University of Iowa biologists have advanced the knowledge of human neurodevelopmental disorders by finding that a lack of a particular group of cell adhesion molecules in the cerebral cortex -- the outermost layer of the brain where language, thought and other higher functions take place -- disrupts the formation of neural circuitry. Andrew Garrett, former neuroscience graduate student and current postdoctoral fellow at the Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, Maine; Dietmar Schreiner, former postdoctoral fellow currently at the University of Basel, Switzerland; Mark Lobas, ...

April 30, 2012 (Portland, Oregon)—Mexican-American women who participated in a culturally tailored weight management program lost weight, reduced their fat and sugar consumption and improved their eating habits according to a new study funded by the National Institutes of Health and published in the Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health. At the end of the year-long De Por Vida ("For Life") program, the women had lost an average of nearly 16 pounds. "More than three-quarters of Mexican-American women in this country are overweight or obese, and they became that way ...

Neuropathic pain, caused by nerve or tissue damage, is the culprit behind many cases of chronic pain. It can be the result of an accident or caused by a variety of medical conditions and diseases such as tumors, lupus, and diabetes. Typically resistant to common types of pain management including ibuprofen and even morphine, neuropathic pain can lead to lifelong disability for many sufferers. Now a drug developed by Tel Aviv University researchers, known as BL-7050, is offering new hope to patients with neuropathic pain. Developed by Prof. Bernard Attali and Dr. Asher ...

Durham, NC — Not all acts of altruism are alike, says a new study. From bees and wasps that die defending their nests, to elephants that cooperate to care for young, a new mathematical model pinpoints the environmental conditions that favor one form of altruism over another. The model predicts that creatures will help each other in different ways depending on whether key resources such as food and habitat are scarce or abundant, say researchers from Indiana University and the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, North Carolina. Examples of creatures caring ...

PHILADELPHIA— To improve the quality of life in gay men and minorities treated for prostate cancer, a greater awareness of ethnic and sexual preference-related factors is needed to help men choose a more-suitable treatment plan, researchers from Thomas Jefferson University Hospital conclude in a literature review published May 1 in Nature Reviews Urology. Some of the factors to consider, for example, include increased risk of urinary and bowel function decline in African Americans regardless of treatment received and differing sexual expectations and social support in ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Every year, U.S. supermarkets lose roughly 10 percent of their fruits and vegetables to spoilage, according to the Department of Agriculture. To help combat those losses, MIT chemistry professor Timothy Swager and his students have built a new sensor that could help grocers and food distributors better monitor their produce. The new sensors, described in the journal Angewandte Chemie, can detect tiny amounts of ethylene, a gas that promotes ripening in plants. Swager envisions the inexpensive sensors attached to cardboard boxes of produce and scanned ...

Montreal, April 30, 2012 – What if there was a way to vastly improve the safety, durability and sustainability of bridges across North America without increasing spending? This was the question Saleh Abu Dabous set out to answer when he began his PhD at Concordia. "I was looking for an applied way to do research — something that would have an impact on society and improve the current situation," he remembers. In a paper published in the Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering, Abu Dabous and his thesis supervisor Sabah Alkass, professor of in the Department of Building, ...

PHILADELPHIA – Two drugs commonly used to treat age-related macular degeneration (AMD) yield similar improvements in vision for patients receiving treatments on a monthly or as-needed basis, according to a study from researchers at the Center for Preventive Ophthalmology and Biostatistics (CPOB) at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The year-two results of the Comparison of AMD Treatment Trials (CATT) support the findings from the first year of the study that evaluated the effects of Avastin ® (bevacizumab) - the off-label drug most frequently ...

Hans Vogel, a professor in the biological sciences department, is the guest editor of a special issue of the journal Biochemistry and Cell Biology that focuses on lactoferrin, an important iron-binding protein with many health benefits. "Some people describe this protein as the 'Swiss army knife' of the human host defense system," says Vogel. "We now know that lactoferrin has many functions in innate immunity and that it plays a role in protecting us from bacterial, viral, fungal, and protozoal infections. It can even protect us from some forms of cancer." Lactoferrin—which ...

There was no change in concentrations of chloride, dissolved solids, or nitrate in groundwater for more than 50 percent of well networks sampled in a new analysis by the USGS that compared samples from 1988-2000 to samples from 2001-2010. For those networks that did have a change, seven times more networks saw increases as opposed to decreases. The analysis was done by the USGS National Water Quality Assessment Program (NAWQA) to determine if concentrations of these constituents have increased or decreased significantly from the 1990's to the early 2000's nationwide. ...

It's very difficult to kick a star out of the galaxy. In fact, the primary mechanism that astronomers have come up with that can give a star the two-million-plus mile-per-hour kick it takes requires a close encounter with the supermassive black hole at the galaxy's core. So far astronomers have found 16 of these "hypervelocity" stars. Although they are traveling fast enough to eventually escape the galaxy's gravitational grasp, they have been discovered while they are still inside the galaxy. Now, Vanderbilt astronomers report in the May issue of the Astronomical ...

Robert Stanek, bestselling author of over 150 published books, has a passion to help other independently published authors reach their goals. Stanek lives in Washington State, but his reach is international via the internet. Over the past 11 years he has developed several venues to help promote and market indie authors giving them more online exposure and visibility. He works diligently to offer ways in which to showcase new authors and books. One example is his blog readindies.blogspot.com (http://readindies.blogspot.com/). Stanek started his writing career as a technical ...

ThePetCrib.com (http://www.thepetcrib.com/), a leading online store for upscale dog products and cat products announced today they will begin promotion one pet product a month as a special way to highlight their vendors products. The pet product of the month promotion will begin in May of 2012. "We really work hard to represent vendors and pet products that are high quality and unique," said Bryan Cochran, owner of ThePetCrib.com. "The pet products we sell represent some of the best in the pet products industry. This is an opportunity for us to showcase ...

"Love thy neighbor" is preached from many a pulpit. But new research from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that the highly religious are less motivated by compassion when helping a stranger than are atheists, agnostics and less religious people. In three experiments, social scientists found that compassion consistently drove less religious people to be more generous. For highly religious people, however, compassion was largely unrelated to how generous they were, according to the findings which are published in the July issue of the journal Social Psychological ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – As the United States grapples with health care reform, much attention has focused on the importance of preventative health care. Now, a researcher at the University of Missouri has developed a system that could help public health care organizations determine the best method of allocating resources by prioritizing health risk factors and conditions – in some cases before these conditions become major health problems. "Every state, county and community has different trends and needs in public health," said Eduardo Simoes, chair of the Department of Health ...

Folsom fitness expert and owner of Superwomen Boot Camp (SWBC), Val Fujii is proud to announce that he has added a 5pm class to the Folsom SWBC afternoon lineup. In addition, the days for afternoon classes have changed effective this week. Afternoon classes are now held on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 4pm, 5pm and 6pm. These classes are in addition to the boot camp's morning offerings on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 6am and 7am. According to Fujii, Superwomen Boot Camp is not your typical 'hard core' boot camp - no one is going to yell in your face or ...

The problem with clutter is, well, the clutter. Being unable to part with things can prolong some spring cleanings into a summer project. And nobody wants to be stuck inside decluttering once the weather gets nice. Certified Professional Organizer Wendy Arundel, owner and manager of The Mudroom, a Wellesley-based company serving Greater Boston, suggests a more practical, less emotional approach to a spring cleaning/decluttering. âEURœYour focus really needs to be on how decluttering your space will improve your life and your living environment. You might even want ...

Patients find "cloud" technology a faster, more efficient way to store and distribute their medical images than current options, according to the preliminary findings of an image sharing project led by The Mount Sinai Medical Center in conjunction with four other academic medical institutions. The Phase I results of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) Image Share project are being presented today at the American Roentgen Ray Society Annual Meeting in Vancouver, Canada. Mount Sinai was the first site to go live in August 2011 and currently has about 190 patients ...

At two years, Avastin (bevacizumab) and Lucentis (ranibizumab injection), two widely used drugs to treat age-related macular degeneration (AMD), improve vision when administered monthly or on an as needed basis, although greater improvements in vision were seen with monthly administration for this common, debilitating eye disease, according to researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health. Of the two drugs, Avastin is most frequently used to treat AMD. However, prior to the Comparison of AMD Treatments Trials (CATT), a two-year clinical trial, the two ...

According to Milton Collier, Over the Road Doctor (www.OverTheRoadDoc.com) is an innovative healthcare solution that provides drivers with 24/7/365 access to doctors who can resolve many of your medical issues, or a U.S. board-certified TeleHealth doctor, through the convenience of phone or online video consultations. It's quality medical care when and where you need it. The Over the Road Doctor (OTR Doc) partnership network is the first and largest provider of telehealth medical consultations in the U.S., serving over 3 million members. Healthcare expenses, premiums ...

BOSTON – A national rise in public bike sharing programs could mean less air pollution and more exercise, an environmental and health win-win for people in the cities that host them, but according to researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, more than 80 percent of bike share riders are putting themselves at significant health risk by not wearing helmets. "Head injury accounts for about a third of all bicycle injuries and about three-quarters of bicycle related deaths, so these are some pretty shocking numbers," says lead author and emergency medicine physician ...

In the age of high-speed computing, the photon is king. However, producing the finely tuned particles of light is a complex and time-consuming process, until now. Thanks to the work by a team of engineers led by Professor Amr Helmy of The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, a novel solution has been identified that will make the production of special class of photons faster and easier. Advanced computing technologies – such as ultra-secure communication systems and optical quantum computers – use light to quickly relay information. ...

Shohei Toyoda is a professional guitarist and a guitar instructor, which makes having a high quality instrument extremely important. He worked closely during the custom guitar design process with luthier Jay Lichty to ensure the finished instrument would be the perfect fit for his style of playing. His custom Lichty guitar is a Cuban mahogany OM-style guitar with Lutz spruce top, Mahogany neck, side sound port, Curly maple binding, redwood burl rosette and headplate, LR Baggs Anthem pick-up, and Gotoh 510 tuners. Shohei Toyoda was born in Japan, raised in Ohio and ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Like a police officer calling for backup while also keeping a strong hold on a suspected criminal, immune cells in the brain take a two-tier approach to fighting off a threat, new research from the University of Michigan Health System finds. For the first time, the scientists managed to capture that reaction in action, showing how certain immune cells locked onto a model of virus-infected brain cells, while also sending signals to neighboring uninfected cells to let them know about the immune attack. The findings may help research on how the brain ...

The phone call is a metric which has become as important as mouse clicks over the last few years, so the ability to compare them side by side will be welcome by anyone responsible for running a marketing campaign. Calltracks integration with Google Analytics enables marketers and business owners to compare online pay per click ads, organic search results, social media ads, and offline sources in terms of mouse clicks and phone calls they generate. Phone call tracking is becoming increasingly sought after by search engine marketers and conventional marketers alike. "For ...