More than 32 million people in the United States have autoantibodies, which are proteins made by the immune system that target the body's tissues and define a condition known as autoimmunity, a study shows. The first nationally representative sample looking at the prevalence of the most common type of autoantibody, known as antinuclear antibodies (ANA), found that the frequency of ANA is highest among women, older individuals, and African-Americans. The study was conducted by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the National Institutes ...

Online voting has now begun for the 2012 Perspective Magazine Awards Program, sponsored by Holiday Systems International, and shared ownership industry professionals around the world are flocking to the magazine's website ( http://perspectivemagazine.com/awards/ ) to support their companies and clients in their bid to win one of the coveted global awards. Unique to the timeshare and fractional ownership industry, Perspective Magazine's awards program offers a combination of regional and global awards that coincide with its own five regional titles (North America, Latin ...

For the first time, a superconducting current limiter based on YBCO strip conductors has now been installed at a power plant. At the Boxberg power plant of Vattenfall, the current limiter protects the grid for own consumption that is designed for 12 000 volts and 800 amperes against damage due to short circuits and voltage peaks. The new technology co-developed by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and made by Nexans SuperConductors enhances the intrinsic safety of the grid and may help reduce the investment costs of plants. "For a long time, high-temperature superconductors ...

Solar Innovations, Inc., a custom manufacturer of residential and commercial folding, stacking, and sliding glass doors and windows, glazed structures, and skylights, announced today that it will begin offering innovative residential and commercial glazing systems enhanced with Dynamic Glass from Soladigm. The new product offering, which is projected to be available Spring 2012, will integrate Soladigm Dynamic Glass to allow building occupants to control the tint of the window on-demand, providing unprecedented control of the light and heat that enters a building. "Soladigm's ...

As tissue slides are more routinely digitized to aid interpretation, a software program whose design was led by the University of Michigan Health System is proving its utility. In a new study, a program known as Spatially Invariant Vector Quantization (SIVQ) was able to separate malignancy from background tissue in digital slides of micropapillary urothelial carcinoma, a type of bladder cancer whose features can vary widely from case to case and that presents diagnostic challenges even for experts. The findings by U-M and Rutgers University researchers were published ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – When organizational crises occur, such as plane crashes or automobile recalls, public relations practitioners develop strategies for substantive action and effective communication. Now, University of Missouri researchers have found that the way in which news coverage of a crisis is framed affects the public's emotional response toward the company involved. Glen Cameron, the Maxine Wilson Gregory Chair in Journalism Research and professor of strategic communication at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, along with Hyo Kim of Nanyang Technological ...

Slow Wine, an English guide to Italian wines by Slow Food Italy, is almost here with launch events just around the corner on January 30, 2012 and February 2, 2012 in New York and Chicago, respectively. The guide and its producers will be the focus of events for the trade during the day and then for consumers in the evening. A complimentary copy of the guide will be included in the entry ticket for the evening event. In New York, [Metropolitan Pavilion at 125 West 18th Street] 140 wines from 68 selected producers and 14 Italian regions will be available for tasting. A press ...

New maps produced by the Lyman Alpha Mapping Project aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter reveal features at the Moon's northern and southern poles in regions that lie in perpetual darkness. LAMP, developed by Southwest Research Institute, uses a novel method to peer into these so-called permanently shadowed regions (PSRs), making visible the invisible. LAMP's principal investigator is Dr. Alan Stern, associate vice president of the SwRI Space Science and Engineering Division. The LAMP maps show that many PSRs are darker at far-ultraviolet wavelengths and redder ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (January 13, 2012) – The blood-brain barrier is essential for maintaining the brain's stable environment—preventing entry of harmful viruses and bacteria and isolating the brain's specific hormonal and neurotransmitter activity from that in the rest of the body. In addition to nerve cells, the brain contains glia cells that support and protect the neurons. In the fruit fly, the blood-brain boundary is made by glia joined into an envelope sealed around the nerve cells. As the brain rapidly expands during development, the glial envelope must grow correspondingly ...

Don't be fooled by the company name, Golf Range Netting caters to more than just the sport of golf! With client needs ranging from tennis courts to baseball and soccer fields, there's no project too large or too complicated for Golf Range Netting to tackle. With a portfolio that boasts accomplishments throughout the nation including the tallest sports netting in the United States and projects for major league baseball teams such as the Boston Red Sox, it's clear that Golf Range Netting is well-equipped to provide for any sports netting or lighting complexity. After ...

ATP is the major energy source for most organisms and ATPases are the machines, which utilize this fuel, for example to move muscles or cargo in our body. The very abundant chaperone protein Hsp90 has such an ATPase in each of its two monomers. During the last years experiments had suggested that the movement and conformational changes of ATPase proteins are in general strictly linked to ATP binding and hydrolysis (i.e. fuel consumption). To probe this theory Thorsten Hugel, Professor at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) and member of the Nanosystems Initiative ...

Digisonics, the #1 KLAS rated Cardiology PACS and Structured Reporting vendor for four consecutive years, announced that support contract renewals exceeded 90% once again in 2011. This marks the third consecutive year that support contract renewals have exceeded 90%, a testament to customer confidence in the quality of Digisonics support services. Digisonics' focus on providing best-of-class image management and structured reporting systems combined with commitment to excellence in customer support services has led to consistent recognition by independent research groups ...

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- A Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine study includes some unexpected findings about the immune systems of smoke-inhalation patients. Contrary to expectations, patients who died from their injuries had lower inflammatory responses in their lungs than patients who survived. "Perhaps a better understanding of this early pulmonary immune dysfunction will allow for therapies that further improve outcomes in burn care," researchers reported. The study is published in the January/February issue of the Journal of Burn Care & Research. First ...

Confidence in the Long Island economy is up compared to the national economy according to the 18th Annual Economic Survey and Opinion Poll conducted by Albrecht, Viggiano, Zureck & Company, P.C. (AVZ) in partnership with Long Island Business News and the Townsend School of Business at Dowling College. Nearly half of the survey respondents indicated that revenue had increased. A panel of Long Island business leaders will discuss the survey findings as HIA-LI, the recognized voice for business on Long Island, hosts the Long Island Economic Summit, Thursday, January 26, ...

"The overactive bladder syndrome has become an accepted way to simplify a complex array of symptoms and leads people to believe that an overactive bladder is an independent disease in itself. However, the truth is not as simple as this, as there are usually several factors at work explaining the symptoms. This is also one of the reasons why so called overactive bladder medications often do not bring the hoped result," says Kari Tikkinen, MD, PhD, from the HUCS Department of Urology. The article on overactive bladder syndrome, which was co-written by Tikkinen, who currently ...

Are you someone who easily recognises everyone you've ever met? Or maybe you struggle, even with familiar faces? It is already known that we are better at recognising faces from our own race but researchers have only recently questioned how we assimilate the information we use to recognise people. New research by the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus has shown that when it comes to recognising people the Malaysian Chinese have adapted their facial recognition techniques to cope with living in a multicultural environment. The study 'You Look Familiar: How Malaysian ...

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- A study about how wearing contact lenses affects glaucoma measurements has been named the top presentation at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine's annual St. Albert's Day research symposium. First author of the study is Marie Brenner, a fourth-year student at Stritch School of Medicine. Brenner and colleagues studied the effects of contact lens wear on retinal nerve fiber layer measurements, which ophthalmologists use to diagnose and manage glaucoma. The researchers found that in patients with lower refractive errors, better quality ...

The following highlights summarize research papers that have been recently published in Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans (JGR-C), Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets (JGR-E), Journal of Geophysical Research- Biogeosciences (JGR-G), and Geophysical Research Letters (GRL). In this release: Variability of North Atlantic heat transport observed from instrument data Methane exceeds nitrous oxide in rivers' contribution to warming Waste recycling primary source of energy in deep ocean Record Arctic ozone depletion could occur again Traveling supraglacial ...

Affiliate Boosters will be giving away GBP1,000 in cold hard cash at the London Affiliate Conference 2012. All affiliates attending the LAC are eligible to win. There will be 2 draws with a GBP500 prize each and to be in for a chance of winning. Affiliates can enter by dropping off a business card at the Affiliate Boosters booth, stand 115 and 116 at some point throughout the 2 days. The two drawings will take place at 15:45 on Friday, 27th of January, and at 16:15 on Saturday, 28th of January at the Affiliate Boosters stand. Head of Affiliate Boosters, Lawrence ...

The University of Arizona's Catalina Sky Survey keeps a watchful eye on asteroids that might cross the Earth's path. A byproduct of that effort is the largest database compiling the brightnesses of 200 million objects in the universe, including supernovae and stars torn up by super-massive black holes. The night sky is filled with objects such as asteroids that dash across the sky and others – such as exploding stars and variable stars – that flash, dim, and brighten. Studying such phenomena can help astronomers better understand the evolution of stars, massive black ...

Devoted to making sure the Israel car rental experience is a positive one, Avis Israel has recently provided an option to rent an iPad 2 with unlimited Wi-Fi connectivity and included GPS for $16 a day to all rental car customers. Soon to be available throughout Israel, the new service is immediately available at the following central branches: Ben Gurion Airport, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The iPad 2 is a tablet computer designed, developed and marketed by Apple. It serves primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, ...

A key protein potentially involved in regulating breast cancer progression has been identified by researchers at Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y. Led by professor Costel Darie, the team worked to identify the binding partner of Tumor Differentiating Factor (TDF), a pituitary hormone that had previously been shown to reduce cancer progression in breast cancer cells. Earlier studies had shown that breast cancer cells treated with TDF lost their cancerous characteristics and began acting like normal mammary cells, suggesting that TDF had tumor-suppressing capabilities. ...

During a marketing presentation in early 2011, an attendee asked Dr. Joe Webb, "Does a plumber need a Web site?" This question inspired an unconventional new business book, written with "co-conspirator" Richard Romano, about a handful of interesting and motivated characters facing small-business sales and marketing challenges. A year and a half's worth of conversations with graphic communications professionals and small business owners across the country and around the world answered the question, and led to the book's title "Does a Plumber Need ...

PORTLAND, Ore. -- A constellation of defective proteins suspected in causing a malfunction in the body's ability to repair its own DNA could be the link scientists need to prove a new class of drugs will be effective in treating a broad range of ovarian cancer patients, an Oregon Health & Science University Knight Cancer Institute study found. These research results, published this week in PLoS ONE, have prompted additional exploration into whether the patient population included in clinical trials for drugs that target the enzyme poly ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) should ...

MBL, WOODS HOLE, MA -- Just like people, some proteins have characteristic ways of "walking," which (also like human gaits) are not so easy to describe. But now scientists have discovered the unique "drunken sailor" gait of dynein, a protein that is critical for the function of every cell in the body and whose malfunction has been associated with neurodegenerative disorders such as Lou Gehrig's disease and Parkinson's disease. The research, which was led by Samara Reck-Peterson of Harvard Medical School and partially conducted in the MBL Physiology Course, received advance ...