DALLAS – May 9, 2011 – Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have uncovered new clues about how the intestine maintains friendly relations with the 100 trillion symbiotic bacteria that normally live in the digestive tract. Their latest findings, available online today and in a future edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that a once enigmatic cell population which lurks in the intestinal lining is essential for preventing friendly bacteria from invading into deeper tissue where they can cause debilitating conditions like inflammatory ...

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When doctors give heart drugs to patients, the time of day can make a big difference, according to new research by University of Guelph scientists. Many doctors prefer to give heart drugs to patients in the morning. But the study revealed that angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors – commonly given to patients with high blood pressure or after a heart attack or during heart failure – improve heart structure and function when given at sleep time. In fact, when administered during wake time, ACE inhibitors are no more effective than a placebo, the study found. The ...

New York, N.Y. (May 9, 2011) – In the first comprehensive study of autism prevalence using a total population sample, an international team of investigators from the U.S., South Korea, and Canada estimated the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in South Korea to be 2.64%, or approximately 1 in 38 children, and concluded that autism prevalence estimates worldwide may increase when this approach is used to identify children with ASD. "Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder in a Total Population Sample," published today online in the American Journal of Psychiatry ...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Imagine an insect repellant that not only is thousands of times more effective than DEET – the active ingredient in most commercial mosquito repellants – but also works against all types of insects, including flies, moths and ants. That possibility has been created by the discovery of a new class of insect repellant made in the laboratory of Vanderbilt Professor of Biological Sciences and Pharmacology Laurence Zwiebel and reported this week in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "It wasn't something we ...

New research has revealed how infection by a parasitic fungus dramatically changes the behavior of tropical of carpenter ants (species Camponotus leonardi), causing them to become zombie-like and to die at a spot that has optimal reproduction conditions for the fungus. The multinational research team studied ants living high up in the rainforest canopy in Thailand. A paper describing the research will be published in the BioMed Central open-access journal BMC Ecology on 9 May 2011. "The behavior of these infected zombie ants essentially causes their bodies to become an ...

The affordable, internet-based TV advertising agency Cheap TV Spots is proud to announce it has won the prestigious Gold Award at the 2011 Worldfest International Film Festival. The advertising agency's amazing award count now stands at over 190 international awards. Worldfest is the one of the longest running international film and TV festivals in North America, and Cheap-TV-Spots.com is the longest-operating producer of original, discount-priced TV commercials for the international market. What do all of these awards mean to you, the business owner? Your high quality ...

Researchers from the Basque nanoscience research center CIC nanoGUNE and Neaspec GmbH (Germany) have developed an instrument that allows for recording infrared spectra with a thermal source at a resolution that is 100 times better than in conventional infrared spectroscopy. In future, the technique could be applied for analyzing the local chemical composition and structure of nanoscale materials in polymer composites, semiconductor devices, minerals or biological tissue. The work is published in Nature Materials. The absorption of infrared radiation is characteristic ...

Online social networking sites, such as Facebook, can help students become academically and socially integrated as well as improving learning outcomes, according to a study by researchers in China and Hong Kong. Writing in the International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations, explain that Facebook usage is around 90% across campuses and many educational institutions offer new students orientation on how to capitalize on social networking to improve their experience of their course and their final results. Many previous studies of social networking have focused ...

OzeVision Web Hosting has been presented with 14th position amongst the "Top 25 Most Poplar" web hosting companies in the category "Australian Web Hosting Directory" by WebHostDir.com and 5th position in the category "Australian Dedicated Servers Directory" by DedicatedServerDir.com for the month of April 2011. The awards pages can be viewed at: http://ozevision.com/web_hosting/top-25-most-popular-webhosting-awards.html http://ozevision.com/web_hosting/top-25-most-popular-dedicated-awards.html On monthly basis, WebHostDir.com and DedicatedServerDir.com ...

Seven out of ten hospital nurses who took part in a Canadian study used the dorsogluteal (DG) buttock site to administer intramuscular injections - despite the potential risks of sciatic nerve injury - with only 14% using the ventrogluteal (VG) hip site recommended by the nursing literature. The research, published in the May issue of the Journal of Advanced Nursing, found that younger, newer nurses were significantly more likely to follow the latest VG site advice than their older, experienced colleagues. It also discovered that more than one in four nurses using ...

Major progress has been made in reducing the burden of infectious diseases in Brazil as part of a "remarkable" success story for health in the South American country, according to researchers on a series of papers published in The Lancet. After decades of marked social change, including the introduction of unified healthcare for all, Brazil can also celebrate a reduction in mortality from chronic diseases and huge inroads into improving maternal and child health. But the nation still faces problems – including some infectious diseases such as dengue and leishmaniasis, ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – A new study of U.S. veterans ages 70 and older finds that the healthiest get the most benefit from current colon cancer screening methods. However, for many less healthy veterans the burdens of screening may outweigh the benefits. "This study shows that we really need to target screening in older adults, so that those who will benefit do get screened and followed-up while those who won't benefit aren't exposed to unnecessary burdens," said Christine E. Kistler, MD, assistant professor of Family Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel ...

Steganography is a form of security through obscurity in which information is hidden within an unusual medium. An artist might paint a coded message into a portrait, for instance, or an author embed words in the text. A traditional paper watermark is a well-known example of steganography in action. At first glance, there would appear to be nothing unusual about the work, but a recipient aware of the presence of the hidden message would be able to extract it easily. In the computer age, steganography has become more of a science than an art. Those intent on hiding information ...

Flying the EU flag on public buildings on Europe Day (Monday, 9th May) has no impact on public attitudes to the EU. But EU symbols used in practical ways such as at airport passport controls can polarise attitudes to the EU amongst the Scots and Welsh, according to a study conducted by researchers at the University of Strathclyde, but have little impact on people in England. The research suggests that a split in the UK Coalition on whether to fly the EU flag over public buildings in Whitehall ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13321460) would be based on unfounded ...

Positech Corporation, the leading manufacturer of material handling equipment in North America is pleased to announce they have launched a brand-new design for their website. The website address www.positech.com remains the same, but has been completely reworked to make it more user-friendly and far more comprehensive in its offerings. Positech Corporation's new site features a video library of their products, enhanced search capabilities and a variety of case studies to view. The goal of the new site is educating end-users seeking material handling solutions that will ...

The creation of a post-mortem tissue archive for a study of the human form of mad cow disease failed because of a "misguided" refusal by coroners to participate. The Coroners' Society of England and Wales (CSEW) did not recognise its "moral obligation to protect public health" from potential new risks associated with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) when it decided not to allow the collection of tissue from autopsies. That is the conclusion of a paper co-written by a researcher at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, which has been published online ...

This release is available in Spanish. This study, published in the journal El Profesional de la Información by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid professor, Antonia Salvador and the UC3M professor, Maria Estrella Gutiérrez, deals with how traditional communication media are implementing applications based on Internet, built upon the ideological and technological basics of the Web 2.0, which allows forms of interaction based on collaborative participation and on the contents generated by the user himself. "Using these social media is a way to capture an audience ...

RakeTheRake.com has today re-branded and re-launched its website to offer its online poker players a highly improved user experience and a wealth of new features and functionality. The new site provides players with a simplified sign up process, an enhanced Your Account area, in-depth rakeback and referral statistics, video tutorials to key areas of the site, and launches two brand new functions; the RakeTheRake forum and free poker training. RakeTheRake, founded seven years ago, has always prided itself on providing the highest levels of customer service in conjunction ...

Are clothing manufacturers helping to turn young girls into sex objects? According to a new study, up to 30 percent of young girls' clothing available online in the US is 'sexy' or sexualizing. The study was carried out by Samantha Goodin, a former Kenyon College (Ohio, USA) student and a research team led by Dr. Sarah Murnen, Professor of Psychology at Kenyon College. In their view, this has serious implications for how girls evaluate themselves according to a sexualized model of feminine physical attractiveness. It makes them confront the issue of sexual identity at a ...

WHAT: Scientists from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), report that they have developed a method—10,000 times more sensitive than other methods—to detect variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (vCJD) in blood plasma. vCJD is a type of prion disease in humans that leads to brain damage and death. The NIAID researchers also used the test to rapidly detect scrapie, a prion disease of sheep, in infected hamsters, some pre-symptomatic. Prion diseases, also known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, ...

"At present, it can take up to a year before a patient is diagnosed with SLE. This is because the symptoms are diffuse and are often mistaken for other diseases. However, with this blood-based test, it is possible to determine quickly whether someone has the disease or not", says Christer Wingren, associate professor in Immunotechnology at CREATE Health, Lund University. The test can also determine how far the disease has progressed. There are three different variants of SLE, and all require different treatment. With current methods, it is often difficult to find out ...

ESA's Herschel infrared space observatory has detected raging winds of molecular gas streaming away from galaxies. Suspected for years, these outflows may have the power to strip galaxies of gas and halt star formation in its tracks. The winds that Herschel has detected are extraordinary. The fastest is blowing at a speed of more than 1000 km/s, or about 10 000 times faster than the wind in a terrestrial hurricane. This is the first time that such molecular gas outflows have been unequivocally observed in a sample of galaxies. This is an important discovery because ...

'Healthy' smokers experience changes in the gene expression of their lungs similar to that suffered by smokers who have developed Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). This is the conclusion of a new study, led by Catalan researchers, which confirms the crucial role that smoking plays in causing these alterations. "Our objective was to analyse the expression of a range of genes in the pulmonary tissue samples of patients with COPD, whether smokers or not, and people who had undergone operations for cancer or lung transplants", Ricardo Bastos, lead author of the ...

A Roberts Law Group PLLC client was facing a serious statutory rape charge when attorney Patrick Roberts stepped in to defend against the charge. By challenging the credibility of the accuser, criminal lawyer Roberts was able to negotiate a reduction in the statutory rape charge to indecent liberties with a minor. This reduction led to a decrease in the amount of possible prison time from nearly 25 years to 10 to 12 months. The facts of the case aren't all that uncommon in North Carolina because many don't realize the consequences stemming from sex with a minor. In this ...