PITTSBURGH—Traditional motion capture techniques use cameras to meticulously record the movements of actors inside studios, enabling those movements to be translated into digital models. But by turning the cameras around — mounting almost two dozen, outward-facing cameras on the actors themselves — scientists at Disney Research, Pittsburgh (DRP), and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) have shown that motion capture can occur almost anywhere — in natural environments, over large areas and outdoors. Motion capture makes possible scenes such as those in "Pirates of the Caribbean: ...

PITTSBURGH, Aug. 8 – Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have identified a molecular pathway that helps explain how an enzyme elevated in asthma patients can lead to increased mucus production and inflammation that is characteristic of the lung condition. Their findings, reported online in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal unique interactions between biological molecules that could be targeted to develop new asthma treatments. An enzyme called epithelial 15-lipoxygenase 1 (15LO1) metabolizes fatty acids to produce ...

Athens, Ga. – Increased seawater temperatures are known to be a leading cause of the decline of coral reefs all over the world. Now, researchers at the University of Georgia have found that extreme low temperatures affect certain corals in much the same way that high temperatures do, with potentially catastrophic consequences for coral ecosystems. Their findings appear in the early online edition of the journal Global Change Biology. Lead author Dustin Kemp, a postdoctoral associate in the UGA Odum School of Ecology, said the study was prompted by an abnormal episode ...

Boulder, CO, USA - Highlights from the September issue of GEOLOGY, which is now online, include debris flow hazard assessment; dune migration in the "greatest desert on Earth": Antarctica; Luizi, the first confirmed meteorite impact structure in Central Africa; a determination of the likelihood that fungal disease had accelerated latest Permian woodland deterioration; the first comprehensive compilation of sedimentary and historical records of ash-fall events in northern Europe; and high-speed video of ash fall from the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption. Keywords: Mariana ...

Boulder, CO, USA - An international team of researchers has found the strongest evidence yet that parts of North America and Antarctica were connected 1.1 billion years ago, long before the supercontinent Pangaea formed. "I can go to the Franklin Mountains in West Texas and stand next to what was once part of Coats Land in Antarctica," said Staci Loewy, a geochemist at California State University, Bakersfield, who led the study. "That's so amazing." Loewy and her colleagues discovered that rocks collected from both locations have the exact same composition of lead isotopes. ...

By 2012, an estimated 14 million people will serve as distance caregivers to family members who live across the state, across the region, even across the country. "No longer are families living just around the corner from each other," says Polly Mazanec, an assistant professor at the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing and an advance practice oncology nurse at University Hospitals Case Medical Center's Seidman Cancer Center. The distance presents a challenge as family members work to gain information about their loved ones and participate in their cancer care. But ...

Social class is more than just how much money you have. It's also the clothes you wear, the music you like, the school you go to—and has a strong influence on how you interact with others, according to the authors of a new article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. People from lower classes have fundamentally different ways of thinking about the world than people in upper classes—a fact that should figure into debates on public policy, according to the authors. "Americans, although this is shifting a ...

Will graphic cigarette package warning labels significantly reduce demand? A new study suggests it will. Current US policy requires that tobacco companies cover 50 percent of one side of a cigarette pack with a text warning. But the FDA recently unveiled nine new cigarette warning labels, which include graphic images of lung and mouth cancer, to be unveiled in September 2012. A sample of 404 adult smokers from four states participated in an experimental auction on cigarette packs with four different kinds of warning labels. All packs carried the same message: smoking ...

The use of GPS technology to monitor sex offenders should be viewed as a tool rather than a control mechanism, a team of researchers at Sam Houston State University found in a recent study. In "Examining GPS Monitoring Alerts Triggered by Sex Offenders: The Divergence of Legislative Goals and Practical Applications in Community Corrections," Dr. Gaylene Armstrong and Beth Freeman examined the affects of a state law in Arizona that required the lifelong GPS monitoring of adult sex offenders convicted of dangerous crimes against children and placed on community supervision. ...

PITTSBURGH—A new tactile technology developed at Disney Research, Pittsburgh (DRP), called Surround Haptics, makes it possible for video game players and film viewers to feel a wide variety of sensations, from the smoothness of a finger being drawn against skin to the jolt of a collision. The technology is based on rigorous psychophysical experiments and new models of tactile perception. Disney will demonstrate Surround Haptics Aug. 7-11 at the Emerging Technology Exhibition at SIGGRAPH 2011, the International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques ...

CHICAGO (August 8, 2011) – The use of Acute Care Emergency Surgical Service (ACCESS) in emergency departments (EDs) can lead to significant reductions in key patient measures, such as length of stay, surgical decision-making time and "time-to-stretcher" (one measure of overall ED overcrowding), according to a study published in the August issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. Emergency departments are a crucial point of access to the health care system for patients with a broad spectrum of injuries and illnesses, and overcrowding has been identified ...

CHICAGO (August 8, 2011) – According to a study published in the August issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, there was an increase in the number of laparoscopic bariatric procedures, an increase in the number of bariatric surgeons and a decrease of inhospital mortality rates between 2003 and 2008. During the past decade, the field of bariatric surgery has changed dramatically and the authors concluded that these trends are due, in part, to an increase in the use of laparoscopic techniques and a greater acceptance of bariatric surgery by patients. "We've ...

We accept that some people are born with a talent for music or art or athletics. But what about mathematics? Do some of us just arrive in the world with better math skills than others? It seems we do, at least according to the results of a study by a team of Johns Hopkins University psychologists. Led by Melissa Libertus, a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, the study -- published online in a recent issue of Developmental Science -- indicates that math ability in preschool children is ...

Physicists at UC San Diego have developed a new kind of X-ray microscope that can penetrate deep within materials like Superman's fabled X-ray vision and see minute details at the scale of a single nanometer, or one billionth of a meter. But that's not all. What's unusual about this new, nanoscale, X-ray microscope is that the images are not produced by a lens, but by means of a powerful computer program. The scientists report in a paper published in this week's early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that this computer program, or ...

In what represents an important step toward curing HIV, a USC scientist has created a virus that hunts down HIV-infected cells. Dr. Pin Wang's lentiviral vector latches onto HIV-infected cells, flagging them with what is called "suicide gene therapy" — allowing drugs to later target and destroy them. "If you deplete all of the HIV-infected cells, you can at least partially solve the problem," said Wang, chemical engineering professor with the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. The process is analogous to the military practice of "buddy lasing" — that is, having a ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. (August 8, 2011)—Peak petroleum—the point at which the maximum rate of global oil extraction is reached, after which the rate of production begins to decline—is a hot topic in scientific and energy circles. When will it occur? What will the impact be? While geologists and economists debate the specifics, American University School of Communication professor Matthew Nisbet believes peak petroleum and the associated risks to public health may provide an opportunity to bring conservatives and liberals together in the move toward alternative forms of energy. "Somewhat ...

CHAMPAIGN, lll. — There may be a few atheists in foxholes, but a new study suggests that in societies under stress, those who are religious outnumber – and are happier than – their nonreligious counterparts. Where peace and plenty are the norm, however, religious participation is lower and people are happier whether or not they are religious, the researchers found. A paper describing the research appears in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The study analyzed data from the 2005-2009 Gallup World Poll, a survey of people in more than 150 countries that ...

DALLAS – Aug. 8, 2011 – A person's ability to battle viruses at the cellular level remarkably resembles the way deadly infectious agents called prions misfold and cluster native proteins to cause disease, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers report. This study marks the first discovery of so-called "good" prion-like proteins in human cells and the first to find such proteins involved in innate immunity: the way the body recognizes and responds to threats from viruses or other external agents, said Dr. Zhijian "James" Chen, professor of molecular biology and senior ...

SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 9, 2011 – Life is tough for woodrats in deserts of the U.S. Southwest. There are few plants for food, and those plants produce poison to deter rodents, insects and other animals. A new University of Utah study shows how certain woodrats put themselves on a diet to avoid poisoning: They sample a smorgasbord of toxic plants, eat smaller meals, increase time between meals and drink more water if it is available. "For decades, we have been trying to understand how herbivores deal with toxic diets," says biology Professor Denise Dearing, senior author ...

Knowing the right way to handle stress in the classroom and on the sports field can make the difference between success and failure for the millions of students going back to school this fall, new University of Chicago research shows. "We found that cortisol, a hormone released in response to stress, can either be tied to a student's poor performance on a math test or contribute to success, depending on the frame of mind of the student going into the test," said Sian Beilock, associate professor in psychology at UChicago and one of the nation's leading experts on poor ...

Desktop Anywhere is a UK cloud computing company specialising in virtual desktops and cloud computing services for companies with anywhere between 5-1,000 users. With clients in various industries such as finance, property investment, fashion, professional services and publishing, they are a trusted IT partner for any serious organisation looking at cloud hosting. August 2011 sees the launch of a new VMware based cloud platform designed to meet the needs of existing and future customers, with enhanced features such as server and data replication, fast graphic streaming, ...

The law in New York, and in many states, prohibits an employee from suing either their employer, or a fellow worker, for any incident that may have harmed that employee during the course of his employment. The idea behind this is basically to promote harmony and efficiency in the workplace which would soon disappear if workers and employers were suing each other. To protect the harmed worker, a system of "Workers' Compensation" has been created. Workers Compensation assures employees that in the event they are injured "on the job," then they will ...

Cuando entramos en una tienda o negocio, confiamos en que los productos utilizados en su interior no sean perjudiciales. Tambien confiamos en que si el negocio utiliza o vende productos perjudiciales, se nos advierta del riesgo para que tomemos decisiones fundadas sobre si utilizar o no dichos productos. Segun algunos informes del New York Times y Houston Chronicle, muchos centros de estetica de unas no cumplen dichas expectativas. Muchos spa y centros de estetica utilizan lamparas UV para que acelerar el secado de las unas. Estas lamparas tambien se venden habitualmente ...

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Wine industry veteran Claudia Zimmermann announced today the formal launch of WineTask, a new wine compliance consulting firm. Based on Zimmermann's 10+ years of alcoholic beverage industry experience in the United States and abroad, WineTask provides clients with a clear strategy to expedite logistics, handle wine and beverage compliance across federal and state lines, and minimize the potential for non-compliance penalties. "WineTask is the culmination of all my wine industry experience and compliance knowledge," says Zimmermann."The company mission ...