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 ...

Large wind farms in certain areas in the United States appear to affect local land surface temperatures, according to a paper published today in the journal Nature Climate Change. The study, led by Liming Zhou, an atmospheric scientist at the State University of New York- (SUNY) Albany, provides insights about the possible effects of wind farms. The results could be important for developing efficient adaptation and management strategies to ensure long-term sustainability of wind power. "This study indicates that land surface temperatures have warmed in the vicinity ...

The Autism Spectrum Disorder Foundation (www.myASDF.org), a national organization that provides direct support for families living with autism, partnered with the Oakland University Center for Autism Research, Education and Support (OUCARES) in 2011 to fund its Christmas Gift Card Program. The Autism Spectrum Disorder Foundation helped OUCARES host its fourth annual holiday gift party at Pontiac's Whitmer Human Resource Center Elementary School for families living with autism. The event featured food, dancing, and gifts—and plenty of smiles—as the Pontiac, Michigan ...

TEMPE (April 30, 2012) - The popular perception of archaeology is a team of dusty individuals in wide-brimmed hats unearthing treasures from a pharaoh's tomb or an ancient collection of Native American artifacts. Archaeology is that, but it is also a social science that utilizes information from other disciplines to inform and enhance archaeological data and to provide input to other sciences. Arizona State University Anthropology Professor Michael Smith explores the broadened scope of archaeology in the paper "Archaeology as a Social Science" published this week in Proceedings ...

OSEHRA, the Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent dedicated to accelerating innovation in electronic health record (EHR) software, is pleased to announce Medsphere Systems Corporation, a leading provider of open source healthcare IT solutions and services, has agreed to join as the newest corporate member of the nonprofit organization. "OSEHRA is pleased that Medsphere has officially joined our ongoing effort to effectively develop interoperable health IT solutions for the benefit of the collective whole," said DaCosta Barrow, chief operating officer of ...

An extraordinary outburst produced by a black hole in a nearby galaxy has provided direct evidence for a population of old, volatile stellar black holes. The discovery, made by astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, provides new insight into the nature of a mysterious class of black holes that can produce as much energy in X-rays as a million suns radiate at all wavelengths. Researchers used Chandra to discover a new ultraluminous X-ray source, or ULX. These objects give off more X-rays than most binary systems, in which a companion star orbits the remains ...

Monday, April 30, 2012, Cleveland: In a landmark drug-comparison study, Cleveland Clinic researchers found that bevacizumab (Avastin) is equivalent to ranibizumab (Lucentis) in the treatment of wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) through two years. The study — Comparison of AMD Treatments Trials (CATT) — also showed that monthly dosing produced slightly more vision gain than as-needed dosing. But the final visual results were similar in all treatment groups, regardless of dosing frequency, with 60-percent or more of the patients achieving driving vision (20/40 ...

A team of Rice University students accepted a challenge to turn shale gas produced in China into a range of useful, profitable and environmentally friendly products and did so in a cost-effective manner. The CHBE Pandas (CHBE stands for chemical and biomolecular engineering) designed a process by which shale gas extracted in the rich Sichuan Basin could be turned into methanol, hydrogen and carbon disulfide, all valuable products in the booming Chinese economy. The Rice team was one of seven groups of students presented similar challenges for locations outside of the ...

Some tourists vanish without a trace. Over 170 people have disappeared from cruise ships around the world since 1995, several under very suspicious circumstances. Others have their lives senselessly stolen, like the 8-year old boy sucked into an unprotected pool drain at a major resort, leaving his mother crying out his name as security staff held her at gunpoint. Or 22-year old Nolan Webster, denied proper medical care after being pulled unconscious from a Cancun resort pool, only to have his dead body left in plain view for hours and his parents billed for his room. Vacations ...

VIDEO: These images were captured by Christofer Clemente and his team using high speed cameras and markers at key points in the bodies of monitor lizards. The research found that middle-sized... Click here for more information. New research in the journal Physiological and Biochemical Zoology shows why bigger isn't always better when it comes to sprinting speed. "Typically, bigger animals tend to run faster than smaller animals, because they have longer legs," said Christofer ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — University of Florida lepidopterist Andrei Sourakov has spent his life's work studying moths and butterflies. But it was his teenage daughter, Alexandra, who led research on how color impacts butterflies' feeding patterns. The research shows different species exhibit unique foraging behaviors, and the study may be used to build more effective, species-specific synthetic lures for understanding pollinators, insects on which humans depend for sustaining many crops. In a study appearing online in April in the journal Psyche, researchers used multi-colored ...

Former Reed Brothers Dodge, in Rockville, Maryland (MD) is delighted to announce the launch of their new Wordpress blog at http://reedbrothersdodgehistory.wordpress.com/. Business longevity is something to celebrate and share. The Reed Brothers Dodge History blog will act as a platform for readers to gain insight into the history and success their business has achieved. On this blog, readers will find an historic timeline that showcases their company's history, how Reed Brothers Dodge came into being, and how the company overcame the inevitable changes and challenges ...

WASHINGTON, District of Columbia (April 30, 2012) – In a surveillance study of over 12 million bacteria, investigators at The George Washington University and Providence Hospital found E. coli antimicrobial resistance to ciprofloxacin, the most commonly prescribed antimicrobial for urinary tract infections in the U.S., increased over five-fold from 2000 to 2010. In addition, nearly one in four isolates in 2010 were resistant to trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (Bactrim®), the second most commonly prescribed drug for this infection. This research was published in the April ...

A synthetic mixture of intestinal bacteria could one day replace stool transplants as a treatment for Clostridium difficile (C. difficile). C. difficile is a toxin-producing bacteria that can overpopulate the colon when antibiotics eradicate other, naturally protective bacteria living there. "A synthetic stool transplant has a lot of potential because we can control what goes in and we can alter, change, or modify it as necessary," says Elaine Petrof, an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at Queen's University and in the Gastrointestinal Disease Research ...

The Tour de Road America Foundation today announced that Subaru will return as a sponsor for the 2012 event and will expand its partnership with the annual cancer survivorship fundraising event, to be known as the SUBARU tour de Road America - BIKE RIDE TO FIGHT CANCER. Between 400 and 500 participants are expected to the challenge of the hills and fourteen turns of the four-mile Road America race track on the evening of Friday, August 17, 2012 as part of the 9th annual SUBARU tour de Road America. Participants will include race fans, families, cancer survivors, and ...

Climate researchers are producing some of the fastest growing datasets in science. Five years ago, the amount of information generated for the Nobel Prize-winning United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report was 35 terabytes—equivalent to the amount of text in 35 million books, occupying a bookshelf 248 miles (399 km) long. By 2014, when the next IPCC report is published, experts predict that 2 petabytes of data will have been generated for it—that's a 580 percent increase in data production. Because thousands of researchers around ...

KANSAS CITY, MO—Historically, fly and human Polycomb proteins were considered textbook exemplars of transcriptional repressors, or proteins that silence the process by which DNA gives rise to new proteins. Now, work by a team of researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research challenges that dogma. In a cover story in the May 2012 issue of the journal Molecular and Cellular Biology, Stowers Investigator Ali Shilatifard, Ph.D., and his team report that in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster a component of the Polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2), which is called ...

Startupr has good news for companies looking to enter the Hong Kong market - The Hong Kong Inland Revenue Department has just announced that they are decreasing the business registration fee from 2000 HKD to 0 HKD. The Hong Kong Inland Revenue Department has just announced that they are decreasing the business registration fee from 2000 HKD to 0 HKD. When you take into account the Hong Kong Levy fee of 450 HKD and the total incorporation fees of 1720 HKD (or 300 USD), the total fees for incorporation have gone down from 4170 HKD to only 2170 HKD. Now that business registration ...

AspireGlobal, the largest provider of online instant win games, announced today the launch of an exclusive instant win game based on the popular multiple Emmy winning soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful. The game, featuring characters from the show, is available on AspireGlobal's instant win gaming site Karamba.com. As part of launch of the game, one lucky player will be flown to Los Angeles to visit the set and attend a live taping of the show and meet some of the B&B cast. According to AspireGlobal's managing director Adrian Bailey, "Fans will not only ...

Ottawa, Ontario (April 30, 2012)–Lactoferrin is an important iron-binding protein with many health benefits. The major form of this powerful protein, is secreted into human biofluids (e.g. milk, blood, tears, saliva), and is responsible for most of the host-defense properties. Because of the many beneficial activities associated with it, researchers are starting to use lactoferrin as a potential therapeutic protein. And, in contrast to many other therapeutic proteins, which need to be injected into patients, lactoferrin can be orally active. Lactoferrin is the subject ...

A team of chemical engineers led by Paul J. Dauenhauer of the University of Massachusetts Amherst has discovered a new, high-yield method of producing the key ingredient used to make plastic bottles from biomass. The process is inexpensive and currently creates the chemical p-xylene with an efficient yield of 75-percent, using most of the biomass feedstock, Dauenhauer says. The research is published in the journal ACS Catalysis. Dauenhauer, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at UMass Amherst, says the new discovery shows that there is an efficient, renewable ...