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Saying no to ACA Medicaid expansion costs states money

Twenty-one states have opted not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), arguing that the expansion would be too expensive. But according to new research, the cost to hospitals from uncompensated care in those states roughly equals the cost of Medicaid expansion.

The study, “Hospitals as Insurers of Last Resort,” by economists at Northwestern University and Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health is released online today as a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper.

Clients lost in system when food banks, NGO health care closed

Safety-net agencies, such as food banks and nonprofits offering health care, serve vulnerable individuals who are uninsured or underinsured and help them connect with services, such as health care, legal aid and housing.

If 'black lives matter' really matter to you, stop Tweeting and start doing

The "Black Lives Matter" hashtag evolved as a call for social change aimed at recognizing racial inequality. Images of a young white sociopath being led to the police station after shooting up a black church side by side with video of police killing a black man who sold illegal cigarettes have made the issue clear - but there is more to making a difference than young white liberals retweeting each other and feeling like they have done their part. Social change is more dependent on nonverbal communication, according to a new paper.

Broadcast TV is not being killed by the Internet, it's being killed by old regulations

Free-to-Air (FTA) television is in trouble. But the reasons are not as simple as you might think.

The trouble is clear. Ten Network Holdings share price has tanked from around $1.50 in late 2010 to about 22 cents today. It is hoping that Foxtel will be the white knight that saves it – at 15 cents per share and subject to ACCC approval!

The Internet has perils for teenagers – but spying on them won't help

The South Korean government has required that teenagers install a spy app on their smartphones. Having the app is compulsory for teens – their phones won’t work unless it is installed. When installed, it provides parents with a means to see what sites are being accessed, block sites and send warning notifications.

Children with good memories are better liars

Children who benefit from a good memory are much better at covering up lies, researchers from the University of Sheffield have discovered.

Experts found a link between verbal memory and covering up lies following a study which investigated the role of working memory in verbal deception amongst children.

The study saw six to seven year old children presented with the opportunity to do something they were instructed not to -peek at the final answers on the back of a card during a trivia game.

Highly educated women stop smoking if the cost goes up

Cigarette prices and images on cigarette packets have an impact on women in terms of continuing to smoke or quitting. In fact, less educated women are more responsive to pictorial labels on cigarette packets, as revealed by a study that has analyzed, for the first time, the generation differences among female smokers, a group which, despite policy measures, has not stopped growing.

How to wipe out polio and prevent its reemergence

Public health officials stand poised to eliminate polio from the planet. But a new study shows that the job won't be over when the last case of the horrible paralytic disease is recorded.

In an article publishing June 19 in the Open Access journal PLOS Biology, graduate research fellow Micaela Martinez-Bakker and professors Aaron A. King and Pejman Rohani of the University of Michigan Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology use disease-transmission models to show that silent transmission of poliovirus could continue for more than three years with no reported cases.

Stanford researcher declares that the sixth mass extinction is here

There is no longer any doubt: We are entering a mass extinction that threatens humanity's existence.

That is the bad news at the center of a new study by a group of scientists including Paul Ehrlich, the Bing Professor of Population Studies in biology and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Ehrlich and his co-authors call for fast action to conserve threatened species, populations and habitat, but warn that the window of opportunity is rapidly closing.

Call for laws to address intrusive potential of face recognition technologies

A telecommunications law academic in Australia has recommended for laws to be enacted criminalising the application of face recognition technology to visual images online that enable the identity of a person or people to be ascertained without their consent.

How toddlers use tablets

Can babies use iPads?

If you've ever viewed YouTube videos of infants and toddlers using iPads, then you know the answer is a resounding "Yes."

But how are they using them?

To answer that question and others, a team of University of Iowa researchers set out to study more than 200 YouTube videos. Their paper is published in the proceedings of the CHI 2015 conference, the most prestigious in the field of human-computer interaction.

What 3-year-olds teach us about justice

Toddlers have a reputation for being stubborn, selfish, and incapable of sharing. But researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on June 18 have found that children as young as three actually will show a surprising level of concern for others and an intuitive sense of restorative justice.

MRSA contamination found in supermarket sausages and minced pork

A survey carried out earlier this year has found the first evidence of the 'superbug' bacteria Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in sausages and minced pork obtained from supermarkets in the UK. However, researchers stress that this does not pose a significant immediate risk to the public.

Female managers do not reduce the gender wage gap

Working women are "leaning in" and supporting more females in leadership roles, but a new study finds that having a female manager doesn't necessarily equate to higher salaries for female employees. In fact, women can sometimes take an earnings hit relative to their male colleagues when they go to work for a female manager.

Should we welcome multinational companies' connection to projects to improve child health?

Partnerships with multinational companies in child health programmes can work to help save lives, write the co-founders of charity ColaLife in The BMJ this week. But an academic argues that connections between multinational companies and child health projects present an ethical minefield.