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Intro to Human Physiology, Duke’s newest MOOC

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This week marks the launch of Duke Universitys latest Coursera MOOC, Introductory Human Physiology. Over 64,000 students have enrolled in this foundational course to build an understanding of the normal function of the human body. This 11 week course was developed by Emma (Mimi) Jakoi, PhD and Jennifer Cabrey, PhD both from the Department of Cell Biology at Duke University. This course is also one of a relatively small number of Coursera offerings currently eligible for a Verified Certificate under the Coursera Signature Track program that links course participation to a students verified identity.

Since the course site was opened, more than 22,000 students have logged in to begin studying the materials, completing problem sets and participating in the online discussions. More than 70,000 streaming views and 27,000 downloads have been recorded so far. Although the course is but a few days old, over 16,000 students have viewed the Course Introduction and more than 3000 have completed the first weeks course videos.

Almost 1000 students have joined the discussion forums in the course web site, but there are a range of options for making connections with other students.Study Groups forming range from an International Facebook study group with ~290 members to many smaller affinity groups by language, region, time zone or nationality such as Greece, Malaysia,Global China, Portuguese speakers and students in the Eastern US time zone. Participants hail from more than 130 countries and of course include many aspiring doctors, a Canadian farmer and an industrial engineer in Haiti. Its not too late to join them!

Yvonne leads assessment and program evaluation for CIT and university initiatives in which CIT takes a leading role. She also provides leadership to library assessment efforts. Her work includes serving on library- and university-wide planning committees and working groups. Her interests include engaging stakeholders in evaluations, organizational learning, utilization-focused evaluation, survey design and evaluation capacity-building.

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Intro to Human Physiology, Duke’s newest MOOC

LP Burpees – Fitness | Athletics | Nutrition – www.limitless-performance.ca – Video

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LP Burpees - Fitness | Athletics | Nutrition - http://www.limitless-performance.ca
LP Trainer Adam de Jong lost a bet on the Leafs and was forced to do 25 Burpees in front of the 12noon Fitness Group........25 Burpees in theory seemed really easy but ended up being a suprisingly chellenging task!

By: LPFitnessAthletics

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LP Burpees - Fitness | Athletics | Nutrition - http://www.limitless-performance.ca - Video

Malawi launches Nutrition, HIV and AIDs project

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By Malawi News Agency

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President Dr. Joyce Banda Thursday launched the Nutrition, HIV and AIDs project which seek to increase access and utilization of selected services known to contribute to the reduction of the child stunting, maternal and child anemia.

With support from the World Bank and the Canadian International for Development Agency (CIDA) the US$103 million (MK38 billion) project will also contribute to prevention of HIV and AIDs in children and sexually active adults.

Speaking at the launch, the President said despite making progress in combating HIV and AIDs and maternal health, the country still had challenges in fighting against stunting and anemia.

Banda said presently 47.1 percent of children were stunted, a development she described to be not health for the country.

President Banda tours the exhibition during the launch.-Photo credit Felix Washon/Mana

She said, from the time HIV and AIDs was diagnosed in 1985, there has been progress in combating the pandemic but little has been done in reducing stunting and anemia among children and pregnant mothers.

President Banda further said the launch of the project meant change of focus and ensure that the country had policies and programs that supported for nutrition improvement.

However, to achieve this, the President said there was need for cooperation between Government and all stakeholders involved in the implementation of mother and child programmes.

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Malawi launches Nutrition, HIV and AIDs project

Nestlé Phils. Offers Free Nutrition Consultation In 500 Stores Nationwide

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As part of its "Choose Wellness, Choose Nestl" program to enhance awareness and lifestyle practices promoting nutrition, health and wellness (NHW) in the country, Nestl Philippines once again is providing free nutrition consultation services in 500 supermarkets and other retail outlets nationwide until the end of March 2013.

According to the company's Corporate Wellness Head, Leslie Go-Alcantara, the nutrition service is Nestl's way of providing personalized nutrition advice to consumers, based on their specific nutritional needs and physical assessment.

This year's service is an implementation of Nestl's focus of putting food back at the center of wellness. "The formula for wellness is a balance of good nutrition and proper exercise. However, people often become preoccupied more with the exercise aspect, but it's also very important to be mindful of the food that you eat," she said.

During the consultation, a registered nutritionist-dietician introduces the consumer to the concept of the "My Wellness Plate," a practical illustration of how to eat right, based on what her daily plate should look like - half being "glow" foods such as vegetables and fruits; a quarter being "grow" foods, namely proteins; and a quarter being "go" foods or carbohydrates, accompanied by a glass of milk or other beverages.

Along with the "My Wellness Plate," the participant is also reminded about the principle of moderation, variety and balance in the diet. The principle highlights eating the right amount or correct serving sizes of food during a meal (moderation); alternating among different vegetable and fruit as well as protein and carbohydrate sources, or utilizing various cooking methods (variety); and maintaining the recommended proportions among food groups (balance).

A new feature of the consultation is body fat analysis, not commonly available to consumers, which indicates a person's body fat percentage that can be linked to health risks and the development of some diseases.

Capping the session, the nutritionist recommends specific products that a participant can consume, a guide to correct serving sizes, and simple, daily physical activities in which the consumer can engagefor her individual journey towards wellness.

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Nestlé Phils. Offers Free Nutrition Consultation In 500 Stores Nationwide

Research and Markets: Sports Nutrition Trends and Development – The Fastest Growing Industry in Consumer Health due to …

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DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/cxndmt/sports_nutrition) has announced the addition of the "Sports Nutrition Trends and Development" report to their offering.

Driven by a global obesity crisis and the rise of more broadly health and fitness oriented consumers, sports nutrition has become the fastest growing category in consumer health. Substantial growth rates have led to more attention from consumer health producers and retailers alike, which has, in turn, greatly expanded access for average consumers. This briefing provides a global overview of the sports nutrition category and explores the most important trends shaping its outlook.

Euromonitor International's Sports Nutrition Trends and Development global briefing examines the size, growth trends and potential opportunities in the Consumer Health market. The strategic analyses include assessing the impacts of changing regulations, research breakthroughs and public health concerns on both the market and leading companies. Consumer attitudes towards the products and their personal healthcare needs are also explored.

Why buy this report?

- Get a detailed picture of the Consumer Health market;

- Pinpoint growth sectors and identify factors driving change;

- Understand the competitive environment, the market's major players and leading brands;

- Use five-year forecasts to assess how the market is predicted to develop.

Key Topics Covered:

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Research and Markets: Sports Nutrition Trends and Development - The Fastest Growing Industry in Consumer Health due to ...

GNC Expands Boundaries of Innovation in Sports Nutrition

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PITTSBURGH, Feb. 28, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --GNC Holdings, Inc. (GNC), the nation's largest specialty retailer of health, wellness and sports nutrition products, today announced its latest technology breakthroughs in sports nutrition and the evolution of several products in its industry-leading Pro Performance line. GNC's expanded offerings will come as exciting news to athletes and fitness enthusiasts of all levels who seek to enhance overall workout performance with the latest product innovations.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110302/NE57701LOGO )

"Over the last 25 years, GNC has built a powerful and unmatched reputation for creating cutting-edge performance nutrition products," saidTom Dowd, Executive Vice President, Chief Merchandising Officer and General Manager for GNC. "With these new performance technologies, we are again setting the standard in sports nutrition, even as more and more products enter this highly competitive category. Our reputation for scientific innovation and clinical validation only grows stronger and appeals to more and more athletes who want to compete at a higher level."

Due to our cutting edge product development, we now have 27 percent of the fast-growing sports nutrition business, and the Pro Performance line of products is approaching $300 million in sales and represents the largest sports brand in the U.S.

As part of GNC's aim to provide athletes with advanced products that deliver the most in quality and performance, the brand now features new delivery systems and certification advancements within GNC proprietary sports products, including the new Pro Performance AMP Concentrated Intelligent Release Series and the Pro Performance X.R. Series.

In addition, GNC has taken the best-selling, clinically proven performance protein of all time, AMP Wheybolic Extreme 60, to a new standard with three brand new, innovative and customized formulas:

To learn more about GNC's line of sports nutrition products visit us at GNC.com, or to locate your nearest retailer, visit our store locator.

About GNC

GNC Holdings, Inc., headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pa., is a leading global specialty retailer of health and wellness products, including vitamins, minerals, and herbal supplement products, sports nutrition products and diet products, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "GNC."

As of December 31, 2012, GNC has more than 8,100 locations, of which more than 6,100 retail locations are in the United States (including 949 franchise and 2,181 Rite Aid franchise store-within-a-store locations) and franchise operations in 54 countries (including distribution centers where retail sales are made). The Companywhich is dedicated to helping consumers Live Wellhas a diversified, multi-channel business model and derives revenue from product sales through company-owned retail stores, domestic and international franchise activities, third-party contract manufacturing, e-commerce and corporate partnerships. The Company's broad and deep product mix, which is focused on high-margin, premium, value-added nutritional products, is sold under GNC proprietary brands, including Mega Men, Ultra Mega, GNC Total Lean, Pro Performance, Pro Performance AMP and Beyond Raw, and under nationally recognized third-party brands.

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GNC Expands Boundaries of Innovation in Sports Nutrition

Head Start teachers behind on nutrition: study

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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Preschool teachers scored low on a nutrition knowledge quiz and seemed to have unhealthy eating habits themselves, researchers found in a small study.

"Kids are with these teachers 6 to 8 hours a day, five days a week," lead author Shreela Sharma told Reuters Health. "Asking a child to make healthy choices when there are none in the environment he's in, that's not going to happen."

The federally funded Head Start program - which has been in the news following President Barack Obama's pledge for preschool funding - provides daily child care for children from low income families across the U.S. The program has served tens of millions of children since 1965.

Sharma and her colleagues asked 173 teachers at Head Start centers in Harris County, Texas five questions including "Which food group should be consumed most?" and "How many servings of fruits and vegetables should you eat each day?"

Ninety-seven percent of the teachers answered three or fewer of the questions correctly, according to results in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

A quarter of the teachers had not eaten fruit the previous day, but half had eaten french fries. Almost half had drank soda the previous day.

Healthy eating habits are especially important for children from low income families, who are hit harder by the obesity epidemic, according to Sharma, who studies nutrition at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston. A 2011 study found that 25 percent of preschoolers who attend Head Start were obese, compared to a national average for 2 to 5 year old kids of 9 percent.

OTHER PRESCHOOLS WORSE?

Head Start, which requires teachers to have college degrees, is probably a bit ahead of other preschool programs in the country, which makes these results even more startling, Dianne Stanton Ward, a professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Public Health in Chapel Hill, told Reuters Health.

Head Start teachers are expected to introduce children to food groups as well as numbers and letters, but nutrition is not mandatory in teacher training, according to Sharma.

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Head Start teachers behind on nutrition: study

Orlando Tech Dental Assisting Program Promo – Video

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Orlando Tech Dental Assisting Program Promo
Dental Assisting prepares you for employment as a dental assistant. Training includes dental office and patient management, laboratory procedures, anatomy, terminology, nutrition, instrument and equipment utilization, microbiology, pharmacology/anesthesia, chair side assisting and expanded functions, office emergencies/CPR, radiography, operatory/instrumentation, specialty procedures, materials, ethics/jurisprudence, dental materials and preventive dentistry and human relations skills. Dental Assisting National Board Examination certification.

By: OCPSOrlandoTech

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Orlando Tech Dental Assisting Program Promo - Video

Free Microbiology PowerPoint Template Download – Video

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Free Microbiology PowerPoint Template Download
http://www.medicaldump.com - Please visit the site for FREE medical PowerPoints, medical PowerPoint templates, medical e-books related to all specialties including ophthalmology, cardiology, neurology,nephrology, GI, etc. This is a Microbiology PowerPoint Template. Thanks to Free music by Rickvanman at http . I #39;ve added his #39;Heading For Battle #39; as the background

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Free Microbiology PowerPoint Template Download - Video

2013 EIDA AWARDS: Cori Fata-Hartley – Video

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2013 EIDA AWARDS: Cori Fata-Hartley
2013 EXCELLENCE IN DIVERSITY AWARDS Friday, February 15, 2013 4:00 pm Cori Fata-Hartley ASSISTANT PROFESSOR Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics College of Natural Science Lyman Briggs College Indivual Award: Sustained Effort toward Excellence in Diversity Above and beyond her teaching and research responsibilities, Dr. Cori Fata- Hartley, Assistant Professor of Biology, has dedicated much of her career to promoting academic and workforce diversity in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), disciplines in which women and minorities have long been under-represented. Recognizing that change begins at the administrative level, she co-founded the Lyman Briggs Committee for Inclusivity (LBC Inc.), established to promote and foster an inclusive environment and equal opportunities for all Lyman Briggs students, faculty, and staff through education, research, and service. Noting that some freshmen were ill prepared for the rigors of the existing science and math curriculum, Dr. Fata-Hartley pursued a Creating Inclusive Excellence (CIE) grant to design a new curriculum to increase retention and success of minority students in STEM fields. Through another CIE grant, she collaborated with a small inter-disciplinary faculty team to develop a senior seminar -- Investigating Diversity in Science -- to reinforce the importance of diversifying the STEM workforce. To further support student success, Dr. Fata-Hartley helped a group of Lyman ...

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2013 EIDA AWARDS: Cori Fata-Hartley - Video

Mutation altering stability of surface molecule in acid enables H5N1 infection of mammals

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Public release date: 28-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Jim Sliwa jsliwa@asmusa.org 202-942-9297 American Society for Microbiology

A single mutation in the H5N1 avian influenza virus that affects the pH at which the hemagglutinin surface protein is activated simultaneously reduces its capacity to infect ducks and enhances its capacity to grow in mice according to research published ahead of print today in the Journal of Virology.

"Knowing the factors and markers that govern the efficient growth of a virus in one host species, tissue, or cell culture versus another is of fundamental importance in viral infectious disease," says Charles J. Russell of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN, an author on the study. "It is essential for us to identify influenza viruses that have increased potential to jump species, to help us make decisions to cull animals, or quarantine humans." The same knowledge "will help us identify targets to make new drugs that stop the virus [and] engineer vaccines."

Various influenza viruses are spreading around the globe among wild birds, but fortunately, few gain the ability to jump to humans. However, those that do, and are able to then spread efficiently from person to person, cause global epidemics, such as the infamous pandemic of 1918, which infected one fifth and killed an estimated 2.7 percent of the world's population. Occasionally, one of these viruses is exceptionally lethal. For example, H5N1 has killed more than half of the humans it has infected. The specter of such a virus becoming easily transmissible among humans truly frightens public health officials. But understanding the mechanisms of transmission could help microbiologists find ways to mitigate major epidemics.

When influenza viruses infect birds, the hemagglutinin surface protein of the virus is activated by acid in the entry pathway inside the host cell, enabling it to invade that cell. In earlier work, Russell and collaborators showed that a mutant version of the influenza H5N1 virus called K58I that resists acid activation, loses its capacity to infect ducks. Noting that the upper airways of mammals are more acidic than infected tissues of birds, they hypothesized, correctly, that a mutation rendering the hemagglutinin protein resistant to acid might render the virus more infective in mammals.

In this study the investigators found that K58I grows 100-fold better than the wild-type in the nasal cavities of mice, and is 50 percent more lethal. Conversely, the mutant K58I virus failed completely to kill ducks the investigators infected, while the wild-type killed 66 percent of ducks, says Russell. "A single mutation that eliminates H5N1 growth in ducks simultaneously enhances the capacity of H5N1 to grow in mice. We conclude that enhanced resistance to acid inactivation helps adapt H5N1 influenza virus from an avian to a mammalian host."

"These data contribute new information about viral determinants of influenza virus virulence and provide additional evidence to support the idea that H5N1 influenza virus pathogenesis in birds and mammals is linked to the pH of [hemagglutinin] activation in an opposing fashion," Terence S. Dermody of Vanderbilt University et al. write in an editorial in the journal accompanying the paper. "A higher pH optimum of [hemagglutinin] activation favors virulence in birds, whereas a lower pH optimum favors virulence in mammals."

Based on this and another study, "surveillance should include phenotypic assessment of the [hemagglutinin] activation pH in addition to sequence analysis," Dermody writes.

The journal carefully considered whether to publish the paper, because it raised issues of "dual use research of concern" (DURC), writes Dermody. DURC is defined as "Life sciences research that, based on current understanding, can be reasonably anticipated to provide knowledge, information, products, or technologies that could be directly misapplied to pose a significant threat with broad potential consequences to public health and safety, agricultural crops and other plants, animals, the environment, materiel, or national security," according to a US government policy document. However, both the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the St. Jude Institutional Biosafety Committee concluded that the study failed to meet the definition of DURC. Clinching the case, "the addition of the key mutation in the Russell paper to other previously reported mutations would not result in an even more virulent H5N1 influenza virus," says Dermody.

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Mutation altering stability of surface molecule in acid enables H5N1 infection of mammals

City prof. bags C.V. Raman prize

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Every year, February 28 is celebrated as National Science Day to commemorate renowned physicist C.V. Ramans discovery of what is known as the Raman effect.

But it has taken over 20 years for a scientist from the State to receive the award constituted under his name.

S. Rajarajan, 58, a professor of microbiology at Presidency College has been awarded the Dr. Sir C. V. Raman birth centenary gold medal this year. Dr. Rajarajan, who hails from Cuddalore is an alumnus of Presidency College and the University of Madras, and holds a Ph.D in medical microbiology.

It is believed that Prof. Raman booked his tickets much before the announcement of the award. He was confident of getting the award because he believed in his research. That is very inspiring for me, said Prof. Rajaram, who was given the responsibility of setting up a microbiology lab in Presidency College in the late nineties.

It was difficult because we had to start everything from scratch. Getting experts in this field is a big challenge, he explains. Presidency College now is one of very few colleges here that offers postgraduate and Ph.D programmes in microbiology.

Prof. Rajaran is also the principal coordinator of the national-level programme to develop an antiviral drug for closely-related viral diseases such as chicken pox and herpes. However, the principal focus of Prof. Rajarajans research has been mosquito-borne diseases such dengue and chikungunya which are causing an increasing number of deaths of late.

We have collaborated with other institutes in Kanpur and Jammu, to collect blood samples. Everything will be processed here, the scientist said.

He also said there is an increasing interest among students in research in pure sciences, but many are also drawn to engineering.

Knowledge of pure sciences is important to enjoy engineering, which is application-oriented. I tell them to be patient because research takes time to bear fruit. Not many engineers are well known, but Sir C.V. Raman, a scientist, is respected everywhere, he said.

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City prof. bags C.V. Raman prize