Beginning July 1, teenagers who are convicted of having consensual sex with a teen younger than 16 will no longer have their name added to Michigan's sex registry, provided they weren't more than four years older than their partner at the time of the offense. Of equal importance, the new legislation also affords people who have already been convicted of this sex crime - under the aforementioned circumstances - to petition the court for their removal from the state sex registry. "This presents a rare opportunity for many people to clear their name - people who would ...

Children and adolescents who eat candy tend to weigh less than their non-consuming counterparts, according to a new study published in Food & Nutrition Research, a peer-reviewed journal. This is potentially important news given the current state of the childhood obesity epidemic. But lead researcher Carol O'Neil, PhD, MPH, LDN, RD, Louisiana State University Agricultural Center, wants to ensure the study is put into perspective. "The study illustrates that children and adolescents who consume candy are less likely to be overweight or obese," O'Neil said. "However, ...

ESA's XMM-Newton space observatory has watched a faint star flare up at X-ray wavelengths to almost 10 000 times its normal brightness. Astronomers believe the outburst was caused by the star trying to eat a giant clump of matter. The flare took place on a neutron star, the collapsed heart of a once much larger star. Now about 10 km in diameter, the neutron star is so dense that it generates a strong gravitational field. The clump of matter was much larger than the neutron star and came from its enormous blue supergiant companion star. "This was a huge bullet of gas ...

The Hampton Inn & Suites Atlanta Airport Hotel (North, I-85) offers convenient lodging to attendees of the National Black Arts Festival, a celebration of the art, music, and culture of people of African descent. The summer festival takes place July 7-17, with a few visual arts exhibitions running longer. The main weekend of the festival is July 15-17, with events taking place at Centennial Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta. There are scheduled musical and dance performances as well as an International Marketplace and children's activities. Exhibitions of visual arts, ...

British researchers have identified specific resistance mutations for two classes of p7 inhibitor, which may explain their lack of effectiveness in clinical trials combined with current standard of care. Study results support the role of p7 inhibitor combinations as potential components of future HCV-specific therapies and are available in the July issue of Hepatology, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases. More than 3% of the world population is infected with HCV, which causes severe liver disease. ...

This release is available in French. Montreal, June 28, 2011 —Canadians aren't the only people concerned with weather, eh? A new study from McGill and Concordia universities observed pedestrians in nine cities around the world and found people are less likely to walk when temperatures dip below zero, when there's too much rain or too much snow. Published in the journal Environment and Behavior, the study was conducted over 170 days from late fall to early summer. "A 5 degree Celsius increase in temperature was associated with a 14 per cent increase in pedestrians," ...

The Eatery on Beach Street has a new look on the inside and new menu items like Burger Diane and weekly specials like Friday's steak gone wild. The restaurant even has a new logo featuring a wine glass and new tagline. The new logo and the new look are part of the restaurant's effort to attract a clientele that likes made-from-scratch American food with fresh ingredients and a creative twist. "Chef Don likes to surprise patrons with a dish that mixes unexpected flavors or recreates a favorite recipe in a new form," said co-owner Cindy Gifford. She mentioned ...

New research confirms that a variant on the patatin-like phospholipase-3 (PNPLA3) gene increases risk of steatosis and fibrosis progression in patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV). The PNPLA3 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs 738409 may represent an important genetic predictor and potential therapeutic target in chronic HCV liver damage. Study details are published in the July issue of Hepatology, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases. According to a report by the World Health Organization (WHO) roughly 170,000 ...

Bird species in rainforest fragments in Brazil that were isolated by deforestation disappeared then reappeared over a quarter-century, according to research results published today in the journal PLoS ONE. Scientists thought many of the birds had gone extinct. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and conducted in cooperation with Projeto Dinâmica Biológica de Fragmentos Florestais, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Manaus, Brazil. Lead author Philip Stouffer, an ornithologist ...

From educators to leaders in industry, there is broad agreement that U.S. schools have a crucial challenge in improving teaching and learning in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) among students from kindergarten through high school. A background in STEM is not only essential to many current and future careers; it is also a means for citizens to understand and participate in an increasingly complex world--from understanding the challenges of environmental sustainability to addressing the need for alternative sources of energy. The NRC report, "Successful ...

New research by the University of Warwick and Humboldt university shows that the frequency of wars between states increased steadily from 1870 to 2001 by 2% a year on average. The research argues that conflict is being fed by economic growth and the proliferation of new borders. We may think the world enjoyed periods of relative freedom from war between the Cold War and 9/1 but the new research by Professor Mark Harrison from at the University of Warwick's the Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy, and Professor Nikolaus Wolf from Humboldt University, ...

When Oxygen4Energy Athlete Kellie Wells got to Eugene, Oregon this past week, she had only one thing on her mind... winning a national championship. She knew that all of the nation's top competitors would also be there gunning for the title, but she was definitely up for the challenge. So far this year, Kellie has been the most dominant figure in women's hurdles by tying an American Record (55m Hurdles), winning the Indoor National Title, running multiple World Lead times, winning the first Diamond League event, and never finishing worse than 2nd place in any race she ...

The global economic recession of 2008-09 has been followed by a decline in fertility rates in Europe and the United States, bringing to an end the first concerted rise in fertility rates in the developed world since the 1960s, according to research published today. "In a new study, scientists from the Vienna Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (VID) and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) identify that economic recessions tend to be followed by a decline in fertility rates - and also identify how specific groups of ...

Johns Hopkins University graduate students have invented a device to reduce the risk of infection, clotting and narrowing of the blood vessels in patients who need blood-cleansing dialysis because of kidney failure. The device, designed to be implanted under the skin in a patient's leg, would give a technician easy access to the patient's bloodstream and could be easily opened and closed at the beginning and end of a dialysis procedure. The prototype has not yet been used in human patients, but testing in animals has begun. The students learned about the need for ...

Zinger Digital Signs today introduced eight new free-standing digital poster kiosk solutions for the retail and office/corporate markets. The digital signage poster kiosks are aimed at replacing printed posters used in retail and corporate environments. The new digital poster kiosks are certified for true 24/7 operations in commercial applications. Digital posters offer many benefits to printed posters including savings from printing, shipping & handling. Digital posters can be updated instantly, giving retailers a tremendous benefit for those last minute sales or ...

A new, cost-effective process for colouring titanium can be used in manufacturing products from sporting equipment to colour-coded nuclear waste containers. "The new method uses an electrochemical solution to produce coloured titanium, improving on an older, time-consuming and expensive method where heat was used to develop a coloured layer," says Gregory Jerkiewicz, a professor in the Department of Chemistry. Dr. Jerkiewicz's new technique can be finely tuned to produce over 80 different shades of basic colours. In addition, the coloured titanium produced using the ...

MANHATTAN, Kan. -- That panicked feeling we get when the family pet goes missing is the same when we misplace our mobile phone, says a Kansas State University marketing professor. Moreover, those feelings of loss and hopelessness without our digital companion are natural. "The cellphone's no longer just a cellphone; it's become the way we communicate and a part of our life," said Esther Swilley, who researches technology and marketing. This reliance on cellphones and other mobile technology in daily life is an interest of Swilley's, and a phenomenon she hopes to explain. One ...

Top sirloin steaks have been getting a grilling in U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) food safety studies. USDA microbiologist John B. Luchansky and his colleagues are conducting experiments to help make sure that neither the foodborne pathogen Escherichia coli O157:H7 nor any of its pathogenic relatives will ruin the pleasure of eating this popular entrée. The scientists are learning more about the movement of E. coli into "subprimals," the meat from which top sirloin steaks are carved. Their focus is on what happens to the E. coli when subprimals are punctured-as ...

Walking to the photocopier and fidgeting at your desk are contributing more to your cardiorespiratory fitness than you might think. Researchers have found that both the duration and intensity of incidental physical activities (IPA) are associated with cardiorespiratory fitness. The intensity of the activity seems to be particularly important, with a cumulative 30-minute increase in moderate physical activity throughout the day offering significant benefits for fitness and long-term health. "It's encouraging to know that if we just increase our incidental activity slightly--a ...

Were dinosaurs slow and lumbering, or quick and agile? It depends largely on whether they were cold- or warm-blooded. When dinosaurs were first discovered in the mid-19th century, paleontologists thought they were plodding beasts that relied on their environment to keep warm, like modern-day reptiles. But research during the last few decades suggests that they were faster creatures, nimble like the velociraptors or T. rex depicted in the movie Jurassic Park, requiring warmer, regulated body temperatures. Now, researchers, led by Robert Eagle of the California Institute ...

Doctors at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are performing a new procedure to treat atrial fibrillation, a common irregular heartbeat. Available at only a handful of U.S. medical centers, this "hybrid" procedure combines minimally invasive surgical techniques with the latest advances in catheter ablation, a technique that applies scars to the heart's inner surface to block signals causing the heart to misfire. The two-pronged approach gives doctors access to both the inside and outside of the heart at the same time, helping to more completely block ...

MADISON, WI, JUNE 28, 2011 -- The evaluation of both nutrient and non-nutrient resource interactions provides information needed to sustainably manage agroforestry systems. Improved diagnosis of appropriate nutrient usage will help increase yields and also reduce financial and environmental costs. To achieve this, a management support system that allows for site-specific evaluation of nutrient-production imbalances is needed. Scientists at the University of Toronto and the University of Saskatchewan have developed a conceptual framework to diagnosis nutrient and non-nutrient ...

VIDEO: Scientists have figured out the brain mechanism that makes this optical illusion work. The illusion, known as "motion aftereffect " in scientific circles, causes us to see movement where none exist Click here for more information. Scientists have come up with new insight into the brain processes that cause the following optical illusion: Focus your eyes directly on the "X" in the center of the image in this short video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXnUckHbPqM&feature=player_embedded) The ...

Tiny seawater algae could hold the key to crops as a source of fuel and plants that can adapt to changing climates. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have found that the tiny organism has developed coping mechanisms for when its main food source is in short supply. Understanding these processes will help scientists develop crops that can survive when nutrients are scarce and to grow high-yield plants for use as biofuels. The alga normally feeds by ingesting nitrogen from surrounding seawater but, when levels are low, it reduces its intake and instead absorbs ...

Tampa, Fla. (June 28, 2011) – Mensenchymal stem cells (MSCs), multipotent cells identified in bone marrow and other tissues, have been shown to be therapeutically effective in the immunosuppression of T-cells, the regeneration of blood vessels, assisting in skin wound healing, and suppressing chronic airway inflammation in some asthma cases. Typically, when MSCs are being prepared for therapeutic applications, they are cultured in fetal bovine serum. A study conducted by a research team from Singapore and published in the current issue of Cell Medicine [2(1)], freely ...