A new report released last month by consumer-research company comScore indicates that the annual volume of auto insurance policies purchased online grew by about 80 percent between 2006 and 2010. With more and more shoppers purchasing their policies through this method, it's important to stop and ask about the safety of buying such a complex item as financial protection over the Web. In a new FAQ published on OnlineAutoInsurance.com, the writers look into the possible pitfalls in the process of buying policies and getting car insurance quotes online. They say that buying ...

Dupont Archives of Bristol, Connecticut, as an authorized distributor of Aurora office furniture and storage systems, is pleased to announce cooperative pricing through a national buying contract with NationalIPA. Towns, schools, non-profits and other institutions can now benefit from the buying power and volume pricing of a national contract on any Aurora furniture or storage system. Imagine the discounts you can realize with the backing of Aurora, NationalIPA and Dupont Archives! Ron Keith, Business Development Manager for Dupont Archives said: "Towns and municipalities ...

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) governance allows businesses to effectively manage the consistency, predictability, change and interdependencies of services. However, no single governance product is comprehensive enough to address the multiple elements of an enterprise SOA. Instead, IT professionals need to implement an end-to-end governance strategy, applied at varying levels of an SOA project and utilizing a range of technologies. This approach provides a stable solution to complex policies and redundant services by maximizing the quality and trust within a service ...

Leading dentist in Houston, Dr. Ellen Lim, is pleased to announce the creation of Facebook and Twitter accounts for her practice in order to stay connected with existing and potential patients. With the introduction of these social media channels, patients can now access more personalized information, as well as learn more about other patient's' experiences with Dr. Lim and her staff of dental professionals. "These days patients are using the Internet for daily information, including sharing resources and interacting with other patients on social media websites. ...

Recognized as the best dentist in Los Angeles, Dr. Shervin Louie makes visiting his office for dental procedures easier than ever with his website's new online appointment requesting feature. The ability to request appointments online has allowed the practice to offer more convenient and easy ways for patients to receive care from Dr. Shervin Louie. Patients can now request an appointment with Dr. Louie via the practice's innovative website. The new appointment tool is easy to use. Simply by visiting the practice's website, patients can fill out the brief request form ...

A dark-matter experiment deep in the Soudan mine of Minnesota now has detected a seasonal signal variation similar to one an Italian experiment has been reporting for more than a decade. The new seasonal variation, recorded by the Coherent Germanium Neutrino Technology (CoGeNT) experiment, is exactly what theoreticians had predicted if dark matter turned out to be what physicists call Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). "We cannot call this a WIMP signal. It's just what you might expect from it," said Juan Collar, associate professor in physics at the University ...

Heirloom Fund Management Ltd., manager of the Heirloom Caribbean Real Estate Fund (HCREF), is pleased to announce that it has entered into a joint venture partnership agreement with Stanhope Shepherd Ltd. HCREF will provide up to USD $50 million in debt and equity financing for the development of the Harbour Island Residences in Jolly Harbour, Antigua. At the sod turning ceremony held last week, Antiguan Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer stated that this major project has the full support and backing of the Government of Antigua. Harbour Island is a 33 acre man-made island ...

A potential life-saving treatment for severe E. coli food poisoning outbreaks – developed more than a decade ago – hasn't gone forward into clinical trials because of lack of commercial interest. University of Adelaide researchers produced a "designer" probiotic bacterium which binds and neutralises the toxin produced by E. coli, which causes life-threatening attack on the kidneys and blood vessels. The team of scientists – Dr Adrienne Paton, Associate Professor Renato Morona and Professor James Paton – showed that mice infected with a highly virulent strain of E. coli ...

CHICAGO — June 6, 2011 — An analysis linking federal bankruptcy court records to cancer registry data from nearly 232,000 adult cancer cases in western Washington during a 14-year period has found a hidden cost to survival: Insolvency rates increase along with the length of survival. "Patients diagnosed with cancer may face significant financial stress due to income loss and out-of-pocket costs associated with their treatment," said Scott Ramsey, M.D., Ph.D., a health care economist and internist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center who led the study. "On average, ...

Los Angeles, CA (May 26, 2011) Doctors are more apt to recommend a more costly therapy to patients if it were determined to prolong the patient's life rather than just improve quality, according to a recent study from Medical Decision Making (published by SAGE). Using a survey of the decision-making process, authors were able obtain data to determine the relative importance oncologists place on quantity of life compared to quality of life in chemotherapy decisions. From this, they found a significant majority of respondents (71.8%) illustrated a greater value they placed ...

A study of more than 1,000 patients with colon cancer that had spread to distant sites found that one in eight was treated with at least one drug regimen that was not recommended. Those patients were exposed to significant risk without proven benefits, at an estimated cost—just for the drugs—of more than $2 million. The study, presented June 7, 2011, by University of Chicago researchers at the American Society for Clinical Oncology's annual meeting in Chicago, focused on three chemotherapy regimens that were not supported by evidence from prior clinical studies or clinical ...

BERN, SWITZERLAND (7 JUNE 2011)—A comprehensive assessment of tropical forest management reports a 50 percent increase in the area of tropical forest under sustainable management in just five years, but cautions that key drivers of that increase—growing demand for certified timber and funding for climate change initiatives—could have only a marginal impact in the long-term. Drawing on detailed data on each of the 33 countries that together control almost all of the world's tropical rainforests and tropical timber production, the report released today by the Japan-based ...

In this week's PLoS Medicine, Ricardo Soares Magalhães and Archie Clements, from the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, describe how they used national cross-sectional household-based demographic health surveys to map the distribution of anaemia risk in preschool-age children in Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Mali. The use of such maps has significant practical implications for targeted control of anaemia in these countries, such as guiding the efficient allocation of nutrient supplements and fortified foods, and contributing to the planning and evaluation of resource ...

Using a combination of sophisticated modelling and statistical analyses, David Fisman and colleagues show that infection with influenza likely increases the incidence of invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD). It is feasible that infection with influenza increases the short-term risk of bacterial invasion in individuals already colonized with Streptococcus pneumoniae (which causes IPD) by increasing the permeability of the lining of the airways to the bacteria. These findings suggest that some cases of IPD could be attributable to influenza, so the extension of influenza ...

In the fourth article in a six-part PLoS Medicine series on migration & health, Joan Benach from the Employment Conditions Network at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain, and colleagues discuss the health risks and policy needs associated with migration to destination countries, especially for low-skilled workers. In destination countries, migrant workers often fill low- or semi-skilled positions in the labour market, which are often characterized by flexibility, insecurity, precarious employment, and long working hours with low pay. Undocumented or "illegal" ...

The mechanisms by which obesity leads towards metabolic co-morbidities, such as diabetes mellitus, are poorly understood and of great public health interest. A study led by Matej Orešič from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland suggests that adaptation of fat cell membranes to obesity may play a key role in the early stages of inflammatory disorders. Millions of adults are diagnosed as obese each year, worldwide. Many of these people suffer from a disorder known as metabolic syndrome, which includes symptoms such as hypertension and elevated blood cholesterol. ...

In search of a way to prevent the muscle wasting that comes with illness and aging, researchers have landed a natural compound that might just do the trick. The findings reported in the June issue of Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication, identify a component of apple peels as a promising new drug candidate for the widespread and debilitating condition that affects nearly everyone at one time or another. "Muscle wasting is a frequent companion of illness and aging," said Christopher Adams of The University of Iowa, Iowa City. "It prolongs hospitalization, delays ...

Researchers reporting in the June issue of Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication, have what they say is some of the first solid proof that insulin has direct effects on the reward circuitry of the brain. Mice whose reward centers can no longer respond to insulin eat more and become obese, they show. The findings suggest that insulin resistance might help to explain why those who are obese may find it so difficult to resist the temptation of food and take the weight back off. "Once you become obese or slide into a positive energy balance, insulin resistance in ...

For Popeye, spinach was the key to extra muscle. For the mice in a new University of Iowa study, it was apples, or more precisely a waxy substance called ursolic acid that's found in apple peel. The UI study, published in the June 8 issue of the journal Cell Metabolism, showed that ursolic acid reduced muscle atrophy (also known as muscle wasting) and promoted muscle growth in mice. It also reduced fat, blood sugar levels, cholesterol and triglycerides in the animals. The findings suggest that the compound may be useful for treating muscle wasting and possibly metabolic ...

A 10-month study of healthy honey bees by University of California, San Francisco scientists has identified four new viruses that infect bees, while revealing that each of the viruses or bacteria previously linked to colony collapse is present in healthy hives as well. The study followed 20 colonies in a commercial beekeeping operation of more than 70,000 hives as they were transported across the country pollinating crops, to answer one basic question: what viruses and bacteria exist in a normal colony throughout the year? The results depict a distinct pattern of infections ...

A new study into osteosarcoma - cancer of the bone - will use advances in genomic research and analysis to identify new genes that give rise to the condition and to create personalised blood tests for children and young adults with the condition. The study is funded by Skeletal Action Cancer Trust, SCAT. It is hoped that the results of this new study will help doctors improve treatment of this difficult disease through better diagnosis and monitoring of this bone cancer. Each year approximately 80 children and young adults develop osteosarcoma in the UK. This painful ...

Around one third of voluntary and charitable organisations in England receive public money to support their work and over 20,000 organisations say that the public sector is their most important source of income according to initial findings of research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). "It is very clear that public funding is more important to voluntary organisations than previously thought," says Professor John Mohan of the Third Sector Research Centre, who led the study. "And this is particularly true for those organisations working in deprived ...

The decision of the German government to phase out nuclear power by 2022 has reopened an energy debate that has far wider implications than Germany or Japan, which is still coming to terms with events at the damaged Fukushima plant. This virtual issue, published by the SETAC journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry adds to that debate by exploring the ecological effects of radiation, using research from the Chernobyl disaster. The issue is a freely accessible resource for researchers that offers a historical precedent for considering the long-term environmental ...

Exposure in the womb to bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical widely used in the food and medical industries, causes changes in female primates' uterus development, new research suggests. The results will be presented Tuesday at The Endocrine Society's 93rd Annual Meeting in Boston. "Previous studies have shown that BPA can affect the reproductive tract. However, because the studies were done in rodents, it was uncertain if this would also be true in humans," said Carmen Williams, MD, PhD, a clinical investigator with the National Institute of Environmental Sciences (NIEHS), ...

A decline in testosterone levels as men grow older is likely the result—not the cause—of deteriorating general health, say Australian scientists, whose new study finds that age, in itself, has no effect on testosterone level in healthy older men. The results, to be presented Tuesday at The Endocrine Society's 93rd Annual Meeting in Boston, are the first findings released from the Healthy Man Study, according to principal investigator David Handelsman, MD, PhD, professor and director of the ANZAC Research Institute at the University of Sydney. "Some researchers believe ...