2012年5月22日星期二

The sleep apnea pipeline includes new technology

Sleep apnea may prove to be a treatable cause of high blood pressure, according to research released today that suggests wearing a special breathing mask at discount louis vuitton shoes women night may protect apnea patients from the hypertension. Most people think of obstructive sleep apnea as a snoring disorder. Although many sufferers snore, apnea is characterized by short episodes in which the patient's upper airway narrows or closes, reducing the flow of oxygen to the body and brain. Those episodes, which can number hundreds in a night, not only disrupt nighttime sleep but may reduce daytime alertness and over time stress the body. For the past 15 to 20 years, doctors have thought that these episodes send blood pressure upward and put patients at risk of heart attack and stroke. Doctors most often treat sleep apnea by having their patients use devices that employ a technique called continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, which delivers mild air pressure through a nasal mask, to keep their airways open throughout sleep. Two studies released today in JAMA suggest that CPAP may reduce the risk of hypertension among apnea patients. Dr. Ferran Barbe and his colleagues at the Institut de Biomedia Recerca in Lleida, Spain, studied the effects of CPAP treatment on hypertension and risk of heart attack and stroke among 723 apnea sufferers who didn't have daytime sleepiness. They divided the patients into two groups, one that wore CPAP masks while sleeping and an observation-only group. In the course of more than two years, patients who used CPAP machines at least 4 hours a night did better, but the study didn't show a statistically significant reduction in cardiovascular problems. However, a related study in the same issue found a stronger benefit. Dr. Jose M. Marin, a respiratory specialist, led an observational study that followed 1,889 patients without hypertension who underwent evaluations for abnormal nighttime breathing at a sleep center in Zaragoza, Spain. They subsequently came in for annual blood pressure checks. With more than 12 years of follow-up, Marin's study suggested that apnea patients who used a CPAP didn't develop hypertension as much as patients with untreated OSA, those who refused treatment or those who don't wear a CPAP as prescribed. The greater the adherence to prescribed nightly CPAP use, the more protective the treatment. Dr. Virend Somers, a sleep apnea and heart disease louis vuitton man suit researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., cautioned that the results of the two studies are suggestive "but not definitive that CPAP is protective of the cardiovascular system." He said the conclusion that better adherence to CPAP use is protective also "has to be taken with a pinch of salt – because the fact that someone uses CPAP more frequently and more conscientiously may mean they do other things, maybe take their medicines or do other things we don't measure that will improve their cardiovascular risk," said Somers, a professor of cardiovascular diseases. Barbe's finding that those patients who adhered to therapy had a decreased incidence of hypertension" is in my opinion quite powerful and supports the relationship found in the Marin study," said Dr. James Rowley, medical director of the Sleep Disorders Center at the Detroit Receiving Hospital in Detroit and faculty member at Wayne State University. "The Marin study in particular was a more 'real-world' study and had a longer follow-up period so is in my opinion strongly supports the statement that OSA is associated with increased risk of hypertension." The two studies provide more evidence for the benefits of CPAP therapy in reducing hypertension and its potential in preventing it among people with obstructive sleep apnea, Drs. Vishesh Kapur and Edward Weaver, both of the University of Washington in Seattle, wrote in an accompanying editorial. "Treatment may not only reduce blood pressure (although modestly on average), but if confirmed by future studies, also may prevent hypertension in at-risk patients. Thus, OSA deserves attention in patients with or at risk of developing hypertension as a potentially treatable cause of hypertension as well as other clinically important outcomes." However, they said additional clinical trials were needed to determine the amount of CPAP therapy necessary to achieve a beneficial effect, and to evaluate other sleep apnea treatments. Because so many apnea patients complain that they cannot tolerate wearing a mask throughout the night, Somers said that industry is "trying to develop new ways of delivering positive airway pressure that are more tolerable." He said the idea is for the machines to deliver constant air flow throughout the night, increasing the pressure when it's needed. That way, the treatment "will be primarily instituted" when breathing is blocked, "and when you're breathing quietly and happily, you don't need it." The sleep apnea pipeline includes new technology being developed to address some of the neurologic issues that underlie disrupted breathing to reduce apnea episodes. One approach now being tested involves stimulating nerves that control how the body keeps the airways open, Somers said. Rowley said that for now, none of the other louis vuitton shoes 2012 new luxury cheap treatments used for OSA, including surgery, some oral appliances that reposition the jaw, CPAP masks, or even devices in the pipeline "have been studied for long-term outcomes of OSA, particularly cardiovascular disease. Most of the data is short-term and relates to subjective symptoms such as sleepiness and quality of life."

2012年5月21日星期一

Different bacteria can cause necrotizing fasciitis

A Georgia graduate student fighting a rare flesh-eating bacterial infection she contracted after being injured in a zip-line accident nearly three weeks ago is new lv sunglasses 2012 breathing on her own without the help of a ventilator, her father said. The struggle to save 24-year-old Aimee Copeland from necrotizing fasciitis - a bacterial infection that can destroy muscles, skin and tissue - has been chronicled by her father, Andy Copeland, in a blog on the university's website. "She has been off of the ventilator for over 10 hours," Andy Copeland wrote late on Sunday. "In other words, she is breathing completely on her own! How cool is that?" Copeland, a student at West Georgia University, slashed her calf when the zip-line snapped May 1 along the Little Tallapoosa River near Carrollton, Georgia. Emergency room doctors closed the wound with 22 staples and released Copeland, but she was diagnosed with the infection after her conditioned worsened. Surgeons amputated Copeland's left leg at the hip. Last week, she mouthed, "Let's do this" when told her hands and remaining foot would have to be amputated, her father wrote on Friday. It is unclear from Andy Copeland's postings whether vest sheaps top the additional amputations had already occurred. A hospital spokeswoman has declined to comment on the woman's condition. In his Sunday night posting, Andy Copeland said he was reducing the time he spends on media interviews. "Two of my most important responsibilities are to pray for and provide financial support for my family," he wrote. "Everything else, including blog posting, organizing blood drives and conducting media interviews is secondary." Different bacteria can cause necrotizing fasciitis. Health experts say the "flesh-eating" infection is not communicable. Two cases of flesh-eating infections have been reported recently in South Carolina as well. A new mother of twins, Lana Kuykendall, 36, was admitted to Greenville Memorial Hospital on May 11, days after giving birth, with a painful spot on her leg that was ultimately diagnosed as necrotizing fasciitis. Her brother, Brian Swaffer, said Kuykendall had undergone at least seven operations, was sedated, and only opened her eyes "a little bit, at times." A former South Carolina fire chief, Glenn Pace, told a local television station he had been battling a flesh-eating bacteria since early April and had three surgeries on his foot. A 1996 report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated there were 500 to 1,500 cases of necrotizing fasciitis annually in the United States, latest louis vuitton handbag 2012 with about 20 percent of them fatal. The National Necrotizing Fasciitis Foundation has said that estimate is probably low.

2012年5月20日星期日

This study represents an important step in identifying

Birds can master new skills without the gradual improvements that normally occur with training. The improvement is all down to an ancient part of the brain that is present cheap louis vuitton shoes for women in all vertebrate species. Learning complex motor skills such as speech or dance movements involves imitation and trial and error. Young songbirds, for example, learn to sing by copying an adult tutor, and practising the song thousands of times until they have perfected every syllable. The underlying brain mechanisms are unknown, but one influential model1 states that structures called the basal ganglia generate a variety of movement patterns that are tried out by the motor cortex, which executes the movements. The basal ganglia then reinforce the best pattern by transmitting a rewarding dopamine signal after receiving feedback on the result of the movement from the motor cortex. But research published today in Nature2 challenges this view. Jonathan Charlesworth, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, and his colleagues trained Bengalese finches (Lonchura striata domestica) to modify the pitch of one song syllable in response to white noise. During the training, the researchers used a drug to block the output of the bird's anterior forebrain pathway (AFP), a bundle of nerve fibres that forms a loop circuit between the basal ganglia and motor cortex. The blocking prevented the gradual improvement that would normally occur as the birds practised, so despite trying, the finches did not manage to modify their song. Instead, they continued to produce it at the original pitch. But when the researchers unblocked the AFP output after training, the birds immediately produced an expert performance at the modified pitch. Inactivating the AFP completely during the training prevented any learning from taking place at all. This indicates that activity in the AFP is essential for learning motor skills, and that the pathway can covertly learn to execute a new skill without contributing to the practice and louis vuitton bracelet without feedback from the motor cortex. The findings suggest that basal ganglia circuits monitor the variations in behaviour and then direct the motor cortex to execute the most successful ones. “Our earlier work indicated that the nervous system keeps track of fine-grained fluctuations in behavioural variation and uses them for trial-and-error learning,” says Charlesworth. “These new results suggest that the basal ganglia learn rapidly and train the motor cortex, which appears to be a repository where the learning is consolidated.” The basal ganglia probably receive detailed information about behavioural variations from the premotor cortex, which plans the movements. Because the birds' performance improved immediately when the AFP output was unblocked, the researchers deduce that activity in the basal ganglia is precisely synchronized with that in the motor system. Getting better "This study represents an important step in identifying brain mechanisms that mediate trial-and-error behavioural learning,” says Richard Mooney, a neurobiologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. “It suggests that the basal ganglia can learn how to improve behaviour even when they are prevented from changing it. This stands in contrast to the popular idea that the basal ganglia must actively drive variability for trial-and-error learning to occur." The basal ganglia have been highly conserved by evolution, and serve similar functions in every vertebrate species. In humans, problems with basal ganglia function are characteristic of movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease. “We hope that our findings will help clinicians to interpret the symptoms of these disorders and help scientists to develop more effective treatments,” says Charlesworth. Charlesworth adds that he is building on the black suits for men 2012 white-noise interference method to develop ultrasound neuromodulation. This could potentially be used to alter the activity of deep brain structures such as the basal ganglia, facilitating non-invasive treatments for neurological disease and improving cognitive function.

2012年5月17日星期四

Donoghue was particularly encouraged to see

By implanting a 96-electrode sensor the size of a baby aspirin onto the surface of their brains, researchers have enabled two quadriplegic participants to use their Burberry handbags outlet, cheap burberry bags on sale, 60% off thoughts alone to perform tasks with two types of robotic arms. The BrainGate implant -- and the resulting Jedi mind tricks -- may be sort of anxiety-producing to some. But the smile on the face of the woman who hadn't been able to serve herself coffee in 15 years put a fine point on the progress the technology is affording. "One of our participants was able to do something that, when all of us saw it for the first time, gave us all pause," lead author Dr. Leigh Hochberg, a neuroengineer and designerburberyoutlet critical care neurologist who holds appointments at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Brown University, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard, said in a Brown news video. "She reached out with the robotic arm, she thought about the use of her own hand, she picked up that thermos of coffee, brought it close to her, tilted it toward herself, and sipped coffee from a straw. And that was the first time in nearly 15 years that she had picked up anything and been able to drink from it solely of her own volition." John Donoghue, the neuroscientist who pioneered the BrainGate implant a decade ago and co-authored the study that appears this week in Nature, has seen the tech advance from participants being able to perform simple cursor commands on a computer monitor to actual 3D movement and dexterity louis vuitton sunglasses commands in space. "There was a moment of true joy, true happiness," Donoghue said in the video. "It was beyond the fact that it was an accomplishment -- I think an important advance in the entire field of brain computer interfaces. It was really a moment where we helped somebody do something that they had wished to do for many years." As they reported in their study, the 58-year-old paralyzed woman known as S3 underwent 158 trials over the course of four days, and was able to touch the target within an allotted time 48.8 percent of the time using the DLR robotic arm and hand and 69.2 percent of the time using the DEKA arm and hand, whose grasp is wider. The other participant, a 66-year-old paralyzed man known as T2, had nearly identical results. Donoghue was particularly encouraged to see that these results held even though one of the participants had the BrainGate array implanted five years ago. "This louis vuitton hoodie men work is a critical step toward realizing the long-term goal of creating a neurotechnology that will restore movement, control, and independence to people with paralysis or limb loss," he said.

2012年5月16日星期三

Richard had lost five consecutive decisions

In six starts against any team not named the San Diego Padres, left-hander Chris Capuano has pitched like an ace. Against the lowly Padres, he’s pitched like a Lv shoes for women 2012 journeyman desperate to hang on. It makes no sense, but as managers and players alike are fond of saying in these situations, that’s baseball. That was a 4-2 loss for the Dodgers and Capuano, his first of the season, on Wednesday in San Diego. The injury-riddled Dodgers sent out a lineup that wouldn’t have been allowed in a spring training game -- it had only one regular, Andre Ethier. It wasn’t a lineup designed to score much, and it did not surprise, sending both runs across in the first and then going so quietly it was hard to remember a single at-bat. Capuano, meanwhile, was not his normal, sharp self. Anyway, the normal, sharp guy the rest of the league knows. Against every other team this season, Capuano is 5-0 with a 1.38 earned-run average. In two starts against the Padres, he’s 0-1 with a 6.55 ERA. Things at least started promisingly enough for Capuano when the Dodgers scored twice in the first. Tony Gwynn Jr., starting in center for the injured Matt Kemp, singled and scored on a double by Elian Hererra, who was making his first major league start. Herrera scored on an Ethier sacrifice fly, and the Dodgers had an early 2-0 lead. Capuano, however, immediately ran into trouble in the form of Chase Headley, who hit a solo home run in the bottom of the first. It remained a 2-1 lead for the Dodgers until the sixth when Headley -- in another nine-pitch at-bat -- doubled in two more to give the Padres a 3-2 lead. The Padres added one more in the seventh after loading the bases on an Orlando Hudson single, a Capuano error on a sacrifice bunt and a walk. That brought a call to reliever Javy Guerra, who threw four consecutive balls to Cameron Maybin to force in the final run. In his 6 1/3 innings, Capuano (5-1) allowed four runs on six hits and three walks, throwing 94 pitches. After their first-inning outburst, however, the Dodgers' meager lineup could do nothing with Clayton Richard, whose situation is the exact opposite of Capuano's. Richard had lost five consecutive decisions, his only victory this season coming against the Dodgers. He is now 6-1 lifetime against the Dodgers. On Wednesday, Richard went seven innings, holding the lv jewelry Dodgers to two runs on just four hits. He struck out six, walked one and was not deducted any points for opposing a triple-A lineup. Until Bobby Abreu singled with one out in the ninth, the Padres had set down 15 consecutive Dodgers. The Dodgers ended the day with just five hits.

2012年5月15日星期二

Deb Fischer has won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate

Fewer people are way overdue on their credit card payments in the U.S. The credit reporting agency TransUnion says the rate of payments 90 days overdue or longer Lv shoes for women 2012 dipped in the first three months of the year to .73 percent. That's down from .78 percent for the fourth quarter of last year. Nebraska and Oregon Republicans have chosen Mitt Romney in Tuesday's presidential primaries. Oregon has 25 presidential delegates up for grabs and most if not all are going to Romney. In Nebraska, the state's 32 delegates to the Republican National Convention will be determined at the state convention on July 14. OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska state Sen. Deb Fischer has won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, setting the stage for a high-stakes November election against former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey. The 53-year-old Fischer overcame low name familiarity and being outspent by two competitors to win the nomination in Tuesday's election. She was backed by 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and former presidential candidate Herman Cain. The race has drawn national attention because a GOP win would push Republicans closer to a Senate majority. Nebraska is a solidly Republican state, but Democrats think they have a shot of winning with Kerrey, a former senator, governor and presidential candidate. Kerrey easily won the Democratic nomination. The general election winner will replace Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson, who isn't seeking a third term. SAN ANSELMO, Calif. (AP) — Representatives of dozens of West Coast Presbyterian churches are defying their denomination's highest court by refusing to censure a retired minister who married same-sex couples in 2008. The Presbyterian Church's highest court found the Rev. Jane Spahr of San Francisco guilty of misconduct in 2010 for officiating at same-sex weddings when they were legal in California. The court previously ruled that clergy could only bless same-sex unions, but not perform weddings. Spahr appealed the decision but lost the battle before the church's General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission in February. On Tuesday, representatives of Northern California Presbyterian churches voted overwhelmingly to ignore the commission and oppose Spahr's official censure. The Marin Independent Journal reports Spahr's supporters celebrated with her at the San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo. MIAMI (AP) — Court records show George Zimmerman had a pair of black eyes, a nose fracture and two cuts to the back of his head after the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. ABC News reports the medical records were part of evidence released Tuesday that prosecutors have in the second-degree murder case against Zimmerman. He has entered a plea louis vuitton t-shirts 2012 of not guilty and claims self-defense in the Feb. 26 shooting. A message left Tuesday evening with Zimmerman's attorney was not immediately returned. Zimmerman was treated Feb. 27 at Altamonte Family Practice. A phone call made Tuesday evening to the practice rang unanswered. Some of the injuries were previously reported by The Associated Press based on video of Zimmerman at a jail sally port. GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) — Attorneys for John Edwards are indicating their case is winding down, but they are not yet saying whether they will call the former presidential candidate or his mistress to testify. Defense attorneys said they would make a decision later Tuesday on whether to call Edwards and Rielle Hunter. It was not clear when they would make that decision public. Testimony ended Tuesday for the day with the trial still focusing on financial records. Edwards is accused of masterminding a plan to use about $1 million from two wealthy donors to hide his pregnant mistress as he ran for the White House in 2008. Edwards has pleaded not guilty to six counts of campaign finance violations. He faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted. CROWN KING, Ariz. (AP) — High winds are increasing the acreage of a northern Arizona wildfire but also blowing flames away from an historic mining town. The blaze near Crown King began on private land Sunday and has burned about 2½ square miles with zero containment. Fire officials say winds estimated at 35 mph pushed the size to an estimated 1,700 acres Tuesday. The wildfire has destroyed two buildings and one trailer. Authorities believe the blaze was started by a structure fire on private property. The area remains under an evacuation order though authorities say most of the town's 350 residents have chosen to stay. Crown King is a community of mostly summer homes about 85 miles north of Phoenix. Facebook IPO could mean up to $2.1B for Calif. SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Facebook's public stock offering this week is projected to generate between $1.6 billion and $2.1 billion through mid-2013 for California's budget as shareholders cash in their shares. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office on Tuesday increased the state's revenue projection after the online social network raised the upper range of its initial stock price from $35 per share to $38. The higher state revenue projection assumes voter approval of Gov. Jerry Brown's tax-hike initiative in November. The analyst's report says Facebook is expected to drive one-fifth of the growth in California's personal income this year. CEO Mark Zuckerberg will make a significant contribution burberry handbags on sale to the state's finances. Department of Finance spokesman H.D. Palmer says California could receive $195 million when he exercises his option on 60 million shares. WASHINGTON (AP) — An influential panel is calling for an 80 percent reduction of U.S. nuclear weapons and an elimination of all nuclear armed intercontinental ballistic missiles. In a report for the advocacy group Global Zero, Gen. James Cartwright and others argue that the U.S. needs no more than 900 total nuclear weapons for its security in a post-Cold War world. The report comes at a time that the president is weighing a range of sharp nuclear reductions. The Obama administration is reportedly considering at least three options for lower total numbers of deployed strategic nuclear weapons: reducing the number to 1,000 to 1,100; 700 to 800; or 300 to 400. The Global Zero report calls for such weapons to be reduced to about 450, while maintaining an equal number of stored weapons. Homeless man's mom accepts $1M settlement in death FULLERTON, Calif. (AP) — The mother of a mentally ill homeless man who died after a violent confrontation with Southern California police has accepted a $1 million settlement with the city of Fullerton. The Orange County Register says the settlement was announced at Tuesday's City Council meeting. It was approved on a 5-0 vote. In exchange, Cathy Thomas agreed to not pursue any further claims or lawsuits seeking damages for the death of her 37-year-old son, Kelly. The deal does not involve her ex-husband, Ron Thomas. A judge earlier this month ordered two officers to stand trial on criminal charges in the case. Their next court appearance is scheduled for May 22. The incident last July also prompted an effort to remove three Fullerton councilmembers. They face a recall on next month's ballot. JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — An Indonesian official says special forces have found the voice-and-data recorder of a Russian passenger jet that slammed into a jagged, mist-shrouded cliff on a dormant volcano. The "black box" could help explain the cause of the deadly crash. Search and Rescue agency spokesman Gagah Prakoso said Wednesday that it was found near the tail of the shattered wreck at the bottom of a 1,500-foot (500-meter) ravine. The device was delivered to investigators burberry handbags sale late Tuesday. The Sukhoi Superjet 100 — Russia's first passenger jet model since the fall of the Soviet Union two decades ago — was being demonstrated for potential buyers when it roared into Mount Salak at 800 kph (480 mph) on May 9. All 45 people on board were killed.

We want a successful financial industry

President Barack Obama said on Monday the huge trading loss at JPMorgan Chase & Co illustrated the need for Wall Street reform and warned that the same kind of error louis vuitton sunglasses at a less stable bank may have required government intervention. "JPMorgan is one of the best managed banks there is. Jamie Dimon, the head of it, is one of the smartest bankers we got and they still lost $2 billion and counting," Obama said on ABC's "The View," according to a transcript released by the network. "We don't know all the details. It's going to be investigated, but this is why we passed Wall Street reform," Obama said. The program was taped on Monday in New York and will air on Tuesday. Wall Street reform was one of Obama's signature discount louis vuitton handbags sale domestic policy achievements, but he has faced opposition in trying to implement and enforce it. "The whole point was, even if you're smart, you can make mistakes and since these banks are insured, backed up by taxpayers, we don't want you taking risks where eventually we might end up having to bail you out again, because we've done that, been there, didn't like it," Obama said, according to the transcript. "This is the best, or one of the best managed banks. You could have a bank that isn't as strong, isn't as profitable making those same bets and we (the government) might burberry handbags have had to step in, and that's exactly why Wall Street reform's so important." Obama, a Democrat, said his support for greater financial oversight differentiated him from Mitt Romney, the presumed Republican presidential nominee. "We've got real differences here, because Governor Romney, members -- some of the Republican members of Congress and the financial industry have been arguing that this is unnecessary, that this is impeding capital formation," Obama said. "We want a successful financial industry. That's burberry sunglasses 2012 always been one of the hallmarks of America. But what makes us the best financial industry is transparency, accountability, rules so that small investors feel like if they put their money into Wall Street, it's not going to suddenly just disappear."

2012年5月13日星期日

Tusk was supposed to have visited Canada in April 2010

Visiting Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Sunday said he was proud to find another Wilno, settled by Canada's first Polish immigrants, on pine-covered hills east of cheap louis vuitton sunglasses Ottawa. Locals are largely descended from immigrants from the Kaszuby region of northern Poland from which the prime minister himself hails. They gave him a warm welcome at St. Stanislas Church. But it sharply contrasted with the reception he was given by demonstrators who came in from Toronto and Ottawa to protest what they see as Warsaw's siding with Moscow on dropping the investigation of the air disaster in Russia in which Polish president Lech Kaczynski and many others were killed. "It is a Russian-Polish conspiracy," louis vuitton earrings insisted Witold Szalankiewicz, a Pole who has been living in Ottawa for about two decades. Nationalists accuse Russian authorities and Tusk's liberal government of being responsible for the crash, going as far as suggesting an assassination to explain the accident of April 10, 2010. In a report published last August, Polish investigators said that the blame for the accident that killed Kaczynski and 95 others lay largely on the Polish side. The government at the same time announced a wave of burberry handbags outlet dismissals among army officials responsible for training in the Polish airforce. The Tupolev 154 plane carrying Kaczynski, his wife and scores of Poland's leaders crashed during an attempt to land at the fog-veiled Smolensk airport in western Russia. The Kaczynski-led delegation had been on its way to Katyn to commemorate the 70th anniversary of a massacre of thousands of Polish officers by the Soviet secret police during World War II. Tusk was supposed to have visited Canada in April 2010, but he was forced to cancel his plans at the last minute when Kaczynski and several Polish officials perished in an air crash in Smolensk. Poland is one of Canada's biggest trading partners in central and eastern Europe, with bilateral imports and exports totaling $1.7 billion. Canada is also home to burberry belts on sale nearly one million citizens of Polish origin. Besides Ottawa, Tusk will be visiting the Quadra copper mine in Sudbury, northern Ontario, acquired by the Polish mining group KGHM in March for $2.9 billion.

2012年5月11日星期五

While it understandably offends many Americans

President Barack Obama's declaration of a personal acceptance of same-sex marriage made for a historic moment, even if its short-term impact remains to be seen. The statement was no surprise, coming on the heels cheap louis vuitton sunglasses of Vice President Joseph Biden's kindred remarks and presaged by the administration's abolishment of "Don't ask, don't tell" for the military and its decision not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act. In terms of political strategy, the president's stand may not be all that audacious. Roughly half of Americans are telling pollsters they are OK with same-sex marriage, and younger voters lean heavily in favor. For the most part, individuals, groups and states that strongly oppose women louis vuitton shoes fashion best online discount purple gay marriage already tend to be beyond Obama's reach in the November election. Heated as the issue can be, it ranks far down the list of concerns driving the electorate in a nation beset with high unemployment, mountainous government debt, a crisis in health-care financing and two wars. And the president himself is not pushing specific legislation on marriage, instead leaving the matter to the states. The states are a mixed bag. Six of them, plus the District of Columbia, have legalized same-sex marriage, while nearly all the rest explicitly ban it. Just Tuesday in North Carolina, where the Democratic Party will nominate Obama for re-election this summer, voters outlawed both burberry handbags outlet same-sex marriage and civil unions. The civil unions ban also is written into a proposed amendment to the Indiana Constitution that will go to the voters in 2014 if approved by the 2013 General Assembly. The referendum would be a divisive and expensive battle over a contract that already is forbidden by state law. Clearly, states will contend with the definition of marriage for years to come unless they're trumped by a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The president's proclamation has far less to do with legislation and lawsuits than with attitudes. While it understandably offends many Americans and draws a collective shrug from many others, it sends a profound message to certain citizens who, despite cheap burberry bag brown fashion on sale 2012 growing acceptance, remain marginalized. The echoes from that validation will resound far beyond capitols and courthouses.

2012年5月10日星期四

This is the controversial new designation for children showing persistent

Reports here provided what may be the last public update on DSM-5, the next edition of American psychiatry's diagnostic guide, before it is formally released louis vuitton sunglasses in May 2013. Many changes have been made since the first draft of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders was put out for public comment in early 2010, according to workgroup leaders speaking at several heavily attended symposia at the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) annual meeting. The current version, DSM-IV, was released in 1994. The update effort has been led by DSM-5 task force chairman David Kupfer, MD, of the University of Pittsburgh, and APA research director Darrel Regier, MD, MPH. The actual work of rewriting the manual fell to 13 workgroups, which tackled disorders in 20 categories. The final drafts are to be completed by August, then they must be approved by a scientific review committee and the task force leadership, and finally by the APA's governing bodies. Kupfer said the final version has to be completed by December, when it's set to go to the printer. Its formal release is planned for the APA's annual meeting next May in San Francisco. Here's a brief overview of the changes you can expect. To a great but not complete extent, the DSM-5 workgroups complied with those instructions. Every one of the dozens of disorder categories has been reorganized and/or rewritten to bring them into line with research conducted over the past 20 years. Often, the groups found no basis for classifications and diagnoses contained in DSM-IV. Here are highlights of what is set to be dumped in DSM-5: Axes. DSM-IV's main organizational scheme was to divide disorders, contributing factors, and global functional assessments into 5 axes -- notably with Axis I containing clinical, substance-related, and learning disorders and Axis II comprising personality and certain other disability-based disorders. The DSM-5 leadership determined early on that there was no scientific basis for this distinction, and so disorders in the new edition will be presented as a simple list of 20 chapters for disorder families. NOS diagnoses. Most disorder families in DSM-IV included an NOS diagnosis that served as a catchall for patients who appeared to have some kind of disorder but who didn't fit into the established categories. In practice, however, some of these became extremely discount louis vuitton handbags sale popular. The head of the eating disorders workgroup, for example, cited data indicating that more than half of all patients diagnosed with an eating disorder were coded for "ED-NOS." Also, some disorders that were now well recognized and characterized were included in NOS categories, such as restless legs disorder. In DSM-5, NOS categories are either gone entirely or replaced with NEC for "not elsewhere classified." NEC categories will include a list of "specifiers," each with a specific diagnostic code, that will convey clinical information. For example, Depressive Disorder NEC comes with 5 specifiers such as "short duration" that indicate the patient's clinical condition and why it doesn't meet criteria for one of the main depression syndromes. Bereavement exclusion in major depression. One of the most controversial proposals in DSM-5 does away with the restriction that diagnosis of major depression cannot be given to patients reporting severe grief from the death of a loved one if the death occurred within the preceding two months. As MedPage Today previously reported, the depression workgroup believes that there is no scientific justification to disqualify patients from diagnosis and treatment if they otherwise meet criteria for major depression. But in a bow to critics, they have proposed to include a caveat in the checklist criteria for major depression noting that certain symptoms appear in normal grief but that others may warrant attention -- as did DSM-IV though in a different way. Catatonia as a psychotic diagnosis. The group has reworked the diagnostic criteria for catatonia and removed it as a subtype of schizophrenia. Instead, catatonia is now a specifier in schizophrenia and several other psychiatric diagnoses. The DSM-IV diagnosis of catatonia related to a general medical condition will be retained, and DSM-5 will also create a new "Catatonia NEC" diagnosis for patients showing catatonia of uncertain origin or associated with neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism. Gender identity disorder. Individuals who believe their biological gender doesn't match their gender identification will no longer be labeled with a disorder. Instead, if they seek psychiatric treatment, they can be labeled with "gender dysphoria." The workgroup responsible for dealing with the hot-button issue considered a variety of other approaches, addressed later in this article. Ultimately they settled on a formal diagnosis -- potentially qualifying a patient for insurance-paid treatment if they want it -- but with a less pejorative name than "disorder." Substance abuse. DSM-IV created separate diagnoses for "abuse" and "dependence" in people having problems with mind-altering substances such as marijuana and narcotics. The DSM-5 workgroup in this area agreed that the vast amount of research conducted in recent decades pointed to substance-related problems as occurring on a continuum, such that the abuse-dependence distinction was purely arbitrary. Hence, DSM-5 will instead feature "substance use disorders" as the diagnosis for people with such problems. Also out are physical tolerance and withdrawal symptoms as criteria for a disorder diagnosis. O'Brien noted that these reflect the body's adaptation to chemicals and are not necessary to a diagnosis. In a commentary delivered to APA burberry handbags meeting attendees, Norman Sartorius, MD, of the World Health Organization, remarked on "the irresistible tendency to introduce new names" when revising diagnostic criteria. And indeed, the DSM-5 workgroups were unable to resist it. But Sartorius also noted that new names can be beneficial -- as long as they are accompanied by preparation and education. In addition to new names, some entirely new disorders and methods of diagnosing them are slated to appear in DSM-5. Dimensions. Perhaps the most important conceptual innovation in DSM-5 is its use of dimensional assessments in most disorder categories. These are indicators of severity for certain symptoms. They may be common "cross-cutting" features that appear in conjunction with many disorders, such as suicide risk and anxiety. Or they may be specific to a particular disorder, such as the frequency of flashbacks in PTSD. Biomarkers. For the first time, results of objective testing will be part of the formal diagnostic criteria in psychiatry. Many sleep-wake disorders in DSM-5 will require polysomnography for a diagnosis. Also, narcolepsy is set to become narcolepsy/hypocretin deficiency, with the latter condition diagnosed on the basis of hypocretin measurements in cerebrospinal fluid. Functional impairments. Despite the leadership's wish to eliminate functional impairments and patient distress as necessary requirements for diagnoses, some of the DSM-5 workgroups found that they couldn't get rid of them. For example, an autism diagnosis will still require "symptoms [that] together limit and impair everyday functioning." Similarly, proposed criteria for PTSD include "the disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning." Regier acknowledged to MedPage Today that impairments are part and parcel of some disorders, particularly those defined by neuropsychiatric deficits. But for many categories -- especially the personality disorders -- functional impairments were transferred from the checklist criteria into the dimensional assessments. Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder. This is the controversial new designation for children showing persistent foul temper punctuated by bursts of rage. When first proposed, it was widely derided as an attempt to medicalize "toddler tantrums" (even though the criteria clearly stated it was for children older than 5.) But the workgroup stuck to its guns, although it did drop the name "temper dysregulation with dysphoria" that they had initially proposed. Autism Spectrum Disorder. This was another controversial move, insofar as it combined Asperger's syndrome with overt autism, as well as two other DSM-IV categories, into a single disorder. Many in the autism community have been unhappy with the proposal -- one member of the workgroup in this area quit in protest -- but the remaining members were adamant that the change was justified and that many of the criticisms were simply wrong. "Craving." A key innovation in the diagnosis of burberry silk ties substance use disorders is a requirement that the patient report or demonstrate craving for the particular substance. Workgroup chairman Charles O'Brien, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania, said this is the key symptom that separates addiction from mere heavy use.

2012年5月8日星期二

How about a pair of coronal mass ejections

A new forecast for the United States suggests designer burberry outlet that 42 percent adult Americans could be obese and 11 percent severely obese by the year 2030. The estimates are part of two Institute of Medicine (IOM) reports issued Monday and Tuesday at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Weight of the Nation conference in Washington. The scientists who conducted the research say a strategy requiring action across all levels of society is needed to reverse the problem of obesity. IOM figures indicate that 34 percent of adults in the U.S. currently are obese, and six percent are severely obese. Severe obesity generally is defined Burberry handbags outlet, cheap burberry bags on sale, 60% off as being about 45 kilograms overweight. One IOM study concludes the source of America’s overweight epidemic is an environment that promotes obesity, rather than a lack of individual willpower. The co-authors made a long list of recommendations, including focusing heavily on schools where children spend most of their days, cutting farm subsidies that prohibit U.S. farmers from planting fruits and vegetables, and taxing sugar-sweetened beverages such as carbonated soda. The IOM report also urges that healthy food and drink choices be more widely available to allow Americans to make better choices, not only at restaurants, but while louis vuitton sunglasses at school, shopping or at entertainment and sports venues. A "monster sunspot" more than 60,000 miles wide could send some powerful solar flares toward Earth on Wednesday, NASA says. The sunspot -- actually a group of four spots, each larger than Earth, and smaller spots -- emerged over the weekend and was spotted by the orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory and amateur astronomers, Spaceweather.com reported (via Space.com). It tossed off a moderately strong M-class flare today, and is expected to follow up with even stronger flares, possibly even X class. Sunspot AR 1476 is so big that a photographer in the Philippines captured it at sunset, without a solar telescope. But Spaceweather offers potential sungazers this crucial warning: Even when the sun is dimmed by clouds and haze, louis vuitton set looking into the glare can damage your eyes. Looking through unfiltered optics is even worse. If you chose to photograph the low sun, use the camera's LCD screen for viewfinding. Sunspots don't excite you? How about a pair of coronal mass ejections, or a dark, coronal hole that has opened in the sun's atmosphere and is hurling solar winds toward us? Good chance of strong geomagnetic activity, including auroras. Want to know the space weather now? NOAA has it. The latest sun show comes three weeks after the Louis vuitton shoes discount for women sale outlet spectacular eruption captured by the solar orbiter.

2012年5月7日星期一

Heartland has sought to portray itself as on the defensive

Forty-two percent of the U.S. population louis vuitton sunglasses will be obese by 2030, rising from the current rate of one-third, according to a study released Monday. The research additionally forecasts a jump in the number of American with severe obesity -- those who are roughly 100 pounds overweight -- with rates rising to 11 percent by 2030. Not only will the U.S. be packing on pounds: the paper's authors also warned that the nation will pile on a whopping $550 billion in health care costs associated with obesity over the next two decades. "Should these forecasts prove accurate, the adverse health and cost consequences of obesity are likely to continue to escalate without a significant intervention," said senior author Justin Trogdon, of the nonprofit RTI International. William H. Dietz, director of CDC's Division of designer burberry outlet Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity, acknowledged that it is ultimately up to Americans to make healthy choices to slow the pace of obesity rates, but he said those healthy choices "must first be available and accessible." Among the changes that could curb obesity growth in the U.S., the authors cited increased access to recreational facilities, improvements in urban design, anti-obesity social marketing programs, workplace programs promoting healthy habits, and the development of new drugs and technologies. The study, based on data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other organizations, was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Billboards popping up in the Chicago Burberry handbags outlet, cheap burberry bags on sale, 60% off area compare climate change scientists and advocates with Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, murderer Charles Manson and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. The billboards, paid for the Heartland Institute, are designed to promote the organization's International Congress on Climate Change in Chicago later this month. The Heartland Institute describes itself as a nonprofit devoted to promoting free-market solutions for social and economic problems. Climate scientists are already reacting to the actions, calling them "truly heinous" and the work of individuals who don't get real global-warming science. In addition, they say the billboards will only bring global-warming skeptics and those who support global warming further apart. The first billboard, which went up along the Eisenhower Expressway in Maywood, Ill., today (May 4), according to a Heartland spokesperson, features a mug shot of Kaczynski with the words "I still believe in Global Warming. Do you?" and a Web address for the Heartland Institute. In a press release, the organization justified this juxtaposition by calling the support for human-caused global warming "nutty." "The point is that believing in global warming is not 'mainstream,' smart, or sophisticated," the organization wrote. "In fact, it is just the opposite of those things." [The Reality of Climate Change: 10 Myths Busted] Climate scientists and mass murderers Heartland further struck out at Peter Gleick, a prominent climate scientist who leaked internal Heartland documents online in February, revealing the Institute's fundraising efforts and plans to spread doubt about climate change. Heartland claims that one of the documents was faked, referring to the occurrence as "fakegate" in their release. Gleick says the documents were anonymously mailed to louis vuitton men bags him and he sought the other documents to verify the information. The information in the disputed document is backed up in the other documents, the veracity of which Heartland has not disputed. Individuals named in these documents have confirmed that they were working with Heartland on the plans. Nevertheless, Heartland has sought to portray itself as on the defensive. In its most recent statement, the organization writes that the leaked memo scandal "revealed that the leaders of the global warming movement are willing to break the law and the rules of ethics to shut down scientific debate and implement their left-wing agendas." "The people who still believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society," the statement reads. "This is why the most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen." The target of their new campaign, Heartland spokesperson Jim Lakely said, is "people who aren't otherwise following the global-warming debate." "Heartland is not usually in the provocation business, which is a common tactic of the global-warming alarmists," Lakely told LiveScience. "The reaction to this billboard has been interesting." Scientists respond Unsurprisingly, some of the scientists who research climate change took umbrage at this portrayal. "This is only the latest in a long history of truly heinous actions by the Heartland Institute," said Michael Mann, the Pennsylvania State University climate scientist who originally published the famous "hockey stick" graph showing a rise in average global temperatures after the industrial revolution. "The only thing I can think of here is New LV sunglasses outlet 2012 new sale online coolest that they are acting out of true desperation," Mann told LiveScience. News of — and jokes about — the billboards quickly spread around the social-networking site Twitter. "#Heartland Institute believes in gravity. SO DID HITLER," wrote Kevin Borgia, the director of the Illinois Wind Energy Coalition. "Ted Kaczynsk[i] believes the world is round, and the Heartland Institute tries to persuade people that the world is flat," tweeted Ken Caldeira, an environmental scientist at the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, Calif. Jason Samenow, a meteorologist at Washington Post, gave his response in a blog post on the newspaper's website.

2012年5月6日星期日

The study is valuable in pointing out gender differences

Breast cancer in men is much less common than it is lv shoes $20 in women, but it may be more deadly, new research suggests. "Men with breast cancer don't do as well as women with breast cancer, and there are opportunities to improve that," said study author Dr. Jon Greif, a breast surgeon in San Francisco. "They were less likely to get the standard treatments that women get." Survival rates for men with breast cancer, overall, are lower than those for women, at least when it is diagnosed in the early stages, Greif found. The cancers differ in other respects too. Greif was scheduled to present his findings Friday louis vuitton online at the American Society of Breast Surgeons annual meeting in Phoenix. Greif and his team warn, however, that some of the differences they found may not bear out in clinical practice. A big limitation to the research: The database they drew from keeps track of which breast cancer patients die, but not what they died from. So it is impossible to tell if they died from their cancer or something else, he explained. Although many men may not be aware that they can get breast cancer, nearly 2,200 new cases of male breast cancer are expected this year, according to the American Cancer Society. The society estimates 410 men will die of breast cancer in 2012 in the United States. Greif compared about 13,000 men with breast cancer, identified from the National Cancer Data Base, to more than 1.4 million women with breast cancer. The data covered 1998 to 2007. The investigators evaluated cancer characteristics louis vuitton sneakers for men and survival rates, taking into account age, ethnicity and other factors. Men with breast cancer were more likely to be black than women with breast cancer (11.7 percent versus 9.9 percent) and less likely to be Hispanic (3.6 percent versus 4.5 percent), the researchers found. In addition, men were older at diagnosis -- 63, on average, compared to 59 for women. Men's tumors were larger when diagnosed; they were designer burberry outlet more likely to have later-stage tumors, involvement of lymph nodes, spreading to other parts of the body and other differences. Men with breast cancer were less likely to get a partial mastectomy and to receive radiation, the study found. Greif also found that women's overall five-year survival rate was 83 percent, but men's was 74 percent. That was looking at all breast cancers, whatever the stage. When Greif's team looked at survival stage by stage, women with early stage cancer had better survival rates than men with early stage disease. The gap closed when men and women had more advanced disease. "Women are encouraged to get breast exams [and] mammograms," Greif said. That is why their cancers are often diagnosed earlier, when the tumors aresmaller, he said. More awareness of male breast cancer is crucial. The study is valuable in pointing out gender differences, even with its limitations, said Dr. Susan Boolbol, chief of the division of breast surgery at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. "Over the years, it was thought Burberry handbags outlet, cheap burberry bags on sale, 60% off that, stage for stage, women and men had equal outcomes," Boolbol said. The new research finds otherwise, and includes larger numbers of men with breast cancer than many previous studies did, she noted. Lack of information on cause of death is a major limitation of the finding, she said. Even so, "this is a very interesting study, and ... it will open the door to more research being done in male breast cancer." The study may also raise awareness that men can indeed develop breast cancer, Boolbol said. Men should be aware of potential symptoms of breast cancer, the American Cancer Society suggests. Among them: a lump or swelling, dimpling or puckering, a turning inward 2012 white louis vuitton handbags of the nipple, scaling of the nipple or breast skin, redness of the nipple or skin of the breast, and nipple discharge. Findings presented at medical meetings are typically considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

2012年5月4日星期五

Dampier played 11 minutes in the first half after not playing at all

Time was of the essence, said Turley, who was diagnosed with a progressive brain disease that he believes also afflicted Seau. Seau's family agreed to a brain study, said San Diego louis vuitton womens sunglasses 2012 Chargers chaplain Shawn Mitchell, and Turley expects the results to show that the 43-year-old Seau, found by a medical examiner to have committed suicide on Wednesday, suffered from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). "I believe Junior's death will be remembered to be the turning point in this fight against CTE, and will wake everyone up," said Turley. CTE has been found in athletes and others with a history of repetitive brain trauma. Turley, who played sevens seasons in the NFL for the New Orleans Saints, St. Louis Rams and Kansas City Chiefs, calls attention to CTE research being done at Boston University. Seau never was listed on an NFL injury report as having a concussion, but his former wife, Gina, told the Associated Press on Thursday that Seau suffered from concussions during his 20-year NFL career. Oceanside Police said Seau died of a gunshot to the chest Wednesday morning. The former Chargers star, survived by his parents, three children and several other relatives, was found at his beachfront home by his girlfriend. "He had too many things to live for to do this," said Turley. "If Junior could wake up today, he wouldn't have done it. But something at that moment got severely crossed in his brain that allowed him to make that decision that life wasn't worth living anymore." Turley, 36, said the CTE medication he takes twice a day — Depakote — may have prevented him from meeting an end similar to Seau's. "I do feel my brain is a ticking time bomb," said the former All-Pro blocker, who played five seasons with the Saints. "If I don't take medication, I very well could in the same situation as Junior is in. It is very scary for me and should be for others." Turley was a San Diego State football player when he first met Seau in the mid-1990s. The Chargers star was dressed up in a Santa outfit as part of a charity event in San Diego. "That's the last image I want to have him," said Turley by phone from Nashville, where he lives. An early fourth-quarter push seemed to have saved the game for the Celtics. . But they got a scare when the Hawks, down 11 with under six minutes to play, went on a 15-4 run to it at 80-80. With 14.9 seconds remaining, the Celtics ran the clock down until the Hawks, with a foul to give, used it with 3.9 to go. Rondo inbounded to Pierce, who got a good open look on a head fake — but couldn't sink the shot at the elbow. So it went to overtime, the Hawks' ninth of the season, the first for any playoff series. Rondo hit the first shot on a driving finger roll, and louis vuitton hair pin the next possession he took Jeff Teague down low for another basket. If you hadn't tuned in until the fourth quarter, you wouldn't have missed much. Not until 5:45 left in the third quarter did a team get to 50 points — the Celtics. So bad, that with under two minutes to go in the third quarter, Celtics coach Doc Rivers actually got excited during a timeout because, "All right. We're playing. We're playing." The score then? 54-54. "We played with a little more urgency," Rivers told ABC's Lisa Salters. What were the highlights? Or lowlights? •Scoring? How about a 19-17 first quarter, Atlanta shooting 32%, Boston 29%. It "improved" to 35% for Atlanta, 39% for Boston by halftime. The Celtics finally did hit their first three-pointer of the series, at 8:30 of the second quarter, a corner shot from Mickael Pietrus. •Rajon Rondo's return for Boston? How about going 0-for-3 early, just two assists. No referee-bumping, sure, but no physicality or wizardry from him until the fourth quarter. Then he turned it on and was a rebound shy of a triple-double: 12 points, 12 assists, nine rebounds. •Celtics forward Paul Pierce, the Game 2 star? He hit his first field goal with 1:54 left in the half. After three quarters he had shot 1-of-7 from the field — but feasted at the foul line, 14-of-14. •Josh Smith? The Hawks, who had 149-man games missed by injury, went into battle without the playoffs' leading rebounder and Atlanta's second leading scorer. Dressed to the nines in a GQ-worthy suit, still improving from the knee injury suffered in the fourth quarter of Game 2, Smith said he still had pain and had to sit out. "It feels a little iffy. I probably could have tried to force it out there tonight. … But I know half of me is not enough," said Smith, who added he would play in Game 4 — even though his body language suggested he didn't believe that. Here's what you did get a lot of: Hawks center Erick Dampier. And a lot of him, with Al Horford and Zaza Pachulia still out from lengthy injuries and starter Jason Collins a magnet for fouls. Dampier played 11 minutes in the first half after not playing at all in the first two games and appearing in only 15 during the regular season. His stat line: 1-of-3 from the field, four rebounds, two fouls himself. But then in the third quarter, Dampier got his second field goal early — and that's one more than he scored ALL SEASON! Veteran Hawks guard Tracy McGrady was actually stealing the show, scoring 10 points, playing 17 minutes, tying his season high, in the first half. And then, what has happened to McGrady in yellow handbags 2012 the latter part of his career happened again. With 30 seconds to go in the half, he sprains his right ankle and leaves. He did return to play in the second half. For Boston, the best news was the return of Ray Allen, after he missed 11 games with bone spurs in his left ankle. He hit his first shot, of course, and finished the first half going 4-of-6 from the field, with eight points.

2012年5月3日星期四

The story about the research explains further

“You don’t need to sell your beach real estate yet, because melting of these large ice sheets will take from centuries to a few thousand years,” explained louis vuitton sunglasses Rutgers geologist Kenneth Miller in this story. “The current trajectory for the 21st century global rise of sea level is 2 to 3 feet (0.8 to 1 meter) due to warming of the oceans, partial melting of mountain glaciers, and partial melting of Greenland and Antarctica.” In a perspective essay titled "Regional Sea-Level Projection", appearing in the same issue of Science, Josh Willis of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and John Church with the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research warn that scientists must investigate sea level rise and make more precise estimates before it's too late. "Without adaptation, a rise by (20 inches) would displace 3.8 million people in the most fertile part of the Nile River Delta," they wrote. "A rise by (6.5 feet) could displace 187 million people globally. Credible projections of sea-level rise in the 21st century are essential for devising adaptation or mitigation measures. Yet, present estimates of future sea-level rise are too imprecise to inform such decisions." This newest study led by Moon focused specifically on the velocity of Greenland’s big-dog outlet glaciers as they flow toward their crackling oblivion in the ocean -- a louis vuitton mens sunglasses 2012 small, but significant piece of the world’s total ice-destruction prospects. The faster these glaciers move, the more ice and meltwater they ultimately add to the sea. In previous studies, scientists have conjured scenarios where Greenland glaciers doubled this rush toward destruction, or even accelerated tenfold, with sea level rising anywhere from four to 19 inches by 2100 as a direct result. But no one knew for sure how fast the glaciers were actually traveling in the real world. In the new study, funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation, Moon and team took a detailed glimpse at most of Greenland’s 206 biggest glaciers. Using three louis vuitton sneakers for men 2012 satellites, the scientists examined glacier motion in the winter of 2000-01 and then repeated the process for each winter from 2005-06 through 2010-11. Based on data from 178 glaciers between 2000 to 2005, and another 195 observed between 2005 and 2010, they found that the velocity of these colossal ice rivers had not surged as much as some studies projected. "In some sense, this raises as many questions as it answers. It shows there's a lot of variability," explained co-author Ian Joughin, a glaciologist in the UW's Applied Physics Laboratory and Moon's doctoral adviser. "We can't look at one glacier for 100 years, but we can look at 200 glaciers for 10 years and get some idea of what they're doing.” The results were complicated. The story about the research explains further. The scientists cautioned that 10 years was too short of a window to pin down the long-term dynamics of Greenland’s ice. Monitoring and research must continue. With more data, and a longer horizon, Greenland’s contribution could surprise us all. (And not in a good way.) The scientists cautioned that 10 years was too short yellow handbags 2012 of a window to pin down the long-term dynamics of Greenland’s ice. Monitoring and research must continue. With more data, and a longer horizon, Greenland’s contribution could surprise us all. (And not in a good way.)

2012年5月2日星期三

Prof Zink and his colleagues collaborated with researchers

NASA has reported a possible new discovery of volatile black holes. The finding is the result of an extraordinary Louis Vuitton shoes, cheap louis vuitton sunglasses sale, 60% off outburst from a black hole from which astronomers saw X-ray output increase by about 3,000 times. That huge outburst suggests there is a population of older black holes that scientists don't yet know about, reported The Daily Mail . The event occurred in the spiral galaxy M83, located about 15 million light years from Earth. "Optical images reveal a bright blue source at the position of the ULX (ultraluminous X-ray source) during the X-ray outburst. Before the outburst the blue source is not seen," NASA said in a news release. "These results imply that the companion to the black hole in M83 is a red giant star, more than about 500 million years old, with a mass less than about four times the Sun's. According to theoretical models for the evolution of stars, the black hole should be almost as old as its companion." NASA said astronomers believe the bright, blue optical emission they saw must have been caused by a disk surrounding the black hole. Astronomers think it brightened dramatically as it gained more material from the companion star. The flash was detected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The space-based telescope was launched into orbit in 1999. "The flaring up of this ULX took us by surprise and was a sure sign we had discovered something new about the way black holes grow," said Roberto Soria of Curtin University in Australia, who led the new study. Researchers studying Oetzi, a 5,300-year-old body found frozen in the Italian Alps in 1991, have found red blood cells around his wounds. Blood cells tend to degrade quickly, and earlier louis vuitton jewelry scans for blood within Oetzi's body turned up nothing. Now a study in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface shows that Oetzi's remarkable preservation extends even to the blood he shed shortly before dying. The find represents by far the oldest red blood cells ever observed. It is just the latest chapter in what could be described as the world's oldest murder mystery. Since Oetzi was first found by hikers with an arrow buried in his back, experts have determined that he died from his wounds and what his last meal was. There has been extensive debate as to whether he fell where he died or was buried there by others. In February, Albert Zink and colleagues at the Eurac Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy published Oetzi's full genome. An earlier study by the group, published in the Lancet, showed that a wound on Oetzi's hand contained haemoglobin, a protein found in blood - but it had long been presumed that red blood cells' delicate nature would have precluded their preservation. Prof Zink and his colleagues collaborated with researchers at the Center for Smart Interfaces at the University of Darmstadt in Germany to apply what is known as atomic force microscopy to thin slices of tissue taken from an area surrounding the arrow wound. The technique works using a tiny metal tip with a point just a few atoms across, dragged along the surface of a sample. The tip's movement is tracked, and results in a 3-D map at extraordinary resolution. AFM image of red blood cells The studies turned up red blood cells' classic "doughnut" shape The team found that the sample from Oetzi contained structures with a tell-tale "doughnut" shape, just as red blood cells have. To ensure the structures were preserved cells and not contamination of some kind, they confirmed the find using a laser-based technique called Raman spectroscopy - Classic lv sunglasses outlet 2012 new sale online discount those results also indicated the presence of haemoglobin and the clot-associated protein fibrin. That, Prof Zink explained, seems to solve one of the elements of the murder mystery. "Because fibrin is present in fresh wounds and then degrades, the theory that Oetzi died some days after he had been injured by the arrow, as had once been mooted, can no longer be upheld," he said. The team also suggest that their methods may prove to be of use in modern-day forensics studies, in which the exact age of blood samples is difficult to determine.

2012年5月1日星期二

I would continue to be an activist in raising SMA awareness

The “bucket list” baby whose battle against a rare disease captivated the nation has died. At just 5-months old, Avery Canahuati, who Louis Vuitton shoes, cheap louis vuitton sunglasses sale, 60% off suffered from spinal muscular atrophy, took her last breath on Monday. Her father Mike Canahuati posted the sad news on the blog, “Avery’s Bucket List,” where the family, in infant’s voice, compiled a list of things she wanted to do before she died. “Avery passed away yesterday sometime around 3pm due to pulmonary complications related to SMA,” he wrote on Tuesday. “In short, one of her lungs collapsed and she went into cardiac arrest." Avery’s parents launched the blog last month after they learned their daughter had a genetic disorder that would only allow her months to live. Doctors gave her up to 18 months to live, but it turned out she had even less time. “We had several days of sitting in shock and crying and then we pulled ourselves out of that,” Laura Canahuati told ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “Since we had such a short time, we knew we wanted to make the best of it.” As the parents chronicled their lives with Avery on the blog, they checked things off the bucket list — “wear a big bow on my head,” “have a bad hair day,” “play with Play-Doh,” “throw the first pitch at a baseball game,” and more. SEE WHAT ELSE AVERY CROSSED OFF HER BUCKET LIST In addition to ‘GMA,” the story of the Canahuati's bravery as their family faced a rare and fatal disease was picked up by major networks like CNN and Fox News, pulling in louis vuitton men hoodies millions of viewers. More than 600 people commented on the post about Avery’s death, many thanking the family for being so inspirational and spreading awareness of SMA. “It is amazing how you can fall in love with a little gal you have never met!” wrote one reader. “I am heartbroken for you all. I think what you have done in the past several weeks is amazing, and I know it isn’t over.” “Because of you I now know about SMA and will continue to spread the word,” wrote another. On Tuesday, Mike Canahuati posted Avery’s final note: “When I started writing this blog, I thought I’d only be speaking to my closest friends and family members,” it reads. “Little did I know soooooooo many people would care about me and while I’m flattered to have so many people who love me, I hope they will also take time to love and care about all of my friends out there with SMA.” Now, Laura and Mike Canahuati are trying to cross one last thing off Avery’s bucket list: Raise $365,000 for a program to help find a cure for SMA. The disease, which is characterized by muscle atrophy and weakness, usually occurs early in life and is the leading cause of death in infants and toddlers. Except for mild cases, SMA is usually fatal. One in every 6,000 to 10,000 are born with it, according to the SMA Foundation. “Before Avery passed away, I made her a promise that I would continue to be an activist in raising SMA awareness, making genetic testing universally available, and in finding a cure for her friends,” Mike Canahuati wrote. “I will not break that promise and in the name Bestseller louis vuitton shoes for men discount on sale 2012 blue of SMA awareness and finding a cure, I hope parents of children everywhere will look at Avery’s Bucket List and help her complete items she was unable to.”