An international team of physicists has developed a method for taking ultrafast 'sonograms' that can track the structural changes that take place within solid materials in trillionth-of-a-second intervals as they go through an important physical process called a phase transition. Common phase transitions include the melting of candle wax before it burns and dissolving sugar in water. They are purely structural changes that produce dramatic changes in a material's physical properties and they play a critical role both in nature and in industrial processes ranging from ...

Arttowngifts.com, a popular online retailer of whimsical signs and personalized gifts announced the addition of wedding name signs to its line of custom wood signs. These personalized signs, which feature the couple's names and wedding date, often feature popular romantic quotes and sayings. These handcrafted custom wedding signs are as unique and charming as the newlyweds they represent. Made from recycled wood and hand painted by the artist, these custom wood signs contain two layers of vinyl lettering, allowing the customer to include their family's last name overlaid ...

In what may prove to be a major step forward for the treatment of HIV-1 infection, scientists have discovered an effective way to eliminate a notoriously persistent form of the virus that does not respond to current therapies. The research, published online by Cell Press on March 8th from the journal Immunity, describes a vaccination strategy that may be essential for successful eradication efforts and should therefore be considered for future clinical trials. Current antiretroviral therapies suppress the ability of HIV-1 to copy itself, but they cannot completely eliminate ...

The humble aspirin may soon have a new role. Scientists from The City College of New York have developed a new aspirin compound that has great promise to be, not only an extremely potent cancer-fighter, but even safer than the classic medicine cabinet staple. The new designer aspirin curbed the growth of 11 different types of human cancer cells in culture without harming normal cells, reported a team from the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education of The City College of New York in a paper published this month in the journal ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters. The cancers ...

NEW YORK – Attracting workers into science and technology fields could be hampered by work-life integration issues according to a new international survey. Drawing data from 4,225 publishing scientists and researchers worldwide, the Association for Women in Science (AWIS) finds that lack of flexibility in the workplace, dissatisfaction with career development opportunities and low salaries are driving both men and women to re-consider their profession. More than half (54%) of all scientists and researchers said that work demands conflict with their personal lives at ...

PASADENA, Calif.—In both animals and humans, vocal signals used for communication contain a wide array of different sounds that are determined by the vibrational frequencies of vocal cords. For example, the pitch of someone's voice, and how it changes as they are speaking, depends on a complex series of varying frequencies. Knowing how the brain sorts out these different frequencies—which are called frequency-modulated (FM) sweeps—is believed to be essential to understanding many hearing-related behaviors, like speech. Now, a pair of biologists at the California Institute ...

Dr Jill, formerly a health care professional, joined ProU this fall to learn skills and to grow her online business, working from home. Things are going well and she has moved up within ProU. In February 2012, Dr Jill has advanced twice. Dr Jill upgraded to Master Affiliate and is now eligible and looking forward to attending and learning even more at the next ProU Master Marketing Event. Dr Jill also upgraded to Ascent Level of ProU program. At this new, higher level she is eligible to attend the BREAKTHROUGH Mastery Workshop and have access to the recorded 12 month BREAKTHROUGH ...

Thanks to the presence of a natural "zoom lens" in space, University of Chicago scientists working with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have obtained a uniquely close-up look at the brightest gravitationally magnified galaxy yet discovered. The imagery offers a visually striking example of gravitational lensing, in which one massive object's gravitational field can magnify and distort the light coming from another object behind it. Such optical tricks stem from Einstein's theory of general relativity, which describes how gravity can warp space and time, including bending ...

Minority principals and other administrative personnel at elementary and high schools play a key role in implementing policies and practices aimed at engaging immigrant parents of students, according to new research from Rice University, the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and Vanderbilt University. The researchers examined how schools in districts with immigrant populations are addressing low levels of parent involvement in their children's education and providing opportunities for engagement and support. The study, which will be published in the March edition of ...

PASADENA, Calif.—An international team of physicists—including several from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech)—has detected and measured, for the first time, a transformation of one particular type of neutrino into another type. The finding, physicists say, may help solve some of the biggest mysteries about the universe, such as why the universe contains more matter than antimatter—a phenomenon that explains why stars, planets, and people exist at all. The results, released online on March 8, come from the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment, which consists ...

Fantazzle Fantasy Sports Games is awarding its community with two different Free March Madness Bracket Games that will be offering several hundred dollars in prizes. The first contest, available for entry now, will be offering $250 in prizes and is the traditional tournament-long bracket. The second bracket will be available for entry shortly after the first bracket game starts and will include the final 32 teams. "We ran a free bracket game last year that was sponsored by Steiner Sports and it was such a success that we decided to run another game this year. Then, ...

The long-term impact of climate change on natural communities of wild animals could be better understood thanks to a new study. The research will help predict how migration of animals or changes to their habitats associated with climate change could impact on the evolution of relationships between predators and their prey. Scientists have shed light on how species and their natural enemies chase each other across continents in a game of cat and mouse lasting for millions of years. They used a technique known as population genetics to reveal historical information hidden ...

Scientists have made fresh discoveries about the processes that govern plants' internal body clocks and help them adjust to changing seasons, triggering the arrival of flowers in spring. Researchers tested computer models of gene networks in a simple cress plant to determine the role played by a protein, known as TOC1, in governing these daily cycles. The model shows how 12 genes work together to run the plant's complex clockwork, and reset the clock at dawn and dusk each day. Researchers found that the TOC1 protein, which was previously associated with helping plants ...

Sirenians, or seacows, are a group of marine mammals that include manatees and dugongs; today, only one species of seacow is found in each world region. Smithsonian scientists have discovered that this was not always the case. According to the fossil record of these marine mammals, which dates back 50 million years ago, it was more common to find three, or possibly more, different species of seacows living together at one time. This suggests that the environment and food sources for ancient seacows were also different than today. The team's findings are published in the ...

Based on successful consumer research conducted through Facebook advertising, Avis Israel has launched its new "On Demand" car rental program. On Demand offers flexible and convenient access to short-term car rentals, without having to register or schedule ahead of time. Focused on younger, urban drivers who would usually use public transportation or borrow a parents' vehicle, the On Demand program provides an attractive option. Drivers can now rent a car for short periods, ranging in time from only one hour up through a long weekend of Thursday afternoon ...

More than 80 percent of radiation oncologists discuss the impact of cancer treatments on fertility with their patients of childbearing age, which can lead to improved quality of life for young cancer patients who are living much longer after their original diagnosis thanks to modern treatment options, according to a study in Practical Radiation Oncology (PRO), the official clinical practice journal of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). In the past, the clinical focus for young cancer patients was strictly survival. With the success of today's treatment ...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – A newly developed, genetically modified pig may hold the keys to the development of improved treatments and possibly even a cure for retinitis pigmentosa (RP), the most common inherited retinal disease in the United States. The pig model was developed by researchers in the University of Louisville Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences and at the National Swine Resource and Research Center at the University of Missouri. "We have previously relied mostly on rodent models to study the development and progression of this disease, and although very ...

Within a decade, personal robots could become as common in U.S. homes as any other major appliance, and many if not most of these machines will be able to perform innumerable tasks not explicitly imagined by their manufacturers. This opens up a wider world of personal robotics, in which machines are doing anything their owners can program them to do—without actually being programmers. Laying some helpful groundwork for this world is, a new study by researchers in Georgia Tech's Center for Robotics & Intelligent Machines (RIM), who have identified the types of questions ...

STONY BROOK, NY -- A team of scientists, led by the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University, used video cameras to count Caribbean reef sharks (Carcharhinus perezi) inside and outside marine reserves on the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef in the Caribbean Sea. Using survey data collected from 200 baited remote underwater video (BRUV) cameras, nicknamed "chum cams," the scientists compared the relative abundance of these reef sharks in two marine reserves with those in two areas where fishing is allowed, and demonstrated that the sharks were more abundant ...

OzeVision Web Hosting repeats history by nabbing 15th position amongst the "Top 25 Most Poplar" web hosting companies in the category "Australian Web Hosting Directory" by WebHostDir.com and 7th position in the category "Australian Dedicated Servers Directory" by DedicatedServerDir.com for the month of February 2012. The awards pages can be viewed at: http://ozevision.com/web_hosting/top-25-most-popular-webhosting-awards.html http://ozevision.com/web_hosting/top-25-most-popular-dedicated-awards.html Every month WebHostDir.com and DedicatedServerDir.com ...

MADISON – New research with monkeys sheds light on how the drug methylphenidate may affect learning and memory in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The results parallel a 1977 finding that a low dose of the drug boosted cognitive performance of children with ADHD, but a higher dose that reduced their hyperactivity also impaired their performance on a memory test. "Many people were intrigued by that result, but their attempts to repeat the study did not yield clear-cut results," says Luis Populin, an associate professor of neuroscience at the University ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- A team of researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have successfully flushed latent HIV infection from hiding, with a drug used to treat certain types of lymphoma. Tackling latent HIV in the immune system is critical to finding a cure for AIDS. The results were presented today at the 19th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Seattle, Washington. While current antiretroviral therapies can very effectively control virus levels, they can never fully eliminate the virus from the cells and tissues it has ...

A new discovery provides a crucial key to understanding how neutrinos – ghostly particles with multiple personalities – change identity and may help shed light on why matter exists in the universe. In an announcement today (Thursday, March 8), members of the large international Daya Bay collaboration reported the last of three measurements that describe how the three types, or flavors, of neutrinos blend with one another, providing an explanation for their spooky morphing from one flavor to another, a phenomenon called neutrino oscillation. The measurement makes possible ...

Seattle, Washington - The first findings from a nationally representative HIV survey were presented today at the 19th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2012) in Seattle, WA. The Swaziland HIV Incidence Measurement Survey (SHIMS) found that overall HIV prevalence, or percentage of the population living with HIV infection, is 31% among adults ages 18-49. This figure matches the 2006 Demographic Health Survey findings for the same age group, indicating that the HIV epidemic in Swaziland has stabilized over the past five years. "The country continues ...

Scientists have discovered that blocking PD-1 (programmed death-1), an immune molecule that inhibits the immune response to viral infections, can have a significant effect on HIV-like illness in nonhuman primates. In earlier research, the scientists showed that PD-1 blockade could restore T and B cell function against SIV. Now they have new findings about the effects of PD-1 blockade along with antiretroviral therapy (ART). Vijayakumar Velu, PhD, a scientist at Yerkes National Primate Research Center and the Emory Vaccine Center presented the information at the 19th ...