A protein that helps the brain develop early in life can fight the mental fuzziness induced by sleep deprivation, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "It's interesting that NOTCH, a protein that plays such a prominent role in development, also has important functions in the adult brain," says senior author Paul Shaw, PhD, associate professor of neurobiology. "To our surprise, we found if NOTCH activity is boosted in the brains of sleep-deprived fruit flies, the flies can continue to stay sharp and learn after sleep deprivation. ...

Energy Digital and Energy Exposition announces their partnership for Energy Exposition 2011, which is taking place June 15th to June 16th. Energy Exposition 2011 is where 250 companies from 32 States and 2 Provinces exhibited last year, bringing with them upwards of 1,000 exhibitors and drawing a crowd of 4,500 people from the oil & gas industry and general community. The Energy Exposition is free and open to the public over the age of 18. With very reasonable booth fees and a relaxed atmosphere, the Expo is a valuable and affordable investment for everyone from small ...

Arsenic exposure and smoking each elevate the risk of disease. But when combined together, the danger of dying from cardiovascular disease is magnified, a new study finds. Exposure to high or even moderate levels of the toxin arsenic through drinking water can elevate the risk of cardiovascular disease mortality, according to a new study published in British Medical Journal. Exposed individuals who smoke were hit with a dangerous double whammy: a combined mortality risk that exceeded the influence of either factor alone. "Cigarette smoking is pervasive all over the ...

HUNTSVILLE, TX -- Researchers at Sam Houston State University and the University of Texas at Austin will team up with representatives from the criminal justice system in Houston to establish protocols to determine when sexual assault kits need to be tested by crime labs. "This is a problem-solving project that seeks to determine why so many kits are not being tested," said Dr. William Wells, who is leading the research project at Sam Houston State University. "The goal is to create appropriate solutions that can be implemented and to determine if there are ways that forensic ...

(Edmonton) The obesity problem plaguing Canadians is a story heard frequently these days. For Katerina Maximova, making connections between the rising body mass index, or BMI, among native-born Canadian versus immigrant children has been the focus of a recent study. In a journal article recently published in the Annals of Epidemiology, Maximova, an assistant professor with the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta, analyzed data from approximately 6,400 low-income children in an inner-city Montreal neighbourhood who were followed for more than five years. ...

TEMPE, Ariz. – Obesity is socially contagious, according to research published in the past few years. How it is "caught" from others remains a murky area. But findings from Arizona State University researchers published online May 5 in the American Journal of Public Health shed light on the transmission of obesity among friends and family. Shared ideas about acceptable weight or body size play only a minor role in spreading obesity among friends, according to the findings published in the article "Shared Norms and Their Explanation for the Social Clustering of Obesity." "Interventions ...

OAKLAND, Calif., May 5, 2011-- Parental exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) during pregnancy is associated with decreased birth weight of offspring, compared with offspring from families without parental BPA exposure in the workplace, according to Kaiser Permanente researchers. The observational study is published in the current online issue Reproductive Toxicology. Researchers explained that there was a greater magnitude of decrease in birth weight in children whose mothers were directly exposed to high BPA levels in the workplace during pregnancy, followed by those whose ...

Transformative changes in markets, policy and science, rather than just incremental changes in farming practices and technology, will be critical if the United States is to achieve long-term sustainability in agriculture, according to a nationwide team of agriculturists that includes a University of California, Davis, animal scientist. The team's recommendations, first published as a 2010 report by the U.S. National Research Council, appear as a Policy Forum piece in the May 6 issue of the journal Science. Lead author on the paper is John Reganold, Regents Professor of ...

Tests of a new antibody-based "biosensor" developed by researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science show that it can detect marine pollutants like oil much faster and more cheaply than current technologies. The device is small and sturdy enough to be used from a boat. Testing of the biosensor in the Elizabeth River and Yorktown Creek, which both drain into lower Chesapeake Bay, shows that the instrument can process samples in less than 10 minutes, detect pollutants at levels as low as just a few parts per billion, and do so at a cost of just pennies per sample. ...

The Hand and Wrist Institute, the leading hand specialist experts in the State of California now offers a "Where Does It Hurt" tool on their website, www.handandwristinstitute.com. The Hand and Wrist Institute is a medical center that focuses primarily on the surgery of hands and wrists. This institute is backed by Dr. John T. Knight, one of the top medical experts in the field of hand and wrist surgery. Dr. John T. Knight is a board certified Orthopedic Surgeon who oversees the operations of the Hand and Wrist Institute at DISC to ensure that all of their ...

Scientists from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and the University of Melbourne have used innovative new technologies to identify the gene responsible for a rare but fatal hereditary brain disorder. The discovery will make it possible to diagnose the disease through a blood test rather than a brain biopsy. Dr Melanie Bahlo, Ms Katherine Smith and Ms Catherine Bromhead from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute's Bioinformatics division, in collaboration with neurologist and epilepsy specialist Professor Sam Berkovic and Dr Todor Arsov from the University of Melbourne, ...

The Psychological Care and Healing Treatment Center, the leading destination for people who want to have their psychological disorders fixed, now offers Panic Disorder treatment Clinic. A Panic Disorder is considered as such when a person experiences several panic attacks within a short period of time. First of all, people must know that panic attacks are not very common. In fact, some people live their lives and experience only as little as two or three panic attacks through out their lives. This is why it is very uncommon to experience or suffer from several panic ...

French researchers have reported the strongest proof yet that evidence of 'circulating tumor cells' found in samples of a patient's blood is strongly linked to poor outcomes such as a short time to disease progression. At the IMPAKT Breast Cancer Conference in Brussels, Dr François-Clement Bidard and colleagues from Institut Curie in Paris say their new findings set the scene for interventional trials designed to see if improved outcomes can be achieved by modifying treatment based on circulating tumor cell counts. "We needed to do this study to confirm data provided ...

The most comprehensive analysis yet of the epigenetic modifications present in breast cancer has revealed potentially important new ways to detect and treat the disease, Belgian researchers have reported. Epigenetics is a term used to describe modifications to the DNA molecule that affect way its code is translated into proteins. These changes include methylation, a form of chemical modification. Although researchers knew epigenetics was important in cancer, information about its exact contribution to breast carcinogenesis was scant, Dr Sarah Dedeurwaerder, from Université ...

German researchers have identified an unexpected molecular marker that predicts how sensitive hard-to-treat triple-negative breast cancers are to chemotherapy. Triple-negative breast cancers --which do not express the genes for estrogen receptor, or progesterone receptor and do not have Her2/neu overexpression or amplification-- are more aggressive than other forms of the disease and cannot be treated with endocrine or Her2 targeted therapies. At the IMPAKT Breast Cancer Conference in Brussels, PhD student Carolin Huelsewig and Dr Cornelia Liedtke from Uniklinikum Muenster ...

Two multi-gene tests designed to predict the risk of disease progression and response to chemotherapy in breast cancer produce broadly similar results for high- and low-risk patients, but do not always agree in their predictions for those at intermediate risk, a new analysis shows. In recent years, several genomic tests have been developed to provide prognostic information for breast cancer. Dr Catherine Kelly from Mater Misericordiae University Hospital, Dublin, Ireland, and colleagues in the USA examined the agreement in prediction results between two multi-gene assays ...

Measuring the transfer of tiny amounts of energy from one protein to another on breast cancer cells has given scientists a detailed view of molecular interactions that could help predict how breast cancer patients will respond to particular therapies. At the IMPAKT Breast Cancer Conference in Brussels, Dr Gargi Patel from the Richard Dimbleby Department, King's College London, described cutting-edge research in which she and colleagues captured detailed information about protein interactions on cancer cells, and correlated that with established genetic markers for cancer ...

The anti-inflammatory drug celecoxib may be a useful additional treatment for people with breast cancer, Dutch researchers report at the IMPAKT Breast Cancer Conference in Brussels. The results of a randomized trial in 45 patients with primary invasive breast cancer showed that the drug --which is currently used to treat arthritis and other painful conditions-- clearly induced an anti-tumor response at the molecular level. "This is exciting because it means that a medication already used to treat other diseases may be efficient in the adjuvant treatment of breast cancer ...

Domenico Di Ceglie, Director of Training and Research at the Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in London, commented: "These are important findings in the field of gender incongruence, which need to be replicated. The awareness of the presence of autistic features may help these young people to explore the reasons behind their perceptions, and help them make more informed decisions about treatment." Emma Martin, who runs a Gender Identity Support and research group in Little Downham, UK, welcomed the new findings, and ...

A new biosensor which uses antibody-based technology has been shown to detect marine pollutants such as oil cheaper and faster than current technology. Tests of the new biosensor, published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, reveal how it could be used for the early detection and tracking of oil spills. The biosensor has been developed by researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) and was tested in the Elizabeth River and Yorktown Creek which both drain into Virginia's Chesapeake Bay. "Our biosensor combines the power of the immune system ...

Spine Surgeon LA, the leading spine surgery specialists in the state of California has recently launched their website at the URL www.spinesurgeonla.com Spine Surgeon LA is a medical hub wherein they treat and address several different types of spine problems. These spine problems include: Bulging Disc, Herniated Disc, Spine Scoliosis, Pinched Nerve, Spine Stenosis, Bone Spurs, and Spine Tumors among others. In their new website, spinesurgeonla.com, you may click on these common spine problems and then get a chance to read some information about them so that you may ...

Deadly human fungal infections caused by certain strains of Aspergillus fungi appear to be developing resistance to current drug treatments at an alarming rate, say scientists. University of Manchester researchers, working with colleagues in Newark, USA, have developed a new test that can not only better diagnose Aspergillus infection, but can also spot signs of antifungal resistance to azoles – the class of drugs used to treat patients with aspergillosis. Using the new test, which uses direct molecular detection rather than culturing the fungus in a Petri dish, the ...

The recent nuclear accident in Fukushima Daiichi in Japan has brought the nuclear debate to the forefront of controversy. While Japan is trying to avert further disaster, many nations are reconsidering the future of nuclear power in their regions. A study by Behnam Taebi from the Delft University of Technology, published online in the Springer journal Philosophy & Technology, reflects on the various possible nuclear power production methods from an ethical perspective: If we intend to continue with nuclear power production, which technology is most morally desirable? On ...

(WASHINGTON) -- Researchers in the Materials Science and Technology division of the Naval Research Laboratory have recently demonstrated electrical injection, detection and precession of spin accumulation in silicon, the cornerstone material of modern device technology, at temperatures up to 225 degrees Celsius. These results provide the first demonstration that spin accumulation in Si is viable as a basis for practical devices which meet the operating temperatures specified for commercial (85˚C), industrial (100˚C) and military (125˚C) applications. This ...

Pan American Metals of Miami (PAMOM), continues to provide opportunities for investment in the bullion markets. "Precious metals are tried and tested and provide investors with a safe alternative to low interest rates and decreasing currency values," says Bill Hionas, CEO of PAMOM. PAMOM deals in four precious metals; silver, gold, platinum and palladium. The current market is showing dips in all precious metal prices, providing savvy investors with a perfect opportunity to buy. "Long-term predictions remain optimistic for the precious metals market, ...