The Hampton Inn & Suites Atlanta Airport Hotel (North, I-85) offers nearby lodging to guests attending the National Black Arts Festival (NBAF ), a celebration of the art, music, and culture of people of African descent. The summer festival takes place July 6-15, 2012, with a few exhibits running longer. The main weekend of the festival is July 12-15, with events taking place at Centennial Olympic Park and other venues in Atlanta, GA. NBAF 2012 events include: - "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", performance (July 10 - 29) - Coretta Scott King Awards Book ...

Rare plants from National Trust gardens across the country will be propagated at a new Plant Conservation Centre that will improve the way one of the most important plant collections in the UK is cared for. Opened by international plantsman Roy Lancaster, the new 2.5 acre facility at a secret East Devon location will bring together plant propagation facilities, plant collection management expertise and facilities for training National Trust staff on all aspects of caring for the important plants in the gardens they look after. The opening of the new facilities comes ...

British Airways has announced that One Direction, one of the world's biggest bands, is to host the ultimate high-flying dinner date on BA jet. The fab five, Harry Styles, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Zayn Malik, will take to the skies to help raise funds for Comic Relief. The charter flight will be given the original flight number BA1D. They will be joined on the exclusive sky-high date by eight lucky fans who will have the chance to win tickets in a competition which has been launched on social media sites including the British Airways Facebook ...

Amongst the stand out performances, was rising star, Melanie Dyer, who had impressed Joel Madden with her encore performance during The Voice's blind auditions. Melanie was amongst celebrities, radio star Michael 'Wippa' Wipfli, past and present MasterChef contestants Alvin Quah, Audra Morrice and Kylie Millar as well as personalities, Steve Willis, 'Commando' from The Biggest Loser, Karen Ledbury, Lizzy Lovett, Glenn Wheeler, who all frocked up for a night of culinary indulgence. The event raised an enormous $130k NET for Variety - the Children's Charity. Guests ...

The shorter days of winter see a 40% jump in animal collisions on Australian roads compared to the summer months, according to claims data from leading national insurer, AAMI. With twilight coinciding more closely with peak hour on rural roads, and city drivers taking to the country for a winter break, animals and cars are more likely to cross paths. "Through the winter months, daylight is shorter and we are on the roads more at the very time of day when animals, such as kangaroos, tend to be more active and invade our roadways," said Reuben Aitchison, AAMI ...

People with lung cancer who are treated with the drug Tarceva face a daunting uncertainty: although their tumors may initially shrink, it's not a question of whether their cancer will return—it's a question of when. And for far too many, it happens far too soon. Now, a team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco's Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center has discovered that a human protein called AXL drives resistance to Tarceva, which suggests that blocking the protein may prevent resistance to the cancer drug. The discovery, described ...

1. After First Heart Attack, Patients Likely to Return to the Hospital for Unrelated Issues Comorbid Conditions and Treatment Complications Contribute to High Rehospitalization Rate Each year nearly 785,000 people are hospitalized for a first heart attack. Treatment advances have contributed to improved survival rates, but rehospitalization in the first 30 days after discharge remains a common and costly problem. Researchers studied 3,010 patients in one health system who were hospitalized with a first-time heart attack between 1987 and 2010 to determine the rate of rehospitalization, ...

Brown widow spiders are relatively new to North America, where they were first documented in Florida in 1935, and even newer to southern California, where they were only recently discovered in 2003. However, in the last decade they have been so successful that they may be displacing native black widow spiders. If so, the overall danger to homeowners may decrease because brown widow spider bites are less toxic than those of native western black widow spiders. In "The Prevalence of Brown Widow and Black Widow Spiders (Araneae: Theridiidae) in Urban Southern California," ...

A new species of phorid fly from Thailand is the smallest fly ever discovered. At just 0.40 millimeters in length, it is 15 times smaller than a house fly and five times smaller than a fruit fly. The tiny fly, Euryplatea nanaknihali, is also the first of its genus to be discovered in Asia, and it belongs to a fly family (Phoridae) that is known for "decapitating" ants. Some species in the Phoridae fly family lay eggs in the bodies of ants, and the resulting larvae feed in the ants' heads, eventually causing decapitation. In fact, some of these phorid flies are being ...

MINNEAPOLIS – Botulinum toxin may help prevent shaking or tremor in the arms and hands of people with multiple sclerosis (MS), according to new research published in the July 3, 2012, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. "Treatments in use for tremor in MS are not sufficiently effective and new alternatives are needed," said study author Anneke van der Walt, MD, consultant neurologist at The Royal Melbourne Hospital and research fellow with the University of Melbourne in Australia. For the study 23 people with MS were ...

Fruit flies on dietary restriction (DR) need to be physically active in order to get the lifespan extending benefits that come from their Spartan diet. If the same axiom holds true in humans, those practicing caloric restriction in hopes of living longer need to make sure they eat enough to avoid fatigue. According to research at the Buck Institute, flies on DR shift their metabolism toward increasing fatty acid synthesis and breakdown, specifically in muscle tissue. "Dietary restriction is known to enhance spontaneous movement in a variety of species including primates, ...

Tree ring and oxygen isotope data from the U.S. Pacific Northwest do not provide the same information on past precipitation, but rather than causing a problem, the differing results are a good thing, according to a team of geologists. The researchers are trying to understand the larger spatial patterns and timing of drought in the arid and semiarid areas of the American West. "We generally understand that the Medieval Climate Anomaly, a warm period in much of the northern hemisphere that occurred about 950 to 1250 was a dry period in the American West," said Byron ...

High levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol increases the risk for coronary heart disease. A variant in the human gene encoding the protein sortilin is associated with reduced plasma LDL levels and a decreased risk of heart attack. This variant results in markedly higher sortilin protein expression in liver. Dr. Daniel Rader and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia have uncovered a two-pronged mechanism for the change in LDL observed. Using a mouse model system, the Rader team found that increased liver sortilin is responsible for reducing ...

CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE Gene variant reduces cholesterol by two mechanisms High levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol increases the risk for coronary heart disease. A variant in the human gene encoding the protein sortilin is associated with reduced plasma LDL levels and a decreased risk of heart attack. This variant results in markedly higher sortilin protein expression in liver. Dr. Daniel Rader and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia have uncovered a two-pronged mechanism for the change in LDL observed. Using a mouse model system, ...

In Parkinson's disease, the loss of dopamine-producing cells in the midbrain causes well-characterized motor symptoms. Though embryonic stem cells could potentially be used to replace dopaminergic (DA) neurons in Parkinson's disease patients, such cell therapy options must still overcome technical obstacles before the approach is ready for the clinic. Embryonic stem cell-based transplantation regimens carry a risk of introducing inappropriate cells or even cancer-prone cells. To develop cell purification strategies to minimize these risks, Dr. Lorenza Studer and colleagues ...

The influence of aerosols (small particles less than 1 micrometre in diameter) and clouds (liquid droplets 1 – 1000 micrometres diameter) represents one of the largest uncertainties in our understanding of trends in past global climate and predicting future climate change, as recognised by the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. One of the most significant 'known unknowns' is how quickly water can condense on the small aerosol particles to grow and become cloud droplets, influencing the albedo (reflectivity) of clouds and cloud lifetime (precipitation). ...

Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adolescents have experienced an anger attack that involved threatening violence, destroying property or engaging in violence toward others at some point in their lives. These severe attacks of uncontrollable anger are much more common among adolescents than previously recognized, a new study led by researchers from Harvard Medical School finds. The study, based on the National Comorbidity Survey Replication Adolescent Supplement, a national face-to-face household survey of 10,148 U.S. adolescents, found that nearly two-thirds of adolescents in ...

CHICAGO – A study of students at seven public high schools in Texas suggests that "sexting" was prevalent and may be linked to teens' sexual behaviors, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. Sexting (a combination of the words sex and texting) is the practice of electronically sending sexually explicit images or messages from one person to another. The study background suggests pediatricians, policy makers, schools and parents have insufficient information about the nature and importance ...

CHICAGO – A study that examined maternal use of antipsychotic drugs during pregnancy suggests that these medications may be linked to an increased risk of gestational diabetes, according to a report in the July issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, a JAMA Network publication. Severe mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, are usually treated with continuous antipsychotic drugs, "however, the evidence concerning use of antipsychotics during pregnancy is generally lacking or weak," the authors write in the study background. Robert Bodén. M.D., ...

CHICAGO – Schizophrenia or bipolar disorder in first-degree relatives, such as parents or siblings, may be associated with increased risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to a report published Online First by Archives of General Psychiatry, a JAMA Network publication. Patrick F. Sullivan, M.D., F.R.A.N.Z.C.P, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and colleagues used population registers in Sweden and Israel to examine whether a family history of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or both were risk factors for ASD, a group of developmental brain ...

CHICAGO – The Medicare Part D coverage gap was associated with reduced use of antidepressants in a study of beneficiaries 65 years or older with depression, according to a report by Archives of General Psychiatry, a JAMA Network publication. Depression affects about 13 percent of Medicare beneficiaries age 65 and older, many of whom have chronic physical conditions. Maintenance medication has been shown to prevent recurrent episodes of major depression. However, the structure of the Part D benefit, particularly the coverage gap, "imposes a serious risk for discontinuing ...

CHICAGO – The medication fingolimod reduced inflammatory lesion activity and reduced brain volume loss in patients with multiple sclerosis who participated in a two-year placebo-controlled clinical trial and were assessed by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measures, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Neurology, a JAMA Network publication. Fingolimod is the first in a new class of drugs called the sphingosine 1-phosphate receptor (S1PR) modulators that was recently approved at 0.5 mg once daily for the treatment of relapsing multiple sclerosis ...

CHICAGO – Jehovah's Witness patients who undergo cardiac surgery do not appear to be at increased risk for surgical complications or death when compared to patients who undergo cardiac surgery and receive blood transfusions, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. Jehovah's Witness patients (Witnesses) hold beliefs that disallow blood product transfusion and encourage the use of a number of blood conservation practices, according to background information in the article. Gregory Pattakos, M.D., M.S., ...

Cancers are age-related, much more frequent in the old than in the young. A University of Colorado Cancer Center review published today in the journal Oncogene argues against the conventional wisdom that the accumulation of cancer-causing mutations leads to more cancer in older people, instead positing that it is the changing features of tissue in old age that promote higher cancer rates in the elderly. "If you look at Mick Jagger in 1960 compared to Mick Jagger today, it's obvious that his tissue landscape has changed," says James DeGregori, PhD, investigator at the ...

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown how an aggressive form of multiple myeloma resists chemotherapy. Multiple myeloma is a rare cancer of plasma cells in the bone marrow. Though the finding has no immediate benefit for patients, the scientists say it could help guide research into better treatments. The results appear online July 2 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. About 20 percent of patients with multiple myeloma have a specific genetic abnormality that is associated with a poor prognosis. Patients with this "translocation" ...