Estate Planning May Save Your Family More Than Just Taxes The death of a loved one is hopefully a time when family members draw closer together and celebrate their dear one's life and the bonds of family unity. Unfortunately, a family member's passing often becomes a time of disagreement and bickering over how the loved one's assets will be divided. Decades-old sibling rivalries, perceived offenses and hard feelings too often boil to the surface when money is involved and can leave scars that last a lifetime. From the outside, the disagreement may seem ridiculous; ...

NTSB: Expand breath testing to reduce drunk driving deaths Drunk driving is one of the biggest threats to highway safety in the United States. According to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 9,878 people died in drunk driving accidents in 2011 -- an average of one DUI fatality every 53 minutes. NHTSA also determined that, on average, alcohol-related crashes injure one person every 90 seconds in the United States. In Illinois, drunk driving accidents claimed the lives of 297 people in 2010. Even though 2010's numbers represented a nearly ...

Is your trademark protected overseas? If your trademark is protected in the United States, this does not ensure its safety in other countries. Before the Internet, national protections seemed to suffice. However, today, someone in another country could be using your trademark. A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol or design, or a combination of these, which provides branding for a company. A business that thinks that its brand equity could potentially expand to other countries should consider filing a trademark to protect its brand rights. Due to the proliferation ...

Unpaid child support payments leaving an $11 billion hole in the Texas economy Texas parents are struggling with the effects of prolonged unemployment and other economic pressures by missing child support payments in record numbers, leaving a gaping, multi-billion-dollar hole in the state's economy. The huge deficit doesn't just apply to missed payments, though; more parents than ever before are also seeking downward modifications of existing orders, most often to account for a loss in income for the paying parent. On the flip side, parents who aren't receiving much-needed ...

Advances in technology can enhance the health care industry, providing various improvements and benefits. However, such developments can also create new opportunities for injury. The Economic Cycle Research Institute, a nonprofit organization that researches the best approaches to improving patient care, recently released a report entitled "The Top 10 Health Technology Hazards for 2013." The institute intends to use the report to raise awareness of the potential dangers associated with the use of particular medical systems and devices. The list is updated ...

It's not unheard of for prescription drug use to get out of hand. When you are suffering from a serious medical condition, the right pills can manage a great deal of pain, suffering and discomfort; when the medical condition begins to improve, it is not always easy to stop taking the pills you have come to depend on. But when does prescription drug use cross the line? Under Oregon and federal law, you can be found guilty of a drug crime by misusing or overusing prescription medication; and drivers of motor vehicles need to be aware that even if you are within your prescription, ...

LA JOLLA, CA – December 23, 2012 – The mysterious inner workings of Chang Shan—a Chinese herbal medicine used for thousands of years to treat fevers associated with malaria—have been uncovered thanks to a high-resolution structure solved at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI). Described in the journal Nature this week, the structure shows in atomic detail how a two-headed compound derived from the active ingredient in Chang Shan works. Scientists have known that this compound, called halofuginone (a derivative of the febrifugine), can suppress parts of the immune system—but ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio—In a discovery that raises further concerns about the future contribution of Antarctica to sea level rise, a new study finds that the western part of the ice sheet is experiencing nearly twice as much warming as previously thought. The temperature record from Byrd Station, a scientific outpost in the center of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), demonstrates a marked increase of 4.3 degrees Fahrenheit (2.4 degrees Celsius) in average annual temperature since 1958—that is, three times faster than the average temperature rise around the globe. This temperature ...

Scientists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have identified two molecules that play an important role in the survival and production of nerve cells in the brain, including nerve cells that produce dopamine. The discovery, which is published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, may be significant in the long term for the treatment of several diseases, such as Parkinson's disease. The same scientists have previously shown that receptors known as "liver X receptors" or LXR, are necessary for the production of different types of nerve cells, or neurons, in the developing ...

Scientists at The University of Manchester have identified how cells know which way up they need to be. The discovery could help in the fight against cancer because in the early stages of the disease the cells become disorganised. Professor Charles Streuli and Dr Nasreen Akhtar of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell-Matrix Research have conducted new research that leads to a better understanding of cell polarity. Properly organised tissues are vital to maintaining functional organs and a healthy body. Part of being organised includes cells being in the correct position ...

Acute lymphatic leukemia (ALL) is the most common cancer in children under the age of 14 years. With optimum treatment, approximately 75 % of children are currently cured, but the treatment consists of severe chemotherapy with many side effects. In collaboration with international research teams, scientists at VIB, KU Leuven and UZ Leuven have identified new genetic mutations that lead to T-ALL, a variant of ALL. They have unmasked the ribosome – the molecular machine in the cell that is involved in the production of proteins – as a weak spot in leukemia cells. Their research ...

Autistic-like behaviors can be partially remedied by normalizing excessive levels of protein synthesis in the brain, a team of researchers has found in a study of laboratory mice. The findings, which appear in the latest issue of Nature, provide a pathway to the creation of pharmaceuticals aimed at treating autism spectrum disorders (ASD) that are associated with diminished social interaction skills, impaired communication ability, and repetitive behaviors. "The creation of a drug to address ASD will be difficult, but these findings offer a potential route to get there," ...

Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center investigators have identified three new genetic "hotspots" linked to colorectal cancer. These variants, reported Dec. 23 in an Advanced Online Publication in Nature Genetics, provide new insight into the biology of colorectal cancer – and could represent new therapeutic targets for the disease. Colorectal cancer is one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers worldwide – and rates are particularly high in the United States and other developed countries. Genetics plays an important role in both sporadic and familial (inherited) forms of ...

Gaithersburg, Md.—December 23, 2012— OpGen, Inc. today announced its ARGUS® Whole Genome Mapping System technology was used in combination with next-generation sequencing (NGS) to produce the first, high-quality reference genome of the domestic goat. The study, which was led by BGI-Shenzhen and Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences was published online today in Nature Biotechnology. The paper, titled Sequencing and automated whole-genome optical mapping of the genome of a domestic goat (Capra hircus), demonstrates the value, efficiency and cost effectiveness ...

Current thinking on how the Toxoplasma gondii parasite invades its host is incorrect, according to a study published today in Nature Methods describing a new technique to knock out genes. The findings could have implications for other parasites from the same family, including malaria, and suggest that drugs that are currently being developed to block this invasion pathway may be unsuccessful. Toxoplasma gondii is a parasite that commonly infects cats but is also carried by other warm-blooded animals, including humans. Up to a third of the UK population are chronically ...

December 23, 2012, Shenzhen, China – In a collaborative study published online today in Nature Biotechnology, researchers from Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, BGI, and other institutes, have completed the first genome sequence of domestic goat by a robust approach integrated with next-generation sequencing (NGS) and whole-genome mapping (WGM) technologies. The goat genome is the first reference genome for small ruminant animals and may help to advance the understanding of distinct ruminants' genomic features from non-ruminant species. This work ...

Scientists have shed light on why some people are more susceptible to gout than others. A study has identified 18 new genetic variations that increase levels of uric acid in the blood, which is the main cause of the disease. High levels of uric acid form small crystals in joints and tissues, causing pain and swelling – the main symptoms of the condition once known as the 'disease of kings'. Gout is the most common form of inflammatory arthritis, affecting up to two per cent of the world's population. Understanding how these common genetic variants increase uric ...

(Embargoed) CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – In research published online Dec. 23, 2012 in the journal Nature Genetics, scientists have found three new and relatively rare genetic variants that influence insulin production, offering new clues about the genetic factors behind diabetes.. "Studying genetic variants — even rare ones — helps us learn how genes affect health and disease," said Karen Mohlke, PhD, one of the study's senior authors and associate professor of genetics at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. "In this study, we've implicated new genes as playing ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- A monkey would probably never agree that it is better to give than to receive, but they do apparently get some reward from giving to another monkey. During a task in which rhesus macaques had control over whether they or another monkey would receive a squirt of fruit juice, three distinct areas of the brain were found to be involved in weighing benefits to oneself against benefits to the other, according to new research by Duke University researchers. The team used sensitive electrodes to detect the activity of individual neurons as the animals weighed ...

Some 40 million people depend on the Colorado River Basin for water but warmer weather from rising greenhouse gas levels and a growing population may signal water shortages ahead. In a new study in Nature Climate Change, climate modelers at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory predict a 10 percent drop in the Colorado River's flow in the next few decades, enough to disrupt longtime water-sharing agreements between farms and cities across the American Southwest, from Denver to Los Angeles to Tucson, and through California's Imperial Valley. "It may not ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (December 23, 2012) – In the perilous hours immediately after birth, a newborn mammal must survive the sudden loss of food supply from its mother. Under normal circumstances, newborns mount a metabolic response to ward off starvation until feeding occurs. This survival response involves a process of controlled breakdown of internal energetic sources known as autophagy. Although autophagy has been well documented, the key mechanistic regulators of autophagy in vivo have remained poorly understood. Whitehead Institute researchers have discovered that a ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — A research team led by biogeochemists at the University of California, Riverside has tested a popular hypothesis in paleo-ocean chemistry, and proved it false. The fossil record indicates that eukaryotes — single-celled and multicellular organisms with more complex cellular structures compared to prokaryotes, such as bacteria — show limited morphological and functional diversity before 800-600 million years ago. Many researchers attribute the delayed diversification and proliferation of eukaryotes, which culminated in the appearance of complex animals ...

DURHAM, NC -- In a forced game of molecular tug-of war, some strings of atoms can act like a lever, accelerating reactions 1000 times faster than other molecules. The discovery suggests that scientists could use these molecular levers to drive chemical and mechanical reactivity among atoms and ultimately engineer more efficient materials. "We are interested in designing new, stress-responsive materials, so we are trying to develop reactions that are very slow normally but that can be accelerated efficiently by force," said Duke chemist Steve Craig, who headed the research. In ...

Nearly a third of children diagnosed with food allergies who participated in a recent study are bullied, according to researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Almost eight percent of children in the U.S. are allergic to foods such as peanuts, tree-nuts, milk, eggs, and shellfish. Nearly half of parents surveyed (47.9 percent) were not aware of the bullying—although both the bullied children and their parents reported experiencing higher stress levels and lower quality of life. The study, titled, "Child and Parental Reports of Bullying in a Consecutive ...

With the combination of steep escalation in utility prices and current economic climate, the price that a businesses and homeowners pay for electricity and natural gas can mean the difference between make and break for their bottom line With electricity prices set to reach a record high this winter, TSI ENERGY has launched a new website to help businesses find the most competitive rates for their business electricity supply. Aimed at helping companies based in the USA obtain the most competitive pricing. TSI ENERGY understands that the volatile market place can be difficult ...