Month: July 2014

Past studies have found that shifting sleep patterns can affect performance and mental health for adults and teens. The questions addressed employment status, current sleep habits and perceived sleep quality, symptoms of depressed mood and aspects of quality of life. Students tended to go to bed later and wake up later with each successive year of college, but switched to an “advanced sleep phase” with earlier wake up times after graduation. New graduates who reported going to bed earlier than they had one year earlier were more likely to be experiencing symptoms of depressed mood and poor sleep quality than others who had gone to bed earlier the previous year as well as the current year.

By David Lawder WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Online insurance marketplaces created under President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law are struggling to verify whether Americans who applied for government subsidies to purchase health insurance are actually qualified to receive them, a federal watchdog agency said on Tuesday. The Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General said in two reports that some "internal controls" were ineffective in verifying eligibility at the marketplaces run by the federal government, California, Connecticut and some other states. Applicants for subsidies must enter income data, Social Security numbers and other information into the online systems. The maximum household income allowed for a subsidy is four times the federal poverty level, or about $94,200 for a family of four.

By Alwyn Scott SEATTLE (Reuters) – American Airlines Group is close to finalizing an order for 200 CFM International engines, worth $2.6 billion at list prices, to equip 100 Airbus Group NV A320neo jetliners that the airline has on firm order, according to three people familiar with the matter. The deal between the world's largest airline and CFM International, a joint venture between General Electric Aviation and Safran SA of France, marks a loss for United Technologies Corp's Pratt and Whitney unit, which makes the other engine offered on the A320neo. American Airlines, Airbus, CFM and Pratt declined to comment.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Many of the 8 million Americans signed up under the new health care law now have to clear up questions about their personal information that could affect their coverage.

It's that time of year for barbecues, beach days and bikinis! With the holiday weekend just around the corner, we look for last minute ways to shape up. This full-proof plan will whittle the waist, strengthen the muscles and boost your metabolism.

“We did this study because there were some previous reports of a higher mortality among subjects with a higher TV viewing time, but they had been done in elderly people in other countries,” Dr. Miguel Martinez-Gonzalez told Reuters Health in an email. “We were interested in knowing whether or not this association also was present in younger subjects,” said Martinez-Gonzalez, a researcher with the Department of Public Health at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, who is the study’s senior author. His team’s results are in line with past studies that found a 13 percent higher risk of death for each additional two hours per day of television-watching time, and a sharper risk increase when daily TV time went above three hours, he said. They wanted to examine any associations between three types of sedentary behavior and risk of death from any cause.

WINSTON-SALEM N.C. (Reuters) – A North Carolina teenager appears to have concealed her pregnancy from her parents before giving birth to a baby girl whose body was found buried in the family’s yard, local police said on Tuesday. The baby’s body was discovered Sunday night inside a brown bag in a shallow grave as police investigated a tip about a concealed childbirth, Franklin County Sheriff Jerry Jones said. As many as a dozen people may have known about the pregnancy, he said. “More people knew about her pregnancy than we once thought,” Jones said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government is expanding its “mystery disease” program, funding a network at six universities around the country to help diagnose patients with diseases so rare they’ve been told they’re undiagnosable.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Their Senate majority in peril, anxious Democrats have seized the Supreme Court decision that some companies need not provide birth control to women as fresh evidence of the GOP's "war on women" — an argument they hope will energize female voters who could decide the balance of power on Capitol Hill.