Health and Science

Bowing to pressure from the hospital industry and Congress, the Obama administration on Wednesday delayed releasing its new hospital quality rating measure just a day before its planned launch. The new "overall hospital quality" star rating aimed to combine the government's disparate efforts to measure hospital care into one easy-to-grasp metric. The new star rating boils 62 of the measures down into a unified rating of one to five stars, with five being the best. more »

A bill seeks to reauthorize and modernize the Small Business Development Centers, Women's Business Centers (WBCs), and Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) programs. Another bill would authorize the National Science Foundation to "encourage its entrepreneurial programs to recruit and support women to extend their focus beyond the laboratory and into the commercial world." And A bill to revise the crime of sexual assault under Article 120 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice to include committing a sexual act upon another person by using position, rank, or authority to obtain compliance by the other person. more »

Jo Freeman writes: Rules written by the Department of Health and Human Services for the ACA provided a way for religious organizations, such as universities, hospitals and social service groups, to opt-out of providing coverage by notifying their insurer or the government that their religious beliefs preclude contraceptive coverage. more »

The Book of the Seven Climes is the earliest known study focused wholly on alchemical illustrations. The 'climes' (from which our word 'climate' is derived) are the seven latitudinal zones into which the astronomer and geographer Claudius Ptolemy divided the inhabited world in the 2nd century AD. more »