Sadler's Smokehouse, Ltd., North America's leader in premium, pit-smoked meats, will offer barbecue enthusiasts free samples of its famous pit-smoked brisket at the 31st annual American Royal Barbecue on October 1 - 3. The American Royal Barbecue is the opening event of the American Royal and the largest barbecue competition in the world. Located on more than 20 acres in Kansas City's historic Stockyards District, nearly 500 teams compete in four individual barbecue contests. Sadler's Smokehouse Brisket recently earned the Kansas City Barbeque Society seal of approval, ...

Boston, MA – The 2010 Annual Meeting & OTO EXPO of the American Academy of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery Foundation (AAO-HNSF), the largest meeting of ear, nose, and throat doctors in the world, will convene September 26-29, 2010, in Boston, MA. Featuring more than 305 scientific research sessions, 594 posters, and several hundred instruction course hours for attendees, the annual meeting is a unique opportunity for journalists from around the world to cover breaking science and medical news. Reporters will have access to the latest research and clinical advances ...

Effect of Waiting Room Time on Ambulatory Satisfaction Presenters: Clifford Bleustein, MD, MBA; Eduardas Valaitis, PhD; Raleigh Jones, MD, MBA Time: 9:38 am Location: Room 259AB Boston, MA – Self-reported patient wait times alone significantly impacts all measured aspects of the ambulatory patient experience, as seen in survey responses. In a presentation at the 2010 AAO-HNSF Annual Meeting & OTO EXPO in Boston, researchers conducted a survey between January 1 and December 31, 2008 for the University of Kentucky Health System. Data collected across 12 questions were ...

DENVER — A new test could reliably detect early increases in prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels — a biomarker commonly used to measure the recurrence of prostate cancer — in men who have undergone prostate cancer-treating surgery. Earlier detection of these rising levels would allow men with cancer recurrence to undergo earlier, more effective treatment for potentially better outcomes. Data measuring the efficacy of this new test were presented at the Fourth AACR International Conference on Molecular Diagnostics in Cancer Therapeutic Development. "AccuPSA is a ...

DENVER — A test based on a panel of microRNAs under development by Rosetta Genomics, Ltd., in Rehovot, Israel, may allow for more precise diagnosis and better targeted therapy for patients with lung cancer. Tina B. Edmonston, M.D., director of the clinical laboratory at Rosetta Genomics, Inc., presented data on the assay at the Fourth AACR International Conference on Molecular Diagnostics in Cancer Therapeutic Development, held here. Lung cancers are traditionally divided into two main groups, either neuroendocrine or non-small cell lung cancer. In 20 to 30 percent ...

DENVER — A new microRNA (miRNA) screening assay detected the majority of early-stage colorectal cancers with good specificity and sensitivity. "Our test has the potential to be safe, cheap, robust, accurate and of little or no inconvenience to the individual, and could, therefore, easily be integrated into national screening programs as part of an annual checkup," said Søren Jensby Nielsen, Ph.D., scientific manager, Diagnostic Product Development, Exiqon A/S. Nielsen presented the results at the Fourth AACR International Conference on Molecular Diagnostics in Cancer ...

DENVER — Researchers have identified a novel, dual-platform technology, the On-Q-ity Circulating Cancer Capture and Characterization Chip (C5), which they believe is more efficient than the commonly used single-platform device in identifying circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in breast cancer. Analyzing CTCs in blood can identify cancer cells and cancer cell mutations to provide physicians with methods for improved cancer diagnosis, prognosis and treatment. In order to efficiently capture CTCs, two capture mechanisms were used to trap CTCs by antibody affinity and size. ...

ST. PAUL, Minn. – New research shows that an intravenous (IV) treatment may cut a person's risk of dying from bacterial meningitis. The research is published in the September 29, 2010, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The treatment is called dexamethasone. "Using this treatment in people infected with meningitis has been under debate because in a few large studies it was shown to be ineffective," said study author Diederik van de Beek, MD, PhD, with the Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands ...

In two landmark studies published today in the journal Drug Testing and Analysis (DTA), UK and Swiss research teams reveal two techniques proven to identify dissolved cocaine in bottles of wine or rum. These tools will allow customs officials to quickly identify bottles being used to smuggle cocaine, without the need to open or disturb the container. Cocaine is among the most common drugs of abuse and a large number of imaginative techniques of smuggling cocaine through border controls have been reported in recent years. One of the latest techniques involves smuggling ...

Cold Spring Harbor, NY -- The story of the double helix's discovery has a few new twists. A new primary source -- a never-before-read stack of letters to and from Francis Crick, and other historical materials dating from the years 1950-76 -- has been uncovered by two professors at the Watson School of Biological Sciences at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). The letters both confirm and extend current knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the epoch-making discovery of DNA's elegant double-helical structure, for which Crick, James D. Watson (now CSHL's chancellor ...

### Grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration supported the immunotherapy study. Grants from the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, supported the study of intermediate-risk neuroblastoma. Both studies were conducted through the Children’s Oncology Group. “Anti-GD2 Antibody with GM-CSF, Interleukin-2 and Isotretinoin for Neuroblastoma,” and “Outcome after Reduced Chemotherapy for Intermediate Risk Neuroblastoma,” New England Journal of Medicine, Sept. 30, 2010. About The Children’s Hospital ...

EDITOR'S NOTE: Images to accompany this story are available at http://www.news.wisc.edu/newsphotos/river-crisis.html END ...

Multiple environmental stressors, such as agricultural runoff, pollution and invasive species, threaten rivers that serve 80 percent of the world's population, around 5 billion people, according to researchers from The City College (CCNY) of The City University of New York (CUNY), University of Wisconsin and seven other institutions. These same stressors endanger the biodiversity of 65 percent of the world's river habitats and put thousands of aquatic wildlife species at risk. The findings, reported in the September 30 issue of Nature, come from the first global-scale ...

HOUSTON -- (Sept. 29, 2010) -- A Rice University-led team of physicists is reporting the first success in a three-year effort to build a precision simulator for superconductors using a grid of intersecting laser beams and ultracold atomic gas. The research appears this week in the journal Nature. Using lithium atoms cooled to within a few billionths of a degree of absolute zero and loaded into optical tubes, the researchers created a precise analog of a one-dimensional superconducting wire. Because the atoms in the experiment are so cold, they behave according to the ...

CHAPEL HILL – An international team of researchers, including a number from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill schools of medicine and public health, have discovered hundreds of genes that influence human height. Their findings confirm that the combination of a large number of genes in any given individual, rather than a simple "tall" gene or "short" gene, helps to determine a person's stature. It also points the way to future studies exploring how these genes combine into biological pathways to impact human growth. "While we haven't explained all of the ...

EDITOR'S NOTE: An image and video are available at http://www.news.wisc.edu/newsphotos/macaque-mirror.html The study, with several videos of the monkeys, appears in today's PLoS One, at http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0012865 END ...

New discoveries about the immune defenses of rare HIV patients who produce antibodies that prevent infection suggest a novel direction for designing new vaccines. Researchers at Rockefeller University and colleagues have now made two fundamental discoveries about the so called broadly neutralizing anti-HIV antibodies, which effectively keep the virus at bay. By detailing the molecular workings of a proven immune response, the researchers hope their work will ultimately enable them to similarly arm those who are not equipped with this exceptional immunological firepower. ...

Close relatives of women diagnosed with breast cancer before the age of 35 years are at an increased risk of developing other cancers, according to a University of Melbourne study, published in the British Journal of Cancer today. Professor John Hopper, Director of Research from the Centre for Molecular, Environmental, Genetic and Analytic Epidemiology at the University of Melbourne, Australia, a lead investigator in the study, said these are surprising and novel findings which could be pointing to the existence of a new cancer genetic syndrome. "The results suggest ...

A high protein diet during development primes the body to react unhealthily to future food binges. A study on juvenile rats, published in BioMed Central's open access journal Nutrition and Metabolism, suggests that lasting changes result from altering the composition of the first solid food that is consumed throughout growth into early adulthood. Raylene Reimer worked with a team of researchers from the University of Calgary, Canada, to carry out the weaning experiments in 18 litters of rats. Six litters were placed on each of three diets: high prebiotic fiber, high ...

SANTA CRUZ, CA--A team of planet hunters led by astronomers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington has announced the discovery of an Earth-sized planet (three times the mass of Earth) orbiting a nearby star at a distance that places it squarely in the middle of the star's "habitable zone," where liquid water could exist on the planet's surface. If confirmed, this would be the most Earth-like exoplanet yet discovered and the first strong case for a potentially habitable one. To astronomers, a "potentially habitable" planet ...

Boston, Mass. -- An international collaboration of more than 200 institutions, led by researchers at Children's Hospital Boston, the Broad Institute, and a half-dozen other institutions in Europe and North America, has identified hundreds of genetic variants that together account for about 10 percent of the inherited variation of height among people. Known as the GIANT (Genetic Investigation of ANthropometric Traits) Consortium, the collaboration pooled data from more than 180,000 individuals, including millions of genetic results from each of 46 separate studies in the ...

Washington, D.C. Astronomers have found a new, potentially habitable Earth-sized planet. It is one of two new planets discovered around the star Gliese 581, some 20 light years away. The planet, Gliese 581g, is located in a "habitable zone"—a distance from the star where the planet receives just the right amount of stellar energy to maintain liquid water at or near the planet's surface. The 11- year study, published in the Astrophysical Journal and posted online at arXiv.org, suggests that the fraction of stars in the Milky Way harboring potentially habitable planets could ...

CHICAGO --- A phase II clinical trial of the first new type of drug for musculoskeletal pain since aspirin shows that it significantly reduces knee pain in osteoarthritis, the most common osteoarthritis pain, according to new research from Northwestern Medicine. However, phase III trials of that drug, tanezumab, have been placed on clinical hold after 16 out of several thousand participants in the new trial developed progressively worsening arthritis and bone changes that required total joint replacements. "The bottom line is this is a very effective drug for relieving ...

September 29, 2010 ─ (BRONX, NY) ─ A seemingly simple inherited trait – height – springs from hundreds of genetic causes, according to an international team of scientists. Robert Kaplan, Ph.D., professor of epidemiology & population health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, is co-author of a paper on the group's findings published in the September 29 online edition of Nature. The study identified hundreds of gene variants in at least 180 locations that influence adult height. These results prove that with internet technology it ...

New Haven, Conn.—The rules that govern the world of the very small, quantum mechanics, are known for being bizarre. One of the strangest tenets is something called quantum entanglement, in which two or more objects (such as particles of light, called photons) become inextricably linked, so that measuring certain properties of one object reveals information about the other(s), even if they are separated by thousands of miles. Einstein found the consequences of entanglement so unpalatable he famously dubbed it "spooky action at a distance." Now a team led by Yale researchers ...