be able to negotiate. if you don't compromise on a lot of middle of the road things how are you going to get anything done? obviously there's some things you will never compromise on.

>> and, chris , i would say -- i actually think take immigration and marco rubio . marco rubio is not a guy i think most people would describe as a centrist moderate but this is a guy who on immigration is saying, look, i understand that there's a part of the party that's never going to be happy with any kind of path to citizenship, but we have to come together at some point on some of these big issues if we're going to move forward as a country. so i actually think it's beyond just kind of the jon huntsmans and michael bloombergs of the world. i think haley barbour the former mississippi grve and republican national chairman has said, look e we're going to have to find some common ground . may not like obama and where we stand on the issue but we have to find some common ground just to move the country forward and keep us sort of viable in the world of economy.

>> chris , i think you're more hopeful than me. i think the hard right being hard right, i watch that scened in ast the other day, i think those people standing up to a guy like john mccain showed the republican party is definitely ruled almost by its hardest right, the hardest right seems to scare everybody else out. i have yet to hear an elected office official take on rush limbaugh ever on any issue. it's still the hard right that makes the noise. thank you. not thom davis, not a member of the hard right.

>>> up next, republicans have been trying to to make it harder for minorities to vote and now the supreme court of the united states is considering whether a key part of the 1965 voting rights act should be struck down. that's section five. that's the one that makes every state check out any changes in its election law with the justice department . this is "hardball," the place for politics. i'd

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