Toronto based Authentic Cuba Travel has already published almost forty tour departures for 2013 and counting. The Canadian company offers North American travelers the chance to get an up close and personal look inside the authentic Cuba through meaningful people to people exchanges and the exploration of Cuba's most unique destinations and attractions. While travel to Cuba is still restricted for Americans, in 2011 some travel restrictions were lifted and new categories of USA Cuba Travel included allowing a larger number of US citizens to travel to Cuba legally as General ...

SALT LAKE CITY— People who reside in rural areas of Utah are less likely to follow colorectal cancer (CRC) screening recommendations than their urban counterparts, according to researchers from Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah. This geographic disparity is evident across all risk groups, including those who have a family history of the disease. "Our hypothesis was that geography matters," said Anita Kinney, Ph.D., R.N., who leads HCI's Cancer Control and Populations Sciences Research Program and is principal investigator of the study. "And what ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. --- Researchers have found the first proof that a chemical in the brain called glutamate is linked to suicidal behavior, offering new hope for efforts to prevent people from taking their own lives. Writing in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, Michigan State University's Lena Brundin and an international team of co-investigators present the first evidence that glutamate is more active in the brains of people who attempt suicide. Glutamate is an amino acid that sends signals between nerve cells and has long been a suspect in the search for chemical ...

University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston researchers have discovered that the commonly used antidepressant drug paroxetine could also become a therapy for the vascular complications of diabetes. The scientists made their discovery after screening 6,766 clinically used drugs and pharmacologically active substances. "We developed this assay and used it to test literally every single existing drug and a good selection of other biologically active compounds," said UTMB professor Csaba Szabo, senior author of a paper on the research published online by Diabetes. ...

Nanocrystals as protective coatings for advanced gas turbine and jet engines are receiving a lot of attention for their many advantageous mechanical properties, including their resistance to stress. However, contrary to computer simulations, the tiny size of nanocrystals apparently does not safeguard them from defects. In a study by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)and collaborators from multiple institutions, nanocrystals of nickel subjected to high pressure continued to suffer dislocation-mediated ...

PHILADELPHIA — Drugs that are used in the clinic to treat some forms of breast and kidney cancer and that work by inhibiting the signaling molecule mTORC1 might have utility in treating some of the more than 15 percent of human cancers driven by alterations in the Myc gene, according to data from a preclinical study published in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "More than 1 million people diagnosed with cancer each year have a tumor driven by alterations in the Myc gene," said Grant A. McArthur, M.D., Ph.D., professor of translational ...

Park Ridge, Ill. (December 14, 2012) – It is estimated that 34% of Americans are affected by an increasingly prevalent condition known as metabolic syndrome which is a combination of at least three of the following risk factors: large waistline, high triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol, high blood pressure and elevated blood sugar.(i) These individuals have a variety of risk factors that increase the likelihood of developing diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Decades of mixed messaging regarding dietary cholesterol have led to avoidance of certain foods, such as eggs, ...

Statistics have entered the life sciences and they are here to stay. This science emerged in the XVIII century by the hand of the mathematicians Thomas Bayes and Pierre Simon Laplace and was used by Gregor Mendel to demonstrate his theory on genetic inheritance. Since the 90s with the appearance of large genomic studies, statistics has become a fundamental tool for the analysis and interpretation of biomedical data. "Today it is difficult to find a scientific article in the field of biomedicine that does not include statistical methodology" explains David Rossell, who performed ...

Approximately ten per cent of 6 year olds have sleep-disordered breathing, according to a recent Finnish study. The risk is increased among children with enlarged tonsils, crossbite and convex facial profile. Unlike in adults, excess body fat is not associated with sleep-disordered breathing in this age group. The study was part of the Physical Activity and Nutrition in Children (PANIC) Study led by the Institute of Biomedicine at the University of Eastern Finland. The results were published in European Journal of Pediatrics. The symptoms of sleep-disordered breathing ...

Higher rates of schizophrenia in urban areas can be attributed to increased deprivation, increased population density and an increase in inequality within a neighbourhood, new research reveals. The research, led by the University of Cambridge in collaboration with Queen Mary University of London, was published today in the journal Schizophrenia Bulletin. Dr James Kirkbride, lead author of the study from the University of Cambridge, said: "Although we already know that schizophrenia tends to be elevated in more urban communities, it was unclear why. Our research suggests ...

An employment contract for NHS consultants introduced in 2003 and including a 27 per cent pay rise over three years failed to increase productivity. The findings emerge from a 10-year study of hospital consultant activity, published today by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, which looked at the levels of consultant clinical activity rates between 1999 and 2009. The researchers found that, despite an expectation by the Department of Health that the contract would result in year-on-year productivity gains of 1.5%, consultant activity levels showed a downward trend. ...

Researchers at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and the Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, demonstrate that an altered gut microbiota in humans is associated with symptomatic atherosclerosis and stroke. These findings are presented in a study published in Nature Communications on December 4. The human body contains ten times more bacterial cells than human cells, most of which are found in the gut. These bacteria contain an enormous number of genes in addition to our host genome, and are collectively known as the gut metagenome. How does the metagenome ...

PITTSBURGH, Dec. 13, 2012 – University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) researchers have identified over 125 genetic components in a chemotherapy-resistant, brain tumor-derived cell line, which could offer new hope for drug treatment to destroy the cancer cells. The results will be reported in the cover story of December's issue of the journal Molecular Cancer Research, to be published Dec. 18 and currently available online. The potential drug targets were identified after testing more than 5,000 genes derived from glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive brain ...

This press release is available in German. Leipzig. Remains of dead bacteria have far greater meaning for soils than previously assumed. Around 40 per cent of the microbial biomass is converted to organic soil components, write researchers from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), the Technische Universität Dresden (Technical University of Dresden) , the University of Stockholm, the Max-Planck-Institut für Entwicklungsbiologie (Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology) and the Leibniz-Universität Hannover (Leibniz University Hannover) in the ...

This press release is available in German. All a question of timing: When bushcrickets mate, the male attaches a sticky package, the so-called spermatophore, to the female's abdomen. Alongside the sperm themselves, this 'bridal present' consists of a protein-rich mass that the female eats after mating. It then takes several hours for the sperm to find their way into the female's reproductive tract. But, who decides when that will happen? A study by the Bielefeld biologists Professor Dr. Klaus Reinhold and Dr. Steven Ramm suggests that it is the male who determines the ...

Montréal, December 14, 2012 – Dr. Marie Kmita and her research team at the IRCM contributed to a multidisciplinary research project that identified the mechanism responsible for generating our fingers and toes, and revealed the importance of gene regulation in the transition of fins to limbs during evolution. Their scientific breakthrough is published today in the prestigious scientific journal Science. By combining genetic studies with mathematical modeling, the scientists provided experimental evidence supporting a theoretical model for pattern formation known as the ...

New research from North Carolina State University provides molecular-level insights into how cellulose – the most common organic compound on Earth and the main structural component of plant cell walls – breaks down in wood to create "bio-oils" which can be refined into any number of useful products, including liquid transportation fuels to power a car or an airplane. Using a supercomputer that can perform functions thousands of times faster than a standard desktop computer, NC State chemical and biomolecular engineer Dr. Phillip Westmoreland and doctoral student Vikram ...

Highlights In a study of African Americans with kidney disease, levels of mineral metabolites rose over time; those with faster rates of kidney function decline had the greatest increases in metabolites. Higher baseline levels of metabolites were linked with an increased risk for kidney failure or death independent of kidney function. Disordered mineral metabolism is more severe in African Americans with chronic kidney disease, which might partially explain why their disease progresses more rapidly to kidney failure. Washington, DC (December 13, 2012) — Abnormalities ...

Highlights Blocking the receptor for endothelin lowers novel cardiovascular risk factors in patients with chronic kidney disease independent of blood pressure. The findings suggest that blocking the receptor may provide heart-related benefits to these patients. 60 million people globally have chronic kidney disease. Washington, DC (December 13, 2012) — Blocking the receptor for proteins that constrict blood vessels reduces markers of heart-related problems in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD), according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue ...

A new study from the rainforests of Panama provides an unprecedented level of detail regarding the diversity and distribution of arthropod species from the soil to the forest canopy. Yves Basset, scientific coordinator of the CTFS Arthropod Initiative at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, led an international team on Project IBISCA-Panama to sample, sort, catalogue, and finally estimate that a 6,000 hectare forest hosts a total of around 25,000 arthropod species – a figure vastly outnumbering that of better-studied organisms. The study will be published online ...

People over age 65 with high psychosocial distress face increased risk of stroke, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Stroke. Psychosocial distress is a broad concept that includes depression, stress, a negative outlook and dissatisfaction with life. In their 10-year study, researchers followed 4,120 people in the Chicago Health and Aging Project for rates of death and stroke incidents. Due to some participants being involved in an HMO only 2,649 participants were analyzed for rates of incident stroke. Participants were 65 years and older ...

Washington, D.C. — When materials are stressed, they eventually change shape. Initially these changes are elastic, and reverse when the stress is relieved. When the material's strength is exceeded, the changes become permanent. This could result in the material breaking or shattering, but it could also re-shape the material, such as a hammer denting a piece of metal. Understanding this last group of changes is the focus of research from a team including Carnegie's Ho-kwang "Dave" Mao. Their breakthrough research on the behavior nickel nanocrystals under intense pressure ...

The Government and police efforts to tackle financial crime – from business fraud to tax evasion – are hampered by a lack of accurate data about the nature and extent of offending, according to new research. Most of the data available on financial crime is produced without a credible methodology, says Michael Levi, Professor of Criminology at Cardiff University, whose research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). "Typically, the information available on offending or threat is just a marketing hype," says Professor Levi. "It comes from business ...

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have found that male mice produce a pheromone that provokes females and competitor males to remember a preference for the place where the pheromone was previously encountered. Some animals, such as moths, use a sensitive tracking system to trace airborne sex pheromones to the source, while others, such as snakes, follow trails of pheromones left on the ground. A team from the University's Institute of Integrative Biology has discovered that mice use a different system to locate mates and competitors by remembering exactly where ...

Two major barriers to the advancement of DNA nanotechnology beyond the research lab have been knocked down. This emerging technology employs DNA as a programmable building material for self-assembled, nanometer-scale structures. Many practical applications have been envisioned, and researchers recently demonstrated a synthetic membrane channel made from DNA. Until now, however, design processes were hobbled by a lack of structural feedback. Assembly was slow and often of poor quality. Now researchers led by Prof. Hendrik Dietz of the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) ...