But alongside his Oscar-winning emotional audacity there's his versatility, from a coma patient in Awakenings, to an ever-possessive father in Meet The Parents.

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Tuesday morning the Case Shiller Index, expected to show the usual acceleration of home prices that a coma patient may show, said that home prices fell 4% in April from the same month in 2010.

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The case has highlighted the difficulties doctors face when trying to diagnose the level of consciousness of a patient in a coma-like state.

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Thanks to this technology, doctors, hospitals, and insurers will be able to find out exactly what sort of care a patient in a coma, for instance, wants.

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On the other hand, a doctor who sedates his patient as far as coma in order to cause death by starvation is intending to end a life.

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The Glasgow Coma Scale is a standardized test that classifies a patient's motor, verbal and eye response on a graded scale.

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Then the patient is put in a drug-induced coma in intensive care for 24 hours before gradually being warmed back up to normal temperature.

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Japan's economic doctors need to adjust the mix of monetary and fiscal treatments if the patient is not to slip back into a coma.

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