Year: 2014

In late May, the directors of the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District are expected to vote to use toll money, as well as state and federal funds to create a $66 million stainless-steel net system — a “suicide system deterrent project” — that will hang 20 feet below the sidewalk.

By Andrew M. Seaman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – People who live the farthest from liver transplant centers may be less likely to get on a waiting list, and ultimately to get a liver, than those who live closer, according to a new U.S. study. “When designing these systems, it’s important to keep this geography issue (as) an important feature,” Dr. David Goldberg told Reuters Health. To see whether distance to centralized care is connected to outcomes for patients, the researchers analyzed data on liver patients within the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The VA has five liver transplant centers nationwide, but veterans with additional insurance, such as Medicare, can use other transplant centers.

One in 68 kids has autism, according to new study that suggests the developmental disorder is on the rise. The sobering new stat, based on 2010 data released today by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, represents a 29 percent increase in autism…

By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) – An international team of scientists has built a modified yeast chromosome from scratch, the latest step in the quest to make the world’s first synthetic yeast genome, an advance that would lead to new strains of the organism to help produce industrial chemicals, medicines and biofuels. Instead of just copying nature, the team did extensive tinkering with their chromosome, deleting unwanted genes here and there. It then successfully incorporated the designer chromosome into living yeast cells, endowing them with new capabilities not found in naturally occurring yeast. “It is the most extensively altered chromosome ever built,” said Jef Boeke of New York University’s Langone Medical Center, who led the effort.

By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) – Healthcare agency NICE, which determines the use of treatments in the state-run health service, may be more likely to say ‘yes’ to new drugs under proposals that enable it to take a broader view of the value they offer. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), will in future look at the “wider societal impact” of therapies – whether they enable a patient to go back to work faster, for example, for the wider benefit of society – as well as their cost-effectiveness on more limited clinical grounds. But campaigners said the new proposals risked jeopardising access to some expensive cancer drugs and could discriminate against old people who contributed less to society, and against people nearing death, since it would do away with current special provisions for end-of-life care. Chief Executive Andrew Dillon told Reuters that wider overall uptake of new drugs would depend on pharmaceutical manufacturers keeping a tight rein on prices.