The YouTube clip* of a lady who is so engrossed in texting on her mobile phone that she falls head first in to fountain in a shopping mall has become an Internet sensation, getting nearly 2 million hits in just a week. Happily, the girl appears to be uninjured, telling one of the mall employees who asks if she is okay that she is "just a little wet." Commenting on the clip, Stephen Ebbett from iPhone insurance (http://www.protectyourbubble.com/ip-iphone-insurance.html) provider Protect your bubble says: "While the clip was classic slapstick style comedy, the dangers ...

Valued Opinions has revealed that the UK has the second highest consumption of chocolate per person in the whole of Europe, and that the confectionery market is worth a staggering GBP4 billion. A recent Valued Opinions online poll has found out the favorite type of chocolate: two thirds of Brits (66%) like milk chocolate the best whilst 22% prefer dark chocolate and 12% would choose white chocolate. Just 1% of all respondents of the online opinion poll didn't like chocolate at all, reflecting the fact that for most of the people in Britain, chocolate is a luxury they ...

Ideasbynet research shows that the average mug is used for 14.75 months, and 4.75 hot drinks per day - over 2000 times in total. With hot drinks such as coffee now being an essential part of many people's morning routine, it is clear that the coffee mug offers a high level of potential marketing opportunities. Ideasbynet believes that promotional mugs can allow companies to advertise over 2000 times with every mug, making them an excellent investment to promote a brand. These figures are based on how many times the first owner will typically use a mug, as a mug may ...

The National Trust has announced that three young grey seal pups born on the National Trust's Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast have been discovered hundreds of miles away on a Dutch beach. The first of the Farne Island three was found on the 13 December 2010 and was less than three weeks old when it made the 350 mile journey. After being found by a member of the public it was taken to a seal rescue centre in Holland. Pups two and three were found on the 6 and 7 January 2011 and were taken to the same centre. All of the seal pups are recovering well and will ...

Real Business Solutions (www.realtaxtools.com), a leading provider of W2 and 1099 printing and e-Filing software products, announced today that its popular W2 Mate software is available for immediate download as a free demo. The easy 2010 / 2011 W2 software can be used by accountants, businesses, CPAs, churches, banks, professional tax preparers and W2 reporting service providers to prepare W2 forms , print w2 forms, E-File W2s and generate EFW2 files. "Preparing W2 and 1099 forms is a chore, but it doesn't have to be. This is why we built W2 Mate. Powerful, yet very ...

HOUSTON, Jan. 20, 2011 – Monitoring everything from explosives to tainted milk, materials for use in creating sensors for detection devices have been developed by a University of Houston (UH) chemist and his team. The findings recently appeared simultaneously in three journals. "There are many dangerous substances, pollutants and infectious bacteria we are constantly exposed to," said Rigoberto Advincula, a highly cited materials scientist at UH. "Our work is poised to assist in such efforts as rapidly detecting explosives or banned substances in airports for homeland ...

Madison, WI JANUARY 20, 2011 -- Chronic water quality problems caused by agricultural and urban runoff, municipal wastewater, and atmospheric deposition from the burning of fossil fuels leads to oxygen depletion, loss of biodiversity, and harmful algal blooms. This nutrient pollution is prevalent in many coastal marine and estuarine ecosystems worldwide. Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in North America and although many efforts have been taken to improve its water quality, nutrient pollution still keeps it at unacceptable levels. In a study funded by the U.S. Environmental ...

Put down those science text books and work at recalling information from memory. That's the shorthand take away message of new research from Purdue University that says practicing memory retrieval boosts science learning far better than elaborate study methods. "Our view is that learning is not about studying or getting knowledge 'in memory,'" said Purdue psychology professor Jeffrey Karpicke, the lead investigator for the study that appears today in the journal Science. "Learning is about retrieving. So it is important to make retrieval practice an integral part of the ...

Using inexpensive air filters may help reduce cardiovascular disease risk that results from exposure to air pollution, according to researchers from Canada, who studied healthy adultsliving in a small community in British Columbia where wood burning stoves are the main sources of pollution. The researchers found that high efficiency particle air (HEPA)filters reduced the amount of airborne particulate matter, resulting in improved blood vessel health and reductions in blood markers that are associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. The findings were ...

The use of CT scanning to evaluate abdominal pain in emergency departments can help physicians arrive at a diagnosis quickly and decisively. A study conducted at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and appearing in the February issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology also finds that information provided by CT scans changed treatment plans for almost half the patients studied and significantly reduced probable hospital admissions. "Our report addresses an important question with substantial policy relevance – what is the value of CT scanning in the emergency ...

"The majority of diabetics will over time develop severe or fatal complications, but 10󈝻 per cent never do. They are the ones we are interested in in the PROLONG study", explains Valeriya Lyssenko, who along with Peter Nilsson, both from Lund University Diabetes Centre, leads the PROLONG study. Stiff sugary arteries: Despite decades of intensive research on diabetes complications, the fundamental mechanisms are not yet fully known. Neither is it possible to prevent or treat the damage to the blood vessels that affects the majority of diabetics. The risk of ...

Catalan researchers have studied the marine trophic network in Mauritania, on the north west coast of Africa, which is an extremely heavily exploited fishing area, as well as being home to two of the world's most threatened species of marine mammal – the monk seal and the Atlantic hump-backed dolphin. The results of the study show that industrial and traditional fishing activities along the coast are putting these mammals and local marine ecosystems at great danger. The researchers studied the local marine trophic network off the north west coast of Africa, and by analysing ...

This press release is available in French. Around one in four Montrealers take some kind of anti-depressant, and according to new research, the drugs are passing into the waterways and affecting fish. The findings are internationally significant as the city's sewage treatment system is similar to that in use in other major cities, and moreover, it is reputed to be the third largest treatment system in the world. Lead by Dr. Sébastien Sauvé at the University of Montreal's Department of Chemistry and André Lajeunesse, a PhD candidate, the research team found that the ...

An Anglo-Swiss research project has found that the impact of disease-resistant genetically-modified wheat plants on insects may be negligible. Many studies have looked at the effects of genetically-modified (GM) plants on single non-target insects. However, agro-ecosystems are characterised by numerous insect species forming food webs. This study is the first to investigate different transgenic disease-resistant wheat lines and their effect on the structure of whole aphid-parasitoid food webs. The findings are published this week in the Royal Society journal, Biology ...

This press release is available in German. Lights off – projector on. Lecture theaters, conference halls and seminar rooms currently have to be darkened if the speaker wants to project a presentation on screen. Unfortunately, the attention of the listeners goes off with the lights, and tiredness takes over. A new technique promises to remedy this situation. The projectors of the futur will not only be small and easy to use but also shine so brightly that the images appear sharp and clear, even in a sun-filled room. The image illuminating the wall of the Fraunhofer ...

New research from the University of Sheffield has revealed that the molecular mechanism underlying deafness is caused by a mutation of a specific microRNA called miR-96. The discovery could provide the basis for treating progressive hearing loss and deafness. The research team, led by Dr Walter Marcotti, Royal Society University Research Fellow from the University's Department of Biomedical Science, in collaboration with Professor Karen Steel at the Sanger Institute in Cambridge, discovered that the mutation in miR-96 prevents development of the auditory sensory hair ...

The levels of environmental contaminants in a mother's body decrease during breast-feeding. After a year of lactation, the levels of a number of environmental contaminants in breast milk drop by 15 – 94 per cent, according to a recent study from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. There has been little study into this topic previously. Breast milk is nutritionally the best food for infants and contains all the substances a child needs for optimal growth and development. However, breast milk contains low but measurable concentrations of environmental contaminants, ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- An innovative, educational computing platform developed by University at Buffalo faculty members and hosted by the cloud (remote, high-capacity, scalable servers) is helping UB students understand parts of evolutionary biology on an entirely new level. Soon, high-school and middle-school students will benefit from the same tool as well. Pop! World, developed by UB faculty members with a $250,000 National Science Foundation grant, takes advantage of cloud computing, which allows programs to run on remote servers instead of through departmental or institutional ...

New research shows that 2010 set new records for the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, expected to be a major contributor to projected sea level rises in coming decades. "This past melt season was exceptional, with melting in some areas stretching up to 50 days longer than average," said Dr. Marco Tedesco, director of the Cryospheric Processes Laboratory at The City College of New York (CCNY – CUNY), who is leading a project studying variables that affect ice sheet melting. "Melting in 2010 started exceptionally early at the end of April and ended quite late in mid- ...

INDIANAPOLIS – A study conducted in four American Indian communities in the Pacific Northwest presents an effective strategy to convince mothers to switch young children from drinking sweetened soda to water and shows that eliminating these sugary drinks from the diets of the youngest members of the tribe significantly decreased tooth decay. The results of the dental arm of "The Toddler Overweight and Tooth Decay Prevention Study" (TOTS), which targeted American Indians from birth to 30 months of age, appear in the current issue (Volume 20, Number 4) of the peer reviewed ...

Mars Express has returned images from the Phobos flyby of 9 January 2011. Mars Express passed Mars' largest moon at a distance of 100km. The HRSC-camera recorded images of Phobos on 9 January 2011 at a distance of 100 km with a resolution of 8.1 m/pixel. Due to the stereo viewing geometry during the flyby a small part of the moon’s edge is only visible for the right eye resulting in odd 3D-perception in this area. This part has been slightly adjusted for better viewing. Also, for the left eye at the left edge of the image four small data gaps have ...

Under standard laboratory conditions, the human beta-defensin 1 (hBD-1), a human antibiotic naturally produced in the body, had always shown only little activity against microbes. Nevertheless the human body produces it in remarkable quantities. The solution to the puzzle was the investigation process itself, as the research group led by Dr. Jan Wehkamp at the Dr. Margarete Fischer-Bosch Institute for Clinical Pharmacology of the Stuttgart-based Robert Bosch Hospital found out. Before the research group took a new approach to this research, defensins were usually tested ...

CHICAGO --- If NFL linemen can recover from back surgery and return to their spine-bruising careers, so can you get back into your "game" of horsing around with your kids or working out at the gym after back surgery. That's the good news from a new Northwestern Medicine study that found 80 percent of NFL lineman – whose spines are especially vulnerable to degeneration – were able to return to play many more games after the surgery. These elite athletes spend a lot of time in a squatting stance that puts tremendous stress on their spine. The study is encouraging ...

Participating in an 8-week mindfulness meditation program appears to make measurable changes in brain regions associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress. In a study that will appear in the January 30 issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, a team led by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers report the results of their study, the first to document meditation-produced changes over time in the brain's grey matter. "Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long ...

Do mountain tops act as sky islands for species that live at high elevations? Are plant populations on these mountain tops isolated from one another because the valleys between them act as barriers, or can pollinators act as bridges allowing genes to flow among distant populations? Dr. Andrea Kramer and colleagues from the Chicago Botanic Garden and the University of Illinois at Chicago were interested in pursuing these questions, particularly for a genus of plants, Penstemon (Plantaginaceae), endemic to the Great Basin region of the Western United States. They published ...