The Delaware Insurance Department's recent announcement that it has recovered nearly $2 million this year for auto, homeowner and other policyholders in that state exemplifies the work regulators carry out on behalf of consumers nationwide, according to Online Auto Insurance (OAI). For the average person, filing a claim on a low cost car insurance policy and then trying to work out a settlement with a large insurer can be a daunting task. But regulatory agencies in every state can help residents settle claims that might otherwise never be paid. A vehicle policy is ...

When fat, sugar and gluten come out of salad dressings, sauces, cookies, beverages, and other foods with the new genre of package labels shouting what's not there, what goes into "light" or "-free" versions of products to make them taste like the original version? The answers appear in the cover story in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News, ACS' weekly newsmagazine. In the article Melody Bombgardner, C&EN Senior Business Editor, explains that food processors usually face the problem of reproducing the texture or "mouth feel" of products that have cut back ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Both boys and girls who play video games tend to be more creative, regardless of whether the games are violent or nonviolent, according to new research by Michigan State University scholars. A study of nearly 500 12-year-olds found that the more kids played video games, the more creative they were in tasks such as drawing pictures and writing stories. In contrast, use of cell phones, the Internet and computers (other than for video games) was unrelated to creativity, the study found. Linda Jackson, professor of psychology and lead researcher on ...

Cardiology departments have hosted a variety of software solutions in the past to meet varying demands. A new report from KLAS reveals that the cardiology IT market is moving toward consolidation. The report, "Cardiology 2012: Will the Complete CVIS Please Stand Up?," explains that as a result of the trend toward consolidation providers are looking for a technology leader to step up and meet their needs. This report examines which vendors, providers feel are poised to lead the cardiology market, provide necessary functionality, and offer integration. "Many ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Researchers at Ohio State University Medical Center and Nationwide Children's Hospital have developed a viral vector designed to deliver a gene into the eyes of people born with an inherited, progressive form of blindness that affects mainly males. The vector is part of a clinical trial investigating the use of gene therapy to cure choroideremia, a disease that affects an estimated 100,000 people worldwide. The trial is being conducted by researchers at the University of Oxford in England. The vector was designed by Dr. Matthew During, professor of ...

Although initially linked with tropical climes as a way to shield against heat and strong sunshine (the chance would be a fine thing in this country!), shutters are also a perfect window treatment to help keep us warm and cosy during cold, wintry weather (that'll be a fair proportion of the year then!). As they fit snugly and tightly into the window recess, effectively 'closing' off the window, they provide better insulation than curtains or blinds. Making the most of natural daylight is even more important during the shorter winter days and shutters allow you to let ...

New York, November 2, 2011 -- A woman goes into labor, and gives birth. The newborn is swaddled and placed to sleep in a nearby bassinet, or taken to the hospital nursery so that the mother can rest. Despite this common practice, new research published in Biological Psychiatry provides new evidence that separating infants from their mothers is stressful to the baby. It is standard practice in a hospital setting, particularly among Western cultures, to separate mothers and their newborns. Separation is also common for babies under medical distress or premature babies, who ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – A newly published paper from Rhode Island Hospital reports that Web-based assessments for outcome measurements of patients in treatment for depression are valid and reliable. The findings indicate that the Internet version of the depression scale was equivalent to the paper version, and that patients preferred the Internet version. The paper is published in this month's edition of the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. Lead author Mark Zimmerman, M.D., director of outpatient psychiatry at Rhode Island Hospital, and his colleagues studied 53 psychiatric ...

WASHINGTON — A new data network that integrates emerging research on the molecular makeup of diseases with clinical data on individual patients could drive the development of a more accurate classification of disease and ultimately enhance diagnosis and treatment, says a new report from the National Research Council. The "new taxonomy" that emerges would define diseases by their underlying molecular causes and other factors in addition to their traditional physical signs and symptoms. The report adds that the new data network could also improve biomedical research by ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Examining the chin and upper and lower abdomen is a reliable, minimally invasive way to screen for excessive hair growth in women, a key indicator of too much male hormone, researchers report. "We wanted to find a way to identify this problem in women that was as non-intrusive and accurate as possible," said Dr. Ricardo Azziz, reproductive endocrinologist and President of Georgia Health Sciences University. "We believe this approach is approximately 80 percent accurate and will be less traumatic for women in many situations than the full body assessments ...

At present, with the amount of domestic meteorite collectors increasing rapidly, meteorite collection is becoming more and more popular. The website http://www.meteorite.hk was born as an answer to these times. The Hong Kong meteorite website was founded by the Hong Kong Best Tone Group Limited; it is not just a professional platform to show meteorites, but also a transaction platform for the meteorite collectors from all over the world and it will provide an international campaign. The Hong Kong meteorite website was identified by the major meteorite authority; it ...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 2, 2011 — Just as people who have the enthusiasm and energy to make things happen are called catalysts, their namesakes — chemical catalysts — also are facilitators, jump-starting chemical reactions that would never work or would work too slowly. Almost everything we rely upon in everyday life — 90 percent of all commercially produced products (a trillion dollars worth each year) — involve catalysts at some stage of their manufacture. A new episode in the 2011 edition of a popular video series from the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest ...

Converting sunlight into electricity is not economically attractive because of the high cost of solar cells, but a recent, purely optical approach to improving luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) may ease the problem, according to researchers at Argonne National Laboratories and Penn State. Using concentrated sunlight reduces the cost of solar power by requiring fewer solar cells to generate a given amount of electricity. LSCs concentrate light by absorbing and re-emiting it at lower frequency within the confines of a transparent slab of material. They can not only ...

Pediatric researchers who tested newborn animals with an existing human drug used in adults with diabetes report that this drug, when given very early in life, prevents diabetes from developing in adult animals. If this finding can be repeated in humans, it may become a way to prevent at-risk infants from developing type 2 diabetes. "We uncovered a novel mechanism to prevent the later development of diabetes in this animal study," said senior author Rebecca A. Simmons, M.D., a neonatologist at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "This may indicate that there is an ...

Antibodies Trick Bacteria into Killing Each Other The dominant theory about antibodies is that they directly target and kill disease-causing organisms. In a surprising twist, researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine have discovered that certain antibodies to Streptococcus pneumoniae actually trick the bacteria into killing each other. Pneumococcal vaccines currently in use today target the pneumococcal capsular polysaccharide (PPS), a sort of armor that surrounds the bacterial cell, protecting it from destruction. Current thought hold that PPS-binding ...

Solar power may be on the rise, but solar cells are only as efficient as the amount of sunlight they collect. Under the direction of a new professor at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, researchers have developed a new material that absorbs a wide range of wavelengths and could lead to more efficient and less expensive solar technology. A paper describing the findings, "Broadband polarization-independent resonant light absorption using ultrathin plasmonic super absorbers," was published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. "The ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Exenatide, a drug commonly prescribed to help patients with type 2 diabetes improve blood sugar control, also has a powerful and rapid anti-inflammatory effect, a University at Buffalo study has shown. The study of the drug, marketed under the trade name Byetta, was published recently in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. "Our most important finding was this rapid, anti-inflammatory effect, which may lead to the inhibition of atherosclerosis, the major cause of heart attacks, strokes and gangrene in diabetics," says Paresh Dandona, ...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 2—In the emerging field of tissue engineering, scientists encourage cells to grow on carefully designed support scaffolds. The ultimate goal is to create living structures that might one day be used to replace lost or damaged tissue, but the manufacture of appropriately detailed scaffolds presents a significant challenge that has kept most tissue engineering applications confined to the research lab. Now a team of researchers from the Laser Zentrum Hannover (LZH) eV Institute in Hannover, Germany, and the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at the ...

Oversensitivity diseases, or allergies, now affect 25 per cent of the population of Denmark. The figure has been on the increase in recent decades and now researchers at the Copenhagen Prospective Studies on Asthma in Childhood (COPSAC), University of Copenhagen, are at last able to partly explain the reasons. "In our study of over 400 children we observed a direct link between the number of different bacteria in their rectums and the risk of development of allergic disease later in life," says Professor Hans Bisgaard, consultant at Gentofte Hospital, head of the Copenhagen ...

Philadelphia, PA, November 2, 2011 – Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (CMR) has undergone substantial development and offers important advantages compared with other well-established imaging modalities. In the November/December issue of Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases, published by Elsevier, a series of articles on key topics in CMR will foster greater understanding of the rapidly expanding role of CMR in clinical cardiology. "Until a decade ago, CMR was considered mostly a research tool, and scans for clinical purpose were rare," stated guest editors Theodoros ...

The world may seem painted with endless color, but physiologically the human eye sees only three bands of light — red, green, and blue. Now a Tel Aviv University-developed technology is using colors invisible to the naked eye to analyze the world we live in. With the ability to detect more than 1,000 colors, the "hyperspectral" (HSR) camera, like Mr. Spock's sci-fi "Tricorder," is being used to "diagnose" contaminants and other environmental hazards in real time. Prof. Eyal Ben-Dor of TAU's Department of Geography and the Human Environment says that reading this extensive ...

One of two proteins that regulate nerve cells and assist in overall brain function may be the key to preventing long-term damage as a result of a stroke, the leading cause of disability and third leading cause of death in the United States. In a recent study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, Bonnie Firestein, professor of cell biology and neuroscience, in the School of Arts and Sciences, says the new research indicates that increased production of two proteins – cypin and PSD-95 – results in very different outcomes. While cypin – a protein that regulates nerve ...

Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. – Cancer cells maintain their life-style of extremely rapid growth and proliferation thanks to an enzyme called PK-M2 (pyruvate kinase M2) that alters the cells' ability to metabolize glucose – a phenomenon known as the Warburg effect. Professor Adrian Krainer, Ph.D., and his team at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), who seek to reverse this effect and force cancer cells to regain the metabolism of normal cells, have discovered details of molecular events that cause cancer cells to produce PK-M2 instead of its harmless counterpart, an isoform ...

The discovery of 13 diffuse interstellar bands with the longest wavelengths to date could someday solve a 90-year-old mystery. Astronomers have identified the new bands using data collected by the Gemini North telescope of stars in the center of the Milky Way. Nature reports on its website today findings that support recent ideas about the presence of large, possibly carbon-based organic molecules—"carriers"—hidden in interstellar dust clouds. The paper will also appear in the Nov. 10 print issue of the journal. "These diffuse interstellar bands—or DIBs—have never ...

Members of our species (Homo sapiens) arrived in Europe several millennia earlier than previously thought. At this conclusion a team of researchers, led by the Department of Anthropology, University of Vienna, arrived after re-analyses of two ancient deciduous teeth. These teeth were discovered 1964 in the "Grotta del Cavallo", a prehistoric cave in southern Italy. Since their discovery they have been attributed to Neanderthals, but this new study suggests they belong to anatomically modern humans. Chronometric analysis, carried out by the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator ...