http://www.post-gazette.com/ Health, Science, Environment, Medicare news en-us Copyright 2012, post-gazette.com. Fri, 10 Feb 2012 07:40:21 -0500 15 http://www.post-gazette.com/includes/2007design/images/150x30pg_now_logo.gif http://www.post-gazette.com/ 144 39 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12041/1209290-114-0.stm?cmpid=healthscience.xml Set against proposed 30 percent cuts in state higher education funding, Gov. Tom Corbett's proposed 4 percent cut in Medicaid reimbursements looks reasonable enough. Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:44:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12041/1209230-28-0.stm?cmpid=healthscience.xml J.P. Morgan was alleged to have been talking about yachts when he uttered his well-known financial axiom -- "If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it" -- but the same is true of MRI machines and CT scanners. Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12041/1209233-28.stm?cmpid=healthscience.xml Six months into its current fiscal year, the West Penn Allegheny Health System has lost $55.9 million -- including $34.1 million from September through December -- as the financially ailing system continues to experience drops in patient volume and revenue. Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12041/1209245-114.stm?cmpid=healthscience.xml WASHINGTON --The Obama administration issued regulations Thursday requiring health plans to describe what they cover in clear, standardized language understandable to consumers. The regulations are an attempt to implement one of the much-anticiapted consumer protections provisions in the new health care law President Barack Obama signed in March 2010. Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12041/1209294-503-0.stm?cmpid=healthscience.xml HARRISBURG -- The state Department of Environmental Protection Thursday said it has fined gas driller Chesapeake Appalachia a total of $565,000 for major violations at three Marcellus Shale sites that occurred since 2010, including a well blowout in Bradford County last April that took five days to secure. Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12041/1209295-53.stm?cmpid=healthscience.xml Describing the drilling process as environmentally sound, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Thursday championed natural gas production in a city that banned the practice more than a year ago. Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12041/1209330-115-0.stm?cmpid=healthscience.xml Janice Voss, a space shuttle astronaut and scientist who explored the behavior of fire in weightlessness, how plants adapt to extraterrestrial flight and an array of other phenomena while logging nearly 19 million miles circling Earth, died on Monday at a hospital in Scottsdale, Ariz. She was 55 and lived in Houston. Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12041/1209331-115-0.stm?cmpid=healthscience.xml SAN DIEGO -- Almost hidden in the northern hills, the pilot water treatment plant here does not seem a harbinger of revolution. It cost $13 million, uses long-established technologies and produces a million gallons a day. Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12040/1209019-53.stm?cmpid=healthscience.xml A crisp romaine salad with chicken or tofu and Kraft Creamy Italian dressing led the menu Wednesday. Scattered around the tray were raw carrots, cooked corn and peas, an apple and a whole wheat roll. The drink of the hour was milk -- skim, 1 percent or soy. Thu, 9 Feb 2012 15:44:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12040/1208857-115.stm?cmpid=healthscience.xml Think of some of the nutrients in your daily vitamins: calcium, potassium, iron, zinc. These are four of the 118 chemical elements from which all matter in the universe is made. But what makes the elements themselves? The answer is shining above you in the sky. Indeed, the building blocks of all substances are chemically created in the stars. Thu, 9 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12040/1209017-114.stm?cmpid=healthscience.xml LOS ANGELES -- Some things are better left unsaid -- and that includes certain aspects of your medical condition, doctors say. In a nationwide survey of 1,800 physicians, 17 percent had some level of disagreement with the notion that they should "never tell a patient something that is not true." Thu, 9 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12040/1209020-114.stm?cmpid=healthscience.xml The amount of trans fat in the American bloodstream fell by more than half after the Food and Drug Administration required food manufacturers to label how much of the unhealthful ingredient is in their products, according to a new study. Blood levels of trans fat declined 58 percent from 2000 to 2008. FDA began requiring trans-fat labeling in 2003. Thu, 9 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12040/1209069-139.stm?cmpid=healthscience.xml Over the next few weeks and months, more runners will take to the streets and gyms to prepare for the Pittsburgh Marathon in May. They'll start slow, going a few miles per day, and ramp up to longer runs as the race draws closer. But there is more to running a marathon than just running. Thu, 9 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12040/1209077-488.stm?cmpid=healthscience.xml Allegheny County Health Department spokesman Guillermo Cole says he doesn't think there's an answer as to why, but he's happy to report that the Pittsburgh area's having a mild flu season to date. So far, there have been only five confirmed cases -- one believed to have been contracted by someone when traveling abroad -- with just the rest of February, March and perhaps April to go. Thu, 9 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12040/1209100-115-0.stm?cmpid=healthscience.xml A piece of Mars fell on Morocco in July. But that was just the start of its travels on Earth. Thu, 9 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12040/1209101-115-0.stm?cmpid=healthscience.xml SAN FRANCISCO -- Venture deep inside the new skyway of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and it becomes clear that the bridge's engineers have planned for the long term. Thu, 9 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12039/1208924-114.stm?cmpid=healthscience.xml So far, Allegheny County is experiencing a "very mild" flu season with just five confirmed cases, according to the Allegheny County Health Department. Wed, 8 Feb 2012 15:39:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12039/1208682-115.stm?cmpid=healthscience.xml This is one of a series presented by the National Aviary. The National Aviary works to inspire respect for nature through an appreciation of birds. Wed, 8 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12039/1208706-28.stm?cmpid=healthscience.xml If you think Pittsburgh's health insurance landscape has changed dramatically in the last year, you ain't seen nothing yet, according to six of the region's top insurance executives. Expect more friction between physicians and health plans as insurers try to wring what they call unnecessary procedures, scans and surgeries out of the system. Wed, 8 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12039/1208794-115-0.stm?cmpid=healthscience.xml Norton D. Zinder, a researcher who helped lay the basis for the new field of molecular biology in the 1950s and '60s and who played a crucial role in the politics of decoding the human genome, died on Friday in a nursing home in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. He was 83. Wed, 8 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12039/1208795-115.stm?cmpid=healthscience.xml Q. Are oral plaque, coronary vessel plaque and eye plaque the same substance? Wed, 8 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12038/1208632-115.stm?cmpid=healthscience.xml A giant crocodile with a bulging shield of thickened skin on its forehead lived among dinosaurs, a new study reports. Tue, 7 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12038/1208633-115.stm?cmpid=healthscience.xml By filtering through 25 gallons of seawater from Puget Sound, a computer scientist in Washington State has managed to tease out and sequence the DNA of a tiny microbe that has eluded scientists for years. Tue, 7 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500