Television dramas often portray the lives of those who work in dangerous jobs. The recent series "Chicago Fire" follows firefighters as they risk their lives to save others and limit property damage. Several years ago, the series "Chicago Code" was all about crime fighting and the dangers associated with law enforcement. While firefighting and law enforcement are dangerous professions, they are by no means the most dangerous jobs in Chicago. Less glamorous jobs are often where accidents occur and lives are lost. For example, a worker cleaning a ...

Under New York's 2009 "Leandra's Law," every person convicted of driving while intoxicated in New York, or DWI, is required to install an Ignition Interlocking Device (IID) on his or her car. However, the data shows that only three of every 10 people (23,000 people statewide) ordered to install the device have actually done so. While many have chosen simply to forgo driving, several DWI offenders have scoffed at court orders and continue to get behind the wheel of a car. What is an IID? An IID is a device that attaches to a vehicle's ignition system ...

Intellectual property might be in the form of trade secrets. This includes include any method, formula or information that creates a competitive benefit. Under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, the law protects a trade secret only to the extent that the owner has made "efforts that are reasonable under the circumstances to maintain its secrecy." For this reason, it is imperative to demonstrate that your company recognized your specific formula, method or information as a trade secret. As a trade secret owner, you do not want to make the mistake of waiting until ...

Employers can minimize their exposure to liability in sexual harassment claims by implementing effective sexual discrimination training for supervisory and non-supervisory employees. Harassment in the workplace can result in drawn out litigation and vicarious liability for an employer when proper training and procedures are not in place. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes it unlawful to discriminate against an individual, because of an individual's race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Sexual harassment is one form of sex discrimination, which can ...

The Washington State Patrol and the Washington Traffic Safety Commission have joined with municipal law enforcement agencies to implement a program known as "Target Zero." "Target Zero" (TZ) is a public safety-based education and awareness program with the stated goal of reducing the state's annual traffic fatality rate to zero by the year 2030. What is the program? The TZ program is designed to increase driver awareness of the most common causes of motor vehicle accidents in the state as well as the types of driver behaviors that contribute to ...

www.glamournailvending.com Glamour Nail Vending has developed a one of a kind product that everyone wants - and they have the sales history to prove it. The company have merged advanced technology with traditional vending to allow users to print nail art directly onto their nails in less than a minute. In 2012, their first year of sales, the company has already appointed distributors to 28 territories worldwide, with more being appointed each week. The nail industry had revenue of $7.3 billion in 2012 and it is looking even more attractive for 2013. With Glamour Nail ...

A large new collection of space photos taken at wavelengths that are invisible to the human eye and blocked by Earth's atmosphere has been released as a New Year's gift to the people of Earth by NASA and Penn State University. The images were captured by a telescope on board NASA's Swift satellite, whose science and flight operations are controlled by Penn State from the Mission Operations Center in State College, Pennsylvania, using the Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope, which resulted from Penn State's collaboration with the Mullard Space Science Laboratory of the University ...

For several years, neurologists at UCLA have been building a case that a link exists between pesticides and Parkinson's disease. To date, paraquat, maneb and ziram — common chemicals sprayed in California's Central Valley and elsewhere — have been tied to increases in the disease, not only among farmworkers but in individuals who simply lived or worked near fields and likely inhaled drifting particles. Now, UCLA researchers have discovered a link between Parkinson's and another pesticide, benomyl, whose toxicological effects still linger some 10 years after the chemical ...

The production of new neurons in the adult normal cortex in response to the antidepressant, fluoxetine, is reported in a study published online this week in Neuropsychopharmacology. The research team, which is based at the Institute for Comprehensive Medical Science, Fujita Health University, Aichi, has previously demonstrated that neural progenitor cells exist at the surface of the adult cortex, and, moreover, that ischemia enhances the generation of new inhibitory neurons from these neural progenitor cells. These cells were accordingly named "Layer 1 Inhibitory Neuron ...

Researchers at Warwick Medical School have discovered that recurrent pregnancy loss can be due to a dysfunctional monthly fertility window. The study, led by Professor Jan Brosens and Professor Siobhan Quenby of the Division of Reproductive Health, sheds new light on the mechanisms that determine the timing and duration of the fertility window and how that may increase the chances of miscarriage. The release of the cytokine IL-33 and the activation of its receptor (ST2) in cells in the uterus induces an inflammatory response that controls the stage that we are familiar ...

Spanish researchers have traced the bacterial microbiota map in breast milk, which is the main source of nourishment for newborns. The study has revealed a larger microbial diversity than originally thought: more than 700 species. The breast milk received from the mother is one of the factors determining how the bacterial flora will develop in the newborn baby. However, the composition and the biological role of these bacteria in infants remain unknown. A group of Spanish scientists have now used a technique based on massive DNA sequencing to identify the set of bacteria ...

BEER-SHEVA, Israel, January 4, 2013 -- Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers reveal that data culled from geosocial networks like the GPS traffic app Waze can help prevent traffic incidents with better deployment of police resources at the most accident prone areas. "Only now are we beginning to discover the potential in the huge amount of data collected daily," explains BGU researcher and Ph.D. student Michael Fire. "Studies of this kind, which monitor events such as traffic accidents over time, can help the police identify dangerous sections of roads ...

For almost 30 years, researchers have sought to identify a particular enzyme that is involved in regulating electron transport during photosynthesis. A team at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich has now found the missing link, which turns out to be an old acquaintance. Photosynthesis sustains life on Earth by providing energy-rich compounds and the molecular oxygen that higher organisms depend on. The process is powered by sunlight, which is captured by "biochemical solar cells" called photosystems that are found in plants, algae and certain types of bacteria. ...

Calcium is so much more than the mineral that makes our bones and teeth strong: It is a ubiquitous signaling molecule that provides crucial information inside of and between cells. Calcium is used to help our hearts beat regularly, our guts to function appropriately and even for fertilization to occur. It is also needed to help muscles and blood vessels contract, to secrete hormones and enzymes and to send messages throughout the nervous system. In a study published in Current Biology, scientists from the University of Rochester Medical Center, Marquette University and ...

However, Francis Chaouloff, research director at Inserm's NeuroCentre Magendie (Inserm Joint Research Unit 862, Université Bordeaux Ségalen), Sarah Dubreucq, a PhD student and François Georges, a CNRS research leader at the Interdisciplinary Institute for Neuroscience (CNRS/Université Bordeaux Ségalen) have just discovered the key role played by a protein, the CB1 cannabinoid receptor, during physical exercise. In their mouse studies, the researchers demonstrated that the location of this receptor in a part of the brain associated with motivation and reward systems controls ...

This press release is available in Spanish. Vegetated drainage ditches can help capture pesticide and nutrient loads in field runoff, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists report. These ditches—as common in the country as the fields they drain—give farmers a low-cost alternative for managing agricultural pollutants and protecting natural resources. Agricultural Research Service (ARS) ecologist Matt Moore at the agency's National Sedimentation Laboratory in Oxford, Miss., and his colleagues conducted the research. ARS is USDA's chief intramural scientific ...

This press release is available in German. What is normal to most people in winter has so far been impossible in physics: a minus temperature. On the Celsius scale minus temperatures are only surprising in summer. On the absolute temperature scale, which is used by physicists and is also called the Kelvin scale, it is not possible to go below zero – at least not in the sense of getting colder than zero kelvin. According to the physical meaning of temperature, the temperature of a gas is determined by the chaotic movement of its particles – the colder the gas, the slower ...

New research from Western University provides brain imaging evidence that students well-versed in very basic single digit arithmetic (5+2=7 or 7-3=4) are better equipped to score higher on the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT), an examination sat by millions of students in the United States each year in preparation for college admission tests. In findings published today in The Journal of Neuroscience research led by Daniel Ansari, Associate Professor in Western's Department of Psychology and a principal investigator at the Brain and Mind Institute, showed by ...

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently selected Southwest Research Institute to provide the flight low-rate crosslink wireless communications platform for the System F6 Program. The System F6 Program, which is envisioned to culminate in an on-orbit demonstration in 2015–2016, is designed to validate a new space mission concept in which a cluster of smaller, wirelessly connected spacecraft replaces the typical single spacecraft carrying numerous instruments and payloads. This "fractionated" architecture enhances survivability, responsiveness ...

BOSTON – Genomic research is widely expected to transform medicine, but progress has been slower than expected. While critics argue that the genomics "promise" has been broken – and that money might be better spent elsewhere -- proponents say the deliberate pace underscores the complexity of the relationship between medicine and disease and, indeed, argues for more funding. But thus far, these competing narratives have been based mostly on anecdotes. Ramy Arnaout, MD, DPhil, a founding member of the Genomic Medicine Initiative at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- The amount of rainfall affects the number of infant infections leading to hydrocephalus in Uganda, according to a team of researchers who are the first to demonstrate that these brain infections are linked to climate. Hydrocephalus -- literally "water on the brain" -- is characterized by the build-up of the fluid that is normally within and surrounding the brain, leading to brain swelling. The swelling will cause brain damage or death if not treated. Even if treated, there is only a one-third chance of a child maintaining a normal life after post-infectious ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Norfolk Southern Railway No. 999 is the first all-electric, battery-powered locomotive in the United States. But when one of the thousand lead-acid batteries that power it dies, the locomotive shuts down. To combat this problem, a team of Penn State researchers is developing more cost-effective ways to prolong battery life. The experimental locomotive's batteries, just like automotive batteries, are rechargeable until they eventually die. A leading cause of damage and death in lead-acid batteries is sulfation, a degradation of the battery caused ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Experience working for a particular hospital matters when it comes to the performance of radiologists who work for outsourcing teleradiology companies, according to a team of researchers, whose finding could have important implications, given the growing use of telemedicine. "More than half of all hospitals now use teleradiology services," said Jonathan Clark, assistant professor of health policy and administration, Penn State. "Hospitals send their X-rays, CT scans, MRIs and other images to outsourcing companies who then forward the images to ...

SAN DIEGO – Genetic sequencing technology is altering the way cancer is diagnosed and treated, but traditional specimen handling methods threaten to slow that progress. That's the message delivered this week in a column appearing in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) by Scripps Clinic physicians Eric Topol, Kelly Bethel and Laura Goetz. Dr. Topol is a cardiologist who serves as chief academic officer of Scripps Health and director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute (STSI), leading Scripps' genomic medicine research efforts. Dr. Bethel ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Many industrial plants depend on water vapor condensing on metal plates: In power plants, the resulting water is then returned to a boiler to be vaporized again; in desalination plants, it yields a supply of clean water. The efficiency of such plants depends crucially on how easily droplets of water can form on these metal plates, or condensers, and how easily they fall away, leaving room for more droplets to form. The key to improving the efficiency of such plants is to increase the condensers' heat-transfer coefficient — a measure of how readily heat ...