Hotel In California - Back Pain: Doctors Increasingly Ignore Clinical Guidelines

Source - http://www.latimes.com/
By - Monte Morin
Category - Hotel In California
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Hotel In California

Doctors have increasingly ignored clinical guidelines for the treatment of routine back pain by prescribing powerful and addictive narcotics instead of other recommended painkillers and by recommending unwarranted diagnostic imagery, according to a new study.

Researchers at Massachusetts' Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School based their conclusion on an examination of roughly 24,000 cases of spine problems in national databases from 1999 to 2010. Their findings appeared online Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine.

"Well-established guidelines for routine back pain stress conservative management, including use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) or acetaminophen and physical therapy," wrote lead author Dr. John Mafi and his colleagues.

Despite these guidelines, researchers found that doctors were doing much the opposite.

Although physical therapy referrals remained steady during the study period, prescriptions for narcotic painkillers jumped 51%. Simultaneously, prescriptions for non-opiate drugs had fallen by the same amount.

Study authors noted that a 2007 analysis found that narcotics provided little to no benefit in cases of acute back pain and that they had also failed to prove effective in cases of chronic back pain.

The jump in narcotic prescriptions therefore raised "significant concerns," the authors wrote, and may be linked to a larger national crisis involving prescription drug deaths.

"Although we lack adequate data to make firm recommendations on narcotic medications, which may be indicated in certain instances, such increases in narcotic prescriptions may be contributing to a current crisis in public health: The rapid increase in narcotic overdose deaths parallels a reported 300% increase in the U.S. sales of prescription narcotics since the 1990s."

Researchers also identified "an inappropriate increase" in the use of "low value" diagnostic imaging that could lead to future cancer in patients because of exposure to ionizing radiation.

While medical guidelines recommended that doctors avoid early imaging or other aggressive treatments, except in rare cases, researchers found that the use of computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) had increased by 57%. 

 

Researchers say that such scans have proved to be of little benefit to patients who lack "red-flag symptoms" and that overuse of the technology has been identified in previous studies as well.

"In 2007, a projected 1,200 additional future cancers were created by the 2.2 million lumbar CTs performed in the United States," the authors wrote.

The authors say that under established treatment guidelines, routine back pain will usually improve within 3 months.

However, referral rates to other doctors, presumably for surgery, had doubled during the study period. (Early MRI for acute back pain was associated with an eight-fold increased risk of surgery, researchers found.)

"The 106% increase in referrals to other physicians is a previously unrecognized and important finding because such referrals likely contributed to the recent increase in costly, morbid and often ineffective outpatient spine operations observed in other studies," the authors wrote.

Nationally, back and neck problems are responsible for more than 10% of all visits to primary care physicians and account for $86 billion in healthcare spending every year.

According to study authors, spending on these conditions has increased more rapidly than overall health expenditures from 1997 to 2005.

"With healthcare costs soaring, improvements in the management of back pain represent an area of potential cost savings for the healthcare system while also improving the quality of care," the authors concluded.

Hampton Hotels Santa Clarita - Move Over iPad Mini -- New Nexus 7 Is Current Small Tablet Champ

Source - http://www.forbes.com/
By - Larry Magid
Category - Hampton Hotels Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

 

Hampton Hotels Santa Clarita

I’ve been using the new Nexus 7 since it was announced last week and, frankly, my iPad mini is starting to look a little weak by comparison.

Unlike the mini, which doesn’t use the higher resolution Retina display like the latest version of its full-sized iPad and latest iPhones, the Nexus 7 has a high definition display (1920×1200/323 pixel compared to mini’s 1024 x 768/163 pixel) screen and is capable of showing 1080p HD video. The difference is noticeable when you read or watch HD video but, I have to admit, that iPad mini is still pretty good when it comes to resolution.   I used both to read parts of a book using Amazon’s Kindle app and, while both were quite clear, I could see that the text was somewhat sharper on the Nexus’ higher resolution screen.

Both have a 1.2 megapixel front and a 5 megapixel rear facing cameras.  Here are the full specifications for the new Nexus 7 and here are the iPad mini specs.

As per price, the 16 GB Nexus 7 costs $229 while the mini starts at $329. That’s a $100 difference for pretty similar hardware configurations.  Google also doesn’t ding you as much for extra storage. A 32GB Nexus (WiFi only) costs $269, while Apple charges $429 for its 32 GB model.

Lighter and narrower but a bit thicker

Bottom line — because it’s not as wide,the Nexus 7, it  not only fits well in the hand but takes up a bit less space in handbags and pockets. It fits pretty easily into the front pockets of my Docker khaki slacks. Of course you could argue that the mini’s extra screen real estate is a bonus compared to the Nexus more petite form factor.

Software

The biggest difference between the two tablets is Android vs iOS.  This is where both reasonable and unreasonable people can argue depending on personal preference. For many of us, the best interface is the one we know so if you’re already an iOS user you’re likely to prefer the familiar iPad interface. Many Android users will likely feel the same about their operating system.

Although it’s hard to argue against Apple’s elegant U.I. and there may be even more to love about  iOS 7 that comes out this fall, I have to give Google credit for — over time — improving and fine tuning Android into an excellent platform for both phones and tablets. One thing I like about the new 4.3 (which comes on the Nexus 7) is that you can create restricted accounts, which makes it a lot more family friendly for parents who want to let their kids use their tablets without being able to buy apps or make in-app purchases or visit naughty websites.

Hotels In Northern California - Android Jelly Bean 4.3 Shines On Nexus 7 But It’s No Key Lime Pie 5.0

Source - http://www.stableytimes.com/
By -  Jerry Miller
Category - Hotels In Northern California
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Hotels In Northern California

Android 4.3 shines as a medium sized update on the new Nexus 7, but it’s not the ‘droid most users were looking for. Android users will have to wait awhile for the Key Lime Pie 5.0 software update, as Google prepares to release yet another Jelly Bean update next week. As far as consolation prizes go, Jelly Bean 4.3 update is not a bad one. In fact when the beta build of 4.3 was first discovered it was thought to be Key Lime Pie based on the significance of what it brings to the table, until the code letters of its build name revealed it to be yet another Jelly Bean release. Now the question is just how many current Android phones and tablets will be compatible with 4.3 upon its release.

Android 4.3 will seek to improve upon that, with full compatibility with Google’s own new Nexus 7 next week. And if vendors are serious about moving beyond the fragmentation era, Samsung and HTC will announce that their Galaxy S4 and One, respectively, have also been built to be forward compatible with the new Jelly Bean release. But while which fraction of Android users will be able to take advantage of the 4.3 update is still in question, it does serve up a decent set of improvements for an x.x release. It’s just no Key Lime Pie, whose features are still unknown but whose 5.0 designation means it’ll bring a significant overhaul to the platform.

Accommodation In Santa Clarita - Here’s Why Apple’s iPad Sales Are Falling

Source - http://wallstcheatsheet.com/
By - Nathanael Arnold
Category - Accommodation In Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

 

Accommodation In Santa Clarita

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) saw a decline in iPad sales for the first time according to its recently released third-quarter results. The Cupertino, California-based company sold 14.6 million iPads during the June quarter, 2.4 million less than the amount it sold in the same quarter last year.

Although this statistic alarmed some Apple watchers, the year-over-year decline in iPad sales is hardly surprising considering the fact that Apple released a new iteration of its tablet in March 2012. In this sense, comparing iPad sales figures from the June quarter in 2012 to the same quarter in 2013 is like comparing apples to oranges.

However, it should also be noted that the majority of the iPad sales drop is directly attributable to a “1.9 million unit channel inventory swing,” as stated by Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer during the third-quarter results conference call, Yahoo Finance reports. “We built 1.2 million units of iPad channel inventory in the June quarter last year whereas we reduced channel inventory by 700,000 units in the June quarter this year.”

The days of paying for costly software upgrades are numbered. The PC will soon be obsolete. And BusinessWeek reports 70% of Americans are already using the technology that will replace it. Merrill Lynch calls it "a $160 billion opportunity." Computing giants including IBM, Yahoo!, and Amazon are racing to be the first to cash in on this PC-killing revolution. Yet, a small group of little-known companies have a huge head start. Get the full details on these companies, and the technology that is destroying the PC, in a free video from The Motley Fool. Enter your email address below to view this stunning video.

Hotel Reservations In Santa Clarita - SIM Cards Have Finally Been Hacked, And The Flaw Could Affect Millions Of Phones

Source - http://www.forbes.com/
By - Parmy Olson
Category - Hotel Reservations In Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Hotel Reservations In Santa Clarita

Smartphones are susceptible to malware and carriers have enabled NSA snooping, but the prevailing wisdom has it there’s still one part of your mobile phone that remains safe and un-hackable: your SIM card.

Yet after three years of research, German cryptographer Karsten Nohl claims to have finally found encryption and software flaws that could affect millions of SIM cards, and open up another route on mobile phones for surveillance and fraud.

Nohl, who will be presenting his findings at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on July 31, says his is the first hack of its kind in a decade, and comes after he and his team tested close to 1,000 SIM cards for vulnerabilities, exploited by simply sending a hidden SMS. The two-part flaw, based on an old security standard and badly configured code, could allow hackers to remotely infect a SIM with a virus that sends premium text messages (draining a mobile phone bill), surreptitiously re-direct and record calls, and — with the right combination of bugs — carry out payment system fraud.

Payment fraud could be a particular problem for mobile phone users in Africa, where SIM-card based payments are widespread. The deployment of so-called NFC payment technology, already slow to take off, could also be at risk, Nohl says, as well as the ability for carriers to track charges to each caller’s account.

There’s no obvious pattern to the flaw beyond the premise of an older encryption standard. “Different shipments of SIM cards either have [the bug] or not,” says Nohl, who is chief scientist at risk management firm Security Research Labs. “It’s very random.”

In his study, Nohl says just under a quarter of all the SIM cards he tested could be hacked, but given that encryption standards vary widely between countries, he estimates an eighth of the world’s SIM cards could be vulnerable, or about half a billion mobile devices.

Nohl, who was profiled by Forbes’ Andy Greenberg in 2011 for his work on breaking mobile encryption standards, believes it unlikely that cyber criminals have already found the bug. Now that word of the vulnerability is out, he expects it would take them at least six months to crack it, by which time the wireless industry will have implemented available fixes.

That effort may already be underway. Nohl says at least two large carriers have already tasked their staff with finding a patch for the SIM vulnerability, which they will share with other operators through the wireless trade body GSMA.

“Companies are surprisingly open to the idea of working cooperatively on security topics because the competition is somewhere else,” says Nohl. “The competition is organized crime, not AT&T versus T-Mobile.” (The situation in similarly in finance, where payment services like MasterCard, Visa, and American Express will work together under  industry association EMVco to improve security standards for smart cards.)

The market for SIMs is almost entirely fed by mobile carriers, and supplied by two leading global vendors, Gemalto and Oberthur Technologies. Both have profited heavily from the huge growth in mobile handsets: ten years ago there were 1 billion SIM cards worldwide, and today there are more than 5 billion, says ABI Research analyst John Devlin, though the market is slowly reaching a plateau. SIMs are thought to be one of the most secure parts of a phone, he added, and as the carrier’s property, are “key to their relationship between you and I, the subscriber.”

Vodafone would not answer questions about the level of encryption its SIM cards used, and referred all media questions to GSMA. Both Verizon and AT&T said they knew of Nohl’s research, but said their SIM profiles were not vulnerable to the flaw. AT&T added that it had used SIMs with triple Data Encryption Standards (3DES) for almost a decade; Verizon did not specify why its SIMs were not vulnerable.

The London-based GSMA said it had looked at Nohl’s analysis and concurred that “a minority of SIMs produced against older standards could be vulnerable.” It said it had already provided guidance to network operators and SIM vendors who could be impacted by the flaw. “There is no evidence to suggest that today’s more secure SIMs, which are used to support a range of advanced services, will be affected,” a spokesperson added.

Vacations In Santa Clarita - Leap Motion: Control Your PC Through Air Gestures

Source - http://www.usatoday.com/
By - Edward C. Baig
Category - Vacations In Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Vacations In Santa Clarita

You're not about to replace your mouse, trackpad, keyboard or even touch-screen as the chief ways to control your computer. But then you start using the new Leap Motion Controller and -- at least in some circumstances -- you can imagine relegating those other devices to the bench. 

Using the compact Leap Motion box, I was able reach out into the open space in front of my computer and pluck a digital harp, manipulate a three-dimensional rendering of molecular structures, dissect a frog and — in the popular game of the same title -- Cut The Rope. I didn't make physical contact with the computer or any other devices.

Leap Motion is a gesture-driven peripheral for PCs and Macs that I've been fascinated with ever since the South By Southwest Interactive conference in March where I had my first hands-on — nope, make that hands-above -- experience with the clever motion controller. Though my experience at home with Leap Motion wasn't perfect, I'm no less intoxicated not only by what it can already do but by what it promises to do in the future. 

For now, you can draw or paint with your fingers, mold 3-D objects, or explore Google Earth through hand gestures. You can interact using objects too.

Today, Leap Motion finally starts shipping to customers who preordered it for $79.99, considerably cheaper than the $249.99 Microsoft Kinect sensor that Leap Motion is inevitably compared to. Leap Motion reaches Best Buy stores July 28. The controller was originally supposed to ship in May.

The smallish (0.5 by 1.2. by 3-inch) rectangular unit plugs into the USB ports on a PC or Mac — both long and short proprietary USB cables are supplied. Once in place, the controller can detect even the subtlest hand and finger movements, anywhere inside an interaction area that goes about two feet above the controller, two feet out to either flank (150 degree angle) and a depth of two feet on each side (120 degree angle). You can use multiple hands and fingers, depending on the gestures required in the specific apps that work with the controller. For that matter, another person can stick their hands into this invisible cone of detection too and have the computer respond provided the hands aren't somehow overlapping in space. 

Inside the controller are two camera sensors and a pair of infrared LEDs, but the real wizardry arrives with the software. Leap Motion claims an accuracy level of up to 1/100th of a millimeter, and for the most part I found it responsive, though a couple of the apps that work with it crashed in my tests on an iMac and at least one lagged a bit. Figuring out and mastering the gestures within certain apps may take some trial and error -- at times the interaction gets a bit finicky.

You find compatible apps inside the aptly named Airspace store. Many are free, though others fetch 99 cents on up. Leap Motion has around 75 apps a modest but reasonably diverse sum. Some apps work on PCs and Macs, some just on one platform or the other. 

The Airspace store is nicely laid out, with sections devoted to music & entertainment apps, creative tools, science, education, productivity & utilities, and other categories. In the "experimental" apps section, you'll find Touchless for Mac and Touchless for Windows, free apps that let you create a "virtual trackpad" in the air for interacting with your computer. I tried the Mac version but didn't exactly excel at it right away. As I wrote this review inside Microsoft Word, I was able to scroll up or down by moving my entire hand towards the computer screen with my hand and then raising it up or down but it was just as easy to manipulate the trackpad the old fashion way. Through Touchless, you can do a "click" gesture by pointing a single finger towards the screen.

I didn't quite master the $2.99 Swoosh DJ app from a developer called Just Add Music Media either. But I had a good time with it anyway. Working in tandem with the music grooving inside iTunes, Swoosh simulates a spinning vinyl disc. Through gestures and movements, you can create reverb effects, or pause and restart a song. But for some reason whenever I tried playing songs in iTunes after using Swoosh, the volume within iTunes was turned all the way down.

I also had fun trying out the $3.99 Frog Dissection simulation app from Emantras, which lets you explore the inner organs of the amphibian wielding virtual scissors, scalpels and forceps -- mercifully without formaldehyde or a mess. 

I can't say it is easier reading the New York Times via their free Leap Motion app, than through more traditional methods. In fact, you feel slightly silly twirling your fingers in the air to navigate from one article to another, pointing and holding your finger to select what to read, and drawing clockwise circles to scroll up or counterclockwise circles to scroll down. And then when you're done reading the piece, you shake your entire hand to escape, which also isn't natural.

For now, you'll need the Leap Motion controller itself to exploit the company's technology. But Leap Motion has struck deals with Asus and Hewlett-Packard to embed 3-D motion control into machines from those computer makers.

During South by Southwest, Leap Motion marketing vice president Michael Zagorsek told me that the company hoped to make the user interface disappear altogether. "I'm not clicking on something to do something else, I'm not touching something to do something else. There is no interface, it's just me represented here," Zagorsek said.

To be sure, you'll still rely on the mouse and keyboard most of the time. But with Leap Motion you won't always have to.

Meeting Space Santa Clarita - This Is Why You Dislike Bing

Source - http://betanews.com/
By - Robert Johnson
Category - Meeting Space Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Meeting Space Santa Clarita

I love Bing. There aren’t many products (Xbox) that I’ll admit to being a fanboy of but Bing is getting pretty close to that status for me. I’m an oddity because most people don’t use Bing at all; either because they’ve used it and didn’t get the results they wanted, or based on word of mouth about it being so terrible. I don’t know where you fall, but I would bet most of you reading this don’t use or even like Bing. That’s unfortunate because you’re missing out.

Yes, Bing is good. But why do so many people hate it? Why do so many googlers refuse to even give it a try? Why do those who actually do give it a try, enter one search query, fail to get the results they want, and go back to Google, never giving Bing a second chance?

In April, SurveyMonkey conducted a study comparing Bing and Google. 641 test participants were given two pages of search results, one with Bing branding and the other Google, and were asked which results they preferred. Participants preferred the Google results.

In another survey 262 participants were given the same results but this time the branding was swapped: Google results labeled Bing and Bing results labeled Google. More people preferred the Bing results labeled Google.

When you look at both studies an interesting thing appears: more people preferred the Bing results labeled Google than the Google results labeled as Google. According to Matt Wallaert of the Bing team:

Before explaining the psychological forces at work here, let me put to rest any concerns of corporate trickery. Bing wasn’t involved in this study in any way. We didn’t even know it was happening until after the results were released, and since Google recently became a prominent investor in SurveyMonkey, it would be hard to argue that SurveyMonkey had a pro-Bing bias. To the best of our understanding from the outside, this was impartial, data-driven research done by an internal team at SurveyMonkey.

He goes on to explain why people chose based on brand rather than quality. The explanation is found in a psychology concept known as confirmation bias. According to the most accurate encyclopedia on the planet (that was a joke), confirmation bias is a "tendency of people to favor information that confirms their hypotheses".

Confirmation bias has to do with how people process information, particularly any way in which people avoid rejecting their assumptions whether they are searching for evidence, interpreting it, or recalling it from memory.

The Search for Evidence

In this bias, people hold a hypothesis which they assume to be true. They test it in such a way that requires an affirmative answer that supports their hypothesis. In other words, they tend to look for the evidence they would expect if their hypothesis were true. For example, if I assume Bing returns bad results, then I would be intentionally looking for all the bad results instead of the good ones.

Interpreting Evidence

In this bias a person will make a judgment call on the evidence to support their original hypothesis. For instance, again, if a person with a "Bing sucks" attitude, arrives at Bing results, they will interpret those results as bad. But if shown the same results labeled as Google, they will interpret them as good.

Recalling Evidence

Information is remembered selectively. That means that when a person has a positive experience with a service they inherently have a negative assumption about (i.e. Bing) they will only remember the ways in which that service provided a negative experience.

So what?

The point I am trying to make is this, perhaps confirmation bias is the reason why Bing is hated by so many people. Regardless of the fact that in some cases Bing still lags behind Google, in pure search results, I can count on one hand in the past two years where Bing has failed me. From the Bing blog:

Think of it this way: have you ever tried using Bing, not found what you wanted, and then immediately went back to using Google because "Google is better at search"? But then when you use Google and it doesn’t give you the right results, you change your search and try again because you "searched wrong", rather than giving Bing a try? That’s the confirmation bias: if you were truly trying to find out which search engine was better, you’d give them an equal chance to give you right and wrong answers.

This happens a lot. I’ve had people tell me that they’ve tried Bing and did not find what they were looking for. But something tells me that they were not looking hard enough because they didn’t overcome their inherent bias against Bing. I understand that Bing is not perfect and still has some growing to do. Remember, Google wasn’t perfect either and it took time for it to grow into what it is today. Bing is innovating at a rapid pace and although I would love to see it add features a little bit quicker, I’m a happy Bing user.

The Solution

My solution to this problem is this. Try Bing for 30 days. In other words, use Bing and nothing else for 30 days; use the maps, local search, general search, images and travel for 30 solid days and let me know how it goes. This is what I did back in 2010, about one year after Bing launched. I decided to give it an honest try. And I haven’t been back to Google since. Yes, I occasionally use Google when I don’t find what I need on Bing, but eventually I will stop using Google altogether because this behavior has not yielded any positive results for me: if I don’t find it on Bing, I typically don’t find it on Google either. Bing is just that good.