COLUMBUS, Ohio – More than half of the women in a recently published survey reported that near the end of their pregnancies, they took it upon themselves to try to induce labor, mostly by walking, having sex, eating spicy food or stimulating their nipples. Of the 201 women who responded to the survey at a Midwestern hospital, 102, or 50.7 percent, used these or other unprescribed methods to try to bring on labor. Other techniques they tried included exercise, laxative use, acupuncture, masturbation and herbal supplementation. Women who tried these techniques tended ...

FAIRFAX, Va.—Evaluating patients with multiple sclerosis who have narrowed jugular and azygos veins—and the value of widening those veins with angioplasty—warrants careful, well-designed research, noted members of a Society of Interventional Radiology Foundation's Research Consensus Panel. And, the multidisciplinary panel indicated that while specific parameters for a large-scale, pivotal multicenter trial are not now available, that type of study is the "mandatory goal" in exploring a condition called chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency (or CCSVI). "Much work ...

Access Legal, the consumer legal services provider, has announced it will be sponsoring motorcycle racer Leon Hunt in this season's Metzeler National Superstock Championship. Access Legal will be backing the 22-year-old from Brighton in all 12 rounds of the series, which began at Easter, at Brands Hatch. This is the first time that Access Legal has sponsored a rider. Leon is racing for Lincoln-based team AP Kawasaki in the Superstock 1000cc class, which supports the popular MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship. He will be riding a brand new Kawasaki ZX-10R. ...

Building upon previous efforts producing a high-quality de novo genome assemblies of deadly 2011 E. coli O104:H4 outbreak strain (http://www.genomics.cn/en/news_show.php?type=show&id=651), the BGI and their collaborators at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf have now released the first complete map of the genome and plasmids without any assembly gaps. (genome publicly available at ftp://ftp.genomics.org.cn/pub/Ecoli_TY-2482/Escherichia_coli_TY-2482.chromosome.20110616.fa.gz and plasmids at ftp://ftp.genomics.org.cn/pub/Ecoli_TY-2482/Escherichia_coli_TY-2482.plasmid.20110616.fa.gz) BThis ...

Old trees must be protected to save the homes of more than 1,000 different bird and mammal species who nest, says a new study from the University of British Columbia. Most animals can't carve out their own tree holes and rely on holes already formed. The study found that outside of North America, most animals nest in tree holes formed by damage and decay, a process that can take several centuries. The study, published this month in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, examined the holes birds and mammals were using for nesting around the world. The research ...

How researchers classify and quantify causes of death across a population has evolved in recent decades. In addition to long-recognized physiological causes such as heart attack and cancer, the role of behavioral factors—including smoking, dietary patterns and inactivity—began to be quantified in the 1990s. More recent research has begun to look at the contribution of social factors to U.S. mortality. In the first comprehensive analysis of such studies, researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health found that poverty, low levels of education, poor ...

Northern Rock has reduced mortgage rates, making its range even more competitive. As well as reducing selected rates across its core mortgage range by up to 0.50%, it has improved its 2-Year Fixed rate deal available exclusively through Northern Rock's intermediary partners. The product is now available at 2.99% for those with a 30% deposit (70% LTV). All of the remaining reduced deals are available to both purchase and remortgage customers, the latter benefiting from Northern Rock's usual incentive of a free basic valuation and free standard legal costs. Northern ...

As everyone knows, the pharmaceutical industry is struggling to deal with bacteria that have become resistant to common antibiotics. Less well known is the similar struggle in agribusiness to deal with weeds that have become resistant to a herbicide that is widely used in farming practice. The herbicide, first introduced in 1974, is glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup products and also in herbicides produced by other manufacturers. The first case of glyphosate resistance was documented in 1997, and today more than 20 weed species globally are reported ...

Ever wonder why on earth you should pay good money to have your blog posts / web copy proofread? Unfortunately writers (yes, even good writers like you) write fast, especially if a deadline is looming. When you're in a hurry you make typos - we all do! In connection with the business copywriting and blogging side of Prompt Proofing, we have to research many specialized fields and I never cease to be surprised how many excellent writers make typos. These are well-educated literate people who are just in a hurry. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, instead of remembering ...

NEW YORK (June 16, 2011) -- As many as 15 percent of men have varicoceles, masses of enlarged and dilated veins in the testicles. There is new evidence that varicoceles, long known to be a cause of male infertility, interfere with the production of testosterone -- a crucial hormone to maintaining men's health. There is good news too: Microsurgery can increase testosterone levels in these men. Results of new research by physician-scientists at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center are in a recent edition of BJU International. "Varicoceles are a much ...

Washington, D.C.--On March 18, 2011, the MESSENGER spacecraft entered orbit around Mercury to become that planet's first orbiter. The spacecraft's instruments are making a complete reconnaissance of the planet's geochemistry, geophysics, geologic history, atmosphere, magnetosphere, and plasma environment. MESSENGER is providing a wealth of new information and some surprises. For instance, Mercury's surface composition differs from that expected for the innermost of the terrestrial planets, and Mercury's magnetic field has a north-south asymmetry that affects interaction ...

With the economic downturn still in effect, many air charter consumers are seeking low-cost options for private jet charter. Stratos Jet Charters, Inc., a worldwide air charter agency, warned private jet travelers today that some charter brokerages are offering reduced pricing on charter flights by engaging in unfair, deceptive business practices. In a recent interview on air charter safety, Stratos Jet Charters' president and founder, Joel Thomas, spoke out against charter brokers that engage in illegal charter flight activity, highlighting the value of working with ...

Washington, D.C., 16 June 2011 – Fortunately, postnatal depression often resolves itself in the weeks following childbirth. But for mothers with more profound or prolonged postnatal depression the risk of subsequent development of depression in their children is strong. A recent study by Lynne Murray and colleagues published in the May 2011 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP) is the first to demonstrate that the effects of maternal depression on the likelihood of the child to develop depression may begin as early as infancy. ...

Innovative adult stem cell research by scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) could aid efforts to apply the brakes to stem cells that produce the type of fat ringing the waists of millions. Research appeared today online ahead of the print issue of Cell Stem Cell. The scientists have developed a bold approach for targeting fat-generating stem cells that one day could aid in the delivery of drugs that slow the cells' ability to direct fat expansion. Because these cells are also used in regenerative medicine, this approach may ...

VESAG watch can now be used by an entire family and its members to avail the emergency medical services more conveniently. Most of the personal emergency response systems or PERS work only for a single member of a house. A VESAG watch can now be used by as many as five members of a family. All the customers will be provided with a unique identification number. With this unique number, they can access their individual account and view their health statistics from VESAG portal. In case the customer does not have access to internet, they can call the customer care centre ...

VIDEO: In this animation of a 3-D plasmon ruler, developed by a collaboration of researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Stuttgart, the plasmonic assembly acts as... Click here for more information. The world's first three-dimensional plasmon rulers, capable of measuring nanometer-scale spatial changes in macrmolecular systems, have been developed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A survey of wine drinkers conducted by the University at Buffalo School of Management has found that 54 percent say they are opposed to a New York State proposal to sell wine in supermarkets. In a survey of more than 5,000 households, 42 percent of those opposing wine sales in supermarkets cited "negative impact on small businesses" as their reason for doing so. Other reasons included reduction of wine selection (19 percent), likely end of personalized services (15 percent), end of a unique shopping experience at specialty stores (11 percent), perceived ...

Two-year-old Owen Stark came to St. Louis Children's Hospital in the summer of 2010 near death from heart failure and dangerously high blood pressure in his lungs. Washington University physicians and surgeons at St. Louis Children's Hospital knew they had to act fast to save his life. They collaborated to make several strategic and innovative decisions that led to the first successful use of an artificial lung in a toddler. Their efforts are reported in the June 2011 issue of The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. The artificial lung, made by Novalung ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – New research by electrical engineers at Oregon State University has confirmed that an electronic technology called "ultrawideband" could hold part of the solution to an ambitious goal in the future of medicine – health monitoring with sophisticated "body-area networks." Such networks would offer continuous, real-time health diagnosis, experts say, to reduce the onset of degenerative diseases, save lives and cut health care costs. Some remote health monitoring is already available, but the perfection of such systems is still elusive. The ideal device ...

African Americans receive poorer dental care than white Americans, even when they have some dental insurance coverage. To better understand why this is so, researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and the College of Dental Medicine, surveyed African American adults with recent oral health symptoms, including toothaches and gum disease. Their findings provide insights into why disparities persist even among those with dental insurance and suggest strategies to removing barriers to dental care. The findings are published online ahead of print ...

Bethesda, MD— "Super bugs," which can cause wide-spread disease and may be resistant to most, if not all, conventional antibiotics, still have their weaknesses. A team of Canadian scientists discovered that specific mixtures of antimicrobial agents presented in lipid (fatty) mixtures can significantly boost the effectiveness of those agents to kill the resistant bacteria. This discovery was published online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org). According to a researcher involved in the study, Richard Epand, Ph.D. from the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical ...

Porto Alegre, Brazil- Glycomics is the functional study of the entire set of sugars found in a given species. To some, the term may sound like a distant cousin of more familiar names such as genomics and proteomics. Indeed, while genomics and proteomics of several species have been extensively investigated in the last years, glycomics is still an emerging field. Now, a paper published in Science magazine by an international collaboration headed by Dr. Jose Estevez (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina) and co-authored by researchers from Argentina, Brazil, Denmark, the ...

Hartley 2's hyperactive state, as studied by NASA's EPOXI mission, is detailed in a new paper published in this week's issue of the journal Science by an international team of scientists that includes Lucy McFadden of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. After visiting a comet and imaging distant stars for hints of extrasolar planets, you could say the spacecraft used for EPOXI had seen its fair share of celestial wonders. But after about 3.2 billion miles (5.1 billion kilometers) of deep space travel, one final wonder awaited the mission's project and ...

In a Landsat 5 satellite image captured June 11, 2011, flooding is still evident both east and west of the Mississippi River near Vicksburg, Miss. Standing water is most apparent, however, in the floodplain between the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers north of Vicksburg. On May 19, 2011, the Mississippi River reached a historic crest at Vicksburg. According to the Advanced Hydrological Prediction Service (AHPS) of the U.S. National Weather Service, the river reached 57.10 feet (17.40 meters) that day. By early June, flooding had receded considerably around Vicksburg, but ...

Resembling looming rain clouds on a stormy day, dark lanes of dust crisscross the giant elliptical galaxy Centaurus A. Hubble's panchromatic vision, stretching from ultraviolet through near-infrared wavelengths, reveals the vibrant glow of young, blue star clusters and a glimpse into regions normally obscured by the dust. The warped shape of Centaurus A's disk of gas and dust is evidence for a past collision and merger with another galaxy. The resulting shockwaves cause hydrogen gas clouds to compress, triggering a firestorm of new star formation. These are visible ...