These days, it is nearly impossible to leave college without having taken out some student loans. Unfortunately, given the job market, finding a job to pay back those loans can seem like an equally daunting task. The federal government is considering a change to the student loan repayment system, hoping that the move could reduce default rates while improving fairness in the system. The proposal, which is modeled after the loan repayment system in the United Kingdom, would make automatic withdrawals from borrowers' paychecks. Loan payments would be tied to borrowers' ...

In Wisconsin, patrolling officers have seen a sharp increase in the number of people "huffing" and driving. Huffing involves the inhaling of hazardous contents of a spray can to get high. While the law is still evolving to include this practice in standardized vehicle codes, to date, huffing can be a form of reckless driving, which endangers other motorists on the road. Huffing and car accident cases In recent months, Oshkosh Police responded to two traffic crashes involving drivers suspected of huffing hazardous substances. In November 2012, police received ...

Texting while driving is against the law in Georgia. However, according to data published recently in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the prohibition may not be doing much to keep motorists safe. This is because law enforcement officials rarely punish drivers for violating the anti-texting law. The law went into effect on July 1, 2010. Since then, data from the Department of Driver Services shows that only 1,281 drivers have been convicted of texting while driving -- an average of less than 50 per month. The State Patrol says that its troopers only cite an average ...

Most of the country recently experienced a reprieve from the foreclosure epidemic plaguing the nation - unfortunately New Jersey was not included in this reprieve. While the nation as a whole enjoyed a 17 percent drop in the number of homes foreclosed upon - when compared to last year - New Jersey suffered an increase of more than one percent in foreclosed homes, according to a monthly report from CoreLogic. In addition, the same report shows that New Jersey ranks second in the nation in the percentage of homes in foreclosure - 7.7 percent in the process of defaulting, ...

Hampton Inn Gaffney South Carolina Hotel offers convenient lodging to guests attending the Battle of Cowpens 232nd Anniversary Celebration. Taking place at Cowpens National Battlefield, SC on January 19-20, 2013, the celebration will include two days of special talks, guided battlefield walks, weapons firing, calvary, and domestic skills demonstration. All activities are FREE! Visit www.nps.gov/cowp/specialevents.htm for more information. Special presentations and featured authors will include: - Dr. Melissa Walker, Converse College, author of The Battles of Kings ...

"It isn't that diets don't help you lose weight," says Dr. Stan Spencer, author of a new book, The Diet Dropout's Guide to Natural Weight Loss (Fine Life Books: 1/1/2013). "The problem is that as soon as you quit the diet, the weight returns." "Think of excess fat as a collection of bad habits," he says. "Lose the habits and you will lose the fat. Each time you give up one of these bad habits (all other things being equal), you will lose fat until your body naturally settles at a lower weight." Dr. Spencer says the key to successfully ...

After 10 years in service, DT Plumbing & Heating (www.dtplumbingandheating.co.uk) have put down a list of common plumbing problems in London. Protecting the home during the winter time is important because even small leaks can cause major issues and result in expensive repair costs. To be out well in advance can often help minimize costs and even reduce running costs. Below are some suggestions from DT Plumbing and Heating. To start with it's important to always insulate cold water pipes under the bath to avoid condensation and drips onto the floor. Call a certified ...

Happy New Year! Happy New Year! Or should that be happy new year, or Happy New Year's? And what is the situation if you are talking about an event that will happen in the new year? This one causes many grammarians to disagree. This writer suggests the following as a consensus: If you are talking about how business will be next year or an event expected to take place next year then no capitalization is required if the term 'new year' is used. You simply have a noun - year - modified by an adjective - new. In the new year we expect to see a 10% increase in sales. If ...

Corcentric, a leading provider of Accounts Payable automation and electronic invoicing solutions, today announced they will be hosting a no-cost 60-minute educational Webinar titled "Just the Facts: A Look into the Types of AP Automation Solutions." This Webinar, hosted by Rob DeVincent, Corcentric's Vice President of Product Marketing, will take place on Thursday, January 17, 2012 at 2:00 PM ET/11:00 AM PT. Many organizations' Accounts Payable processes are burdened with finding lost invoices, resolving exceptions, and reconciling supplier disputes. With an ...

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The Board of Directors of VII Peaks-KBR Co-Optivist Income BDC II, Inc. (the "Company") authorized and declared a special cash distribution equal to $0.077 per share, to be paid to stockholders of record at the close of business December 27, 2012, payable on January 17, 2013. This special distribution shall be paid exclusive of and in addition to the current annualized distribution of 7.35% per share, based on a $10.00 share price. On December 27, 2012, the Company also declared two semi-monthly distributions of $0.030625 per share each (an annualized ...

With Smokers Utopia nothing is off limits when it comes to electronic cigarette reviews and the companies behind them. While other review sites have sales type reviews with nothing but the good, Smokers Utopia covers the dirt on the companies that market them to the public. This week the site announced their South Beach Smoke Review and has just recently updated their SmokeTip Review so that consumers are informed of both the good and the bad of the products and companies that retail them to the smoking public. "We just believe people should get the whole story ...

A BYU biologist is part of a team of researchers that has unlocked the "black box" to the underground world home to billions of microscopic creatures. That first peek inside, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – one of the top three scientific journals in the world – may well explain how the number of species in an ecosystem changes the way it functions. "The organisms that live in soil do all kinds of important things for us – they decompose and decontaminate our waste and toxic chemicals, purify our water, prevent erosion, renew ...

Because modern computers have to depict the real world with digital representations of numbers instead of physical analogues, to simulate the continuous passage of time they have to digitize time into small slices. This kind of simulation is essential in disciplines from medical and biological research, to new materials, to fundamental considerations of quantum mechanics, and the fact that it inevitably introduces errors is an ongoing problem for scientists. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have now identified ...

Bigger brains can make animals, well, brainier, but that boost in brain size and ability comes at a price. That's according to new evidence reported on January 3rd in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, in which researchers artificially selected guppies for large and small brain sizes. The findings lend support to the notion that bigger brains and increased cognitive ability do go together, a topic that has been a matter of considerable debate in recent years, said Niclas Kolm of Uppsala University in Sweden. They also represent some of the first convincing evidence ...

Researchers from the RIKEN Research Centre for Allergy and Immunology in Japan report today that they have succeeded for the first time in creating cancer-specific, immune system cells called killer T lymphocytes, from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells). To create these killer cells, the team first had to reprogram T lymphocytes specialized in killing a certain type of cancer, into iPS cells. The iPS cells then generated fully active, cancer-specific T lymphocytes. These lymphocytes regenerated from iPS cells could potentially serve as cancer therapy in the future. ...

The human body contains immune cells programmed to fight cancer and viral infections, but they often have short lifespans and are not numerous enough to overcome attacks by particularly aggressive malignancies or invasions. Now researchers reporting in two separate papers in the January 4th issue of the Cell Press journal Cell Stem Cell used stem cell technology to successfully regenerate patients' immune cells, creating large numbers that were long-lived and could recognize their specified targets: HIV-infected cells in one case and cancer cells in the other. The findings ...

STANFORD, Calif. — When a young athlete dies unexpectedly on the basketball court or the football field, it's both shocking and tragic. Now Stanford University School of Medicine researchers have, for the first time, identified the molecular basis for a condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy that is the most common cause for this type of sudden cardiac death. To do so, the Stanford scientists created induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, from the skin cells of 10 members of a family with a genetic mutation that causes the condition. The researchers then ...

In a novel use of gene knockout technology, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine tested the same gene inserted into 90 different locations in a yeast chromosome – and discovered that while the inserted gene never altered its surrounding chromatin landscape, differences in that immediate landscape measurably affected gene activity. The findings, published online in the Jan. 3 issue of Cell Reports, demonstrate that regulation of chromatin – the combination of DNA and proteins that comprise a cell's nucleus – is not governed by a uniform ...

The memory problems that many women experience in their 40s and 50s as they approach and go through menopause are both real and appear to be most acute during the early period of post menopause. That is the conclusion of a study which appears today in the journal Menopause. "Women going through menopausal transition have long complained of cognitive difficulties such as keeping track of information and struggling with mental tasks that would have otherwise been routine," said Miriam Weber, Ph.D. a neuropsychologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) ...

Pioneering research presented at the Fertility 2013 conference today (Thursday 3 January 2013) shows that a large proportion of male cancer patients are missing out on appropriate fertility advice. Sperm banking is routinely recommended for all men diagnosed with cancer who are at risk of long-term infertility, caused by treatment such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Infertility can be permanent or temporary depending on the individual's circumstances and men may need to attend follow-up appointments to assess their fertility in the years after they have been discharged ...

Two researchers from the Polytechnic University of Valencia and the University of Oxford have proven that hot chocolate tastes better in an orange or cream coloured cup than in a white or red one. The study adds to recent research demonstrating how our senses perceive food in a different way depending on the characteristics of the container from which we eat and drink. "The colour of the container where food and drink are served can enhance some attributes like taste and aroma," as explained to SINC by Betina Piqueras-Fiszman, researcher at the Polytechnic University ...

The research, carried out at Imperial College London and the University of Warwick, suggests these signals could be targets for drugs that would help prevent miscarriage in women who are particularly vulnerable. At the start of pregnancy, the fertilised embryo must embed itself in the lining of the uterus. The uterus is only receptive to embryos for a few days in each menstrual cycle, ensuring that embryos can only implant at the right stage of development. Currently scientists know only a few details about the biological processes that control when an embryo can be implanted. In ...

Jerusalem, January 3, 2013 – All living cells keep their cellular calcium concentration at a very low level. Since a small increase in calcium can affect many critical cellular functions (an elevated calcium concentration over an extended period can induce cell death), powerful cellular mechanisms ensure that calcium concentration quickly returns to its low level. It is known that impairments of cellular calcium regulation underlie almost all neurodegenerative diseases. For example, age-related loss of calcium regulation was shown to promote cell vulnerability in Alzheimer's ...

Up to 75 per cent of patients who take statins to treat elevated cholesterol levels may suffer from muscle pain. Scientists at the Center for Healthy Aging at the University of Copenhagen have now identified a possible mechanism underlying this unfortunate side effect. The results have just been published in the well-reputed Journal of American College of Cardiology. Statin is a class of drugs which are used to treat high levels of blood cholesterol by way of inhibiting the liver's ability to produce cholesterol. Statins are the most potent drugs on the market for lowering ...