California
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California’s Dream To Be The Saudi Arabia Of Solar Dries Up In The Desert
Three years ago California regulators in quick succession approved nine multibillion-dollar solar thermal power plants. They were to be built in the desert and would generate 4,142 megawatts (MW) of carbon-free electricity. The state, it was said, was on its way to becoming the Saudi Arabia of solar. Read More »
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California’s Other Drought: A Major Earthquake Is Overdue
California earthquakes are a geologic inevitability. The state straddles the North American and Pacific tectonic plates and is crisscrossed by the San Andreas and other active fault systems. Tragic quakes that occurred in 2017 near the Iran-Iraq border and in central Mexico, with magnitudes of 7.3 and 7.1, respectively, are well within the range of earthquake sizes that have a high likelihood of occurring in highly populated parts of California during the next few decades. The earthquake situation in California is actually more dire than people who aren't seismologists like myself may realize. Although many Californians can recount experiencing an earthquake, most have never personally experienced a strong one. For major events, with magnitudes of 7 or greater, California is actually in an earthquake drought. Multiple segments of the expansive San Andreas Fault system are now sufficiently stressed to produce large and damaging events.
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Community Health Network in Houston Leverages Open Source Tech to Help Victims of Hurricane Harvey
Undaunted by the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey in Houston, the Stephen F. Austin Community Health Network (SFA) responded to the crisis by leveraging open source technology to reach out to their patients and victims of the hurricane in areas of Texas that are virtually inaccessible. The Health Network, a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) covering Brazoria County, is one of the areas hardest hit by Hurricane Harvey and currently recovering. Using an advanced cloud-based version of the OpenEMR software, the SFA Community Health Network has been able to treat patients in clinics physically unreachable by their medical providers.
- The Future Is Open
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Could California Bill Mandate Open Access To Research?
Champions of open access to publicly funded academic research had something to celebrate last week... Read More »
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Court Upholds Rx Transparency Law
Advocates for healthcare transparency scored a small win in California, where the state Supreme Court upheld a law requiring pharmacy benefit managers to disclose their pricing. Read More »
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Drones and the Future of Disaster Response
Four continental states and one U.S. territory took a beating this fall as one natural disaster after another rocked communities in Northern California and along the Gulf Coast, spreading disaster relief resources and personnel thin as federal, state, and local governments scrabbled to address the crises. Wildfires in California's wine country claimed at least 42 lives, 8,400 structures, and 245,000 acres of land in October. Hurricanes Harvey and Irma pummeled Louisiana, Texas, and Florida only to be followed by Hurricane Maria, which slammed Puerto Rico on September 20 and left much of the U.S. territory without communications systems, electricity, clean water, or functioning hospitals....
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Drug-resistant ‘Nightmare Bacteria’ Show Worrisome Ability to Diversify and Spread
A family of highly drug-resistant and potentially deadly bacteria may be spreading more widely—and more stealthily—than previously thought, according to a new study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Researchers examined carbapenem resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) causing disease in four U.S. hospitals. They found a wide variety of CRE species. They also found a wide variety of genetic traits enabling CRE to resist antibiotics, and found that these traits are transferring easily among various CRE species..
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FEMA Was Overwhelmed by Hurricanes and Wildfires in 2017, GAO Says
The back-to-back devastation of hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, followed by catastrophic wildfires in California, overwhelmed federal disaster responders in 2017, according to a government report released Tuesday. The unprecedented sequence of storms and fires forced Federal Emergency Management Agency staff to jump from one disaster to another and in some cases use uncertified workers to fill key roles. “They were 30% understaffed when Harvey hit,” said Chris Currie, director of emergency management issues at the Government Accountability Office, which wrote Tuesday’s report. “By the time Maria hit Puerto Rico, they were down to the bottom of the barrel.”
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Health 3.0: A Vision to Unbreak Healthcare
Healthcare is broken. Few argue this point. Dr. Zubin Damania (aka “ZDoggMD”) is releasing an anthem to unbreak healthcare – it’s a parody of Eminem’s critically acclaimed Lose Yourself, with a call to build Health 3.0. ZDoggMD has become an Internet sensation with his musical parodies and characters such as Dr. House of Cards and Doc Vader approaching 100 million views on Facebook and YouTube. Many consider Lose Yourself to be one of the greatest hip hop songs of all time.
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Hortonworks Initiates Precision Medicine Consortium to Explore Next Generation Genomics Open Source Platform
Hortonworks, Inc., a leading innovator of open and connected data platforms, today announced the formation of a new consortium to define and develop an open source genomics platform to accelerate genomics-based precision medicine in research and clinical care. Other founding members include Arizona State University, Baylor College of Medicine, Booz Allen Hamilton, Mayo Clinic, OneOme and Yale New Haven Health...
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Hospital CEOs Behaving Badly And The Devastating Consequences On The Middle Class
When big health insurers propose mergers, it makes for good antitrust enforcement theater to try to block them. However, if government officials want to address anti-competitive activities that have a dramatically bigger impact, they should shift their focus to local market provider M&A activity that consistently show prices increase after the deal is done. However, the most rapacious, anti-competitive practices I’ve seen in my entire career have come from hospitals–frequently from tax-exempt “nonprofits” that would make John D. Rockefeller blush with their brutal actions. The combined impact has created a middle class economic depression that has driven populist presidential campaign success, which was highlighted in a recently released Brookings study.
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How a Bee Sting Saved My Life: Testimony From a Lyme Disease Patient
Ellie Lobel was 27 when she was bitten by a tick and contracted Lyme disease. And she was not yet 45 when she decided to give up fighting for survival. Caused by corkscrew-shaped bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi, which enter the body through the bite of a tick, Lyme disease is diagnosed in around 300,000 people every year in the United States. It kills almost none of these people, and is by and large curable - if caught in time...
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How A City Is Slashing Gun Crime With A Paid Fellowship For Would-Be Shooters
A few years ago, the city of Richmond, California, embarked on a radical new approach to gun violence. Instead of simply arresting, prosecuting, and jailing its shooters, it started helping them. It formed a fellowship program, introduced intensive mentoring, and asked these "high-risk individuals" to agree to wide-ranging life-goals.
The strategy appears to be working. Since 2007—the year it launched its Office of Neighborhood Safety (ONS)—there's been a 76% reduction in firearm-related homicides and a 66% reduction in firearm-related assaults. Helping young men break a cycle of hopelessness and nihilism gets results, officials say...
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Inside Big Pharma's Fight to Block Recreational Marijuana
Marijuana legalization will unleash misery on Arizona, according to a wave of television ads that started rolling out across the state last month. Replete with ominous music, the advertisements feature lawmakers and teachers who paint a bleak future for Arizona’s children if voters approve Proposition 205, a measure that would allow people aged 21 and over to possess an ounce of pot and grow up to six plants for recreational use. “Colorado schools were promised millions in new revenues” when the state approved recreational pot use, says the voiceover in one ad. Instead, schoolchildren were plagued by “marijuana edibles that look like candy”...
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Insurance Policies Are Canceled In New Hurdle For Obamacare
The Obamacare rollout is leading to the cancellation of hundreds of thousands of health insurance plans nationwide, contradicting President Barack Obama’s repeated pledge that people who like their coverage can keep it. Read More »
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