A Texas man who lost his entire face in an electrical accident is waiting for a suitable donor - and to realize his wish to feel his daughter's kisses again. The man, Dallas Wiens, awaits a rare face transplant, and his experience demonstrates the achievements that have been made in the treatment and rehabilitation of catastrophic injuries like severe burns. The Electrical Accident Wiens was critically injured while painting a church on a boom lift in Texas. His brother, who was also working at the church, told Wiens that he appeared to have lost control of the lift ...

Research from Confused.com has revealed bad news for drivers looking for modifications from Father Christmas this year. A 20 year old male driver adding alloy wheels to their car could see the price of their premium rise by a massive GBP616*.   For those who are willing to pay the price of modifications, it is worth noting some insurance providers will refuse to cover cars with them and therefore drivers who choose to modify, risk a narrowing of choice. Undisclosed modifications could also lead to the invalidation of a policy.  It's also important to remember that the ...

M&S Money has revealed that as parents begin to feel the pinch of Government cuts, new research shows that grandparents in the UK are providing more than GBP6000 of support to grandchildren. Over the first 18 years of each grandchild's life, grandparents gift on average GBP6165 in either money or presents. Children born after 1st January 2011 will no longer receive a GBP250 Child Trust Fund voucher from the Government, and some families will also be hit by the plans to cut higher rate taxpayers' child benefit from April 2012. But despite these losses to household income, ...

LV= has revealed that over 97,000 Brits have fallen victim to criminals setting up fraudulent direct debits from their accounts, with this number set to escalate over the next three years, according to new research. The findings from the home insurer, conducted by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), show that so far this year 26,000 Brits found fraudsters taking out regular direct debit payments in their name, with an average of GBP540 going missing before they noticed and stopped it. Over the last four years, the number of criminals gaining access ...

Is the Bible filled with scientific and historical errors? Does it repeatedly contradict itself? Indeed, was it written by "pious frauds" centuries after the fact? A new book says the answers are "No", "No", and "No". In his latest book, "No Errors in My Bible, Sorry About Yours", software engineer Mark Johansen takes on, point by point, over 90 claimed errors and contradictions in the Bible. The author applies the same rigorous logic to the Bible that he does to computer projects. He presents detailed rebuttals to each criticism, drawing on sources ranging from the ...

Officially launched in December 2010, Artyii is out to debunk the myth of a "starving artist". Their platform (www.artyii.com) is an "invite-only" community of artists and art professionals consisting of independent art dealers, galleries, interior designers and curators. Their focus is on selling high quality, original, Asian art. With their artist database growing daily, Artyii has been attracting six figure investments from wealthy art angels who recognise the potential in lower priced, original art by emerging artists. Their Facebook page, appropriately titled "Best ...

Wherever Latinos are active, Newhall Laboratories and its La Bella brand are increasingly found to be involved and, with the second annual ROJO fundraising event, a further demonstration of the company's support of Latino causes was delivered in the form of giveaways to over 500 attending guests. Newhall's participation at ROJO helped raise funds for The Wall Las Memorias, a Highland Park-based nonprofit promoting wellness and preventing HIV/AIDS among Latino populations. The La Bella brand, which holds a strong affiliation with Hispanics, and Newhall were a perfect ...

Bsecure Online, Inc., a leader in parental control software for families, today announced that its Bsecure Online v6.16 service secured PC Magazine's highest editorial honor, the Editors' Choice award. In the review, the editorial staff preferred Bsecure Online over all other parental control services, with a score of 4.5 out of 5 points. PC Magazine editors praised Bsecure Online (www.bsecure.com) as "a total winner" for its innovative Web 2.0 features like whole home filtering, social network monitoring, social media and parental alerts. According to PC Magazine's ...

Hundreds of people who developed Tardive Dyskinesia after taking Reglan have filed Reglan lawsuits against makers for hiding potential side effects. Are you one of them? If so, you may be entitled to compensation for your injuries. No Cure For Reglan Side Effects Reglan (made by Avalon Pharmaceuticals and Baxter Healthcare Corporation) and metoclopramide (the generic equivalent of Reglan sold by Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Pliva Inc, Mutual Pharmaceutical Company Inc and Major Pharmaceuticals Inc), are antidopamine drugs which treat nausea, vomiting and heartburn due ...

A Japanese research group led by Prof. Ryusuke Kakigi and Dr. Emi Nakato (National Institute for Physiological Sciences: NIPS) and Prof. Masami K Yamaguchi (Chuo University) found that there was the different hemodynamic response in the temporal cortex between infants' perceptions of their own mother and of female strangers. The presentation of mother's face elicited increased hemodynamic responses in the bilateral temporal cortex. This finding was reported in Early Human Development. Recognition of the mother's face is important in the development of an infant's social ...

Global biodiversity surveys over the past few years have provided increasing evidence that our planet is in the midst of its sixth mass extinction. Plants, animals, and microorganisms are disappearing thousands of times more rapidly than they have for more than 65 million years, and for the first time in Earth's history, human activity is the predominant force behind this mass extinction. As governments and conservation organizations around the world attempt to stem this tide of disappearing species, they face a number of formidable challenges, but perhaps the greatest ...

An infrequently used blood test can effectively identify individuals at increased risk of developing complications associated with chronic kidney disease (CKD), according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society Nephrology (JASN). Use of this simple test might help physicians identify persons with CKD who are at high risk for complications, and identify persons with impaired kidney function at earlier stages of disease. To assess kidney function, doctors most often measure an individual's level of creatinine in the blood. Creatinine ...

Researchers at the University of Iowa have pinpointed the part of the brain that causes people to experience fear – a discovery that could improve treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other anxiety conditions. Published today in the journal Current Biology, the study investigates how the emotion of fear depends on an almond-shaped brain region called the amygdala. The patient in the case study has a rare condition that destroyed her amygdala. UI researchers observed the patient's response to frightening stimuli such as a haunted house, snakes, spiders, ...

The finding offers a powerful take on the connection between the brain and behavior, specifically in the context of situations that would normally evoke fear, the researchers say. "The nature of fear is survival and the amygdala helps us stay alive by avoiding situations, people, or objects that put our life in danger," said Justin Feinstein of the University of Iowa. "Because SM is missing her amygdala, she is also missing the ability to detect and avoid danger in the world. It is quite remarkable that she is still alive." Feinstein says that the average person may ...

Naturally occurring high hemoglobin levels are safe for kidney disease patients on dialysis, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society Nephrology (JASN). The results suggest that there is no need to lower these levels to protect patients' health. The vast majority of individuals who develop advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD) also develop progressive anemia, or red blood cell deficiency, that must be treated with medication. Prior to the approval of such erythropoiesis-stimulating agents in 1989, many dialysis patients ...

Cystatin C, a blood marker of kidney function, proved significantly more accurate than the standard blood marker, creatinine, in predicting serious complications of kidney disease, in a study by researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco. Among adults who were identified as having chronic kidney disease by high creatinine levels, the researchers found that only patients who also had abnormally high levels of cystatin C were at high risk for death, cardiovascular disease, heart failure, or kidney failure. People with ...

A new study provides fascinating insight into the underlying pathology associated with the autoimmune disease, systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). The research, published by Cell Press in the December issue of the journal Immunity, reveals an unexpected role for a key type of immune cell and provides a potential new therapeutic strategy for SLE and, potentially, other autoimmune diseases. SLE is a chronic systemic disease that can affect many regions of the body and, as a result, presents with diverse clinical symptoms. As is characteristic of other autoimmune disease, ...

Until this year, all human-made objects have moved according to the laws of classical mechanics. Back in March, however, a group of researchers designed a gadget that moves in ways that can only be described by quantum mechanics—the set of rules that governs the behavior of tiny things like molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles. In recognition of the conceptual ground their experiment breaks, the ingenuity behind it and its many potential applications, Science has called this discovery the most significant scientific advance of 2010. Physicists Andrew Cleland and ...

SALT LAKE CITY, Dec. 16, 2010 – University of Utah physicists stored information for 112 seconds in what may become the world's tiniest computer memory: magnetic "spins" in the centers or nuclei of atoms. Then the physicists retrieved and read the data electronically – a big step toward using the new kind of memory for both faster conventional and superfast "quantum" computers. "The length of spin memory we observed is more than adequate to create memories for computers," says Christoph Boehme (pronounced Boo-meh), an associate professor ...

The greater susceptibility of humans to certain infectious diseases when compared to other primates could be explained by species-specific changes in immune signaling pathways, a University of Chicago study finds. The first genome-wide, functional comparison of genes regulated by the innate immune system in three primate species discovers potential mediators of differences in disease susceptibility among primates. These findings are published on December 16 in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics. Humans are more sensitive than chimpanzees to the severe effects of certain ...

December 16, 2010 - Scientists have discovered that a class of materials known to convert heat to electricity and vice versa behaves quite unexpectedly at the nanoscale in response to changes in temperature. The discovery - described in the December 17, 2010, issue of Science - is a new "opposite-direction" phase transition that helps explain the strong thermoelectric response of these materials. It may also help scientists identify other useful thermoelectrics, and could further their application in capturing energy lost as heat, for example, in automotive and factory ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Researchers have created a powerful new approach to scholarship, using approximately 4 percent of all books ever published as a digital "fossil record" of human culture. By tracking the frequency with which words appear in books over time, scholars can now precisely quantify a wide variety of cultural and historical trends. The four-year effort, led by Harvard University's Jean-Baptiste Michel and Erez Lieberman Aiden, is described this week in the journal Science. The team, comprising researchers from Harvard, Google, Encyclopaedia Britannica, ...

New genes that have evolved in species as little as one million years ago – a virtual blink in evolutionary history – can be just as essential for life as ancient genes, startling new research has discovered. Evolutionary biologists have long proposed that the genes most important to life are ancient and conserved, handed down from species to species as the "bread and butter" of biology. New genes that arise as species split off from their ancestors were thought to serve less critical roles – the "vinegar" that adds flavor to the core genes. But when nearly 200 new ...

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), fleeting events that last from less than a second to several minutes, are detected by orbiting observatories that can pick up their high energy radiation. Thirteen years ago, however, astronomers discovered a longer-lasting stream of less energetic radiation coming from these violent outbursts, which can last for weeks or even years after the initial explosion. Astronomers call this the burst's afterglow. While all gamma-ray bursts [1] have afterglows that give off X-rays, only about half of them were found to give off visible light, with the ...

Nearly two-thirds of Medicare beneficiaries discharged from hospitals after ischemic stroke die or are readmitted within one year, researchers report in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association. Stroke is the second leading cause of hospital admissions among older adults in the United States, according to American Heart Association/American Stroke Association statistics. Ischemic stroke, which occurs as a result of an obstruction within a blood vessel supplying blood to the brain, accounts for 87 percent of all strokes. Only a few contemporary studies have ...