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'Ballooning' Spiders Grounded By Infection
Money spiders infected with Rickettsia bacteria are less likely to "balloon" - that is, to use their silk as sails to catch gusts of wind and travel long distances. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Biology suggest that it may be in the bacteria"s interests to ground the spiders and that this reduction in dispersal could reduce gene flow and impact on reproductive isolation within the meta-population.
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OurParents Launches First Independent, Unbiased Online Service To Match Families Of Aging Parents With Senior Care Providers
Millions of Baby Boomers are struggling to care for their aging parents. Many don"t know where to turn or even what their options are in making important decisions about senior care facilities for their parents.
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Baucus: 'Effectiveness' Part Of Health-Care Bill, Could Reduce Health Costs
"Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said Tuesday he expects Senate health-care legislation will include provisions encouraging doctors to compare drugs and therapies for their effectiveness," Dow Jones Newswires reports. At a conference at the Brookings Institution, "Baucus said he plans to re-introduce legislation with Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., that further boosts" comparative effectiveness research. The research, which "saw $1.1 billion from the federal stimulus package earlier this year," lets "doctors and patients to utilize publicly-available information on medical treatments, has emerged as something of a political lightning rod this year. Some conservative Republicans are suggesting it would result in rationing of health care." But Baucus "sought to dispel that notion Tuesday, saying that the research would not be used solely to cut costs" (Yoest, 6/9).
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Computer System For Dementia Patients

The labour force in the health services is shrinking, there are more and more old people, and a very high proportion of them are plagued by deteriorating short- and long-term memory. All this has created a need for computer-based solutions that will enable elderly people to live safely in their own homes, but at the same time, the technology needed to take special care of them is expensive. On top of this, different standards for home sensors create problems. This situation formed the backcloth for the EU"s decision a couple of years ago to launch a series of projects to make it simpler for industry to develop new equipment in this field. One of these projects was called Mpower, and its aim was to create a computer platform that could be used for various purposes and meet a wide range of needs among its target group. Reminder board What is being tested out in Norway today is a simple communication system based on a computer screen, aimed at elderly people who live at home but whose memory is failing. No keyboard is needed, only a touch on the screen, which displays the sun and the moon to indicate whether it is day or night, while a large clock-face shows the time. "This is also a system for sharing information", explains project manager Marius Mikalsen. The families of these patients are often anxious about how it is going with their parents, and this allows both them and the home help to enter messages that will be automatically displayed by the system. On the screen, for example, the elderly person might find "Remember to drink some water", or "Take the number 52 bus". Or current messages such as "The home help will be coming at nine o"clock this morning to give you a shower". Another useful feature is that family members can also access the system to check whether the elderly person"s appointments have been kept. Has she been to the doctor? Has he remembered to go to the day-care unit today? "SINTEF has been project manager here, and it is nice to think that what we are now testing in Norway was develop by the University of Cyprus in collaboration with two Spanish companies, and that it runs on a server in Austria," says Mikalsen. Trials Since last summer, a handful of elderly people have been trialling the system in Trondheim and Grimstad. Meanwhile, a variant of the system is being tested in a nursing home near Krakow in Poland. This version uses sensors and GPS to offer smart solutions both in the house and outdoors to sound the alarm if and elderly person is moving around in an unsafe area. Mpower will come to an end in June this year. SINTEF will try to prolong the project in collaboration with Trondheim"s local authorities. SINTEF


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