An online slots player known as 'CleaningLady' has cleaned up at Slotastic casino after an incredible winning streak. The other night, she deposited $65 and before the evening was over walked away with nearly a quarter of a million dollars. A regular player at Slotastic for some time now, Susan S. is an assistant manager at a deli. After she played her initial deposit up to $6000 she requested a withdrawal. "At first I thought I should quit while I was ahead," said Susan. "But somehow it just seemed crazy to stop when I was feeling so lucky!" She ...

Coming back to California after more than three years in the Chicago area, Hanh and Sergio Gonzalez had a detailed wish list for their new digs--including finding a place where they could happily stay put. That place is LivingSmart Homes Fair Oaks Ranch in the Santa Clarita Valley. The well being of their three children was paramount in their decision-making. "It meant a lot to find a California Distinguished School right here in the community for our 6-year old daughter," said Sergio. "College of the Canyons is a quality community college for our 18-year ...

Private investment and financing firm Sapinda has appointed an advisory board of German and international personalities to provide the company with consulting assistance in strategic questions and with all of its business activities. Sapinda Holding B.V. - established by German businessman Lars Windhorst and Robert Hersov of South Africa - is the parent company of the Sapinda Group, with locations in Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Johannesburg, Hong Kong, Seoul and Moscow. The advisory board is chaired by Dr. Hubertus von Grunberg (Chairman ABB Ltd., Zurich, and member of ...

Strategic Five Marketing has earned the respect of their clients by delivering results. The volume of new customer acquisition and the superior service delivered has been possible due to their positive work environment. Corporate Culture in business is proving more important as many businesses fight to stand out from their competitors. Creating and defining a culture for success, based on collective ethics, strong values and superior service have given Strategic Five Marketing an edge which differentiates them from other businesses in the sales and marketing field. Everyone ...

Blue Steel Acquisitions reveal the event is designed to give aspiring entrepreneurs insight into leadership and development and advice for succeeding in business today. Every quarter a selection of top sales and marketing professionals and business owners from Ireland are chosen to talk at the seminar. By bringing all the best performers in the Sales and Marketing Industry together, prospective entrepreneurs are given an opportunity to learn from the best and gain valuable advice to help them further their careers. Topics covered during the seminar included Tips on ...

Only when man understands the true nature of peace will there be movement toward peace. Peace can only be understood when we understand the true nature of wisdom as peace is an attribute of wisdom. As wisdom is selflessness; peace is selflessness. Peace is a fragrance of the pure self. Peace is an innate property of the pure self. Only when both adversaries have a real transformation not just in attitude toward each other and also toward their own outlook on life will there be real peace. It is not for nothing that Jesus said that if someone hits you on one cheek offer ...

While diamonds may be a girl's best friend, they're also well-loved by scientists working to enhance the performance of electronic devices. Two new studies performed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory have revealed a new pathway for materials scientists to use previously unexplored properties of nanocrystalline-diamond thin films. While the properties of diamond thin films are relatively well-understood, the new discovery could dramatically improve the performance of certain types of integrated circuits by reducing their "thermal budget." ...

"Bows and flows of angel hair, and ice cream castles in the air;" we've looked at clouds that way. But the interface between clouds and clear air isn't as well-defined as these imaginative shapes might lead us to believe. Detecting that hazy line can help scientists to better understand the processes that lead to cloud formation, which is important for good weather forecasts and climate modeling. Now atmospheric scientists from the University of Reading in the United Kingdom have designed a sunlight-measuring tool that uses the natural swinging and spinning of a rising ...

Using an experimental apparatus reminiscent of a classic Frankenstein movie, French researchers have coaxed laboratory-generated lightning into striking the same place, not just twice, but over and over. This feat of electrical reorientation used femtosecond (one quadrillionth of a second) pulses of laser light to create a virtual lightning rod out of a column of ionized gas. This is the first time that these laser-induced atmospheric filaments were able to redirect an electrical discharge away from its intended target and guide it to a normally less-attractive electrode. ...

More than one hundred years after the pioneering inventor Nikola Tesla first became fascinated with wireless energy transfer, the spread of mobile electronic devices has sparked renewed interest in the ability to power up without plugging in. Now researchers from Duke University in Durham, N.C., and the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories in Cambridge, Mass., have proposed a way to enhance the efficiency of wireless power transfer systems by incorporating a lens made from a new class of artificial materials. When a changing electric current flows through a wire ...

Boulder, Colo., USA - Highlights include several studies based in the U.S. Sierra Nevada, including a description of "magma fingers" and the formation of granite in the high Sierra crest near Yosemite National Park. Other studies investigate knickzones in the South Fork of the Eel River, California; the Rodgers Creek-Maacama fault system in the northern California Coast Ranges and its relation to the San Andreas fault; and the frequency and severity of destructive debris flows in the Pacific Northwest. Representatives of the media may obtain complimentary copies of Geosphere ...

An analysis of the UK Obstetric Surveillance System published in this week's PLoS Medicine shows that uterine rupture—a serious complication of pregnancy in which the wall of the uterus (womb) tears during pregnancy or early labour—is rare but for women who have previously had a caesarean section, the risk of rupture increases with the number of previous caesarean deliveries, a short interval since the last caesarean section, and with induced labour. Kathryn Fitzpatrick and colleagues from the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit based at the University of Oxford in the ...

A team of scientists has found a novel road-block in the pain pathway, which could be used to treat chronic pain. Their results are published March 13 in the online, open-access journal PLoS Biology. Pain is an important physiological function that protects our bodies from harm. Pain-sensing nerves transduce harmful stimuli into electrical signals and transmit this information to the brain via the spinal cord. However, when these nerves get activated persistently, such as after injury or inflammation, the information flow into the spinal cord is remarkably amplified. ...

A study by a group of Australian researchers—the Birth After Caesarean Study Group— published in this week's PLoS Medicine, suggests that in women who had a previous caesarean section, delivering their next baby by a planned repeat caesarean section was linked to better health outcomes for the mother during her stay in hospital and also better outcomes for her baby compared to having a vaginal birth. The researchers, led by Caroline Crowther from the Australian Research Centre for Health of Women and Babies based at the University of Adelaide, recruited 2345 suitable ...

There are concerns that the revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM—an internationally recognised classification of mental disorders produced by the American Psychiatric Association), scheduled for publication in May 2013, has been unduly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry despite the APA's instigating a policy of disclosing all financial conflicts of interest. Writing in this week's PLoS Medicine, Lisa Cosgrove from Harvard University and the University of Massachusetts and Sheldon Krimsky from Tufts University in Boston, USA state that ...

In the second paper in a three-part series on health systems guidance, John Lavis of McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada and colleagues explore the challenge of linking guidance development and policy development at global and national levels. Writing in this week's PLoS Medicine, the authors call for a division of labour between global guidance developers, global policy developers, national guidance developers, and national policy developers, and argue that a panel charged with developing health systems guidance at the global level could best add value by ensuring that ...

VIDEO: Kurt Brunden, Ph.D., Director of Drug Discovery at Penn's Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research, explains a new Journal of Neuroscience study which shows that the compound epothilone D is effective... Click here for more information. PHILADELPHIA – A study published this week in the Journal of Neuroscience shows that the compound epothilone D (EpoD) is effective in preventing further neurological damage and improving cognitive performance in a mouse model of ...

CHICAGO – Among hospitals in Ontario, Canada, those with higher levels of spending, which included higher intensity nursing and greater use of specialists and procedures, had an associated lower rate of deaths, hospital readmissions, and better quality of care for severely ill hospitalized patients, according to a study in the March 14 issue of JAMA. Studies have investigated whether higher health care spending produces better patient outcomes and higher quality of care, with conflicting evidence in the United States and other countries. "The extent to which better spending ...

CHICAGO – Certain mutations of the gene ATRX were associated with age at diagnosis in children and young adults with advanced-stage neuroblastoma, a cancer that grows in parts of the nervous system, according to a study in the March 14 issue of JAMA. Neuroblastoma is the most common extracranial (outside the cranium) solid tumor of childhood and accounts for 15 percent of all cancer-related deaths in children. "Half of the patients (50 percent) with neuroblastoma present with metastatic disease; with current treatment approaches, the age at diagnosis has proven to be ...

CHICAGO – In a small, preliminary trial, patients with infected necrotizing pancreatitis (severe form of the disease involving devitalized pancreatic tissue) who received a less-invasive procedure, endoscopic transgastric necrosectomy (removal of the pancreatic tissue), had an associated lower risk of major complications and death compared to patients who had surgical necrosectomy, according to a study in the March 14 issue of JAMA. "Acute pancreatitis is a common and potentially lethal disorder. In the United States alone, more than 50,000 patients are admitted with ...

CHICAGO – In the E coli outbreak in Germany in May 2011, treatment with azithromycin was associated with a lower frequency of long-term carriage of the bacteria and shorter duration of shedding of the bacteria in stool specimens, according to a study in the March 14 issue of JAMA. "Since May 2011, a large outbreak of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) has caused 3,816 documented infections in Germany, including 845 confirmed cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome [HUS; a condition characterized by the breakup of red blood cells and kidney failure]," the authors ...

Washington, DC — A compound that previously progressed to Phase II clinical trials for cancer treatment slows neurological damage and improves brain function in an animal model of Alzheimer's disease, according to a study in the March 14 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings suggest the drug epothilone D (EpoD) may one day prove useful for treating people with early-stage Alzheimer's disease. Nerve cells in people with Alzheimer's disease contain tangles — distorted clumps made up of the protein tau. Under normal circumstances, tau helps stabilize structures ...

A nightly breathing treatment may do more than help people with obstructive sleep apnea get a good night's rest — it may also help prevent heart failure. In a study published in Circulation: Heart Failure, a journal of the American Heart Association, researchers in the U.K. discovered that moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) can cause changes in the heart's shape and function, similar to the effects of hypertension. These changes include increased mass, thickening of the heart wall and reduced pumping ability. But, six months after continuous positive airway ...

Mobile phones could play a valuable role in helping HIV patients to take their medication every day, according to a new Cochrane Systematic Review. The researchers found that patients were less likely to miss doses if they were sent weekly mobile phone text message reminders. Text messaging is increasingly being used as a means of support in health care, including to help promote attendance at clinics and hospitals, and to increase contact between patients and care workers. There is also some evidence that text messaging helps tuberculosis patients to take their daily ...

Survival rates for cancer patients may be improved by treatment in specialised cancer centres, according to Cochrane researchers. In a review of recent studies, they found that women diagnosed with gynaecological cancer lived longer when treated in specialist compared to non-specialist units. In the past, cancer patients were often treated by non-specialist surgeons and hospitals. This is changing and in developed countries, most cancer care is now organised into networks of specialised centres, with on-site experts and specialised nursing staff. This centralised approach, ...