Writers and Illustrators (www.writersandillustrators.com) is a free online community for anyone with an interest in the literary and visual arts. Writers and illustrators need no longer slave away in isolation and anonymity. This new site promotes writing, illustrating and reading. Well-produced literary or visual work still has the power to evoke strong emotions from its readers, even in our fast-paced world of abbreviated and truncated communication methods. Additionally, www.writersandillustrators.com provides a forum for those who simply want to tell a story or share ...

This year Blenz is marking Valentine's Day with something that has never been done before. They are giving singles in Vancouver a way to meet each other through "Blenz Red Band" - a customized sleeve they developed. If you are single you would grab this red sleeve at any Blenz location throughout February, prompting other singles to approach you and vice versa. It was just a month ago when Yuliya Talmazan approached Blenz President, George Moen, with this concept. A local media professional, Talmazan was the one who came up with the original idea and will be assisting ...

Nasrin Mani, M.D., well-known laser surgeon and cosmetic physician in La Jolla, received notification of her selection as Health Hero for 2011 by the American Melanoma Foundation. Honorees are recognized for the contributions they have made to the local health industry through their community activism. As part of the United Way's workplace funding partner, the American Melanoma Foundation serves the San Diego public in the prevention and treatment of melanoma Dr. Mani is a very active community supporter both in health and the arts. She is the medical director of ...

Sky has confirmed a number of changes to its Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) which will make it even easier for customers to discover and enjoy the best in pay television. Taking effect from the 1 st February 2011, the changes represent one of the biggest updates to the channel line up for over a decade, and include: a High Definition (HD) 'channel swap' for Sky + HD subscribers; the relocation of a range of leading pay TV channels on Sky's EPG; and the launch of a major new channel, Sky Atlantic HD. The revised UK channel line-up will help make great TV - including ...

As a leader in the press release distribution industry, 24-7PressRelease.com kicked off its affiliate program in early 2010. The affiliate program rewards website owners with a $15 commission when a press release package is purchased from their site. The press release affiliate program has been a huge success with more than 1,900 affiliates to date. 24-7PressRelease.com offers paid press release packages ranging from $49 to $369 which may be conveniently accessed through more than two dozen types of flashy banners or simple text links on any website. Michael Iwasaki, ...

AlexaGlassMosaicTile.com announced today that the company is experiencing a large surge of business with customers shopping for glass tile on the web. "Over the past six months, we've seen our online sales of glass tile, and glass tile mosaics triple," said Alex Eitelbach, CEO of AlexaGlassMosaicTile.com. "In this recessionary time, people want to save money but don't want to delay home improvements; by purchasing online, home renovators save 60% on the cost of glass tile products and still find the same quality." AlexaGlassMosaicTile.com manufactures all of its glass ...

Journalists in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia and NZ can now seek out local sources from a country of choice, while potential sources escape irrelevant media leads, thanks to the latest innovation from free PR leads website SourceBottle. The online service, which has been running in Australia for 18 months, has not only expanded globally but has further customized the user experience, enabling both journalists and sources to narrow the scope of their search. Founder Director Rebecca Derrington said SourceBottle had always concentrated on the needs of journalists ...

The Exergame Network (TEN) held the first ever public voting for awards relating to active video games with results announced this week. Of the fifteen award categories, Gamercize products were nominated for Best Physical Education Exergame, Best Competition Exergame, Best Group Exergame and Best Brain (Training) Exergame. The Gamercize Pro-Sport range, for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii, was the public choice for Best Physical Education and Best Competition Exergame of 2010. The international awards reflect public recognition of Gamercize used in schools around ...

A wider range of asteroids were capable of creating the kind of amino acids used by life on Earth, according to new NASA research. Amino acids are used to build proteins, which are used by life to make structures like hair and nails, and to speed up or regulate chemical reactions. Amino acids come in two varieties that are mirror images of each other, like your hands. Life on Earth uses the left-handed kind exclusively. Since life based on right-handed amino acids would presumably work fine, scientists are trying to find out why Earth-based life favored left-handed amino ...

Researchers at Northwestern University have created a robotic fish that can move from swimming forward and backward to swimming vertically almost instantaneously by using a sophisticated, ribbon-like fin. The robot -- created after observing and creating computer simulations of the black ghost knifefish -- could pave the way for nimble robots that could perform underwater recovery operations or long-term monitoring of coral reefs. Led by Malcolm MacIver, associate professor of mechanical and biomedical engineering at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and ...

MADISON — A cold dose of fear lends an edge to the here-and-now — say, when things go bump in the night. "That edge sounds good. It sounds adaptive. It sounds like perception is enhanced and that it can keep you safe in the face of danger," says Alexander Shackman, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But it sounds like there's also a catch, one that Shackman and his coauthors — including Richard Davidson, UW-Madison psychology and psychiatry professor — described in the Jan. 19 Journal of Neuroscience. "It makes us more sensitive to our external surroundings ...

Collaborative research at the University of Guam has people asking: "What IS a species" and entomologists wondering about the relationship between an insect species and the host plant or plants it feeds on. Western Pacific Tropical Research Center (WPTRC) entomologist Ross Miller has been studying aphids for years and this work has brought him in contact with entomologists in Canada and the US mainland. Aphid systemetist Robert Foottit, DNA expert Eric Maw and aphid authority Keith Pike have been working with Miller on the identification of aphids, particularly the dreaded ...

While the overall hospitalization rate for stroke has declined in recent years, the numbers have jumped dramatically for patients infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), suggesting they may be up to three times more likely to suffer a stroke than people uninfected by the virus that causes AIDS. In a paper published in the Jan. 19 online issue of Neurology, Bruce Ovbiagele, MD, professor of neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Avindra Nath, MD, of Johns Hopkins University, reviewed a national dataset of all hospital ...

ST. PAUL, Minn. – New research suggests that people infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) may be up to three times more likely to have a stroke compared to those not affected with HIV. The study is published in the January 19, 2011, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. "Our findings showed that stroke hospitalizations in the United States decreased by seven percent in the general population within the last decade while stroke hospitalizations for people with HIV rose 67 percent," said Bruce Ovbiagele, MD, MSc, ...

Ohio State University entomologists have conducted the first genetic study of bedbugs, paving the road to the identification of potential genes associated with pesticide resistance and possible new control methods for the troublesome insect, whose sudden resurgence in the United States has led to a public health scare. The discovery was reported Jan. 19 in the online journal PLoS ONE. "While bedbugs are poised to become one of the major household pests across the United States in the coming years, we know very little about their genetic makeup and their mechanisms of ...

The secrets behind the mysterious nano-sized electromagnetic "hotspots" that appear on metal surfaces under a light are finally being revealed with the help of a BEAST. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a single molecule imaging technology, dubbed the Brownian Emitter Adsorption Super-resolution Technique (BEAST), that has made it possible for the first time to directly measure the electromagnetic field inside a hotspot. The results hold promise for a number of technologies including ...

UCSF researchers have developed a new approach to decoding the vast information embedded in an organism's genome, while shedding light on exactly how cells interpret their genetic material to create RNA messages and launch new processes in the cell. By combining biochemical techniques with new, fast DNA-sequencing technology and advanced computer technology, the team was able to examine with unprecedented resolution how a cell converts DNA into RNA – a molecular cousin of DNA that is used in the process of creating proteins that govern most biological functions. And they ...

The Orion Nebula, also known as Messier 42, is one of the most easily recognisable and best-studied celestial objects. It is a huge complex of gas and dust where massive stars are forming and is the closest such region to the Earth. The glowing gas is so bright that it can be seen with the unaided eye and is a fascinating sight through a telescope. Despite its familiarity and closeness there is still much to learn about this stellar nursery. It was only in 2007, for instance, that the nebula was shown to be closer to us than previously thought: 1350 light-years, rather ...

(Toronto, Canada – January 20, 2011) – Cancer scientists led by Dr. John Dick at the Ontario Cancer Institute (OCI) and collaborators at St Jude Children's Research Hospital (Memphis) have found that defective genes and the individual leukemia cells that carry them are organized in a more complex way than previously thought. The findings, published today in Nature (DOI:10.1038/nature09733), challenge the conventional scientific view that cancer progresses as a linear series of genetic events and that all the cells in a tumour share the same genetic abnormalities and ...

Society has long debated the contrasting advantages of monogamy and promiscuity and, in western society at least, the long term benefits of monogamy have in general won out. However new research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology shows that sperm from polygamous mice are better competitors in the race for fertilisation. Dr Renée Firman at the Centre for Evolutionary Biology, University of Western Australia, has used house mice to show that sperm from rival males compete to fertilise females and that, over several generations, polygamy ...

What makes music beautiful? The best compositions transcend culture and time – but what is the commonality which underscores their appeal? New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Research Notes suggests that the brain simplifies complex patterns, much in the same way that 'lossless' music compression formats reduce audio files, by removing redundant data and identifying patterns. There is a long held theory that the subconscious mind can recognise patterns within complex data and that we are hardwired to find simple patterns pleasurable. Dr ...

A multifaceted quality improvement intervention that included education, reminders and feedback through a collaborative telecommunication network improved the adoption of evidenced-based care practices in intensive care units at community hospitals for practices such as preventing catheter-related bloodstream infections and ventilator-associated pneumonia, according to a study that will appear in the January 26 issue of JAMA. The study is being published early online to coincide with its presentation at the annual meeting of the Society of Critical Care Medicine. Despite ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — University of Illinois materials scientists have developed a simple, generalizable technique to fabricate complex structures that assemble themselves. Their advance, published in the Jan. 20 issue of Nature, utilizes a new class of self-assembling materials that they developed. The team demonstrated that they can produce a large, complex structure – an intricate lattice – from tiny colloidal particles called triblock Janus spheres. "This is a big step forward in showing how to make non-trivial, non-obvious structures from a very simple thing," said ...

Cambridge, Mass., January 19, 2011 – Invention and innovation are essential to remaining globally competitive, and a new survey shows an untapped group of potential inventors in the U.S. The 2011 Lemelson-MIT Invention Index , announced today, indicates that American women ages 16 – 25 possess many characteristics necessary to become inventors, such as creativity, interest in science and math, desire to develop altruistic inventions, and preference for working in groups or with mentors – yet they still do not see themselves as inventive. Young men in the same age group ...

TORONTO, ON –Adult children of divorce are more likely to have seriously considered suicide than their peers from intact families, suggests new research from the University of Toronto In a paper published online this week in the journal Psychiatry Research, investigators examined gender specific differences among a sample of 6,647 adults, of whom 695 had experienced parental divorce before the age of 18. The study found that men from divorced families had more than three times the odds of suicidal ideation in comparison to men whose parents had not divorced. Adult daughters ...