Currently, Governor Bob McDonnell is promoting a proposal to privatize the sale of alcohol in Virginia. Under this proposal, the state would sell the 332 state-run liquor stores and release as many as 1000 licenses authorizing the sale of alcohol. The proposal would privatize all aspects of alcohol sales, from wholesale to distribution to retail. As a result, Virginians would be able to purchase alcohol at private liquor stores, convenience stores and grocery stores. The Governor has presented this proposal as a means of improving Virginia roads without raising taxes; ...

If you become unable to express your wishes regarding your health care and treatment, who gets to make these decisions for you? In New York, the answer to this question has recently changed for many people. Health Care Proxy vs. No Healthy Care Proxy For those who have a health care proxy, the answer is straightforward and has not changed. A health care proxy allows a person to designate a surrogate decision maker who will be responsible for treatment decisions if he or she is incapacitated. However, according to a New York Senate press release, only 20 percent of ...

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness: whether Jefferson's original intent or not, many have come to equate the pursuit of happiness with the pursuit of property ownership. The national foreclosure crisis has offered a rude awakening from those dreams for many Americans. Recently, according to Fox, Trenton Mayor Tony Mack's home was foreclosed and Beneficial Mortgage won a judgment against Mack for $320,000. The Associated Press says the national foreclosure rate in July 2010 was one in 62 homes. While the Obama administration is attempting to restructure government-sponsored ...

Debenhams has revealed that the age at which men become 'invisible' to women has advanced by at least a decade, according to new research* carried out by the retailer. Men can now win a woman's attention based on looks alone up until they are 55 years old. Just 30 years ago, few women would have found any man over 45 years old worth a second glance, rendering them effectively invisible at any gathering.  Ruth Attridge, Debenhams' spokeswoman, said: "Older men are now remaining more attractive to women for longer than ever before. "They are increasingly seen as ...

House of Fraser has revealed that the new Biba collection with be available both in stores and online, with Daisy Lowe being the face of the brand. The British model is famed for gracing the catwalks of Vivienne Westwood and PPQ, and also featured in campaigns for Marc by Marc Jacobs, DKNY and Louis Vuitton. September 2010 sees the much-anticipated re-launch of the globally iconic Biba clothing brand. The collection of women's apparel, accessories and jewellery takes inspiration from the original Biba themes of 1930's Hollywood glamour, synonymous with signature prints, ...

Kuoni has announced the launch if its own Facebook page. The new page offers an interactive opportunity for Kuoni to communicate with its customers and encourages people to engage and interact with the Kuoni brand in a new way. One of the highlights of the new Kuoni Facebook page is Kuoni Recommends, where Kuoni's insider destination knowledge offers users expert reviews, tips and inspiration for their next holiday. Reviews can be found on destinations, experiences, hotels, local attractions, local restaurants and spas; everything travellers need to make a holiday extra ...

There are many tax planning strategies that can be implemented each year to help minimize your tax exposure. Some are simple, such as doing a Roth IRA conversion, while others are more complex, like structuring the terms of a business sale. However, in both cases, understanding what the tax consequences will be is essential to making the right decision. In fact, most personal financial decisions whether they are small or large, could have a significant impact on your ability to meet your long term retirement goals. Congressional failure to address whether to extend ...

One of the biggest issues in addiction treatment is the high rate of relapse for patients. One of the most successful treatment facilities for relapse treatment and prevention is Challenges, a facility in Fort Lauderdale Florida. Challenges is the first treatment center to have been awarded the prestigious national certification as a "Center of Excellence" in relapse treatment and prevention. Unique Relapse Treatment and Prevention Approach One reason the Challenges program is so successful is because of the focus on individual, unique treatment plans. Challenges ...

Thomas Cook has launched its first foreign exchange mobile app for iPhone and android phone users, as well as a new website. The app and website compare rates and help users decide when and where to buy your foreign exchange. So, in addition to providing travellers with great cheap holidays, Thomas Cook is helping them make it quicker and easier to get a good exchange rate. The app is free to download for the first 25,000 users from the iPhone App Store or Android Market (search for "What's The Rate"). Designed to save time and hassle, the app and website make it quick ...

Many companies seek increased energy efficiency solutions, while some even strive for LEED certification. How the company chooses to go about it can be the difference between unnecessary down-time and a quicker investment payback. Especially in the case of companies who opt to retrofit existing facilities, Cypress Envirosystems offers innovative technologies that actually improve productivity while saving money. Founded by CEO Harry Sim in 2006, Cypress Envirosystems' goal is simple: to help older plants and buildings save energy and improve productivity. The company ...

Driven by the demand for increased performance, water circulation pumps have taken a quantum leap in energy efficiency in both commercial and residential applications. The advantages are simple: low noise level, efficient motor and maintenance-free design. With energy remaining a valuable global commodity, one of the world's largest pump manufacturers has taken efficiency to a new level by designing a system that offers up to 80% energy savings. WILO, which was founded in Germany and came to the U.S. in 2004, invests more than $40 million per year in new and innovative ...

Imagine a building in which sunlight could be captured and utilized in the most unexpected and never-before-seen places. Imagine the "World's First Green Olympics." Imagine employees who are happier, more productive, healthier and less prone to accidents. All are reality, thanks to Solatube International's tubular Daylighting Devices, which use state-of-the-art design to provide superior performance and efficiency to every daylighting application imaginable. Solatube is the worldwide leader in tubular daylighting devices, which notably provided 148 of its systems to ...

When consumers think of Toshiba, most think of world-class electronics and semiconductor technologies, and that would be an accurate association. As of September 2009, Toshiba International Corporation brought its LED Lighting Division to the U.S. with a lofty environmental vision and a rich history of global technology and lighting innovations in Japan. Toshiba's Environmental Vision 2050 is a worldwide effort to improve the eco-efficiency of all of the company's business processes and products by five times by the year 2025 and by ten times by 2050, with LED lighting ...

We've all heard the old adage, "One man's trash is another man's treasure." Waste Management, Inc. actually proved it with a study a couple of years ago that found the materials in U.S. landfills alone holds about $10 billion in value every year. North America's leading provider of comprehensive waste management solutions knows that we are a throw-away society and has perfected getting garbage to the landfills. Its challenge now is to get people to understand that realizing a zero-waste operation is an achievable goal and that there is value to the trash being thrown out, ...

The number of times our cells can divide is dictated by telomeres, stretches of DNA at the tips of our chromosomes. Understanding how telomeres keep our chromosomes – and by extension, our genomes – intact is an area of intense scientific focus in the fields of both aging and cancer. Now, scientists at The Wistar Institute have published the first detailed report on the structure and function of a crucial domain in the protein known as Cdc13, which sustains telomeres by clamping to DNA and recruiting replicating enzymes to the area. While the nature of this portion of ...

Hurricane Igor is a monster hurricane in terms of strength and size. To get a perspective on its size, it is the same distance from one end of the storm to the other as it is from Boston, Mass. to Richmond, Va., some 550 miles. That's a 10-hour drive from one end to the other, and NASA satellites captured that entire distance in one image. Because Hurricane Igor is a large storm and even if Igor doesn't make a direct landfall in Bermuda, the extent of the winds (the wind field) is so large that the National Hurricane Center noted that Bermuda can be buffeted by winds ...

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered a new drug target that could improve the effectiveness of radiation for hard-to-treat cancers. The finding, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, focuses on the role of the enzyme cytosolic phospholipase A2 (cPLA2). This enzyme promotes development and functioning of blood vessel networks that feed malignant tumors, enabling them to overcome the effects of radiation. They have also identified a drug that stops production of the enzyme. Inhibiting the enzyme can stop ...

Elevated levels of a growth protein in the brains of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients is linked to impaired neurogenesis, the process by which new neurons are generated, say researchers at the University of California, San Diego in today's edition of The Journal of Neuroscience. Eliezer Masliah, MD, professor of neurosciences and pathology in the UC San Diego School of Medicine and colleagues report that increased levels of BMP6 – part of a family of bone morphogenetic proteins involved in cell signaling and growth – were found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients and ...

The Arctic sea ice cover appears to have reached its minimum extent for the year, the third-lowest recorded since satellites began measuring sea ice extent in 1979, according to the University of Colorado at Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center. While this year's September minimum extent was greater than 2007 and 2008, the two record-setting and near-record-setting low years, it is still significantly below the long-term average and well outside the range of natural climate variability, according to CU-Boulder's NSIDC scientists. Most researchers believe the shrinking ...

Chronic stress acts as a sort of fertilizer that feeds breast cancer progression, significantly accelerating the spread of disease in animal models, researchers at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have found. Researchers discovered that stress is biologically reprogramming the immune cells that are trying to fight the cancer, transforming them instead from soldiers protecting the body against disease into aiders and abettors. The study found a 30-fold increase in cancer spread throughout the bodies of stressed mice compared to those that were not stressed. ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Scientists at UC Santa Barbara have discovered a caste of genetically identical "warrior worms" –– members of a parasitic fluke species that invades the California horn snail. The findings are reported in the early online version of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. "We have discovered flatworms in colonies with vicious, killer morphs defending the colony," said Armand M. Kuris, professor of zoology, in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology. "These flukes have a strongly developed social organization, much like some insects, ...

When fish or tiny, shrimp-like krill get together, it appears they follow the same set of "rules." According to a new study published online on September 16th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, shoals of fish and swarms of krill hang out in groups that take on the same overall shape; it's not a simple sphere, a cylinder, or ovoid, but something more akin to an irregular crystal, the researchers say. "The fact that several species of fish and krill that live in very different locations—from the tropics to polar oceans—form shoals that are the same shape suggests ...

In today's increasingly urbanized world, the lights in many places are always on, and according to a report published online on September 16 in of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, that's having a real impact on the mating life of forest-breeding songbirds. "In comparison to chemical and noise pollution, light pollution is more subtle, and its effects have perhaps not received the attention they deserve," said Bart Kempenaers of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany. "Our findings show clearly that light pollution influences the timing of breeding ...

VIDEO: This is an informal conversation with Mr. Stephen Fleming . This video relates to an article that is appearing in the Sept. 17, 2010, issue of Science, published by AAAS.... Click here for more information. A specific region of the brain appears to be larger in individuals who are good at turning their thoughts inward and reflecting upon their decisions, according to new research published in the journal Science. This act of introspection—or "thinking about your ...

An international research group led by scientists from the University of Bristol has developed a new approach to quantum computing that could soon be used to perform complex calculations that cannot be done by today's computers. Scientists from Bristol's Centre for Quantum Photonics have developed a silicon chip that could be used to perform complex calculations and simulations using quantum particles in the near future. The researchers believe that their device represents a new route to a quantum computer – a powerful type of computer that uses quantum bits (qubits) ...