Rapidly, but expressively and with amazing ease, the guitarist's fingers move over the strings on the neck of the instrument. His fingertips move up and down and a vibrato resonates. From the guitar a cable leads to a laptop, which records the virtuoso performance in minute detail. The computer registers each vibrato, each bend precisely and almost instantaneously. Afterwards the guitarist can play back the digital recording and process it on a computer. The guitar incorporates a piece of Fraunhofer technology. Engineers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering ...

Missing or deformed limbs, clubfoot, facial disorders and gastrointestinal problems are some of the most common birth defects found to be associated with smoking during pregnancy, according to a major new report led by scientists at UCL. The study, published today in Human Reproduction Update, is the first comprehensive review to identify the specific birth defects (malformations) most associated with smoking. Despite public health advice which warns of the harms of maternal smoking, such as miscarriage and premature birth, in the UK 45% of women under 20 and 17% overall ...

Source Outdoor will be attending Outdoor Show 2011. The Show takes place this week in Friedrichshafen, Germany. Source will be located at Hall B1 - Booth 206. The show is an exhibition dedicated to all things outdoor and is an appropriate venue for Source Outdoor to launch the new Spresh Bottle. The Spresh Bottle brings modern technology to the bottle, the end result of which is a design that is sleek and fresh. The squeezable bottle allows users to drink all in one hand motion. No longer does one have to sip or tilt one's head. It is also durable and leakage safe. ...

Milan, Italy, 11 July 2011 – Although out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are typically associated with migraine, epilepsy and psychopathology, they are quite common in healthy and psychologically normal individuals as well. However, they are poorly understood. A new study, published in the July 2011 issue of Elsevier's Cortex, has linked these experiences to neural instabilities in the brain's temporal lobes and to errors in the body's sense of itself – even in non clinical populations. Dr Jason Braithwaite from the Behavioural Brain Sciences Centre, School of Psychology, ...

Machines stretch from one end of the production hall to another, each of them an important part of the manufacturing process. When one of these complex pieces of machinery stops working, the on-site technicians grab their tools and the manual and try to fix it – but sometimes the only solution is to call the manufacturer for tips on how to get it working again. The problem is that giving advice over the telephone is never easy: Do they mean the screw on the right or the screw on the left? Well, that depends on which side of the machine you are standing on! Even putting ...

On June 29th, 2011 the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. issued a memorandum to local federal prosecutors clarifying that medical marijuana dispensaries are not off-limits when it comes to federal prosecutions. This memorandum was somewhat contradictory of an earlier Justice Department memorandum by Attorney General Eric Holder implying that federal prosecutors would not pursue criminal charges against medical marijuana dispensaries. The policy change has many dispensary owners nervous, particularly in Washington State, where medical marijuana has been legal for over ...

Scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have discovered previously unknown volcanoes in the ocean waters around the remote South Sandwich Islands. Using ship-borne sea-floor mapping technology during research cruises onboard the RRS James Clark Ross, the scientists found 12 volcanoes beneath the sea surface – some up to 3km high. They found 5km diameter craters left by collapsing volcanoes and 7 active volcanoes visible above the sea as a chain of islands. The research is important also for understanding what happens when volcanoes erupt or collapse underwater ...

TeamSupport.com (http://www.TeamSupport.com) - an emerging leader in SaaS-based customer service and help desk tools - today announced an integration of the company's flagship TeamSupport product with social networking phenomenon Facebook. "With some 150 million users in the United States alone, Facebook is the 'go to' destination for friends, families, and increasingly, businesses seeking to connect with their customers," noted Robert C. Johnson, CEO of TeamSupport. "Our corporate users are acutely aware of the impact that responsive customer communications ...

According to the researchers from the University of Bologna (Italy) who designed the app, this automatic accident detection system could reduce the number of vehicles involved in pile-ups by up to 40 percent. For now, at least, that's what it does on paper and in computer simulations, as is described in an article published in the scientific journal Computer Networks. Road tests will be carried out this summer, on the streets and highways of Los Angeles, around the campus of the University of California. Here, together with engineers from Toyota, other scientists are also ...

People who have a long term debilitating physical illness demonstrate mental resilience according to Understanding Society, the world's largest longitudinal household study. The first findings reveal that people diagnosed with cancer, diabetes, respiratory or cardiovascular disease report similar mental health scores to those without physical illness. The survey's findings suggest that those people who may not be able to function well physically because of an illness do not necessarily suffer problems with their mental health - for example with their concentration, confidence ...

The Ohio residential correctional programs – halfway houses and community-based correctional facilities – that are most successful at reducing recidivism among offenders enjoy an impressive track record. An offender participating in the state's most successful programs is 50 percent less likely to engage in criminal activity in the two-year period following release vs. offenders who receive no guidance or services. In contrast, the least successful of these programs actually increased the chances of criminal recidivism. The least successful programs increased recidivism ...

DURHAM, N.H. – Rural workers have less access to sick leave, forcing them to choose between caring for themselves or family members, and losing pay or perhaps even their jobs when faced with an illness, according to new research from the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. "Paid sick days are a central component of job flexibility for rural and urban workers alike. Everyone gets sick, and the lack of paid sick days can place workers in a bind, especially given that workers who lack paid sick days are also more likely to lack other paid leave options, ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — By honing in on the mysterious potato genome and its tuber – its edible portion – researchers are unveiling the secrets of the world's most-important nongrain food crop. Robin Buell, Michigan State University plant biologist, is part of an international research team that is mapping the genome of the potato. In the current issue of Nature, the team revealed that it accomplished its goal, thus quickly closing the gap on improving the food source's elusive genome. The potato is a member of the Solanaceae, an economically important family that includes ...

The Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium (PGSC), a team of scientists from institutions worldwide, including Virginia Tech, has published its findings in the Sunday July 10 online issue of the journal Nature. The successful sequencing of the genome of the world's third most important crop began when Richard Veilleux, who is the Julian and Margaret Gary Professor of Horticulture in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Virginia Tech, wondered if the then new applications of plant tissue culture could be used to develop parent lines for hybrid potatoes. The concept ...

Becoming a Workamajig expert requires a replete understanding of the platform (Client Services, Project Management, Trafficking, CRM and Finance modules) and the rollout of the solution for a minimum of three agency clientele. We are extremely pleased, states Vanessa Edwards, President and Founder of CPI. "My journey with Workamajig began nearly five years ago, when I was searching for a solution to help improve my own agency's realization rates, drive efficiency and improve profitability. Post-adoption, our AGI went from 75% to 200% of the national average... providing ...

BURGESS, the superyacht leader, joins OCEANA's prestigious group of corporate donors and becomes active sponsors of the group's major events and activities. Partly founded by actor Ted Danson and recently named a 4-star charity for sound fiscal management, Oceana is the largest international advocacy group working solely to protect the world's oceans. The initial collaboration of the two organizations resulted in this year's highly successful "Bid To Save The Earth" Green Auction when heated bidding on a four day/three night BURGESS luxury yacht charter courtesy ...

Saranac Lake, N.Y. – New research from the Trudeau Institute may help to explain why anticoagulant therapies have largely failed to extend the lives of patients with sepsis. The study was led by Deyan Luo, a postdoctoral fellow in Stephen Smiley's laboratory. It shows that fibrin, a key product of the blood clotting process, is critical for host defense against Yersinia enterocolitica, a gram-negative bacterium that causes sepsis in humans and experimental mice. The new data will be published in the August 15 issue of The Journal of Immunology and is available now online ...

Applying a vaccine patch to the skin with thousands of tiny micro-needles could help boost the body's immune response and prevent the spread of life-threatening infections like HIV and TB, a major Cardiff University study aims to uncover. Professor Vincent Piguet from Cardiff University's School of Medicine, has been awarded almost a million dollars by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to examine how key immune cells in the skin can be targeted to cause the immune system to produce antibodies against infection. Recent advances in the prevention and treatment of ...

A new drug has recently been discovered in Russia, and is taking the country by storm. The drug is called krokodil or crocodile, named for the gruesome effects the drug has on the users' appearance. The skin of the user literally begins to rot. At the injection site, which can be anywhere where there is a suitable vein, the users complexion becomes greenish and scaly, like a crocodile's, blood vessels rupture and the skin tissue dies. Gangrene and amputations are a common result, bone tissue, especially in the lower jaw begins to deteriorate, slowly being disintegrated ...

College athletes tend to be less likely than their non-athlete peers to smoke marijuana. But when they do, they may have some different reasons for it, according to a study in the July issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. Past studies have shown that athletes generally smoke marijuana less often than other college students do. "But there is still a pretty large number who choose to use it," said Jennifer F. Buckman, Ph.D., of the Center of Alcohol Studies at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. Because marijuana could have ill health effects—and ...

Cancer is not invincible but its weaknesses can be difficult to detect. An effort known as Project Achilles — named after the Greek warrior whose one vulnerability led to his undoing — was launched to develop a systematic way of pinpointing these weak spots. In their largest and most comprehensive effort to date, researchers from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute examined cells from over 100 tumors, including 25 ovarian cancer tumors, to unearth the genes upon which cancers depend. One of these genes, PAX8, is altered in a significant ...

Researchers have discovered that a protein found in the walls of blood vessels plays a key role in maintaining healthy blood pressure; a discovery that could one day lead to new treatments for people with high blood pressure. The research, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the British Heart Foundation (BHF), shows that malfunction of the protein – a potassium channel called Kv7.4 – contributes to the maintenance of high blood pressure. The discovery is published this evening (2100hrs, 11 July) in the journal Circulation. Dr ...

Philadelphia, PA, July 11, 2011 – In people with Parkinson's Disease (PD), the inability to make quick movements limits basic functioning in daily life. Movement can be improved by various cueing techniques, such as providing visual or auditory stimuli when movements are started. In a study scheduled for publication in the August issue of the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, researchers report that virtual reality (VR) and physical reality exercises can be used to provide effective stimuli to increase movement speeds in PD patients. Investigators from ...

A freeroll tournament requires no buy-in and anyone can play it for free. Because of the lack of deposit, playing freerolls is really a win-win situation as you can earn money without losing a single penny. Such tournaments are excellent for novice poker players who are new to the game and these tournaments are good enough to improve a player's skills in a poker game. When playing free poker, there are certain approaches a player needs to learn in order to play the game strategically, and learning these can take some time. To get better, play freerolls and gain experience ...

Tampa, Fla. (July 11, 2011) – A team of researchers from Spain and Switzerland have developed a new model for studying the development of testicular germ cell tumors by transplanting embryonic stem cells into the seminiferous tubules in mouse models, resulting in the development of testicular germ cell tumors (TGCT) that mimic the early stages of TGCT development. The study, published in Cell Transplantation (20:5), is now freely available on-line at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/. "Over the last fifteen years, cell transplantation into seminiferous tubules ...