King Jewelers supports the YWCA of Nashville & Middle Tennessee at the Wine Women & Shoes event on Saturday, January 26, 2013, in Nashville. Created for women who enjoy fine wine, great style, and supporting a noble cause, Wine Women & Shoes is one of the fastest-growing charity event series in the country. The event features wine tastings from illustrious Napa Valley vineyards, a live and silent auction, and walk-around boutique Marketplace featuring local and national trendsetters. Wine Women & Shoes will auction off a 'Key to the Closet', and the winner ...

Smokers Utopia e cigarette reviews has announced that their South Beach Smoke Review has been updated with new information on the experience with this company. The company stated that there were few changes on South Beach Smoke since it is an older company that has their system in fairly good shape. The company explained that they not only do new reviews, but continue buying a few brands over again to make sure nothing in the reviews are inaccurate in a reasonable timeline like the recently updated volcano e cigarette review page. "The more popular brands are ...

The vision of legendary NY model industry agent Alana Hoss, Sassination.com aims to create a low cost platform for the hottest new models to be discovered and for brands to easily fulfill their needs for promotional models with a simple one-click contracting process. Ad agencies and brands can use a unique set of search tools to narrow down their model search by city, measurements, and other characteristics. The best thing about Sassination.com is it eliminates the need for the brands that use their models to pay an agency fee and a minimum 4 hour call. Sassination.com ...

FMA Congresses (www.fmaintl.com) is hosting their 16th event the Progressive Energy, Environment & Sustainability Congress #16, May 29th to 31st 2013 in Chicago, IL. FMA Congresses builds a platform for the facilitation of high-level and valuable business partnerships between companies confronted with challenges within their facilities as they pertain to energy efficiency and the companies that offer the latest technologies and services that can answer to a range of issues. Now in its 16th event in the Progressive Energy, Environment & Sustainability series, ...

WASHINGTON, DC, January 15, 2013 — College students who aren't studying hard may have their parents' financial support to blame. A new study by University of California, Merced, sociology professor Laura T. Hamilton found that students' GPAs decreased with increased financial support from their parents. The study also found that students with financial aid from their parents were more likely to complete college and earn a degree. The study, "More is More or More is Less? Parental Financial Investments during College," will appear in the February issue of the American ...

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., January 15, 2013 — Researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory and the French Space Agency have tracked a trail of minerals that point to the prior presence of water at the Curiosity rover site on Mars. Researchers from the Mars Science Laboratory's ChemCam team today described how the laser instrument aboard the Curiosity Rover—an SUV-sized vehicle studying the surface of the Red Planet—has detected veins of gypsum running through an area known as Yellowknife Bay, located some 700 meters away from where the Curiosity Rover landed five months ago. "These ...

Scientists at Singapore Eye Research Institute and A*STAR's Genome Institute of Singapore have succeeded in identifying genes for central corneal thickness that may cause potentially blinding eye conditions. These eye conditions include glaucoma, as well as the progressive thinning of the cornea, which may eventually lead to a need for corneal transplantation. The authors jointly led a multi-centre study involving 55 hospitals and research centres around the world. They performed a meta-analysis on more than 20,000 individuals in European and Asian populations. Their ...

Cancer researchers are increasingly aware that in addition to genetic mutations in a cancer itself, characteristics of the surrounding tissue can promote or suppress tumor growth. One of these important tissue characteristics is inflammation – most cancers prosper in and attach to inflamed tissue and so many cancers have developed ways to create it. A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation shows that the protein SPARC (Secreted Protein Acidic and Rich in Cysteine) acts much like an anti-inflammatory drug, attempting ...

Could probiotics help HIV patients? Antiretroviral (ARV) drugs are the first line therapy for patients with HIV; however, ARV-treated, HIV-infected individuals still have a higher mortality rate than uninfected individuals. During the course of infection, HIV patients develop inflammation that damages the walls of the intestines, known as the gut mucosa, allowing intestinal microbes to escape and enter the blood stream to cause a life-threatening systemic infection. The health of the gut mucosa is significantly influenced by the complement of bacteria in the gut and ...

Antiretroviral (ARV) drugs are the first line therapy for patients with HIV; however, ARV-treated, HIV-infected individuals still have a higher mortality rate than uninfected individuals. During the course of infection, HIV patients develop inflammation that damages the walls of the intestines, known as the gut mucosa, allowing intestinal microbes to escape and enter the blood stream to cause a life-threatening systemic infection. The health of the gut mucosa is significantly influenced by the complement of bacteria in the gut and there is mounting evidence that probiotic ...

Viruses prompt oncogenic transformation by genetically altering infected cells. Several recent studies have demonstrated that viruses alter the expression of microRNAs, non-coding RNA molecules that can block the expression of target genes. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Xiaoje Xu and colleagues at the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology report that miR-148a is repressed by hepatitis B virus (HBV) X protein (HBx) to promote growth and metastasis of liver cancer. In normal liver cells, miR-148a represses the expression of the oncogenic protein HPIP, ...

PHILADELPHIA - One of the most insidious ways that parasitic diseases such as malaria and toxoplasmosis wreak their havoc is by hijacking their host's natural cellular processes, turning self against self. Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University, led by Doron Greenbaum, Ph.D., assistant professor of Pharmacology at Penn, have identified the cell signaling pathway used by these parasites to escape from and destroy their host cells and infect new cells -- pointing the way toward possible new strategies to ...

On the left of this new image there is a dark column resembling a cloud of smoke. To the right shines a small group of brilliant stars. At first glance these two features could not be more different, but they are in fact closely linked. The cloud contains huge amounts of cool cosmic dust and is a nursery where new stars are being born. It is likely that the Sun formed in a similar star formation region more than four billion years ago. This cloud is known as Lupus 3 and it lies about 600 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion). The section ...

PITTSBURGH—For the first time, scientists at Carnegie Mellon University's Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging (CCBI) have used a new combination of neural imaging methods to discover exactly how the human brain adapts to injury. The research, published in Cerebral Cortex, shows that when one brain area loses functionality, a "back-up" team of secondary brain areas immediately activates, replacing not only the unavailable area but also its confederates. "The human brain has a remarkable ability to adapt to various types of trauma, such as traumatic brain injury and stroke, ...

WASHINGTON, DC, January 16, 2013 — Psychiatric disorders are prevalent among current and former inmates of correctional institutions, but what has been less clear is whether incarceration causes these disorders or, alternatively, whether inmates have these problems before they enter prison. A study co-authored by Jason Schnittker, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, shows that many of the most common psychiatric disorders found among former inmates, including impulse control disorders, emerge in childhood and adolescence and, therefore, ...

Mass poultry vaccination programmes introduced to combat Salmonella infections have led to a dramatic fall in the number of cases since the late 1990s, according to a researcher at the University of Liverpool. Salmonella are important food-borne pathogens worldwide, causing diarrhoea, vomiting, nausea, fever and abdominal pain. There are currently around 6 million cases of illness from Salmonella across the EU each year, the majority of which are linked to food items such as eggs, chicken, beef, pork, salad vegetables and dairy products. Between 1981 and 1991, the ...

This press release is available in French. Quebec City, January 16, 2013—Genetics plays a major role in peer rejection and victimization in early elementary school, according to a study recently published on the website of the journal Child Development by a team directed by Dr. Michel Boivin, a research professor at Université Laval's School of Psychology. To come to this conclusion, Boivin and his team tested over 800 twins at three time points: when they were in kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 4. This sample consisted of 41% monozygotic twins—"true" twins who share ...

Since 1992 the number of deaths linked to breast cancer in Spain has decreased among young and middle aged patients but not among the elderly. Spanish researchers also predict that it will continue to decline over the next decade, although more slowly as observed up until now. A new study headed by a team of Spanish researchers has analysed breast cancer mortality in Spain among different age groups from 1981 to 2007, setting a valid prediction up until 2023. Studying this age-related tendency is interesting because any improvement could have significant social and ...

Charles Dickens' tales are filled with immortal characters — think of A Christmas Carol's Scrooge and Great Expectations' Miss Havisham. But more than whims of literary invention, his characters and plots often deal with the difficult social realities of Victorian England. His portrayal of the disabled — both in terms of medicine and the social discrimination they faced — is no exception. "Social attitudes towards the disabled can often be traced through art, from ancient times through today," explains Prof. Avi Ohry of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine, ...

Scientists at the Academy of Finland's Centre of Excellence in Computational Inference Research have developed novel computational methods that have yielded essential knowledge of how hospital-acquired bacteria spread and develop. These new methods, based on randomised algorithms, make it possible to analyse extensive genomic data significantly faster and more efficiently than previously. By applying these results, it is possible to better follow hospital-acquired infections in the future, or even fight them in real time. The new methods are used to develop models of ...

AMHERST, Mass. – Despite modern designs intended to allow migratory fish to pass, hydropower dams on major Northeast U.S. waterways, including the Merrimack and Connecticut rivers, have failed to let economically important species such as salmon, shad and river herring reach their spawning grounds, say a team of economists and fish ecologists including Adrian Jordaan of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. This raises serious questions about the impact of new dams now being planned and constructed on major waterways worldwide, say the researchers in the current ...

MANHATTAN, Kan. -- A Kansas State University researcher is developing more efficient ways to save costs, time and energy when creating nanomaterials and lithium-ion batteries. Gurpreet Singh, assistant professor of mechanical and nuclear engineering, and his research team have published two recent articles on newer, cheaper and faster methods for creating nanomaterials that can be used for lithium-ion batteries. In the past year, Singh has published eight articles -- five of which involve lithium-ion battery research. "We are exploring new methods for quick and cost-effective ...

Obese and overweight people are gaining weight rapidly in low-and middle-income countries while those who are severely undernourished are not experiencing similar weight gains, according to a University of Toronto and Harvard School of Public Health study. This growing divide may force governments in the developing world to care for people who fall dramatically short on their calorie intake while simultaneously treating health problems associated with obesity, including diabetes and heart disease. "One might think that as a country grows economically, the majority of ...

CAMBRIGDE, MA -- Epileptic seizures occur when neurons in the brain become excessively active. However, a new study from MIT neuroscientists suggests that some seizures may originate in non-neuronal cells known as glia, which were long believed to play a mere supporting role in brain function. In a study of fruit flies, the researchers identified a glial-cell mutation that makes the flies much more prone to epileptic seizures. Mutations in the gene, which influences glial cells' communication with neurons, appear to make neurons much more excitable. That excitability ...

Radiocarbon dates of tiny fossilised marine animals found in Antarctica's seabed sediments offer new clues about the recent rapid ice loss from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and help scientists make better predictions about future sea-level rise. This region of the icy continent is thought to be vulnerable to regional climate warming and changes in ocean circulation. Reporting this month in the journal Geology a team of researchers from British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and the University of Tromsø presents ...