Honda Sneaks at the Italian Grand Champ at Mugello

Honda is now very pressured about the four races which will come in five weeks from now. In the press release, the team said that if it was not tough before, now it is. They consider the races as on their maximum intense level that they have no time to be happy-go-lucky since it will begin early July with just one week off between the events in the Netherlands and in Germany.

This makes the situation difficult for both riders and teams. The drivers’ race fitness is now becoming a big issue just like machine development. The up coming events give Honda team no ample time to fine tune bikes between races for the specific demands of each Grand event. The team considers Mugello as a demanding track like any other.

A high-speed carousel of a track is found just 30km north east of Florence Mugello. It has rolling, really bendy turns and a 215mph 1141m main straight. It measures 5.245km classifying it with the longer tracks. Contending here has the high possibility of nerve wrecking actions with nine right and six left turns.

Honda team said the key to a fast lap in this race is rhythm. Race rhythm over the 23-laps of the MotoGP contest will be critical. The 800cc bicycles with the best drive out of the turns and the highest top speeds will run well here.

For 2007, the track has been modified. It added 20,000 capacities with new naturally craved grandstands at the turns in Scarperia and Correntado. A 280m of run-off at Arrabbiata One and Two is also added.

Nicky Hayden, last year, ranked third after winner Valentino Rossi (Yamaha) and second-placer Loris Capirossi (Ducati). And this year, Casey Stoner (Ducati) is leading the MotoGP World Championship with 102 points while Rossi currently has 81. So fans will definitely cheer as loud as they could.

Nonetheless, Honda is optimistic that its Italian Marco Melandri (Gresini Honda

RC212V) will find form on his 800cc machine. Currently, Melandri is overall fourth and just one point behind third placer Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda RC212V).

Melandri said it is nice to be heading to his home race. According to him this was the result of their entire team’s hard work. He added that one’s home grand championship is always both exciting and demanding. He admits that Mugello is one of the most technical circuits on the series of events. But the mere fact that he will be racing in front of his fellowmen makes him proud.

Pedrosa, a second timer in the MotoGP, commented that Mugello is has always been a challenging track and it will be exciting to find out how the technical circuit feels on the new 800s. He added that maximum speed will be a key factor again. Based on the tests of the other teams, racers on the straight road here need to be fast.

Teammate Hayden said that one cannot really imagine the intensity at Mugello until you experience it and he is hoping to get back. One exciting feature of the track he pointed out is the many fast changes of direction which are crucial to a good lap. He added that the ground is starting to get a bit worn and dumpy so they would have their bikes set up.

Shinya Nakano (Konica Minolta Honda RC212V) recalled his 2004 crash in Mugello. According to him, it happened down the very fast start and finish straight. He felt scared upon recalling it but he added that the he fears wears off as he returns to the track with every thing new – team, bike, and tires.

Their team knows their flaw this year. He cannot carry his desired corner speed but Nakano believes they can do better this time.

Carlos Checa (LCR Honda RC212V) is also confident on this race. He believes that their team is now very competitive but still has no enough power. But he added that Michelin is giving them a very good support and they tested different rear tires in France. After this race comes another one in Catalunya and he is excited regarding that matter on his home race.

Meanwhile, Andrea Dovizioso (Scot Honda RS250RW) in the 250cc is hoping that the support of his home crowd can affect his chasing Jorge Lorenzo (Aprilia), the series point leader. Divizioso is currently at 88 while Lorenzo has 120 points. Divizioso said he likes Mugello because the amazing race here is so fast. Though he has not yet won here, he is hoping to win this time. He said he will fight at the highest level possible.

Injured Yuki Takahashi (Scot Honda RS250RW) is currently mending and said he immediately started rehab. His wrist still hurts but the operation was successful. The team will decide whether or not he will be in the race.

Lukas Pesek (Derbi) and Gabor Talmacsi (Aprilia) currently preserves their posts in the 125cc. These experienced racers are expected to be defeated by Honda’s youngster Bradley Smith (Repsol Honda RS125R) after a third place in France.

About Honda

Aside from being a race team, Honda is also a Japanese engine manufacturer and engineering corporation.

Maker of quality Honda AC compressor, Honda is also a producer of other products like trucks, scooters, robots, jets and jet engines, ATV, water craft, electrical generators, marine engines, lawn and garden equipment, and aeronautical and other mobile technologies.

Tiger Woods And His Wife

For keeping intact family Elin Nordegren wants to save marriage，however，Tiger woods wants to return to golf world .

While Elin Nordegren is desperate for their two kids to have a dad, Woods “wants to go back to being a golf star with major endorsements.”

“He wants his clients, who have kids of their own, to think he is a good family man.”

Woods, the insider said, had hoped that his wife’s furor over his serial philandering “would die down so they could discuss the situation and behave rationally.”

Instead, Woods has landed in a Mississippi sex-addiction clinic, and this week could make or break the marriage.

“This is the rough part where the patient has to admit to his wife that he cheated,” a former patient told.

Woods checked himself into the clinic earlier this month under orders from his management team and his wife.

“He didn’t want to go to rehab,” a source reported.

Since then, Woods has discovered the biggest challenge is not the “celibacy contract,” which bans all sexual contact while in treatment. It’s not being allowed to play golf.

“He’s used to going in this robot mode of hitting a ball over and over as a way to escape,” a source told Us. “He can’t do that now.”

While Woods is in therapy, Nordegren has reportedly been hanging at the crib of another high-profile athlete who is also down in the dumps – Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre.

Do you like golf,do you want to have a romantic meeting, come here, there are golf clubs for sale ,you can buy a club then have a good day!

Suburban hospitals learn to compete with big city counterparts

Ten years ago, four hospitals in Bucks and Eastern Montgomery counties had cardiac catheterization or electrophysiology labs. Fewer had advanced cancer diagnosis and care. And robotic surgery was science fiction.

Today most local hospitals have at least two cardiac cath labs. Most have opened comprehensive cancer, cardiac care, orthopedic and diagnostic imaging centers. And at least two have robotic surgery programs.

In less than a decade, at least six radiation oncology centers have opened within a 20-mile radius of Bucks and Eastern Montgomery suburbs; a seventh is expected to open next year in Doylestown.

Same-day surgeries are routine. Next month a second Bucks County hospital will open a hyperbaric oxygen chamber used in wound treatment.

Some hospitals participate in clinical trials testing new drugs or medical devices for major pharmaceutical companies.

The advanced specialty medical care that Philadelphia suburbanites once found only in large urban and academic hospitals is as close as their well-manicured backyards.

“A ton of primary care is being done by specialists – that is why health care is so expensive, said Tom Getzen, a professor in the risk, insurance and health care management at Temple University’s Fox School of Business. “If you don’t have specialty stuff, you can’t get by anymore.”

As a result, suburban hospitals face pressure to expand and add profitable services and the latest advanced technology as a way to attract the best medical professionals, meet higher patient quality standards, and underwrite the less profitable, but necessary, community services and unpaid care.

They also have encountered unforeseen competition for shrinking health insurance dollars: private doctors with the expertise and financial ability to provide identical services.

To meet the growing specialty care demands, some suburban and urban hospitals are forging alliances.

The new radiation oncology center planned at Doylestown Hospital is a joint venture with Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania; last year Philadelphia’s Moss Rehab opened a 12-bed inpatient rehab unit inside Aria Health’s Bucks County campus in Falls.

Other Philadelphia-based health care providers are migrating north in pursuit of privately insured patients seeking lucrative elective procedures.

Fox Chase Cancer Center last year opened a $14 million radiation treatment center – its first suburban satellite – in Chalfont about 20 miles outside its main Philadelphia campus.

The Rothman Institute, the region’s largest private orthopedic practice, recently opened its first specialty hospital in Bensalem.

The medical building it occupies is the former Comprehensive Breast Care Institute of DSI Bucks County, another specialty hospital that closed less than two years after its 2007 opening because of insufficient patient volumes and financial issues.

Deregulation to proliferation

Industry analysts trace Pennsylvania’s suburban specialty explosion with the end of the Certificate of Need (CON) program in December 1996, which removed the requirement that hospitals gain state approval before adding or expanding most medical services and technologies. Some business experts say CON programs contain health care costs.

Before deregulation Philadelphia and its four suburbs had 15 open heart surgery programs – all but three located in Philadelphia. By 2004, 24 hospitals had open-heart surgery- only half located in Philadelphia hospitals.

Between 1997 and 2004, Bucks County hospitals more than quadrupled the number of open- and closed-heart operations from 190 to 853. During the same time period, Philadelphia hospitals experienced a 41 percent drop in cardiac surgeries, from 8,758 to 5,143.

Today, many suburban hospitals offer every type of cardiac and cancer diagnosis and treatment procedure, except the most high-end specialty care such as organ transplants.

“It was almost as if there was a dam holding back a lot of these developments and the dam broke in 1996,” said Craig Holm, senior vice president of Health Strategies and Solutions, a Philadelphia health care strategy company.

Two significant events fueled the suburban market for advanced specialty care, health analysts say. The population explosion created a large enough patient base and greater demand for nearby medical care, and nationally health care dollars began shifting away from expensive inpatient to cheaper outpatient care, a trend that hospitals were eager to pursue.

A decade ago, Pennsylvania had 61 freestanding outpatient diagnostic or surgical centers, most wholly or partially hospital-owned. They included one center in Bucks and nine in Montgomery County.

But as technology improved and prices dropped, private doctors found they also could perform the same profitable medical procedures outside hospitals. As of last year, the number of Pennsylvania outpatient centers was 261 including 15 in Bucks County and 29 in Montgomery County. Most are privately owned.

Outpatient diagnostic and specialty centers are far less expensive to operate since they are less regulated than full-service hospitals, don’t provide a broad range of services, take patients at low-risk for medical complications, and they don’t have to treat the uninsured.

The proliferation of suburban specialty care, while more convenient for patients, doesn’t guarantee better quality, health business experts point out. Many studies show that hospitals that perform the most medical procedures have the best patient outcomes.

A good example is cardiology, said Holm, of Health Strategies and Solutions. Heart centers that don’t perform enough procedures tend to have lower quality levels – it’s the old practice-makes-perfect adage, he said.

As hospitals upgrade medical technology, the older equipment is typically sold to primary doctors and private outpatient centers. But those providers likely have less highly skilled and experienced staff interpreting data and images, said Guy David, an assistant professor of health care management at the Wharton School of Business.

“For me that is the big worry,” he added.

Higher standards

Health experts also worry the specialization trend could force full-service hospitals to reduce or eliminate less profitable services that communities depend on, forcing patients to travel farther and placing greater burdens on hospitals that continue the services.

Last year Grand View Hospital closed its 18-bed behavior health unit, citing underuse and a shift towards outpatient treatment. Grand View and Penn Foundation, which jointly ran the unit, combined lost about $500,000 annually operating the behavior health unit, hospital officials said.

Since 2007 alone, short-term psych beds in Bucks County hospitals have dropped from 113 to 59.

Also last year Abington Memorial Hospital eliminated the maternity unit at Lansdale Hospital, which it purchased in 2008 with officials also cited under use as the reason.

Since 2000, the Philadelphia region has seen 12 maternity units close.

Local hospital administrators, though, insist community need, not profit margins, drive financial and service decisions.

“OB is the perfect example and the perfect example why we are continuing it,” said Dr. Scott Levy, Doylestown Hospital’s chief medical officer. We just don’t feel we could possibly give up OB because of the community need.”

Hospitals also face greater standards of patient care, specifically the speed and level at which they are expected to administer care, which requires better equipment and more highly trained staff, said Eleanor Wilson, vice president of patient services at Doylestown Hospital.

“The bar has been raised everywhere,” she added.

Ten years ago, hospitals were not expected to have a heart attack patient in the catheterization lab for angioplasty in under 90 minutes. Now the standard is moving toward 60 minutes or less. Ten years ago, suspected stroke patients were observed for hours before diagnosis; now clot-busting drug treatment should be administered within four hours of symptom onset.

“You can’t get them downtown fast enough,” Wilson said. “It’s not going to work.”