One day in 2010, Rutgers physicist Vitaly Podzorov watched a store employee showcase a kitchen gadget that vacuum-seals food in plastic. The demo stuck with him. The simple concept – an airtight seal around pieces of food – just might apply to his research: developing flexible electronics using lightweight organic semiconductors for products such as video displays or solar cells. "Organic transistors, which switch or amplify electronic signals, hold promise for making video displays that bend like book pages or roll and unroll like posters," said Podzorov. But traditional ...

Deacom, Inc., producer of the DEACOM Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software system for mid-to-large sized batch process manufacturing companies launched its new website today. The new website, http://www.deacom.com, was designed to communicate Deacom's overall message of Complexity Made Simple to employees, customers, potential customers and the world at large. The new website outlines the capabilities of the DEACOM ERP software package offerings and explains the philosophies behind its development. Deacom has a unique niche in the ERP software industry and the ...

BOSTON, MA—According to a recent study, there is a new mechanism of drug release using 3D superhydrophobic materials that utilizes air as a removable barrier to control the rate at which drug is released. The study was electronically published on January 16, 2012 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Boston University (BU) graduate student Stefan Yohe, under the mentorship of Mark Grinstaff , PhD, BU professor of biomedical engineering and chemistry, and Yolonda Colson, MD, PhD, director of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) ...

Rosa & Co. LLC, a drug development advisory firm with expertise in drug-disease modeling and simulation, today announced that Mike Reed, PhD, Vice President of Client Services, will participate in a roundtable panel to discuss " The Use of Physiological, Mechanistic Models in Drug Development and Therapy: Introduction, Case Studies, Impact, and Ideas for Applications". This is a local event sponsored by the American Society of Pharmacometrics (ASoP), to be held on Thursday, February 2, 2012, in Bridgewater, New Jersey. At this roundtable, industry experts ...

New research by scientists at the University of Southampton could lead to the design of more effective drugs to combat malaria. The research will enable scientists to learn more about the nature of the enzymes required for vitamin biosynthesis by the malaria causing pathogen Plasmodium. Vitamins are essential nutrients required in small amounts, the lack of which leads to deficiencies. Many pathogenic microorganisms produce vitamins, and these biosynthetic pathways may provide suitable targets for development of new drugs. Indeed antifolates targeting vitamin B9 biosynthesis ...

If you need a celebrity or local fitness expert to help you with your personal training and nutrition needs or you are seeking to expand your career by becoming a top fitness expert and personal trainer to the stars or your neighbors, a brand-new website, http://www.thefitnessexpert.com/, offers resources, links, tips and tools all focused on fitness experts. For fitness enthusiasts, the Fitness Expert site provides group discount deals-of-the-day with the Fitness Coupon Club, a list of local fitness experts at FitnessProDirectory.com as well as information on becoming ...

Athens, Ga. – Influenza virus can rapidly evolve from one form to another, complicating the effectiveness of vaccines and anti-viral drugs used to treat it. By first understanding the complex host cell pathways that the flu uses for replication, University of Georgia researchers are finding new strategies for therapies and vaccines, according to a study published in the January issue of the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. The researchers studied RNA interference to determine the host genes influenza uses for virus replication. ...

EVANSTON, Ill. -- A Northwestern University study has found that the evidence for intuitive physics occurs in infants as young as two months – the earliest age at which testing can occur. Intuitive physics includes skills that adults use all the time. For example, when a glass of milk falls off the table, a person might try to catch the cup, but they are not likely to try to catch the milk that spills out. The person doesn't have to consciously think about what to do because the brain processes the information and the person simply reacts. The majority of an adult's ...

KANSAS CITY, MO – Memories in our brains are maintained by connections between neurons called "synapses". But how do these synapses stay strong and keep memories alive for decades? Neuroscientists at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have discovered a major clue from a study in fruit flies: Hardy, self-copying clusters or oligomers of a synapse protein are an essential ingredient for the formation of long-term memory. The finding supports a surprising new theory about memory, and may have a profound impact on explaining other oligomer-linked functions and diseases ...

The Harvey Lembeck Comedy Workshop is the premier comedy class in Los Angeles. Among its accomplished students you'll find over 150 Oscar, Emmy, SAG and Tony Award winners and nominees. The Harvey Lembeck Comedy Workshop has been helping actors improve their comedy skills for more than 46 years. The Workshop teaches an actor how to play comedy legitimately in a scene. The classes are designed for actors who wish to exercise their comedy skills for TV and film. It is the safest environment for actors to take risks and work on their craft. The Workshop uses improvisation ...

The Specialty Hospital of Washington (http://www.specialtyhospitalofwashington.com) is the first Long Term Acute Care Hospital in the metropolitan area to offer Aquapheresis, a tremendous benefit for congestive heart failure (CHF) patients with fluid overload who do not respond to diuretics. Fluid overload is a distressing symptom of CHF, which is responsible for more than one million hospitalizations each year. If not managed, fluids begin to accumulate in the extremities eventually causing congestion in the lungs, and making breathing difficult. The usual treatment ...

San Diego -- Republicans and Democrats are less divided in their attitudes than popularly believed, according to new research. It is exactly those perceptions of polarization, however, that help drive political engagement, researchers say. "American polarization is largely exaggerated," says Leaf Van Boven of the University of Colorado Boulder, especially by people who adopt strong political stances. And when people perceive a large gap between political parties, they may be more motivated to vote. That message emerges from analyses of 40 years' worth of voter data ...

How will you feel if you fail that test? Awful, really awful, you say. Then you fail the test and, yes, you feel bad—but not as bad as you thought you would. This pattern holds for most people, research shows. The takeaway message: People are lousy at predicting their emotions. "Psychology has focused on how we mess up and how stupid we are," says University of Texas Austin psychologist Samuel D. Gosling. But Gosling and colleague Michael Tyler Mathieu suspected that researchers were missing part of the story. So the two reanalyzed the raw data from 11 studies of "affective ...

The owners of Sunstone Homes, Brian Lamb and Joe Gibbons, have launched "Planet Forward" Concept Green Housing and are offering affordable, attainable "Net Zero" homes throughout the Tampa Bay region. Sensing a need to pursue healthier living options, Sunstone provides affordability to buyers with the availability to grow a local commitment to their Planet Forward Concept. You can't open the newspaper today or listen to a report on the television without hearing about a new "green" product or idea. From biofuel to reusable grocery bags and ...

Whenever we fall ill, there are many different factors that come together to influence the course of our illness. Additional medical conditions, stress levels, and social support all have an impact on our health and well-being, especially when we are ill. But a new report suggests that what you think about your illness matters just as much, if not more, in determining your health outcomes. In the February issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, Keith Petrie, of the University of Auckland, and John Weinman, ...

In a 2007 episode of the television show Boston Legal, a character claimed to have figured out that a cop was racist because his amygdala activated – displaying fear, when they showed him pictures of black people. This link between the amygdala and fear – especially a fear of others unlike us, has gone too far, not only in pop culture, but also in psychological science, say the authors of a new paper which will be published in the February issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Indeed, many experiments ...

The largest solar particle event since 2005 hit the Earth, Mars and the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft travelling in-between, allowing the onboard Radiation Assessment Detector to measure the radiation a human astronaut could be exposed to en route to the Red Planet. On Sunday, a huge coronal mass ejection erupted from the surface of the sun, spewing a cloud of charged particles in our direction, causing a strong "S3" solar storm. A NASA Goddard Space Weather Lab animation of the CME illustrates how the disturbance impacts Earth, Mars and several spacecraft. Solar ...

The eyes are the window into the soul—or at least the mind, according to a new paper published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Measuring the diameter of the pupil, the part of the eye that changes size to let in more light, can show what a person is paying attention to. Pupillometry, as it's called, has been used in social psychology, clinical psychology, humans, animals, children, infants—and it should be used even more, the authors say. The pupil is best known for changing size in reaction to light. In ...

Boker's, Inc. announces metric washers are available in 2,000 materials. Via their easy-to-navigate website, users can browse Boker's extensive flat washer offering in either millimeters or inches for enhanced application compatibility and ordering convenience. Through Boker's online search tool, users can mandate washer criteria by selecting the appropriate unit of measurement and material, as well as designate inside/outside diameters and a thickness range. Metric washer searches can be expedited by narrowing the company's vast washer selection to sizes appropriate ...

Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University (http://www.ohsu.edu) have discovered that a molecule critical to the development and plasticity of nerve cells – brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) -- is severely lacking in brainstem neurons in mutations leading to Rett syndrome, a neurological developmental disorder. The finding has implications for the treatment of neurological disorders, including Rett syndrome that affects one in 10,000 baby girls. The new discovery is published online in Neuroscience (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306452212000395?v=s5) ...

DETROIT – Transplant patients who develop head and neck cancer are more likely to be non-smokers and non-drinkers, and less likely than their non-transplant counterparts to survive past one year of diagnosis, according to a new study from Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. As part of a 20-year review, Henry Ford researchers found cancers of the throat, tonsils and mouth may be more aggressive in transplant recipients as the result of long-term immunosuppressive therapy required to prevent solid organ rejection. Transplant patients in the study who developed skin cancer ...

CHICAGO --- Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine researchers have identified a new and unusual role for a key player in the human immune system. A protein initially believed to regulate one routine function within the cell has proven vital for another critical step in the activation of the immune system. That protein, STIM1, was previously known to sense a change in calcium within immune cells, a process that occurs when the body confronts a pathogen. Upon sensing this change, STIM1 opens a type of pore in the cell membrane, called a CRAC channel, to allow ...

Improved Forecasting to Coincide with Peak in Solar Activity After years of relative somnolence, the sun is beginning to stir. By the time it's fully awake in about 20 months, the team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., charged with researching and tracking solar activity, will have at their disposal a greatly enhanced forecasting capability. Goddard's Space Weather Laboratory recently received support under NASA's Space Technology Program Game Changing Program to implement "ensemble forecasting," a computer technique already used by meteorologists ...

Canary Labs, the leading provider of data historian and trending applications, was chosen as an "Outstanding in the Field" supplier by Control's Readers' Choice Awards under the Data Acquisition Systems category. The list is described as suppliers of systems and devices that are needed in process automation. As part of the 20th Readers' Choice Awards, Control randomly sampled over 1,000 readers to find the year's best process automation technologies from over 100 entries. Control explains that this survey is "the only completely unaided brand preference ...

Mobile Poker Club expects its nearly one million users to multiply quickly as it releases its new real money applications for Android and iPhone/iPad smartphones worldwide this week. The company, which pioneered poker for cell phones, can now take real money wagers. The free app is available for downloading to phones at http://mobilepokerclub.com. The Android/iOS market is growing quickly and Mobile Poker Club's established mobile poker network is ready to bring real-money mobile poker to iPhone, iPad and Android phone users. "We're not a PC company going mobile. ...