A four-part investigation by the Columbus Dispatch found that credit reporting agencies enjoy loopholes and omissions in the Fair Credit Reporting Act that hold them blameless for mistakes that can make or break consumers' abilities to apply for loans, rent apartments and even receive medical care. The Fair Credit Reporting Act The Fair Credit Reporting Act was enacted in 1971 as a way to protect consumers, but has faced criticism over the years for providing more protections to credit reporting agencies than to the public, which cannot opt out of credit reporting ...

The highest court in the land has decided to hear a case that will help clarify how the first-sale doctrine applies to international trade. This decision will then, in turn, impact future intellectual property disputes affected by the doctrine. The Supreme Court will hear arguments on the case this October and will likely issue a ruling in early 2013. The First-Sale Doctrine The first-sale doctrine allows the owner of a lawfully made copy of a trademarked or copyrighted good to sell or dispose of that copy without obtaining the permission of the copyright owner. For ...

This summer, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) changed the 140-year-old rules on how whistleblowers are compensated for information that leads to a successful collection of funds from tax evaders. The law should help incentivize those who witness tax evasion to come forward, despite the possible difficulties whistleblowers face. New Whistleblower Rules Increase Monetary Awards The IRS offers a monetary reward for those who provide information that leads to a successful investigation of a case of tax evasion. Whistleblowers may be entitled to up to 30 percent of what ...

Divorce is such a prominent part of our society. While headlines may focus on the children of divorcing celebrity couples, thousands of kids from everyday families experience the stress of divorce each year. It would be great if there were specific, established guidelines for how children react to divorce. Unfortunately, there are none. Children's reactions to divorce are just as unique as their personalities. It all depends on their age, the power dynamics within the home, as well as how much the relationship between the spouses has played out in front of the children. Nevertheless, ...

Rezidor, one of the fastest growing hotel companies worldwide and a member of the Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group, announces the Park Inn by Radisson Cape Town Newlands. The mid-market property featuring 122 keys is scheduled to open in Q1 2014. It is Rezidor's second Park Inn by Radisson hotel in Cape Town and the group also has two Radisson Blu hotels in the city, one in operation and one under development. "South Africa is an important cluster for our young and dynamic Park Inn by Radisson brand, and we are delighted to further strengthen our presence in the key ...

One small group of devoted individuals is riding the naked wave and making a significant splash. While newspapers and magazines are publishing articles about the aging nudist population in the USA, Young Naturists America has grown so big that they have decided to launch a membership program. Based on how well this young company has been doing, perhaps it is safe to say that nudism is alive and doing better than ever. Young Naturists America's core followers are people in the 25-40 age ranges who are highly educated, socially conscious tech savvy and extremely engaging. ...

John G. Nettleton, a Certified College Planning Specialist and Pay For College 123 have developed Student Loan Awareness Project (S.L.A.P). as a vaccine for the student loan epidemic. Most families don't recognize the signs of student loan debt until it is too late, usually when the first repayment is due. S.L.A.P. works quickly by educating both parents and students about the deadly consequences of student loans and how to avoid them. S.L.A.P. goes to work on four main areas of the epidemic. First, parents don't know the rules on how to pay a lower "wholesale" ...

PinkyThumb.com was created to provide a wide range of high quality, trendy, and unique fashion jewelry and accessories at affordable prices. The e-commerce website was launched on August 2012 with the premise that there is an incredible need for fun, trendy, and affordable fashion jewelry within the industry. PinkyThumb.com is an online fashion jewelry online destination created for the young, fashionable woman who likes to keep up with the latest trend while maintaining her own unique style. PinkyThumb.com is for women who love to mix different jewelry pieces to create ...

Over the past decade, researchers have made great strides in identifying genes that lead to an increased risk of autism spectrum disorders (ASD), which result in a continuum of social deficits, communication difficulties and cognitive delays. But it's still critical to determine how exactly these genetic risk factors impact the brain's structure and function so that better treatments and interventions can be developed. This led researchers at UCLA to look more closely at one particular culprit that's known to cause a susceptibility to ASD — a genetic variant, or mutation, ...

PORTLAND, Ore. – Many people with multiple sclerosis for years have taken the natural supplement Gingko biloba, believing it helps them with cognitive problems associated with the disease. But the science now says otherwise. A new study published in the journal Neurology says Gingko biloba does not improve cognitive performance in people with multiple sclerosis. The research was published in the Sept. 5, 2012, issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The current study was a more extensive look at the question after a smaller 2005 ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Sept. 13, 2012 – The drinking water at one-third of migrant farmworker camps in eastern North Carolina failed to meet state quality standards, according to a new study from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. "Testing drinking water is vital to protect the public from serious diseases," said lead author Werner E. Bischoff, M.D., Ph.D., health system epidemiologist at Wake Forest Baptist. "Contaminated water puts the health of the workers who drink it at risk. It also puts the health of the surrounding community at risk because they may be drinking ...

Researchers from the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research analysed data on the diet, exercise and personality type of more than 7000 people. The study found those who believe their life can be changed by their own actions ate healthier food, exercised more, smoked less and avoided binge drinking. Professor Deborah Cobb-Clark, Director of the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, said those who have a greater faith in 'luck' or 'fate' are more likely to live an unhealthy life. "Our research shows a direct link between the ...

Hamburg / Grenoble 14 September 2012 (jointly released by the ESRF and DESY): With a sophisticated X-ray analysis scientists have identified why parts of the Van Gogh painting "Flowers in a blue vase" have changed colour over time: a supposedly protective varnish applied after the master's death has made some bright yellow flowers turn to an orange-grey colour. The origin of this alteration is a hitherto unknown degradation process at the interface between paint and varnish, which studies at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility ESRF in Grenoble (France) and at Deutsches ...

LA JOLLA, CA – Researchers at The Scripps Research Institute have found new links between a protein that controls our urge to eat and brain cells involved in the development of alcoholism. The discovery points to new possibilities for designing drugs to treat alcoholism and other addictions. The new study, published online ahead of print by the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, focuses on the peptide ghrelin, which is known to stimulate eating. "This is the first study to characterize the effects of ghrelin on neurons in a brain region called the central nucleus of the ...

In the vicinity of Hermeskeil, a small town some 30 kilometers southeast of the city of Trier in the Hunsrueck region in the German federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate, archaeologists from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have confirmed the location of the oldest Roman military fortification known in Germany to date. These findings shed new light on the Roman conquest of Gaul. The camp was presumably built during Julius Caesars' Gallic War in the late 50s B.C. Nearby lies a late Celtic settlement with monumental fortifications known as the "Hunnenring" or "Circle ...

People who bear the genetic mutation for Huntington's disease learn faster than healthy people. The more pronounced the mutation was, the more quickly they learned. This is reported by researchers from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum and from Dortmund in the journal Current Biology. The team has thus demonstrated for the first time that neurodegenerative diseases can go hand in hand with increased learning efficiency. "It is possible that the same mechanisms that lead to the degenerative changes in the central nervous system also cause the considerably better learning efficiency" ...

A whole-genome scan to identify large-scale chromosomal damage can help doctors choose the best treatment option for children with neuroblastoma, one of the most common types of childhood cancer, finds an international collaboration jointly led by The Institute of Cancer Research, London. The researchers called for all children diagnosed with neuroblastoma worldwide to have a whole-genome scan as a standard part of their treatment. Neuroblastoma, a cancer of the developing nervous system, is sometimes very treatable but other forms are highly aggressive, making the ...

Scientists from three UK universities have developed a new test to catch drugs-cheats in sport. Over the last 10 years, the GH-2004 team, which is based the University of Southampton, has been developing a test for Growth Hormone misuse in sport with funding from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and US Anti-Doping Agency and with support from UK Anti-Doping. The test, developed by scientists at the University of Southampton, King's College London and University of Kent at Canterbury, is based on the measurement of two proteins in the blood, insulin-like growth factor-I ...

Since the early 1900s, scientists have been wondering how birds and mammals could have developed almost identical conduction systems independently of each other when their common ancestor was a cold-blooded reptile with a sponge-like inner heart that has virtually no conduction bundles. The studies show that it is simply the spongy inner tissue in the foetal heart that gets stretched out to become a fine network of conductive tissue in adult birds and mammals. And this knowledge can be put to use in the future. ### END ...

Quantifying noise exposure will be significantly easier thanks to a new set of common noise assessment methods published today. Comparable data on noise exposure in Europe is a prerequisite to set up EU policies to reduce noise pollution, a growing health and economic concern all over Europe. The new methods – known as Common Noise Assessment Methods in Europe (CNOSSOS-EU) – were drawn up by the European Commission's in-house science service, the Joint Research Centre. They assess noise from road, rail and air traffic and from industry, and will provide consistent and comparable ...

Many pathogenic bacteria are able to go into a dormant state by producing persister cells that are not susceptible to conventional antibiotics. This causes serious problems in the treatment of life-threatening diseases such as tuberculosis, where the presence of persister cells often leads to a resurgence of infection following medical treatment. At the molecular level, the formation of persister cells is due to the presence of toxins that are produced by the bacteria themselves, and which enable them to enter the dormant state. During this hibernation period, the bacteria ...

This press release is available in German. Precise determination of distances is of increasing importance in fabrication technology, for instance, when actuating robots, producing micromechanical components, or controlling machine tools. Frequently, glass scales, inductive sensors, or laser measurement systems are used for distance measurements. Glass scales are very precise and reach micrometer precision. However, they are too inflexible and expensive for daily use. Inductive sensors measuring distances with a coil, magnetic field, and movement work in a contact-free ...

A new study shows that newborns that have been exposed to nicotine from both active and passive smoking mothers show poor physiological, sensory, motor and attention responses. Smoking during pregnancy has been linked to many different problems in infants like learning difficulties, attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity and even obesity. However, although the paediatric and obstetric disorders linked to tobacco during this stage are well defined, the effects on neonatal behaviour have not yet been studied in depth. A new study headed by experts at the ...

Scientists from the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) describe how natural selection also occurs at the cellular level, and how our body's tissues and organs strive to retain the best cells in their ranks in order to fend off disease processes. These results appear this week in the new issue of Cell Reports. The research, carried out in the CNIO, is led by Eduardo Moreno, who is currently working at the University of Bern in Switzerland. Recent studies suggest that natural selection described by Charles Darwin also occurs at the cellular level, as our body's ...

There is little doubt that Frances O'Grady has made history as the first woman to be elected General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress in September 2012. A recent study from Queen Mary, University of London casts some light on the level of O'Grady's achievement in the wider union landscape. This cross-national study found that in both the UK and the US, women still have fewer top positions in trade unions despite growth in overall female membership. The paper, Lift as You Rise: Union Women's Leadership Talk, discusses the lack of women at union leadership level, ...