Tech

The Health and Social Care Bill amounts to the abolition of the English NHS as a universal, comprehensive, publicly accountable, tax funded service, free at the point of delivery, warn experts today.

In a paper published on bmj.com, Professor Allyson Pollock and David Price examine the proposed changes and argue that the government's duty to provide a comprehensive health service in England is abolished.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Field tests by University of Missouri scientists have backed up laboratory research indicating that buffer strips of grass and other plants can reduce the amount of herbicide and veterinary antibiotics in surface runoff from farm plots.

Vegetative buffer strips have already proven effective in limiting erosion as well as reducing sediment and nutrients in runoff.

DETROIT – Ninety percent of cancer deaths resulted from metastasis, the spread of cancer to different areas in the body, yet scientific exploration of the possible mechanical factors that promote metastasis has been limited. A Wayne State University researcher, however, is expanding the scientific understanding of what makes malignant tumors spread, and the answer lies within the dense, fibrous matrix that surrounds cancer cells.

PITTSBURGH—Conventional rules of survival tend to favor the strongest, but University of Pittsburgh-based researchers recently found that in the emerging world of self-healing materials, it is the somewhat frail that survive.

Changes that occur in the airways of asthma patients are in part caused by the naturally occurring protein interleukin-13 (IL-13) which stimulates invasion of airway cells called fibroblasts, according to a study conducted by researchers at Duke University.

Catalysts made of carbon nanotubes dipped in a polymer solution equal the energy output and otherwise outperform platinum catalysts in fuel cells, a team of Case Western Reserve University engineers has found.

The researchers are certain that they'll be able to boost the power output and maintain the other advantages by matching the best nanotube layout and type of polymer.

But already they've proved the simple technique can knock down one of the major roadblocks to fuel cell use: cost.

As conventional accelerators like CERN's Large Hadron Collider grow ever more vast and expensive, the best hope for the high-energy machines of the future may lie in "tabletop" accelerators like BELLA (the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator), now being built by the LOASIS program at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). BELLA, a laser-plasma wakefield accelerator, is remarkably compact.

People fluent in sign language may simultaneously keep words and signs in their minds as they read, according to an international team of researchers.

Alexandria, VA – If you ask someone involved in community remote sensing to define the emerging field, the most likely response will be a chuckle followed by "That's a hard question to answer…" At its core, the movement is about remote sensing - collecting data from afar. Remote sensing has revolutionized science and Earth monitoring, but it fails to collect data at the hyper-local level. And that's where the community comes in.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – There are 50 million family members providing care to older adults in the United States, according to the MetLife Foundation and national caregiving associations. When older adults are hospitalized and discharged, their families face numerous choices about where they will go and how they will receive care. A University of Missouri nursing expert says the complexity of this process will intensify with increasing demands for health care and workforce shortages.

Three days of NASA infrared satellite imagery provides a clear picture to forecasters of the effect wind shear has had on former Cyclone Cherono. Wind shear increased near Cyclone Cherono this weekend and weakened it down to a remnant low pressure area in the Southern Indian Ocean. Today, March 21, Cherono's remnants are moving away from Mauritius and still causing ocean swells.

The incidence of melanoma appears higher in non-Hispanic white adolescent girls and young women living in higher socioeconomic neighborhoods than those living in lower socioeconomic areas, according to a report posted online today that will appear in the July print issue of Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

PHILADELPHIA -- Patients who've been hurt in car or bike crashes, been shot or stabbed, or suffered other injuries are more likely to live if they arrive at the hospital on the weekend than during the week, according to new University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine research published in the March 21 issue of Archives of Surgery.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Monday, March 21, 2011 – For a patient at high risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), keeping up with what pills to take at different times of the day can be tedious. Window sills lined with prescription bottles – a pill for cholesterol, another for blood pressure, and an aspirin to keep blood thin and flowing – the list can get quite long and, as a result, many people, especially the elderly, often forget doses or take the wrong pill at the wrong time.