Mindful of lessons from a failed heart drug that cost $800 million to develop, drug companies are taking another shot at new medications that boost levels of so-called "good cholesterol," which removes cholesterol from the body. A report on how three new versions of medications in the same family as the failed torcetrapib appears in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News, the newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. In the cover story, C&EN Associate Editor Carmen Drahl explains that the drug maker Pfizer abruptly ...

Tampa, Fla. (Feb. 22, 2012) – Increasingly, institutions of higher learning are including faculty member patents and commercialization activities in their calculus for offering tenure and promotion. However, a report published in Volume 13 Number 3 of Technology and Innovation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Inventors® finds that 75 percent of institutions surveyed do not include patent and commercialization considerations in their tenure and promotion criteria. "Texas A&M University created quite a stir in May 2006 when it added commercialization considerations ...

Inflammation, cell division and cell differentiation that occur during skeletal muscle regeneration may provide an ideal environment for the highly malignant tumor, rhabdomyosarcoma to arise. These are the findings from a Nationwide Children's Hospital study that examined rhabdomyosarcoma growth in mouse models of muscular dystrophy. The new models could help investigators search for factors that drive tumor growth and help test new therapies. Rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) is a fast-growing, highly-malignant tumor and is the most common soft tissue sarcoma in children and adolescents. ...

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Feb. 22, 2012) — The University of Kentucky has announced that Dr. Daret St. Clair, the James Graham Brown Endowed Chair and professor of toxicology, has published the first comprehensive study that provides insight into the relationship between two types of suppressors in cancerous tumors. The results will enhance the understanding of transcriptional mechanisms in carcinogenesis. The study was supported by a National Cancer Institute research grant and was recently published in Cancer Research. St. Clair and her team generated transgenic mice expressing ...

To address the faculty shortage problem, schools of nursing are reexamining how they provide clinical education to undergraduate students to find ways to use faculty resources more efficiently so they can maintain student enrollment and meet the future need for nurses. To this end, researchers from the New York University College of Nursing (NYUCN), funded with a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Evaluating Innovations in Nursing Education Program, have just published a description of an evaluation study, "Shifting the Clinical Teaching Paradigm in Undergraduate ...

The manager of TDS Insurance discovered Islamaphobic vandalism on his store and reported it to police, reported the New York Daily News (2/9/2012). The apparent New York hate crime incident occurred last week. "'Allah is s--t,'" said the anti-Muslim graffiti, according to the New York Daily News. As reported by the tabloid, Bangladeshis in Kensington said they are now "living in fear" and "emotionally scarred" as a result of the apparent hate crime. "Hate crime is not acceptable," said New York civil rights violation lawyer ...

Philadelphia, PA, February 22, 2012 – Mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are cardinal injuries associated with combat stress, and TBI increases the risk of PTSD development. The reasons for this correlation have been unknown, in part because physical traumas often occur in highly emotional situations. However, scientists at University of California at Los Angeles provide new evidence from an animal model of a mechanistic link underlying the association between TBI and PTSD-like conditions. Using procedures to separate the physical ...

NEW YORK – February 22, 2012 – Research on the relationship between teacher characteristics and teacher effectiveness has been underway for over a century, yet little progress has been made in linking teacher quality with factors observable at the time of hire. A recent study by Columbia Business School's Prof. Jonah Rockoff, Sidney Taurel Associate Professor of Business, Finance and Economics; Brian Jacob, Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Education Policy, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan; Thomas Kane, Professor of Education and Economics, ...

Separating complex mixtures of cells, such as those found in a blood sample, can offer valuable information for diagnosing and treating disease. However, it may be necessary to search through billions of other cells to collect rare cells such as tumor cells, stem cells or fetal cells. "You're basically looking for a needle in a haystack," says Sukant Mittal, a graduate student in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST). Mittal and his colleagues at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have now demonstrated a new microfluidic device that ...

New Orleans, LA – Glen Palmer, PhD, Assistant Professor of Microbiology, Immunology & Parasitology at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans, was part of an international research team led by Luigina Romani, MD, at the University of Perugia, that discovered opportunistic fungi like Candida albicans can sense the immune status of host cells and adapt, evading immune system defenses. Unlike previous studies, this research investigated both sides of the infection equation as well as the interaction between the fungi and the cells they will invade. The findings are published ...

4t Networks, a managed virtual hosting company based in metro Atlanta, is pleased to announce that it now offers Parallels Plesk Panel 10.4 for both its VPS hosting and Cloud hosting clients. "We couldn't wait for the latest version of Plesk to be released," says Kevin Gray, President of 4t Networks. "We find that Parallels Plesk Panel 10.4 continues the improvements that were started with the release of Plesk 10." Parallels Plesk Panel 10.4 gives clients an intuitive interface to control the management of their Virtual Private Servers and their ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Contrary to common perception, state and local police are often on the front lines against product counterfeiting, yet it's unclear how prepared they are to deal with the growing crime, according to a new report from two Michigan State University criminologists. Justin Heinonen and Jeremy Wilson found that local and/or state police were involved in nearly half of the identified product counterfeiting cases related to Michigan, which range from jewelry to car windshields to cholesterol drugs. "Product counterfeiting may have links to terrorism and ...

WASHINGTON -- Young adult blacks, especially those with higher levels of education, are significantly less likely to seek mental health services than their white counterparts, according to a study published by the American Psychological Association. "Past research has indicated people with higher education levels are more likely to seek out and receive mental health services. While that may be true for whites, it appears the opposite is true for young adult blacks," said study author Clifford L. Broman, PhD, of Michigan State University. Broman's article was published ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – A paper from Rhode Island Hospital and Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit examines whether different presentation formats, presenter characteristics, and patient characteristics affect decision-making for patients requiring treatment for asymptomatic carotid stenosis. Based on the study, the researchers concluded that how the treatment options are presented to a patient strongly impacts patients' decision-making, while the patient's age, gender, and education level may also influence the decision. The study was recently published in the journal Neurology. Lead ...

Howtotrainagermanshepherd.org was created with the intention to become a useful resource for those who are interested in german shepherd training. Learning how to train a German Shepherd is not as hard as it might sound since it is a breed that loves to please its owner. John considers his German Shepherd a true friend that he has actually learned a lot from. "A dog is a being that shows affection without hesitation" That is what John tries to teach all dog owners since he feels that training German Shepherds is also a time when dog owners discover more about ...

The results of an activity (physical or mental) partly depend on the efforts devoted to it, which may be incentive-motivated. For example, a sportsperson is likely to train with "increased intensity" if the result will bring social prestige or financial gain. The same can be said for students who study for their exams with the objective of succeeding in their professional career. What happens when physical and mental efforts are required to reach an objective? Mathias Pessiglione and his team from Inserm unit 975 "Centre de recherche en neurosciences de la Pitié-Salpêtrière" ...

"Broken-hearted" isn't just a metaphor—social pain and physical pain have a lot in common, according to Naomi Eisenberger of the University of Califiornia-Los Angeles, the author of a new paper published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. In the paper, she surveys recent research on the overlap between physical and social pain. "Rejection is such a powerful experience for people," Eisenberger says. "If you ask people to think back about some of their earliest negative experiences, they will often be ...

TAMPA, Fla. (Feb. 22, 2012) – Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla., and the University of South Florida (USF) College of Medicine evaluated the experience of medical students who participated in videotaped sessions where they practiced conveying difficult news to "standardized patients" (SPs). The SPs role-played patients with a variety of cancers and who were receiving bad medical news. The study aimed at both evaluating student perceptions of the methods used in teaching how to break bad news and also at determining the effectiveness of the educational ...

(Garrison, NY) Researchers almost always offer money as an incentive for healthy volunteers to enroll in research studies, but does payment amount to coercion or undue inducement to participate in research? In the first national study to examine their views on this question, the majority of institutional review board members and other research ethics professionals expressed persistent ethical concern about the effects of offering payment to research subjects. But they differed in their views of the meaning of coercion and undue influence and how to avoid these problems ...

Los Angeles, (February 22, 2012)—While medical professionals have long known breastfeeding positively impacts infant and maternal health, few effective tools are available to measure breastfeeding practices nationally. According to a new study, one preexisting government-funded program is a potential wealth of accurate data about the breastfeeding practices of low-income mothers. This study was published in a recent issue of the Journal of Human Lactation (published by SAGE). The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), a USDA-funded ...

NEW YORK (Feb. 22, 2012) -- Oncologists have known that in order for cancer cells to spread, they must transform themselves so they can detach from a tumor and spread to a distant organ. Now, scientists at Weill Cornell Medical College have revealed critical steps in what happens next -- how these cells reverse the process, morphing back into classical cancer that can now grow into a new tumor. Their findings, now published online and in a upcoming issue of Cancer Research and funded through a National Cancer Institute grant to the Cornell Center on the Microenvironment ...

Fallout from the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power facility in Japan was measured in minimal amounts in precipitation in the United States in about 20 percent of 167 sites sampled in a nationwide study released today. The U.S. Geological Survey led the study as part of the National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP). Levels measured were similar to measurements made by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the days and weeks immediately following the March 2011 incidents, which were determined to be well below any level of public health concern. Many NADP ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The first anniversary is approaching of the March, 2011, earthquake and tsunami that devastated Fukushima, Japan, and later this year debris from that event should begin to wash up on U.S. shores – and one question many have asked is whether that will pose a radiation risk. The simple answer is, no. Nuclear radiation health experts from Oregon State University who have researched this issue following the meltdown of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant say the minor amounts of deposition on the debris field scattered in the ocean will have long since ...

MANHATTAN, KAN. -- A Kansas State University researcher and former park ranger is helping people take a new view of the prairie and see it as more than a seemingly empty landscape. Tyra Olstad, doctoral student in geography, North Tonawanda, N.Y., is studying the rich -- although sometimes hidden -- beauty of Kansas landscapes. It's an abstract, yet important, field of study that may help develop new ways to promote and celebrate Kansas tourism, history and geography. "I became interested in the pejoratives that people layer on prairie landscapes," Olstad said. "I wanted ...

CHICAGO, February 22, 2012 – The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) today announced major changes in how the nation's medical residency programs will be accredited in the years ahead, putting in place an outcomes-based evaluation system where the doctors of tomorrow will be measured for their competency in performing the essential tasks necessary for clinical practice in the 21st century. Summarized in a paper published in the February 22, 2012 online edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, the ACGME's next accreditation system for graduate ...