URBANA – If someone agreed to buy your home as is a year from now, you'd likely cancel the kitchen remodel. According to a study at the University of Illinois, Kentucky tobacco farmers adopted that same logic when the tobacco companies announced the buyout – also known as the Tobacco Transition Act of 2004 that ended a 66-year-old federal farm program. However, the immediate drop in productivity was followed by startling changes. Over the 10-year period of the study, the number of farms declined from just over 40,000 farms to just over 8,500 farms – but productivity increased ...

NEW YORK, June 7, 2012 – Researchers at NYU School of Medicine have made an important discovery that partially answers the long-standing question of why a mother's immune system does not reject a developing fetus as foreign tissue. "Our manuscript addresses a fundamental question in the fields of transplantation immunology and reproductive biology, namely, how do the fetus and placenta, which express antigens that are disparate from the mother, avoid being rejected by the maternal immune system during pregnancy?" explained lead investigator Adrian Erlebacher, MD, PhD, ...

On November 16, 2006, Robert Medina, a 22-year-old, active-duty marine got into an argument with his wife, left his house and started driving down the I-5 freeway. Police officers from the California Highway Patrol noticed Medina driving slowly and weaving in his own lane. What followed was a slow-speed chase involving 18 officers and 13 police cars that ended in Medina's untimely death, after police officers shot him 37 times. Medina suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and had recently come home from a tour of duty in Iraq. Post-traumatic stress disorder, ...

As landfills overflow with discarded plastics, scientists have been working to produce a biodegradable alternative that will reduce pollution. Now a Tel Aviv University researcher is giving the quest for environmentally friendly plastics an entirely new dimension — by making them tougher than ever before. Prof. Moshe Kol of TAU's School of Chemistry is developing a super-strength polypropylene — one of the world's most commonly used plastics — that has the potential to replace steel and other materials used in everyday products. This could have a long-term impact on ...

A new RAND Corporation study found an unexpected link between the reported numbers of nonfatal and fatal injuries among construction workers. The findings show that states with low fatality rates seem to report higher numbers of nonfatal injuries. Conversely, states with higher rates of fatal injuries report lower numbers of nonfatal injuries. The study compared fatal and nonfatal construction-site injury reports across all 50 states. Researchers chose to focus on the construction industry because it typically accounts for more fatal work accidents than any other ...

Developmental psychology researchers have long known that children aren't simply mini-adults – their minds and brains work in fundamentally different ways. Exploring those differences can help us understand how kids think and behave and can provide insights into how the mind and brain develop and change over time. Here is some of the latest research involving children from Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Who is Good At This Game? Linking an Activity to a Social Category Undermines Children's Achievement Can linking an activity ...

WORCESTER, MA – Degeneration of the axon and synapse, the slender projection through which neurons transmit electrical impulses to neighboring cells, is a hallmark of some of the most crippling neurodegenerative and brain diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Huntington's disease and peripheral neuropathy. Scientists have worked for decades to understand axonal degeneration and its relation to these diseases. Now, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School are the first to describe a gene – dSarm/Sarm1 – responsible for actively promoting ...

Every year, power plants in the U.S. produce about 140 million tons of coal ash. The substance, otherwise known as "fly ash," is an inorganic byproduct of burning coal, and is usually disposed of in landfills and settlement ponds. West Virginia is home to more than 20 coal ash storage sites; all of them pose a risk of exposure to hazardous substances. Yet, the debate over what to do with fly ash is not as open and closed as it may appear at first glance, and lawmakers in Washington are struggling to find common ground on the issue. Benefits and Risks of ...

Millions of pre-diabetic Americans may be at increased risk of future stroke, say researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine in a new meta-analysis of epidemiological studies, but the precise degree of that threat is confounded by differing medical definitions and factors that remain unknown or unmeasured. "The immediate implication of our findings is that people with pre-diabetes should be aware they are at increased risk of stroke, and that this condition is frequently associated with one or more major risk factors for cardiovascular disease," ...

A bill that recently passed both legislative houses in Illinois will prohibit convicted child sex offenders from participating in holiday activities involving children, if signed by the Governor. While this bill is very specific, it adds further requirements for registered sex offenders in Illinois, and puts additional limits on how they must live following a criminal conviction. Illinois Sex Offender Bill The recent bill, SB3579, was introduced in February of this year and sponsored by Senator Kirk Dillard. If signed, it will amend the Illinois Criminal Code by making ...

URBANA –Teachers learn a lot about how to teach curriculum in college, but they don't get much training in helping very young children learn to handle frustration, anger, and excitement, skills that kids need for kindergarten readiness, said Nancy McElwain, a University of Illinois professor of human development and family studies who conducted a study on the topic. "When teachers aren't trained to respond to emotional outbursts in supportive ways, they often fall back on responses that reflect the way they were raised and whether they feel comfortable with their own ...

HIV superinfection, when a person with HIV could acquire a second, new strain of HIV, may occur as often as initial HIV infection in the general population in Uganda, a study suggests. Since researchers demonstrated more than a decade ago that a person infected with HIV could subsequently acquire a second, new strain of HIV, there has been little agreement in the scientific community as to how often HIV superinfection occurs. Previous studies have found HIV superinfection to be relatively frequent among individuals who engaged in high-risk behaviors, but the rate of superinfection ...

Nursing homes are responsible for the care and comfort of those who cannot take care of themselves. Unfortunately, all too often nursing home patients become victims of abuse and neglect at the very hands of those entrusted to watch over them. The statistics on nursing home abuse are shocking, making it ever more important for family members and friends to ensure that nursing homes treat their loved ones well. Examples of Preventable Abuse Torrington Health and Rehabilitation Center in Torrington, Connecticut, was fined $510 and ordered to implement a corrective ...

A team of researchers at the IRCM led by Dr. André Veillette made an important breakthrough in the field of immunology, which will be published online today by the scientific journal Immunity. The scientists explained a poorly understood molecular mechanism associated with a human immune disorder known as XLP disease or Duncan's syndrome. "We studied the SAP molecule, which plays a critical role in multiple different types of immune cells," says Dr. Veillette, Director of the Molecular Oncology research unit at the IRCM. "More specifically, we wanted to understand why ...

The quantum computer is a futuristic machine that could operate at speeds even more mind-boggling than the world's fastest super-computers. Research involving physicist Mike Thewalt of Simon Fraser University offers a new step towards making quantum computing a reality, through the unique properties of highly enriched and highly purified silicon. Quantum computers right now exist pretty much in physicists' concepts, and theoretical research. There are some basic quantum computers in existence, but nobody yet can build a truly practical one—or really knows how. Such ...

Social Security Disability benefits are designed to aid those who are unable to work due to an injury, disease or other medical condition. Although the application process may appear easy after browsing the Social Security Administration's (SSA) website, many people who meet the required qualifications and should receive benefits are often initially denied. In fact, initial claims for disability benefits are denied 65 percent of the time. There are ways to fight a social security disability denial. Unfortunately, although an appeals process is available, it can take ...

Results of a preliminary experiment conducted at the University of Illinois indicate that it may be possible to select pigs that can make efficient use of energy in less expensive feed ingredients, thus reducing diet costs. Less expensive feed is usually higher in fiber than the corn-soy diets typically used in U.S. swine production, explained Hans H. Stein, professor of animal sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. However, the white breeds that are used in commercial pork production use only about 40 percent of the insoluble fiber. "If you can increase ...

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) superinfection may be as common as initial HIV infection and is not limited to high risk-populations, according to a new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). In the first large-scale study of HIV superinfection in a general heterosexual population, researchers examined the rate of superinfection among a community of sub-Saharan adults. HIV superinfection occurs when an HIV-infected individual acquires a new viral strain that ...

Several weeks ago, Neufeld, Kleinberg & Pinkiert was approached by another law firm. This other law firm represented a man who was injured when an old wooden set of stairs (connecting a yacht to the dock) collapsed as the man was disembarking from the vessel. The owner of the boat had been previously notified of the stair / gangplank's shoddy condition, but elected to avoid making any repairs or replacements. The man was significantly injured. Knowing of David Kleinberg's reputation as a relentless, yet entertaining and incisive advocate in the courtroom, the other ...

Nursing homes that foster an environment in which workers feel they are valued contributors to a team of caregivers provide better care to their residents. That is the conclusion of a study out this month in the journal Health Services Research. "We know from other fields of medicine that teamwork – the relationship between coworkers that facilitates decision making and care coordination – plays an important role in the quality of care," said Helena Temkin-Greener, Ph.D., lead author of the study and professor in the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine ...

A team of researchers, including scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), discovered a massive bloom of phytoplankton beneath ice-covered Arctic waters. Until now, sea ice was thought to block sunlight and limit the growth of microscopic marine plants living under the ice. The amount of phytoplankton growing in this under-ice bloom was four times greater than the amount found in neighboring ice-free waters. The bloom extended laterally more than 100 kilometers (62 miles) underneath the ice pack, where ocean and ice physics combined to create a phenomenon ...

In hospitals throughout Illinois and the rest of the United States, about one in every 6,000 surgical patients faces a common complication: Surgeons mistakenly sew up a patient while leaving a foreign object inside the surgical site, often a surgical sponge. The consequences of this surgical error can be painful and even deadly, because the body reacts unfavorably to a foreign object. For example, one victim suffered increasing pain after abdominal surgery, complaining repeatedly to his doctors until they finally reopened his incision five months later and discovered ...

HOUSTON -- (June 7, 2012) -- Researchers from Rice University and UCLA unveiled a new data-encoding scheme this week that slashes more than 30 percent of the energy needed to write data onto new memory cards that use "phase-change memory" (PCM) -- a competitor to flash memory that has big backing from industry heavyweights. The breakthrough was presented at the IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference (DAC) in San Francisco by researchers from Rice University's Adaptive Computing and Embedded Systems (ACES) Laboratory. PCM uses the same type of materials as those used ...

HOUSTON -- (June 7, 2012) -- Thanks to a little serendipity, researchers at Rice University have created a tiny coaxial cable that is about a thousand times smaller than a human hair and has higher capacitance than previously reported microcapacitors. The nanocable, which is described this week in Nature Communications, was produced with techniques pioneered in the nascent graphene research field and could be used to build next-generation energy-storage systems. It could also find use in wiring up components of lab-on-a-chip processors, but its discovery is owed partly ...

Alex Membrillo, the co-founder of Cardinal Web Solutions, an Atlanta Internet Marketing firm, was recently featured in an article for Entrepreneur.com. Written by Lambeth Hochwald, the piece, "5 Ways to Make Sweet Music for Your Business," was published on May 29, 2012. It discusses how music can be used to positively influence sales and motivate staff. In the article Mr. Membrillo explains how Cardinal Web Solutions (CWS) uses music to energize employees, encourage innovative ideas, and recognize achievements. "In the ever changing world of Internet ...