Pharmacies Respond Inaccurately to Teens Seeking Contraception (LiveScience.com)

Pharmacies may misinform teens about whether they are allowed to buy emergency contraception, which can prevent pregnancy after sex, a new study finds.

Such misinformation is more commonly given by pharmacies in low-income neighborhoods, the study showed.

The researchers called 943 commercial pharmacies in five states. The caller posed as a 17-year-old girl seeking emergency contraception after unprotected sex. Under Food and Drug Administration rules, the emergency contraception drug called Plan B may be sold over the counter (without a prescription) to women ages 17 and older (those ages 16 and younger need a prescription).

But of the pharmacies who said they had emergency contraception available that day, 19 percent said the 17-year-old caller could not buy the emergency contraception under any circumstances. The pharmacies who responded this way usually hung up the phone quickly.

"We were really surprised that so many pharmacies actually ended the conversation at that point," said study researcher Dr. Tracey Wilkinson, a pediatrician at Boston Medical Center.

The misinformation was more common in poor neighborhoods: 23.7 percent of pharmacies in low-income neighborhoods said the teenage caller could not obtain emergency contraception at all, compared with 14.6 percent in other neighborhoods.

In addition, just under half (44 percent) of pharmacies surveyed gave the incorrect age at which a teenager can obtain emergency contraception without a prescription. Most who got it wrong said a person needed to be older than 17 to obtain emergency contraception. In low-income neighborhoods, about 50 percent of pharmacies gave the incorrect age, compared to about 37 percent in other neighborhoods.

The findings suggest that access to emergency contraception is particularly difficult for young women living in low-income areas ? areas that also have higher rates of teen pregnancy, Wilkinson said.

While access to Plan B isn't the only factor that affects teen pregnancy rates, "knowing that teen pregnancy rates are higher in low-income neighborhoods makes this disparity an even bigger problem," Wilkinson said.

The researchers noted their results are based on calls to pharmacies and not in-person visits, which may have yielded different responses. But adolescents may call pharmacies beforehand, and may be discouraged from going to a pharmacy in person if they receive incorrect information about emergency contraception, Wilkinson said.

Pass it on: Women ages 17 and up can buy Plan B without a prescription.

This story was provided by MyHealthNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily staff writer Rachael Rettner on Twitter @RachaelRettner. Find us on Facebook.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/parenting/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20120125/sc_livescience/pharmaciesrespondinaccuratelytoteensseekingcontraception

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Apple Q1 2012 by the numbers

Apple held their Q1 2012 conference call today and, as usual, announced a ton of numbers pertaining to revenue, profit, sales, and more.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/MfPpz6TZQPM/story01.htm

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Google speeds toward a future with driverless cars

Google and other companies have ironed out most of the wrinkles in computer-driven cars, and have even done successful tests on public highways. But policy questions remain, including: how would a police officer pull over an autonomous vehicle?

Here's a question to ponder: would you feel safer in a computer-driven car than you do in one you drive yourself? A self-driving car could succumb to software errors or poor programming -- but on the other hand, it also couldn't fall asleep at the wheel, get lost, or fail to see another vehicle in its blind spot.

Skip to next paragraph

The choice between the two is hypothetical for now, but maybe not for much longer.

Autonomous cars aren't on the roads yet, but the technological hurdles have mostly been met by now: Google, BMW, Toyota, and other companies have been working on prototype vehicles for years, and they've even been tested on public roads (in fact, BMW showed off a new self-driving Series 5 vehicle a few days ago). The questions surrounding driverless cars now aren't so much "Are they safe?" and "How do they work?"; rather, they're things like "Would a driverless car need insurance?" and "How would these cars yield right-of-way to each other?"

Those sorts of questions were the focus of a Silicon Valley symposium last week, at which government regulators and technologists tried to sort through some of the legal and policy challenges posed by autonomous cars. Take, for example, the routine traffic stop: how would a police officer pull over a driverless vehicle? Would that even be necessary, if the vehicles were programmed to always obey traffic laws?

Or, another example: surely everyone reading this has bent traffic laws at one point or another. A rolling stop, perhaps, or cruising a bit above the speed limit. How would a computer, programmed to play by the rules, respond to other drivers who don't always do the same? A car that's too "polite" to go with the flow of traffic might put its passenger at a disadvantage.

There are a lot of very human questions that remain to be answered, and the symposium was only the first few baby steps. But Google and other companies have already made a lot of progress toward a driverless future. Lots of vehicles already come with driver-assisting sensor systems that help to limit human error -- things such as blind-spot cameras and even infrared systems for detecting pedestrians at night. BMW and Volkswagen both plan to offer semi-autonomous cars in the near future -- models that can perform relatively simple tasks, such as passing slower vehicles, on their own.

There's also a growing body of evidence that driverless cars could cut down on automotive injuries and deaths. Google's autonomous driving program, for example, recently completed 200,000 miles of unassisted driving on public highways without an accident. And computers can cut down on the human error that causes the great majority of highway injuries and fatalities.

So how far away is a driverless future? It's tough to say when the policy and legal hurdles ? and lingering technical challenges ? will be cleared. The New York Times' John Markoff quotes Sven. A Beiker, the director of Stanford University's Center for Automotive Research, as saying autonomous vehicles might be available "twenty years from now ... maybe on limited roads." But others, including Google's own engineers, think the cars could be made safe for public use sooner than that. (Markoff also mentions that Google is apparently lobbying for state laws that would enable driverless delivery vans within two or three years.)

Readers, what's your take? Would you welcome a future with autonomous vehicles -- or is driving too much fun for you to relinquish control? Let us know how you feel in the comments.

For more tech news, follow us on Twitter @venturenaut. And don?t forget to sign up for the weekly BizTech newsletter.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/yh5uL9uoTzo/Google-speeds-toward-a-future-with-driverless-cars

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White House suggests Romney release tax forms (AP)

WASHINGTON ? The White House is suggesting GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney should release his tax returns, saying it's "established tradition" for presidential candidates to do so.

Responding to a question about Romney's failure so far to release his returns, White House press secretary Jay Carney stopped short of directly calling on the former Massachusetts governor to make them public. But he noted that when Barack Obama was a presidential candidate he released multiple years of his returns.

Carney said making tax records public has been a standard practice for presidential candidates, though it's not a law.

On Monday night, Romney said that while he might be willing to release his tax returns, he wouldn't do so until tax filing time.

Carney made his comments Tuesday at a White House press briefing.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120117/ap_on_el_pr/us_white_house_romney_taxes

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British police spent $54,000 checking the time (AP)

LONDON ? For Britain's biggest police force, time really is money.

Figures show that London's Metropolitan Police spent 35,000 pounds ($54,000) on calls to a speaking clock service between 2009 and 2011. By recording such calls, police presumably obtained proof of the times they entered into their official written reports.

The force also spent more than 200,000 pounds calling directory inquiries over the same period.

Data released after a freedom of information request from the Press Association news agency shows members of the force made more than 110,000 calls to the speaking clock, at 31 pence a shot.

The force said it was committed to cost-cutting, but there were "evidential and operational reasons" for officers and staff to need to know the exact time, and many had no direct Internet access.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/eurobiz/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120118/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_time_is_money

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Using contrasting colors to reduce serving sizes and lose weight

Public release date: 17-Jan-2012
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Mary-Ann Twist
JCR@bus.wisc.edu
608-255-5582
University of Chicago Press Journals

Choosing the right size and color of your bowls and plates could help you eat less, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

"The bigger your dinnerware, the bigger your portion. If you use larger plates, you could end up serving 9 percent to 31 percent more than you typically would," write authors Koert van Ittersum (Georgia Institute of Technology) and Brian Wansink (Cornell University). The average size of dinner plates has increased by almost 23 percent from since 1900, the authors point out, and eating only 50 more calories a day could result in a five-pound weight gain each year.

In one lab experiment, the researchers asked 225 student participants to pour a specified amount of tomato soup into one of seven different sized bowls: three smaller, three larger, and one control bowl. Consistent with researchers' expectations, participants served less than the target serving size of soup into the smaller bowls, and they served more into the larger bowls.

Follow-up experiments showed that the "bowl bias" is nearly impossible to eliminate with education, awareness, or practice. During two summer camps, larger bowls led people to overserve up to 31 percent more than normal.

One of the few ways to reduce bowl bias is through colorsuch as changing the color of a tablecloth or a plate. In a field study, participants were asked to serve white-sauce or red-sauce pasta on either a large white or a large red plate. On average, changing the color of the plate so it was high contrast reduced how much people served by 21 percent, and changing the color of the tablecloth reduced how much people served by 10 percent.

The study reinforces the little-known Delboeuf illusion, where people believe the size of a circle is much smaller when surrounded by a large circle than a small one. Likewise, when serving onto a small plate, the serving size looks relatively larger than it actually is, which leads people to underserve.

"In the midst of hard-wired perceptual biases, a straightforward action would be to simply eliminate large dinnerwarereplace our larger bowls and plates with smaller ones or contrast ones," the authors conclude.

###

Koert van Ittersum and Brian Wansink. "Plate Size and Color Suggestibility: "The Delboeuf Illusion's Bias on Serving and Eating Behavior." Journal of Consumer Research: August 2012 (published online November 11, 2011).

---

[ | 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.

Public release date: 17-Jan-2012
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Mary-Ann Twist
JCR@bus.wisc.edu
608-255-5582
University of Chicago Press Journals

Choosing the right size and color of your bowls and plates could help you eat less, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

"The bigger your dinnerware, the bigger your portion. If you use larger plates, you could end up serving 9 percent to 31 percent more than you typically would," write authors Koert van Ittersum (Georgia Institute of Technology) and Brian Wansink (Cornell University). The average size of dinner plates has increased by almost 23 percent from since 1900, the authors point out, and eating only 50 more calories a day could result in a five-pound weight gain each year.

In one lab experiment, the researchers asked 225 student participants to pour a specified amount of tomato soup into one of seven different sized bowls: three smaller, three larger, and one control bowl. Consistent with researchers' expectations, participants served less than the target serving size of soup into the smaller bowls, and they served more into the larger bowls.

Follow-up experiments showed that the "bowl bias" is nearly impossible to eliminate with education, awareness, or practice. During two summer camps, larger bowls led people to overserve up to 31 percent more than normal.

One of the few ways to reduce bowl bias is through colorsuch as changing the color of a tablecloth or a plate. In a field study, participants were asked to serve white-sauce or red-sauce pasta on either a large white or a large red plate. On average, changing the color of the plate so it was high contrast reduced how much people served by 21 percent, and changing the color of the tablecloth reduced how much people served by 10 percent.

The study reinforces the little-known Delboeuf illusion, where people believe the size of a circle is much smaller when surrounded by a large circle than a small one. Likewise, when serving onto a small plate, the serving size looks relatively larger than it actually is, which leads people to underserve.

"In the midst of hard-wired perceptual biases, a straightforward action would be to simply eliminate large dinnerwarereplace our larger bowls and plates with smaller ones or contrast ones," the authors conclude.

###

Koert van Ittersum and Brian Wansink. "Plate Size and Color Suggestibility: "The Delboeuf Illusion's Bias on Serving and Eating Behavior." Journal of Consumer Research: August 2012 (published online November 11, 2011).

---

[ | 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/2012-01/uocp-ucc011712.php

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Asian firms may eye RIM platform; Samsung denies interest (Reuters)

TORONTO/SEOUL (Reuters) ? Research In Motion is not on Samsung Electronics Co's immediate shopping list, but the ailing Blackberry maker may still be attractive to Asian smartphone makers looking to compete against Google's Android, the world's fastest growing mobile platform.

Samsung said on Wednesday it has no interest in buying RIM or licensing its operating system, refuting a tech blog report that Canada-based RIM was looking to sell itself to the South Korean technology giant.

Shares of RIM, which has long been the subject of takeover speculation with its stock valuation lingering at multi-year lows, jumped more than 10 percent on the blog report, but fell back after Samsung's denial.

Product delays and profit warnings have eroded confidence in RIM, once at the cutting edge of smartphone technology for business users, and its management.

But RIM, still valued at above $9 billion, may hold enough allure to interest Asian vendors like LG Electronics Inc, HTC and ZTE, which don't have their own platform, said a source at a major Asian handset maker.

"As we don't have our own platform, it's (RIM) an attractive option to look into and we're flexible about anything," said the source, who has direct knowledge of the matter, but who declined to be named as he is not authorized to talk to the media.

Samsung has its own platform called bada and is seeking to boost its presence by merging it with a platform backed by chipmaker Intel.

"We haven't considered acquiring the firm and are not interested in (buying RIM)," said Samsung spokesman James Chung, adding that Samsung had not been approached by the Canadian firm for a takeover and was not interested in licensing RIM's mobile platform.

The Boy Genius Report website cited an unidentified source as saying RIM co-Chief Executive Jim Balsillie was meeting with companies interested in either licensing its software or buying a part or all of RIM, with Samsung leading the pack.

After Samsung's denial, Nasdaq-listed RIM shares tumbled 5.3 percent to $16.55 in extended trading, after closing up 8 percent at a 6-week high of $17.47. The stock rose as much as 11.1 percent.

LICENSING DEAL?

Samsung may not be interested in buying RIM outright, but some analysts say that adding BlackBerry software may be a good fit with its strategy of bolstering software capability and adding corporate subscribers.

"We see RIM licensing BlackBerry 10 and charging $10 per device," Jefferies analyst Peter Misek said in a note, referring to RIM's operating system.

"Samsung and HTC would do this to gain access to RIM's subscriber base, diversify away from sole dependence on Android and create more enterprise exposure. BlackBerry 10 is effectively an Android derivative and, therefore, many bridges are possible."

Samsung has traditionally focused on growing its business from within and has no track record of major deals in recent years. In 2008, it withdrew a $5.9 billion unsolicited bid for flash memory card maker SanDisk due to the U.S. firm's deepening losses and uncertain outlook.

But it has since become more flexible on M&A as the hardware-focused firm seeks to boost its software capabilities to counter Apple and Google.

"It'd be helpful for Samsung or HTC to license BlackBerry OS so they can gain access to the corporate space," said Vincent Chen, an analyst at Yuanta Securities.

Shares in Samsung slid 1.1 percent in Seoul on Wednesday, underperforming the main KOSPI share index, which slipped 0.3 percent.

Jefferies' Misek said RIM could announce a deal within three months, and the appointment of a new chairperson could speed up the process. A spokesman for RIM declined to comment on the blog report.

Balsillie and fellow co-CEO Mike Lazaridis also share a role as board chairman, but, after pressure from investors, a committee made up of the rest of RIM's board is due to report this month on possible changes to the unusual structure.

RIM already turned down takeover overtures from Amazon.com Inc and other potential buyers because it prefers to fix its problems on its own, people with knowledge of the situation told Reuters recently.

RIM's shares have jumped nearly 40 percent since December 21, when Reuters reported such interest, but the stock is still down almost 75 percent from a year ago.

(Additional reporting by Clare Jim in TAIPEI; Editing by Frank McGurty, David Chance and Ian Geoghegan)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120118/ts_nm/us_rim

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TiVo Premiere Finally Gets Multi-Room Streaming and HD Guide UI [Updates]

If you've got a TiVo Premiere, you're going to be happy with the latest software update that adds some long-desired features. Not only can you now stream video from one TiVo Premiere to another TiVo Premiere in your own house, but all the TiVo Guide menus have been updated to HD.

I've been testing out the update for a week or so now and it's pretty wonderful. I don't have another Premiere to stream video to, so I couldn't test that, but the updated HD menus?which includes a mini guide during live shows that shows a lot more info than before?works really well.

There are smaller additions like including Hulu Plus in their search, and a revamped clock in live TV, which go fairly far in making the experience feel new. The trend these days is to ditch cable and do everything using Netflix, Hulu Plus and other streaming/downloading services, but if you really want to watch shows live (especially sports), it's hard to cobble together something that matches cable.

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/EX_gkNU2uig/tivo-premiere-finally-gets-multi+room-streaming-and-hd-guide-ui

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Gadgets Week in Review: Anticipate

Here are some posts from the past week on TechCrunch Gadgets: The Road To CES: A Peek Inside Our Gadget Bags The Logitech Cube Attempts To Redefine The Humble Mouse Mogees: Multitouch On Any Surface With A Contact Microphone Miss Your Cat? Now Fluffy Can Send You Tweets All Day Long What Witchery Is This? A Cardboard Camping Pot?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/BhMjoRsc16U/

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