HAYS, Kan. - Today, the Kansas NOW Political Action Committee announced its endorsements for the candidates running in the 2010 primary and general elections. Kari Ann Rinker, state coordinator of Kansas NOW, explains, "These endorsements indicate the PAC's approval of candidates who are, or promise to be, leaders in promoting NOW's issues, or candidates whose voting records, if they exist, demonstrate this support."

Kansas candidates were asked to respond to 7 survey questions and provide comments. The PAC's survey questions addressed issues such as gender equality, access to reproductive health care and legislation reducing violence against women.

Once the surveys were tabulated and reviewed by the KS NOW PAC Committee, decisions were made to endorse 45 Kansas Democrats and 11 Kansas Republicans. For the complete list of endorsements, click here.

HAYS, Kan. - Researchers have now found that the destruction of old bone during normal skeletal regrowth - a process known as resorption - is necessary to maintain a healthy level of glucose in the blood. We now know that the skeleton plays an important role in regulating blood sugar. The finding, published in Cell, is important because it may lead to a greater understanding of how to treat both diabetes type 2 as well as osteoporosis.

This study has further illuminated how bone controls this process.

HAYS, Kan. - Even though literature suggests that promoting active patient involvement in care may improve doctor-patient communication and clinical outcomes, in November 2009, a report published by researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine suggested that most patients are dissatisfied with the way they receive results of tests and want more access to information in their medical records, specifically, detailed, lay-language results from the tests. (Patients Want Faster Access to Better Medical Records)

Technology has placed vast amounts of medical information literally a mouse click away. Yet what often may be central - a doctor's notes about a patient visit - has traditionally not been part of the discussion. In effect, such records have long been out of bounds.

Now in a new report in the July 20 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers speculate about the risks and rewards of making clinicians' notes transparent to patients.

HAYS, Kan. - In regard to federal assistance for state Medicaid funding, a recent survey found that voters oppose cutting funding to nursing homes so strongly that 62% of voters favored additional federal funding for Medicaid.

The new national survey from The Mellman Group found that Americans, by significant margins, strongly support passage of federal Medicaid relief. Voters support the use of federal funding to prevent additional cuts at the state level.

The new survey findings further punctuate the impact of Medicaid cuts enacted in state capitols across the nation on elderly and disabled constituents - and the threat of more to come as state governors face ongoing budget crises.

Results also show that voters vehemently oppose any additional state Medicaid cuts initiated by their state legislatures.

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. - In her first appearance with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Sen. Tom Holland, state Sen. Kelly Kultala said that she will file paperwork to begin campaigning as the Democratic candidate for Kansas Lieutenant Governor. Kultala, 51, is in her first term in the state senate serving District 5, which includes Ft. Leavenworth, Leavenworth, Lansing, western Kansas City, and Bonner Springs.

In announcing his choice of Sen. Kultala as his running mate, Sen. Holland contrasted their moderate campaign against that of Sam Brownback, who he refers to as the "Washington Insider,"

"Sam Brownback says he's a fiscal conservative, but he forked over billions in earmarks to his campaign donors. He pretends to be a champion of Main Street, but he treated Kansas as an obstacle to Wall Street's bottom line."

HAYS, Kan. - After leading the Allied victory in World War II, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was asked to speak in Canada's capitol city of Ottawa. He said, "I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense," he emphasized later, speaking to a gathering of the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 16th, 1953.

In preparing to leave the White House in January 1961, President Eisenhower made these remarks in his farewell speech ...

HAYS, Kan. - Is empathy declining among young adults? At least one set of researchers has reached this conclusion. A University of Michigan study shows that today's college students are not as empathetic as college students of the 1980s and '90s. The study, presented in Boston at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, analyzes data on empathy among almost 14,000 college students over the last 30 years.

College kids today are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago, as measured by standard tests of this personality trait.

Compared to college students of the late 1970s, the study found, college students today are less likely to agree with statements such as "I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective" and "I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me."