SAN ANTONIO - The Good Bytes Cafe has stained concrete floors, jars of scones and a small bank of computers in the corner, making it much like any Internet cafe.  The computers - with a joystick mouse, magnifying software, and equipment allowing people to point and click with their eyes - make Good Bytes one of just a handful nationwide specifically for disabled users.  The cafe is a first for Goodwill Industries, the nonprofit best known for selling used clothing and furniture at thrift stores.  "We're the first, but won't be the last," said Rebecca Helterbrand, marketing vice president for Goodwill of San Antonio.  Goodwill has long had job centers around San Antonio to help disabled residents find work, but surveys found 70% of the area's disabled are unemployed and 60% don't have computer skills, she said.  Due to the tie between joblessness and lack of computer skills, Goodwill wanted something that would give more disabled people access to assistive technology.  It wanted a setting as likely to be filled with nearby office workers and tourists as the disabled, Helterbrand said.  The cafe, funded with a $125,000 grant from San Antonio-based AT&T Inc., will be supported by food sales and double as a location to train disabled food service workers, she said.  Good Bytes doesn’t charge for access to the technology.

ROCHESTER, NY - MedPage Today disclosed low doses of Mifeprex, at the heart of the abortion pill, shrink uterine fibroids and improve quality of life for women with the condition.  In a randomized, placebo-controlled trial, women getting Mifeprex had less bleeding and lower rates of anemia, Dr. Kevin Fiscella, of the University of Rochester, and colleagues, noted in Obstetrics & Gynecology.  Improvements were so dramatic that 19 of the 20 women in the treatment group at the end of the study correctly guessed they had received Mifeprex versus nine of 17 in the placebo group who guessed correctly they weren’t receiving the drug, authors said.  The six-month study of 42 women with at least moderate fibroid symptoms and a uterine volume of greater than 160 mL, used doses of 5mg daily.  The dose of Mifeprex used to terminate a pregnancy is 600mg at one time, followed two days later by 400mcg of Cytotec.  The women were evaluated using the standard Uterine Fibroid Symptoms Quality of Life Questionnaire and Medical Outcomes Study 36-Item Short Form survey.

WASHINGTON - Monday Morning in Washington, DC noted the Five Practical Tips for Providing and Maintaining Job Accommodations from the Job Accommodation Network (JAN) Presentation Library (join.buddywalk.org).  This 14-minute video (Windows media) highlights job accommodation issues related to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and practical ways for employers to address these issues.  The Employer Assistance & Recruiting Network (EARN, join.buddywalk.org) has a fact sheet which provides programs and resources to assist students with disabilities in gaining valuable work experience and refining career choices before graduation.

MEMPHIS, TN - Investigators at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital showed in mice a way that might reduce the time it takes for a bone marrow transplant to rebuild a child’s immune system, and cut the risk of potentially fatal virus infections.  The team showed the current way of harvesting specific stem cells from donated bone marrow to capture many stem cells called CD34+ fails to capture many cells that might be more vigorous in rebuilding the immune system.  CD34+ cells yield blood cells, including T lymphocytes, a part of the immune system that orchestrates the attack on invading microorganisms.  Scientists showed in mice that most of the CD34+ stem cells left behind by the current method are especially vigorous in producing T lymphocytes.  In humans, the loss of many of these vigorous stem cells from the transplant might contribute to delay in rebuilding the immune system - a lag that leaves children exposed to serious infections.  The finding is important: children whose own bone marrow stem cells have been destroyed by chemotherapy or radiation for cancer routinely undergo bone marrow transplantation.

PHILADELPHIA - HealthDay News noted Medicare's standard hospital-performance measures may not reflect real-life patient outcomes accurately, researchers report.  They found little difference in death rates for three common conditions - heart attack, heart failure, and pneumonia - at hospitals with low and high Medicare performance measures.  The study, by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center, analyzed ratings for more than 3,600 acute care hospitals in the U.S.  The study included Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) data on hospital care Jan. 1-Dec. 31, 2004.  Researchers found, across all heart attack performance measures, the absolute reduction in risk-adjusted death rates between hospitals in the 25th percentile and those in the 75th percentile was 0.005 for inpatient death, 0.006 for 30-day death, and 0.012 for death at one year.  For heart failure performance measures, the absolute reduction in deaths ranged from 0.001 for inpatient death to 0.002 for death at one year, and for pneumonia ranged from 0.001 for 30-day death to 0.005 for inpatient death.