Their critics weren't convinced the first time, but Rice University researchers didn't give up on the "ice that burns." A paper by a Rice team expands upon previous research to locate and quantify the amount of methane hydrates -- a potentially vast source of energy -- that may be trapped under the seabed by analyzing shallow core samples. The paper published this week by the Journal of Geophysical Research- Solid Earth should silence the skeptics, the researchers said. Chemical engineers George Hirasaki and Walter Chapman and oceanographer Gerald Dickens headed the ...

Scientists have sequenced the genomes (genetic codes) of 17 strains of common lab mice--an achievement that lays the groundwork for the identification of genes responsible for important traits, including diseases that afflict both mice and humans. Mice represent the premier genetic model system for studying human diseases. What's more, the 17 strains of mice included in this study are the most common strains used in lab studies of human diseases. By enabling scientists to list all DNA differences between the 17 strains, the new genome sequences will speed the identification ...

Savings at one of the UK's leading theme parks and money off at cinemas can be had from leading voucher codes website DiscountVouchers.co.uk right now thanks to new deals announced this week. The discount voucher codes website, which is home to regularly-updated deals for over 800 suppliers, has introduced new deals redeemable at Chessington World of Adventures and Cineworld. Great evenings out at the cinema are always popular with kids, and DiscountVouchers.co.uk can help mums and dads treat the kids right now thanks to new Cineworld vouchers on show on the site. Parents ...

An avatar is really no more than a graphical representation, generally human, which is associated with a user for identification purposes. Avatars can be either photographs or art drawings, and certain technologies enable their use in three dimensions. Until now, 3D avatars were mainly used as fun objects for diversion and entertainment purposes of the end user. However, the Media Unit at Tecnalia has developed a "Personalised 3D avatars" technology, the aim of which is to facilitate the building of low-cost 3D avatars. This 3D avatar is used as a responsible interface ...

Researchers at the University of Sheffield have developed polymers that fluoresce in the presence of bacteria, paving the way for the rapid detection and assessment of wound infection using ultra-violet light. When contained in a gel and applied to a wound, the level of fluorescence detected will alert clinicians to the severity of infection. The polymers are irreversibly attached to fragments of antibiotics, which bind to either gram negative or gram positive bacteria – both of which cause very serious infections – informing clinicians as to whether to use antibiotics ...

Prof. Dr. Motoharu Yoshida and colleagues from Boston University investigated how the rhythmic activity of nerve cells supports spatial navigation. The research scientists showed that cells in the entorhinal cortex, which is important for spatial navigation, oscillate with individual frequencies. These frequencies depend on the position of the cells within the entorhinal cortex. "Up to now people believed that the frequency is modulated by the interaction with neurons in other brain regions", says Yoshida. "However, our data indicate that this may not be the case. The frequency ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A study of more than 400 children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder has found a link between the children's routine play settings and the severity of their symptoms, researchers report. Those who regularly play in outdoor settings with lots of green (grass and trees, for example) have milder ADHD symptoms than those who play indoors or in built outdoor environments, the researchers found. The association holds even when the researchers controlled for income and other variables. The study appears in the journal Applied Psychology: ...

The World MoneyShow Vancouver September 19-21, 2011 Where? Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, British Columbia CANADA Focus: Global Investing Martha will be speaking Monday, September 19, 2011 at 01:30 PM - 02:15 PM Topic? Educational Presentation - "The Cloud Investing and Trading Opportunities: Are You Ready for the Next Big Displacement Technology?" To learn more on this event please visit: http://technitrader.com/get-connected/ TechniTrader Home Page: http://technitrader.com/ Contact us: 888 846 5577TechniTrader is a stock ...

INDIANAPOLIS – A study by researchers from the schools of science and medicine at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis examines the effects of carbon nanoparticles (CNPs) on living cells. This work is among the first to study concentrations of these tiny particles that are low enough to mimic the actual exposure of an ordinary individual. The effects on the human body of exposure to CNPs -- minute chemicals with rapidly growing applications in electronics, medicine, and many other fields -- is just beginning to be revealed. Exposure at the level studied ...

Closet World is an organizing service that offers a huge variety of accessories and a range of systems, colors, and closet designs. There are organizing solutions for walk-in closets, kids' closets, wall beds, home offices, media centers, garages, laundry rooms, and pantries. Closet World also offers mirrored doors. Getting organized is one way to increase your living space. And Closet World offers an innovative Bedtec wall bed that stylishly allows you to truly maximize your living space. The wall bed is designed to remain safely tucked away behind doors when it's not ...

OTTAWA, ON – September 15, 2011 – The demand for transparency through publicly available healthcare data is on the rise. This is the case for administrative and clinical data for research, and for clinical trials data used to support new drug approvals. Broad data access has a measurable impact on research and policy making. A new report by Dr. Khaled El Emam, the Canada Research Chair in Electronic Health Information at the University of Ottawa and the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute, looks at the creation of clinical public use microdata files ...

Fires have continuously occurred on Earth for at least the last 400 million years. But since the 1970s, the frequency of wildfires has increased at least four-fold, and the total size of burn areas has increased at least six-fold in the western United States alone. Steadily rising, the U.S.'s bill for fighting wildfires now totals $1.5 billion per year. How much of the increases in the frequency and size of fires are due to human activities? No one knows for sure. But a paper in this week's issue of the Journal of Biogeography puts the role of fire in natural ecosystems ...

The Carlsbad Department of Development (CDOD) recently welcomed Secretary Celina Bussey of the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions to Carlsbad. Carlsbad and Eddy County, New Mexico, are looking for ways to attract workers for the plethora of jobs currently available. Secretary Bussey and her staff met with CDOD officials, community leaders, business owners, and New Mexico State Representatives Bill Gray and Cathrynn Brown to hear their needs and offer solutions. The unemployment rate in Carlsbad, which has never risen above 6.6% in the last five years, has been ...

Fungi found in the leaves and trunks of wild Peruvian cacao trees offer the potential for biological control of cacao diseases such as witches' broom disease, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists. Several of the fungal species were previously unknown to science. Agricultural Research Service (ARS) researchers at the agency's Sustainable Perennial Crops Laboratory (SPCL) and Systematic Mycology and Microbiology Laboratory (SMML) in Beltsville, Md., and Peruvian collaborators conducted cacao collection expeditions in 2008 and 2009 through the Amazon ...

SEATTLE, WASH. — September 15, 2011 — The Allen Institute for Brain Science announced today the discovery of a new class of cells in the spinal cord that act like neural stem cells, offering a fresh avenue in the search for therapies to treat spinal cord injury and disease. The published collaborative study, authored by scientists from the University of British Columbia, the Allen Institute for Brain Science and The Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital at McGill University and titled "Adult Spinal Cord Radial Glia Display a Unique Progenitor Phenotype," appears ...

A new paper by a team of University of Notre Dame researchers that included Shahriar Mobashery, Jeffrey Peng, Brian Baker and their researchers Oleg Borbulevych, Malika Kumararasiri, Brian Wilson, Leticia Llarrull, Mijoon Lee, Dusan Hesek and Qicun Shi describes a unique process that is central to induction of antibiotic resistance in the problematic bacterium methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRRA). MRSA first emerged in the United Kingdom in 1961and spread rapidly across the globe. Modern strains of MRSA are broadly resistant to antibiotics of various classes, ...

Scientists have replaced all of the DNA in the arm of a yeast chromosome with computer-designed, synthetically produced DNA that is structurally distinct from its original DNA to produce a healthy yeast cell. (Yeast chromosomes are often depicted as bow tie-shaped--with each chromosome bearing two "arms" that are positioned similarly to the two sides of a bow tie.) These results confirm that large pieces of DNA can be synthesized and inserted into a chromosome, and validate the research team's principles for designing synthetic chromosomes. Further, the researchers report ...

Lyme disease is a dangerous disease which is transmitted by ticks. Blood-sucking ticks ingest the agents that cause the disease – bacteria of the species Borrelia burgdorferi and its relatives – during a blood meal, and subsequently transmit them to the next victim they feast on, often a person. It is estimated that, in Western Europe, up to half of all ticks carry the bacteria. Although the early symptoms of the illness are quite mild, if left untreated, it can result in serious damage to the skin, the joints, the heart and the nervous system, and effective therapy becomes ...

SANTA CRUZ, CA--Using the Hubble Space Telescope to probe the distant universe, astronomers have found supermassive black holes growing in surprisingly small galaxies. The findings suggest that central black holes formed at an early stage in galaxy evolution. "It's kind of a chicken or egg problem: Which came first, the supermassive black hole or the massive galaxy? This study shows that even low-mass galaxies have supermassive black holes," said Jonathan Trump, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Trump is first author of the study, ...

Secrets from the age of the dinosaurs are usually revealed by fossilized bones, but a University of Alberta research team has turned up a treasure trove of Cretaceous feathers trapped in tree resin. The resin turned to resilient amber, preserving some 80 million-year-old protofeathers, possibly from non-avian dinosaurs, as well as plumage that is very similar to modern birds, including those that can swim under water. U of A paleontology graduate student Ryan McKellar discovered a wide range of feathers among the vast amber collections at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in southern ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Florida has the world's worst invasive amphibian and reptile problem, and a new 20-year study led by a University of Florida researcher verifies the pet trade as the No. 1 cause of the species' introductions. From 1863 through 2010, 137 non-native amphibian and reptile species were introduced to Florida, with about 25 percent of those traced to one animal importer. The findings appear online today in Zootaxa. "Most people in Florida don't realize when they see an animal if it's native or non-native and unfortunately, quite a few of them don't belong ...

While whistleblowers are often respected for their willingness to stand up for what is right and report corporate or workplace corruption, they sometimes face tough consequences for their actions. However, federal legislation like the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) include provisions to protect whistleblowers from retaliation. Some whistleblower activities are also safeguarded through Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) federal agency practices. Under the 2002 Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX), covered ...

Washington, DC (September 15, 2011) — Equations that estimate a patient's kidney function work as well as direct, invasive measurements, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society Nephrology (JASN). This means that many patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) do not need to undergo the painful and cumbersome procedures that are performed to monitor kidneys' health. Measuring CKD patients' kidney function can help physicians anticipate complications and provide optimal treatments. Most measures focus on patients' glomerular ...

Wouldn't it be nice if all those hours kids spent glued to their PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 or Nintendo DS video games actually resulted in something tangible? Better grades, perhaps? Improved concentration? Superior driving skills? Over the past decade, many studies and news media reports have suggested that action video games such as Medal of Honor or Unreal Tournament improve a variety of perceptual and cognitive abilities. But in a paper published this week in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, Walter Boot, an assistant professor in Florida State University's Department ...

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that children covered by Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) were less likely to be seen by specialists than their wealthier peers. Researchers prepared two scripts for participants to use when they called 546 specialist clinics in Cook County, Illinois, home to Chicago and its surrounding suburbs. In one script, the callers, posing as mothers of sick children, reported symptoms of depression. In the other script, the callers described symptoms of type one diabetes. Although neither ...