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Would you be shocked to learn what Obamacare is doing to state budgets? [feedly]
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Would you be shocked to learn what Obamacare is doing to state budgets?
// Personal Liberty Digest™
Remember all those Republican governors who held out on joining Obamacare and expanding Medicaid? They claimed no amount of matching federal money could offset the immense state-level costs.
To no one's surprise, it's turning out they were right — more right than even they might have predicted.
Not only would Obamacare, even if it had followed its ideal-scenario sales pitch, have been too expensive for state revenues to offset; it's even worse now that the numbers aren't adding up. Obamacare's projected sign-up rate has gone way off script; and in the Medicaid-expanded states, the subsidized enrollments are crippling.
"New ObamaCare enrollees and costs have exceeded estimates and threaten to swamp budgets," a headline in The Wall Street Journal warns:
The AP says that California expected 800,000 new enrollees after the state's 2013 Medicaid expansion, but wound up with 2.3 million. Enrollment outstripped estimates in New Mexico by 44%, Oregon by 73%, and Washington state by more than 100%.
This has blown holes in state budgets. Illinois once projected that its Medicaid expansion would cost the state $573 million for 2017 through 2020. Yet 200,000 more people have enrolled than were expected, and the state has increased its estimated cost for covering each. The new price tag? About $2 billion, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Enrollment overruns in Kentucky forced officials to more than double the anticipated cost of the state's Medicaid expansion for 2017, the AP reports, to $74 million from $33 million. That figure could rise to $363 million a year by 2021.
In Rhode Island, where one-quarter of the state's population is now on Medicaid, the program consumes roughly 30% of all state spending, the Providence Journal reports. To plug this growing hole, Rhode Island has levied a 3.5% tax on insurance policies sold through the state's ObamaCare exchange.
Rhode Island approved a 2015 budget of $8.67 billion. How much did it spend on Medicaid in 2014? Nearly $2.5 billion. And that was with the federal government's help.
If you live in one of the holdout states, did your newspaper of record blast your governor for declining to sign on with Obamacare? Did you see editorial after editorial ignoring the fiscal crisis that Obamacare promises to state budgets, only to make moral judgments on how deeply your red-state governor hates the poor?
And now that the cat's out of the bag, is that same paper of record vindicating your governor's decision? The federal contribution to state Medicaid funding is a time-released product with an expiration date. And if states are having funding trouble now, when part of the money's still free, just wait until they're floating the entire bill on their own.
The post Would you be shocked to learn what Obamacare is doing to state budgets? appeared first on Personal Liberty®.
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Monday, November 9, 2015
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A Visual Guide to the Most Common Biting and Stinging Bugs [feedly]
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A Visual Guide to the Most Common Biting and Stinging Bugs
// Lifehacker
There are a lot of creepy crawlies out there that can't help but bite or sting you when you get too close. This infographic shows the 28 arthropods most likely to cause you harm, and explains whether their bite or sting is medically significant.
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Saturday, September 26, 2015
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Glasses Let The Colorblind See Pigments For The First Time [feedly]
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Glasses Let The Colorblind See Pigments For The First Time
// Popular Science
EnChroma glasses
EnChroma
They may look like typical sunglasses, but these are making waves for people who are colorblind. Since they first went on sale in 2012, glasses from the company EnChroma Labs have allowed people to see colors as they've never seen them before, according to an article published this weekend in the New York Times.
You can see colors because you have receptors in you eyes called cones. If you have normal color vision, you have three sets of them that pick up red, green, and blue pigments. Most people who are colorblind have trouble distinguishing red and green because their cones pick up colors with spectra that overlap. Usually everything else in the visual system—the wiring that connects the retina (where the cones are found) to the brain, the brain itself—is intact, so EnChroma or similar glasses just have to change how the color is perceived.
Venice with colorblindness
EnChroma
Left, how a person with color vision would see Venice, with their visual spectra below. Right, how a colorblind person would see it, with visual spectra. Note the spectral overlap where the arrow points on the right.
The EnChroma glasses were initially designed to protect surgeons' eyes from lasers during procedures, but now the company primarily markets them to people who are colorblind. The glasses contain a filter that absorbs light where the spectra overlap the most, effectively pushing a wedge between the frequencies of light that the two cones pick up. The result is a "color boost" that allows a colorblind person to distinguish the colors more clearly. Thousands of people have posted videos online of them putting on the glasses and seeing colors for the first time, following suit of a paint advertisement for which EnChroma was a partner.
Video of Valspar Color For The Colorblind
It's important to note that the EnChroma glasses aren't a cure for colorblindness—just as wearing glasses isn't a cure for nearsightedness. But for people living with colorblindness, the effect may just be worth it.
Effect of EnChroma glasses
EnChroma
Left, what a colorblind person would see. Right, what they would see with EnChroma glasses.
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Thursday, August 20, 2015
Obesity breakthrough: Metabolic master switch prompts fat cells to store or burn fat [feedly]
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Obesity breakthrough: Metabolic master switch prompts fat cells to store or burn fat
// ScienceDaily: Latest Science News
Obesity is one of the biggest public health challenges of the 21st century. Affecting more than 500 million people worldwide, obesity costs at least $200 billion each year in the United States alone, and contributes to potentially fatal disorders such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer. Scientists have now revealed the mechanism underlying the genomic region most strongly associated with obesity. The findings uncover a genetic circuit that controls whether our bodies burn or store fat. Manipulating that genetic circuit may offer a new approach for obesity treatments.
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Friday, August 14, 2015
Is science pretending both sexes have the same brain? [feedly]
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Is science pretending both sexes have the same brain?
// Futurity.org
Neuroscientists have found a key molecular difference between males and females in how synapses are regulated in the hippocampus. The findings suggest that female and male brains may respond differently to drugs, such as endocannabinoids, that target synaptic pathways.
"The importance of studying sex differences in the brain is about making biology and medicine relevant to everyone, to both men and women," says Catherine S. Woolley, senior author of the study published in the Journal of Neuroscience and a neurobiology professor at Northwestern University. "It is not about things such as who is better at reading a map or why more men than women choose to enter certain professions."
Currently, about 85 percent of basic neuroscience studies are done in male animals, tissues, or cells.
A drug called URB-597, which regulates a molecule important in neurotransmitter release, had an effect in females that it did not have in males, the research shows. While the study was done in rats, it has broad implications for humans because this drug and others like it are currently being tested in clinical trials in humans.
"Our study starts to put some specifics on what types of molecular differences there are in male and female brains," Woolley says.
"We don't know whether this finding will translate to humans or not," Woolley says, "but right now people who are investigating endocannabinoids in humans probably are not aware that manipulating these molecules could have different effects in males and females."
Same drug, different effect
Specifically, Woolley and her research team found that in female brains the drug URB-597 increased the inhibitory effect of a key endocannabinoid in the brain, called anandamide, causing a decrease in the release of neurotransmitters. In male brains, the drug had no effect. (The difference is not related to circulating reproductive hormones.)
The subject of many clinical trials, endocannabinoids are molecules that help regulate the amount of certain neurotransmitters released at synapses, the gap between neurons. Their name comes from the fact that endocannabinoids activate the same neural receptors as the active ingredient in marijuana.
These molecules are involved in a variety of physiological processes, including memory, motivational state, appetite, and pain as well as in epilepsy.
Understanding what controls the synthesis, release, and breakdown of endocannabinoids has broad implications both for normal and pathological brain function, Woolley says.
'We are not doing women's health any favors'
For 20 years, Woolley actively avoided studying sex differences in the brain until her own data showed her that differences between females and males were real. Her discovery, reported in 2012, that estrogens decreased inhibitory synaptic transmission in the brains of female rats but not in males, changed her thinking.
"Being a scientist is about changing your mind in the face of new evidence," Woolley says. "I had to change my mind in the face of this evidence."
Building on these earlier findings, Woolley and her team used a series of electrophysiological and biochemical studies to pinpoint what causes this effect. The researchers found the difference between males and females lies in the interaction between the molecules ERalpha and mGluR1. Details of the molecular pathway are reported in the new study.
To find out what is the same and what is different between males and females, scientists need to study both sexes, Woolley maintains. Currently, about 85 percent of basic neuroscience studies are done in male animals, tissues, or cells.
"We are not doing women—and specifically women's health—any favors by pretending that things are the same if they are not," Woolley says. "If the results of research would be different in female animals, tissues, and cells, then we need to know. This is essential so that we can find appropriate diagnoses, treatments, and, ultimately, cures for disease in both sexes."
The National Institutes of Health supported the research.
Source: Northwestern University
The post Is science pretending both sexes have the same brain? appeared first on Futurity.
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Sniffing Could Detect Autism in Kids [feedly]
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Sniffing Could Detect Autism in Kids
// I4U News
It is a no-brainer. The majority of human beings would rather inhale the beautiful fragrance of a bunch of fresh red roses than the disgusting stench of a pile of rotting fish. But it seems that...
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Thursday, July 2, 2015
First US Measles Death in 12 Years: How Was It Missed? [feedly]
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First US Measles Death in 12 Years: How Was It Missed?
// Livescience.com
A woman in Washington state is the first person to die of measles in the United States in a dozen years, but how did doctors miss her diagnosis.
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Tuesday, June 30, 2015
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Textbooks got it wrong: How your brain understands words [feedly]
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Textbooks got it wrong: How your brain understands words
// Futurity.org
For 140 years, scientists' understanding of language comprehension in the brain came from individuals with stroke.
Based on language impairments caused by stroke, scientists believed a single area of the brain—a hotdog-shaped section in the temporal lobe of the left hemisphere called Wernicke's region—was the center of language comprehension. Wernicke's was thought to be responsible for understanding the meaning of single words and sentences, two separate and critical functions.
"There was some disconnect between what textbooks said and what we saw in our patients."
But scientists have updated and redrawn the traditional brain map of language comprehension based on new research with individuals who have a rare form of dementia that affects language, primary progressive aphasia (PPA).
The new research shows word comprehension is actually located in a different brain neighborhood—the left anterior temporal lobe, a more forward location than Wernicke's. And sentence comprehension turns out to be distributed widely throughout the language network, not in a single area as previously thought.
The paper was published in the journal Brain.
"This provides an important change in our understanding of language comprehension in the brain," says lead study author Marek-Marsel Mesulam, a neurology professor and director of Northwestern University's Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center.
Knowing where language comprehension is located offers a more precise target for future therapies that could potentially protect or restore language function.
People who had strokes
Strokes cut off blood supply to regions of the brain and cause destruction of both neurons and fiber pathways passing through that region.
In the 1870s, a scientist named Carl Wernicke observed a specific region damaged by stroke and resulting language impairments. This area, consequently named Wernicke's region, was identified as the seat of language comprehension.
"People who had strokes that affected Wernicke's region couldn't explain what a word such as umbrella meant," Mesulam says. "Secondly, they had difficulty understanding sentence construction.
"If you said, 'Put the apple on top of the book,' even if they understood the meaning of apple and book, they wouldn't be able to carry out the command because they can't understand the construction of the sentence."
People with PPA
But Mesulam, the world's leading expert in PPA, for years had been puzzling over the fact that his PPA patients with damage in Wernicke's area did not have the word comprehension impairment seen in stroke patients. They still understood individual words. And their sentence comprehension was inconsistent; some understood sentences; some didn't.
"It was becoming clear over the many years I saw these patients that there was some disconnect between what textbooks said and what we saw in our patients," Mesulam says. "We did this study to analyze the discrepancy. The view of brain as seen from stroke did not match the view of the brain when seen from PPA."
He and colleagues began a study of PPA patients, conducting quantitative MRI imaging of their brains and testing their language.
Northwestern scientist Emily Rogalski conducted the imaging in 72 PPA patients with damage inside and outside of Wernicke's area. She measured cortex thickness in all of these areas.
Cortex thickness is an indirect measure of the number of neurons and brain health. Thinning of the cortex in PPA indicates the destruction of neurons by the disease.
Wernicke's area
Rogalski, a research associate professor, found PPA patients who lost cortical thickness in Wernicke's area still could understand individual words and had varied impairment of sentence comprehension. None of these patients had the global type of comprehension impairment described in stroke patients with Wernicke's aphasia.
Severe word comprehension loss was only seen in PPA patients who had diminished cortical thickness in a region of the brain completely outside of Wernicke's area, in the front part of the temporal lobe. This part of the brain is not prone to the effects of stroke, so its role in comprehension had been missed in prior language maps.
The discrepancy between the traditional map of comprehension and what was seen in PPA can be explained by the different ways the two diseases injure Wernicke's area.
In PPA, the neurodegenerative disease does not destroy the underlying fiber pathways that allow language areas to work together. But, in stroke patients, those critical highways passing through Wernicke's had been blown up. So, the messages from other parts of the brain to the left anterior temporal lobe—the spot for word comprehension—were simply not getting through, Mesulam suspects.
"What is happening here is no different from the charting of galaxies in outer space," Mesulam says. "You look through one kind of telescope, you see one picture; you look through another infrared telescope, you get another picture.
"We are all in this pursuit of how to piece together different perspectives to get a better sense of how the brain works.
"In this case, we saw a different map of language by comparing two different models of disease, one based on strokes that destroy an entire region of brain, cortex as well as underlying pathways, and the other on a neurodegenerative disease that attacks mostly brain cells in cortex rather than the region as a whole," Mesulam adds.
The National Institutes of Health funded the study.
Source: Northwestern University
The post Textbooks got it wrong: How your brain understands words appeared first on Futurity.
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His pain and her pain may not be the same [feedly]
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His pain and her pain may not be the same
// Futurity.org
Males and females process pain using different cells, a new study with mice suggests.
The findings could help researchers develop the next generation of medications for chronic pain—the most prevalent health condition humans face.
"Research has demonstrated that men and women have different sensitivity to pain and that more women suffer from chronic pain than men, but the assumption has always been that the wiring of how pain is processed is the same in both sexes," says co-senior author Jeffrey Mogil, professor of pain studies at McGill University and director of the Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain.
"The realization that the biological basis for pain between men and women could be so fundamentally different raises important research and ethical questions if we want to reduce suffering."
Pain blocker
Mogil and colleagues looked at the longstanding theory that pain is transmitted from the site of injury or inflammation through the nervous system using an immune system cell called microglia and discovered it is only true in males. Interfering with the function of microglia in a variety of different ways effectively blocked pain in male mice, but had no effect in females.
T cells, a completely different type of immune cell, appear to be responsible for sounding the pain alarm in female mice. However, exactly how this happens remains unknown.
"Understanding the pathways of pain and sex differences is absolutely essential as we design the next generation of more sophisticated, targeted pain medications," says co-senior author Michael Salter, a professor at the University of Toronto.
"We believe that mice have very similar nervous systems to humans, especially for a basic evolutionary function like pain, so these findings tell us there are important questions raised for human pain drug development."
The discovery comes as there is increased attention to the inclusion of female animals and cells in preclinical research. The US National Institutes of Health recently unveiled a new policy, similar to one already in place in Canada, to require the use of female animals and cell lines in preclinical research.
"For the past 15 years scientists have thought that microglia controlled the volume knob on pain, but this conclusion was based on research using almost exclusively male mice," Mogil says. "This finding is a perfect example of why this policy, and very carefully designed research, is essential if the benefits of basic science are to serve everyone."
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Louise and Alan Edwards Foundation, the US National Institutes of Health, and SickKids Foundation funded the work. Researchers from Duke University also contributed. The findings appears in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
Source: McGill University
The post His pain and her pain may not be the same appeared first on Futurity.
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Friday, June 26, 2015
House bill would force Supreme Court justices onto Obamacare [feedly]
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House bill would force Supreme Court justices onto Obamacare
// Personal Liberty Digest™
A Texas congressman is floating a bill that aims to force the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court into the same Obamacare coverage they upheld in King v. Burwell.
Taking a cue from dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia, who quipped that Obamacare should henceforth be referred to as "SCOTUScare," Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas) introduced the "SCOTUScare Act" on June 25.
In a statement on his congressional Web page, Babin said his bill would amend the Affordable Care Act so that the nine justices, as well as "Supreme Court staff," could obtain health coverage only by enrolling through an Obamacare exchange plan.
"As the Supreme Court continues to ignore the letter of the law, it's important that these six individuals [representing the majority opinion] understand the full impact of their decisions on the American people," Babin wrote. "That's why I introduced the SCOTUScare Act to require the Supreme Court and all of its employees to sign up for Obamacare. By eliminating their exemption from Obamacare, they will see firsthand what the American people are forced to live with!"
While Babin's idea will be received merely as a symbolic gesture, he's not alone in voicing substantive criticism of the court's majority opinion in the Burwell case.
Scalia was especially incensed with the six justices who voted to uphold the law, writing in his dissenting opinion that courts are, by the Constitution's design, inappropriate venues to resolve arguments over legislative intent.
"Our only evidence of what Congress meant comes from the terms of the law, and those terms show beyond all question that tax credits are available only on state Exchanges," he wrote.
"… The Court's decision reflects the philosophy that judges should endure whatever interpretive distortions it takes in order to correct a supposed flaw in the statutory machinery."
The post House bill would force Supreme Court justices onto Obamacare appeared first on Personal Liberty.
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acell-finger-regrowth-powder. Way to go science . read article for more info - http://pinterest.com/pin/68468856811045965/?s=3&m=gmail