TULSA, Okla. (AP) — Given the choice, World War II veteran Phillip Coon probably wouldn't want the formality and fuss of being honored on a military base with men and women standing at attention, dressed in full regalia — even if it was with a fistful of long-overdue medals he waited decades to receive.
So it's fitting that the awards were presented to the humble Tulsa-area man Monday evening in an informal ceremony at the Tulsa International Airport, with family and fellow veterans in attendance and little pomp and circumstance.
The 94-year-old survivor of a POW labor camp and the Bataan Death March received the Prisoner of War Medal, Bronze Star and the Combat Infantryman Badge after he and his son, Michael, returned from a trip to Japan to promote understanding and healing with the U.S.
A couple of dozen people applauded wildly after the medals were presented to Coon, who was seated in a wheelchair. He lifted his ball cap in recognition, exposing a shock of silver hair.
"I've been blessed to come this far in life," he said, a tear streaming down one cheek. "I thank the Lord for watching over me."
Japan's Foreign Ministry said Coon visited the site of the former POW camp in Kosaka next to a now defunct copper mine where he was put to forced labor. The veteran also met the mayor and other officials in Kosaka, in Japan's northern prefecture of Akita.
Coon, who lives in Sapulpa in northeastern Oklahoma, served as an infantry machine gunner in the Army. He is also a survivor of the Bataan Death March in the Philippines in 1942, when the Japanese military forced tens of thousands of American and Filipino soldiers to trek for 65 miles with little food or water in blazing heat. As many as 11,000 died along the way.
It's not clear why Coon didn't get his medals before now, but such occurrences with awards are not uncommon in the military.
"It continues to trouble me that there are instances where service members do not receive the service medals they have earned through the course of their careers," said U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, whose office contacted the military three weeks ago about the missing medals. "But It is extremely rewarding for me and my staff to be able to help veterans and active-duty members receive the honors they have fought for."
Retired Maj. Gen. Rita Aragon, Oklahoma's secretary of military and veterans' affairs, said most veterans were — rightly — more focused on reuniting with their families than chasing after military ribbons when they returned after the war. Aragon presented the medals to Coon during the airport ceremony.
Tulsa veteran David Rule, who served in the Vietnam War, helped Coon and his family to find out why his medals hadn't been issued. For the past 10 years or so, Rule has helped recognize about 150 area veterans by memorializing their names, ranks and branches of service on granite plaques that are presented to them and their families.
"I have a passion for these servicemen," Rule said earlier Monday. "They just sacrificed so much. It doesn't matter to me whether they were a cook or a four-star general, just for them to get this million-dollar smile on their face when they know they aren't forgotten."
___
Associated Press reporter Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.
Gene Luen Yang broke out in 2006 with American Born Chinese, the first graphic novel nominated for a National Book Award. It weaves three stories — about a Chinese-American boy, a terrible stereotype named Chin-Kee and the mythical Monkey King — into a complex tapestry of identity and assimilation.
Yang returns to the theme of identity and sense of self in his latest book, another National Book Award candidate. Boxers & Saints is a diptych following a Chinese boy and girl as their lives are upended by the Boxer Rebellion. Little Bao joins the Boxers — a violent, mystically-inspired fighting society dedicated to wiping out foreign influences in China at the turn of the 20th century. Vibiana, on the other side of the divide, sheds her Chinese name and her constrained home life to join a Christian missionary group after her family rejects her. Both must wrestle with questions of faith and identity: What does it mean to be Chinese? To be Christian? Can you be both?
In an email interview, Yang says his Catholic upbringing inspired his interest in the Boxer Rebellion. "In 2000, Pope John Paul II canonized 120 saints of China, 87 of whom were ethnically Chinese. My home church was incredibly excited, because this was the first time the Roman Catholic Church acknowledged Chinese citizens in this way," he says. "When I looked into the lives of the newly canonized, I learned that many of them were martyred during the Boxer Rebellion. And when I looked to the world outside my Chinese American Catholic community, I realized that the canonizations were controversial. Shortly after the Vatican's announcement, the Chinese government issued a statement of protest. From their point of view, the Catholic Church was honoring traitors to Chinese culture."
This is a work deeply concerned with compassion — it draws parallels between Jesus and Guan Yin, and on a more personal level almost everyone in it is complex and hard to dislike. Little Bao, for example, is really a fanatic, but you give him depth and a believable inner struggle.
Early on in my research, I was struck by the parallels between the Boxer Rebellion and current events. The Boxers have a lot in common with many of today's extremist movements in the Middle East. Little Bao would probably be labeled a terrorist if he were real and alive today. I tried to make him understandable, but not justified. The Boxers were defending a culture under attack. Yet — within my story, at least — their view of their own culture was incomplete. There is this strand of compassion that runs through every world culture. It's embodied by Guan Yin within Eastern stories, and Christ within Western ones.
This book is also concerned with identity and sense of self – which is a recurring theme in your work, and this time you're addressing the role religion plays in identity.
Religion and culture are two important ways in which we as humans find our identity. That's certainly true for me. My experiences growing up in both a Chinese American household and the Catholic Church define much of who I am. A college writing professor once told me to write my life. Cliched advice, but still really helpful. I've tried to write from my own understanding of identity in all my comics, whether it's about superheroes or historical conflicts or monkey gods.
Gene Yang's 2006 debut, American Born Chinese, was a National Book Award Finalist.
First Second
Gene Yang's 2006 debut, American Born Chinese, was a National Book Award Finalist.
First Second
Boxers & Saints is a wrenching read — having finished it, I feel like the only reason it's in the YA category is that it features teen characters. How did you approach the story when you were writing it? Who's it for?
My main goal with all my comics is to tell a story compelling enough to get the reader from the first page to the last. I don't think about age demographics all that much during my process. The age demographics get figured out later. That said, I think my graphic novels fit pretty well in the YA category. Author Marsha Qualey says that an equation lies at the heart of all YA: Power + Belonging = Identity. That describes my stories, including Boxers & Saints. My characters long for power and belonging because they're figuring out their place in the world, their identities.
You've chosen to publish this as two separate volumes, even though the stories are intertwined.
I outlined both books together, but then I wrote and drew Boxers first, then Saints. I did them as two separate books because I wanted each to stand on their own, to have a satisfying beginning, middle, and end. Each would represent a complete, cohesive worldview. I had expected First Second Books to put out one book and then the other in two separate seasons. It was my editor Mark Siegel who suggested the simultaneous release. That guy is super-smart.
What do you want readers to take away from Boxers & Saints?
I hope readers are inspired to look into the actual historical event. The Boxer Rebellion doesn't get all that much attention on this side of the Pacific, but it still resonates in modern China. The Boxer Rebellion, and all the events of China's Century of Humiliation, still weighs heavily on their foreign policy. As China grows economically, as China and America's relationship evolves, events like the Boxer Rebellion will gain importance in Western history classes.
I also hope the books encourage readers to look at both sides of every conflict. The Internet age has brought about a blossoming of exaggerated righteous indignation. I've certainly been guilty of it. Maybe some of that will dissipate if we learn to look at both sides with compassion.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama turned to a trusted adviser on Tuesday to lead a "tech surge" aimed at repairing the troubled launch of the government website at the heart of his signature healthcare law.
Jeffrey Zients, a former official of the Office of Management and Budget who will become head of the National Economic Council in January, will provide short-term management advice on the project, said Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS).
She said a team of experts and specialists drawn from government and industry, "including veterans of top Silicon Valley companies," also would work to diagnose and fix the problems that have plagued the rollout of Healthcare.gov since October 1 and drawn criticism from Republicans opposed to the law.
The websites, which Obama compared to online shopping sites such as Amazon.com, were meant to be the main vehicle for consumers to check out prices and purchase the health insurance offered under the law.
The HHS said at the weekend it was launching a "tech surge" for the website, but neither the White House nor the health department has provided details about the cause of the problems, precisely what is being done to fix them and who exactly is doing the fixing.
Obama's administration scheduled a briefing for Wednesday with Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, some of whom have expressed concern with the program's troubles.
One Democrat, Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, called for an extension of the "open enrollment" date for those purchasing insurance beyond the March 31 deadline because of what she called the "incredibly frustrating and disappointing" experience people are having as they try to enroll.
The announcement that Zients would be involved underlines Obama's determination to put the website controversy behind him. Zients has 20 years of business experience as a CEO, management consultant and entrepreneur.
He helped the Obama administration figure out a solution for the "cash for clunkers" car exchange program's website, which crashed repeatedly when it opened early in Obama's first term.
Republicans, long opposed to the 2010 Affordable Care Act known as "Obamacare," have seized on the information vacuum about the website's problems to start their own investigation in Congress about the role of the White House.
CRITICISM OF DESIGN FEATURE
In a letter to two administration technology officers, Republicans on the House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee said their investigation already points to significant White House involvement in discussions between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the website contractor, CGI Federal.
CGI officials have also told committee staff the widely criticized design feature requiring visitors to create accounts before shopping for insurance was implemented in late August or early September, barely a month before the October 1 start of open enrollment.
The requirement contributed to a traffic bottleneck that worsened underlying flaws in a system intended to serve millions of Americans without healthcare insurance. The technology problems have frustrated attempts by many to sign on and allowed only a trickle of enrollments.
"We are concerned that the administration required contractors to change course late in the implementation process to conceal Obamacare's effect on increasing health insurance premiums," said the letter authored by panel chairman Darrell Issa and four Republican subcommittee chairmen.
The committee probe, the second House Republican investigation into Obamacare, follows the latest attempt by the party to derail the law during a 16-day government shutdown in October.
Republicans, who view the law as an unwarranted expansion of the federal government, eventually dropped demands for delays or changes to the healthcare law before they would support a federal funding bill and allowed the government to reopen.
Obama said on Monday he was frustrated by the website's problems. A prolonged delay in getting Healthcare.gov to work could jeopardize White House efforts to sign up as many as 7 million people in 2014, the first full year it takes effect.
CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATIONS
The White House declined to directly address the October 21 letter to U.S. Chief Information Officer Steve VanRoekel and U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park.
"It's not about, you know, who's to blame for glitches in a website. What we need to focus on is fixing those problems, making the information that the American people want available to them in an efficient way. And that's what we're doing," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
Under Issa's leadership, the House oversight committee has investigated the Obama administration on several issues since Republicans took control of the chamber in the 2010 elections.
Last year, Issa accused Obama or his aides of obstructing an investigation into the botched "Fast and Furious" gun-running probe on the Arizona border with Mexico. He also spearheaded the House investigation of a 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, and another into the Internal Revenue Service's handling of conservative non-profit groups seeking tax-exempt status.
Issa's committee is asking VanRoekel and Park to provide all documents and communications that describe the federal system's architecture and design, CMS' role as system integrator, problems relayed to the White House and the decision to require account creation as a prerequisite to seeing insurance plans.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee has started its own investigation and is scheduled to question Sebelius and several contractors at separate hearings within the next eight days.
Polls show that a narrow majority of Americans oppose the healthcare law, and the flap over the launch of the insurance exchanges has done little to change public opinion.
A Reuters/Ipsos online poll on Tuesday showed 54 percent of Americans opposed the law and 46 percent favored it. A poll from a month ago found similar percentages divided over the law.
(Additional reporting by Steve Holland, Roberta Rampton and Susan Heavey; Editing by Fred Barbash, Grant McCool and Christopher Wilson)
Children play at the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, where more than 120,000 Syrian refugees live. Roughly two-thirds are kids, many of whom have been traumatized by the violence in their homeland.
Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps
Children play at the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, where more than 120,000 Syrian refugees live. Roughly two-thirds are kids, many of whom have been traumatized by the violence in their homeland.
Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps
Alexandra Chen, a specialist in childhood trauma, is on her way from the Lebanese capital, Beirut, to the southern town of Nabatiyeh, where she's running a workshop for teachers, child psychologists and sports coaches who are dealing with the Syrian children scarred by war in their homeland.
"All of the children have experienced trauma to varying degree," explains Chen, who works for Mercy Corps and is training a dozen new hires for her aid group.
Her intense five-day workshop is based on skills and techniques developed in other conflict zones, used for the first time here.
"They need to know enough to understand exactly what's going on in the brain of the children they are working with," Chen says of her trainees. Her course stresses the science of severe trauma, which can be toxic for the brain.
"The human memory remembers negative memories almost four times more strongly than positive ones," she says.
Some 2 million Syrian children have been displaced by the war and more than 1 million of them are now refugees in neighboring countries. One of the biggest challenges for international aid agencies is healing the invisible scars of war in the youngest victims.
Mercy Corps organizes games and movies at the Zaatari camp to help children return to more normal activities and routines.
Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps
Mercy Corps organizes games and movies at the Zaatari camp to help children return to more normal activities and routines.
Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps
"These children have seen terrible things, like bombings and people screaming and people dying, and they've smelled blood and smoke," Chen says as she opens the course. "For them, to be connected to the world feels like a very dangerous thing."
PTSD In Children
Chen tells the trainees that long-term exposure to violence can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder, which is difficult to treat in adults and even harder to manage in kids. Children can remain hyper-alert, with an "inability to step out of survival mode," which is often expressed as anger or aggression.
This group has already seen signs of severe trauma in Syrian children who recently arrived. Chen teaches them key skills to build a sense of safety for children.
But these newly trained Mercy Corps outreach workers face an overwhelming task. More than 85,000 Syrian refugees have migrated to this part of southern Lebanon, living in the poorest neighborhoods. Aid programs are underfunded and basic needs often go unmet.
Still, international aid organizations are raising the alarm over the newest arrivals. They have lived under traumatic conditions for much longer, surviving continuous bombardments, witnessing deaths firsthand, and many need immediate help.
Chen moves between workshops in Lebanon and refugee camps in Jordan to tackle the same problem.
A Camp Where Most Refugees Are Children
We met again in Zaatari, the sprawling camp in Jordan's desert with more than 120,000 residents, 65 percent of them under 18. Here, children seem dangerously aggressive, punching, fighting or throwing rocks in the open spaces between the refugee tents and trailers.
"Acting aggressively, in many ways, is the mind's way of making sense of what happened before," says Chen, who adds that she has seen behavior change. Many have made progress in a program run by Mercy Corps in a place called Dream Land.
It's in the middle of Zaatari, where kids can feel secure. They play soccer or build sandcastles in soft sand under a large tent that protects them from the sun.
Here, kids hammer on Legos in nearby trailers, while others sit, quietly, watching Tom and Jerry cartoons.
"The fact that they can sit there for an hour of Tom and Jerry is quite remarkable" says Chen, calling it a sign of healing.
But for some, the terrible memories can still become a trigger in daily life.
"The misunderstanding about trauma is that it is an event we have been unable to deal with in the past," she explains. In severe cases of PTSD, she says, "it is the person's inability to engage with the present that is the problem."
There have been some children who sneak into Dream Land in the middle of the night, she says.
"There was a little boy who would come at 3 a.m.," she says. "He would hide in the corner of the tent and shake. The stress that he was expressing was too much in his own little mind. He was unable to sleep. So, this is where he came to find refuge."
And that was a small success, that he had found a safe place.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy added just 148,000 jobs in September, suggesting that employers held back on hiring before a 16-day partial government shutdown began Oct. 1.
Still, hiring last month was enough to lower the unemployment rate. The Labor Department said Tuesday that the rate fell to 7.2 percent from 7.3 percent in August. Unemployment remains historically high but is near a five-year low and is down from 7.9 percent at the start of 2013.
The tepid job growth makes it more likely that the Federal Reserve will maintain its level of bond purchases for the rest of this year. The bond purchases are intended to lower long-term interest rates and boost borrowing and spending.
The release of the September jobs report had been delayed 2½ weeks by the shutdown, which likely further slowed economic growth and hiring. Temporary layoffs of federal workers and government contractors will probably depress October's job gain. That means a clear view of the job market may not emerge until the November jobs report is issued in December.
The report "reinforces the impression that the labor market was losing a little momentum heading in to the shutdown," said Josh Feinman, global chief economist at Deutsche Asset and Wealth Management. "The labor market is continuing to create jobs. ...It's just frustratingly slow."
The economy has added an average of 143,000 jobs a month from July through September, weaker than the 182,000 average gain from April through June.
Stock futures rose after the report was released at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, and in early trading the Dow Jones industrial average was up about 40 points.
A tight job market has discouraged many Americans from looking for work. The percentage of Americans working or looking for work remained at a 35-year low last month
The September jobs report showed that some higher-paying industries added jobs at a healthy pace. Construction companies, for example, added 20,000.
Transportation and warehousing gained 23,400 jobs, governments 22,000.
And average hourly pay ticked up 3 cents to $24.09. In the past year, hourly pay has risen 2.1 percent, ahead of the 1.5 percent inflation rate.
The department revised its estimates of job growth in July and August to show a slight net gain of 9,000. It said employers added 193,000 jobs in August, more than the 169,000 previously estimated. But it said just 89,000 were added in July, the fewest in more than a year and below the earlier estimated 104,000.
The deceleration in job growth was a key reason the Fed decided in September to hold off on slowing its $85-billion-a-month in bond purchases. Many economists think the lack of clean data will lead the Fed to put off any decision on the bond purchases until 2014.
"It reinforces their hesitancy," Feinman said of the September jobs report. "It's more validation for their hesitancy to taper in September."
Many economists say the shutdown cut $25 billion out of the economy and slowed growth to about a 2 percent annual rate in the October-December quarter. That's down from estimates before the shutdown that the economy would expand at a 2.5 percent annual rate.
But growth will likely be a bit higher in the first three months of next year, as consumers and businesses make purchases and investments that were delayed during the shutdown.
LONDON (AP) — Co-operative Group, the U.K.'s biggest mutual business, says it will retain "effective control" of its banking unit after agreeing to a restructuring that will give bondholders a 70 percent stake in the lender.
Chief executive Officer Euan Sutherland said Monday that the group will retain 30 percent of Co-operative Bank, making it the single largest shareholder. Fuller details of the agreement in principle will emerge in the coming days.
The restructuring took place as the bank had to plug a 1.5 billion-pound ($2.4 billion) hole in its finances. Co-op had wanted to retain a majority stake in the rescue deal that converts some bonds into stock, but investors demanded majority ownership.
The bank's difficulties arose from poor commercial loans taken on in a merger with the Britannia building society in 2009.
Contact: Nik Papageorgiou n.papageorgiou@epfl.ch 41-216-932-105 Ecole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a technique widely used in medicine to create images of internal organs such as the heart, the lungs, the liver and even the brain. Since its invention in 1977, MRI has become a staple of clinical radiology, used across the world to identify health problems in millions of patients worldwide. But despite its prominence, MRI suffers from low sensitivity, which can be improved by injecting patients with potentially toxic agents. Publishing in PNAS, researchers from EPFL have found a way to achieve high spatial and temporal resolution MRI using a safe compound that is naturally produced in the body.
MRI works by manipulating the alignment of the body's hydrogen atoms, which are susceptible to magnetic fields. Normally, our body's atoms spin around randomly, without any observable direction. During an MRI scan, a powerful magnet is used to generate a magnetic field that can be up to 40,000 times stronger than the Earth's. This causes approximately half the atoms to align towards the patient's head and the other half towards the feet.
The opposing alignment of the body's atoms cancels out much of the background 'noise', since for every atom lined up one way there is one lined up the opposite way. However, a few atoms per million (still a huge amount in total) line up in either direction without a cancelling counterpart. By reading out the energy levels of these atoms, the MRI computer can generate detailed images of the body, which can be central in diagnosing disease.
A well-known weakness of MRI is low sensitivity. This can be addressed with the use of hyperpolarization techniques, which involve injecting patients with substrates that contain a stable carbon isotope that is almost perfectly aligned with the machine's magnetic field. However, the preparation of these contrast agents requires the use of highly reactive chemicals called persistent radicals, which can be potentially toxic. Consequently, they have to also be filtered out prior to injecting the substrates and require additional pharmacological tests, all of which considerably reduce the MRI contrast, while posing a risk to the patient.
Researchers replace toxic chemicals with a natural substance
A research team led by Arnaud Comment developed a breakthrough solution to this problem. They found that high resolution in contrast-enhanced MRI can still be achieved with pyruvic acid, an organic chemical that occurs naturally in the body as a result of glucose breakdown, without the need of persistent radicals.
The scientists exposed frozen, pure pyruvic acid to ultraviolet light for an hour, which resulted in the generation of non-persistent radicals at a high concentration. The radicals automatically recombine to produce a solution only containing compounds that are naturally present in the body but in much lower concentrations. It was used to perform high-resolution MRI on a mouse brain. The resulting images showed detailed spatial and temporal resolution to the point of tracking the metabolism of pyruvic acid in the animal's brain.
The new hyperpolarization method opens a way to perform MRI with compounds that are not toxic, thus reducing or altogether eliminating associated health risks. In addition, because it does not require filtering or additional tests, the method will cut down on the time and cost of contrast-enhanced MRI protocols, thus improving the quality of the scans and diagnosis. The authors believe that the technique will be rapidly incorporated into the clinical setting and call it "a substantial step forward toward clinical radiology free of side effects".
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This study represents a collaboration of EPFL with Paul Scherrer Institut, UNIL and the University of Geneva.
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A natural boost for MRI scans
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21-Oct-2013
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Contact: Nik Papageorgiou n.papageorgiou@epfl.ch 41-216-932-105 Ecole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a technique widely used in medicine to create images of internal organs such as the heart, the lungs, the liver and even the brain. Since its invention in 1977, MRI has become a staple of clinical radiology, used across the world to identify health problems in millions of patients worldwide. But despite its prominence, MRI suffers from low sensitivity, which can be improved by injecting patients with potentially toxic agents. Publishing in PNAS, researchers from EPFL have found a way to achieve high spatial and temporal resolution MRI using a safe compound that is naturally produced in the body.
MRI works by manipulating the alignment of the body's hydrogen atoms, which are susceptible to magnetic fields. Normally, our body's atoms spin around randomly, without any observable direction. During an MRI scan, a powerful magnet is used to generate a magnetic field that can be up to 40,000 times stronger than the Earth's. This causes approximately half the atoms to align towards the patient's head and the other half towards the feet.
The opposing alignment of the body's atoms cancels out much of the background 'noise', since for every atom lined up one way there is one lined up the opposite way. However, a few atoms per million (still a huge amount in total) line up in either direction without a cancelling counterpart. By reading out the energy levels of these atoms, the MRI computer can generate detailed images of the body, which can be central in diagnosing disease.
A well-known weakness of MRI is low sensitivity. This can be addressed with the use of hyperpolarization techniques, which involve injecting patients with substrates that contain a stable carbon isotope that is almost perfectly aligned with the machine's magnetic field. However, the preparation of these contrast agents requires the use of highly reactive chemicals called persistent radicals, which can be potentially toxic. Consequently, they have to also be filtered out prior to injecting the substrates and require additional pharmacological tests, all of which considerably reduce the MRI contrast, while posing a risk to the patient.
Researchers replace toxic chemicals with a natural substance
A research team led by Arnaud Comment developed a breakthrough solution to this problem. They found that high resolution in contrast-enhanced MRI can still be achieved with pyruvic acid, an organic chemical that occurs naturally in the body as a result of glucose breakdown, without the need of persistent radicals.
The scientists exposed frozen, pure pyruvic acid to ultraviolet light for an hour, which resulted in the generation of non-persistent radicals at a high concentration. The radicals automatically recombine to produce a solution only containing compounds that are naturally present in the body but in much lower concentrations. It was used to perform high-resolution MRI on a mouse brain. The resulting images showed detailed spatial and temporal resolution to the point of tracking the metabolism of pyruvic acid in the animal's brain.
The new hyperpolarization method opens a way to perform MRI with compounds that are not toxic, thus reducing or altogether eliminating associated health risks. In addition, because it does not require filtering or additional tests, the method will cut down on the time and cost of contrast-enhanced MRI protocols, thus improving the quality of the scans and diagnosis. The authors believe that the technique will be rapidly incorporated into the clinical setting and call it "a substantial step forward toward clinical radiology free of side effects".
###
This study represents a collaboration of EPFL with Paul Scherrer Institut, UNIL and the University of Geneva.
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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.
Syrian opposition fighters sit on the front line in the city of Deir Ezzor on Oct. 13. Ongoing violence has ravaged the city since March 2011.
AFP/Getty Images
Syrian opposition fighters sit on the front line in the city of Deir Ezzor on Oct. 13. Ongoing violence has ravaged the city since March 2011.
AFP/Getty Images
The World Health Organization is investigating a cluster of possible polio cases in an eastern province of Syria.
If the cases are confirmed, they'd be the first ones in the war-torn nation in more than a decade. The country eliminated polio in 1999.
The suspected polio cases are in the Syrian province of Deir Ezzor (pink), which borders Iraq.
Courtesy of Map data (c) 2013 Basarsoft, Google, Mapa GISrael, ORION-ME
The suspected polio cases are in the Syrian province of Deir Ezzor (pink), which borders Iraq.
Courtesy of Map data (c) 2013 Basarsoft, Google, Mapa GISrael, ORION-ME
Syria used to have one of the highest polio vaccination rates in the region. If the virus has returned, it would be a high-profile example of the ramifications of the collapse of Syria's once-vaunted public health system.
Initial tests from the Syrian national laboratory in Damascus suggested that polio has crippled two children in the east, the WHO said Saturday. Further laboratory tests related to the cases are underway at the WHO's regional offices.
"We still need final confirmation from a laboratory, but all the indicators show that this is polio," Oliver Rosenbawer from the Global Polio Eradication Initiative toldThe Telegraph on Sunday.
The Syrian Ministry of Health says that it's treating the cases as part of a polio outbreak and beginning emergency vaccination campaigns in the area. The cluster of paralysis cases is in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, which straddles the Euphrates River. That river flows east from Syria across Iraq.
Over the last two decades, the world has nearly eradicated polio. There were only 223 cases recorded globally in 2012, and they were all from remote areas of Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This year, there have been 296 cases worldwide, but more than half of them have been in Somalia, which had eliminated polio in 2007.
Before the civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, the WHO estimated that 83 percent of Syrian children were fully vaccinated against polio. By 2012 that vaccination rate had fallen to 52 percent.
The WHO has issued a regional polio surveillance alert in response to the cases from Syria. It is urging neighboring countries to launch supplementary polio vaccination campaigns to keep the virus from spreading.
In September, Israel underwent an emergency immunization drive after polio appeared in sewers around the country. The campaign aimed to give polio boosters to 1 million children under the age of 9.
But carrying out such vaccination campaigns in Syria amid the ongoing civil war, however, could prove very difficult.
Yeah I would say fantasy and sci-fi are my forte. Likewise, we look forward to your universes. And if you ever have any questions, you can ask anybody here. We have a Help Forum for you to post questions if you can not pm somebody for help. We have a ten post minimum rule to activate your personal messaging options because we're doing our part to fight the war on terror (not really, but you know).
On behalf of everyone here at RPG, RolePlayGateway, we're glad to have you here.
Scientists untangle nanotubes to release their potential in the electronics industry
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
21-Oct-2013
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Contact: Simon Levey s.levey@imperial.ac.uk 44-020-759-46702 Imperial College London
Researchers have demonstrated how to produce electronic inks for the development of new applications using the 'wonder material', carbon nanotubes.
Carbon nanotubes are lightweight, strong and conduct electricity, which make them ideal components in new electronics devices, such as tablet computers and touchscreen phones, but cannot be used without being separated out from their natural tangled state.
In the video above, Dr Stephen Hodge and Professor Milo Shaffer, both from Imperial's Department of Chemistry, talk about the challenges of unravelling and applying carbon nanotubes in the laboratory and how the method is being scaled up to meet the requirements of industrial-scale manufacturing.
Carbon nanotubes are hollow, spaghetti-like strands made from the same material as graphene; only one nanometre thick but with theoretically unlimited length. This 'wonder material' shares many of graphene's properties, and has attracted much public and private investment into making it into useful technology.
By giving the nanotubes an electrical charge, they were able to pull apart individual strands. Using this method, nanotubes can be sorted or refined, then deposited in a uniform layer onto the surface of any object.
Working with an industrial partner, Linde Electronics, they have produced an electrically-conductive carbon nanotube ink, which coats carbon nanotubes onto ultra-thin sheets of transparent film that are used to manufacture flat-screen televisions and computer screens.
This was developed by Professor Shaffer and colleagues from the London Centre for Nanotechnology, which includes fellow Imperial scientist Dr Sin Fogden, as well as Dr Chris Howard and Professor Neal Skipper from UCL.
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The research is written up in the journals Nature Communications and ACS Nano.
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Scientists untangle nanotubes to release their potential in the electronics industry
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
21-Oct-2013
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Contact: Simon Levey s.levey@imperial.ac.uk 44-020-759-46702 Imperial College London
Researchers have demonstrated how to produce electronic inks for the development of new applications using the 'wonder material', carbon nanotubes.
Carbon nanotubes are lightweight, strong and conduct electricity, which make them ideal components in new electronics devices, such as tablet computers and touchscreen phones, but cannot be used without being separated out from their natural tangled state.
In the video above, Dr Stephen Hodge and Professor Milo Shaffer, both from Imperial's Department of Chemistry, talk about the challenges of unravelling and applying carbon nanotubes in the laboratory and how the method is being scaled up to meet the requirements of industrial-scale manufacturing.
Carbon nanotubes are hollow, spaghetti-like strands made from the same material as graphene; only one nanometre thick but with theoretically unlimited length. This 'wonder material' shares many of graphene's properties, and has attracted much public and private investment into making it into useful technology.
By giving the nanotubes an electrical charge, they were able to pull apart individual strands. Using this method, nanotubes can be sorted or refined, then deposited in a uniform layer onto the surface of any object.
Working with an industrial partner, Linde Electronics, they have produced an electrically-conductive carbon nanotube ink, which coats carbon nanotubes onto ultra-thin sheets of transparent film that are used to manufacture flat-screen televisions and computer screens.
This was developed by Professor Shaffer and colleagues from the London Centre for Nanotechnology, which includes fellow Imperial scientist Dr Sin Fogden, as well as Dr Chris Howard and Professor Neal Skipper from UCL.
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The research is written up in the journals Nature Communications and ACS Nano.
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Tablets shipments will blast ahead by 53 percent in 2013 as desktop and laptop shipments decline by 11 percent, research firm Gartner forecast on Monday.
The emergence of ultramobile devices, which marries a PC with the form factor of a tablet, will help ease the declines in other PCs, but not by much. When ultramobiles are included, the overall PC market will still decline 8.4 percent in 2013, Gartner said.
Gartner forecast that Android tablets of all brands will exceed iPads for all of 2013 for the first time, with 91.5 million (49.6 percent) Android tablets shipped compared with 89.6 million (48.6 percent) Apple iPads. Gartner said just over 3 million (1.7 percent) Windows tablets will ship.
Apple's iPads still had the largest share of the worldwide tablet market by manufacturer at 32 percent in the second quarter, according to IDC, followed by Samsung at 18 percent. Samsung builds its tablets primarily on the Android mobile operating system.
Gartner and other analysts have found a strong trend toward smaller tablets, some as small as those with a 7-in. display. In a survey of 21,500 consumers in the U.S. and seven other countries, Gartner found 47 percent owned a tablet with a display of 8 inches or less.
"Continuing on the trend we saw last year, we expect this holiday season to be all about smaller tablets as even the long-term holiday favorite -- the smartphone -- loses its appeal," said Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi in a statement.
Mobile phones will reach 1.8 billion shipments in 2013, Gartner said, growing by 3.7 percent over 2012.
For all devices, including desktops, laptops, ultramobiles, tablets and mobile phones, Android has 38 percent of the market, while the Windows OS is second at 4.3 percent due to a decline in traditional PC sales, Gartner said. The total shipments for all devices should reach 2.3 billion in 2013.
By device type, Gartner said shipments of desktops and laptops in 2013 will total 303 million units; ultramobiles, 18.5 million; tablets, 184 million; and mobile phones,1.8 billion. The total of all categories is 2.3 billion.
All products running iOS are third, at 1.2 percent. Gartner noted that Windows will return to growth in 2014, with OS shipments increasing nearly 10 percent to about 364 million that year.
Swat team members secure the scene near Sparks Middle School in Sparks, Nev., after a shooting there on Monday, Oct. 21, 2013. Authorities are reporting that two people were killed and two wounded at the Nevada middle school. (AP Photo/Kevin Clifford)
Swat team members secure the scene near Sparks Middle School in Sparks, Nev., after a shooting there on Monday, Oct. 21, 2013. Authorities are reporting that two people were killed and two wounded at the Nevada middle school. (AP Photo/Kevin Clifford)
Police secure the scene near Sparks Middle School after a shooting in Sparks, Nev., on Monday, Oct. 21, 2013. Authorities are reporting that two people were killed and two wounded at the Nevada middle school. (AP Photo/Kevin Clifford)
Map locates Sparks, Nev., where at least 2 people are killed in a shooting at Sparks Middle School.; 1c x 2 inches; 46.5 mm x 50 mm;
SPARKS, Nev. (AP) — A shooting at a middle school in northern Nevada has left two people dead and two boys in critical condition, rattling parents, teachers and students as they showed up for the start of the school week.
The identities of the shooter and victims weren't immediately known. The suspect is "down," police said, and school officials say there is no further danger.
The first reports of the shooting came in at about 7:15 a.m., about 15 minutes before the first classes were set to begin.
Students from the middle school and next door elementary school were evacuated to the nearby high school, and classes were canceled.
At the evacuation center, parents walked with their arms around their children, some of whom were in tears.
"We came flying down here to get our kids," said Mike Fiorica, whose nephew attends the school. "... It's really chaotic. You can imagine how parents are feeling. You don't know if your kid's OK."
The shooting happened on the school's campus, but outside the school building itself, according to police.
Spokeswoman Angela Rambo of Renown Regional Medical Center says two boys are in critical condition.
Gov. Brian Sandoval issued a statement after hearing about the shooting.
"I was deeply saddened to learn of the horrific shooting at Sparks Middle School this morning. My administration is receiving regular updates and the Nevada Highway Patrol is assisting at the scene," he said. Sandoval extended his thoughts and prayers to those affected.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, offered his condolences to students, parents and staff who experienced "a traumatic morning."
"No words of condolence could possibly ease the pain, but I hope it is some small comfort that Nevada mourns with them. I stand by to be of any assistance if there is anything that can be done," Reid said in a statement.
The school, located in a working class neighborhood, enrolls about 700 students in 7th and 8th grades.
The violence erupted nearly a year after a gunman horrified the nation by opening fire in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., leaving 26 dead. The Dec. 14 shooting reignited debate over how best to protect the nation's schools and whether armed teachers should be part of that equation.
Washoe County School District held a session in the spring in light of the Connecticut tragedy to educate parents on what safety measures the district takes.
Sparks, a city of roughly 90,000 that sprung out of the railway industry, lies just east of Reno.
___
Associated Press Writer Michelle Rindels contributed from Las Vegas.
New Yorkers have mixed feelings about Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s legacy as his days at city hall wind down, but amid questions about what's next for the billionaire mayor, he is winning high praises on the international stage for his long record of philanthropy and stewardship of the Big Apple.
Bloomberg on Monday was named the first-ever recipient of the $1 million Genesis Prize, which the award’s organizers have described as the “Jewish Nobel Prize.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will formally present the award to Bloomberg next May in Jerusalem.
The Genesis Philanthropy Group, a charity founded by Russian Jewish billionaires, set up the award earlier this year to honor “exceptional human beings” committed to the “betterment of mankind” who will inspire the next generation of Jews.
In a statement, Bloomberg said he was “deeply honored” to receive the prize. He’ll donate the $1 million prize to a philanthropic cause that he’ll announce next year.
“Many years ago, my parents instilled in me Jewish values and ethics that I have carried with me throughout my life, and which have guided every aspect of my work in business, government, and philanthropy,” Bloomberg said. “The Genesis Prize embraces and promotes those same values and ethics — a common thread among the Jewish people worldwide that has helped move humankind forward for centuries."
According to the group, Bloomberg was picked from more than 200 nominees around the world as the inaugural recipient because of “his track record of outstanding public service and his role as one of the world’s greatest philanthropists.”
"Mayor Michael Bloomberg sets a very high bar as the first recipient of the Genesis Prize," Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, one of the judges for the award, said in a statement. "It is a great honor for the entire Jewish people to celebrate his achievements, his commitment to improving the world, and in particular his city: New York. His pursuit of the agenda centered on health, innovation and social justice has been unwavering.”
Bloomberg has long said his goal is to be remembered as one of New York City’s best mayors, but his popularity has taken a hit as he prepares to leave office in late December. His handling of the city — including his support of the controversial stop-and-frisk tactic that allowed police officers to randomly search people without cause — became a key issue in the Democratic mayoral primary.
Public advocate Bill de Blasio won the primary by positioning himself as the anti-Bloomberg in the race, arguing that income inequality in New York had created a “tale of two cities” for residents under the mayor’s stewardship.
A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC 4 New York/Marist poll found 45 percent of registered voters in the city believe Bloomberg is doing an “excellent or good” job as mayor, compared to 52 percent who rated his job as “fair or poor.”
That’s major nose-dive since his ratings four years ago, when he successfully fought to overturn term limits to seek an unprecedented third term at ciity hall. Back then, the same poll found 68 percent rated Bloomberg’s job performance as “excellent or good,” compared to 32 percent who said “fair or poor.”
But Bloomberg has professed not to read the polls, and he’s vowed to stay out of the limelight as he winds down his final months in office.
Chiwetel Ejiofor (left) plays Solomon Northrup, a New York freeman kidnapped into slavery in 1841 and eventually resold to plantation owner Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender).
Francois Duhamel/Fox Searchlight Pictures
Chiwetel Ejiofor (left) plays Solomon Northrup, a New York freeman kidnapped into slavery in 1841 and eventually resold to plantation owner Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender).
Francois Duhamel/Fox Searchlight Pictures
12 Years a Slave
Director: Steve McQueen
Genre: Biopic, drama
Running Time: 133 minutes
Rated R for violence/cruelty, some nudity and brief sexuality
Just a few years before the start of the Civil War, two anti-slavery books became best-sellers in the United States. One was Uncle Tom's Cabin, the Harriet Beecher Stowe opus that went on to become the best-selling novel of the 19th century.
The other was a memoir with a mouthful of a title: Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a citizen of New-York, kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and rescued in 1853 from a cotton plantation near the Red River in Louisiana.
Twelve Years a Slave — successful enough to prompt multiple editions before falling into obscurity after the war — was rediscovered by scholars in the 1960s and has now been transformed into a wrenching, soul-stirring film from British director Steve McQueen.
The film begins with an enslaved Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) cutting sugar cane on a Louisiana plantation, then flashes back to the life he'd been leading just a few years earlier in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. There, he was a musician of stature, living with his wife and three kids in comfort and even some luxury. A free black family in a state that did not allow slavery, they inhabited a world of learning and culture.
In fact it's Solomon's talent as a violinist that leads to his downfall. He accompanies two men to Washington for what he thinks is a fiddling job, only to have them get him drunk and betray him. New York has laws protecting its African-American residents. The nation's capital does not. He wakes up in chains.
Patsy (Lupita Nyong'o), another of Epps' slaves, becomes the subject of her master's unwanted attentions — and the abuse of his jealous wife.
Francois Duhamel/Fox Searchlight Pictures
Patsy (Lupita Nyong'o), another of Epps' slaves, becomes the subject of her master's unwanted attentions — and the abuse of his jealous wife.
Francois Duhamel/Fox Searchlight Pictures
Without papers to establish his identity, far from anyone who knows him, Solomon is helpless when his kidnappers rename him Platt and ship him off to Louisiana to be sold. As other desperate men in chains tell him, he'll be killed if he even says his real name, let alone tries to escape. Survival means "keeping your head down," he's told.
"I don't want to survive," he gasps. "I want to live."
Still, survival comes first. Sold to a Baptist preacher (Benedict Cumberbatch) who realizes there's more to him than meets the eye, and who treats him, as another slave puts it, like "prized livestock," Solomon does keep his head down. He bides his time, and urges others around him to do the same.
Inwardly, though, he's seething. And when another slave accuses him of truckling to his master, he roars, "My back is thick with scars for protesting my freedom."
McQueen keeps those scars — and the brutality that creates them — front and center in 12 Years a Slave, with incidents that scald, and searing supporting performances, particularly from Michael Fassbender (star of McQueen's previous art-house films Hunger and Shame) as a sadistic but strangely conflicted slave owner.
But it is Ejiofor — bewildered, sorely tested, morally towering — whose staggered dignity anchors the film.
John Ridley's script brings both historical sweep and an urgent intimacy to Northup's story — no small accomplishment. Rife with visceral beatings, multiple lynchings and an almost casual air of psychological cruelty, 12 Years a Slave is anything but easy to watch, but it is powerfully moving.
It's also a powerful corrective, because it so skillfully links that brutality to the sort of tranquil antebellum South that Hollywood has often peddled — the broad porches, the hoop skirts, the fields fluffy with cotton. It will be hard for audiences to see those images ever again without thinking about the savagery and injustice that propped them up.
District nursing homes win high marks for quality, but antipsychotic prescribing remains problematic
Public release date: 17-Oct-2013 [
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Contact: Kathy Fackelmann kfackelmann@gwu.edu 202-994-8354 George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services
WASHINGTON, DC (October 17, 2013)The District of Columbia Department of Health (DOH) has released a study by the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS) investigating prescribing of antipsychotics to District seniors. The study combines pharmaceutical marketing data collected by the District with publicly available data on nursing home quality and Medicare drug claims.
"The good news is that nursing homes in the District of Columbia generally are not prescribing antipsychotic medication at rates higher than the rest of the country," says Susan F. Wood, PhD, lead researcher and an associate professor of health policy and of environmental and occupational health at SPHHS. "However, there are still concerns that District providers are too quick to prescribe these drugs to District seniors and Medicaid beneficiaries."
Antipsychotics are one of the top-selling drug classes, despite widely reported side effects that include weight gain and sedation. Elderly patients suffering from dementia or agitation may be dosed with antipsychotics for their sedative effects, an off-label use that raises ethical questions. Use of antipsychotics puts seniors at increased risk of serious adverse events, including cognitive decline, hip fractures, and death.
"Senior citizens living in the District of Columbia are the city's most vulnerable population," said Dr. Joxel Garcia, Director, DC Department of Health. "The Department of Health will continue to invest in educating physicians on effective use of antipsychotic medications to provide the better health outcomes for all District residents."
The report fulfills the requirement of a 2004 law in the District of Columbia that requires pharmaceutical companies to file annual reports describing their prescription-drug marketing activities in the District. The AccessRx Act also requires analysis of these reports to determine how pharmaceutical marketing may affect healthcare services in the District.
SPHHS researchers searched District of Columbia marketing data for reports of drug-company gifts made in 2007 - 2011 to physicians who currently serve as nursing home medical directors. The search was done to see if pharmaceutical companies were targeting marketing efforts at the medical directors of nursing homes. The report found that nine of the district's 19 nursing home medical directors received no gifts from pharmaceutical companies between 2007 and 2011. Three received cash or checks for speaking or consulting, which totaled $34,639 over five years. Only four received gifts totaling over $1,000 in at least one of the years studied; six received gifts, mostly food or books, totaling $100 to $800 in at least one year.
The study also examined nursing home quality ratings and rates of antipsychotic prescriptions across eight wards in the district, using ratings from the Nursing Home Compare website run by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Thirteen of the District's 19 nursing homes received above-average ratings (four or five stars) for overall quality. The two nursing homes with the lowest ratings (two stars, or "below average") are both located in Ward 7.
Nursing Home Compare also reports the percentage of short-stay nursing home patients receiving new antipsychotic prescriptions and the percentage of long-stay patients receiving antipsychotic medications. In the District, seven out of 18 nursing homes have above‐average prescribing rates for short‐stay patients, and six out of 19 have above‐average rates of long‐stay patients taking antipsychotics. (Average US rates are 2.7 percent for short-stay patients and 22.4 percent for long-stay patients.)
Researchers also examined data on prescriptions of antipsychotics for Medicare Part D patients, the majority of whom are seniors. The SPHHS report compiles information on 67 District providers who wrote antipsychotic prescriptions for large numbers of Part D patients. Nearly one-third (22 of 67) of these prescribed at least one antipsychotic to 70 percent or more of their Part D patients.
"Many doctors in the District write significant numbers of prescriptions of antipsychotic medication to Medicare patients. This provides a window into prescribing practices here," says Adriane Fugh-Berman, MD, a co-author of the report and an associate professor of pharmacology and physiology at Georgetown University Medical Center.
"As we noted in an earlier report for the Department of Health, the District has a very high percentage of Medicaid beneficiaries receiving antipsychotic medications," Wood says. Data released by CMS just after this report was written indicate that nearly 11 percent of the District's Medicaid beneficiaries filled antipsychotic prescriptions in 2009. "High rates of prescribing antipsychotics, whether to children or elders, raises concerns about the quality of care provided to low-income District residents and the role of pharmaceutical marketing in prescribing practices."
The study can be found on the D.C. Department of Health Website by clicking here.
###
About the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services:
Established in July 1997, the School of Public Health and Health Services brought together three longstanding university programs in the schools of medicine, business, and education and is now the only school of public health in the nation's capital. Today, more than 1,100 students from nearly every U.S. state and more than 40 nations pursue undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral-level degrees in public health. The school now offers an online Master of Public Health, MPH@GW, which allows students to pursue their degree from anywhere in the world. http://sphhs.gwu.edu/
About the District of Columbia Department of Health:
The Mission of the Department of Health is to promote and protect the health, safety and quality of life of residents, visitors and those doing business in the District of Columbia. Our responsibilities include identifying health risks; educating the public; preventing and controlling diseases, injuries and exposure to environmental hazards; promoting effective community collaborations; and optimizing equitable access to community resources. For more information about the Department of Health or to learn more about administrations and programs please visit http://www.doh.dc.gov.
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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.
District nursing homes win high marks for quality, but antipsychotic prescribing remains problematic
Public release date: 17-Oct-2013 [
| E-mail
| Share
]
Contact: Kathy Fackelmann kfackelmann@gwu.edu 202-994-8354 George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services
WASHINGTON, DC (October 17, 2013)The District of Columbia Department of Health (DOH) has released a study by the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS) investigating prescribing of antipsychotics to District seniors. The study combines pharmaceutical marketing data collected by the District with publicly available data on nursing home quality and Medicare drug claims.
"The good news is that nursing homes in the District of Columbia generally are not prescribing antipsychotic medication at rates higher than the rest of the country," says Susan F. Wood, PhD, lead researcher and an associate professor of health policy and of environmental and occupational health at SPHHS. "However, there are still concerns that District providers are too quick to prescribe these drugs to District seniors and Medicaid beneficiaries."
Antipsychotics are one of the top-selling drug classes, despite widely reported side effects that include weight gain and sedation. Elderly patients suffering from dementia or agitation may be dosed with antipsychotics for their sedative effects, an off-label use that raises ethical questions. Use of antipsychotics puts seniors at increased risk of serious adverse events, including cognitive decline, hip fractures, and death.
"Senior citizens living in the District of Columbia are the city's most vulnerable population," said Dr. Joxel Garcia, Director, DC Department of Health. "The Department of Health will continue to invest in educating physicians on effective use of antipsychotic medications to provide the better health outcomes for all District residents."
The report fulfills the requirement of a 2004 law in the District of Columbia that requires pharmaceutical companies to file annual reports describing their prescription-drug marketing activities in the District. The AccessRx Act also requires analysis of these reports to determine how pharmaceutical marketing may affect healthcare services in the District.
SPHHS researchers searched District of Columbia marketing data for reports of drug-company gifts made in 2007 - 2011 to physicians who currently serve as nursing home medical directors. The search was done to see if pharmaceutical companies were targeting marketing efforts at the medical directors of nursing homes. The report found that nine of the district's 19 nursing home medical directors received no gifts from pharmaceutical companies between 2007 and 2011. Three received cash or checks for speaking or consulting, which totaled $34,639 over five years. Only four received gifts totaling over $1,000 in at least one of the years studied; six received gifts, mostly food or books, totaling $100 to $800 in at least one year.
The study also examined nursing home quality ratings and rates of antipsychotic prescriptions across eight wards in the district, using ratings from the Nursing Home Compare website run by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Thirteen of the District's 19 nursing homes received above-average ratings (four or five stars) for overall quality. The two nursing homes with the lowest ratings (two stars, or "below average") are both located in Ward 7.
Nursing Home Compare also reports the percentage of short-stay nursing home patients receiving new antipsychotic prescriptions and the percentage of long-stay patients receiving antipsychotic medications. In the District, seven out of 18 nursing homes have above‐average prescribing rates for short‐stay patients, and six out of 19 have above‐average rates of long‐stay patients taking antipsychotics. (Average US rates are 2.7 percent for short-stay patients and 22.4 percent for long-stay patients.)
Researchers also examined data on prescriptions of antipsychotics for Medicare Part D patients, the majority of whom are seniors. The SPHHS report compiles information on 67 District providers who wrote antipsychotic prescriptions for large numbers of Part D patients. Nearly one-third (22 of 67) of these prescribed at least one antipsychotic to 70 percent or more of their Part D patients.
"Many doctors in the District write significant numbers of prescriptions of antipsychotic medication to Medicare patients. This provides a window into prescribing practices here," says Adriane Fugh-Berman, MD, a co-author of the report and an associate professor of pharmacology and physiology at Georgetown University Medical Center.
"As we noted in an earlier report for the Department of Health, the District has a very high percentage of Medicaid beneficiaries receiving antipsychotic medications," Wood says. Data released by CMS just after this report was written indicate that nearly 11 percent of the District's Medicaid beneficiaries filled antipsychotic prescriptions in 2009. "High rates of prescribing antipsychotics, whether to children or elders, raises concerns about the quality of care provided to low-income District residents and the role of pharmaceutical marketing in prescribing practices."
The study can be found on the D.C. Department of Health Website by clicking here.
###
About the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services:
Established in July 1997, the School of Public Health and Health Services brought together three longstanding university programs in the schools of medicine, business, and education and is now the only school of public health in the nation's capital. Today, more than 1,100 students from nearly every U.S. state and more than 40 nations pursue undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral-level degrees in public health. The school now offers an online Master of Public Health, MPH@GW, which allows students to pursue their degree from anywhere in the world. http://sphhs.gwu.edu/
About the District of Columbia Department of Health:
The Mission of the Department of Health is to promote and protect the health, safety and quality of life of residents, visitors and those doing business in the District of Columbia. Our responsibilities include identifying health risks; educating the public; preventing and controlling diseases, injuries and exposure to environmental hazards; promoting effective community collaborations; and optimizing equitable access to community resources. For more information about the Department of Health or to learn more about administrations and programs please visit http://www.doh.dc.gov.
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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.
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