Snowdrops, shortlisted for the Man Booker prize, appears - at first glance - to be a love story. Nicholas Platt is a seasoned and somewhat cynical expatriate lawyer, living in Moscow around the millennium. The book is written in the first person - Nick is writing a 'confession' to a future, unnamed fiancee - and appears to detail his affair with Masha, a young Russian girl. However, all is not as it seems and the reader soon begins to realize that there is something strange in this relationship. Just how badly things can go wrong, on a number of levels - there are three ...

HES today announced the appointment of SHARON CHATMAN MCGEE as Executive Vice President. "We are excited about Sharon joining our team" says Jean Ann Hartzell-Minzey, President and CEO; "she brings a new level of expertise to our organization. In addition, to having excellent HIM credentials, she has been an Adjunct Professor for Southern University at New Orleans and the University of New Orleans." Healthcare Education Strategies, Inc. is a company which stresses the continued education of coding professionals, compliance officers and physicians. ...

Wright & McGurk Law would like to caution consumers that taking your anti- depressant medication while pregnant could cause serious birth defects. According to the FDA, mothers taking anti- depressant SSRI medication during pregnancy could experience 1 to 2 times greater the risk of giving birth to a child with birth defects, and 6 times more likely to be born with persistent pulmonary hypertension. The Centers for Disease Control estimates 17 million Americans take prescription SSRI anti-depressants, a part of an estimated $11 billion industry. SSRI anti- depressants ...

In the month of October, the Atlanta-based The Tolson Firm, LLC made an inter-city move to a more centralized building. They were previously located on Lookout Place but have since moved to 2890 Piedmont Road. They hope this move will better accommodate their clients. With over a decade of legal experience, their firm is dedicated to helping clients who have suffered from sort of medical malpractice. They understand how difficult it can be to deal with the aftermath of such a tragic accident and are dedicated to providing their clients with the high-quality legal assistance ...

Kinsman Company of Pipersville, Pa has launched their new site, www.LivingWallsbyKinsman.com. Pamela Crawford, in partnership with Kinsman, introduced "Living Wall" planters to beautify bare walls with live plants through an affordable vertical side planting system costing only $34.95. Steel wire boxes contain replaceable coco-fiber liners, to be filled with soil-less mix and planted with established, well grown plants for instantly flourishing flowers and foliage. "While landscaping 1500 homes - including the outdoor living areas - I ran into a lot ...

The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, a founding resident company of The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, announces the second concert program of its 2012-2013 season. The orchestra will perform All Bach on November 4, 5 and 6. The program features winner of Denmark's Carl Nielsen International Violin Competition, conductor and violinist Adele Anthony. The November 4 2:30 p.m. and November 5 7:30 p.m. concerts will be performed in the Kimmel Center's intimate Perelman Theater as part of the 2012-2013 subscription series. The November 6 7:30 p.m. concert will be ...

The number of towns recording a rise in home sales has more than doubled over the past year, according to research by Lloyds TSB. Almost two-thirds - 324 out of 500 (or 65%) - of the towns tracked in England and Wales were property sales 'hotspots' (i.e. towns that recorded a rise in home sales in the past year) in the first half of 2012. This was 115% higher than the 151 (or 30%) towns that recorded a rise in the first half of 2011. North-south divide in location of property hotspots 60% of the towns that saw a rise in home sales in 2012 are in southern England1. This ...

There has been significant change within the Leeds and Yorkshire housing markets in recent years, despite the fact that nationally house prices continue to tread water. Over the last decade, prices in both the city and the region have experienced significant change. Since 2002 the average property price in Leeds has increased 47%, from GBP92,987 to GBP137,030 in 2012. However, in the last five years, when the market has fallen from its peak this figure has dropped 18% from an average of GBP167,988 in 2007. Regionally property prices have increased 62% (GBP81,522 to ...

There has been significant change within the Manchester and the North West housing markets in recent years, despite the fact that nationally house prices continue to tread water. Over the last decade, prices in both the city and the region have experienced significant change. Since 2002 the average property price in Manchester has increased 57%, from GBP78,328 to GBP123,063 in 2012. However, in the last five years, when the market has fallen from its peak, this figure has dropped 22% from an average of GBP158,541 in 2007. Regionally property prices have increased ...

Fusion electronic cigarettes are known for high-quality electronic cigarettes that are affordable, always come with perks like free shipping, and come with a free case with every kit purchase. The company has repeatedly stated that their goal is to make their products available to all smokers looking to make the jump to a much superior lifestyle. "We know times are hard and the electronic cigarette can cut the cost of smoking down to crazy savings compared to tobacco smoking," states Tiffany Ellis of Firelight Fusion. "Because of our low prices, excellent ...

The Container Store, the nation's leading retailer of storage and organization products, is shouting from the roof-top its employee-first culture and how they are helping communities along the way by getting their customers involved - putting purpose before profits - in its new What We Stand For campaign. The Container Store stands for EMPLOYEES first in all that they do. By putting its employees first, customers' lives are improved with great service and the gift of organization delivered by their happy, well-trained and enthusiastic salespeople. And if customers are ...

LA JOLLA, CA – October 24, 2012 – Millions of people with "wet" macular degeneration are prescribed a class of medication known as anti-VEGF drugs. But now scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found that a drastic reduction of VEGF activity may do more harm than good. In the new study, the researchers deleted the gene for the blood-vessel growth factor VEGF, which has been implicated in stimulating abnormal blood vessel growth in a range of cancers and eye diseases, from cells in the retinas of adult mice. The results showed that without VEGF a large ...

Most of the more than 6,000 species of frogs in the world lay their eggs in water. But many tropical frogs lay their eggs out of water. This behavior protects the eggs from aquatic predators, such as fish and tadpoles, but also increases their risk of drying out. Justin Touchon, post-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, discovered that climate change in Panama may be altering frogs' course of evolution. By analyzing long-term rainfall data collected by the Panama Canal Authority, Touchon discovered that rainfall patterns are changing just as ...

A large-scale study that defines the complexity of underlying mutations responsible for pancreatic cancers in more than 100 patients was published in Nature today. The analysis represents the first report from Australia's contribution to the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC), which brings together the world's leading scientists to identify the genetic drivers behind 50 different cancer types. Pancreatic cancer has the highest mortality rate of all the major cancers and is one of the few for which survival has not improved substantially over the past 40 ...

Researchers at the National Heart Centre Singapore (NHCS) have successfully created a human heart cell model of arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC), an inherited heart muscle disorder which puts one at high risk of developing life-threatening arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death. The NHCS research team discovered that key characteristics of the disease, such as abnormal "fatty changes" and altered distribution of proteins involved in cell-cell connections (called desmosomal proteins) are reproduced in the heart cells. This novel cellular model for studying ...

On July 20, a gunman in Aurora, Colorado, used an assault rifle to murder 12 people and wound 58 others. Although this was one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history, all mass shootings account for a small percentage of gun violence that occurs in the U.S. every day. In the past 100 days since the Aurora shooting, an estimated 3,035 Americans have died as a result of gun violence. A new report by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health examines policies and initiatives for reducing gun violence in the U.S. by reforming current gun policies. ...

DURHAM, N.C. – While studying the sense of touch, scientists at Duke Medicine have pinpointed specific neurons that appear to regulate perception. The sensory neurons are characterized by thin spikes, and based on their volume, these protrusions determine the cells' sensitivity to force. The findings in fruit fly larvae, which appear in online Oct. 25, 2012, in the journal Current Biology, demonstrate the first known function for the sensory neurons and provide insights that could broaden the understanding of chronic pain syndromes in humans. "On a molecular level, ...

PHILADELPHIA - Most healthy cells rely on a complicated process to produce the fuel ATP. Knowing how ATP is produced by the cell's energy storehouse – the mitochondria -- is important for understanding a cell's normal state, as well as what happens when things go wrong, for example in cancer, cardiovascular disease, neurodegeneration, and many rare disorders of the mitochondria. Two years ago, Kevin Foskett, PhD, professor of Physiology at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues discovered that fundamental control of ATP is an ongoing ...

Severe spermatogenic failure (SSF) is a genetic condition that causes low sperm count and infertility. New insights into the genetic alterations that cause this disorder and their prevalence in populations of men around the world are provided by a study published by Cell Press in the American Journal of Human Genetics on October 25. The findings reveal which alterations are the greatest risk factors for the disease, and they could be immediately applicable in genetic counseling for assisted reproduction. "Medically relevant population genetics studies are well established ...

When patients are put under anesthesia, they are often told they will be "put to sleep," and now it appears that in some ways that's exactly what the drugs do to the brain. New evidence in mice reported online on October 25 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, shows that the drugs don't just turn wakefulness "off," they also force important sleep circuits in the brain "on." "Despite more than 160 years of continuous use in humans, we still do not understand how anesthetic drugs work to produce the state of general anesthesia," said Max Kelz of the University ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Coaxing a humble skin cell to become a jack-of-all-trades pluripotent stem cell is feat so remarkable it was honored earlier this month with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Stem cell pioneer Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD, showed that using a virus to add just four genes to the skin cell allowed it to become pluripotent, or able to achieve many different developmental fates. But researchers and clinicians have been cautious about promoting potential therapeutic uses for these cells because the insertion of the genes could render the cells cancerous. Now ...

ANN ARBOR— The genes responsible for inherited diseases are clearly bad for us, so why hasn't evolution, over time, weeded them out and eliminated them from the human genome altogether? Part of the reason seems to be that genes that can harm us at one stage of our lives are necessary and beneficial to us at other points in our development. The idea that the same gene can be both beneficial and harmful, depending on the situation, is called antagonistic pleiotropy. The theory has been around since the 1950s and has been used to explain aging, cancer and genetic diseases. But ...

DETROIT – Patients treated with an epidural steroid injection for back pain relief are at increased risk of bone fractures in the spine, according to a Henry Ford Hospital study. Researchers say the risk of fracture increased 29 percent with each steroid injection, a finding they believe raises patient safety concerns. "For a patient population already at risk for bone fractures, steroid injections carry a greater risk that previously thought and actually pose a hazard to the bone," says Shlomo Mandel, M.D., a Henry Ford orthopedic physician and the study's lead author. Dr. ...

When a female mates with several males, these will compete over the fertilization her eggs. This is an important evolutionary force that has led to the evolution of a diversity of male sexual organ morphologies. This is revealed in a study of seed beetles published today in the leading scientific journal Current Biology. In higher plants, the influential classification system developed by Carl von Linnaeus relied on the fact that the reproductive parts of plants are evolutionarily stable. This is in sharp contrast to the reproductive organs of animals with internal fertilization, ...

(Philadelphia, PA) – Researchers at Temple University's Center for Translational Medicine and the University of Pennsylvania have identified a protein that serves as a gatekeeper for controlling the rush of calcium into the cell's power source, the mitochondria. Without this calcium spigot under control, calcium levels can run amok, contributing to cardiovascular disease, diabetes and neurodegeneration. The findings, reported online October 25, 2012, in the journal Cell, add important new insights into the inner workings of the mitochondria and may eventually help scientists ...