March 8, 2012, Shenzhen, China – BGI, the world's largest genomics organization, reported that it can use next-generation sequencing to analyze DNA as low as 200 ng from formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) samples. This advancement enables researchers to easily identify the genetic details and pathology mechanism of FFPE disease samples, especially for some rare tumors, with higher accuracy and reliability than existing techniques. FFPE samples are common biological materials for disease diagnoses and scientific research. Because FFPE tissue samples may be stored indefinitely ...

Researchers at King's College London and Hiroshima University, Japan, have identified a specific gene linked to throat cancer following a genetic study of a family with 10 members who have developed the condition. The study, published today in American Journal of Human Genetics, uncovered a mutation in the ATR gene, demonstrating the first evidence of a link between abnormality in this gene and an inherited form of cancer. The researchers say this finding raises new ideas about genetic factors linked to throat cancer and provides a platform for exploring the role of ...

Modular Industrial Computers, the "Leaders' Choice" for plant floor computing, announces new models to its successful line of NEMA 4X workstations. The FS PowerBox 17-HP and FS PowerBox 19-HP combine the proven, award winning, FS (Field Serviceable) PowerBox platform with Hewlett Packard's (HP) T5740. The system is shipped fully assembled, tested and ready for quick installation into the most demanding industrial applications. The FS PowerBox has proven itself as the most flexible, cost effective solution for companies looking to deploy Thin Clients into the ...

Growing older and being overweight are not necessarily associated with a decrease in mental well-being, according to a cross-cultural study looking at quality of life and health status in the US and the UK. The study, led by Warwick Medical School at the University of Warwick, analysed lifestyle and health patterns in more than 10,000 people in both countries and their links to participants' mental and physical quality of life and health status. Quality of life was evaluated using a measure which takes in eight different factors including perception of general health, ...

A research team from the Netherlands assessed the impact of wine and resveratrol (a natural polyphenol found in high quantities in red wine) on lung function. It also looked at genetic factors and mechanisms by which resveratrol might be absorbed by the body and its possible effect on longevity of life. The authors report that pure resveratrol intake was associated with higher lung volumes and that white wine intake (but not red wine intake) and was associated with lower risk of airway obstruction. They report that the genetic factors studied did not relate to the associations ...

In today's computer processors, much of the power put into running the processor is being wasted. A research team at Case Western Reserve University came up with a novel idea called fine-grained power gating, which saves power and money in a couple of ways: less energy would be used, and less heat produced. "Using less power produces less heat. Less heat means less cooling is needed," said Swarup Bhunia, professor of electrical engineering and computer science and an author of the research. "That can avoid the need for a big fan to cool off the processor, which saves ...

Boston, MA – When babies are born prematurely, they are thrust into a hospital environment that while highly successful at saving their lives, is not exactly the same as the mother's womb where ideal development occurs. The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) is equipped with highly skilled care givers and incubators that regulate temperature and humidity, but Amir Lahav, ScD, PhD, director of the Neonatal Research Lab at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) thought that something was missing - simulation of the maternal sounds that a baby would hear in the womb. Now, new ...

In the nearly five decades since the first lunar surveys were conducted as part of NASA's Apollo program, scientists have advanced a number of increasingly complex theories to explain the vast swaths of highly magnetic material that had been found in the some parts of the Moon's crust. But now a team of researchers from Harvard, MIT and the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, have proposed a surprisingly simple explanation for the unusual findings – the magnetic anomalies are remnants of a massive asteroid collision. As described in a paper published March 9 in Science, ...

Cambridge, Mass. - March 8, 2012 - Researchers in applied physics have cleared an important hurdle in the development of advanced materials, called metamaterials, that bend light in unusual ways. Working at a scale applicable to infrared light, the Harvard team has used extremely short and powerful laser pulses to create three-dimensional patterns of tiny silver dots within a material. Those suspended metal dots are essential for building futuristic devices like invisibility cloaks. The new fabrication process, described in the journal Applied Physics Letters, advances ...

Toronto – Countries that more strictly uphold their cultural norms are less likely to promote women as leaders – unless those norms support equal opportunity for both sexes, shows a new paper from the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. "Cultural tightness can prevent the emergence of women leaders because tighter cultures may make a society's people more resistant to changing the traditionally-held practice that placed men in leadership roles," says Prof. Soo Min Toh, who is cross-appointed to the Rotman School and the University of Toronto Mississauga, ...

Winston-Salem, N.C. – March 8, 2012 -- Maternal obesity may contribute to cognitive impairment in extremely premature babies, according to a new study by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. "Although in the past decade medical advances have improved the survival rate of babies born at less than seven months, they are still at very high risk for mental developmental delays compared with full-term infants," said Jennifer Helderman, M.D., assistant professor of pediatrics at Wake Forest Baptist and lead author of the study. "This study shows that obesity doesn't ...

Washington, DC – A collaborative team of researchers at Children's National Medical Center are making progress in understanding how to protect infants needing cardiac surgery from white matter injury, which impacts the nervous system. The synergistic team from the Children's National Heart Institute and Center for Neuroscience Research at Children's National Medical Center was led by Nobuyuki Ishibashi, MD, Joseph Scafidi, DO, Richard Jonas, MD, and Vittorio Gallo, PhD. The study, published online in the January edition of Circulation, identifies the stages of white matter ...

Philadelphia, PA, March 6, 2012 – The Canadian Journal of Cardiology has published a paper on the effect of socioeconomic factors on myocardial infarction outcomes. This study describes an analysis of the effect of socioeconomic class on outcomes after a first myocardial infarction ("heart attack"). The study analyzed detailed databases in Quebec and found that socioeconomic deprivation did not negatively affect access to the most advanced high-level health care – clearly a success for the Canadian public healthcare system. Nevertheless, mortality rates were slightly ...

AUSTIN, Texas — Inspired by the paper-folding art of origami, chemists at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a 3-D paper sensor that may be able to test for diseases such as malaria and HIV for less than 10 cents a pop. Such low-cost, "point-of-care" sensors could be incredibly useful in the developing world, where the resources often don't exist to pay for lab-based tests, and where, even if the money is available, the infrastructure often doesn't exist to transport biological samples to the lab. "This is about medicine for everybody," says Richard Crooks, ...

Young America, http://www.young-america.com, an incentive marketing firm, has hired Steve Schulte as senior sales executive responsible for new business development initiatives and strategic growth focusing on opportunities among large clients. Prior to joining Young America, Schulte worked for Restaurant.com as national account manager. He previously held leadership positions in the sales departments of loyalty and incentive companies Maritz, Inc. and Meridian Enterprises, and has experience in the technology, automotive, hospitality and insurance industries. He holds ...

Sometimes the fastest pathway from point A to point B is not a straight line: for example, if you're underwater and contending with strong and shifting currents. But figuring out the best route in such settings is a monumentally complex problem — especially if you're trying to do it not just for one underwater vehicle, but for a swarm of them moving all at once toward separate destinations. But that's just what a team of engineers at MIT has figured out how to do, in research results to be presented in May at the annual IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. ...

Feeling angry and annoyed with others is a daily part of life, but most people don't act on these impulses. What keeps us from punching line-cutters or murdering conniving co-workers? Self-control. A new review article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, examines the psychological research and finds that it's possible to deplete self-control—or to strengthen it by practice. Criminologists and sociologists have long believed that people commit violent crimes when an opportunity arises and they're low on ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. –Veterans are almost twice as likely as the general public to have chronic illnesses, such as diabetes and heart failure. Therefore, veterans may require more assistance from informal caregivers, especially as outpatient treatment becomes more common. A University of Missouri researcher evaluated strain and satisfaction among informal caregivers of veterans with chronic illnesses. The findings show that more than one third of veterans' caregivers report high levels of strain as a result of taking care of their relatives; yet, on average, caregivers also report ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Though women are better represented in the workforce and in higher education institutions, they still face barriers in employment, education and health care access and are more likely to live in poverty. Now, a University of Missouri expert says new research highlighting current issues affecting Missouri women provides insights that could significantly improve the lives of women throughout the state. Kristin Metcalf-Wilson, an assistant teaching professor in the MU Sinclair School of Nursing, helped compile the Missouri Women's Report. The report includes ...

The 2011 Tohoku tsunami was Japan's deadliest in more than 100 years. Despite an extraordinary level of preparedness by the Japanese, the tsunami caused more than 90 percent of the almost 20,000 fatalities last March. Georgia Tech Associate Professor Hermann Fritz and his research team are studying the impact of the tsunami on the Sanriku coast. Using eyewitness video and terrestrial laser scanners from atop the highest buildings that survived the tsunami, Fritz has mapped the tsunami's height and flood zone to learn more about the flow of the devastating currents. Fritz's ...

In both war and peacetime scenarios, fire in the shipboard environment is serious and frequently results in excessive damage and high repair costs because the fire is not detected or controlled adequately. To help further improve future shipboard firefighting capability scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory have formed an interdisciplinary team to develop a humanoid robot that could fight fires on the next generation of combatants. A humanoid-type robot was chosen because it was deemed best suited to operate within the confines of an environment that was deigned ...

Perspective Magazine announces that Holiday Systems International (HSI) has renewed its sponsorship package for the Third Annual Global Networking Expo, GNEX 2013 - The Global Meeting Of Minds. The agreement will provide HSI with exclusive sponsorship of the Perspective Magazine Awards Program and Platinum-level sponsorship for the event, to be held at the world famous Beverly Wilshire - A Four Seasons Hotel on February 4-6, 2013. "GNEX is in touch with the industry and continues to demonstrate their Expo is valuable to the attendees," said Craig Morganson, ...

Pitney Bowes today announced it is expanding the availability of its Reliant Sorting Solution to the European Market, where its small-footprint design and robust capabilities will help small private posts provide fast, accurate and flexible services to their customers. The Reliant can also meet the needs of in-house and interoffice sorting applications. The Reliant sorter will be shown to European audiences for the first time at Drupa 2012 - Hall 4, Stand C04. The Reliant Sorter will bring automation and full-integrity to three core market segments - incoming mail, outgoing ...

Rockville, Md. – – Wii remotes are not all about fun and games. Scientists can use them to assess and diagnose children with an abnormal head position caused by eye diseases. As described in a recent Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science article, researchers developed a low-cost digital head posture measuring device with Nintendo Wiimotes to help diagnose this condition, medically called ocular torticollis. "Torticollis occurs in about 1.3% of children," said author, Jeong-Min Hwang, MD, of Seoul National University College of Medicine. "Accurate measurement of ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – A team of paleontologists has discovered the oldest animal with a skeleton. Called Coronacollina acula, the organism is between 560 million and 550 million years old, which places it in the Ediacaran period, before the explosion of life and diversification of organisms took place on Earth in the Cambrian. The finding provides insight into the evolution of life – particularly, early life – on the planet, why animals go extinct, and how organisms respond to environmental changes. The discovery also can help scientists recognize life elsewhere in the ...