Visitors to Thailand can experience a unique Buddhist festival when the Poi Sang Long Ceremony is held in Mae Hong Son province this April.   Taking place from April 4th to 6th 2012, it is a grand and colourful celebration that is entirely unique to this province, seeing young boys aged between seven and 14 ordained as Buddhist novices so they may spend time studying the religion's doctrines.   Tracing its roots back to the legend of Prince Rahula - the Buddha's son who gave up his own worldly life to follow his father's teachings - the event is said to bring spiritual ...

Pediatricians who show an unconscious preference for European Americans tend to prescribe better pain-management for white patients than they do for African-American patients, new University of Washington research shows. Pediatricians responded to case scenarios involving medical treatments for white and African American patients for four common pediatric conditions. "We're talking about subtle, unconscious attitudes that are pervasive in society. Because these are unconscious attitudes, doctors aren't aware that their racial attitudes may affect their treatment decisions," ...

Some of Asia's most talented swimmers will be travelling to Phuket this April in order to take part in the hotly-contested 2012 Thanyapura Long Course Swim Championships.   To be held at the Thanyapura Sports & Leisure Club from April 6th to 8th, the event will see athletes from international swimming clubs based across the continent all competing.   It represents the first long course swim championship to be held in Phuket, with participants set to compete in the facility's 50-metre Olympic-standard swimming pool.   The event will run from 09:00 until 17:00 local ...

CHICAGO --- The number of American children leaving doctors' offices with an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis has risen 66 percent in 10 years, according to a new Northwestern Medicine study. Over this same timeframe, specialists, instead of primary care physicians, have begun treating an increasing number of these young patients, the study found. The study, which was published in the March/April issue of the journal Academic Pediatrics, analyzed ADHD trends from 2000 to 2010 among children under the age of 18 who were diagnosed and treated by ...

Richard P. Brown, MD, and Patricia Gerbarg, MD, award-winning authors and leaders in Complementary and Alternative Medicine for psychiatry, will teach their ground-breaking Breath~Body~Mind Workshop for Beginners and Intermediate Students live online Saturday, April 14, from 10 am to 5 pm ET, and Sunday, April 15, from 10 am to 4 pm ET. The event will be broadcast from Fellowships of the Spirit in Lilydale NY, for the general public, health professionals, caregivers, and yoga teachers. "People inquire about our Breath~Body~Mind workshops because they want to enhance ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- Technology alone won't help the world turn away from fossil fuel-based energy sources, says University of Oregon sociologist Richard York. In a newly published paper, York argues for a shift in political and economic policies to embrace the concept that continued growth in energy consumption is not sustainable. Many nations, including the United States, are actively pursuing technological advances to reduce the use of fossil fuels to potentially mitigate human contributions to climate-change. The approach of the International Panel on Climate Change assumes ...

Health must be taken into account in climate change mitigation strategies. It is not widely appreciated that there are many benefits to health that are likely to accrue from a low carbon economy, say experts in a special supplement published on bmj.com today. They believe that health professionals "are uniquely placed to guide the climate change conversation towards better policies that are good for the planet and for people." It follows a high level meeting, hosted by the BMJ in October 2011, where doctors and security experts warned that climate change poses an immediate ...

Ventana Research has released its newest benchmark research, "Trends in Developing the Fast, Clean Close: Refining Financial Processes and Systems for Best Execution." Completing the accounting cycle quickly and accurately is essential for any finance organization. Not only is this a good indicator of efficiency, but also the speed in which books are closed has a number of ramifications. It can affect how rapidly a company is able to prepare data management reports, and the sooner managers have this information, the sooner they understand their situation. This ...

Nearly two-thirds of the oil we use comes from wells drilled using polycrystalline diamond compact (PDC) bits, originally developed nearly 30 years ago to lower the cost of geothermal drilling. Sandia and the U.S. Navy recently brought the technology fullcircle, showing how geothermal drillers might use the original PDC technology, incorporating decades of subsequent improvements by the oil and gas industry. Sandia and the Navy's Geothermal Program Office (USN GPO) conducted the Phase One demonstration tests as part of a geothermal resources evaluation at the Chocolate ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Food-borne diseases might soon have another warrior to contend with, thanks to a new molecule discovered by chemists at the University of Illinois. The new antibiotic, an analog of the widely used food preservative nisin, also has potential to be a boon to the dairy industry as a treatment for bovine mastitis. The antibiotic nisin occurs naturally in milk, a product of bacteria resident in the cow's udder. It helps keep milk from spoiling and kills a broad spectrum of bacteria that cause food-borne illness, most notably listeria and clostridium. It was ...

A team of researchers that includes a USC scientist has methodically demonstrated that a face's features or constituents – more than the face per se – are the key to recognizing a person. Their study, which goes against the common belief that brains process faces "holistically," appears this month in Psychological Science. In addition to shedding light on the way the brain functions, these results may help scientists understand rare facial recognition disorders. Humans are great at recognizing faces. There are even regions in the brain that are specifically associated ...

The effect of population aging on the number of admissions to hospital for inpatient treatment is examined by epidemiologist Enno Nowossadeck in the latest issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2012; 109[9]: 151-7. Germany's population is steadily growing older, and the number of hospital admissions is increasing. By taking nationwide statistics on hospital treatment in the years 2000 and 2009 and classifying the patients by year of birth, sex, and diagnosis, the author investigates whether these two trends are connected. His analysis reveals, ...

Zug, Switzerland and San Diego, CA – Cytori Therapeutics (NASDAQ: CYTX) announced today the publication of RESTORE-2 trial results in the peer-reviewed European Journal of Surgical Oncology. RESTORE-2 is a 71 patient multi-center, prospective clinical trial using autologous adipose-derived regenerative cell (ADRC)-enriched fat grafting for reconstruction of the breast after cancer surgery. The majority of patients underwent radiation prior to the procedure, creating an unfavorable ischemic environment for which breast reconstruction with ADRC-enriched fat grafting appears ...

DURHAM, N.H. –– Space scientists from the University of New Hampshire and multi-institutional colleagues report they have quantified levels of radiation on the moon's surface from galactic cosmic ray (GCR) bombardment that over time causes chemical changes in water ice and can create complex carbon chains similar to those that help form the foundations of biological structures. In addition, the radiation process causes the lunar soil, or regolith, to darken over time, which is important in understanding the geologic history of the moon. The scientists present their findings ...

More than 400 years after Galileo's discovery of Io, the innermost of Jupiter's largest moons, a team of scientists led by Arizona State University (ASU) has produced the first complete global geologic map of the Jovian satellite. The map, published by the U. S. Geological Survey, depicts the characteristics and relative ages of some of the most geologically unique and active volcanoes and lava flows ever documented in the Solar System. Following its discovery by Galileo in January 1610, Io has been the focus of repeated telescopic and satellite scientific observation. ...

With 30 years of management under our belt, Omega Janitorial Service is proud to announce the opening of our second office in the Houston Area. In order to accommodate a growing demand, we have expanded into a brand new facility located off of Beltway 8 North by the International Airport. Our spacious new office and large warehouse offers Omega expanded abilities to receive and house bulk shipments. With increased abilities to house greater amounts of the best products possible, we are continuing to strive to achieve the greatest savings for our customers as our main focus ...

A new study by University of Notre Dame biologist Michael Pfrender and a team of researchers from the University of Nevada-Reno, Utah State University and the University of Virginia suggests that snakes from different regions of the world have evolved a similar, remarkable resistance to a deadly neurotoxin. The finding, which appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, greatly increases scientists' understanding of the genetic basis of adaptation and is a model for understanding the limits to adaptation and the degree to which evolutionary responses ...

"Anyone who has been admitted into a hospital or undergone a procedure, even if cared for in the most appropriate way, can feel as though they were treated like an animal or object," says Harvard University psychologist and physician Omar Sultan Haque. Health care workers enter their professions to help people; research shows that empathic, humane care improves outcomes. Yet dehumanization is endemic. The results can be disastrous: neglect of necessary treatments or prescription of excessive, painful procedures or dangerous drugs. What are the causes and effects of dehumanization ...

University of Alberta led research may have discovered how memories are encoded in our brains. Scientists understand memory to exist as strengthened synaptic connections among neurons. However components of synaptic membranes are relatively short-lived and frequently re-cycled while memories can last a lifetime. Based on this information, U of A physicist and lead researcher Jack Tuszynski, his graduate student Travis Craddock and University of Arizona professor Stuart Hameroff investigated the molecular mechanism of memory encoding in neurons. The team looked into structures ...

Montreal, March 19, 2012 – Parents should think twice before brushing off their child's calls to "look at me!" A Concordia study published in the journal Child Development is the first to show that toddlers' expectations of how their parent will respond to their needs and bids for attention relate to how eager they are to collaborate and learn. Collaboration in toddlers has been linked to the acquisition of social rules and norms later in childhood. Understanding what contributes to more collaboration can help improve conscience development in children. Marie-Pierre ...

Investigators at Nationwide Children's Hospital, working with the DNA Sequencing Core Facility at the University of Utah, have developed an approach to newborn screening (NBS) for the life-threatening genetic disorder, Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and potentially other muscular dystrophies. As a model for NBS, the approach published online in January in the Annals of Neurology provides evidence that this approach could be implemented if approved by regulatory bodies at a state level or alternatively through the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders ...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — In a challenge to current astrophysical models of the universe, researchers at Sandia National Laboratories Z machine and the University of Rostock in Germany have found that current estimates of ice-giant planetary interiors overstate water's compressibility by as much as 30 percent. The work was reported in the paper "Probing the Interior of the Ice Giants" in the Feb. 27 Physical Review Letters. "Our results question science's understanding of the internal structure of these planets," said Sandia lead author Marcus Knudson, "and should require ...

Irvine, Calif., March 19, 2012 — By analyzing the hundreds of metabolic products present in the liver, researchers with the UC Irvine Center for Epigenetics & Metabolism have discovered that circadian rhythms – our own body clock – greatly control the production of such key building blocks as amino acids, carbohydrates and lipids. They identified more than 600 liver-originated metabolites, which are the chemical substances created by metabolism that sustain and promote cell health and growth. Approximately 60 percent of these metabolites were found to be dependent on ...

(Philadelphia) – Intervention by peer mentors has a statistically significant effect on improving glucose control in African American veterans with diabetes, according to a study by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia VA Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion (CHERP). Full results of the study were published in the March 20th issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine. In the study 118 African American veterans aged 50-70 years old with persistently poor diabetes control were randomly assigned to ...

Chemists at the University of California, San Diego have produced the first high resolution structure of a molecule that when attached to the genetic material of the hepatitis C virus prevents it from reproducing. Hepatitis C is a chronic infectious disease that affects some 170 million people worldwide and causes chronic liver disease and liver cancer. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hepatitis C now kills more Americans each year than HIV. The structure of the molecule, which was published in a paper in this week's early online edition ...