The Government is Drafting a New Birth Control Accommodation

Every since the Hobby Lobby decision in the Supreme Court of the United States of America, the birth control sections of the Affordable Care Act have been facing scrutiny and have been under attack from a number of rightwing and religious organizations and institutions. While there is a form currently available for those that are against subsidizing birth control for their employees, Wheaton College successfully argued that even signing the form was against their religious beliefs because it forces them to participate in a system that would make them choose someone else to subsidize coverages they oppose. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing for those who are pushing for more comprehensive healthcare reforms that ignore religious belief, it’s just a different way for those who disagree to opt out.

To deal with this issue that religious nonprofits are facing, the government is releasing new forms within the month so that they have a way to pass the cost of birth control to a third-party provider without infringing on their religious beliefs. This is neither a step back nor a step forward in the fight for equal women’s rights and so people shouldn’t be too upset about it. They should be upset about the original ruling that put corporations above women when it comes to paying for birth control.

If you’d like to read more, the link is below:

http://ift.tt/1rAIPET

from Scott Houghton and Healthcare Consulting http://ift.tt/1ngZnyT

High School Lacrosse Sees a Rise In Injuries

A study has recently come out that points to a worrisome trend in the world of high school sports, lacrosse players are facing more injuries both during games as well as during practice. This is bad news for both the players who have to deal with the potential for injury as well as for those who want to see lacrosse as a sport that should expand in popularity around the country. While most of the injuries are twists and sprains, over 22 percent are concussions. The authors of the study see the increase in injuries as proof that the medical community as a whole needs to work harder towards understand sports-related injuries and concussions in general.

While boys sustained 67 percent of the injuries studied, both boys and girls were seeing an increase in injuries and scientists and coaches are worried. As lacrosse continues to become more and more popular, these sorts of injuries need to be understood and reigned in so that the sport avoids the negative backlash that football has faced. One of the results of this study is a renewing in the debate over whether girls should wear helmets when they play. While in the past they haven’t, it might be time to revisit this rule to make sure that everyone is as protected as possible.

If you’d like to read more, the article is linked below:

http://ift.tt/1tzfPex

from Scott Houghton and Lacrosse http://ift.tt/1ug0ZgY

Could A Giant Global Chimney Alter Climate Change?

There’s no denying that climate change is one of the most dangerous (and divisive) political and global issues to happen in recent decades. The fact that humans are not only negatively affecting our atmosphere, but are affecting it in ways that we don’t even understand is a terrifying thing to think about. We, as humans, barely know how the world works to sustain itself without human interference and we are now adding to the confusion by speeding up the natural order of things.

To combat out lack of knowledge, as well as the threat of global warming, scientists have been studying the world’s “global chimney”, an area of the Pacific ocean with the warmest ocean temperatures in the world that also vents off massive amounts of warm gasses into the atmosphere. There is a very good chance that this location shapes global climate conditions and affects billions of people all around the world. By studying the chemical composition of the gasses exuded as well as the the actual method of transporting the gasses high into the atmosphere, scientists hope to advance our knowledge of the atmosphere and how it reacts to to climate change and gasses. Scientists also hope to glean some information on how chemicals, gasses, and pollutants are transported through the air and how climate is impacted around the world by what happens in this one location.

If you’d like to read more about this groundbreaking attempt to learn more about our environment, the link is below:

http://ift.tt/1rkjiQ2

from Scott Houghton and Chemistry http://ift.tt/1ngCN9J