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, ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. - Pancreatic cancer has one of the highest mortality rates of any of the major cancers, and of the 43,000-plus Americans diagnosed with the disease each year, more than 94 percent die within five years of diagnosis. One reason for this high number of deaths is a lack of effective screening tools for catching the disease early. Now, in an effort to try to gain the upper hand on this deadly form of cancer, Mayo Clinic researchers believe they have found a new way to test for pancreatic cancer with DNA testing of patients' stool samples. The research was presented ...

Doug Huggins Founder of OwnDepot announced today that the company website, www.owndepot.com has officially launched. The Site provides the insured community with a secure inventory solution that allows the customer or a designated agent to inventory all home valuables. OwnDepot provides proof of ownership by recording detailed purchase information, while providing customers with tools to help them manage their home life. OwnDepot has created a new market category - a Home Management Solution that focuses on personal asset management and household simplification. It ...

About two years ago, Dr. Philippe Gros, a McGill University professor in the Department of Biochemistry and a Principal Investigator in thd McGill Life Sciences Complex, described a mouse mutant that was immunodeficient and hypersensitive to the Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine and to tuberculosis (TB). In this model, Gros's team had found that the immunodeficiency was caused by a mutation in a regulatory protein of the immune system named IRF8. A year later, a physician in Newcastle who had heard about Gros's work, contacted him about a three-month-old patient ...

For diagnosing head and neck ailments, tests that use radiation are always less desirable than those that don't. Otolaryngologists have a wide range of techniques available to them, including CT or "CAT" scans, MRI and ultrasound. CT uses significant radiation and MRI a lower amount, but ultrasound is a non-invasive, non-radiating technique. It does not require injection of radioactive contrast material and has no side effects. Now, a new study by Tel Aviv University exploring the efficacy of expensive and invasive CT scans has found that, in some cases, they don't offer ...

Some of the most effective and expensive cancer drugs, dubbed "smart drugs" for their ability to stop tumors by targeting key drivers of cancer cell growth, are not effective in some patients. In two related studies, Yale School of Medicine researchers examined one such driver, the EGF receptor (EGFR), and found that a decoy receptor might be limiting the amount of drug that gets to the intended target. "We know that smart drugs like Cetuximab are not always effective in the cancer cells they're supposed to target because there are no positive predictive markers for ...

An innovative program to encourage sustainable farming in rural China has helped restore eroded forestland while producing economic gains for many farmers, according to a new study by Stanford University researchers. Their findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). "The Sloping Land Conversion Program, which began in 2000 after massive flooding caused in part by land clearing, focuses on China's largest source of soil erosion and flood risk – farms on steep slopes," said study co-author Gretchen Daily, a professor of biology ...

ZyLAB, a leading eDiscovery and information management technology company, today announced that the popular webcast titled "Contemporary Productions and Metadata for 21st Century Disclosures" is now available on demand from the company's website. The lively and informative 80-minute webcast addresses the controversy surrounding the recent ruling in the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) v. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) case involving ESI productions and metadata. NDLON plaintiff counsel, Anthony Diana, of Mayer Brown LLP, ...

New research from McMaster University may answer a controversial question: do the blind have a better sense of touch because the brain compensates for vision loss or because of heavy reliance on their fingertips? The study, published in the most recent edition of the Journal of Neuroscience, suggests daily dependence on touch is the answer. Twenty-eight profoundly blind participants—with varying degrees of Braille expertise—and 55 normally sighted adults were tested for touch sensitivity on six fingers and both sides of the lower lip. Researchers reasoned that, ...

Vitamins and medications may one day take rides on starch compounds creating stable vitamin-enriched ingredients and cheaper controlled-release drugs, according to Penn State food scientists. The technique may offer drug and food companies a less expensive, more environmentally friendly alternative in creating, among other products, medications and food supplements. In a series of experiments, researchers formed pockets with corn starch and a fatty acid ester to carry oil soluble vitamins, such as vitamin A and vitamin C, into the body, according to Gregory Ziegler, ...

The first results from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA), a national study of 8,000 older people aged 50 and over in Ireland, were launched this week by the Minister for Health and Children, Dr James Reilly. TILDA is the most comprehensive study ever conducted on ageing in Ireland. Between 2009- 2011, over 8,000 people aged 50 and over were randomly selected across the country and interviewed about many aspects of their lives including issues such as health, financial circumstances and quality of life. Almost 85 per cent of the participants also underwent ...