Fire is an awesome force that cannot always be contained. A single spark can unleash fast moving fires that will engulf homes, businesses and anything else in its path. Residents around San Diego are currently struggling with fast moving wildfires that have already destroyed 20 homes, threaten hundreds more and killed at least one person. Gusting winds and dry conditions make the fires nearly impossible to contain as they consume hilly brushlands and rush across the area. Whether you live in the path of these dangerous fires or not, it's wise to be prepared in the event ...

With gas prices once again approaching record levels and U.S. government regulations mandating 54.5 average MPG by 2025, car manufacturers are now harnessing advanced technologies to safe consumers money and lower dependence on fossil fuels. From all-electric vehicles to hybrids and modern, clean-burning diesels, consumers have more options to choose from than ever before to save money at the pump while doing a small part to save the planet from global warming. Electric Cars: More Viable in the Years to Come The world's automakers and innovators made huge strides ...

There are not many better examples of seemingly oversupplied industries than the market for spas in Bangkok, Thailand. Travelling around Bangkok's city center, one is rarely more than a minute's walk from the nearest massage shop, day spa or hotel with spa. Given this abundant supply, one would assume it is impossible for new entrants to gain a foothold in the market. However, that is exactly what So Thai Spa has done. In fact, after establishing its new Bangkok branch earlier this year, So Thai Spa is already planning further expansion in the city. Oliver O'Dell, ...

CashWire.com, online payday loan provider, now provides cash for car shoppers to use for a new car down payment. Buying a car is a big commitment, and it can be a very costly process. Regardless of whether the car shopper is looking to purchase a brand new car or a reliable pre-owned vehicle, the day of purchase is very expensive. Many dealerships require down payments before they'll sell a car, and down payments are not easy to come by. And if a car needs to be purchased in a short time frame after a car accident or other emergency, down payments may not be available ...

After spending years managing marketing responsibilities for major companies such as Proctor & Gamble and Quaker Oats in South America and Mexico, and the last 15 years of his career producing the largest monthly Graphic Arts Magazine in Mexico, Jorge Merigo wanted a new career where he could work outdoors in a country setting. That's why he moved from Mexico City and bought Blue Streak Stables in Seguin. Blue Streak Stables is a camp that hosts Girl Scouts for weekend camps in the spring and fall, and girls in general who are 7 to 15 years old for weeklong camps ...

New Orleans, the colorful Crescent City, is the birthplace of jazz, and 10 years ago it gave birth to the brilliant and buoyant 18-piece New Orleans Jazz Orchestra (NOJO). Led by its Grammy award-winning founder, artistic director, trumpeter and cultural ambassador, Irvin Mayfield, this exciting ensemble embraces all of the uptown/down-home hues, moods and grooves of the music. In celebration of its incredible decade, NOJO will party in the Big Apple - Big Easy-style - when it presents 10 Years, One Night at Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage on Monday, October ...

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require employers to supply personal protective equipment (PPE) when necessary. That's why whatishealthandsafety.co.uk is encouraging business owners to buy health and safety products online. This, they claim, will reduce the risk of personal injury and will keep staff, visitors and general members of the public safe. Matt Hornsby, a spokesman for the site said: "While some jobs are more dangerous than others, a thorough risk assessment should be carried out to see what products are needed. Once this ...

Gone Girl has been widely touted as one of the best books of 2012, and it's easy to see why. It is far more than what it appears on the surface - a (possible) murder mystery - and with its unique narrative style and plot twists, it constantly keeps you guessing and, as the best books do, thinking. We begin with a portrait of a marriage gone sour, as husband Nick Dunne tells the story of the day he returned home to find his wife, Amy, missing. It is also their fifth anniversary. From the start, Nick as a narrator is somewhat self-effacing but also infuriating in his honesty ...

3 Second Health all natural liquid multi-vitamin shot will be officially on sale at the 2012 Mr. Olympia Fitness Expo September 28th and 29th at the Las Vegas Convention Center. This product is the latest from Pureform 1000 LLC, the makers of Vitamin Liquid, America's Best Tasting All Natural liquid multi-vitamin supplement. 3 Second Health is designed to give users 13 key vitamins and more than 70 minerals in a 2.5 oz easy to swallow delicious citrus formula. "We believe 3 Second Health will set the industry standard for those wishing to take a liquid multi-vitamin ...

WASHINGTON – Using a newly discovered cell technology, Georgetown University Medical Center researchers were able to identify an effective therapy for a patient with a rare type of lung tumor. The single case study, reported in the September 27 issue of New England Journal of Medicine, provides a snapshot of the new technology's promising potential; however, researchers strongly caution that it could be years before validation studies are completed and regulatory approval received for its broader use. The patient in the case study was a 24-year-old man with a 20 year history ...

WASHINGTON – Enormous troughs that reach across the asteroid Vesta may actually be stretch marks that hint of a complexity beyond most asteroids. Scientists have been trying to determine the origin of these unusual troughs since their discovery just last year. Now, a new analysis supports the notion that the troughs are faults that formed when a fellow asteroid smacked into Vesta's south pole. The research reinforces the claim that Vesta has a layered interior, a quality normally reserved for larger bodies, such as planets and large moons. Asteroid surface deformities ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– For two decades, evolutionary scientists have been locked in a debate over the evolved functions of three distinctive human behaviors: the great readiness we show for cooperating with new people, the strong interest we have in tracking others' reputations regarding how well they treat others, and the occasional interest we have in punishing people for selfishly mistreating others. In an article published today in the journal PLoS ONE, researchers at UC Santa Barbara's Center for Evolutionary Psychology report new findings that may help settle ...

In what could be a breakthrough in the treatment of deadly brain tumors, a team of researchers from Barrow Neurological Institute and Arizona State University has discovered that the immune system reacts differently to different types of brain tissue, shedding light on why cancerous brain tumors are so difficult to treat. The large, two-part study, led by Barrow research fellow Sergiy Kushchayev, MD under the guidance of Dr. Mark Preul, Director of Neurosurgery Research, was published in the Sept. 14 issue of Cancer Management and Research. (Monocyte galactose/N-acetylgalactosamine-specific ...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The explosive PETN has been around for a century and is used by everyone from miners to the military, but it took new research by Sandia National Laboratories to begin to discover key mechanisms behind what causes it to fail at small scales. "Despite the fact explosives are in widespread use, there's still a lot to learn about how detonation begins and what properties of the explosive define the key detonation phenomena," said Alex Tappan of Sandia's Explosives Technology Group. Explosives are typically studied by pressing powders into pellets; tests ...

A study co-led by Simon Fraser University and Purdue University has found that the intestinal enzymes responsible for processing starchy foods can be turned on and off, helping to better control those processes in people with Type 2 diabetes. The process, called "toggling," was discovered in the lab of SFU V-P Research and chemist Mario Pinto, who has designed inhibitors capable of regulating each of the four starch-digesting enzymes known as alpha-glucosidases. It could lead to several solutions for diabetics and those prone to obesity. Three of these enzymes are responsible ...

Communication of discoveries has always been a hallmark of science, yet the challenges of making significant contributions to entomology did not stop many deaf and hard of hearing people as the field grew in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Written by the Harry G. Lang (Professor Emeritus, National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY), a deaf scholar, and by entomologist Jorge A. Santiago-Blay (National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC), this review paper reveals the fascinating stories ...

AMARILLO – Salt cedar along the waterways of the southern and eastern Panhandle is rapidly being defoliated and dying back, and one Texas A&M AgriLife Research entomologist believes he knows why. When salt cedar beetles from Uzbekistan were released in 2006 by Dr. Jerry Michels and his entomology crew in parts of Lake Meredith and the Palo Duro Canyon, it was thought they would be more prolific eaters of salt cedar than other beetle species tried before. Salt cedar displaces native vegetation and impacts the availability of water, Michels said. Numerous projects have ...

Washington, D.C.–The D.C. Department of Health (DOH) has released a study by George Washington University School of Public Health & Health Services (SPHHS) indicating the high levels of marketing by antipsychotic drug manufacturers to Medicaid psychiatrists in the District of Columbia. Antipsychotics are one of the top-selling drug classes; In 2010, top antipsychotic manufacturers spent more than $25 million on marketing in Washington DC. Among 26 psychiatrists receiving at least $1000 from top antipsychotic manufacturers in 2010, 7 (27%) were Medicaid providers. Medicaid ...

CINCINNATI – Researchers have discovered a previously unknown function for a protein that could add to the expanding arsenal of potential new drugs for battling inflammation and tissue fibrosis in a number of disease processes. Scientists from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center report Sept. 27 in Developmental Cell that, a protein called TRPC6 mediates a molecular pathway critical to the body's repair processes following various forms of injury caused by disease. After injury – such as that caused by a heart attack – the TRPC6-controlled pathway prompts ...

Washington, DC (September 24, 2012) – Children ages 2-11 view an alarming amount of television shows that contain forms of social bullying or social aggression. Physical aggression in television for children is greatly documented, but this is the first in-depth analysis on children's exposure to behaviors like cruel gossiping and manipulation of friendship. Nicole Martins, Indiana University, and Barbara J. Wilson, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, published in the Journal of Communication a content analysis of the 50 most popular children's shows according to ...

Atherosclerosis – the hardening of arteries that is a primary cause of cardiovascular disease and death – has long been presumed to be the fateful consequence of complicated interactions between overabundant cholesterol and resulting inflammation in the heart and blood vessels. However, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, with colleagues at institutions across the country, say the relationship is not exactly what it appears, and that a precursor to cholesterol actually suppresses inflammatory response genes. This precursor molecule ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Mayo Clinic researchers have found a way to detect and eliminate potentially troublemaking stem cells to make stem cell therapy safer. Induced Pluripotent Stem cells, also known as iPS cells, are bioengineered from adult tissues to have properties of embryonic stem cells, which have the unlimited capacity to differentiate and grow into any desired types of cells, such as skin, brain, lung and heart cells. However, during the differentiation process, some residual pluripotent or embryonic-like cells may remain and cause them to grow into tumors. "Pluripotent ...

BOSTON--Flipping a newly discovered molecular switch in white fat cells enabled mice to eat a high-calorie diet without becoming obese or developing the inflammation that causes insulin resistance, report scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The researchers say the results, to be published in the Sept. 28 issue of the journal Cell, provide the first known molecular link between thermogenesis (burning calories to produce heat) and the development of inflammation in fat cells. These two processes had been previously thought to be controlled separately. Thermogenesis ...

AUDIO: An authoritative, evidence-based assessment of the state of science and technology in Canada has found that Canadian science and technology is healthy, growing and internationally respected. Over the past five... Click here for more information. Ottawa (September 27th, 2012) - An authoritative, evidence-based assessment of the state of science and technology in Canada has found that Canadian science and technology is healthy, growing and internationally respected. Over ...

Researchers of motor neuron diseases have long had a hunch that two fatal diseases, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), might somehow be linked. A new study confirms that this link exists. "Our study is the first to link the two diseases on a molecular level in human cells," said Robin Reed, Harvard Medical School professor of cell biology and lead investigator of the study. The results will be published online in the September 27 issue of Cell Reports. ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, which has an adult onset, affects neurons that ...