Blogger and artist Karys Munns at Who Is Grumble Beard? has won a GBP500 Next gift card in Next's New Year, New Shoes competition hosted by Laura Budd at A Daisy Chain Dream blog. For the competition, bloggers had to talk through their favourite pair of shoes and why they love them, then going on to showcase their style picks from Next's Spring Summer shoe collections. The winning post, which can be found at http://whoisgrumblebeard.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/shoes-pick.html combines Karys's love of fashion and art by incorporating Next shoes into her pieces. For her entry, ...

Digital Learning Now! (DLN) today released "The Shift From Cohorts to Competency," the fourth DLN Smart Series white paper in collaboration with Getting Smart , that explores the shift from seat time to demonstrated mastery. For generations students have been passed from grade to grade without mastering foundational skills. Other students are held restricted to grade-level work that is too easy or previously-mastered. This paper outlines how schools and districts can ensure every student gains the necessary skills to graduate college and career ready by shifting ...

Bike & Cruise is a unique cycling tour via a luxury cruise ship. We offer a group package price for the cruise and cycling. All participants sign up through us. A normal group is between 16 and 30 cyclists. We provide vans, bikes & guides. BIKE AND CRUISE TOURS FOR 2013 & 2014 CONTACT: John and Linda Black, Bike & Cruise Tours, (239) 431-6219 WHAT: Bicycling Tours to Western Caribbean, Alaska, Southern Caribbean via a cruise ship or Europe tours from hotel to hotel. TOUR/DATES: Western Caribbean Tour - March 31st to April 7th, 2013 and March 9th ...

Matthew (Oakland, CA) came to Blue Tax not knowing what he owed to the IRS. After Blue Tax's initial compliance call to the IRS, Blue Tax found out that Matthew owed close to $37,000 to the IRS and had numerous missing tax returns. The challenge for Blue Tax was going to be to keep Matthew out of collections while working out a resolution. After Blue Tax discovered the issues on the case, they worked on finding out why Matthew hadn't filed for 10 years. It turns out that he did not work in the United States for those years and did not notify the IRS. Once Blue Tax got ...

IIS Group, LLC (www.iisgroupllc.com) a critical space and data center solution company headquartered in Fort Washington, is pleased to announce that Mark Gogots has joined the team at IIS Group as Director of Sales Support. This strategic hire further develops IIS Group's growing portfolio of regional, national, and international accounts. Mark Gogots arrives at IIS Group with a wealth of experience in the data center industry. Mark was employed with Comcast for three years where he was a Senior Technical Project Manager and responsible for two of Comcast's national ...

Leading divorce and family law attorneys from the Massachusetts Family Law Group will conduct a series of two-hour seminars teaching men and women how to properly plan and prepare for the "harsh reality of divorce." Each seminar will give participants a roadmap of the divorce process and focus on the main issues in a typical divorce case, such as child custody and parenting plans, child support and alimony, property division, and the allocation of debt. With over 100 years of combined experience in family law amongst the attorneys at the law firm, the group will ...

DURHAM, N. C. -- Male sparrows are capable of fighting to the death. But a new study shows that they often wave their wings wildly first in an attempt to avoid a dangerous brawl. "For birds, wing waves are like flipping the bird or saying 'put up your dukes. I'm ready to fight,' " said Duke biologist Rindy Anderson. Male swamp sparrows use wing waves as an aggressive signal to defend their territories and mates from intruding males, Anderson said. The findings also are a first step toward understanding how the birds use a combination of visual displays and songs to ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – New research at Oregon State University suggests the health benefits of small amounts of activity – even as small as one- and two-minute increments that add up to 30 minutes per day – can be just as beneficial as longer bouts of physical exercise achieved by a trip to the gym. The nationally representative study of more than 6,000 American adults shows that an active lifestyle approach, as opposed to structured exercise, may be just as beneficial in improving health outcomes, including preventing metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. "Our ...

SAN ANTONIO (Jan. 28, 2013) — If findings of a new study in mice are any indication, it might be possible to fine-tune cellular powerhouses called mitochondria, tweaking one aspect to increase insulin sensitivity, reduce body and fat mass, and even extend life. Exploiting this target could one day lead to novel treatments for type 2 diabetes — an endocrine system disease that affects 8 percent of the U.S. population. The research also points to promising new avenues of investigation in the biology of aging. The study, reported in The FASEB Journal by authors from the ...

VIDEO: Diabetes drug could hold promise for lung cancer patients. Click here for more information. LA JOLLA, CA— Ever since discovering a decade ago that a gene altered in lung cancer regulated an enzyme used in therapies against diabetes, Reuben Shaw has wondered if drugs originally designed to treat metabolic diseases could also work against cancer. The growing evidence that cancer and metabolism are connected, emerging from a number of laboratories around the world ...

Charlottesville, VA, January 29, 2013. The "July effect"—the notion that the influx of new residents and fellows at teaching hospitals in July of each year adversely affects patient care and outcomes—was examined in a very large data set of hospitalizations for patients undergoing spine surgery. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN) and the University of Virginia Health System (Charlottesville, VA) found a negligible effect on periprocedural outcomes among patients treated by spine surgery. Detailed results of their thorough study are furnished in the article "The ...

A large study published in PLOS Medicine on January 29, 2013, shows that the risk of future cardiovascular disease and death increased with severity of erectile dysfunction in men both with and without a history of cardiovascular disease. While previous studies have shown an association between ED and CVD risk, this study finds that the severity of ED corresponds to the increased risk of CVD hospitalization and all-cause mortality. The study authors, Emily Banks (from the Australian National University) and colleagues, analyzed data from the Australian prospective cohort ...

Coral reefs build their structures by both producing and accumulating calcium carbonate, and this is essential for the maintenance and continued vertical growth capacity of reefs. An international research team has discovered that the amount of new carbonate being added by Caribbean coral reefs is now significantly below rates measured over recent geological timescales, and in some habitats is as much as 70% lower. Coral reefs form some of the planet's most biologically diverse ecosystems, and provide valuable services to humans and wildlife. However, their ability to ...

Boston, MA—Most weight-loss plans center around a balance between caloric intake and energy expenditure. However, new research has shed light on a new factor that is necessary to shed pounds: timing. Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), in collaboration with the University of Murcia and Tufts University, have found that it's not simply what you eat, but also when you eat, that may help with weight-loss regulation. The study will be published on January 29, 2013 in the International Journal of Obesity. "This is the first large-scale prospective study ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- The "July Effect" -- the notion that the influx of new residents and fellows at teaching hospitals each July makes that the worse time of year to be a patient -- seems to be a myth, according to new Mayo Clinic research that examined nearly 1 million hospitalizations for patients undergoing spine surgery from 2001 to 2008. Among those going under the knife, researchers discovered that the month surgery occurred had an insignificant impact on patient outcomes. In addition, no substantial "July Effect" was observed in higher-risk patients, those admitted ...

BOSTON – A patient's relationship with his or her doctor has long been considered an important component of healing. Now, in a novel investigation in which physicians underwent brain scans while they believed they were actually treating patients, researchers have provided the first scientific evidence indicating that doctors truly can feel their patients' pain – and can also experience their relief following treatment. Led by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Program in Placebo Studies and Therapeutic Encounter (PiPS) at Beth Israel Deaconess ...

Scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have discovered the signaling pathway whereby a master regulator of cancer cell proteins – known as Src – leads to ovarian cancer progression when exposed to stress hormones. The researchers report in the current issue of Nature Communications that beta blocker drugs mitigate this effect and reduce cancer deaths by an average of 17 percent. Src (pronounced "sarc," short for sarcoma) is a proto-oncogene – a normal gene that can become an oncogene due to increased expression – involved in the regulation of ...

FAIRFAX, Va.—The first outcome-based guidelines for interventional treatment of acute ischemic stroke—providing recommendations for rapid treatment—will benefit individuals suffering from brain attacks, often caused by artery-blocking blood clots. Representatives from the Society of Interventional Radiology and seven other medical societies created a multispecialty and international consensus on the metrics and benchmarks for processes of care and technical and clinical outcomes for stroke patients. In February, the guidelines will be published first in SIR's Journal ...

This press release is available in German. Found in flat screens, solar modules, or in new organic light-emitting diode (LED) displays, transparent electrodes have become ubiquitous. Typically, they consist of metal oxides like In2O3, SnO2, ZnO and TiO2. But since raw materials like indium are becoming more and more costly, researchers have begun to look elsewhere for alternatives. A new review article by HZB scientist Dr. Klaus Ellmer, published in the renowned scientific journal Nature Photonics, is hoping to shed light on the different advantages and disadvantages ...

This press release is available in German. Many different tissues and organs form from pluripotent stem cells during embryonic development. To date it had been known that these processes are controlled by transcription factors for specific tissues. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, in collaboration with colleagues at MIT and the Broad Institute in Boston, have now been able to demonstrate that RNA molecules, which do not act as templates for protein synthesis, participate in these processes as well. The scientists knocked down ...

As influenza spreads through the northern hemisphere winter, Dr Linda Wakim and her colleagues in the Laboratory of Professor Jose Villadangos from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, believe they have a new clue to why some people fight infections better than others. The lab has been investigating the 'defensive devices' contained within the T- cells that are located on exposed body surfaces such as skin and mucosal surfaces to ward off infection. T-cells detect cells infected with viruses and kill ...

Detecting sexual selection in the fossil record is not impossible, according to scientists writing in Trends in Ecology and Evolution this month, co-authored by Dr Darren Naish of the University of Southampton. The term "sexual selection" refers to the evolutionary pressures that relate to a species' ability to repel rivals, meet mates and pass on genes. We can observe these processes happening in living animals but how do palaeontologists know that sexual selection operated in fossil ones? Historically, palaeontologists have thought it challenging, even impossible, ...

Dr Tim Peterson, from the School of Engineering at the University of Melbourne has offered new theories that will lead to a deeper knowledge of how water catchments behave during wet and dry years. His research was published recently in the leading international hydrology journal "Water Resources Research" and was selected by the American Geophysical Union as a highlight of the society's 13 international journals. Dr Peterson's work shows that some catchments have a finite resilience to wet and dry years because they have two steady states. The traditionally held view ...

OAKLAND, Calif., January 29 — HIV-positive patients have a higher incidence of non-melanoma skin cancers, according to a Kaiser Permanente study that appears in the current online issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Specifically, basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas occur more than twice as often among HIV-positive individuals compared to those who are HIV-negative. The study cohort of 6,560 HIV-positive and almost 37,000 HIV-negative subjects was drawn from members of Kaiser Permanente Northern California from 1996 to 2008. Overall, HIV-positive ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. – The hazards of breathing outdoor air in some Chinese cities have been well-documented. Now a University at Buffalo study confirms that breathing indoor air also carries significant cancer risks, especially for Chinese women. The UB study, published online this month, in the journal Cancer Causes & Control, found that indoor air pollution that generates fine particulate matter is a key contributor to the high rates of lung cancer among Chinese women, despite the fact that few of them smoke. The research found indoor particulate matter levels that are ...