The Alquity Africa equity investment fund targets double-digit returns from Africa's high-growth economies. Notably, it achieved a 10% return for investors in its maiden year. In addition, Alquity Investment Management, the fund's investment manager, has committed to donating a minimum of 25% of its net management fees on an ongoing basis to projects aimed at transforming lives across Africa. As the donation comes from Alquity's management fees, investors still receive their full investment return. The Alquity Africa Fund will be available to invest in via The deVere ...

SALT LAKE CITY – One-fifth of all patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension suffer with the fatal disease for more than two years before being correctly diagnosed and properly treated, according to a new national study led by researchers at Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake City. "For a lot of patients, that means the treatment is more difficult and the damage is irreversible," said Lynnette Brown, MD, PhD, a pulmonologist and researcher at Intermountain Medical Center and lead author of the study, which is published this week in the July issue of Chest, the ...

Hospitals across the nation are increasingly implementing palliative care programs to help patients manage the physical and emotional burdens of serious illnesses, but a new University of Georgia study finds that 82 percent of the state's hospitals do not offer palliative care services. "Most people will have some sort of extended illness at the end of their life, and many, especially frail elders, could benefit from this type of care," said study principal investigator Anne Glass, assistant director of the UGA Institute of Gerontology, part of the College of Public Health. ...

Studies by the University of Toronto's psychology department suggest that racism may impact some female minority groups more deeply than sexism. "We found that Asian women take racism more personally and find it more depressing than sexism," said lead author and doctoral student Jessica Remedios. "In order to understand the consequences for people who encounter prejudice, we must consider the type of prejudice they are facing," says Remedios. In one study, 66 participants of Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Taiwanese and Japanese descent were assigned one of three hypothetical ...

LEXINGTON, Ky. − A team of researchers led by University of Kentucky College of Agriculture Professor Joe Chappell is making a connection from prehistoric times to the present that could result in being able to genetically create a replacement for oil and coal shale deposits. This could have fundamental implications for the future of the earth's energy supply. Tom Niehaus, completing his doctorate in the Chappell laboratory; Shigeru Okada, a sabbatical professor from the aquatic biosciences department at the University of Tokyo; Tim Devarenne, a UK graduate and ...

Toronto, ON - When it comes to how they respond to the environment, trees may not be that different from humans. Recent studies showed that even genetically identical human twins can have a different chance of getting a disease. This is because each twin has distinct personal experiences through their lifetime. It turns out that the same is likely true for forest trees as well, according to new research from the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC). "The findings were really quite stunning," says Malcolm Campbell, a biologist and lead author of the study. "People ...

A genome-wide survey by researchers at The Wistar Institute shows how our cells create alternate versions of mRNA transcripts by altering how they "read" DNA. Many genes are associated with multiple gene promoters, the researchers say, which is the predominant way multiple variants of a given gene, for example, can be made with the same genetic instructions. Their findings, which appear in the journal Genome Research, available online now, show how genes are read in developing and adult brains, and identify the changes in reading DNA that accompany brain development. ...

Researchers at the NYU Cancer Institute, an NCI-designated cancer center at NYU Langone Medical Center, identified for the first time the key role specific microRNAs (miRNAs) play in melanoma metastasis to simultaneously cause cancer cells to invade and immunosuppress the human body's ability to fight abnormal cells. The new study is published in the July 11, 2011 issue of the journal Cancer Cell. Researchers performed a miRNA analysis of human melanoma tissues, including primary and metastatic tumors. They found in both sets of tumor cells significantly high levels ...

Researchers from Rigshospitalet – Copenhagen University Hospital – and the University of Copenhagen have discovered why malaria parasites are able to hide from the immune defences of expectant mothers, allowing the parasite to attack the placenta. The discovery is an important part of the efforts researchers are making to understand this frequently fatal disease and to develop a vaccine. Staff member at CMP. Photo: Lars Hviid"We have found one likely explanation for the length of time it takes for the expectant mother's immune defences to discover the infection in the ...

PITTSBURGH, July 11 – A new method for scoring the severity of illness for patients after cardiac arrest may help to predict their outcomes, according to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Most importantly, their findings, published in the early online version of Resuscitation, also show that none of the severity categories rules out the potential for a patient's recovery. "Traditionally, we have used historical or event-related information, such as initial cardiac rhythm or whether someone witnessed the collapse, to categorize these patients ...

Rockville, Md. — Using owls as a model, a new research study reveals the advantage of stereopsis, commonly referred to as stereovision, is its ability to discriminate between objects and background; not in perceiving absolute depth. The findings were published in a recent Journal of Vision article, Owls see in stereo much like humans do. The purpose of the study, which was conducted at RWTH Aachen (Germany) and Radboud University (Nijmegen, Netherlands), was to uncover how depth perception came into existence during the course of evolution. "The reason why studying ...

Health care laws to protect patients' privacy make it nearly impossible for medical device designers to develop and test the safety and usability of medical products by observing use in an actual practitioner-patient setting. As a result, usability errors and hazards may be overlooked, with the potential for devastating consequences. In the recent issue of Ergonomics in Design, human factors/ergonomics researchers found that storytelling as a qualitative research method was a more effective—and stimulating—way for health care practitioners to provide valuable insights during ...

What accounts for the sounds we like to hear? Is it something about the properties of our auditory systems or brains? Or are such tastes learned? Two-month-old human infants show a preference for consonant, or gentler harmonies over more dissonant or harsher ones. But it's still impossible to know whether that preference is inborn, since the babies may have been exposed to certain sounds, even in utero. Birds show similar behaviors: they can distinguish between different kinds of sounds and certain species are attracted to certain sounds. But because no one had experimented ...

It's not just the words, but the sounds of words that have meaning for us. This is true for children and adults, who can associate the strictly auditory parts of language— vowels produced in the front or the back of the mouth, high or low pitch—with blunt or pointy things, large or small things, fast-moving or long-staying things. Do the same principles apply for young infants, and not just to things, but also to abstractions? A new study by Marcela Peña, Jacques Mehler, and Marina Nespor, working together at the International School for Advanced Studies, in Trieste, ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – Physicists at the University of California, Riverside report that they have discovered a new way to create positronium, an exotic and short-lived atom that could help answer what happened to antimatter in the universe, why nature favored matter over antimatter at the universe's creation. Positronium is made up of an electron and its antimatter twin, the positron. It has applications in developing more accurate Positron Emission Tomography or PET scans and in fundamental physics research. Recently, antimatter made headlines when scientists at CERN, ...

AUDIO: Optic nerve damage from glaucoma seems to be at least partly related to damage from byproducts of oxygen in the eye. now, measuring oxygen levels during eye surgery, researchers at... Click here for more information. Measuring oxygen during eye surgery, investigators at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered a reason that may explain why African-Americans have a higher risk of glaucoma than Caucasians. They found that oxygen levels ...

San Diego, CA, July 12, 2011 – Lack of physical exercise is often implicated in many disease processes. However, sedentary behavior, or too much sitting, as distinct from too little exercise, potentially could be a new risk factor for disease. The August issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine features a collection of articles that addresses many aspects of the problem of sedentary behavior, including the relevant behavioral science that will be needed to evaluate whether initiatives to reduce sitting time can be effective and beneficial. "Epidemiologic and ...

07/07/11, Clearwater Beach, FL. Research to be presented at the upcoming annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, may explain why some antipsychotic drugs can promote overeating, weight gain, and insulin resistance. Olanzapine, an atypical antipsychotic drug approved by the FDA for the treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, has been associated with body weight gain and impaired glucose homeostasis in humans and in experimental animals. As part ...

07/07/11, Clearwater Beach, FL. New research findings to be presented at the upcoming annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, finds that ghrelin, a natural gut hormone that stimulates feeding, also modulates the ability of tasty food and food-related cues to alter dopamine levels within the striatum, a critical component of the brain's reward system. Scientists measured dopamine in 'real-time' while rats ate sugar, a highly rewarding food. Administering ...

07/07/11, Clearwater Beach, FL. Experimental results to be presented at the upcoming annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, suggests that dietary supplementation with molasses extract may provide a novel approach for weight management in humans. The study, conducted in mice by Richard Weisinger, Ph.D., investigated the impact of adding molasses extract to a high fat diet. Molasses extract is rich in polyphenols, a group of chemical compounds found ...

07/07/11, Clearwater Beach, FL. Research to be presented at the upcoming annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, indicates that caffeine added to sugar-sweetened, carbonated beverages teaches adolescents to prefer those beverages. Researchers found that the amount of caffeine added to an unfamiliar beverage was correlated with how much teenagers liked that beverage. "Soda manufacturers claim that caffeine is added to their products to enhance flavor. ...

A University of Connecticut scientist has perfected a method for creating quick-changing, variable colors in films and displays, such as sunglasses, that could lead to the next hot fashion accessory. The new technology also has captured the interest of the U.S. military as a way to assist soldiers who need to be able to see clearly in rapidly changing environments. The process for creating the lenses, for which a patent is pending, also is less expensive and less wasteful to manufacturers than previous methods. The findings were published July 7 in the Journal of Materials ...

07/07/11, Clearwater Beach, FL. Research to be presented at the upcoming annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, finds that alterations of meal-related gut hormone signals may contribute to the overall effects of exercise to help manage body weight. Regular exercise is important in maintaining low body weight and also is known to facilitate weight loss in obese subjects. Running exercise is known to increase sensitivity to leptin, a hormone released ...

07/07/11, Clearwater Beach, FL. Research to be presented at the upcoming annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, suggests that people can become dependent on highly palatable foods and engage in a compulsive pattern of consumption, similar to the behaviors we observe in drug addicts and those with alcoholism. Using a questionnaire originally developed by researchers at Yale University, a group of obese men and women were assessed according to the 7 symptoms ...

07/07/11, Clearwater Beach, FL. Research to be presented at the upcoming annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, suggests that ghrelin, a naturally occurring gut hormone, increases our willingness to pay for food, while simultaneously decreasing our willingness to pay for non-food items. Have you ever wondered about why you are willing to pay more for food when you are hungry? Ghrelin, a naturally occurring gut hormone that signals hunger by acting on ...