Pre-existing heart disease in pregnancy remains a concern. Complications are frequent and in some cases may be life-threatening for both the mother and her child. In Europe maternal heart disease has now become the major cause of maternal death during pregnancy. As interim data from the ESC's special registry on pregnancy in cardiac disease suggests, the numbers of women at risk is not in decline, mainly because of today's older age at first pregnancy and with it a concomitant increase in risks of diabetes, hypertension and obesity. Professor Jolien Roos-Hesselink, ...

From SARS to swine flu, virus outbreaks can be unpredictable — and devastating. But now a new application through the ubiquitous social networking site Facebook, developed in a Tel Aviv University lab, is poised to serve as a better indicator of how infections spread among populations. Dr. Gal Almogy and Prof. Nir Ben-Tal of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at TAU's George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences have developed a Facebook application called PiggyDemic, which allows users to "infect" their friends with a simulated virus or become infected ...

Contact Centers are facing a wave of new challenges. With social media and self-service channels becoming a common method of interacting with customers, the need to support a multi-channel customer contact center is now greater than ever. With that need has come a proliferation of new multi-channel contact center technology choices. Many companies are opting for cloud based computing models. Cloud-based contact centers have advantages to be sure. They can cut costs, create flexibility with anywhere, anytime access for agents and customers alike to interact without the cumbersome ...

OTS Solutions recently announced that their Quality Management System has been registered as compliant within the International Standard ISO 9001. This achievement was a direct result of the entire organization working together in effectively developing and maintaining the Quality System in order to be registered. Meeting the ever growing customer demands for the highest level of quality is vital to the future success of every company in any kind of business. OTS has demonstrated their commitment to quality and to the continuous improvement of their management system ...

Results of the independently-funded Bern-Rotterdam cohort study provide robust evidence of an "important" reduction in overall and very late stent thrombosis. The reduction in incidence was found when a newer generation everolimus-eluting stent (EES) was compared with early generation drug-eluting stents (DES) at long-term follow-up. "The near elimination of stent thrombosis observed between one and four years after implantation shows that everolimus-eluting stents overcome the principal limitation of early generation DES," said investigator Dr Lorenz Räber from the ...

Depending on the age of asthmatic children, on their exposure to molds or dampness in their bedroom, and on the severity of their asthma, vitamin C has greater or smaller beneficial effect against asthma, according to a study published in the Clinical and Translational Allergy. Proposals that vitamin C might be beneficial in the treatment of asthma date back to the 1940s, but the findings from controlled trials have been conflicting. Drs Mohammed Al-Biltagi from the Tanta University in Egypt and Harri Hemila from the University of Helsinki in Finland analyzed the effect ...

A randomised multicentre open-label study evaluating the efficacy and safety of prolonged antiplatelet therapy in patients with coronary disease has found that 24 months' duration of dual therapy is no better than six months DAPT in preventing adverse cardiac events. However, the PROlonging Dual antiplatelet treatment after Grading stent-induced Intimal hyperplasia studY (PRODIGY) also found a consistently greater risk of haemorrhage in the 24-month dual therapy group according to all prespecified bleeding definitions, including the recently proposed Bleeding Academic ...

Insurance companies and government entities are warning drivers and other East Coast residents that while the storm has passed, danger still abounds for motorists in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene, according to Online Auto Insurance News. Roadways that are normally safe can be dangerous after hurricanes and other natural disasters, authorities say. And auto accidents pose more than just physical risks--they can also drive up premiums for policyholders, especially those with tarnished driving records or who for other reasons already carry high risk car insurance policies. ...

A phase II dose-finding study has found that the new oral Factor Xa inhibitor darexaban was associated with a two to four-fold increase in bleeding when added to dual antiplatelet therapy in patients following an acute coronary syndrome. Professor Gabriel Steg from the Hôpital Bichat in Paris, presenting results from the RUBY-1 trial in a Hot Line session of the ESC Congress today, said the study produced no other safety concerns and that "establishing the role of low-dose darexaban in preventing major cardiac events after ACS now requires a large phase III trial". The ...

The second generation drug-eluting stent Xience V performs well in patients having primary PCI for ST elevation myocardial infarction, and has a better safety profile than that of bare metal stents, according to results of the EXAMINATION (Evaluation of Xience-V stent in Acute Myocardial INfArcTION) trial. The study was a randomised controlled trial with an "all-comers" design to evaluate the Xience V stent in the complex setting of STEMI and to provide data that may be applicable to the real world population. Dr Sabate said that the first generation drug-eluting stents ...

Intra-aortic balloon pump counterpulsation prior to PCI in patients with ST segment elevation MI does not reduce infarct size as measured by MRI, according to results from the Counterpulsation Reduces Infarct Size Acute Myocardial Infarction (CRISP AMI) trial. Intra-aortic balloon counterpulsation is a procedure in which a balloon inserted in the aorta is timed to inflate at the start of diastole and to deflate before the start of systole. This increases diastolic pressure, which increases coronary perfusion and oxygen delivery to the myocardium, and facilitates ejection ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — When Kathryn Orzech attended the College of William and Mary in Virginia, she participated in drama and choir. Rehearsals that would have ended at 10 p.m. in high school now went much later. Social opportunities around the dorm — card games, trips to late-night snack hangout spots — beckoned but without parents around to wield the cudgel of a curfew. For a long list of reasons, college freshmen are often subpar sleepers. A new study by Orzech, now a postdoctoral fellow in sleep research at Brown University, and student health officials ...

Researchers at King's College London have discovered how coral produces natural sunscreen compounds to protect itself from damaging UV rays, leading scientists to believe these compounds could form the basis of a new type of sunscreen for humans. The team has begun to uncover the genetic and biochemical processes behind how these compounds are produced and eventually hope to recreate them synthetically in the laboratory for use in developing sun protection. This month, as part of the three-year project funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council ...

Boulder, Colorado, USA - As a prelude to The Geological Society of America's 2011 Annual Meeting & Exposition in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, the September issue of GSA Today departs from its normal format by publishing four short science articles intended to introduce different aspects of the geology of the Upper Midwest and the contemporary role of the geologist in society. Find them online at http://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/21/9/. The theme of the 8󈝸 Oct. 2011 GSA Annual Meeting & Exposition is Archaean to Anthropocene: The past is the key to the ...

Choice is a central tenet of a free society. From the brand of cereal we eat for breakfast, to the answers we give on a survey, or the people we select to be our leaders, we frequently define ourselves by the choices we make. Yet a recent study appearing in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology suggests that there are factors that can significantly influence our free will without us even knowing it. In their article 'Preferring the One in the Middle: Further Evidence for the Centre-stage Effect', researchers Paul Rodway, Astrid Schepman and Jordana Lambert of the ...

"A major intent of the ACA is to control health care spending and increase access to necessary services for those who need it most," said Alliance Director Christine Ferguson, J.D. "With America's rising obesity rates leading to worsening health outcomes and equally alarming cost projections, leaving obesity unaddressed is both unsustainable and unacceptable." At the core of the Task Force's recommendations is the tenet that obesity and weight-related interventions should receive the same consideration as any other health condition. The Task Force noted that while more ...

Efforts to build larger wind turbines able to capture more energy from the air are stymied by the weight of blades. A Case Western Reserve University researcher has built a prototype blade that is substantially lighter and eight times tougher and more durable than currently used blade materials. Marcio Loos, a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering, works with colleagues at Case Western Reserve, and investigators from Bayer MaterialScience in Pittsburgh, and Molded Fiber Glass Co. in Ashtabula, Ohio, comparing the properties ...

One of the world's strangest animals – a unique fish that lives on land and can leap large distances despite having no legs – has a rich and complex social life, a new study has found. The odd lifestyle of the Pacific leaping blenny (Alticus arnoldorum) has been detailed for the first time in research findings that throw new light on how animal life first evolved to colonise the land. The Pacific leaping blenny is a marine fish yet is terrestrial in all aspects of its daily adult life, eking out a precarious existence in the intertidal zone of rocky shores in Micronesia, ...

Women who commit suicide are more likely than men to avoid facial disfiguration, but not necessarily in the name of vanity. Valerie Callanan from the University of Akron and Mark Davis from the Criminal Justice Research Center at the Ohio State University, USA, show that there are marked gender differences in the use of suicide methods that disfigure the face or head. While firearms are the preferred method for both men and women, women are less likely to shoot themselves in the head. The study is published online in Springer's journal Sex Roles. Although a number of ...

University of Cincinnati research finds that college students could be undermining their own education, simply because they're not practicing proper sleep habits. The study, led by Adam Knowlden, a UC doctoral student in UC's Health Promotion and Education Program, also holds recommendations for students to form better sleep habits that will ultimately enhance their learning. The study evaluated the sleep habits of nearly 200 undergraduate college students between the ages of 18 and 24 who were not living with a parent or legal guardian. The study included 130 females ...

This release is available in French. Montreal, August 30, 2011 — Fathers who actively engage in raising their children can help make their offspring smarter and better behaved, according to new research from Concordia University. Published in the Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, the long-term study examined how fathers can positively influence the development of their kids through hands-on parenting. "Fathers make important contributions in the development of their children's behaviour and intelligence," says Erin Pougnet, a PhD candidate in the Concordia ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. - Mayo Clinic has identified a new benefit of social media and online networking: a novel way to study rare diseases. Through patient-run websites dedicated to heart conditions and women's heart health, a team of cardiologists led by Sharonne Hayes, M.D., is reaching out to survivors of spontaneous coronary artery dissection, also known as SCAD, a poorly understood heart condition that affects just a few thousand Americans every year. Study recruitment through social media and online networks could help researchers assemble large and demographically diverse ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — It's not how old but how frail patients are that can predict how well they will fare after a melanoma diagnosis. In fact, young patients in poor health may have worse outcomes than older patients in good shape. A new study from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center finds that patients with decreased core muscle density were more likely to see their cancer spread to distant parts of the body. These findings may also support the idea that the patient's biological response to a tumor is important in controlling the spread of melanoma. ...

DETROIT – Relationships between mothers and their sons change during childhood and adolescence, however, not all relationships change in the same way. A Wayne State University-led study has found that how the relationships change may affect boys' behavior when they become teens. The research team, led by Christopher Trentacosta, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Wayne State University, looked at 265 mother-son pairs from low-income families in Pittsburgh, starting when the boys were 5 through adolescence. The families ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- New research from MIT suggests that there are parts of our brain dedicated to language and only language, a finding that marks a major advance in the search for brain regions specialized for sophisticated mental functions. Functional specificity, as it's known to cognitive scientists, refers to the idea that discrete parts of the brain handle distinct tasks. Scientists have long known that functional specificity exists in certain domains: In the motor system, for example, there is one patch of neurons that controls the fingers of your left hand, and ...