CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — According to a new study, American, but not Chinese, children's sense of responsibility to their parents tends to decline in the seventh and eighth grades, a trend that coincides with declines in their academic performance. The study, in the journal Child Development, found no difference between American and Chinese students' feelings of responsibility to their parents at the beginning of the seventh grade. The American children's sense of obligation to their parents and desire to please them by doing well in school declined over the next two years, ...

Qui tam actions provide incentives for individuals to expose deceptions intended to defraud the federal government, from military contract fraud and Medicare fraud to misuse of federal stimulus funds. Similar laws are designed to punish fraud against state government agencies in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and most other states. A person who has inside knowledge and discloses previously unknown information that leads to legal action to punish fraudulent dealings with the government is eligible for considerable financial rewards. One type of whistleblower action that is ...

Montreal, May 11, 2011 – The electrophysiology team at the Montreal Heart Institute (MHI) used cryoablation (ablation using cold) to treat a patient suffering from atrial fibrillation, the most common form of cardiac arrhythmia, and one associated with significant morbidity. The procedure was performed by Dr. Peter Guerra, Chief of Electrophysiology, and Dr. Marc Dubuc, cardiologist and specialist in electrophysiology. This was a first in Canada following the approval of the Arctic Front device by Health Canada. A Canadian technique using cold as a new form of energy The ...

NAIROBI (5 May 2011)— A workshop in Nairobi, Kenya last week saw representatives from 43 African nations participate in an ambitious project to document the status of the world's forest genetic resources; a vital step in conserving and sustainably managing forests. "Forest genetic resources are unique and irreplaceable; from plants that provide timber and essential nourishment when crops fail to those that may be used in future medicines," explains Oudara Souvannavong, Senior Forestry Officer with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and coordinator ...

Adversity, we are told, heightens our senses, imprinting sights and sounds precisely in our memories. But new Weizmann Institute research, which appeared in Nature Neuroscience this week, suggests the exact opposite may be the case: Perceptions learned in an aversive context are not as sharp as those learned in other circumstances. The findings, which hint that this tendency is rooted in our species' evolution, may help to explain how post-traumatic stress syndrome and other anxiety disorders develop in some people. To investigate learning in unfavorable situations, Dr. ...

The mayor's recent announcement of an initiative to increase dedicated bicycle lanes on streets in Manhattan, Brooklyn and other boroughs came as welcome news to cycling advocates such as Transportation Alternatives. In a recent Quinnipiac poll, a solid majority of New Yorkers supported an expansion of bike lanes "because it's greener and healthier for people to ride their bicycles." Yet while New York City has 6,000 miles of streets that cater to cars, taxis and, for the most part, trucks and buses, a modest expansion of bike lanes by 255 miles in recent years ...

Gent - VIB/UGent researchers have unveiled a mechanism that can be used to develop crop varieties resistant to mild droughts. For years, improving drought tolerance has been a major aim of academic and industrial research, thereby focusing on effects of extreme drought stress. However, translating this research to the field has proven to be problematic. In a set of papers in Nature Biotechnology and the Plant Cell, the team of Dirk Inzé at the VIB Department of Plant Systems Biology, UGent now shows that the focus should be on mild drought stress instead. It turns out that ...

Men who visited a major online support group after being diagnosed with prostate cancer were most likely to seek advice on therapy and treatment, together with emotional support, according to research in the May issue of the urology journal BJUI. But, surprisingly, they went to great lengths to avoid using the word "cancer". Researchers studied 501 threads posted during a 32-month period on Germany's largest prostate cancer forum, run by an umbrella group of organisations covering the disease. They analysed 1,630 posts on 82 threads started by men who had just been ...

Incarceration of individuals convicted of non-violent crimes comes at a great cost to society. In the case of a person found guilty of a drug-related offense who would be best served by treatment for addiction, the criminal justice system often just perpetuates a problem. But the Florida legislature is giving strong consideration to getting rid of mandatory minimum sentences for defendants convicted of sale of controlled substances. Senate Bill 1334 also seeks to encourage the Department of Corrections to place non-violent offenders into paid community service employment ...

Resettlement services over the last few years have helped many homeless people make positive changes in their lives. The largest study in the UK of the resettlement of single homeless people has found that four-in-five (81 per cent) of a large representative sample were still living independently 18 months after being re-housed. The FOR-HOME study followed up 400 single homeless people who were moved from hostels and other temporary accommodation into independent housing in London, Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire to determine the long-term outcomes of resettlement. It ...

Great hopes are always placed in new cancer therapies. However, whether new surgical techniques, drugs or radiation therapies actually prolong the life of cancer patients, or even cure them, can often only be reliably assessed after several years' of testing. Researchers are therefore looking for proxy markers ("surrogate endpoints") that after initiation of cancer therapy can reliably predict as quickly as possible whether the treatment has a benefit. A rapid report published by the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) summarizes the findings ...

However, one of the most well-known characteristics of yeast is the ability of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, baker's yeast, to ferment sugar to 2-carbon components, in particular ethanol, without completely oxidising it to carbon dioxide, even in the presence of oxygen, as many other microbes do. This fermentative ability is essential for the production of wine, beer and many other alcoholic beverages. Why do Saccharomyces yeasts actually do this and what were the driving forces behind the evolution of this phenomenon? For several years, the yeast molecular genetics group ...

The SENTIDO Perissia hotel, located in the Turkish holiday region of Side, is to offer products from its own farm. Guests who visit any of the six restaurants of the hotel are spoiled for choice with aromatic home-grown olives, tomatoes, grapes and figs as well as freshly-harvested pistachios and peanuts all on offer among other fresh produce. Ahmet Turgan, General Manager of the five-star hotel, said: "On our 500 hectare farm we harvest organic apples and organic vegetables, we press our own olive oil and we produce wine from our organic grapes. All this effort ...

What was previously known from animal studies has thus for the first time been demonstrated for human individuals too. "The findings open new perspectives in the intervention and treatment of visual perceptual disorders, because the changes can be induced quite simply" said Dr. Christian Beste of the RUB Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. New perspectives in learning "The gold standard to achieve a lasting change in behaviour and perception is by means of training and practice, which intensively stimulates the brain" explains PD Dr. Hubert Dinse from the RUB's Institute ...

Climate change in the Arctic is occurring at a faster and more drastic rate than previously assumed, according to experts attending the AMAP conference in Copenhagen. The latest scientific data show that developments in the Arctic's climate are closely related to developments in the rest of the world. "The order of the day in the Arctic right now is change. But we shouldn't expect that those changes will be linear in the sense of a little bit each day. We're going to see dramatic changes. If the ice in the Arctic melts it is going to lead to water level problems on a ...

Glover's Flooring America, an Atlanta flooring company, recently participated in the 33rd annual spring Atlanta Home Show in the Cobb Galleria Centre. In conjunction with the Consult A Home Pro group, Glover's Flooring participated in the show's SeeThru House. The SeeThru House is a 1600 square foot house constructed by the members of Consult A Home Pro, including the Atlanta carpet and flooring experts from Glover's Flooring America. The open-walled house was designed to show homeowners how a house is built, including plumbing and electrical wiring. The house included ...

Philadelphia, PA - 11 May 2011 - Two new research studies published in Biological Psychiatry point to progressive abnormalities in brain development that emerge as vulnerable individuals develop schizophrenia. The first of these papers studied individuals with a deletion of a small section of chromosome 22. This genetic deletion often results in the development of abnormalities in the structure of the heart and of the face, a condition called velocardiofacial syndrome (VCFS; also known as 22q11.2 deletion syndrome). Up to 32% of people with VCFS develop psychotic disorders ...

Mother and kid goats recognise each other's calls soon after the mothers give birth, new research from Queen Mary, University of London reveals. The study, published in the journal Animal Cognition, measured the individuality of the goats' calls and the ability of goats to recognise the individual differences. Scientists Dr Elodie Briefer and Dr Alan McElligott from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences found that mother and kid goats react more to the calls from their own kids and mothers than they do from other goats they know. Dr Briefer said: ...

The package on a supermarket steak may say "grass-fed" or "grass-finished," but how can a consumer know whether the cow spent its days grazing peacefully on meadow grass or actually gorged on feedlot corn? In ACS's Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, scientists are now reporting the development of a method that can reconstruct the dietary history of cattle and authenticate the origins of beef. Frank J. Monahan and colleagues note that consumers are increasingly concerned about the origins and labeling of meat, as they seek assurance about the meat's safety or ...

Foster Care Associates (FCA) has received the Leading Aspect Award for empowering staff and foster carers to drive up educational standards for looked after children and young people. The Leading Aspect Award is a self-evaluation framework designed to judge the support of educational welfare within an organisation. FCA has received positive results based on criteria such as commitment to quality, teaching and learning, sharing good practice, and disseminating innovation. The agency has proved particularly successful in empowering foster carers and staff to narrow ...

Advances in technology have almost lifted the curtain on the long-awaited era of the "$1,000 genome" — a time when all the genes that make up a person can be deciphered for about that amount – compared to nearly $1 million a few years ago. But an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS' weekly newsmagazine, raises the disconcerting prospect that a price tag of $100,000, by one conservative estimate, is necessary to analyze that genetic data so it can be used in personalized medicine – custom designing treatments that fit the patient's genetic ...

London, UK (May 11th, 2011) - In 1988 Margaret Thatcher took control of business rates away from local councils and in 2011 Eric Pickles wants to give it back to them. In his article, What do business rates measure? published by SAGE, Dominic Williams carries out research into the link between business rates and the local economy. Within this article Williams looks at the consequences should this change go ahead and what this would mean for poorer councils. He also explores supporters' views that this would give councils an incentive to promote growth in their local ...

Alkaviva Water Ionizers has being a leading name in water ionization for over 5 years and enjoys an A+ ranking from the Better Business Bureau. AlkaViva offers the best quality water ionization products at honest prices and with unmatched after sales service. The AlkaViva 9 is the latest addition to AlkaViva's extensive lineup of water ionizers and comes with a 60 day money back satisfaction guarantee. What makes the AlkaViva 9 stand out from other water ionizers is it's low price even though it is made to outperform models more than twice the cost. Unlike Chinese ...

This release is available in French and Spanish. Scientists at the University of Granada have confirmed that injecting a local anesthetic or botulinum toxin (botox) into certain points named "trigger points" of the pericraneal and neck muscles reduce migraine frequency among migraine sufferers. University of Granada researchers have identified the location of these trigger points –which activation results in migraine– and their relationship with the duration and severity of this condition. Headache is a universal experience. At present, there are more than 100 different ...

Liquid smoke flavoring made from hickory and other wood — a mainstay flavoring and anti-bacterial agent for the prepared food industry and home kitchens — may get a competitor that seems to be packed with antioxidant, antiallergenic and anti-inflammatory substances, according to a new study in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. It is the first analysis of liquid smoke produced from rice hulls, the hard, inedible coverings of rice grains. Mendel Friedman, Seok Hyun Nam and colleagues explain that wood from trees is typically used to produce liquid smoke, ...