Stena Line has signed an agreement with DFDS to acquire its Liverpool (Birkenhead) to Belfast and Heysham to Belfast routes. The acquisition, which amounts to approximately GBP40M, will enable Stena Line to improve its service on the Irish Sea by offering several different alternatives for transportation between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In recent years, Stena Line has invested heavily in significant improvements across the whole of its route network. Irish Sea Ferry area director Michael McGrath believes the latest acquisition reflects Stena Line's commitment ...

At New Year's time it's fun to prognosticate upon the coming year's happenings, and one person in particular, mentalist/futurist/"psychic" SIDNEY FRIEDMAN (aka SidneySeer), has had a remarkable documented track record of prediction over the last 13 years with a consistent accuracy near 70% with stated predictions on TV shows like THE VIEW, the TODAY SHOW and THE EARLY SHOW. This year is no exception. In a few days, SIDNEY FRIEDMAN will release his 2011 visions of the economy, world events, the weather, the Oscars, and even predictions to satisfy celebrity curiosity. See ...

Actress Katherine Heigl, the star of Knocked Up, Life As We Know It and Grey's Anatomy, recently appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman and touted the benefits of eco-friendly cigarettes, also known as e-cigs. During her interview, the conversation turned to vaping and Heigl surprised Letterman by pulling out her all new e-friendly cigarette and smoking it on stage. "I tried everything," she said. "I did the patch, I did the gum... and went bananas," Heigl said. After her initial comments on smoking, Heigl pulled out an electronic cigarette and began to smoke ...

Most professional financial planners will tell you that personal financial planning is an ongoing process that requires a comprehensive strategy with continuous reviews and adjustments. The end of every year provides the opportune time to review past strategies as well as assess future new ones. The recent extension of the "Bush era" tax cuts only opens up more reasons to take the time and review your current financial position. The compromise the White House and Congressional leaders hammered out last week include additional elements that will impact everyone, and ...

For tennis players and fans, Tennis Cruise may very well have it all. Tennis Cruise kicked off two successful events in 2010 that combined a luxury cruise, tennis playing on the cruise and at ports of call, and attendance at a top tier professional tennis event and they seek to top that success in 2011. The first event of the new year takes tennis fans to Miami and the Sony Ericsson Open followed by a seven day cruise to the Caribbean where participants will play aboard the brand new Norwegian Epic and at beautiful tennis courts in the Bahamas, St. Thomas, and St. ...

Thermafiber, Inc. and ARCAT have developed AutoDesk Revit BIM objects for Thermafiber's mineral wool insulation products. These objects are available for free download on the ARCAT site and also accessible on Thermafiber's website. "BIM technology and acceptance has grown dramatically over the last couple of years," says Austin Hess, Thermafiber's Director of Business Development. "Adding Thermafiber BIM objects to ARCAT supports our Thermafiber Insolutions. We want to provide the architectural community with the tools and solutions that make our products easier to ...

New research by scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences reveals that the immune system has an effective backup plan to protect the body from infection when the "master regulator" of the body's innate immune system fails. The study appears in the December 19 online issue of the journal Nature Immunology. The innate immune system defends the body against infections caused by bacteria and viruses, but also causes inflammation which, when uncontrolled, can contribute to chronic illnesses ...

Berkeley – Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a new technique that allows plasmon lasers to operate at room temperature, overcoming a major barrier to practical utilization of the technology. The achievement, described Dec. 19 in an advanced online publication of the journal Nature Materials, is a "major step towards applications" for plasmon lasers, said the research team's principal investigator, Xiang Zhang, UC Berkeley professor of mechanical engineering and faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "Plasmon ...

Australian researchers have identified a way to measure the structure of membrane proteins despite being damaged when using X-ray Free-Electron Lasers (XFELs), a discovery that will help fast track the development of targeted drugs using emerging XFELs technology. About 70% of drugs on the market today depend on the activity of membrane proteins, which are complex molecules that form the membranes of the cells in our body. A major problem for the design of new pharmaceuticals, often known as the "membrane protein problem", is that they do not form the crystals needed ...

BOSTON – December 20, 2010 – In some adults, the white fat cells that we all stockpile so readily are supplemented by a very different form of fat—brown fat cells, which can offer the neat trick of burning energy rather than storing it. Researchers at Joslin Diabetes Center, which last year led the way in demonstrating an active role for brown fat in adults, now have identified progenitor cells in mouse white fat tissue and skeletal muscle that can be transformed into brown fat cells. "This finding opens up a whole new avenue for researchers interested in designing molecules ...

Using acid suppressive medications, such as proton pump inhibitors and histamine2 receptor antagonists, may increase the risk of developing pneumonia, states an article in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (pre-embargo link only) http://www.cmaj.ca/embargo/cmaj092129.pdf. Acid suppressive drugs are the second leading medication worldwide, totaling over US$26 billion in sales in 2005. Recently, medical literature has looked at unrecognized side effects in popular medications and their impact on public health. This systematic review, which incorporated all relevant ...

Strictly controlling the heart rate of patients with atrial fibrillation provides no advantage over more lenient heart rate control, experts report in a focused update of the 2006 guidelines for the management of patients with atrial fibrillation. The new recommendations, published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, and HeartRhythm Journal, are updates of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association/European Society of Cardiology 2006 Guidelines for the Management of Patients ...

Researchers have reported some of the first evidence that chimpanzee youngsters in the wild may tend to play differently depending on their sex, just as human children around the world do. Although both young male and female chimpanzees play with sticks, females do so more often, and they occasionally treat them like mother chimpanzees caring for their infants, according to a study in the December 21st issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. The findings suggest that the consistently greater tendency, across all cultures, for girls to play more with dolls ...

December 20th, 2010 – Tyrannosaurus rex may have been a flesh-eating terror but many of his closest relatives were more content with vegetarian fare, a new analysis by Field Museum scientists has found. The scientists, Lindsay Zanno and Peter Makovicky, who will publish their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used statistical analyses to determine the diet of 90 species of theropod dinosaurs. Their results challenge the conventional view that nearly all theropods hunted prey, especially those closest to the ancestors of birds. ...

NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Brain scans of adolescents with dyslexia can be used to predict the future improvement of their reading skills with an accuracy rate of up to 90 percent, new research indicates. Advanced analyses of the brain activity images are significantly more accurate in driving predictions than standardized reading tests or any other measures of children's behavior. The finding raises the possibility that a test one day could be developed to predict which individuals with dyslexia would most likely benefit from specific treatments. The research was published ...

STANFORD, Calif. — An expanded U.S. program of HIV screening and treatment could prevent as many as 212,000 new infections over the next 20 years and prove to be very cost-effective, according to a new study by Stanford University School of Medicine researchers. The researchers found that screening high-risk people annually and low-risk people once in their lifetimes was a worthwhile and cost-effective approach to help curtail the epidemic. The screening would have to be coupled with treatment of HIV-infected individuals, as well as programs to help change risky behaviors. "We ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have used sophisticated brain imaging to predict with 90 percent accuracy which teenagers with dyslexia would improve their reading skills over time. Their work, the first to identify specific brain mechanisms involved in a person's ability to overcome reading difficulties, could lead to new interventions to help dyslexics better learn to read. "This gives us hope that we can identify which children might get better over time," said Fumiko Hoeft, MD, PhD, an imaging expert and instructor at ...

The ability to find shoes in the bedroom, apples in a supermarket, or a favourite animal at the zoo is impaired among children with autism, according to new research from the University of Bristol. Contrary to previous studies, which show that children with autism often demonstrate outstanding visual search skills, this new research indicates that children with autism are unable to search effectively for objects in real-life situations – a skill that is essential for achieving independence in adulthood. Previous studies have tested search skills using table-top tasks ...

Boston, MA – Scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and collaborators from other institutions have identified a natural substance in dairy fat that may substantially reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. The compound, trans-palmitoleic acid, is a fatty acid found in milk, cheese, yogurt, and butter. It is not produced by the body and so only comes from the diet. Reporting in the December 21, 2010, issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, investigators led by Dariush Mozaffarian, associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology at HSPH and Division of ...

Many trauma patients in Illinois who are transferred to another facility for care are not transported within the state-mandated two-hour window, but the most seriously injured patients appear to reach care more quickly, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. "Trauma systems have been designed to optimize the outcomes of injured patients by encouraging providers to triage patients to appropriate levels of care, defining pre-hospital and interhospital transport patterns and educating caregivers in the recognition ...

Black patients with early-stage liver cancer appear more likely to die of the disease than Hispanic or white patients with the same condition, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Hepatocellular carcinoma, or cancer of the liver, is the fifth leading cause of cancer death worldwide, according to background information in the article. The five-year rate of survival for patients with advanced-stage disease is 5 percent, but those who are diagnosed at an early stage are more likely to be successfully treated. ...

Individuals with psoriasis have a high prevalence of the metabolic syndrome, according to a report posted online today that will appear in the April 2011 print issue of Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. According to background information in the article, individual features of the metabolic syndrome include obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes and high total cholesterol and triglycerides. Additional background information notes that while past studies have suggested a link between psoriasis and individual components of the metabolic syndrome, ...

Women are more likely to report use of indoor tanning facilities than men, and some characteristics common to indoor tanners differ by sex, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. However, few tanners—male or female—mention avoiding tanning beds when asked about ways to reduce skin cancer risk. "Skin cancer is the most common form of malignancy in the United States. The American Cancer Society estimated that 1 million new cases of melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer were diagnosed in 2009; 8,650 deaths ...

Most patients do not have ongoing speaking or swallowing difficulties following combined chemotherapy and radiation treatment for advanced head or neck cancer, but several factors may be associated with worse outcomes in these functions, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. "Speaking and swallowing deficits are experienced by many survivors of primary cancers of the head and neck," the authors write as background information in the article. "Although it is often difficult to separate ...

Patients who have recurrence of oral squamous cell carcinoma tend to do worse if the new cancer appears at the same site early or if it appears in the lymph nodes six months or longer after initial treatment, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Treating recurrences of oral squamous cell carcinoma (cancer in the thin, flat cells that line the lips and mouth) involves balancing the risk of complications against the potential benefit to the patient in terms of survival or controlling ...