Avantium announced the appointment of Jonathan Wolfson to its Supervisory Board. Jonathan Wolfson is Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Solazyme. Solazyme is a leading industrial biotechnology company producing renewable oil and bioproducts from microalgae for fuels, chemicals, nutrition and personal care products. Solazyme (SZYM) is a US stock listed company at NASDAQ. Mr. Wolfson and Solazyme have received numerous awards for their technology pioneering role in the industrial biotechnology industry. Mr. Wolfson holds J.D. and M.B.A. degrees from the NYU School ...

Put on your thinking cap! Beginning Nov. 30, NASA wants your ideas on how to use the International Space Station as a technology test bed. NASA's Technology Demonstration and National Lab Offices are asking for proposals on advanced and improved exploration technologies for testing and refinement that take advantage of the unique environment aboard the space station. The NASA Research Announcement, or NRA, titled "Soliciting Proposals for Exploration Technology Demonstration and National Lab Utilization Enhancements" was issued on Nov. 14. This opportunity ...

The company that offers the same quality and model as some of the most popular e cigarettes on the market offers more for less when compared to other brands. The company has a long standing record of free shipping on all orders and a free case with every kit order. The e cigarette is a model KR808D-1 that is so highly rated by e cigarette users around the world and is known for its massive vapor and rugged demeanor, making it a top model in the industry. "We are making the deal even sweeter now by adding a global coupon code with an additional 10% off by using ...

Smokers Utopia, considered the most brutal e cigarette reviews site in the world has covered the popular v2 cigs brand. The brand came out in 2009 and has been one of the dominate brands in the e cigarette industry since it came on the scene, but does the facts back up the brand? The V2 Cigs Review on Smokers Utopia claims that buyers must beware and that the company has a few shortcomings that buyers need to be aware of before investing into this popular company. The review points out in detail some of the issues it has with the V2 brand and some interesting information ...

Southwest Media Group, a Dallas-based media and marketing services company, announces a stellar lineup of advertising's leading minds for its fourth-annual experiential digital summit, "Immersion 2013: Explore Your Digital Soul," Feb. 6-7, 2013, at The House of Blues in Dallas. Companies from Microsoft to Shazam will explore the rapidly changing media technology landscape in a series of keynotes, fireside chats, "ignite" mini sessions and "Immersion Rooms" that plunge attendees into the latest innovations and tools in media. Attendees will ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– A new, noninvasive, and low-cost method for the early detection and monitoring of osteoarthritis (arthritis caused by wear and tear) may be on its way, thanks to research by UC Santa Barbara scientists from the Department of Chemical Engineering and the Department of Materials. By studying patterns of friction between cartilage pads, the researchers discovered a different type of friction that is more likely to cause wear and damage. Their work suggests ways to detect this friction, and points to new research directions for getting to the root ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Older adults can improve their decision making and working memory simply by putting on a happy face, a new study suggests. Researchers found that easy mood-boosters -- like giving people a small bag of candy -- helped seniors do significantly better on tests of decision-making and working memory. This is the first study to show the power of positive moods in helping older people with these brain tasks. "There has been lots of research showing that younger adults are more creative and cognitively flexible when they are in a good mood. But because ...

LOS ANGELES (Jan. 30, 2012) – Injecting specialized cardiac stem cells into a patient's heart rebuilds healthy tissue after a heart attack, but where do the new cells come from and how are they transformed into functional muscle? Researchers at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, whose clinical trial results in 2012 demonstrated that stem cell therapy reduces scarring and regenerates healthy tissue after a heart attack, now have found that the stem cell technique boosts production of existing adult heart cells (cardiomyocytes) and spurs recruitment of existing stem cells ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- One in five adults in the United States lacks the math competency expected of an eighth grader, according to the United States Center for Educational Statistics. University of Missouri researchers identified how a lack of a specific math skill in first grade correlated to lower scores on a seventh grade math test used to determine employability and wages in adults. Intervention programs designed to overcome this early math deficiency could prepare students for later employment, help them make wiser economic choices and improve the future U.S. workforce. "Our ...

The risk of hospitalisation or death from heart disease is 32% lower in vegetarians than people who eat meat and fish, according to a new study from the University of Oxford. Heart disease is the single largest cause of death in developed countries, and is responsible for 65,000 deaths each year in the UK alone. The new findings, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggest that a vegetarian diet could significantly reduce people's risk of heart disease. 'Most of the difference in risk is probably caused by effects on cholesterol and blood pressure, ...

NEW YORK (January 30, 2013) -- New data suggests the erectile dysfunction (ED) drug Cialis may also be beneficial in helping men who have problems with ejaculation and orgasm, report researchers from NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in the February issue of the British Journal of Urology International. Cialis is currently approved for the treatment of ED, benign prostate hypertrophy (BPH) and for treatment of men with both conditions. Their study, a meta-analysis of 17 double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials of men with ED, is the first ...

The lipid molecules of membranes, also known as phospholipids, are composed of two elements: A hydrophilic head and two long-chain fatty acids. The molecules form a bilayer in the membrane, with all of the heads pointing outwards and the fatty acid chains hanging in a zip-like interlay position. Biomembranes are constantly reorganized or renewed, for example whenever cells divide. The cell is constantly creating new phospholipids that have to align themselves – which they do in both layers of the biomembrane. However, cells only produce phospholipids on one side of the ...

The researchers have carried out a social network simulation: each individual is represented by a node, while links, connecting the nodes, represent social interactions. Each individual has the tendency to enhance their social importance, and to do so they necessarily have to connect with the "most central nodes", that is, to the people who count. However, to advance socially an individual has to break with the past: technically speaking, abandon old nodes and connect with the most central ones. But how many have an inclination to break up with old connections to aim high? ...

Droughts can severely limit crop growth, causing yearly losses of around $8 billion in the United States. But it may be possible to minimize those losses if farmers can synchronize the growth of crops with periods of time when drought is less likely to occur. Researchers from Oklahoma State University are working to create a reliable "calendar" of seasonal drought patterns that could help farmers optimize crop production by avoiding days prone to drought. Historical probabilities of drought, which can point to days on which crop water stress is likely, are often calculated ...

Toronto – Brokers are supposed to recommend investments that are in the best interests of their clients. But a study published in the February 2013 issue of the Journal of Finance has found that mutual funds offering higher broker fees attract the most investments, especially when the broker is not affiliated with the mutual fund company. Every additional dollar paid to a broker corresponds with another six dollars invested into the fund, and another fourteen dollars if the broker is an unaffiliated third party whose compensation depends exclusively on sales commissions. ...

Disrupting a key interaction between two types of proteins in cells inhibits the spread of cancerous cells, providing researchers with a new pathway toward developing cancer-fighting drugs, according to new findings by Georgia State University scientists. Cell migration is essential for the spread of cancerous cells, also known as metastasis, as well as for other diseases. The research team in the labs of Zhi-Ren Liu, professor of biology, and Jenny Yang, professor of biochemistry, studied the interaction of two molecules, p68 RNA helicase and calcium-calmodulin. Interrupting ...

Bulky and noisy air-conditioning compressors and refrigerators may soon be a thing of the past. With the latest discovery by scientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), current cooling systems which uses refrigerant harmful to the ozone layer could be replaced by a revolutionary cooling system using lasers. This discovery, published and featured on the cover of the 24 January 2013 issue of Nature, the world's top scientific journal, could also potentially lead to a host of other innovations. This includes making huge Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines, ...

Nurses are the largest group of health care providers in the U.S., and health care leaders and experts agree that engaging registered nurses (RNs) in quality improvement (QI) efforts is essential to improving our health care system, patient care and our nation's health. Unfortunately, despite studies demonstrating the value of nurse-led quality improvement efforts, far too few nurses are involved in these efforts, and the number is not growing, according to a study published in the Journal of Nursing Care Quality. The study—part of the RN Work Project funded by the Robert ...

ANN ARBOR—Working beneath the towering oaks and maples on the University of Michigan's central campus Diag, undergraduate researchers and their faculty adviser helped explain an observation that had puzzled insect ecologists who study voracious leaf-munching gypsy moth caterpillars. The caterpillars, which defoliate and sometimes kill stands of trees in the Upper Midwest and the Northeast, are especially fond of oaks, but sugar maple trees appear to be relatively resistant to the European pest. Biologists wondered whether the caterpillars shun sugar maples in part because ...

"We have continued with our study and for the first time are able to present a five-year follow-up on the need for and results of ACL surgery as compared with physiotherapy. The findings have been published in the British Medical Journal and are basically unchanged from 2010. This will no doubt surprise many people, as we have not seen any difference in the incidence of osteoarthritis", says Richard Frobell, one of the researchers behind the study, who is an associate professor at Lund University and a clinician at the orthopaedic department, Helsingborg Hospital. Richard ...

(Boston)–Researchers at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) led by Carmela Abraham, PhD, professor of biochemistry, along with Cidi Chen, PhD, and other collaborators, report that the protein Klotho plays an important role in the health of myelin, the insulating material allowing for the rapid communication between nerve cells. These findings, which appear online in Journal of Neuroscience, may lead to new therapies for multiple sclerosis (MS) and Alzheimer's disease (AD), in which white matter abnormalities are also common but have been largely ignored. MS is ...

A new study provides the first evidence of polyandry – when females choose to mate with more than one male – in female fallow deer. According to a team of scientists from Queen Mary, University of London, UWEHartpury, and University College Dublin, female fallow deer play an active role in selecting their mates, with a consistent proportion (on average 12 per cent) choosing to mate with multiple males each year. "Until now there has been limited understanding of female mate choice during this process, with many people believing that female deer are controlled by males ...

In an advance toward closing a major gap in defenses against terrorist attacks and other mass casualty events, scientists are reporting discovery of a promising substance that could be the basis for development of a better antidote for cyanide poisoning. Their report, which describes a potential antidote that could be self-administered, much like the medication delivered by allergy injection pens, appears in ACS' Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. Steven E. Patterson, Ph.D., and colleagues at the University of Minnesota Center for Drug Design explain that the only existing ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- For immigrants, the path to citizenship in many countries is filled with hurdles: finding a job, learning the language, passing exams. But for some people, the biggest obstacle of all may be one they cannot help: their country of origin. That's one conclusion of a methodologically innovative study of European immigrants suggesting that, other qualifications being equal, migrants from certain countries may be roughly 40 percent less likely than others to gain citizenship. Even if an immigrant has obtained a good education and job, and solid language ...

Mention mobile applications, or mobile apps, and people think of games, email, news, weather, productivity and other software for Apple, Android and other smart phones and tablet computers. But an app with broader impact — the first mobile application to foster wider use of the environmentally friendly and sustainable principles of green chemistry — is the topic of a report in the American Chemical Society's new journal, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. Sean Ekins, Alex M. Clark and Antony Williams point out that the companies that manufacture medicines, electronics ...