RHDV Virus Structure Determined

 

Atomic model of rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV) capsid. Simulations carried out using the Blue Waters petascale supercomputer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) have determined the structure of RHDV (belonging to the genus Lagovirus), which causes a highly infectious and often fatal illness in domestic and wild rabbits. The research was a collaboration involving the University of Illinois (UI) at Urbana-Champaign, the University of California, San Diego, and several Chinese research institutions. According to researchers, this “provides a reliable, pseudo-atomic model of a Lagovirus and suggests a new candidate for an efficient vaccine that can be used to protect rabbits from RHDV infection.

Klaus Schulten, a biophysicist with the Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group at UI-Urbana-Champaign, co-authored the study, which was published in PLOS Pathogens. Computing capabilities were supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (grant OCI 07-25070).To learn more about this research, see the NCSA news story U.S.-China team determines structure of virus with Blue Waters. (Date of Image: November 2012)

Credit: Yanxin Liu and Klaus Schulten, Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Fei Sun, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Pay it forward

 

Credit Olimpia Zagnoli

By MILENA TSVETKOVA and MICHAEL MACY

ONE morning in December of 2012, at the drive-through window of a Tim Hortons coffee shop in Winnipeg, Manitoba, a customer paid for her order and then picked up the tab for the stranger in the car behind her in line. Then that customer paid the bill for the following customer in line — and so on, for the next 226 customers, in a three-hour sequence of spontaneous generosity.

It turns out that such “pay it forward” chains are not unheard-of at Tim Hortons (though they are usually much shorter), and news outlets have reported the emergence of many such chains in a variety of restaurant drive-throughs and tollbooths throughout North America. Last year, a Chick-fil-A in Houston experienced a 67-car chain. A few months later, a Heav’nly Donuts in Amesbury, Mass., had a run of 55 cars.

Why do these things happen? One possibility is that generosity among strangers can be socially contagious. According to this theory, if you receive or observe an act of help, you become more likely to help others, even if your own action won’t be directly reciprocated or rewarded. Rather than repay someone for helping, you “pay it forward” — a phrase popularized by Catherine Ryan Hyde’s 1999 novel of that title (later turned into a movie of the same name).

In recent years, social scientists have conducted experiments demonstrating that the effect of a single act of kindness can in fact ripple through a social network, setting off chains of generosity that reach far beyond the original act. But whether it is enough to merely witness a generous act, rather than actually benefit from one, has been an open question.

In an experiment the results of which were published last month in the journal PLoS One, we studied both possibilities. We found that receiving and observing generosity can both significantly increase your likelihood of being generous toward a stranger, but that if you observe a high enough level of generosity, your willingness to help suffers — you become a “bystander” who feels that help is no longer needed.

For our study, we recruited more than 600 participants from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, an online marketplace where users advertise tasks to be completed in exchange for money. We enlisted them to participate in something we called the Invitation Game. They were informed that they could participate in the game and earn a base payment in cash and a cash bonus — but only if they received an email invitation.

To get the game started, we created a few invitations that we sent to randomly chosen participants. Those who received invitations were then informed that they had been assigned to play the game in a group of 150 people. Each “invitee” had the opportunity to create one additional invitation for a stranger in his group if he gave back the bonus and earned only the base payment. That invitation would be sent anonymously to the stranger.

Participants were randomly assigned to one of four situations: receiving help (they got an anonymous donated invitation created by another participant); observing help (they witnessed other participants anonymously donating invitations); receiving and observing help; and neither. (In the “neither” condition, participants received their invitation directly from the experimenters, which established a baseline condition against which to compare what happened when participants received or observed help, or both.) Then we observed how the participants chose to act in each situation.

What did we find out? The bad news was that the willingness to help suffered from what social psychologists call “the bystander effect”: When participants observed a low level of helping, it increased their own likelihood of helping; but when they observed a high level of helping, they did not themselves help — they appeared to feel that their own sacrifice was no longer needed. This finding was consistent with many previous studies of “social loafing,” “free riding” and “diffusion of responsibility.”

The good news was that receiving help reliably increased the likelihood of being generous toward a stranger, and that participants who benefited from generosity were also less susceptible to the bystander effect when they themselves observed high levels of helping in their group.

We conclude that observing an act of kindness is likely to play an important role in setting a cascade of generosity in motion, since many people can potentially observe a single act of helping. But we found that it was receiving help that sustained the cascade as it spread through the group.

Our research suggests that the next time you stop to help a stranger, you may be helping not only this one particular individual but potentially many others downstream. And who knows? In the end, maybe what goes around will come around.

Milena Tsvetkova is a doctoral candidate in sociology and Michael Macy is a professor of sociology, both at Cornell University.

A regra mais importante é parar de fumar

 

 

SP em rede contra o câncer

 

David Uip

Paulo M. Hoff

A construção de um sistema de atendimento público de saúde com acesso universal passa, obrigatoriamente, pela identificação das prioridades e o direcionamento adequado dos investimentos. Como em uma grande batalha, somente uma estratégia de implementação sólida torna possível que as experiências bem-sucedidas cheguem a todos os usuários do Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS). Na sua concepção, o SUS já surgiu com um conceito de atendimento hierarquizado, de maneira a minimizar os desperdícios e assegurar o melhor atendimento possível aos pacientes. Esta estruturação é um dos maiores desafios de quem trabalha na gestão pública, uma vez que as partes do sistema já existiam e, por essa razão, nem sempre trabalham em sinergia. Com a implantação da Rede Hebe Camargo de Combate ao Câncer, o Estado de São Paulo mais uma vez inova e sai na frente na construção de um SUS cada vez melhor e mais integrado.

A rede se propõe a aumentar a eficiência do sistema, facilitando o atendimento da população de maneira mais hábil e rápida. A idéia central é de que as 71 unidades cadastradas para o atendimento do câncer no Estado de São Paulo atuem de forma coordenada, interagindo entre si tanto em termos de ensino e pesquisa, como na distribuição de atendimento. A implantação da rede já resultou em melhorias no Hospital Estadual de Heliópolis, na capital paulista, e no Hospital Guilherme Álvaro, em Santos. Com isso, paulatinamente irá levar para todas as unidades de saúde do Estado a excelência do atendimento e os protocolos do Instituto do Câncer de São Paulo (Icesp), eleito pela população paulista como o melhor hospital do Estado.

Com investimentos de mais de R$ 190 milhões, a implantação da rede irá garantir o acesso rápido e de qualidade aos pacientes oncológicos. Uma regulação única permitirá que as pessoas sejam atendidas na unidade mais próxima às suas residências e sejam transferidas apenas para tratamentos mais complexos. Com isso, os pacientes ganham tanto na qualidade do atendimento, quanto na facilidade de acesso aos diferentes serviços.

As melhorias chegarão a todas as regiões do Estado e irão garantir ampliações e adequações nas unidades de oncologia em cidades como Barretos, Catanduva, Sorocaba, Mogi das Cruzes, Araçatuba, Guarulhos e Osasco. Cerca de 12.000 novos pacientes por mês poderão ser beneficiados quando a Rede estiver completamente implementada. Além disso, contarão com um prontuário integrado, de forma que seu histórico médico possa ser facilmente acessado nas diferentes unidades que integram o projeto.

Além do atendimento assistencial, a Rede também garantirá o crescimento profissional de seus colaboradores, que passarão por treinamento, capacitação e reuniões clínicas para que os melhores protocolos possam ser implementados e seguidos em todo o Estado. Outra frente não menos importante e que certamente terá impacto no avanço de novas técnicas no tratamento do câncer, será o desenvolvimento de pesquisas em conjunto nas unidades da rede oncológica, garantindo um forte incentivo para essa área, fundamental para o avanço da medicina.

Estamos convictos de que iniciativas como esta continuarão fazendo do Estado de São Paulo um líder no sistema público de saúde, com a ampliação do atendimento não se restringindo a números, mas melhorando a qualidade com humanização. Esta tem sido uma marca do ICESP. O combate ao câncer é a nossa prioridade e nenhum paciente ficará fora da rede.

David Uip, médico infectologista, é secretário de Estado da Saúde de São Paulo

Paulo M. Hoff, oncologista, é Professor Titular da FMUSP e diretor-geral do Instituto do Câncer do Estado de São Paulo Octavio Frias de Oliveira (ICESP) 

Robô vai guiar cirurgias de câncer no SUS de São Paulo

 

Equipamento importado dos EUA chega ao Instituto do Câncer de SP e vai beneficiar mais de mil pacientes em três anos com intervenções mais precisas; projeto faz parte do protocolo de pesquisa do ICESP

Um robô, inédito em hospitais públicos paulistas, vai guiar cirurgias de pacientes do Instituto do Câncer do Estado de São Paulo (Icesp), unidade ligada à Secretaria de Estado da Saúde e à Faculdade de Medicina da USP, na capital paulista. A novidade faz parte do protocolo de pesquisa do ICESP. O equipamento irá beneficiar 1.070 pacientes da instituição nos próximos três anos com procedimentos minimamente invasivos. A idéia é que, futuramente, os benefícios (custo-efetividade e a segurança) da cirurgia robótica no tratamento do câncer seja uma realidade permanente para o SUS paulista.

Sentado à frente de um console, os cirurgiões do Icesp irão acionar os comandos do robô e terão visão tridimensional, com profundidade, o que deverá permitir maior precisão das intervenções em relação às cirurgias convencionais e àquelas guiadas por videolaparoscopia.

As cirurgias com o robô, importado dos EUA, irão acontecer em cinco diferentes especialidades oncológicas: urologia, ginecologia, cabeça e pescoço, aparelho digestivo e cirurgias do tórax.

Espera-se que o novo equipamento, além de permitir cirurgias mais precisas e menos invasivas, propicie um tempo de recuperação mais rápido e menos dor aos pacientes, assim como menor tempo de internação no hospital e, consequentemente, maior rotatividade dos leitos.

Três cirurgias já foram realizadas pelo Icesp com o novo robô, para retirada de tumores malignos da próstata, uma no dia 7, uma no dia 13 e outra no dia 18 de fevereiro.

“A oportunidade de termos uma cirurgia robótica no SUS, mesmo que como pesquisa, inicialmente, demonstra um grande avanço na saúde, além de termos a chance de tratar os pacientes com câncer com uma efetividade ainda maior”, avalia Paulo Hoff, diretor Geral do ICESP.

“Trata-se de um projeto muito importante para comprovar a eficácia de equipamentos guiados por robôs nas cirurgias de câncer. Este é um projeto de pesquisa fundamental para a rede pública de saúde, e nos orgulha que o Icesp tenha sido escolhido”, afirma David Uip, secretário de Estado da Saúde de São Paulo.

A Secretaria de Estado da Saúde investiu R$ 2 milhões no custeio das cirurgias realizadas pelo robô, que foi adquirido pelo Ministério da Saúde.

 

1 a cada 3 mulheres com câncer tem tumor de mama

 

Dados são do Instituto do Câncer de SP; exames de rotina e diagnóstico precoce continuam sendo os principais aliados

         Levantamento realizado pelo Instituto do Câncer do Estado de São Paulo, ligado à Secretaria de Estado da Saúde e à Faculdade de Medicina da USP, na capital paulista, aponta que 52% dos pacientes do Icesp são do sexo feminino. Dessas mulheres, 28% (quase uma a cada três) têm diagnóstico de câncer de mama e quase 22% apresentam tumores em órgãos digestivos.

A neoplasia da mama continua sendo a principal vilã dentro e fora do instituto. No Brasil, segundo o Instituto Nacional de Câncer (Inca), ela corresponde a 22% dos novos casos de tumores por ano. No Icesp, o grupo de Mastologia realiza mais de 1,2 mil atendimentos por mês, entre consultas médicas e cirurgias.

Os cânceres do aparelho digestivo representam juntos uma grande fração dos tumores humanos. São exemplos de neoplasias apresentadas nessa região: o câncer de esôfago, de estômago, de fígado e o colorretal (cólon e reto), este o último apontado entre os cinco mais comuns entre as mulheres.

“Quando a prevenção primária não é possível, o diagnóstico precoce é fundamental na busca pela cura e por uma boa qualidade de vida”, destaca o oncologista e diretor geral do Icesp, Paulo Hoff.

No intuito de obter esse diagnóstico precoce, medidas simples devem ser adotadas após a primeira relação sexual. Incluir na agenda o hábito de realizar uma visita anual ao ginecologista, garante a realização de consultas e exames que serão essenciais para a prevenção e/ou diagnóstico de diversos tipos de câncer.

São exames de rotina fundamentais: o papanicolau, usado para detectar a neoplasia de colo de útero, além de identificar lesões que antecedem o tumor, permitindo o tratamento antes que a doença se desenvolva; a mamografia, capaz de mostrar lesões mamárias, recomendada para pacientes com mais de 50 anos ou a critério médico, dependendo dos fatores de risco.

 

For the Web's Birthday, a Look Back

 

 

MIT Technology Review’s first mention of the World Wide Web was five years after it was first invented in 1989.

An early mention of the World Wide Web in our magazine was in an ad for a book called “The Whole Internet User’s Guide & Catalog.”

The Web turned 25 this week, marking a quarter century since Tim Berners-Lee invented it while working at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (often referred to by its French acronym, CERN). He created the Web to make it easier for scientists to share their work, a worthy goal that has had many side effects, not least our easy access to cat videos. MIT Technology Review has been chronicling the tech world since 1899, so I did a little digging to find the first mentions of the World Wide Web and Berners-Lee.

The first time the term “World Wide Web” appears in our archives isn’t in a story, but in a paragraph on page 43 of the July 1994 issue of the magazine, in a section devoted to MIT alumni called ClassNotes:

“Also, by the time this article is published, the Class of ‘89 will have a World wide Web site.”

Apparently that didn’t happen on schedule; the same pronouncement is made in the August edition of ClassNotes and the site is only declared ready in November. The World Wide Web is also mentioned on page 77 of the July 1994, in an ad for a book called “The Whole Internet User’s Guide & Catalog” by Ed Krol. The ad copy says this of the book:

“The Guide pays close attention to several information servers (archie, wais, gopher) that are, essentially, databases of databases.There’s also coverage of the World-Wide Web, including the Web’s multimedia browser, Mosaic.”

Our cover story in that same issue, “Life on the Net,” written by Stephen Steinberg, explored the communities that had developed over the Internet. But it focused largely on Usenet, an online communication system created in 1980, and other ways that people communicated via the Internet early on, such as IRC. While never mentioning the World Wide Web explicitly, Steinberg does get into the topic by talking a bit about the Mosaic browser, which he describes as having “an attractive, graphical interface that allows the user to jump from one topic to another with a click of the mouse.”

The World Wide Web is mentioned in a January 1995 cover story about Dilbert creator Scott Adams, but the first story on our pages that I could find that truly tackles the topic appears on page 11 of the April 1995 edition of the magazine in an article called “Spinning a Better Web.”

Written by Wade Roush, the story describes the Web like this:

“The newest segment of the global Internet [which] lets users wander by clicks of a computer mouse among thousands of custom-designed multimedia documents stored in linked computers.”

Roush reports that the number of Web servers in use climbed from 130 in the middle of 1993 to north of 10,000 less than two years later. He explains how that speedy growth led to problems like slow data delivery times, security worries, and fears that the Web would become fragmented if different programs on the Web used different protocols.

Berners-Lee, at the time director of the newly-formed World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, told Roush that those fears had led to him being swamped with demands to fix and protect the embryonic Web:

“People were arriving unannounced at my office at CERN demanding that we form the consortium. Companies investing larger and larger amounts of their own resources into the Web, or into work that relies on the Web, wanted to know that it would still be there, still interoperable, in 20 years.”

Twenty-five years later, some of the same fears remain. But the Web still works and it continues to grow and change incredibly quickly. Berners-Lee himself is still in the thick of things as director of W3C.

 

the NSOPS Study (Badge of Life)

 

A study of Police Suicide Statistics

Ron Clark, RN, MS, Connecticut State Police (ret.)

Andy O’Hara, California Highway Patrol (ret.)

A Badge of Life Police Mental Health Foundation article

January 4, 2013

Badge of Life has completed its annual survey of police suicides.  Known as NSOPS (National Study of Police Suicides), this is our third in a series of studies that began in 2008. 

Badge of Life

It will take us several months to review our data and profiles of cases, but one thing is already clear: police suicides took a noticeable drop in 2012. We are the first group to track police suicides on a scientific basis and this is the first reduction we have seen since we began monitoring them in 2008. This is encouraging news that we tentatively attribute to the increased number of departments adopting peer support programs and the increased willingness of officers, many of them younger, to seek professional assistance—not only when they have a problem, but before problems develop (through things like annual "mental health checks"). Other factors may be involved, as well, and we will keep you advised through our newsletters, website and, of course, the final published study. Our studies show the following:

2008 police suicides: 141

2009 police suicides: 143

2012 police suicides: 126

Profile of suicide cases:

Average age, 2012:   42

Average yrs on job:   16

Some additional data from the study that might be of interest to you includes:

91 percent of suicides were by males.

Ages 40 – 44 were most at risk.

Time on the job:  15 – 19 years were most at risk.

63 percent of suicide victims were single.

11 percent of suicides were veterans.

This national study of police suicides (NSOPS) was a massive undertaking, requiring the review of almost 50,000 emails, the monitoring of news and websites and the voluntary contributions from many of you in the field. In spite of this encouraging news, the fact is that police suicides continue at a rate much higher than the number of police officers killed by felons. This alone reminds us of the need to redouble our efforts, not only at suicide intervention, but on the maintenance of mental health in law enforcement. We cannot lose sight of the fact that the officer whose mind is on other problems, be they at home or at work, is a danger to himself and other officers who are relying on him. Much remains to be done.

For more on this, go to http://www.badgeoflife.com/

Police suicide is not a popular topic in the law enforcement culture.  As we learn more through research and study, however, it becomes obvious that suicide is merely “the tip of the iceberg” in comparison to the more important issue of mental health in law enforcement.

It may well prove impossible to develop a program that can identify and prevent 150 suicides in a force of almost a million police officers.  It is clear, however, that when efforts are focused on mental health, instead of the narrower “suicide prevention,” there can be be benefits that include not only suicide prevention, but fewer:

officer deaths from shootings and accidents

lawsuits

complaints

sick leave

alcoholism

Substance abuse

Criminal/other behaviors

On and off-job injuries

divorces

grievances

resignations

NSOPS 2012 represents a turning point in efforts to save police lives and bring career quality and improved personal lifestyles to the men and women working America’s streets in uniform.  If you have any questions regarding the study or would like additional information regarding mental health training programs for law enforcement, contact Badge of Life at badgeoflife@gmail.com

Additional references:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19637497

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21138153

http://www.officer.com/article/10232405/2009-police-suicide-statistics

http://www.policesuicidestudy.com/id5.html

http://www.policesuicideprevention.com/id62.html

 

See how the world advances

 

Confidence to grow

As the world gets wealthier, the demand for food is soaring, while producers struggle to provide more supply.

This volatile situation poses some big opportunities — and challenges — for farmers and ranchers since a drought or a storm halfway across the world can disrupt markets. And if the producers overshoot demand, they could create a glut of supply.

Yet they don’t have the luxury of time so they must decide what, and how much, to plant months or years in advance, with nearly everything at stake. Choosing wisely can mean a successful year while choosing poorly can mean big losses.

More information on this chart

How do derivatives advance food security?

Videos’ format in the blog are not supported by the browser and can’t be open.

Ian Goldin

• Former Vice President, World Bank
• Director, Oxford University’s Oxford Martin School

 

More information on this chart

Confidence to build

How do derivatives advance construction?

Jeff Jennings

• Managing Director of Investment Banking, Credit Suisse

Architects, city planners, property owners and construction companies can protect themselves from big jumps in commodity prices through copper, iron ore or oil futures, or even hedge against bad weather. Businesses can reduce interest rate and currency risk so they can focus on what they do best, bringing new products to market. And governments worldwide can upgrade their local infrastructure, confident they can get the raw materials they need at the prices they can afford.

By helping businesses and developers in these ways, CME Group gives them more confidence in their plans and projects.

With that confidence, developers can put more buildings in more places, and tomorrow's businesses can occupy them. And that's how progress is built.

More information on this chart

 

Confidence to invest

Every year, banks make loans totaling trillions of dollars. They’re not just funding projects—they’re funding progress.

Access to capital just might be the only thing standing in the way of a job-creating business expansion, a neighborhood revitalization, or the next wave of technological innovation.

Lenders need confidence in the loans they make, while businesses rely on consistent extension of credit to grow their operations.

Small and Medium Businesses:

• Contribute almost 51% of the U.S. GDP, or $7.2 trillion*
• Pay 44% of total U.S. private payroll
• Have generated 64% of net new jobs over the past 15 years

More information on this chart

How do derivatives advance investing?

Richard Prager

• Head of Global Trading, BlackRock

 

10-year Treasury Notes and 30-year Mortgage Rates, January to December, 2009 More information on this chart

 

Confidence to expand

How do derivatives advance global commerce?

 

As companies do more business globally, they face ever-greater currency risk and its consequences. Because an unexpected move in exchange rates can cut into profits, it becomes critically important for them to hedge their exposure to this risk.

Every day, CME Group helps global businesses achieve more consistent financial performance. With nearly $125 billion in notional value traded each day in CME Group futures and options on foreign currencies, companies can actively manage their foreign currency exposure.

They can lock in their profits and transact with confidence, knowing that the deal they agree to today will provide necessary protection against future price movements.

 

http://www.cmegroup.com/advance/#/build-1

Stroke Patients Lose Month for Each 15-Minute Delay

 

By Jason Gale Mar 14, 2014 1:38 AM GMT-0300

Photographer: Jason Gale/Bloomberg

Stroke survivor Diane Barbeler, left, with neurologist Atte Meretoja at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

Diane Barbeler had a stroke on Monday last week. The next day, she walked out of the hospital with only minor sensory changes in her right hand and foot.

Barbeler owes her quick recovery to the tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, that she received within 3 hours of losing strength and control in her lower limb, says Atte Meretoja, a neurologist who helped diagnose her stroke at Australia’s Royal Melbourne Hospital. Patients like Barbeler, 66, gain a month of disability-free life for every 15 minutes saved in getting the clot-busting drug, according to research by Meretoja and colleagues published today in the journal Stroke.

By quantifying the importance of speed, Meretoja and collaborators in Australia, Finland and the U.S. aim to inspire medical services to improve response time. The world’s fastest stroke services in Helsinki and Melbourne take an average of 20 minutes from the patient’s arrival at the hospital to start tPA treatment, Meretoja said. Most other centers in Australia, the U.S. and Europe take 70 to 80 minutes.

“The main delay in stroke is due to people not calling for help,” said Meretoja, the lead author of the study and an associate professor of medicine at the University of Melbourne. “We have now demonstrated that this is very harmful, and people lose on average a month of life for every 15 minutes they wait at home hoping that the symptoms will go away.”

 

Brain Death

Stroke is the fourth-most common cause of death in the U.S., and the leading cause of adult disability. It occurs when blood flow to the brain stops, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Brain cells begin to die within minutes. Ischemic stroke, which accounts for about 87 percent of cases, is caused by a blood clot, while hemorrhagic stroke is caused by a blood vessel that breaks and bleeds into the brain.

Symptoms of stroke include sudden numbness of the leg, arm or face, confusion, problems with vision, abrupt severe headache, dizziness, loss of balance or trouble walking. The American Stroke Association advises people to call emergency medical services immediately if someone shows any of these symptoms.

Barbeler, who describes herself as a fit and active recent retiree, stood upright after leaning down to pick vegetables in her garden when she felt heaviness in her right foot, along with a loss of sensation and control, she said.

“I couldn’t tell my foot to move,” she said. “I could lift my foot, but I couldn’t tell where I was putting it. Then, my hand was a bit numb. ‘Have I pinched something in my neck?’ was my first thought.”

With help from her husband, Christopher, Barbeler returned to her house and finished a cup of tea while contemplating the cause of her sudden illness, she said. Meanwhile, Christopher called her family doctor’s office for advice.

 

Call For Ambulance

“The nurse told him to call for an ambulance immediately,” Barbeler recalled in an interview yesterday. She was taken directly to the Royal Melbourne Hospital, where doctors used computerized tomography, or CT, images of her brain to rule out causes other than stroke for her symptoms, which had worsened slightly en route from her home in Lauriston, a small town about 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of Melbourne.

Subsequent, more detailed images identified a small offending clot, Meretoja said.

“Because the symptoms were milder than usual, we had to make sure there was something to treat because the treatment isn’t risk-free,” he said. “A few percent of patients will get a bleed because of the treatment.”

 

Time Is Brain

TPA should be given within 4 1/2 hours of the onset of stroke symptoms, according to the American Stroke Association. Speeding treatment by just 1 minute means another 1.8 days of healthy life, today’s study found.

While it’s not possible to predict what the outcome would have been had Barbeler not received the tPA within hours of the onset of her stroke, it’s likely the damage caused by a lack of oxygen to a small part of her brain would have resulted in “trouble walking for a long time,” Meretoja said. There would have also been a risk that the clot could have progressed to cause a greater blood-oxygen deficit.

His research shows that, although all patients benefit from faster treatment, younger patients with longer life expectancies gained more than older patients. The average age of Meretoja’s stroke patients is 75 years.

Today’s study by scientists at the University of Melbourne’s Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Helsinki University Central Hospital and the University of California, Los Angeles Stroke Center, is based on evidence from trials of clot-busting drugs that was applied to 2,258 stroke patients in Australia and Finland to calculate what the patient outcomes would have been if they had been treated faster or slower.

 

Helsinki Model

“Until now, we have always known it’s important to treat the patients quickly, but we have never known how important it is,” said Meretoja, 38, who has been studying stroke and treating patients with the condition for 15 years, mostly in Helsinki, where treatment times are the shortest.

Ten days after her stroke, Barbeler says her hand has a “sense of feeling fatter” and her foot, which turns in slightly when she walks, feels as though its tendons are shorter. The symptoms should gradually fade as areas of her brain unaffected by the stroke begin to compensate, Meretoja said.

Relieved to have avoided weeks of rehabilitation and the possibility of permanent disability, the former professional opera singer and information technology consultant is keen to tell others to heed the signs of stroke, which don’t always include dizziness and pain -- symptoms she’d assumed were indicative of stroke.

“They’re the things I had no idea about,” she said. “I had no pain at any stage through this.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Jason Gale in Melbourne at j.gale@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anjali Cordeiro at acordeiro2@bloomberg.net Terje Langeland, Jason Gale

 

O poder das frutas é destaque no 'Globo Repórter'

 

Alimento ou remédio? O "Globo Repórter" investiga o poder das frutas: saborosas, nutritivas e medicinais. 

Conheça o goji berry, uma frutinha que virou vedete: a nova estrela da vitalidade vem das montanhas do Nepal. Ela faz bem ao coração, reduz as gorduras e retarda o envelhecimento.

O suco mais comum da mesa dos brasileiros pode ajudar a emagrecer. Suco de laranja, apesar de calórico, libera um hormônio chamado "leptina" que ajuda na saciedade. E cai o mito: banana não engorda. E abacate pode prevenir diabetes e problemas cardíacos.

Confira a data de exibição do programa na sua região:

África - 21/03 às 22h50 (horário de Luanda)

Américas - 14/03 às 22h15 (horário de Nova York)

Ásia - 15/03 às 22h55 (horário de Tóquio)

Europa/Oriente Médio - 21/03 às 22h20 (horário de Paris)

Portugal - 21/03 às 21h20 (horário de Lisboa)

Marijuana Shop Owners Paying Taxes In Cash Because Banks Can’t Take Their Money

 

By Chris Morran

Marijuana may be legal and taxed in Colorado, but the federal government still considers anyone who sells it to be a drug dealer and won’t allow banks to offer accounts to these businesses. So how is a legal businessman supposed to pay those sales tax to the state?

One shop owner tells Bloomberg he’s got to carry a bag holding thousands of dollars in cash to the state’s revenue department in order to remit sales tax payments.

“It highlights the awkward situation we’ve been placed in,” he explains. “We are paying taxes, but despite our best efforts to be good citizens, we’re still paying in cash.”

Since the business can’t open a bank account, it has to operate on a purely cash basis, making it a target for robbery — and just a huge pain in the butt for people keeping the books.

Making matters more complicated, some state and local agencies won’t accept cash payments for required taxes and licensing fees.

The owner of the Colorado shop had been operating a legal dispensary even before the recent change in state law. He tells Bloomberg that his business had an account with Wells Fargo until 2011, but then the bank decided to stop doing business with dispensaries, regardless of local laws.

Since then, he’s been paying cash for his $45,000/year licensing fees and $35,000 in state and local taxes.

“They’re encouraging cash operations, which are a threat to public safety, and much more difficult to track and audit,” says the executive director of the National Cannabis Industry Association to Bloomberg. “Wherever you stand on the marijuana issue, it serves everybody’s interest to have banking access.”

Business owners can try to hide the nature of their marijuana shop by putting it inside a shell business with an innocuous name and not telling the bank.

“As long as the bank doesn’t find out, you should be safe,” explains the director of the California office of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. “Or you can use a family account or a personal account. Some people have another business on the side and they use that account.”

But once the bank finds out, expect to have that account closed right away.

A rep for the Colorado Revenue Dept. says some local banks have begun allowing marijuana-selling businesses to open accounts, though these institutions risk losing their federal deposit insurance and possibly their charter if caught.

Banks are supposed to file Suspicious Activity Reports on transactions and deposits related to proceeds from the sale of controlled substances, says the FDIC.

The Liquor Control Board in Washington state, where pot was also recently legalized, says it is now prepping itself for what it expects could be the problematic intake of cash from bank-less marijuana sellers.

“We’ll need to be prepared to accept potentially large amounts of cash,” a Board rep tells Bloomberg. “Do we suddenly have to have armored-truck service? That’s a potential.”

Congressman Jared Polis of Colorado recently introduced legislation that would remove the Schedule I controlled substance designation from marijuana.

“We want to make sure they have access to the same type of banking facilities as other businesses,” explains Polis.