WALNUT CREEK, Calif.— It's not quite Christmas, but the DNA sequence of a small plant that resembles the seasonal conifers is providing biofuels researchers with information that could influence the development of candidate biofuel feedstock plants and offering botanists long-awaited insights into plant evolution. "When you burn coal, you're burning Selaginella's ancestors," said Purdue University botanist Jody Banks, who originally proposed that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI) sequence the plant more commonly known as spikemoss as part ...

San Diego, CA, May 5, 2011 – A study published in the June 2011 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine examined the association between patient–physician gender concordance and weight-related counseling in obese individuals. Investigators from the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University found that obese male patients seeing male physicians had higher odds of receiving weight-related counseling than obese women seeing a female physician. Commenting on the study, Octavia Pickett-Blakely, MD, MHS, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, ...

Philadelphia, PA, May 6, 2011 – According to the United States Department of Agriculture, Americans are spending about half their food budget in restaurants. As it is widely known, food prepared away from home, as compared to food prepared at home, is often higher in calories, saturated fat, and sodium. With children's dietary quality at risk, a study in the May/June 2011 issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior explores the influence of parental styles and work schedules on children's use of and time spent in fast-food and full-service restaurants. Investigators ...

Clinicians, researchers and scientists from around the world will gather for Digestive Disease Week® (DDW) 2011, the largest and most prestigious gastroenterology meeting, from May 7-10, 2011, at McCormick Place, Chicago, IL. DDW, which is jointly sponsored by the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Institute, the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy and the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract, is the annual meeting of the AGA Institute. AGA researchers will present exciting, cutting-edge ...

El Niño and its partner La Niña, the warm and cold phases in the eastern half of the tropical Pacific, play havoc with climate worldwide. Predicting El Niño events more than several months ahead is now routine, but predicting how it will change in a warming world has been hampered by the short instrumental record. An international team of climate scientists has now shown that annually resolved tree-ring records from North America, particularly from the US Southwest, give a continuous representation of the intensity of El Niño events over the past 1100 years and can be used ...

Oregon's Complicated Drug Delivery Laws One of the most frequent complaints regarding Oregon State drug delivery charges is that the suspect never sold or delivered the drugs in question. "How can they charge me with delivery when I never sold anything?" The answer has to do with a tricky and dangerous quirk of Oregon's drug delivery laws. Oregon law defines "delivery" as the "actual", "constructive", or "attempted" transfer of a controlled substance from one person to another. Problems arise for clients who are charged ...

Complying With Federal Safety Regulations Does Not Excuse Car Manufacturers The United States Supreme Court recently issued an opinion that opens the door to personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits against car manufacturers under state law. The ruling against Mazda Motor of America came after the family of a woman killed in an motor vehicle accident involving a minivan sued Mazda in state court. The family claimed that Mazda was negligent in failing to install rear seat lap-and-shoulder seatbelts that could have prevented the woman's fatal injuries. Mazda argued ...

Latest insights into immunity to HIV could help to develop a vaccine to build antibodies' defences against the disease, a University of Melbourne, Australia study has found. By investigating the action of the human antibodies called ADCC, in people with HIV, researchers were able to identify that the virus evolves to evade or 'escape' the antibodies. Professor Stephen Kent of the University of Melbourne and one of the senior authors on the paper said ADCC antibodies have been strongly implicated in protection from HIV in several vaccine trials but their action was poorly ...

The presence of even a simple chemical reaction can delay or prevent the spreading of stored carbon dioxide in underground aquifers, new research from the University of Cambridge has revealed. The findings may have implications for carbon sequestration in saline aquifers – one of the many methods being explored to mitigate rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Depending on the strength of the reaction between dissolved CO2 and porous rock, the new research shows that distinct scenarios of CO2 transport may occur in deep saline rock formations. Jeanne Andres, a Schlumberger ...

For additional information please contact: Genevieve Maul, Office of Communications, University of Cambridge Tel: direct, +44 (0) 1223 765542, +44 (0) 1223 332300 Mob: +44 (0) 7774 017464 Email: Genevieve.maul@admin.cam.ac.uk Notes to editors: 1. The paper is entitled "Weak intermolecular interactions in an ionically bound molecular adsorbate: Cyclopentadientyl/Cu(111)" and will be published in Physical Review Letters on Friday, 06 May. 2. Authors of the work: - Surface, Microstructure and Fracture Group, Physics Department, Cambridge (http://www.phy.cam.ac.uk/research/smf/) Holly ...

The Effect of Bankruptcy on Credit Scores People who are mired in debt often dread the thought of filing for bankruptcy protection and the effect it will have on their credit scores. Many in this situation fear that they will never be able to obtain a loan, get a credit card or that they will be turned down for jobs, all because of a poor credit score. As a matter of course, bankruptcy can have a serious effect on your credit score. It can lower your score by nearly 240 points. How much it will drop will depend on the type of debts you have and your prior credit history. ...

Music producers have for decades had electronics tricks at their disposal for improving a recorded vocal performance. They can add a little reverb or echo to bolster a weak rendition, use effects such as phasing and delay to add color to the vocal, fix duff notes with auto-tuning or even reprogram a whole melody line in software. In recent years, voice synthesis for converting text to spoken word has improved considerably but combining that technology with auto-tuning capability allows computers to "sing". Software, such as Vocaloid, can successfully create lead vocals ...

In the first-of-its-kind analysis of Groupon's impact on a startup company, a new Rice University study found that the daily deal promotion was beneficial even though it had no material impact on the company's profits when unredeemed Groupons were not accounted for. When those unredeemed Groupons were factored in, the company had a substantial 30 percent increase in profits. Having run the Groupon promotion, the company – Houston-based startup Gourmet Prep Meals (GPM) – had greater exposure and earned revenues almost 140 percent higher than it would have earned had it ...

Florida Legislature Looks at Better Criminal Identification Procedures TV crime programs tend to suggest that every aspect of solving a crime lends itself to forensic science, as if CSI has been reduced to a magical formula. But in many criminal investigations, identification of the alleged perpetrator is still dependent on the recollections of eyewitnesses. And all too often, a false identification can lead to a prosecution of the wrong suspect in a homicide, sexual assault or theft case, all due to a convergence of unfortunate circumstances. Florida legislators ...

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – From a bucket of seawater, scientists have unlocked information that may lead to deeper understanding of organisms as different as coral reefs and human disease. By analyzing genomes of a tiny, single-celled marine animal, they have demonstrated a possible way to address diverse questions such as how diseased cells differ from neighboring healthy cells and what it is about some Antarctic algae that allows them to live in warming waters while other algae die out. Debashish Bhattacharya, professor of ecology, evolution and natural resources in Rutgers' ...

Newly released images from ESA's Mars Express show Nili Fossae, a system of deep fractures around the giant Isidis impact basin. Some of these incisions into the martian crust are up to 500 m deep and probably formed at the same time as the basin. Nili Fossae is a 'graben' system on Mars, northeast of the Syrtis Major volcanic province, on the northwestern edge of the giant Isidis impact basin. Graben refers to the lowered terrain between two parallel faults or fractures in the rocks that collapses when tectonic forces pull the area apart. The Nili Fossae system contains ...

Bard Avaulta Surgical Mesh Lawsuits Implantable medical devices from artificial hips to heart values have made it possible for people to have healthier, longer and more productive lives. There can be a dark side to these devices, however, as sometimes they are more harmful than helpful. For example, in October 2008, the FDA issued a warning regarding the potential danger of surgical meshes after receiving more than 1,000 adverse-event reports. Since the FDA warning, a number of women have filed product liability lawsuits against C.R. Bard, Inc. and other mesh manufacturers ...

Experts from medical and patient communities call on national policymakers in the Asia-Pacific region to take urgent action against preventable strokes that strike millions of people with atrial fibrillation (AF) each year Countries in the Asia-Pacific region carry a disproportionate share of the burden of stroke with millions of people affected; a burden that will grow as life expectancy rises1 AF, the most common, sustained abnormal heart rhythm, increases the risk of stroke five-fold and is responsible for 15-20% of all strokes, and for 20% of all ischaemic strokes ...

Options For Homeowners Facing Foreclosure If you have missed a payment on your mortgage or have received notice from your lender they are filing a foreclosure action, you still have some options. You may be able to save your house and prevent being saddled with unmanageable debt. Foreclosure A foreclosure is the legal process where a mortgage lender takes back a piece of property from the party to whom it loaned funds to originally. Foreclosure permits the lender to evict the occupier, resell the property and potentially assess a deficiency balance (the difference ...

The May issue of JAMIA, the top-ranked journal reporting on informatics in biomedical and health informatics, features new scientific research—in print and online—on healthcare's hottest HIT-related topics, written by prominent experts working in health and biomedicine. Editor-in chief Lucila Ocho-Machado bullets some of the rich content in the newly released, current issue: "A secure protocol for protecting the identity of providers when disclosing data for disease surveillance" (Editor's Choice, available free online) — Lead author Khaled El Emam of Children's Hospital ...

An international panel of experts from The Heart Rhythm Society and the European Heart Rhythm Association issued new guideline recommendations for all health care professionals about cardiovascular genetic testing at the Heart Rhythm Society's 32nd Annual Scientific Sessions. Silvia G. Priori, MD, PhD, a leader in the field of inherited cardiovascular diseases and director of the Cardiovascular Genetics Program at NYU Langone Medical Center, was co-lead author of the HRS/EHRA Expert Consensus Statement on the State of Genetic Testing for the Channelopathies and Cardiomyopathies. ...

Economy Not Recovering Fast Enough for Some Economists and other financial experts speak continually about signs of improvement in the US economy. With the overall number of bankruptcy and foreclosure filings showing moderate decreases nationally, some are saying this is an indication that the country is coming out of the recession. Others, however, are not so convinced, especially with the national unemployment rate hitting over 10 percent in February - the same percentage as one year ago. While foreclosure and bankruptcy rates are declining in North Carolina, the economy ...

Edmonton – Researchers with the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Alberta have discovered that some "protective" T-cells can kill neurons. This finding is significant because a specific type of T-cell therapy is being touted in the medical community as a potential treatment for MS and other autoimmune conditions. Dr. Fabrizio Giuliani and his post-doctoral fellow, Yohannes Haile, both from the Division of Neurology, collaborated on this research which was recently published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology, a peer-reviewed medical journal. "Using ...

A new strain of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria associated with exposure to livestock was recently discovered in one Iowa child care worker who reported no contact with livestock, according to University of Iowa researchers. The discovery was an unexpected finding in a study of Staphylococcus aureus in child day care facilities conducted by Erin Moritz, a doctoral student in epidemiology in the UI College of Public Health, for her dissertation. The finding was reported in a letter written by Moritz and her advisor, Tara Smith, Ph.D., assistant professor of epidemiology ...

While children of all ethnicities can contract Kawasaki disease (KD), a study led by researchers at the Kawasaki Disease Research Center at the University of California, San Diego and Rady Children's Hospital-San Diego finds that Filipino children with KD are at a higher risk for inflammation of the blood vessels of the heart than those of other Asian and non-Asian backgrounds. Nearly 24 percent of Filipino children with KD in San Diego County were found to have aneurysms compared to 10.5 percent of children of other Asian descent. The study appears in the May 6, 2011 ...