Hospital-borne infections are a serious risk of a long-term hospital stay, and ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), a lung infection that develops in about 15% of all people who are ventilated, is among the most dangerous. With weakened immune systems and a higher resistance to antibiotics, patients who rely on a mechanical ventilator can easily develop serious infections — as 26,000 Americans do every year.

Thanks to a proven new clinical approach developed by Tel Aviv University nurses, though, there is a new tool for stopping the onset of VAP in hospitals.

This new high-tech tool? An ordinary toothbrush.

Three Times a Day Keeps Pneumonia Away

Chocolate toffee came to America from England in the 1920s with Heath, Hammond, and Jane Royce who made the treat from an old family recipe for family and friends. When her time came, Jane took the highly coveted recipe with her to her grave, and that would have been the end of the story had it not been for her daughter Betty Burns who became determined to revive the tradition and her great-granddaughter, Stephanie Rush, who decided to share the treat, though not the recipe, with the rest of us with the online and wholesale business Rushburn Toffee Company.

How can we share 98% of our DNA with a chimpanzee and still be so different? One of the biggest biological surprises found in our genomes is that chimps, mice, and even flies don't differ very much from us in either number or types of genes. What makes the many diverse animal groups different is not what genes they have; the secret is in how those genes are used.

Something similar takes place inside ourselves: nearly every one of our cells carries the exact same DNA, and yet some cells transmit electrical signals in the brain, while others break down toxic compounds in the liver. How do you get such different cells from the same DNA? Again, the secret lies in how genes are regulated.

It should be no surprise then that gene regulation has been the subject of intense study. Most of these studies have focused on taking known genes and describing how they are regulated, but what biologists would really like to do is predict how an unfamiliar gene is controlled, simply by analyzing that gene's regulatory DNA. Once we can predict how genes are regulated, we're not far away from being able to design new regulatory DNA, which we can use to control the fate of stem cells, manipulate dosing in gene therapy, and design microbes that make better biofuels or degrade toxic waste.  A new report in Nature describes an innovative new way to learn the logic of gene regulation.

TORTOLA, British Virgin Islands, December 10 /PRNewswire/ -- BSG Resources Guinea (BSGR Guinea) is pleased to announce that it has been awarded Simandou Block 1 and Block 2. BSGR Guinea welcomes this opportunity to work together with the Government and the people of the Republic of Guinea to create a world class iron ore mine in Guinea.

RISI today through its Wood Biomass Market Report, indicated that woodfiber will play a major role in any new green energy spending plans in the U.S. The Report stated that as of Dec. 12, estimates from the ever-expanding federal stimulus package suggest the green component (wood, wind, solar, etc.) will be a whopping US$50 billion over two years. If 20% falls to wood energy, that near term spending of US$10 billion would spur formidable growth, providing tens of thousands of new jobs -- and wood demand of perhaps 120 million green tons, long-term.

BARCELONA, Spain and DALLAS, December 10 /PRNewswire/ --

- More than just for CRM Applications, On-demand IT Service Platforms such as NTRsupport and NTRadmin Are Among Emerging Class of Solutions Slated for Significant Growth in 2009

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is often narrowly thought about as a way of delivering point solutions such as customer relationship management (CRM) and a few other business applications.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081111/NTRGLOBALLOGO)

Obviously, scientificblogging.com is all about science writing (it's not just a clever name, as Wayne Campbell would say). Blogging, as Atlantic senior editor Andrew Sullivan said in the November issue, "is, in many ways, writing out loud." But what about that dying breed of the enterprising newspaper science journalist?

BILLERICA, Massachusetts, December 10 /PRNewswire/ --

- Demonstrates Vertica Analytic Database's enterprise-class scale and support of storage area networks

Vertica is participating in the new EMC(R) Data Warehouse/Business Intelligence/Analytics Competency Center to provide customers with a unique one stop shopping experience for determining the appropriate solution to meet their data warehouse/business intelligence needs. The Competency Center is designed to help organizations achieve cost efficiencies and reduce time-to-value in data warehouse deployments.

BEIJING, December 10 /PRNewswire/ --

- Application Period Ends January 4, 2009

- METP, the Official EU-China Managers Exchange and Training Programme, Offers Executives the Possibility to Train as China Experts

Executives from EU-based companies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have the opportunity to apply for a fully-funded training scheme that will qualify them as China experts in 2009. Applications for the EU-China Managers Exchange and Training Programme (METP) can be submitted until January 4, 2009.

LUDWIGSHAFEN, Germany, December 10 /PRNewswire/ -- In simple terms, behind the glass on the front of a plasma screen you'll find a whole lot of tiny cells that are filled with one of the 'noble' gases, generally neon or xenon. Each of these cells represents a single point - a pixel. If a voltage is applied to the gas, then it converts into what is known as a plasma - and the pixel begins to glow. In entertaining episodes our Chemical Reporter answers questions of our Podcast listeners on Chemistry in our everyday life.

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