Craftmark Solid Surfaces understands that as the weather turns chilly, many of us head indoors. That's when we look around and see that it's time to focus our attention on decorating for fall and winter and making upgrades before holiday guests are knocking at the door. Adding a door wreath of autumn leaves and a pine cone centerpiece on the table can help make your home feel warmer and more inviting for fall, but now is also the time to think about the upgrades you need to make your holiday parties sparkle. Replacing a worn out kitchen counter with a granite kitchen ...

After the ballots are counted and the anticipated Initiative 502 goes into effect December 6th, the criminal justice system will be left to make sense of the law and its complexities. Criminal defense lawyer Steve Graham has written about the law and what it might mean for Washington voters. As with Washington's earlier voter initiative for medical marijuana in 1998, I-502 will leave many questions for the courts to interpret. Lawyers across the state will await the federal government's response to the decriminalization of what the U.S. government still outlaws. Drivers ...

Throughout the Christmas season, Hyde Park will again transform into the festive hotspot, Winter Wonderland. Last year it welcomed over 2 million visitors during its seven week run. Millennium & Copthorne Hotels have hotels near Hyde Park London all conveniently located in central locations, with easy access to Hyde Park and other festive attractions. This year, Winter Wonderland is set to be bigger and better than ever, with attractions including the UK's largest ice rink and Zippos Circus, featuring jugglers, clowns and aerialists. Thrill seekers should visit ...

Essential Patch, a modern holistic medicine company with a philanthropic philosophy, introduces its first collection of all-natural aromatherapy patches. By tapping into the body's natural physiological and psychological responses to aromatic plant extracts, these easy-to-use patches utilize organic, therapeutic grade essential oils to alleviate common maladies and promote overall well being. "Aromatherapy has been providing relief from various ailments for thousands of years, but still, most people find the concept of blending their own essential oils a bit ...

Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS-SOL) — which will be presented at the American Heart Association Annual Meeting in Los Angeles on Nov. 5 and published in the Nov. 7 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) — finds heart disease risk factors are widespread among Hispanic/Latino adults in the United States. Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) study — which will be published in the Nov. 7 issue of JAMA— finds black men and women are about twice as likely to die from coronary heart disease (CHD) compared ...

Boulder, CO, USA – Climate change and extreme weather events grab the headlines, but there is another, lesser known, global change underway on land, in the seas, and in the air: acidification. It turns out that combustion of fossil fuels, smelting of ores, mining of coal and metal ores, and application of nitrogen fertilizer to soils are all driving down the pH of the air, water, and the soil at rates far faster than Earth's natural systems can buffer, posing threats to both land and sea life. "It's a bigger picture than most of us know," says Janet Herman of the Department ...

SAN DIEGO – (Monday, November 5, 2012) – Heart disease risk factors are widespread among Hispanic/Latino adults in the United States, with 80 percent of men and 71 percent of women having at least one risk factor for heart disease, according to a San Diego State University study funded by the National Institutes of Health. These percentages are much higher than the general population, where approximately 49 percent of adults have at least one major risk factor for heart disease and stroke. Findings from the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL), ...

If you look old, your heart may feel old, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2012. In a new study, those who had three to four aging signs — receding hairline at the temples, baldness at the head's crown, earlobe crease, or yellow fatty deposits around the eyelid (xanthelasmata) — had a 57 percent increased risk for heart attack and a 39 percent increased risk for heart disease. "The visible signs of aging reflect physiologic or biological age, not chronological age, and are independent of chronological age," said ...

Adults 18-24 years old with high blood pressure were 28 percent less likely to be diagnosed during doctor visits than those 60 and older, according to findings presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2012. "These young patients come to the clinic and their blood pressure is recorded," said Heather Johnson, M.D., lead researcher of the study. "They have high blood pressure, but there's no documentation of a diagnosis. We wanted to find out why." Researchers examined electronic health records of 13,593 men and women who were at least 18 years ...

No matter what climate you live in, you're more likely to die of heart-related issues in the winter, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2012. "This was surprising because climate was thought to be the primary determinant of seasonal variation in death rates," said Bryan Schwartz, M.D., lead author of the study. Researchers at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles analyzed 2005-08 death certificate data from seven U.S. locations with different climates: Los Angeles County, Calif.; Texas; Arizona; Georgia; Washington; ...

Combining cancer medication with a drug for erectile dysfunction and one for heart transplants helped kill cancer cells and protected the heart from damage, in a study presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2012. For decades, doxorubicin has been a powerful anti-cancer treatment for various human cancers, including breast, ovarian, colon and prostate. But its use has been limited due to harmful, possibly irreversible effects on the heart. In this study, using cell and animal models, researchers found that sildenafil alone or in combination with ...

The 2011 Mineral, Virginia M-5.8 earthquake was felt over an extraordinarily large area. A new study details landslides triggered by the earthquake at distances four times greater and over an area 20 times larger than previously documented for M-5.8 earthquakes worldwide. The study, to be published in the December issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (BSSA), describes physical confirmation of previous observations that ground shaking from earthquakes in the eastern U.S. travels farther than in the western U.S, a plate-boundary region. U.S. ...

A multi-institutional team of researchers has sequenced the DNA of 6,700 exomes, the portion of the genome that contains protein-coding genes, as part of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI)-funded Exome Sequencing Project, one of the largest medical sequencing studies ever undertaken. Scientists participating in the project initially expected that individual rare variants would have a greater effect on over 80 heart, lung and blood related traits and diseases of high public health significance, said Suzanne M. Leal, Ph.D., professor and director, Center ...

SALT LAKE CITY – Cardiology researchers at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute have found that approximately 75 percent of patients taking two common blood-thinning drugs may be receiving the wrong dosage levels, according to a new study. This could put them at risk for serious problems like uncontrolled bleeding or developing blood clots. Millions of Americans with coronary artery disease take one of the two drugs — clopidogrel (Plavix) and prasugrel (Effient) — to prevent harmful blood clots that can cause a stroke or heart attack. Current guidelines ...

Researchers from Aarhus University, Denmark, have now discovered an important mechanism behind one of our most fundamental lines of immune function. The discovery has been published in the esteemed scientific journal, The Journal of Immunology, where it has been highlighted as a top story. In collaboration with colleagues from USA and Turkey, they have discovered exactly which enzymes collaborate in the first line of the immune defence. Thus, they answer a central question about the so-called complement system, which has been a focal point of the scientific field for the ...

VIDEO: Figaro, a Goffin's Cockatoo, makes and uses a tool. Click here for more information. Goffin's cockatoos are a highly playful and curious Indonesian cockatoo species. Therefore, cognitive biologists are now using them as a model species to investigate intelligent behaviour in birds. Together with researchers from the University of Oxford, Alice Auersperg and Birgit Szabo from the Department of Cognitive Biology at the University of Vienna have made a sensational discovery: ...

With its deeply embedded roots, sturdy trunk and dense profusion of branches, the Tree of Life is a structure of nearly unfathomable complexity and beauty. While major strides have been made to establish the evolutionary hierarchy encompassing every living species, the project is still in its infancy. At Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute, Sudhir Kumar has been filling in the Tree of Life by developing sophisticated methods and bioinformatics tools. His latest research, which appeared on the advance online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy ...

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disease with an occurrence rate in France similar to multiple sclerosis (two to three new cases per year for every 100,000 residents). It has a specific affect on neurons responsible for motor control, in particular motor neurones and central motor neurones. The former, located in the spinal cord, are directly linked to muscles and are used for muscle contraction and stretching. The latter, located in the brain, receive movement orders. As the disease develops, the neurons degenerate and the muscles are no longer ...

To this day it remains a mystery why the cerebral pressure in certain people suddenly increases. The consequences, however, are better understood: The blood circulation is disrupted and after a while parts of the brain may die off, similar to what occurs in a stroke. This is how dementia takes its insidious path. Experts estimate that up to ten percent of all cases of dementia in Europe can be attributed to rising blood pressure in the brain. Still, making the diagnosis is tough. People with a heightened susceptibility to a rise in intracranial pressure must be treated ...

Each year throughout the world, up to 22 million tons of rubber are processed and a large portion of it goes into the production of vehicle tires. Once the products reach the end of their useful life, they typically land in the incinerator. In the best case, the waste rubber is recycled into secondary products. Ground to powder, the rubber residues can be found, for example, in the floor coverings used at sports arenas and playgrounds, and in doormats. But until now, the appropriate techniques for producing high-quality materials from these recyclables did not exist. Researchers ...

Extended work shifts of twelve hours or longer are common and popular among hospital staff nurses, but a new study reports that nurses working longer shifts were more likely to experience burnout, job dissatisfaction, and patients were more dissatisfied with their care. In the first study to examine the relationship between nurse shift length and patients' assessment of care, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing report that nurses working shifts of ten hours or longer were up to two and a half times more likely than nurses working shorter ...

(Philadelphia, PA) – Scientists for the first time have evidence showing how a widely used type of "targeted" cancer drug can be dangerous to the heart. Studying mice with the equivalent of a heart attack, researchers found that the drug sorafenib (Nexavar) – which inhibits proteins called tyrosine kinase receptors (RTKs), and is used in kidney and liver cancer treatment – can interfere with heart stem cell activity, affecting the heart's ability to repair itself after injury. The findings suggest that sorafenib and other similar drugs that target these kinds of protein ...

(Philadelphia, PA) – When a person has a heart attack, portions of the heart muscle die in the next several days or even weeks if deprived of oxygen for long enough. The recovering heart slowly remodels itself, even fostering the growth of new blood vessels, in an attempt to regain some of its former function. But all too often, the remodeling is actually harmful, and the damaged heart is on an inevitable downward slide to heart failure. Now, scientists at the Center for Translational Medicine at Temple University School of Medicine have identified a key target they hope ...

DUBLIN, November 6, 2012 – Taiho Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (HQ: Tokyo, President: Masayuki Kobayashi), the developer of the first orally available fluorouracil (FU) Chemotherapeutic treatment (TS-1/S-1), is presenting early stage data for eight novel oncology compounds, including potential first-in-class therapies. The data being presented during the 24th EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics from November 6 – 9, 2012 in Dublin, Ireland underscore Taiho's steadfast commitment to improving cornerstone anti-metabolic cancer agents and developing ...

Boston, Mass.—Using a combination of surgical procedures developed over the last 11 years, surgeons at Boston Children's Hospital have established a new approach for rebuilding the heart in children born with a severe heart defect called hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS). This "staged left ventricle recruitment" (SLVR) strategy uses the existing standard single-ventricle treatment for HLHS and additional procedures to spur the body's capacity for healing and growth and encourage the small left ventricle in these children to grow and function. Members of Boston Children's ...