The annual recruitment of mascots to the world's largest Mascot Race at Wetherby Races has begun with the announcement of a three year main sponsorship deal with international financial services organisation Foresters. Foresters have been main sponsors of the event since 2009 and have recently signed up to be main sponsors for a further three years including the 2014 event on 13th April. The event which is always a favourite amongst the 'Family day' crowd at Wetherby was first run in 2006 since when it has raised over GBP110,000 for good causes with the Lion's share ...

U-Jam Fitness, a cardio dance fitness program that unites world beats with urban flavor and takes students around the world from Hip-Hop to Bollywood, will celebrate four years of unity through dance and fitness with thousands of students and world class instructors from around the country. This year's anniversary party will feature opening events with special guests musicians Shock G of Digital Underground with Humpty Hump and DJ Fuze live in concert, as well as a dance segment featuring Beau "Casper" Smart, the highly sought after Creative Director, Choreographer, ...

Piece by piece, NASA is building new technologies to refuel and repair existent satellites in orbit - and they're using the International Space Station to test them. After concluding a successful ground-based test of robotic satellite refueling technology, NASA is preparing for a new round of related demonstrations on the space station. The orbital testing focuses on real-time relative navigation, spacecraft inspection and the replenishment of cryogens in satellites not originally designed for in-flight service. Collectively, these efforts are part of an ongoing and ...

BrightArch today announced that their OrganizationWeaver cloud-based software was chosen to support Det Norske Veritas and Germanischer Lloyd's post-merger integration management selection process. OrganizationWeaver enabled the newly formed company to minimize the risks, time, and cost of merging the two management structures while maintaining control over a global process. "OrganizationWeaver filled a specific need for us that could not have been met by spreadsheets, ERP systems, or recruiting solutions," said Cecilie B. Heuch, CHRO, DNV GL. OrganizationWeaver ...

LegacyBuilder.com, a private web platform that allows families to make the most of their media and time, today announced the launch of Rapid Sync. Rapid Sync allows LegacyBuilder users to sync photos and videos from their computer with the click of a button. Once media is added to a user's account, LegacyBuilder automatically organizes it into a series of events on a private, interactive family timeline based on the information in the photos and the responses to questions users answer within the site. LegacyBuilder President Clint Lee believes that with the growth of ...

Scientists rely on the public's reporting of ground shaking to characterize the intensity of ground motion produced by an earthquake. How accurate and reliable are those perceptions? A new study by Italian researchers suggests that a person's activity at the time of the quake influences their perception of shaking more than their location. Whether a person is at rest or walking plays a greater role in their perception of ground motion than whether they were asleep on the first or sixth floor of a building. People in motion had the worst perception. "People are like ...

Exposure to high levels of traffic-related air pollution is associated with changes in the right ventricle of the heart that may contribute to the known connection between air pollution exposure and heart disease, according to a new study. "Although the link between traffic-related air pollution and left ventricular hypertrophy, heart failure, and cardiovascular death is established, the effects of traffic-related air pollution on the right ventricle have not been well studied," said lead author Peter Leary, MD, MS, of the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle. ...

French researchers have looked into data mining to develop a method for extracting information on the vulnerability of cities in regions of moderate risk, creating a proxy for assessing the probable resilience of buildings and infrastructure despite incomplete seismic inventories of buildings. The research exposes significant vulnerability in regions that have experienced an "explosion of urbanization." "Considering that the seismic hazard is stable in time, we observe that the seismic risk comes from the rapid development of urbanization, which places at the same site ...

Tampa, FL (March 6, 2014) – A method called molecular subtyping can help doctors better determine which of their breast cancer patients are at high risk of getting breast cancer again, a new study led by the University of South Florida reports. This sophisticated genetic profiling of an individual's specific tumor offers an additional resource to help identify patients who would most benefit from chemotherapy and those who would not. The findings by researchers from USF and other institutions were presented in a scientific poster at the Miami Breast Cancer Conference, ...

Patients are more likely to raise a health problem with a doctor they've seen over time and have built-up a relationship with, new research has revealed. The insight comes as an increasing number of patients struggle to see the same GP. Researchers from the University of Bristol will share their findings with health practitioners and researchers at the South West Society for Academic Primary Care (SW SAPC) meeting today [07 March]. Seeing the same GP is thought to be important in ensuring quality of patient care, as the doctor will have better knowledge of the patient's ...

Researchers looking at how healthcare professionals deal with domestic violence cases have identified that GPs, practice nurses and practice managers are uncertain about how to respond to the exposure of children to domestic violence. With at least 1.2 million women and 784,000 men experiencing domestic violence and abuse in England and Wales each year, the negative effect on families and children can be far-reaching. Childhood exposure to domestic violence and abuse can result in long-term behavioural, mental health and education problems. However, new research has ...

The majority of Europe will experience higher warming than the global average if surface temperatures rise to 2 °C above pre-industrial levels, according to a new study published today. Under such a scenario, temperatures greater than the 2 °C global average will be experienced in Northern and Eastern Europe in winter and Southern Europe in summer; however, North-Western Europe—specifically the UK—will experience a lower relative warming. The study, which has been published today, 7 March, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, also shows that in ...

Cerebral malaria is a serious complication of infection with the malaria parasite, affecting approximately one in a thousand children in areas where malaria is common. Many of the patients die, and among those who survive, about a third have lasting cognitive and neurological disabilities, including epilepsy and learning disorders. A study published on March 6th in PLOS Pathogens shows that a known drug can prevent brain damage in a cerebral malaria mouse model and eliminate subsequent neurological deficits. Infection with the malaria parasite elicits a strong immune ...

Washington, DC (March 6, 2014) — A new noninvasive urine test can distinguish among different causes of acute kidney dysfunction after transplantation. The test, which is described in a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN), may allow patients to avoid invasive kidney biopsies when their transplanted organ is not functioning properly. When creatinine levels are elevated in the blood of a kidney transplant recipient, it is an indication that the transplanted kidney is not functioning well. There are several reasons ...

Flocks of birds manage to navigate through difficult environments by individuals having predispositions to favour the left- or right-hand side, according to research published in PLOS Computational Biology this week. Scientists at The University of Queensland's Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Vision Science found that budgerigars display individual bias to fly to the left or right. This allows flocks to quickly navigate past obstacles by being able to split and not slow down due to crowding. Dr Partha Bhagavatula, ...

This news release is available in Portuguese. Our intestines harbour an astronomical number of bacteria, around 100 times the number of cells in our body, known as the gut microbiota. These bacteria belong to thousands of species that co-exist, interact with each other and are key to our health. While it is clear that species imbalances may result in disease, it is unclear at what pace does each species in the gut evolves, a process that contributes to the chance of a particular innocuous species becoming harmful to the host. In the latest issue of the scientific ...

For adults and children who undergo cataract surgery, implantation of an artificial lens is the standard of care. But a clinical trial suggests that for most infants, surgery followed by the use of contact lenses for several years—and an eventual lens implant—may be the better solution. The trial was funded in part by the National Eye Institute (NEI), a component of the National Institutes of Health. A cataract is a clouding of the eye's lens, and can be removed through a safe, quick surgical procedure. After cataract removal, most adults and children receive a permanent ...

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has recorded the never-before-seen break-up of an asteroid into as many as 10 smaller pieces. Fragile comets, comprised of ice and dust, have been seen falling apart as they near the sun, but nothing like this has ever before been observed in the asteroid belt. "This is a rock, and seeing it fall apart before our eyes is pretty amazing," said David Jewitt of the University of California at Los Angeles, who led the astronomical forensics investigation. The crumbling asteroid, designated P/2013 R3, was first noticed as an unusual, fuzzy-looking ...

VIDEO: NASA Goddard's Aki Roberge explains how observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile tell us about poison gas, comet swarms and a hypothetical planet around Beta Pictoris.... Click here for more information. An international team of astronomers exploring the disk of gas and dust around a nearby star have uncovered a compact cloud of poisonous gas formed by ongoing rapid-fire collisions among a swarm of icy, comet-like bodies. The researchers ...

MIAMI – A new study satellite tracked 17 young loggerhead turtles in the Atlantic Ocean to better understand sea turtle nursery grounds and early habitat use during the 'lost years.' The study, conducted by a collaborative research team, including scientists from the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, was the first long-term satellite tracking study of young turtles at sea. "This is the first time we were able to show the maiden voyage of young turtles after they left the beach," said Rosenstiel School scientist Jiangang Luo ...

SAN DIEGO, Calif. (March 6, 2014)—A team led by researchers at San Diego State University has been awarded $4 million to enhance asthma education and treatment strategies in California's Imperial Valley, where children are twice as likely as the national average to suffer from asthma. The grant will allow researchers to better understand the specific asthma needs of Imperial Valley's largely Latino/Latina population, as well as develop more effective approaches to treatment for families, communities, and physicians. Approximately 4.5 million African-Americans and 3.6 ...

URBANA, Ill. - Crop yields in the fragile semi-arid areas of Zimbabwe have been declining over time due to a decline in soil fertility resulting from mono-cropping, lack of fertilizer, and other factors. In collaboration with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), University of Illinois researchers evaluated the use of a precision farming technique called "microdosing," its effect on food security, and its ability to improve yield at a low cost to farmers. "Microdosing involves applying a small, affordable amount of fertilizer ...

MATERIALS – Lighter, stronger engines . . . Engines could become lighter and more efficient because of a research project that combines the talents and resources of the Chrysler Group, Nemak S.A. of Mexico and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The goal of the four-year $5.5 million cooperative research and development agreement is to develop an advanced cast aluminum alloy for next-generation higher efficiency engines. In addition to being lighter, the new alloy for cylinder heads would be stronger and capable of sustaining the higher temperatures and pressures of engines ...

Preschoolers can be smarter than college students at figuring out how unusual toys and gadgets work because they're more flexible and less biased than adults in their ideas about cause and effect, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Edinburgh. The findings suggest that technology and innovation can benefit from the exploratory learning and probabilistic reasoning skills that come naturally to young children, many of whom are learning to use smartphones even before they can tie their shoelaces. The findings also ...

In the first study of its type, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have looked at the health threat to pregnant women with a history of Kawasaki disease (KD), concluding that the risks are low with informed management and care. The findings are published in the March 6, 2014 online edition of the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. KD is a childhood condition affecting the coronary arteries. It is the most common cause of acquired heart disease in children. First recognized in Japan following World War II, KD diagnoses ...