Founded in 2003, oDesk rapidly secured its position as one of the market leaders. Total billings since launch have exceeded $196m. In the third quarter of 2010 the company reported more than 1m hours worked by its global freelance workforce in a single month (August 2010). These findings and more were reported today (22nd November 2010) in the Freelance Marketplace Review, published by WhichLance.com, the outsourcing marketplace comparison site. The report found that oDesk had secured almost 40% share of all spend across the top ten online outsourcing sites during ...

CMC Markets have launched their new charting package which is available to all demo and live users of their next generation spread betting platform. The new, powerful proprietary charting and drawing tool package has been designed to give traders access to advanced tools and powerful functionality, yet remain simple and intuitive to use. Executive Chairman of CMC Markets, Peter Cruddas, commented: "We understand that professional real-time charts are extremely important to our clients and we think that the new spread betting charts package is so powerful that traders ...

The MBNA Ireland Platinum credit card introduced earlier this year continues to provide a market leading deal to Irish card-holders despite financial uncertainty. The Platinum card comes with 10 months interest free borrowing on balance and money transfers followed by a well below average 14.9% rate (variable). Considering the rarity of 0% deals in the current market and the interest rate average of 18.6%, the offer made by the MBNA card is a seriously big deal. Speaking about the Platinum card, a Bank of America representative, of which MBNA is a subsidiary, said: "The ...

From the best-selling Complete Idiot's Guide series comes a new title teaching runners how to run more naturally by running barefoot. Co-authored by barefoot running pioneer Dr. Craig Richards and running coach Thomas Hollowell, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Barefoot Running reveals the stages to successfully transition to barefoot and minimal footwear running. "This barefoot running book does much more than tell runners they should run without shoes," says Thomas Hollowell. "Dr. Richards and I go to great lengths to outline where running shoes went wrong, why barefoot ...

The independent consumer organization, toyportfolio.com, announces the launch of their free mobile app. "Toy shopping just got a lot simpler with our easy-to-use mobile app," notes co-founder Stephanie Oppenheim. "Shoppers can take us along to the toy store or shop online. If you're shopping for kids, this takes the guesswork out of finding expert and kid-tested toys that will surely be a hit. Everyone wants to deliver that wow-wee gift and shoppers have been using us as their secret resource for years. The app now makes it that much easier to access our reviews and ...

Cruise.com, one of the Internet's largest cruise sellers, jumped into the "Black Friday" promotions with its first-ever Black Friday Cruise Sale. The sale is scheduled to begin at 8AM on Friday, November 26th. Cruise.com is offering exclusive opportunities on many cruise lines to destinations worldwide. Be among the first 35 callers and receive a 7-night Caribbean cruise for just $249. Other exclusive offers include dollars off, free air, on-board credits, 2 for 1 cruises and more. "These are by far the best deals of the year! If you are planning a cruise, this is the ...

Working out how to make the best possible use of material stocks and minimize waste has always been a time-consuming, everyday problem for industrial companies, professional contractors and hobbyists who need to cut parts according to a project's specification. Now, Optimalon Software's new and innovative 1DCutX add-in for Microsoft Excel makes it easy to optimize the cutting of linear material (such as bars, beams and pipes). Traditionally, the most obvious and widely-used cutting procedure is known as the "greedy" cutting approach and involves cutting the biggest parts ...

Frequent hemodialysis improved left ventricular mass (heart size) and self-reported physical health compared to conventional hemodialysis for kidney failure, according to the Frequent Hemodialysis Network (FHN) Daily Trial funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Results were published online Nov. 20, 2010, in the New England Journal of Medicine to coincide with a presentation at the American Society of Nephrology meeting in Denver. Six hemodialysis treatments per week improved left ventricular mass and physical health ...

Jerusalem, November 21, 2010 – Research work carried out at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem arouses a cautionary warning in the growing field of the development of stem cells as a means for future treatment of patients through replacement of diseased or damaged tissues by using the patient's own stem cells. The research indicates a possible danger of cancerous tissue development in the use of such cells. Embryonic stem cells, which are undifferentiated cells, have the potential to develop into all cell types of the adult body, and thousands of researchers all over ...

An international group of scientists, including researchers at the Medical Research Council (MRC), has discovered 30 genes that control the age at which girls reach sexual maturity. They found that many of the genes responsible for puberty also play a strong role in how the body metabolises fat, establishing new biological links between going through puberty at a young age and being at increased risk of obesity. This knowledge will help to explain why girls in some families are more likely to go through puberty at an early age, and may eventually help to prevent chronic ...

Leading scientists and marine managers have called for a greater national effort to protect vital 1000-kilometre stretches of ocean bordering the middle of Australia's eastern and western coastlines. In a major statement entitled The Coffs Harbour Subtropical Reefs Declaration, they urge increased focus and better management for reefs south of the Great Barrier Reef and WA tropical coral zone, explaining that these more southerly areas are expected to become critical refuges for northern tropical marine life under global warming. The declaration follows a workshop by ...

"We demonstrate that human age can be estimated from blood with reasonable accuracy using a simple, robust, and sensitive test assay," said Manfred Kayser of the Erasmus MC University Medical Center Rotterdam in the Netherlands. "Our method is applicable in situations where only bloodstains are available, which covers a large proportion of crime cases." The method will be especially useful in forensic cases in which age information is important to provide investigative leads for finding unknown persons, Kayser added. Existing methods for age estimation have limited use ...

A pilot trial showed that a six-month exercise training program designed to increase leg strength, leg flexibility and overall fitness may improve post-thrombotic syndrome, a frequent, chronic complication of deep vein thrombosis, states a research article in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (pre-embargo link only) http://www.cmaj.ca/embargo/cmaj100248.pdf Chronic post-thrombotic syndrome develops in up to one half of patients with deep vein thrombosis (DVT). These patients can experience leg pain, heaviness, swelling, water retention, hyperpigmentation and ...

A new evidence-based clinical practice guideline will help doctors, healthcare providers and parents reduce the pain and distress of immunization in children, states an article in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (pre-embargo link only) http://www.cmaj.ca/embargo/cmaj092048.pdf. Immunization injections are the most common source of physician-induced pain in childhood and are given many times to most Canadian children. Pain from vaccine injections needs to be addressed at an early age to avoid needle fears and anxiety at future procedures, and non-compliance ...

Richmond, Va. (Nov. 22, 2010) – Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University have discovered that a gene well known for its involvement in tumor cell development, growth and metastasis also protects cancer cells from being destroyed by chemotherapy. By inhibiting the expression of this gene, doctors may have a new viable and effective approach for treating aggressive cancers such as breast, liver and prostate carcinomas, malignant gliomas and neuroblastomas that result from high expression of this cancer-promoting gene. The new study was reported the week of Nov. 22 ...

A new study reveals that muscle cells fuse together during development by poking "fingers" into each other to help break down the membranes separating them. The study appears online on November 22, 2010 in the Journal of Cell Biology(www.jcb.org). During muscle development, individual muscle cells fuse together to form long myotubes containing multiple cell nuclei. In the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, fusion occurs between two different types of muscle cell: founder cells and fusion-competent myoblasts. Using electron microscopy to analyze developing fly embryos, ...

WASHINGTON, D.C., November 22, 2010 -- Five related species of tree-dwelling snakes found in Southeast and South Asia may just be the worst nightmares of ophidiophobes (people who have abnormal fears of snakes). Not only are they snakes, but they can "fly" -- flinging themselves off their perches, flattening their bodies, and gliding from tree to tree or to the ground. To Virginia Tech biologist Jake Socha, these curious reptiles are something of a biomechanical wonder. In order to understand how they do what they do, Socha and his colleagues recently studied Chrysopelea ...

Boston, Mass. – Medulloblastomas are the most common malignant brain tumors of childhood, with 40 to 50 percent overall mortality. One of the greatest challenges in treating them is that they vary substantially from patient to patient. In the largest genomic study of human medulloblastomas to date, researchers from Children's Hospital Boston, together with collaborators, have identified six subtypes with distinct molecular "fingerprints" that will improve doctors' ability to direct and individualize treatment. The study, reported online November 22nd in the Journal of ...

Black, Asian, and Native American children are more likely than white and Hispanic children to die after being treated for neuroblastoma, according to new research on the pediatric cancer. The study, of more than 3,500 patients with the disease, is the largest ever to look at racial disparities in risk and survival for the most common solid cancer found in young children. The study also found that black and Native American children are more likely to have the high-risk form of the disease and show signs of resistance to modern treatment. Those biological characteristics ...

Beta-thalassemia is an inherited blood disorder that results in chronic anemia. A major complication of the condition is iron overload, which damages organs such as the liver and heart. The iron overload has been linked to low levels of the protein hepcidin, a negative regulator of intestinal iron absorption and iron recycling. A team of researchers, led by Stefano Rivella, at Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, has now shown that increasing the concentration of hepcidin in beta-thalassemic mice limits iron overload and markedly reduces their anemia. They therefore ...

Children who experience a parental divorce are over twice as likely to suffer a stroke at some point in their lives, according to new research presented in New Orleans at The Gerontological Society of America's (GSA) 63rd Annual Scientific Meeting. This finding is based on a representative community sample of over 13,000 people from the 2005 Canadian Community Health Survey. The data analysis was conducted by Esme Fuller-Thomson, PhD, and a team of colleagues at the University of Toronto. "We were very surprised that the association between parental divorce and stroke ...

When using combined positron emission tomography (PET) computed tomography (CT) imaging, adopting a true whole-body field of view in the imaging of cancer patients could lead to more accurate staging and restaging than achieved with the routinely used limited whole-body field of view, according to a study in the December issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology (www.ajronline.org). PET/CT is a dual imaging technique that is used to diagnose and treat a variety of diseases, including many types of cancers. "Use of the routine field of view for whole-body FDG PET/CT ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — More than half of all combat-related injuries sustained by U.S. troops are the result of explosions, and many of those involve injuries to the head. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, about 130,000 U.S. service members deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan have sustained traumatic brain injuries — ranging from concussion to long-term brain damage and death — as a result of an explosion. A recent analysis by a team of researchers led by MIT reveals one possible way to prevent those injuries — adding a face shield to the helmet worn by military personnel. In ...

High blood levels of the antioxidant alpha-carotene appear to be associated with a reduced risk of dying over a 14-year period, according to a report posted online today that will be published in the March 28 print issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Oxygen-related damage to DNA, proteins and fats may play a role in the development of chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer, according to background information in the article. Carotenoids—including beta-carotene, alpha-carotene and lycopene—are produced by plants and microorganisms ...

Diabetes appears to be associated with the risk of depression and vice versa, suggesting the relationship between the two works in both directions, according to a report in the November 22 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. An estimated 23.5 million U.S. adults—more than 10 percent—have diabetes, including 23 percent of those ages 60 and older, according to background information in the article. Major depressive disorder affects about 14.8 million U.S. adults each year. "Although it has been hypothesized that the diabetes-depression ...