August 31, 2006, 4:23 PM CT

Hearts For Your Ears

Nice! Six choices of styles with white or black base color/wire color with the ear pieces gilded with "diamond" like crystals on the sides. Weighs 3 grams so they are light enough to enjoy your music in style. Only 13x25x12mm in size, you can carry these with you anywhere.

Blue, pink, and white crystals adorn these lovely headphones. Also available are the Eardrops Round version with crystals. Ships in 5-10 working days and can be ordered online via this site........

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August 31, 2006, 4:17 PM CT

Fashion Designers via Technology

That's right, Angelo Russica has decided to take fashion design to the web. Using a web-based design school that is dedicated to teaching all aspects of design including the basic skills needed, history of design and the aesthetics of Italian fashion, www.fashioncampus.it is born.

Many students had apparently complained about the fact that they had spent thousands of dollars learning the trade yet never had a job that related to fashion, once they left these schools. Angelo Russica decided to make it a little cheaper and less intrusive by using technology.

Modeling the lessons so that each individual lesson is built upon the previous lesson, you slowly graduate into more expansive knowledge of the industry and Italian design. The lessons require the students to actively participate and encourage many different things such as learning to analyze the market and find sources for information sought.

With 7 sections, 27 chapters, 197 pages and more than 170 exercises, they hope to teach with a different mode of getting the knowledge out but still allow the students to acquire the same skill level that is reached in typical schools.

Sounds interesting to me but do they get to digitally display the degree too? I think this is going to become more commonplace as online degrees and colleges start pepping up their courses.........

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August 31, 2006, 5:20 AM CT

Threat of nuclear terrorism?

Nuclear terrorism is the gravest international security challenge today. Is the United States prepared to cope with this very real threat? Is nuclear terrorism preventable? What steps has the U.S. already taken to avoid this catastrophe and what steps should be taken in the future?

Esteemed scholars, scientists, and policymakers address these crucial questions in the September volume of SAGE Publications' The ANNALS of The American Academy of Political and Social Science. All sides of the discussion, from strategic to tactical, from ideological to technical, and from the historical to the contemporary, are explored in this volume, which is edited by Graham Allison of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John. F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

This special volume of The ANNALS clarifies and assesses the possibility of a nuclear terrorist attack by taking a comprehensive historical look at this threat over time, while examining and proposing solutions for preventing such a catastrophic event.

"The authors devoutly hope for a future when world leaders recognize this grave danger, taking the actions necessary to defeat it," commented issue editor Graham Allison. "On current trendlines, however, the likelihood of failure is greater than that of success. We hope to remind the world just how horrible nuclear anarchy would be".........

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August 31, 2006, 5:16 AM CT

Lead Poisoning In Condors

A study led by environmental toxicologists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has confirmed what wildlife biologists have long suspected: Bullet fragments and shotgun pellets in the carcasses of animals killed by hunters are the principal sources of lead poisoning in California condors that have been reintroduced to the wild.

Lead poisoning is a major factor limiting the success of efforts to rebuild populations of the endangered California condor. Since the mid-1980s, condors have been bred in captivity and released back into the wild in California, Arizona, and Baja California. The birds, which feed on carrion, can ingest lead from ammunition in animal carcasses or gut piles left behind by hunters.

The UCSC scientists used a "fingerprinting" technique based on the unique isotope ratios found in different sources of lead. The technique enabled them to match the lead in blood samples from condors to the lead in ammunition. Their findings were published online today by the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

"There had been anecdotal reports for years about condors being exposed to lead from ammunition, but there was never enough clear evidence to document the extent of the problem. We knew that we could probably identify the sources of the lead using isotopic signatures," said Donald Smith, professor and chair of environmental toxicology at UCSC and a coauthor of the paper.........

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August 31, 2006, 5:04 AM CT

Targets For Inflammatory Diseases

Patients with systemic autoimmune diseases such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) often suffer loss of kidney function. When marked by a crescent formation in the glomerulus a tiny ball comprised of capillary blood vessels integral to forming urine kidney failure tends to be rapidly progressive, irreversible, and fatal. Little is known about the mechanism behind this crescent or its relationship to immune-mediated inflammation.

To gain understanding, a team of researchers in Japan began by analyzing a spontaneous mutant strain of EOD mice. Their study, published in the September 2006 issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism (http://www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/arthritis), indicates the critical role of platelet function in this dire form of autoimmune kidney disease, crescentic glomerulonenephritis (CGN). It also sheds light on the involvement of Cno protein, a member of a large protein complex called biogenesis of lysosome-related organelle complex 1 (BLOC-1), in the development of an autoimmune disease.

Researchers isolated this mutant strain of mice from the autoimmune-prone strain EOD, which stably develops fatal CGN. Then, using blood samples, they thoroughly assessed blood cell count, immune function, platelet function, and properties of various cell types and genes in these mice, searching for clues to their marked improvement in CGN and ability to survive about twice as long as wild-type EOD mice. Among the surprising findings in the mutant mice was an ability to alter platelet functions. While wild-type EOD mice displayed massive accumulations of platelets in the glomerulus, the mutant mice did not, but they were more prone to bleeding. Further investigation revealed a mutation in the cappuccino gene, which encodes the Cno protein. Mutant platelets also showed abnormally low aggregation in response to collagen and abnormally low rates of serotonin storage.........

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August 31, 2006, 5:02 AM CT

Fruit And Vegetable Juice Reduce Alzheimer's Disease

Drinking fruit and vegetable juices frequently may delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease. According to a research findings published in the recent issue of The American Journal of Medicine, researchers followed almost 2000 subjects for up to 10 years and found that the risk for developing Alzheimer's disease was reduced by 76% for those who drank fruit and vegetable juices more than 3 times per week compared with those who drank juices less than once per week. A lower reduction (16%) was obtained for juice consumption once or twice per week.

Recent studies of Alzheimer's disease biochemistry have focused on the accumulation of beta-amyloid peptide in the brain, and the action of hydrogen peroxide in mediating this process. Various studies have suggested that polyphenols, strong anti-oxidants available in many foods, might disrupt these processes and provide some protection against Alzheimer's disease. Although some studies of anti-oxidant vitamins have been disappointing, this study is the first to examine juices rich in polyphenols as a preventive measure for Alzheimer's disease.

The subjects were already part of the Kame Project, a prospective study of Japanese populations living in Hiroshima, Japan; Oahu, Hawaii; and the metropolitan area of Seattle, Washington. Drawing from the Seattle population, 1836 people were identified as free of dementia in 1992-1994, and were followed at 2-year time intervals until the end of 2001. Dietary consumption of fruit and vegetable juices was determined from self-administered questionnaires developed for Asian populations. Cognitive function was assessed by trained interviewers using a standardized test, with clinical follow-up resulting in clinical diagnoses for those patients showing impairment.........

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August 31, 2006, 4:39 AM CT

Drink Orange Juice To Keep Kidney Stones Away

A daily glass of orange juice can help prevent the recurrence of kidney stones better than other citrus fruit juices such as lemonade, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have discovered.

The findings indicate that although many people assume that all citrus fruit juices help prevent the formation of kidney stones, not all have the same effect. The study is available online and is scheduled would be published in the Oct. 26 issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

Medically managing recurrent kidney stones requires dietary and lifestyle changes as well as treatment such as the addition of potassium citrate, which has been shown to lower the rate of new stone formation in patients with kidney stones.

But some patients can't tolerate potassium citrate because of gastrointestinal side effects, said Dr. Clarita Odvina, assistant professor of internal medicine at the Charles and Jane Pak Center for Mineral Metabolism and Clinical Research and the study's lead author. In those cases, dietary sources of citrate such as orange juice may be considered as an alternative to pharmacological drugs.

"Orange juice could potentially play an important role in the management of kidney stone disease and may be considered an option for patients who are intolerant of potassium citrate," Dr. Odvina said.........

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August 30, 2006, 5:08 AM CT

Pension Web sites

Awareness of pension scheme websites is considerably higher among employees than the self-employed, reports research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) e-Society programme.

In a survey of 1,337 individuals, Dr Tina Harrison and Kathryn Waite have observed that less than a quarter of self-employed individuals know that their pension scheme has a website, and around half of these have actually used it.

Findings show that pension scheme members who have used their scheme website are benefiting from an increased understanding of pensions and, in some cases, an enhanced decision-making capacity.

A number of large occupational pension schemes now provide scheme members with a website. Around three-quarters of the occupational scheme members surveyed were aware of their pension website and similarly high proportions had used it. Facilities and features range from purely informational sites, such as web-based scheme booklets, to fully functional integrated sites that allow scheme members to switch funds, change contribution levels and update personal details online. Most popular features are the modellers or calculators that allow members to obtain projections of their benefits and to model 'what if' scenarios.

A number of scheme members value their pension website and are benefiting from its use. The greatest benefit is in information provision and education. The vast majority of all pension website users report increased access to pension information, and half of these say they are better informed about pensions as a result. Similar proportions report experiencing greater confidence in making pension enquiries and decisions as a result of using their pension scheme website.........

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August 29, 2006, 9:50 PM CT

More than just pretty faces

You'll find more than faces in these places. Stanford University researchers have taken the closest look yet at a region of the brain that was thought to be devoted solely to face recognition and discovered that this particular patchwork of neurons does much more: It also responds to such objects as cars, animals and sculptures.

Current face perception theories suggest neurons in a portion of the brain called the fusiform gyrus light up in response to a face, leading researchers to refer to this region as the "fusiform face area." But a study would be published in the recent issue of Nature Neuroscience reports that this area also shows a localized - albeit less extensive - response to more than just faces.

"We've looked at the fine structure of face-selective regions in the brain, and it argues against prevailing theories," said first author Kalanit Grill-Spector, PhD, assistant professor of psychology and a researcher in the Neuroscience Institute at Stanford.

Using high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging, Grill-Spector and colleagues imaged regions of the brain at a magnification of 27 to 70 times smaller than a traditional fMRI scan. Like viewing a grain of sugar rather than the whole cube, this allowed the team to "zoom in" on a hybrid of neural patches, each of which responds to a different category of objects.........

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August 29, 2006, 9:38 PM CT

Higher Risk For Cesarean

For mothers at low risk, infant and neonatal mortality rates are higher among infants delivered by cesarean section than for those delivered vaginally in the United States, according to recent research published in the latest issue of Birth: Issues in Perinatal Care. Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed over 5.7 million live births and nearly 12,000 infant deaths over a four-year period. In general, neonatal (<28 days of age) deaths were rare for infants of low-risk women (about 1 death per 1,000 live births). However, neonatal mortality rates among infants delivered by cesarean section were more than twice those for vaginal deliveries, even after adjustment for socio-demographic and medical risk factors.

The overall rate of babies delivered by cesarean increased by 41% between 1996 and 2004, while the rate among women with no indicated risk for cesarean delivery (term births with no indicated medical risk factors or complications of labor and delivery) nearly doubled.

"These findings should be of concern for clinicians and policy makers who are observing the rapid growth in the number of primary cesareans to mothers without a medical indication," says lead researcher Marian MacDorman. While timely cesareans in response to medical conditions have proven to be life-saving interventions for countless mothers and babies, we are currently witnessing a different phenomenon- a growing number of primary cesareans without a reported medical indication. Although the neonatal mortality rate for this group of low-risk women remains low regardless of the method of delivery, the resulting increase in the cesarean rate may inadvertently be putting a larger population of babies at risk for neonatal mortality.........

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