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Science28 Nov 2012

Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee Purveyor J. Martinez & Co. Has a New Blog!

Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee purveyor J. Martinez & Company has a new blog, so you can keep up with all the latest news and information from your favorite source for gourmet coffee. J. Martinez & Company has been a leader in the gourmet coffee business since 1988. The family owned company, founded by John A Martinez with his wife, Melanie, has pioneered incredibly innovative ways of getting coffee to its drinkers. One quite important innovation was the concept of single estate coffee. This refers to beans that have been grown on the same farm, and thus under ...

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Science28 Nov 2012

Money Dashboard Unveils the 3 Steps to Saving During Christmas

Money Dashboard, the free financial software service, has put together some top tips on ways to save money this Christmas and into the New Year. Christmas is one of the most expensive times of the year. This year Britons will spend around GBP89 billion on Christmas, from food and decorations to presents and travel. Trying to save at this time is therefore an uphill struggle. But Money Dashboard knows it is possible. Through its free online software anyone can take control of their finances. Users of the software can see exactly where their money goes, monitor their ...

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Science28 Nov 2012

Costen Tax Group Leverages Changes In IRS "Fresh Start" To Help Clients With Tax Troubles

The IRS recently announced some major changes to the 2008 initiative called "Fresh Start". The new changes will permit a large number of taxpayers who are without a job for longer than 30 days the opportunity to avoid tax penalties. As a result Costen Tax Group can help a greatly increased number of taxpayers. Beginning this year many self-employed and wage earning taxpayers can avoid costly penalties for a late payment of 2011 taxes by submitting an extension and paying their full tax obligation by October 15th 2012. This penalty relief only applies to households ...

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Science28 Nov 2012

Australian Retailer Launches Biggest Ever Costume Sale, This Christmas

This Friday (30th November), Australian online costume retailer Smiffy's AU will be launching their biggest ever online sales campaign with huge savings of up to 50%, while stock lasts. With the passing of Cyber Monday and Australia's very own Click Frenzy, Smiffy's AU have decided to launch their very own sales campaign which will be the biggest sales push undergone by the company to date. "We're in the last quarter of 2012 and it's evident that will be seeing the best sales since the launch of the company a number of years ago. Our '#SmiffysOzCracker' sales ...

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Physics27 Nov 2012

Researchers use shock tube for insight into physics early in blasts

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories' one-of-a-kind multiphase shock tube began with a hallway conversation that led to what engineer Justin Wagner describes as the only shock tube in the world that can look at how shock waves interact with dense particle fields. The machine is considered multiphase because it can study shock wave propagation through a mixture of gas and solid particles. Shock tubes — machines that generate shock waves without an explosion — have been around for decades. What makes Sandia's unique is its ability to study how densely clustered ...

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Science27 Nov 2012

Brief exercise immediately enhances memory, UCI study finds

Irvine, Calif., Nov. 26, 2012 — A short burst of moderate exercise enhances the consolidation of memories in both healthy older adults and those with mild cognitive impairment, scientists with UC Irvine's Center for the Neurobiology of Learning & Memory have discovered. Most research has focused on the benefits of a long-term exercise program on overall health and cognitive function with age. But the UCI work is the first to examine the immediate effects of a brief bout of exercise on memory. In their study, UCI postdoctoral scholar Sabrina Segal and neurobiologists ...

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Medicine27 Nov 2012

New behavioral strategies may help patients learn to better control chronic diseases

One of the most important health problems in the United States is the failure of patients with chronic diseases to take their medications and do all that is necessary to control their illnesses. In a study published online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, UCLA researchers and their colleagues suggest that physicians take a serious look at tools and strategies used in behavioral economics and social psychology to help motivate their patients to assert better control over chronic diseases. Breaking large goals into smaller, more manageable parts, for example, ...

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Medicine27 Nov 2012

USC, Oxford researchers find high fructose corn syrup-global prevalence of diabetes link

LOS ANGELES AND OXFORD, U.K.— A new study by University of Southern California (USC) and University of Oxford researchers indicates that large amounts of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) found in national food supplies across the world may be one explanation for the rising global epidemic of type 2 diabetes and resulting higher health care costs. The study reports that countries that use HFCS in their food supply had a 20 percent higher prevalence of diabetes than countries that did not use HFCS. The analysis also revealed that HFCS's association with the "significantly ...

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Science27 Nov 2012

Administrative data set not always best source for number of surgical complications

Charlottesville, VA (November 27, 2012). Hospital administrative databases, designed to provide general information on hospital stays and associated costs, are frequently used to find information that can lead to quality assessments of care or clinical research. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) extracted data on hospital readmissions following spine surgery at their institution from an administrative database to assess the clinical relevance of the information and to define clinically relevant predictors of readmission. What they found were ...

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Science27 Nov 2012

Graphene switches: HZB research group makes it to first base

Now, Helmholtz Centre Berlin's Dr. Andrei Varykhalov, Prof. Dr. Oliver Rader and his team of physicists has taken the first step towards building graphene-based components, in collaboration with physicists from St. Petersburg (Russia), Jülich (Germany) and Harvard (USA). According to their report on 27. November 2012 in Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2227), they successfully managed to increase the graphene conduction electrons' spin-orbit coupling by a factor of 10,000 – enough to allow them to construct a switch that can be controlled via small electric fields. The ...

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Medicine27 Nov 2012

Protein injection points to muscular dystrophy treatment

November 27, 2012 — Ottawa — Scientists have discovered that injecting a novel human protein into muscle affected by Duchenne muscular dystrophy significantly increases its size and strength, findings that could lead to a therapy akin to the use of insulin by diabetics. These results were published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Dr. Julia von Maltzahn and Dr. Michael Rudnicki, the Ottawa scientist who discovered muscle stem cells in adults. "This is an unprecedented and dramatic restoration in muscle strength," says Dr. Rudnicki, a senior ...

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Social Science27 Nov 2012

Study finds heavily indebted med students choosing primary care face greater financial challenges

(Boston) - Researchers at Boston University and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) have determined that heavily indebted medical students choosing primary care careers will experience difficulty paying their student debt unless they consider alternative strategies to support repayment. These findings appear online in Academic Medicine, the peer-reviewed Journal of the AAMC. Most medical school graduates have education debt and the average amount of education debt is increasing. In 2011, 86 percent had education debt at graduation, averaging $161,290, ...

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Science27 Nov 2012

James' bond: A graphene/nanotube hybrid

HOUSTON – (Nov. 27, 2012) – A seamless graphene/nanotube hybrid created at Rice University may be the best electrode interface material possible for many energy storage and electronics applications. Led by Rice chemist James Tour, researchers have successfully grown forests of carbon nanotubes that rise quickly from sheets of graphene to astounding lengths of up to 120 microns, according to a paper published today by Nature Communications. A house on an average plot with the same aspect ratio would rise into space. That translates into a massive amount of surface area, ...

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Medicine27 Nov 2012

GI researcher co-author of international permafrost report

Fairbanks, Alaska—University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher Vladimir Romanovsky is one of four scientists who authored a report released today by the United Nations Environmental Programme. The report, "Policy Implications of Warming Permafrost," seeks to highlight the potential hazards of carbon dioxide and methane emissions from warming permafrost, which have not thus far been included in climate-prediction modeling. The report notes that permafrost covers almost a quarter of the northern hemisphere and contains 1,700 gigatonnes of carbon—twice that currently in the ...

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Science27 Nov 2012

How devout are we? Study shows evangelicals surge as Catholics wane

The percentage of Americans who say they are strong in their religious faith has been steady for the last four decades, a new study finds. But in that same time, the intensity of some religious groups has surged while others – notably Roman Catholics – has faded. Among the risers: Evangelicals, who have become more staunchly devout since the early 1990s. Meanwhile, Catholics now report the lowest proportion of strongly affiliated followers among major American religious traditions. The drop in intensity could present challenges for the Roman Catholic Church, the study ...

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Science27 Nov 2012

Ruling out deep vein thrombosis at the primary care level

Algorithms improve certainty in ruling out deep and pelvic vein thrombosis at the primary level of patient care, say Lobna El Tabei and her co-authors in the current issue of the Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2012; 109[45]: 761-6). Deep vein thrombosis (DVT) can lead to fatal pulmonary embolism or chronic post-thrombotic syndrome. To improve differential diagnostic certainty, scores have been developed that allow the clinical probability of DVT to be calculated on the basis of weighted combinations of individual clinical findings. Items of these ...

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Science27 Nov 2012

Tracking down smallest biomarkers

Microvesicles are smallest cell elements which are present in all body fluids and are different, depending on whether a person is healthy or sick. This could contribute to detecting numerous diseases, such as, e.g., carcinomas, at an early stage, and to treating them more efficiently. The problem is that the diameter of the relevant microvesicles generally lies below 100 nm, which makes them technically detectable, but their exact size and concentration hardly possible to determine. A new device is now to provide the metrological basis for these promising biomarkers. The ...

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Social Science27 Nov 2012

Early intervention prevents behavioral problems

"In Norway, we almost employ the opposite strategy. The main chunk of resources in special education in Norway is earmarked for secondary schools. We must look more closely at how we can shift and distribute these resources to the primary schools and kindergartens, without automatically removing them from the secondary school classes," says Pål Roland at the Centre for Behavioural Research. Through "The Challenging Children", a project that aims to reveal, remedy and prevent psychosocial problems among children, aged four to eight years, Roland has seen that teachers ...

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Medicine27 Nov 2012

New mechanism for cancer progression discovered by UNC and Harvard researchers

The protein Ras plays an important role in cellular growth control. Researchers have focused on the protein because mutations in its gene are found in more than 30 percent of all cancers, making it the most prevalent human oncogene. University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and Harvard researchers have discovered an alternative mechanism for activating Ras that does not require mutation or hormonal stimulus. In healthy cells, Ras transmits hormone signals into the cell that prompt responses such as cell growth and the development of organs and ...

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Medicine27 Nov 2012

Being bullied can cause trauma symptoms

This study of 963 children aged 14 and 15 in Norwegian schools found a high incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms among bullied pupils. These signs were seen in roughly 33 per cent of respondents who said they had been victims of bullying. "This is noteworthy, but nevertheless unsurprising," says psychologist Thormod Idsøe from the Universitiy of Stavanger (UiS) and Bergen's Center for Crisis Psychology. "Bullying is defined as long-term physical or mental violence by an individual or group. "It's directed at a person who's not able to defend themselves ...

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Science27 Nov 2012

Scientists at the Institute of Molecular Biology identify key event for sex determination

Scientists at the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) in Mainz have identified a protein essential for initiating the development of male sex organs. Loss of the gene Gadd45g results in complete sex reversal of male mice, making them appear female. The researchers' finding uncovers a novel signaling cascade, which acts early in development to determine the gonads in males. This discovery sheds light on the genetic network that controls how embryos develop as males or females. The research has just been published in the high-impact journal Developmental Cell. Research ...

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Science27 Nov 2012

Research reveals new understanding of X chromosome inactivation

Chapel Hill, NC – In a paper published in the Nov. 21 issue of Cell, a team led by Mauro Calabrese, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina in the lab of Terry Magnuson, chair of the department of genetics and member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, broadens the understanding of how cells regulate silencing of the X chromosome in a process known as X-inactivation. "This is a classic example of a basic research discovery. X-inactivation is a flagship model for understanding how non-coding RNAs orchestrate large-scale control of gene ...

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Science27 Nov 2012

Preventing posttraumatic stress disorder by facing trauma memories

Philadelphia, PA, November 27, 2012 – Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a form of learning that begins at the moment of the exposure to extremely stressful situations and that grows in impact as trauma-related memories are rehearsed and strengthened repeatedly. This somewhat oversimplified view of PTSD yields a powerful prediction: if one could disrupt the rehearsal and strengthening of traumatic memories, a process called reconsolidation of memories, then one might reduce PTSD risk or PTSD severity after potentially traumatic events. To be certain, it is tricky ...

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Medicine27 Nov 2012

Enzyme explains angina in diabetics

In a new study published in the scientific journal Circulation, scientists at Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden show that an enzyme called arginase might have a key part to play in the development of cardiovascular disease in patients who already have type II diabetes. According to the team, arginase prevents the formation of protective nitrogen oxide in the blood vessels, and treatments that inhibit this enzyme reduce the risk of angina in diabetics. "The fact that we could demonstrate the presence of arginase in several types of cell ...

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Medicine27 Nov 2012

New method for diagnosing malaria

Malaria is a life-threatening disease that strikes more than 200 million people every year – mainly in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The disease is caused by the Plasmodium parasite, which is spread by infected mosquito bites. Today, malaria can be prevented and successfully treated, but more than half a million people nevertheless die every year from the disease. Large-scale monitoring and treatment programmes during the past decade have reduced the distribution of the disease, and the frequency of actual epidemics has fallen. However, the number of malaria patients ...

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