Thinking small and local, not big and global, may help communities ignite long-term economic growth, according to Penn State economists. Small, locally owned businesses and startups tend to generate higher incomes for people in a community than big, nonlocal firms, which can actually depress local economies, said Stephan Goetz, professor of agricultural and regional economics. "Local ownership matters in important ways," said Goetz. "Smaller, locally owned businesses, it turns out, provide higher, long-term economic growth." The association of small businesses ...

Illustrator software packages have really broadened the creative power of the illustrators. Gone are the days of endless drawings, erasing, scaling and tracing. All of these can be done with a click of a button with powerful illustrator software. This type of software really turbo charges the creative process so that illustrations that used to take days can be finished in hours if not within an hour. These pieces of software automate the most tedious and manual part of the illustration process and makes an artist's creative flow more dynamic and smooth. However, there are ...

Scientists using chemical isotopes in ancient soil to measure prehistoric tree cover--in effect, shade--have found that grassy, tree-dotted savannas prevailed at most East African sites where human ancestors and their ape relatives evolved during the past six million years. "We've been able to quantify how much shade was available in the geological past," says University of Utah geochemist Thure Cerling, lead author of a paper titled "Woody cover and hominin environments in the past 6 million years" on the results in this week's issue of the journal Nature. "It shows ...

The concept of the no fax payday loans has eased the financial troubles of hundreds of people across the globe. This is the reason these types of loans are fast becoming popular within the different countries of the world. The individuals can borrow an amount of money according to their needs to facilitate their cash flows before their next salary day. This way they can meet their urgent needs like paying for car maintenance, doctor's fees and other related issues. There are a number of banks and the financial institutes like Sky Loans offering these types of loans for ...

SPRINGLAKE – Whether it is a purple potato to fit a niche market or finding varieties resistant or at least tolerant to psyllid infestations, Dr. Creighton Miller has a potato plant in Texas aimed at meeting a grower's need. Miller, a potato breeder with Texas AgriLife Research and the Texas A&M University department of horticultural sciences in College Station, has breeding trials near Springlake and Dalhart. Selections are made from seedlings grown in breeding plots each year, he said. The children of these "families," as the parent plants are known in potato breeding, ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Predictive genetic testing may be able to identify children's risk for developing common, treatable, and possibly preventable disorders. Using this knowledge, doctors may be able to help at-risk children learn to manage their conditions by making healthy lifestyle changes. Test results may also be the motivation children need to take their health seriously as they grow older. But critics of predictive genetic testing say test results may be psychologically harmful to children. However, these claims are rooted in assumption, not evidence, says U-M ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – August 4, 2011 – A new study from researchers in Indiana reports that use of a retroflexion technique in the right side of the colon during colonoscopy is safe and results in the detection of additional adenomatous (precancerous) polyps in approximately four percent of patients. This result is comparable to that expected from a second colonoscopy in the forward view. The study appears in the August issue of GIE: Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, the monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE). Several ...

Leading dentist in Garfield Ridge, IL, Dr. Kyle Takla, has released new patient education resources via the practice's informative website. Patients can easily access the practice's website for valuable information on dental health care topics, symptoms and treatments at any time. With the addition of the online patient education library, patients can search various procedures performed by Drs. Takla, Perez and Patel such as veneers, teeth whitening and implants in Garfield Ridge. The new library presents patient education in a way that is "always on," allowing ...

A paper co-authored by William Phillip of the University of Notre Dame's Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Menachem Elimelech, Robert Goizueta Professor of Environmental and Chemical Engineering at Yale University, appearing in this week's edition of the journal Science offers a critical review of the state of seawater desalination technology. Elimelech and Phillip and examine how seawater desalination technology has advanced over the past 30 years, in what ways the state-of-the-art technology can be improved, and if seawater desalination is a sustainable ...

BOZEMAN, Mont. – Researchers led by Montana State University have found a surprising condition that occurs in the lungs after an invasion of a common mold that can cause deadly infections in humans. In the most oxygen-rich environment in the body – the lungs – the scientists discovered a shortage of oxygen. The shortage resulted from inflammation and invasive growth of the mold, which greatly reduced the oxygen available to the pathogenic mold Aspergillus fumigatus. The mold is generally found in hay, soils and compost piles and can cause a variety of lung infections ...

This release is available in Spanish. Kidney transplant from a living donor, besides of being the best option for young people and those affected by particular conditions, results in increased organ survival and solves in part the organ shortage afflicting Spain since the mid-90 despite the high rate of cadaveric donation. According to the National Transplant Organization in 2010 in Spain 240 living donor kidney transplants were made, which represents 11% of the total. This year the expectation is that this number will grow to about 300, which would be almost about ...

Washington, DC, August 4, 2011 -- Increased hand hygiene knowledge positively correlates with a decreased risk of transmitting infection among both healthcare workers (HCW) and elementary school children, according to two studies published in the August issue of the American Journal of Infection Control (AJIC), the official publication of APIC - the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology. In the first study, conducted by Anne McLaughlin, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychology at North Carolina State University, 71 nurses, infection preventionists ...

Tel Aviv — Companies like Google and Zappos.com are famous for their "work hard, play hard" attitudes and friendly work environments, but are their employees healthier too? According to a Tel Aviv University researcher, a positive relationship with your co-workers has long-term health benefits. Dr. Sharon Toker of the Department of Organizational Behavior at TAU's Leon Recanati Graduate School of Business Administration says that employees who believe that they have the personal support of their peers at work are more likely to live a longer life. "We spend most of our ...

VIDEO: After suffering from black lung disease, Ernie Gillispie, became the first UK HealthCare patient to receive help from an artificial lung that led to a double lung transplant. The machine... Click here for more information. Surgeons at the University of Kentucky on Aug. 3 announced that they were among the first to use artificial-lung technology to demonstrate the feasibility of a lung transplant, using a device invented by two university faculty members, Dr. Joseph Zwischenberger ...

Researchers at National Jewish Health have discovered a type of cell that may contribute to autoimmune disease and suggests why diseases such as lupus, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis strike women more frequently than men. The cells, a subset of immune-system B cells, make autoantibodies, which bind to and attack the body's own tissue. The researchers reported in the August 4, 2011, issue of the journal Blood, that they found higher levels of these cells in elderly female mice, young and old mice prone to autoimmune disease, and humans with autoimmune diseases. ...

Poorly controlled asthma more than doubles healthcare costs associated with the disease and threatens educational achievement through a dramatic increase in school absence, according to researchers at National Jewish Health. The research team reported in the August 2011 issue of The Archives of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology that children with "very poorly controlled" asthma missed an average of 18 days of school each year, compared to 2 or less for other asthma patients. "This study looks for the first time at how effective and ineffective management of severe asthma impacts ...

The avatar is displayed on the monitor of the Audi Mulitmedia Interface that comes standard in all new Audi models. The virtual figure understands complete sentences. Using artificial intelligence, AviCoS interprets questions by the vehicle occupants and answers in spoken language. The driver can view descriptive images or videos on-screen and the avatar points to the relevant areas during the explanation. A further option – in addition to speech – for communicating with AviCoS is a Touch&Tell mode. If a driver is unfamiliar with a specific control element, a simple touch ...

SpeakingPal, a young startup company that is pioneering the development of English teaching mobile programs, announced that it has just launched its award-winning language learning application for the iPhone, which is now available in the iTunes stores. SpeakingPal has developed a unique and highly interactive solution that focuses on developing English speaking skills for non-native learners. The unique mobile learning application allows users to simply speak into their phone in amusing dialogs with a video character and get instant feedback on how well their sentences ...

There is a new way to design computer chips and electronic circuitry for extreme environments: make them out of diamond. A team of electrical engineers at Vanderbilt University has developed all the basic components needed to create microelectronic devices out of thin films of nanodiamond. They have created diamond versions of transistors and, most recently, logical gates, which are a key element in computers. "Diamond-based devices have the potential to operate at higher speeds and require less power than silicon-based devices," Research Professor of Electrical Engineering ...

An international team of researchers led by scientists at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have found that motion sickness on tilting trains can be essentially eliminated by adjusting the timing of when the cars tilt as they enter and leave the curves. They found that when the cars tilt just at the beginning of the curves instead of while they are making the turns, there was no motion sickness. The findings were published online Monday, July 25 in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Journal. When a tilting train enters a curve, sensors ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — The possibility of developing stem cells from a patient's own skin and using them to treat conditions as diverse as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and cancer has generated tremendous excitement in the stem cell research community in recent years. Such therapies would avoid the controversial need for using stem cells derived from human embryos, and in theory, also bypass immunological problems inherent in using cells from one person to treat another. However, in the nearly five years since the first article describing the development of ...

NEW YORK (Aug. 4, 2011) -- Physicians in the United States spend nearly four times as much dealing with health insurers and payers compared with doctors in Canada. Most of the difference stems from the fact that Canadian physicians deal with a single payer, in contrast to the multiple payers in the United States. These findings are published in the August issue of the journal Health Affairs -- the result of a research collaboration among Weill Cornell Medical College, Cornell University–Ithaca, the University of Toronto, and the Medical Group Management Association. Administrative ...

A clinical warning system that uses wireless sensors to track the vital signs of at-risk patients is undergoing a feasibility study at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. When the full system is operational sensors will take blood oxygenation and heart-rate readings from at-risk patients once or twice a minute. The data will be transmitted to a base station, where they will be combined with other data in the patient's electronic medical record, such as lab test results. The incoming vital signs and data in the medical record will be continually scrutinized by a machine-learning ...

University of Minnesota researchers have discovered and received a patent for a naturally occurring lantibiotic — a peptide produced by a harmless bacteria — that could be added to food to kill harmful bacteria like salmonella, E. coli and listeria. The U of M lantibiotic is the first natural preservative found to kill gram-negative bacteria, typically the harmful kind. "It's aimed at protecting foods from a broad range of bugs that cause disease," said Dan O'Sullivan, a professor of food science and nutrition in the university's College of Food, Agricultural and Natural ...

AUDIO: Male túngara frogs producing their distinctive "whine " and "chuck " calls to attract females. Click here for more information. AUSTIN, Texas—Female cognitive ability can limit how melodious or handsome males become over evolutionary time, biologists from The University of Texas at Austin, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute have observed. Males across the animal world have evolved ...