A new study by Baylor University environmental health researchers found that zebra fish exposed to several different technical mixtures of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) – a common fire retardant – during early development can cause developmental malformations, changes in behavior and death. The study will appear in the June issue of the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry and is the first to test multiple PBDE mixtures for changes in behavior, physical malformations and mortality on zebra fish. PBDEs are found in many common household products from ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Many kinds of algae and cyanobacteria, common water-dwelling microorganisms, are capable of using energy from sunlight to split water molecules and release hydrogen, which holds promise as a clean and carbon-free fuel for the future. One reason this approach hasn't yet been harnessed for fuel production is that under ordinary circumstances, hydrogen production takes a back seat to the production of compounds that the organisms use to support their own growth. But Shuguang Zhang, associate director of MIT's Center for Biomedical Engineering, and postdocs ...

TORONTO, Ont., May 24, 2011—For every year a person is homeless, the odds of them having a family doctor drop by 9 per cent, according to a report by St. Michael's Hospital and Street Health. One of the key barriers to having a family doctor is the lack of a health card, often because it has been lost or stolen, the report found. The report, published today in the journal Open Medicine, www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/368/407, is an analysis of data collected for The Street Health Report 2007, a survey of the health status and needs of homeless people in downtown Toronto. ...

npower has announced that Royals' fan Mark Horseman will be the face of Reading FC when they take on Swansea City. Mark, 63, from Kennington, Oxford, will feature on a giant 24 x16 metre poster on the side of Wembley Stadium on Monday, May 30 - seen by thousands of people on their way into the ground for the npower Championship play offs Final. Mark won the competition - run by Football League title sponsors npower - after explaining what the Reading shirt means to him. There were more than three thousand entries from football fans across the country. He explained ...

A team of researchers from Galicia in Spain have used forensic mitochondrial DNA species identification techniques to distinguish between sardines and horse mackerel. This method makes it possible to genetically differentiate between the fish, even if they are canned or processed, which makes it easier to monitor the degree to which fisheries resources are being exploited. DNA from the mitochondria – cell organelles – is ideal for distinguishing between species. One of its components in particular, cytochrome b, is a genetic marker that scientists use to establish relationships ...

WASHINGTON, May 24, 2011 — The latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS) award-winning podcast series, "Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions," focuses on new blood test that can quickly tell whether patients are infected with an antibiotic-resistant bacterium that's become a global threat, significantly improving treatment. This "superbug" is called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or simply MRSA. The podcast explains how MRSA started off as a threat mainly in hospitals and nursing homes among patients with open wounds, urinary catheters and ...

Berkeley, CA—In the next 40 years, California's population is expected to surge from 37 million to 55 million and the demand for energy is expected to double. Given those daunting numbers, can California really reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, as required by an executive order? Scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who co-wrote a new report on California's energy future are optimistic that the target can be achieved, though not without bold policy and behavioral changes as well as some scientific innovation. The ...

Global digital marketing and technology agency LBi and its media arm bigmouthmedia today released a joint white paper on digital innovation in the retail sector.  The document analyses how the touchable web and the trends towards a multi-device, multi-channel future are fast becoming an opportunity for retail brands to engage and reward consumers with deep and positive retail and marketing experiences.  At the same time, it looks into the blurring edges of the online and offline environments and the opportunities presented by consumers expecting to interact with brands ...

Tiny fossil teeth discovered in Inner Mongolia are a new species of birch mouse, indicating that ancestors of the small rodent are much older than previously reported, according to paleontologist Yuri Kimura at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Fossils of the new species were discovered in sediments that are 17 million years old, said Kimura, who identified the new species and named it Sicista primus to include the Latin word for "first." Previously the oldest prehistoric ancestor of the modern-day birch mouse was one that inhabited Inner Mongolia 8 million years ...

The Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management, one of the world's leading hospitality management schools and part of Jumeirah Group, recently signed a cooperation agreement with the Beijing Hospitality Institute. The agreement establishes an academic exchange programme between The Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management and Beijing Hospitality Institute - a specialist university certified by the Ecole hoteliere de Lausanne (EHL). The agreement provides study abroad programmes for students, faculty exchanges, academic cooperation and programmes for the development ...

Contemplating mortality can be terrifying. But not everyone responds to that terror in the same way. Now, a new study which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds cultural differences in how people respond to mortality. European-Americans get worried and try to protect their sense of self, while Asian-Americans are more likely to reach out to others. Much of the research on what psychologists call "mortality salience" – thinking about death – has been done on people of European descent, ...

In a world where everything from placement in a Google search result to World Cup eligibility depends on ranking and numerical ratings of some kind, it is becoming increasingly important to analyze the algorithms and techniques that underlie such ranking methods in order to ensure fairness, eliminate bias, and tailor them to specific applications. In a paper published this month in the SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, authors Timothy Chartier, Erich Kreutzer, Amy Langville, and Kathryn Pedings mathematically analyze three commonly-used ranking methods. "We studied ...

Confused.com has announced that the well-loved 70's disco anthem YMCA is the soundtrack to the latest advert "Con-Fused-Dot-Com" featuring animated logo Cara. The new thirty second advert, focusing on car insurance, launched on Sunday 22nd May, with its peak spot taking place during the new ITV1 drama Vera. The new advert is once again voiced by Louise Dearman who plays the lead in the popular West End hit musical, Wicked. Animated and produced by Hornet, with musical arrangement from Speckulation entertainment, the advert will feature living logo Cara singing ...

More than just a tool for predicting health, modern genetics is upending long-held assumptions about who we are. A new study by Harvard researchers casts new light on the intermingling and migration of European, Middle Eastern and African and populations since ancient times. In a paper titled "The History of African Gene Flow into Southern Europeans, Levantines and Jews," published in PLoS Genetics, HMS Associate Professor of Genetics David Reich and his colleagues investigated the proportion of sub-Saharan African ancestry present in various populations in West Eurasia, ...

MANHASSET, NY --– After decades of studying the pathological process that wipes out large volumes of memory, scientists at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research discovered a molecule called c-Abl that has a known role in leukemia also has a hand in Alzheimer's disease. The finding, reported in the June 14th issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, offers a new target for drug development that could stave off the pathological disease process. Peter Davies, PhD, head of the Feinstein Institute's Litwin-Zucker Center for Research in Alzheimer's Disease, became ...

Bupa has held Communi-tea Week events in its care homes to help tackle loneliness in older people. Residents of Bupa care homes throughout the UK have brewed up some community spirit by inviting older people to join them for a friendly cup of tea. Altogether, over 300 care homes, including residential care and nursing care homes, hosted special afternoon tea parties to mark Communi-tea Week, a nationwide campaign which aimed to use tea-related social activities to help tackle the problems of isolation and loneliness in older people. Worrying statistics demonstrate ...

NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Understanding the actions of other people can be difficult for those with schizophrenia. Vanderbilt University researchers have discovered that impairments in a brain area involved in perception of social stimuli may be partly responsible for this difficulty. "Misunderstanding social situations and interactions are core deficits in schizophrenia," said Sohee Park, Gertrude Conaway Professor of Psychology and one of the co-authors on this study. "Our findings may help explain the origins of some of the delusions involving perception and thoughts experienced ...

NASA's Kepler spacecraft is proving itself to be a prolific planet hunter. Within just the first four months of data, astronomers have found evidence for more than 1,200 planetary candidates. Of those, 408 reside in systems containing two or more planets, and most of those look very different than our solar system. In particular, the Kepler systems with multiple planets are much flatter than our solar system. They have to be for Kepler to spot them. Kepler watches for a planet to cross in front of its star, blocking a tiny fraction of the star's light. By measuring how ...

Non-governmental organizations continually strive to find ways to deliver more services with fewer resources, decreased funding and increased compliance regulations. Constant challenges include contract routing, review and approvals from global reviewers, collaboration with team members in remote worldwide locations, and maintaining document control and compliance. These challenges drive NGOs to search for affordable technology solutions to address their needs. Document Advantage Corporation (DocuVantage) will be exhibiting its NGO Contract and Business Process Management ...

For many movie stars, their age is a well-kept secret. In space, the same is true of the actual stars. Like our Sun, most stars look almost the same for most of their lives. So how can we tell if a star is one billion or 10 billion years old? Astronomers may have found a solution - measuring the star's spin. "A star's rotation slows down steadily with time, like a top spinning on a table, and can be used as a clock to determine its age," says astronomer Soren Meibom of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Meibom presented his findings today in a press conference ...

Polaris Software Lab Limited (POLS.BO), a leading global financial technology company, today announced that Polaris Software Lab, Inc. (a Polaris Group Company) has launched its first Cloud-Ready platform offering for the insurance sector globally. IntellectTM SEEC is a comprehensive solution for the Insurance sector offering 3X Efficiency Multiplier that runs on the Polaris Continuous Migration (PCM) Architecture. Owing to its highly complex nature, the Insurance sector needed a solution which is both easy to implement and highly efficient. Polaris achieved this through ...

NEW YORK (May 23, 2011) -- In a significant breakthrough, investigators at Weill Cornell Medical College and the University of California, San Francisco, have been able to overcome resistance of a form of leukemia to targeted therapy, demonstrating complete eradication of the cancer in cell and animal studies. Their study, published in the May 19 issue of Nature, shows that an investigational drug, RI-BPI, developed at Weill Cornell, in combination with the drug Gleevec shut down stem cells responsible for about one-third of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), a cancer ...

Clinical trials for a new bladder cancer therapy show promising interim results. Lead researcher Alvaro Morales says that the breakthrough using the drug Urocidin follows thirty years of his research in this important area. "I am optimistic about the results of the trial," says Dr. Morales, professor emeritus in the Department of Urology at Queen's University and director of the Queen's University Centre for Applied Urological Research. "Positive results in the next phase of trials will move us very close to a far more effective bladder cancer treatment." Initial human ...

A professional Palm Springs real estate agent for nearly two decades, Randy Heinitz has spent numerous months studying the current market and developing a marketing campaign for selling Palm Springs properties. The result of all this hard work is Selling PS: It's So Sunny! Nearly six months of research were involved in the development of Selling PS: It's So Sunny!, with much of it being trial and error Internet marketing concepts. During these months, Randy stepped away from day to day real estate transactions to study the importance of social media connections, Internet ...

WACO, Texas (May 24, 2011) — Male rappers see the "independent woman" as an educated, bill-paying person who will care for an average guy without making demands, while female rappers stress their sexual prowess and keep mum about their domestic skills, according to a Baylor University researcher's study. But despite their very different takes on independent women, both men and women artists displayed a definite lack of the R-E-S-P-E-C-T that Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin craved in her 1967 mega-hit song. "Both groups use misogynistic language to describe women," said ...