The storm that hit the D.C. metro area on Sunday, July 25 caused widespread damage in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Four people died as a result of the storm; one on a personal watercraft on Chesapeake Bay, two from falling trees, and one from electrocution from a downed power line. The term "acts of God" is sometimes used to describe events such as a tree falling through a house due to a storm, and the term convincingly captures the random, unpredictable nature of these storms. But the destruction these storms cause is not wholly random--often it begins with ...

They're the biggest things on the road: semi-trucks rolling on our nation's highways and interstates at high speeds. Fatigued drivers of the super-sized trucks are disproportionately involved in fatal crashes and accidents involving serious injuries. The National Transportation Safety Board states that "truck driver fatigue may be a contributing factor in as many as 30 to 40 percent of all heavy truck accidents." Fatigue Behind the Wheel of a Big Truck When the driver of an 80,000-pound commercial truck is fatigued or otherwise failing to drive safely, bad things ...

This August, President Obama signed the Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-216) into law. The Act is the first piece of major federal legislation aimed at strengthening airline safety standards passed in the last 20 years. Most notably, the Act requires all commercial airline pilots to have completed a minimum of 1500 flight hours in addition to "appropriate" operational experience before they may begin piloting commercial passenger flights. Prior to the law's enactment, pilots needed to complete as little as 250 hours ...

Kuoni has announced the launch of the Kuoni Holiday Hotlist, a collection of top hotels and tours selected to suit a range of travel needs.  Realising that every traveller wants different things from their individual holiday, Kuoni travel experts have searched the world personally checking and hand-picking the best resorts to make it easier for customers to choose between them. The Hotlist includes the Top 10 Holiday destinations for value, romance, wellness, all-inclusive and culture, in worldwide destinations for travel between October 2010 and June 2011. The Kuoni ...

BrainPOP, the award-winning creator of animated, educational resources, is pleased to announce that its curriculum-based quizzes are now fully integrated with Promethean's learner response systems, ActiVote and ActivExpression. The integration of ActiVote and ActivExpression, the industry-leading learner response system, with BrainPOP's quizzes - including all BrainPOP Jr. (K-3) topics - makes it easier than ever for teachers to improve learning outcomes by providing highly individualized instruction and assessment. Linking BrainPOP's content to learner response devices ...

Department store retailer Debenhams turned the convention of the sale on its head by reducing prices at the start of the Autumn/Winter season, rather than the end of it. The innovative move sees tens of thousands of new season lines reduced by up to 25 per cent, across new to store stock including womenswear, accessories, menswear, childrenswear, home, cosmetics, lingerie, sports and leisure and gifting. The move will no doubt be popular with consumers, with many remaining cautious due to the continuing, challenging economic climate following spending cuts and the ...

The Harley Medical Group has reported demand from male patients for laser rejuvenation treatments is up +93% over the last quarter, across its 30 clinics. Laser rejuvenation treatments now account for 11% of all non-surgical treatments carried out during June, July and August at the UK's largest cosmetic surgery group. More unusual requests received this year are for skin regeneration treatments on receding hairlines, including laser treatment and chemical peels to reduce the appearance of aging sun spots. Laura Marshall, specialist nurse counsellor at The Harley ...

MyBritishColumbiaInfo.com, a member of the award-winning MyDestinationInfo.com travel network, continues to grow in popularity since its first few months of launching on the network and is now adding social media tools to further reach travellers and directly interact with visitors of the website. MyBritishColumbiaInfo.com provides a range of options that assist visitors in connecting directly with businesses and services in British Columbia. Promoting the best of Canada's westernmost province, MyBritishColumbiaInfo.com showcases its travel industry sector from popular ...

Hays Senior Finance reports that while multi-millions of pounds are spent on coaching across the UK, 15% of organisations admit they have absolutely no measurements in place to assess the impact of their programmes. A new survey from Hays Senior Finance, working with expert coach/ mentors LeaderShape, shows that coaching is often undertaken without evaluating the return on investment. The survey also shows that 68% of businesses fail to use coaching directly to address corporate objectives and outcomes are often simply referenced at a personal level. According to ...

One of the most popular online poker portals - Pokersignupcodes.net announced free $50 poker money for new players today. Pokersignupcodes.net is founded and maintained by 4 professional poker players. The CEO of Pokersignupcodes.net, Mr. Mark Williams said in an interview "Being a poker player myself, I know how important it is to build and maintain a bankroll. That's why poker bonuses are so important. I'm happy to announce the latest free $50 offer available at Pokersignupcodes.net." This offer is available on most of the poker sites listed at Pokersignupcodes.net. ...

With the approaching peak months of hiring of seasonal employees by retailers and other organizations, Tracker Corp announces special features included with its Tracker I-9 software to speed and streamline the Form I-9 and E-Verify processing for any number employees. By using its secure web services application programming interface (API), Tracker I-9 integrates seamlessly with the employer's onboarding, applicant tracking, payroll or other system of record. This pre-fills most of the fields on the employees' I-9 forms, saving data entry time. With Tracker I-9's ...

After celebrating its 60th birthday in August, Whataburger pays tribute to its founder, Harmon Dobson, by offering free four-ounce samplings of its famous shakes on Sunday, September 19 from 12-4 p.m. for dine-in customers. Dobson opened his first Whataburger in 1950, a small burger stand located at 2609 Ayers Street in Corpus Christi, offering chocolate shakes for 15 cents to accompany the 25 cent burgers. Today, Whataburger offers thick, delicious shakes at 700+ locations in 10 states. "Harmon Dobson opened his first Whataburger in 1950 and creamy, cold shakes ...

The team at Fly Away Simulation has added a whole new dimension to its flight simulator portal following an exciting announcement by Microsoft. Microsoft has announced that they will be releasing the next in its series of flight simulator packages for PC users, with the next release being called Microsoft Flight. Microsoft Flight is set to become the biggest complete flight simulator package available to PC users. With drastic enhancements in technology, and more powerful machines for the software to run on, the graphics will be like nothing yet seen in a simulation ...

Volcanoes display the awesome power of Nature like few other events. Earlier this year, ash from an Icelandic volcano disrupted air travel throughout much of northern Europe. Yet this recent eruption pales next to the fury of Jupiter's moon Io, the most volcanic body in our solar system. Now that astronomers are finding rocky worlds orbiting distant stars, they're asking the next logical questions: Do any of those worlds have volcanoes? And if so, could we detect them? Work by theorists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics suggests that the answer to the ...

Using high-resolution microscopy, researchers at the National Institutes of Health have shown how insulin prompts fat cells to take in glucose in a rat model. The findings were reported in the Sept. 8 issue of the journal Cell Metabolism. By studying the surface of healthy, live fat cells in rats, researchers were able to understand the process by which cells take in glucose. Next, they plan to observe the fat cells of people with varying degrees of insulin sensitivity, including insulin resistance–considered a precursor to type 2 diabetes [http://diabetes.niddk.nih.gov]. ...

AMES, Iowa -- A new Iowa State University study has found that corn bred to contain increased levels of beta-carotene is a good source of vitamin A. The discovery gives added support to the promise of biofortified corn being developed through conventional plant breeding as an effective tool to combat vitamin A deficiency in developing countries. Beta-carotene is converted in the body to vitamin A. The researchers found that the beta-carotene in the corn was converted to vitamin A at a higher rate than what's predicted for corn, and higher than the rate for beta-carotene ...

Scientists from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have identified dendritic antigen-presenting cells in zebrafish, opening the possibility that the tiny fish could become a new model for studying the complexities of the human immune system. The study, reported in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was headed by David Traver, an associate professor in UCSD's Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, with colleagues in UCSD's Division of Biological Sciences and at the Brazilian National Cancer Institute. ...

September 7, 2010 (4 pm ET) – Nevirapine is widely used to help prevent mother-to-child transmission of the HIV virus. In cases where the infants are nonetheless infected with HIV virus at birth, the standard treatment is to use protease inhibitors (PI) to reduce the amount of virus in their bloodstream. A new study involving 195 infants in South Africa found that children who were treated with PI and then switched to nevirapine were more likely to maintain virus below the detection threshold of the test than infants who continued to receive PI. Results of the study are ...

Chemists at the University of California, San Diego, have identified how a protein that accumulates in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease interferes with the ability of cells to get rid of debris. They also found a natural mechanism by which this protein, amyloid beta, itself may be discarded. Plaques of amyloid are a hallmark of the ailment, but no one is sure exactly how they contribute to catastrophic loss of memory and cognition. Scientists have begun to suspect that amyloid disables a structure called a proteasome, which chops up proteins that cells ...

Too much testosterone can be a deal breaker, according to Sauder School of Business researchers at the University of British Columbia. Their paper, to be published in the INFORMS journal Management Science on September 10, shows that young CEOs with more of the steroidal hormone in their system are more likely to initiate, scrap or resist mergers and acquisitions. The study by Sauder Finance Professors Maurice Levi and Kai Li, and PhD student Feng Zhang, titled "Deal or No Deal: Hormones and the Mergers and Acquisitions Game," shows that testosterone – a hormone associated ...

Fairbanks, Alaska—A University of Alaska Fairbanks fisheries scientist has teamed up with Alaska Power and Telephone to study how a new power-generating turbine affects fish in the Yukon River. So far, the news looks good for the fish. "In the brief testing that we have been able to accomplish, we have no indication that the turbine has killed or even injured any fish," said Andrew Seitz, project leader and assistant professor of fisheries. Alaska Power and Telephone installed the in-stream turbine near Eagle, Alaska this summer. They are testing its effectiveness ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – There's a reason why some sports fans are referred to as "die-hards" – even after they move away, their loyalty to their hometown team endures, according to research by two University of Illinois professors. Scott Tainsky and Monika Stodolska, professors of recreation, sport and tourism, say new residents of a community maintain an attachment to their old team or former city as a way of asserting their identity after they move. "People new to a city don't just adopt their new hometown's team as a way to acclimate themselves in a new community," Tainsky ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A University of Illinois economist says consumers and investors concerned about the specter of deflation looming over an already bleak economic landscape should relax – for the time being, at least. Although the consumer price index is near zero, J. Fred Giertz says we're unlikely to see a prolonged deflationary period like the slump Japan experienced during its "lost decade" of the 1990s. "We're close to zero right now, but we're not below zero," said Giertz, an Institute of Government and Public Affairs economist who compiles a monthly barometer ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Most proteins are shapely. But about one-third of them lack a definitive form, at least that scientists can readily observe. These intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) perform a host of important biological functions, from muscle contraction to other neuronal actions. Yet despite their importance, "We don't know much about them," said Wolfgang Peti, associate professor of medical science and chemistry. "No one really worried about them." Now, Peti, joined by researchers at the University of Toronto and at Brookhaven National Laboratory ...

A new study identifies molecules that can be used to selectively reduce generation of the sticky, neuron-damaging plaques that are the hallmark of the Alzheimer's disease (AD) brain. The research, published by Cell Press in the September 9 issue of the journal Neuron, may lead to the development of effective and safe therapeutics for this currently incurable disease. Previous research has suggested that an alteration in brain levels of amyloid ? proteins (A?) plays a major pathogenic role in AD, a devastating neurodegenerative disorder that causes progressive cognitive ...