Conservation International & Starbucks expand partnership, launch Verde Ventures loan program
...to provide pre- and post-harvest loans and capital improvement financing to coffee producers. With Verde Ventures, Starbucks and CI are taking a leadership role in the coffee industry to address some of the financial challenges facing small-scale coffee producers. Most of the loans will be distributed to small...Other highlights in the January 21 issue of JNCI
...isk, whereas, in prospective studies, there was an improvement in accuracy of perceived risk. The authors conclude that these findings should be investigated further through well-designed, well-reported, randomized controlled trials with suitable comparison groups and additional outcome measures. Gene Mutation...Dec. 17 JAMA study shows new 'biologic' drug reduces psoriasis symptoms, improves quality of life
... received the biologic therapy achieve significant improvement vs. placebo. "The efalizumab treatment reduced the frequency and severity of psoriasis symptoms, particularly in the severity of itching and scaling," said Gordon. Psoriasis can develop at any age, although it usually shows up in 15- to 35-year-olds....Purdue biologists expose the inner workings of viral machine
...he discovery was possible because of an innovative improvement on the microscope technology developed in Baker's lab at Purdue. To get the complete image, graduate student Zhang obtained images of 8,000 different particles, each of which showed a viral particle from a slightly different orientation. With the hel...OXiGENE launches significant expansion of its R&D program in ophthalmology
...g from myopic macular degeneration showed dramatic improvement following treatment with CA4P. The patient was tr...learly responded to CA4P and has had a significant improvement in vision," said OXiGENE President and Chief Executive Officer Fred Driscoll. "This significant imp...Breakthroughs lead to better understanding in prevention of transfusion-transmitted infection
...arge number of WNV infected units and seen a major improvement in the overall yield and cost-effectiveness of NAT screening, justifying the substantial investment in implementation of molecular screening of the blood supply," said Michael Busch, M.D., Ph.D., from Blood Systems Research Institute, San Francisco, ...Hope available for patients with anemia and myelodysplastic syndrome
...u, 12.9 g/dl; range 11.1 15.7 g/dl). Hematologic improvement was associated with resolution of megakaryocytic dysplasia (the abnormal appearance of bone marrow cells that are the source of platelets), whereas reduction in bone marrow blast percentage (three out of six) or RS was less common (one out of 10). B...Gastrointestinal specialists comment on new study on 'Virtual' colonoscopy
...ine next week. The results represent a remarkable improvement on previous results. The results appear to rest on fundamental changes in the method of performance of virtual colonoscopy. Excellent results have been seen in some previous studies that could not be repeated by others. It will be important to ver......elicate boundary between medicine and the directed improvement of human beings. But it is not only in medicine that genetic information has found a use; in many areas of the information society, for example in law and justice, in security and insurance it promises - or sometimes threatens - to be of great utilit...Diet may improve cognition, slow aging, and help protect against cosmic radiation
...he cognitive skills of the older dogs, we found no improvement in the younger animals. This suggests, Tapp says, that the diet is most effective in animals that already have some degree of cognitive impairment. The study is currently ongoing in the younger dogs to determine if the diet has a protective effect on...Excellent survival rates for liver cancer patients undergoing transplant
... 2001. Researchers found significant and steady improvement in survival over time among liver transplant patients with liver cancer, especially in the last five years. Five-year survival improved from 25.3 percent during 1987-1991 to 47 percent during 1992-1996, and 61.1 percent during 1996-2001. Accordin...Zadaxin in triple therapy shows 61% response for hepatitis C non-responders
...sponse (clearance of the hepatitis C virus) and an improvement in the liver histological activity index measured at the end of the six-month observation period. About ZADAXIN ZADAXIN is a pure synthetic preparation of thymosin alpha 1, a substance which circulates in the blood naturally and is instrumental i...FDA approves Raptiva (efalizumab) for chronic moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis
...dies had a primary efficacy endpoint of 75 percent improvement in the Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI). The PASI is a composite score that takes into consideration both the fraction of body surface area affected and the nature and severity of the psoriatic changes within the affected regions (erythema, i...Aggregation of cloned mouse embryos improves survival rate
...e four-cell stage, the embryos showed a remarkable improvement in viability, much greater than expected from the sum of their parts." Despite the successful cloning of sheep, pigs, cats and most recently rats, mammalian cloning -- in which an ordinary cell's nucleus is transferred to an egg whose nucleus has bee...Respiratory-pacing device found beneficial in heart failure
...03 Heart failure patients witnessed a significant improvement in disease symptoms and markers of the underlying ...ificantly. In addition, we have seen a significant improvement in patients' quality of life (QOL) as reflected by a formal QOL questionnaire and by patients attest...Ingenium publishes biological characterization of first mouse model for kidney stones
...ypes model: biologically well-characterized and an improvement over current models because it is the result of single base pair substitutions in the gene, which produces a phenotype closely representing a human disease state," stated Michael C. Nehls, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer at Ingenium. "The public...Dual action anthrax vaccine more effective
...he toxins it makes. This dual action represents an improvement over the currently available vaccine, which targets only the toxins. In a test of the vaccine using mice, animals were injected first with the vaccine, then 10 days later with anthrax toxin. All the vaccinated mice survived the toxic challenge, whil...... said. That represents an approximately eight-fold improvement over an earlier device built by Cherry's laboratory at UCLA, before moving to UC Davis in 2001. PET works by detecting short-lived radioactive tracers that emit positrons, or anti-electrons. Those tracers can be attached to other molecules that are t...Psoriasis treatment based on Weizmann Institute Research passes phase II clinical trials
..., called Onercept, or r-hTBP-1, caused significant improvement in the patients' Psoriasis Area and Severity Index...ts treated with onercept experienced a significant improvement in quality of life, based on the standard measurements of Short Form 36 (SF-36) and Dermatology Life......evidence was performed. In this way, a significant improvement regarding the reproducibility and uniformity of allergen evaluation was achieved. The criteria have the character of guidelines and serve as a guide to a logical evaluation of the data. However, in special cases deviations from their strict applicati...