The beautiful province of Krabi in south west Thailand enjoyed a remarkable year in 2011, with a record number of tourists visiting the area, despite a devastating flood which severely impacted the Thai tourist trade. Amazingly in 2012, Krabi villas, hotels and resorts are already reporting an improvement on last years impressive performance, even factoring in a traditionally busy period covering Chinese New Year. Since the very beginning of the year, we have been experiencing our highest occupancy rates ever, Ton Loriers, managing director at Krabi Villas by Ton Company ...

Researchers at the NanoScience Center of the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, and at Harvard University, US, have discovered a novel way to make nanomaterials. Using computer simulations, the researchers have been able to predict that long and narrow graphene nanoribbons can be rolled into carbon nanotubes by means of twisting. The research has received funding from the Academy of Finland. The basic idea is simple and easily explained: just twist the ends of a strap on your backpack and watch what happens. Being classical in origin, the mechanism is robust and valid ...

At the CeBIT in Hanover, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the FZI Research Center for Information Technology will present innovations for our everyday life in the future. At the joint stand G33 in hall 26, a humanoid kitchen robot will move around, three-dimensional visualizations will open up new perspectives, and new algorithms will be presented to protect data in the cloud. The FZI House of Living Labs will present the interactive HoLLiE service robot and solutions for intelligent energy management. ARMAR Robot Learns by Watching A robot helping in the household ...

An article published in Physical Review and conducted by researchers at the universities of Granada and Barcelona might lead to a revolutionary change in water desalination and filtration methods. Researchers at the universities of Granada and Barcelona have described for the first time the diffusion of liquid water through nanochannels in molecular terms; nanochannels are extremely tiny channels with a diameter of 1-100 nanometers that scientists use to study the behavior of molecules (nm. a unit of length in the metric system equal to one billionth of a meter that is ...

Two separate surveys six years apart have been used to analyse the level of satisfaction with adoptions in Andalucía. The study shows that 77.7% of families are happier after the process and variables that make it more difficult have been identified, such as the age of the children when arriving, multiple adoption and previous experiences of abuse. There is a significant link between the parents' assessment and that of the children. "We wanted to know to what extent adoptions in Spain are providing children who need it with a healthy family environment that promotes their ...

Researchers at the University of Granada and the university hospital Virgen de las Nieves in Granada have developed a new radiotherapy technique that is much less toxic than that traditionally used and only targets cancerous tissue. This new protocol provides a less invasive but equally efficient cancer postoperative treatment for cases of cancer of the oral cavity and pharynx. The study -conducted between 2005 and 2008- included 80 patients diagnosed with epidermoid cancer of the oral cavity and pharynx, who had undergone lymph node removal. The affected nodes were ...

Well-known internet marketers, Aaron and Sophia Rashkin along with members of the Loyal 9 Revolution have scheduled the "Legacy" on March 24 and 25, at the offices of the Loyal 9 in New Jersey. The Legacy is an extremely focused event and follows the AFL Freedom Mastermind 2 that took place in late January at the Rashkin home office in beautiful Parker, Colorado. That 2 and 1/2 day live training experience brought together 12 inspired entrepreneurs from around the world to teach them the mindset and the successful internet marketing strategies used by these ...

NEW YORK (February 24, 2012) – A new study by the University of California, Berkeley, Wildlife Conservation Society, and others uses a new scientific methodology for establishing marine protected areas in Madagascar that offers a "diversified portfolio" of management options – from strict no-take zones to areas that would allow fishing. The methodology looks at existing information on the country's climate, along with dependence on fisheries and marine resources, and applies three different planning approaches to establish priorities for management along the entirety of ...

Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which have been used in recent years in increasing quantities as substitutes for CFCs, are also climatically very active and many are also extremely long-lived. In the renowned journal Science an international team of researchers recommends that the most potent of these gases also be regulated. This could save the positive «side effect» of the Montreal Protocol for the global climate. It is regarded as the most successful international environmental agreement and has, to date, been ratified by 196 countries – the Montreal Protocol on Substances ...

Pediatric cardiology researchers and clinicians from almost 50 centers from across the U.S. and around the world are gathering at the Cardiology 2012 Conference sponsored by The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia on Feb. 22-26 in Orlando, Fla. The news briefs below summarize 11 research abstracts selected by the conference organizers as featured presentations. The researchers leading these presentations comprise 6 physicians and 5 nurses. New Early Warning Algorithm Detects Children's Early Cardiac Deterioration Before Inpatient Arrest Most cardiopulmonary arrests in ...

A controversial bill that would make big changes to Florida's car insurance coverage system should soon be on its way to a vote by the full House after getting the OK from the third and final committee to review it, according to OnlineAutoInsurance.com. If the bill is signed into law, drivers who go to run their next Florida insurance quote comparison could be in for a bit of a surprise. That's because the bill would, among other things, nix the current system in which motorists rely on personal injury protection (PIP) policies to pay for their medical bills following ...

When Sifrhippus sandae, the earliest known horse, first appeared in the forests of North America more than 50 million years ago, it would not have been mistaken for a Clydesdale. It weighed in at around 12 pounds--and it was destined to get much smaller over the ensuing millennia. Sifrhippus lived during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a 175,000-year interval of time some 56 million years ago in which average global temperatures rose by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit. The change was caused by the release of vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and ...

A life cycle assessment of growing crops for fuel as opposed to refining and using fossil fuels has revealed that substitution of gasoline by bioethanol converted from energy crops has considerable potential for rendering our society more sustainable, according to a Japanese study published in the International Journal of Foresight and Innovation Policy. Kiyotada Hayashi of the National Agriculture and Food Research Organisation in Tsukuba and colleagues explain how biomass derived from sugarcane, sugar beet and other crops, has emerged as one of the most promising renewable ...

New research from the University of Calgary's Hotchkiss Brain Institute (HBI) shows that using a CT (computerised tomography) scan, doctors can predict if patients who have had a transient ischemic attack (TIA) or minor stroke, with neurological symptoms such as weakness or speech issues, are at risk for another more severe stroke. This vital information can help doctors decide if stronger medications should be used to prevent future episodes, or if a patient can be safely sent home. Currently, doctors can use a brain MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scan to predict ...

In the crash-car derby between heavy and light isotopes vying for the coolest spots as magma turns to solid rock, weightier isotopes have an edge, research led by Case Western Reserve University shows. This tiny detail may offer clues to how igneous rocks form. As molten rock cools along a gradient, atoms want to move towards the cool end. This happens because hotter atoms move faster than cooler atoms and, therefore, hotter atoms move to the cool region faster than the cooler atoms move to the hot region. Although all isotopes of the same element want to move towards ...

From spaghetti-like sea anemones to blobby jellyfish to filigreed oak trees, each species in nature is characterized by a unique size and shape. But the evolutionary changes that produce the seemingly limitless diversity of shapes and sizes of organisms on Earth largely remains a mystery. Nevertheless, a better understanding of how cells grow and enable organisms to assume their characteristic sizes and shapes could shed light on diseases that involve cell growth, including cancer and diabetes. Providing new information about the evolution of the diversity of sizes and ...

For decades, scientists have understood that there is a genetic component to intelligence, but a new Harvard study has found both that most of the genes thought to be linked to intelligence are probably not in fact related to it, and identifying intelligence's specific genetic roots may still be a long way off. Led by David I. Laibson '88, the Robert I. Goldman Professor of Economics, and Christopher F. Chabris '88, PhD '99, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Union College, a team of researchers examined a dozen genes using large data sets that included both intelligence ...

PHILADELPHIA -- Would you be able to find an automated external defibrillator if someone's life depended on it? Despite an estimated one million AEDs scattered around the United States, the answer, all too often when people suffer sudden cardiac arrests, is no. In a Perspective piece published online this week in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality Outcomes, two researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania outline the tremendous potential associated with greater utilization of AEDs in public places and a method to find ...

LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, February 24, 2012—A multinational team of scientists has developed a process for creating glass-based, inorganic light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that produce light in the ultraviolet range. The work, reported this week in the online Nature Communications, is a step toward biomedical devices with active components made from nanostructured systems. LEDs based on solution-processed inorganic nanocrystals have promise for use in environmental and biomedical diagnostics, because they are cheap to produce, robust, and chemically stable. But ...

CLEMSON — A study of X-rays emitted a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away has unmasked a stellar mass black hole in Andromeda, a spiral galaxy about 2.6 million light-years from Earth. Two Clemson University researchers joined an an international team of astronomers, including scientists at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, in publishing their findings in a pair of scientific journals this week. Scientists had suspected the black hole was possible since late 2009 when an X-ray satellite observatory operated by the Max Planck Institute ...

NEW YORK – February 24, 2012 – A forthcoming article in the Journal of Consumer Research by Professor Michel Tuan Pham, Kravis Professor of Business, Marketing, Columbia Business School; Leonard Lee, Associate Professor, Marketing, Columbia Business School; and Andrew Stephen, PhD '09, currently Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh, finds that a higher trust in feelings may result in more accurate predictions about a variety of future events. The research will also be featured in Columbia Business ...

The gold standard for nanotechnology is nature's own proteins. These biomolecular nanomachines – macromolecules forged from peptide chains of amino acids - are able to fold themselves into a dazzling multitude of shapes and forms that enable them to carry out an equally dazzling multitude of functions fundamental to life. As important as protein folding is to virtually all biological systems, the mechanisms behind this process have remained a mystery. The fog, however, is being lifted. A team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley ...

Patients with heart disease who took cholesterol-lowering statins were significantly less likely to develop depression than those who did not, in a study by Mary Whooley, MD, a physician at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. The study was published electronically in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry (February 21, 2012). Whooley and her research team evaluated 965 heart disease patients for depression, and found that the patients who were on statins were significantly less likely to be clinically ...

NEW YORK – February 24, 2012 – A recent study in the Review of Financial Studies proposes a new, valuation-based measure of equity market segmentation. Equity market segmentation occurs when stocks of similar risk in different countries are priced differently. The study, by Columbia Business School Professor Geert Bekaert, Chazen Senior Scholar at The Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business at Columbia Business School and the Leon G. Cooperman Professor of Finance and Economics, uncovers the factors that cause variation in market segmentation, both through ...

Prehistoric Eurasian nomads are commonly perceived as horse riding bandits who utilized their mobility and military skill to antagonize ancient civilizations such as the Chinese, Persians, and Greeks. Although some historical accounts may support this view, a new article by Dr. Michael Frachetti (Washington University, St. Louis) illustrates a considerably different image of prehistoric pastoralist societies and their impact on world civilizations more than 5000 years ago. In the article, recently published in the February issue of Current Anthropology, Frachetti argues ...