When most of us think of the perils that present themselves during surgery or hospitalization, we think of surgeons who may make cutting mistakes, or leave objects inside of us. We think of nurses who may give us the wrong medications, or unsanitary conditions that may cause severe infections. But it is entirely possible that the greatest danger lurking within the walls of the hospital is anesthesia. It is an oversimplification to think that anesthesiologists simply render a patient unconscious at the beginning of the surgery, and then wake him up at the end of the surgery. ...

(Edmonton) University of Alberta researchers have determined that the influence of northern peatlands on the prehistorical record of climate change has been over estimated, but the vast northern wetlands must still be watched closely as the planet grapples with its current global warming trend. Northern peatlands, which are a boggy mixture of dead organic material and water, cover more than four million square kilometers. The largest northern peatlands occur in the subarctic regions of Canada and Russia. As peatlands grow they sequester carbon (in the form of carbon dioxide ...

A U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) grass breeder has rediscovered a forage grass that seems just right for today's intensive rotational grazing. A farmer's report of an unusual forage grass led Michael Casler, an Agricultural Research Service (ARS) geneticist at the agency's U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center in Madison, Wis., to identify the grass as meadow fescue. Meadow fescue has been long forgotten, although it was popular after being introduced about 50 to 60 years before tall fescue. ARS is USDA's principal intramural scientific research agency. Casler ...

WASHINGTON, March 15—In the latest twist on optical knots, New York University (NYU) physicists have discovered a new method to create extended and knotted optical traps in three dimensions. This method, which the NYU scientists describe in the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal Optics Express, produces "bright" knots, where the maximum of the light intensity traces out a knotted trajectory in space, for the first time allowing microscopic objects to be trapped along the path of the knot. The method may even, one day, help enable fusion energy as a practical power ...

Reliant Technology, an EMC and IBM storage supplier, is proud to offer the IBM EXP810 storage upgrades for the IBM DS4000 series, including the IBM DS4800, the IBM DS4700, IBM FastT storage, the IBM DS4500, the IBM DS4300 and DS5020 storage systems, giving customers an affordable option for growth. Reliant Technology offers quality refurbished storage and SAN Hardware from IBM, EMC, NetApp Brocade, Data Domain, and HDS. The IBM EXP810, otherwise known as an IBM expansion shelf or disk tray, is a 16 slot disk enclosure that allows IBM storage controllers to be upgraded ...

The researchers are from the National Institutes of Health, collaborating with labs at The Scripps Research Institute and the University of California, San Diego. The finding is published in the March 10 edition of Science Express. "This is an important step forward — it was impossible until recently to know how this type of receptor is switched on by chemical signals like a tiny machine," said Dr. Kenneth A. Jacobson, chief of the Laboratory of Bioorganic Chemistry in NIH's National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) and an author on the ...

The exhaustive audit covered the period September 1, 2010 through February 28, 2011 and was performed by an independent accounting and auditing firm. Completion of the SAS 70 Type II examination indicates that Corporate Colocation Inc. processes, procedures and controls have been formally evaluated and tested by an independent accounting and auditing firm. The examination included the company's controls related to: Physical Security, Environmental Security and Network Monitoring. SAS 70 is designated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as an acceptable ...

A new laser technique has demonstrated that it can measure the interactions between proteins tangled in a cell's membrane and a variety of other biological molecules. These extremely difficult measurements can aid the process of drug discovery. Scientists estimate that about 30 percent of the 7,000 proteins in a human cell reside in the cell's membrane and that these membrane proteins initiate 60 to 70 percent of the signals that control the operation of the cell's molecular machinery. As a result, about half of the drugs currently on the market target membrane proteins. Despite ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Engineering researchers at the University of Michigan have found a way to improve the performance of ferroelectric materials, which have the potential to make memory devices with more storage capacity than magnetic hard drives and faster write speed and longer lifetimes than flash memory. In ferroelectric memory the direction of molecules' electrical polarization serves as a 0 or a 1 bit. An electric field is used to flip the polarization, which is how data is stored. With his colleagues at U-M and collaborators from Cornell University, Penn State ...

DETROIT — Approximately two million adults in the United States meet criteria for pathological gambling, and another four to six million are considered problem gamblers, according to the National Council on Problem Gambling. A study by researchers at Wayne State University reveals that gambling addiction treatment is not one-size-fits-all, but it is difficult to predict which style of treatment is best for the various forms of gambling addiction. According to David M. Ledgerwood, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences at Wayne State University, ...

A model of health care developed by a Queen's University doctor should be studied and copied as a way to reform health care in the U.S. The U.S. is facing a problem of adding 40 million people to its health care system if President Obama's health care reforms are passed and Ontario's Family Health Team Model (FHT) could help ease the burden. "What we are saying is that Ontario's FHT model is a very effective and efficient way of providing health care," says Walter Rosser, professor in the Department of Family Medicine. "It should be part of the solution for health system ...

Smart Software, Inc., provider of industry-leading demand forecasting, planning, and inventory optimization solutions, today announced that Metro-North Railroad (MNR) has purchased Smart's flagship product, SmartForecasts, as part of a company-wide service improvement and inventory reduction program. MNR, the nation's second largest commuter railroad, serves 275,000 passengers each weekday in the New York City metropolitan area, operating 1,193 engines and rail cars over 765 miles of track. It will use SmartForecasts to reduce inventory stocking levels for its 40,000 active ...

BOSTON--Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists report they have shrunk or slowed the growth of notoriously resistant pancreatic tumors in mice, using a drug routinely prescribed for malaria and rheumatoid arthritis. The pre-clinical results, which will appear in the April issue of the journal Genes & Development and is currently published on its web site, have already prompted the opening of a small clinical trial in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest and hardest-to-treat forms of cancer, said the investigators, led by Alec Kimmelman, MD, ...

Misfold an origami swan and the worst that happens is you wind up with an ugly paper duckling. Misfold one of the vital proteins in your body – each of which must be folded in a particular way to perform its function – and the result can be a debilitating neurodegenerative disease such as Alzheimer's or Huntington's. There are no cures for such brain-wasting diseases, but now Stanford researchers have taken an important step that may one day aid in developing therapies for them. They have literally popped the lid off one of the microscopic chambers in which many of life's ...

NwPlaza.com today announced the national availability of NwPlaza Cashback Rewards, an online comparison shopping platform designed to give back to shoppers for purchases on over 50 well-known and trusted merchants. The NwPlaza Cashback Rewards Program, which can be found at http://www.nwplaza.com, helps consumers save money on these shopping categories: - Books - Electronics - Nutrition - Travel - Office supplies - Gift baskets - Clothing - Pet supplies "When I received my Cashback Reward for travel booked through NwPlaza.com, I couldn't believe the amount ...

TEMPE, Ariz – People with diabetes could be helped by a new type of self-monitoring blood glucose sensor being developed by Arizona State University engineers and clinicians at Mayo Clinic in Arizona. More than 23 million people in the United States have diabetes. The disease is the fifth leading cause of death in the United States. It contributes to a higher risk for heart disease, blindness, kidney failure, lower extremity amputations and other chronic conditions. Many people with diabetes suffer due to the difficulty of managing their blood glucose levels. It's recommended ...

NASA's Aqua satellite spotted some strong convection in a recently formed low pressure area that strengthened into Sub-Tropical Storm Arani in the South Atlantic. Arani formed near the coast of Brazil and is now moving away from it. Tropical cyclones in the Atlantic are a rare occurrence and since 2004 there have only been three of them, Arani being the third. On March 14, 2011 at 1553 UTC (11:53 a.m. EST) the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared image of Sub-Tropical Storm Arani moving away from the ...

If the latest theory of Tom Weiler and Chui Man Ho is right, the Large Hadron Collider – the world's largest atom smasher that started regular operation last year – could be the first machine capable causing matter to travel backwards in time. "Our theory is a long shot," admitted Weiler, who is a physics professor at Vanderbilt University, "but it doesn't violate any laws of physics or experimental constraints." One of the major goals of the collider is to find the elusive Higgs boson: the particle that physicists invoke to explain why particles like protons, neutrons ...

Toygaroo.com, an innovative new toy rental company, has launched its online service, which will help families save money and go green by not having to throw out their old toys. Toygaroo, which has a similar format to Netflix, allows families to rent toys for their children and provide a steady rotation of high-quality toys that can grow along with them. In addition, Toygaroo will be featured on the March 25 season premiere of ABC's "Shark Tank," a show that allows entrepreneurs to pitch their business ideas to successful investors. "Any family with children understands ...

Johns Hopkins researchers believe they have uncovered the molecular switch for the secretion of insulin — the hormone that regulates blood sugar — providing for the first time an explanation of this process. In a report published online March 1 in Cell Metabolism, the researchers say the work solves a longtime mystery and may lead to better treatments for type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease. "Before our discovery, the mechanism behind how exactly the insulin-producing beta cells in the islet of Langerhans of the pancreas fail in type 2 diabetes was incompletely ...

Choosing the appropriate way to present risk statistics is key to helping people make well-informed decisions. A new Cochrane Systematic Review found that health professionals and consumers may change their perceptions when the same risks and risk reductions are presented using alternative statistical formats. Risk statistics can be used persuasively to present health interventions in different lights. The different ways of expressing risk can prove confusing and there has been much debate about how to improve the communication of health statistics. For example, you ...

Experts in the travel industry are progressively turning towards Experiential Travel and Transformational Travel to stand out in a much too undifferentiated, fusional and standardised world. A recent survey created by PURE confirms this trend: travel experts provided insightful information on the new challenges that operators in the industry will soon be facing and on how it is going to be all about the "experience". For the complete report, visit http://ww.purelifeexperiences.com/pureinsights.pdf. According to the survey, 96.5% of Experiential suppliers agree that authentic ...

Quinine should no longer be the drug of choice for treating severe malaria, according to an updated systematic review by Cochrane researchers. It is now evident that the antimalarial drug artesunate, which is derived from herbs used in Chinese medicine, is more effective at preventing death in patients with severe malaria. Severe malaria occurs when the disease affects the function of vital organs. It is associated with rarer cerebral malaria, which affects the brain and can lead to long-term disability. More than a million people die each year from severe malaria, the ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Researchers recently tested first-generation x-ray equipment from 1896 and found that it produced radiation doses and exposure times that were vastly higher than those of today's systems, according a study published online and in the May print edition of Radiology. "To my knowledge, nobody had ever done systematic measurements on this equipment, since by the time one had the tools, these systems had been replaced by more sophisticated ones," said the study's lead author, Gerrit J. Kemerink, Ph.D., from Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands. Wilhelm ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Older adults may put themselves at risk by talking on cell phones while crossing the street, researchers report in a new study. The researchers found that adults aged 59 to 81 took significantly longer than college students to cross a simulated street while talking on a mobile phone, and their heightened cautiousness in initiating crossing did nothing to improve their safety. Older adults on cell phones also were more likely to fail to cross in the time allotted for the task. The findings, from researchers at the University of Illinois, appear in the ...