Medicare Smoking Prevention Program Could Lower Costs

The Fiscal Times: A Medicare program that has agreed to pay for counseling for seniors who smoke but are not yet sick could help the program, and America’s health system, lower costs. “Smoking costs the U.S. economy $97 billion annually in lost productivity, in addition to the $96 billion a year in direct health care costs, according to [the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services]…

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Going Back To School Met With Mixed Emotions

Millions of students at all grade levels, from elementary to high school to college, will head back to school and many times this is met with mixed emotions. Not because the “summer fun” has ended, but because school adds new pressures into the mix, with many kids focusing on trying to be popular, and some just to even fit in…

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Infant’s Gaze May Be An Early, But Subtle, Marker For Autism Risk

Kennedy Krieger Institute announced new study results showing an early marker for later communication and social delays in infants at a higher-risk for autism may be infrequent gazing at other people when unprompted…

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New Study Singles Out Factors Linked To Cognitive Deficits In Type 2 Diabetes

Older adults with diabetes who have high blood pressure, walk slowly or lose their balance, or believe they’re in bad health, are significantly more likely to have weaker memory and slower, more rigid cognitive processing than those without these problems, according to a new study published by the American Psychological Association…

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Link Between Girls’ Early Puberty And Unstable Environment Via Insecure Attachment In Infancy

Girls are hitting puberty earlier and earlier. One recent study found that more than 10 percent of American girls have some breast development by age 7. This news has upset many people, but it may make evolutionary sense in some cases for girls to develop faster, according to the authors of a new paper published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science…

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Study Reveals That American Women Are Happier Going To Church Than Shopping On Sundays

A new study conducted by a Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researcher, together with a researcher from De-Paul University, reveals that women in the United States generally derive more happiness from religious participation than from shopping on Sundays…

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Swiss Breast Cancer Patient Becomes First In World To Receive Treatment Using Gated RapidArc From Varian Medical Systems

A 51-year-old breast cancer patient from Switzerland has become the first person in the world to be treated using Gated RapidArc®, which makes it possible to monitor patient breathing and compensate for tumor motion while quickly delivering radiotherapy during a continuous rotation around the patient…

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Data From Mipomersen Phase 3 Trial In heFH Patients Presented At ESC

Genzyme Corp. (NASDAQ: GENZ) and Isis Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: ISIS) announced that data from the phase 3 study of mipomersen in patients with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (heFH) were presented at the European Society of Cardiology’s Congress 2010 in Stockholm, Sweden…

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Improving Ocular Disease Screening By LED Illumination Of The Eye

A new imaging system using six different wavelengths to illuminate the interior of the eyeball (ocular fundus) may pave the way for doctors to easily screen patients for common diseases of the eye, such as age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy. The system is described in the journal Review of Scientific Instruments, which is published by the American Institute of Physics…

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Prometheus Launches The First Serogenetic Test To Predict Risk Of Complications From Crohn’s Disease

Prometheus Laboratories Inc., a specialty pharmaceutical and diagnostic company, announced the commercial launch of its proprietary PROMETHEUS® Crohn’s Prognostic test…

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