Pardee Homes has announced that they have reduced prices on move-in ready townhomes at Highlands Village at Carmel Country Highlands. The builder is offering this special for a limited time on their popular Plan 1 and Plan 1X models, and will also include $10,000 towards HOA dues or closing costs. "This is great time to buy and an exceptional opportunity to live the Carmel Valley lifestyle without the typical Carmel Valley price," said Rachel Collins, director of sales for Pardee Homes. "Coastal-close Highlands Village offers affordability, location, lifestyle ...

A simple finger prick test during routine eye examinations at high street opticians could help to identify millions of people with previously undiagnosed Type 2 diabetes, according to new research. The researchers suggest earlier diagnosis could set people on the road to better management of the disease, which is the leading cause of blindness in the working age population, and that this could ultimately result in cost-savings for the NHS. The Durham University study suggests that screening for the condition in unconventional settings, such as opticians, chiropodists ...

An editorial this week in PLoS Medicine concludes that in the two years since extensive ghostwriting by pharmaceutical giant Wyeth to promote its hormone drug Prempro was exposed through litigation intervention by PLoS Medicine and The New York Times, medical ghostwriting remains a prevalent problem with few concrete solutions in sight. This week also sees the launch of the PLoS Ghostwriting Collection, which documents everything published across the PLoS journals on the topic. Among these are three new articles published earlier this month in PLoS Medicine that provide ...

STANFORD, Calif. — A team at the Stanford University School of Medicine has cataloged, down to the letter, exactly what parts of the genetic code are essential for survival in one bacterial species, Caulobacter crescentus. They found that 12 percent of the bacteria's genetic material is essential for survival under laboratory conditions. The essential elements included not only protein-coding genes, but also regulatory DNA and, intriguingly, other small DNA segments of unknown function. The other 88 percent of the genome could be disrupted without harming the bacteria's ...

Neonatal mortality—deaths in newborns, aged 3 weeks and under— has declined in all regions of the world over the past two decades but in 2009, more than half of all neonatal deaths occurred in five countries—India, Nigeria, Pakistan, China, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Furthermore, over the past 20 years, more than 4% of all babies born live in India died during the first month of life. These shocking findings come from a comprehensive and detailed analysis led by Mikkel Z Oestergaard, from the World Health Organization and partners published in this week's ...

Mobile phone positioning data can be used to monitor population movements during disasters and outbreaks, according to a study published in this week's PLoS Medicine. The study, conducted by Linus Bengtsson and colleagues from the Karolinska Institute, Sweden and Columbia University, USA, finds that reports on the location of populations affected and in need of assistance can be generated within hours of receiving data. Population movements after disasters make it difficult to deliver essential relief assistance to the right places and at the right scale. In this geospatial ...

In dengue-endemic areas such as South-East Asia, in contrast to conventional thinking, rural areas rather than cities may bear the highest burden of dengue fever—a viral infection that causes sudden high fever, severe headache, and muscle and joint pains, and can lead to a life-threatening condition, dengue hemorrhagic fever. In a study led by Wolf-Peter Schmidt from the Nagasaki Institute of Tropical Medicine, Japan, and published in this week's PLoS Medicine, the authors analysed a population in Kanh-Hoa Province in south-central Vietnam (~350,000 people) that was affected ...

In the conclusion to a three-part series of articles addressing the current challenges and opportunities for the development of Health Policy and Systems Research (HPSR), Sara Bennett of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore USA and colleagues lay out an agenda for action to help build the field: 1) local actors, including policy-makers and researchers, must have a greater say in determining the nature of HPSR conducted; 2) a better shared understanding of theoretical frames and methodological approaches for HPSR, including journals, methods training, ...

August 31, 2011 – The digestive system is home to a myriad of viruses, but how they are involved in health and disease is poorly understood. In a study published online today in Genome Research (www.genome.org), researchers have investigated the dynamics of virus populations in the human gut, shedding new light on the gut "virome" and how it differs between people and responds to changes in diet. "Our bodies are like coral reefs," said Dr. Frederic Bushman of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, senior author of the study, "inhabited by ...

DURHAM, N.C.—Inserting intra-aortic balloon pumps prior to angioplasty in patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) does not reduce the scope of heart muscle damage, a condition referred to as infarct size, according to a new study conducted by Duke University Medical Center researchers. The findings were published online today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and presented at the European Society of Cardiology in Paris, France. The intra-aortic balloon pump works by increasing the blood supply to the heart, which reduces the heart's ...

STANFORD, Calif. —A novel technique to "tame" the malaria parasite, by forcing it to depend on an external supply of a vital chemical, has been developed by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the University of California-San Francisco. The scientists have, in effect, created a domesticated strain of Plasmodium — the one-celled parasite that causes malaria — that would no longer cause this dreaded disease. Their findings not only make it possible to grow large volumes of this modified parasite, but also reveal how the parasite's very survival ...

The profound success and awareness of the Sleep Train Foster Kids Program has inspired a number of other companies and organizations in the area to support regional foster children too. Collecting important material items and cash to contribute to current Sleep Train drives, area companies and organizations are leveraging Sleep Train's successful infrastructure and marketing efforts to offer their support for foster children. This summer alone, Under the Nile, a Milpitas-based cotton apparel company, hosted a drive to support Sleep Train's annual collection of pajamas, ...

[EMBARGOED FOR AUG. 30, 2011] Vaccinating infants against rotavirus also prevents serious disease in unvaccinated older children and adults, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This helps reduce rotavirus-related hospital costs in these older groups. The results of the study are published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases and are now available online. Rotavirus is a major cause of severe diarrhea in infants and young children. Before the vaccine, rotavirus was responsible for 58,000 to 70,000 pediatric hospitalizations each ...

How the brain controls impulsive behavior may be significantly different than psychologists have thought for the last 40 years. That is the unexpected conclusion of a study by an international team of neuroscientists published in the Aug. 31 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. Impulse control is an important aspect of the brain's executive functions – the procedures that it uses to control its own activity. Problems with impulse control are involved in ADHD and a number of other psychiatric disorders including schizophrenia. The current research set out to better ...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — An international team of researchers led by neuroscientists at Mayo Clinic in Florida has found a genetic variation they say protects against Parkinson's disease. The gene variants cut the risk of developing the disease by nearly 20 percent in many populations. The study, published in the online Aug. 31 issue of Lancet Neurology, also reports the discovery of different variants of the same gene, LRRK2— the most important Parkinson's risk gene found to date — that double Parkinson's risk in Caucasians and Asians. Parkinson's disease is a common movement ...

Berkeley – Exposure during pregnancy to flame retardant chemicals commonly found in the home is linked to lower birthweight babies, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Public Health. In the study, to appear Tuesday, Aug. 30, in the peer-reviewed publication American Journal of Epidemiology, researchers found that every tenfold increase in levels of PBDEs, or polybrominated diphenyl ethers, in a mother's blood during pregnancy corresponded to a 115 gram (4.1 ounce) drop in her baby's birthweight. "This is ...

Writing in the journal Nature Communications, a collaboration between the Universities of Manchester and Cambridge, which includes Nobel Prize winning scientists Professor Andre Geim and Professor Kostya Novoselov, has discovered a crucial recipe for improving characteristics of graphene devices for use as photodetectors in future high-speed optical communications. By combining graphene with metallic nanostructures, they show a twentyfold enhancement in harvesting light by graphene, which paves the way for advances in high-speed internet and other communications. By ...

The US economy continues to produce conflicting headlines and consumer anxiety on a daily basis as unemployment remains above 9 percent. Those looking for a short-term financial solution routinely turn to online lending resources such as Personal Cash Advance, which promotes best loan options such as secure cash advances, payday loans, and other personal loans. "Our new guide to finding the best loans has been met with much enthusiasm from consumers as the economy continues to heal," PersonalCashAdvance.com company spokesperson Neil Cutting said. "As a ...

"Our data indicate that the brain becomes hypersensitive to rewards when this co-signaling of glutamate and dopamine does not function. Lower doses than normal are enough to increase the propensity to ingest the substance, and this is true of both sugar and cocaine," says Åsa Mackenzie, associate professor of neuroscience at Uppsala University and the researcher who led the study. Addiction disorders are a major social problem, and we lack sufficient knowledge of how they arise and how various substances impact the brain. The brain's reward system gives us feelings of ...

Since 2007 Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI) has become an alternative treatment for elderly patients with severe aortic stenosis at high risk for surgical aortic valve replacement. At present, durability and hemodynamic performance of transcatheter aortic valves remain unclear. Our single center data of the German Heart Center in Munich demonstrates a sustained improvement of hemodynamic performance up to 3 years after CoreValve implantation. Aortic valve stenosis (AS) is the most frequent heart valve disease in Europe and North America. The most common ...

Primary PCI is the best reperfusion therapy for patients presenting with acute ST-elevation myocardial infarction. CJ Terkelsen and co-workers used the Western Denmark Heart Registry to describe the implementation of primary PCI in Denmark. Their study (including almost 10,000 patients) showed that a strategy with early diagnosis based on ECG recording in the ambulance and directing the patients straight to the catherization laboratory in the Primary PCI Centre, was associated with a lower mortality. Direct access to PPCI is unfortunately still not possible in many European ...

Results from the SCAAR study, presented at the ESC Congress 2011 today, showed that Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI) with "new generation" Drug Eluting Stents, was associated with a 38% lower risk of clinically meaningful restenosis and a 50% lower risk of stent thrombosis compared to old generation DES. Although many trials and studies support the overall early and mid-term safety and efficacy of first-generation drug-eluting stents, there has been concern on their long-term safety, especially regarding the potential risk of late stent thrombosis as well as ...

With a great response from the audience Christopher Flach's film Madeleine Castaing, ended the last days of the Cesis Festival along with the final concert "Imants Kalnins and Philip Glass." Attended by more than 1800 visitors, this years 2011Festival contained a rich program featuring a diverse range of art forms included classical music concerts, visual art exhibitions, films and drama performances. Christopher Flach's film "Madeleine Castaing," is the documentary that explores the personality and influence of the French decorator and antique dealer. ...

Acute myocardial Infarction (AMI) is a major cause of death and disability. Worldwide, one in eight patients die of an ischemic heart disease. Its rapid and accurate diagnosis is critical for the initiation of effective evidence based medical management, including early revascularization, but is still an unmet clinical need. The gradual implementation of high-sensitive cardiac troponins (hs-cTnT) in clinical practice has helped clinicians to detect and treat patients with acute myocardial infarction earlier than with conventional assays. But, high-sensitive assays have ...

Compared to patients who had persistently high platelet reactivity, those who achieved low platelet reactivity, according to the VerifyNow P2Y12 Test, had a reduced incidence of cardiovascular death, heart attack and stent thrombosis, as indicated by a clinical trial presented today at the ESC Congress 2011. These findings were part of a secondary analysis of the Gauging Responsiveness with A VerifyNow P2Y12 Assay- Impact on Thrombosis and Safety (GRAVITAS) trial, the largest prospective trial to date to test the clinical efficacy of antiplatelet therapy modification, ...