Rats exposed to an antidepressant just before and after birth showed substantial brain abnormalities and behaviors, in a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. After receiving citalopram, a serotonin-selective reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), during this critical period, long-distance connections between the two hemispheres of the brain showed stunted growth and degeneration. The animals also became excessively fearful when faced with new situations and failed to play normally with peers – behaviors reminiscent of novelty avoidance and social impairments seen in ...

In a report in Energy Digital, the City of Kingston explains that through a cooperation among City, community and business Kingston is on its way to becoming the most energy efficient municipality in Canada. The City of Kingston is heavily focused on creating a more sustainable community. Through promotion of LEED construction, collaboration with community partners and the encouragement of renewable energy use, Kingston is already on its way to becoming the most sustainable municipality in Canada for generations to come. The City of Kingston's green initiatives are ...

The SHAW Center for Aesthetic Enhancement (www.theshawcenter.com) is the first plastic surgery practice to add CoolSculpting by Zeltiq to it's list of fat reduction, body contouring procedures in the Scottsdale / Phoenix Metro area. With over twenty-five years of body contouring experience, Dr. Lawrence W. Shaw, a Scottsdale plastic surgeon, feels there is definitely a place for this non-invasive fat reduction procedure in his busy plastic surgery practice. "I've been looking for many years, without success, to find an effective, scientifically proven, non-surgical ...

VIDEO: Using carbon nanotubes bent to act as springs, Stanford researchers have developed a stretchable, transparent skin-like sensor. The sensor can be stretched to more than twice its original length and... Click here for more information. Imagine having skin so supple you could stretch it out to more than twice its normal length in any direction - repeatedly - yet it would always snap back completely wrinkle-free when you let go of it. You would certainly never need ...

Soft matters maintain their structures via weak interactions, such as Van der Waals, capillary, hydrogen bonds etc. The entropy plays a key role in the ordering of this kind of materials. They behave as a solid until a sufficiently large stress is applied, and then behave as a viscoelastic liquid. Due to the unique structures and rheological properties, soft matter such as concentrated suspensions, emulsions, pastes and gels often exhibit unusual slow relaxation and aging effect. Studying the relaxation dynamics may gain more insight into the microstructure of the material ...

Introducing heterogeneities into the structure is an effective way to enhance the plasticity of metallic glasses (MGs). The original randomly distributed free volume in MGs, a natural heterogeneity, has been found to promote plasticity. However, the exact correlation between the free volume distribution and mechanical response is still unclear. Professor Dai Lanhong and his group from the State Key Laboratory of Nonlinear Mechanics, Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, set out to tackle this problem. They investigated the shear banding in MGs with different ...

When Aaron & Sophia Rashkin began their first online business with CarbonCopy PRO Elite back in August of 2008, they had no idea that their persistence and tenacity would become their biggest allies en route to internet marketing success. The couple had a background in traditional multi-level marketing, but after building an organization of over 10,000 distributors and still hardly being able to pay for their two kids, two cars and two mortgages, they took their desire to become financially free to the internet. Recently named "Marketing Partners of the ...

"We have investigated the cycling of molybdenum (Mo) in ancient oceans by studying the elemental and isotopic composition of Mo in sedimentary rocks from Grand Canyon that formed in the oceans 750 million years ago", explains Tais W. Dahl, who did this research in collaboration with researchers from Arizona State University, Harvard University and the Nordic Center of Earth Evolution in Denmark (NordCEE). Molybdenum tracks the presence of poisonous sulfide in ancient oceans The study uses a new method to determine the extent of anoxia and presence of sulfide in the ...

CHICAGO - Five years ago, Sheri Scott was beginning a new chapter in her life. The recently engaged 31-year-old was eagerly browsing bridal magazines and busy planning for her big day. Unfortunately, just weeks following her engagement, Scott was diagnosed with breast cancer. Suddenly, she was juggling medical appointments and planning a double mastectomy instead of a wedding. Soon after her diagnosis, Scott was approached by her doctor at Northwestern Memorial Hospital about preserving her fertility. He explained that cancer treatment could compromise her fertility and ...

Boston, MA – Age- related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of severe visual loss among the elderly. Researchers had previously identified several relatively common genetic variants which together predict a person's increased risk for AMD, but a significant number of persons without the disease also have these variants. Now, for the first time, investigators have been able to clearly show a specific rare mutation called CFH R1210C that predicts a very high risk of disease and is extremely uncommon among individuals who do not have the disease. Although it ...

This press release is available in German. The heat which occurs in tiny computer processors might soon be no longer useless or even a problem. On the contrary: It could be used to switch these processors more easily or to store data more efficiently! These are two of the several potential applications made possible by a discovery made at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB). This so-called "thermoelectric voltage" may well be very interesting – mainly for the use of nano-junctions, i.e. small components based on magnetic tunnel structures. The results obtained ...

The Fontainebleau Miami Beach condo hotel is one of the hottest properties in the South Florida real estate market today and Reiner Perez of Turnberry International Realty now offers the most comprehensive listings you can find online. His new website offers all of the current resales and updates with the newest listings as soon as they hit the market. Reiner has been with the Fontainebleau condo hotel project since its inception and nobody has a more detailed and intimate knowledge of this property and how the resale and rental programs work. Reiner has sold more than ...

This press release is available in Spanish. The study, recently published in the journal Climatic Change, is the result of an interdisciplinary collaboration between two researchers: one is UC3M Professor Santiago Fernández Muñoz, who has worked in the area of geographic history under the direction of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Professor Josefina Gómez Mendoza; the other is Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC – Spanish National Research Council) ecologist Juli Pausas. Specifically, the authors constructed a complete database of historical fires ...

There is an increasing need for pharmacological tools for biomedical and translational research applications. The field of diversity-oriented synthesis (DOS) has been very fruitful in providing access to numerous new molecules with diverse shapes and chemical structures in order to discover candidate molecules for therapeutic use. Boston University researchers, in a paper published in the journal Nature Chemistry [23 OCTOBER 2011 | DOI: 10.1038/NCHEM.1178], present a new approach to accessing new, biorelevant structures by "remodelling" natural products. In this case, they ...

Jerusalem -- Instinctive mothering behavior towards care of newborns has long been recognized as a phenomenon in humans and animals, but now research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has shown that motherhood is associated with the acquisition of a host of new behaviors that are driven, at least in part, by alterations in brain function. The research, by Dr. Adi Mizrahi of the and Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences and the Silberman Institute of Life Sciences at the Hebrew University, has just been published in the journal Neuron. It provides insight ...

Chapel Hill, NC – In a study published today in the journal Nature Genetics, a group of scientists including UNC biologist Jason Lieb, PhD, present experiments supporting a longstanding hypothesis that explains how males can survive with only one copy of the X chromosome. The finding provides clarity to a hotly debated topic in science and provides biologists with more information to interpret experiments involving genetic measurements in males and females. "The issue is important because many diseases are tied to a defect in a regulatory mechanism within the cell," said ...

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is critical to online marketing today. Good SEO can strengthen an organization's search engine ranking, enabling a self-employed small businessperson to jump ahead of even a major multinational corporation in search engine rankings. No longer does an organization's promotional outreach have to be limited by its resources. Los Angeles SEO Company, Avital Web, announces its new, free SEO services to help companies of all sizes reach their Internet marketing goals. Google SEO may be one of the biggest predictors of a website's success, ...

Athens, Ga. – Increasing acidification in coastal waters could compromise the ability of oysters and other marine creatures to form and keep their shells, according to a new study led by University of Georgia researchers. Their findings will be published in the November 2011 issue of Nature Geoscience. The researchers determined the combined effects of fertilizer runoff carried by the Mississippi River to the northern Gulf of Mexico and excess atmospheric carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels result in an unexpected increase in the acidity of Gulf waters. "Before, ...

Plain, sloping roofs can collect up to 50% more rainwater than flat roofs with gravel. This water is also of higher quality. These are the conclusions of a study conducted by researchers from Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB, Spain) which suggests the incorporation of systems to collect rainwater in urban planning. The water collected can be used to water streets and gardens, wash floors or vehicles and fill cisterns. Ramon Farreny, co-author of different projects developed by the UAB, said "It is important to consider the collection of rainwater when planning ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University and Purdue University have shown that the semiconductor material gallium nitride (GaN) is non-toxic and is compatible with human cells – opening the door to the material's use in a variety of biomedical implant technologies. GaN is currently used in a host of technologies, from LED lighting to optic sensors, but it is not in widespread use in biomedical implants. However, the new findings from NC State and Purdue mean that GaN holds promise for an array of implantable technologies – from electrodes used in neurostimulation ...

Less than ten percent of healthcare providers are over halfway there in terms of being fully prepared for ICD-10, according to the KLAS report, "ICD-10: Preparing for October 2013." While providers know a lack of preparation could result in a halt to reimbursements and a revenue cycle disaster when ICD-10 comes, KLAS found that most organizations are still in the strategy/planning phase of their preparation. This is significant given that providers further down the path of preparation told KLAS that ICD-10 readiness is a complex and costly initiative--one that ...

Dydacomp, a leading provider of business technology platforms for eCommerce and multichannel merchants, today announced a strategic partnership with Web2Market, the leading provider of development, support and hosting for the AbleCommerce Web storefront software. This will enable users of AbleCommerce to connect to Dydacomp's Multichannel Order Manager (M.O.M.) software, creating a powerful end-to-end eCommerce solution. The new partnership solidifies Dydacomp's recent commitment to open up M.O.M.'s full-featured order management and fulfillment platform to eCommerce ...

African-Americans with two copies of the APOL1 gene have about a 4 percent lifetime risk of developing a form of kidney disease, according to scientists at the National Institutes of Health. The finding brings scientists closer to understanding why African-Americans are four times more likely to develop kidney failure than whites, as they reported in the Oct. 13 online edition of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. Researchers including Jeffrey Kopp, M.D., at the NIH's National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and Cheryl Winkler, ...

The use of organic photovoltaics for the production of electricity from sunlight offers an attractive and promising basis for an innovative and environmentally friendly means of energy supply. They can be manufactured quite economically and, because they are as bendable as plastic wrap, they can be processed flexibly. The problem is that they are yet markedly less efficient than conventional inorganic semiconductor cells. The most crucial process in the conversion of light into electric current is the generation of free charge carriers. In the first step of photoconversion, ...

A new study demonstrates that mechanical forces affect the growth and remodeling of blood vessels during tissue regeneration and wound healing. The forces diminish or enhance the vascularization process and tissue regeneration depending on when they are applied during the healing process. The study found that applying mechanical forces to an injury site immediately after healing began disrupted vascular growth into the site and prevented bone healing. However, applying mechanical forces later in the healing process enhanced functional bone regeneration. The study's findings ...