People who find themselves facing credit card debt, creditor harassment, repossession and other financial troubles have many options to consider. Yet there is no more powerful tool than bankruptcy, which provides advantages such as the automatic stay and the potential to discharge debts and make a clean start. One major benefit of the Chapter 7 bankruptcy process is the ability to protect certain assets from seizure and sale, which could then be used to pay the claims of your creditors. Each state identifies the extent of exemptions it will allow under the U.S. Bankruptcy ...

The Rezidor Hotel Group, one of the fastest-growing hotel companies worldwide, has announced plans for the Park Inn London ExCeL. The brand-new property at the ExCeL Exhibition Centre in London is scheduled to open in Q2 2013. "We are delighted to announce this new flagship in the key market of London. This property will further strengthen the presence and brand awareness of our young and dynamic mid market brand Park Inn in the UK," commented Kurt Ritter, president & CEO of Rezidor. ExCeL is the largest event centre in London; it is spread over 100 acres and provides ...

The Royal Mint has announced six new commemorative coins for 2011 along with details of the first Proof and Brilliant Uncirculated coin sets. The coming year will see the six commemorative coins added to the eight circulating coins that feature Matthew Dent's shield design. 2011 is a year of several unique and memorable anniversaries and promises to be an exciting one for coin collectors. Significantly, this year the commemorative coins include two GBP2 coin designs as well as two GBP1 coins, a 50p coin and a GBP5 crown. These new commemorative coins celebrate key ...

The National Trust has announced that holidaymakers will have the chance to stay in a medieval manor house thanks to a transformation that has created the grandest and oldest holiday property in the National Trust's portfolio. Shute Barton, near Axminster in east Devon, dates back to the 13th century and is part of what was a larger family house owned by the Bonville family. It has stood through a staggering amount of history from the dissolution of the monasteries through to the Second World War. The house - which has reputedly the largest fireplace in England where ...

Bird and Co Creative has announced the redevelopment of the recently launched website for Fostertalk, an independent, not-for-profit organisation providing high quality professional support to foster carers in the UK. The redeveloped website is an integral tool for acquiring new leads for FosterTalk, with the company experiencing significant growth in the last year. The redevelopment of the website is to ensure that they continue to expand in 2011, while also providing a unique opportunity for foster carers to obtain independent support and advocacy as well as a forum ...

Dussault and Zatir client was a front-seat passenger of the employer's vehicle when the loss occurred. The client's vehicle was struck from behind. Dussault and Zatir client was working at the time and was entitled to Workers Compensation Benefits under the employer's policy. The client missed a few days from work and incurred medical expenses. The medical expenses and lost wages were paid under Workers Compensation. A Third-Party claim was presented against the at-fault party who struck the client's vehicle. The person was able to recover against the Third-Party Insurance ...

Mark Systems announced today that it's Integrated Homebuilder Management System (IHMS) has garnered it's third Top Products award, according to Constructech Magazine of Carol Stream, IL. One of a series of high profile industry awards received by Mark Systems over the last 4 years, the Constructech top Products award honors technology solutions that have demonstrated the greatest innovations geared toward the homebuilding market. "We're extremely honored to be selected once again as a Top Product in residential software," said Donald Scattergood, Mark Systems Vice ...

Aftermath, Inc. is a biological remediation service company with it's U.S. Corporate Headquarters based in Oswego, Illinois and is pleased to announce a brand-new website launched January 2011. The website address, www.AftermathInc.com, remains the same, but has been completely reworked to make it more user-friendly and far more comprehensive in its offerings. Read more at www.Aftermathinc.us. The website for Aftermath, Inc. includes easy-to-find, detailed information on the services they offer and easy to find local locations. With offices nationwide their service is ...

PurposeCashAdvance.com is proud to announce its cash advance loans offering that is now available in the states of Mississippi, Utah, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Missouri. Borrowers interested in taking out payday loans can apply online through the PurposeCashAdvance.com website. PurposeCashAdvance.com is a provider of cash advance loans (also known as "payday loans"). Cash advances are small, short-term loans that are intended to help the borrower cover their expenses until they receive their next paycheck. Cash advance loans are a fast and simple solution for short-term ...

In the early years of the AIDS epidemic, being infected with the virus that causes the disease was considered a virtual death sentence. But with the development of antiretroviral therapy, many with HIV are now living much longer. In fact, it is estimated that by 2015, about half of all HIV-positive individuals will be older than 50. Yet those over 50 also progress to AIDS faster than adults in their 20s or 30s. And those in the younger age bracket — even those responding well to antiretroviral therapy — still exhibit illnesses and clinical conditions commonly associated ...

A paper published in the January issue of the journal Nanomedicine could provide the foundation for a new ovarian cancer treatment option – one that would use an outside-the-body filtration device to remove a large portion of the free-floating cancer cells that often create secondary tumors. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have formed a startup company and are working with a medical device firm to design a prototype treatment system that would use magnetic nanoparticles engineered to capture cancer cells. Added to fluids removed from a patient's abdomen, ...

BATON ROUGE – The word "orangutan" is derived from a Malay phrase meaning "man of the forest," which is a perfectly apt description of these tree-dwelling primates. Genetically the most distant great ape from humans, these critically endangered creatures inhabit the jungles of Borneo and Sumatra. As an arboreal species, they are incredibly sensitive to deforestation, which has decimated census populations in recent years. Mark Batzer, LSU System Boyd Professor and Dr. Mary Lou Applewhite Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences, and an international consortium of ...

Boston, MA -- Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers and colleagues from Research Institute for a Tobacco Free Society have found that a reduction in secondhand smoking in American homes was associated with fewer cases of otitis media, the scientific name for middle ear infection. The study appears on January 26, 2011, as an online first article on the website of the journal Tobacco Control. "Our study is the first to demonstrate the public health benefits to children of the increase in smoke-free homes across the nation. It also is the first study to quantify ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Older patients with diabetes who are not dealing well with the disease are likely to have symptoms of depression, and spouses of older patients also suffer distress related to diabetes and its management, according to research from Purdue University. "Responsibilities and anxieties can differ for patients with diabetes and their spouses, but each may experience stress, frustration and sadness at times related to the demands of living with this disease," said Melissa M. Franks, an assistant professor of child development and family studies. "We know ...

An investigation has found that celiac disease and Crohn's disease, both inflammatory diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, share at least four genetic risk loci. Together, researchers from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands; the Broad Institute, USA; the Université de Montréal and Montreal Heart Institute in Canada performed a combined meta-analysis of genome-wide data for celiac disease and Crohn's disease. This meta-analysis, published in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics on January 27, has identified two new shared risk loci and two shared risk loci ...

Scientists at the Institut Pasteur and the University of Maryland have revealed how bacterial and archaea microbes successfully evolve their gene repertoires to face new challenges, predominantly by acquiring genes from other individuals. The study, published in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics on January 27, was instigated to clarify the role of gene duplication, an important source of novelty in multicellular organisms, in bacteria. Microbes live and thrive in incredibly diverse and harsh conditions, from boiling or freezing water to the human immune system. This ...

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – In a new study, scientists at the University of Maryland and the Institut Pasteur show that bacteria evolve new abilities, such as antibiotic resistance, predominantly by acquiring genes from other bacteria. The researchers new insights into the evolution of bacteria partly contradict the widely accepted theory that new biological functions in bacteria and other microbes arise primarily through the process of gene duplication within the same organism. Their just released study will be published in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics on January ...

Artifacts unearthed in the United Arab Emirates date back 100,000 years and imply that modern humans first left Africa much earlier than researchers had expected, a new study reports. In light of their excavation, an international team of researchers led by Hans-Peter Uerpmann from Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen, Germany suggests that humans could have arrived on the Arabian Peninsula as early as 125,000 years ago — directly from Africa rather than via the Nile Valley or the Near East, as researchers have suggested in the past. The timing and dispersal of modern ...

VIDEO: The DOE Joint Genome Institute is characterizing plants, microbes and communities of microbes to improve the production of next generation biofuels. Click here for more information. WALNUT CREEK, Calif.—Cows eat grass—this has been observed for eons. From this fibrous diet consisting mainly of the tough to degrade plant cell wall materials cellulose and hemicellulose, substances of no nutritional value to most animals, ruminants manage to extract all they need ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Psychologists at Harvard University have found that infants less than one year old understand social dominance and use relative size to predict who will prevail when two individuals' goals conflict. The finding is presented this week in the journal Science. Lead author Lotte Thomsen says the work suggests we may be born with -- or develop at a very early age -- some understanding of social dominance and how it relates to relative size, a correlation ubiquitous across human cultures and the animal kingdom. This knowledge may help infants face the formidable ...

New research provides the first detailed genetic picture of an evolutionary war between Streptococcus pneumoniae bacteria and the vaccines and antibiotics used against it over recent decades. Large-scale genome sequencing reveals patterns of adaptation and the spread of a drug-resistant lineage of the S. pneumoniae bacteria. The study unmasks the genetic events by which bacteria such as S. pneumoniae respond rapidly to new antibiotics and vaccines. The team suggest that knowing the enemy better could improve infection control measures. S. pneumoniae is responsible ...

Significant disparities exist between the race of kidney disease patients and that of the physicians who will care for them, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN). The results suggest that efforts are needed to increase minority recruitment into kidney specialty programs to more closely balance the racial background of physicians and patients. Kidney disease disproportionately affects African Americans: 32% of dialysis patients are African Americans, who make up only 13% of the US population. ...

The majority of public high school biology teachers are not strong classroom advocates of evolutionary biology, despite 40 years of court cases that have ruled teaching creationism or intelligent design violates the Constitution, according to Penn State political scientists. A mandatory undergraduate course in evolutionary biology for prospective teachers, and frequent refresher courses for current teachers, may be part of the solution, they say. "Considerable research suggests that supporters of evolution, scientific methods, and reason itself are losing battles in America's ...

The temperatures of North Atlantic Ocean water flowing north into the Arctic Ocean adjacent to Greenland -- the warmest water in at least 2,000 years -- are likely related to the amplification of global warming in the Arctic, says a new international study involving the University of Colorado Boulder. Led by Robert Spielhagen of the Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Literature in Mainz, Germany, the study showed that water from the Fram Strait that runs between Greenland and Svalbard -- an archipelago constituting the northernmost part of Norway -- has warmed roughly ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — What happens when two proteins join together? In this case, they become like a power couple, where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. API2 and MALT1 are two proteins that become fused together in a subset of lymphomas. The API2 part of the fusion connects with an enzyme called NIK. When it does, MALT1 comes in for the kill, splitting NIK in two, a process called cleavage. The result? NIK is stronger than ever. It sheds its "conscience" by removing a regulatory region of the enzyme that forces NIK to behave and self-destruct. Consequently, ...