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Addressing a huge gathering of Eezham Tamils who had gathered to remember those massacred in May 2009, speakers at the “War Crimes Day – May 18” at Dusseldorf highlighted the role the powers in the International Community played in abetting the genocide of the Eezham Tamils, besides emphasising the need to remain faithful to the fundamentals of the struggle for Tamil Eelam, on Friday. While Dr. Andrew Higginbottom, lecturer at Kingston University, London spoke about how the US-UK axis provided the necessary background for the Mu’l’livaaykkaal massacre to happen, Ninthujah Sutharshan, research scholar and Deputy Chief of Eezham Tamils’ Country Council in Germany, said that the ideals of the Tamils’ struggle “was defined in Mullivaikkal by the people who died defending that cause and cannot be redefined in Berlin or London or Paris or New York to match our comfort and convenience.”

Eezham Tamils from across the UK gathered at Trafalgar Square, London to remember the Mu’l’livaaykkaal massacre at a remembrance event organized by the British Tamils’ Forum, on Saturday. With participation from the main political parties of the UK, diaspora groups and activists from the homeland and Tamil Nadu, speakers at the occasion emphasised the need for an independent international investigation in the island, a probe into charges of genocide committed by the Sri Lankan state, ending the militarization and colonization of the Tamil homeland, and self-determination of the Tamil people. Many of the non-Tamil speakers also strongly stated that the UK should stop deporting the Eezham Tamil asylum seekers back to the island. The event drew a crowd of over five thousand the organizers said, citing police sources.

Mount Sinai School of Medicine researchers will present several landmark studies, including data on treatment trends in late-stage cancer, a promising multiple myeloma vaccine, and predictive models of soft tissue sarcomas, prostate and bladder cancer, at the 2012 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting June 1-5, 2012 in Chicago.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.--- Across history and cultures, religion increases trust within groups but also may increase conflict with other groups, according to an article in a special issue of Science.

Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital for Children in Boston have determined that pediatric epilepsy significantly impacts sleep patterns for the child and parents. According to the study available in Epilepsia, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE), sharing a room or co-sleeping with their child with epilepsy decreases the sleep quality and prevents restful sleep for parents.

Researchers at the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute have confirmed the long-held conjecture that studying the genes we share with other animals is a viable means of extrapolating information about human biology. The study, published in the open access journal PLoS Computational Biology, shows how bioinformatics makes it possible to test the conjecture.

Philadelphia, PA, May 17, 2012 – Stories of athletes bravely "playing through the pain" are relatively common and support the widespread belief that they experience pain differently than non-athletes. Yet, the scientific data on pain perception in athletes has been inconsistent, and sometimes contradictory. Investigators from the University of Heidelberg have conducted a meta-analysis of available research and find that in fact, athletes can indeed tolerate a higher level of pain than normally active people. However, pain threshold, the minimum intensity at which a stimulus is perceived as painful, did not differ in athletes and normal controls. Their findings are published in the June issue of Pain®.

Obesity is a major health challenge in many developed countries, reaching global pandemic proportions. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than one-third of American adults and 17 percent of youth are obese. Obesity increases the risk of a number of health conditions including: high blood pressure, high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes. Lifestyle modifications, including eating a healthy diet and daily exercise, are first-line interventions in the fight against obesity. The Salk study suggests another option for preventing obesity by preserving natural feeding rhythms without altering dietary intake.

MADISON – An international team of researchers has discovered how adding trace amounts of water can tremendously speed up chemical reactions—such as hydrogenation and hydrogenolysis—in which hydrogen is one of the reactants, or starting materials.

Technology is helping communication companies merge telephone, television and Internet services, but a push to deregulate may leave some customers on the wrong side of the digital divide during this convergence, according to a Penn State telecommunications researcher.

Researchers at the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute have confirmed the long-held belief that studying the genes we share with other animals is useful. The study, published today in the open access journal PLoS Computational Biology, shows how bioinformatics makes it possible to test the fundamental principles on which life science is built.

The abundance of rare variations across the human genome is consistent with the population explosion of the past few thousand years, medical geneticists and evolutionary biologists report in the May 17 advanced online edition of Science.

New research shows that women stockbrokers sometimes earn as much as 20 percent less than their male counterparts. "Stockbrokers are among the highest paid workers, yet they have the greatest gender inequality among all sales worker jobs," says Prof. Janice Fanning Madden, who conducted the research.

For pregnant women, including those who are overweight and obese, following a healthy calorie controlled diet during pregnancy is safe and can reduce the risk of serious complications such as pre-eclampsia, diabetes and premature birth, finds a study published on bmj.com today.

PITTSBURGH, May 17, 2012 – A change in the formulation of tenofovir gel, an anti-HIV gel developed for vaginal use, may make it safer to use in the rectum, suggests a study published online this week in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. In laboratory tests of rectal tissue, researchers from the Microbicide Trials Network (MTN) found that the reformulated gel was less harmful to the lining of the rectum than the original vaginal formulation, and just as effective in protecting cells against HIV.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Contrary to recent scholarship and popular belief, parents experience greater levels of happiness and meaning in life than people without children, according to researchers from the University of California, Riverside, the University of British Columbia and Stanford University. Parents also are happier during the day when they are caring for their children than during their other daily activities, the researchers found in a series of studies conducted in the United States and Canada.

Joel Anaya has given them a fair amount of study, focusing on that very special jerk who can take a routine service experience—dining out, paying at a cash register, air travel—and make it a nightmare.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — People with bleeding brain aneurysms have the best chance of survival and full recovery if they receive aggressive emergency treatment from a specialized team at a hospital that treats a large number of patients like them every year, according to new guidelines just published by the American Stroke Association.

Scientists at Queen Mary, University of London have shown that zebrafish could be used to study the underlying causes of psychiatric disorders.

Toronto, CANADA (May 17, 2012)— By focusing on the identification of common genetic variants, researchers have identified 57 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that predict—with a high degree of certainty--the risk that siblings of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) will also develop the condition. The findings were presented at the International Meeting for Autism Research.

CHICAGO — A breast cancer vaccine already shown to elicit a powerful immune response in women with varying levels of HER2 expression has the ability to improve recurrence rates and is well tolerated in an adjuvant setting, according to new research from a clinical trial led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

A decade after the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, studies have shown that the incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among troops is surprisingly low, and a Harvard researcher credits the drop, in part, to new efforts by the Army to prevent PTSD, and to ensure those who do develop the disorder receive the best treatment available.

Scientists at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute have found that suspicion resides in two distinct regions of the brain: the amygdala, which plays a central role in processing fear and emotional memories, and the parahippocampal gyrus, which is associated with declarative memory and the recognition of scenes.