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01/11/12--05:00: Berkeley Lab seeks to help US assert scientific leadership in critical materials (chan 1274592)

( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) A few short decades ago, few could have imagined that the world would be seriously concerned over something called dysprosium. Also known as number 66 on the periodic table, dysprosium was once just another element for chemistry students to memorize but is now one of the most sought-after and critically needed materials on the planet.

Belonging to a family of elements known as lanthanides-also called rare earths-dysprosium and other rare earths are used in almost every high-tech gadget and clean energy technology invented in the last 30 years, from smart phones to wind turbines to hybrid cars. Although the United States was self-sufficient in rare earths or obtained them on the free market until the early 2000s, the vast majority are now mined in China and the supply has been subject to fluctuations. The Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) aims to change the status quo by reviving the study of these critical materials to better understand how to extract them, use them more efficiently, reuse and recycle them and find substitutes for them.

In its 2011 Critical Material Strategy released last month, the DOE said that supply challenges for five rare earth metals (dysprosium, neodymium, terbium, europium and yttrium) may affect clean energy technology deployment in the years ahead. It also recommended enhanced training of scientists and engineers to address vulnerabilities and realize opportunities related to critical materials.

If we are going to achieve what we need to do in terms of managing climate change, we absolutely have to fix the materials problem-it's the linchpin for clean energy technologies, said Frances Houle, a Berkeley Lab scientist who is Director of Strategic Initiatives in the Chemical Sciences Division. Because Berkeley Lab is such a broad institution, many of the pieces required are already here. We have the chemistry, the earth science, the materials science, the theory. Not very many institutions can say that.

Like coal and gold, the rare earths are mined out of the ground. However, in any given ore, they are mixed together with other rare earths. So although they are not actually rare, they are difficult to mine. They're in low concentration, and it's very hard to mine them and separate them out, so it's challenging and extremely energy-intensive to produce rare earth materials ready for industrial manufacturers; it requires a lot of electricity, water and chemicals, said Berkeley Lab Senior Scientist David Shuh. This area of study has been ignored over the last two decades, largely due to insufficient research and development support.

Shuh is the lead investigator on a Berkeley Lab project that takes a multidisciplinary approach to the issues, reinvigorating the study of the fundamental chemistry and materials sciences while taking advantage of advances in nanoscience, earth sciences, genomics and energy analysis techniques to devise innovative solutions.

While the United States has some scientists working in the rare earth field, China has at least 100 times as many. The U.S. used to have the leadership in the chemistry and materials sciences of these materials, but now we are losing competitive advantages in these areas, Shuh said. We need to rev up rare earth science from top to bottom if we want to retain leadership in the use of these critical materials.

Batteries, photovoltaics and lighting are just a few of the industries that could be crippled without reliable access to materials such as cerium, neodymium and terbium. Dysprosium is used in high-performance magnets (for cars, wind turbines, disc drives and a myriad of other uses) essential for the implementation of many clean energy technologies. In addition to the rare earths, there are a number of other so-called energy critical elements in other parts of the periodic table, including lithium, helium, cobalt and rhenium, that are crucial to a clean energy economy and are currently found in a limited number of places.

The resources devoted to studying the rare earths have not changed much since around the time the color television was invented. But in the meantime, their price has skyrocketed, increasing by nearly a factor of 1,000 in some cases, and scientists and engineers continue to rely on decades old science to address the energy challenge today. Moreover, new ways to use rare earths are being developed all the time.

More advanced study of the chemical and materials properties of the energy critical elements would not only aid in mining, separating, processing, and using them in current applications more efficiently but would also allow scientists to better understand-and thus find-substitutes for them. Plus, it should accelerate technological breakthroughs. With better science, you'll have better discovery and better technology, Houle said. It's not feasible to go on a fishing expedition any more. You must have theory to guide the discovery effort.

The Chemical Sciences Division of Berkeley Lab is world renowned in the study of actinides, a close neighbor of the lanthanides (rare earths) and which bear some chemical similarities. One goal of Shuh's project is to improve understanding of their fundamental interactions by coupling theory to spectroscopic results, paving the way for the design of more efficient element-specific separations and development of new applications in fields such as lighting and biotechnology.

Complementing this approach, Berkeley Lab's Materials Science Division will focus on basic research into understanding the properties of materials to come up with new alternatives that mimic those properties. For example, certain wind turbines and motors rely on neodymium magnets. A better microscopic understanding may point toward new replacement materials containing elements that are more environmentally friendly or abundant, said Jeff Neaton, deputy director of the division. It may be that replacements draw on a combination of materials, a composite or assembly, or reduced dimensionality, as in nanostructures.

Neaton added that recent advances in nanoscience, which allows researchers to synthesize and control materials at the level of atoms and molecules and a few tens of nanometers, has potential to play a large role in the process. Also, new nanoscale characterization tools and theory could bring breakthroughs in understanding that will be important in guiding the search for replacement materials.

Berkeley Lab's Earth Sciences Division has deep experience in the modeling of subsurface chemical processes and in geochemical analysis of mineral surface structure and pore chemistry, expertise that will be useful in studying new ways to recover rare earth elements. Another approach would take advantage of -omics methods (which includes genomics and proteomics) to identify microorganisms that could aid in releasing rare earths from minerals.

At the other end of the process but encompassing the overall use of rare earth materials, researchers Jim McMahon and Eric Masanet of Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division specialize in analyzing industrial processes and quantifying the environmental and energy implications. Their lifecycle analysis of critical materials will focus on how to reuse and recycle them in efficient and environmentally acceptable ways.

Currently, the rare earth elements in computers, smart phones and other electronic gadgets are often either thrown away or sent abroad to be recovered-typically using low-cost labor and environmentally hazardous means. Today's cell phones use 40 different elements; a Toyota Prius contains approximately 30 pounds of rare earth material.

The materials are not designed to be easily recovered from the product, so we would look at the entire process of how something is manufactured, such as car batteries, and see if the battery can be designed and manufactured in a way to get the same performance but so that not only do we not waste anything but also puts the metal in a form that we can get it back, said McMahon.

The analysis and modeling adds two other dimensions missing from many other lifecycle analyses: place and time. If you look at a plant in California versus Wyoming, there's different weather, different water availability, different pollutants, so it matters where you are, McMahon said. It also matters when you do it: things like photovoltaics are evolving, so five years from now, it will be different materials and different technologies.

Many factors ranging from political events to environmental trends to changes in markets for products influence the availability of resources for manufactured goods. A critical material today wasn't a critical material 20 or 30 years ago, Houle said. Who knows what the crisis is going to be in 30 years. The main goal should be to be more resilient to shortages. Having alternatives and good reuse and recycling programs is essential.




01/11/12--05:00: ALMA early science result reveals starving galaxies (chan 1274592)

( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Astronomers using the partially completed ALMA observatory have found compelling evidence for how star-forming galaxies evolve into 'red and dead' elliptical galaxies, catching a large group of galaxies right in the middle of this change.

For years, astronomers have been developing a picture of galaxy evolution in which mergers between spiral galaxies could explain why nearby large elliptical galaxies have so few young stars. The theoretical picture is chaotic and violent: The merging galaxies knock gas and dust into clumps of rapid star formation, called starbursts, and down into the maws of the supermassive black hole growing in the merger's core. As more and more matter heaves onto the black hole, powerful jets erupt, and the region around the black hole glows brilliantly as a quasar. The jets blowing out of the merger eventually plow out the galaxy's potential star-forming gas, ending the starbursts.

Until now, astronomers had never spotted enough mergers at this critical, jet-plowing stage to definitively link jet-driven outflows to the cessation of starburst activity. During its Early Science observations in late 2011, however, ALMA became the first telescope to confirm nearly two dozen galaxies in this brief stage of galaxy evolution.

What did ALMA actually see? Despite ALMA's great sensitiviy to detecting starbursts, we saw nothing, or next to nothing - which is exactly what we hoped it would see, said lead investigator Dr. Carol Lonsdale of the North American ALMA Science Center at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Charlottesville, Virginia. Lonsdale presented the findings at the American Astronomical Society's meeting in Austin, Texas on behalf of an international team of astronomers.

For these observations, ALMA was tuned to look for dust warmed by active star-forming regions. However, half of Lonsdale's two dozen galaxies didn't show up at all in ALMA's observations, and the other half were extremely dim, indicating that there was very little of the tell-tale dust present.

ALMA's results reveal to us that there is little-to-no starbursting going on in these young, active galaxies. The galaxy evolution model says this is thanks to their central black holes whose jets are starving them of star-forming gas, Lonsdale said. On its first run out of the gate, ALMA confirmed a critical phase in the timeline of galaxy evolution.

Once their star-forming gas has been blown away, merging galaxies will be unable to make new stars. As the last generation of massive and brilliant, but short-lived, blue stars dies out, the long-lived, lower mass, redder stars come to dominate the merger's star population, giving the gas-starved galaxy an overall reddish hue over time.




01/11/12--05:00: Best way to boost adult immunizations is through office-based action, study finds (chan 1274592)

( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Promoting immunizations as a part of routine office-based medical practice is needed to improve adult vaccination rates, a highly effective way to curb the spread of diseases across communities, prevent needless illness and deaths, and lower health care costs, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

Increasingly, vaccinations are being offered outside of physician offices at pharmacies, workplaces and retail medical clinics. Even so, office-based medical practice continues to be central to the delivery of recommended vaccinations to adults.

Regardless of where vaccines are actually administered, office-based providers are uniquely positioned to identify patients who need vaccination, to communicate credibly about the benefits and risks of vaccination, and to ensure that vaccination histories are properly maintained, said Katherine Harris, the study's lead author and a senior economist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization.

The RAND study outlines improvements needed to strengthen the role of office-based medical providers to promote vaccination to adult patients. These include creating tools to improve communications between patients and providers about vaccinations, and stronger incentives to encourage health providers to refer patients to community sites that administer vaccinations if they do not offer them.

Diseases that can be readily prevented by vaccines take a heavy toll on adults in the United States despite the wide-spread availability of this generally safe and effective preventive care. The yearly health care and productivity costs blamed on influenza -- a common illness that can be prevented by vaccination -- is as high as $90 billion, depending on the severity of the annual outbreak.

In contrast to childhood vaccination rates, which are generally high, adult vaccination rates remain disappointingly low. Even in the case of influenza, inoculation rates for even those at the highest risk of death do not exceed 70 percent. Vaccines recommended for adults can prevent influenza, pneumococcal sepsis, shingles, hepatitis A and B, pertussis (whooping cough) and the human papillomavirus -- the leading cause of cervical cancer.

Researchers say recent changes in the policy and practice environments provide a unique window of opportunity to improve the delivery of vaccinations to adults. Health care reform legislation promotes preventive care and improves financial access to adult vaccinations.

RAND researchers identified bottlenecks that have stalled delivery of adult vaccinations and propose strategies to overcome these shortcomings. Their effort included a review of past research about adult vaccination, a stakeholder workshop, interviews with experts, and a short telephone survey of adults to learn about the relationship between influenza vaccination and public beliefs and misperceptions about its safety.

The study reports that while medical offices are the location where most adults receive vaccinations, only about one-fourth of physician offices stock all recommended vaccines for adults. Reasons include the fact that some vaccines have a short shelf life and insurance payments for administering adult vaccines may not cover the doctor's costs.

Researchers say one priority is to collect better national information about the patterns of office-based vaccination of adults to pinpoint gaps in practice, which could then be targeted for improvement efforts.

Better guidance should be developed to help health providers effectively promote and administer vaccines, including structured vaccination counseling protocols. Providers also need tools to help them evaluate whether to administer vaccines onsite or refer their patients to community resources such as pharmacies and flu vaccine clinics, according to the study.

Systems also must be developed to credit primary care providers for providing vaccine counseling, whether their patients receive the vaccination on-site or go elsewhere to get it.




01/11/12--20:54: Animals in confined shelters harm human health (chan 1274592)

( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, Jan 11 - Confinement of animals in industrial facilities threatens human health, degrades the environment and diminishes income-earning opportunities in rural areas, a report said Wednesday.

The Impact of Industrial Farm Animal Production on Food Security in the Developing World by NGO Humane Society International, the report is critical of the idea that inhumane confinement of animals in industrial production facilities enhances food security.

'There is strong scientific evidence of the negative impacts of these animal factories on people and animals,' said Chetana Mirle, director of farm animal protection for HSI.

'We must do a better job of supporting small-farmer led and animal welfare-friendly agriculture as well as implementing stronger environmental and farm animal welfare regulations.'

According to the report, in India, 140-200 million egg laying hens were confined to barren, wire battery cages so restrictive they cannot even spread their wings.

Each bird has less living space than an A4 sheet of paper.

With no opportunity to experience most natural behavior, such as nesting, dust bathing, perching and foraging, these birds endure lives wrought with suffering.

Factory farms that confine more than 50,000 birds within a single shed are increasingly common in the country.

'The HSI report reviews the growing body of evidence showing that industrial farm animal production fails to improve food security,' said the report.

For example, the growing confinement of India's egg laying hens in cramped battery cages has failed to significantly improve the nutritional outcomes for low-income communities.




01/12/12--01:44: Interferon-stimulated gene 15 (ISG15), a ubiquitin like protein, is a new therapeutic target for breast cancer (chan 1274592)

( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) In a study published in the January 2012 issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine, Dr. Shyamal Desai and her co-investigators report that gene knock-down studies demonstrate that elevated ISG15 pathway results in disruption of the cytoskeletal architecture of breast cancer cells. ISG15 also inhibits degradation of cellular proteins involved in cell motility, invasion, and metastasis, promoting breast cancer cell migration. Interferon-stimulated gene 15 (ISG15), a ubiquitin like protein, is highly elevated in a variety of cancers including breast cancer.

Dr. Desai said "Using ISG15 and UbcH8 gene knocked-down approach, our recent published and unpublished results explicitly demonstrated that the ISG15 pathway inhibits the ubiquitin-mediated proteasome-dependent protein degradation in breast cancer cells. We were the first to recognize this antagonizing effect of ISG15 in cancer cells"; however, others are increasingly coming to the same conclusion in their observations that ISG15 conjugation stabilizes cellular proteins.

Dr. Arthur Haas said "Given the crucial role of the ubiquitin/26S proteasome pathway in normal cell homeostasis, one expects that ISG15-induced downregulation of the ubiquitin pathway must contribute to breast tumor cell viability. Concurrently, in this manuscript we demonstrate that ISG15 promotes breast cancer cell migration by inhibiting ubiquitin-mediated degradation of cellular proteins associated with cell motility, invasion and metastasis".

The authors report that the elevated ISG15 pathway results in disruption of the cytoskeletal architecture effecting actin polymerization and formation of focal adhesions in breast cancer cells. Targeted knockdown of both ISG15 and UbcH8 resulted in reconstitution of the cytoskeletal architecture. Dr. Desai said "Disruption of cellular architecture is a hallmark of cancer. The ISG15 pathway is also elevated in a variety of tumors. Our results therefore reveal that the ISG15 pathway which is aberrantly elevated in tumors could disrupt cell architecture and contribute to breast cancer cell motility". "Because the cellular architecture is conserved and the ISG15 pathway is constitutively activated in tumor cells of different lineages, our observations in breast cancer must hold true for many other tumors".

If ISG15 confers motility to tumor cells in vivo, as suggested in this manuscript, then Dr. Desai concludes that "strategies to decrease ISGylation could provide a therapeutic advantage for patients diagnosed with metastatic tumors overexpressing the ISG15 pathway".

Dr. Steven R. Goodman, Editor-in-Chief of Experimental Biology and Medicine said that "these intriguing studies by Desai and colleagues suggests that modulation of the ISG15 pathway may provide future therapeutic targets for breast cancer and other metastatic tumors".




01/12/12--01:54: Deep brain stimulation is effective at improving motor symptoms patients with advanced Parkinson's disease (chan 1274592)

( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Researchers from the University of Florida and 14 additional medical centers reported results in the online version of The Lancet Neurology journal indicating that deep brain stimulation — also known as DBS — is effective at improving motor symptoms and quality of life in patients with advanced Parkinson's disease.

The study, sponsored by St. Jude Medical Inc., tested the safety and effectiveness of a constant current DBS device developed by St. Jude Medical to manage the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. The device aimed to reduce tremors, improve the slowness of movement, decrease the motor disability of the disease and reduce involuntary movements called dyskinesia, which are a common side effect of Parkinson's drugs.

After treatment, analysis of 136 patient diaries revealed longer periods of effective symptom control — known as "on time" — without involuntary movements. "On time" for patients who received stimulation increased by an average of 4.27 hours compared with an increase of 1.77 hours in the group without stimulation. Patients also noted overall improvements in the quality of their daily activities, mobility, emotional state, social support and physical comfort.

"I think it is safe to say since dopamine treatment emerged in the 1960s, DBS has been the single biggest symptomatic breakthrough for Parkinson patients who have experienced the fluctuations associated with levodopa therapy," said Michael S. Okun, M.D., first author of the study, administrative director of the UF College of Medicine's Center for Movement Disorders and Neurorestoration, and the National Medical Director for the National Parkinson Foundation. "This study validates the use of mild electrical currents delivered to specific brain structures in order to improve Parkinson's disease in select patients with advanced symptoms, and additionally, it explored a new stimulation paradigm. Future improvements in devices and the delivery systems for DBS will hopefully provide exciting new opportunities for Parkinson's sufferers."

Only patients who have had Parkinson's disease for five years or more were included in the study. They were randomly assigned to a control group that delayed the onset of stimulation for three months, or a group whose stimulation began shortly after surgery. All patients were followed for 12 months.

The deep brain stimulation procedure involves surgeons implanting small electrodes into an area of the patient's brain that controls movement. The electrodes are connected to a device precisely programmed to use mild electrical current to modulate problematic brain signals that result in movement problems.

Today's voltage-controlled DBS devices deliver pulses of current that vary slightly with surrounding tissue changes. The DBS devices tested in this study are intended to provide more accurate delivery and control of the electrical pulses.

"We are committed to driving research that will provide solutions for physicians and their patients whose needs are currently unmet," said Rohan Hoare, president of St. Jude Medical Neuromodulation Division. "These results are significant as they offer evidence that stimulation with the Libra™ constant current system enabled patients to have better motor control and an improvement in their quality of life when compared to the control group."

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the use of DBS for Parkinson's disease in 2002. At least 500,000 people in the United States suffer from Parkinson's with about 50,000 new cases reported annually, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. These numbers are expected to increase as the average age of the population rises.

"The study answered some very important questions concerning cognition and mood with lead implantation (alone) versus implantation with stimulation. It also refutes the hypothesis that DBS increases depressive symptoms," said Gordon H. Baltuch, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of neurosurgery in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and a study author. "The group's results also showed a decrease in the infection rate to 4 percent from previously published 10 percent. It shows that American neurosurgeons and neurologists with their industry partners are improving the safety of this procedure and working in a collaborative fashion."

Comparable with other large DBS studies, the most common serious adverse event revealed was infection, which occurred in five patients. Likewise, some participants also reported an increase in the occurrence of slurred speech, known as dysarthria.

"Technology is on the move, and we expect to see continued improvements to DBS approaches, equipment and materials," said Okun, who is also affiliated with UF's McKnight Brain Institute. "DBS has set the bar high for the development of new therapies for advanced Parkinson's disease patients. DBS will be the standard of care gene therapy and other cell-based therapies that are now being conceived will be measured against, and this will hopefully translate into significant improvements in what we can offer our patients."




01/12/12--02:03: Shock therapy to eradicate Escherichia Coli (chan 1274592)

( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) According to a study published in the International Journal of Food Safety, Nutrition and Public Health, a short burst of low voltage alternating current can effectively eradicate E. coli bacteria growing on the surface of even heavily contaminated beef. The technique offers an inexpensive and easy to implement approach to reducing the risk of food poisoning, which can occur despite handlers complying with hygiene standards.

Escherichia coli (E. coli) is a bacterium that is commonly found in the gut of humans and warm-blooded animals. Most strains of E. coli are harmless. Some strains however, such as enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC), can cause severe foodborne disease. It is transmitted to humans primarily through consumption of contaminated foods, such as raw or undercooked ground meat products, raw milk and contaminated raw vegetables and sprouts.Infection with this bacterium causes serious diarrhea, dehydration, kidney problems and can lead to serious long-term problems or even be fatal in children, the elderly and people with pre-existing health problems. Tens of thousands of people are affected by E. coli infection each year through eating contaminated beef and other food products. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that about 2500 people are hospitalized and there are several dozen deaths each year.

Now, Ajit Mahapatra and colleagues at Fort Valley State University, in Georgia and Virginia Tech have demonstrated that applying a low-voltage alternating current to beef samples inoculated with large numbers of the potentially lethal E. coli O157:H7 can almost completely deactivate the bacterium, which is usually present on the surface of contaminated meat. The team points out that the level of contamination used in their tests far exceeded the contamination that would be seen in commercial carcasses after slaughter.

Previous researchers had demonstrated that electricity can kill bacteria effectively. The study by Mahapatra and colleagues proves efficacy against E. coli O157:H7 at low voltage and low alternating current. It offers a quick and easy way to decontaminate at-risk, but otherwise safe beef without recourse to microbicidal chemicals or other more complicated treatment processes.




01/12/12--02:15: Fitness club memberships help insurance plans to enrol healthier patients (chan 1274592)

( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Because healthy enrollees cost them less, Medicare Advantage plans would profit from selecting seniors based on their health, but Medicare strictly forbids practices such as denying coverage based on existing conditions. Another way to build a more profitable membership is to design insurance benefits that attract the healthiest patients. In a study published in the Jan. 12, 2012, edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, Brown University researchers report that plans have managed to do just that by offering fitness club memberships as a covered benefit.

"Offering a fitness membership does not mean that you are denying people coverage, but you are changing your benefits to appeal selectively to people who are healthy," said co-author Amal Trivedi, a Brown public health professor and a physician at the Providence VA Medical Center. "Policymakers intended for Medicare Advantage plans to compete on the basis of improving quality and reducing costs, rather than on their ability to attract healthier patients. What we found in the study is that offering coverage for fitness membership is a very effective strategy to attract a much healthier population."

That conclusion comes from Trivedi's and lead author Alicia Cooper's rigorous statistical comparisons among thousands of patients in 22 Medicare Advantage plans — 11 "case" plans that added fitness club memberships in 2004 or 2005 and 11 similar "control" plans that didn't. They looked at when each plan member enrolled, when plans started offering the benefit, and what each plan member said about his or her health in the Medicare Health Outcomes Survey from 2006 to 2008.

One analysis compared the self-reported health of seniors who enrolled in case plans before the fitness club benefit was offered to the health of those who enrolled after the benefit was offered. While 29.1 percent of the seniors who enrolled before the benefit was available described themselves to be in excellent or very good health, 35.1 percent of the seniors who enrolled after it became available reported that level of health. In the before group, 56.1 percent reported some limitation to their physical activity but only 45.7 percent in the after group did. Also, a third of the before group reported difficulty walking compared to just a quarter in the after group.

Once the Medicare Advantage plans started covering health club memberships, they enrolled healthier enrollees with fewer physical limitations. In the control plans, which did not offer the benefit, self-reported health levels over the same timeframe changed only slightly. In comparison to the control plans, eight of the 11 case plans (the ones that added fitness club coverage) enrolled seniors with better overall health, 10 of the 11 case plans enrolled seniors with fewer restrictions in physical activity, and nine of the 11 case plans enrolled seniors that had less difficulty walking.

An increasing practice

Trivedi and Cooper studied the benefit structures of 101 Medicare Advantage health plans between 2002 and 2008 to select plans for comparison. What they found is a rapid growth in the number of plans offering fitness club memberships, from 14 in 2002 to 58 in 2008.

"This trend suggests that offering fitness memberships may be an attractive business strategy for Medicare plans," Trivedi said.

Trivedi acknowledged that if every plan offered the fitness benefits, it would no longer be an effective way of selecting for the healthiest members. However, given the continued incentive to enroll more profitable enrollees, he said, insurers may employ other related tactics to cherry-pick desirable enrollees.

"In general, policymakers have regulated the Medicare Advantage insurance market to prevent the ability of private plans to select the healthiest enrollees," Trivedi said. "If Medicare plans do engage in favorable selection, then unhealthy enrollees can be concentrated in a small number of plans or in the traditional Medicare program, driving up the costs for those enrollees and the tax-payers that fund the Medicare program."



01/12/12--05:00: 'Open-source' robotic surgery platform going to top medical research labs (chan 1274592)

( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) SANTA CRUZ, CA--Robotics experts at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the University of Washington (UW) have completed a set of seven advanced robotic surgery systems for use by major medical research laboratories throughout the United States. After a round of final tests, five of the systems will be shipped to medical robotics researchers at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Nebraska, UC Berkeley, and UCLA, while the other two systems will remain at UC Santa Cruz and UW.

We decided to follow an open-source model, because if all of these labs have a common research platform for doing robotic surgery, the whole field will be able to advance more quickly, said Jacob Rosen, associate professor of computer engineering in the Baskin School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz and principal investigator on the project.

Rosen and Blake Hannaford, director of the UW Biorobotics Laboratory, lead the research groups that developed the Raven II robotic surgery system and its predecessor, Raven I. A grant from the National Science Foundation funded their work to create seven identical Raven II systems. Hannaford said the systems will be shipped out from UW by the end of January. After they are delivered and installed, all seven systems will be networked together over the Internet for collaborative experiments.

Robotic surgery has the potential to enable new surgical procedures that are less invasive than existing techniques. For some procedures, such as prostate surgery, the use of surgical robots is already standard practice. In addition, telesurgery, in which the surgeon operates a robotic system from a remote location, offers the potential to provide better access to expert care in remote areas and the developing world. Having a network of laboratories working on a common platform will make it easier for researchers to share software, replicate experiments, and collaborate in other ways.

Even though it meant giving competing laboratories the tools that had taken them years to develop, Rosen and Hannaford decided to share the Raven II because it seemed like the best way to move the field forward. These are the leading labs in the nation in the field of surgical robotics, and with everyone working on the same platform we can more easily share new developments and innovations, Hannaford said.

According to Rosen, most research on surgical robotics in the United States has focused on developing new software for various commercially available robotic systems. Academic researchers have had limited access to these proprietary systems. We are changing that by providing high-quality hardware developed within academia. Each lab will start with an identical, fully-operational system, but they can change the hardware and software and share new developments and algorithms, while retaining intellectual property rights for their own innovations, Rosen said.

The Raven II includes a surgical robot with two robotic arms, a camera for viewing the operational field, and a surgeon-interface system for remote operation of the robot. The system is powerful and precise enough to support research on advanced robotic surgery techniques, including online telesurgery.

In addition to Rosen and Hannaford, UCSC postdoctoral researchers Daniel Glozman and Ji Ma, along with a group of dedicated undergraduate students working in Rosen's Bionics Lab, played a key role in developing the Raven II. Rosen and Glozman have also developed a Raven IV surgical robotics system, which includes four robotic arms and two cameras. The system enables collaboration between two surgeons working from separate locations and connected over the Internet.




01/13/12--05:00: Drilling around the globe (chan 1274592)

( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) On 15 January the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program ICDP heads into a new round. About a dozen proposals for drilling projects to explore our planet have been filed for the year 2012. The topics cover a wide range of research projects, ranging from earthquake research over paleao -climate research to the exploration of natural resources. The planned drill sites span the globe, from Iceland to South Africa.

New is also the Chairman of the Executive Committee, Professor Brian Horsfield of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, who now directs the evaluation of the proposals and the planning of the suggested research. New in the office but in business for a long time: Brian Horsfield heads the Center for Integrated Hydrocarbon Research at the GFZ, holds the Chair of Organic Geochemistry and Hydrocarbon Systems at the Technical University Berlin, and is a member of acatech, the National Academy of Science and Engineering. He has over 30 years of experience in the petroleum industry and research.

About his ideas concerning the importance of scientific research boreholes, he says: Drilling the Earth's crust is an indispensable tool for the geosciences and ICDP is the global leader in the effort to contribute to the understanding and sustainable use of our planet, be it the protection against natural disasters, serving an ever-growing population with natural resources or exploring the natural and anthropogenic processes of our dynamic earth.

In December last year, Brian Horsfield took over the chair of the ICDP from Professor Rolf Emmermann, formerly the founding Director of the GFZ. It was Professor Emmerman who initiated the founding of the ICDP. In February 1996 in Tokyo, he encouraged China, the United States and Germany to sign an agreement establishing the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program, which serves the exploration of the active processes on the continents. The research topics cover the whole spectrum of Earth Sciences: Volcanoes are drilled, earthquake epicenters are pierced, sediments in lakes acting as climate archives are opened, geothermal energy and methane hydrates are examined as an energy source - there are very few geoscientific issues that are not examined by research drilling.

The ICDP scientific drilling program has proved highly successful and has set new standards in the exploration of our planet, explains Professor Reinhard Huettl, Chair of the Executive Board of the GFZ and Vice President of the Helmholtz Association. Today, 24 states and UNESCO are members of and the ICDP. 29 drilling projects and 57 international workshops have already been conducted that have completely changed our view of Earth. In addition, this drilling program has the character of a role model for international cooperation. The achievement of Professor Emmermann against this background cannot be overstated. After his retirement as the Chair of the Scientific Executive Board of the GFZ (1992 - 2007), Rolf Emmermann was the chairman of the ICDP governing board until December 2011.