Many Los Angeles residents are all too familiar with the sight of drivers who are more focused on their cellphones than on the road. In a busy metropolitan area like Los Angeles, the risks of texting while driving are particularly high -- and yet the phenomenon remains alarmingly common. Distracted Driving by the Numbers According to a study by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, distracted driving plays a role in 80 percent of U.S. traffic crashes and 65 percent of near-misses. While all types ...

Risk prediction models developed from an ancillary study of the Prostate Lung Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial (PLCO) may be useful in the public health sector for identifying individuals who are at risk for adverse smoking outcomes, such as relapse among former smokers and continued smoking among current smokers, and those who may benefit from relapse prevention and smoking cessation interventions according to a study published October 26 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. With a projected 226,160 new cases of lung cancer and 160,340 lung ...

VIDEO: An animation of NOAA's GOES-13 satellite observations from Oct. 24-26, 2012, shows Hurricane Sandy crossing eastern Cuba and moving through and exiting the Bahamas. This visualization was created by the... Click here for more information. NASA's TRMM satellite revealed Hurricane Sandy's heavy rainfall and the storm is expected to couple with a powerful cold front and Arctic air to bring that heavy rainfall to the Mid-Atlantic and northeastern U.S. Some forecasters ...

MIAMI, FL – OCTOBER 26, 2012 – A study found several benefits in using the radial artery in the arm as the entry point for angioplasty or percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) compared to the femoral artery in the leg. Results of the STEMI-RADIAL trial were presented today at the 24th annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) scientific symposium. Sponsored by the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF), TCT is the world's premier educational meeting specializing in interventional cardiovascular medicine. Recent data have demonstrated better clinical ...

There are thousands of silver artifacts in museum collections around the world, and keeping them shiny is a constant challenge. So scientists are using new technology to give conservators a helping hand. A team of researchers led by Ray Phaneuf, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, has partnered with The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore to investigate less labor-intensive ways to protect silver artifacts from tarnishing. The new techniques, which might keep silver surfaces shiny for longer than traditional methods, ...

It may sound like a post-season football game for very tiny players, but the "nanobowl" has nothing to do with sports and everything to do with improving the way biofuels are produced. That's the hope of a team of scientists from the Institute for Atom Efficient Chemical Transformations (IACT), an Energy Frontier Research Center led by Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), and including Northwestern University, the University of Wisconsin and Purdue University. The team is using a layering technique developed for microchip manufacturing to build nanoscale (billionth of a meter) ...

Research shows newly developed solar powered cells may soon outperform conventional photovoltaic technology. Scientists from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have demonstrated the first solar cell with external quantum efficiency (EQE) exceeding 100 percent for photons with energies in the solar range. (The EQE is the percentage of photons that get converted into electrons within the device.) The researchers will present their findings at the AVS 59th International Symposium and Exhibition, held Oct. 28 — Nov. 2, in Tampa, Fla. While traditional semiconductors ...

As child reality TV star Honey Boo Boo continues to capture the attention of audiences with her boisterous personality and her own show about life on the child beauty pageant circuit, a new paper published today in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry takes a critical look at the very types of pageants in which she and thousands of other children compete in America every year. The paper, authored by Martina M. Cartwright, a registered dietician and adjunct professor in the University of Arizona's department of nutritional sciences, suggests ...

Scientific research has provided us with a fundamental understanding of how light (via photons) and electricity (via electrons) move within and between materials at the micrometer or nanometer levels, making possible a wide variety of miniature devices such as transistors, optical sensors and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). However, man's knowledge of micro- and nanoscale heat flow is rudimentary at best. Now, a research team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) has developed a novel system for examining and measuring nanoscale thermal conductance ...

Photovoltaic cell efficiency may soon get a big boost, thanks to next-generation antireflection coatings crafted from nanomaterials capable of cutting down on the amount of light reflected away from a cell's surface. Materials boasting a "tunable" refractive index have been developed within the past few years, and they show tremendous potential for photovoltaic applications. Professor E. Fred Schubert, of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering, is investigating ways to exploit this newly gained controllability and ...

Baltimore, MD— The ability of embryonic stem cells to differentiate into different types of cells with different functions is regulated and maintained by a complex series of chemical interactions, which are not well understood. Learning more about this process could prove useful for stem cell-based therapies down the road. New research from a team led by Carnegie's Yixian Zheng zeroes in on the process by which stem cells maintain their proper undifferentiated state. Their results are published in Cell October 26. Embryonic stem cells go through a process called self-renewal, ...

When talking to the key immune system fighters known as T-cells, it helps to speak their language. Now researchers from Columbia University in New York, N.Y., and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia have discovered two new conditions for communication that may help scientists one day harness the power of T-cells to fight diseases such as cancer. The team will present its findings at the AVS 59th International Symposium and Exhibition, held Oct. 28 – Nov. 2 in Tampa, Fla. T-cells flow freely throughout the body and communicate with their partner T-cells, in ...

Silicon is the workhorse of the electronics industry, serving as the base material for the tiny transistors that make it possible for digital clocks to tick and computers to calculate. Now scientists have succeeded in creating near-atomically flat silicon, of the orientation used by the electronics industry, in a room temperature reaction. The flat silicon might one day serve as the base for new biological and chemical sensors. The researchers will present their work at the AVS 59th International Symposium and Exhibition, held Oct. 28 – Nov. 2 in Tampa, Fla. "In essence, ...

When surgeons operate to remove a tumor, determining exactly where to cut can be tricky. Ideally, the entire tumor should be removed while leaving a continuous layer of healthy tissue, but current techniques for locating the tumors during surgery are imprecise. Now a multidisciplinary team from the University of California, San Diego, is developing an alternate means of precisely tagging breast cancer tumors for removal or targeted destruction. They will present the results of their investigations at the AVS 59th International Symposium and Exhibition, held Oct. 28 – Nov. ...

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) are incredibly tiny devices, often built on the scale of millionths of a meter. Conventional MEMS structures tend to be made out of silicon-based materials familiar to the micro-electronics industry, but this ignores a suite of useful materials such as other semiconductors, ceramics, and metals. By using a variety of materials not commonly associated with MEMS technology, a team from Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah has created stronger microstructures that can form precise, tall and narrow 3-D shapes – characteristics ...

BOSTON – Maintaining a healthy body weight may be difficult for many people, but it's reassuring to know that our brains and bodies are wired to work together to do just that—in essence, to achieve a phenomenon known as energy balance, a tight matching between the number of calories consumed versus those expended. This careful balance results from a complex interchange of neurobiological crosstalk within regions of the brain's hypothalamus, and when this "conversation" goes awry, obesity or anorexia can result. Given the seriousness of these conditions, it's unfortunate ...

Alexandria, VA – Much has been written about the court decision passed down earlier this week by an Italian judge, convicting seven members of the Italian Serious Risks Commission to six years in prison. The "L'Aquila Seven" were convicted for inadequate warnings to residents of L'Aquila, Italy, before a magnitude-6.3 earthquake struck the region on April 6, 2009, killing more than 300 people. Though the story has received international attention and ignited tensions throughout the scientific community, little attention has been paid to the exact roles each of the ...

A tragic accident in Connecticut resulted in the hospitalization of five after an Audi A4 crossed a double yellow line on Route 67. The Audi was attempting to navigate a curve in the highway when it lost control and crossed the center line. After entering oncoming traffic the Audi crashed head on with a Honda Civic. The Jaws of Life were needed to help free the driver and a passenger from the Honda before transporting them to the hospital for further treatment. The driver of the Audi and two young passengers were also hospitalized. No charges have been filed for the ...

Adding to the stress of the holidays for many Texans is the prospect of family celebrations as a single parent. For those recently divorced or separated, this could be the first holiday season when parents have to divide their time with the children. However acrimonious a split may have been, when children are involved it is not always possible to simply walk entirely out of an ex-spouse's life. Even with negative feelings about one another, it is still important for co-parents to develop the skills needed to work together over the years of child-raising as they share ...

Taking a vacation on a cruise can be an exciting adventure. Cruises are available across the country and can offer passengers trips to tropical destinations or provide the opportunity to view icebergs and polar bears in their natural habitat. Although these vacations can provide a much needed getaway, some passengers are beginning to question what happens when that adventure results in an injury. Unfortunately, injuries can and do happen while enjoying a cruise vacation. Accidents can range from the tragic, like the Costa Concordia accident off the Italian coast, ...

The cruise ship industry is attempting to improve the safety of their ships after the devastating Costa Concordia cruise ship accident in January 2012. The accident resulted in the loss of 32 lives -- lives that may have been saved if the crew was better prepared to deal with potential accidents. Reports completed by experts who examined the accident note that the Concordia's crew was not prepared to handle an accident of this magnitude. Not only did the crew fail to follow evacuation instructions, but many crew members were confused about the proper procedure to follow. ...

With unemployment hovering near 8 percent in the wake of the Great Recession, wage-and-hour lawsuits by workers in the United States have reached their highest level in 20 years, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts reported recently. According to the report, U.S. workers filed a total of 7,064 lawsuits contesting their wages, hours and overtime during the 12-month period ending March 31, 2012. The number of wage-and-hour lawsuits has increased nearly every year since 2000, which had a total of only 1,854, Bloomberg Businessweek reported. The weak economy ...

There's a novel firm coming out of Korea this month, and its making major headlines. The company, Aim High, has a wide line of B2C products that will shake up the marketplace this holiday season. Just launched a week ago, the company has gained the attention of mass media virtually everywhere, and everyone wishes to get in touch with their staff in hopes of getting an interview. And while the organization has been secretive regarding its releases up to this point, their new designer furniture may exert a significant impact on interior designers everywhere. For starters, ...

P.H.D. is pleased to announce they are teaming up with iWebContent to increase their online presence to improve business. IWebContent is an SEO firm that provides companies of all sizes with SEO content and online marketing tactics to help them build the online presence that is required in the world of business today. P.H.D. aims to build their client base, helping businesses improve their communications, along with other high-tech devices. P.H.D. is a telecommunications company that strives to help businesses of all sizes install, service and repair all aspects of their ...

We are innovating new forms, shapes, and designs with color blocking jewelry. We are the designer and producer of these new jewelries, looking to wholesale directly to retailer boutiques. These jewelry pieces will accent any casual or dressed-up outfits. At this time, we have received lots of interest and great comments from women of all ages during several study groups. Generally, our jewelry shape influence the person's choice, but the various color pattern options extend their interest to other shapes and patterns. Our targeted jewelry market could be best defined ...