Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University (http://www.ohsu.edu) have discovered that a molecule critical to the development and plasticity of nerve cells ? brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) -- is severely lacking in brainstem neurons in mutations leading to Rett syndrome, a neurological developmental disorder. The finding has implications for the treatment of neurological disorders, including Rett syndrome that affects one in 10,000 baby girls.
Using a mouse model of Rett syndrome, the OHSU team found that mutant neurons in the brainstem fail miserably at making BDNF. When normal neurons are faced with a respiratory challenge, such as low oxygen, they dramatically increase the production of BDNF, whereas mutant neurons do not.
According to the National Institutes of Health, Rett syndrome is estimated to affect one in every 10,000 to 15,000 live births and almost exclusively girls because it is caused by an X-linked gene mutation. In addition to severe problems with motor function, other symptoms of Rett syndrome may include breathing difficulties while awake.
"The new finding, coupled with our previously published data that show BDNF is involved in normal maturation of neuronal pathways controlling cardiorespiratory function, could play a significant role in the development of a treatment for Rett syndrome," said Agnieszka Balkowiec, M.D., Ph.D., principal investigator and associate professor of integrative biosciences in the OHSU School of Dentistry; and adjunct assistant professor of physiology and pharmacology in the OHSU School of Medicine. To conduct this research, Balkowiec partnered with John M. Bissonnette, M.D., professor of obstetrics and gynecology, and cell and developmental biology in the OHSU School of Medicine.
###
The new discovery is published online in Neuroscience (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306452212000395?v=s5) and is expected in the print issue of Neuroscience in March.
Oregon Health & Science University: http://www.ohsu.edu
Thanks to Oregon Health & Science University for this article.
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As per reports, it has got revealed that England Government has launched a campaign, Be Clear on Cancer, to raise awareness on bowel cancer. It is the first time that the government has launched a campaign of bowel cancer.
Bowel cancer is one of the leading causes of deaths in the country. As per official data, 33,000 people get diagnosed with bowel cancer in the country and 13,000 out of them have to lose their life. The main motive to launch this campaign is to increase the awareness among people about bowel cancer.
It generally occurs among people who are above 55 years and has some peculiar symptoms through which one could detect the cancer. Doctors said that if blood comes out in their stools or passes loose stools for more than three weeks then one should immediately contact their doctors.
The cancer is curable in majority of the cases but only if it gets detected early. Early detection leads to better survival chances and if one gets late then there are only 6% survival chances. If awareness is increased in this regard then it is expected that there would fewer bowel cancer cases and less deaths due to it.
This is the reason that the government has initiated and launched a campaign. Professor Sir Mike Richards, who is the Government's National Clinical Director for Cancer, said that they are quite positive that people would get enlightened about bowel cancer and there would more referrals in the NHS for bowel cancer test.
For this, they have already sent a letter to the NHS that they should be ready to tackle increased rush of people who would come for colonoscopies, a traditional way to test bowel cancer. As per Richards, the NHS could see an extra 100 colonoscopies.
TEHRAN (Reuters) ? European companies owed oil by Iran could lose out if Tehran imposes a ban on crude exports to the European Union next week, the head of Iran's state oil company said on Saturday.
Iran's parliament is due to debate a bill on Sunday that would cut off oil supplies to the EU in a matter of days, in revenge for a decision last Monday by the 27 EU member states to stop importing crude from Iran as of July 1.
"Generally, the parties to incur damage from the EU's recent decision will be European companies with pending contracts with Iran," Ahmad Qalebani, head of the National Iranian Oil Co. told the ISNA news agency.
"The European companies will have to abide by the provisions of the buyback contracts," he said. "If they act otherwise, they will be the parties to incur the relevant losses and will subject the repatriation of their capital to problems."
By turning the sanctions back on the EU, Iranian lawmakers hope to deny Europe the six-month window it had planned to give those countries most dependent on Iranian oil - including some of the most economically fragile - time to adapt.
The EU banned imports of oil from Iran on Monday and imposed a number of other economic sanctions, joining the United States in a new round of measures aimed at deflecting Tehran's nuclear development programme.
Under buyback contracts, a common feature of the Iranian oil industry, investments in oil field projects are paid back in oil, often over many years.
Italy's Eni says it is owed $1.4-1.5 billion in oil for contracts in Iran dating from 2000 and 2001 and has been assured by EU policymakers its buyback contracts will not be part of the European embargo but the prospect of Iran acting first may put that into doubt.
The EU accounted for 25 percent of Iranian crude oil sales in the third quarter of 2011.
(Writing by Robin Pomeroy; Editing by David Stamp)
[unable to retrieve full-text content]communication. Since I became a consultant, I have been quite proud of my career. If you're creative and verbal, perhaps it is the appropriate profession choice for you as well.
Skyworth , Konka, Haier , TCL as well as other enterprises have turned to a big sector possibilities
Automotive Business Equipment giants ?dream car? throbbing once more, Skyworth, Konka and Haier have shot automotive electronics business.
Yesterday (Might possibly 23), Skyworth Motor vehicle Electronics Co., Ltd Liu Xuepeng to the ?Daily Economic News? reporter unveiled that a large number of firms have fought through in the domestic automotive business, and devices sector, Skyworth is functioning with
Chery Motor approached the very first to interrupt to the top notch would like to install in the market pronostic pmu prospects. Are being actively detected as well as other preparations. Liuxue Peng explained the 2nd half of this 12 months there?ll be preliminary final results.
Skyworth?s ?city rivals? Konka appears to be to consonance. In its 25-year-old birthday celebration, Konka announced a comprehensive Sharu automotive electronics business, not just to automotive audio and video collection, and can gradually extend to the motor management as well as other fields.
On the very same time, Konka, president-designate Song Yung Konka long run original public elaborated a comprehensive map of electronic expertise business, house, automotive and handheld electronic enjoyment programs will undoubtedly be Konka?s three ?sword.?
Reality, not just is Skyworth, and Konka, Haier, TCL, as well as other enterprises have also been attracted from the significant sector possibilities.
It will be comprehended that in engineered nations, just about every new car or truck, the automotive car or truck expenditures to the typical appeal of 26.two, but China is only seven or so.
Additional high-end cars and trucks, the more obvious tendencies in digital or exceeded the repairer the price of significantly more than half.
Additional importantly, Liu Xuepeng unveiled that at present, the gross margin of automotive electronics business is as higher as 50%. Struggling in the little revenue margins internet your home appliance giants change to car electronics business, isn?t stunning.
Liuxue Peng explained the modern in 2012, Skyworth will emphasis on automotive audio and video devices, the present has attained just one million units of yearly ability. But this really is only the very first action to the automotive electronics business. Sooner or later, Skyworth will more Sharu core automotive areas like as chassis management devices in the field, the previous completely engaged
Automotive Business . Liu Xuepeng previous added: ?Everyone wants to intervene in the automotive business, but is quite explicit about easy methods to intervene, soon after all, house electrical appliance enterprises ?fees? not white cross.?
Not lengthy ago, claiming the financing will undoubtedly be in 5 a long time, 8.0 billion to build 450,000 cars and trucks every year scale
Oaks Only a 12 months afterwards had to withdraw from a weighty coronary heart. ninety million yuan into Oaks Vehicle impulse need to pay out the price.
Coincidentally, the U.S. group?s ?dream car? is now a ?heart? automotive venture remaining centralized in a very little appliance-based Xinhua, under Group, the future fate of a elegance no longer ready to speak about and subject.
Nonetheless, the house electrical appliance enterprises curve tactic however faces sizeable dangers.
Remind Song Tsinghua College Center for Automotive Homework, ?Daily Economic News? Reporter: First you may need to get enough cash to assist car or truck manufacturers are no less than six months of the cash utilized chance; Secondly, the core of the automotive electronics business component manufacturing, technological obstacles, particularly demanding computer software.
Song Jian explained the up-to-date perform of the vehicle and automotive digital components 90% of all foreign immediate import and domestic assembly.
At long last, trade obstacles shouldn?t be overlooked. Beijing Automotive has become the introduction of the modern day head to make use of the specific services supporting whom, to grow and carry to Beijing
Components Business. Are often modern day right here, the matching shift the initial plant has also introduced, at preferred, several of them dominated the newest joint enterprise factory.
In engineered nations, just about every new automotive
SAIC Motor vehicle Electronics expenditures to the typical appeal of 26.two car or truck, but China is only seven or so.
Additional high-end cars and trucks, the more obvious tendencies in digital or exceeded the repairer the price of significantly more than half. At present, the automotive electronics business, gross margin as higher as 50%.
Ethel Kennedy hates her first name. I would not have known this had I not seen the terrific documentary Ethel by her filmmaker daughter Rory Kennedy. A festival favorite, "Ethel" is one of several hundred features and shorts playing here at the annual snowbound Sundance festival centered in Park City, Utah, where journalists who spend their waking (and sometimes sleeping) hours in dark screening rooms are ringed by ? taunted by ? ski slopes reaching high into the sky.
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Founded by Robert Redford in 1981, Sundance remains the premier showplace ? and marketplace ? for independent filmmakers. It is more inexpensive than ever to make movies; shoestring budgets are stringier than ever. At least one film at this festival, the horror anthology V/H/S, was apparently shot entirely on a laptop. Distribution systems are more wide-ranging, too. Theatrical release is no longer the only game in town: Now there's VOD (video on demand), streaming, and who knows what else.
And yet the emphasis here at Sundance this year is still on the theatrical event. Nothing can replace watching a movie on a big screen with a big audience.
When there is a film as powerful as The Invisible War, that sense of communality is almost essential to the experience. This year I focused my filmgoing predominantly on documentaries, always the high point of Sundance. This one, by Kirby Dick, exposes a subject ? the high prevalence of rape in the military ? that, amazingly, has never before been addressed in a movie. A succession of servicewomen and one serviceman recount their horrific stories as the statistics pile up: About 500,000 women have been sexually assaulted in the US military (and about 80 percent of assaults go unreported).
An estimated 30 percent of female soldiers and at least 1 percent of male soldiers are sexually assaulted during their enlistment ? by their fellow soldiers. Only 2 percent of those accused of assault are convicted. The film calls for nothing less than an overhaul of the justice system so that victims feel safe in reporting these crimes and attackers are punished.
One of the interviewees, Kori Cioca, is unable to get disability relief for serious injuries sustained in her attack while serving in the US Coast Guard. She says she can't imagine a life without pain. After the film's public screening, the producer was approached by a local couple who said they would pay for all of the soldier's medical bills. When told of the gift, Cioca, and everyone within earshot, started sobbing.
Watching the Alison Klayman documentary Ai WeiWei: Never Sorry, a lot of us felt like cheering. Ai is a world-class artist and architect who is also one of China's most outspoken dissidents. His mantra is, "If you don't act, the danger becomes stronger." The film humanizes him without detracting from the symbolic importance he holds for a new generation of Chinese, who avidly follow his rallying cry, "Don't retreat, retweet." Ai was detained for 81 days in 2011 by the Chinese government just as this film, which was shot over three years, was wrapping up, giving it a special poignancy. As the film makes clear, what happens to Ai is vitally important to understanding China's ? and by extension, the world's ? future.
(Reuters) ? Chevron Corp reported lower quarterly earnings on Friday, missing Wall Street forecasts, as rising spending on oil and gas projects and losses at its U.S. refinery business offset gains from higher crude oil prices.
Oil and gas output at the No. 2 U.S. oil company also declined to 2.64 million barrels per day (BPD) from 2.79 million BPD a year-ago, although benchmark oil prices rose about 25 percent during the quarter.
Chevron had said earlier this month its refinery margins were suffering and would be near breakeven for the quarter, but the U.S. losses pulled the entire segment into the red, and the company's profits from oil and gas sales also appeared weaker than expected.
Its shares fell 2.5 percent in early trading.
"It was a miss on some non-controllable factors," said Pavel Molchanov, analyst with Raymond James in Houston, citing the timings of sales and global pricing differences as the likely reason oil and gas profits fell about $500 million below his forecast.
Still, Chevron added 1.67 billion barrels of oil equivalent to its reserves last year, 171 percent of its 2011 output, a very strong performance, Molchanov said.
Chevron is embroiled in two major legal battles in South America, where a Brazilian prosecutor plans to file criminal charges against it and some of its local managers.
The company is facing an $11 billion lawsuit there related to an offshore oil spill in November, and it also remains locked in a legal war against plaintiffs in Ecuador, who won an $18 billion judgment against it in a court there.
PROFIT DIP
Fourth-quarter profit slipped to $5.1 billion, or $2.58 per share, from $5.3 billion, or $2.64 per share, a year earlier.
That fell short of the $2.84 per share that analysts had forecast, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Chevron's warning of weaker earnings on January 11 knocked 17 cents per share off the average analyst estimate.
Among other U.S. oil companies, the quarterly profits from ConocoPhillips and Occidental Petroleum Corp earlier this week topped Wall Street estimates, though Hess Corp fell short.
Exxon Mobil is due to report earnings on Tuesday, Jan 31.
Chevron is spending piles of money on production growth that will not really kick in until 2014. Its 2012 capital budget of $32.7 billion is nearly $5 billion higher than last year.
In the fourth quarter, Chevron's spending on oil and gas projects in the United States nearly doubled from a year ago to $2.0 billion, while outside the U.S. it grew by more than a quarter to $5.1 billion.
Shares of Chevron fell 2.5 percent to $103.94 in early trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
(Reporting by Matt Daily in New York, additional reporting by Braden Reddall in San Francisco, editing by Dave Zimmerman)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? School meals for millions of children will be healthier under obesity-fighting U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) standards unveiled on Wednesday that double the amount of fruits and vegetables in cafeteria lunches - but won't pull French fries from the menu.
In the first major changes to school meals in more than 15 years, the new USDA guidelines will affect nearly 32 million children who eat at school. They will cost about $3.2 billion to implement over the next five years.
"Improving the quality of the school meals is a critical step to building a healthy future for our kids," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement.
The new meal requirements are part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act championed by first lady Michelle Obama. President Barack Obama approved the measure in late 2010.
The guidelines double the amounts of fruits and vegetables in school lunches and boost offerings of whole grain-rich foods. The new standards set maximums for calories and cut sodium and trans fat, a contributor to high cholesterol levels.
Schools may offer only fat-free or low-fat milk varieties and must assure that children are getting proper portion sizes, the USDA said.
The new standards will be largely phased in over a three-year period, starting in the 2012-13 school year.
About 17 percent of U.S. children and teenagers are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About one-third of U.S. adults are obese.
FRIES WITH THAT?
Lawmakers altered the guidelines in November. They barred the USDA from limiting French fries and ensured that pizza counted as a vegetable because of its tomato paste.
Trade associations representing frozen pizza sellers like ConAgra Foods Inc and Schwan Food Co as well as French fry sellers McCain Foods Ltd and J.R. Simplot Co were instrumental in blocking changes to rules affecting those items.
Margo Wootan, nutrition policy director for the non-profit Center For Science in the Public Interest, said that the new standards were a big improvement despite food industry lobbying and the congressional revamp.
"The new school meal standards are one of the most important advances in nutrition in decades," she said in a statement.
The Environmental Working Group said the changes could pack a financial punch since they may help reduce medical bills related to diabetes and other obesity-related chronic diseases.
"A healthier population will save billions of dollars in future health care costs," said Dawn Undurraga, EWG's staff nutritionist.
As an example of a new meal, the USDA said an elementary school lunch could be whole wheat spaghetti with meat sauce and a whole wheat roll, green beans, broccoli, cauliflower, kiwi, low-fat milk, low-fat ranch dip and soft margarine.
That lunch would replace a meal of a hot dog on a bun with ketchup, canned pears, raw celery and carrots with ranch dressing, and low-fat chocolate milk.
As part of the new standards, schools will receive another 6 cents a meal. The USDA also will increase the number of inspections of school menus.
Food and beverages sold in vending machines and other school sites "will also contribute to a healthy diet," the USDA statement said.
The USDA gives school districts funds for meals through its National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs.
U.S.A.'s Heather O'Reilly (9) celebrates her goal against Mexico during the first half of CONCACAF Women's Olympic Qualifying soccer at B.C. Place in Vancouver, British Columbia Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jonathan Hayward)
U.S.A.'s Heather O'Reilly (9) celebrates her goal against Mexico during the first half of CONCACAF Women's Olympic Qualifying soccer at B.C. Place in Vancouver, British Columbia Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jonathan Hayward)
U.S.A.'s Amy Rodriguez (8) fights for control of the ball with Mexico's Alina Garciamendez Rowold (4) during the first half of CONCACAF Women's Olympic Qualifying soccer at B.C. Place in Vancouver, British Columbia Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jonathan Hayward)
U.S.A.'s Amy Lepeilbet (6) fights for control for the ball with Mexico's Dinora Garza (10) during the first half of CONCACAF Women's Olympic Qualifying soccer at B.C. Place in Vancouver, British Columbia Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jonathan Hayward)
U.S.A.'s Heather O'Reilly (9) fights for control of the ball with Mexico's Rosario Saucedo (15) during the first half of CONCACAF Women's Olympic Qualifying soccer at B.C. Place in Vancouver,British Columbia Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jonathan Hayward)
U.S.A.'s Carli Lloyd (10) fights for control of the ball with Mexico's Veronica Perez (17) during the first half of CONCACAF Women's Olympic Qualifying soccer at B.C. Place in Vancouver, British Columbia Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jonathan Hayward)
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) ? The U.S. women's soccer team was still on the field, having dispatched rival Mexico, when Abby Wambach gathered her teammates for a little speech.
The message: "We haven't done anything yet."
The Americans avenged one of their most shocking losses Tuesday night, and did so emphatically. A pair of early goals put to rest any notion of another upset by the neighbor to the south, and Carli Lloyd scored her first international hat trick in a 4-0 victory that clinched first place in the Americans' group and put them a major step closer to the London Olympics.
But hang on. Next up is the one game in this tournament that matters most, the London-or-bust semifinal against Costa Rica on Friday. The winner gets one of the two available berths for the Olympics; the loser stays home.
"The next game is the game that we need to be prepared for, and that matters the most," goalkeeper Hope Solo said. "She made sure that we didn't celebrate too much today."
Wambach and her teammates remember all too well the sting from a 2-1 defeat against Mexico in Cancun in a World Cup qualifier 14 months ago, the only time in 28 tries the Mexicans have beaten the Americans. That loss forced the U.S. into a backdoor playoff just to qualify for the World Cup ? and served as a wakeup call that the top-ranked team in the world can't take important games for granted any more.
"This was the exact same position that we were in, in Mexico in 2010," Wambach said. "We haven't done anything. We still have one game left. That's what I said ? stay focused.
"It's simple. I think everybody knows it. I think everybody understands it. But I also think that in hindsight we wish we had said something like that prior to that game. Because we didn't say those things, I didn't want to leave any stone unturned. And that's kind of what that speech was about."
The Americans will be heavily favored in the semis. Costa Rica is ranked No. 41 in the world and has never beaten the U.S., having been outscored 34-0 in seven meetings. Had the Americans lost to Mexico on Tuesday, they would have faced a much tougher semifinal against host Canada.
Instead, it will be Mexico vs. Canada in the other semi that will produce the tournament's second Olympic berth.
The lessons from Cancun have been prevalent during this entire CONCACAF tournament. The Americans routed their first two opponents ? Dominican Republic and Guatemala ? by scores of 14-0 and 13-0, the most lopsided results in U.S. team history.
Keeping with that theme, coach Pia Sundhage wanted a strong start against the Mexicans, and she got one. The Americans controlled the run of play early, and it paid off when Lloyd headed in the rebound in the seventh minute after Rachel Buehler clanged a shot off the post following a corner kick.
A minute later, the lead was doubled. Amy Rodriguez's cross was deflected by a defender and then by goalkeeper Cecilia Santiago straight to Heather O'Reilly for an easy goal.
Lloyd also netted in the 57th and 86th as the Americans avoided a repeat of a Mexican upset ? and wrapped up group play with three wins by a combined score of 31-0.
"It was redemption for us," Lloyd said. "We came out strong and knew we had to get it done."
The Mexicans, buoyed by a vocal and slightly pro-Mexico crowd of 7,599 at BC Place, worked hard on the counterattack for a goal, but the American back four of Buehler, Becky Sauerbrunn, Christie Rampone and Amy LePeilbet cleared nearly every serious threat, leaving goalkeeper Hope Solo without much work to earn her third shutout of the tournament.
That was probably for the best. Solo revealed after the game that she has "a little quad pull" that nearly caused her to ask for a sub. She hopes she'll be fine for the semifinals.
The defensive performance was especially heartening for the Americans given the absence of Ali Krieger, who tore two ligaments in her right knee against the Dominican Republic and likely won't be back in time for the Olympics. As a tribute to Krieger, each American player had the word "liebe" ? German for "love" ? written on her arm. Krieger, who has played five seasons in the German league for FFC Frankfurt, has a tattoo with the word on her left arm.
"Ali will be a part of this team ? whether she's here or not," Wambach said.
___
Joseph White can be reached at http://twitter.com/JGWhiteAP
Nokia has announced a major mobile milestone: over 1.5 billion (with a b) Series 40 (S40) handsets sold since the first device -- the 7110 -- was introduced in 1999. "We are incredibly proud to reach this milestone," wrote Nokia's Executive VP of Mobile Phones, Mary McDowell. "It is gratifying to consider how Series 40 devices have made mobile technology accessible." Breeze on past the break for the official PR with more information about the Asha 303 handset knighted number 1,500,000,000, then feel free to weigh in on how long will take the Lumia line to reach the same milestone.
PARIS ? France's troops won't be pulled hastily from Afghanistan, says foreign minister Alain Juppe, adding that talk of a retreat by the end of 2012 isn't "well thought out and examined."
Speaking Tuesday during a question and answer session in parliament, Juppe said "when I hear talk of an immediate pullout, or even by the end of 2012, I'm not sure that's well thought out and examined."
Last week Francois Hollande ? the Socialist front-runner in next spring's presidential election ? pledged to bring France's roughly 4,000 troops home from Afghanistan by the end of the year.
That followed President Nicolas Sarkozy's comment that if security for troops is not restored, "then the question of an early withdrawal of the French army would arise."
Current plans are for French troops to return home by 2014, when NATO is due to wind up its combat mission in Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan Tuesday, President Hamid Karzai declared an emergency in the mountainous Badakhshan province in the northeast.
He promised a relief fund of $160,000 after heavy snow and avalanches killed at least 46 people in the last week. Avalanches are an annual problem in the mountainous country.
Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D) will resign from Congress this week, she announced in a video message posted Sunday.?
Giffords, the victim of a gunshot wound to the head in an attack a year ago in her Arizona district, cited her continued work toward recovery as a reason for stepping down from her seat.?
"I have more work to do on my recovery so to do what is best for Arizona I will step down this week," she said in a video message posted to YouTube. "I will return and we will work together for Arizona and this great country."
According to a statement posted on her Congressional website, Giffords will attend?Tuesday night's State of the Union address as one of her final acts as a member of Congress before?submitting her resignation?to Speaker John Boehner on Wednesday.? The?statement also says Giffords plans to "finish" the Congress on your Corner event where the shooting happened before she leaves office.?
Giffords has enjoyed a remarkable recovery since being shot in that?Jan. 8, 2011 incident that left six dead.?
Prior to that shooting, she had been considered a rising Democratic star, and had been considering a bid for Senate this fall. During the course of her recovery, she has been absent from Capitol Hill except for a surprise return to vote in August on an agreement to raise the nation's debt ceiling.
?I salute Congresswoman Giffords for her service, and for the courage and perseverance she has shown in the face of tragedy.? She will be missed,? House Speaker?John Boehner said in a statement.?
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi reacted to the announcement in a statement saying Giffords "has been a true bright star - a dynamic and creative public servant.? Gabby's message of bipartisanship and civility is one that all in Washington and the nation should honor and emulate."? Pelosi continued, "I join all my colleagues in Congress in thanking Gabby for the honor of calling her colleague and wishing Gabby and Mark great success and happiness.? She will be missed in the House of Representatives, but her legacy in the Congress and her leadership for our nation will certainly continue."
NEW YORK ? U.S. stocks are slightly higher, following a rise in European markets on hopes that Greece will reach a deal with private creditors on lowering its debt.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 42 points to 12,764 a half-hour after the opening bell Monday. That's a gain of 0.3 percent. Bank of America Corp is the Dow's leading stock, rising 4 percent.
If those early gains hold, the Dow would close at its highest level since last April.
Creditors are in negotiations with the Greek government to reduce that country's debt burden so it can avoid default. European finance ministers are expected to give new momentum to a Greek debt relief deal. One proposal would have Greece's private creditors, which include banks and other investors, swap their bonds for news ones at a 50 percent discount. That would cut the country's debts by some $129 billion.
In other trading, the Standard & Poor's 500 index edged up 7 points to 1,322, a gain of 0.5 percent. The Nasdaq composite is up 17 points to 2,804.
Energy companies are making large moves in early trading. Chesapeake Energy Corp. jumped 6 percent after the country's second-largest natural gas producer said it plans to cut production. Other natural gas producers shot higher. Southwestern Energy Co. rose 7.5 percent and Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. 7.6 percent.
Apache Corp. climbed 2 percent after the oil and gas producer said it plans on buying Cordillera Energy Partners in a $2.85 billion deal.
Research In Motion Ltd., the maker of BlackBerry mobile devices, sank 7 percent after its new chief executive said no drastic changes are needed. The company's founders announced they were stepping down as co-CEOs late Sunday.
CAMP PENDLETON, California ? Military prosecutors worked for more than six years to bring Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich to trial on manslaughter charges that could have sent him away to prison for life.
But only weeks after the long-awaited trial started, they offered Wuterich a deal that stopped the proceedings and could mean little to no jail time for the squad leader who ordered his men to "shoot first, ask questions later," resulting in one of the Iraq War's worst attacks on civilians by U.S. troops.
The 31-year-old Marine, who was originally accused of unpremeditated murder, pleaded guilty Monday to negligent dereliction of duty for leading the squad that killed 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha in 2005 during raids after a roadside bomb exploded, killing a fellow Marine and wounding two others.
Wuterich, who was indicted in 19 of the 24 deaths, now faces no more than three months in confinement.
It was a stunning outcome for the last defendant in the case once compared with the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. The seven other Marines initially charged were exonerated or had their cases dropped.
Military judge Lt. Col. David Jones will hear arguments from both sides Tuesday at Camp Pendleton, Calif., before sentencing Wuterich.
Legal experts said the case was fraught with errors made by investigators and the prosecution that let it drag on for years. The prosecution was also hampered by squad mates who acknowledged they had lied to investigators initially and later testified in exchange for having their cases dropped, bringing into question their credibility.
In addition, Wuterich was seen as taking the fall for senior leaders and more seasoned combat veterans, analysts said. It was his first time in combat when he led the squad on Nov. 19, 2005.
Brian Rooney, an attorney for another former defendant, said cases like Haditha are difficult to prosecute because a military jury is unlikely to question decisions made in combat unless wrongdoing is clear-cut and egregious, like rape.
"If it's a gray area, fog-of-war, you can't put yourself in a Marine's situation where he's legitimately trying to do the best he can," said Rooney, who represented Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, the highest-ranking Marine charged in the case. "When you're in a town like Haditha or Fallujah, you've got bad guys trying to kill you and trying to do it in very surreptitious ways. Marines understand it's a crazy environment. You've got to do the best you can with what you've got."
Marine Corps spokesman Lt. Col. Joseph Kloppel said the deal was not a reflection or in any way connected to how the prosecution felt its case was going in the trial.
The Haditha attack is considered among the war's defining moments, further tainting America's reputation when it was already at a low point after the release of photos of prisoner abuse by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison.
It still fuels anger in Iraq today.
Kamil al-Dulaimi, a Sunni lawmaker from the Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi, called the plea agreement proof that "Americans still deal with Iraqis without any respect."
"It's just another barbaric act of Americans against Iraqis," al-Dulaimi told The Associated Press. "They spill the blood of Iraqis and get this worthless sentence for the savage crime against innocent civilians."
Wuterich, the father of three children, had faced the possibility of life behind bars when he was charged with nine counts of manslaughter, which will be dropped. Besides now facing a maximum of three months in confinement, he could also lose two-thirds of his pay and see his rank demoted to private when he's sentenced.
.Wuterich, his family and his attorneys declined to comment Monday after he entered the plea. Prosecutors also declined to comment on the plea deal.
During the trial before a jury of combat Marines who served in Iraq, prosecutors argued he lost control after seeing the body of his friend blown apart by the bomb and led his men on a rampage in which they stormed two nearby homes, blasting their way in with gunfire and grenades. Among the dead was a man in a wheelchair.
In the deal, Wuterich acknowledged that his orders misled his men to believe they could shoot without hesitation and not follow the rules of engagement that required troops to positively identify their targets before they raided the homes.
He told the judge that caused "tragic events."
"I think we all understood what we were doing so I probably just should have said nothing," Wuterich told the judge.
He said his orders were based on the guidance of his platoon commander at the time, and that the squad did not take any gunfire during the 45-minute raid.
Many of his squad mates testified that they do not believe to this day that they did anything wrong because they feared insurgents were inside hiding.
Haditha prompted commanders to demand troops be more careful in distinguishing between civilians and combatants.
Former Navy officer David Glazier said the case shows such rules are essential to helping the United States prevail in an armed conflict.
"The reality is that this incident has had significant consequences for the U.S. in Iraq," said Glazier, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. "It probably fueled the resistance and so it probably ended up costing additional soldiers and Marines their lives later on."
___
Associated Press writers Barbara Surk and Mazin Yahya in Baghdad, Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Raquel Dillon in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Dog skull dates back 33,000 yearsPublic release date: 23-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Daniel Stolte stolte@email.arizona.edu 520-626-4402 University of Arizona
A dog skull unearthed in a Siberian cave presents some of the oldest known evidence of dog domestication and suggests modern dogs may be descended from multiple ancestors
If you think a Chihuahua doesn't have much in common with a Rottweiler, you might be on to something.
An ancient dog skull, preserved in a cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia for 33,000 years, presents some of the oldest known evidence of dog domestication and, together with equally ancient dog remains from a cave in Belgium, indicates that domestication of dogs may have occurred repeatedly in different geographic locations rather than with a single domestication event.
In other words, man's best friends may have originated from more than one ancient ancestor, contrary to what some DNA evidence previously has indicated.
"Both the Belgian find and the Siberian find are domesticated species based on morphological characteristics," said Greg Hodgins, a researcher at the University of Arizona's Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory and co-author of the study that reports the find.
"Essentially, wolves have long thin snouts and their teeth are not crowded, and domestication results in this shortening of the snout and widening of the jaws and crowding of the teeth."
The Altai Mountain skull is extraordinarily well preserved, said Hodgins, enabling scientists to make multiple measurements of the skull, teeth and mandibles that might not be possible on less well-preserved remains. "The argument that it is domesticated is pretty solid," said Hodgins. "What's interesting is that it doesn't appear to be an ancestor of modern dogs."
The UA's Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory used radiocarbon dating to determine the age of the Siberian skull.
Radioactive carbon, or carbon-14, is one of three carbon isotopes. Along with naturally occurring carbon dioxide, carbon-14 reaches the surface of the Earth by atmospheric circulation, where plants absorb it into their tissues through photosynthesis.
Animals and humans take in carbon-14 by ingesting plants or other animals that have eaten plants. "Carbon-14 makes it into all organic molecules," said Hodgins. "It's in all living things."
"We believe that carbon-14 production is essentially constant over time," said Hodgins. "So the amount of carbon-14 present in living organisms in the past was similar to the levels in living organisms today. When an animal or plant dies, the amount of carbon-14 in its remains drops at a predictable rate, called the radioactive half-life. The half-life of radiocarbon is 5,730 years."
"People from all over the world send our laboratory samples of organic material that they have dug out of the ground and we measure how much carbon-14 is left in them. Based on that measurement, and knowing the radiocarbon half-life, we calculate how much time must have passed since the samples had the same amount of carbon-14 as plants and animals living today."
The researchers use a machine called an accelerator mass spectrometer to measure the amount of radioactive carbon remaining in a sample. The machine works in a manner analogous to what happens when a beam of white light passes through a prism: White light separates into the colors of the rainbow.
The accelerator mass spectrometer generates a beam of carbon from the sample and passes it through a powerful magnet, which functions like a prism. "What emerges from it are three beams, one each of the three carbon isotopes," said Hodgins. "The lightest carbon beam, carbon-12, bends the most, and then carbon-13 bends slightly less and carbon-14 bends slightly less than that."
The relative intensities of the three beams represent the sample's carbon mass spectrum. Researchers compare the mass spectrum of an unknown sample to the mass spectra of known-age controls and from this comparison, calculate the sample's radiocarbon age.
At 33,000 years old, the Siberian skull predates a period known as the Last Glacial Maximum, or LGM, which occurred between about 26,000 and 19,000 years ago when the ice sheets of Earth's last ice age reached their greatest extent and severely disrupted the living patterns of humans and animals alive during that time. Neither the Belgian nor the Siberian domesticated lineages appear to have survived the LGM.
However, the two skulls indicate that the domestication of dogs by humans occurred repeatedly throughout early human history at different geographical locations, which could mean that modern dogs have multiple ancestors rather than a single common ancestor.
"In terms of human history, before the last glacial maximum people were living with wolves or canid species in widely separated geographical areas of Euro-Asia, and had been living with them long enough that they were actually changing evolutionarily," said Hodgins. "And then climate change happened, human habitation patterns changed and those relationships with those particular lineages of animals apparently didn't survive."
"The interesting thing is that typically we think of domestication as being cows, sheep and goats, things that produce food through meat or secondary agricultural products such as milk, cheese and wool and things like that," said Hodgins.
"Those are different relationships than humans may have with dogs. The dogs are not necessarily providing products or meat. They are probably providing protection, companionship and perhaps helping on the hunt. And it's really interesting that this appears to have happened first out of all human relationships with animals."
###
Reference:
A 33,000-Year-Old Incipient Dog from the Altai Mountains of Siberia: Evidence of the Earliest Domestication Disrupted by the Last Glacial Maximum, PLoS One
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.
Dog skull dates back 33,000 yearsPublic release date: 23-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Daniel Stolte stolte@email.arizona.edu 520-626-4402 University of Arizona
A dog skull unearthed in a Siberian cave presents some of the oldest known evidence of dog domestication and suggests modern dogs may be descended from multiple ancestors
If you think a Chihuahua doesn't have much in common with a Rottweiler, you might be on to something.
An ancient dog skull, preserved in a cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia for 33,000 years, presents some of the oldest known evidence of dog domestication and, together with equally ancient dog remains from a cave in Belgium, indicates that domestication of dogs may have occurred repeatedly in different geographic locations rather than with a single domestication event.
In other words, man's best friends may have originated from more than one ancient ancestor, contrary to what some DNA evidence previously has indicated.
"Both the Belgian find and the Siberian find are domesticated species based on morphological characteristics," said Greg Hodgins, a researcher at the University of Arizona's Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory and co-author of the study that reports the find.
"Essentially, wolves have long thin snouts and their teeth are not crowded, and domestication results in this shortening of the snout and widening of the jaws and crowding of the teeth."
The Altai Mountain skull is extraordinarily well preserved, said Hodgins, enabling scientists to make multiple measurements of the skull, teeth and mandibles that might not be possible on less well-preserved remains. "The argument that it is domesticated is pretty solid," said Hodgins. "What's interesting is that it doesn't appear to be an ancestor of modern dogs."
The UA's Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory used radiocarbon dating to determine the age of the Siberian skull.
Radioactive carbon, or carbon-14, is one of three carbon isotopes. Along with naturally occurring carbon dioxide, carbon-14 reaches the surface of the Earth by atmospheric circulation, where plants absorb it into their tissues through photosynthesis.
Animals and humans take in carbon-14 by ingesting plants or other animals that have eaten plants. "Carbon-14 makes it into all organic molecules," said Hodgins. "It's in all living things."
"We believe that carbon-14 production is essentially constant over time," said Hodgins. "So the amount of carbon-14 present in living organisms in the past was similar to the levels in living organisms today. When an animal or plant dies, the amount of carbon-14 in its remains drops at a predictable rate, called the radioactive half-life. The half-life of radiocarbon is 5,730 years."
"People from all over the world send our laboratory samples of organic material that they have dug out of the ground and we measure how much carbon-14 is left in them. Based on that measurement, and knowing the radiocarbon half-life, we calculate how much time must have passed since the samples had the same amount of carbon-14 as plants and animals living today."
The researchers use a machine called an accelerator mass spectrometer to measure the amount of radioactive carbon remaining in a sample. The machine works in a manner analogous to what happens when a beam of white light passes through a prism: White light separates into the colors of the rainbow.
The accelerator mass spectrometer generates a beam of carbon from the sample and passes it through a powerful magnet, which functions like a prism. "What emerges from it are three beams, one each of the three carbon isotopes," said Hodgins. "The lightest carbon beam, carbon-12, bends the most, and then carbon-13 bends slightly less and carbon-14 bends slightly less than that."
The relative intensities of the three beams represent the sample's carbon mass spectrum. Researchers compare the mass spectrum of an unknown sample to the mass spectra of known-age controls and from this comparison, calculate the sample's radiocarbon age.
At 33,000 years old, the Siberian skull predates a period known as the Last Glacial Maximum, or LGM, which occurred between about 26,000 and 19,000 years ago when the ice sheets of Earth's last ice age reached their greatest extent and severely disrupted the living patterns of humans and animals alive during that time. Neither the Belgian nor the Siberian domesticated lineages appear to have survived the LGM.
However, the two skulls indicate that the domestication of dogs by humans occurred repeatedly throughout early human history at different geographical locations, which could mean that modern dogs have multiple ancestors rather than a single common ancestor.
"In terms of human history, before the last glacial maximum people were living with wolves or canid species in widely separated geographical areas of Euro-Asia, and had been living with them long enough that they were actually changing evolutionarily," said Hodgins. "And then climate change happened, human habitation patterns changed and those relationships with those particular lineages of animals apparently didn't survive."
"The interesting thing is that typically we think of domestication as being cows, sheep and goats, things that produce food through meat or secondary agricultural products such as milk, cheese and wool and things like that," said Hodgins.
"Those are different relationships than humans may have with dogs. The dogs are not necessarily providing products or meat. They are probably providing protection, companionship and perhaps helping on the hunt. And it's really interesting that this appears to have happened first out of all human relationships with animals."
###
Reference:
A 33,000-Year-Old Incipient Dog from the Altai Mountains of Siberia: Evidence of the Earliest Domestication Disrupted by the Last Glacial Maximum, PLoS One
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.
ACAPULCO, Mexico ? Police say eight men were killed in an attack on a funeral in a rural area of Guerrero, part of a death toll of 13 over the weekend in the southern state plagued by drug violence.
An Atoyac de Alvarez municipal police statement says officers found seven dead and two injured early Sunday morning at the scene of a vigil. One of the injured later died.
The statement said the funeral-goers were attacked by masked men firing large caliber rifles favored by drug cartels as they mourned the victim of shooting several days earlier.
Acapulco police said Sunday that three bodies were found dumped in a vacant lot in the resort city, while a fourth was found decapitated in a car and another man died in a shootout with police.
We first reported on Jarnos Smeets when his HumanBirdWings project was still a baby. He had successfully paired the accelerometers of a WiiMote and an HTC Wildfire S to control the outrunners on his wings, but hadn't yet taken to the air. Today, that all changes.
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Former president Bill Clinton has turned media critic - dubbing MSNBC ?our version of Fox.?
Clinton told Esquire magazine MSNBC has become just like Fox News ? and he blames the insatiable demand for cable news to have constant content as one of the reasons politics has become so caustic and divisive.
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The existence of so many news channels and media outlets, Clinton said, ?has contributed to less actual reporting and a louder, more contentious, more divisive public discourse, highlighting conflict, sometimes falsely.?
?I also think that the diffusion of the media has complicated things. For example, I was just watching ? I don?t know if you heard what I said in the other room ? I was just watching MSNBC, and they had a woman that used to work for me and a couple of other people on there, and they were talking about the Republican primary. And I was laughing. I said, ?Boy, it really has become our version of Fox,?? he said in the piece in the February issue, which culls from interviews done on November 30 and December 16, 2011.
To make a profit in today?s media world, news organizations have to push so much content, and punditry trumps reporting in terms of attracting viewership, Clinton noted.
?And I say that because think of the economics of running cable channels,? he said. ?Suppose you and I bought a cable channel, and he [pointing] bought another. You know that to make a living out of it, you?ve got to get about eight hundred thousand viewers for all your major programs. So you can get eight hundred thousand, and you won?t be as wealthy as Fox, but you?ll do okay.?
Back when there were just the Big Three television networks, ?there was enough competition that everybody could keep each other honest,? he told Esquire.
?And now if you get a slice that?s that small and still viable ? and you know it?s not like when we just had NBC, CBS, and ABC. That?s all there was. Everybody had enough market share that they knew would guarantee some comfortable level of profit,? he said. ?And yet there was enough competition that everybody could keep each other honest, and when the Vietnam War came along, they could send fifty-five-year-old reporters to Vietnam for extended stays. They could afford to have correspondents in Europe to report. Correspondents in Asia.?
?All that?s changed now,? he added. ?And so the good news is you can get a lot of information off the Internet for free and in a hurry. But I think the breaking up of the media, which is otherwise kind of healthy, has contributed to less actual reporting and a louder, more contentious, more divisive public discourse, highlighting conflict, sometimes falsely.?
Everyone likes a good optical illusion, and that includes at least one animal. Male bowerbirds woo females by constructing a bachelor pad that creates an illusion of uniform decor (and the illusion that their owners are much more robust lads than they really are).
And a new study suggests the females tend to choose mates from those who produce the best illusion.
Male great bowerbirds ?pigeon-size birds native to Australia ? spend the majority of their time building and maintaining their courtship sites, called bowers. A bower consists of a tunnel-like avenue made of densely woven sticks that leads to a court of gray stones, shells and bones. Previous research suggested the birds arrange items in such a way that the court appears uniform and small to a female viewing it from within the avenue, which makes the male appear much larger and more impressive than he really is.
Bowerbirds are the only animals so far that have been shown to use illusions for mating.
By analyzing the geometry of various bowers and studying the mating success of the bowers' creators, researchers have now determined that the male bowerbirds creating the best bower illusion get all the females.
The purpose of the illusion may be to make displayed objects more attention-grabbing to a female, giving her more time to decide if she wants to mate, the researchers said.
The idea that illusion strength can predict mating success is "absolutely brilliant and novel," said Fabrizio Sergio, a conservation biologist at the Spanish National Research Council (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cient?ficas) in Madrid, who was not involved in the current study. "It opens a new perspective on (mating) signal design and makes more complete our view of the fascinating subject of animal communication."
The power of a bower
Male bowerbirds, which live about 30 years, begin collecting objects at around age 5 for their bower courts. After building his avenue and court, which can have several thousand objects, the bird will vocally advertise his bower from the top of a nearby tree.
If a female is interested, she will inspect the bower from both outside and inside of the avenue. While the female is inside, the male will stand in the court just outside her view and display brightly colored objects, such as plastic clothespins or pieces or fruit, or the crest on the back of his neck. Then he will enter the avenue, come up to the gal from behind and try to mate.
John Endler, an evolutionary ecologist at Deakin University in Australia, and his colleagues first observed a peculiar aspect of the bower in 2010. Rather than randomly placing items while constructing a court, the birds were putting smaller objects closer to the avenue and larger objects farther away. This size gradient, when viewed from within the avenue, created an optical illusion called forced perspective: All the court items appeared roughly the same size, and the court itself looked smaller than it was.
The researchers experimentally rearranged the court items and found that the original design was no accident. "They fix it within three days," Endler told LiveScience. "The objects' placements were really important to them."
While court design was critical to the males, it was unclear whether it really mattered to the females. To find out, Endler and study co-author Laura Kelly, an ecologist at Deakin University, first monitored 20 male bowerbirds to see which bowers successfully attracted females, and then placed motion-sensing cameras around the eight bowers that drew female visitors.
Males that created the best illusions were more likely to mate with interested females, the results showed. Some males crafted perfectly reasonable size gradients of the objects, but those gradients, when viewed from within the avenue, didn't produce a suitable illusion of uniformity ? the only birds that successfully mated were those that got the illusion just right.
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The researchers also found that females chose to mate only if they had spent at least 55 percent of their visit checking out the court from within the avenue. The researchers suspect the bright objects, when waved by the male over the court illusion, stand out more, helping to hold the female's attention. "This might give her more time to decide if she wants to mate with him," Endler said.
Trial and error?
Sergio found the new study "catchy and interesting," though he said that the conclusions would have been stronger if the team had studied more than eight bowers. "But the authors did start with 20 bowers (an adequate sample) and had it reduced by absence of visitation by females, something out of their control," he wrote in an email to LiveScience.
Given that some birds, such as pigeons and gray parrots, are sensitive to visual tricks, the study proposed that other animals also might use illusions during courtship. Sergio agreed: "If the study is successful in stimulating further research, many examples of similar dynamics from other species will soon accompany it."
At this point, the researchers aren't sure whether the bowerbirds' ability to use illusions says anything about their cognitive abilities. Endler said the birds simply could be good at recognizing patterns and create the forced perspective by trial and error.
"But it's amusing to think that forced perspective was invented by bowerbirds millions of years before humans," Endler said. "Bird art has a bigger history than human art."
As per reports, it has got revealed that England Government has launched a campaign, Be Clear on Cancer, to raise awareness on bowel cancer. It is the first time that the government has launched a campaign of bowel cancer.
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Public release date: 23-Jan-2012
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