(WASHINGTON, May 7, 2012) – A new analysis concludes that rituximab, a drug commonly used to treat blood cancers, leads to treatment responses lasting at least five years in approximately one quarter of patients with low platelet counts and a risk of bleeding due to chronic immune thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP). In study results published online today in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), investigators at Weill Cornell Medical College provide the very first long-term outcome data for patients with chronic ITP treated with rituxamab. Approximately ...

SEATTLE – A long-term follow-up analysis of participants in the Step Study, an international HIV-vaccine trial, has confirmed that certain subgroups of male study participants were at higher risk of becoming infected after receiving the experimental vaccine compared to those who received a placebo. The vaccine used in the study did not contain the HIV virus, but it did contain HIV genes which were delivered to cells using a vector that employed a type of cold virus known as adenovirus serotype 5 (Ad5). Of the 1,836 men examined in this study, 172 became infected with HIV. ...

Verygoodservice.com , the website dedicated to companies offering good products and good customer service, announces the inclusion of Teachers Building Society on its website. The Dorset-based building society historically had a strong affinity with people who work in education, providing them with mortgages and savings products. It now offers its mortgages to Dorset residents too and the full range of savings products is available to the general public. Being a mutual, the building society is managed for the benefit of its members and has strong customer focus. This dedication ...

This press release is available in German. With a range of diseases, doctors need unique features which they can use to unequivocally identify a patient's illness for an appropriate diagnosis. Scientists therefore search for the biomarkers for an illness or a combination of biomarkers, known as biosignatures, which are as easy as possible to measure. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin have now created complete gene and microRNA expression profiles together with important inflammatory mediators in the blood of tuberculosis and sarcoidosis ...

EUROMONITOR INTERNATIONAL REVEALS ENCOURAGING OUTLOOK Key figures indicate that the Middle East region will remain a high focus area for global beauty majors, as demand continues to grow at a considerable rate. This was revealed by Epoc Messe Frankfurt at a press conference held to announce the upcoming Beautyworld Middle East, which will run from May 29th to 31st at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre. Trends revealed by Euromonitor International, Knowledge Partner for Beautyworld Middle East and leading independent global strategic intelligence ...

One of Devon's most historic houses Great Fulford is a Domesday manor. The present house was mainly constructed in the early 16th century and is a semi fortified mansion built round a courtyard. It boasts a superb paneled Great Hall as well as a marvelous 17th century Great Staircase and other interesting 17th and 18th century rooms, Great Fulford has been the home of the Fulford family since the reign of Richard 1 granted to William de Fulford. The manor originally belonged to the Priory of Canonsleigh until the Reformation when it was purchased by Sir John Fulford. ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — For the first time, scientists have created a satellite-guided plan to effectively control the tsetse fly – an African killer that spreads "sleeping sickness" disease among humans and animals and wipes out $4.5 billion in livestock every year. Michigan State University researchers developed the plan using a decade's worth of NASA satellite images of Kenyan landscape and by monitoring tsetse movement. With unprecedented precision, the plan can tell where and when to direct eradication efforts. Current control efforts in Kenya are ineffective and ...

Cold Spring Harbor, NY – Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center have amassed strong experimental evidence implying that commonly occurring large chromosomal deletions that are seen in many cancer types contain areas harboring multiple functionally linked genes whose loss, they posit, confers a survival advantage on growing tumors. Looking closely at one large deletion -- a so-called copy-number alteration or CNA on 8p, the short arm of chromosome 8 -- in mouse models of human liver cancer, the team validated the ...

Slotland.com's new Greatest Hits slots game is a retro-style tribute to the music industry. It's a beautiful five reel, 19 payline no download slots game with a bonus game where players can top the charts with their gold and platinum records - and multiply their winnings up to five times. The hit record "Disc" symbol is the Scatter and three Discs trigger the unique bonus game where wannabe music moguls release a new album and sell as many records as possible before the album loses its "Hype". When an album tops the charts or goes on tour Hype increases ...

The exploding stars known as Type Ia supernovae serve an important role in measuring the universe, and were used to discover the existence of dark energy. They're bright enough to see across large distances, and similar enough to act as a "standard candle" - an object of known luminosity. The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for the discovery of the accelerating universe using Type Ia supernovae. However, an embarrassing fact is that astronomers still don't know what star systems make Type Ia supernovae. Two very different models explain the possible origin of ...

AURORA, Colo. (May 7, 2012) – New research from the University of Colorado School of Medicine shows that school-based health centers are highly effective in delivering comprehensive care, especially vaccines to adolescents. The study, published today in the journal Pediatrics, highlights the value of a `captive audience' in a school setting where students can be easily reminded to get recommended vaccinations. "School-based health centers can provide comprehensive care to children and adolescents who are hard to reach," said CU School of Medicine professor of pediatrics ...

Political leaders such as Barack Obama and Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt may be popular among Swedes. However, they are not as popular as Swedish Crown Princess Victoria, according to the results of the latest SOM survey - University of Gothenburg, Sweden - which were presented Tuesday during the seminar Focus on the Leaders. Although Swedes' confidence in the Swedish Royal Court is at a record low, it turns out that Crown Princess Victoria is the most popular of all royalties included in the survey. 'The popularity of the crown princess is actually the strongest ...

Infants whose gut is colonised by E. coli bacteria early in life have a higher number of memory B cells in their blood, reveals a study of infants carried out at the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. The bacteria in our gut outnumber the cells in our bodies by a factor of ten and are extremely important for our health because they stimulate the maturation of the immune system. The normal bacterial flora in the gut is established at the very beginning of our lives, but an increasingly hygienic lifestyle has led to changes in this flora. Colonised ...

MANHATTAN, KAN. -- A Kansas State University graduate student is creating a schoolyard that can become a therapeutic landscape for children with autism. Chelsey King, master's student in landscape architecture, St. Peters, Mo., is working with Katie Kingery-Page, assistant professor of landscape architecture, to envision a place where elementary school children with autism could feel comfortable and included. "My main goal was to provide different opportunities for children with autism to be able to interact in their environment without being segregated from the rest ...

After the 2008 election of President Barack Obama, many proclaimed that the country had entered a post-racial era in which race was no longer an issue. However, a new large-scale study shows that racial attitudes have already played a substantial role in 2012, during the Republican primaries. They may play an even larger role in this year's presidential election. The study, led by psychologists at the University of Washington, shows that between January and April 2012 eligible voters who favored whites over blacks – either consciously or unconsciously – also favored Republican ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - When you "lose yourself" inside the world of a fictional character while reading a story, you may actually end up changing your own behavior and thoughts to match that of the character, a new study suggests. Researchers at Ohio State University examined what happened to people who, while reading a fictional story, found themselves feeling the emotions, thoughts, beliefs and internal responses of one of the characters as if they were their own - a phenomenon the researchers call "experience-taking." They found that, in the right situations, experience-taking ...

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is hard to diagnose as well as treat, but researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy, at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, have discovered a way of confirming the disorder using stool samples. Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) causes chronic or recurring problems with pain and discomfort in the abdomen together with changes in bowel habits. The syndrome is common and is believed to be linked to dysfunction of the stomach and intestines, but our understanding of IBS is incomplete, making it difficult to diagnose and treat. Identified specific ...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- One of the world's most important fossils has a story to tell about the brain evolution of modern humans and their ancestors, according to Florida State University evolutionary anthropologist Dean Falk. The Taung fossil — the first australopithecine ever discovered — has two significant features that were analyzed by Falk and a group of anthropological researchers. Their findings, which suggest brain evolution was a result of a complex set of interrelated dynamics in childbirth among new bipeds, were published May 7 in the prestigious Proceedings ...

There is an old saying that knowledge is power, but in this day and age, it might be equally accurate to say that knowledge is money. Facebook has recently made this clear in its efforts to buy up as many patents, and shore up as much intellectual property, as possible, all in hopes of besting competitors like Yahoo while also impressing investors at its initial public stock offering. A new report finds that Facebook has agreed to purchase some 650 patents from Microsoft, amassing as much intellectual property as possible in order to boost its bottom line. This report underscores ...

If consumer-directed health plans grow to account for half of all employer-sponsored insurance in the United States, health costs could drop by $57 billion annually -- about 4 percent of all health care spending among the nonelderly, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Consumer-directed health plans, which include high deductibles and personal health accounts, are a market-based approach that many employers have adopted to address health care spending. Such plans now account for about 13 percent of all employer-sponsored health coverage. Aggressive expansion ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — For most people with asthma, a couple of puffs from an inhaler filled with steroids makes breathing easy. But if their lungs become resistant to the calming effect of that medicine, they live in fear of severe asthma attacks that could send them to the hospital – or worse. Now, new research from the University of Michigan Health System may help explain what's going on in the lungs of these steroid-resistant individuals. The findings could aid the development of new treatment options, and of better ways to identify people at risk of becoming steroid-resistant. The ...

The Daily Titan, the student-run newspaper at California State University, Fullerton, reports on the proceedings of the 2012 Educational Summit on Online Education, which took place at the Fullerton campus. Speakers at the event cite online education as a key part of education's future, and as such hope to explore the ways in which Internet-based educational programs can boost the academic performance of American students. Almeda University, which has been providing online educational opportunities for over 15 years, is glad that U.S. political leaders are finally paying ...

A study on a handful of people with suspected mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) suggests that a device that sends continuous electrical impulses to specific "memory" regions of the brain appears to increase neuronal activity. Results of the study using deep brain stimulation, a therapy already used in some patients with Parkinson's disease and depression, may offer hope for at least some with AD, an intractable disease with no cure. "While our study was designed mainly to establish safety, involved only six people and needs to be replicated on a larger scale, we don't have ...

Since 1997, an active ban on owning or harboring a pit bull or pit bull mix has existed in Prince George's County, Maryland. Many consider the penalty, which is punishable to up to six months in prison and a $1,000 fine, an unnecessary act of breed discrimination. Nationwide, organizations, like No Leash Needed and the SPCA discourage such injustices. However, in a recent report by MSNBC, the Maryland Court of Appeals rules that pit bulls are an "inherently dangerous" breed. The ruling states that pet owners, or landlord that rent to them, are fully liable ...

WASHINGTON, May 7—X-ray mammography is an important diagnostic tool in the fight against breast cancer, but it has certain drawbacks that limit its effectiveness. For example, it can give in false positive and negative results; it also exposes women to low doses of ionizing radiation, which – while accepted as safe – still carry some risk. In the first phase of clinical testing of a new imaging device, researchers from Netherlands' University of Twente and Medisch Spectrum Twente Hospital in Oldenzaal used photoacoustics – light-induced sound – rather than ionizing radiation ...