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In a fun convergence of dumb social media behavior and bureaucratic ineptitude, two idiotic Brits were detained by armed guards at Los Angeles International Airport for incredibly dumb (but totally harmless) tweets about "destroying America" and "diggin' up Marilyn Monroe." More »
FILE - In this Jan. 6, 2012, file photo, Oregon 1st Congressional District Democratic candidate Suzanne Bonamici speaks during a debate with her Republican opponent Rob Cornilles in Portland, Ore. Voters have until Tuesday to cast a ballot in the all-mail election to replace former Rep. David Wu.(AP Photo/Don Ryan, file)
FILE - In this Jan. 6, 2012, file photo, Oregon 1st Congressional District Democratic candidate Suzanne Bonamici speaks during a debate with her Republican opponent Rob Cornilles in Portland, Ore. Voters have until Tuesday to cast a ballot in the all-mail election to replace former Rep. David Wu.(AP Photo/Don Ryan, file)
FILE - In this Jan. 6, 2012, file photo, Oregon 1st Congressional District Republican candidate Rob Cornilles, right, speaks during a debate with his Democratic rival Suzanne Bonamici in Portland, Ore. Voters have until Tuesday to cast a ballot in the all-mail election to replace former Rep. David Wu.(AP Photo/Don Ryan, file)
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) ? Determined not to lose another friendly district because of a sex scandal, Democrats and their allies have pumped more than $1 million into an Oregon special election race that has turned into a vicious exchange of attacks over the airwaves.
Voters are deciding who should replace former Rep. David Wu, a seven-term Democrat who resigned last year following a string of bizarre news stories that began with photos of the congressman wearing a tiger costume and ended with a young woman's accusation that he made an unwanted sexual advance.
Voters have until 8 p.m. Tuesday to return their ballots in the all-mail election.
Republican Rob Cornilles, a sports business consultant, has tried hard to extend the scandal that brought down Wu to the Democrat who wants to take his place, former state Sen. Suzanne Bonamici. She says the race is about the future, not about Wu.
Bonamici and independent groups that support her have gone after Cornilles for missing tax payments for his business and for inconsistent statements about the number of jobs his company has created.
Oregon's 1st Congressional District is the state's economic engine, encompassing downtown Portland and the fast-growing western suburbs that are home to the Silicon Forest high-tech hub and the global headquarters for athletic-wear giants Nike Inc. and Columbia Sportswear Company. It stretches across agricultural communities to the Pacific coast. Democrats have represented the district since 1975, and its voters overwhelmingly supported President Barack Obama.
But Democrats do not want to see a repeat of what happened last year in a heavily Democratic New York district, when a Republican won a special election after Rep. Anthony Weiner acknowledged sending provocative text messages and resigned.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has spent $1.3 million to boost Bonamici. Political committees for a union, abortion-rights groups and a super PAC allied with Democrats have also chipped in with their own mail or television ads.
Democrats insist they're not scared. They've likened their investment to an insurance policy to avoid any doubts about the party's strength that would inevitably follow a loss in a liberal state like Oregon. The National Republican Congressional Committee has spent just $85,000 on the race.
Cornilles, 47, is making his second bid for the seat after losing to Wu in 2010. He's centered his pitch on his experience running a sports-marketing firm, hoping to swing an upset with a relentless focus on jobs and a run toward the center. Unemployment in the Portland area dropped to 7.8 percent in November 2011, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Bonamici, 57, is mixing traditional Democratic themes of protecting Social Security and Medicare with a pledge to tackle the national debt by getting Washington's priorities in order.
Without reliable public polling it's anyone's guess how close the race will be.
JERUSALEM ? A hard-line Jewish settler who wants to pay Palestinians to leave the West Bank and Gaza is running against Israel's prime minister in Tuesday's party primary election.
Moshe Feiglin has little chance of defeating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but he could deliver an embarrassing blow to the country's leader in his fourth try for leadership of the Likud, none of which have had a realistic shot at success.
Experts say Feiglin could get a third of the vote in the closed party primary, reflecting the view of hard-liners that Netanyahu, despite his uncompromising worldwide, is not hawkish enough.
"I am providing an alternative," said Feiglin, 49. "The world expects ... much more than creating a terrorist country right in the heart of the land of the Bible," referring to a Palestinian state in the West Bank.
Israeli nationalists believe the West Bank must remain under Israeli control for religious and security reasons. Though Netanyahu backed that view for years, his movement has edged toward compromise in recent years, and Netanyahu himself has accepted the concept of creating a Palestinian state.
Feiglin founded a nationalist movement that blocked highway intersections around the country in 1995 to protest partial peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians, and he opposes further peace talks.
Feiglin proposes annexing the West Bank, retaking Gaza ? Israel withdrew in 2005 ? and bolstering a Jewish majority by offering emigration incentive packages of $350,000 to each Arab family in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Such extreme positions have the backing of a small but noisy minority of Israelis.
Netanyahu called the snap leadership primary in his Likud Party a year ahead of schedule, raising the possibility of an early general election later this year.
Netanyahu is so popular that no Likud Cabinet ministers or lawmakers dared challenge him, leaving Feiglin as the only other candidate.
Feiglin has steadily gained support over the last three times he has run for Likud party leadership ? from winning 3.5 percent of the vote in his first campaign nine years ago, to scooping up nearly a quarter of the vote in 2007.
Analysts are divided about how the underdog would affect the ruling party.
Avraham Diskin, a Hebrew University political scientist, said the stronger Feiglin performs in the primaries, the more Netanyahu will strive to portray a moderate face to the party by endorsing less hawkish lawmakers around him, he said.
"It doesn't look like (Netanyahu) will give in to the extremists," Diskin said.
Analyst Yaron Ezrahi says if Feiglin wins more than 30 percent of the votes in the primaries, it could push the Likud party's base further right politically and weaken Netanyahu's claim that the ruling party represents the majority of the nation.
"It's very serious. It hurts the Likud's image," Ezrahi said. He called Feiglin's camp an "embarrassing minority" for Netanyahu.
Feiglin's expected gains in Tuesday's primaries come as religious nationalists are preparing for a showdown with the government over plans to evict the unauthorized Migron settlement, which the government says was built on unlawfully seized land from private Palestinian landowners in 2001.
Hard-line lawmakers are threatening to bolt Netanyahu's coalition if Migron is dismantled, and Feiglin's campaign could add more pressure to Netanyahu to find a solution that will satisfy the settlers.
"Netanyahu is fighting a war of survival. But there is no survival without a vision," said Feiglin. "He is losing credit."
Since our review of Aperture 3.0 at its launch, Apple has been busy not only tightening the app by making it more stable and correcting minor glitches in specific cases, but also adding new capabilities like support for iCloud, iOS 5, and Lion multi-touch. Among an extremely capable field of pro photo-workflow software?especially Adobe Lightroom ($299, 4.5 stars), ACDSee Pro ($99.99, 4 stars), and the impressive newer arrival, CyberLink PhotoDirector ($99.99, 3.5 stars)?Aperture's smooth user interface, Faces and Places features, plentiful output options, and good camera raw support stand out. For Mac users who want a big step up in power from iPhoto, Aperture is a natural. But Lightroom goes further for the pro or very serious amateur, with not only the enforced workflow, but with specific lens-based corrections for geometry, vignetting, and chromatic aberration.
Aperture is available either from the Mac App Store for $79.99, or as a free trial downloadable from www.apple.com/aperture. It's a Mac-only application, so Windows and Linux users are out of luck, but are well served by Adobe's competing Lightroom, PCMag.com Editors' Choice photo workflow app, which is also available for the Mac. Another new Mac and Windows offering, Corel AfterShot ($99.99, 2.5 stars) has a ways to go before catching up with the two major players from Adobe and Apple.
Interface Programs in Aperture's class are all about workflow. The progression is generally from importing and organizing to adjusting and editing to outputting your photos to print and web. Lightroom, ACDSee, AfterShot, and PhotoDirector take the approach of segmenting each of these phases of the workflow with different "modes" in tabs or buttons, usually along the lines of Organize, Edit, and Output. The progression often makes sense, but there are times when you may just want to jump around and perform an organizing action in the midst of photo editing.
Aperture is non-modal, meaning you can do just this, performing any action at any point in your process from its single Inspector panel. The tabs on this panel for Library, Metadata, and Adjustments, along with the interface's buttons and the app menu, give you access to everything in the program at any stage of the process. Your process will determine which is best for you: the more methodical types will prefer Lightroom's approach, while Aperture will better suit the more ADD types, who want to jump around between functions.
The modal approach will be comfortable for many photo pros, and it epitomizes an actual "workflow." But navigating Aperture's easy full-screen view, with optional "heads-up" display for the Inspector, becomes second nature pretty quickly. This new full-screen capability makes it easier to show nothing but your big glorious photo. Lightroom still has three levels of "full screen" and requires extra steps to hide all the panels and toolbars. However, neither Aperture nor Lightroom let me undock the panels the way ACDSee did.
Aperture lets you view your library as large thumbnails in full screen mode, and its thumbnail-size slider makes adjusting them easier than in Lightroom. Aperture also has a nice zoom with the mouse-wheel option. New support for OS X Lion gestures means you can pinch and unpinch on a trackpad to zoom in and out as well. Rotating and cropping also benefits from multitouch gestures. Another feature lacking in Lightroom but available in Aperture is the virtual Light Table; this lets you arrange photos in different sizes in a single view and save them as one PDF or JPG. I'm not sure how useful this is for most photographers, but it's been brought up on Adobe Lightroom forums by those who miss it.
Import and Organize When you import photos from a memory card, Aperture saves files in its own area as "managed" photos, only accessible by Aperture, but you can save the images to a regular disk folder and have Aperture treat them as "referenced" files for editing. Any edits will be saved in Aperture's database, but the master images remain where you placed them on the drive. You can also export a managed file to a disk file visible in Finder. The raw import settings for my Canon EOS Rebel T1i turned out beautiful images. And the software can perform some image processing as it imports, such as applying adjustment presets, and even Apple ActionScripts that you can download from enthusiast sites.
Like most current photo-editing software, Aperture is "non-destructive," meaning it keeps a master of the original image you imported and saves your edits in a database. Any of your edited images is called a "version" (as opposed to the master?the original). I think Lightroom makes it a little easier to take snapshots and view before/after comparisons, though you can do this in Aperture through menus. Lightroom also makes it easier to see a split view of one side showing your original and the other your edited version. And while tethering my T1i worked flawlessly in Lightroom 3 beta, Aperture wouldn't play. I contacted Apple about this and assume it will support this most popular of DSLRs soon.
Aperture lets you organize your images in several hierarchies?at the top level, your Library contains Projects, which can be subdivided into folders, albums, and Smart albums. Stacks is a feature in both Aperture and Lightroom that lets you group related photos, and both can auto-group photos into stacks based on the shots' timestamps. Aperture makes a bigger deal out of stacks, giving the feature its own menu (Lightroom offers a choice under its Photo menu). And Aperture has a nice expanding animation when you reveal a stack's photos.
Aperture offers all the extensive metadata support you could want?camera and EXIF, ratings, captions, keywords, and much more?including support for the standard IPTC Core spec. One thing I'm used to is right-clicking to get properties, but that's not an option in Aperture. For my Canon T1i, Aperture could show me the focus points, but Lightroom couldn't. A very complete filter dialog lets you view just photos that meet the criteria you want, though in a minor quibble, Lightroom makes it easier to filter by EXIF info such as which lens you used.
Aperture also now displays video and lets you do basic trimming, something Ligthroom users will have to wait for in version 4. I do wish it were easier to filter the library view by just video, though. The video editing like what you get on the iPhone?very basic. But it can be useful for slideshow presentations, and it's more than you get it Lightroom 3, which only displays videos in the betas I've seen so far.
iCloud Photo Stream New for version 3.2 in Aperture, a Photo Stream entry appears by default in your Library tab in the side panel. The first time you click on this, you'll see a message asking whether you want to turn the feature on or not. After responded in the affirmative, a confirmation dialog appeared, telling me I had to enable iCloud in System Preferences. The relevant control panel opened, where I could sign into my Apple ID. After returning to Aperture and hitting the Turn on Photo Stream button, two project thumbnail trays appeared at the bottom of the window. My guess is that this was because I had iCloud Photo Stream syncing set up on a Windows PC, too, but shooting a couple more photos with my iPhone quickly populated both sets with the new photos.
By default, any photos I added to my Aperture Library were automatically added to Photo Stream, which wasn't a good thing for my storage limit. A complicated series of rules apply if you upload from multiple computers. One smart feature of Photo Stream is that it can make raw camera files viewable on your iPhone or iPad.
A striking point about Photo Stream (and in some ways iCloud as a whole) is that it's almost more generous with Windows PC users than with Mac users. The service works with all recent versions, including XP, Vista, and Windows 7, whereas only the latest version of Mac OS X is compatible: Leopard and even Snow Leopard users are less favored than Windows users.
Also, on Windows, you get a standard folder under My Photos for your Photo Stream, where on the Mac the folder is hidden, with the photos only accessible through iPhoto or Aperture. This means Lightroom users on Windows can point to this as an auto-import folder, so Lightroom has no Photo Stream disadvantage compared with Aperture.
A British teenager collapsed and was rushed to the hospital this week after eating primarily chicken nuggets for the past 15 years. Stacey Irvine, 17, has reportedly survived on her nugget-heavy diet, occasionally supplemented by a bag of chips or piece of toast, since she was a toddler. Doctors have urgerd her to change her ways, but Irvine's case got us wondering: what would actually happen if you ate only one type of food for your entire life?
Depends on the poison you pick, but poison it most likely would be. According to Jo Ann Hattner, a nutrition consultant at Stanford University School of Medicine and former national spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, choosing to eat only one fruit, vegetable or grain would lead to organ failure. Consuming only meat would eventually force your body to start munching on?your own muscles. And if you stuck solely to almost any one food (besides fruit), you would develop a serious case of scurvy.
"I wouldn't recommend this experiment," said Hattner, who also wrote "Gut Insight" (Hattner Nutrition, 2009), a book about digestive health.
No single vegetable or legume has all nine essential amino acids humans need to build the proteins that make up our muscles, Hattner said. That's why most human cultures, without knowing anything about food chemistry, have developed diets centered on complementary veggies that, together, provide all nine. At first, without all the right amino acids, your hair starts to lighten in color and your fingernails get soft. Much worse, "your lean body mass suffers. That doesn't just mean your muscles, but also your heart and your organs." Eventually, your heart shrinks so much you die; this happens, on occasion, with extreme cases of?anorexia nervosa.
Eating only one type of carbohydrate ? just bread or pasta, for example ? also causes organ failure, due to amino acid deficiency. On top of that, you'd get scurvy, a horrific disease brought on by lack of vitamin C, an essential component of many of the body's chemical reactions. Thanks to?highly unethical experiments?carried out on prison inmates in Britain and the United States in the 1940s, we know that scurvy hits after one to eight months of vitamin C deprivation (depending on the quantity one's body has stored to begin with). At first, you feel lethargic and your bones ache. Later, strange spots pop up all over your body and develop into suppurating wounds. You get jaundice, fever, tooth loss and, eventually, you die. [Why Don't Fad Diets Work?]
Life as a "meat purist" would also be a dead-end.
In addition to lacking vitamin C, most meats contain very few carbs ? the easy-to-access packets of energy your body constantly requires to perform even the smallest tasks. "Without carbohydrates, you're going to start to break down some of your muscle mass to get the energy," Hattner said. Again, "muscle" doesn't just mean your biceps. You'll be eating your own heart, too.
However, there is one food that has it all: the one that keeps babies alive. "The only food that provides all the nutrients that humans need is human milk," Hattner said. "Mother's milk is a complete food. We may add some solid foods to an infant's diet in the first year of life to provide more iron and other nutrients, but there is a little bit of everything in human milk."
Technically, adults could survive on?human milk, too, she said; the sticking point would be finding a woman who is willing to provide it (and enough of it). Lacking that option, the second-best choice would be mammalian milk, especially if it is fermented. "Yogurt, which is fermented milk, has a lot of bacteria that is good for the digestive tract," Hattner said.
These hypothetical scenarios aren't just whimsical speculation. In many parts of the world, people have no choice but to eat mostly one food: often, rice. Scientists are developing genetically modified rice that contains more vitamins and nutrients, especially vitamin A, in order to fight malnutrition.
Figuring out how to pack everything we need into one food is also useful for space travel, Hattner said. "The impetus of a lot of nutritional science is, 'How do we feed?people in space?' Scientists are trying to increase the nutritional concentration of food so you don't have a lot of bulk."
Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @nattyover. Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter @llmysteries, then join us on?Facebook.
SEOUL, South Korea ? Samsung Electronics Co. reported a 17 percent jump in fourth quarter profit on the strength of smartphone sales even as the company battled claims it had copied Apple's iPhone.
Samsung said Friday in a regulatory filing that its net profit reached 4 trillion won ($3.5 billion) in the three months that ended in December. The company earned 3.4 trillion won in the same quarter a year earlier.
The Suwon, South Korea-based company said its operating profit jumped 75.8 percent to 5.3 trillion won in the fourth quarter. The figure was closely in line with the company's estimate earlier this month of a 73 percent rise.
The company, however, posted an operating loss of 220 billion won in its display division in the fourth quarter despite a sales increase of 19 percent from the previous year.
"If profit in handsets continues to stream in, this year will also likely be a solid one for Samsung," said Jae Lee, an analyst at Daiwa Securities in Seoul. "The biggest threat would be if the global economy worsens."
Samsung, the world's biggest manufacturer of memory chips and liquid crystal displays, said demand for semiconductors in mobile products and servers remained solid despite weakness in personal computers, which face stiff competition from the rising popularity of tablets.
Samsung has over the decades grown into a key global manufacturer of components that let PCs, digital music players and handsets store data and display it on flat, high-resolution screens. The company has recently been stepping up its challenge against Apple Inc. in the global smartphone business, releasing models such as the Galaxy S II.
Cupertino, California-based Apple, which spurred the smartphone boom with the launch of its iPhone in 2007, has accused Samsung of "slavishly" copying its smartphone and iPad in design, user interface and packaging. Apple sued Samsung in April last year in the United States.
The legal battle has now spilled into 10 countries, according to Samsung officials. Court rulings so far have tended to side with Apple.
Lee said legal battles with Apple would start weighing less on Samsung this year as the South Korean company is expected to release models with new designs.
The quarterly profit brought 2011 net profit to 13.7 trillion won, down 15 percent from the previous year.
Samsung shares rose 0.4 percent to 116,000 won in Seoul.
ScienceDaily (Jan. 26, 2012) ? A team led by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine reports that newly discovered mutations in an evolved assembly of genes cause Joubert syndrome, a form of syndromic autism.
The findings are published in the January 26 online issue of Science Express.
Joubert syndrome is a rare, recessive brain condition characterized by malformation or underdevelopment of the cerebellum and brainstem. The disease is due specifically to alterations in cellular primary cilia -- antenna-like structures found on most cells. The consequence is a range of distinct physical and cognitive disabilities, including poor muscle control, and mental retardation. Up to 40 percent of Joubert syndrome patients meet clinical criteria for autism, as well as other neurocognitive disorders, so it is considered a syndromic form of autism.
The cause or causes of Joubert syndrome are not well-understood. Researchers looked at mutations in the TMEM216 gene, which had previously been linked to the syndrome. However, only half of the expected Joubert syndrome patients exhibit TMEM216 gene mutations; the other half did not. Using genomic sequencing, the research team, led by Joseph G. Gleeson, MD, professor of neurosciences and pediatrics at UC San Diego, broadened their inquiry and discovered a second culprit: mutations in a neighboring gene called TMEM138.
"It is extraordinarily rare for two adjacent genes to cause the same human disease," said Gleeson. "The mystery that emerged from this was whether these two adjacent, non-duplicated genes causing indistinguishable disease have functional connections at the gene or protein level."
Through evolutionary analysis, the scientists concluded that the two TMEM genes became joined end-to-end approximately 260 million years ago, about the time some amphibians began transitioning into land-based reptiles. The connected genes evolved in tandem, becoming regulated by the same transcription factors.
"Prior to this transition, the two genes had wildly different expression levels," said Jeong Ho Lee, MD, PhD, and first author of the study. "Following this transition, they became tightly co-regulated. Moreover, we found that the two encoded proteins coordinate delivery of factors key for cilia assembly."
Gleeson said the findings suggest the human genome has evolved to take advantage of fortuitous ancestral events like gene translocations to better coordinate gene expression by assembling into specific modules. When these modules are disrupted, however, neurodevelopmental diseases may result.
This research was funded, in part, by the Simons Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the National Institutes of Health and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
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Journal Reference:
Jeong Ho Lee, Jennifer L. Silhavy, Ji Eun Lee, Lihadh Al-Gazali, Sophie Thomas, Erica E. Davis, Stephanie L. Bielas, Kiley J. Hill, Miriam Iannicelli, Francesco Brancati, Stacey B. Gabriel, Carsten Russ, Clare V. Logan, Saghira Malik Sharif, Christopher P. Bennett, Masumi Abe, Friedhelm Hildebrandt, Bill H. Diplas, Tania Atti?-Bitach, Nicholas Katsanis, Anna Rajab, Roshan Koul, Laszlo Sztriha, Elizabeth R. Waters, Susan Ferro-Novick, Geoffrey C. Woods, Colin A. Johnson, Enza Maria Valente, Maha S. Zaki, and Joseph G. Gleeson. Evolutionarily Assembled cis-Regulatory Module at a Human Ciliopathy Locus. Science, 26 January 2012 DOI: 10.1126/science.1213506
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Symantec has been scrabbling around trying address a security breach from 2006 that came to light recently. But the fact that the company wasn't sure its was hacked in the first place doesn't exactly inspire confidence. More »
FILE - In this Oct. 24, 2011 file photo, actor Tracy Morgan attends the premiere of "Tower Heist" in New York. Morgan is back at work in New York after a brief hospitalization in Utah. Morgan's publicist, Lewis Kay, says Morgan appreciates fans' concern. The actor was hospitalized Sunday while attending the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, where the elevation is 7,000 feet. Kay says he suffered from exhaustion and altitude. Morgan also suffers from diabetes. (AP Photo/Peter Kramer, file)
FILE - In this Oct. 24, 2011 file photo, actor Tracy Morgan attends the premiere of "Tower Heist" in New York. Morgan is back at work in New York after a brief hospitalization in Utah. Morgan's publicist, Lewis Kay, says Morgan appreciates fans' concern. The actor was hospitalized Sunday while attending the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, where the elevation is 7,000 feet. Kay says he suffered from exhaustion and altitude. Morgan also suffers from diabetes. (AP Photo/Peter Kramer, file)
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) ? Comedian and "30 Rock" cast member Tracy Morgan is back at work in New York after a brief hospitalization in Utah, his publicist said Wednesday.
"He appreciates everyone's support and concern," Lewis Kay said in an email to The Associated Press.
The actor was hospitalized Sunday while attending the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, where the elevation is 7,000 feet (2,133.6 meters).
Kay said Morgan suffered from exhaustion and altitude. Morgan also has diabetes.
Morgan posted a comment on Twitter from the hospital Monday, saying the high altitude "shook up this kid from Brooklyn."
"Superman ran into a little kryptonite," he quipped.
The hospital found no drugs or alcohol in Morgan's system, Kay said.
Recordings of emergency services calls made on the night he collapsed, which were obtained by the AP, indicate Morgan passed out at the Blue Iguana restaurant.
"I don't know if he's been drinking," said one caller, who added that Morgan had vomited. He also said the actor was unconscious and had been loaded into the backseat of a taxi, ready to be rushed to a hospital. However, the dispatcher told the caller to remain there and wait for an ambulance.
Other callers told the dispatcher Morgan had a high fever and was breathing slowly.
"It's actually a celebrity. He has a high fever," said one caller.
An ambulance arrived a short time later and took Morgan to a nearby hospital. He was released a day later.
___
Associated Press writer Jennifer Dobner contributed to this report.
In a holy crap stat o' the week, AT&T sold a record setting 9.4 million smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2011. 7.6 million of that 9.4 million were iPhones. 7.6 MILLION. That's a ridiculous 81% of all AT&T smartphones sold! That's only 1.8 million phones left to split between Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry (ha!). That is freaking nuts. More »
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. ? The 84th annual Academy Award nominations for supporting actor in a motion picture have been announced in Beverly Hills, Calif., by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The nominees announced Tuesday morning are: Kenneth Branagh, "My Week with Marilyn"; Jonah Hill, "Moneyball"; Nick Nolte, "Warrior"; Christopher Plummer, "Beginners"; Max von Sydow, "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close."
The Oscars will be presented Feb. 26 at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, hosted by Billy Crystal and broadcast live on ABC.
U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords, left, tours the Gabrielle Giffords Family Assistance Center, one of her favorite charities, with Community Food Bank CEO Bill Carnegie Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, in Tucson, Ariz. The tour is her last act as a congresswoman in Tucson before her resignation this week. (AP Photo/Matt York, Pool)
U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords, left, tours the Gabrielle Giffords Family Assistance Center, one of her favorite charities, with Community Food Bank CEO Bill Carnegie Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, in Tucson, Ariz. The tour is her last act as a congresswoman in Tucson before her resignation this week. (AP Photo/Matt York, Pool)
U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., tours the Gabrielle Giffords Family Assistance Center, one of her favorite charities, with her staffer Ron Barber, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, in Tucson, Ariz. The tour is her last act as a congresswoman in Tucson before her resignation this week. (AP Photo/Matt York, Pool)
U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., center, tours the Gabrielle Giffords Family Assistance Center, one of her favorite charities, with Community Food Bank CEO Bill Carnegie and food bank board member Fran McNeely, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, in Tucson, Ariz. The tour is Giffords' last act as a congresswoman in Tucson before her resignation this week. (AP Photo/Matt York, Pool)
U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., center, tours the Gabrielle Giffords Family Assistance Center, one of her favorite charities, with Community Food Bank CEO Bill Carnegie, left, and Food Bank board member Fran McNeely Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, in Tucson, Ariz. Giffords announced Sunday that she would resign from Congress this week to focus on her recovery. (AP Photo/Matt York, Pool)
U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., left, greets board members as she tours the Gabrielle Giffords Family Assistance Center, one of her favorite charities, with Community Food Back CEO Bill Carnegie, second left, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, in Tucson, Ariz. The tour is her last act as a congresswoman in Tucson before her resignation this week. (AP Photo/Matt York, Pool)
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) ? Outgoing Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords spent her last hours as Tucson's U.S. representative finishing the meeting she started on the morning she was shot and bidding farewell to constituents who have supported her through her recovery.
But it may not be the end. The woman whose improbable recovery has captivated the nation promised, "I will return."
Giffords spent time Monday at her office with other survivors of the shooting rampage that killed six people and injured 13. She hugged and talked with survivors, including Suzi Hileman, who was shot three times while trying to save her young friend and neighbor, 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green. The little girl died from a gunshot wound to the chest.
"The last time I did this I had Christina's hand," Hileman said. "It was something that was hanging out there, and now it's not."
Others who met with Giffords included Pat Maisch, who was hailed as a hero for wrestling a gun magazine from the shooter that day, and Daniel Hernandez, Giffords' intern at the time who helped save her life by trying to stop her bleeding until an ambulance arrived.
"It was very touching," said Maisch, who was not hurt in the attack. "I thanked her for her service, wished her well, and she just looked beautiful."
Giffords announced Sunday that she would resign from Congress this week to focus on her recovery. Maisch was sad to think that Giffords would no longer be her congresswoman.
"But I want her to do what's best for her," she said. "She's got to take care of herself."
However, an upbeat Giffords hinted that her departure from public life might be temporary. In a message sent on Twitter, she said: "I will return & we will work together for Arizona & this great country."
In her last act in Tucson as a congresswoman, the Democrat visited one of her favorite charities, the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona.
The food bank established the Gabrielle Giffords Family Assistance Center with $215,000 it received in the wake of the shooting. Giffords' husband and former astronaut Mark Kelly told people who wanted to help Giffords after the shooting that the best way to do so was to donate to one of her favorite charities.
The center has helped 900 families get on food stamps in the last year and offered guidance to needy families seeking assistance with housing, insurance, clothing and other basic needs.
"It's a wonderful thing that she gets to come here and see the center we built," said Bill Carnegie, the food bank's CEO. "But it's also her exit from Congress. I'm concerned about the future."
Giffords' aides had to yell at TV cameramen and reporters who surrounded the congresswoman as she arrived, telling them to back up. Giffords didn't bat an eye and walked with confidence through the crowd and into the building, where she promptly hugged Carnegie and others.
When she saw the center that is named in her honor, she said "Wow" and "Awesome."
When one woman told Giffords, "I love your new hairstyle," she beamed and responded with "Thank you."
Giffords did not address reporters at the center and planned to head to the airport right after her visit. She was expected in Washington on Tuesday for President Barack Obama's State of the Union address.
In her announcement Sunday, Giffords said that by stepping down, she was doing what is best for Arizona.
"I don't remember much from that horrible day, but I will never forget the trust you placed in me to be your voice," she said in a video posted online.
The video showed a close-up of Giffords gazing directly at the camera and speaking in a voice that was both firm and halting.
"I have more work to do on my recovery," the congresswoman said at the end of the two-minute message, appearing to strain to communicate.
C.J. Karamargin, who was Giffords' spokesman until recently, said he can only imagine what she is feeling as she steps down.
"But Gabby would never want to do a job unless she could give everything to it," he said.
"The news of her stepping down was almost more emotional than this time last year because then, she had survived and had a positive prognosis. Now we've got this pause, this comma, in her career ... and she won't be back anytime soon."
Giffords was shot in the head at point-blank range as she was meeting with constituents outside a grocery store. Her recovery progressed to the point that she was able to walk into the House chamber last August to cast a vote.
Giffords' resignation set up a free-for-all in a competitive district.
She could have stayed in office for another year even without seeking re-election, but her decision to resign scrambles the political landscape.
Arizona must hold a special primary and general election to find someone to finish out her remaining months in office. That will probably happen in the spring or early summer. Then voters will elect someone in November for a full two-year term.
Giffords would have been heavily favored to win again.
She was elected to her third term just two months before she was shot, winning by only about 1 percent over a tea party Republican. But she gained immense public support during her recovery.
Among those mentioned as potential candidates were several Republican and Democratic state lawmakers and the name of Giffords' husband, Mark Kelly, although he has publicly quashed such speculation.
A state Democratic party official who met with Giffords on Sunday also suggested that she could return to politics.
Jim Woodbrey, a senior vice chairman of the state party, said Giffords strongly implied at a meeting that she would seek office again someday. He said the decision to resign came after much thought.
"It was Gabby's individual decision, and she was not in any condition to make that decision five months ago," he said. "So I think waiting so that she could make an informed decision on her own was the right thing to do."
___
Associated Press writers Bob Christie and Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix and David Espo in Washington contributed to this story.
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) ? People exposed to very high levels of arsenic in Chilean drinking water back in the 1950s and 60s are still showing a higher-than-normal risk of bladder cancer -- years after the arsenic problem was brought under control, a new study shows.
The findings are not surprising, researchers say, since the cancer would take decades to emerge.
But the results underscore the importance of continuing to screen high-risk people for bladder cancer, according to lead researcher Dr. Fernando Coz, a professor of urology at the Universidad de Los Andes in Santiago de Chile.
The study, reported in the Journal of Urology, focused on people in the Antofagasta region of Chile. In the 1950s and 60s, drinking water in the region became contaminated with high levels of arsenic.
Arsenic is semi-metallic element found in rock, soil, water and air. It is also released into the environment through industrial activities, and can be found in products like paints, dyes and fertilizers. High exposure has been linked to several cancers, including tumors of the bladder, liver and lungs.
In Antofagasta, a combination of factors led to a huge increase in drinking-water arsenic by the late-1950s: naturally high arsenic levels in the environment, heavy mining and a move to make two rivers the area's main drinking-water sources.
Arsenic concentrations reached 800 to 900 micrograms per liter (mcg/L) -- far above the current allowable limit of 10 micrograms per liter recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency EPA).
The arsenic problem was first reported in 1971, which prompted the first water treatment plants to be set up in the area. Arsenic levels dropped sharply, though it took until about 1990 for levels to fall in line with WHO standards (which at the time allowed for more arsenic than the current standard).
But even two decades after the arsenic problem came under control, people in Antofagasta are showing high bladder cancer rates, Coz and his colleagues found.
Among the region's men in 2009, the rate was about 16 cases per 100,000. That compared with just under six per 100,000 for the rest of Chile.
There was a similar gap seen among women. In Antofagasta, the bladder cancer rate was 13.5 cases for every 100,000 women -- versus just 2.5 per 100,000 in the rest of Chile.
"Our observation shows that bladder cancer appears in high rates in the population that was exposed to arsenic during childhood" in the 50s and 60s, Coz told Reuters Health in an email.
On top of that, he said, they are developing bladder cancer earlier -- in their 50s and 60s, on average, rather than the typical age range of 60s and 70s.
None of that is surprising, according to Coz. High arsenic exposure in childhood or in the womb would lead to cancer decades down the road -- though possibly, as seen in Antofagasta, at an earlier-than-average age.
It's possible to screen for bladder cancer through urine tests, though routine screening is not recommended for the general public -- since there's not enough evidence that the possible benefits would outweigh the risks (like false-positive results).
But Coz said that people from Antofagasta known to have had high arsenic exposures as children should be screened.
He added, however, that the current findings apply only to that Chilean region. "We have no data regarding the risk of cancer if exposed to lower levels of arsenic," Coz said.
Potentially dangerous arsenic levels in drinking water are major problem globally.
Researchers have estimated that about 140 million people worldwide drink water with arsenic levels above 10 micrograms per liter. Bangladesh has been among the hardest hit, with millions exposed to high levels of naturally occurring arsenic in well water.
But no one is sure if arsenic levels below the 10-microgram threshold are completely "safe." And researchers are still studying whether there could be health effects at those concentrations.
In the U.S., most public drinking-water supplies are well below the 10-microgram level.
Still, it's estimated that 13 million Americans live in areas where the public water supply exceeds that threshold. And unregulated private wells might also contain too much arsenic -- particularly in certain areas of the West, Midwest and New England where the groundwater contains high concentrations of the toxic metal.
Experts suggest that people have private well water tested for arsenic. If the level exceeds 10 micrograms per liter, it can be treated with special filtration systems.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/x9wGvy Journal of Urology, online January 16, 2012.
It seems as if the Medicare program is always changing, and it can be hard for baby boomers to keep up with the modifications and deadlines.
Every year more than 1.5 million baby boomer enroll in the government-sponsored health insurance program, and the big problem right now is that the number of people receiving Medicare benefits is substantially higher than the number of people paying into the system.
Penn researchers help solve questions about Ethiopians' high-altitude adaptationsPublic release date: 20-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Evan Lerner elerner@upenn.edu 215-573-6604 University of Pennsylvania
PHILADELPHIA -- Over many generations, people living in the high-altitude regions of the Andes or on the Tibetan Plateau have adapted to life in low-oxygen conditions. Living with such a distinct and powerful selective pressure has made these populations a textbook example of evolution in action, but exactly how their genes convey a survival advantage remains an open question. Now, a University of Pennsylvania team has made new inroads to answering this question with the first genome-wide study of high-altitude adaptations within the third major population to possess them: the Amhara people of the Ethiopian Highlands.
Surprisingly, all three groups' adaptations appear to involve different genetic mutations, an example of convergent evolution.
"These three groups took different genetic approaches to solving the same problem," said senior author Sarah Tishkoff, a Penn Integrates Knowledge professor with appointments in the genetics department in Penn's Perelman School of Medicine and the biology department in the School of Arts and Sciences.
In addition to Tishkoff, the research was led by Laura B. Scheinfeldt, a research scientist in the genetics department at the Perelman medical school. Other members of the genetics department who contributed to the research are Sameer Soi, Simon Thompson, Alessia Ranciaro, William Beggs, Charla Lambert and Joseph P. Jarvis.
The Penn team collaborated with Dawit Wolde Meskel, Dawit Abate and Gurja Belay of the Department of Biology of Addis Ababa University.
Their research was published today in the journal Genome Biology.
One of the guiding principles behind evolution is natural selection; the more an organism is suited to its environment, the more likely it is to survive and pass on its genes. In high-altitude environments, oxygen concentration is low, a condition that can rapidly sicken even kill individuals who are not acclimated.
"As genetic anthropologists," Scheinfeldt said, "we know what patterns of genetic variation we expect to see after positive, or Darwinian, selection has occurred. Then we look for those patterns in the genome and try to make biological sense of what we find.
"The easiest way for us to do this is to look at situations where there's been very strong selective pressure: a disease with a really high mortality rate, or here at high-altitude where there are hypoxic conditions. This kind of situation makes a dramatic difference in terms of who passes on their genes, so it gives us more power to find the genetic signatures left behind."
Pregnant women are especially susceptible to the physiological pressure represented by hypoxia, which influences the birth weight and health of their children. Yet people have been living in the high-altitude regions of the Andes and the Tibetan Plateau for generations, with little apparent ill effect.
Anthropologists, notably, Cynthia Beall, of Case Western University, and Lorna Moore, of Wake Forest University, have therefore extensively documented their physiological traits, trying to understand how these groups offset the problems pregnant women would normally have in hypoxic environments. More recently, geneticists have attempted to correlate these physical traits, or phenotypes, with the genes that are responsible for them, or genotypes.
Researchers have long wanted to add additional populations for comparison, and while the people of the Ethiopian Highlands met the criteria, living at over 3,000 meters above sea level, economic, linguistic and geographic hurdles stood in the way of collecting the data.
"This was an extremely challenging study. The logistics alone, getting permits and permission to do this trip, took us many years," Tishkoff said.
"Sampling from these remote populations was also very difficult," said Simon Thompson, who was part of the group's field team. "Roads were impassable and we spent a lot of time just trying to find the groups that were living at the highest altitude possible."
The researchers compared the genotypes and phenotypes of Amhara participants with those of two other Ethiopian groups that live at lower altitudes. They also compared the Amhara group with Nigerian and European groups that live at or around sea level.
"We make these comparisons," Scheinfeldt said, "to figure out where in the genome the high-altitude group looks distinct from the other groups. Those distinct areas are candidate regions for genetic variants contributing to high altitude adaptation. Two of the top candidates are involved in the HIF-1 pathway, a pathway that is initiated in hypoxic conditions."
Both the Andean and Tibetan populations had mutations related to the HIF-1 pathway as well, but all three groups differed in both genotype and phenotype. One difference in phenotype had to do with hemoglobin, the part of the blood that transports oxygen. Ethiopians and Andeans had hemoglobin levels that were higher than low-altitude populations, but the Tibetans had average levels.
The researchers also discovered a variant in the Ethiopian groups in a gene involved in mitochondrial function. Mitochondria regulate the production of ATP, the chemical cells use for energy, making this gene another interesting candidate for playing a role in adaptation to high altitude.
These differences all seem to play a role in how well a body can maintain homeostasis in low-oxygen conditions, but even seemingly clear advantages, such as higher levels of hemoglobin, are only proxies for more complex phenotypic changes. Putting them together into the big picture of how certain genes translate into a survival advantage will require more focused research based on the Tishkoff lab's findings.
We're chipping away at this question," Scheinfeldt said. "Every little bit helps."
Such research holds promise beyond understanding the history of these populations.
"There's a lot of interest in this kind of research from the biomedical community, in terms of lung physiology and oxygen transport," Tishkoff said. "If one can understand how it is that people who have these genetic adaptations can do fine at these high altitudes while the rest of us suffer, it could help us better understand one of the body's vital systems."
###
This research was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Penn researchers help solve questions about Ethiopians' high-altitude adaptationsPublic release date: 20-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Evan Lerner elerner@upenn.edu 215-573-6604 University of Pennsylvania
PHILADELPHIA -- Over many generations, people living in the high-altitude regions of the Andes or on the Tibetan Plateau have adapted to life in low-oxygen conditions. Living with such a distinct and powerful selective pressure has made these populations a textbook example of evolution in action, but exactly how their genes convey a survival advantage remains an open question. Now, a University of Pennsylvania team has made new inroads to answering this question with the first genome-wide study of high-altitude adaptations within the third major population to possess them: the Amhara people of the Ethiopian Highlands.
Surprisingly, all three groups' adaptations appear to involve different genetic mutations, an example of convergent evolution.
"These three groups took different genetic approaches to solving the same problem," said senior author Sarah Tishkoff, a Penn Integrates Knowledge professor with appointments in the genetics department in Penn's Perelman School of Medicine and the biology department in the School of Arts and Sciences.
In addition to Tishkoff, the research was led by Laura B. Scheinfeldt, a research scientist in the genetics department at the Perelman medical school. Other members of the genetics department who contributed to the research are Sameer Soi, Simon Thompson, Alessia Ranciaro, William Beggs, Charla Lambert and Joseph P. Jarvis.
The Penn team collaborated with Dawit Wolde Meskel, Dawit Abate and Gurja Belay of the Department of Biology of Addis Ababa University.
Their research was published today in the journal Genome Biology.
One of the guiding principles behind evolution is natural selection; the more an organism is suited to its environment, the more likely it is to survive and pass on its genes. In high-altitude environments, oxygen concentration is low, a condition that can rapidly sicken even kill individuals who are not acclimated.
"As genetic anthropologists," Scheinfeldt said, "we know what patterns of genetic variation we expect to see after positive, or Darwinian, selection has occurred. Then we look for those patterns in the genome and try to make biological sense of what we find.
"The easiest way for us to do this is to look at situations where there's been very strong selective pressure: a disease with a really high mortality rate, or here at high-altitude where there are hypoxic conditions. This kind of situation makes a dramatic difference in terms of who passes on their genes, so it gives us more power to find the genetic signatures left behind."
Pregnant women are especially susceptible to the physiological pressure represented by hypoxia, which influences the birth weight and health of their children. Yet people have been living in the high-altitude regions of the Andes and the Tibetan Plateau for generations, with little apparent ill effect.
Anthropologists, notably, Cynthia Beall, of Case Western University, and Lorna Moore, of Wake Forest University, have therefore extensively documented their physiological traits, trying to understand how these groups offset the problems pregnant women would normally have in hypoxic environments. More recently, geneticists have attempted to correlate these physical traits, or phenotypes, with the genes that are responsible for them, or genotypes.
Researchers have long wanted to add additional populations for comparison, and while the people of the Ethiopian Highlands met the criteria, living at over 3,000 meters above sea level, economic, linguistic and geographic hurdles stood in the way of collecting the data.
"This was an extremely challenging study. The logistics alone, getting permits and permission to do this trip, took us many years," Tishkoff said.
"Sampling from these remote populations was also very difficult," said Simon Thompson, who was part of the group's field team. "Roads were impassable and we spent a lot of time just trying to find the groups that were living at the highest altitude possible."
The researchers compared the genotypes and phenotypes of Amhara participants with those of two other Ethiopian groups that live at lower altitudes. They also compared the Amhara group with Nigerian and European groups that live at or around sea level.
"We make these comparisons," Scheinfeldt said, "to figure out where in the genome the high-altitude group looks distinct from the other groups. Those distinct areas are candidate regions for genetic variants contributing to high altitude adaptation. Two of the top candidates are involved in the HIF-1 pathway, a pathway that is initiated in hypoxic conditions."
Both the Andean and Tibetan populations had mutations related to the HIF-1 pathway as well, but all three groups differed in both genotype and phenotype. One difference in phenotype had to do with hemoglobin, the part of the blood that transports oxygen. Ethiopians and Andeans had hemoglobin levels that were higher than low-altitude populations, but the Tibetans had average levels.
The researchers also discovered a variant in the Ethiopian groups in a gene involved in mitochondrial function. Mitochondria regulate the production of ATP, the chemical cells use for energy, making this gene another interesting candidate for playing a role in adaptation to high altitude.
These differences all seem to play a role in how well a body can maintain homeostasis in low-oxygen conditions, but even seemingly clear advantages, such as higher levels of hemoglobin, are only proxies for more complex phenotypic changes. Putting them together into the big picture of how certain genes translate into a survival advantage will require more focused research based on the Tishkoff lab's findings.
We're chipping away at this question," Scheinfeldt said. "Every little bit helps."
Such research holds promise beyond understanding the history of these populations.
"There's a lot of interest in this kind of research from the biomedical community, in terms of lung physiology and oxygen transport," Tishkoff said. "If one can understand how it is that people who have these genetic adaptations can do fine at these high altitudes while the rest of us suffer, it could help us better understand one of the body's vital systems."
###
This research was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
According to the German newswire service DPA, a chemical explosion at Technical University of Dresden has injured dozens, possibly sending as many as 100 people to the hospital. More »
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Public release date: 20-Jan-2012
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