This press release is available in Spanish. A technique developed by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists for tracking pathogens has helped confirm that Escherichia coli is not likely to contaminate the internal vascular structure of field-grown leafy greens and thus increase the incidence of foodborne illness. Agricultural Research Service (ARS) microbiologist Manan Sharma wanted to find out if plant roots could draw in E. coli pathogens from the soil when taking in nutrients and water. He and colleagues modified several types of E. coli-including some ...

Economists from the Bank of Spain's Research Department have published a study on the direct, indirect and 'second time around' effects of oil prices on the economies of Spain and those of the European Monetary Union (EMU). The results show that Spanish inflation reflects oil prices than more directly inflation in the euro area overall. "It affects Spanish inflation more for two reasons. Firstly, because Spaniards spend proportionally more on petrol and diesel than people in other European countries, and also becuase fuel taxes in Spain are lower than in the other countries ...

Once you have decided to undergo breast augmentation, you will find yourself inundated with many other important choices regarding your new implants. One of the most important decisions you will have to make will deal with the size of your breast implants. Ultimately, this is a highly personal decision, and it is important that you - not your spouse, significant other, friends, or family members - feel comfortable with this decision. Approximately one third of all breast augmentation revision procedures are performed to address dissatisfaction in the breast implant size. ...

Breathalyzers have gained considerable scrutiny across the United States as more defendants challenge the accuracy of blood alcohol test results. Breathalyzer machines are used by scores of law enforcement agencies to measure the level of alcohol in a person's blood. If a driver's BAC is above .08, he or she could be arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) or driving while intoxicated (DWI). Specifically, defendants and advocacy groups have long questioned whether the machines were properly calibrated to accurately measure blood-alcohol content. Last ...

This release is available in German. The term entanglement was introduced by the Austrian Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger in 1935, and it describes a quantum mechanical phenomenon that while it can clearly be demonstrated experimentally, is not understood completely. Entangled particles cannot be defined as single particles with defined states but rather as a whole system. By entangling single quantum bits, a quantum computer will solve problems considerably faster than conventional computers. "It becomes even more difficult to understand entanglement when there are ...

A report issued in January 2011, rated New Jersey the second safest in the nation, based on the laws designed to promote highway safety. Only the District of Columbia ranked in front of New Jersey. Motor vehicle crashes impose a significant financial burden on society. According to the NHTSA, the total economic cost of motor vehicle crashes in 2000 was more than $230 billion. The Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety issued its eighth annual roadmap to state highway safety laws. The report ranks the states on fifteen criteria that promote highway safety: Adult ...

Athens, Ga. – A University of Georgia researcher studying invasive ladybugs has developed new models that help explain how these insects have spread so quickly and their potential impacts on native species. In recent years, some people have noticed swarms of ladybugs amassing in the fall, even infesting their homes. These are Asian lady beetles, insects native to eastern Asia, introduced to the U.S. as a biocontrol for aphids and have since spread throughout the country and into Canada. When he found the beetles in his own home, Assistant Research Scientist Richard Hall, ...

New guidelines, released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC) outline steps to eliminate bloodstream infections in patients with intravenous catheters, which are among the most deadly and costly healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). The document, titled "Guidelines for the Prevention of Intravascular Catheter-Related Infections" will be published in its entirety in a special supplement to the American Journal of Infection Control. The Journal will also present a video roundtable ...

Senate Bill 232 -- introduced in November by state senator Jane Nelson and currently being debated by the Criminal Justice Committee of the Texas State Senate -- recommends that every person put on probation following a conviction of driving while intoxicated (DWI) wear an alcohol-sensing monitor. The most common of these monitors is known as a secure continuous remote alcohol monitor (SCRAM). SCRAM bracelets -- manufactured by Alcohol Monitoring Systems, Inc. -- have gained notoriety due to high-profile DWI cases involving Hollywood celebrities. They are the most common ...

"I hope that unraveling the way Skywalker works will not only teach us more about the way neurons communicate with each other but will also lead to new diagnostics and therapies for neurological diseases such as Parkinson's," says Verstreken. Communication between brain cells Brain disorders take a major toll on society. More than 8% of the population in the West depends on analgesics. Twenty per cent suffers from a mental disturbance and the number of people suffering from the effects of neurological diseases is estimated at 1 billion. Many of these problems are caused ...

New research from the University of Cincinnati provides food for thought. The research examined how short-term and long-term hunger affected mate selection and aggression in female wolf spiders (Schizocosa ocreata) commonly found in the eastern United States and Canada. These female spiders are potentially aggressive and cannibalistic when approached by a courting male. The research is published in the April 2011 print issue of the journal, "Animal Behavior." It was carried out by George Uetz, UC professor of biology, and former UC doctoral student Brian Moskalik, ...

More than half of the commercial vehicle drivers who responded to United Safety Alliance, Inc.'s online survey admitted to deliberately violating federal Hours of Service (HOS) regulations. Those regulations aim to keep highways safe by limiting driving time so commercial vehicle drivers get enough rest. Currently, HOS compliance is monitored through paper logs and supporting documentation such as toll receipts. However, paper logs allow for falsification. For that reason, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is looking to shift to an automated means ...

Planting short rotation energy crops on England's unused agricultural land could produce enough biomass to meet renewable energy targets without disrupting the food industry or the environment, according to research led by Professor Gail Taylor from the University of Southampton. The study, funded by the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC), is a rare investigation into energy crop supply which looks at the potential of planting short rotation coppice (poplar and willow) in England, taking into account social, economic and environmental constraints. It found that with efficient ...

January 2011 was the snowiest January that Connecticut has seen since records were first kept in 1905. While one would expect snow and ice accumulation to impact commute times, such accumulation also has had impact on sidewalks, making outside entrances to businesses and houses slippery and dangerous. In fact, according to the Brookfield Patch, snow and ice-related accidents are unusually high this year. Tom Rizzo, spokesman for the Westchester District of the United States Postal Service, also told the Yorktown Patch that there have been 57 accidents due to slips and falls ...

Federal legislation proposed by Republican Senator Orrin Hatch seeks to force local law enforcement agencies to further assist federal immigration policy or lose funding. Senate Bill 332, the Strengthening Our Commitment to Legal Immigration and America's Security Act, also eliminates the diversity visa, an immensely popular program that allows for 50,000 lottery-based visas every year. Several other provisions involving exit procedures, welfare benefits and drug crimes round out the wide-ranging bill. But some commentators are already calling the effort a political ploy ...

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is often diagnosed too late in children and adolescents. In the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2011; 108: 173-79), Susanne Walitza and her colleagues point out that appropriate early recognition and treatment can positively affect the course of the disease. Compulsive washing, the most common obsessive-compulsive manifestation among children and adolescents, is present in up to 87% of all patients; other common types are compulsive repetitive behavior and checking, and obsessive thoughts of an aggressive ...

The dormouse in Alice in Wonderland was well advised to stay asleep – especially as doing so did not prevent it from taking a full part in the tea-time conversation. Dormice in Europe spend about eight months of the year asleep and are extremely safe during this extended period, with almost all of them surviving the winter. This result comes from a study of dormouse survival rates in Austria, the Czech Republic, England, Germany and Italy. Karin Lebl was a PhD student in Ruf's group. Together with collaboration partners in these countries, she examined how the survival ...

A potential new experimental diagnostic test able to quickly distinguish individuals with active tuberculosis (TB) from those with latent TB infection has been developed. If the preliminary results of the study will be confirmed in a larger population sample, the new diagnostic system could allow more effective strategies to control the spread of the re-emerging pathology. The work was performed by a group of scientists from the Catholic University of Rome, the National Institute of Infectious Diseases "L. Spallanzani" of Rome and the University of Sassari, in a study ...

A recent survey performed by the Pew Hispanic Center (PHC) found that over 60 percent of Hispanics polled still feel that they are the victims of national origin bias. The PHC -- a nonpartisan, nonprofit research group -- is focused on tracing trends in attitude and lifestyle that affect Latinos and others of Hispanic origin living in America. The striking percentage of disenfranchised Hispanics is a sharp uptick in the numbers of those who felt discriminated against in recent years, and most blame the rise in bias as being the direct result of America's highly publicized ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Engineers at Oregon State University have invented a new way to use surface-mount adhesives in the production of low-temperature, microchannel heat exchangers - an advance that will make this promising technology much less expensive for many commercial applications. This type of technology will be needed, researchers say, in next-generation computers, lasers, consumer electronics, automobile cooling systems, fuel processors, miniature heat pumps and more. New industries and jobs are possible. A patent has been applied for, the findings reported in ...

LA JOLLA, CA—When cells find themselves in a tight spot, the cell cycle regulator p21 halts the cell cycle, buying cells time to repair the damage, or if all else fails, to initiate programmed cell death. In contrast to other stress-induced genes, which dispense with the regular transcriptional entourage, p21Cip1 still requires SKIP, a transcription elongation factor that also helps with the editing of transcripts, to be expressed, found researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. In the absence of SKIP, the expression of p21Cip1 is rapidly down-regulated, ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Most parents get their information about vaccines from their children's doctors, but some also consider public health officials, other parents, friends and family members and even celebrities as sources of vaccine information. These are the results of a national survey conducted by University of Michigan researchers to determine how much parents trust different sources of information in regards to vaccines, as well as to determine what disseminating methods would be most effective for those distributing evidence-based information about vaccines. The ...

In late January, a district court judge in Florida issued a lengthy opinion holding that the new federal health care reform act shepherded into law by President Obama is unconstitutional. Although news of the ruling has traveled fast, many are wondering just what the decision means for the future of the health care law. The Case In a joint lawsuit involving 26 states, Federal District Court Judge Roger Vinson found that the health care law popularly known as Obamacare overstepped the authority granted to Congress by the U.S. Constitution. Specifically, Judge Vinson ...

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- An award-winning Loyola University Health System study includes some unexpected findings about the immune systems of smoke-inhalation patients. Contrary to expectations, patients who died from their injuries had lower inflammatory responses in their lungs than patients who survived. "Perhaps a better understanding of this early pulmonary immune dysfunction will allow for therapies that further improve outcomes in burn care," researchers reported. Results were released at the 43rd annual meeting of the American Burn Association. The project won the 2011 ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A low dose of insulin has been found to suppress the expression in the blood of four precursor proteins involved in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease, according to new clinical research by University at Buffalo endocrinologists. The research, published in March online in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, suggests that insulin could have a powerful, new role to play in fighting Alzheimer's disease. "Our results show clearly that insulin has the potential to be developed as a therapeutic agent for Alzheimer's, for which no satisfactory ...