PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Aggregating nearly the entire landmass of Earth, Pangaea was a continent the likes our planet has not seen for the last 200 million years. Its size meant there was a lot of space for animals to roam, for there were few geographical barriers, such as mountains or ice caps, to contain them. Yet, strangely, animals confined themselves. Studying a transect of Pangaea stretching from about three degrees south to 26 degrees north (a long swath in the center of the continent covering tropical and semiarid temperate zones), a team of scientists ...

From private dinners with Paris Hilton at the Sundance Film Festival to the Men's Luxury Toy Expo, to the Muhammed Ali "Night of Champions" charity dinner, millionaire entrepreneur Keith Middlebrook has a long standing reputation for funding charity events, funding promotions, and for funding just plain fun. This includes several weekends of partying at the Chateau Marmont Hotel with Lindsay Lohan. Keith Middlebrook was recently featured on the cover of Star magazine when someone from inside the Chateau Marmont sold his American Express credit card receipts ...

According to a new study released online today, a majority of Americans, including most African Americans, stand together in support of banning menthol in cigarettes just as other cigarette flavorings have now been banned by the FDA. According to established reports, 83 percent of African American smokers and 24 percent of white smokers smoke menthol cigarettes. This new study was done by the Center for Child and Adolescent Health Policy at MassGeneral Hospital for Children (MGHfC), the American Academy of Pediatrics' Julius B. Richmond Center of Excellence, and the ...

Getting two fluids to mix in small or confined spaces is a big problem in many industries where, for instance, the introduction of one fluid can help extract another — like water pumped underground can release oil trapped in porous rock — or where the mixing of liquids is the essential point of the process. A key example of the latter is microfluidics technology, which allows for the controlled manipulation of fluids in miniscule channels often only a few hundred nanometers wide. Microfluidic devices were first introduced in the 1980s and for many years were best known ...

Plants can overcome their evolutionary legacies to become much better at using biological photosynthesis to produce energy, the kind of energy that can power vehicles in the near future, an all-star collection of biologists, physicists, photochemists, and solar scientists has found. A U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) workshop that drew a prestigious collection of 18 scientists to compare the efficiency of plants and photovoltaic solar cells led to an important and provocative scholarly article in today's issue of the journal Science. Two of the scientists are from DOE's ...

Films depicting the 1787 mutiny aboard the British ship HMS Bounty show sailors living cheek by jowl, being forced to dance, enduring storm-ridden Cape of Good Hope crossings to satisfy the ship captain's ego and being flogged for trivial reasons. We may not think that these harsh conditions have much relevance today. But mutinies continue to occur, especially in the armed forces of developing nations. And mutinies have similarities to other types of rebellions, including worker strikes, riots, prison rebellions and political uprisings. University of Washington sociologists ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — In a head-to-head battle of harvesting the sun's energy, solar cells beat plants, according to a new paper in Science. But scientists think they can even up the playing field, says researcher David Kramer at Michigan State University. Plants are less efficient at capturing the energy in sunlight than solar cells mostly because they have too much evolutionary baggage. Plants have to power a living thing, whereas solar cells only have to send electricity down a wire. This is a big difference because if photosynthesis makes a mistake, it makes toxic ...

Since 2008, the U.S. economy has been "seizing" uncontrollably. Now a Tel Aviv University researcher says that a comparison of the multifaceted economic downturn with the uncontrolled spasms of an epileptic is not inappropriate — and may say something about the origins of the disaster. In a recent article published in the journal PLoS ONE, Prof. Eshel Ben-Jacob of Tel Aviv University's School of Physics and Astronomy, his doctoral student Dror Y. Kenett and economist Dr. Gitit Gur-Gershgorn examined the dynamics of the S&P 500 over the last decade, employing methods originally ...

The Wildlife Conservation Society and other organizations released a new study recommending a disease screening program for farm-raised caiman in ranching facilities in Argentina to ensure the safety of people and wildlife alike. The recommendations focus on two crocodilian species, the yacare caiman and broad-snouted caiman, both of which are reared in caiman ranches for sustainable harvest. The research team sought to assess the presence of potentially harmful bacteria in captive-raised caiman at a typical ranching facility in Argentina's Chaco region, where several ...

Vidaroo Corporation today announced that it has contracted with Emmis Radio, a subsidiary of Emmis Communications Corporation, for use of its video distribution and syndication platform for Emmis' 22 radio stations. Vidaroo's Enterprise software will allow Emmis' radio stations to deliver its website's video distribution through use of Vidaroo's centralized management platform, as well as distribute live and on-demand content and branded time-of-day programming. In addition to use of the Vidaroo platform for video distribution and syndication, Emmis will also be able ...

The following highlights summarize research papers that have been recently published in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), Water Resources Research (WRR), the Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans (JGR-C), and the Journal of Geophysical Research-Solid Earth (JGR-B). In this release: New freshwater source for Antarctic coastal waters Phytoplankton affect clouds and precipitation River model enhanced by floodplain dynamics Weighing natural variability in projected precipitation change Study suggests no slowing of Atlantic 'conveyor belt' current Warming, salinity ...

Contour, Inc is a market leader in wearable video technology, introducing innovative new features such as integrated GPS tracking and bluetooth connectivity to smartphone devices. Contour have just announced the release of their latest product, the Contour+ camera. The Contour+ builds on the popular Contour GPS model with added connectivity and refined features and has been designed with the broadcast and pro-sumer market in mind. Contour cameras are renowned for their ease of use thanks to the large sliding start/stop switch on top of the camera and their unique rotating ...

If pending clinical trials prove successful, a new discovery published in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) could represent a major scientific leap toward human tissue regeneration and engineering. In a research report appearing online, Yale scientists provide evidence to support a major paradigm shift in this specialty area from the idea that cells added to a graft before implantation are the building blocks of tissue, to a new belief that engineered tissue constructs can actually induce or augment the body's own reparative mechanisms, including complex tissue ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Researchers tracking the spread of Toxoplasma gondii – a parasite that reproduces only in cats but sickens and kills many other animals – have found infected wildlife throughout a 1,500-acre (600-hectare) natural area in central Illinois. The researchers also found dozens of free-ranging cats in the area, the Robert Allerton Park, near Monticello, Ill. Two years of tracking, trapping and motion-triggered night photography at eight sites in the park found no evidence of bobcats, but plenty of examples of feral or abandoned house cats, many of them infected ...

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin's Cockrell School of Engineering have created a new porous, three-dimensional carbon that can be used as a greatly enhanced supercapacitor, holding promise for energy storage in everything from energy grids and electric cars to consumer electronics. The findings of the group, led by materials science and mechanical engineering Professor Rodney S. Ruoff, will be published May 12 by Science magazine in its online publication ScienceXpress. The significance of the discovery by Ruoff's team, which included postdoctoral fellow ...

Since the notorious Black Friday of the online poker world, CarbonPokerRakeback.com has been working diligently to ensure that American players, as well as European and Canadian poker fans, are aware that Carbon Poker is not just a viable online poker option for each of these regions; the site has some of the most unique perks for members, including free poker training, a surfeit welcome bonus and 35% rakeback. Three short weeks ago, the US Department of Justice and FBI set off a string of virtual missiles that rocked the online poker industry to its core. The online ...

A report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy has concluded that a novel University of Colorado Boulder method of producing hydrogen fuel from sunlight is the only approach among eight competing technologies that is projected to meet future cost targets set by the federal agency. The process, which is being developed by Professor Alan Weimer's research team of CU-Boulder's chemical and biological engineering department, involves an array of mirrors to concentrate the sun's rays and create temperatures as high as 2,640 degrees Fahrenheit. The process consists ...

New data offer hints to why Parkinson's disease so selectively harms brain cells that produce the chemical dopamine, say researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Dopamine is involved in brain cell communications including the signals that control movement. As Parkinson's kills the dopamine-producing cells, patients begin to develop tremors, problems moving and other symptoms. The new research shows that a drug known to damage dopamine-producing nerve cells and mimic Parkinson's disease does so by rapidly damaging cellular energy generators ...

ARLINGTON, VA (May 3, 2011) – Cancer studies from Mercer University (Ga.) headline groundbreaking research that will be unveiled at the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists' (AAPS) National Biotechnology Conference (NBC). The conference takes place Monday, May 16 -Wednesday, May 18 at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square. Developing an Oral Vaccine for Cervical Cancer Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer among women in the world . Two preventative vaccines are currently available, but are expensive, require complex storage, and trained personnel ...

This is the last of a six-part series on improving your writing style. Whether you write for business or academic purposes, there are a few golden rules that will help you sharpen up your prose. Part 6 - Adjust your style to fit your audience "Well, duh!", I hear you say; unfortunately this is not as obvious as it might seem. Basic rule of thumb: professional documents require a professional writing style whereas informal documents allow you to be more relaxed. That said, if an informal document is being written in a professional or business related environment, ...

Which is more efficient at harvesting the sun's energy, plants or solar cells? This salient question and an answer are the subject of an article published in the May 13 issue of the journal Science. Although both photosynthesis and photovoltaics harvest energy from the sun, they operate in distinctly different ways producing different fuels. It is not a simple task to find common ground between the two in order to compare energy conversion efficiency. "In order to make meaningful comparisons between photosynthesis (which provides stored chemical potential) and photovoltaic ...

Locust Capital Management is proud to announce the appointment of Henry J. Miller III, "Doc" as a Managing Director. Mr. Miller's responsibilities include Sales, Marketing, and Relationship Management for the firm. Prior to Locust Capital Mr. Miller was President of Miller & Company, LLC, a strategic Investment Consultant to institutional investors and Asset Management companies. Mr. Miller has held senior leadership positions with Wachovia Wealth Management, Neuberger Berman, Mellon Financial, CoreStates Bank, and Fidelity. Mr. Miller's Clients have included ...

PORTLAND, Ore. — A comprehensive report based on the National Survey of Children's Health conducted by children's health researchers at Oregon Health & Science University and the Maternal and Child Health Bureau finds insurance duration, consistency and adequacy, and the corresponding access to health care, are lacking for many U.S. children and have a detrimental effect on their health and well-being. The researchers cite a need for improvement in all states, with wide variations across states that can inform improvement efforts. The results especially support national ...

Athens, Ga. – In a time of transition for rural African-American young adults, natural mentors in the community help them stay focused on their goals and avoid potential difficulties associated with emerging adulthood, according to findings from an ongoing University of Georgia study. The study, published in the early online edition of American Journal of Community Psychology, is part of a broader research program called the Adults in the Making project, which is aimed at helping rural African Americans transition to adulthood. The researchers found that behaviors such ...

This press release is available in French. They may be uncomfortable talking about it, but it's definitely going on. A recent survey, led by McGill Psychiatry Professor and Senior Lady Davis Institute Researcher Amir Raz, reports that one in five respondents – physicians and psychiatrists in Canadian medical schools – have administered or prescribed a placebo. Moreover, an even higher proportion of psychiatrists (more than 35 per cent) reported prescribing subtherapeutic doses of medication (that is, doses that are below, sometimes considerably below, the minimal recommended ...