Some of the incredible inventions of Leonardo da Vinci are brought to life in an interactive installation coming to Adelaide next month. The Da Vinci Machines Exhibition boasts more than 60 models interpreted from his original designs and drawings by the Artisans of Florence. Display pieces include the bicycle, tank and air screw, alongside a number of simpler items that are commonly used today, including cam hammers and ball bearings. Visitors can get a better understanding of many of these constructions by taking part in group challenges such as building an arched ...

Prescribing antibiotics for patients with discoloured phlegm caused by acute cough has little or no effect on alleviating symptoms and recovery, a Cardiff University study has found. Acute cough is one of the common reasons why people visit their GP and accounts for a large proportion of antibiotics prescribed in the community. One of the most common questions asked by GPs to their patients is about their phlegm: "Are you coughing anything up?" or "What colour is your phlegm?" Clinicians and patients commonly believe that yellow and green phlegm production is associated ...

The team, working with Sichuan University in Chengdu, China, investigated eye movements in Chinese and British people to further understanding of the brain mechanisms that control them and how they compare between different human populations. They found that a type of eye movement, that is rare in British people, is much more common in Chinese people, suggesting that there could be subtle differences in brain function between different populations. Tests of eye movements can be used to help identify signs of brain injury or disease, such as schizophrenia and multiple ...

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley have joined with researchers at Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to mount a three-pronged attack on one of the most obstinate puzzles in materials sciences: what is the pseudogap? A collaboration organized by Zhi-Xun Shen, a member of the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Science (SIMES) at SLAC and a professor of physics at Stanford University, used three complementary experimental ...

Performers from across the world will travel to Western Australia next month to take part in the annual Fremantle Street Arts Festival (FSAF). Over the years, the event has grown to become the biggest of its kind in the country, attracting artists from as far afield as England, France, Japan and the US. FSAF 2011 looks like it will be bigger and better than ever before, with the programme expanded to four days to coincide with the long Easter weekend (April 23rd to 26th). Thousands of people are expected to pack the streets of Fremantle throughout the festival ...

This press release is available in German. "Neurons synchronize with different partners at different frequencies" says Dr. Dirk Jancke, Neuroscientist at the Ruhr-University in Bochum, Germany. A new imaging technique enabled to show that such functioning results in distinct activity patterns overlaid in primary visual cortex. These patterns individually signal motion direction, speed, and orientation of object contours within the same network at the same time. Together with colleagues at the University of Osnabrück, the Bochum scientists successfully visualized ...

New vouchers and deals introduced this week by popular voucher codes specialist DiscountVouchers.co.uk are able to save UK consumers money on leading brands right now. The latest weekly deals feature money off top name furniture plus also hotels, electrical and eating out to help consumers make the most of their budgets. Available this week on the www.discountvouchers.co.uk website are deals which include - - LoveFilm - EXCLUSIVE 30 Day Free Trial plus a GBP10 Amazon Voucher - Movie buffs can enjoy this exclusive deal to save - DiscountVouchers.co.uk is home to ...

Sabrient Systems and Stutland Volatility Group (SVG) announce the formation of Stutland Volatility Funds (SVF), an asset management firm offering a suite of long/short quant funds designed to deliver superior stock selection with enhanced risk management. SVF will benefit hedge funds, actively managed ETFs, mutual fund distributors and privately managed accounts for investors starting at $100,000. "As U.S. markets approach 11 years of negative and near zero returns, simple buy-and-hold is no longer acceptable as a viable investment strategy," said SVG Managing Partner ...

Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have developed a new method which enables researchers to label any protein of their choice with any of a wide variety of previously available compounds, in living cells, by introducing a single reactive artificial amino acid. Published today in Angewandte Chemie, the new technique enables researchers to label even rare proteins very precisely for optical imaging and in the future likely also for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Carsten Schultz, Edward Lemke and colleagues tricked the ...

Have you been wearing your retainer? It's a question countless parents ask of their children post-braces. Now Case Western Reserve University School of Dental Medicine researchers are getting serious about the question. "We found little written about the kinds of retainers prescribed and how compliant patients are in using them," said Case Western Reserve's Manish Valiathan, an assistant professor of orthodontics and a member of the American Board of Orthodontics. He notes that there is a dearth of information despite the devices being common in orthodontics practice. Consequently ...

In a deal that is 99% complete and yet to be announced publicly, we can exclusively reveal that Victory Poker is due to leave the Cake Network to join The Cereus Poker Network imminently. Meanwhile Cake has news of its own: it is now owned by the PokerListings affiliate group. Victory Poker, currently stable to pros such as Antonio Esfandiari, Lee Markholt, Paul Wasica and Andrew Robl to name but a few of the 20, only joined the Cake Network in the last quarter of 2010. But they are already on their way to greener pastures. The Cereus network is currently only made ...

Diabetes type 2 is caused by insufficient levels of insulin to keep blood glucose under control. Excessive levels of another hormone, glucagon, can also contribute to diabetes type 2 by causing the liver to flood the body with stored glucose. Diabetes type 2 does not arise overnight, but slowly progresses for many years as a condition known as prediabetes. In prediabetes, blood sugar rises to excessive levels after a meal, but is normal or nearly normal after an overnight fast. Researchers are seeking ways to prevent prediabetes from progressing to diabetes. Besides diet ...

New evidence has emerged from studies in mice that short telomeres or "caps" at the ends of chromosomes may predispose people to age-related diabetes, according to Johns Hopkins scientists. Telomeres are repetitive sequences of DNA that protect the ends of chromosomes, and they normally shorten with age, much like the caps that protect the end of shoelaces. As telomeres shorten, cells lose the ability to divide normally and eventually die. Telomere shortening has been linked to cancer, lung disease, and other age-related illnesses. Diabetes, also a disease of aging, ...

Arlington, Va. (March 24, 2011) – Researchers with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health have found high rates of the multi-drug resistant pathogen, carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae (CRKP) among the patient population in long-term acute care hospitals compared to general acute care hospitals across the county. These findings are particularly important because CRKP was thought to be contained to East Coast facilities and communities. These findings will be presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) ...

Leading Park Ridge dentist, Dr. Daniel Hogan invites patients to visit the practice's website for new educational resources, including the extensive patient library covering a wide array of topics related to the different phases of dentistry. Patients are encouraged to look through the topics whenever they have an interest or a concern that may arise about the function, appearance, comfort or health of the teeth. Providing patients with the opportunity to learn more about various procedures and treatments creates a welcoming environment for this cosmetic dentist in ...

This press release is available in French and Spanish. Researchers from the Department of Optics of the University of Granada, belonging to the Laboratorio de Ciencias de la Visión y Aplicaciones, have developed a programme for testing alterations in night vision, and the tool required to implement it, which has been named "halometer". This instrument consists on a software named Software Halo v1.0, and a computer where the mouse is used as a response button, and a chin cup with a forehead holder to fix the observer's position. Software Halo v1.0 was initially ...

Contact: Carl Blesch cblesch@ur.rutgers.edu 732-932-7084 x616 Rutgers University Megan Watzke mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu 617-496-7998 Chandra X-Ray Center Exploding stars and stripes Pattern of X-ray 'stripes' in supernova remnant could explain how cosmic rays are produced NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – The discovery of a pattern of X-ray "stripes" in the remains of an exploded star may provide the first direct evidence that a cosmic event can accelerate particles to energies a hundred times higher than achieved by the most powerful particle accelerator on Earth. This ...

CLEMSON, S.C. — Biomechanics researchers Timothy Higham of Clemson University and Andrew Clark of the College of Charleston conclude that moving quickly in a forward, firm-footed stance across a slippery surface is less likely to lead to a fall than if you move slowly. Approaching a slippery surface slowly hinders the necessary task of shifting the center of mass forward once foot contact is made. The researchers studied helmeted guinea fowl strutting along a six-meter runway that either had a rough-surface section (150-grit sandpaper) or a slippery one (polypropylene ...

Washington, D.C. – A national survey of U.S. family medicine residency programs finds that most limit pharmaceutical and other industry interactions with residents while many exclude all interactions. The results, published in the May issue of Academic Medicine, suggest a major shift away from acceptance of food, gifts, samples, and industry-supported events. The survey was a joint effort between Georgetown University Medical Center and the American Medical Student Association (AMSA). There are more than 400 accredited family medicine residency programs in the country ...

A number of American men who have sex with men are supportive of couples-based voluntary HIV counseling and testing (CVCT), in which couples receive counseling and their HIV test results together, according to a new study by Dr. Rob Stephenson from Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta, USA, and his colleagues. The authors argue that there may be a demand among gay men for this effective strategy, used in Africa amongst heterosexual couples, albeit with some adaptations to the protocol to make it relevant in the US. The work is published online in Springer's journal, ...

If it bleeds, it leads, or so the old journalistic adage goes. Not necessarily, say researchers from McGill University and the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research of the Jewish General Hospital. In a first-of-its kind study that analyzes how cancer is portrayed in Canadian newspapers today versus 20 years ago, positivity and hope seem to be winning out. "Our focus was on the media's potential impact on patient perspectives," said Dr. Melissa Henry, the study's lead author from McGill's Dept. of Oncology and the Segal Cancer Centre at the Jewish General Hospital ...

Music Elbow 'Build a Rocket Boys' - Release date: 7th March 2011 Manchester-based indie rock five-piece Elbow follow-up the 2008 Mercury Prize winning 'The Seldom Seen Kid' with their fifth studio album, 'Build A Rocket Boys'. The Strokes 'Angles' - Release date: 21st March 2011 'Angles' is the fourth album from The Strokes - one of New York City's finest exports of indie rock of their generation DVD Saw DVD - Release date: 7th March 2011 The final part of the long standing Saw movie franchise and the first of the films available in 3D. Despite poor ...

If you seek America's most diverse, densely packed human population, head for New York's Manhattan, but if it's lichens you fancy instead of people, then Southwestern Florida is your best bet. This special kind of symbiotic fungus thrives in the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park not far from the Everglades National Park, and its remarkable diversity was documented in a census led by Robert Lücking, collections manager and adjunct curator in the botany department of The Field Museum, Chicago, and organized by William Safranek, assistant professor at the College of ...

Philadelphia, PA, 24 March 2011 - Studies in twin pairs suggest that 40% of the risk for panic disorder is heritable, yet the manner in which genes contribute to the risk for panic disorder is far from clear. To date, variations in a growing number of genes have been implicated in the risk for panic disorder, but the magnitude of the impact of each individual gene is relatively small. The pattern of these implicated genes raises the question of whether there might be molecular "switches" that control the function of groups of genes in a coordinated fashion, which would ...

This press release is available in German. The use of different resources by males and females exacerbates the estimation of population sizes. However, the monitoring of population sizes, particularly for rare and threatened species, is pivotal to quick and effective conservation action. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Radolfzell investigated the ecological niches of male and female parti-colored bats (Vespertilio murinus) and found out that the sexes use entirely different foraging grounds. With their results they can show that a finer ...