RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A team of scientists from the USDA Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station and the University of Córdoba in Spain recently developed a new methodology that measures the economic impact of forest fires on timber resources. When evaluating and planning fire management program activities, it is important to know the value of the forest ecosystems protected. However, determining the true volume or economic value of the resources lost during a fire can be difficult. For example, when a fire burns through a timber stand, the market value lost ...

Caring Transitions of North Central Ohio, a company specializing in estate sales, downsizing and senior moves today announced the sale of a vast Barbie collection on the company's exclusive online auction Web site, http://www.ctonlineauctions.com/ncentraloh. The auction, starting at 9 a.m. EST today, Sunday, March 25th, features more than 400 lots of Barbie dolls, clothing ensembles, accessories, furniture, vehicles, novelties, convention items and other Barbie collectibles. This extensive collection has been fueled by a local collector's passion for Barbie and it has ...

This press release is available in French and German. A study led by Dr Janet Shipley from The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London in collaboration with Dr Mauro Delorenzi from the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics in Lausanne has shown that a simple genetic test could help predict the aggressiveness of rhabdomyosarcoma tumours in children. The test, which should be introduced into clinical practice, would lead to changes in treatment for many patients, allowing some children to escape potentially long-term side-effects whilst giving others the intense ...

SAN DIEGO, March 27, 2012 — Scientists today reported striking new evidence that green, or unroasted, coffee beans can produce a substantial decrease in body weight in a relatively short period of time. In a study presented at the 243rd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society, Joe Vinson, Ph.D., and colleagues described how a group of overweight or obese people who consumed a fraction of an ounce of ground green coffee beans each day lost about 10 percent of their body weight. "Based on our results, ...

SAN DIEGO, March 27, 2012 — Some of the flame retardants added to carpets, furniture upholstery, plastics, crib mattresses, car and airline seats and other products to suppress the visible flames in fires are actually increasing the danger of invisible toxic gases that are the No. 1 cause of death in fires. That was the finding of a new study presented here today at the 243rd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society. Anna A. Stec, Ph.D., led the research, which focused on the most widely-used category ...

Lanner, a provider of simulation software proven to maximize performance and optimize resources, today announced the expansion of its partner network in China, with two new reseller agreements focused on increasing the market share of WITNESS, Lanner's flagship simulation software. Beijing Tianyan Rongzhi, a specialist in the provision of software and training to education organizations will work with Lanner to increase adoption of WITNESS within the 65 universities already using the software, as well as new universities and teaching establishments. As part of the agreement, ...

SAN DIEGO, March 27, 2012 — Thirty-five years after a landmark report documented minority women as the most underrepresented individuals in science, engineering, medicine and dentistry, dramatic improvements have occurred for women of color, but serious obstacles remain. That was the message from a report here at the 243rd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society. The presentation was part of an ACS symposium titled, "The Double Bind: Minority Women in Science and Update Thirty Five Years Later." It ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Growth rates of lung cancers found by annual rounds of computed tomography (CT) screening are important for determining the usefulness and frequency of screening, as well as for determining the treatment. According to the latest report from the International Early Lung Cancer Action Program (I-ELCAP) published online in the journal Radiology, lung cancers diagnosed in annual repeat rounds of CT screening are similar—both in volume doubling time and cell-type distribution— to those found in clinical practice. "There was concern that cancers diagnosed ...

Perspective Magazine announces that Emirates Vacation Club will renew its commitment as a Contributing Sponsor for GNEX 2013 - The Global Meeting of Minds, scheduled for February 4-6, 2013 at the world famous Beverly Wilshire - A Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. "GNEX conferences are a wonderful way to network with business associates. At the last event in Cancun, having the opportunity to meet all these people in two days, that's phenomenal. You see, I do that all the time but that would have taken me a year's work which was done in two days. That's ...

Microorganisms can sometimes lose the ability to perform a function that appears to be necessary for their survival, and yet they still somehow manage to endure and multiply. How can this be? The authors of an opinion piece appearing in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, on March 27 explain their ideas about the matter. They say microbes that shed necessary functions are getting others to do the hard work for them, an adaptation that can encourage microorganisms to live in cooperative communities. The Black Queen Hypothesis, ...

Unless development patterns change, by 2030 humanity's urban footprint will occupy an additional 1.5 million square kilometres - comparable to the combined territories of France, Germany and Spain, say experts at a major international science meeting underway in London. UN estimates show human population growing from 7 billion today to 9 billion by 2050, translating into some 1 million more people expected on average each week for the next 38 years, with most of that increase anticipated in urban centres. And ongoing migration from rural to urban living could see world ...

A new comparative effectiveness study found older adults with stable coronary heart disease (CHD) who underwent bypass surgery had better long-term survival rates than those who underwent a non-surgical procedure to improve blood flow to the heart muscle, also called revascularization. The National Institutes of Health-supported study compared a type of surgery known as coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) with a non-surgical procedure known as percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). While there were no survival differences between the two groups after one year, after ...

It's time to dust off the garden tools! The Harris Seeds staff is offering helpful gardening tips on the Paul Parent Garden Club Radio Show on Sundays in March and April 2012. Harris Seeds kicked off the gardening segments in March with lessons about starting vegetable seeds and flower seeds indoors and organic gardening with Worm Power organic fertilizer. Product experts will wrap up the month with direct-seeding vegetables and flowers into the garden. In April, listeners will hear about growing fresh fruit and unusual vegetables at home, building raised beds and space-saving ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — You see it listed on the side of your cereal box and your multivitamin bottle. It's vitamin B12, part of a nutritious diet like all those other vitamins and minerals. But when it gets inside your body, new research suggests, B12 turns into a gymnast. In a paper published recently in the journal Nature, scientists from the University of Michigan Health System and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology report they have created the first full 3-D images of B12 and its partner molecules twisting and contorting as part of a crucial reaction called ...

In a new study, researchers at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet have identified epigenetic changes – known as DNA methylation – in the blood of patients with schizophrenia. The researchers were also able to detect differences depending on how old the patients were when they developed the disease and whether they had been treated with various drugs. In the future this new knowledge may be used to develop a simple test to diagnose patients with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is one of our most common chronic psychiatric diseases and affects 1% of the population. ...

Oral glucocorticoids are commonly prescribed for a wide variety of disorders, most commonly for rheumatoid arthritis, obstructive pulmonary disease and inflammatory bowel diseases. However, the use of these medications can result in rapid bone loss during the first three to six months of therapy, leading to increased risk of fragility fractures. Although awareness of glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis (GIO) has grown in recent years, it still remains vastly under-diagnosed and under-treated. As a result, and despite the availability of effective treatment options to ...

Millions of people around the world are prescribed glucocorticoids for a wide variety of inflammatory conditions, including, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma and inflammatory bowel diseases. Although they are effective and widely used, one of the potentially serious side effects of these medications is glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is a serious condition in which bones become thinner and more fragile, making them more likely to break (fracture). Glucocorticoids can cause rapid bone loss in the first three to six months of treatment, leading to an increased ...

Pioneering engineers at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow are developing an innovative technique based on lasers that could radically change asteroid deflection technology. The research has unearthed the possibility of using a swarm of relatively small satellites flying in formation and cooperatively firing solar-powered lasers onto an asteroid – this would overcome the difficulties associated with current methods that are focused on large unwieldy spacecraft. Dr Massimiliano Vasile, of Strathclyde's Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, is leading ...

Patients experiencing symptoms such as chest pain who received from paramedics an intravenous solution consisting of glucose-insulin-potassium (GIK) had no reduction in the rate of progression to heart attack and no improvement in 30-day survival, although GIK was associated with a lower rate of the composite outcome of cardiac arrest or in-hospital death, according to a study appearing in JAMA. The study is being published early online to coincide with its presentation at the American College of Cardiology's annual scientific sessions. Laboratory studies suggest that ...

All cattle are descended from as few as 80 animals that were domesticated from wild ox in the Near East some 10,500 years ago, according to a new genetic study. An international team of scientists from the CNRS and National Museum of Natural History in France, the University of Mainz in Germany, and UCL in the UK were able to conduct the study by first extracting DNA from the bones of domestic cattle excavated in Iranian archaeological sites. These sites date to not long after the invention of farming and are in the region where cattle were first domesticated. The ...

A collaborative team of researchers has found that cats are able to consume a diet relatively high in fat without raising cholesterol levels. The research also showed that, as long as cats' daily calorie intake remains constant, increasing the proportion of fat in the diet will not affect the likelihood of weight gain. The findings advance understanding of how cats handle dietary fat and reinforce the differences between the nutritional needs of cats and humans. This research was conducted by scientists from the University of Glasgow and the WALTHAM® Centre for Pet Nutrition ...

Permafrost is ground that remains at or below 0°C for at least two consecutive years and usually appears in areas at high latitudes such as Alaska, Siberia and Northern Scandinavia, or at high altitudes like the Andes, Himalayas and the Alps. About half of the world's underground organic carbon is found in northern permafrost regions. This is more than double the amount of carbon in the atmosphere in the form of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane. The effects of climate change are most severe and rapid in the Arctic, causing the permafrost to thaw. When ...

This press release is available in German. In a widely noticed study, developmental psychologists reported that 14-month-old infants imitate an unusual action if it was chosen deliberately by the person they observed, but not if it could be attributed to external constraints. This selective imitation was put forth as evidence for an early understanding of rational action and action goals. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig now present a much simpler explanation for the finding. A replication study revealed that ...

Forget the fact of there being "9 million bicycles in Beijing, that's not a fact. Indeed, motor vehicle traffic is fast becoming a big problem that has led to unsustainable pollution and draconian rules in some parts of the city. Now, Nan Ji of the Hebei United University in China and colleagues have developed an algorithm to help traffic planners optimize the flow of traffic across roundabouts. Writing in the International Journal of Innovative Computing and Applications, Ji and colleagues at the Tangshan Tanggang Expressway Management Office and Tian Jin Polytechnic ...

A radical new approach to innovation is urgently needed to ensure a fair and green economy and avoid reversing progress made on global poverty reduction, according to leading scientists. Ahead of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20, the ESRC STEPS Centre calls on negotiators to rethink the way science and innovation can contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are likely to emerge from Rio. Rio+20 is a golden opportunity to enhance the role that science, technology and innovation of many kinds can play in building ...