Thursday, July 7, 2011

Geocaching Shuts Down British Town

Posted by samzenpus  
from the everyone-panic dept.
DaveAtWorkAnnoyingly writes"Many geocachers will be thinking twice when planting their treasure in an urban space as one geocacher found out in England after the police cordoned off the center of a small West Yorkshire town and the Bomb Squad was called in. From the article: 't was a normal busy Friday morning in the small West Yorkshire market town of Wetherby when someone working in a cafĂ© spotted a man acting a bit suspiciously on the street. He appeared to have a small plastic box in his hand and after fiddling with the container he bent down and hid it under a flower box standing on the pavement. He then walked off, talking to somebody on his phone.'"

Outcomes for Cardiac Valve Procedure Patients Are Affected by Insurance Status, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (July 6, 2011) — The type of primary insurance patients carry affects outcomes of cardiac valve operations in the United States according to a study in the May issue of theJournal of the American College of Surgeons. As a result, the type of primary insurance should be considered as an independent risk factor during preoperative risk stratification and planning, the researchers reported. They found that uninsured and Medicaid patients incur worse unadjusted and risk-adjusted outcomes following cardiac valve operations compared with those who carry private insurance.
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Bill Gates On Energy

Posted by Unknown Lamer  
from the agreeing-with-bill-gates-feels-dirty dept.
Sam the Nemesis submitted an interview in Wired with Bill Gates on the future of energy. Gates sees nuclear as the only feasible option for base load generation. His views on the current direction of energy funding are particularly distressing: "But the economics are so, so far from making sense. And yet that's where subsidies are going now. We're putting 90 percent of the subsidies in deployment — this is true in Europe and the United States — not in R&D. And so unfortunately you get technologies that, no matter how much of them you buy, there's no path to being economical. You need fundamental breakthroughs, which come more out of basic research."