Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently announced the preliminary findings of a months-long review of the national foreclosure crisis by federal banking regulators: there is some evidence of lax procedural compliance by large lenders pursuing foreclosures. This investigation brought to light allegations that some of the nation's largest financial institutions -- Bank of America and GMAC Mortgage among them -- didn't actually investigate the circumstances of foreclosures before they were processed, potentially leading to wrongful evictions of some families and the ...

According to the New York Times, blacks and Latinos were nine times as likely as whites to be stopped by New York City Police Officers in 2009. But once stopped, they were no more likely than any other demographic to be arrested. This disparate rate of stop and frisks has not only instigated a lawsuit against the Police Department but ignited public debate over current stop laws in New York City. Stop-and-Frisk Statistics In 2009, the New York Times indicates that New York City police utilized stop and frisk procedures (procedures in which an officer "pats down" a ...

2entertain has announced that 'An Idiot Abroad' will be released on DVD in time for customers to pick it up for Christmas. Straight from its debut on Sky 1, An Idiot Abroad follows the star of The Ricky Gervais Show, Karl Pilkington, as he undertakes a journey of a lifetime. British comedy legends Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant throw down the gauntlet to send Karl around the globe to force him out of his comfort zone. Stephen wants the experience to broaden Karl's mind and change his outlook on the world but Ricky wants Karl to hate every minute of it for his own ...

Hotter Shoes has found out in a new survey that fashion conscious women go to such extreme lengths to wear trendy shoes that one in ten women admits they have had to receive medical attention or even be hospitalised because of their shoes. Nearly half of women have twisted their ankle because of their footwear and two thirds admit to wearing shoes that have caused them injury. The top injuries caused by shoes were broken ankles, twisted knees, infected blisters, bunions and torn tendons. The study into 3,000 women's footwear choices was conducted by Hotter Shoes, ...

To help the Hanahan Hawks Football team prepare for their lower state playoffs match up with Lake City tonight, Coastal Kids Dental is providing and serving the pre-game meal. The Hanahan Hawks (8-3) will host Lake City (9-2) tonight at 7:30pm in round 2 of the South Carolina High School Class AA playoffs. "We are excited about donating and serving the Hanahan Hawks their pre-game meal," says Dr. Isabel, lead Pediatric Dentist at Coastal Kids Dental. "Many of the players and their families are patients of our practice. It's so fun to give back and support the players ...

HTM (Herald Towers Matrix) was developed for Manhattan-based JEMB Realty and allows personnel in leasing offices to easily manage their inventory, quickly identifying available apartments, apartments up for lease or renewal, vacancies and so on. It is also a mobile application, allowing sales and leasing agents to view real time status on their handheld devices. Mr. Louis Jerome, principle and co-founder of JEMB Realty Corp., stated: "This system has literally revolutionized the way we conduct our business, by streamlining information about our apartments in real time ...

NEW YORK (Nov. 11, 2010) -- The liver's unique ability among organs to regenerate itself has been little understood. Now Weill Cornell Medical College scientists have shed light on how the liver restores itself by demonstrating that endothelial cells -- the cells that form the lining of blood vessels -- play a key role. The results of their study are published today in the online edition of the journal Nature, with a companion study in the Oct. 24 issue of Nature Cell Biology describing how endothelial cells are activated to initiate organ regeneration. It has long ...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A new X-ray imaging capability has taken pictures of a critical instability at the heart of Sandia's huge Z accelerator. The effort may help remove a major impediment in the worldwide, multidecade, multibillion dollar effort to harness nuclear fusion to generate electrical power from sea water. "These are the first controlled measurements of the growth of magneto-Rayleigh-Taylor [MRT] instabilities" in fast Z-pinches, said project lead Daniel Sinars. MRT instabilities are spoilers that arise wherever electromagnetic forces are used to contract (pinch) ...

The American Heart Association should develop a comprehensive hospital certification program with policies and evidence-based criteria for cardiovascular disease and stroke care in the United States, according to an American Heart Association Presidential Advisory published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. "Our goal is to continue to reduce deaths from cardiovascular disease and stroke by 20 percent by 2020," said Ralph Sacco, M.D., M.S., president of the American Heart Association and co-author of the advisory. "To do so we have to make sure ...

Patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) may blame their daytime difficulties on simple sleepiness, but new research suggests that their brains may be to blame. Specifically, their cognitive challenges may be caused by structural deficits in gray matter, brought on by the intermittent oxygen deprivation that comes with OSA. The good news is that these deficits may be partially or fully reversible with early detection and treatment, according to Italian researchers. "OSA patients demonstrate several neuropsychological impairments, but current knowledge of the brain structures ...

ESA GlobSnow project led by the Finnish Meteorological Institute uses satellites to produce up-to-date information on global snow cover. The new database gives fresh information on the snow situation right after a snowfall. Gathering this information was not possible before when only land-based observations were available. European Space Agency´s (ESA) GlobSnow project, led by the Finnish Meteorological Institute, can map the extent and volume of snow cover especially on the northern hemisphere. Launched at the beginning of November, the service provides almost real-time ...

The brain, a complex network The human brain is composed of 100 billion individual nerve cells which communicate with each other via a complex network of connections. Errors in communications of these cells are often at the basis of brain and nerve diseases such as Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis. In the search for possible solutions to these diseases, one important aspect is to understand how the connections between nerve cells develop. Drosophila as a model organism The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is an important, low-cost model organism with 60% genetic ...

Powdery mildew is a fungus that infects both crop and ornamental plants. Each year, powdery mildew and other plant pathogens cause immense crop loss. Despite decades of intense research, little is known of the plant molecules that allow fungal hyphae to invade the host's epidermal cells. A European research group lead by Ueli Grossniklaus, a plant geneticist at the University of Zurich, now published a study in Science shedding a new light on mildew susceptibility in plants and its surprising link to reproduction. Investigating mildew susceptibility in plants is not really ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Urinary tract infections are a painful, recurring problem for millions of women. They are also getting more dangerous as bacteria develop resistance to the most common treatments. Scientists from the University of Michigan have moved one step closer to a vaccine that could prevent a majority of urinary tract infections, which are caused by E. coli bacteria. Using a genetic technique rarely used to look at infections in human hosts, the researchers studied how the E. coli bacteria operate and discovered key differences between how the bacteria's genes ...

History's first recognized influenza pandemic originated in Asia and rapidly spread to other continents 500 years ago, in the summer of 1510. A new commentary by researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, explores the 1510 pandemic and what we have learned since then about preventing, controlling and treating influenza. Prior to that time, regional and local epidemics of respiratory infectious diseases and pneumonia had occurred, but no outbreaks had yet been recorded on a worldwide scale. The 1510 ...

A collaboration between a physician-researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and a mathematician from Harvard University has led to development of a mathematical model reflecting how red blood cells change in size and hemoglobin content during their four-month lifespan. In their report published online in PNAS Early Edition, John Higgins, MD, MGH Center for Systems Biology and Department of Pathology, and L. Mahadevan, PhD, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), also describe how their model may be used to provide valuable clinical information. "This ...

Geneva, Switzerland, 12 November 2010 – Allosteric modulation company Addex Pharmaceuticals (SIX:ADXN) announced today that data on a total of nine therapeutic programs will be presented during Society for Neuroscience 2010 (November 13-17, San Diego, USA), highlighting the strength of its allosteric modulation technology platform. The data being presented cover multiple receptor types and therapeutic areas, including Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, anxiety, Alzheimer's disease and depression. "The data generated by Addex and our partners, Ortho-McNeil-Janssen and ...

COLLEGE STATION -- A virus that normally deforms or kills plants like tomatoes, peppers and eggplants isn't all bad: A gene within the virus has been found useful for allowing foreign genes to be introduced into a plant without harmful effects, according to Texas AgriLife Research scientists. The technology ultimately could lead the way toward a "cheap, green alternative" for pharmaceutical development, said Dr. Herman Scholthof, AgriLife Research virologist. Scholthof and colleague Drs. Yi-Cheng Hsieh and Veria Alvarado collaborated with scientists at the John Innes ...

Chemical reactions are happening all over the place all the time--on the sun, on the Earth and in our bodies. In many cases, enzymes help make these reactions occur. One family of enzymes, called cytochrome P450s (P450), is important because they help us eliminate toxins. We know P450s are important to life of all kinds because they have been found in animals, plants, fungi and bacteria, but they are of special interest to humans because they are responsible for metabolism of about 75 percent of known pharmaceuticals. "The reactions that P450s perform to detoxify a ...

PHILADELPHIA - The potential for harmful side effects associated with anti-psychotic medications for treating schizophrenia is a frustration for mental-health professionals who must balance this with the positive benefits of drugs. For example, the issue of the antipsychotic drug ziprasidone lengthening the QTc interval, a possible indicator of life-threatening heart arrhythmias, has demanded much attention among clinicians since the drug was introduced in 2001. Ziprasidone (marketed as Geodon and Zeldox by Pfizer Inc.) was the fifth second-generation anti-psychotic ...

The impact of 30 years of HIV on an area once described as the epicentre of the African AIDS epidemic will be discussed at a lecture hosted by the University of East Anglia (UEA) in London this month. Progressive declines in agricultural production, with dire consequences for rural livelihoods, were originally predicted as a result of the long-term effects of HIV and AIDS in central and south western Uganda. However, recent research has shown that those forecasts have not come true. The lecture "30 years into the HIV epidemic in South West Uganda and the rural economy ...

Amsterdam, The Netherlands and San Antonio, TX, USA, November 12, 2010 – There is growing global concern regarding the potential neurotoxicity of anesthetics. Biophysical and animal model studies have identified molecular changes simulating Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology after exposure to inhaled anesthetics. This research has alerted anesthesiologists, neuropsychologists, surgeons and other clinicians to initiate in-depth clinical research on the role of anesthetics in post operative cognitive decline. AD is a devastating disease commonly found in elderly persons ...

Catastrophic drought is on the near-term horizon for the capital city of Bolivia, according to new research into the historical ecology of the Andes. If temperatures rise more than 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius (3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit) above those of modern times, parts of Peru and Bolivia will become a desert-like setting. The change would be disastrous for the water supply and agricultural capacity of the two million inhabitants of La Paz, Bolivia's capital city, scientists say. The results, derived from research funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and ...

James "Jimmy" Armstrong hadn't missed a "Mac" in 28 years. At 44, he's one of the youngest "goats" in the Chicago Yacht Club. Sailors receive the designation of "goat" once they've completed 20 or more "Macs", the 333-mile boat race from Chicago to Mackinac, Mich. Armstrong has sailed the race every year since he was 16. But, he wasn't among the sailors this past July. Instead, he was in intensive care awaiting heart transplant following a harrowing experience spurred by severe case of myocarditis—a little-known condition causing inflammation of the heart muscle. "I ...

CHAPEL HILL – An imbalance of salt and water in patients with cystic fibrosis makes their lungs clog up with sticky mucus that is prone to infection. The cause of the offending imbalance is a well-known genetic error, one that blocks the molecular expressway for tiny chloride ions to move across the surface of the lungs. But how does that same gene mutation upset a parallel roadway controlling the flow of the other component of salt, sodium ions? Now, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have found the answer, demonstrating ...