'Chase and run' cell movement mechanism explains process of metastasis

June 16, 2013 ? A mechanism that cells use to group together and move around the body -- called 'chase and run' -- has been described for the first time by scientists at UCL.

Published in Nature Cell Biology, the new study focuses on the process that occurs when cancer cells interact with healthy cells in order to migrate around the body during metastasis. Scientists know that cancer cells recruit healthy cells and use them to travel long distances, but how this process takes place and how it could be controlled to design new therapies against cancer remains unknown.

Now, using embryonic cells called 'neural crest cells' (which are similar to cancer cells in term of their invasive behaviour) and placode cells which are the precursors for cranial nerves (the equivalent to healthy cells) researchers at UCL have started to unravel this process.

They have found that when neural crest cells are put next to placode cells they undergo a dramatic transformation and start 'chasing' the placode cells. At the same time placode cells exhibite 'escape' behaviour when contacted by neural crest cells. The chasing behavior depends on the production of small chemical molecules by the placode cells that attracts neural crest cells toward them.

The authors of the study are confident that the process whereby cancer cells attached to healthy cells in order to migrate around the body is comparable. Healthy cells of the body try to escape from tumor cells, but are followed by malignant cells because the healthy cells produce an attractant for the cancer cells.

Dr Roberto Mayor, UCL Department of Cell and Developmental Biology and lead author of the research, said, "We use the analogy of the donkey and the carrot to explain this behaviour: the donkey follows the carrot, but the carrot moves away when approached by the donkey. Similarly the neural crest cells follow the placode cells, but placode cells move away when touched by neural crest cells."

"The findings suggest an alternative way in which cancer treatments might work in the future if therapies can be targeted at the process of interaction between malignant and healthy cells to stop cancer cells from spreading and causing secondary tumours."

"Most cancer deaths are not due to the formation of the primary tumor, instead people die from secondary tumors originating from the first malignant cells, which are able to travel and colonize vital organs of the body such as the lungs or the brain."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/Gh2sioP5Zo8/130616155019.htm

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East Antarctic ice shelves melting at surprising pace, study suggests

Breakup of the shelves can accelerate the flow of continental ice to the sea, contributing to sea-level rise, and the Antarctic shelves 'are melting too fast,' the study's lead author says.

By Pete Spotts,?Staff writer / June 14, 2013

Emperor penguins walk across sea ice near Ross Island, Antarctica. New research finds the frozen continent's ice shelves melting at an alarming rate.

Courtesy Thomas Beer/AP/File

Enlarge

Several small ice shelves along the East Antarctic coast appear to be melting at surprisingly high rates, some at rates comparable to those of shelves in West Antarctica, long a center of concern over the impact of climate change on the region's vast ice sheet and sea-level rise.

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This is an unexpected result of a new study that documents the current status of ice shelves around Antarctica's coastline and the relative influence of the factors melting them.

It's unclear if the unexpected melt rates represent a trend. Conditions off the East Antarctic coast have been less-well studied than those off of West Antarctica, notes Stanley Jacobs, a researcher at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., and a member of the team reporting its results in the current issue of the journal Science.

The cause also is unclear. But a lead suspect is relatively warm water that deep currents drive up onto the continental shelf. This water melts the ice shelves from underneath.

Still, "the numbers were a little bit larger than we were expecting ? about the same as for shelves on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet," Dr. Jacobs says.

Ice shelves are the leading edges of glaciers that flow from the continental interior into bays and fjords. Friction with a bay's sides or with raised features on the sea floor turn the buoyant ice shelves into brakes that slow the pace at which the glacial ice upstream moves toward the sea. The last area where the ice touches sea floor is known as the grounding line.

Relatively warm water, driven by deep-ocean currents up onto the continental shelf, can melt the shelves from underneath. The water-induced melting also can cause the grounding line to retreat. Both are thought to contribute to the break-up, or calving, of the ice shelves into icebergs. On the shelf surface, meltwater can work its way into crevasses, freeze, and act as a wedge to help cleave the ice.

"Ice shelf melt doesn't necessarily mean an ice shelf is decaying; it can be compensated by the ice flow from the continent," notes Eric Rignot, a professor of earth science at UC Irvine and the study's lead author. "But in a number of places around Antarctica, ice shelves are melting too fast."

Excessive breakup of the shelves can accelerate the flow of continental ice to the sea, contributing to sea-level rise.

Some of the most dramatic break-ups have occurred along the Antarctic Peninsula, a region of the continent that has seen some of the most pronounced warming on the planet ? warming most climate scientists attribute to the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuel and from land-use changes.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/SLBtJxmiB_Q/East-Antarctic-ice-shelves-melting-at-surprising-pace-study-suggests

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Australian Health Information Technology: Weekly Overseas Health ...

Note: Each link is followed by a title and few paragraphs. For the full article click on the link above title of the article. Note also that full access to some links may require site registration or subscription payment.

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Posted on Jun 03, 2013

By Mike Miliard, Managing Editor

It's probably the most anticipated and potentially transformative new gadget since the smartphone. But unlike the iPhone, Google Glass has also been heralded with a healthy dose of controversy.

Although few folks have yet managed to get their mitts on a pair, lots of people have some pretty passionate ideas about what the technology ? which enables hands-free Web and camera access ? will mean, for healthcare and society at large.

Earlier this year, Google put out the call "Explorers" who might be willing to test out prototypes of the device. Interested folks were encouraged to head to Twitter and Google+ and say what they'd do if they were lucky enough to get a pair in advance, appending the hash tag #ifihadglass.

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Posted on Jun 07, 2013

By Bernie Monegain, Editor

A half million Cleveland Clinic? patients gained access to more of their healthcare information Thursday ? and by the end of the year ? they will see all that is in their electronic medical record, including physician notes, via MyChart, the secure online portal. As Cleveland Clinic officials see it, it?s the right thing to do because it will give patients a more complete picture of their health and empower them to make better, smarter and more economical decisions about their care.

Today patients? can view their after-visit summary, medications list, allergies, immunization records, preventative care details, laboratory results, and radiology reports. If they want to see the rest of their medical records, they must contact the hospital to get hard copies of the EMR.

The new transparent MyChart EMR will give patients access to pathology records, X-ray reports, physician notes, and the list of their current health issues, which physicians use to briefly describe a patient?s health status, recent concerns, and known diagnoses. Patients will be able to view online nearly everything their doctor sees in their EMR, except for behavioral health information, which is prohibited from release by state law.

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JUN 6, 2013 3:42pm ET

A new report from vendor research firm KLAS Enterprises assesses user perceptions of the usability of nine major ambulatory electronic health record products. They include Allscripts Enterprise, athenahealth, Cerner, eClinicalWorks, Epic, GE Healthcare CPS, Greenway, McKesson Practice Partner and NextGen.

Providers reporting achieving high usability of their EHR ranged from 55 percent of McKesson users to 85 percent of athenahealth users. Many providers, regardless of the product, put significant investment into making their system more usable.

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June 7, 2013 | By Ashley Gold

Privacy experts spoke about their data breach experiences Thursday at the Healthcare Privacy Summit in Washington, D.C., agreeing that what they've experienced likely is just the beginning for what's possible in security fissures at healthcare organizations.

Omar Khawaja, a global project manager for Verizon, noted that 61 percent of breaches his group finds are for payment card information, and pointed out that the reactive system presently in place for combating such breaches is problematic.

"What does 911 look like in cyberspace? Who do you call when you have a breach?" Khawaja asked. "It takes months just to contain the breach."

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June 5, 2013

By GINA KOLATA

More than 70 medical, research and advocacy organizations active in 41 countries and including the National Institutes of Health announced Wednesday that they had agreed to create an organized way to share genetic and clinical information. Their aim is to put the vast and growing trove of data on genetic variations and health into databases ? with the consent of the study subjects ? that would be open to researchers and doctors all over the world, not just to those who created them.

Millions more people are expected to get their genes decoded in coming years, and the fear is that this avalanche of genetic and clinical data about people and how they respond to treatments will be hopelessly fragmented and impede the advance of medical science. This ambitious effort hopes to standardize the data and make them widely availabl e.

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Posted on Jun 05, 2013

By Bernie Monegain, Editor

A new report from Burning Glass Technologies shows that the health informatics sector continues to produce jobs.? Since 2007, postings for health informatics jobs have increased 10 times faster than healthcare jobs overall, according to Burning Glass.

Using data from online job postings, Burning Glass, a Boston-based labor market analytics firm, partnered with the Education Advisory Board, a membership-based research company, to examine the health informatics job market.

The study found that healthcare informatics includes a range of positions that involve the collection, handling and processing of clinical information for a variety of purposes, from billing to medical quality assurance. Also, informatics has become increasingly integrated into the management of clinical care.

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Friday, June 07, 2013

by Ashley Marchand, iHealthBeat Senior Staff Writer

The LIVESTRONG Foundation has released a report that shows high user satisfaction with an online tool to help cancer survivors receive post-treatment care plans, and the foundation is launching a study into whether electronic health record data can help streamline the tool.

Experts representing LIVESTRONG and the Commission on Cancer revealed the report findings on Monday during the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual conference.

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Friday, 07 June 2013 12:27 June Shannon

June Shannon reports from the recent eHealth conference in Dublin

eHealth Week 2013, which took place from May 13 to 15, consisted of two main events: A high level eHealth conference organised jointly by the EU Commission and the Irish EU Presidency of the Council of Europe, and the World of Health IT Conference (WoHIT) organised by Healthcare Information and Management Systems Services Europe (HIMSS).

The three-day conference was a unique opportunity to put Ireland at the very centre of the latest developments in eHealth technology and innovation.

Speaking at the event, the Secretary General of the Department of Health Dr Ambrose McLoughlin, said that? Ireland was ideally placed for a new services industry and his vision was one where eHealth would be as strong as the international financial services centre has been for Ireland.

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June 3, 2013 | By Marla Durben Hirsch

Using a "gentle" electronic health record flu prompt not only increased the number of flu vaccinations children received, but also improved the documentation explaining why the vaccine was not administered, according to a study?reported?in Family Practice News.? The study, funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, was conducted at four urban community clinics affiliated with New York-Presbyterian Hospital Ambulatory Care Network and Columbia University that serve a low-income Latino population. It stems from an earlier related study?that analyzed providers' challenges with flu alerts and highlighted the need for "well integrated" alerts that didn't impede clinicians' work flow.

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Posted on Jun 06, 2013

By Erin McCann, Associate Editor

Healthcare providers are taking telemedicine to new heights, with the market seeing growth of a whopping 237 percent within a five-year period, according to a new Kalorama report.

Officials say the telemedicine patient monitoring market grew from $4.2 billion in 2007 to more than $10 billion in 2012. According to the report, the market itself is considered small- to moderate in size but makes up for it with its notable number of competitors and "increasing awareness of effectiveness."

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Posted on Jun 06, 2013

By Mike Miliard, Managing Editor

More than a third of physician practices plan to purchase, replace or upgrade ambulatory EHR systems, according to HIMSS Analytics' newest Ambulatory Electronic Health Record & Practice Management Study. Meanwhile, nearly half of physician groups say they'll join an HIE. The fifth annual report represents HIMSS Analytics' continuation of the series previously published by CapSite, which was acquired by HIMSS in late 2012. In addition to polling more than 800 physician groups about EHR and practice management technologies, the study incorporates information from the HIMSS Analytics/directory/analytics" Analytics Database to offer an in-depth look at the ambulatory markert.

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6 June 2013?? Lis Evenstad

Trusts will be contractually obligated to use the NHS number as their primary patient identifier from April 2014.

Tim Kelsey, NHS England?s national director for patients and information, wrote on his blog post on NHS Voices that using the NHS number was one of the ?urgent steps? needed to ?make the data revolution real.?

?We will require all NHS providers funded by NHS England to use the NHS number as their primary identifier so that all data can be linked and patients identified, with accuracy.

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June 6, 2013 | By Dan Bowman

Big data is an enigma when it comes to healthcare, as described by a panel on Wednesday at the third annual Health Privacy Summit in Washington, D.C., hosted by Patient Privacy Rights. On one hand, according to Deloitte principal Deborah Golden, there are infinite positive possibilities for big data use, such as improving patient safety via openly available medication information.

On the other hand, according to Harvard professor Latanya Sweeney, big data also represents big privacy issues.

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June 6, 2013 | By Marla Durben Hirsch

To meet the industry's goals of providing high quality, safe and affordable healthcare, quality measures need to transition from "setting specific narrow snapshots" to a more broad based, meaningful and patient center based assessments "centered in the continuum of time in which care is delivered," according to an?article?published in the Journal of the American Medical Association this week?by National Coordinator for Health IT Farzad Mostashari and other U.S. Department of Health & Human Services officials.

The article?stresses the need to identify important clinical measures, discontinue the use of those of little value and "create a portfolio that meets the needs of payers, policy makers and the public."?

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The study includes insights from more than 800 physician groups on electronic health record and practice management adoption, vendor share and meaningful use attestation across the U.S. physician market. It also incorporates information from the HIMSS Analytics database.

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WEDNESDAY, June 5 (HealthDay News) -- Shifting primary care practice toward a shared-care model for work distribution and responsibility can improve professional satisfaction, according to research published in the May/June issue of the Annals of Family Medicine.

Christine A. Sinsky, M.D., from Medical Associates Clinic and Health Plans in Dubuque, Iowa, and colleagues made site visits to 23 high-performing primary care practices to investigate how these practices distribute functions among the team, use technology to their advantage, improve outcomes with data, and make the job of primary care feasible and enjoyable as a life's vocation.

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More than 100 EHRs will offer mobile access, native iPad versions or both by 2014, but voice recognition is still missing.

Electronic health record vendors are responding to pent-up demand among doctors for EHRs they can access on mobile devices, including smartphones and computer tablets. According to a new national survey by Washington, D.C.-based Black Book Rankings, 122 companies said they would introduce fully functional mobile access to their EHR products, native iPad versions, or both by the end of this year. Another 135 EHR vendors said that mobile apps were in their strategic plans.

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Posted on Jun 04, 2013

By Diana Manos, Senior Editor

Adoption of basic electronic health records has increased from nearly 34 percent in early 2011 to 44 percent by March 2012, according to a new study. Former National Coordinator for Health Information Technology David Blumenthal, MD, says that despite the challenges, EHR use is inevitable. ?One reason our health care system is in crisis is that most doctors and hospitals collect and manage health information pretty much the way Hippocrates did 2,400 years ago," Blumenthal, president of the Commonwealth Fund (CWF), co-writes in a June 4 blog post. "We have substituted paper for tablet and papyrus, but most everything else is the same."

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June 4, 2013 | By Marla Durben Hirsch

Correcting errors in electronic health records can be trickier to deal with than correcting errors in paper records, according to Georgette Samaritan, senior risk manager and patient safety consultant with Atlanta-based MAG Mutual Insurance Company.

Samaritan, writing an article in Medscape Business of Medicine, noted that unlike errors found in a paper record, correcting an electronic error may completely override the initial error, making it look as if the record never contained a mistake. That, in turn, means that a clinician has no way to show that he or she relied on erroneous data when treating a patient.?

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June 5, 2013 | By Ashley Gold

Two leaders from large healthcare systems agreed yesterday at the Big Data and Healthcare Analytics Forum in Washington, D.C., that they have the tools in place to harness lots of data. But the challenge, they said, is to better understand it and use what they learn to improve care and outcomes.

Chris Belmont (right), CIO of Oschner Health System in New Orleans, La., spoke about his company's journey into electronic health records and big data, which he said began shortly after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005. ?

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Physicians in Colorado HIE ordered fewer lab tests and the same number of imaging tests, but costs remained constant.

The use of health information exchanges (HIEs) in ambulatory care is unlikely to produce significant cost savings through reductions in rates of testing, a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA) concludes. But the researchers emphasized that there may be other economic benefits of HIE from "downstream outcomes of better informed, higher quality care."

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Posted on Jun 04, 2013

By Bernie Monegain, Editor

Kaiser Permanente will launch June 5 its first application interface program, Interchange by Kaiser Permanente. The secure program enables collaboration between Kaiser Permanente and application developers to improve healthcare and health-related experiences in ways that never before have been possible, Kaiser executives say. Interchange makes information that is already in the public domain accessible in a more efficient way, enabling app development outside of Kaiser Permanente, thereby benefitting consumers in the form of a broader variety of apps.

"We're excited to see what developers come up with as we open up secure, public data sets," Phil Fasano, Kaiser executive vice president and CIO, said in a news release. "Imagine being able to download a mobile app so customized that it shows you nearby restaurants that cater to your healthy lifestyle and offers food suggestions based on the amount of activity you have completed in the last week, your nutrition plan and friends' reviews. Once you've finished your meal, a device synced to your app reports your blood-sugar levels and reminds you to pick up insulin, then tells you the nearest Kaiser Permanente pharmacy where you can pick it up. Interchange by Kaiser Permanente is the beginning of that possibility."?

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3 June 2013?? Rebecca Todd

Implementation of the care.data programme to extract and link large amounts of primary and secondary data starts this month.

Guidance for GPs on release one of the programme has been published by NHS England.

Data will be extracted from practices via the GP Extraction Service and linked with Hospital Episode Statistics to create new Care Episode Statistics. This will be done in the ?safe haven? of the Health and Social Care Information Centre.

Implementation will start with a small number of practices in June with wider implementation over the rest of the year.

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June 4, 2013 | By Greg Slabodkin

Although advancements in telemental health (TMH) technologies have rapidly reduced obstacles for their use, significant barriers remain that "plague" the diffusion of TMH from the provider's perspective, finds an article in the peer-reviewed journal Telemedicine and e-Health. According to the article, these barriers fall into three categories: personal; clinical workflow and technology; and licensure, credentialing and reimbursement.

Among the personal barriers cited in the article, many providers are concerned that TMH will inhibit their ability to effectively establish rapport and cultivate a successful clinical relationship with patients, and that successful treatment outcomes may be inhibited by the lack of proximity between that clinician and the provider. However, despite providers' initial concerns, the authors determine that "confidence and buy-in can be significantly improved when clinicians are given the opportunity to actually use telehealth."

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? New technology can create inflated expectations about what can be accomplished, but setting realistic goals can help alleviate feelings of being let down.

Too much hype about new technology may result in expectations not being met, according to a study by the University of Chicago Medical Center.

In 2010, soon after Apple released the first iPad, the University of Chicago Medical Center launched a program in which it would hand out iPads to all incoming residents. The program was met with great enthusiasm, with a majority of residents saying in a survey that use of the tablet would improve efficiencies and quality of care. Four months later, most agreed that use of the tablet was beneficial, but it didn't live up the initial hype for many. Researchers blamed inflated expectations and say the same can happen with the introduction of any new technology.

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Research firm ON World released new data from its mobile health and wellness sensor reports, which predicts that in 2017, 515 million sensors for wearable, implantable or mobile health and fitness devices will be shipped globally, up from 107 million in 2012.

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By Alex Nussbaum

June 04, 2013

Fewer than 1 in 10 doctors used electronic records last year to U.S. standards, according to a survey that shows the challenge facing a multibillion-dollar effort to digitize the health system for improved patient care.

Only 9.8 percent of 1,820 primary-care and specialty doctors said they had electronic systems that met U.S. rules for ?meaningful use,? a list of tasks such as tracking referrals or filling prescriptions online. Less than half all those surveyed, or 44 percent, had any system in place, according to the report published by the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

The Obama administration has spent about $15 billion since 2009 to help doctors and hospitals adopt electronic health records, fueling growth for vendors such as McKesson Corp. (MCK) and Cerner Corp. (CERN) In March, the administration said it was considering new regulations, amid complaints that the systems are hard to use and don?t share information easily.

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Tuesday, June 04, 2013

by Jim Martin

The current consumer landscape is inundated with technology and applications enabled by broadband. Our smart phones multi-task as communication devices, forms of entertainment, educational platforms and much more.?Constant connectivity has allowed previously isolated communities to remain integrated with larger society and realize benefits that 10 years ago were figments of our imagination.

Whether it be through online banking or a game of Angry Birds, a broadband connected world has allowed for both large- and small-scale innovation that has changed the way we live our lives. Seniors in particular have witnessed a huge shift in accessible technologies and applications.

One of the most critical technological tools for the older adult community is health IT.?The amazing innovations in the space have the potential to change lives by encouraging aging in place, providing better health care at a lower cost and easing the daily lives of millions of elderly Americans.

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Scott Mace, for HealthLeaders Media , June 4, 2013

A joint effort to provide interoperability among the electronic health records systems of competing vendors is proceeding without a great deal of transparency and openness outside of the participating members.

Three months ago this week, Cerner, McKesson, Allscripts, Greenway and athenahealth?rivals all?announced the CommonWell Health Alliance, a joint effort to provide interoperability among their electronic health records systems and others.

Technology companies are good at announcing such alliances, but customers often never see all the benefits promised. Making different technologies interoperate is difficult, and U.S. companies in particular are predisposed to compete with each other, making attempts at interoperability even tougher.

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Posted on Jun 03, 2013

By Bernie Monegain, Editor

As physicians continue to switch EHR systems or select a first vendor, a new survey by research firm Black Book Rankings has identified? a ?meteoric trend? in favor of mobile EHR applications, especially a marked leaning for iPad apps. Black Book conducted the user poll as a? follow-up to the 2013 electronic health record study, foretelling the ?Year of the Big EHR Switch.? Nearly one in five physician users indicated the high likelihood of shifting systems after disappointing first vendor results. Several new EHR integrated mobile apps have been added to the list of physician must-haves in the replacement market demand.

Today, 8 percent of office-based physicians use either a mobile device for electronic prescribing, accessing records, ordering tests or viewing results, according to the survery. However, 83 percent indicated they would immediately utilize mobile EHR functionalities to update patient charts, check labs and order medications immediately if available to them via their EHR.

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By ANI?

London, June 3 (ANI): For decades, the military has used sonar for underwater communication.

Now, researchers at the University at Buffalo are developing a miniaturized version of the same technology to be applied inside the human body to treat diseases such as diabetes and heart failure in real time.

The advancement relies on sensors that use ultrasounds - the same inaudible sound waves used by the navy for sonar and doctors for sonograms - to wirelessly share information between medical devices implanted in or worn by people.

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June 3, 2013 | By Susan D. Hall

The proliferation of wearable devices such as Nike Fuelbands and Jawbone Ups that allow people to track their health and fitness by the minute only adds to the mounds of health data being generated, a GigaOM?article?points out. Combine that with information from electronic health records and insurance claims--among other sources of heath data--and myriad research possibilities emerge.

A new partnership between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology aims to assess the issues and questions that these new pools of health data can address.

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June 3, 2013 | By Ashley Gold

Medical care is increasingly moving online as the number of health-related sites, apps and remote technologies proliferate. From improving medication adherence to monitoring the health of newborn babies, here are five ways the Internet is helping people manage their health for a variety of conditions:

1. Getting MS patients walking more.?The latest is an internet behavioral intervention that has been proved to help patients with multiple sclerosis increases their daily amount of walking. A trial presented to MedPage Today showed that a simple Internet behavior intervention boosted average daily step counts from 4,000 at baseline to almost 5,500 at its close, according to researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Patients' scores on measures of depression, anxiety, fatigue, and physical ability also improved.

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May 30, 2013 | By Marla Durben Hirsch

I must admit, I was surprised when I read that Massachusetts's healthcare law, passed last summer, includes a provision that requires physicians to demonstrate a "proficiency" in the use of EHRs, electronic prescribing, computerized physician order entry and other forms of health IT as a condition of licensure. The law defines "proficiency" as, at a minimum, sufficient skills to comply with the Meaningful Use requirements.?

I'm surprised not only at the existence of the provision, but also that it's received such scant attention. The law is slated to go into effect in 2015; I was alerted to it via a blog post published earlier this week by a Massachusetts physician who suggests that the requirement be rescinded. The provider,?Hayward Zwerling, M.D.,?said that the government has a "misguided obsession" with dictating what kind of software and functionalities physicians should be using to treat patients.

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June 2, 2013 6:48 pm

By Sarah Neville, Public Policy Editor

The National Health Service is looking to Silicon Valley as ministers attempt to banish memories of its ill-fated IT programme with a fresh push to turn Britain into a global technology leader. Poor care in the health service was exposed in the findings of the Francis report into more than 1,000 avoidable deaths at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. As part of the drive to raise standards, Britain will become the first country to allow online access to information about NHS doctors? surgical survival rates across 10 specialities so prospective patients can compare performance, said Jeremy Hunt, health secretary.

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Enjoy!

David.

Source: http://aushealthit.blogspot.com/2013/06/weekly-overseas-health-it-links-15th.html

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Deep-diving mammals' secret revealed

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Deep-diving mammals' secret revealed
Study solves the mystery of one of the most extreme adaptations in the animal kingdom: how marine mammals store enough oxygen to hold their breath for up to an hour.

Source: BBC News
Posted on: Friday, Jun 14, 2013, 9:25am
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128642/Deep_diving_mammals__secret_revealed

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Bomb on Pakistani women's university bus kills 11

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) ? A bomb tore through a bus of female university students in southwestern Pakistan Saturday, killing 11, officials said. As family and friends gathered at the hospital another blast went off, followed by a flurry of bullets that sent bystanders running for cover.

The violence in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, came hours after militants destroyed a historic house elsewhere in the province that at one time was used by the country's founder.

No one claimed responsibility for the multiple attacks Saturday that highlighted the violence that has continued to plague the sparsely populated province. Baluch nationalists pushing for more say in the province's future, Taliban militants and violent sectarian groups all have a presence in the region.

At least 19 other students were wounded when the bomb went off near the bus for a women's university, said police officer Mir Zubair Mahmood. Television footage of the bus showed a blackened hulk with twisted pieces of metal and articles of women's clothing strewn about.

The second blast occurred at a hospital where the dead and wounded were taken later Saturday. The police chief and the chief secretary of the province had arrived at the hospital when the blast went off in a corridor of the hospital's emergency room, said Fayaz Sumbal, a senior police officer in Quetta. Sumbal said at least four people were wounded.

The blast was followed by bursts of gunfire but it was not clear whether the firing was the work of militants or security officials. Images on Pakistani television showed people running from the hospital building into a parking lot filled with ambulances. Some people appeared to be taking cover behind the vehicles.

The destruction of the historic house associated with Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who's referred to by Pakistanis as Quaid-e-Azam or "great leader," outraged people across Pakistan. Jinnah lived in the house before his death in 1948, a year after he led Pakistan to independence.

Attackers on motorcycles planted bombs at the 19th century residence in the mountain resort town of Ziarat, which then started a fire, said senior police officer Asghar Ali Yousufzai.

Three bombs exploded, triggering the blaze that destroyed the building, Yousufzai said. The attackers also shot dead a police guard outside the residency, which had been turned into a museum about Jinnah.

Police found six unexploded explosive devices hours later after firefighters extinguished the fire, Yousufzai said.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned the attack in a statement and expressed his sorrow over the policeman's death.

The wooden building was constructed in the late 19th century. Pakistan's founder spent his last two months or so there, and the building was serving as a museum with Jinnah's belonging and other historical artifacts on display.

There had been no previous threat to the historical monument, the chief secretary of the province said on television.

"This tragedy happened which is a huge national loss," said Babar Fateh Yaqoo. "The people of Ziarat are protesting over this incident."

Ziarat is about 120 kilometers (75 miles) north of Quetta.

Meanwhile, former Pakistan ruler Pervez Musharraf has pleaded not guilty in a case involving his decision to fire senior judges, including the chief justice of the Supreme Court, while he was in power. The prosecution says his actions in the case amounted to terrorism.

A lawyer for Musharraf, Ilyas Siddiqi, said the not guilty plea came during a hearing Saturday at the ex-general's house which has served as a jail for the former Pakistani leader. The judge read out the charges against Musharraf who then entered his plea.

It is the latest development in Musharraf's legal troubles since returning to Pakistan in March after living in exile for four years. He took power in a 1999 coup and ruled for nearly a decade before he was forced to step down because of growing discontent with his rule, especially among the legal community because of his decision to dismiss the judges.

He returned to Pakistan in March, intending to stand for elections, but was disqualified. In addition to the judges' case, he faces charges in the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto and in the killing of a Baluch nationalist.

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Associated Press writer Zarar Khan in Islamabad contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/bomb-pakistani-womens-university-bus-kills-11-110159296.html

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4H Outdoor Recreation Day Camp ? 4-H Youth Development

Today, Friday, June 14, 2013 Camp Counselors are in training for next weeks camp.? Monday, June 17, 2013 starts our first day camp for the 2013 Summer Camping Season.? This camp is our Outdoor Recreation Day Camp.? Camp is for campers 10 ? 15 years of age.? The campers will be learning things about Forestry, Conservation and Wildlife in the mornings Monday ? Wednesday and about Shooting Sports (Archery, Air rifles, and Shot guns) in the afternoons Monday ? Wednesday.? On Thursday the campers will travel to St. Marks, FL to learn about Florida History, Canoeing, Fishing and Seining.? On Friday the campers will travel to Letchworth-Love Mounds for some morning activities and back to the extension office for a cookout and competions in the Shooting Sports areas.? Camp will close with awards and sno cones.

Source: http://jefferson.ifas.ufl.edu/4h/2013/06/14/4h-outdoor-recreation-day-camp/

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Google launches Internet-beaming balloons

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand (AP) ? Wrinkled and skinny at first, the translucent, jellyfish-shaped balloons that Google released this week from a frozen field in the heart of New Zealand's South Island hardened into shiny pumpkins as they rose into the blue winter skies above Lake Tekapo, passing the first big test of a lofty goal to get the entire planet online.

It was the culmination of 18 months' work on what Google calls Project Loon, in recognition of how whacky the idea may sound. Developed in the secretive X lab that came up with a driverless car and web-surfing eyeglasses, the flimsy helium-filled inflatables beam the Internet down to earth as they sail past on the wind.

Still in their experimental stage, the balloons were the first of thousands that Google's leaders eventually hope to launch 20 kilometers (12 miles) into the stratosphere in order to bridge the gaping digital divide between the world's 4.8 billion unwired people and their 2.2 billion plugged-in counterparts.

If successful, the technology might allow countries to leapfrog the expense of laying fiber cable, dramatically increasing Internet usage in places such as Africa and Southeast Asia.

"It's a huge moonshot. A really big goal to go after," said project leader Mike Cassidy. "The power of the Internet is probably one of the most transformative technologies of our time."

The first person to get Google Balloon Internet access this week was Charles Nimmo, a farmer and entrepreneur in the small town of Leeston. He found the experience a little bemusing after he was one of 50 locals who signed up to be a tester for a project that was so secret, no one would explain to them what was happening. Technicians came to the volunteers' homes and attached to the outside walls bright red receivers the size of basketballs and resembling giant Google map pins.

Nimmo got the Internet for about 15 minutes before the balloon transmitting it sailed on past. His first stop on the Web was to check out the weather because he wanted to find out if it was an optimal time for "crutching" his sheep, a term he explained to the technicians refers to removing the wool around sheep's rear ends.

Nimmo is among the many rural folk, even in developed countries, that can't get broadband access. After ditching his dial-up four years ago in favor of satellite Internet service, he's found himself stuck with bills that sometimes exceed $1,000 in a single month.

"It's been weird," Nimmo said of the Google Balloon Internet experience. "But it's been exciting to be part of something new."

While the concept is new, people have used balloons for communication, transportation and entertainment for centuries. In recent years, the military and aeronautical researchers have used tethered balloons to beam Internet signals back to bases on earth.

Google's balloons fly free and out of eyesight, scavenging power from card table-sized solar panels that dangle below and gather enough charge in four hours to power them for a day as the balloons sail around the globe on the prevailing winds. Far below, ground stations with Internet capabilities about 100 kilometers (60 miles) apart bounce signals up to the balloons.

The signals would hop forward, from one balloon to the next, along a backbone of up to five balloons.

Each balloon would provide Internet service for an area twice the size of New York City, about 1,250 square kilometers (780 square miles), and terrain is not a challenge. They could stream Internet into Afghanistan's steep and winding Khyber Pass or Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, a country where the World Bank estimates four out of every 100 people are online.

There are plenty of catches, including a requirement that anyone using Google Balloon Internet would need a receiver plugged into their computer in order to receive the signal. Google is not talking costs at this point, although they're striving to make both the balloons and receivers as inexpensive as possible, dramatically less than laying cables.

The signals travel in the unlicensed spectrum, which means Google doesn't have to go through the onerous regulatory processes required for Internet providers using wireless communications networks or satellites. In New Zealand, the company worked with the Civil Aviation Authority on the trial. Google chose the country in part because of its remoteness. Cassidy said in the next phase of the trial they hope to get up to 300 balloons forming a ring on the 40th parallel south from New Zealand through Australia, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina.

Christchurch was a symbolic launch site because some residents were cut off from online information for weeks following a 2011 earthquake that killed 185 people. Google believes balloon access could help places suffering natural disasters get quickly back online. Tania Gilchrist, a resident who signed up for the Google trial, feels lucky she lost her power for only about 10 hours on the day of the quake.

"After the initial upheaval, the Internet really came into play," she said. "It was how people coordinated relief efforts and let people know how to get in touch with agencies. It was really, really effective and it wasn't necessarily driven by the authorities."

At Google's mission control in Christchurch this week, a team of jet lagged engineers working at eight large laptops used wind data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to maneuver the balloons over snowy peaks, identifying the wind layer with the desired speed and direction and then adjusting balloons' altitudes so they floated in that layer.

"It's a very fundamentally democratic thing that what links everyone together is the sky and the winds," said Richard DeVaul, an MIT-trained scientist who founded Project Loon and helped develop Google Glass, hidden camera-equipped eyeglasses with a tiny computer display that responds to voice commands.

DeVaul initially thought their biggest challenge would be establishing the radio links from earth to sky, but in the end, one of the most complex parts was hand building strong, light, durable balloons that could handle temperature and pressure swings in the stratosphere.

Google engineers studied balloon science from NASA, the Defense Department and the Jet Propulsion Lab to design their own airships made of plastic films similar to grocery bags. Hundreds have been built so far.

He said they wouldn't interfere with aircraft because they fly well below satellites and twice as high as airplanes, and they downplayed concerns about surveillance, emphasizing that they would not carry cameras or any other extraneous equipment.

The balloons would be guided to collection points and replaced periodically. In cases when they failed, a parachute would deploy.

While there had been rumors, until now Google had refused to confirm the project. But there have been hints: In April, Google's executive chairman tweeted "For every person online, there are two who are not. By the end of the decade, everyone on Earth will be connected," prompting a flurry of speculative reports.

And international aid groups have been pushing for more connectivity for more than a decade.

In pilot projects, African farmers solved disease outbreaks after searching the Web, while in Bangladesh "online schools" bring teachers from Dhaka to children in remote classrooms through large screens and video conferencing.

Many experts said the project has the potential to fast-forward developing nations into the digital age, possibly impacting far more people than the Google X lab's first two projects: The glasses and a fleet of self-driving cars that have already logged hundreds of thousands of accident-free miles.

"Whole segments of the population would reap enormous benefits, from social inclusion to educational and economic opportunities," said DePauw University media studies professor Kevin Howley.

Temple University communications professor Patrick Murphy warned of mixed consequences, pointing to China and Brazil where Internet service increased democratic principles, prompting social movements and uprisings, but also a surge in consumerism that has resulted in environmental and health problems.

"The nutritional and medical information, farming techniques, democratic principles those are the wonderful parts of it," he said. "But you also have everyone wanting to drive a car, eat a steak, drink a Coke."

As the world's largest advertising network, Google itself stands to expand its own empire by bringing Internet to the masses: More users means more potential Google searchers, which in turn give the company more chances to display their lucrative ads.

Richard Bennett, a fellow with the nonprofit Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, was skeptical, noting that cell phones are being used far more in developing countries.

"I'm really glad that Google is doing this kind of speculative research," he said. "But it remains to be seen how practical any of these things are."

Ken Murdoch, a chief information officer for the nonprofit Save the Children, said the service would be "a tremendous key enabler" during natural disasters and humanitarian crises, when infrastructure can be nonexistent or paralyzed.

"The potential of a system that can restore connectivity within hours of a crisis hitting is tremendously exciting," agreed Imogen Wall at the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, although she warned that the service must be robust. "If the service fails in a crisis, then lives are lost."

In Christchurch this week, the balloons were invisible in the sky except for an occasional glint, but people could see them if they happened to be in the remote countryside where they were launched or through binoculars, if they knew where to look.

Before heading to New Zealand, Google spent a few months secretly launching between two and five flights a week in California's central valley, prompting what Google's scientists said were a handful of unusual reports on local media.

"We were chasing balloons around from trucks on the ground," said DeVaul, "and people were calling in reports about UFOs."

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Mendoza reported from Mountain View, Calif. Follow Martha Mendoza at http://twitter.com/mendozamartha.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/google-launches-internet-beaming-balloons-033037901.html

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