“Breaking Bad” to get the “MythBusters” treatment

























LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Finally, the world might find out if it’s truly a bad idea to dissolve a body with hydrofluoric acid in a bathtub.


Discovery Channel‘s reality show “MythBusters” – which re-enacts scenarios from movies, TV and urban legend to test their accuracy with scientific methodology – is filming a “Breaking Bad”-themed episode, a spokesman for the cable network told TheWrap on Friday.





















“Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan and star Aaron Paul – who plays meth manufacturer Jesse Pinkman on the series — will be on hand as “MythBusters” stars Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage put the logic of the hit AMC drama.


No other details, such as when the episode will air, were available.


Back in June, Gilligan said in an interview that he’d like to do a “Breaking Bad”/”MythBusters” crossover.


“I’d dig seeing those guys prove or disprove some of the crazy stuff we’ve done on ‘Breaking Bad,’” Gilligan enthused.


While they’re at it, perhaps they can get to the bottom of whether that electromagnet episode would have been possible in the real world.


EW.com first reported the news of the “Breaking Bad”/”MythBusters” crossover.


TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Israel’s Neuronix offers new Alzheimer’s treatment

























TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Israel-based Neuronix, which has developed a non-invasive medical device to help to treat Alzheimer’s disease, expects the system to be approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration in late 2014.


The device, which combines electromagnetic stimulation with computer-based cognitive training, is already approved for use in Europe, Israel and several Asian countries. In Singapore it is approved for clinical trial use and the application for registration of the product is still under evaluation.





















“You stimulate the brain on a biological level as well as on a cognitive level,” Neuronix CEO Eyal Baror told Reuters, saying this double approach created longer-lasting benefits.


The device, which consists of a chair containing an electronic system and software in the back and a coil placed at the head, has been tested on mild to moderate Alzheimer’s patients who suffer from dementia but are not totally dependent.


The system is in trials at Harvard Medical School/Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre. Patients are treated for one hour a day, five days a week over six weeks.


“We see improvement lasting for 9-12 months and the good thing is that patients can return and undergo treatment again,” Baror said. “If out of 10 years the patients have left to live we can keep them at home in a relatively mild state of the disease for three, four, five years, it’s a lot.”


According to Alvaro Pascual-Leone, director of the hospital’s Berenson-Allen Centre for Non-invasive Brain Stimulation, brain stimulation – or transcranial magnetic stimulation – involves a very low current applied to a specific part of the brain and is approved by the FDA for treatment of a variety of ailments and diagnostic applications.


“The application in Alzheimer’s disease and in combination with cognitive training is novel,” Pascual-Leono said in a phone interview from Boston.


About 20 percent of patients experience a mild headache but there are no long-term negative effects, he said.


Pascual-Leone, who is principal investigator in the Harvard trial, said that of 12 patients in the study, six received the real treatment and all showed cognitive improvement. Their improvement was significantly more than the average seen in patients taking just medication, he said.


The study’s results will be submitted for publication in the coming weeks and a follow-up study on 30 patients is planned.


Neuronix received European approval several months ago and has installations in the UK and Germany. In Israel, a few dozen patients are being treated with the device.


The U.S. trials are expected to run till the end of 2013. Neuronix is also running a trial in Israel for pre-Alzheimer’s patients.


The company expects to sell half a dozen systems in the second half of 2012 and three dozen in 2013. In Israel, the treatment costs $ 6,000.


“Our target for becoming profitable is in parallel to entering the U.S. market around 2015,” Baror said.


Neuronix has raised $ 8 million from private individuals as well as in grants from the Israeli Chief Scientist’s Office and is exploring options to raise more money in the coming year, including the possibility of going public.


(This version of the October 24 story corrects paragraph two that company corrects to say that in Singapore, device is approved for clinical trial use and its application for registration of the product is under evaluation, not that device is approved for commercial use.)


(Reporting by Tova Cohen; editing by Stephen Nisbet)


Diseases/Conditions News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Campaigning for victory, Romney speeches shift

NEWINGTON, N.H. (AP) — From an airport runway on a cold New Hampshire morning, Republican Mitt Romney faced 2,000 supporters and delivered the same speech he had given the day before — three times on the day before, actually.

"I won't just represent one party, I'll represent one nation," the presidential candidate declared Saturday for the fourth time in 36 hours as swing-state Republicans cheered, most of them hearing his pledge for the first time.

The Romney stump speech, like that of his opponent, is a carefully crafted 15 minutes that opens a window into the strategy behind his second presidential bid. And for Romney, it is a constantly evolving tool that has shifted sharply in recent weeks to appeal to the political center.

Let there be no doubt that Romney, who once described himself as "severely conservative," is aggressively courting the narrow slice of undecided voters — largely women and moderates — who have yet to settle on a candidate.

From central Florida to central Iowa, the stories Romney tells in daily campaign stops have changed to include intimate personal details. The emphasis on his business career has been forgotten. And while he repeatedly jabs President Barack Obama, he devotes as much time to an optimistic vision for an America that would "come roaring back" under a Romney administration.

"Come walk with me. Walk together to a better place," Romney said Saturday with the confidence of a man who has used the line several times before.

The year before, Romney launched his presidential campaign in New Hampshire with a very different message. At the time, he referenced his 25-year business career in almost every speech, suggesting he was uniquely qualified to repair the nation's ailing economy.

It was all economy, all the time.

"This, for me, is not about the next step in my political career," the former Massachusetts governor who also ran for president in 2008 told a New Hampshire audience in September 2011. "I don't have a political career. I spent 25 years in business."

But three days before Election Day, Romney the businessman had completed the journey to becoming Romney the politician.

He drew heavily from his experience in Massachusetts, devoting just a few sentences to his business career. He cited his work to cut taxes, create jobs, cut the deficit, improve education. And above all, he emphasized his ability to work with the Democrats who dominated state politics.

"Instead of attacking each other, we went to work to try to solve our problems," Romney said.

While heavily scripted, the daily stump speech also offers the occasional insight. Romney often slips dry humor into his speeches along with awkward words that sometimes raise eyebrows. He loves to begin sentences with, "In the final analysis," references "quartiles," and often proclaims, "Wow!"

On Saturday he joked that his New Hampshire supporters should "harangue" his friends. Later Saturday in Iowa, he noted that Sen. Chuck Grassley recently hit a deer with his car and asked, "Was it delicious?"

Romney has never possessed the same charm at the podium that allowed successful campaigners in the past — Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama among them — to connect with voters. But, in the speeches themselves, Romney has tried to address that weakness. This week he has repeatedly declared that "talk is cheap."

He also uses his speeches to address the regular criticism that he's not offering enough specifics. In virtually every rally since late summer, he outlines a five-point plan to get the nation's economy going. It's a general list of talking points that is largely in line with Obama's, albeit with different focuses.

First, Romney says he'd push an energy agenda that focuses on oil, gas and coal. He'd then adopt a trade policy that opens markets in Latin America and cracks down on China. The Republican also supports training and education programs that work around teachers unions. He'd also get the nation "on track" to a balanced budget. And finally, he would "champion small business."

Perhaps most striking is the shift in the personal stories he tells to help connect with voters.

For several months, on a near-daily basis, he shared underdog stories of oilmen and food industry magnates. In recent weeks, he has spoken instead about Boy Scouts who watched a space shuttle explosion, talked of a sister who has raised a child with Down syndrome and devoted a special mention to single mothers.

"I think of all the single moms who are scrimping and saving to make sure they have a good meal on the table at the end of the day for their children," he said this week. "We're a nation of people with great hearts who care very deeply about things bigger than ourselves."

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Syria army quits base on strategic Aleppo road

























BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Syrian army abandoned its last base near the northern town of Saraqeb after a fierce assault by rebels, further isolating the strategically important second city Aleppo from the capital.


But in a political setback to forces battling to topple President Bashar al-Assad, the United Nations said the rebels appeared to have committed a war crime after seizing the base.





















The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday government troops had retreated from a post northwest of Saraqeb, leaving the town and surrounding areas “completely outside the control of regime forces”.


It was not immediately possible to verify the reported army withdrawal. Authorities restrict journalists’ access in Syria and state media made no reference to Saraqeb.


The pullout followed coordinated rebel attacks on Thursday against three military posts around Saraqeb, 50 km (30 miles) southwest of Aleppo, in which 28 soldiers were killed.


Several were shown in video footage being shot after they had surrendered.


“The allegations are that these were soldiers who were no longer combatants. And therefore, at this point it looks very likely that this is a war crime, another one,” U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said in Geneva.


“Unfortunately this could be just the latest in a string of documented summary executions by opposition factions as well as by government forces and groups affiliated with them, such as the shabbiha (pro-government militia),” he said.


Video footage of the killings showed rebels berating the captured men, calling them “Assad’s dogs”, before firing round after round into their bodies as they lay on the ground.


Rights groups and the United Nations say rebels and forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have committed war crimes during the 19-month-old conflict. It began with protests against Assad and has spiraled into a civil war which has killed 32,000 people and threatens to drag in regional powers.


The mainly Sunni Muslim rebels are supported by Sunni states including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and neighboring Turkey. Shi’ite Iran remains the strongest regional supporter of Assad, who is from the Alawite faith which is an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.


STRATEGIC BLOW


Saraqeb lies at the meeting point of Syria’s main north-south highway, linking Aleppo with Damascus, and another road connecting Aleppo to the Mediterranean port of Latakia.


With areas of rural Aleppo and border crossings to Turkey already under rebel control, the loss of Saraqeb would leave Aleppo city further cut off from Assad’s Damascus powerbase.


Any convoys using the highways from Damascus or the Mediterranean city of Latakia would be vulnerable to rebel attack. This would force the army to use smaller rural roads or send supplies on a dangerous route from Al-Raqqa in the east, according to the Observatory’s director, Rami Abdelrahman.


In response to the rebels’ territorial gains, Assad has stepped up air strikes against opposition strongholds, launching some of the heaviest raids so far against working class suburbs east of Damascus over the last week.


The bloodshed has continued unabated despite an attempted ceasefire, proposed by join U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to mark last month’s Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.


In the latest in a string of fruitless international initiatives, China called on Thursday for a phased, region-by-region ceasefire and the setting up of a transitional governing body – an idea which opposition leaders hope to flesh out at a meeting in Qatar next week.


Veteran opposition leader Riad Seif has proposed a structure bringing together the rebel Free Syrian Army, regional military councils and other rebel forces alongside local civilian bodies and prominent opposition figures.


His plan, called the Syrian National Initiative, calls for four bodies to be established: the Initiative Body, including political groups, local councils, national figures and rebel forces; a Supreme Military Council; a Judicial Committee and a transitional government made up of technocrats.


The initiative has the support of Washington. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Wednesday for an overhaul of the opposition, saying it was time to move beyond the troubled Syrian National Council.


The SNC has failed to win recognition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people and Clinton said it was time to bring in “those on the front lines fighting and dying”.


(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes in Beirut and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Jon Boyle)


World News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Google's Android software in 3 out of 4 smartphones

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Chuck Lorre slams Romney, GOP with “Big Bang Theory” vanity card

























(Please note profanity in second-to-last paragraph))


LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – That Chuck Lorre – what a card.





















No, seriously; what a card.


The “Big Bang Theory” and “Two and a Half Men” honcho – who’s used the vanity cards at the end of his shows to expound on everything from former “Men” star Charlie Sheen to the humilities of aging – used Thursday night’s “Big Bang Theory” card to rant about presidential candidate Mitt Romney and the current state of the Republican party.


Unfortunately for fans of political mud-flinging, the card never made it to air. Lorre published the card on his website instead, noting that he’d opted for self-censorship.


“I’ve decided to save everybody a lot of unhappiness and not submit this week’s vanity card to the CBS censors (I know when I’ve crossed the line with these things and don’t need a bunch of corporate lawyers getting their cotton blend panties in a bunch),” Lorre wrote.


Kind of a shame, really, because it’s quite a doozy.


The card takes shots at GOP politicians’ recent stances on everything from rape to FEMA, along with a dig at the reality series “The Bachelor” and a not-so-veiled reference to Romney’s Mormonism.


The card ends with a wholesale condemnation of modern American society.


The text of the vanity card is presented below in its entirety, to preserve flavor and flow:


CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #397


CENSORED BY ME


What does it say about us when we are simultaneously pro-life and pro AK-47′s? What does it say about us when God’s will would allow a rapist to ask for shared custody and child support payments? What does it say about us when a black guy’s in charge and we say things like “it’s time to take America back”? What does it say about us when we think the institution of marriage is threatened by gay people who love each other, but not by idiotic game shows like “The Bachelor”? What does it say about us when we export democracy with Hellfire missiles, then restrict the right to vote here? What does it say about us when we build nuclear submarines to defend against exploding vests? What does it say about us when we think a guy who doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, keeps his money offshore, stubs his toe and says “H-E-double hockey sticks” and wears magical underwear can feel our pain? What does it say about us when we demand less government and more FEMA? What does it say about us when we completely forgot the colossal shit storm we were in four years ago?


The answer, my friends, is not blowing in the wind.


The answer is, “We are fucking crazy.”


It’s just a shame that Lorre has trouble sharing his feelings.


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Bloomberg cancels marathon amid outcry

RT @YahooSportsNBA: Jeremy Lin and James Harden are the NBA’s best backcourt. Do not argue. http://t.co/zsGlGTgp via @YahooBDL
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Syrian rebels kill 28 soldiers, several executed

























BEIRUT (Reuters) – Anti-government rebels killed 28 soldiers on Thursday in attacks on three army checkpoints around Saraqeb, a town on Syria’s main north-south highway, a monitoring group said.


Some of the dead were shot after they had surrendered, according to video footage. Rebels berated them, calling them “Assad’s Dogs”, before firing round after round into their bodies as they lay on the ground.





















The highway linking the capital Damascus to the contested city of Aleppo, Syria’s commercial center, has been the scene of heavy fighting since rebels cut the road last month. Saraqeb lies about 40 km (25 miles) south of Aleppo


In other developments, China put forward a new initiative to resolve the 19-month-old conflict, including a phased, region-by-region ceasefire and the setting up of a transitional governing body.


A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said Beijing had made the proposal to international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi – whose own call for a truce over the Muslim holiday of Eid was largely ignored by both sides.


The United States meanwhile has called for an overhaul of Syria’s opposition leadership, signaling a break with the largely foreign-based Syrian National Council to bring in more credible figures.


A meeting in Qatar next week of foreign powers backing the rebels will be an opportunity to broaden the coalition against President Bashar al-Assad, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Zagreb on Wednesday.


The United States and its allies have struggled for months to craft a credible opposition coalition, while Assad has counted on the support of Russia, Iran and, to a lesser extent, China. International efforts to end the violence have all foundered.


More than 32,000 people have been killed since protests against Assad, an Alawite who succeeded his late father Hafez in ruling the mostly Sunni Muslim country, first broke out on city streets. The revolt has since degenerated into full-scale civil war, with the government forces relying heavily on artillery and air strikes to thwart the rebels.


CHECKPOINT ATTACKS


The army has lost swathes of land in Idlib and Aleppo provinces but is fighting to control towns along supply routes to Aleppo city, where its forces are fighting in many districts.


The head of the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdelrahman, said two of the attacked checkpoints at Saraqeb were on the Damascus-Aleppo highway. The third was near a road linking Aleppo with Latakia, a port city still mostly controlled Assad’s forces.


“The rebels will not stay at the checkpoints for long as Syrian warplanes normally bomb positions after rebels move in,” Abdelrahman said.


Five rebels died in the fighting and at least 20 soldiers were killed at the third site, including those shot after surrendering, he said.


The video footage showed a group of petrified men, some bleeding, lying on the ground as rebels walked around, kicking and stamping on their captives.


One of the captured men says: “I swear I didn’t shoot anyone” to which a rebel responds: “Shut up you animal … Gather them for me.” Then the men are shot dead.


Reuters could not independently verify the footage.


The Observatory said the al Qaeda-inspired Jabhat al-Nusra rebel group was responsible for the executions.


Islamist rebel units are growing in prominence in the war – a cause for concern for international powers as they weigh up what kind of support to give the opposition.


U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration has said it is not providing arms to internal opponents of Assad and is limiting its aid to non-lethal humanitarian assistance. It concedes, however, that some of its allies are providing lethal assistance.


Russia and China have blocked three U.N. Security Council resolutions aimed at increasing pressure on the Assad government, leading the United States and its allies to say they could move beyond U.N. structures for their next steps.


China has been strongly criticized by some Arab countries for failing to take a stronger stance on the conflict. Beijing has urged the Assad government to talk to the opposition and take steps to meet demands for political change.


“More and more countries have come to realize that a military option offers no way out, and a political settlement has become an increasingly shared aspiration,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in Beijing.


He said China’s new proposal was aimed at building international consensus and supporting peace envoy Brahimi’s mediation efforts.


(Additional reporting by Ayat Basma, Laila Bassam and Dominic Evans in Beirut and Terril Yue Jones in Beijing; Writing by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Angus MacSwan)


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Songwriter Bill Dees,”Oh, Pretty Woman” co-writer, dead at 73

























LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Singer-composer Bill Dees, best known for his songwriting collaboration with Roy Orbison on the hits “Oh, Pretty Woman” and “It’s Over,” has died at age 73 in Mountain Home, Arkansas, according to an obituary posted online by a local funeral home.


Dees, a Texas native who got his start in the 1950s with a high school band called the Five Bops, is credited with writing scores of songs in all, some recorded by such performers as Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn and Glen Campbell.





















But Dees’ most fruitful collaboration was his work with fellow Texan Orbison, with whom he teamed up to write Orbison’s signature 1964 hit, “Oh, Pretty Woman.” which was featured years later in the soundtrack to the movie “Pretty Woman,” starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere.


The band Van Halen also scored a hit with a cover version of “Oh, Pretty Woman.”


According to various accounts, the song’s refrain grew out of an offhand comment Dees made when Orbison’s wife, Claudette, walked into the room where the two men were writing together, and Orbison asked her if she needed any money.


Dees cracked, “Pretty woman never needs any money,” and the song took shape from there, with the bulk of the composition coming together in less than hour.


As recounted in one biography posted on Dees’ official website, Dees also contributed uncredited harmony vocals on the record.


“Oh, Pretty Woman” went to No. 1 in United States and topped the charts in Britain, as did the 1964 Orbison ballad co-written by Dees, “It’s Over,” a considerable achievement given the dominance of the Beatles and other British groups on both sides of the Atlantic at the time.


Other Orbison singles Dees co-wrote included “Born on the Wind,” “Crawling Back,” “Communication Breakdown,” “Walk On,” “Windsurfer” and “So This Is Love.”


Dees died last week, on October 24, at Mountain Home, where he had lived since 1989, according to an announcement posted on the website of the Kirby & Family Funeral Home, where a memorial service is scheduled for Saturday, November 3.


(Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Eric Walsh and W Simon)


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Floods render NYC hospitals powerless

























NEW YORK (AP) — There are few places in the U.S. where hospitals have put as much thought and money into disaster planning as New York. And yet two of the city’s busiest, most important medical centers failed a fundamental test of readiness during Superstorm Sandy this week: They lost power.


Their backup generators failed, or proved inadequate. Nearly 1,000 patients had to be evacuated.





















The closures led to dramatic scenes of doctors carrying patients down dark stairwells, nurses operating respirators by hand, and a bucket brigade of National Guard troops hauling fuel to rooftop generators in a vain attempt to keep the electricity on.


Both hospitals, NYU Langone Medical Center and Bellevue Hospital Center, were still trying to figure out exactly what led to the power failures Thursday, but the culprit appeared to be the most common type of flood damage there is: water in the basement.


While both hospitals put their generators on high floors where they could be protected in a flood, other critical components of the backup power system, such as fuel pumps and tanks, remained in basements just a block from the East River.


Both hospitals had fortified that equipment against floods within the past few years, but the water — which rushed with tremendous force — found a way in.


“This reveals to me that we have to be much more imaginative and detail-oriented in our planning to make sure hospitals are as resilient as they need to be,” said Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.


The problem of unreliable backup electricity at hospitals is nothing new.


Over the first six months of the year, 23 percent of the hospitals inspected by the Joint Commission, a health care facility accreditation group, were found to be out of compliance with standards for backup power and lighting, according to a spokesman.


Power failures crippled New Orleans hospitals after Hurricane Katrina. The backup generator failed at a hospital in Stafford Springs, Conn., after the remnants of Hurricane Irene blew through the state in 2011. Hospitals in Houston were crippled when Tropical Storm Allison flooded their basements and knocked out electrical equipment in 2001.


When the Northeast was hit with a crippling blackout in 2003, the backup power at several of New York City’s hospitals failed or performed poorly. Generators malfunctioned or overheated. Fuel ran out too quickly. Even where the backup systems worked, they provided electricity to only some parts of the hospital and left others in the dark.


Afterward, a mayoral task force recommended upgrading testing standards for generators and requiring backup plans for blood banks and health care facilities that provide dialysis treatment.


Alan Aviles, president of New York City’s Health and Hospitals Corp., which operates Bellevue, said that after a scare last summer when Hurricane Irene threatened to cause flooding, Bellevue put its basement-level fuel pumps in flood-resistant chambers.


It still isn’t clear whether water breached those defenses, but when an estimated 17 million gallons of water rushed through loading docks and into the hospital’s 1-million-square-foot basement, the fuel feed to the generators stopped working. The floodwaters also knocked out the hospital’s elevators.


For two days, National Guardsmen carried fuel to the generators, but conditions inside the hospital for patients and staff deteriorated anyway. The generators were designed to supply only 30 percent of the usual electrical load at the hospital, leaving a lot of equipment and labs hobbled. The hospital also lost all water pressure on Tuesday. Nearly 700 patients had been evacuated by Thursday afternoon.


“The precautions we had taken to date had served us well,” Aviles said. “But Mother Nature can always up the stakes.”


NYU Langone Medical Center had also tried to armor itself against floods.


All seven of the generators providing backup power to the parts of the hospital involved in patient care are only a few years old and are on higher floors. The fuel tank is in a watertight vault. New fuel pumps were installed just this year in a pump house upgraded to withstand a high flood, said the hospital’s vice president of facilities operation, Richard Cohen.


“The medical center invested quite a bit of money to upgrade the facility,” he said.


The pump house remained “bone dry,” Cohen said. But water shoved aside plastic and plywood defenses and infiltrated the fuel vault, where sensors detected the potentially damaging liquid and shut the generators down. “The force of the surge that came in was unbelievable. It dislodged our additional protection and caused a breach of the vault as well,” Cohen said.


The power at NYU went out in a flash, leaving the staff scrambling to evacuate 300 patients with no notice.


Dr. Robert Berg, an obstetrician, said that when he lost power in his apartment, he went to the hospital to charge his cellphone and was stunned to find it in chaos.


“It didn’t really occur to me that the hospital was going to be in trouble,” he said. Even after finding the lobby dark, “I thought, ‘We’ll have power upstairs. We’re an operating room.’”


He wound up carrying two patients down flights of stairs on a “med sled.”


“There was a Category 1 outside and a Category 4 inside,” he said. “I can’t say that they were very well prepared for it.”


That has left only one hospital, Beth Israel Medical Center, functioning in the southern third of Manhattan. It is also on backup power, but brought in two huge new generators Thursday, just in case.


Aviles said Bellevue might be out of commission for at least two more weeks. NYU Langone’s generators are operating again, but the hospital is waiting for Consolidated Edison to restore its power before it starts taking patients again. That could happen in a matter of days.


Flooding may pose less of a danger to the hospital’s power supply in the future. Construction is under way on a new power plant, at a cost of more than $ 200 million, that will run on natural gas and supply all the hospital’s power needs.


“It’s a tremendous facility, with a lot of hardening built into it,” Cohen said.


___


AP Medical Writer Mike Stobbe contributed to this report.


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