California State Sen. Alex Padilla is one step closer to having California begin to test autonomous vehicles to help reduce the number if accidents on state roads, but a legal referral network says that regardless of the bill's fate, accidents will still happen. "When accidents do happen, our expert team of attorneys can help," said James Logan, marketing coordinator for CaliforniaCarAccidentLaw.com, a website that was built and developed to provide legal help for car accident victims. Logan explained that the website provides accident victims with a variety ...

Utility, Inc., a provider of technology and services that allow first responders and utilities to more effectively command, control and support mobile field operations, announced today the addition of Jason Blair as a Senior Member of the Utility Executive Team. Blair has taken the role of Vice President and Chief Financial Officer leading the Finance, Accounting, Human Resources and Administration functions for Utility. Jason Blair is a senior financial executive with 15+ years experience providing financial, operational and managerial expertise for small to mid-sized ...

Corcentric, a leading provider of Accounts Payable outsourcing solutions, today announced they will be co-hosting a 90-minute educational Webinar event with the Institute of Finance Operations (IOFO). The Webinar, titled "AP Outlook: The Top 5 Changes Coming to Accounts Payable," will reveal how implementing AP automation and zero touch processes is enabling AP departments to become more strategic within their organizations by achieving heightened levels of visibility, accelerated cycle times, and cost-savings to their payables processes. This Webinar will take ...

Hydro Alternative Energy, Inc. ("HAE" or the "Company"), an emerging independent power provider, announced today that it has executed a memorandum of understanding ("MOU") with Energreen, SA de C.V ("Energreen") of Mexico, a renewable energy and environmental improvement projects company. Energreen is part of the Desus Group of Mexico, an integrated series of companies with each focused on a specific area of sustainable development. The intent of the MOU is for HAE and Energreen to partner with each other for the purpose of developing ...

The creators of "Newborn Care 101 - What Parents Need To Know", have recently announced their 50,000th visitor on their free newborn care information website www.newborncare101.com offering a wide variety of information for new parents including SIDS risk and prevention, feeding, vaccinations, colic as well as a popular Frequently Asked Questions section. There is also a downloadable list of what to bring to the hospital when having a newborn and what to have at home for your newborn's arrival. "With so many visitors to our newborn site, it is very rewarding ...

International Logistic Solutions (ILS) was recently certified as an Indirect Air Carrier by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). As an Indirect Air Carrier, ILS may now contract directly for the freight services of passenger air carriers. Third party logistic companies and freight forwarders that are not in possession of such certification may only ship using passenger air carriers through companies with IAC approval from the TSA. International Logistic Solutions was able to attain this certification due to its successful adoption of a security program that ...

Having unfiled tax returns is a situation not only incredibly common, but incredibly resolvable. Mark (Panama City, FL) came to Blue Tax with the news that the IRS was reporting he was missing business returns for the years of 2007-2009. The issue was that Mark's company in question was dissolved in mid 2008. Blue Tax needed to make sure that Mark was protected from any collections, file the missing tax returns, and establish a resolution. The Blue Tax team got on the case, working quickly to ensure Mark was protected from any collections, while filing the missing tax ...

CiCi's Pizza has introduced the newest pizza on its custom buffet, The Meltdown, made with Parmesan, Romano and mozzarella cheeses with signature Italiano sauce topped with an oregano seasoning blend on a thin, crisp Italiano crust. The delicious new pizza is the third in CiCi's Italiano line, joining the Pepperoni & Sausage Italiano and the Veggie Italiano in the permanent CiCi's buffet rotation. It is being rolled out with a national advertising campaign featuring the tagline "So good it makes grown men cry." "The Meltdown was well received by ...

Environmental vibrations induced by urban railway traffic are mainly generated from uneven wheel–rail contact in the short wavelength range, according to a study in the 4th issue of SCIENCE CHINA Technological Sciences, 2012. The introduction of urban railways is one of the most effective ways to deal with traffic problems in large cities. However, in the vicinity of railways, day-by-day vibrations from trains may cause discomfort to people, the malfunctioning of sensitive equipment, and even damage to old buildings, and railways therefore have serious environmental ...

Aging may seem unavoidable, but that's not necessarily so when it comes to the brain. So say researchers in the April 27th issue of the Cell Press journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences explaining that it is what you do in old age that matters more when it comes to maintaining a youthful brain not what you did earlier in life. "Although some memory functions do tend to decline as we get older, several elderly show well preserved functioning and this is related to a well-preserved, youth-like brain," says Lars Nyberg of Umeå University in Sweden. Education won't save ...

HONOLULU – April 25, 2012 -- Many shark populations have plummeted in the past three decades as a result of excessive harvesting – for their fins, as an incidental catch of fisheries targeting other species, and in recreational fisheries. This is particularly true for oceanic species. However, until now, a lack of data prevented scientists from properly quantifying the status of Pacific reef sharks at a large geographic scale. In a study published online April 27 in the journal Conservation Biology, an international team of marine scientists provide the first estimates ...

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have found that mice and rats have evolved to gnaw with their front teeth and chew with their back teeth more successfully than rodents that 'specialise' in one or other of these biting mechanisms. Researchers designed a computer model to simulate the bite of rats to understand whether their skull shape or muscle arrangement was a major factor in their evolutionary success and global dominance, making them one of the most common pest species in the world. Research has already shown that rats and mice can both chew and gnaw, ...

(Toronto) - Researchers at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) led a study discovering a gene for a new form of intellectual disability, as well as how it likely affects cognitive development by disrupting neuron functioning. CAMH Senior Scientist Dr. John Vincent and his team found a mutation in the gene NSUN2 among three sisters with intellectual disability, a finding to be published in the May issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics. The discovery was made after mapping genes in a Pakistani family, in which three of seven siblings had intellectual ...

Like a lead actress on the red carpet, nanowires—those superstars of nanotechnology—can be enhanced by a little jewelry, too. Not the diamonds and pearls variety, but the sort formed of sinuous chains of metal oxide or noble metal nanoparticles. Though science has known for some time that such ornamentation can greatly increase the surface area and alter the surface chemistry of nanowires, engineers at Stanford University have found a novel and more effective method of "decorating" nanowires that is simpler and faster than previous techniques. The results of their study ...

Claudia Bieber from the Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology (FIWI) of the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, and fellow scientists analysed a capture-recapture data set on common dormice (Muscardinus avellanarius) to investigate the life-history strategy of this species. These small rodents are about the size and weight of a wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus), but, unlike their rodent cousins, they hibernate – usually from late September/October to April/May. This is reflected in rather different life history strategies: While wood mice may reproduce any time between ...

China's economic growth will continue to be energy-intensive and highly polluting for the foreseeable future with emissions and efficiency far below capital growth on the agenda, according to a study published in the International Journal of Global Energy Issues. Economist Yanqing Xia of Dongbei University of Finance and Economics and the Northeast Branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Liaoning has looked at almost a decade's worth of data from 30 Chinese provinces to build a comprehensive model of pollution, energy consumption and economic growth. The model offers ...

Our genes control many aspects of who we are — from the colour of our hair to our vulnerability to certain diseases — but how are the genes, and consequently the proteins they make themselves controlled? Researchers have discovered a new group of molecules which control some of the fundamental processes behind memory function and may hold the key to developing new therapies for treating neurodegenerative diseases. The research, led by academics from the University of Bristol's Schools of Clinical Sciences, Biochemistry and Physiology and Pharmacology and published ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Obese drivers are far less likely to wear seatbelts than are drivers of normal weight, a new University at Buffalo study has found, a behavior that puts them at greater risk of severe injury or death during motor vehicle crashes. The UB study found that normal weight drivers are 67 percent more likely to wear a seatbelt than morbidly obese drivers. Drivers were considered overweight or obese if they had a BMI (body mass index) of 25 or more, according to the World Health Organization definition of obesity, with 25-30 defined as overweight, 30-35 slightly ...

In a new study, scientists at the University of Copenhagen show that a specific type of carbohydrate plays an important role in the intercellular signalling that controls the growth and development of the nervous system. In particular, defects in that carbohydrate may result in the uninhibited cell growth that characterizes the genetic disease neurofibromatosis and certain types of cancer. The results have just been published in the well-reputed journal PNAS. Scientists from The Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen have put a special ...

This press release is available in German. In particle physics, the baryon family refers to particles that are made up of three quarks. Quarks form a group of six particles that differ in their masses and charges. The two lightest quarks, the so-called "up" and "down" quarks, form the two atomic components, protons and neutrons. All baryons that are composed of the three lightest quarks ("up", "down" and "strange" quarks) are known. Only very few baryons with heavy quarks have been observed to date. They can only be generated artificially in particle accelerators as ...

This press release is available in German. Optical atomic clocks measure time with unprecedented accuracy. However, it is the ability to compare clocks with one another that makes them applicable for high-precision tests in fundamental theory, from cosmology all the way to quantum physics. A clock comparison, i.e. a comparison of their optical frequencies, proved to be challenging so far as the few existing optical clocks around the world are not readily portable due to their complex nature. A team of researchers from the Physikalisch-TechnischeBundesanstalt (PTB) in ...

This press release is available in German. Leipzig/Dresden/Freiburg. In recent years the economic value of pollination-dependent crops has substantially increased around the world. As a team of researchers from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), the Technical University of Dresden and the University of Freiburg headed by the UFZ wrote in an article entitled "Spatial and temporal trends of global pollination benefit" in the open-access journal PLoS ONE the value of ecological pollination services was around 200 billion US dollars in 1993 and rose ...

Medical researchers at the University of Sheffield have defined the structure of a key part of the human obesity receptor- an essential factor in the regulation of body fat- which could help provide new treatments for the complications of obesity and anorexia. This major advance in research, published in the journal Structure, will greatly enhance the ability to generate drugs which can both block and stimulate the receptor for the obesity hormone leptin. This could have life-changing effects on people suffering from the complications of obesity and malnutrition. Researchers ...

The fungal infection that killed a record number of amphibians worldwide leads to deadly dehydration in frogs in the wild, according to results of a new study. High levels of an aquatic, chytrid fungus called Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) disrupt fluid and electrolyte balance in wild frogs, the scientists say, severely depleting the frogs' sodium and potassium levels and causing cardiac arrest and death. Their findings confirm what researchers have seen in carefully controlled lab experiments with the fungus, but San Francisco State University biologist Vance ...

Using nature's beauty as a tourist draw can boost conservation in China's valued panda preserves, but it isn't an automatic ticket out of poverty for the humans who live there, a unique long-term study shows. Often those who benefit most from nature-based tourism are people who already have resources. The truly impoverished have a harder time breaking into the tourism business, according to the paper, "Drivers and Socioeconomic Impacts of Tourism Participation in Protected Areas," published in the April 25 edition of PLoS One. The study looks at nearly a decade of burgeoning ...