David Rivera, Aversboro Elementary, and Natalia Garay, Efland-Cheeks Elementary, submitted the winning essays in a Mother's Day essay contest sponsored by National Pawn. The topic of the essay was, "My Mother." David's teacher is Ms. Sheryl Weichbrodt, and Natalia's teacher is Mrs. Anna Toone. Prizes include a pair of diamond earrings valued at $1,000 for David and Natalia's mothers, and a $2,500 check for school supplies to each winner's school. David, Natalia and their families will be presented the prizes at a ceremony to be held at 3:30 p.m., Friday, May 11, ...

Downtown Metamora, Michigan is the new location of Melody Piano, a private piano studio owned and directed by Suzan Pleva. Established in 2009, in January, Melody celebrated its 3 year anniversary. Pleva has won awards for her excellence as a pianist and music teacher from the Music Teachers National Association, the Michigan Music Teachers Association, and the Metropolitan Detroit Musicians League. The studio will be holding a summer recital to showcase the talents of its students, which now number 22. Melody Piano currently has students enrolled from age 5-65. ...

Circle + Bloom's newest mind+body program for infertility is designed for people ready to take the next step in their fertility journey and have a FET or Frozen Embryo Transfer. The program is an eleven session audio journey that will guide a women through each stage of the FET procedure - from the first part of the regimen when their cycle is suppressed through taking estrogen, or another fertility supplement, to the actual transfer and two week wait period. Benefits Include: * Specific visualization for accepting a frozen embryo and leveraging your innate mind-body ...

With its inventory of modular buildings for sale or lease, Palomar Modular Buildings of Desoto, TX is able to respond to disaster needs in local communities by providing buildings for immediate use. John Martin President of Palomar says, "We have reached out to communities, school districts and local non profits seeking shelter to provide a ready-made fast solutions to sudden space needs." Buildings are available by contacting the plant and reviewing the current inventory. In addition, the company is giving factory priority to meet disaster building needs in the ...

Visitors to the Loei region of Thailand can get involved in a unique and colourful tradition this June when the Phi Ta Khon Festival comes to town. Held from June 22nd to 24th this year, the event is part of the wider Boon Luang merit-making ceremony and has been held annually for many years in honour of Prince Vessandara, the Buddha's penultimate incarnation. According to folklore, the return of the prince was such a joyous occasion that ghosts and spirits rose up to join in the festivities, a story that is honoured each year with a grand parade filled with colourful ...

Top university athletes from around the world will travel to the Taipei region this June to take part in the 11th annual World University Triathlon Championship. Organised by the Chinese Taipei University Sports Federation, the competition will take place in Yilan county from June 29th to 30th and will see male and female teams from a number of different countries participating. Highly trained competitors will embark on individual races across Olympic distances, with a 1.5 km swim followed by a 40 km cycling leg and a ten km run for the finish line. Each country ...

Bangkok visitors will be able to learn more about one of the most famous maritime wrecks of all time at Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition this June. The world-famous touring show will be coming to Bangkok's CentralWorld Live venue on June 9th and will run until September 2nd, allowing visitors to see items recovered from the actual wreck of the infamous ocean liner. Titanic has returned to the public consciousness in recent months following the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the magnificent ship on its maiden voyage on April 15th 1912. By visiting the exhibition, ...

New benchmark research from Ventana Research, Social Collaboration for Human Capital Management finds that the use of social collaboration and social media is beginning to establish itself as the next step in engaging employees to improve productivity and retail talent in an organization but also for the most complete recruiting and talent management processes. The use of social collaboration technology within businesses has become increasingly important as companies look to achieve specific goals including knowledge sharing (49%), collaboration (37%) and learning (34%). ...

LearnKey, a global provider of self-paced online training, today announced "Certify for Life," a new program that provides free education for qualifying U.S. veterans. Certify for Life is available to veterans who participate in Vocational Rehabilitation & Employment (VR&E), Veterans Retraining Assistance Program (VRAP) and VOW to Hire Heroes programs offered through the Veterans Administration. LearnKey's Certify for Life program enables veterans who complete the initial training certification programs through VA-sponsored programs to receive additional ...

Elite Appliance, one of the nation's largest online luxury appliance retailers, announces the availability of Viking's new D3 Series customizable kitchen appliance suite. As a fully authorized dealer of Viking D3 appliances, Elite will be offering up to $1000 in instant rebates on the new series now through September 30th, 2012. During development of the D3 Series, Viking surveyed customers, home chefs and designers to find out exactly what consumers are looking for in their kitchen appliances. The resulting suite of appliances features a fresh take on Viking's designer-style ...

The American Dream has changed in meaning from generation to generation, but property ownership has long been a central part of this concept. Today, though, Americans are growing more and more comfortable with the idea of renting, rather than owning. Daniel Gross writes in The Wall Street Journal that the Great Recession has changed the financial goals that Americans have set. Bethesda Estate Services, an estate sale company that assists in the planning and execution of estate sales, has noticed this trend among its clients. As a result, it has helped many customers prepare ...

VIDEO: A team of Rice University freshmen have built a unique giraffe feeder in cooperation with the Houston Zoo. The feeder keeps giraffes from eating too quickly by making it more... Click here for more information. HOUSTON – (May 9, 2012) – Like their human cousins, orangutans enjoy food and don't mind working a little to get it. If the menu's right, giraffes are even less picky. Two teams of students at Rice University's George R. Brown School of Engineering have designed ...

Buffalo, N.Y. – Chronic exposure to cocaine reduces the expression of a protein known to regulate brain plasticity, according to new, in vivo research on the molecular basis of cocaine addiction. That reduction drives structural changes in the brain, which produce greater sensitivity to the rewarding effects of cocaine. The finding suggests a potential new target for development of a treatment for cocaine addiction. It was published last month in Nature Neuroscience by researchers at the University at Buffalo and Mount Sinai School of Medicine. "We found that chronic ...

PORTLAND, Ore. — It is relatively common for doctors to diagnose someone with multiple sclerosis when the patient doesn't have the disease — a misdiagnosis that not only causes patients potential harm but costs the U.S. health care system untold millions of dollars a year, according to a study published online today in the journal Neurology. The study is based on a survey of 122 multiple sclerosis specialists nationwide and was conducted by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University and the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Neurology is the medical journal ...

NEW YORK— Markle Connecting for Health today released a wide-ranging compendium of resources designed to further support the interoperable, private, and secure sharing of health information. The Markle Connecting for Health Common Framework Policies in Practice for Health Information Sharing—or Polices in Practice—address current critical implementation issues for electronic health information sharing, including informed individual consent, governance, individual access, and procurement. A diverse group of leaders with expertise in health information sharing, technology, ...

Techniques used by researchers from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory to analyze a simple marine worm and its resident bacteria could accelerate efforts to understand more complex microbial communities such as those found in humans. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a multi-institutional research team analyzed the proteins found in a marine worm known as Olavius algarvensis. The worm lacks a digestive system and relies on microbes that live in its body to process its waste and provide energy. Previous ...

A crocodile large enough to swallow humans once lived in East Africa, according to a University of Iowa researcher. "It's the largest known true crocodile," says Christopher Brochu, associate professor of geoscience. "It may have exceeded 27 feet in length. By comparison, the largest recorded Nile crocodile was less than 21 feet, and most are much smaller." Brochu's paper on the discovery of a new crocodile species was just published in the May 3 issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. The new species lived between 2 and 4 million years ago in Kenya. It resembled ...

JUPITER, FL, May 9, 2012 – While we often think of memory as a way of preserving the essential idea of who we are, little thought is given to the importance of forgetting to our wellbeing, whether what we forget belongs in the "horrible memories department" or just reflects the minutia of day-to-day living. Despite the fact that forgetting is normal, exactly how we forget—the molecular, cellular, and brain circuit mechanisms underlying the process—is poorly understood. Now, in a study that appears in the May 10, 2012 issue of the journal Neuron, scientists from the ...

The rapid shift from nomadic life to modern-day culture in the United Arab Emirates has exposed residents to significant indoor air quality risks that can lead to respiratory illness, according to a new study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. With the swift modernization of the country, UAE governmental agencies have not performed the research required to pinpoint health risks, the study reported. The need to develop governmental research capacity makes collaborations with U.S. research teams vital, but the studies must be conducted in a culturally ...

This press release is available in French. MONTREAL, MAY 10, 2012 – By comparing the testosterone levels of five-month old pairs of twins, both identical and non-identical, University of Montreal researchers were able to establish that testosterone levels in infancy are not inherited genetically but rather determined by environmental factors. "Testosterone is a key hormone for the development of male reproductive organs, and it is also associated with behavioural traits, such as sexual behaviour and aggression," said lead author Dr. Richard E. Tremblay of the university's ...

The latest news and discoveries from the science of sound will be featured at Acoustics 2012 Hong Kong, May 13-18, a joint meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), Acoustical Society of China, Western Pacific Acoustics Conference, and the Hong Kong Institute of Acoustics. Experts in acoustics will present research spanning a diverse array of disciplines, including medicine, music, speech communication, noise, and marine ecology. Lay-language versions of particularly interesting presentations are available at the ASA's Worldwide Press Room (http://www.acoustics.org/press/163rd/lay_lang.html). The ...

PORTLAND, Ore. - The number of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) cases in the United States are exploding. According to a 2011 statement by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly one in 10 American children is diagnosed with the disorder. To better understand the cause of ADHD and to identify methods to prevent and treat it, researchers at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) and OHSU's Oregon National Primate Research Center have developed a new form of specially bred mouse that mimics the condition. The research is published in the current ...

Continuing a popular but controversial treatment for osteoporosis could reduce spine fracture risk for a particular group of patients, but others could see little to no change if they discontinue it. Based on available evidence, a UCSF researcher reevaluated his 2006 finding from a randomized 10-year study of alendronate, a type of bisphosphonate – a class of drugs that prevent loss of bone mass. "Our study suggests that even after five years of therapy, if your bone density is low enough, you're at high risk for having additional spine fractures," said Dennis Black, ...

Safer indoor sex work spaces provide important and potentially life-saving benefits to sex workers including reduced exposure to violence and HIV and improved relationships with police, according to a study published by the Gender and Sexual Health Initiative of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE) and the University of British Columbia (UBC). The qualitative evaluation study published today in the America Journal of Public Health interviewed 39 women living in low-threshold, supportive housing programs for sex workers in poverty and using drugs. These programs, ...

WASHINGTON, May 9, 2012 – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced today that physicians should reassess patients with osteoporosis who are being treated with a class of drugs called bisphosphonates after three to five years of therapy to determine whether they should continue treatment. Bisphosphonates are a widely prescribed class of drugs that are proven to be effective in reducing common bone fractures in people with osteoporosis and at high risk of fractures. Bisphosphonates include the drugs Aclasta, Actonel, Aredia, Bondronat, Boniva, Didronel, Fosamax, ...