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Science 2012-09-06

Trafalgar Launches Taste of North America Program for 2013

With the launch of Trafalgar's (www.trafalgar.com) biggest and best USA & Canada brochure to date comes their new Taste of North America program. Targeted towards those with a passion for the finer tastes in life, the program invites guests to learn about food specific to their destination as well as indulge in some of the continent's most delicious dishes. The new USA & Canada brochure features the 4 gastronomic itineraries - San Francisco & Wine Country Delights, Wonder & Flavors of the Golden State, Tastes & Sounds of the South, New York Zest & ...
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Medicine 2012-09-06

Gatwick Seeks Views From Capel on the Proposed Implementation of P-RNAV

A three month public consultation by Gatwick Airport is taking place to implement a system called P-RNAV. The system, which has been trialled on a limited basis at the airport for 6 years, utilises the full navigation capability of modern aircraft and improves the track keeping for departing flights. The proposed implementation is in line with the Civil Aviation Authority's (CAA) policy for the application of performance based navigation in UK airspace, which effectively requires all conventional departure routes from airports to be replaced with a minimum of a P-RNAV ...
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Engineering 2012-09-06

Sportsbook Review, The Online Leader of Sportsbook Ratings and Industry News Releases its 2012 Sportsbook Scam Alert for its 2012 Football Betting Season

With the start of the NFL season comes a bevy of sportsbook promotions and seductive offers created to lure bettors into winning some serious cash. Within the sea of sportsbook offerings, you'll also find that not all offers are created equal and some are just complete scams. It's up to you to use the Sportbookreview.com rating guide to help you do your research and find the soundest offers on the net. Below we have compiled a list of sportsbooks that bettors should stay clear from due to their faulty offerings. This is also an opportunity for players to buzz in and ...
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Science 2012-09-06

Jose Canseco Proclaims Steroids Were Not the Cause of Death for Late Taylor Hooton

Jose Canseco offers his personal conviction of what actually led to the tragic death of teen baseball player, Taylor Hooton. Settling into his new role as the no holds barred editor for his controversial blog "Canseco on Steroids", hosted by Steroid.com, former baseball All-Star Jose Canseco uses his fourth official video blog to talk about a "touchy", yet highly industry-influenced topic; the death of teenage baseball player, Taylor Hooton. Son to Don Hooton, founder of "The Taylor Hooton Foundation", (dedicated to educating parents ...
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That giant tarantula is terrifying, but I'll touch it
Science 2012-09-05

That giant tarantula is terrifying, but I'll touch it

"Give sorrow words." —Malcolm in Shakespeare's "Macbeth" Can simply describing your feelings at stressful times make you less afraid and less anxious? A new UCLA psychology study suggests that labeling your emotions at the precise moment you are confronting what you fear can indeed have that effect. The psychologists asked 88 people with a fear of spiders to approach a large, live tarantula in an open container outdoors. The participants were told to walk closer and closer to the spider and eventually touch it if they could. The subjects were then divided ...
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Medicine 2012-09-05

Global health requires new dynamics, suggests science panel

Basic science plays a critical role in the quest to improve global health, but it's only one part of a multi-pronged effort that includes changing the dynamics of global health so that developing nations have a more leading role in fulfilling their health care needs. That was among the conclusions of the 2012 Kavli Prize Science Forum in Oslo, Norway, held this week. The Forum featured four leading international science experts on global health: Rita Colwell, former director of the National Science Foundation, US; Alice Dautry, president of the Institut Pasteur, France; ...
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Explosion of galaxy formation lit up early universe
Space 2012-09-05

Explosion of galaxy formation lit up early universe

New data from the South Pole Telescope indicates that the birth of the first massive galaxies that lit up the early universe was an explosive event, happening faster and ending sooner than suspected. Extremely bright, active galaxies formed and fully illuminated the universe by the time it was 750 million years old, or about 13 billion years ago, according to Oliver Zahn, a postdoctoral fellow at the Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics (BCCP) at the University of California, Berkeley, who led the data analysis. The data provide new constraints on the universe's ...
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A cluster with a secret
Science 2012-09-05

A cluster with a secret

A new image from ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile shows the spectacular globular star cluster Messier 4. This ball of tens of thousands of ancient stars is one of the closest and most studied of the globular clusters and recent work has revealed that one of its stars has strange and unexpected properties, apparently possessing the secret of eternal youth. The Milky Way galaxy is orbited by more than 150 globular star clusters that date back to the distant past of the Universe (eso1141). One of the closest to the Earth is the cluster Messier 4 (also known as NGC 6121) ...
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Science 2012-09-05

Are restrictions to scientific research costing lives?

London, UK (05 September 2012) – In 'Censors on Campus', Index on Censorship asks whether lives might be saved by making vital research freely available. As malaria expert Bart Knols argues, in some parts of Asia and Africa the fight against malaria is severely hampered because doctors and researchers are denied full access to the 3,000 articles published on the disease each year. At the same time, scientists living and working in developing countries are prevented from becoming global players in the public health arena. In this special issue looking at academic freedom ...
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Medicine 2012-09-05

Scientists dramatically reduce plaque-forming substances in mice with Alzheimer's disease

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Scientists have found that eliminating an enzyme from mice with symptoms of Alzheimer's disease leads to a 90 percent reduction in the compounds responsible for formation of the plaques linked to Alzheimer's disease. That is the most dramatic reduction in this compound reported to date in published research. The compounds are amyloid beta, or A-beta peptides; peptides are proteins, but are shorter in length. When A-beta peptides accumulate in excessive amounts in the brain, they can form plaques, which are a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease. "These ...
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Science 2012-09-05

London Olympics anti-doping labs set for first-of-a-kind repurposing

The United Kingdom is preparing to convert the London 2012 Olympics anti-doping center, which conducted more than 6,000 drug tests on athletes during the Olympic and Paralympic Games, into a facility that could help revolutionize 21st century health care. That new facility — the world's first national "phenome center" — is the topic of a story in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN). C&EN is the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. Alex Scott, C&EN senior editor in London, explains that a phenome ...
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Medicine 2012-09-05

Concern about plans to close unique Canadian environmental project

The Canadian government's plans to discontinue in 2013 a unique environmental research project that has yielded insights into water pollution, climate change and other topics for almost 40 years would be a "huge loss not only to science but to the scientific heritage of humanity." That's the focus of a viewpoint article in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology. J. G. Hering, D. L. Swackhamer and W. H. Schlesinger explain that the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) comprises 58 freshwater lakes and their watersheds in remote areas of the province of Ontario, where ...
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Science 2012-09-05

Galileo didn't invent thermometer that bears his name

The great Italian scientist Galileo may have been the first person to use a telescope to observe the heavens, helping spark the scientific revolution of the 16th century, but Galileo definitely did not invent the famous thermometer and captivating curiosity that bears his name. That's the message of an article in ACS' Journal of Chemical Education. Peter Loyson explains that a number of companies sell so-called "Galilean thermometers," sealed tubes of liquid in which glass spheres float and sink with changes in ambient temperature. Modern versions have morphed into elegant ...
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Science 2012-09-05

Powerful new explosive could replace today's state-of-the-art military explosive

Borrowing a technology used to improve the effectiveness of drugs, scientists are reporting discovery of a new explosive more powerful than the current state-of-the-art explosive used by the military, and just as safe for personnel to handle. Their report appears in ACS' journal Crystal Growth & Design. Adam J. Matzger and colleagues explain that a technique for engineering medicines and other materials, termed cocrystallization, is attracting attention as a way to make improved explosives, rocket propellants and fireworks. Most solid materials consist of crystals — with ...
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Why does Alzheimer's disease affect twice as many women as men?
Medicine 2012-09-05

Why does Alzheimer's disease affect twice as many women as men?

New Rochelle, NY, September 5, 2012—A group of experts has developed consensus recommendations for future research directions to determine why nearly two-thirds of Americans with Alzheimer's disease (AD) are women. The recommendations are published in a Roundtable discussion in Journal of Women's Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Women's Health website at http://www.liebertpub.com/jwh. An estimated 5.4 million Americans are affected by AD and related dementias, and that number will ...
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Engineering 2012-09-05

Prenatal exposure to pesticide additive linked with childhood cough

Children exposed in the womb to the widely used pesticide additive piperonyl butoxide (PBO) have heightened risk of noninfectious cough at ages 5 and 6, according to researchers at the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health (CCCEH) at the Mailman School of Public Health and of Columbia University Medical Center. The findings, which appear in the August 31 online edition of the journal Environment International, support the premise that the children's respiratory system is susceptible to damage from toxic exposures during the prenatal period. A common symptom, ...
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Adolescents in foster care require guidelines for safe social media use, MU expert says
Social Science 2012-09-05

Adolescents in foster care require guidelines for safe social media use, MU expert says

COLUMBIA, Mo. – About 73 percent of online American teens use social networking sites, such as Facebook, to share photos, interests and experiences with others, according to Pew Research Center. For youths in the foster care system, sharing information online presents additional safety and privacy issues. A University of Missouri researcher recommends that child welfare agencies develop policies to guide how adolescents in foster care use social media. Dale Fitch, an assistant professor in the MU School of Social Work, says agencies usually advocate restricting how youths ...
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Medicine 2012-09-05

Tumor suppressor genes vital to regulating blood precursor cells in fruit flies

UCLA stem cell scientists have shown that two common tumor suppressor genes, TSC and PTEN, are vital to regulating the stem cell-like precursor cells that create the blood supply in Drosophila, the common fruit fly. The researchers examined a signaling pathway called TOR that the cells use to gauge nutrition levels and stress, said study senior author Dr. Julian A. Martinez-Agosto, an assistant professor of human genetics and pediatrics and a researcher with the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA. "We wondered how an ...
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Environment 2012-09-05

Ecosystems cope with stress more effectively the greater the biodiversity

Higher average temperatures and increasing salt concentrations are stress factors that many ecosystems face today in the wake of climate change. However, do all ecosystems react to stress in the same way and what impact does stress have on ecosystem services, such as biomass production? Botanists and ecologists from the universities of Zurich and Göttingen demonstrate that a high level of biodiversity aids stress resistance. Higher number of species leads to greater stress resistance The scientists studied a total of 64 species of single-celled microalgae from the SAG ...
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Science 2012-09-05

Kessler Foundation releases preliminary research findings for Ekso in spinal cord injury

West Orange, NJ. September 5, 2012. Kessler Foundation has released preliminary research findings from its clinical study of the wearable robotic exoskeletal device, Ekso (Ekso Bionics). Gail Forrest, PhD, assistant director of Human Performance and Engineering Research, presented the Ekso research data on September 3, at the meeting of the Academy of Spinal Cord Injury Professionals at the Rio Suites in Las Vegas. Dr. Forrest directs mobility research at the Foundation, including activity-based locomotor therapy, functional electrical stimulation, and treadmill training ...
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Medicine 2012-09-05

Possible new therapy for the treatment of a common blood cancer

Research from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden shows that sorafenib, a drug used for advanced cancer of the kidneys and liver, could also be effective against multiple myeloma. The disease is one of the more common forms of blood cancer and is generally incurable. "Recently developed drugs, like bortezomib, have increased the survival rate for people with this serious and complex disease," says study leader Theocharis Panaretakis, docent of experimental oncology. "Having said this, the heterogeneity of the disease progression, the treatment response and the development ...
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Medicine 2012-09-05

Brainy beverage: Study reveals how green tea boosts brain cell production to aid memory

It has long been believed that drinking green tea is good for the memory. Now researchers have discovered how the chemical properties of China's favorite drink affect the generation of brain cells, providing benefits for memory and spatial learning. The research is published in Molecular Nutrition & Food Research. "Green tea is a popular beverage across the world," said Professor Yun Bai from the Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China. "There has been plenty of scientific attention on its use in helping prevent cardiovascular diseases, but now there is emerging ...
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Can videogaming benefit young people with autism spectrum disorder?
Physics 2012-09-05

Can videogaming benefit young people with autism spectrum disorder?

New Rochelle, NY, September 5, 2012—According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 1 in 88 children in the U.S. has autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a broad group of neurodevelopmental disorders. Children and adolescents with ASD are typically fascinated by screen-based technology such as videogames and these can be used for educational and treatment purposes as described in an insightful Roundtable Discussion published in Games for Health Journal: Research Development, and Clinical Applications, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.. ...
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Trout will become extinct in the Iberian Peninsula in less than 100 years
Science 2012-09-05

Trout will become extinct in the Iberian Peninsula in less than 100 years

Climate change, pollution, the extraction of water for irrigation and overfishing all threaten the survival of the common trout. This fish is very sensitive to changes in its environment and, according to the Spanish study, its habitat will have reduced by half by the year 2040 and will have completely disappeared from Iberian rivers by 2100, so its population will become extinct. Global warming is threatening the existence of many fish species, especially those in the salmonid family, which are sensitive to temperature changes as they require clear and fresh water to ...
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Medicine 2012-09-05

Infections in rheumatoid arthritis patients: Mayo Clinic study finds way to pinpoint risk

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Rheumatoid arthritis alone is painful and disabling, but it also puts patients at higher risk of death. The greater susceptibility to infections that accompanies the autoimmune disorder is one reason. Assessing the danger of infection a particular patient faces so it can be addressed can prove challenging for physicians. A Mayo Clinic study finds that a risk score can be developed to predict a patient's chances of having serious infections. The score uses information about how rheumatoid arthritis is affecting a patient, plus factors including age, corticosteroid ...
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