Aiming to improve its presence in the health insurance sector, Saham Finance, a subsidiary of Saham Group (www.sahamgroup.com), has signed a strategic partnership with Cegedim Activ, a subsidiary of Cegedim. This agreement seeks to develop Cegedim Activ health management solutions in African, Maghrebian and Middle Eastern markets. The first phase of this partnership will be materialized by early 2013, with a project in Angola. Saham Finances, first Pan-African insurance group which has established a substantial presence in the Middle East, announces the signing ...

A new way of studying and visualizing Earth science data from a NASA and U.S. Geological Survey satellite program is resulting in, for the first time, the ability to tease out the small events that can cause big changes in an ecosystem. Called LandTrendr, this computer program is able to find patterns previously buried within vast amounts of scientific data. Still in development, it's already led to seeing for the first time in satellite imagery an obscured, slow-moving decline and recovery of trees in Pacific Northwest forests. Comparing satellite data to ground data, ...

Tropical Storm Narelle is growing weaker as it continues to track in a southerly direction parallel to the coast of Western Australia. NASA's Aqua and TRMM satellites captured visible data and rainfall rates on Narelle and noticed the storm was less intense than it was, however, warnings are still up as Narelle continues moving down the coast. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Cyclone Narelle on Jan. 12 at 0615 UTC (1:15 a.m. EST) and Jan. 13 at 0655 UTC (1:55 a.m. EST) and captured these visible images of the storm. The imagery on Jan. 12 showed that Narelle ...

When it comes to prescribing medications to their patients, physicians could use a dose of extra training, according to a new study led by a UCLA researcher. In previous studies, Dr. Derjung Tarn and her colleagues found that when doctors prescribed medicines, the information they provided to patients was spotty at best, they rarely addressed the cost of medications and they didn't adequately monitor their patients' medication adherence. The logical next step, Tarn said, was to devise an intervention aimed at improving how physicians communicate to their patients ...

It is well known that violent adults often have a history of childhood psychological trauma. Some of these individuals exhibit very real, physical alterations in a part of the brain called the orbitofrontal cortex. Yet a direct link between such early trauma and neurological changes has been difficult to find, until now. Publishing in the January 15 edition of Translational Psychiatry, EPFL Professor Carmen Sandi and team demonstrate for the first time a correlation between psychological trauma in pre-adolescent rats and neurological changes similar to those found in ...

PASADENA, Calif., January 15, 2013 – Measurements taken over time of prostate specific antigen, the most commonly used screening test for prostate cancer in men, improve the accuracy of aggressive prostate cancer detection when compared to a single measurement of PSA, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published today in the British Journal of Urology International. The retrospective study examined the electronic health records of nearly 220,000 men ages 45 and older over a 10-year period who had at least one PSA measurement and no previous diagnosis of prostate cancer. ...

Some children who are accurately diagnosed in early childhood with autism lose the symptoms and the diagnosis as they grow older, a study supported by the National Institutes of Health has confirmed. The research team made the finding by carefully documenting a prior diagnosis of autism in a small group of school-age children and young adults with no current symptoms of the disorder. The report is the first of a series that will probe more deeply into the nature of the change in these children's status. Having been diagnosed at one time with an autism spectrum disorder ...

Philadelphia, PA, January 15, 2013 – Originally, the label "borderline personality disorder" was applied to patients who were thought to represent a middle ground between patients with neurotic and psychotic disorders. Increasingly, though, this area of research has focused on the heightened emotional reactivity observed in patients carrying this diagnosis, as well as the high rates with which they also meet diagnostic criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder and mood disorders. New research now published in Biological Psychiatry from Dr. Anthony Ruocco at the University ...

Researchers at North Carolina State University have come up with a technique to embed needle-like carbon nanofibers in an elastic membrane, creating a flexible "bed of nails" on the nanoscale that opens the door to development of new drug-delivery systems. The research community is interested in finding new ways to deliver precise doses of drugs to specific targets, such as regions of the brain. One idea is to create balloons embedded with nanoscale spikes that are coated with the relevant drug. Theoretically, the deflated balloon could be inserted into the target area ...

A protein known as Sp2 is key to the proper creation of neurons from stem cells, according to researchers at North Carolina State University. Understanding how this protein works could enable scientists to "program" stem cells for regeneration, which has implications for neural therapies. Troy Ghashghaei and Jon Horowitz, both faculty in NC State's Department of Molecular Biomedical Sciences and researchers in the Center for Comparative Medicine and Translational Research, wanted to know more about the function of Sp2, a cell cycle regulator that helps control how cells ...

People's memory for Facebook posts is strikingly stronger than their memory for human faces or sentences from books, according to a new study. The findings shed light on how our memories favour natural, spontaneous writing over polished, edited content, and could have wider implications for the worlds of education, communications and advertising. The research, authored by academics at the University of Warwick (Dr Laura Mickes) and UC San Diego (including Professors Christine Harris and Nicholas Christenfeld), tested memory for text taken from anonymised Facebook updates, ...

If this were a Facebook post, you would remember it – better than a stranger's face or a line from a published book. That, in fewer than 140 characters, is the finding of research from the University of California, San Diego and the University of Warwick, published in the Springer journal Memory & Cognition. Oh, and: The small, social-networking faux pas you were hoping would fade from your friends' memories real soon…? Don't count on it. Sorry. :/ In "Major Memory for Microblogs," the researchers report that Facebook status updates were about one and a half times ...

Research from the University of Sheffield has discovered that the ancient civilisation of Crete, known as Minoan, had strong martial traditions, contradicting the commonly held view of Minoans as a peace-loving people. The research, carried out by Dr Barry Molloy of the University of Sheffield's Department of Archaeology, investigated the Bronze Age people of Crete, known by many as the Minoans, who created the very first complex urban civilisation in Europe. "Their world was uncovered just over a century ago, and was deemed to be a largely peaceful society," explained ...

DURHAM, N.H. – In 2011, 13 percent of all American households relied on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) -- the program formerly known as food stamps – with nearly 6.2 million more American households using the program now than five years ago, according to new research from the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. "The Great Recession had profound effects on families across the United States, and economic recovery has been slow. Poverty and unemployment remained high in 2011, and job growth was stagnant. Amid these signs of a sluggish ...

By looking at the entire DNA from this one patient's tumor, researchers have found a genetic anomaly that provides an important clue to improving how this cancer is diagnosed and treated. Researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center sequenced the tumor's genome through a new program called MI-ONCOSEQ, which is designed to identify genetic mutations in tumors that might be targeted with new therapies being tested in clinical trials. The sequencing also allows researchers to find new mutations. In this case, an unusual occurrence of two genes ...

COLUMBIA, Mo.-- Usually, results from a new study help scientists inch their way toward an answer whether they are battling a health problem or are on the verge of a technological breakthrough. Once in a while, those results give them a giant leap forward. In a preliminary study in a canine model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), University of Missouri scientists showed exactly such a leap using gene therapy to treat muscular dystrophy. The results of the study will be published in the journal Molecular Therapy on Jan. 15, 2013. Muscular dystrophy occurs when damaged ...

CIC bioGUNE researchers have opened a new pathway for the future development of biosensors that enable measuring the glucose in the blood, but which are also believed to be more reliable with other fluids, such as urine. To this end, a complex scientific process has been developed which has called into question a dominant paradigm amongst the scientific community with respect to the mechanisms of binding and communication between proteins. The mechanisms of communication at subcellular level are based on the interaction between proteins or between proteins and metabolites ...

Despite known risks and recommendations for protective equipment, many people are still affected with asthma after exposure to chemicals at work. This is the finding of an international study of 13,000 people carried out at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Asthma is among the most common adult diseases in the world. Despite the fact that the risks of chemical exposure have long been known and that there are well-established recommendations for handling chemicals and protective equipment, many cases of asthma are still caused by exposure to toxic ...

Halfway between bacteria and tree How the protein transport machinery in the chloroplasts of higher plants developed Moss Physcomitrella patens is an evolutionary intermediate stage Together with colleagues from Sweden, RUB researchers have studied how the protein transport system of bacteria developed over time to form the system in the chloroplasts of higher plants. They explored the so-called signal recognition particles (SRP) and their receptors. Bioinformatic and biochemical analyses revealed that the moss Physcomitrella patens has evolutionarily old and new components ...

AUSTIN, Texas — Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a menu of 61 new strains of genetically engineered bacteria that may improve the efficacy of vaccines for diseases such as flu, pertussis, cholera and HPV. The strains of E. coli, which were described in a paper published this month in the journal PNAS, are part of a new class of biological "adjuvants" that is poised to transform vaccine design. Adjuvants are substances added to vaccines to boost the human immune response. "For 70 years the only adjuvants being used were aluminum salts," ...

Safety fears about carbon nanotubes, due to their structural similarity to asbestos, have been alleviated following research showing that reducing their length removes their toxic properties. In a new study, published today in the journal Angewandte Chemie, evidence is provided that the asbestos-like reactivity and pathogenicity reported for long, pristine nanotubes can be completely alleviated if their surface is modified and their effective length is reduced as a result of chemical treatment. First atomically described in the 1990s, carbon nanotubes are sheets of ...

Genetic differences are significantly associated with the likelihood that people take on managerial responsibilities, according to new research from UCL (University College London). The study, published online in Leadership Quarterly, is the first to identify a specific DNA sequence associated with the tendency for individuals to occupy a leadership position. Using a large twin sample, the international research team, which included academics from Harvard, NYU, and the University of California, estimate that a quarter of the observed variation in leadership behaviour ...

An international team of nuclear astrophysicists has shed new light on the explosive stellar events known as novae. These dramatic explosions are driven by nuclear processes and make previously unseen stars visible for a short time. The team of scientists measured the nuclear structure of the radioactive neon produced through this process in unprecedented detail. Their findings, reported in the US journal Physical Review Letters, show there is much less uncertainty in how quickly one of the key nuclear reactions will occur as well as in the final abundance of radioactive ...

Using graphene – either as an alternative to, or most likely as a complementary material with – silicon, offers the promise of much faster future electronics, along with several other advantages over the commonly used semiconductor. However, creating the one-atom thick sheets of carbon known as graphene in a way that could be easily integrated into mass production methods has proven difficult. When graphene is grown, lattices of the carbon grains are formed randomly, linked together at different angles of orientation in a hexagonal network. However, when those orientations ...

Facebook posts resonate significantly more with human nature than books or even human faces, according to a new study by Laura Mickes and colleagues from the University of California San Diego in the US. The difference in memory between these microblogs and actual published words from a page is as striking as the difference in memory between amnesiacs and healthy controls. The work is published online in Springer's journal Memory & Cognition. Online social networking is very popular, and allows people to post their thoughts as microblogs, an opportunity that people exploit ...