The Oregon state legislature cleared two reform bills that passed its House of Representatives earlier this week, the Portland Oregonian reports. One bill will tax insurers and hospitals up to $500 million over two years to provide "health coverage for 80,000 uninsured children and an additional 35,000 uninsured low-income adults and put the state on a path toward covering all of its more than 600,000 uninsured residents." The state will leverage as much as $1 billion in federal matching funds. "Some of the federal money will be used to pay hospitals what they pay in taxes. Insurers also will get a portion of their tax money back," the Oregonian reports.
Identification of criteria for the detection of prolonged grief disorder (PGD) appear able to identify bereaved persons at heightened risk for enduring distress and dysfunction, says a new study in this week"s open access journal PLoS Medicine. The results support the psychometric validity of the criteria for PGD and should be included in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-V) and the International Statistical Classification of Diseases
and Related Health Problems (ICD-11), say the authors. Dr. Holly Prigerson from the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts and her colleagues conducted a field trial to develop and evaluate algorithms for diagnosing PGD based on a set of symptoms agreed upon by experts in bereavement, mood and anxiety disorders, and psychiatric nosology. They interviewed 291 bereaved individuals three times in the two years following the loss of a spouse about their experiences of these symptoms. 
The House Energy and Commerce Committee on July 31 approved its health care reform bill (HR 3200) by a 31-28 vote that was mostly along party lines, the AP/Seattle Times reports. Among the many amendments considered during the markup, the committee rejected an amendment offered by Reps. Joe Pitts (R-Pa) and Bart Stupak (D-MI) to prohibit government subsidies to any insurance plans that offers abortion coverage, effectively prohibiting abortion coverage for customers eligible
for public premium assistance. The amendment was rejected by a 27-31 vote. Another provision approved on July 30 would neither require nor prohibit insurance companies from providing coverage for abortion services.The approved bill includes provisions limiting how much insurers can increase premiums and gives the federal government the power to negotiate with drug companies for lower prices under Medicaid. 
Whether it"s highlighted in major news headlines about Argentinean affairs and Ponzi schemes, or in personal battles with obesity and drug addiction, individuals regularly succumb to greed, lust and self-destructive behaviors. New research from the Kellogg School of Management examines why this is the case, and demonstrates that individuals believe they have more restraint than they actually possess - ultimately leading to poor decision-making. The study, led by Loran
Nordgren, senior lecturer of management and organizations at the Kellogg School, examined how an individual"s belief in his/her ability to control impulses such as greed, drug craving and sexual arousal influenced responses to temptation. 
Flasks, beakers and hot plates may soon be a thing of the past in chemistry labs. Instead of handling a few experiments on a bench top, scientists may simply pop a microchip into a computer and instantly run thousands of chemical reactions, with results - literally shrinking the lab down to the size of a thumbnail. Toward that end, UCLA researchers have developed technology to perform more than a thousand chemical reactions at once on a stamp-size, PC-controlled microchip,
which could accelerate the identification of potential drug candidates for treating diseases like cancer. Their study appears in the Aug. 21 edition of the journal Lab on a Chip and is currently available online. A team of UCLA chemists, biologists and engineers collaborated on the technology, which is based on microfluidics - the utilization of miniaturized devices to automatically handle and channel tiny amounts of liquids and chemicals invisible to the eye.