The brightness of the nightly sky glow over major cities has been shown to depend strongly on cloud cover. In natural environments, clouds make the night sky darker by blocking the light of the stars but around urban centers, this effect is completely reversed, according to a new study by a group of physicists and ecologists at the Free University of Berlin (FU) and the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB). "We found that overcast skies were almost three times brighter than clear at our rural location, and ten times as bright within the city ...

The Holiday Inn Express & Suites Atlanta Perimeter Hotel (North) by Perimeter Mall and Atlanta Perimeter Center, offers nearby accommodations to fans attending the 2011 SEC Men's Basketball Tournament at Georgia Dome in downtown Atlanta, GA. The tournament will be held from Thursday, March 10 -13, 2011. This year's winner will be awarded the SEC conference's automatic bid to the 2011 NCAA Tournament which will follow the 2011 SEC Basketball tournament. The SEC Basketball Tournament is a premier event in college sports. All Southeastern Conference schools participate ...

In times of uncertainty employers should engage more openly with their staff and drop the jargon to improve communication and allow feedback, according to a paper in this month's International Journal of Productivity and Quality Management. D. Keith Denton of the Department of Management, at Missouri State University, in Springfield, suggests that it is essential for companies that wish to survive economic strife to create an atmosphere of trust in these untrusting times. He says that, "Companies with high-trust levels give employees unvarnished information about company's ...

Jerusalem, March 1, 2011 – A pathway whereby bacteria communicate with each other has been discovered by researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The discovery has important implications for efforts to cope with the spread of harmful bacteria in the body. Bacteria are known to communicate in nature primarily via the secretion and receipt of extracellular signalling molecules, said Prof. Sigal Ben-Yehuda of the Institute for Medical Research Israel-Canada (IMRIC) at the Hebrew University Faculty of Medicine, head of the research team on the phenomenon, whose ...

Researchers have long promoted biofuels produced from crop biomass as an environmentally sustainable source of renewable energy. A recent study questions whether the potential climate benefit of sugarcane ethanol is diminished when emissions from land use management are considered. Scientists examined the sugarcane ethanol production systems to identify sources of greenhouse gas emissions. They found that land use change, fertilization, residue burning, and tillage had the largest impact on greenhouse gas emissions. According to Dr. Klaus Butterbach-Bahl, head of the ...

The Hampton Inn & Suites Atlanta Airport Hotel (North I-85) offers nearby accommodations travelers planning to visit the High Museum of Art in midtown Atlanta. High Museum of Art is one of the southeast's leading art museums and is a division of the Woodruff Art Center, which also includes the Alliance Theater and the 14th Street Playhouse. The Museum has more than 12,000 pieces in its permanent collection. Other collections currently on exhibition include: - Toulouse-Lautrec (The Stein Collection), now through May 1, 2011 - Henri Cartier-Bresson (The Modern Century), ...

As part of the study, which will follow 40,000 UK households over a number of years more than 2,000 young people aged between 10 to 15 years have been asked how satisfied they are with their lives. The findings indicate there is little difference between the average life satisfaction score of those children living in the household with the bottom fifth income and those children living in households in the top fifth income bracket. Dr Gundi Knies a researcher based at ISER said: "Despite the seemingly high levels of happiness amongst young people in the UK, our children's ...

Immunological research at the University of Haifa, Israel, has made a new breakthrough, revealing a critical component in the "decision-making" process of white blood cells that play a role in the healing process from bacterial inflammation. "The process that we have discovered can assist in the development of drugs that are based on the natural processes that take place in the human body, unlike most of the existing drugs that attempt to curb inflammation by artificial means," explains Dr. Amiram Ariel of the Department of Biology at the University of Haifa, who headed ...

Sheraton Atlanta Perimeter Hotel North, located near Atlanta Perimeter Center, announces a new special savings deal that their guests can enjoy. The Pay Rates Equal to Your Birth Year promotion let's travelers celebrate the year that they were born. With this deal, the first night's stay at the Sheraton Atlanta Perimeter Hotel is $109. Then, stay a second or third night and pay rates equal to your birth year. For example, if you were born in 1952, you'll receive your 2nd and 3rd nights at just $52 per night. Rates for second and third night stays will be confirmed at check-in ...

Opposites don't always attract. A study from North Carolina State University shows that participants are happier – and perform better – when the electronic helpers used in online training programs resemble the participants themselves. "It is important that the people who design online training programs understand that one size does not fit all," says Dr. Lori Foster Thompson, an associate professor of psychology at NC State and co-author of the study. "Efforts to program helper agents that may be tailored to individuals can yield very positive results for the people taking ...

Track and Field News: Oxygen4Energy Athlete, Kellie Wells dominates the 2011 Indoor Season There is just one word that describes the performances of Oxygen4Energy athlete, Kellie Wells, this 2011 Indoor Track and Field season... DOMINANT. She ran in 6 meets. She won every race she was in. She currently holds the 9 fastest times in the World in the 60 m Hurdles. In her first event of the year, she tied Jackie Joyner Kersee's 50m American Record. In her last indoor event, she captured the National Championship with a PR of 7.79 seconds, making her the 3rd faster ...

Manipulation of cells by a new microfluidic device may help clinicians improve a promising cancer therapy that harnesses the body's own immune cells to fight such diseases as metastatic melanoma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, chronic lymphocytic leukemia and neuroblastoma. The therapy, known as adoptive T cell transfer, has shown encouraging results in clinical trials. This treatment involves removing disease-fighting immune cells called T cells from a cancer patient, multiplying them in the laboratory and then infusing them back into the patient's body to attack the cancer. ...

New research, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) has shown that nematode worms have to trade-off resistance to different diseases, gaining resistance to one microbe at the expense of becoming more vulnerable to another. This finding, published in PLoS ONE today (2 March 2011), reveals that the worms, called C. elegans, have a much more complex immune system than was previously thought and shows how important such trade-offs are across the animal kingdom. Dr Robin May from the University of Birmingham's School of Biosciences who ...

MedReturn LLC has been researching, developing, and testing a safe and secure method to collect expired prescription medication for the past three years. The effort culminated with development of a unique metal enclosure that is currently being placed in police departments and sheriff's offices across the country. This effort is especially timely because President Obama signed the Secure and Responsible Drug Disposal Act on October 12, 2010 and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration National Prescription Drug Take Back Day, is April 30, 2011. It makes it possible ...

Boston, MA - Melatonin is known to have cancer-protective properties, and shift work can induce desynchrony of the circadian system, reducing melatonin production. Shift work has been thought to have important health impacts, with evidence linking shift work to an increased risk of several cancers including breast, endometrial, prostate, and colorectal, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. In a recent study, researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) found that shift work may be associated with a reduced risk of skin cancer in women. These findings are published online in ...

Not all the terrain of the same vineyard has the same properties. Research undertaken by Neiker-Tecnalia (the Basque Institute for Agricultural Research and Development) confirmed that, over the same zone of cultivated land, there are plots with soils of different characteristics, a fact which gives rise to significant differences in the production of the grape and in the quality of the must. Knowing these differences enables the winegrowers to carry out zoning on their vineyards with the goal of better adapting to the needs of fertilisation, irrigation and treatment of ...

German researchers have found a significant association of IL28B genotypes to interferon-based antiviral treatment outcome, and to graft inflammation caused by hepatitis C virus (HCV). The study determined that the presence of G-allele serves as a marker for severe HCV-induced graft inflammation, as well as a predictor for unsuccessful treatment. Study findings—the largest to report on the role IL28B variants in a transplant cohort with recurrent HCV—are published in the March issue of Liver Transplantation, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases. The ...

Turmeric, a bright yellow spice from south Asia belonging to the ginger family, is the main ingredient in curries — and ancient wisdom suggests that it's also good for your health. Taking this wisdom to the laboratory, Tel Aviv University researchers have discovered that turmeric's active ingredient called curcumin amplifies the therapeutic activity of highly toxic anti-inflammatory drugs used to fight colon cancer when used at high doses. Dr. Shahar Lev-Ari of Tel Aviv University's School of Public Health at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine and his colleagues have found ...

In a decisive move to honor women whose courage and heroism have brought attention the plight of women in Muslim-majority countries, New York based non-profit Women's Voices Now will honor journalist Lara Logan and the Egyptian women who saved her, Iranian political martyr Neda Agha-Soltan and author and former political prisoner in Iran - Roxana Saberi at the opening night celebration of Women's Voices from the Muslim World: A Short-Film Festival. "We were so moved by the rescue of journalist Lara Logan by the Egyptian women and soldiers that we had to honor her and those ...

VIDEO: The Center for Injury Research and Policy released a study of boxing injuries and found the number of injuries has increased over the 19-year study period. Click here for more information. The risk and nature of injury in the sport of boxing has generated a great deal of controversy in the medical community, especially in relation to youth boxing. A new study, conducted by researchers in the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide ...

Fire, cattle and even prairie dogs all could play a role in sustaining the biodiversity of the western Great Plains, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) researcher. As large grazers, cattle now perform the historical role of buffalo on the Great Plains. Ecologist David Augustine and his colleagues-in collaboration with state, federal, and university researchers-have results from several studies over the past 13 years showing that fire, cattle and prairie dogs together maintain a mosaic of diverse vegetation, with varying vegetation heights, that supports ...

COLLEGE STATION — Researchers have come closer to understanding how a common fungus "makes its living in the soil," which could lead to its possible "career change" as a therapeutic agent for plant and human health. That's according to Dr. Charles Kenerley, Texas AgriLife Research plant pathologist, and a team of scientists from the U.S., India and France, whose study on Trichoderma virens is in February's Journal of Biological Chemistry. T. virens already enjoy a good reputation in the plant world. The fungi is found throughout the world in all types of soil, Kenerley ...

A team of scientists has described two cladocerous crustaceans, which could be endemic to the Iberian Peninsula, and which were found in two lagoons, one in the lower basin of the Guadalquivir river, and the other in the grasslands of Extremadura. Both of these arthropods may today inhabit more areas in the Mediterranean region. "These two new crustaceans (Leydigia) are a species of living fossil and are very powerful bio-geographic and historical indicators", Miguel Alonso, one of the authors of the study, and a researcher in the Department of Ecology of the University ...

For the first time, quantitative—not qualitative—data analysis has demonstrated that time-of-flight (TOF) positron emission tomography (PET) scans can improve cancer detection. Research published in the March issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine shows that oncologic TOF fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) PET scans yielded significant improvements in lesion detection of lung and liver cancers over all contrasts and body mass indexes. Conventional PET scans create images by detecting gamma rays produced by radioisotopes that are injected into the body. Although these conventional ...

To determine if a tissue biopsy reveals the presence of cancer, a histologist often screens for cells with an abnormal appearance or a specific visible trait such as a larger-than-usual nucleus. However, by the time a cancer is physically noticeable, the disease may be in its later stages and more difficult to treat. In an effort to identify the earlier-onset, more subtle chemical changes occurring in a cell heading toward malignancy, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) have developed a technique ...