SAN ANTONIO (June 27, 2011) — In the constant battle to lose inches or at least stay the same, we reach for the diet soda. Two studies presented June 25 and 27 at the American Diabetes Association's Scientific Sessions in San Diego suggest this might be self-defeating behavior. Epidemiologists from the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio reported data showing that diet soft drink consumption is associated with increased waist circumference in humans, and a second study that found aspartame raised fasting glucose (blood sugar) ...

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite passed over Tropical Depression Meari as it neared a landfall in southwestern North Korea on June 26. TRMM did not observe any heavy rainfall, but did see moderate rainfall with the system. TRMM captured an image of the rainfall in Tropical Depression Meari on June 26 at 1210 UTC (8:10 a.m. EDT). Most of the rainfall was light to moderate in the system, with the heaviest rain near the center of circulation falling at a rate between .78 to 1.57 inches (20 and 40 mm) per hour. Satellite imagery showed that Meari had ...

Madrid's Veranos de la Villa festival has started, bringing with it a huge range of arts events in the Spanish capital over the course of the summer. Music, theatre, dance, film and children's activities all form part of this enormous event, which takes place at various venues until August 28th. It is not just Latin performers such as Antonio Cortes, Pastora Soler and Manuel Lombo on the bill, with US funk pioneers Kool & the Gang due to take the stage at the Escenario Puerta del Angel on July 3rd. For children and big kids, the Madrid Magico magic festival ...

LOMA LINDA, Calif. — Health disparities between black Americans and the rest of the nation have been well-documented in medical journals. But one study shows that blacks who identify as members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church actually report a better quality of life than the average American. Researchers point to certain lifestyle behaviors as a possible explanation for the difference. The research was conducted at Loma Linda University as part of the Adventist Religion and Health Study (ARHS), a study of nearly 11,000 Adventists, including more than 3,400 black Adventists. The ...

A new exhibition entitled Painterly Abstractions at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao looks at the main movements in US and European art in the post-war years. The display opened on June 14th and runs until January 8th 2012, featuring high-profile artists such as Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Yves Klein, Robert Rauschenburg and Ellsworth Kelly. It has been drawn from the overall Guggenheim collection to bring together a comprehensive picture of the Western art world in the 1950s and 1960s. For Europe, this was largely comprised of Tachisme and Art Informel, which ...

By combining advanced laser technologies in a new way, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have generated microwave signals that are more pure and stable than those from conventional electronic sources. The apparatus could improve signal stability and resolution in radar, communications and navigation systems, and certain types of atomic clocks. Described in Nature Photonics,* NIST's low-noise apparatus is a new application of optical frequency combs, tools based on ultrafast lasers for precisely measuring optical frequencies, or colors, ...

Grammy award-winning heavy metal band Judas Priest will play in Prague later this month. The veteran hard rockers are set to take the stage at the Prague O2 Arena on June 28th as part of a summer European tour taking in cities such as Belgrade, Bucharest, Istanbul and Sofia. Formed in 1969, the band have sold more than 50 million records to date and have been cited as a major influence by many modern alternative musicians. Their twin-lead guitar style, leather-clad appearance and frontman Rob Halford's operatic singing style make them an unforgettable live proposition. Bassist ...

Milan's Fieramilano is preparing to welcome The Strokes for what will be the group's only Italian date on their current tour. Performing on July 12th in the Fiera Rho-Pero area of the venue, the band's gig is part of Flippaut Alternative Reload 2011. The Strokes burst on to the alternative music scene with debut album Is This It in 2001, leaving critics and fans alike spellbound with their infectious and raw, guitar-led sound. Fronted by Julian Casablancas on vocals, the group went on to release another three LPs, including Angles, which was unveiled earlier this ...

Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center researchers have identified six subtypes of an aggressive and difficult-to-treat form of breast cancer, called "triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC)." In the July issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Cancer Center Director Jennifer Pietenpol, Ph.D., and colleagues describe the molecular features of these six distinct subtypes and identify chemotherapies to which the different subtypes respond in cultured cells and animal tumor models. Knowing the specific subtype could help physicians determine which therapies would work best ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — With the threats of cybercrime, cyberterrorism and cyberwarfare looming over our hyper-connected world, the best defense for the U.S. might be a good offense, says new research by a University of Illinois expert in technology and legal issues. Law professor Jay P. Kesan warns that an active self-defense regime, which he terms "mitigative counterstriking," is a necessity in cyberspace, especially to protect critical infrastructure such as banking, utilities and emergency services. "The threats from cyber-attacks are real, and the harm of a potential ...

Along with upcoming music star, Alex Wayne as the opening act, Luis Miguel Del Amargue, will not only perform his hit songs, but will be signing autographs promoting his music albums. San Francisco Bachata Festival is known for featuring top notch bachata musicians, and is very proud to host the famous Luis Miguel Del Amargue this year. "He is as popular as Aventura in Europe! I've been listening and dancing to the music of Mr. Amargue for many years. This is why I'm very excited that he will be performing at the festival's peak night, which is on Saturday, ...

Researchers from the University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology have found that certain neotropical stream ecosystems rely almost entirely on a single fish species known as the banded tetra for the critical nutrient phosphorus. In a paper recently published in the journal Ecology, the researchers, led by Gaston E. "Chip" Small, explain why this particular species plays such a crucial role—and why these stream systems are vulnerable as a result. "I initially set out to understand how different physiological factors—diet, fish elemental composition, stream chemistry—interacted ...

Boulder, Colorado, USA - July GSA Today science article authors Peter W. Reiners of the University of Arizona and colleagues have developed and successfully carried out a novel, extraordinary technique for learning how efficiently river channels cut and increase local topographic relief: They have used the exposure of "clinker" deposits in combination with highly refined dating techniques. Clinkers are baked coals; baking naturally occurs in shallow depths (tens of meters) and when the clinkers are exhumed during erosion and the development of topographic relief, they are ...

A tiny doughnut-shaped laser is the latest marvel of silicon microminiaturization, but instead of manipulating bits it detects very small particles. Small particles play a big — and largely unnoticed — role in our everyday lives. Virus particles make us sick, salt particles trigger cloud formation, and soot particles sift deep into our lungs and make it harder to breathe. The sensor belongs to a category called whispering gallery resonators, which work like the famous whispering gallery in St. Paul's Cathedral in London, where someone on the one side of the dome can hear ...

To maintain and improve their market competitiveness, small and midsized businesses are turning to focused analytics that help them manage today's vastly greater information flows, operate more efficiently and make better decisions, new benchmark research from Ventana Research finds. For these businesses the most important categories of metrics are financial (identified by 64% of participants), cost (62%) and operational (53%). However, the research indicates that despite viewing them as valuable and important, small and midsize businesses are maturing only slowly in ...

PULLMAN, Wash.—Some baseball superstitions are accepted as cold, hard truth. But in the world of physics, the most accepted verities are subject to experimentation. A corked bat hits the ball further? Not in Lloyd Smith's lab. Baseballs today are livelier than in the past? See above. Storing balls in a humidor can curb home run production? We'll grant you that one, but only because Smith has fired the balls through a cannon and measured their bounciness as they hit a bat. Smith, an associate professor of in Washington State University's School of Mechanical and Materials ...

LOS ANGELES (June 27, 2011) – A simple item found in almost every medicine cabinet – a cotton swab -- may be a key tool in the fight against post-surgical wound infections. In a sentinel trial, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center surgeon Shirin Towfigh, MD, showed that painless and gentle probing of a wound with a dry cotton swab after surgery dramatically reduced infections in post-operative incision sites: only 3 percent of patients who had the daily probings contracted infections compared to 19 percent of those who didn't -- a rate more than six times higher than that of ...

Exciting news announced today that Vinia & Walter Casuga, established home based business owners & entrepreneurs, launched their Internet Home Based Business & partnered with Carbon Copy PRO, the world's top Internet marketing educational system & online community. When asked why they joined Carbon Copy PRO, they replied, "Having previously come from a traditional network marketing company, we were looking for something that enabled us to truly work from home without having to build a list of friends, family, & co-workers. Also, having three ...

CSIRO research has revealed that the tremendous diversity of ladybird beetle species is linked to their ability to produce larvae which, with impunity, poach members of 'herds' of tiny, soft-bodied scale insects from under the noses of the aggressive ants that tend them.Reconstructing the evolutionary history of ladybird beetles (family Coccinellidae), the researchers found that the ladybirds' first major evolutionary shift was from feeding on hard-bodied ("armoured") scale insects to soft-bodied scale insects. "Soft-bodied scales are easier to eat, but present a whole ...

Tiny metallic particles produced by University of Adelaide chemistry researchers are bringing new hope for the production of cheap, efficient and clean hydrogen energy. Led by Associate Professor Greg Metha, Head of Chemistry, the researchers are exploring how the metal nanoparticles act as highly efficient catalysts in using solar radiation to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. "Efficient and direct production of hydrogen from solar radiation provides a renewable energy source that is the pinnacle of clean energy," said Associate Professor Greg Metha. "We believe ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Researchers may have discovered one reason that African Americans are at increased risk for heart attacks and other cardiovascular events. According to a new study published online in the journal Radiology, African Americans have increased levels of non-calcified plaque, which consists of buildups of soft deposits deep in the walls of the arteries that are not detected by some cardiac tests. Non-calcified plaque is more vulnerable to rupturing and causing a blood clot, which could lead to a heart attack or other cardiovascular event. According to ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Breast cancer screening with mammography results in a significant reduction in breast cancer mortality, according to long-term follow-up results of a large-scale Swedish trial. The results are published online in the journal Radiology. "Mammographic screening confers a substantial relative and absolute reduction in breast cancer mortality risk in the long-term," said Stephen W. Duffy, M.Sc., professor of cancer screening at Queen Mary, University of London. "For every 1,000 to 1,500 mammograms, one breast cancer death is prevented." The Swedish Two-County ...

PHILADELPHIA — Patients treated with sunitinib and sorafenib responded to the flu vaccine, which suggests the agents do not damage the immune system as much as previously feared, according to a study in Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. Keith Flaherty, M.D., director of developmental therapeutics at the Massachusetts General Hospital and a senior editor of Clinical Cancer Research, said the findings have broad implications beyond questions of patient management. "The damage that chemotherapy does to normal, healthy ...

This press release is available in French.LONDON (28 JUNE 2011)—A new analysis of progress in the global fight against malaria finds a four-fold increase in annual funding for malaria research and development (R&D) in just 16 years—increasing from US$121 million in 1993 to US$612 million in 2009, with a particularly rapid increase since 2004. The funding has generated the strongest pipeline of malaria control and prevention products in history. The report warns, however, that even a small decline in annual funding could jeopardize this pipeline, derail development of ...

Alameda Services, a Health Information Technology (HIT) consulting and training organization specializing in workforce development, has been recognized as a training affiliate for the CEHRS Exam, administered by the National Healthcare Association (NHA). As an affiliate, Alameda Services is able to prepare students for the rigorous national certification as part of its program. Students and healthcare providers often report a higher level of recruitment, retention and placement among those who obtain the electronic health record (EHR) certification. More information about ...