Sometimes only a child has the strength to face reality. In Mary and the Invisible Scaffolding, the new novel by author David Michael Conner, eight-year-old Mary's life in Cactus, Nevada comes to an abrupt end when her mother tears her from bed in the middle of the night and relocates them to lush, strange New Orleans. Bewildered, Mary must adapt to a new world with only her memories to guide her. "Initially, Mary was a short story inspired by the Tori Amos song 'Marys of the Sea (Les Saintes Maries de la Mer),'" said Conner. The Amos song is about the theory ...

Some Norwegian women with birth anxiety face additional trauma in their meeting with the country's health service, according to research carried out in Stavanger. The Cesarean section rate is rising in most developed countries and many pregnant women around the world suffer from a fear of childbirth. In Norway, birth anxiety affects one in five pregnant women and can prompt some to demand a Caesarean delivery. But the question is how afraid a woman must be before her wishes are heard. Unlike many other countries, Norway does not give women an automatic right to a Caesarean ...

Researchers from Aarhus University have now located the place in the human body where the earliest virus alert signal triggers the human immune system. They have also discovered a new alarm signal, which is activated at the very first sign of a virus attack. The groundbreaking finding has just been published in the highly esteemed scientific journal Nature Immunology. "It may turn out that patients suffering from frequent infections actually have problems with activating the mechanism that we have now detected," says Søren Riis Paludan, professor of immunology and virology ...

After 10 years of archaeological investigations, researchers have concluded that Stonehenge was built as a monument to unify the peoples of Britain, after a long period of conflict and regional difference between eastern and western Britain. Its stones are thought to have symbolized the ancestors of different groups of earliest farming communities in Britain, with some stones coming from southern England and others from west Wales. The teams, from the universities of Sheffield, Manchester, Southampton, Bournemouth and University College London, all working on the Stonehenge ...

Scientists at the University of Copenhagen have previously documented that substances from the South African plant species Crinum and Cyrtanthus – akin to snowdrops and daffodils – have an effect on the mechanisms in the brain that are involved in depression. This research has now yielded further results, since a team based at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences has recently shown how several South African daffodils contain plant compounds whose characteristics enable them to negotiate the defensive blood-brain barrier that is a key challenge in all new drug development. "Several ...

Technicians from Madrid City Council and a team of Pole and Spanish researchers have analysed the density and intensity of traffic on Madrid's M30 motorway (Spain) throughout the day. By applying mathematical algorithms, they have verified that drivers should pay more attention to the road between 6pm and 8pm to avoid accidents. Detection devices installed by the Department of Traffic Technologies of Madrid City Council on the M30 motorway and its access roads were used to conduct a scientific study. Researchers from SICE, the traffic management company in charge of ...

The Marketing Store Worldwide, one of the world's largest privately held global brand activation agencies, announced today that Michael Edelstein has joined the agency as vice president, director of brand partnerships. Edelstein joins The Marketing Store from Learning Curve Brands, Inc where he was vice president, Preschool division. Edelstein will be based at The Marketing Store's Chicago office where he brings his licensing and partnership expertise to brand activations that The Marketing Store produces for its leading CPG (consumer packaged goods) and QSR (quick ...

Data from a nationally representative sample of 5,404 community-dwelling Canadians ages 50 and older at baseline (1994/1995) was used to estimate the effects of alcohol drinking patterns on quality of life when subjects were aged =50 years and after a follow-up period. Health-related quality of life was assessed with the Health Utilities Index Mark 3 (HUI3). The authors report that most participants showed stable alcohol-consumption patterns over 6 years. Detailed information was available on the participants alcohol consumption. Moderate drinkers were defined as ...

iResumed.com announces the launch of their online web-site, providing job-seekers the ability to link a video to their resumes, and employers with the ability to screen job candidates more effectively. The Video resume site provides a bridge between the traditional resume of the past and the video resume of the future by making them both work together. "Video resumes have received a lot of consideration but have provided little value to the employer," explains Mike Mead, President, and Founder of iResumed.com. "Besides seeing what someone looks like and ...

According to the Canadian Diabetes Association, more than nine million Canadians have diabetes or prediabetes. By 2020, it's estimated that diabetes will cost the Canadian healthcare system $16.9 billion a year. "Although clinicians, managers and policy makers expend significant time and resources attempting to optimize care for patients with diabetes, the optimum approach to improving diabetes care and outcomes remains uncertain," Dr. Tricco said. Her review of clinical trials found: For patients with high levels of HbA1c – the average blood sugar level over ...

HOUSTON - Once considered merely a passive link between proteins that matter, Grb2 - pronounced "grab2" - actually lives up to its nickname with its controlling grip on an important cell signaling pathway, scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center report in the June 22 issue of Cell. "Grb2 is a switch that controls normal signaling through the fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR)," said the paper's senior author, John Ladbury, Ph.D., professor in MD Anderson's Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. "Perhaps the best way to think ...

After taking a year off from blogging for work and family reasons, former magazine editor Aun Koh has re-launched his ultra-popular food and gourmet-travel blog, Chubby Hubby (www.chubbyhubby.net). The blog has a worldwide audience, prior to Koh's hiatus, up to 90,000 unique visitors and over 3 million hits per month. Chubby Hubby returns with a complete redesign and now boasts a striking visual aesthetic that fluidly adapts to all devices. This makes browsing through Chubby Hubby equally easy and pleasurable, no matter if one's using a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone. ...

Researchers from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich have identified an enzyme that is involved in a modification pathway that is essential for bacterial pathogenicity. Because it shows no similarity to other known proteins, it may be an ideal target for development of novel antimicrobial drugs. Studies on a number of pathogenic bacteria have shown that these strains become pathogenic only when an enzyme called elongation factor P (EF-P) is chemically modified on a conserved lysine residue. EF-P is a universally conserved translation factor, which is involved ...

The Rio+20 summit on promoting jobs, clean energy and a more sustainable use of our planet's resources closed today after three days of talks. During the summit, the role of Earth observation in sustainable development was highlighted. In 1992, a blueprint to rethink economic growth, advance social equity and ensure environmental protection was adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Now, 20 years later, the Rio+20 Summit brought participants from governments, the private sector, non-govermental organisations and other stakeholders once again to Brazil ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- A multidisciplinary team of researchers at MIT and in Spain has found a new mathematical approach to simulating the electronic behavior of noncrystalline materials, which may eventually play an important part in new devices including solar cells, organic LED lights and printable, flexible electronic circuits. The new method uses a mathematical technique that has not previously been applied in physics or chemistry. Even though the method uses approximations rather than exact solutions, the resulting predictions turn out to match the actual electronic ...

Whether you're a mummy-to-be who is loving the latest maternity dresses, or a proud mum who likes to style up the little ones, simply style an outfit from this season's Next's maternity or childrenswear ranges - to value of GBP500 and write an accompanying blog post telling Next why these are your fashion favourites. The Next's Mummy Stylist competition allows you to show off your creative flair with moodboards, links, pictures and social platforms to tell everyone about why your style choices shine above the rest. Be as original and imaginative as you like; perhaps ...

First published over 10 years ago, this novel was widely acclaimed and won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2002. On the surface it is a fantasy adventure tale of a young man surviving more than seven months adrift in the Pacific, in the company of a 450-pound Bengal tiger. To be fair, I should confess that I am not generally a big fan of 'castaway' novels; despite this, I found Life of Pi so intriguing that I read it one sitting, even though I was guilty of skimming a little over some of Pi's adventures while adrift in the ocean. Without wishing to give away too ...

A business card is tangible, something that can be handled and felt, which in this day and age of 'virtual' everything is something that people like. A great business card can make a lasting impression, especially if it's visually striking or unique in some way. In fact, a well-designed business card that uses high-quality materials can be as good at making sales as any brochure or sales pitch, and sometimes better. Bce-online.com is a high-quality printing service that specializes in business cards that are unique, high quality and a cut above the rest. They use the ...

Researchers from the University of Notre Dame have engineered nanoparticles that show great promise for the treatment of multiple myeloma (MM), an incurable cancer of the plasma cells in bone marrow. One of the difficulties doctors face in treating MM comes from the fact that cancer cells of this type start to develop resistance to the leading chemotherapeutic treatment, doxorubicin, when they adhere to tissue in bone marrow. "The nanoparticles we have designed accomplish many things at once," says Başar Bilgiçer, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular ...

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (06/15/2012) – University of Minnesota Medical School researchers have collaborated with the School of Public Health and discovered an enzyme that, when found at high levels and alongside low levels of HDL (good cholesterol), can dramatically reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. The enzyme – glutathione peroxidase, or GPx3 – is a natural antioxidant that helps protect organisms from oxidant injury and helps the body naturally repair itself. Researchers have found that patients with high levels of good cholesterol, the GPx3 enzyme does not make ...

RICHLAND, Wash. -- The design of a nature-inspired material that can make energy-storing hydrogen gas has gone holistic. Usually, tweaking the design of this particular catalyst -- a work in progress for cheaper, better fuel cells -- results in either faster or more energy efficient production but not both. Now, researchers have found a condition that creates hydrogen faster without a loss in efficiency. And, holistically, it requires the entire system -- the hydrogen-producing catalyst and the liquid environment in which it works -- to overcome the speed-efficiency ...

DENVER – Research presented in the July 2012 issue of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer's (IASLC) Journal of Thoracic Oncology, concluded that patients with limited large cell neuroendocrine tumors or with limited stage small-cell lung cancer who were treated with perioperative chemotherapy and surgery had better overall survival outcomes than patients treated with surgery alone. Small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) represents about 15 percent of lung cancers annually. Of those, about 30 percent of patients have limited disease SCLC. Whereas large-cell ...

DENVER – Until recently, many elderly patients with stage I non-small cell lung cancer were left untreated because treatment may not improve their quality of life. However, stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) has become one of the standards of treatment for these patients. The outpatient treatment given over a two-week period allows frail patients to undergo the treatment. Researchers wanted to know if this treatment maintained the same health-related qualify of life levels as patients receiving surgery. The researchers received questionnaires from 382 patients ...

Richmond, Va. (June 15, 2012) – A multi-institutional research study has uncovered a new mechanism that may lead to unique treatments for lung cancer, one of the leading causes of death worldwide. The study recently published in the journal Genes & Development was a collaboration between Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Massey Cancer Center and the VCU Institute of Molecular Medicine, the University of California, San Diego, the University of Minnesota and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The scientists discovered ...

Superhydrophobicity is one of most important interfacial properties between solids and liquids. SHI Yanlong and his group from the College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Key laboratory of Hexi Corridor Resources Utilization of Gansu Universities, Hexi University investigated the superhydrophobicity of the water boatman's hind wings. The study showed that superhydrophobicity plays a crucial role in the water boatman's swimming, balance, and breathing in water, and in its escape ability from water area under unfavorable conditions. Their work, entitled "Investigation ...