NEW ORLEANS, LA – May 23, 2011 -- The next agricultural revolution may be sparked by fungi, helping to greatly increase food-production for the growing needs of the planet without the need for massive amounts of fertilizers according to research presented today at the 111th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in New Orleans. "The United Nations conservatively estimates that by the year 2050 the global human population is expected to reach over 9 billion. Feeding such a population represents an unprecedented challenge since this goes greatly beyond ...

NEW ORLEANS, LA – May 23, 2011 -- As the United States continues to import increasingly more of its food from developing nations, we are putting ourselves at greater risk of foodborne disease as many of these countries do not have the same sanitary standards for production, especially in the case of seafood and fresh produce, say scientists today at the 111th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in New Orleans. "Approximately 15 percent of food consumed in the United States in 2006 was imported. Sanitation practices for food production are not universally ...

Philadelphia, PA, May 23, 2011 – Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have examined the potential for human exposure to prion diseases, looking at hunting, venison consumption, and travel to areas in which prion diseases have been reported in animals. Three prion diseases in particular – bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or "Mad Cow Disease"), variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), and chronic wasting disease (CWD) – were specified in the investigation. The results of this investigation are published in the June issue of the Journal ...

Another week and another great promotion from RakeTheRake.com to celebrate its new site launch. There's $11,000 worth of prizes to be snapped up, provided by InterPoker and RakeTheRake. InterPoker's very special promotion is one of a wealth of amazing additional prizes running for three months until the end of July 2011. This three month period of extra special poker promotions is over and above the regular $500k+ of monthly promotions at RakeTheRake. InterPoker has put together a great competition over the full three month period. Online poker players at the room have ...

CORAL GABLES, FL (May 23, 2011)-- Economist Christopher Cotton from the University of Miami (UM), uses game theory to explore two of the most famous military bluffs in history. The findings are published in the current issue of the Journal of Peace Research. The study is one of the first to use game theory to assess the Chinese military legends of Li Guang and his 100 horsemen (144 BC), and Zhuge Liang and the Empty City (228 AD). The stories appear in modern day translations of Sun Tzu's fundamental book on military strategy "The Art of War" to explain what is meant ...

JUPITER, FL, May 23, 2011 – Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have for the first time accomplished a laboratory synthesis of a rare natural product isolated from the bark of a plant widely employed in traditional medicine. This advance may provide the scientific foundation to develop an effective alternative to commonly prescribed narcotic pain treatments. The study, published May 23, 2011, in an advanced online edition of the journal Nature Chemistry, defines a chemical means to access meaningful quantities of the rare natural product ...

Lombard, IL, May 23, 2011 – Headache is a very common complaint, with over 90% of all persons experiencing a headache at some time in their lives. Headaches commonly are tension-type (TTH) or migraine. They have high socioeconomic impact and can disturb most daily activities. Treatments range from pharmacologic to behavioral interventions. In a study published online today in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, a group of Dutch researchers analyzed 119 randomized controlled clinical trials (RCTs) and determined the magnitude of placebo effect and ...

Raleigh criminal attorney Patrick Roberts at the Roberts Law Group PLLC defended a North Carolina man against the statutory rape charges. A man who was caught engaging in sexual acts with a minor by the young woman's mother pled guilty to a misdemeanor in exchange for the dismissal of more serious statutory rape charges. The man pled guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor and assault on a female. The man fell prey to a common situation in North Carolina - the alleged victim, a girl under 16 years old, lied about her age on a social networking website. ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Monday, May 23, 2011 – New findings out of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center reveal that a common test may be useful in predicting early death in individuals with diabetes. The study appears in the May issue of Diabetes Care. "People with diabetes are already at high risk of developing heart disease and experiencing an early death," said Donald W. Bowden, Ph.D., the director of the Center for Diabetes Research at Wake Forest Baptist and lead investigator. "With this study, we've discovered that we can identify a subset of individuals within ...

How well a family recovers from a natural catastrophe may be tied to the household's pre-disaster make up and socio-economic status. In a recent study, Dr. Michael Rendall of the RAND Corporation compared the number of households in New Orleans, LA that broke up following Hurricane Katrina to the national rate of household break-ups over an equivalent period. An estimated 1.3 million people fled the Gulf Coast during that emergency in 2005 – the largest urban evacuation America has ever seen. The results are published today in the Journal of Marriage and Family. Relying ...

Jerusalem, May 23, 2011 – A little bitter with a little sweet, in the form of a nano-complex dietary supplement taken before meals, can result in a substantial reduction of fat and sugar absorption in the body, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Harvard University researchers have found. The researchers previously showed that naringenin, the molecule responsible for the bitter taste in grapefruits, could potentially be used in the treatment of diabetes, arteriosclerosis and hyper-metabolism. However, the absorption of naringenin in its natural form is very low. To ...

The Wine Industry Technology Symposium (WITS), the premier event showcasing innovation and strategic use of information technology and services for the wine industry, announced headline speakers for its seventh annual conference July 12-13, 2011 at the Marriot Napa Valley. The symposium will open with a technology showcase and hands on experiential workshops on the afternoon of Tuesday, July 12, but the main event takes place on Wednesday, July 13 with the general session and keynote speakers. Tim Bucher's Keynote Address is titled "Technology and Innovation" What ...

New scientific evidence challenges a popular conception that behaviours such as repetitive hand-washing, characteristic of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), are carried out in response to disturbing obsessive fears. The study, conducted at the University of Cambridge in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam, found that in the case of OCD the behaviours themselves (the compulsions) might be the precursors to the disorder, and that obsessions may simply be the brain's way of justifying these behaviours. The research provides important insight into how the ...

Johns Hopkins scientists say that a newly discovered "survival protein" protects the brain against the effects of stroke in rodent brain tissue by interfering with a particular kind of cell death that's also implicated in complications from diabetes and heart attack. Reporting in the May 22 advance online edition of Nature Medicine, the Johns Hopkins team says it exploited the fact that when brain tissue is subjected to a stressful but not lethal insult a defense response occurs that protects cells from subsequent insult. The scientists dissected this preconditioning ...

WASHINGTON – Praying about health issues dramatically increased among American adults over the past three decades, rising 36 percent between 1999 and 2007, according to a study published by the American Psychological Association. Researchers analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's 1999, 2002 and 2007 National Health Interview Surveys for an article in the May issue of the APA journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. The study primarily focused on comparisons of results between the 2002 and 2007 surveys, which included, respectively, ...

A new study published in the American Journal of Transplantation reveals that HIV-infected deceased donors represent a potentially novel source of organs for HIV-infected transplant candidates that could decrease waitlist deaths and even shorten the national waitlist. For patients with HIV, there is an increased chance of dying while awaiting transplantation, as the HIV itself causes the risk of dying on the waiting list to be higher. The option of deceased donors who were also infected with HIV could shorten this wait time. However, this is now illegal due to a 1988 ...

Chemical Engineering students at Stevens Institute of Technology are transforming the way that American soldiers power their battery-operated devices by making a small change: a really small change. Capitalizing on the unique properties of microscale systems, the students have invented a microreactor that converts everyday fossil fuels like propane and butane into pure hydrogen for fuel cell batteries. These batteries are not only highly efficient, but also can be replenished with hydrogen again and again for years of resilient performance in the field. With batteries ...

A Biomedical Engineering Senior Design team at Stevens Institute of Technology is working with the U.S. Army and New Jersey physicians to develop a new device to combat hypothermia among wounded soldiers. Team "Heat Wave" is composed of seniors Walter Galvez, Amanda Mendez, Geoffrey Ng, and Dalia Shendi, in addition to Biomedical Engineering graduate student Maia Hadidi. The team's faculty advisor is Dr. Vikki Hazelwood and consulting physician is Dr. Herman Morchel from Hackensack University Medical Center. Additional expert support from industry and military was provided ...

Every year, the world consumes 15 Terrawatts of power. Since the amount of annual harvestable solar energy has been estimated at 50 Terrawatts, students at Stevens Institute of Technology are working on a supercapacitor that will allow us to harness more of this renewable energy through biochar electrodes for supercapacitors, resulting in a cleaner, greener planet. Supercapacitors are common today in solar panels and hydrogen fuel cell car batteries, but the material they use to store energy, activated carbon, is unsustainable and expensive. Biochar, on the other hand, ...

High-temperature superconductivity can be looked at as a fight for survival at the atomic scale. In an effort to reach that point where electrons pair up and resistance is reduced to zero, superconductivity must compete with numerous, seemingly rival phases of matter. Understanding those phases and whether or not they are rivals or complementary phenomena has consumed the attention of theoreticians and experimentalists in the quest to find superconducting materials capable of functioning at close-to-room temperature, a potential that has gone unrealized for nearly three ...

When taxpayers underreport income, whether intentionally or accidentally, the IRS always catches up. And when they do, they want to get paid - and now. Sandra (Delevan, NY) found herself in just this predicament when she came into the Blue Tax offices with an IRS tax liability of $3,636 due to a 2006 tax return filed with underreported income. The goal of the team at Blue Tax was getting this client on a payment arrangement that accurately reflected her income, resolving all of this in a timely manner. First, Blue Tax met with the client and submitted their personal ...

Mummies from along the Nile are revealing how age-old irrigation techniques may have boosted the plague of schistosomiasis, a water-borne parasitic disease that infects an estimated 200 million people today. An analysis of the mummies from Nubia, a former kingdom that was located in present-day Sudan, provides details for the first time about the prevalence of the disease across populations in ancient times, and how human alteration of the environment during that era may have contributed to its spread. The American Journal of Physical Anthropology is publishing the ...

Boston, MA - Charles J. Dimitroff, MS, PhD and colleagues in the Dimitroff Lab at Brigham and Women's Hospital, have developed a fluorinated analog of glucosamine, which, in a recent study, has been shown to block the synthesis of key carbohydrate structures linked to skin inflammation and cancer progression. These findings appear in the April 14, 2011, issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Dr. Dimitroff and colleagues show for the first time that the fluorinated glucosamine therapeutic works not through direct incorporation into growing sugar chains as previously ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – A team of researchers, including a number from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, have pinpointed regions of the genome that contribute to the debilitating lung disease that is the hallmark of cystic fibrosis. Their findings provide insight into the causes of the wide variation in lung disease severity experienced by CF patients. It also points the way to new diagnostic markers and therapeutic approaches for this and more common lung diseases such as COPD. This study, which appears online Sunday, May 22, 2011 in ...

Quit Tea, the natural stop smoking aid, has received an official professional endorsement. "This is a good product I will continue to tell my clients about," says Leeanne Taylor, a licensed drug and alcohol counselor with a private practice in Bangor, Maine, who specializes in smoking cessation. Ms. Taylor received free samples of Quit Tea as part of the Quit Tea LLC's local Maine smoking cessation professional detailing program. She said "since that time I have given clients a tea bag and the website so they could get some of their own. The majority of ...