Pioneering work by a leading University of Nottingham scientist has helped reveal for the first time a vital process in the development of the early mammalian embryo. A team led by Professor of Tissue Engineering, Kevin Shakesheff, has created a new device in the form of a soft polymer bowl which mimics the soft tissue of the mammalian uterus in which the embryo implants. The research has been published in the journal Nature Communications. This new laboratory culture method has allowed scientists to see critical aspects of embryonic development that have never been ...

Stem cells are the body's mechanics, repairing damaged tissues and organs. Because these cells are able to grow into any type of cell in the body, scientists believe they hold the key to groundbreaking new therapies. To help further this research, scientists from the University of Victoria have found a new way to culture cells in 3D— a significant step forward for regenerative medicine. "Cells in your body grow and divide in a 3D environment, especially when you think of stem cells, which differentiate to become all the different types of cells in your body," said paper-author ...

ToolWatch Corporation will implement the full ToolWatch Enterprise suite on the London Crossrail C-310 Thames Tunnel contract. The $306 million contract is part of the $22.5 billion London Crossrail project that will connect the east and west London rail routes. The project will use the Enterprise suite to track heavy equipment, machinery (or plant), vehicles and tools, as well as monitor equipment servicing schedules and fuel consumption. Hochtief/Murphy, a joint venture between worldwide construction giant Hochtief Solutions and U.K.-based civil engineering firm J ...

Anthropogenic CO2 emissions, in addition to causing global warming, alter the chemistry of seas and oceans, causing them to turn progressively acidic. This change has severe effects on marine organisms and ecosystems. An international research published in the latest edition of the journal Science concludes that in the past 300 million years the chemistry of the Earth's oceans has undergone profound changes, although none seem to have been so rapid, so global, or to such an extent as the changes occurring presently. The research included participation of the Institute ...

Heavy diesel exhaust (DE) exposure in humans may increase the risk of dying from lung cancer, according to two papers released March 2nd by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Starting in the 1980s, studies have investigated a possible causal relationship between exposure to diesel exhaust and lung cancer. In 1989, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified diesel exhaust as a probable carcinogen. To determine the association between diesel exhaust exposure and the risk of dying from lung cancer, Michael D. Attfield, Ph.D., formerly ...

Couples who are married or living together will probably have more trouble parenting as a team if they have been violent toward one another during pregnancy, according to a team of psychologists. "This finding is helpful because working as a parenting team, in what we call the co-parenting relationship, is a key influence on everything from mothers' postpartum depression to sensitive parenting to the children's emotional and social adjustment," said Mark E. Feinberg, research professor, Prevention Research Center for the Promotion of Human Development at Penn State. Researchers ...

CHICAGO --- Maintaining a healthy lifestyle from young adulthood into your 40s is strongly associated with low cardiovascular disease risk in middle age, according to a new Northwestern Medicine study. "The problem is few adults can maintain ideal cardiovascular health factors as they age," said Kiang Liu, first author of the study. "Many middle-aged adults develop unhealthy diets, gain weight and aren't as physically active. Such lifestyles, of course, lead to high blood pressure and cholesterol, diabetes and elevated cardiovascular risk." Liu is a professor and the ...

Batavia, Ill. -- The world's most precise measurement of the mass of the W boson, one of nature's elementary particles, has been achieved by scientists from the CDF and DZero collaborations at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The new measurement is an important, independent constraint of the mass of the theorized Higgs boson. It also provides a rigorous test of the Standard Model that serves as the blueprint for our world, detailing the properties of the building blocks of matter and how they interact. The Higgs boson is the last ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers have discovered critical new details about the structure of a virus that causes potentially fatal brain swelling and paralysis in children, pointing toward designs for antiviral drugs to treat the disease. The virus, called enterovirus 71, causes hand, foot and mouth disease, and is common throughout the world. Although that disease usually is not fatal, the virus has been reported to cause encephalitis, a potentially fatal illness found primarily in the Asia-Pacific region. Now, two research teams are reporting new findings about ...

A deterioration of working memory is observed in people who consume drugs containing cannabinoid compounds found in cannabis leaves and buds. A team led by Giovanni Marsicano (Inserm Research Unit 862) in collaboration with a team led by Xia Zhang, has recently identified the mechanism by which these substances affect working memory. These researchers have demonstrated for the first time that the adverse effect of cannabinoids on working memory is exerted via receptors located in the glial cells (brain cells present in large numbers and scarcely studied). This effect is ...

Do you want to achieve your business goals in the next five years? Your personal goals in three years or so? How about achieving them now? Anyone interested in rapid results for achieving business or life goals can benefit from a free online training video, "6 Steps for Your Rapid Results in Business and Life." The free online video was developed by personal development and fitness guru John Spencer Ellis and Jairek Robbins, the world's foremost authority at developing creative solutions for achieving results; it is now available online at John Spencer Ellis' ...

ATLANTA – The American College of Rheumatology has released the first classification criteria for polymyalgia rheumatica – aimed at helping physicians identify patients with this condition, which occurs in persons aged 50 years or older who have recent onset of pain in the shoulders, neck and hips along with other inflammatory symptoms not explained by an alternate diagnosis. Polymyalgia rheumatica is a relatively common cause of widespread aching and stiffness in older adults. It can be difficult to diagnose because it rarely causes swollen joints or other abnormalities ...

A small clinical trial led by researchers at UC San Diego School of Medicine and VA San Diego Healthcare System (VASDHS) found that patients with advanced heart failure and type 2 diabetes showed improved mitochondrial structure after three months of treatment with epicatechin-enriched cocoa. Epicatechin is a flavonoid found in dark chocolate. The results of this initial study has led to the implementation of larger, placebo-controlled clinical trial at UC San Diego School of Medicine and VASDHS to assess if patients with heart failure and diabetes show improvement ...

Emotion-sensing computer software that models and responds to students' cognitive and emotional states – including frustration and boredom – has been developed by University of Notre Dame Assistant Professor of Psychology Sidney D'Mello and colleagues from the University of Memphis and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. D'Mello also is a concurrent assistant professor of computer science and engineering. The new technology, which matches the interaction of human tutors, not only offers tremendous learning possibilities for students, but also redefines human-computer ...

Shark fins are worth more than other parts of the shark and are often removed from the body, which gets thrown back into the sea. To curtail this wasteful practice, many countries allow the fins to be landed detached from shark bodies, as long as their weight does not exceed five per cent of the total shark catch. New University of British Columbia research shows that this kind of legislation is too liberal. A study published this week in the journal Fish Biology analyzes the fin to body weight ratios for 50 different shark species. The authors find the average fin ...

DestinationPro.com is a solution allowing independent execution of events and incentive programs. If anyone needed to organize a corporate meeting, business trip, training, bonus (incentive) trip for employees, conference, etc., he/she usually took advantage of services provided by one of the specialized agencies (DMCs - Destination Management Company). Based on the client's specification, such agency proposed agenda and individual suppliers (accommodation, restaurants, venues, transportation, logistic, etc.), subsequently ensuring and executing the whole event. We ...

Philadelphia, PA, March 2, 2012 – Impaired social function is a cardinal symptom of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). One of the brain circuits that enable us to relate to other people is the "mirror neuron" system. This brain circuit is activated when we watch other people, and allows our brains to represent the actions of others, influencing our ability to learn new tasks and to understand the intentions and experiences of other people. This mirror neuron system is impaired in individuals with ASD and better understanding the neurobiology of this system could help ...

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 2, 2012 – Newly proposed asthma outcome measures will help standardize and improve results from the hundreds of millions of dollars the National Institutes of Health (NIH) spends annually to study asthma, according to the Merck Childhood Asthma Network, Inc. (MCAN), the nation's only organization focused solely on childhood asthma. Even though years of research have led to groundbreaking improvements in better understanding and managing asthma, MCAN noted that the inability to compare results across many studies has hindered the nation's efforts ...

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- A scientific method paper and video by Loyola researchers has gone viral. The video demonstrates a laboratory technique used to study some aspects of mitochondrial dysfunctions in Alzheimer's disease and many other disorders. It has been accessed by more than 14,000 scientists around the world since it was published in the Journal of Visualized Experiments, a peer-reviewed, PubMed-indexed journal that publishes biological and other scientific research in a video format. Senior author is Joanna C. Bakowska, DVM, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department ...

A consortium of federal agencies and nongovernmental organizations has published a report proposing a set of common measures and data-collection methods for use in asthma clinical research. Asthma Outcomes in Clinical Research: Report of the Asthma Outcomes Workshop, which appears as a supplement to the March 2012 issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, resulted from a meeting organized by the National Institutes of Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Merck Childhood Asthma Network, Inc., with additional support for the publication ...

As more organizations look for ways to manage the cost of employee healthcare, what better way to bring this message to your organization than to have your CEO enter a fitness challenge. Nancy Munro, CEO of KnowledgeShift was willing to take on this challenge offered to members of the Illinois Technology Association starting in November of 2011. The contest was sponsored by InerTrain, an online fitness company. Contestants had to evaluate their fit age before and after the contest. Each contestant worked with one of InerTrain's online virtual trainers with personalized ...

Scientists from PRBO Conservation Science and the Department of Fish and Game have completed an innovative study on the effects of climate change on bird species of greatest concern. This first-of-its-kind study prioritizes which species are most at risk and will help guide conservation measures in California. The study was published this week in the journal PLoS ONE. "What's most exciting about the study is that our unique approach is one that other scientists and resource managers can duplicate to help them conserve wildlife in the face of climate change," said PRBO ...

A University of Alberta research team has discovered that technology commonly used to decontaminate food industry equipment can also rid meat processing plants of lethal microbial material responsible for the human version of the ailment Mad Cow disease. U of A microbiology professors Mike Belosevic and Norm Neumann and engineering professor Mohamed Gamal El-Din demonstrated that infectious proteins found in the brain matter of cattle can be eradicated from water treated with ozone. The discovery could have applications in decontaminating wastewater in settings such ...

Athens, Ga. – In an emergency, minutes matter. With this knowledge, University of Georgia researchers developed a new method for determining where emergency vehicle stations should be located. The results of their work could improve ambulance response time for the 200 million Americans who dial 911 each year, according to the Federal Communications Commission. "If we can meet this critical time window [of 8 minutes], we can maximize benefits," said Ping Yin, a UGA graduate student studying geography who co-authored the paper. The model uses geographical information ...

A polymer is a mesh of chains, which slowly break over time due to the pressure from ordinary wear and tear. When a polymer is squeezed, the pressure breaks chemical bonds and produces free radicals: ions with unpaired electrons, full of untapped energy. These molecules are responsible for aging, DNA damage and cancer in the human body. In a new study, Northwestern University scientists turned to squeezed polymers and free radicals in a search for new energy sources. They found incredible promise but also some real problems. Their report is published by the journal Angewandte ...