Billy Cromedy, President of Advantage Contracting, was selected as one of a small group of minority business leaders from around the country to participate in a meeting at the White House with administration officials on December 4th. The participants in the round table hosted by the White House Business Council discussed the current fiscal cliff debate, the President's budget plan, and future job creation opportunities. "It is an honor and a privilege to be included in such pivotal discussions on our national economy," Cromedy said about the invitation. "The ...

Privately held research and development laboratory Separation Design Group, LLC (SDGroup) has developed the world's smallest oxygen machine. The O-Pal Personal Beverage Oxygenator is a handheld appliance that extracts oxygen from the air and injects it into beverages to improve flavor. The patent-pending device harvests oxygen directly from the air around us. To accomplish this, O-Pal employs a proprietary filter material which temporarily traps nitrogen molecules while allowing oxygen molecules to flow through to the machine's self-contained reservoir. The captured ...

Most people don't have the time or budget to travel around the world and visit countries where they could learn a language from a native speaker. Now anyone can. Linguo Land is a multi-player online language learning game that takes language learning out of a stuffy classroom. Players who want to speak another language are connected with native-speaking new friends anywhere in the world. The native speakers will help the beginners, or those who want to enhance skills they've already acquired, learn a language or improve on one they are already speaking. This fascinating ...

While most children are looking forward to getting gifts during the upcoming holiday season, it is worth noting that one in five children live in poverty. Poverty is a major risk factor for children's development and deep poverty is linked to a range of physical-biological, cognitive-academic, and social-emotional problems. These problems persist into adulthood. Poverty also contributes to a growing health and academic achievement gap, declining college attendance and graduation rates, and an increasing workforce skills gap. A new Social Policy Report from SRCD on Children, ...

Political communications researcher Dr Jacob Groshek, together with co-investigators Noortje de Boer and Hannah Sütfeld, analysed 144 online campaign ads produced for more than 11 candidates during the 2012 French and American presidential elections, including the Republican primaries in the US. The study found slightly more than 60% of American ads possessed a negative tone, compared to just 7% of French ads. The vast majority of French advertisements (68%) were deemed to be 'neutral' in tone, while just 18% of US ads resided in this category. In addition, unofficial ...

SAN FRANCISCO—In the search for rogue nukes, researchers have discovered an unlikely tool: astronomical radio telescopes. Ohio State University researchers previously demonstrated another unlikely tool, when they showed that South Korean GPS stations detected telltale atmospheric disturbances from North Korea's 2009 nuclear test. Both techniques were born out of the discovery that underground nuclear explosions leave their mark—on the outer reaches of Earth's atmosphere. Now, working with astronomers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), they have analyzed ...

Athens, Greece – 5 December 2012: Children with HIV have a 2.5 fold increased risk of atherosclerosis, according to research1 presented at EUROECHO and other Imaging Modalities 2012. Antiretroviral treatment, lipid lowering drugs and prevention with healthy lifestyles are needed to prevent early death from cardiovascular disease. EUROECHO and other Imaging Modalities 2012 is the annual meeting of the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI)2, a registered branch of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC)3. It takes place 5-8 December in Athens, Greece, ...

Athens, Greece – 5 December 2012: Patients with obstructive sleep apnea have the same early cardiovascular damage as diabetics, according to research presented at EUROECHO and other Imaging Modalities 2012. The study1 was presented by Dr Raluca Mincu from Bucharest, Romania. EUROECHO and other Imaging Modalities 2012 is the annual meeting of the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI)2, a registered branch of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC)3. It takes place 5-8 December in Athens, Greece, at the Megaron Athens International Conference Centre. Obstructive ...

Athens, Greece – 5 December 2012: Hearts previously rejected due to donors' age or other risk factors can now be declared viable for transplantation using pharmacological stress echo, according to research presented at EUROECHO and other Imaging Modalities 2012. The study1 was presented by Dr Tonino Bombardini from Pisa, Italy. EUROECHO and other Imaging Modalities 2012 is the annual meeting of the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI)2, a registered branch of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC)3. It takes place 5-8 December in Athens, Greece, at ...

Conventional wisdom in brain research says that you just used your hippocampus to answer that question, but that might not be the whole story. The context of place depends on not just how you got there, but also the things you see around you. A new study in Neuron provides evidence that a different part of the brain is important for understanding where you are based on the spatial layout of the objects in that place. The finding, in rats, has a direct analogy to primate neuroanatomy. "Understanding how and where context is represented in the brain is important," said ...

Antibodies against amyloid beta (Aβ) protein deposits that are thought to play a role in Alzheimer's disease have shown some success in preventing the buildup of deposits in animals, but they have not been effective at removing preexisting deposits. Now researchers reporting in the December issue of the Cell Press journal Neuron show that a modified antibody was able to clear preexisting Aβ deposits in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease. "These findings have important implications for current and future development of antibodies for the treatment of Alzheimer's ...

Many galaxies have a giant black hole at their centre that causes the gas around it to glow. However, in the case of green bean galaxies, the entire galaxy is glowing, not just the centre. These new observations reveal the largest and brightest glowing regions ever found, thought to be powered by central black holes that were formerly very active but are now switching off. Astronomer Mischa Schirmer of the Gemini Observatory had looked at many images of the distant Universe, searching for clusters of galaxies, but when he came across one object in an image from the Canada-France-Hawaii ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Most patients whose breast cancer has spread to their lymph nodes have most of the lymph nodes in their armpit area removed after chemotherapy to see if any cancer remains. A study conducted through the American College of Surgeons Oncology Group and led by Judy Boughey, M.D. a breast surgeon at Mayo Clinic shows that a less invasive procedure known as sentinel lymph node surgery successfully identified whether cancer remained in lymph nodes in 91 percent of patients with node-positive breast cancer who received chemotherapy before their surgery. In sentinel ...

"We find that 87% of the 15 largest (8.6 magnitude or higher) and half of the 50 largest (8.4 magnitude or higher) earthquakes of the past century are associated with intersection regions between oceanic fracture zones and subduction zones," says Dietmar Müller, researcher at the University of Sydney in Australia and lead author of the Solid Earth paper. The connection is less striking for smaller earthquakes. Powerful earthquakes related to these intersection regions include the destructive 2011 Tohoku-Oki and 2004 Sumatra events. "If the association we found were ...

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. – December 5, 2012 – Scientists have long used the speed of seismic waves traveling through the Earth as a means of learning about the geologic structure beneath the Earth's surface, but the seismic waves they use have typically been generated by earthquakes or man-made explosions. A University of Rhode Island graduate student is using the tiny seismic waves created by ocean waves crashing on shorelines around the world to learn how an underwater plateau was formed 122 million years ago. "There are any number of ways to create seismic waves, but most ...

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. – December 5, 2012 – Oceanographers at the University of Rhode Island have analyzed long-term data from several anemometers in southern New England and found that average wind speeds have declined by about 15 percent at inland sites while speeds have remained steady at an offshore site. Kelly Knorr, a graduate student at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography, and Professor John Merrill reported the results of their research today at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. The researchers found that average wind speeds ...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—December 5, 2012—Despite researchers' best efforts, no drug exists that can slow, halt or reverse the onslaught of Alzheimer's disease. A progressive and fatal neurodegenerative disorder, Alzheimer's has stolen the memories and livelihoods of millions—leaving patients and their families struggling to cope with the disease's devastating consequences. But today, scientists at the Gladstone Institutes propose a new research avenue that has the potential to change all that. In the latest issue of the journal Neuron, available today online, Gladstone Investigators ...

The search for the origin of modern human behaviour and technological advancement among our ancestors in southern Africa some 70 000 years ago, has taken a step closer to firmly establishing Africa, and especially South Africa, as the primary centre for the early development of human behaviour. A new research paper by renowned Wits University archaeologist, Prof. Christopher Henshilwood, is the first detailed summary of the time periods he and a group of international researchers have been studying in South Africa: namely the Still Bay techno-traditions (c. 75 000 – 70 ...

Scientists have discovered 100 million-year-old regions in the DNA of several plant species which could hold secrets about how specific genes are turned 'on' or 'off'. The findings, which are hoped will accelerate the pace of research into crop science and food security, are detailed by University of Warwick researchers in the journal The Plant Cell. By running a computational analysis of the genomes of the papaya, poplar, Arabidopsis and grape species, scientists have uncovered hundreds of conserved non-coding sequences which are found in the DNA of all four species. These ...

A combined team of scientists from Europe and South Africa (Luísa G. Carvalheiro (University of Leeds, UK & Naturalis Biodiversity Research Centre, Netherlands), Colleen Seymour and Ruan Veldtman (SANBI, South Africa) and Sue Nicolson (University of Pretoria)) have discovered that pollinator services of large agriculture fields can be enhanced with a simple cost-effective measure, that involves the creation of small patches of native plants within fruit orchards. "Mango farmers in South Africa are aware of the pollination limitation of this crop and invest a substantial ...

In research published in the journal Acta Biomaterialia, researchers from the University of Sheffield describe a new method for producing membranes to help in the grafting of stem cells onto the eye, mimicking structural features of the eye itself. The technology has been designed to treat damage to the cornea, the transparent layer on the front of the eye, which is one of the major causes of blindness in the world. Using a combination of techniques known as microstereolithography and electrospinning, the researchers are able to make a disc of biodegradable material which ...

Experts already know that pregnant women should not eat for two. A study now insists on the importance of a healthy diet as a way of avoiding increased insulin and glucose levels in the child, both of which are indicators of diabetes and metabolic syndrome risk. Maternal diet quality during pregnancy is fundamental to foetal growth as well as insulin and glucose levels at birth. Such indications warn of the possible predisposition to suffer from illnesses like diabetes and metabolic syndrome. The study was headed by the Complutense University of Madrid and published ...

Scientists have demonstrated a new way to investigate mechanisms at work in Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases, which also could prove useful in the search for effective drugs. For new insights, they turned to the zebrafish, which is transparent in the early stages of its life. The researchers developed a transgenic variety, the "MitoFish," that enables them to see – within individual neurons of living animals – how brain diseases disturb the transport of mitochondria, the power plants of the cell. Neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, ...

Sustainable business innovation is good business; researchers from Aalto University, Finland have proved. The researchers tested how sustainability business innovations and the market value of companies in the construction sector are connected. The study is a first of its kind. An event study model was used to analyse large construction sector companies in several European countries as well as Australia. The most important finding of the study is that a positive and statistically significant association exists between sustainability innovation announcements and the market ...

The sense of immersion in role-play and computer games is sometimes viewed as dangerous, as players' strong perceptions of fictional worlds are assumed to make them lose contact with reality. On the other hand, players' immersion also implies a potential for improved learning, since it enables them to 'experience' new places and historical eras. Yet a new study from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, shows that immersion in online role-play games requires a lot of hard work. Gaming researcher Jonas Linderoth, at the Department of Education, Communication and Learning, ...