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Defects of the skull and facial bones can pose difficult challenges for plastic and reconstructive surgeons. A synthetic material called hyperelastic bone - readily produced by 3D-printing - could offer a powerful new tool for use in reconstructing skull defects, reports a study in the May issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). The experimental material accelerates bone regeneration across skull defects in rats, according to initial results by Ramille N. Shah, PhD, and colleagues of Northwestern University and University of Illinois Health, Chicago. The researchers write, "Hyperelastic bone...

INDIANAPOLIS — Gov. Eric Holcomb will not take action to toll Indiana's interstate highways during his tenure in office, a decision that a key Region lawmaker believes betrays the goals of the state road funding plan Holcomb enacted last spring. The Republican chief executive on Thursday transmitted to the State Budget Committee an interstate tolling plan crafted by the Indiana Department of Transportation, as required by House Enrolled Act 1002 sponsored by state Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso. The plan details how the state could collect approximately $15 billion for road improvements between 2024 and 2045 by imposing tolls of up...

CHICAGO — The Illinois Tollway is examining the possibility of embedding equipment into I-294 that would charge electric vehicles as they drive along the road. The agency is at the start of a $4 billion project to rebuild and widen a 22-mile stretch of I-294, also known as the Tri-State. As part of the project, the Tollway wants to add infrastructure to charge electric vehicles. Off the highway, that could include both conventional charging stations and "super-charger" stations that power up electric cars and trucks more quickly. The agency also is studying "smart-powered lanes," a type of technology being tried...

By the time the I-95 reconstruction is complete, you’ll probably be too old to have to worry about a commute. The same goes for the planners, engineers, managers, and laborers who for more than a decade have worked to rebuild the highway’s 51 miles in Pennsylvania from the ground up. Their careers at PennDot or with contractors will almost surely end before construction does. “I don’t know that I think about too much that I’m not going to be here,” said Elaine Elbich, PennDot’s portfolio manager for the I-95 project. Elbich plans with a span of decades in mind. From...

At a packed town hall meeting in Brooklyn Thursday evening to discuss options for saving a crumbling section of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, city officials from the Department of Transportation came up against some not-unexpected pushback against a proposal that would involve closing the Brooklyn Heights promenade for six years. This was the first public meeting since the city unveiled two separate proposals for the project last week. The meeting opened with a presentation of both options—each projected to cost between $3 billion and $4 billion—while Polly Trottenberg, the city’s transportation commissioner, braced herself for the inevitable backlash. “I understand a...

The Illinois Tollway is examining the possibility of embedding equipment into I-294 that would charge electric vehicles as they drive along the road. The agency is at the start of a $4 billion project to rebuild and widen a 22-mile stretch of I-294, also known as the Tri-State. As part of the project, the Tollway wants to add infrastructure to charge electric vehicles. Off the highway, that could include both conventional charging stations and “super-charger” stations that power up electric cars and trucks more quickly. The agency also is studying “smart-powered lanes,” a type of technology being tried in Sweden...

An interesting phenomenon in politics is the flip flop. What would cause a politician who takes a stand on an issue to reverse himself and take precisely the opposite stand on the same issue? Even more interesting is the about face or volte face. The volte face goes beyond the flip flop because it represents a total and usually lasting shift of course, as when Reagan abandoned the Democratic Party and became a Republican. More interesting even than the volte face is when a whole group or party makes this shift. Perhaps the most dramatic example in our lifetime is...

Many ancient and beautiful churches and monasteries, dating from the Byzantine era and dotting the mountainous landscape of Albania, have fallen into ruin due to years and decades of neglect. However, a program is has recently begun for the reconstruction of ancient temples, with the hope of attracting more tourists, reports tvkultura.ru. Before the First World War Albania was Turkish, and became socialist after the Second. The regime, which was one of the most severe, fell in the early 1990s, but during the reign of Enver Hoxha from 1944 to 1985, churches continued to deteriorate. Churches and mosques were often...

One of the advantages of the present media-driven furor to remove or demolish monuments to the Confederacy is that it is forcing numerous Americans, myself included, to dig deep into the history of the Civil War. And what a strange, convoluted period of history it is! The primary sources are plentiful, rich and deep which makes for endlessly fascinating reading. If the aim of the iconoclasts was to push this period of history even further from the national consciousness, or gloss over it with cherry-picked anecdotes allowing for knee-jerk verdicts, they have failed miserably. For my own part, I have...

Chapter 1 (The rest of the ebook at the source) THE CASE STATED The student of American sociology will find the year 1894 marked by a pronounced awakening of the public conscience to a system of anarchy and outlawry which had grown during a series of ten years to be so common, that scenes of unusual brutality failed to have any visible effect upon the humane sentiments of the people of our land. Beginning with the emancipation of the Negro, the inevitable result of unbribled power exercised for two and a half centuries, by the white man over the Negro,...

The Texas Legislature has passed significant knife law reform by large margins. The bill is on the way to Governor Abbott, and will likely be signed into law. The bill removes bowie knives, dirks, throwing knives, daggers, swords and spears from the list of “illegal knives”.H.B. 1935 in the House with a vote of 131 to 1. The Senate vote has not yet been reported. In the last legislature a similar bill was approved by the Senate unanimously. The ban on knives was first passed in 1871.In 1871, the reconstruction government in Texas passed the bill to forbid the...

Rebuilding and widening the mammoth Central Tri-State Tollway (I-294) is complicated enough given it's the system's most-used road, with up to 185,000 cars and trucks clogging it daily.Throw in a tangle of towns where officials either hate or love the project, plus churn on the tollway board, and the planned redo gets even gnarlier. The Illinois tollway intends to fix the road between 95th Street in the South Suburbs and Balmoral Avenue in Rosemont. There's no final design or budget yet, but a decision is expected soon.Improvements likely could include extra lanes and new interchanges -- exciting news for anyone...

From a charred Hebrew scroll, researchers resurrected one of the earliest known versions of the Old Testament using a new digital reconstruction technique that may prove invaluable in revealing words from other previously unreadable finds, said scientists who plan to make the imaging software freely available. In research published in Science Advances Wednesday, computer analysts at the University of Kentucky in Lexington detailed the technology they used to reveal text within a roll of parchment reduced to charcoal in a burning synagogue 1,500 years ago, “virtually unwrapping” the scroll without ever actually touching the artifact. While important to archaeologists, the...

And why she should listen to Killer Mike. At the the Iowa Democratic forum on Monday night, Hillary Clinton took one of the easiest questions lobbed her way -- Who is your favorite president? -- and blasted it right into the back of her own goal. She did fine with the first part, naming Abraham Lincoln, but then dipped into the history of Reconstruction, bemoaning the vengeful way in which the North targeted the South after Lincoln's assassination. You know, he was willing to reconcile and forgive. And I don't know what our country might have been like had he...

Carly Fiorina criticized fellow GOP presidential contenders Ben Carson and Donald Trump for threatening to boycott CNBC's debate. “Well, I think apparently they’re worried about answering questions for three hours,” she told host Megyn Kelly on Fox News’ “The Kelly File” on Thursday night. “For heaven sakes, we have ten candidates on stage,” Fiorina said. "I don’t think three hours is a long time. “They also apparently asked for prepared statements,” she added of Carson and Trump. "You know, prepared statements are what politicians do. “So, honestly, here are two outsiders supposedly. Donald Trump and Ben Carson – they sound...

Liberal talker Thom Hartmann wonders if "Union" forces should re-occupy the old Confederacy.It seems that for some on the left, the Civil War never really ended. Citing a Politico story slamming southern states, liberal talk show host Thom Hartmann wondered if the United States should "reoccupy the South with Union forces" to restart Reconstruction, Newsbusters reported Saturday. "Now listen to this in the context of my question -- should we, a) reoccupy the South with Union forces and restart Reconstruction which came to a screeching halt in 187- whatever it was, '74 I think, the election of Rutherford B. Hayes,"...

This 1938 Jackson Daily News article tells the story of how the Southern governors fought to level the playing field with the North when it came to railroad freight rates. The railroad commissions kept the freight rates very slanted towards the North. Canada, yes- Canada, enjoyed lower freight rates on railroads than did the South; so slanted weighted against the South were the rates. Thus a builder in New Orleans could get steel shipped more cheaply from Pittsburgh than he could from Birmingham....

Last month marked the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, a moment vividly encapsulated by the frenzied scene of South Vietnamese desperately trying to reach the last helicopter on the roof of the American embassy. April was also the 150th anniversary of the surrender at Appomattox, when Robert E. Lee capitulated to Ulysses S. Grant, bringing the bloodiest fighting of the Civil War to an end.The two episodes seemingly have little to do with each other. But each, in its way, illustrates one of the bleakly recurring themes of US military history: When America's armed forces prematurely abandon the...

Representative James Clyburn (D-SC) told NewsOne Now host Roland Martin Wednesday evening that the recently-announced Benghazi select committee, which just gained five Democratic members, was redolent of the efforts to intimidate black politicians during the Reconstruction. “I seem to remember our history,” Clyburn said. “After reconstruction, when people of color gained political presence throughout the south, they drummed up all kinds of things, indictments and accusations, they drove these people out of the south. Some went to Chicago, some came here to Washington D.C. And I see the same kind of efforts to discredit this president and this administration.” RELATED:...

Looking for a good, balanced (read "not leftist") survey of the period, both political/legislative & social/cultural developments.Don't need anything with an agenda on either side.