EAST LANSING, Mich. — The rate of workplace deaths in Michigan remained steady in 2011, as 141 workers died on the job compared with 145 in 2010, according to an annual report from Michigan State University. The construction industry had the most deaths at 24, while the agriculture industry had the second most at 22, according to the Michigan Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation program, or MIFACE. The program – administered by MSU's Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, part of the College of Human Medicine – investigates work-related deaths and ...

Once considered unimportant "junk DNA," scientists have learned that non-coding RNA (ncRNA) — RNA molecules that do not translate into proteins — play a crucial role in cellular function. Mutations in ncRNA are associated with a number of conditions, such as cancer, autism, and Alzheimer's disease. Now, through the use of "deep sequencing," a technology used to sequence the genetic materials of the human genome, Dr. Noam Shomron of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine has discovered that when infected with a virus, ncRNA gives off biological signals that ...

Demand for car hire around the 2012 Olympic Games has surged recently according to leading online car hire comparator Carrentals.co.uk. The website is advising people to book rentals well in advance if they want to get plenty of choice and availability of cars this coming summer. Carrentals.co.uk reports that rental bookings for between 20 July and 12 August are up by around four times on the same period in 2011, with 40% of total bookings around the Olympics set for collection at Gatwick or Heathrow airport. July 20 and 21 will see the most cars being collected as ...

Fibronectin plays a major role in wound healing and embryonic development. The protein, which is located in the extracellular matrix of cells, has also been linked to pathological conditions including cancer and fibrosis. During physiological processes, fibronectin fibers are believed to experience mechanical forces that strain the fibers and cause dramatic structural modifications that change their biological activity. While understanding the role of fibronectin strain events in development and disease progression is becoming increasingly important, detecting and interrogating ...

Dr. Mark Young, Norwich dentist, is pleased to be able to offer an in-depth patient education library to his patients as a part of his practice's new comprehensive website. The library is designed to give his patients the information necessary to maintain good oral health and avoid costly dental problems. "I am happy that our new dental website is able to help educate our patients. I have always believed that the more educated a patient is about dental topics, the better chance they have to maintain good oral health over their lifetimes. I hope our patients will ...

Dr. Rouben Yedigarian, McLean dentist, is pleased to be joining the social media world by creating Facebook and Twitter pages for his patients to follow. In addition, the McLean, VA dentist also has created a dentistry blog that can be found on his practice's new comprehensive website. "We are excited to be able to enter the world of social media with our new Twitter and Facebook pages. I believe that interaction between us and our patients is a very positive thing and our social media presence will allow us to interact like never before. I hope all of our patients ...

An award-winning research project, funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), has tested a new imaging method which could help improve how doctors predict a patient's risk of having a heart attack (1). Scientists from the University of Edinburgh, a BHF Centre of Research Excellence, in collaboration with the University of Cambridge are the first to demonstrate the potential of combining PET and CT scanning to image the disease processes directly in the coronary arteries that cause heart attacks (2). There are nearly 2.7 million people living with coronary heart ...

The chances of rogue fractures due to shale gas fracking operations extending beyond 0.6 kilometres from the injection source is a fraction of one percent, according to new research led by Durham University. The analysis is based on data from thousands of fracking operations in the USA and natural rock fractures in Europe and Africa. It is believed to be the first analysis of its type and could be used across the world as a starting point for setting a minimum distance between the depth of fracking and shallower aquifers used for drinking water. The new study, ...

Dr. Rajiv Motwani, Bradenton dentist, is pleased to be able to offer his patients a virtual online patient education library on his new comprehensive dental website. The library is designed to increase awareness among his patients and promote better oral health. "I am happy that I can offer this service to my patients. I have always believed that the more educated a patient is, the better chance they have of maintaining good dental health. I hope all of our patients take advantage of this new feature on our website," said Dr. Motwani, dentist in Bradenton. The ...

Dr. Kenneth Wilhelm, Centreville podiatrist, is celebrating the grand opening of his practice's new Centreville location. With state of the art equipment in a comfortable environment, the new location will offer superior podiatry care for patients of the Centreville foot doctor. "We are all tremendously excited to have moved to our new location in Centreville. The new location offers both a comfortable environment for our patients and all of the state of the art equipment we need to effectively offer treatment. I look forward to treating all of our patients at our ...

TORONTO, ON – As the Earth's climate warms, a melting ice sheet produces a distinct and highly non-uniform pattern of sea-level change, with sea level falling close to the melting ice sheet and rising progressively farther away. The pattern for each ice sheet is unique and is known as its sea level fingerprint. Now, a group of geophysicists from the University of Toronto, Harvard and Rutgers Universities have found a way to identify the sea level fingerprint left by a particular ice sheet, and possibly enable a more precise estimate of its impact on global sea levels. "Our ...

Two Concurrency consultants who are also Microsoft "Most Valuable Professionals" will present Microsoft System Center 2012 best practices at two related events early next month. Concurrency is sponsoring the largest System Center 2012 release events in the Midwest, to be held in Brookfield, WI on May 3 and the following day at Microsoft's downtown Chicago facility. Presenting for Concurrency will be infrastructure team lead Nathan Lasnoski, who is based at Concurrency's Brookfield, WI headquarters, and information architect Annur Sumar, who is based in Chicago. ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – The dynamics of Earth are discussed in this new batch of GSA Bulletin papers posted online 6 April. Topics include the link between wildfire-flooding events and the supply of sand to beaches, with specific focus on a coastal California watershed; high-pressure metamorphism in the mountains of northwest China; generation of the Gold Hill shear zone and widespread tectonism in the Appalachian mountain belt; and the nature of magma-filled fractures (dikes) in the earth. GSA BULLETIN articles published ahead of print are online at http://gsabulletin.gsapubs.org/content/early/recent. ...

PITTSBURGH—A vibrating steering wheel is an effective way to keep a driver's eyes safely on the road by providing an additional means to convey directions from a car's navigation system, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and AT&T Labs have shown. The study, one of the first to evaluate combinations of audio, visual and haptic feedback for route guidance, found that younger drivers in particular were less distracted by a navigation system's display screen when they received haptic feedback from the vibrating steering wheel. For elder drivers, the haptic feedback ...

The study, published online this month in the journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, found that approximately one-third of adults who were physically abused in childhood had seriously considered taking their own life. These rates were five times higher than adults who were not physically abused in childhood. The findings suggest that children exposed to physical abuse may be at greater risk for suicidal behaviours in adulthood. Investigators examined gender specific differences among a sample of 6,642 adults, of whom 7.7 per cent reported that they had been physically ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– An international team of researchers has reported a new understanding of a little-known process that happens in virtually every cell of our bodies. Protein folding is the process by which not-yet folded chains of amino acids assume their specific shapes, hence taking on their specific functions. These functions vary widely: In the human body, proteins fold to become muscles, hormones, enzymes, and various other components. "This protein folding process is still a big mystery," said UC Santa Barbara physicist Everett Lipman, one of several ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – A University of Michigan Health System study examined who's having outpatient surgery in the U.S. today, and showed 1 in 84 highest-risk patients suffers a dangerous blood clot after surgery. Hospitalized patients are often warned of the possibility of venous thromboembolism, which include blood clots that can form in the veins and travel to the lungs. However these warnings have not necessarily been extended to the outpatient surgery population, says U-M surgeon and lead study author Christopher J. Pannucci, M.D. With more than 60 percent of procedures ...

Citing the lack of clear guidelines for ordering blood transfusions during surgery, Johns Hopkins researchers say a new study confirms there is still wide variation in the use of transfusions and frequent use of transfused blood in patients who don't need it. The resulting overuse of blood is problematic, the researchers say, because blood is a scarce and expensive resource and because recent studies have shown that surgical patients do no better, and may do worse, if given transfusions prematurely or unnecessarily. "Transfusion is not as safe as people think," says Steven ...

One of America's most automobile-dependent large cities may be heading into a new era, according to the 31st annual Kinder Houston Area Survey conducted by Rice University. Among the findings in this year's survey: Houstonians support mass transit, feel better about the economy and say relations between ethnic groups are better than ever. The survey results were released today at a luncheon hosted by the Greater Houston Partnership and Rice's Kinder Institute for Urban Research. Mass transit and a preference for urban living A large and growing proportion of Harris ...

A recent report from Scottish Widows revealed that for 47% of Scots a holiday is an unaffordable luxury, while a day out with children is an impossibility for 45%, but any homeowners in the survey that are on variable rate deals with Halifax or RBS could expect to have even less money after the announcement of a rate hike on May 1st. While millions of Scots struggle to make ends meet, two of the biggest mortgage providers have plunged a million of their customers into uncertainty over their financial futures. RBS will raise their rates 0.25% to 4% while Halifax will ...

A research collaboration between the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and Children's Hospital Boston has created a microfluidic device that can harvest rare circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from blood to enable their expansion in culture for analysis. These cells, which have detached from a primary cancer site and often create a secondary—or metastasized—tumor, hold an extraordinary amount of information regarding patient-specific drug sensitivity, cancer progression, and patient response to therapy. Such information could help clinicians ...

SAN DIEGO, April 24, 2012—A preliminary 16-person study suggests that eating pistachios may help alter levels of potentially beneficial bacteria in the gut, a finding that holds promise for supporting digestive health(1). The research, presented as an abstract this week at the Experimental Biology conference, is the first study of pistachios and almonds and their modulating role on the gut microbiota composition. "Gut microbiota, or the microbial environment in the gastrointestinal tract, provides important functions to the human host," said Volker Mai, PhD, lead study ...

City streets can be mean, but somewhere near Brooklyn, a tree grows far better than its country cousins, due to chronically elevated city heat levels, says a new study. The study, just published in the journal Tree Physiology, shows that common native red oak seedlings grow as much as eight times faster in New York's Central Park than in more rural, cooler settings in the Hudson Valley and Catskill Mountains. Red oaks and their close relatives dominate areas ranging from northern Virginia to southern New England, so the study may have implications for changing climate and ...

Women's charity Engender launched the Who Counts? campaign this month as a result of research from women's groups across Scotland highlighting the number of women forced into poverty because of low-pay, poor health and housing and/or a lack of access to childcare and education. The campaign is funded by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, and aims to persuade public bodies to address poverty among women now before government efficiency savings drive down wages even further and condemn thousands more women and children to the poverty trap. Niki Kandirikirira, Engender's ...

Edinburgh and Glasgow account for nearly 1 in 10 of all referrals for enforcement action, topping the list of UK authorities, with almost six million cases being passed to bailiffs over the last three years. In total 27 local authorities in Scotland revealed figures that accounted for 20% of all UK referral cases. Big Brother Watch, a civil liberties and privacy spin-off from lobby group The TaxPayer's Alliance, revealed the figures following its freedom of information request of the UK's 433 councils. A spokesperson for Debt Solutions Company, Trust Deed Scotland, ...