A mental disorder not yet widely recognized by the medical community is at the center of a debate among family law attorneys and mental health professionals alike. This disorder, known as "parental alienation syndrome" sometimes called "hostile aggressive parenting", involves the alleged brainwashing of a child by one parent in order to turn the child against the other parent. When a child succumbs to the negative influences of one parent, he or she will often see the other parent as an enemy or a source of fear. This situation commonly occurs in hotly contested custody ...

Forget oil. The fight in California is over a much more precious, finite resource: water. The latest chapter in California's water wars pits the state's agricultural industry against environmentalists and the fishing industry as the state tries to determine who should have priority: farmers or fish. A popular rallying cry has been "people over fish" by those who believe that the farmers' interests should come first. Farms in the Central Valley are responsible for producing more than half of the country's fruit, vegetables and nuts. Recent droughts combined with cutbacks ...

Streamline.net, a leading UK provider of web hosting, has revealed two sets of new research that shows a worrying number of firms could be taking their foot off the Internet pedal.  The company's latest 'Small Business Bytes Survey' of 2400 UK firms* finds that only 10 per cent of small firms are updating their websites on a daily basis with  1 in 3 firms admitting that updates are being done 'infrequently'.  A further study of 400 UK firms** finds that over half of Britain's small companies are now building and maintaining their website themselves.  However, the data ...

Burton's Black Label has executed 4 classic white shirts that are the ideal accompaniment to the perfect black suit, giving a new dimension to mix and match shopping. These limited edition shirts are all made from luxury cotton and have specific collar formations to suit every man and every occasion. To identify this key shape more easily, each shirt has been given the name of a London borough that epitomizes its cool fashion credentials. The Hoxton is a slim fit shirt, with its penny collar and a single button cuff is perfect underneath a slim fit suit that has a ...

Experian has announced the launch of a new service specifically aimed at protecting consumers against the growing threat of ID fraud: ProtectMyID. ProtectMyID offers a comprehensive online service to allow consumers to keep track of where their personal information is being used to secure credit. The launch of the service follows research by Experian that shows identity fraud is on the increase and is more widespread than ever. Experian revealed that the number of identity fraud victims who sought help from the company last year leapt by nearly 20% compared to the year ...

Topman Design has announced it is to showcase its second consecutive solo show at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden on September 22nd as part of the ever growing menswear day at London Fashion Week. Until last season when the debut solo show was held at the official British Fashion Council (BFC) Tents, Topman Design had shown on-schedule as part of the increasingly successful MAN event which Topman set up alongside Fashion East eleven seasons ago. This season, Topman Design will share the Royal Opera House venue with MAN, whose show will follow Topman Design later ...

BestWeddingAway has announced that it will be at the National Wedding Show in Birmingham from 8th to 10th October 2010. BestWeddingAway will be at Stand B15 and intends to make it a great opportunity for future brides to come and meet the team and have a chat about ideas and locations for their wedding in Italy. BestWeddingAway currently has five Moods; Verona, Venice, Lake Garda, South Tyrol and In Vino Veritas, however in the next few weeks it will also be launching a sixth - Tuscany. Brides that come over to introduce themselves and have a chat will have the opportunity ...

Saxo Bank, the specialist in online trading and investment, has launched two new European morning publications entitled the 'Morning Kickoff @ Saxo Bank' and the 'Saxo Bank Charts of the Day' which will be published through the Tradingfloor.com site. The trading Morning Kickoff @ Saxo Bank will deliver analysis and trading commentary on both short-term intraday events and the longer-term trends which are important to traders dealing Forex - foreign exchange or equity markets. The Saxo Bank Charts of the Day, on the other hand, provides a snapshot of key graphical ...

The car that drew international attention and broke eBay records with over 10 million visitors to its auction page in May 2005 is now going to be put back on the auction block to benefit Action against Hunger. The Auction will be listed on eBay by GoldenPalace.com, the winners of the now famous collectible. The winning bidder will be driven in the famous pope car for one hour, and be the first to do so since 2005. The Ride will take place on Saturday September 18th, near Westminster Cathedral, London England. In what was easily one of the most phenomenal events ...

VIDEO: Damon Centola, assistant professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, discusses his research on how social networks affect health behaviors. Click here for more information. CAMBRIDGE, Mass.— Scientists have long thought that social networks, which features many distant connections, or "long ties," produces large-scale changes most quickly. But in a new study, Damon Centola, an assistant professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, has reached a different conclusion: ...

A chemical that rid mice of malaria-causing parasites after a single oral dose may eventually become a new malaria drug if further tests in animals and people uphold the promise of early findings. The compound, NITD609, was developed by an international team of researchers including Elizabeth A. Winzeler, Ph.D., a grantee of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. "Although significant progress has been made in controlling malaria, the disease still kills nearly 1 million people every year, mostly ...

Fish oil is touted for its anti-inflammatory and anti-diabetic benefits, but scientist weren't sure how the omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil work. Now, according to a report in the September 3rd issue of the journal Cell, scientists have nailed how omega-3 fatty acids both shut down inflammation and reverse diabetes in obese mice. Omega-3s alleviate inflammation by acting on a receptor (GPR120) found in fat tissue and on inflammatory immune cells called macrophages, studies in mice show. "Omega-3s are very potent activators of GPR120 on macrophages -- more potent than ...

LA JOLLA, CA – August 30, 2010 –– An international team led by scientists from The Scripps Research Institute, the Swiss Tropical Institute, the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation and the Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases has discovered a promising new drug candidate that represents a new class of drug to treat malaria. Clinical trials for the compound are planned for later this year. The research was published on September 3, 2010, in the prestigious journal Science. "We're very excited by the new compound," said Elizabeth Winzeler, a Scripps ...

Athens, Ga. – Stem cells might be thought of as trunks in the tree of life. All multi-cellular organisms have them, and they can turn into a dazzling variety other cells—kidney, brain, heart or skin, for example. One class, pluripotent stem cells, has the capacity to turn into virtually any cell type in the body, making them a focal point in the development of cell therapies, the conquering of age-old diseases or even regrowing defective body parts. Now, a research team at the University of Georgia has shown for the first time that a gene called Myc (pronounced "mick") ...

Kidney transplants that show a combination of fibrosis (scarring) and inflammation after one year are at higher risk of long-term transplant failure, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). To identify these abnormalities, doctors would need to perform routine biopsies on apparently normal kidney transplants—rather than waiting for problems to occur. "Even for some transplants that would be expected to have a very long graft survival, protocol biopsies performed in the first year may indicate the ...

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have identified the molecular mechanism that makes omega-3 fatty acids so effective in reducing chronic inflammation and insulin resistance. The discovery could lead to development of a simple dietary remedy for many of the more than 23 million Americans suffering from diabetes and other conditions. Writing in the advance online edition of the September 3 issue of the journal Cell, Jerrold Olefsky, MD, and colleagues identified a key receptor on macrophages abundantly found in obese body fat. ...

DURHAM, N.C. – Duke University Medical Center researchers have found two genes in mice which might help identify why some people are more susceptible than others to potentially deadly staph infections. The researchers uncovered important genetic clues that ultimately could help inform patient management and drug development. "If you know up front that a patient is at risk for developing an Staphylococcus aureus infection, then you will be better able to manage them clinically, give them preventive measures, and treat them more aggressively if they become ill," said ...

Results of a study reported in the September issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society suggest that Veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have a greater risk for dementia than Veterans without PTSD, even those who suffered traumatic injuries during combat. Exposure to life threatening events, like war, can cause PTSD, and there are high rates among veterans. PSTD includes symptoms such as avoiding things or people that remind a person of the trauma, nightmares, difficulty with sleep, and mood problems. "We found Veterans with PTSD had ...

DURHAM, N.H. – New research from the University of New Hampshire shows that the "gateway effect" of marijuana – that teenagers who use marijuana are more likely to move on to harder illicit drugs as young adults – is overblown. Whether teenagers who smoked pot will use other illicit drugs as young adults has more to do with life factors such as employment status and stress, according to the new research. In fact, the strongest predictor of whether someone will use other illicit drugs is their race/ethnicity, not whether they ever used marijuana. Conducted by UNH associate ...

Roberto Carlos' free kick goal against France in 1997's Tournoi de France is thought by many to have been the most skilful free kick goal - from 35m with a powerful curling banana trajectory - ever scored; but by others to have been an incredible fluke. Taken in 1997, a year before the French won the World Cup, Brazilian Carlos's goal held France to a frustrating draw but, now, a group of French physicists – perhaps with a nostalgic eye to a happier time for French football – have computed the trajectory and shown that Carlos' goal was no fluke. The research published ...

Heidelberg, 3 September 2010 – Our cerebral cortex, or pallium, is a big part of what makes us human: art, literature and science would not exist had this most fascinating part of our brain not emerged in some less intelligent ancestor in prehistoric times. But when did this occur and what were these ancestors? Unexpectedly, scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have now discovered a true counterpart of the cerebral cortex in an invertebrate, a marine worm. Their findings are published today in Cell, and give an idea of what ...

Montreal, September 3, 2010 – Dr. Éric A. Cohen, Director of the Human Retrovirology research unit at the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal (IRCM), and his team published yesterday, in the online open-access journal PLos Pathogens, the results of their most recent research on the role of the Vpr protein in HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) infection and AIDS (acquired autoimmune deficiency syndrome). "We previously identified that HIV, when infecting target cells, blocks cell division and induces cell death," says Dr. Cohen. "We then discovered that the Vpr ...

A new discovery by scientists at the Universities of East Anglia and Frankfurt could make it possible in future to identify the source of banned CFCs that are probably still being released into the atmosphere. Using mass spectrometers, the researchers analysed air samples collected in the stratosphere by balloons belonging to the French space agency, the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES). They discovered the largest chlorine isotope enrichment ever found in nature. CFCs were banned in most countries because of their depletion of the ozone layer. Due to their ...

New York, NY, September 2, 2010—16.6 million small business employees work in firms that will be eligible for tax credits under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), according to a new Commonwealth Fund report. The credits, designed to offset health insurance premium costs and help small businesses afford and maintain health insurance, are available in taxable years beginning in 2010. Researchers estimate that by 2013, 3.4 million workers may work in firms that take advantage of the tax credit. The tax credits increase in value in 2014, from up to 35 percent of the employer's ...

Observations made with NASA's newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope of a nearby supernova are allowing astronomers to measure the velocity and composition of "star guts" being ejected into space following the explosion, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder. The team detected significant brightening of the emissions from Supernova 1987A, which were consistent with some theoretical predictions about how supernovae interact with their immediate galactic environment. Discovered in 1987, Supernova 1987A is the closest exploding star to Earth ...