Irvine, Calif., Nov. 21, 2011 — UC Irvine and Italian researchers have discovered a new means of enhancing the effects of anandamide – a natural, marijuana-like chemical in the body that provides pain relief. Led by Daniele Piomelli, UCI's Louise Turner Arnold Chair in the Neurosciences, the team identified an "escort" protein in brain cells that transports anandamide to sites within the cell where enzymes break it down. They found that blocking this protein – called FLAT – increases anandamide's potency. Previous work by the researchers indicates that compounds boosting ...

California lemon law attorney Michael R. Vachon, Esq. has filed a lawsuit in the California Superior Court for the County of San Diego alleging that Mossy Automotive Group, Inc. (a San Diego, California car dealership that operates under the name "Mossy Toyota") has an illegal practice of inserting double charges into vehicle lease contracts. The lawsuit alleges that this practice amounts to common law fraud, and violates California's consumer protection statutes. The lawsuit also alleges violations of the California lemon law. The Plaintiff seeks monetary damages ...

A team of researchers from several universities and institutions, including University of Notre Dame physics faculty Chris Howk and Nicolas Lehner, has demonstrated how galaxies continue to form stars by recycling vast amounts of hydrogen gas and heavy elements across billions of years. The researchers also identified large masses of previously undetected material surrounding galaxies, and described the large-scale flows of this gas. The results were published in three papers in the Nov. 18 edition of the journal Science. The leaders of the three studies are Lehner ...

PORTLAND, Ore. November 21, 2011. Log and lumber exports from Washington, Oregon, northern California, and Alaska in the first three quarters of 2011 already surpass the total exports of 2010 according to the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Northwest (PNW) Research Station. "The increasing shipments to China are the main driver of the hike in log and lumber exports from the west coast," says Xiaoping Zhou, a research economist with the station. "The log exports to China in 2010 (664.2 million board feet) was over 40 times of that in 2005 (15.8 million board feet). The ...

New benchmark research from Ventana Research finds that while insurance companies are advancing in their ability to apply analytics, there is still significant room for improvement in their analytics processes and technology. Insurance companies, under more pressure than ever to operate efficiently and make the right decisions regarding customers, policies and claims that can optimize the full potential from business analytics to be effective. This new benchmark research from Ventana Research, the leading business technology research firm, presents comprehensive, research-based ...

PITTSBURGH—Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have made advances in better understanding correlated quantum matter that could change technology as we know it, according to a study published in the Nov. 20 edition of Nature. W. Vincent Liu, associate professor of physics in Pitt's Department of Physics and Astronomy, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Maryland and the University of Hamburg in England, has been studying topological states in order to advance quantum computing, a method that harnesses the power of atoms and molecules for computational ...

Drug companies currently developing therapeutic cancer vaccines may be determining the cancers they target based on the number of annual cases, not the number of deaths they cause. This approach may limit the patient benefits of such drugs, according to a new University of Michigan report. Therapeutic vaccines, an alternative form of cancer treatment that may be more effective than traditional cancer therapies, are currently being tested in clinical trials around the world. Early studies on these vaccines, which trigger patients' immune systems to attack cancer ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. ╨ Future astronauts spending Thanksgiving in space may not have to forgo one of the most traditional parts of the day's feast: fresh sweet potatoes. Cary Mitchell, a Purdue University professor of horticulture, and Gioia Massa, a former postdoctoral researcher at Purdue, developed methods for growing sweet potatoes that reduce the required growing space while not decreasing the amount of food that each plant produces. Their findings were published in the journal Advances in Space Research. Sweet potato plants have main vines with many shoots ...

Dazadi.com's revamped e-commerce website offers an all new and easier to use layout, just in time for this holiday season. Dazadi features competitive, low-price deals on sporting good products like basketball hoops, ping pong tables and pool tables. Outdoor living products and workout equipment including affordable deals on stair climber machines make the perfect holiday gift. "It was just time for an update utilizing the latest and greatest in development technology. This new platform will allow us to specialize the buying experience on Dazadi over the coming ...

As used medical equipment is a very practical solution to upgrading medical facilities at a fraction of the cost; more and more professionals are taking advantage of the wide availability of good-quality used devices on the market. For hospital administrators, department heads, and other personnel involved in the purchase of medical equipment, MedWOW has published and upgraded its Medical Equipment Buying Guide, to assist professionals in getting the most out of their new and used medical equipment purchases. The eBook is a downloadable PDF-ready file with easy printing ...

In 2009, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) recommended that Hemoglobin A1c be exclusively used for the diagnosis of diabetes in children. The simple test measures longer-term blood sugar levels -- without requiring patients to fast overnight. However, a new U-M study has shown that these tests are not very accurate in children. "We found that Hemoglobin A1c is not as reliable a test for identifying children with diabetes or children at high risk for diabetes compared with other tests in children," says Joyce M. Lee, M.D., M.P.H., lead author of the study and a ...

In 1991, a team led by Washington University in St. Louis paleoanthropologist Glenn Conroy, PhD, discovered the fossils of the first — and still the only — known pre-human ape ever found south of the equator in Africa after only 30 minutes of searching a limestone cave in Namibia. Traditionally, fossil-hunters often could only make educated guesses as to where fossils lie. The rest lay with chance — finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. "I don't want to say it's total luck," says Conroy, professor of physical anthropology in Arts & Sciences, "but it's a combination ...

Research by a team of Michigan State University scientists has shed new light on why some body parts are more sensitive to environmental change than others, work that could someday lead to better ways of treating a variety of diseases, including type 2 diabetes. The research, led by assistant zoology professor Alexander Shingleton, is detailed in the recent issue of the Proceedings of the Library of Science Genetics. In particular, Shingleton is studying the genetics of fruit flies and zeroing in on why some of the insects' body parts will grow to full size even when ...

For most Californians, a vehicle is not just a mode of transportation. Automobiles are an investment, a daily asset, and a necessary tool that many rely on. This is why it can become a major headache when those minor cracks and dings begin to crop up the windshield or other pieces of auto glass. For those that have had enough of unsightly and unsafe auto glass, there is now a great solution. Los Angeles auto glass repair is now easier and more affordable than ever as one of the most trusted local companies, PG Auto Glass, is offering a 10% discount on all of their services. Auto ...

HONOLULU—A new study from the University of Hawaii Cancer Center reveals that PEA-15, a protein previously shown to slow ovarian tumor growth and metastasis, can alternatively enhance tumor formation in kidney cells carrying a mutation in a cancer-promoting gene called H-Ras. The H-Ras oncogene is mutated in many human malignancies, and previous reports have shown the ability of H-Ras to contribute to the development, proliferation and metastasis of these tumors. Conversely, PEA-15 had been reported to inhibit tumor cell proliferation and metastasis by opposing H-Ras ...

Most people understand that serious weight loss requires changing attitudes toward what they eat and how often they exercise. But, what if the process could be aided by simply chewing a stick of gum after meals? That's the question a team of scientists, led by Syracuse University chemist Robert Doyle, is trying to answer. In a groundbreaking new study, Doyle's team demonstrated, for the first time, that a critical hormone that helps people feel "full" after eating can be delivered into the bloodstream orally. Doyle's study was published online Nov. 4, 2011 in the American ...

CHICAGO --- Following a major Northwestern Medicine breakthrough that identified a common converging point for all forms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS and Lou Gehrig's disease), a new finding from the same scientists further broadens the understanding of why cells in the brain and spinal cord degenerate in the fatal disease. Less than three months ago, Northwestern research found that the crucial recycling system for cells in the brain and spinal cord was broken in people with ALS. And one mutated gene had a key role. Like a loafing worker, it wasn't doing its ...

Grand Rapids, Mich. (November 21, 2011) A Van Andel Research Institute (VARI) study published recently in the Journal of Biological Chemistry reveals that a natural fatty acid can serve as a regulator of blood sugar levels, which may have important applications in designing better and safer drugs for diabetes treatment. According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly 26 million Americans have diabetes, and current drugs commonly used to treat the disease sometimes have unwanted side effects. The study found that decanoic acid, a saturated ...

Global food demand could double by 2050, according to a new projection by David Tilman, Regents Professor of Ecology in the University of Minnesota's College of Biological Sciences, and colleagues, including Jason Hill, assistant professor in the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences. Producing that amount of food could significantly increase levels of carbon dioxide and nitrogen in the environment and cause the extinction of numerous species. But this can be avoided, the paper shows, if the high-yielding technologies of rich nations are adapted ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers are making progress in developing a system that measures the mechanical properties of living cells, a technology that could be used to diagnose human disease and better understand biological processes. The team used an instrument called an atomic force microscope to study three distinctly different types of cells to demonstrate the method's potentially broad applications, said Arvind Raman, a Purdue University professor of mechanical engineering. For example, the technique could be used to study how cells adhere to tissues, which is ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Scientists have designed a first draft of a mathematical model that someday could guide treatment decisions for advanced prostate cancer, in part by helping doctors predict how individual patients will respond to therapy based on the biology of their tumors. These decisions would apply to treatment of cancer that has already spread beyond the prostate gland or that has recurred after initial treatments, such as surgery or radiation. Patients with this more advanced prostate cancer receive a therapy called androgen ablation, which inhibits production of ...

Researchers at Rochester Institute of Technology have found that use of a technology-rich learning environment in several undergraduate engineering-technology courses has improved learning and decreased withdrawals from, or failing grades in, the courses. They found that more than 90 percent of students involved stated that using the technology-rich environment—which includes a combination of tablet PCs, collaborative software, and multiple projection screens capable of capturing and retaining graphics and notations—helped them learn and retain the information better ...

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- Many premature infants suffer a life-threatening destruction of intestinal tissue called necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). Now a Loyola University Medical Center study has identified a major risk factor for NEC: Preemies with the AB blood type who develop NEC are nearly three times as likely to die from it as preemies with other blood types. The finding suggests that a simple change in blood transfusion practices in neonatal ICUs could significantly reduce the incidence of NEC. The study is published online ahead of print in the Journal of Perinatology. ...

The American College of Radiology today denounced new breast cancer screening guidelines by the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health (CTFOPH), which recommend against annual screening of women ages 40-49 and would extend time between screens for older women. An ACR news release said "the CTFOPH guidelines ignore results of recent landmark randomized control trials which show that regular screening reduces breast cancer deaths in these women by approximately a third" and that "While implementation of the CTFOPH guidelines may save money on screening costs, the result ...

Healthcare research firm KLAS announces a new pharmacy report designed to help providers attending the 2011 American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) conference make informed pharmacy technology buying decisions. With thinning wallets, providers are becoming more strategic in their technology purchasing decisions--and pharmacy is no exception. The "KLAS Pharmacy Buyers Guide" offers product ratings for more than 100 software and equipment offerings, all based on the feedback of thousands of healthcare providers. Each rated product has been given ...