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Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Jury convicts former doctor in Vegas hep C case

FILE - In this Jan. 267, 2012 file photo, Dr. Dipak Desai is shown during his competency hearing at Regional Justice Center in Las Vegas. Neither Desai, the former owner of clinics blamed for a 2007 Las Vegas hepatitis C outbreak nor a former employee took the witness stand before the defense rested in their state trial on criminal charges that could get them decades in prison if they?re convicted.(AP Photo/Las Vegas Review-Journal, Jeff Scheid, File) LAS VEGAS SUN OUT

Former doctor and endoscopy clinic owner Dipak Desai is taken into custody by Clark County marshals at the Regional Justice Center in Las Vegas Monday, July 1, 2013 after a jury found him guilty. Nevada state court jury found Desai guilty of all 27 criminal charges against him? including second-degree murder ? in a 2007 hepatitis C outbreak that officials called one of the largest ever in the U.S. At left is defense lawyer Richard Wright. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Review-Journal, Jessica Ebelhar)

Nurse-anesthetist Ronald Lakeman is taken into custody by Clark County marshals at the Regional Justice Center in Las Vegas on Monday, July 1, 2013 after a jury found him guilty. Lakeman was found guilty of 16 of 27 charges against him, but was spared a murder conviction stemming from the death of 77-year-old former Desai patient Rodolfo Meana in April 2012. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Review-Journal, Jessica Ebelhar)

Nurse-anesthetist Ronald Lakeman watches as the jury's verdict is read at the Regional Justice Center in Las Vegas on Monday, July 1, 2013. Lakeman was found guilty of 16 of 27 charges against him, but was spared a murder conviction stemming from the death of 77-year-old former Desai patient Rodolfo Meana in April 2012. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Review-Journal, Jessica Ebelhar)

LAS VEGAS (AP) ? A prominent former Las Vegas doctor and endoscopy clinic owner was convicted Monday of all 27 criminal charges against him ? including second-degree murder ? in a 2007 hepatitis C outbreak that officials called one of the largest ever in the U.S.

A former employee at Dipak Desai's Endoscopy Clinic of Southern Nevada, nurse-anesthetist Ronald Lakeman, was found guilty of 16 of 27 charges against him but was spared a murder conviction stemming from the death of 77-year-old Rodolfo Meana in April 2012.

Defense attorneys for both men said they'll appeal.

Desai, a former Nevada state medical board member, surrendered his medical license, declared bankruptcy and turned over his business affairs to family members and lawyers in recent years. He stared straight ahead as the jury's verdicts were read.

His lawyers maintained that he was unfit for trial because of the effects of several strokes in recent years.

Desai's wife, Kusam, sobbed quietly and one of their adult daughters cried out as Desai and Lakeman were handcuffed and led from the courtroom to jail to await sentencing Sept. 5.

"We love you, Daddy," she said to Desai. "God is with you. Always with you."

Desai didn't appear to respond.

Desai, 63, and Lakeman, 66, face the possibility of life in prison for their multiple felony convictions.

Jurors heard more than 70 witnesses during seven weeks of testimony about a case that shocked the community when the outbreak became public in February 2008. Health officials issued advisories that led 63,000 clinic patients to get tested for potentially fatal blood-borne diseases, including hepatitis and HIV.

Investigators blamed unsafe injection practices and traced the infections of nine people to Desai clinics, although local and federal health investigators said they thought the hepatitis C infections of another 105 patients might have been related to similar practices. In those cases, however, they said they couldn't rule out other sources of infection.

The charges in Clark County District Court resulted from the infection of seven patients and bills paid by their insurers.

Prosecutors alleged that Desai and Lakeman recklessly and negligently put patients at risk with the reuse of syringes and vials of the general anesthetic propofol during procedures at a clinic where speed was emphasized over patient safety.

Health investigators testified that they believed vials became contaminated with hepatitis C virus from two different "source" patients on two dates in 2007, and that tainted anesthetic was injected into subsequent patients on those dates.

In addition to the murder charge, Desai was found guilty of seven counts of criminal neglect of patients resulting in substantial bodily harm, seven counts of reckless disregard of persons resulting in substantial bodily harm, nine counts of insurance fraud, two counts of obtaining money under false pretenses and one felony theft charge.

Lakeman was found guilty of 16 charges including insurance fraud, criminal neglect, reckless disregard, obtaining money under false pretenses and theft. He was acquitted of 11 counts.

"I'm elated that he didn't get convicted on the murder charge," Lakeman's lawyer, Frederick Santacroce, said outside court. "I'm disappointed that he was convicted of the other charges."

Desai attorneys Richard Wright and Margaret Stanish, and prosecutors Michael Staudaher and Pamela Weckerly, declined immediate comment.

The jury of seven women and five men deliberated Friday and most of the day Monday before reaching their verdict.

Another former Desai clinic nurse anesthetist, Keith Mathahs, 77, pleaded guilty in December to five felonies, including criminal neglect of patients resulting in death, insurance fraud and racketeering. He testified against Desai and Lakeman and could get probation or up to six years in state prison when he is sentenced.

The state criminal case is separate from a case pending against Desai and a former clinic business manager, Tonya Rushing, in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas.

Desai and Rushing have pleaded not guilty to conspiracy and health care fraud charges alleging they schemed to inflate anesthesia times and overbill health insurance companies. Trial is scheduled to begin Aug. 20.

The hepatitis outbreak also spawned dozens of civil lawsuits, including several that yielded jury findings holding drug manufacturers and the state's largest health management organization liable for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to plaintiffs.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/bbd825583c8542898e6fa7d440b9febc/Article_2013-07-01-Hepatitis%20Exposure%20Trial/id-1fa64030082e4efda8fffbc1f1fdd598

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Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Cloud behavior expands habitable zone of alien planets

Public release date: 1-Jul-2013
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Contact: Steve Koppes
skoppes@uchicago.edu
773-702-8366
University of Chicago

A new study that calculates the influence of cloud behavior on climate doubles the number of potentially habitable planets orbiting red dwarfs, the most common type of stars in the universe. This finding means that in the Milky Way galaxy alone, 60 billion planets may be orbiting red dwarf stars in the habitable zone.

Researchers at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University based their study, which appears in Astrophysical Journal Letters, on rigorous computer simulations of cloud behavior on alien planets. This cloud behavior dramatically expanded the habitable zone of red dwarfs, which are much smaller and fainter than stars like the sun.

Current data from NASA's Kepler Mission, a space observatory searching for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars, suggest there is approximately one Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of each red dwarf. The UChicago-Northwestern study now doubles that number.

"Most of the planets in the Milky Way orbit red dwarfs," said Nicolas Cowan, a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern's Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics. "A thermostat that makes such planets more clement means we don't have to look as far to find a habitable planet."

Cowan is one of three co-authors of the study, as are UChicago's Dorian Abbot and Jun Yang. The trio also provide astronomers with a means of verifying their conclusions with the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2018.

The formula for calculating the habitable zone of alien planetswhere they can orbit their star while still maintaining liquid water at their surfacehas remained much the same for decades. But the formula largely neglects clouds, which exert a major climatic influence.

"Clouds cause warming, and they cause cooling on Earth," said Abbot, an assistant professor in geophysical sciences at UChicago. "They reflect sunlight to cool things off, and they absorb infrared radiation from the surface to make a greenhouse effect. That's part of what keeps the planet warm enough to sustain life."

A planet orbiting a star like the sun would have to complete an orbit approximately once a year to be far enough away to maintain water on its surface. "If you're orbiting around a low mass or dwarf star, you have to orbit about once a month, once every two months to receive the same amount of sunlight that we receive from the sun," Cowan said.

Tightly orbiting planets

Planets in such a tight orbit would eventually become tidally locked with their sun. They would always keep the same side facing the sun, like the moon does toward Earth. Calculations of the UChicago-Northwestern team indicate that the star-facing side of the planet would experience vigorous convection and highly reflective clouds at a point that astronomers call the sub-stellar region. At that location the sun always sits directly overhead, at high noon.

The team's three-dimensional global calculations determined for the first time the effect of water clouds on the inner edge of the habitable zone. The simulations are similar to the global climate simulations that scientists use to predict Earth climate. These required several months of processing, running mostly on a cluster of 216 networked computers at UChicago. Previous attempts to simulate the inner edge of exoplanet habitable zones were one-dimensional. They mostly neglected clouds, focusing instead on charting how temperature decreases with altitude.

"There's no way you can do clouds properly in one-dimension," Cowan said. "But in a three-dimensional model, you're actually simulating the way air moves and the way moisture moves through the entire atmosphere of the planet."

These new simulations show that if there is any surface water on the planet, water clouds result. The simulations further show that cloud behavior has a significant cooling effect on the inner portion of the habitable zone, enabling planets to sustain water on their surfaces much closer to their sun.

Astronomers observing with the James Webb Telescope will be able to test the validity of these findings by measuring the temperature of the planet at different points in its orbit. If a tidally locked exoplanet lacks significant cloud cover, astronomers will measure the highest temperatures when the dayside of the exoplanet is facing the telescope, which occurs when the planet is on the far side of its star. Once the planet comes back around to show its dark side to the telescope, temperatures would reach their lowest point.

But if highly reflective clouds dominate the dayside of the exoplanet, they will block a lot of infrared radiation from the surface, said Yang, a postdoctoral scientist in geophysical sciences at UChicago. In that situation "you would measure the coldest temperatures when the planet is on the opposite side, and you would measure the warmest temperatures when you are looking at the night side, because there you are actually looking at the surface rather than these high clouds," Yang said.

Earth-observing satellites have documented this effect. "If you look at Brazil or Indonesia with an infrared telescope from space, it can look cold, and that's because you're seeing the cloud deck," Cowan said. "The cloud deck is at high altitude, and it's extremely cold up there."

If the James Webb Telescope detects this signal from an exoplanet, Abbot noted, "it's almost definitely from clouds, and it's a confirmation that you do have surface liquid water."

###

Citation: "Stabilizing Cloud Feedback Doubles Frequency of Red Dwarf Habitable Planets," by Jun Yang, Nicolas B. Cowan and Dorian S. Abbot, Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 771, No. 2, July 10, 2013.

Funding: Alfred P. Sloan Research Foundation.

Media Contacts:

Steve Koppes
773-702-8366
skoppes@uchicago.edu

Megan Fellman
847-491-3115
fellman@northwestern.edu
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Cloud behavior expands habitable zone of alien planets Public release date: 1-Jul-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Steve Koppes
skoppes@uchicago.edu
773-702-8366
University of Chicago

A new study that calculates the influence of cloud behavior on climate doubles the number of potentially habitable planets orbiting red dwarfs, the most common type of stars in the universe. This finding means that in the Milky Way galaxy alone, 60 billion planets may be orbiting red dwarf stars in the habitable zone.

Researchers at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University based their study, which appears in Astrophysical Journal Letters, on rigorous computer simulations of cloud behavior on alien planets. This cloud behavior dramatically expanded the habitable zone of red dwarfs, which are much smaller and fainter than stars like the sun.

Current data from NASA's Kepler Mission, a space observatory searching for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars, suggest there is approximately one Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of each red dwarf. The UChicago-Northwestern study now doubles that number.

"Most of the planets in the Milky Way orbit red dwarfs," said Nicolas Cowan, a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern's Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics. "A thermostat that makes such planets more clement means we don't have to look as far to find a habitable planet."

Cowan is one of three co-authors of the study, as are UChicago's Dorian Abbot and Jun Yang. The trio also provide astronomers with a means of verifying their conclusions with the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2018.

The formula for calculating the habitable zone of alien planetswhere they can orbit their star while still maintaining liquid water at their surfacehas remained much the same for decades. But the formula largely neglects clouds, which exert a major climatic influence.

"Clouds cause warming, and they cause cooling on Earth," said Abbot, an assistant professor in geophysical sciences at UChicago. "They reflect sunlight to cool things off, and they absorb infrared radiation from the surface to make a greenhouse effect. That's part of what keeps the planet warm enough to sustain life."

A planet orbiting a star like the sun would have to complete an orbit approximately once a year to be far enough away to maintain water on its surface. "If you're orbiting around a low mass or dwarf star, you have to orbit about once a month, once every two months to receive the same amount of sunlight that we receive from the sun," Cowan said.

Tightly orbiting planets

Planets in such a tight orbit would eventually become tidally locked with their sun. They would always keep the same side facing the sun, like the moon does toward Earth. Calculations of the UChicago-Northwestern team indicate that the star-facing side of the planet would experience vigorous convection and highly reflective clouds at a point that astronomers call the sub-stellar region. At that location the sun always sits directly overhead, at high noon.

The team's three-dimensional global calculations determined for the first time the effect of water clouds on the inner edge of the habitable zone. The simulations are similar to the global climate simulations that scientists use to predict Earth climate. These required several months of processing, running mostly on a cluster of 216 networked computers at UChicago. Previous attempts to simulate the inner edge of exoplanet habitable zones were one-dimensional. They mostly neglected clouds, focusing instead on charting how temperature decreases with altitude.

"There's no way you can do clouds properly in one-dimension," Cowan said. "But in a three-dimensional model, you're actually simulating the way air moves and the way moisture moves through the entire atmosphere of the planet."

These new simulations show that if there is any surface water on the planet, water clouds result. The simulations further show that cloud behavior has a significant cooling effect on the inner portion of the habitable zone, enabling planets to sustain water on their surfaces much closer to their sun.

Astronomers observing with the James Webb Telescope will be able to test the validity of these findings by measuring the temperature of the planet at different points in its orbit. If a tidally locked exoplanet lacks significant cloud cover, astronomers will measure the highest temperatures when the dayside of the exoplanet is facing the telescope, which occurs when the planet is on the far side of its star. Once the planet comes back around to show its dark side to the telescope, temperatures would reach their lowest point.

But if highly reflective clouds dominate the dayside of the exoplanet, they will block a lot of infrared radiation from the surface, said Yang, a postdoctoral scientist in geophysical sciences at UChicago. In that situation "you would measure the coldest temperatures when the planet is on the opposite side, and you would measure the warmest temperatures when you are looking at the night side, because there you are actually looking at the surface rather than these high clouds," Yang said.

Earth-observing satellites have documented this effect. "If you look at Brazil or Indonesia with an infrared telescope from space, it can look cold, and that's because you're seeing the cloud deck," Cowan said. "The cloud deck is at high altitude, and it's extremely cold up there."

If the James Webb Telescope detects this signal from an exoplanet, Abbot noted, "it's almost definitely from clouds, and it's a confirmation that you do have surface liquid water."

###

Citation: "Stabilizing Cloud Feedback Doubles Frequency of Red Dwarf Habitable Planets," by Jun Yang, Nicolas B. Cowan and Dorian S. Abbot, Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 771, No. 2, July 10, 2013.

Funding: Alfred P. Sloan Research Foundation.

Media Contacts:

Steve Koppes
773-702-8366
skoppes@uchicago.edu

Megan Fellman
847-491-3115
fellman@northwestern.edu
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-07/uoc-cbe070113.php
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How 3D Printing Can Build New Bone

Damaged bones could be fixed with a new technique that involves 3D printing a tissue using living stem cells.

For example, if a child had a jawbone defect, you could take an image of the defect, feed it into a computer and print a replacement to precisely fill the defect using the patient's own cells, said Kevin Shakeshaff, a pharmacist at the University of Nottingham in England.

"The tissues of our body are structured at the level of single cells," Shakeshaff said. "Using 3D printing, we can position cells in precise places."

The technology, which enables scientists to create a custom-fitted body part, is on display at the Royal Society?s annual Summer Science Exhibition this week in London.? [7 Cool Uses of 3D Printing in Medicine]

To create the bone replacement, the 3D bioprinter creates a scaffold in the shape of the bone, and coats it with adult human stem cells, which are capable of developing into many different tissue types.

The printer's "ink" consists of a polymer called polylactic acid and a gel-like substance called alginate. The polylactic acid provides the hard, mechanical strength of bone, while the alginate acts as a cushioning material for the cells.

The printed product can be implanted in the body, where the scaffold will degrade and be replaced by new bone within about three months.

"The first advantage is you get something in the exact shape of the defect you're trying to replace," Shakeshaff said. "More subtly, you have the ability to organize where the cells go within the scaffold," he said, adding that it leads to better blood vessel formation and ultimately better bone formation.

Previously, Shakeshaff and his colleagues developed a method of replacing bone by injecting a material that solidifies inside the body without damaging cells. Surgeons can use this as a quick fix for filling an injury. But the new 3D printing technique may offer a better solution.

At the exhibition, the team is also showing off a technique for manipulating stem cells using "laser tweezers." In the technique, two laser beams are crossed, creating an attractive force. The lasers can then pick up cells and move them around with unprecedented precision. By manipulating cells in this way, the researchers hope to understand the precise cell movements within developing human embryos.

Ultimately, these techniques may help scientists build fully functional replacements for bones or organs. The 3D printing method may be clinically available within a decade, Shakeshaff said, and the same technique could also be applied to repair more complex tissues, such as the liver or heart.

Visitors to the exhibition can try out the new techniques themselves: picking up cells using the laser tweezers, sculpting the biomaterials into structures such as veins or arteries, and printing 3D scaffolds shaped like skulls and other bones.

The Royal Society hosts the Summer Science Exhibition every year to display advanced science and engineering research from throughout the United Kingdom.

Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter?and Google+.?Follow us @livescience, Facebook?& Google+. Original article on?LiveScience.com.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/3d-printing-build-bone-191414159.html

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Monday, July 1, 2013

Madman Producer replied to Angels at Astros Total play in Baseball .

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Insurance Costs Set for a Jolt (WSJ)

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Bail set for man accused of carrying guns to Hawks parade

Bail was set at $75,000 today for a south suburban man accused of carrying two guns while walking with the crowds in the Loop toward the Hawks rally.

Roger Harrison, 36, of the 3100 block of Holden Circle in Matteson, was charged with aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, said Cook County state?s attorney?s office spokeswoman Tandra Simonton. Police News Affairs said Harrison was also charged with one misdemeanor count of cannabis possession.

Bail was set Saturday when he appeared in bond court.

Harrison was walking in the 100 block of North LaSalle Street Friday morning when he was stopped by police officers because he had a ?large backpack,?? police said. A search turned up two guns, one small and the other a 9 mm handgun.

?He was acting suspiciously and a search revealed a second handgun" in his backpack, said police News Affairs Officer Veejay Zala.
?
Zala said the arrest happened at 10:10 a.m. at the LaSalle Street address.

Harrison was in a crowd of people headed toward the Hawks rally, but there was no indication he was planning anything.

In court Saturday, the judge was told Harrison had spent four years as a Marine, and the 9 mm handgun was loaded with seven live rounds.

Tribune reporters Michelle Manchir and Rosemary Regina Sobol contributed.

chicagobreaking@tribune.com
Twitter: @ChicagoBreaking

Source: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-bail-set-for-man-accused-of-carrying-guns-to-hawks-parade-20130629,0,4481188.story?track=rss

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