New Rochelle, October 4, 2011–The glassy, porous, and once gas-rich rock called pumice may have given rise to early life forms, according to a provocative new hypothesis on the origin of life published in Astrobiology, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.. The article is available free online at www.liebertpub.com/ast for the next week. Martin Brasier, Richard Matthewman, and Sean McMahon, University of Oxford (U.K.), and David Wacey, University of Western Australia (Crawley), contend that pumice has "four remarkable properties" that would enable it to ...

The Middle East's largest motoring event returns to Dubai later this year, with more than 100,000 car enthusiasts and industry members expected to be in attendance. Running from Thursday November 10th to Monday November 14th, the Dubai International Motor Show will offer visitors the chance to see the freshest models and experience the latest technology. With dedicated zones for performance cars and tuning, as well as an extensive showcase of supercars and motorcycles, the biennial event has plenty to satisfy even the most demanding of petrolheads. Many of the ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Growing up in a poor neighborhood significantly reduces the chances that a child will graduate from high school, according to a study published in the current (October) issue of the American Sociological Review. And the longer a child lives in that kind of neighborhood, the more harmful the impact. The study by sociologists Geoffrey Wodtke and David Harding of the University of Michigan and Felix Elwert of the University of Wisconsin is the first to capture the cumulative impact of growing up in America's most disadvantaged neighborhoods on a key educational ...

New York City is famous for its Halloween celebrations, which see costumed revellers taking to the streets of Manhattan in their thousands to mark the annual holiday. The Big Apple takes Halloween seriously, with preparations beginning in early September and gradually becoming more intense as the weekend closest to October 31st approaches. Countless parties and special events take place across New York in honour of Halloween, but arguably the most essential event for first-time visitors is the annual Village Halloween Parade. This colourful procession of costumed ...

To arrange for an interview with a researcher, please contact the Communications and External Relations staff member identified at the end of each tip. For more information on ORNL and its research and development activities, please refer to one of our Media Contacts. If you have a general media-related question or comment, you can send it to news@ornl.gov. RACING -- Green checkered flag . . . Getting to the finish line quickest with the least environmental impact is what's driving the Green Racing initiative that has made its way to Oak Ridge National Laboratory. ...

Boulder, CO, USA -- New research from three Geological Society of America journals is now online. Highlights for GSA BULLETIN (published online ahead of print on 19 Sept.), GEOSPHERE (with additions to two themed issues), and the October GSA TODAY science article are provided below. Representatives of the media may obtain complimentary copies of GSA BULLETIN and GEOSPHERE articles by contacting Christa Stratton at the address above. Please discuss articles of interest with the authors before publishing stories on their work, and please make reference to the appropriate ...

Avista Solutions, a leading provider of a web-based, end-to-end mortgage loan origination system, is pleased to announce its new partnership with Old Republic Credit Services (ORCS), a Chicago-based provider of customized credit products and services. At the request of its customers, Avista recently completed a seamless integration that allows users to order credit reports from ORCS without exiting their Avista Agile LOS. "With our new partnership with ORCS, Avista Solutions once again works to fulfill the needs of our current and future customers," Avista ...

The human body has a love-hate relationship with iron. Just the right amount is needed for proper cell function, yet too much is associated with brain diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Science knows that men have more iron in their bodies and brains than women. These higher levels may be part of the explanation for why men develop these age-related neurodegenerative diseases at a younger age. But why do women have less iron in their systems than men? One possible explanation for the gender difference is that during menstruation, iron is eliminated through ...

It is not necessary for an effective anti-fouling coating to release toxins into the environment. Scientists at the University of Gothenburg have shown that it is instead possible to mix into the coating molecules on which the adult barnacles cannot grow. The result has been published in the scientific journal Biofouling. Fouling of hulls is a problem for all boat owners, and one of the most difficult organisms to deal with is barnacles. A research group at the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology has therefore studied the biology of barnacles in detail, and focussed ...

Retail guru Mary Portas and famous hosiery brand Charnos have joined forces to create a fabulous range of tights aimed at women that that want to look stylish and fashionable in their forties, fifties and beyond. The sensational range of Mary Portas tights which includes spots, stripes, argyle patterns, lace and luxurious basics is now available at MyTights.com. Mary Portas has collaborated with Charnos to design a new hosiery collection that takes the season's key trends and makes them wearable for grown up women. Fabulous and fashionable whatever your age, the Mary ...

A fish's personality may determine how it is captured. This association between personality difference and capture-technique could have significant evolutionary and ecological consequences for affected fish populations, as well as for the quality of fisheries. Anglers fishing near rocky outcrops or in areas of water with submerged vegetation may be more likely to catch timid fish, while those fishing in open water may be more likely to reel in bolder fish, according to new research conducted at Queen's University Biological Station. "Boldness -- the tendency of an ...

Intensive daily training for a limited period is better for children with reading and writing difficulties than the traditional remedial tuition offered by schools, reveals new research from the University of Gothenburg. Around 5% of school children in Sweden have problems learning to read and write on account of difficulties with word decoding. Phonemic building blocks "Most researchers agree that the underlying problem is a limited phonological ability, in other words limited awareness of the sounds that make up spoken words," says Ulrika Wolff, senior lecturer in ...

Business-Trader.com.au is a leading online marketplace designed to help Australians buy or sell a business. We've added additional features to our services and now offer multiple listings of businesses for sale, with resources for Australian business buyers and sellers. Our database contains listings of all categories of businesses including franchising opportunities and online websites. Business-Trader features multiple listing options for sellers and we also provide professional listing services for business brokers. Our business broker listings are available for ...

Patients who are fed more calories while in intensive care have lower mortality rates than those who receive less of their daily-prescribed calories, according to a recent study of data from the largest critical care nutrition database in the world. "Our finding is significant as there have been a number of previous studies in the area of critical care nutrition that have produced conflicting clinical recommendations and policy implications," says study lead Daren Heyland, a professor of Medicine at Queen's, director of the Clinical Evaluation Research Unit at Kingston ...

Reliant Technology would like to announce the new IBM Cost Reduction System, a strategic cost reduction strategy for IBM customers with limited budgets and growing data storage costs. Reliant Technology has created this system to help enterprises find cost-saving IBM storage solutions that will meet the data demands of the future despite stagnant or declining IT budgets. IBM customers can depend on Reliant Technology for competitive prices on used IBM equipment, IBM upgrades, IBM SAN equipment, replacement disks, and tape drives. Reliant Technology offers IBM DS3000, ...

U.S. efforts to bring stability to Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years have focused less on killing insurgents and more on gaining the cooperation of the local population. But does this population-centered approach to counterinsurgency actually work? A study published today (October 4, 2011) in the Journal of Political Economy finds evidence that it does. The study, by economist Eli Berman (University of California, San Diego) and political scientists Jacob Shapiro (Princeton) and Col. Joseph Felter (Stanford), focused on the Commander's Emergency Response Program ...

This press release is available in Spanish. A vaccine that protects cattle against East Coast fever, a destructive disease in eastern and central Africa, is being developed by scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Kenya. Entomologist Glen Scoles, veterinary medical officer Massaro Ueti and research leader Don Knowles at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Animal Disease Research Unit (ADRU) in Pullman, Wash., have been working on the collaborative project for more than five years. ARS ...

In the results of a new study, scientists explain how they used DNA to identify microbes present in the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill -- and the particular microbes responsible for consuming natural gas immediately after the spill. Water temperature played a key role in the way bacteria reacted to the spill, the researchers found. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published the results in this week's journal. David Valentine and Molly Redmond, geochemists at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) conducted ...

AURORA, Colo. -- Researchers studying the first national quality measure for hospitalized children have found that no matter how strictly a health care institution followed the criteria, it had no actual impact on patient outcomes. The scientists examined 30 hospitals with 37,267 children admitted for asthma from 2008 to 2010 and discovered that the quality of discharge planning made no difference to the rate of return to the hospital for another asthma attack in 7, 30 or 90 days. "Our research concluded that there is no relationship between compliance with this measure ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- According to the Pew Research Center, one in one hundred American adults is currently in prison. U.S. Department of Justice statistics show that 67 percent of those inmates will recidivate, or re-offend and return to prison after they are released. Now, a University of Missouri researcher has found that educating inmates and preparing them to find jobs upon their release from prison greatly reduces their recidivism rate. Jake Cronin, a policy analyst with the Institute of Public Policy in the Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri, ...

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Patients at Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center Clinical Trials at Scottsdale Healthcare were the first in the nation to participate in a clinical trial to determine the safety, tolerability and effectiveness for usage of a new drug combination consisting of a standard drug called gemcitabine and a drug called nab-paclitaxel for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. The results of this study, headed by renowned pancreatic cancer expert Dr. Daniel Von Hoff, were published online Oct. 3, 2011, in the prestigious Journal of Clinical Oncology. Nab-paclitaxel ...

Fox Chase Researchers Develop a New Tool That Helps Identify Prostate Cancer Patients with the Highest Risk of Death MIAMA BEACH, FL (October 4, 2011)––After a prostate cancer patient receives radiation treatment, his doctor carefully monitors the amount of prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, in his blood. An increase in PSA, called biochemical failure, is the first detectable sign of the cancer's return to the prostate. Fox Chase Cancer Center researcher have found that the time between the last radiation treatment and biochemical failure can accurately predict a patient's ...

MIAMA BEACH, FL (October 4, 2011)––In a new study led by Fox Chase Cancer Center radiation oncologist Natasha Townsend, M.D., researchers have found that Gleason scores determined by pathologists at Fox Chase Cancer Center more accurately predict the risk of recurrence than Gleason scores from referring institutions. She presented the new research at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology on Monday, October 3. When a man is diagnosed with prostate cancer, his tumor is assigned a Gleason score – a number between 2 and 10 indicating the ...

DENVER (Oct. 5, 2011) – A new study shows that using the Internet to look for a job reduces the time spent unemployed by an average of 25 percent. The discovery directly contradicts a 2004 study showing that using the Internet actually prolonged unemployment. "In 2004 the researchers came up with two scenarios for their findings – the Internet was not an effective tool or that people who looked on-line for jobs were not as qualified," said Hani Mansour, Ph.D., assistant professor of economics at the University of Colorado Denver who conducted the new study with Peter ...

More than 100 artefacts from the First World War have been uncovered in an archaeological fieldwork survey on the Gallipoli battlefield, leading to some interesting theories about life on the frontline according to University of Melbourne survey archaeologist Professor Antonio Sagona. The discoveries were made as part of a second season of fieldwork undertaken as part of the Joint Historical and Archaeological Survey – the only systematic survey of the battlefields of Gallipoli since the First World War. The survey covered the northern frontline areas on the Turkish ...