In Pursuit of My Success(tm) for Teens: Developing a College, Career, and Money Plan for Life, by Katherine Berntzen, has been approved for use by the Baldwin Union Free School District in New York. Berntzen says, "I designed the book to help teens get a good start in life and become economically self-sufficient professionals in adulthood. I'm so excited each time a school, and now, a school district, approves my book, because it means I can help more people through my work." In Pursuit of My Success(tm) for Teens identifies what teens can do for themselves in high ...

Minds On, a digital marketing agency, announced today the launch of a new Dominion Homes website specifically for mobile phones and portable devices, enabling easy access to home models, locations, sales information and social media connections. The new mobile site, located at m.dominionhomes.com, was designed to make navigation on portable devices simple and direct, while still containing all of the most important features of the full site. Minds On has created a simplified navigation for the site that makes it easy for home shoppers to locate homes and developments ...

The Phoenix Viewer team will be providing phoenix viewer builds to the folks at Spoton3d with the addition of Spoton3D specific features for use on the SpotON3D grid. SpotON3D has enabled the following capabilities: SaaS Elastic Cloud Server Scalability, Universal Grid System, Universal Registration, Avatar & Inventory System, Private Label Grid System, PayPal Economy System, Integrated SpotOn3D EZPrezTools and more. Both the Phoenix Viewer Team and the SpotON3D Team are looking forward to working in close collaboration. This will provide users with a clear voice ...

(Garrison, NY) Can optimism be ethically problematic? Yes, according to a new study, which found unrealistic optimism prevalent among participants in early-phase cancer trials and suggested that it may compromise informed consent. Many cancer researchers and ethicists assume that hope and optimism in the research context are "always ethically benign, without considering the possibility that they reflect a bias," write the authors of the study, which appears in IRB: Ethics & Human Research. "Others have claimed that unrealistic expectations for benefit are a result of ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – In a recent survey of pharmacy professors, 100 percent of the respondents who had Facebook profiles said they would not send friend requests to their current students. Just fewer than half of the responding faculty members had a Facebook profile, and of those, most said they also ignored friend requests from students – especially current students. It was a small study, with 95 faculty members from colleges of pharmacy at four Ohio institutions participating. But it is among the first studies to examine college professors' use of the social network, ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - The time students invest in rereading or reviewing their notes would be better spent practicing retrieval to ensure better learning, according to new research from Purdue University. "We continue to show that practicing retrieval, or testing yourself, is a powerful, robust tool for learning," said Jeffrey D. Karpicke (pronounced CAR-picky), an assistant professor of psychological sciences who studies learning and memory. "Our new research shows that practicing retrieval is an even more effective strategy than engaging in elaborative studying. "Educators, ...

BOSTON (January 24, 2011) — Genetics in Medicine, the official journal of the American College of Medical Genetics, published this month a paper by Tufts University faculty calling for a moderate, strategic approach to teaching personalized genomic testing in medical school curricula. For 16 months, a multi-disciplinary group of Tufts University faculty examined ways to improve education regarding personalized genomic testing at Tufts University School of Medicine (TUSM). The genesis of the debate centered on whether medical students should use their own genome for ...

The genome of the fungus that helps mountain pine beetles infect and kill lodgepole pines has been decoded in a University of British Columbia study. Also known as blue stain fungus for the stain it leaves in the wood of infected trees, Grosmannia clavigera is carried to the host trees by pine beetles and weakens the trees' natural defense system, allowing pine beetles to feed and reproduce in the tree bark. A successful beetle-fungus attack ultimately causes tree death. Now, researchers from UBC and the BC Cancer Agency's Genome Sciences Centre have conducted a detailed ...

MADISON — Future queen or tireless toiler? A paper wasp's destiny may lie in the antennal drumbeats of its caretaker. While feeding their colony's larvae, a paper wasp queen and other dominant females periodically beat their antennae in a rhythmic pattern against the nest chambers, a behavior known as antennal drumming. The drumming behavior is clearly audible even to human listeners and has been observed for decades, prompting numerous hypotheses about its purpose, says Robert Jeanne, a professor emeritus of entomology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Many have ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– A new scientific study shows that debris coverage –– pebbles, rocks, and debris from surrounding mountains –– may be a missing link in the understanding of the decline of glaciers. Debris is distinct from soot and dust, according to the scientists. Melting of glaciers in the Himalayan Mountains affects water supplies for hundreds of millions of people living in South and Central Asia. Experts have stated that global warming is a key element in the melting of glaciers worldwide. Bodo Bookhagen, assistant professor in the Department of Geography ...

Careful dating of new dinosaur fossils and volcanic ash around them by researchers from UC Davis and UC Berkeley casts doubt on the idea that dinosaurs appeared and opportunistically replaced other animals. Instead -- at least in one South American valley -- they seem to have existed side by side and gone through similar periods of extinction. Geologists from Argentina and the United States announced earlier this month the discovery of a new dinosaur that roamed what is now South America 230 million years ago, at the beginning of the age of the dinosaurs. The newly discovered ...

New research led by UC Davis scientists provides insight into why some body organs are more susceptible to cell death than others and could eventually lead to advances in treating or preventing heart attack or stroke. In a paper published Jan. 21 in the journal Molecular Cell, the UC Davis team and their collaborators at the National Institutes of Health and Johns Hopkins University report that Bax, a factor known to promote cell death, is also involved in regulating the behavior of mitochondria, the structures that provide energy inside living cells. Mitochondria constantly ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Many of the genes that allow wheat to ward off Hessian flies are no longer effective in the southeastern United States, and care should be taken to ensure that resistance genes that so far haven't been utilized in commercial wheat lines are used prudently, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture and Purdue University scientists. An analysis of wheat lines carrying resistance genes from dozens of locations throughout the Southeast showed that some give little or no resistance to the Hessian fly, a major pest of wheat that can cause millions of ...

LA JOLLA, CA--Glioblastoma, the most common and lethal form of brain cancer and the disease that killed Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, resists nearly all treatment efforts, even when attacked simultaneously on several fronts. One explanation can be found in the tumor cells' unexpected flexibility, discovered researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. When faced with a life-threatening oxygen shortage, glioblastoma cells can shift gears and morph into blood vessels to ensure the continued supply of nutrients, reports a team led by Inder Verma, Ph.D., ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Purdue University researchers have reproduced portions of the female breast in a tiny slide-sized model dubbed "breast on-a-chip" that will be used to test nanomedical approaches for the detection and treatment of breast cancer. The model mimics the branching mammary duct system, where most breast cancers begin, and will serve as an "engineered organ" to study the use of nanoparticles to detect and target tumor cells within the ducts. Sophie Lelièvre, associate professor of basic medical sciences in the School of Veterinary Medicine, and ...

Baltimore, Md. (January 24, 2011) – A research effort designed to prevent the introduction of viruses to blue crabs in a research hatchery could end up helping Chesapeake Bay watermen improve their bottom line by reducing the number of soft shell crabs perishing before reaching the market. The findings, published in the journal Diseases of Aquatic Organisms, shows that the transmission of a crab-specific virus in diseased and dying crabs likely occurs after the pre-molt (or 'peeler') crabs are removed from the wild and placed in soft-shell production facilities. Crab ...

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- The American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) has released new medical guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of postmenopausal osteoporosis. Loyola physician Pauline Camacho, MD, was part of a committee that developed the guidelines to manage this major public health issue. These recommendations were developed to reduce the risk of osteoporosis-related fractures and improve the quality of life for patients. They explain new treatment options and suggest the use of the FRAX tool (a fracture risk assessment tool developed by the World ...

They said it could be done and now they've done it. What's more, they did it with a GRIN. A team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California, Berkeley, have carried out the first experimental demonstration of GRIN – for gradient index – plasmonics, a hybrid technology that opens the door to a wide range of exotic optics, including superfast computers based on light rather than electronic signals, ultra-powerful optical microscopes able to resolve DNA molecules with visible ...

Congresswomen consistently outperform their male counterparts on several measures of job performance, according to a recent study by University of Chicago scholar Christopher Berry. The research comes as the 112th Congress is sworn in this month with 89 women, the first decline in female representation since 1978. The study authors argue that because women face difficult odds in reaching Congress – women account for fewer than one in six representatives – the ones who succeed are more capable on average than their male colleagues. Women in Congress deliver more federal ...

Current legal restrictions significantly compromise the clinical effectiveness of advance directives, according to a study by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco. Advance directives allow patients to designate health care decision-makers and specify health care preferences for future medical needs. However, "the legal requirements and restrictions necessary to execute a legally valid directive prohibit many individuals from effectively documenting their end-of-life wishes," said lead author Lesley S. Castillo, BA, a geriatrics research assistant ...

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- As the population ages, neurologists will be challenged by a growing population of patients with stroke, dementia, Parkinson's disease and epilepsy. The expected increase in these and other age-related neurologic disorders is among the trends that Loyola University Health System neurologists Dr. José Biller and Dr. Michael J. Schneck describe in a January, 2011, article in the journal Frontiers in Neurology. In the past, treatment options were limited for patients with neurological disorders. "Colloquially, the neurologist would 'diagnose and adios,'" ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- (Jan. 25, 2011) -- A child's taste preferences begin at home and most often involve salt, sugar and fat. And, researchers say, young kids learn quickly what brands deliver the goods. In a study of preschoolers ages 3 to 5, involving two separate experiments, researchers found that salt, sugar and fat are what kids most prefer -- and that these children already could equate their taste preferences to brand-name fast-food and soda products. In a world where salt, sugar and fat have been repeatedly linked to obesity, waiting for children to begin school ...

A workhorse of modern biology is sick, and scientists couldn't be happier. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the Jacques Monod Institute in France and Cambridge University have found that the nematode C. elegans, a millimeter-long worm used extensively for decades to study many aspects of biology, gets naturally occurring viral infections. The discovery means C. elegans is likely to help scientists study the way viruses and their hosts interact. "We can easily disable any of C. elegans' genes, confront the worm with a virus and ...

Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) is a life-threatening disease of the blood system. The condition is caused by the presence of ultralarge multimers of the protein von Willebrand factor, which promote the formation of blood clots (thrombi) in small blood vessels throughout the body. Current treatments are protracted and associated with complications. However, a team of researchers, led by José López, at the Puget Sound Blood Center, Seattle, has generated data in mice that suggest that the drug N-acetylcysteine (NAC), which is FDA approved as a treatment for chronic ...

EDITOR'S PICK: Possible new approach to treating a life-threatening blood disorder Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) is a life-threatening disease of the blood system. The condition is caused by the presence of ultralarge multimers of the protein von Willebrand factor, which promote the formation of blood clots (thrombi) in small blood vessels throughout the body. Current treatments are protracted and associated with complications. However, a team of researchers, led by José López, at the Puget Sound Blood Center, Seattle, has generated data in mice that suggest ...