Throughout the U.S., there have been cases of flesh-eating bacteria so severe that major amputations of various limbs has occurred. This was the case with 24-year-old college student Aimee Copeland, who lost her hands, leg and foot due to the widespread bacterial infection. In about 30 percent of all cases, it is fatal, as was the case with 33-year-old Crystal Spencer, who battled for a month before her body finally succumbed to the bacteria in July 2012. According to the Center for Disease Control, there are between 500 and 1,500 incidents each year, which is a ...

After 20 successful years in New York City, Kevin C. Hall, the co-owner of interior design firm, CUSPANT, is pleased to bring his Big Apple design panache and chic style to America's Finest City - San Diego, CA. Since 1996, CUSPANT's principal designer, Kevin C. Hall, has taken the lead on major projects of space renovation, construction documentation, and interior space planning for such well-known corporate, retail, education, and non-profit clients as Calvin Klein, Inc., Armani Exchange (A/X Stores), The American Institute of Physics, and the Ross School of East ...

The gold price has dropped below its $1,600 support level, setting a new lower range between $1,550 and $1,625. However, gold's relatively low pricing could prompt China, one of the world's largest bullion consumers, to take advantage of cheap gold, reports American gold dealer, Gold Price. This would boost demand and rise the gold price. Gold Price forecasts that China will begin picking up the pace on gold buying now that the Lunar New Year holiday has passed. The World Gold Council expects China to remain one of the biggest gold bullion consumers this year. Arthur ...

This weekend sees the return of Mothering Sunday, a day when mums across the country can relax in the knowledge that it's their turn to be fully pampered. London embraces the day with a range of events, special offers and dining deals. Also, for those hoping to treat their mum to an overnight stay in the city, LondonTown.com offers a wide choice of London hotels situated nearby to many of London's best attractions. Coinciding with International Women's Day, the Southbank Centre celebrates the formidable power of women with the return of their Women of the World festival. ...

Linda Bilo-Brechtel, author of "my Sicilian kitchen", will make her debut appearance with her signature cookbook Saturday March 9th, 2013, from 11am-1pm at Surfas Culinary District in Costa Mesa, California. The complimentary event, taking place in the Surfas Test Kitchen, is open to the public and will include a cooking demonstration featuring both "Mama Bilo's Meatballs" as well as the homemade Marinara Sauce from Linda's collection of authentic Sicilian recipes as seen in "my Sicilian kitchen". Guests will have front row access during the ...

Just in time for South By Southwest, a group of Cleveland- based, digital advertising, marketing and technology professionals have launched Plotter - a new map-based social network for iPhone. "Plotter is the first full-featured map app with social capabilities that allows you to create and crowdsource maps of your favorite locations," said Tom Nolan, Founder & CEO of Plotter. The application allows users to "plot" locations onto customized maps, which they can easily show or hide in a simple map view. By linking their Facebook and Twitter ...

Livingston & Haven is seeking entries for the 2013 Aluminum Extrusion Design Competition. The company is looking for innovative product ideas using Bosch Rexroth's Aluminum Framing product line. Individual designers, students, companies and teams are eligible to enter the competition. Entries will be judged by a panel of aluminum extrusion product managers and will be evaluated on how well they showcase the design and manufacturing advantages of extruded aluminum. The winning design will be the one that best demonstrates the benefits of aluminum extrusion, while ...

Autoglass, the UK's leading vehicle glass repair and replacement specialist has announced the opening of its brand new branch in Edinburgh. Located just off the A71 into Edinburgh, this branch is an easy and convenient stop off for commuters. Customers of the UK's leading vehicle glass repair and replacement specialist prefer for the company's mobile technicians, who are available 24/7/365, to come out to a location of their choice and the team based at this new branch will cover Edinburgh, Lothian and the Borders. However, the new, larger, purpose built facility ...

About 428 miles above Earth, the collective observations from the "A-Train," or Afternoon Train build three-dimensional images of the Earth's atmosphere and surfaces. A team at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., is working to supplement those satellites with an instrument mounted to the orbiting International Space Station, or ISS. According to Richard Eckman of the Earth Science Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, the satellites provide a means to make near simultaneous measurements of atmospheric processes. ...

New York, NY— Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers have found the first evidence that selective activation of the dentate gyrus, a portion of the hippocampus, can reduce anxiety without affecting learning. The findings suggest that therapies that target this brain region could be used to treat certain anxiety disorders, such as panic disorder and post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), with minimal cognitive side effects. The study, conducted in mice, was published today in the online edition of the journal Neuron. The dentate gyrus is known to play a ...

In the din of a crowded room, paying attention to just one speaker's voice can be challenging. Research in the March 6 issue of the Cell Press journal Neuron demonstrates how the brain hones in on one speaker to solve this "Cocktail Party Problem." Researchers discovered that brain waves are shaped so that the brain can selectively track the sound patterns from the speaker of interest and at the same time exclude competing sounds from other speakers. The findings could have important implications for helping individuals with a range of deficits such as those associated ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — All too often, stress turns addiction recovery into relapse, but years of basic brain research have provided scientists with insight that might allow them develop a medicine to help. A new study in the journal Neuron pinpoints the neural basis for stress-related relapse in rat models to an unprecedented degree. The advance could accelerate progress toward a medicine that prevents stress from undermining addiction recovery. In the paper published March 6, researchers at Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania demonstrated ...

The flip of a single molecular switch helps create the mature neuronal connections that allow the brain to bridge the gap between adolescent impressionability and adult stability. Now Yale School of Medicine researchers have reversed the process, recreating a youthful brain that facilitated both learning and healing in the adult mouse. Scientists have long known that the young and old brains are very different. Adolescent brains are more malleable or plastic, which allows them to learn languages more quickly than adults and speeds recovery from brain injuries. The ...

Boston, MA – "Use it or lose it." The saying could apply especially to the brain when it comes to protecting against Alzheimer's disease. Previous studies have shown that keeping the mind active, exercising and social interactions may help delay the onset of dementia in Alzheimer's disease. Now, a new study led by Dennis Selkoe, MD, co-director of the Center for Neurologic Diseases in the BWH Department of Neurology, provides specific pre-clinical scientific evidence supporting the concept that prolonged and intensive stimulation by an enriched environment, especially ...

A region of the brain known to play a key role in visual and spatial processing has a parallel function: sorting visual information into categories, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Chicago. Primates are known to have a remarkable ability to place visual stimuli into familiar and meaningful categories, such as fruit or vegetables. They can also direct their spatial attention to different locations in a scene and make spatially-targeted movements, such as reaching. The study, published in the March issue of Neuron, shows that these very different ...

KLAS Enterprises celebrated 15 years of working with providers and vendors last night with their annual Best in KLAS awards reception in New Orleans. The event was attended by prominent healthcare leaders who came to support KLAS' ongoing effort to improve healthcare transparency. The speakers for the evening included Jonathan Bush, CEO of athenahealth, Peter Smith, CEO and Co-Founder of Impact Advisors, and keynote speaker Russell Branzell, CEO of Colorado Health Medical Group. Branzell focused most of his comments on praising KLAS for being the "go-to source for ...

With an average satisfaction score of 4.5 out of 5 on security, cloud users feel safe. Non-cloud users though remain at bay--particularly with many questions still looming around the future of cloud computing in healthcare. The KLAS report titled Cloud Computing Perception 2013: The Hybrid Cloud in Healthcare looks at the evolution of the cloud in healthcare, provider concerns, as well as vendor performance. Given the near-perfect satisfaction scores that cloud-users gave to their vendors, 66% of non-users surveyed said security was definitely the main issue stopping ...

Early diagnosis and treatment with antimalarial drugs (ACTs—artemisinin based combination treatments) has been linked to a reduction in malaria in the migrant population living on the Thai-Myanmar border, despite evidence of increasing resistance to ACTs in this location, according to a study by international researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine. These findings are important as this study suggests that alternative treatments are urgently needed to replace the failing first line drug regimen (mefloquine and artesunate). The authors, led by François Nosten ...

Is it feasible to share research findings with HIV-infected participants enrolled in observational research in rural sub-Saharan African? Anna Baylor and colleagues orally disseminated their findings to 477 research participants during a meeting modelled on a traditional wedding event. The information was enthusiastically received by participants. The meeting was a rewarding experience for the research team and identified new areas for investigation, say the authors. ### Funding: The UARTO Study is funded by U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) RO-1 MH-54907 and ...

Although patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have a disproportionately higher incidence of herpes zoster (shingles), an analysis that included nearly 60,000 patients with RA and other inflammatory diseases found that those who initiated anti-tumor necrosis factor therapies were not at higher risk of herpes zoster compared with patients who initiated nonbiologic treatment regimens, according to a study appearing in the March 6 issue of JAMA. "For patients with rheumatoid arthritis, the risk of herpes zoster is elevated an additional 2- to 3-fold. The contribution ...

Detection of midwall fibrosis (the presence of scar tissue in the middle of the heart muscle wall) via magnetic resonance imaging among patients with nonischemic dilated cardiomyopathy (a condition affecting the heart muscle) was associated with an increased likelihood of death, according to a study appearing in the March 6 issue of JAMA. Nonischemic dilated cardiomyopathy is associated with significant illness and death due to progressive heart failure (HF) and sudden cardiac death (SCD). Despite therapeutic advances, 5-year mortality remains as high as 20 percent. ...

Among patients with coronary artery disease referred for cardiovascular magnetic resonance and found to have regional myocardial wall thinning (of the heart muscle), limited scar burden was associated with improved contraction of the heart and reversal of wall thinning after revascularization, suggesting that myocardial thinning is potentially reversible, according to a study appearing in the March 6 issue of JAMA. Regional myocardial wall thinning is thought to represent chronic myocardial infarction. "However, recent case reports incorporating the use of delayed-enhancement ...

A team of scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School have found that substances which give some foods their bitter flavors can also act to reverse the contraction of airway cells. This reversal, known as bronchodilation, is needed to treat airway obstructive diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The new findings, which could have significant implications for such treatments, are published March 5 in the open access journal PLOS Biology. The sense of taste is mediated by taste receptor cells bundled in our taste buds. These ...

(Boston) – In a Clinical Crossroads article featured in the March 6, 2013 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Dr. Dan Alford from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and Boston Medical Center (BMC) suggests that prescription opioid abuse can be minimized by monitoring patients closely for harm by using urine drug testing (UDT), pill counts, and reviewing prescription drug monitoring program data when available. Approximately 100 million Americans have chronic pain. The safe and effective use of opioids for the management of chronic ...

Employees with disabilities are twice as likely to be attacked at work and they experience higher rates of insults, ridicule and intimidation, a new UK study has found. Researchers from Cardiff and Plymouth universities found that people with physical or psychological disabilities or long-term illness reported higher rates of 21 types of ill-treatment than other workers did, often from their managers and colleagues. These included being given impossible deadlines and being ignored, gossiped about or teased. The research, published in the journal Work, Employment ...