WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. ╨ Future astronauts spending Thanksgiving in space may not have to forgo one of the most traditional parts of the day's feast: fresh sweet potatoes. Cary Mitchell, a Purdue University professor of horticulture, and Gioia Massa, a former postdoctoral researcher at Purdue, developed methods for growing sweet potatoes that reduce the required growing space while not decreasing the amount of food that each plant produces. Their findings were published in the journal Advances in Space Research. Sweet potato plants have main vines with many shoots ...

Dazadi.com's revamped e-commerce website offers an all new and easier to use layout, just in time for this holiday season. Dazadi features competitive, low-price deals on sporting good products like basketball hoops, ping pong tables and pool tables. Outdoor living products and workout equipment including affordable deals on stair climber machines make the perfect holiday gift. "It was just time for an update utilizing the latest and greatest in development technology. This new platform will allow us to specialize the buying experience on Dazadi over the coming ...

As used medical equipment is a very practical solution to upgrading medical facilities at a fraction of the cost; more and more professionals are taking advantage of the wide availability of good-quality used devices on the market. For hospital administrators, department heads, and other personnel involved in the purchase of medical equipment, MedWOW has published and upgraded its Medical Equipment Buying Guide, to assist professionals in getting the most out of their new and used medical equipment purchases. The eBook is a downloadable PDF-ready file with easy printing ...

In 2009, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) recommended that Hemoglobin A1c be exclusively used for the diagnosis of diabetes in children. The simple test measures longer-term blood sugar levels -- without requiring patients to fast overnight. However, a new U-M study has shown that these tests are not very accurate in children. "We found that Hemoglobin A1c is not as reliable a test for identifying children with diabetes or children at high risk for diabetes compared with other tests in children," says Joyce M. Lee, M.D., M.P.H., lead author of the study and a ...

In 1991, a team led by Washington University in St. Louis paleoanthropologist Glenn Conroy, PhD, discovered the fossils of the first — and still the only — known pre-human ape ever found south of the equator in Africa after only 30 minutes of searching a limestone cave in Namibia. Traditionally, fossil-hunters often could only make educated guesses as to where fossils lie. The rest lay with chance — finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. "I don't want to say it's total luck," says Conroy, professor of physical anthropology in Arts & Sciences, "but it's a combination ...

Research by a team of Michigan State University scientists has shed new light on why some body parts are more sensitive to environmental change than others, work that could someday lead to better ways of treating a variety of diseases, including type 2 diabetes. The research, led by assistant zoology professor Alexander Shingleton, is detailed in the recent issue of the Proceedings of the Library of Science Genetics. In particular, Shingleton is studying the genetics of fruit flies and zeroing in on why some of the insects' body parts will grow to full size even when ...

For most Californians, a vehicle is not just a mode of transportation. Automobiles are an investment, a daily asset, and a necessary tool that many rely on. This is why it can become a major headache when those minor cracks and dings begin to crop up the windshield or other pieces of auto glass. For those that have had enough of unsightly and unsafe auto glass, there is now a great solution. Los Angeles auto glass repair is now easier and more affordable than ever as one of the most trusted local companies, PG Auto Glass, is offering a 10% discount on all of their services. Auto ...

HONOLULU—A new study from the University of Hawaii Cancer Center reveals that PEA-15, a protein previously shown to slow ovarian tumor growth and metastasis, can alternatively enhance tumor formation in kidney cells carrying a mutation in a cancer-promoting gene called H-Ras. The H-Ras oncogene is mutated in many human malignancies, and previous reports have shown the ability of H-Ras to contribute to the development, proliferation and metastasis of these tumors. Conversely, PEA-15 had been reported to inhibit tumor cell proliferation and metastasis by opposing H-Ras ...

Most people understand that serious weight loss requires changing attitudes toward what they eat and how often they exercise. But, what if the process could be aided by simply chewing a stick of gum after meals? That's the question a team of scientists, led by Syracuse University chemist Robert Doyle, is trying to answer. In a groundbreaking new study, Doyle's team demonstrated, for the first time, that a critical hormone that helps people feel "full" after eating can be delivered into the bloodstream orally. Doyle's study was published online Nov. 4, 2011 in the American ...

CHICAGO --- Following a major Northwestern Medicine breakthrough that identified a common converging point for all forms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS and Lou Gehrig's disease), a new finding from the same scientists further broadens the understanding of why cells in the brain and spinal cord degenerate in the fatal disease. Less than three months ago, Northwestern research found that the crucial recycling system for cells in the brain and spinal cord was broken in people with ALS. And one mutated gene had a key role. Like a loafing worker, it wasn't doing its ...

Grand Rapids, Mich. (November 21, 2011) A Van Andel Research Institute (VARI) study published recently in the Journal of Biological Chemistry reveals that a natural fatty acid can serve as a regulator of blood sugar levels, which may have important applications in designing better and safer drugs for diabetes treatment. According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly 26 million Americans have diabetes, and current drugs commonly used to treat the disease sometimes have unwanted side effects. The study found that decanoic acid, a saturated ...

Global food demand could double by 2050, according to a new projection by David Tilman, Regents Professor of Ecology in the University of Minnesota's College of Biological Sciences, and colleagues, including Jason Hill, assistant professor in the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences. Producing that amount of food could significantly increase levels of carbon dioxide and nitrogen in the environment and cause the extinction of numerous species. But this can be avoided, the paper shows, if the high-yielding technologies of rich nations are adapted ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers are making progress in developing a system that measures the mechanical properties of living cells, a technology that could be used to diagnose human disease and better understand biological processes. The team used an instrument called an atomic force microscope to study three distinctly different types of cells to demonstrate the method's potentially broad applications, said Arvind Raman, a Purdue University professor of mechanical engineering. For example, the technique could be used to study how cells adhere to tissues, which is ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Scientists have designed a first draft of a mathematical model that someday could guide treatment decisions for advanced prostate cancer, in part by helping doctors predict how individual patients will respond to therapy based on the biology of their tumors. These decisions would apply to treatment of cancer that has already spread beyond the prostate gland or that has recurred after initial treatments, such as surgery or radiation. Patients with this more advanced prostate cancer receive a therapy called androgen ablation, which inhibits production of ...

Researchers at Rochester Institute of Technology have found that use of a technology-rich learning environment in several undergraduate engineering-technology courses has improved learning and decreased withdrawals from, or failing grades in, the courses. They found that more than 90 percent of students involved stated that using the technology-rich environment—which includes a combination of tablet PCs, collaborative software, and multiple projection screens capable of capturing and retaining graphics and notations—helped them learn and retain the information better ...

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- Many premature infants suffer a life-threatening destruction of intestinal tissue called necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). Now a Loyola University Medical Center study has identified a major risk factor for NEC: Preemies with the AB blood type who develop NEC are nearly three times as likely to die from it as preemies with other blood types. The finding suggests that a simple change in blood transfusion practices in neonatal ICUs could significantly reduce the incidence of NEC. The study is published online ahead of print in the Journal of Perinatology. ...

The American College of Radiology today denounced new breast cancer screening guidelines by the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health (CTFOPH), which recommend against annual screening of women ages 40-49 and would extend time between screens for older women. An ACR news release said "the CTFOPH guidelines ignore results of recent landmark randomized control trials which show that regular screening reduces breast cancer deaths in these women by approximately a third" and that "While implementation of the CTFOPH guidelines may save money on screening costs, the result ...

Healthcare research firm KLAS announces a new pharmacy report designed to help providers attending the 2011 American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) conference make informed pharmacy technology buying decisions. With thinning wallets, providers are becoming more strategic in their technology purchasing decisions--and pharmacy is no exception. The "KLAS Pharmacy Buyers Guide" offers product ratings for more than 100 software and equipment offerings, all based on the feedback of thousands of healthcare providers. Each rated product has been given ...

The hurricane season in the eastern Pacific isn't over and Hurricane Kenneth serves as a reminder that the season ends November 30. NASA satellite imagery shows Kenneth more organized than it appeared on Sunday, Nov. 20 and became a late season hurricane earlier today. Kenneth began as the thirteenth tropical depression and that formed on Saturday, November 19, about 480 miles south of Acapulco, Mexico. On Sunday, November 29 at 0300 UTC (11 p.m. EST, Nov. 19) the National Hurricane Center noted that the center of Tropical Depression 13E was further north than previously ...

The most recent evaluations of NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) project confirmed all systems go for a third generation upgrade of the orbiting communications network. TDRS-K is scheduled for launch aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida in the fall of 2012. Approval to move forward came during a recent Agency Project Management Council (APMC) meeting at NASA Headquarters. "I am very proud of the entire TDRS civil servant and contractor team for successfully completing this milestone and demonstrating that the TDRS project is ready to proceed ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – A team of University of Missouri researchers have found that targeting a synthetic molecule to a specific gene could help the severity of the disease Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) – the leading genetic cause of infantile death in the world. "When we introduced synthetic RNA into mice that carry the genes responsible for SMA, the disease's severity was significantly lowered," said Chris Lorson, researcher at the Bond Life Sciences Center and professor in the Department of Veterinary Pathobiology and the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology. ...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Sustainability has not only become a science in the past 25 years, but it is one that continues to be fast-growing with widespread international collaboration, broad disciplinary composition and wide geographic distribution, according to new research from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Indiana University. The findings, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were assembled from a review of 20,000 academic papers written by 37,000 distinct authors representing 174 countries and over 2,200 cities. Authors of the ...

Bullritos, a regional burrito chain, is breaking new ground with the launch of a new online ordering application designed by OLO Online Ordering. Starting today, fans of Texas-based Bullritos can order, pay and confirm their spot as first in line -- all without leaving the regional chain's Facebook page. Bullritos is the first restaurant brand in the country to launch an online ordering application on Facebook that allows its 5,000 fans the ability to view and order from the restaurant's full menu, repeat previous orders, pay securely using a credit card, and confirm ...

BOSTON – Functional electrical stimulation (FES) was developed to help return lost function to patients with upper and lower extremity injuries and spinal cord injuries, among other applications. However, the devices, which work by stimulating neuronal activity in nerve-damaged patients, have a potential shortcoming in that the electrical currents needed for the treatment to work can also send errant signals to surrounding nerves, resulting in painful side effects. Earlier this fall, a plastic surgery research team at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and ...

A recent trial shows cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) reduces functional disability and depressive symptoms in adolescents with juvenile fibromyalgia. The psychological intervention was found to be safe and effective, and proved to be superior to disease management education. Full findings from this multi-site clinical trial are published in Arthritis & Rheumatism, a peer-reviewed journal of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR). Medical evidence reports that juvenile fibromyalgia syndrome affects 2% to 7% of school age children. Similar to adult cases, the juvenile ...