The issue isn't settled yet; Senate Democrats are pushing for a vote on July 10 to retroactively bring the rate back down. Republicans favor tying student loan rates to the markets instead of setting a federal lending rate. As it stands now, college students can expect to pay an additional $2,600 on their loans.

For those in school, the rate increase is just another part of what is turning out to be an increasingly bleak financial future. Here is what college students have to look forward to after they graduate.

1. Staggering student loan debtEven before the rate increase, Americansby nearly $1 trillion in outstanding student loan debt. Around 38.8 million people owe an average of $24,803 for pursuing a college degree.

Why are students taking out such big loans? Because it's more expensive than ever to go to college. Board and tuition costs jumped 42 percent at public universities over the last decade, with private schools seeing an increase of 31 percent.

To put that in historical context, the cost of college has increased 1,120 percent since records were first kept in 1978, risingthan the consumer price index, which measures inflation.

This wouldn't be a big deal if companies were gladly hiring young people without a college degree. The problem, however, is that the "undergraduate degree has become the new high school diploma," as one debt-addled graduate told .

2. Dim employment prospectsEven when shelling out tens of thousands of dollars for college, graduates have little guarantee of a job afterwards. As of March, thefor young college graduates was 8.8 percent, compared to 5.7 percent before the Great Recession hit. (They fare much better than those with only a high school degree, who suffer from 29.9 percent unemployment).

Even if they find a job, there is a good chance it doesn't pay much. Forty-five percent of college grads between 22 and 27 years old are "underemployed" — meaning they have jobs that don't require the college degrees they paid so much for.

"You always have a lot of young college grads working as baristas," Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, told . "The reason it is so high right now is part and parcel of the overall weakness in the labor market."

Nope. Studies show that 70 percent of overall wage growth occurs in the first 10 years of a person's career. The least advantaged students who graduate during a recession "suffer permanent earnings losses and are permanently relegated to lower wages," according to a study from the . Even graduates with degrees in high-earning fields take a hit, requiring 10 years for their salaries to .

The combination of low wages and high student debt is bad news for the U.S. economy as a whole. Young people attempting to climb out of debt aren't likely toon homes or cars.

On the plus side, today'swill be able document their economic hardships on their iPhones.

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Health experts say poor hand cleanliness is a factor in hospital-borne infections that kill tens of thousands of Americans each year. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta estimates that one of every 20 patients in U.S. hospitals gets a hospital-acquired infection each year.

"We've known for over 150 years that good hand hygiene prevents patients from getting infections," said Dr. John Jernigan, an epidemiologist for the CDC. "However, it's been a very chronic and difficult problem to get adherence levels up as high as we'd like them to be."

Hospitals have tried varying ways to promote better hygiene. Signs are posted in restrooms. Some even employ monitors who keep tabs and single out offenders.

Still, experts believe hospital workers wash up, at best, about 50 percent of the time. One St. Louis-area hospital believes it can approach 100 percent adherence.

Since last year, SSM St. Mary's Health Center in the St. Louis suburb of Richmond Heights, Mo., has been the test site for a system developed by Biovigil Inc., of Ann Arbor, Mich. A flashing light on a badge turns green when hands are clean, red if they're not. It also tracks each hand-cleaning opportunity the successes and the failures.

The failures have been few at the two units of St. Mary's where the system is being tested, the hospital said. One unit had 97 percent hand hygiene success, said Dr. Morey Gardner, the hospital's director of infection disease and prevention. The other had 99 percent success.

"The holy grail of infection prevention is in our grasp," Gardner said.

The Biovigil system is among many being tried at hospitals. A method developed by Arrowsight, based in Mt. Kisco, N.Y., uses video monitoring. It is being used in intensive care units at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y., and the University of California San Francisco Medical Center.

Akron, Ohio-based GOJO Industries, maker of Purell hand sanitizer, has developed an electronic compliance monitoring system using wireless technology to track when soap and hand sanitizer dispensers are used. The SmartLink system gives the hospital data on high- and low-compliance areas. The company said it has installed the system at several hospitals around the country, but didn't say how many.

HyGreen Inc.'s Hand Hygiene Reminder System was developed by two University of Florida doctors. The Gainesville, Fla., company now features two systems used in seven hospitals, including Veterans Administration hospitals in Chicago, Wilmington, Del., and Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

One is similar to Biovigil's green badge method. In HyGreen's, a wall-mounted hand wash sensor detects alcohol on the hands. The badge includes an active reminding system. Unclean hands create a warning buzz. If the buzz sounds three times, the worker is noted for noncompliance.

HyGreen spokeswoman Elena Fraser said that because some hospitals are moving away from alcohol-based sanitizers, HyGreen offers a second system. A touch of the sanitizer dispenser clears the worker to interact with a patient. If the worker shows up at the patient bed without hand-cleaning, the series of warning buzzes begins.

Fraser said hospital infections have dropped 66 percent at units of Miami Children's Hospital where the badge system has been implemented.

Nurses using the Biovigil system at St. Mary's near St. Louis wear a badge with changeable colored lights. A doorway sensor identifies when the nurse enters a patient's room, and the badge color changes to yellow.

The nurse washes his or her hands and places them close to the badge. A sensor in the badge detects chemical vapors from the alcohol-based solution. If hands are clean, the badge illuminates a bright green hand symbol.

If the nurse fails to sanitize, the badge stays yellow and chirps every 10 seconds for 40 seconds, then flashes red. Once the flashing red starts, the nurse has another 30 seconds to wash up, otherwise the badge turns solid red, denoting non-compliance. Either way, each instance is tracked by a computer. The hospital can track each individual's compliance.

Registered Nurse Theresa Gratton has helped lead the effort toward hand cleanliness at St. Mary's. She heard about the Biovigil system in early 2012 and convinced the hospital to give it a try.

Gratton said patients are aware of the risk of infection and frequently inquire about whether caregivers have washed their hands. She said the badge relieves their anxiety.

Bill Rogers, a 65-year-old retiree recuperating at St. Mary's from back surgery and a heart scare, agreed.

"The first thing I noticed up here was the badges," Rogers said. "It is comforting for me to know their hands are clean as soon as the badge beeps and it goes from yellow to green."

St. Mary's is expanding the Biovigil system later this year to other units of the hospital and to employees other than nurses, though details are still being worked out, Gardner said. Eventually, the system may be expanded to SSM's seven other St. Louis-area hospitals, he said.

Biovigil's chief client officer, Brent Nibarger, said customers won't buy the system but will pay a subscription fee of about $12 a month per badge.

The CDC's Jernigan said the high-tech systems can only help.

"For a health care worker, keeping their hands clean is the single most important thing they can do to protect their patients," Jernigan said.

LONDON (Reuters) - Andy Murray sent expectations of a first Wimbledon title soaring through the Center Court roof on Friday as he roared into the last 16 without a blemish but two giant-slayers fell to earth after bitter reality checks.

On a soggy day at the All England club in which the Center Court roof earned its corn, a steely-eyed Murray outclassed Spaniard Tommy Robredo 6-2 6-4 7-5 to stay on course to end Britain's 77-year wait for a men's singles champion.

The world number two, aiming for a first Wimbledon title to go with the breakthrough U.S. Open crown he won last year, sent a clear signal to anyone blocking his path.

In his last nine slams Murray has won one, reached the final of three more, made the semis in four others and suffered just one quarter-final defeat.

It is the consistency of a truly great player.

Others, such as Ukraine's 116th-ranked Sergiy Stakhovsky and 131st-ranked Michelle Larcher de Brito, can play truly great tennis - just not all that often.

Two days after producing a spellbinding performance to eclipse holder and seven-times Wimbledon champion Roger Federer, Stakhovsky returned to the ranks of the journeymen when losing his third round match against wily Austrian Jurgen Melzer.

With a few hundred watching in the Court Three drizzle, rather than the thousands he had on the edge of their seats on the weirdest of Wednesdays, Stakhovsky proved to be a flash in the pan as his net-rushing game misfired in a four-set defeat.

Portugal's Larcher de Brito, who sent former champion Maria Sharapova packing on the same day as Stakhovsky's exploits, went down 7-5 6-2 to Italy's 104th-ranked Karin Knapp.

Dreadlocked German Dustin Brown, who dazzled in a second-round win over former champion Lleyton Hewitt on Wednesday, also came to earth with a thud after his hopes of reaching the last 16 ended in a dismal defeat by Frenchman Adrian Mannarino.

All three will each pocket 63,000 pounds ($95,600) for their cameo performances and the memories will be priceless.

GOOD DEAL

"Nobody's going to take it away from me," the 27-year-old Stakhovsky told reporters.

"If someone would ask me, would you rather beat Roger and lose in next round, I would always take it."

Those sentiments were echoed by entertaining Jamaican-born qualifier Brown who will head off back to the second-tier Challenger circuit next week.

"I'm sad that I lost but if someone would have told me from the beginning, sign here, you get the thirdround prize money and points and you are going to win five matches, I would have taken the deal," he said.

Murray has higher ambitions.

With the roof closed and a partisan 15,000 capacity crowd creating a claustrophobic atmosphere even a man of 32nd seed Robredo's class and fighting spirit was overwhelmed as Murray unleashed a performance of destructive power and precision.

With Rafa Nadal, Federer and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga already removed from the bottom half of the draw, Murray's biggest problem might be keeping a lid on home expectations.

"I think there's a lot more pressure on me now with them being out," Murray, who faces either 20th seed Mikhail Youzhny or unseeded Serb Viktor Troicki after a weekend's rest.

"I don't read the papers. But there are papers in the locker room, so you see some of the headlines. It's not that helpful."

This year's championships have equaled the worst showing by the top 10 men's and women's seeds in the professional era with only 10 - six men and four women - surviving to the third round.

DARK HORSE

Emerging as a dark horse from the rubble is Poland's Jerzy Janowicz who made his Centre Court debut and crushed Nicolas Almagro to reach the last 16 of a major for the first time.

Fourth seed David Ferrer got back on schedule after wearing down fellow Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut and will be back in third round action against Alexandr Dolgopolov on Saturday.

Grigor Dimitrov will have to wait a little longer for his predicted grand slam breakthrough after the 22-year-old lost to Slovenian Grega Zemlja in a curious second round match that was held over from Thursday because of rain.

Bulgarian Dimitrov resumed trailing 8-9 in the fifth set, saved three more match points to go with the two he fended off the previous night but, despite the vocal encouragement of high-profile girlfriend Sharapova, lost 11-9 in the decider.

"At a few points I heard her Maria screaming behind my back which wasn't very pleasant!" Zemlja, the 26-year-old son of a former ski jumper, told reporters.

On a good day for the home fans, hundreds of whom spent hours huddled under umbrellas on Henman Hill (aka Murray Mound) peering at the giant video screen, teenager Laura Robson made sure Murray does not have to shoulder all the burden - yet.

The 19-year-old left-hander took full advantage of a Centre Court appointment for her postponed second round match with Colombia's Mariana Duque-Marino, winning 6-4 6-1.

"It's a big win for me," former junior champion Robson, who beat 10th seed Maria Kirilenko in the opening round, told reporters.

"Any match on Centre Court is big and it was a great atmosphere. Having the roof closed just made it louder."

The volume will go up another notch or two if she wins again on Saturday against New Zealand's Marina Erakovic.

Spain's 19th seed Carla Suarez Navarro and Belgian number 20 seed Kirsten Flipkens reached the last 16 but the fall of the seeds continued as Germany's Angelique Kerber, seeded seventh and a potential fourth round opponent for Robson, lost her delayed second round match against Estonia's Kaia Kanepi.

($1 = 0.6593 British pounds)

(Reporting by Martyn Herman; editing by Ken Ferris)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A one-hour educational session followed by personalized feedback helped pediatricians more closely align their antibiotic prescribing habits with national guidelines, in a new study.

Researchers found fewer doctors in the program prescribed a drug that could increase the risk of antibiotic resistance for children with pneumonia or a sinus infection, compared to those who received no extra guidance.

"We tried to keep it relatively simple," said Dr. Jeffery Gerber, who led the new study at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "Our hope is that any practice with an electronic health record would be able to adopt this strategy."

The potential for antibiotic resistance - when bacteria no longer respond to certain drugs - exists any time an antibiotic is used. Researchers have focused on limiting overuse or misuse of those drugs, in hopes they will continue to work when needed.

One strategy for preventing resistance is to prescribe the antibiotic most specifically targeted to a particular infection, rather than a "broad-spectrum" antibiotic that can kill many types of bacteria.

For their new study, Gerber and his colleagues tracked how often pediatricians prescribed a broad-spectrum drug versus "narrow-spectrum" options such as penicillin and amoxicillin, which are recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics for conditions like pneumonia and sinus infections.

Their data came from 162 doctors at 18 pediatric primary care practices in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, nine of which received the year-long education and electronic feedback intervention.

In the 20 months before the initial education session, doctors prescribed broad-spectrum antibiotics to 27 percent of kids with common respiratory infections. During the program, that fell to 14 percent.

In comparison, the decline in antibiotic misuse was much smaller at practices where doctors didn't receive education or feedback: from 28 percent to 23 percent, Gerber's team reported Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The researchers did not see a reduction in how often antibiotics were inappropriately prescribed for viral conditions - but those numbers were low to begin with, they said.

Dr. Adam Hersh, who studies pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, said doctors in general are getting better at not prescribing antibiotics when they won't help, such as for the common cold. But concerns about increasing resistance continue.

"Despite the success in the decline in overall antibiotic use that we've seen over the last decade, at the same time there's still an ongoing problem and even increasing problem of overuse of unnecessarily broad-spectrum antibiotics," he told Reuters Health.

Narrow-spectrum drugs "will limit the collateral damage that goes along with antibiotic prescribing," said Hersh, who didn't participate in the new study. And they're often cheaper than broad-spectrum versions.

He said the program used in the new study has the advantage of being relatively cheap and non-intrusive, so it's likely to work for other types of practices.

Still, it's unclear from these findings whether the rate of broad-spectrum prescribing would stay down after doctors stopped getting regular antibiotic-related feedback, Gerber and his colleagues noted.

Hersh said parents can do their part by asking if an antibiotic is really necessary when the doctor prescribes one, as well as if it's the most appropriate version.

"The number one thing is to make sure the kid gets the best medication that cures their infection," Gerber told Reuters Health.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/MvXYT6 Journal of the American Medical Association, online June 11, 2013.

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The Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System does not allow gay marriages,  explains. This has beenwhose benefits are maintained in DEERS, because the military won't switch a veteran's official gender if it would then take benefits away from his or her spouse. And the Veterans Administration currently defines a spouse as "a person of the opposite sex who is a wife or husband." That goes away with DOMA. But benefits are calculated based on where a veteran lives. Here'sit gets:

Veterans who traveled to get legally married while living in a state that does not recognize gay marriage, and who received benefits in a state that does not recognize gay marriage, are likely not considered married under VA law, [Outserve-SLDN's David] McKean said. All others — including those who live in gay-marriage recognition states when they’re married but live in non-recognition states when benefits take effect — are considered married by the VA, he said.

Military benefits involve more than the usual civilian stuff. Married troops can get housing on post with their spouses; spouses get big things like health care and little things like the right to shop at the subsidized grocery stores on post. Troops' spouses get access to information about where their loved one is deployed, and they're the first ones notified if their loved one is hurt. In February, the Defense Department  — they could go on post, but they couldn't get health care or on-post housing. Then-Defense Secretary Leon Panettathat if DOMA fell, the Pentagon would have to decide whether to recognize gay marriages or civil unions as well. Hagel's announcement gives gay spouses full benefits, but he didn't offer details on timing or domestic partnerships.

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Unlike the rest of us, troops can't vote with their feet — they can't move to states that have laws they like better. And while a gay soldier might be able to take advantage of legal gay marriage while stationed in, say, Fort Drum, New York, she might be forced to move to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage just passed. Following those state laws — granting benefits, and then taking them away — would have created a huge headache for the Pentagon, Loyola law professor Douglas NeJaime told The Atlantic Wire. Granting benefits to all married gay couples "makes it easier for the military."

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A U.S. group that sets policy for organ transplants voted on Monday to give some children access to adult organs after the parents of two children successfully sued to add them to the adult list for lung transplants.

The cases, both in Pennsylvania, have touched off a debate in the United States over how donor organs - a scarce, life-saving resource - should be allocated among the 1,659 people, including 30 children, on the waiting list for a lung transplant.

For the adult list, data on patients aged 12 and older is thrown into a complicated computer program that arrives at a score which determines where they sit in line for a donor organ.

Since there was too little data on children under 12 when the program was put in place in 2005, transplant experts devised a different system that takes into account the child's age and severity of illness and assigns a priority code of 1 or 2. Children under 12 have first pick of pediatric lungs, but are generally not eligible for an adult lung.

That two-tiered policy came under fire on June 5 as the mother of 10-year-old Sarah Murnaghan of Pennsylvania, who suffers from end-stage cystic fibrosis, successfully sued to have her daughter added to the list for adult organs.

Murnaghan's case was followed last week by a suit brought by the mother of 11-year-old Javier Acosta of New York, who also has cystic fibrosis, who also won the right to have her son's name added to the adult organ list.

As part of the rulings, the U.S. District Court Judge Michael Baylson ordered U.S. Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to request a review of how organs are allocated.

In an emergency session on Monday, members of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network's executive committee adopted a new, temporary policy to allow children under 12 to be classified as adolescents, putting them in the running for adult organs.

The decision was based on new data presented to the committee that suggested that some younger patients were receiving fewer offers of organs than adults, and that some older children may be suitable candidates for an adult organ.

The new classification for adolescents will be in place until July 1, 2014, giving the group time to review its policies to ensure that all organs are allocated fairly.

Dr Edward Garrity, associate director of transplantation services at the University of Chicago, who helped devise the 2005 transplant policy, said he was "very concerned about a legal decision driving medical care."

He said the current system was "carefully crafted and scientifically analyzed to be as fair and equitable and understandable as can be."

He said he was concerned about how children would be ranked on the adult transplant list, noting that it was possible a child could jump ahead of a more deserving adult.

In the context of the number of adults waiting for a transplant, the number of children was "not a huge number, but it is if you are denied at transplant because someone else jumped the line," he said.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by David Brunnstrom)