Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned! begins where Atlas Shrugged leaves off, with the United States of America having devolved into the United Corporations of America and a world where the divide between the 99% and the 1% is ever prevalent. Stephen Goldstein's book offers the 99% a vision for closing that gap. Imagine firefighters stand watching a house burn because the owner owed some back taxes or municipal fees. Imagine the government providing no relief at all to a hurricane-ravaged Florida. That non-action is the (fortunately) fictitious exemplification of Ayn ...

The 2013 Green Living Show hits Toronto April 12th-14th and Contiki Holidays Canada (www.contiki.com) is treating attendees to a special presentation by environmentalist Celine Cousteau (www.celinecousteau.com). As a documentary filmmaker, environmental activist and granddaughter of legendary oceanographer, Jacques Cousteau, Celine's commitment to protect marine ecosystems and diverse cultures expands from hands-on projects to educating young travellers as Contiki's sustainability partner. Sponsored by Contiki, Celine will take the main stage on April 13th at 5:30 pm before ...

Although winter seems to be taking its time in moving on British Airways is already welcoming the summer, having recently kicked off its brand new summer schedule. Speaking about the new timetable, presenter and musician Myleene Klass, said: "Take advantage of British Airways' summer schedule starting, grab your bikini (you know I'm partial to mine) and let's get out of this freezing weather!" The airline has launched a host of routes to Spanish destinations in time for the summer season, allowing travellers to visit numerous brand new locations. New services ...

Celebrities are used to life in front of the lens but this spring stars from the world of sport, film and TV are taking a turn behind the camera to help with a National Trust initiative. Actor Jude Law, chefs The Fabulous Baker Brothers and England rugby ace Austin Healey are among those who have shared photographs of the places that mean the most to them as part of a nationwide scheme by the National Trust to celebrate the importance of 'special places' in people's lives. The campaign follows research undertaken by the charity which found that 84 per cent of Brits ...

HOUSTON – (April, 3 2013) – Vermont's aggressive health care reform initiatives can serve as a roadmap for other states, according to a Master of Public Health candidate at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth). The paper, "Lessons from Vermont's Health Care Reform," will appear tomorrow in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study's author, Laura Grubb, M.D., of The University of Texas School of Public Health, part of UTHealth, wrote that Vermont is well ahead of most other states in implementing federal and state health care reforms. ...

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (04/03/2013) —Adélie penguins may actually benefit from warmer global temperatures, the opposite of other polar species, according to a breakthrough study by an international team led by University of Minnesota Polar Geospatial Center researchers. The study provides key information affirming hypothetical projections about the continuing impact of environmental change. Researchers from the United States and New Zealand used a mix of old and new technology studying a combination of aerial photography beginning in 1958 and modern satellite imagery ...

VIDEO: The animation shows the NIST logo that was stored within a vapor of rubidium atoms and three different portions of it that researchers were able to extract at will. Animation... Click here for more information. Talk about storing data in the cloud. Scientists at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland have taken this to a whole new level by demonstrating* that they can store visual ...

The challenge of making concrete greener—reducing its sizable carbon footprint without compromising performance—is just like the world's most ubiquitous manufactured material—hard! But, according to a new report* from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the potential engineering performance, energy-efficiency and environmental benefits make it a challenge worth tackling. Many factors determine the overall energy and environmental impact of concrete. However, reducing the amount of portland cement, which reacts with water to bind all the sand, ...

A study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine recommends a dramatic shift in the way doctors treat metastatic prostate cancer. "These results have changed the way I treat patients," said Ian M. Thompson Jr., M.D., director of the Cancer Therapy & Research Center at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and senior author on the international study. Hormone therapy in hormone-sensitive prostate cancer has been shown to help extend the lives of patients, but it causes a range of unpleasant side effects in men like moodiness, hot ...

It's generally thought that anticancer chemotherapies work like antibiotics do, by directly killing off what's harmful. But new research published online on April 4 in the Cell Press journal Immunity shows that effective chemotherapies actually work by mobilizing the body's own immune cells to fight cancer. Researchers found that chemo-treated dying tumors secrete a factor that attracts certain immune cells, which then ingest tumor proteins and present them on their surfaces as alert signals that an invader is present. This new understanding of how chemotherapy works with ...

People who have a buildup of certain proteins in the brain and spinal fluid have an increased likelihood of developing Alzheimer's disease, but it's currently unclear who will develop these protein accumulations. Now researchers reporting online April 4th in the Cell Press journal Neuron have identified mutations in certain genetic regions that influence the levels of these protein accumulations. The findings may not only help identify people most at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease well before they show signs of cognitive decline, but also offer new information for ...

Scientists at Queen Mary, University of London and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), have discovered why bees copy each other when looking for nectar – and the answer is remarkably simple. Despite their tiny brains, bees are smart enough to pick out the most attractive flowers by watching other bees and learning from their behaviour. By using simple logic, they see which coloured flowers are the most popular, and conclude that those of the same colour must also contain lots of energy-rich nectar. "Learning where to find nectar by watching others seems fantastically ...

Obesity is linked to the widespread epidemics of diabetes and heart disease that plague society, but a lesser-known fact is that the weight can also lead to autoimmune disease. Now, researchers have new information about how that damaging immune response happens and how it might be stopped, published on April 4 in Cell Reports, a Cell Press publication. The key, they show, may be to block an important element known as AIM (for apoptosis inhibitor of macrophage) in the bloodstream and, ultimately, the production of antibodies that attack the self. The discovery is especially ...

On Twitter, a popular microblogging and social-networking service, statements about vaccines may have unexpected effects -- positive messages may backfire, according to a team of Penn State University researchers led by Marcel Salathé, an assistant professor of biology. The team tracked the pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine messages to which Twitter users were exposed and then observed how those users expressed their own sentiments about a new vaccine for combating influenza H1N1 -- a virus strain responsible for swine flu. The results, which may help health officials improve ...

This press release is available in German. Freiburg: Two metres of DNA are packed into the cell nucleus, presumably based on a strictly defined arrangement. Researchers working with biologist Patrick Heun from the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg have now succeeded in explaining a phenomenon, which was first observed 40 years ago. The centromeres, namely the structures at the primary constriction of the X-shaped chromosomes, are clustered in a few specific locations in the cell nucleus. Using fruit flies as a model, the researchers ...

Researchers from The Wistar Institute explain a new molecular mechanism behind the phenomenon of oncogene-induced senescence. By depriving the cell of the ability to make new nucleotides—the building blocks of DNA molecules—cells can suppress cancer development by forcing a damaged cell into a senescent state, where the cell remains alive yet cannot reproduce. According to the researchers, their findings may offer a new strategy to strengthen the effects of anti-cancer drugs and chemotherapies. Their results, which appear in the April 25 issue of Cell Reports (available ...

DALLAS – April 4, 2013 – UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers report that a pathogen annually blamed for an estimated 90 million cases of food-borne illness defeats a host's immune response by using a fat-snipping enzyme to cut off cellular communication. "Our findings provide insight into severe bacterial infectious diseases, as well as some forms of cancer, in which the attachment of fat molecules to proteins is an essential feature of the disease process," said Dr. Neal Alto, assistant professor of microbiology and senior author of the study in today's print ...

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a new set of genetic markers for Alzheimer's that point to a second pathway through which the disease develops. Much of the genetic research on Alzheimer's centers on amyloid-beta, a key component of brain plaques that build up in the brains of people with the disease. In the new study, the scientists identified several genes linked to the tau protein, which is found in the tangles that develop in the brain as Alzheimer's progresses and patients develop dementia. The findings may help ...

Research from New Zealand's University of Otago detailing the fossil of a dwarf baleen whale from Northern California reveals that it avoided extinction far longer than previously thought. Otago Department of Geology PhD student Robert Boessenecker has found that the fossil of the 4-5 meter long Herpetocetus, thought to be the last survivor of the primitive baleen whale family called cetotheres, may be as young as 700,000 years old. Mr Boessenecker says the previously youngest-known fossils of this whale were from the pre-Ice Age Pliocene epoch; approximately 3 million ...

Sight is such a spontaneous activity that we are unaware of the complexity of the brain mechanisms it implies. For instance, we easily recognize objects, which appear to look always the same, without realizing that we observe them from ever-changing points of view and that their image – the luminance profile cast onto the retina –varies significantly each time we look at them. To maintain such "invariance" in the shape, our brain performs procedures that extract from the two-dimensional image "key" visual information that enables us to recognize the object under any condition. ...

In mammals, an individual's sex is determined by the chromosomes it inherits from its parents. Two X chromosomes lead to a female, whereas one X and one Y lead to a male. Y chromosomes are only passed from fathers to sons, so each Y chromosome represents the male genealogy of the animal in question. In contrast, mitochondria are passed on by mothers to all their offspring. This means that an analysis of the genetic material or DNA of mitochondria can give information on the female ancestry. For the modern horse, it is well known that mitochondrial DNA is extremely ...

PHILADELPHIA, April 4, 2013 – – A new report on teen driver safety released today by The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and State Farm® shows encouraging trends among teen passengers. In 2011 more than half of teen passengers (54 percent) reported "always" buckling up. From 2008 to 2011, risky behaviors of teen passengers (ages 15 to 19 years) declined: the number of teen passengers killed in crashes not wearing seat belts decreased 23 percent; the number of teen passengers driven by a peer who had been drinking declined 14 percent; and 30 percent fewer teen ...

Global population data spanning the years from 1900 to 2010 have enabled a research team from the Autonomous University of Madrid to predict that the number of people on Earth will stabilise around the middle of the century. The results, obtained with a model used by physicists, coincide with the UN's downward forecasts. According to United Nations' estimates, the world population in 2100 will be within a range between 15.8 billion people according to the highest estimates –high fertility variant– and 6.2 billion according to the lowest –low fertility variant–, a figure ...

Springtime spells tick-time. Lyme borreliosis is the most common tick-borne disease in Switzerland: around 10,000 people a year become infected with the pathogen. The actual hosts for Borrelia, however, are wild mice. Like in humans, the pathogen is also transmitted by ticks in mice. Interestingly, not all mice are equally susceptible to the bacterium and individual animals are immune to the pathogen. Scientists from the universities of Zurich and Lund headed by evolutionary biologist Barbara Tschirren reveal that the difference in vulnerability among the animals is genetic ...

Researchers at the University of Leeds may have solved a key puzzle about how objects from space could have kindled life on Earth. While it is generally accepted that some important ingredients for life came from meteorites bombarding the early Earth, scientists have not been able to explain how that inanimate rock transformed into the building blocks of life. This new study shows how a chemical, similar to one now found in all living cells and vital for generating the energy that makes something alive, could have been created when meteorites containing phosphorus minerals ...