The House voted Thursday to freeze Medicare Part B premiums for most elderly next year, even as Democrats moved to exempt the Postal Service from having to make $4 billion in payments due next week to cover retirement health benefits for its employees. The back-to-back actions reflect a flurry of last minute multi-billion-dollar fixes, often without warning, as the government approaches the new fiscal year beginning next Thursday, Oct. 1. Democrats hope the Medicare premium freeze, which sailed through on a 406-18 vote, will defuse what would otherwise be an October surprise for health care reform – threatened cuts in Social Security checks for millions of elderly. In the case of the Postal Service, the action closely tracks a House bill approved Sept. 15 but would allow proponents to get past the Senate now without the threat of amendments. At a meeting of House and Senate Appropriations Committee negotiators Thursday morning, the Postal Service language was incorporated into a stop-gap continuing resolution, or CR, that Congress must enact in the next week to keep the full government operations. As adopted, the postal agency, which now faces a liability of $5.4 billion due Sept. 30, would have to […]
Researchers found that chronic sleep deprivation increased so-called plaques in the brain thought to be a main cause of the condition and other dementias. They also found that orexin, a protein that helps regulate the sleep cycle, appears to be directly involved in the increase. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital noticed that levels of amyloid beta, a protein that forms the plaques, rose and fell in association with sleep and wakefulness. They found levels in both mice and humans increased when they were awake and decreased when they slept. Depriving the mice of sleep, caused a 25 percent increase in amyloid beta levels, it was discovered. Excess sleep could reduce it by 80 per cent. Professor David Holtzman, neurologist in chief at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, said the results showed that lack of sleep could have ‘potential long-term impacts on brain health. When Professor Holtzman’s group injected orexin into the brains of the mice, mice stayed awake longer, and amyloid beta levels increased. While the exact cause fo Alzheimer’s remains unknown it is thought to be connected to plaques and tangles that effectively ‘silt up the information channels of the […]
After decades of debate and four years of investigation an international body of earth scientists has formally agreed to move the boundary dates for the prehistoric Quaternary age by 800,000 years, reports the Journal of Quaternary Science. The decision has been made by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), the authority for geological science which has acted to end decades of controversy by formally declaring when the Quaternary Period, which covers both the ice age and moment early man first started to use tools, began. In the 18th Century the earth’s history was split into four epochs, Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and Quaternary. Although the first two have been renamed Palaeozoic and Mesozoic respectively, the second two have remained in use by scientists for more than 150 years. There has been a protracted debate over the position and status of Quaternary in the geological time scale and the intervals of time it represents. ‘It has long been agreed that the boundary of the Quaternary Period should be placed at the first sign of global climate cooling,’ said Professor Philip Gibbard. ‘What we have achieved is the definition of the boundary of the Quaternary to an internationally recognised and […]
Editors Note: On Sept. 17, in the midst of the publicity blitz for his cinematic takedown of the capitalist order, filmmaker Michael Moore talked with Nation columnist Naomi Klein by phone about the film, the roots of our economic crisis and the promise and peril of the present political moment. Listen to a podcast of the full conversation here. Following is an edited transcript of their conversation. Naomi Klein: So, the film is wonderful. Congratulations. It is, as many people have already heard, an unapologetic call for a revolt against capitalist madness. But the week it premiered, a very different kind of revolt was in the news: the so-called tea parties, seemingly a passionate defense of capitalism and against social programs. Meanwhile, we are not seeing too many signs of the hordes storming Wall Street. Personally, I’m hoping that your film is going to be the wake-up call and the catalyst for all of that changing. But I’m just wondering how you’re coping with this odd turn of events, these revolts for capitalism led by Glenn Beck. Michael Moore: I don’t know if they’re so much revolts in favor of capitalism as they are being fueled […]
Research suggests Hippocrates’ holistic view of health and illness was right; mind does matter when it comes to health and healing. Nurse researchers and clinicians at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing (JHUSON) and the Johns Hopkins Hospital (JHH) share that view and are working at this mind-body intersection. They are exploring how to prevent the damage excessive stress can do to a young child’s development and how the mind can help speed or slow healing and help control pain. And they’re helping nurses recognize and recover from their own stress-induced behavioral problems. Key Ingredient to Growing Healthy Kids under Stress: Active Parenting JHUSON researcher and professor Deborah Gross, DNSc, RN, FAAN, knows unrelenting stress hurts. For young children, that hurt can last a lifetime. Stress causes excessive secretion of the brain’s ‘fight-flight hormone, cortisol, that can damage a child’s growing body and brain. It’s a hurt she’s working to help stop. Consistent with a recent Institute of Medicine report, she has found that some behavioral disorders in young people are preventable, particularly if resilience is taught and risk factors for stress are reduced. Among the foremost stressors are factors like poverty and unemployment, community violence and […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
