As the festive season approaches and shoppers gear up for their annual Christmas spending spree, it is noticeable just how much our shopping habits, particularly when it comes to Christmas gifts, have changed in a relatively short period of time. Just 10 years ago online shopping accounted for less than 1% of UK retail sales. This Christmas, however, is expected to see a growth in online sales of 16% to GBP6.4 billion*. Even as the economy continues to emerge from a significant slump the rise and rise of e-commerce shows no sign of slowing. Notonthehighstreet.com, ...

Two area dentists are redefining the phrase "put your money where your mouth is." This Halloween, trick-or-treaters can bring their excess candy to the Boulder Dental Group in Boulder and Gordon West DDS Aesthetic and General Dentistry in Lafayette and receive $1 per pound. The candy collected will be shipped to all of our brave men and women in the armed forces in the Middle East. Dr. Marc Alber and Dr. Gordon West are leading this anti-decay movement by giving away dollars and glowing electric toothbrushes in exchange for the large amounts of excess candy that most kids ...

Pan American Metals of Miami believes that investors buying physical bullion are boosting the cost of silver, a metals analyst told a commodities outlook session at the annual convention of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada. "That is the single most important factor pushing the price up," said Jeffrey Christian, CEO of CPM Group in New York. "They are not a residual actor; they are the single most active participants in the market." Pan American Metals of Miami is in concurrence with this statement. Pan American Metals of Miami predicted the price ...

Boulder, CO, USA - Topics in the November-December 2010 GSA Bulletin include earthquake hazard assessment, tectonics, fault ruptures, paleo-earthquakes, magmatism, landslides, climate modeling, and geochronology. The issue also reports the first combined field and geochronological investigation of the Big Creek Gneiss and the first optically stimulated luminescence dating of the Bolson sand sheet, including its affect on cultural resource management at Fort Bliss. The invited review article finds a new absolute timeline for first Cambrian appearances of skeletal animals. Keywords: ...

AUDIO: Friendly conversations improve mental functioning, but competitive encounters do not. Click here for more information. ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Talking with other people in a friendly way can make it easier to solve common problems, a new University of Michigan study shows. But conversations that are competitive in tone, rather than cooperative, have no cognitive benefits. "This study shows that simply talking to other people, the way you do when you're making friends, can ...

It's a prediction often met with worry: In 20 years, there will be more Americans over 60 than under 15. Some fear that will mean an aging society with an increasing number of decrepit, impaired people and fewer youngsters to care for them while also keeping the country's productivity going. The concerns are valid, but a new Stanford study shows there's a silver lining to the graying of our nation. As we grow older, we tend to become more emotionally stable. And that translates into longer, more productive lives that offer more benefits than problems, said Laura Carstensen, ...

Every day our brains are flooded by stimulation — sounds, sights and smells. At the same time, we are constantly engaged in an inner dialogue, ruminating about the past, musing about the future. Somehow the brain filters all this input instantly, selecting some things for long- or short-term storage, discarding others and focusing in on what's most important at any given instant. How this competition is resolved across multiple sensory and cognitive regions in the brain is not known; nor is it clear how internal thoughts and attention decide what wins in this continual ...

Contrary to expectations, climate change has had a significant effect on mountain plants at low elevations, says a new study led by a UC Davis researcher. The information could guide future conservation efforts at local scales by helping decision makers anticipate biological responses to climate changes, said lead author Susan Harrison, a UC Davis professor of environmental science and policy. Harrison and scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the U.S. Geological Survey examined vegetation changes during the past 60 years in the Siskiyou Mountains ...

Montreal, October 27, 2010 – Mutations in DNA are a normal part of life. Sometimes these variations give rise to unique and beneficial traits including the creation of a new species, other times they cause devastating diseases. We are now another step closer to capturing most of the DNA mutations in humans thanks to an international study cataloging all forms of DNA variation from five populations from Europe, East Asia, South Asia, West Africa and the Americas, in the "1000 Genomes Project". Findings from the first phase of this study have been published in this week's ...

PHILADELPHIA — For the first time, researchers have found a link between long telomeres and an increased risk for colorectal cancer, according to research presented at the American Association for Cancer Research special conference on Colorectal Cancer: Biology to Therapy, held here Oct. 27-30, 2010. Telomeres are small strips of DNA that cover the ends of chromosomes — they are similar to the plastic coverings on shoelace tips. They prevent chromosome tips from fraying during cell division. If the telomeres shorten, then cells age. Shortened telomeres have been associated ...

PHILADELPHIA — Researchers are one step closer to providing a new therapy for colon cancer, after findings revealed that a small molecule focal adhesion kinase (FAK) inhibitor known as Y15 effectively blocked cell viability, promoted detachment and apoptosis, and decreased tumor growth in mice. These findings were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research special conference on Colorectal Cancer: Biology to Therapy, held Oct. 27-30, 2010. "We believe that these types of novel small molecule inhibitors may be the future direction for cancer therapy," said ...

PHILADELPHIA — A variant site linked to poor outcome in advanced colorectal cancer has now been found to predict improved prognosis in early stages of cancer, according to research presented at the American Association for Cancer Research special conference on Colorectal Cancer: Biology to Therapy, held Oct. 27-30, 2010. Researchers said they don't know why this variant site, a microRNA binding site that should allow appropriate regulation of the KRAS gene, exhibited a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde duality. Further study could show that patients with this miRNA variant might ...

PHILADELPHIA — Researchers have identified two small-molecule inhibitors that effectively targeted the focal adhesion kinase (FAK), an enzyme present in certain cancers that helps tumors thrive and survive. If the drugs are developed into oral therapeutic agents in the future, they could open up the potential for more effective and less toxic cancer therapies, according to research presented at The American Association for Cancer Research special conference on Colorectal Cancer: Biology to Therapy, held Oct. 27-30, 2010. "It is well known that FAK is overexpressed ...

PHILADELPHIA — University of Pittsburgh researchers have devised a three-dimensional system in laboratory culture that mimics the growth patterns of colon cancer stem cells in patients. Their findings were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research special conference on Colorectal Cancer: Biology to Therapy, held Oct. 27-30, 2010. The assay, which uses green fluorescent "reporter" proteins to watch the process of stem cell differentiation, is designed to understand how these cancer stem cells behave, and to identify and test therapies that could halt production ...

A highly skillful and delicate method of sharpening and retouching stone artifacts by prehistoric people appears to have been developed at least 75,000 years ago, more than 50,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder. The new findings show that the technique, known as pressure flaking, took place at Blombos Cave in South Africa during the Middle Stone Age by anatomically modern humans and involved the heating of silcrete -- quartz grains cemented by silica -- used to make tools. Pressure flaking ...

Nearly one in four stars like the sun could have Earth-size planets, according to a University of California, Berkeley, study of nearby solar-mass stars. UC Berkeley astronomers Andrew Howard and Geoffrey Marcy chose 166 G and K stars within 80 light years of Earth and observed them with the powerful Keck telescope for five years in order to determine the number, mass and orbital distance of any of the stars' planets. The sun is the best known of the G stars, which are yellow, while K-type dwarfs are slightly smaller, orange-red stars. The researchers found increasing ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Mad Cow disease and its human variant Creutzfeldt—Jakob disease, which are incurable and fatal, have been on a welcome hiatus from the news for years, but because mammals remain as vulnerable as ever to infectious diseases caused by enigmatic proteins called prions, scientists have taken no respite of their own. In the Oct. 29 edition of the journal Science, researchers at Brown University report a key new insight into how prion proteins — the infectious agents — become transmissible: In yeast at least, it is the size of prion complexes, ...

Elderly patients with kidney failure get kidney transplants more often than they did a decade ago, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN). The results suggest that the chances of receiving a kidney transplant are better than ever for an older patient who needs one. Kidney failure afflicts nearly half a million individuals in the United States, and 48% of sufferers are 60 years of age or older. Kidney disease patients who obtain a transplant live longer than those that remain on dialysis. ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- In a study of mice with lymphoma, MIT biologists have discovered that a small number of cancer cells escape chemotherapy by hiding out in the thymus, an organ where immune cells mature. Within the thymus, the cancer cells are bathed in growth factors that protect them from the drugs' effects. Those cells are likely the source of relapsed tumors, said Michael Hemann, MIT assistant professor of biology, who led the study. The researchers plan to soon begin tests, in mice, of drugs that interfere with one of those protective factors. Those drugs were ...

Many times, cancer patients respond very well to chemotherapy initially only to have their disease return, sometimes years later. Now researchers reporting in the October 29th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, have new insight into the factors that allow some lingering tumor cells to resist treatment and to seed that kind of resurgence. Contrary to expectations, it appears that the answer doesn't necessarily lie in the cancerous cells themselves. The evidence based on studies of mice with lymphoma shows that cues coming from healthy cells in response ...

The lower the birth weight, the greater the chance of poor growth rate in children with chronic kidney disease (CKD), according to a new study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN). In the general population, low birth weight is not an important cause of poor growth and short stature. To determine whether low birth weight is a risk factor for poor growth in children with CKD, Larry Greenbaum, MD, PhD (Emory University and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, Atlanta, GA) and his colleagues analyzed results from ...

PASADENA, Calif.—A team of scientists led by researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have fully characterized a key chemical reaction that affects the formation of pollutants in smoggy air. The findings suggest that in the most polluted parts of Los Angeles—and on the most polluted days in those areas—current models are underestimating ozone levels, by between 5 to 10 percent. The results—published in this week's issue of the journal Science—are likely to have "a small but significant impact on the predictions ...

NEW YORK, October 28, 2010 – An international study led by researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center has identified genetic variants in women with BRCA2 mutations that may increase or decrease their risk of developing breast cancer. The study was published today online in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics. The findings of the study suggest that genetic variants on chromosomes 10 and 20 may modify risk for breast cancer among women with a BRCA2 mutation. Researchers analyzed DNA samples from 6,272 women with BRCA2 mutations in a two-stage genome-wide ...

White blood cells called neutrophils are part of the body's first line of defense against bacterial infection. Neutrophils are recruited from the bloodstream to infected tissues where they release powerful chemicals that kill bacteria and amplify the immune response. These cells function as first responders at the scene of infection and often have a short life span. As a result, new neutrophils are produced continuously from stem cells in the bone marrow. Previous research has suggested that regulation of neutrophil production is a complex and carefully controlled process. "We ...

SEATTLE – An international team of researchers led by an investigator from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has made a second critical advance in determining the cause of a common form of muscular dystrophy known as facioscapulohumeral dystrophy, or FSHD. In August 2010 the group published a landmark study that established a new and unifying model for the cause of FSHD. The current work, published Oct. 28 in PLoS Genetics, shows that the disease is caused by the inefficient suppression of a gene that is normally expressed only in early development. The work will ...