A new study examining nearly 40 years of satellite imagery has revealed that the floating ice shelves of a critical portion of West Antarctica are steadily losing their grip on adjacent bay walls, potentially amplifying an already accelerating loss of ice to the sea. The most extensive record yet of the evolution of the floating ice shelves in the eastern Amundsen Sea Embayment in West Antarctica shows that their margins, where they grip onto rocky bay walls or slower ice masses, are fracturing and retreating inland. As that grip continues to loosen, these already-thinning ...

HighPoints Learning, Inc. a leader in online math tutoring for the past six years announced today that it is changing the game for online math help for students in grades 2-12. They just reduced the price of achievemath.com, their online guided math practice site from $40 to just $9.95 per month. HighPoints wants to make proven online math assistance available to everyone. "The United States is mired in 26th place among the world's nations in mathematics" said Dennis McLynn, vice president of marketing for Highpoints Learning. "The bulk of the under-performing ...

Boston -- A number of studies have shown that excess insulin circulating in the bloodstream is a major independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease. However, a new study from Joslin Diabetes Center finds that this condition, called hyperinsulinemia, is itself not a cause of atherosclerosis. In humans, insulin resistance, a condition in which insulin becomes less effective at lowering blood sugar levels, coexists with hyperinsulinemia. Both are associated with atherosclerosis, the buildup of cholesterol in blood vessels that causes coronary artery disease, heart ...

WASHINGTON -- Teaching students of all ages about the value of diversity and the serious mental health impacts of bias and stereotyping will help end widespread discrimination in the United States, according to a new American Psychological Association task force report. "Not only is discrimination wrong from the perspectives of morality and justice, it is ultimately detrimental to our entire country. Diversity increases our strength," said task force Chair James M. Jones, PhD. "To thrive in a global economy within the context of the rapidly changing demographics in the ...

This press release is available in French. Montreal -- With the click of a mouse or touch of a mobile phone screen — in pyjamas or jeans — gambling is now at our fingertips 24/7 with Internet play. With this increased access to gambling, are online gamblers more prone to risky behaviours than offline gamblers? A new study published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, led by Sylvia Kairouz of Concordia University, has compared people who gamble offline only to people who also gamble online in an effort to answer this question. Her results show that ...

This press release is available in German. In the beginning the focus was concentrated on research aimed at encouraging the exploitation of indigenous types of wood, according to Klaus Richter, who headed Empa's Wood Laboratory for many years and who now teaches wood science at the Technical University, Munich. In the early days, for example, new processes for the pressure-impregnation of telegraph poles were developed which significantly increased their useful life. Over time the field of research broadened, but the aim has remained the same, explains Tanja Zimmermann, ...

VueTek Scientific announced today that it has launched Veinsite, which is the only hands free and portable peripheral vascular imaging device. Veinsite is head worn, allowing clinicians' to be hands free in order to place IVs without changing standard clinical practice. In a recent clinical study, clinicians saw on average two additional veins with Veinsite than with the naked eye. The study included subjects who can present challenges to vascular access, including infants, children, elderly, obese and those with dark skin. Veinsite allows clinicians to simply look ...

Athens, Ga. – Using nanoparticles and alternating magnetic fields, University of Georgia scientists have found that head and neck cancerous tumor cells in mice can be killed in half an hour without harming healthy cells. The findings, published recently in the journal Theranostics, mark the first time to the researchers' knowledge this cancer type has been treated using magnetic iron oxide nanoparticle-induced hyperthermia, or above-normal body temperatures, in laboratory mice. "We show that we can use a small concentration of nanoparticles to kill the cancer cells," ...

Despite the 2010 passage of the Elder Justice Act, policy experts have found that combating widespread abuse of seniors is still not a top priority for care providers and governments alike. As many as one in 10 people age 60 and over are affected by this problem, according to the newest Public Policy & Aging Report (PPAR) from the National Academy on an Aging Society, the policy institute of The Gerontological Society of America. U.S. Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI) and U.S. Representative Peter King (R-NY), who have been heavily involved in legislation to address elder abuse, ...

Depending on the weather, wind turbines can face whispering breezes or gale-force gusts. Such variable conditions make extracting the maximum power from the turbines a tricky control problem, but a collaboration of Chinese researchers may have found a novel solution in human-inspired learning models. Most turbines are designed to produce maximum allowable power once winds reach a certain speed, called the rated speed. In winds above or below the rated speed, control systems can make changes to the turbine system, such as modifying the angle of the blades or the electromagnetic ...

Common material such as polyethylene used in plastic bags could be turned into something far more valuable through a process being developed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In a paper published in Advanced Materials, a team led by Amit Naskar of the Materials Science and Technology Division outlined a method that allows not only for production of carbon fiber but also the ability to tailor the final product to specific applications. "Our results represent what we believe will one day provide industry with a flexible technique for producing ...

The unique electrical properties of graphene have enticed researchers to envision a future of fast integrated circuits made with the one-carbon-atom-thick sheets, but many challenges remain on the path to commercialization. Scientists from the University of Florida have recently tackled one of these challenges – how to reliably manufacture graphene on a large scale. The team has developed a promising new technique for creating graphene patterns on top of silicon carbide (SiC). SiC comprises both silicon and carbon, but at high temperatures (around 1300 degrees Celcius) ...

Cancer remains a medical mystery – despite all of the research efforts devoted to understanding and controlling it. The most sought-after tumor model is one that would be able to formulate theoretical and computational tools to predict cancer progression and propose individual treatment strategies. To better understand the role complex tumor-host interactions play in tumor growth, Princeton University researchers developed a cellular automation model for tumor growth in heterogeneous microenvironments. They then used this same model to investigate the effects of pressure ...

Researchers have developed multiple techniques and procedures to detect cancer cells during the earliest stages of the disease or after treatment. But one of the major limitations of these technologies is their inability to detect the presence of only a few cancer cells. Now, a research collaboration between the University of Missouri-Columbia and Mexico's Universidad de Guanajuato shows that pulsed photoacoustic techniques, which combine the high optical contrast of optical tomography with the high resolution of ultrasound, can do just that, in vitro. Most cancer cells ...

In search of a different perspective on the physics of cancer, Princeton University and University of California, San Francisco researchers teamed up to use game theory to look for simplicity within the complexity of the dynamics of cooperator and cheater cells under metabolic stress conditions and high spatial heterogeneity. In the context of cancer, cooperator cells obey the general rules of communal survival, while cheater cells do not. The ultimate goal of this research was to gain an understanding of the dynamics of cancer tumor evolution under stress. Since cancer ...

Bald Head Design, Ohio based web design firm is helping dentist improve their communication between patients and their practices through the creation of social media outlets - Facebook and Twitter. By offering a comprehensive social media strategy, which includes not only the creation of these social media tools, but by also providing training and resources providing for a successful social media marketing campaign. Social media allows patients to connect and engage with both the dentists and their staff. With over 500 million users, and growing, Facebook is becoming ...

Androgen suppression – the inhibition of testosterone and other male hormones – is a routine therapy for prostate cancer. Unfortunately, it can dramatically reduce the quality of patients' sex lives and, more importantly, lead to cancer recurrence in a more deadly androgen-independent form. A new paper combining mathematical modeling with clinical data validates a different approach: cycling patients on and off treatment. Such intermittent androgen suppression alleviates most unwanted side effects and postpones the development of resistance to treatment. With the model, ...

The theory of quantum metabolism is the idea that quantum processes, such as entanglement, influence the metabolism of cells. This idea offers scientists a new explanation for the metabolic changes that cause healthy cells to transform into cancerous ones. The metamorphosis gives cancerous cells the ability to outcompete healthy cells for space and nutrients, causing the disease to spread. Understanding the quantum metabolic underpinnings of the transformation could potentially lead to new types of treatment to stop cancer growth, researchers argue. ### Article: "Implications ...

Some breast cancer tumours may be resistant to a common chemotherapy treatment, suggests recent medical research at the University of Alberta. Principal investigator Ing Swie Goping and her team discovered some breast cancer tumours had low levels of certain genes, and that those tumours didn't respond well to taxane chemotherapy, a common treatment used in breast cancer. "These tumours didn't shrink and were resistant to a common chemotherapy treatment. These results give us a strong incentive to continue our research," she said. Goping and her team looked at tumour ...

In response to record numbers of Australians moving their lives online, Australia Post today announced a free Australia Post Digital MailBox for every Australian will be launched this year, in addition to opening 30 superstores across the country. "The Australia Post Digital MailBox will allow businesses, government entities and customers to communicate through a secure online portal that can be accessed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, wherever they are," said Australia Post Chairman, David Mortimer. "Just as the traditional letterbox has been a vital ...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Herpetologists from the California Academy of Sciences and University of Texas at El Paso discovered a single specimen of the Bururi long-fingered frog (Cardioglossa cyaneospila) during a research expedition to Burundi in December 2011. The frog was last seen by scientists in 1949 and was feared to be extinct after decades of turmoil in the tiny East African nation. For biologists studying the evolution and distribution of life in Africa, Burundi sits at an intriguing geographic crossroads since it borders the vast Congo River Basin, the Great Rift Valley, ...

The Offshore Group recently recorded another podcast in its continuing series on Mexico business issues on the subject of Mexico manufacturing facility start-up under its Mexico Shelter Plan. Leonard Ottosen, project manager at The Offshore Group's La Angostura Industrial Park in Saltillo, Coahuila, describes how companies that are new to the country are guided from the beginning of the start-up process through to the point at which actual part production takes place under the Mexico Manufacturing Shelter Plan. The Offshore Group's sister company, Manufacturas Zapaliname, ...

Twenty years ago in Chicago, a small leak in an unused freight tunnel expanded beneath the Windy City and started a flood which eventually gushed through the entire tunnel system. A quarter-million people were evacuated from the buildings above, nearly $2 billion in damages accrued, and it took 6 weeks to pump the tunnels dry. How much more costly – in lives and infrastructure – would a flood in a heavily used, underwater subway tunnel be today? In January 2012 the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) successfully tested ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A paper by neuroscientists at the University at Buffalo and Buffalo State College suggests that ingestion of components of afterbirth or placenta -- placentophagia -- may offer benefits to human mothers and perhaps to non-mothers and males. They say this possibility does not warrant the wholesale ingestion of afterbirth, for some very good reasons, but that it deserves further study. Mark Kristal, PhD, professor of psychology and neuroscience at UB, directs the graduate program in behavioral neuroscience, and has studied placentophagia for more than ...

App Minis announces the worldwide success of Design This Home, a social iOS game based on designing a house, keeping residents happy and performing a multitude of interior design tasks. In Design This Home, the player takes the role of a superstar designer as she builds, expands and decorates her house with over 500 different items. Design This Home is one of the largest social iOS games, with a huge range of furniture, decor and fixtures in nearly every conceivable style. Design This Home is currently in the Top 5 Grossing Overall ranking in the UK, Canada, Australia ...