Brutality is the name of the game at Smokers Utopia, a vapor cigarette review site that has established itself as the only truly honest review site on the web today in the e cigarette industry. The website has now completed its Green Smoke review and now invites the general public to stop by and get the facts on this highly popular company. They are also offering access a special offer coupon code for the ones interested in Green Smoke e cigarettes. Unlike other e cigarette review sites on the web, the truth is laid out and there is no drooling when it comes to companies ...

UNICEF ambassador for Serbia, five-time Grand Slam champion and world No. 2 Novak Djokovic of Serbia has entered the 2012 Necker Cup, the world's most exclusive Pro-Am, to be held on Sir Richard Branson's private island Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands Dec. 9-13. Amateurs can book a space in the Necker Cup Pro-Am by calling (001) 800.376.0975 or visiting www.neckercup.com. You can also win a place directly into the Necker Cup by winning the Life Time Necker Cup Challenge, to be run in eight markets across the US. In addition, you can register to play in the ...

Sound Physicians, a leading hospitalist organization focused on driving improvements in quality, satisfaction, and financial performance of inpatient healthcare delivery, today announced the appointment of a physician leader focused on improving the inpatient experience of care of communities served by the hospitalist organization nationwide. Mark Rudolph, MD, SFHM has been appointed to Sound Physicians' leadership team as the Vice President of Patient Experience and Physician Development. In this role, he will have primary responsibility for leading Sound Physicians' ...

NEW YORK, October 11, 2012 – With Election Day 2012 just weeks away, a recent study provides scientific evidence that voting in national elections is actually a stressful event with measurable hormonal changes. "Emotional changes are related and affect various physiological processes, but we were surprised that voting in national democratic elections causes emotional reactions accompanied by such physical and psychological stress that can easily influence our decision-making," according to Prof. Hagit Cohen from the Anxiety and Stress Research Unit at Ben-Gurion University ...

BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL, October 11, 2012 -- Mediterranean and low-carbohydrate diets have lasting, healthy effects, even with partial weight regain, according to a follow-up study by researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) and Israel's Nuclear Research Center. The results were published in a peer-reviewed letter in the current New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) as an update to the landmark study, the workplace-based Dietary Intervention Randomized Controlled Trial (DIRECT), a tightly controlled 24-month dietary intervention. According to Dr. Dan Schwarzfuchs ...

What are the key ingredients to raising successful, self-sufficient offspring? A new life sciences study using 14 years of data on gray wolves in Yellowstone National Park indicates that cooperative group behavior and a mother's weight are crucial. "A female's body weight is key in the survival of her offspring, and cooperation in the protection and feeding of young pups pays off in terms of the production of offspring," said Robert Wayne, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA and co-author of the new research, published this week in the online edition ...

If a 7-year-old is breezing through the "Harry Potter" books, studies indicate that he or she will be a strong reader later in life. Conversely, if a 7-year-old is struggling with "The Cat in the Hat," that child will most likely struggle with reading going forward. New research from Stanford shows that brain scans can identify the neural differences between these two children, and could one day lead to an early warning system for struggling students. The researchers scanned the brain anatomy of 39 children once a year for three consecutive years. The students then ...

Women are twice as likely as men to use emoticons in text messages, according to a new study from Rice University. Emoticons are graphic symbols that use punctuation marks and letters to represent facial expressions to convey a person's mood, help provide context to a person's textual communication and clarify a message that could otherwise possibly be misconstrued. The study, "A Longitudinal Study of Emoticon Use in Text Messaging from Smartphones," used smartphone data from men and women over six months and aggregated 124,000 text messages. The participants were ...

New York, NY (October 11, 2012) — A study by scientists from the Motor Neuron Center at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) suggests that spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a genetic neuromuscular disease in infants and children, results primarily from motor circuit dysfunction, not motor neuron or muscle cell dysfunction, as is commonly thought. In a second study, the researchers identified the molecular pathway in SMA that leads to problems with motor function. Findings from the studies, conducted in fruit fly, zebrafish and mouse models of SMA, could lead to therapies ...

In monkeys and humans with AIDS, damage to the gastrointestinal tract is common, contributing to activation of the immune system, progressive immune deficiency, and ultimately advanced AIDS. How this gastric damage occurs has remained a mystery, but now researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Cell provide new clues, implicating the presence of potentially pathogenic virus species other than the main virus that causes AIDS. The findings could provide an opportunity to explain and eventually intervene in the processes that lead to AIDS progression. To investigate ...

More than 15% of children suffer with eczema, or atopic dermatitis, an inflammatory skin disease that in some cases can be debilitating and disfiguring. Researchers reporting in the October issue of Immunity have discovered a potential new target for the condition, demonstrating that by blocking it, they can lessen the disease in mice. In eczema, immune T cells invade the skin and secrete factors that drive an allergic response, making the skin itch. Dr. Raif Geha, of Boston Children's Hospital, and his collaborators now show that scratching the skin precipitates the ...

Today, the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) released a new report, revealing approximately 80 percent of patients treated in clinics or hospitals following a fracture are not screened for osteoporosis or risk of future falls. Left untreated, these patients are at high risk of suffering secondary fractures and facing a future of pain, disfigurement, long-term disability and even early death. The report 'Capture the Fracture – A global campaign to break the fragility fracture cycle' calls for concerted worldwide efforts to stop secondary fractures due to osteoporosis ...

ANN ARBOR—Researchers at the University of Michigan have determined how the hormone leptin, an important regulator of metabolism and body weight, interacts with a key receptor in the brain. Leptin is a hormone secreted by fat tissue that has been of interest for researchers in obesity and Type 2 diabetes since it was discovered in 1995. Like insulin, leptin is part of a regulatory network that controls intake and expenditure of energy in the body, and a lack of leptin or resistance to it has been linked to obesity in people. Although there can be several complex reasons ...

In the largest-ever genetic study of cholesterol and other blood lipids, an international consortium has identified 21 new gene variants associated with risks of heart disease and metabolic disorders. The findings expand the list of potential targets for drugs and other treatments for lipid-related cardiovascular disease, a leading global cause of death and disability. The International IBC Lipid Genetics Consortium used the Cardiochip, a gene analysis tool invented by Brendan J. Keating, Ph.D., a scientist at the Center for Applied Genomics at The Children's Hospital ...

A new way to grow cells vital for nerve repair, developed by researchers from the University of Sheffield, could be a vital step for use in patients with severe nerve damage, including spinal injury (1). Schwann cells are known to boost and amplify nerve growth in animal models, but their clinical use has been held back because they are difficult, time-consuming and costly to culture. The Sheffield team, led by Professor John Haycock, has developed a new technique with adult rat tissue which overcomes all these problems, producing Schwann cells in less than half the time ...

Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have developed a novel method for determining how ready acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells are to die, a discovery that may help cancer specialists to choose treatments option more effectively for their patients who have AML. In a study published in the Oct. 12 issue of the journal Cell, the researchers report that their findings may lead to improved tests to predict which patients successfully treated for AML can continue in remission with standard chemotherapy alone, and which patients are likely to relapse despite ...

New Haven, Conn. — New research led by Yale University scientists suggests that a rocky planet twice Earth's size orbiting a nearby star is a diamond planet. "This is our first glimpse of a rocky world with a fundamentally different chemistry from Earth," said lead researcher Nikku Madhusudhan, a Yale postdoctoral researcher in physics and astronomy. "The surface of this planet is likely covered in graphite and diamond rather than water and granite." The paper reporting the findings has been accepted for publication in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters. The ...

Coral specialist Dr. Bert W. Hoeksema of Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, The Netherlands, recently published the description of a new coral species that lives on the ceilings of caves in Indo-Pacific coral reefs. It differs from its closest relatives by its small polyp size and by the absence of symbiotic algae, so-called zooxanthellae. Its distribution range overlaps with the Coral Triangle, an area that is famous for its high marine species richness. Marine zoologists of Naturalis visit this area frequently to explore its marine biodiversity. Reef corals in ...

Food marketers are masters at getting people to crave and consume the foods that they promote. In this study authors Dr. Brian Wansink, co-director of the Cornell University Center for Behavioral Economics in Child Nutrition and Professor of Marketing and Dr. Pierre Chandon, professor of Marketing at the leading French graduate school of business, INSEAD challenge popular assumptions that link food marketing and obesity. Their findings presented last weekend at the Association for Consumer Research Conference in Vancouver, Canada point to ways in which smart food marketers ...

For the first time, scientists have visualised an interaction between gluten and T-cells of the immune system, providing insight into how coeliac disease, which affects approximately 1 in 133 people, is triggered. Published today in Immunity, the discovery was led by Dr Hugh Reid and Professor Jamie Rossjohn of Monash University, Professor Frits Koning of the University of Leiden and Dr Bob Anderson of biotechnology company ImmusanT Inc, based in the US. An increasingly diagnosed chronic inflammatory disorder, coeliac disease affects the digestive process of the small ...

Providing healthcare staff with a one-day training course on dealing with the sexual needs of people with an acquired physical disability gave them greater understanding of the issues patients faced and enabled them to address intimate questions more comfortably and proactively. The findings were so encouraging that the authors of the study, published in the November issue of the Journal of Advanced Nursing, are calling for all healthcare practitioners to receive sexuality training, regardless of their role or the area of healthcare they work in. Researchers surveyed ...

Chemists at Queen's University Belfast have devised a novel, environmentally friendly technique, which allows the rapid production of Metal-Organic Frameworks porous materials (MOFs). These revolutionary nanomaterials have the potential to transform hazardous gas storage, natural gas vehicles and drug delivery and have the highest surface-area of any known substance. A sugar-lump sized piece of MOF material can have the same surface area as a football pitch. Until now MOF manufacturing techniques have been limited as they are costly, slow and require large quantities ...

University of Luxembourg's Laboratory for Photovoltaics has established a method to observe and prevent solar cell degradation before solar cell production is finished, which has implications for the solar cell manufacturing industry since chemical damage to solar cells can occur quickly. Solar panels are capable of converting light energy from the sun into electrical energy because they contain solar cells – the "power generators" responsible for the energy in solar panels. Thin film solar cells have a coating that is responsible for absorbing the sun's energy, but ...

A team of international researchers has provided the first comprehensive DNA evidence that the Addis Ababa lion in Ethiopia is genetically unique and is urging immediate conservation action to preserve this vulnerable lion population. While it has long been noted that some lions in Ethiopia have a large, dark mane, extending from the head, neck and chest to the belly, as well as being smaller and more compact than other lions, it was not known until now if these lions represent a genetically distinct population. The team of researchers, led by the University of York, ...

Philadelphia, PA, October 11, 2012 – A paper by Shizhong Han and colleagues in the current issue of Biological Psychiatry implicates a new gene in the risk for cannabis dependence. This gene, NRG1, codes for the ErbB4 receptor, a protein implicated in synaptic development and function. The researchers set out to investigate susceptibility genes for cannabis dependence, as research has already shown that it has a strong genetic component. To do this, they employed a multi-stage design using genetic data from African American and European American families. In the first ...