New research from North Carolina State University shows that informal social networks play an important role when it comes to finding jobs in both the United States and Germany, but those networks are significantly more important for high-paying jobs in the United States – which may contribute to economic inequality. "It is interesting to note that the open market system in the United States, with minimal labor regulations, actually sees people benefiting more from patronage – despite the expectation that open markets would value merit over social connections," says ...

CLEMSON — Clemson researchers redesigned and modified a mobile drill press to retrofit a section of a runway that halts overrun aircraft, ultimately minimizing aircraft damage and passenger injury. The process of retrofitting the end of a runway at Greenville Downtown Airport required more than 80,000 holes to be drilled in the concrete. Pace Pavement Technologies Inc. recognized that manually drilling the holes was not an option and there needed to be a more efficient and accurate way to drill. "We visited several machine shops and pneumatic suppliers and received ...

VIDEO: For older adults, loneliness is a major risk factor for health problems -- such as cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's -- and death. Initial attempts to diminish loneliness with social networking... Click here for more information. PITTSBURGH—For older adults, loneliness is a major risk factor for health problems — such as cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's — and death. Attempts to diminish loneliness with social networking programs like creating community ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Researchers have found a way to use GPS to measure short-term changes in the rate of ice loss on Greenland – and reveal a surprising link between the ice and the atmosphere above it. The study, published in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, hints at the potential for GPS to detect many consequences of climate change, including ice loss, the uplift of bedrock, changes in air pressure – and perhaps even sea level rise. The team, led by earth scientists at Ohio State University, pinpointed a period in 2010 ...

DETROIT — Neuroscientists from Wayne State University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are taking a deeper look into how the brain mechanisms for memory retrieval differ between adults and children. While the memory systems are the same in many ways, the researchers have learned that crucial functions with relevance to learning and education differ. The team's findings were published on July 17, 2012, in the Journal of Neuroscience. According to lead author Noa Ofen, Ph.D., assistant professor in WSU's Institute of Gerontology and Department of Pediatrics, ...

Scientists have identified what may be the Peyton Manning of prostate cancer. It's a protein that's essential for the disease to execute its game plan: Grow and spread throughout the body. Like any good quarterback, this protein has command over the entire field; not only does it control cell growth in tumors that are sensitive to hormone therapy, a common treatment for men with advanced disease, but also in tumors that grow resistant to such treatment – a dismal development that leaves men and their doctors with no good options to turn to. In a study published in ...

If you are a steak lover, enjoy your meat while you can. An article by Susan Wolver, MD, and Diane Sun, MD, from Virginia Commonwealth University in the US, and colleagues, explains why if you have been bitten by a tick, you may develop an allergy to red meat. Their article1 elucidates this connection and discusses the journey of the discovery. Their work appears online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine², published by Springer. Delayed anaphylaxis - a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction - to meat is a new syndrome identified initially in the southeastern ...

Today, the 12-member U.S. Antarctic Program Blue Ribbon Panel, commissioned by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) released their report, More and Better Science in Antarctica through Increased Logistical Effectiveness. The report is a comprehensive document based on several months of research, containing numerous specific recommendations for the U.S. logistics system for improved support of scientific research in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. "The Antarctica Blue Ribbon Panel encourages us to take ...

A rare accounting document, half-concealed beneath a coat of arms design, has revealed the activities of Italian bankers working in early 15th century London, decades before the capital became a financial powerhouse. The discovery was made by economic historians at Queen Mary, University of London. Among the pages of a bound collection of traditional English crests held at the London College of Arms - the headquarters of British heraldry - are several papers belonging to a book of debtors and creditors for Florentine merchant-banking company, Domenicio Villani & Partners. The ...

(Washington) – "Repeal of Medicare's Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) is essential, but repeal by itself will not move Medicare to better ways to deliver care," David L. Bronson, MD, FACP, president of the American College of Physicians (ACP), today told the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health. "We need to transition from a fundamentally broken physician payment system to one that is based on the value of services to patients, building on physician-led initiatives to improve outcomes and lower costs." Dr. Bronson described how physician organization's efforts and ...

WASHINGTON -- For several days this month, Greenland's surface ice cover melted over a larger area than at any time in more than 30 years of satellite observations. Nearly the entire ice cover of Greenland, from its thin, low-lying coastal edges to its 2-mile-thick center, experienced some degree of melting at its surface, according to measurements from three independent satellites analyzed by NASA and university scientists. On average in the summer, about half of the surface of Greenland's ice sheet naturally melts. At high elevations, most of that melt water quickly ...

New Rochelle, NY, July 24, 2012—Hundreds of colleges and universities around the world are offering courses and even graduate degrees in ecopsychology and other forms of environmentally focused psychology. Ecopsychology examines the psychological, spiritual, and therapeutic aspects of human-nature relationships, concern about environmental issues, and responsibility for protecting natural places and other species. Educators are increasingly recognizing the value of integrating psychology and environmental content to help students appreciate the link between their own well-being ...

Papers on how best to identify trending stories on Twitter and on just how cool computers in data centers need to be kept has won accolades for faculty and students from UTSC's Department of Computer & Mathematical Sciences. Nick Koudas, UTSC computer science professor, and his graduate students Albert Angel and Nikos Sarkas, won the Best Paper award for the Very Large Databases Conference, which they will present at the meeting in Istanbul in August. The paper presents a new way of identifying stories of interest on Twitter and other streaming microblogging sites. ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — The inferior members of swimming or running relay teams – those athletes who fared poorest in individual races – showed the greatest gains when performing as part of a team, and those gains were even greater during final races as opposed to preliminary races. The new research from Michigan State University's Deborah Feltz and Kaitlynn Osborn provides some of the first real-world support for the Köhler motivation effect, which describes how less capable individuals perform better when performing a task with others as opposed to individually. The ...

Contact: David Hosansky hosansky@ucar.edu 303-497-8611 Zhenya Gallon zhenya@ucar.edu 303-497-8607 National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Reducing traffic at 2008 Olympics yielded large cut in CO2 BOULDER—China's Olympian attempt to improve air quality during the 2008 summer games did more than provide a healthier atmosphere for the athletes. It also demonstrated that widespread changes in transportation patterns could greatly reduce the threat of climate change. New research by an international team ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – JULY 24, 2012 – A study from researchers in Switzerland found that colonoscopy with polypectomy significantly reduces colorectal cancer incidence and colorectal cancer-related death in the general population. A total of 12 colorectal cancer cases were identified in the screening group of 1,912 patients and 213 cases of colorectal cancer were found in the non-screened group of 20,774 patients. One of the 12 persons of the screened individuals with a colorectal cancer and 51 of the 213 persons of the non-screened individuals with a colorectal cancer died ...

Patients with blocked arteries to their extremities, known as peripheral artery disease (PAD) or critical limb ischemia (CLI), may now find relief from lower leg pain and wounds caused by impaired leg artery circulation with the previously unproven therapy, percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA). The XCELL trial results now available in Catheterization and Cardiovascular Interventions, a journal published by Wiley on behalf of the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI), reports that infrapopliteal nitinol stenting to treat CLI is safe and effective ...

Rapid intensification of tropical cyclones is still somewhat of a mystery to forecasters, but one marker that NASA scientists confirmed is when "hot towers" appear within a tropical cyclone as they did in Typhoon Vicente before it exploded in strength on July 23. Vicente made landfall in southern China on July 23. NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite spotted hot towers in Typhoon Vicente, and it rapidly intensified again within six hours on July 23. By the afternoon (Eastern Daylight time) Vicente's winds spun up to 120 knots (138 mph/222 kmh). ...

Though technology has taken much of the guesswork out of mining, mountain ranges are still notoriously difficult environments in which to hunt for valuable minerals. Various methods used to draw a picture of the underground environment, including the measurement of gravitational and magnetic fields, are easily thrown off by factors such as changes in topography height, surrounding temperature, and barometric pressure. Now Prof. Lev Eppelbaum of Tel Aviv University's Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences has developed a new method for processing and analysing ...

The finding involves the cancer gene RhoC, which has previously been shown to promote metastasis of many types of cancer. RhoC levels increase as breast cancer progresses and high levels of RhoC are associated with worse patient survival. Cancer stem cells are the small number of cells within a tumor that are believed to fuel the tumor's growth and spread. Researchers believe traditional chemotherapy and radiation treatments often become ineffective because they do not kill the cancer stem cells, and that the key to future treatments is to develop drugs that target and ...

New Rochelle, NY, July 24, 2012—A naturally occurring line of immunodeficient pigs can support the growth of human tumors injected under their skin, offering a promising new large animal model for studying human cancers and testing new drugs and treatment strategies. The ability of human melanoma cells and pancreatic carcinoma cells to grow in these pig models is described in an article in BioResearch Open Access, a new bimonthly peer-reviewed open access journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. (http://www.liebertpub.com). The article is available free online at the BioResearch ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Participation in competitive sports by people with long QT syndrome -- a genetic abnormality in the heart's electrical system -- has been a matter of debate among physicians. Current guidelines disqualify most LQTS patients from almost every sport. In a first-of-its-kind study, Mayo Clinic's LQTS Clinic recently examined its own experience, determining the outcome of LQTS patients who chose to remain athletes against guideline recommendations. The study is published online in the Journal of the American Medical Association. In the study, the records ...

The scientific community has always wanted to know why people who eat high-salt diets are prone to developing medical problems such as kidney stones and osteoporosis. Medical researchers at the University of Alberta may have solved this puzzle through their work with animal lab models and cells. Principal investigator Todd Alexander and his team recently discovered an important link between sodium and calcium. These both appear to be regulated by the same molecule in the body. When sodium intake becomes too high, the body gets rid of sodium via the urine, taking calcium ...

Human defensins, aptly named antimicrobial peptides, are made in immune system cells and epithelial cells (such as skin cells and cells that line the gut). One of these peptides, human neutrophil peptide 1, under certain circumstances hinders HIV infection, but exactly how it works remains unclear. HIV entry into mature T-helper cells (cells essential to the immune system) proceeds by attachment of the virus to specific targets on T-helper cells, uptake of the virus, fusion of its envelope with the cell membranes, and release of the virus into the cells. In a forthcoming ...

In addition to the well-known risk factor of smoking, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) increases lung cancer risk. A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research details one novel mechanism of this risk: long-term oxygen depletion stimulates signals that promote tumor growth. In addition, this early study – performed in animal models – shows that tumors fueled by these COPD-induced signals may be especially susceptible to prevention or perhaps even treatment with drugs that turn off these same signals, namely ...