Modesto, CA (Dec. 16, 2010) – With nearly 16 million Americans living today with prediabetes, a condition that is the precursor to type 2 diabetes, and half of all Americans expected to have either prediabetes or type 2 diabetes by the year 2020, nutritional approaches to maintaining healthy blood sugar levels are essential.1,2 The findings of a scientific study examining the health promotion and disease prevention benefits of almond consumption were published in the June, 2010 Journal of the American College of Nutrition. The study, one of the first of its kind to quantify ...

When children are exposed to head and neck radiation, whether due to cancer treatment or multiple diagnostic CT scans, the result is an increased risk of thyroid cancer for the next 58 years or longer, according to University of Rochester Medical Center research. The study is believed to be the longest of any group of children exposed to medical irradiation and followed for thyroid cancer incidence. It was published in the December 2010 edition of the journal, Radiation Research. The data also might provide some insight about why the rates of thyroid cancer continue ...

AMES, Iowa – Wind turbines in Midwestern farm fields may be doing more than churning out electricity. The giant turbine blades that generate renewable energy might also help corn and soybean crops stay cooler and dryer, help them fend off fungal infestations and improve their ability to extract growth-enhancing carbon dioxide [CO2] from the air and soil. Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, a scientific society, in San Francisco today, a researcher at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory and his co-researcher from the University ...

Challenging students take up more of their teachers' time—and the difference between a tougher student and an easier one appears to be genetic, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study looked at young twins in the U.K. and asked their teachers how much of a handful they are. "Policy-wise, there's a lot going on, blaming teachers for what's going on in the classrooms," says Renate Houts of Duke University, who cowrote the study with Avshalom Caspi and Terrie E. Moffitt of Duke, Robert ...

AUDIO: People with a known risk for Alzheimer’s disease seem to develop abnormal brain function even before the appearance of amyloid plaques in the brain. A new study from Washington University... Click here for more information. People with a known, high risk for Alzheimer's disease develop abnormal brain function even before the appearance of telltale amyloid plaques that are characteristic of the disease, according to a new study. Researchers at Washington University ...

Results of a five-year monitoring effort to repair seagrass damaged in a boat grounding incident suggest that restoration techniques such as replanting seagrass can speed recovery time. The finding is included in a new report released today by NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries. The National Marine Sanctuaries Conservation Series report, "N-Control Seagrass Restoration Monitoring Report Monitoring Events 2003-2008," presents results of efforts to repair a nearly 1,000-square-foot (92.8-square-meter) swath of seagrass that was damaged on May 29, 2001, when a ...

To answer the big questions, it often helps to look at the smallest details. That is the approach Stanford mineral physicist Wendy Mao is taking to understanding a major event in Earth's inner history. Using a new technique to scrutinize how minute amounts of iron and silicate minerals interact at ultra-high pressures and temperatures, she is gaining insight into the biggest transformation Earth has ever undergone – the separation of its rocky mantle from its iron-rich core approximately 4.5 billion years ago. The technique, called high-pressure nanoscale X-ray computed ...

A mathematically driven evolutionary snapshot of woody plants in four similar climates around the world has given scientists a fresh perspective on genetic diversity and threats posed by both extinctions and loss of habitat. The message from the study, appearing online ahead of publication in Ecology Letters, says lead author Hélène Morlon, is that evolutionary diversity -- the millions of years of evolutionary innovations contained in present-day species -- is more sensitive to extinctions or loss of habitat than long thought. And that, she adds, means conservation efforts ...

Older people have a hard time keeping a lid on their feelings, especially when viewing heartbreaking or disgusting scenes in movies and reality shows, psychologists have found. But they're better than their younger counterparts at seeing the positive side of a stressful situation and empathizing with the less fortunate, according to research from the University of California, Berkeley. A team of researchers led by UC Berkeley psychologist Robert Levenson is tracking how our emotional strategies and responses change as we age. Their findings – published over the past ...

A University of California, Berkeley, geophysicist has made the first-ever measurement of the strength of the magnetic field inside Earth's core, 1,800 miles underground. The magnetic field strength is 25 Gauss, or 50 times stronger than the magnetic field at the surface that makes compass needles align north-south. Though this number is in the middle of the range geophysicists predict, it puts constraints on the identity of the heat sources in the core that keep the internal dynamo running to maintain this magnetic field. "This is the first really good number we've ...

The PSA screening test for prostate cancer is not perfect. It can indicate cancer when none is present and miss life-threatening tumors. But a new study suggests the test is more reliable in men taking dutasteride (Avodart®), a drug widely prescribed to shrink an enlarged prostate gland. Dutasteride lowers PSA levels by about half within six months. But the researchers found that even a slight rise in PSA levels among men taking the drug was a stronger indicator of prostate cancer, particularly aggressive tumors that require early diagnosis and treatment, than rising ...

(Boston) - Current diagnostic procedures for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) fail to adequately reflect research into the broad nature of a traumatic event, according to a study that will appear in the January print issue of Psychological Bulletin. The relevancy of an individual's subjective experience in determining what constitutes a traumatic event has been a source of debate among PTSD specialists for years. The study concludes that both objective and subjective factors are relevant and that current PTSD criteria are missing several reactions that many trauma ...

A new genetic biomarker that indicates an increased risk for developing breast cancer can be found in an individual's "junk" (non-coding) DNA, according to a new study featuring work from researchers at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech and their colleagues. The multidisciplinary team found that longer DNA sequences of a repetitive microsatellite were much more likely to be present in breast cancer patients than healthy volunteers. The particular repeated DNA sequence in the control (promoter) region of the estrogen-related receptor gamma (ERR-γ) ...

New Rochelle, NY, December 16, 2010 – Former tennis champion Martina Navratilova was hospitalized for pulmonary edema—fluid build-up in the lungs—while climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, drawing attention to the high risk of acute mountain sickness (AMS) and high altitude pulmonary edema among climbers of high peaks. A timely study in a recent issue of High Altitude Medicine & Biology, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. (www.liebertpub.com), warned of the risks and serious medical outcomes associated with climbing Kilimanjaro and demonstrated that prior ...

Long before Facebook introduced its hot new Social Graph app, researchers in the ADVANCE project at NJIT were pioneering the use of social network mapping to help women scientists and engineers supercharge their careers. "Universities are more than buildings and balance sheets. They're webs of human interaction," said Nancy Steffen-Fluhr, director of NJIT's Murray Center for Women in Technology and the ADVANCE project leader. "The complex structure of those webs is largely invisible to the people embedded in them, however -- especially women scientists and engineers. ...

Without Social Security, research indicates that about half of women age 65 and older would be living in poverty. With the program in place, the poverty rate for women falls to 12 percent. These facts — paired with recommended future courses of action — are presented in the latest installment of the Public Policy & Aging Research Brief series from the National Academy on an Aging Society, the public policy branch of The Gerontological Society of America (GSA). The new publication, "For Millions of Older Women, Social Security Is a Lifeline," was funded by grant support ...

UCSF researchers have shown for the first time that the human fetal immune system arises from an entirely different source than the adult immune system, and is more likely to tolerate than fight foreign substances in its environment. The finding could lead to a better understanding of how newborns respond to both infections and vaccines, and may explain such conundrums as why many infants of HIV-positive mothers are not infected with the disease before birth, the researchers said. It also could help scientists better understand how childhood allergies develop, as well ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---There's a whale of a new display at the University of Michigan Exhibit Museum of Natural History, a leviathan that represents a scientific saga of equally grand proportions. A complete, 50-foot-long skeleton of the extinct whale Basilosaurus isis, which lived 37 million years ago, now is suspended from the ceiling of the museum's second floor gallery and will reign over an updated whale evolution exhibit scheduled to open in April 2011. "It's a spectacular fossil," said Exhibit Museum director Amy Harris. "Basilosaurus looks ferocious with its big ...

Xlibris Publishing, a leader in the self publishing industry, recently announced the latest addition to their self publishing services, the Xlibris Audio Book Publishing Packages. Whatever type of published book the author has, he can now share it to the world as a first-class audio book. Available in five different services, Touchstone, Compact, Amplified, Storytale and Paramount, the Xlibris Audio Publishing Service produces a digital version of an audio book for the author while the high end packages involve digital availability of the author's books through Overdrive ...

New independent research carried out by Local Traders in the UK has shown that more than 60% of people use online services to find tradespeople than traditional directories, and as many as 80% won't use a paper based phone directory to aide their search. Results from research conducted at the start of December has shown that the majority of people are turning to the internet and online services when they need to find tradespeople to carry out work on their homes. 2000 people living in the UK were surveyed in the recently conducted independent research, carried out ...

Tarpaflex, an internet based tarps ( http://www.tarpaflex.com ) company, specializes in providing seven popular qualities of tarps online and has been successfully established as a widely known Tarpaulin company for 25 long years now. The latest client for Tarpaflex being the 2012 Olympic stadium in London for their exquisite blue tarps, Tarpaflex has come a long way in spreading its brand name with top notch clients and pride themselves in being one of the rare family owned and operated company as worthy competitors to their larger business contemporaries. Tarpaflex ...

Stories to Tale, an independent publishing company announces inaugural publication of two childrens fantasy titles: Christmas in Kangaroo Land by Adla M. Hannon, and Abnora's Quest by Rebekah Cohen, both available from Amazon.com. Christmas in Kangaroo Land is a charming and imaginative Christmas tale (http://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Kangaroo-Land-Adla-Hannon/dp/0982436300). While delivering presents across Australia, Santas sleigh breaks down, and in order not to disappoint Australias children on Christmas morning, a group of mama kangaroos come forward to deliver the ...

Richard J. Williams, CEO of New York Guest, a multifaceted hospitality company that provides services to individuals, wholesale travel partners, hotel companies, corporations and groups will appear on BlogTalkRadio's "AiresLibre Travel Show" with host Raquel Segura on Monday, December 27, 2010, at 3:00 p.m. Eastern. This episode entitled "Escaping The Postcard Travel Syndrome: New York City" marks the first in the "Escaping the Postcard Travel Syndrome: Spotlight City" series. This series is aimed at educating the average traveler on experiencing the true culture and ...

Golden Spot Wire Mesh Welding Machine GSA-80 is equipped with precise Spot Welding System, which helps to adjust the up cylinder, the electrodes, and the fixture based on wire pitch, and this system also can set the welding time and current strength for every individual spot. GSA-80 Auto wire mesh welding machine has auto wire load carriage with wire hopper, which is for loading pre-cut wires. The system will not only automatically feed and collect wires, but also can make the perfect pull-out wire quantity and length as your request. Furthermore, this auto welding machine ...

This tumultuous year in business has transformed human resources strategies in organizations of all sizes. From its vantage point at the forefront of these HR trends, CanopyHR Solutions, an innovative human resources group based in Orange County, California, offers up its insights on 2010's trends and how some will continue to reshape the way successful businesses operate in 2011. "Challenging times inspire creative solutions, and the volatile economy has forged many changes in the human resources sector," says Jeff Fenster, founder of CanopyHR Solutions. "Businesses ...