They can estimate whether native plants in the neighbourhood of invasive species incorporate the nitrogen fixed by the latter. The biologists examined the Sydney Golden Wattle (Acacia longifolia), an Australian shrub that has established itself in Mediterranean climates worldwide. They found that the invasive species threatens native ecosystems not only through its prolific growth but also by fertilizing the surrounding soil with nitrogen – this effect markedly extended beyond the area occupied by the invader. This innovative method (called 15N isoscapes) is being published ...

Puget Sound Computers now offers IT services, technology planning, support and project management to healthcare providers in both King and Snohomish counties. While new to the area, the company has more than 20 years' experience providing technological support to businesses. Puget Sound Computers supports healthcare providers, both medical and dental, with services such as network management, backup, disaster recovery and technology support and training. With their IT needs outsourced to Puget Sound Computers, businesses can relax, knowing that their technology requirements ...

Scientists have gained insight into why lithium salts are effective at treating bipolar disorder in what could lead to more targeted therapies with fewer side-effects. Bipolar disorder is characterised by alternating states of elevated mood, or mania, and depression. It affects between 1% and 3% of the general population. The extreme 'mood swings' in bipolar disorder have been strongly associated with disruptions in circadian rhythms – the 24-hourly rhythms controlled by our body clocks that govern our day and night activity. For the last 60 years, lithium salt (lithium ...

Might the "Twinkie defense" have a scientific foundation after all? Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have shown – by each of a range of measures, in men and women of all ages, in Caucasians and minorities – that consumption of dietary trans fatty acids (dTFAs) is associated with irritability and aggression. The study of nearly 1,000 men and women provides the first evidence linking dTFAs with adverse behaviors that impacted others, ranging from impatience to overt aggression. The research, led by Beatrice Golomb, MD, PhD, associate ...

CHICAGO (March 13, 2012) – According to the results of a new study published in the March 2012 issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, patients who score highest on the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test–Consumption (AUDIT-C) experience longer postoperative hospital stays and more days in the intensive care unit (ICU); they are also more likely to return to the operating room (OR) within 30 days of a surgical procedure than patients with low AUDIT-C scores. As a result, study authors determined alcohol screening could be used to identify patients ...

Italian researchers at the Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Rome found an important molecular mechanism responsible for low back pain and other acute vertebral problems like cervical axial pain, all due to aging and degeneration of the vertebral column. The team led by Dr. Luigi Aurelio Nasto and Enrico Pola also developed an experimental drug to inhibit this degenerative mechanism, by blocking its principal culprit, the molecule, "NF-kB" and tested it successfully in mice. The study was carried out in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh research team ...

WASHINGTON, March 13—Ultrafast lasers, lasers that emit light pulses that are as short as a few femtoseconds, have enabled a wide-range of fundamental science and applications over the past two decades. To highlight recent state-of-the-art developments in femtosecond lasers, the Optical Society (OSA) today published a series of papers as part of an upcoming special Focus Issue on Modular Ultrafast Lasers in its open-access journal Optics Express. The issue is organized and edited by Wilson Sibbett and Tom Brown of the University of St Andrews in the United Kingdom, and ...

The study, appears this week in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, with Andrés J. López-Contreras and Paula Gutiérrez Martínez as first authors, focuses on the activity of Chk1, a gene known for its tumour suppressing effect. It is what Fernández-Capetillo calls "a genome guardian, a gene that keeps our genome free of mutations and, therefore, protects against the development of tumours". The team wished to ascertain whether the tumour-protective effect of Chk1 was magnified in organisms with a larger quantity of the protein it codes for, ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. ¬— For years, doctors have been able to treat defects in joint cartilage by grafting cartilage donated from cadavers into patients' bad joints. Using current methods, donated cartilage can be stored for 28 days for a transplant before the tissue becomes too degraded to transplant into a patient. Now, researchers from the University of Missouri have found a way to store donated cartilage more than twice as long. "Currently, nearly 80 percent of all donated tissue has to be discarded because it deteriorates before a transplant bank can find a match with a ...

Is the gambling industry recession-proof? The answer isn't as obvious today as it may have been in previous years. In the early days of gambling, the only legal options available in most countries were horse and dog racing. Until 1976, when gambling was legalized in Atlantic City, the only state that allowed players to gamble legally was Las Vegas. Casino games like slots and blackjack only made their way to the rest of the country in the late 1980's by way of riverboat and Indian casinos. Nowadays, with the exception of Utah and Hawaii, some form of legal gambling exists ...

WEST ORANGE, N.J. -- Warm weather may hinder cognitive performance in people with multiple sclerosis (MS), according to results of a Kessler Foundation study e-published online ahead of print by Neurology. An accompanying editorial by Meier & Christodoulou, MS and heat: The smoke and the fire, details the study's unique aspects, ie, longitudinal followup in a cohort with apparently quiescent disease. Victoria M. Leavitt, Ph.D., research scientist at Kessler Foundation, is principal investigator for the study, which for the first time, shows a link between warm weather ...

DETROIT — A team of neuroscientists led by a Wayne State University School of Medicine professor has discovered stark developmental differences in brain network function in children of parents with schizophrenia when compared to those with no family history of mental illness. The study, led by Vaibhav Diwadkar, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences and co-director of the Division of Brain Research and Imaging Neuroscience, was published in the March 2012 issue of the American Medical Association journal Archives of General Psychiatry and ...

For every individual who's a victim of Alzheimer's — some 5.4 million persons in the United States alone — there's a related victim: the caregiver. Spouse, son, daughter, other relative or friend, the loneliness, exhaustion, fear and most of all stress and depression takes a toll While care for the caregivers is difficult to find, a new study out of UCLA suggests that using yoga to engage in very brief, simple daily meditation can lead to improved cognitive functioning and lower levels of depression for caregivers. Dr. Helen Lavretsky, professor of psychiatry at ...

Overweight people who shed pounds, especially belly fat, can improve the function of their blood vessels no matter whether they are on a low-carb or a low-fat diet, according to a study being presented by Johns Hopkins researchers at an American Heart Association scientific meeting in San Diego on March 13 that is focused on cardiovascular disease prevention. In the six-month weight-loss study, Hopkins researchers found that the more belly fat the participants lost, the better their arteries were able to expand when needed, allowing more blood to flow more freely. The ...

Northern Australia is dealing with two tropical systems today, and both were close enough to be captured on one satellite image. One of them has strengthened enough to be named Tropical Cyclone Lua, while the other is still getting organized and is a tropical low pressure area. The unnamed storm is currently close enough to the coast to generate warnings, while Lua is not. When NASA's Aqua satellite passed over northern Australia on March 12 at 1711 UTC and March 13 at 0539 UTC it captured the two tropical disturbances close enough to appear on one image. Tropical Cyclone ...

Many patients desire an improved smile, but may need that extra push to follow through with their procedure. To build patients' confidence, Dr. Hugh Allen, dentist in Pembroke Pines, is pleased to offer patients a before and after gallery to showcase previous smile makeovers that have been completed at Allen Dental. A smile makeover is the process of improving the appearance of a patient's smile through one or more cosmetic dentistry procedures, such as dental veneers, composite bonding, tooth implants and teeth whitening in Pembroke Pines. Patients choose to have a ...

Through a digital dental library, Facebook, Twitter and educational blog, Dr. Rick Brar, South Elgin, IL dentist, offers patients a new avenue for finding valuable dental health care information, as well as increased communication efforts. With these new available resources, Dr. Brar is finding new and innovative ways to educate his patients about dental awareness and good oral health. Patients can now easily access reliable, patient friendly resources via Dr. Brar's comprehensive website. Dr. Rick Brar, South Elgin dentist, offers patients an array of dental articles ...

UVALDE – Researchers at the Texas AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Uvalde have developed a more accurate technique than traditional methods for estimating the age of white-tailed bucks, said a Texas AgriLife Research scientist at the center. "South Texas is famous for producing trophy white-tailed deer," said Dr. Susan Cooper, AgriLife Research associate professor and lead investigator for the new age-estimation research. "Large-antlered deer sell for very high prices, so harvesting a good buck before it reaches its prime or after it begins to decline can represent ...

March 2012 JAAOS News Highlights Spine Patient Outcomes Research Trial (SPORT) Provides Lessons in Treatment and CareThe Spine Patient Outcomes Research Trial (SPORT) is the first comprehensive study to look at the effectiveness of different treatments for low back and leg pain. It was designed to provide data and outcomes to guide doctors and their patients in their treatment choices for three common spinal disorders: intervertebral disk herniation (IDH), degenerative spondylolisthesis (DS), and lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS). The results from the trial, which began in ...

Leading UK-based loan finding service this morning happily announces the coming launch of its freshly developed website branding. Payday Loans UK are excited by the news. Having worked with a top Midlands based design team in Forme Creative to design a fresh look for the website making applying for a loan even easier and the fees involved less complicated for consumers to understand while also giving the site a strong new identity. "Our aim was to create a website that was friendly and as simple to use a possible," said Paydayloansuk.org.uk marketing manager ...

Athens, Ga. – African Americans in Georgia, especially in rural areas, have drastically poorer survival rates from cancer. These disparities are much larger when compared to national data, according to the findings from a study recently published in the journal Cancer by a team of researchers in the University of Georgia College of Public Health. Sara Wagner, an assistant research scientist in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics in the College of Public Health, worked with a team to develop a detailed analysis of new cancer cases (incidence) and deaths (mortality) ...

New movies of Jupiter are the first to catch an invisible wave shaking up one of the giant planet's jet streams, an interaction that also takes place in Earth's atmosphere and influences the weather. The movies, made from images taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft when it flew by Jupiter in 2000, are part of an in-depth study conducted by a team of scientists and amateur astronomers led by Amy Simon-Miller at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and published in the April 2012 issue of Icarus. "This is the first time anyone has actually seen direct wave ...

Massachusetts bankruptcy lawyer Nina M. Parker of Parker & Associates was a speaker at the 4th Annual Northeast Consumer Winter Forum of the American Bankruptcy Institute, held at Suffolk University Law School in Boston. Ms. Parker was a panel member during the presentation "New Amendments for Proofs of Claim under the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure." The panel discussed important changes to Federal Bankruptcy Rules that became effective on December 1, 2011. These changes include amended procedures for filing Proofs of Claim in consumer bankruptcy ...

Tracking the genetic pathway of a disease offers a powerful, new approach to drug discovery, according to scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine who used the approach to uncover a potential treatment for prostate cancer, using a drug currently marketed for congestive heart failure. Their findings are published in the current online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "The science of genomics – the study of all of the genes in a person and how these genes interact with each other and the environment – has revealed ...

In today's world, it is almost impossible to imagine a life without the Internet. Many people are becoming increasing dependent on Facebook, Google or even email - with younger generations who would find themselves completely lost without them. Unfortunately, as with every technological advancement there is always someone who is willing to exploit it; which is only illustrated by an Internet rife with illegal music and movie downloads, not to mention unauthorized uses of trademarks. Consequently, the owners of intellectual property - such as copyrights and trademarks ...