Monday, April 29, 2013

Wellywood Woman: Under-Representation in Scriptwriting

Recently I participated (from my bed, distracted by itchy shingles) in an excellent?Blackboard forum?discussion on under-representation in scriptwriting,?inspired by the news that the prestigious?Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting?are tracking gender among its applicants. (They have a wonderful ongoing commentary on their?Facebook page.)?Alas, so far, only a quarter of the applicants are women. You have three days left to enter!!!
from Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting Facebook page ?(26 April 2013)

The Blackboard Forum: Under-Representation in Screenwriting

Shaula Evans?led the Blackboard discussion warmly-and-welcomingly-and-brilliantly. In her introduction, she says:

'Where are the women' pops up more than other similar potential questions, both online and offline, because it is relatively easy to tell from people?s names if they are male or female, and unless you are collecting demographic data, it ranges from difficult to impossible to tell what proportion of your community are people of color or GLBTQ, have disability issues, are members of minority religions, are economically disadvantaged, etc. Geography is certainly an obstacle of a different kind that many of us right here are actively tackling. Age discrimination is a terrible scourge in American TV writing. And where women are under-represented other people often are, too, and their lack of participation and representation can be even harder to address because it is an 'invisible' problem. So we?re going to open this up beyond the question of gender and look at the broader question of under-representation of any group in screenwriting, along with examples of programs and resources that are addressing obstacles to those groups.

This broader question resonated for me with a?Writers Guild of America (West)?statement that I love, which is one of the inspirations for the Development Project:

Industry diversity is not only about equal access to employment opportunities; it is also about opening space for the telling of stories that might not otherwise be told.

But most of the fascinating Blackboard discussion was about women screenwriters. The usual issues ? confidence, the need for mentors and allies, the value of blind reading, whether there are as many women screenwriters as men (I think so!) etc were canvassed, from a variety of perspectives, with goodwill and respect. And many contributors provided links to very useful info.?

As I read, my main concern became that both the Academy Nicholl Fellowships and The Black List have stated that half their script readers are women, as though that is a good thing, something that inevitably helps women scriptwriters. (The Black List is a script hosting service, where writers pay to submit their scripts using their own names or pseudonyms for hosting and evaluations, and the highest-rated scripts are brought to the attention of participating industry professionals. Industry pros can also actively search for scripts on the site using criteria that include evaluation scores, genre, and tags.)

One contributor to the Blackboard debate thought that because half the Black List readers are women, that would reduce the risk of bias:

Gender bias is unlikely because half the [Black List] readers are female.
Another disagreed:
I do think though that even women readers can be capable (unwittingly) of gender bias (and I speak as someone who has been a reader), simply because we have all been taught what a well-made story is, and that notion is largely based in the supremacy of the traditional hero?s journey. It can be hard to be open to non-traditional ideas and methods, even when you want to, and it takes reading with that self-awareness. The Geena Davis Institute has done research that revealed that it?s only a small percentage of female characters who have journeys unrelated to the men in their lives, or even just conversations about something other than men. Even in works by women writers.

I do believe it?s changing for the better, and younger female writers are less likely to be oriented this way. For the rest of us, to fully explore our experiences as women through story, it may be that we have to re-train our brains to some extent, to give ourselves permission to focus fully on creating worthy female characters and storylines that have every bit the richness of stories about men. There are so many amazing stories to tell, stories that both men and women can take inspiration from and even, certainly just pure enjoyment watching women be women.


And the other contributor agreed.
...great point about women also being capable of gender bias; of course this is true. I kick myself sometimes when I find myself thinking in a way that was shaped by the gender biases I grew up with.
There are other myths around women's support for other women's storytelling beyond the one that women appreciate other women's work more than men do. There's the one that women support other women to tell their stories, more than men do. And that, given a choice, women will support other women's storytelling instead of supporting men's stories.

An element of Emily Sands'?three-part?research, recorded in her Princeton thesis?Opening the Curtain on Playwright Gender: An Integrated Economic Analysis of Discrimination in American Theater,?perhaps uniquely,?explores one aspect of these myths, women readers' responses to playscripts when they are told that women wrote them.


Emily Sands' research into playwright gender issues

The whole thesis is a great read and here's an extract from a?New York Times?article about it. It shows the complexity of the issues that face women playwrights, among which the 'woman reader' problem is just one; and establishes that having women readers assessing scripts doesn't necessarily help women writers, at least when those scripts are plays.
The first [part of the research] considered the playwrights themselves. Artistic directors of theater companies have maintained that no discrimination exists, rather that good scripts by women are in short supply. That claim elicited snorts and laughter from the audience when it was repeated Monday night, but Ms. Sands declared, ?They?re right.?

In reviewing information on 20,000 playwrights in the Dramatists Guild and Doollee.com, an online database of playwrights, she found that there were twice as many male playwrights as female ones, and that the men tended to be more prolific, turning out more plays.

What?s more, Ms. Sands found, over all, the work of men and women is produced at the same rate. The artistic directors have a point: they do get many more scripts from men.

For the second study, Ms. Sands sent identical scripts to artistic directors and literary managers around the country. The only difference was that half named a man as the writer (for example, Michael Walker), while half named a woman (i.e., Mary Walker). It turned out that Mary?s scripts received significantly worse ratings in terms of quality, economic prospects and audience response than Michael?s. The biggest surprise? ?These results are driven exclusively by the responses of female artistic directors and literary managers,? Ms. Sands said.

Amid the gasps from the audience, an incredulous voice called out, ?Say that again??

Ms. Sands put it another way: ?Men rate men and women playwrights exactly the same.?

Ms. Sands was reluctant to explain the responses in terms of discrimination, suggesting instead that artistic directors who are women perhaps possess a greater awareness of the barriers female playwrights face.

For the third piece, Ms. Sands looked specifically at Broadway, where women write fewer than one in eight shows. She modeled her research on work done in the 1960s and ?70s to determine whether discrimination existed in baseball. Those studies concluded that black players had to deliver higher performing statistics ? for example, better batting averages ? than white players simply to make it to the major leagues.

Ms. Sands examined the 329 new plays and musicals produced on Broadway in the past 10 years to determine whether the bar was set higher. Did scripts by women have to be better than those by men?

Of course, there are many ways to define ?better,? but on Broadway, with the exception of three nonprofit theaters, everyone can agree that one overriding goal is to make a profit. So did shows written by women during that period make more money than shows written by men?

The answer is yes. Plays and musicals by women sold 16 percent more tickets a week and were 18 percent more profitable over all. In the end, women had to deliver the equivalent of higher batting averages, Ms. Sands said.

Yet even though shows written by women earned more money, producers did not keep them running any longer than less profitable shows that were written by men. To Ms. Sands, the length of the run was clear evidence that producers discriminate against women.

A year before Emily Sands published her results,?Julia Jordan presented figures?from three states in the U.S. that show that women write for theatre at around the 20% level that exists in scriptwriting for feature film production in many parts of the world. So perhaps the first part of the research can be applied to screenwriting and explains why fewer women have entered scripts for the Nicholls Fellowships in Screenwriting. But, are the database figures a reliable measure? For example, I know that half the students who take an MA in Scriptwriting at Victoria University's International Institute of Modern Letters are women and that women win the annual class prize more often than men. Last year in New Zealand's Script Writer Awards women won Best Feature Film Script, the Best New Writer Award and the Unproduced Feature Script Award, where women also wrote seven of the ten final scripts. This evidence of a strong cohort of women scriptwriters exists alongside New Zealand's dismal track record for produced feature scripts by women and suggests that women scriptwriters produce excellent scripts here (and in other parts of the world) in greater numbers than appears from our engagement with competitions and databases. What happens to all those scripts? Do we enter competitions only if we are confident that our work excels?

Maybe men appear to be more prolific when they engage with databases and competitions only because they feel more welcome and at home there than women do. Maybe it's necessary for organisations and databases to strategise to attract women scriptwriters and people from other under-represented groups, some of whom will also be women. Because more diversity of all kinds will make for a richer culture. But decision-makers have to believe that and to work for it, or it won't happen. The Black List has just introduced a group of 'diversity tags' for scriptwriters to use when submitting scripts to its service, including a #BechdelTest tag, thanks to suggestions from @Silverwingscrpt and @BiatchPack on Twitter and from @margibk in the Blackboard discussion, who wrote:

Why not a set of tags that describe the protagonist? Female, male, straight, gay, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, and so on. Such tags would help any search designed to find a screenplay featuring underrepresented groups. And the writers can choose whether they wish to tag their screenplays that way or not.
And that seems like a good place to start.

As for the second part of Emily Sands' research, it didn't surprise me that exclusively?women artistic directors and literary managers gave worse ratings to 'Mary?s' scripts than to Michael's, in terms of quality, economic prospects and audience response. While Emily Sands suggested?that artistic directors who are women perhaps possess a greater awareness of the barriers female playwrights face and this may explain their ratings, I suspect that the reasons are more complex and include the effects of learned gender biases like those that the contributors to the Blackboard discussion referred to and which I've observed wherever women (including me) assess other women's work. We're all conditioned to enjoy and support men's work more than women's. Those 'golden boys' are seductive!

The 'higher batting averages' element makes sense, too and it's great to have this confirmation of it. At the moment the reality is that women's stories will be resourced only if they're exceptional.

New Zealand and gender bias in theatre

I know little about gender bias in New Zealand theatre. But four years ago Branwen Millar wrote an article in Playmarket magazine (not available online) where she started
As an emerging playwright, I'm excited by the huge talent and diversity of our writers. As a woman, I'm disheartened.
She acknowledged that she had "a massive amount of support for my writing" but is "at a loss when I look at the landscape I'm entering", provided some grim statistics about women playwrights' representation in productions and awards and asked:
Where are the female voices in our theatres? Is it that men are better writers? Do men write faster and therefore have more plays? Receive more support? Are women one-hit wonders? Why do they stop writing?
Nothing's changed since. Earlier this year, in a New Zealand Herald opinion piece entitled Men still pull strings in Auckland theatre, Janet McAllister commented on the lack of female playwrights and directors in Auckland theatres. This is how she started:
The performance arts have a female-friendly image - the ladies are thought to like all that theatrical stuff. But two years ago, I noted the proportion of female directors, playwrights and public-forum speakers participating at various Auckland venues and found that the more flagshippy and stalwarty an establishment was, the fewer of these key women it featured.

The number of women onstage merely masked the general chauvinistic Svengali nature of the industry, with males pulling the strings behind the scenes.

Two years on, has anything changed? Not much, although there are a few hopeful signs, a few worries - and one absolute shocker.

You can read the original article here. Then came a response from distinguished playwright and screenwriter Fiona Samuel, printed several days later in the Letters to the Editor section.
Re Janet McAllister's Opinion column in Saturday's Herald Weekend section, pithily titled 'Men still pull strings in Auckland theatre', I thank the Herald for this timely analysis.?
In Janet's final paragraph, she hopes that the presence of two plays-in-development by female playwrights in the Auckland Theatre Company's Next Stage showcase for 2012 indicates change to come. Don't hold your breath, Janet.?
To my knowledge, ATC has never taken a play by a female playwright from this development initiative on to presentation on the main bill stage. One male/female writing team has made the leap, but that's it - one co-writing credit in seven years.?During that time, nine female playwrights had work in Next Stage; none progressed to production as sole author of a main-bill drama under the aegis of the ATC. ?
The men fared differently. In those same years, plays by Stephen Sinclair, Michael Galvin, Dave Armstrong, Victor Rodger, Geoff Chapple, Arthur Meek and Eli Kent have progressed from development workshop to full theatrical presentation.?
Is this just a surprising coincidence? After seven years, it looks more like a pattern.
So - will things be different in 2013 and beyond? I'd like to think so, but this record doesn't fill me with optimism.?
Fiona Samuel ?(NZ Arts Laureate & playwright)
In New Zealand we're fortunate to have?Playmarket,?a not-for-profit organisation concerned with
...the development, support and representation of New Zealand playwrights. We are a key advocate for the continued growth of New Zealand theatre on our stages and coordinate a range of resources, services and opportunities for playwrights.
Today, I went to the Playmarket website and counted the images from produced plays on two of their pages. ?There were twenty-five writers represented, some several times. Five of them, 20%, are women. ? There are 179 playwrights listed in Playmarket's database and 69, or 38.5%, are women. Why are images of their productions not reproduced in the same proportion? Playmarket has two diversity-oriented programmes, Asian Ink for Asian playwrights and Brown Ink for Maori and Pasifika playwrights, some of whom will of course be women, but no discrete women's programme. Does Playmarket need to up its game? It seems that change is needed in the New Zealand theatre world, as it is in film.

Celebration

Now for the good news, a wee celebration.?Playmarket's?Adam NZ Play Award?is an annual group of awards, supported by arts philanthropists Denis and Verna Adam. It's the only New Zealand award for new writing and "encourages writers to banish all self censoring, all worries about what theatres want, what is affordable and what they think audiences want to see". Only unproduced plays are eligible and the plays are read blind. The top award is for the Best New Zealand Play (last won by a woman in 2009, by Pip Hall with?The 53rd Victim) and further awards for Best Play By a Maori Playwright, Best Play By a Pasifika Playwright and Best Play By a Woman Playwright.Hannah McKie, a Creative Writing PhD student at the International Institute of Modern Letters, and part of the all-women Page Left Collective, is this year's winner of the Best Play By A Woman Playwright with Mary Scott: Queen of the Backblocks. This means that her play is also the New Zealand entry in the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, "given annually to recognize women who have written works of outstanding quality for the English-speaking theatre."Renae Maihi, an actor/writer/director, won Best Play By A Maori Playwright for Patua, a play about child abuse, funded by Creative New Zealand. Renae's first play was Nga Manurere.
She also co-wrote Katie Wolfe's short film Redemption and is writer/director of a New Zealand Film Commission funded short ? Purerehua/Butterfly, currently in post-production. Many congratulations to Hannah and Renae.

It's taken me a few days to write this and in the meantime, ever hopeful, I've been tweeting about the Nicholl gender split,?hoping that might encourage more women to enter.?And kind tweeps have been retweeting. But it's made no difference.?There's so much more work to be done.?Here's the info for today, off the Nicholl Facebook site (the main site seems to be down).

Source: http://wellywoodwoman.blogspot.com/2013/04/under-representation-in-scriptwriting.html

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Turtle genome analysis sheds light on turtle ancestry and shell evolution

Apr. 28, 2013 ? From which ancestors have turtles evolved? How did they get their shell? New data provided by the Joint International Turtle Genome Consortium, led by researchers from RIKEN in Japan, BGI in China, and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the UK provides evidence that turtles are not primitive reptiles but belong to a sister group of birds and crocodiles. The work also sheds light on the evolution of the turtle's intriguing morphology and reveals that the turtle's shell evolved by recruiting genetic information encoding for the limbs.

Turtles are often described as evolutionary monsters, with a unique body plan and a shell that is considered to be one of the most intriguing structures in the animal kingdom.

"Turtles are interesting because they offer an exceptional case to understand the big evolutionary changes that occurred in vertebrate history," explains Dr. Naoki Irie, from the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology, who led the study.

Using next-generation DNA sequencers, the researchers from 9 international institutions have decoded the genome of the green sea turtle and Chinese soft-shell turtle and studied the expression of genetic information in the developing turtle.

Their results published in Nature Genetics show that turtles are not primitive reptiles as previously thought, but are related to the group comprising birds and crocodilians, which also includes extinct dinosaurs. Based on genomic information, the researchers predict that turtles must have split from this group around 250 million years ago, during one of the largest extinction events ever to take place on this planet.

"We expect that this research will motivate further work to elucidate the possible causal connection between these events," says Dr. Irie.

The study also reveals that despite their unique anatomy, turtles follow the basic embryonic pattern during development. Rather than developing directly into a turtle-specific body shape with a shell, they first establish the vertebrates' basic body plan and then enter a turtle-specific development phase. During this late specialization phase, the group found traces of limb-related gene expression in the embryonic shell, which indicates that the turtle shell evolved by recruiting part of the genetic program used for the limbs.

"The work not only provides insight into how turtles evolved, but also gives hints as to how the vertebrate developmental programs can be changed to produce major evolutionary novelties." explains Dr. Irie.

Another unexpected finding of the study was that turtles possess a large number of olfactory receptors and must therefore have the ability to smell a wide variety of substances. The researchers identified more than 1000 olfactory receptors in the soft-shell turtle, which is one of the largest numbers ever to be found in a non-mammalian vertebrate.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by RIKEN, via AlphaGalileo.

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Journal Reference:

  1. Zhuo Wang, Juan Pascual-Anaya, Amonida Zadissa, Wenqi Li, Yoshihito Niimura, Zhiyong Huang, Chunyi Li, Simon White, Zhiqiang Xiong, Dongming Fang, Bo Wang, Yao Ming, Yan Chen, Yuan Zheng, Shigehiro Kuraku, Miguel Pignatelli, Javier Herrero, Kathryn Beal, Masafumi Nozawa, Qiye Li, Juan Wang, Hongyan Zhang, Lili Yu, Shuji Shigenobu, Junyi Wang, Jiannan Liu, Paul Flicek, Steve Searle, Jun Wang, Shigeru Kuratani, Ye Yin, Bronwen Aken, Guojie Zhang, Naoki Irie. The draft genomes of soft-shell turtle and green sea turtle yield insights into the development and evolution of the turtle-specific body plan. Nature Genetics, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/ng.2615

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/8zHOVHrvis0/130428144848.htm

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Happy Monday

Happy Monday

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Source: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2013/04/happy-monday-23/

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Bar Power Is A Nightlife App To Help You Be Less Of A Jerk At Bars

barpowerOnce you’ve had a few drinks at a bar it’s easy to let loose and blow off steam. Unfortunately, while you’re having fun, you could end up annoying others around you, namely the staff at the venue you’re at. By acting like a fool, you’re jeopardizing your future visits, since bartenders tend to remember who was a jerk and who was a great customer. A project at our Disrupt Hackathon called “Bar Power” is an app that will remind you to “not be a douchebag.” It’s somewhat of a game, walking you through nice things to do when you enter a bar. For example, the app will suggest that you say “hi” to the bartender and introduce yourself. If you do it and mark it?down in the app, you get some karma points. The really interesting part of the app comes into play when you’ve done something wrong. Did you drop a glass? Fall down? Mark that down, too. Naturally, you’ll lose those karma points that you gained by being the perfect customer. I chatted with the team who built it, Patricia Ju and Chris Baily, and they discussed their reasons for creating Bar Power, mostly stemming from Baily’s professional experience in the bar scene. While Bar Power might complicate what you’ve set out to do, which is drink, it is a good way to have a little fun and learn how to be a better customer. Ju explained: “It’s so much better to go out to places where you know people. Bartenders gave us feedback and that helped us make Bar Power’s rules. Once you’re in the app, you select the bar that you’re at and then start doing the nice things that it tells you to do. Slip up? Check that off on the list, too: The map below will track how you’re doing throughout the city, alerting you to areas that you should avoid since you were a freaking jerk the night before: As Baily explained, if people understand what to do and what not to do from the bartender community, their experience will be a better one. If the team can build relationships with venues to get them to interact with customers through the app, this could be a neat rating system that goes both ways, ? la?apps like Lyft and Uber. It sounds like Bar Power has potential past being “just a hack,” and I

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/cmFu8v-5PJw/

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Bangladesh united in grief over a failed rescue from collapsed factory

Many hundreds have been rescued so far. But a fire broke out today amid the rubble of the collapsed building, ending hopes of saving a known survivor named Shahinur.

By Saad Hammadi,?Correspondent / April 28, 2013

Rescue workers search Sunday for survivors in the remains of a collapsed garment factory in Bangladesh.

Wong Maye-E/AP

Enlarge

She was the last person located and known to still be alive inside a garment factory building that collapsed last week in Bangladesh. But before rescuers could save Shahinur, who went by only one name, a fire broke out in the rubble today and the woman who captured the attention of the nation perished. The death toll now stands at 378.

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Bangladesh is passing through one of its gloomiest national moments. Civilians extending help in the rescue effort were anxiously looking forward to Shahinur?s rescue, as were those away from the site, who remained glued to television and mobile phones.

Firefighters made three foxholes in the area where Shahinur was stuck and almost managed to get her out. In the meantime, public hope for her rescue led the army to hold off on its plans this morning to start using heavy equipment to clear more of the rubble, according to Masudur Rahman Akand, a deputy assistant director of the Fire Service and Civil Defense.

When the fire broke out, the failure brought tears to the eyes of many. With the fourth day of search and rescue coming to a close, victims are reluctant to give up hope, and a nation remains, for a time, united in grief and anger.?

According to information provided by relatives of those who worked in the factories, about 761 persons are still missing. A security guard rescued last night has said that a person on the seventh floor of the squeezed building was still alive.

?There could be few more people still surviving inside the wreckage,? says a local journalist present at the site.

However, preparations are underway to begin the second phase of recovery by using cranes and other heavy equipment. ?According to our estimates possibly there is no more persons alive,? says a lieutenant colonel with the Bangladesh Army. ?With [only] light equipment we cannot remove all the rubble.?

The rescue efforts have transfixed Bangladeshis, overshadowing the Shahbag protests that began in February to insist on tough punishments for Islamist leaders who committed war crimes during the 1971 war for independence. The protests spawned a broader secular movement, and touched off political tensions about the role of Islam in politics.?

For now, those tensions have receded. Bangladeshis from all walks of life, besides extending their support to the rescue efforts, are largely united in calling for the maximum punishment for the owner of the building and the factory owners ??for what many call a ?mass murder.?

Despite instructions to keep the building closed on Tuesday after an inspection team comprising of engineers identified cracks, the building owner kept it open. Factory owners threatened they would dock workers' pay unless they went to work.

Bangladesh?s elite crime busting agency Rapid Action Battalion on Sunday arrested Sohel Rana, owner of Rana Plaza ? the eight-story commercial complex ? that housed five factories, a few shops, and a private bank. Mr. Rana was arrested from Benapole, one of the border crossings Bangladesh shares with India.?

?All agencies were alerted about Rana. We were finally able to arrest him,? said Mukhlesur Rahman, director general of the Rapid Action Battalion. He had traveled to more than one district in the last four days, he added.?

Bangladesh police have also arrested four of the owners of the five factories: Mahmudur Rahman Tapas of New Wave Bottoms, Bazlus Samad Adnan of New Wave Styles, Aminul Islam of Phantom Apparels and Phantom Tac Limited, and Anisur Rahman of Ether Tex.

Yet political disagreements are already on the horizon. Bangladesh?s right-wing opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has called for a countrywide shutdown on May 2, protesting the deaths at Savar.

A BNP official noted that the day of the factory collapse, the party had called for a nationwide general strike, or hartal, on unrelated matters. Abdul Moyeen Khan, standing committee member of the BNP, implied that workers in the cracked building were forced to come to work in a political bid to prove that people defied the hartal.?

?Work was called off the day cracks were identified. What turned so important for the workers to gather during a?hartal?? he said.?You must have noticed that several survivors said that they were threatened that their pay will be docked.?

The government is now faced with trying to manage anger from a second major factory disaster within the past half year. In November, a fire broke out in a factory on the outskirts of the capital, killing more than 100 people.

So far, the government has highlighted the rescue efforts as a major success, with as many as 2,400 rescued. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said: ?This has perhaps never happened in the history that so many lives were rescued after such a disaster.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/FoZDiDr7eao/Bangladesh-united-in-grief-over-a-failed-rescue-from-collapsed-factory

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Obesity may influence heart function through sex hormones

Apr. 27, 2013 ? New research suggests that changes in sex hormones as seen in obesity may have possible effects on the heart. The study by researchers from Belgium, presented at the European Congress of Endocrinology in Copenhagen, Denmark, suggests effects on heart function in healthy men with artificially raised estrogen levels and artificially lowered testosterone levels to mimic an obese state.

Estradiol, an estrogen, is primarily known as a female hormone but it also circulates at very low levels in men. Testosterone is converted to estradiol by the enzyme aromatase, the activity of which might be increased in obesity leading to raised estradiol and reduced testosterone.

To determine whether obesity might alter heart function via changes in sex hormones, Drs Maarten De Smet and colleagues at Ghent University in Belgium recruited 20 healthy men aged 20-40 and used an aromatase inhibitor and an estrogen patch to artificially alter the hormone levels to mimic sex hormone concentrations in obesity (high estradiol and low testosterone) vs contrast by an aromatase inhibitor (low estradiol, high testosterone). Prof Dr T De Backer, Cardiologist, assessed the heart function before and seven days after the intervention using ultrasonographic imaging with strain analysis, which measures the deformation of the heart between the resting and contracted states.

The men with obesity-related changes in sex hormones exhibited altered heart function. At baseline the global circumferential strain was -17.1% +/-3.9, which decreased significantly to -14% +/-2.5 (p=0.01). The contrasting group did not show any difference.

By artificially altering sex hormones in a small number of healthy men, Drs De Smet and colleagues have shown that an altered sex hormone profile as seen in obesity might be relevant for heart function. Adequately powered clinical trials with sufficient duration may establish the role of sex hormones in the heart function of obese men.

Maarten De Smet, Masters student in Medicine at Ghent University, Belgium, and first author said:

"Obesity is a major contributor to heart disease. By giving an aromatase inhibitor and estrogen to healthy men we mimicked the effect of sex hormones in obesity alone, in isolation from the rest of the obese metabolic state.

"In order to pump blood around the body the heart must fill with blood and then contract, pushing the blood out. We found that after increasing the estrogen levels and decreasing the testosterone levels in men for one week the deformation of the left heart chamber was significantly altered.

"Because the contributing factors to obesity, as well as the underlying biology, are so complicated it's a real challenge to tease apart one single aspect, so we think this study is of particular interest. As these results are from a small number of healthy men over one week, we hope to investigate sex hormone changes and the heart in the obese in the long term."

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/WqFSu6CkU-U/130428144857.htm

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Fire erupts at Israeli prison holding ex-president

JERUSALEM (AP) ? A fire erupted Sunday at the prison where former Israeli President Moshe Katsav is serving time, but he was not among the 11 people who suffered light injuries, authorities said.

Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said seven jailers, a prisoner and three firefighters suffered smoke inhalation, but the ex-president was not hurt.

Itsik Gorlov, a spokesman for the prisons service, said the blaze broke out at a factory at Maasiyahu prison in central Israel. It was not immediately clear what caused the fire.

Katsav was Israel's president from 2000 to 2007. He has been serving a seven-year sentence since 2011 after being convicted of rape and other charges, though he has repeatedly professed his innocence.

Israel on Sunday was battling a series of brushfires caused by the combination of hot, dry weather and the Lag Baomer holiday, in which revelers traditionally celebrate with bonfires.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fire-erupts-israeli-prison-holding-ex-president-114922858.html

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Italy forms new government after 2-month stalemate

ROME (AP) ? Center-left leader Enrico Letta forged a new Italian government Saturday in a coalition with former Premier Silvio Berlusconi's conservatives, an unusual alliance of bitter rivals that broke a two-month political stalemate from inconclusive elections in the recession-mired country.

The daunting achievement was pulled off by Letta, who will be sworn in as premier along with the new Cabinet at the presidential Quirinal Palace on Sunday.

Letta, 46, is a moderate with a reputation as a political bridge-builder. He is also the nephew Berlusconi's longtime adviser, Gianni Letta, a relationship seen as smoothing over often nasty interaction between the two main coalition partners.

Serving as deputy premier and interior minister will be Berlusconi's top political aide, Angelino Alfano. He is a former justice minister who was the architect of legislation that critics say was tailor-made to help media mogul Berlusconi in his many judicial woes.

The creation of the coalition capped the latest political comeback for Berlusconi, a former three-time premier who was forced to resign in 2011 as Italy slid deeper in to the eurozone's sovereign debt crisis.

On Monday, Letta is expected to lay out his strategy to Parliament, before required confidence votes from the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.

"We negotiated for the formation of the government without throwing up any stop signs," Berlusconi told one of his TV networks. "That's how we contributed to forming a government in short time" after Letta was tapped Wednesday.

Berlusconi, a fervent anti-Communist, views Italy's left as a personal nemesis, and Letta's Democratic Party has some of its roots in what was the West's largest Communist Party.

Letta expressed "sober satisfaction over the team we put together and its willingness" to form a coalition.

Although Letta strove to fill his Cabinet with new faces, a longtime Italian central bank official, Fabrizio Saccomanni, who also served a stint at the International Monetary Fund, was chosen for the key economy ministry portfolio.

In the role, Saccomanni will have to balance European Union insistence on rigorous austerity to heal Italy's finances with politicians' sensitivities to voters. The public's patience has been tried by spending cuts and higher taxes without seeing the start of any economic revival.

Only a few weeks earlier, the head of the Democrats, Pier Luigi Bersani, resigned from the party post in humiliation and he refused Berlusconi's offer for a "grand coalition" and futilely tried to form a government without the center-right. Letta was a Bersani loyalist.

Bersani hailed the coalition formula as a "necessary compromise" that gives the country "freshness and solidarity."

The No. 3 bloc in Parliament, the anti-establishment 5 Star Movement, is led by comic Beppe Grillo, who ruled out any alliance with the largely sullied political class that has ruled Italy for decades.

President Giorgio Napolitano, who tasked Letta with creating a government out of bitter rivals, called upon the coalition partners to work "in a spirit of absolute, indispensable cohesion" as they work for sorely needed political and economic reforms.

The 87-year-old head of state sounded almost breathless as he expressed confidence the rivals could work together "without conflict or prejudices to find the right solutions" to the country's pressing economic and political problems.

Napolitano didn't name the challenges, but they include fighting unemployment, especially for young people, and corruption sullying much of the political class.

Napolitano said: "It was and is the only possible government," and one "whose formation couldn't be delayed further, in the interest of our country and of Europe."

He reluctantly agreed to be re-elected by Parliament earlier this month for another seven-year term because of the political instability.

Italy's economy is No. 3 among eurozone members, and financial markets have been anxiously watching to see if an effective government could be formed to carry on with outgoing Premier Mario Monti's efforts to keep the country from sliding into the eurozone's sovereign debt crisis.

Some Italian political observers have predicted such a hybrid government might last only a few months of Parliament's five-year term, before collapsing in squabbling.

But the fear of elections, especially after the lightning-quick rise of comic Grillo's grassroots movement, could prove to be strong glue.

Giovanni Orsina, deputy director of LUISS university's school of government in Rome, ventured that Letta's new coalition could "last more than we expect, 18 to 24 months, more or less."

The history professor cited "lack of alternatives, and because I believe Parliament's members are not particularly eager to get back to the polling booth and face new elections."

Voters, fed up with new and higher taxes, including a despised property tax revived by Monti, rejected his severe austerity policies.

The small centrist party created in time for the election by Monti, an economist and former European Union commissioner, will participate in the coalition, although Monti won't be in the Cabinet, which is heavy on two novelties ? a large presence of female ministers and Italy's first black minister.

A native of Congo, Cecile Kyenge is a doctor who will serve as minister of integration. Proposals to make it easier for Italy' growing immigrant population to become citizens have gone nowhere in Parliament amid fierce opposition from the anti-immigrant Northern League party. The party, a Berlusconi ally, isn't in the new government.

Prominent among the women in the Cabinet is Emma Bonino, a former EU commissioner and Radical Party leader who will serve as foreign minister. Olympic gold medal kayaker Josefa Idem was tapped as minister of equal opportunity and sports.

Letta comes from a moderate wing of the left-rooted Democratic Party that is close to the Vatican. Since Parliament always includes an array of lawmakers enjoying good ties to the politically influential Catholic church in Italy, this was one more qualification on Letta's bridge-building resume.

The father of three sons, he lives in Rome's working-class Testaccio neighborhood. When he was tapped by Napolitano on Wednesday, he drove his own car to the Quirinal Palace, in what was seen as a photo opportunity gesture to Italian taxpayers who widely despise the huge fleet of luxury cars that shuttles around ministers and lawmakers.

In 1998, when he was 32, Letta became the youngest minister in Italy's history when he served as minister for European policy for then-Premier Massimo D'Alema, an ex-Communist leader. Letta seemed a natural for that post. He spent his childhood in Strasbourg, home to the European Parliament, and studied international law before jumping into politics.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/italy-forms-government-2-month-stalemate-153710380.html

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Saturday, April 27, 2013

Texas to execute second man for 2002 murder, kidnapping

By Corrie MacLaggan

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Texas on Thursday is scheduled to execute a man convicted of murder after he and an accomplice robbed an East Texas convenience store in 2002, kidnapping a male customer who was later shot to death and two women who worked there.

Richard Cobb, 29, is due to be put to death by lethal injection after 6 p.m. CDT (2300 GMT) at a state prison in Huntsville. He would be the fourth person executed in Texas this year and the ninth in the United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Cobb and his accomplice, Beunka Adams, who was executed in 2012 for the crime, entered BDJ's convenience store in Rusk, Texas, armed with a shotgun and wearing masks and demanded money, according to an account of the case from the state attorney general's office.

Cobb and Adams took store clerks Candace Driver and Nikki Ansley Dement hostage along with customer Kenneth Vandever and forced them into Driver's Cadillac, then Adams drove to an open pasture, the account said.

Adams forced Driver and Vandever into the trunk while Cobb held the gun. Then, Adams took Dement to a wooded area and raped her.

Later, according to the account, Cobb fatally shot Vandever and either Cobb or Adams shot the two women, who survived.

"Mr. Cobb has never disputed his involvement in the crimes, but explained that he acted out of fear of Adams, who orchestrated the crimes," says a statement of the case that is included in a court filing by Cobb's lawyer.

Cobb, who was 18 at the time of the kidnapping murder, has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that his death sentence was based on false testimony by a state witness.

(Reporting by Corrie MacLaggan; Editing by David Bailey and Alden Bentley)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/texas-execute-second-man-2002-murder-kidnapping-171224384.html

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Boat club lease looks headed for a September vote | Greenwich Post

The status of the lease for the Mianus River Boat and Yacht Club remains in flux. ?Ken Borsuk photo

The status of the lease for the Mianus River Boat and Yacht Club remains in flux.
?Ken Borsuk photo

Another delay is in store for the Mianus River Boat and Yacht Club as now it appears its lease with the town won?t be considered by the Representative Town Meeting (RTM) until September.

However, this time the delay appears to be just fine with the club?s leadership.

At the April 22 meeting of the RTM?s Finance and Legislative and Rules Committees? Joint Subcommittee on Leases, an actual policy draft was finally voted on, but any discussion of the specific boat club lease was deferred at the request of club members. Both club Commodore Bill Ingraham and club member Frank Mazza agreed that it made more sense to wait for the actual guidelines to be heard and approved by the full RTM so everything that was currently unknown could be settled first.

That means more waiting for the club, which saw a renewal of its lease with the town recommended back to the RTM?s Finance and Legislative and Rules Committee instead of getting an up or down vote from the body at its January meeting. Since May?s RTM meeting is devoted entirely to consideration of the 2013-14 municipal budget and the body does not meet in July and August, if the subcommittee?s work is considered by the committees in June, then it would be September at the earliest before the lease gets full RTM consideration.

But this delay came with the reluctant blessing of the club?s representatives, several of whom attended the April 22 meeting. Mr. Mazza has been a vocal critic of the subcommittee for not letting the club see the proposed guidelines. He said he felt it was better to wait instead of having the lease considered and then have the new guidelines go into effect.

?It?s impossible for us to understand what everything is when you?re working up there and changing a word here and a word there,? Mr. Mazza said. ?Now you?re saying you want to apply guidelines that haven?t been approved by anyone to a lease. Something is wrong here.?

?Suddenly it?s not as important to me to get this lease done in two months as is getting the right plan and guidelines done and letting everyone who has leases know this is how it?s going to be and it?s going to be fair and equitable to everyone,? Mr. Ingraham said.

Subcommittee members, led by RTM moderator pro tempore Joan Caldwell, said they had no issue with waiting and that the only reason they were considering working on the boat club lease was to satisfy unhappy members. Subcommittee Chairman Erf Porter noted his commitment to the Board of Selectmen to push for a resolution on the lease, but said if the members were willing to wait he would let things proceed without discussion about the lease.

?Waiting doesn?t kill us, but we ought to know what are in the guidelines for the future,? Mr. Mazza said.

?That?s fine, that takes the pressure off,? Ms. Caldwell replied.

Mr. Ingraham ultimately stated, ?I don?t think we have a problem with September. I think this plan is equally as important to us as our lease is.?

Mr. Porter warned the club members that if they did wait until September for the lease to be considered there was a risk that it would lose the momentum it had now for approval. He didn?t speculate, however, on what its chances would be on the floor for a full RTM vote.

Mr. Mazza and Mr. Ingraham both voiced concerns about the possibility of the property being put out to bid after the next 10-year lease, but Mr. Porter assured him he was ?jumping to conclusions? and that there was no discussion of putting the property up for open bid.

?You talk about transparency but everyone here is in the dark,? Mr. Mazza said.

?You?re drawing that conclusion,? Mr. Porter insisted in response. ?We didn?t draw that conclusion. How the town administers that is the town?s responsibility.?

What was formally decided in the meeting was to send the draft of the subcommittee?s lease guidelines to the Finance and Legislative and Rules Committees for review. Since the draft, which was recommended to be submitted to the committees by a unanimous vote, was declared ?work product? and not a formal resolution it was not released publicly in written form. But it is expected to become widely distributed as RTM members view it in anticipation of a special May 2 joint meeting of the committees to discuss the proposed guidelines.

This was all triggered by the belief of some RTM members that there was not a sufficient policy in place with regard to the leasing of town property, such as the yacht club, to town organizations and individuals. All along, First Selectman Peter Tesei and his colleagues on the board have insisted a policy to consider the leases on a case-by-case basis was in place, but the majority of RTM members, in deferring the club?s lease in January, agreed that it wanted something more formalized.

One issue that could come up again during the RTM discussion was how resources, like the boat club slips, were allocated. The club, like others in town, has a waiting list for slips that moves very slowly. This has led some RTM members to question whether this is a ?fair? arrangement or if there are ways to make the lists move more quickly to allow more people to use slips by limiting how long a person was able to have a slip. However, Mr. Ingraham noted a flaw in that argument by comparing it to other town leases.

?What about the long list of people waiting for housing at ABILIS?? Mr. Ingraham said. ?Maybe they should only stay there for four years and then let other people move in. What about McKinney Terrace? Should people there move out for new old people to move in??

?

editor@greenwich-post.com

Source: http://www.greenwich-post.com/12976/boat-club-lease-looks-headed-for-a-september-vote/

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Poll: Will you pay $250 for a BlackBerry Q10?

(Ends first round) NEW YORK, April 25 (Reuters) - Selections in the first roundof the 2013 NFL Draft at Radio City Music Hall on Thursday (picknumber, NFL team, player, position, college): 1-Kansas City, Eric Fisher, offensive tackle, Central Michigan 2-Jacksonville, Luke Joeckel, offensive tackle, Texas A&M 3-Miami (from Oakland), Dion Jordan, defensive tackle, Oregon 4-Philadelphia, Lane Johnson, offensive tackle, Oklahoma 5-Detroit, Ezekiel Ansah, defensive end, Brigham Young 6-Cleveland, Barkevious Mingo, linebacker, LSU 7-Arizona, Jonathan Cooper, guard, North Carolina 8-St. ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/poll-pay-250-blackberry-q10-173042172.html

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Friday, April 26, 2013

Tsarnaev questioned for 16 hours before he was read rights

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (FBI handout)Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, suspected of bombing the Boston Marathon with his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was questioned for 16 hours by authorities before being read his Miranda rights, the AP reports today.

Tsarnaev, a 19-year-old college student, confessed his role in the crime during the questioning in his hospital room, but that confession may not be admissible in court. Once he was advised of his right to seek counsel and remain silent by a representative from the U.S. attorney's office, the suspect stopped talking.

Police are allowed to question suspects without first Mirandizing them, but then their statements are not admissible in court. If police ask questions that seek to uncover future threats to the public, something called the "public safety exception" provides a loophole to this rule.

So in Tsarnaev's case, if they had asked him if he knew of any planned attacks, or whether there were any bombs planted around Boston, his answers would theoretically be OK to use in a case against him. Authorities questioned both the Christmas Day "underwear bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab?for 50 minutes?and the attempted Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad without first reading them their Miranda rights using the public safety exception.

Some Republicans, led by Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have argued that Tsarnaev should be treated as an enemy combatant and detained indefinitely so he can be questioned without a lawyer. Since Tsarnaev is a U.S. citizen arrested on U.S. soil?and because authorities have not connected him to a larger terror network?holding him as an enemy combatant most likely would be illegal.

Even if Tsarnaev's reported confession is not allowed to be used in the courtroom, authorities told the AP that the Tsarnaevs told a witness?a man whose car they carjacked?that they were responsible for the bombing. Law enforcement has also uncovered physical evidence from the scene that they think ties the Tsarnaevs to the bombings.

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/tsarnaev-questioned-16-hours-read-miranda-rights-135531333.html

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Psychopaths are not neurally equipped to have concern for others

Apr. 24, 2013 ? Prisoners who are psychopaths lack the basic neurophysiological "hardwiring" that enables them to care for others, according to a new study by neuroscientists at the University of Chicago and the University of New Mexico.

"A marked lack of empathy is a hallmark characteristic of individuals with psychopathy," said the lead author of the study, Jean Decety, the Irving B. Harris Professor in Psychology and Psychiatry at UChicago. Psychopathy affects approximately 1 percent of the United States general population and 20 percent to 30 percent of the male and female U.S. prison population. Relative to non-psychopathic criminals, psychopaths are responsible for a disproportionate amount of repetitive crime and violence in society.

"This is the first time that neural processes associated with empathic processing have been directly examined in individuals with psychopathy, especially in response to the perception of other people in pain or distress," he added.

The results of the study, which could help clinical psychologists design better treatment programs for psychopaths, are published in the article, "Brain Responses to Empathy-Eliciting Scenarios Involving Pain in Incarcerated Individuals with Psychopathy," which appears online April 24 in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.

Joining Decety in the study were Laurie Skelly, a graduate student at UChicago; and Kent Kiehl, professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico.

For the study, the research team tested 80 prisoners between ages 18 and 50 at a correctional facility. The men volunteered for the test and were tested for levels of psychopathy using standard measures.

They were then studied with functional MRI technology, to determine their responses to a series of scenarios depicting people being intentionally hurt. They were also tested on their responses to seeing short videos of facial expressions showing pain.

The participants in the high psychopathy group exhibited significantly less activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, lateral orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala and periaqueductal gray parts of the brain, but more activity in the striatum and the insula when compared to control participants, the study found.

The high response in the insula in psychopaths was an unexpected finding, as this region is critically involved in emotion and somatic resonance. Conversely, the diminished response in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and amygdala is consistent with the affective neuroscience literature on psychopathy. This latter region is important for monitoring ongoing behavior, estimating consequences and incorporating emotional learning into moral decision-making, and plays a fundamental role in empathic concern and valuing the well-being of others.

"The neural response to distress of others such as pain is thought to reflect an aversive response in the observer that may act as a trigger to inhibit aggression or prompt motivation to help," the authors write in the paper.

"Hence, examining the neural response of individuals with psychopathy as they view others being harmed or expressing pain is an effective probe into the neural processes underlying affective and empathy deficits in psychopathy," the authors wrote.

The study with prisoners was supported with a $1.6 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Chicago, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. Jean Decety, Laurie R. Skelly, Kent A. Kiehl. Brain Response to Empathy-Eliciting Scenarios Involving Pain in Incarcerated Individuals With Psychopathy. JAMA Psychiatry, 2013 DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2013.27

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/uRcT0SkoiG0/130424161108.htm

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Thursday, April 25, 2013

Obama: Bush 'Loves His Country'


* Former presidents also due to attend dedication
* Memorial service for Texas explosion victims on the agenda
* Fundraiser will aim to help Democrats in midterm elections (Updates with Obama, Bush comments, previous dateline WASHINGTON)
By Steve Holland
DALLAS, April 24 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama is in Texas to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with former President George W. Bush in what could serve as a powerful reminder of the ongoing struggle against terrorism, from the Sept. 11 attacks to the Boston Marathon bombings.
Obama is due to attend the dedication on Thursday of Bush's presidential library at Southern Methodist University, along with former presidents Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter and hundreds of Bush administration alumni.
While Democrat Obama and Republican Bush have deep political differences, they share a common belief that the United States must defend itself against violent extremism.
The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks defined Bush's eight years in the White House and last week's Boston Marathon bombing handed Obama another challenge to homeland security.
Obama, at a Democratic fundraiser soon after he arrived in Dallas on Wednesday night, said he was looking forward to attending the Bush library dedication and that he would project a bipartisan spirit.
"One thing I will insist upon is whatever our political differences, President Bush loves his country and loves its people and...was concerned about all people in America, not just those who voted Republican. I think that's true about him and I think that's true about most of us," Obama said.
Bush told ABC News that the Boston attacks reminded him of his time in the presidency.
"I was deeply concerned that there might've been an organized plot," Bush told ABC News. "I don't know all the facts... But I was deeply concerned that this could've been, you know, another highly organized attack on the country. And it still may be. Again, I don't know all the facts."
Certain issues require a common response regardless of political party, said David Yepsen, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Center at the University of Southern Illinois.
"They may get to the office as a conservative or a liberal but there are real forces that move them to the pragmatic center on a variety of issues and national security is one of them," Simon said.
But Obama was also looking to a time when more Democrats could be elected to Congress. His first stop in Dallas was at a fundraiser that brought in $600,000 for the Democratic National Committee at the home of major Democratic donor Naomi Aberly.
It is his third fundraiser this year for his party in the hope that Democrats can wrestle control of the House of Representatives from Republicans and add to the Democrats' Senate majority in 2014 midterm elections.
Without adding Democratic seats, Obama may find it difficult to overcome Republican opposition to many of the priorities of his second term, such as closing tax loopholes enjoyed mostly by the wealthy and stricter gun control.
"Washington is not, how should I put this charitably, it's not as functional as it could be," Obama said.
Still, he told the Democratic donors, he plans to keep talking to Republicans as he has in recent weeks to try to find common ground, even though "some of you may think I'm a sap" for doing so.
Thursday's dedication of Bush's library and museum has put Bush, the 43rd U.S. president, back in the limelight he has largely avoided since leaving office in January 2009.
At the time, the United States was laboring under the burden of two wars and a collapsed economy. Bush's approval rating at the time was 33 percent. A Washington Post-ABC poll this week put his approval rating at 47 percent, basically equal to Obama's.
The museum exhibits cover major points of Bush's presidency and offer visitors an opportunity to decide how they would have responded to those challenges.
A central feature of the museum concerns the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
Obama has found himself pursuing some of the same policies that Bush began, such using drones on military targets and trying to overhaul U.S. immigration laws.
Obama is expected to speak at the dedication along with the former presidents.
"Regardless of the times when they served and their political and policy differences, there is a commonality of experience that the president believes binds them together," said White House spokesman Jay Carney.
After visiting Bush in Dallas on Thursday, Obama is scheduled to attend a memorial service at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, for the 14 people killed when a fertilizer plant exploded last week in West, Texas. (Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Karey Van Hall, Toni Reinhold and Lisa Shumaker)

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/25/obama-bush_n_3151427.html

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Facebook and romantic relationships

Apr. 23, 2013 ? A Western Illinois University faculty member who published a study about Facebook and narcissism last year has authored another study about Facebook and romantic relationships.

WIU Department of Communication Assistant Professor Christopher Carpenter, with his co-author Erin Spottswood (Cornell University), have authored, "Exploring romantic relationships on social networking sites using the self-expansion model," which will appear in the July 2013 journal issue of Computers in Human Behavior. According to Carpenter, in the study, the co-authors found the more past romantic relationships the participants had, the more interests they listed in their Facebook profiles.

"I predicted this relationship because other research suggested that part of romantic relationship development involves adopting new interests and behaviors from one's partner," he said. "I also found that people who report appearing in more photos with their partners on Facebook and who regularly tag their partner in their status updates tend to have closer romantic relationships."

In humans, the self-expansion model -- per a seminal study authored by State University of New York, Stony Brook, Psychology Professor Arthur Aron and Elaine Aron, author of the book, "The Highly Sensitive Person" -- asserts the desire to grow is a key motivation. One of the key sources of this need to expand one's self is derived from romantic relationships.

Carpenter said he studies humans' interactions on Facebook and social networks because the online networks offer a unique window into people's lives.

"We can't follow people around with a tape recorder getting a record of what they say all day. Facebook, on the other hand, offers us the chance to see one part of that record. We can see how often people interact with their romantic partners on Facebook, what they say to each other and how they present themselves on their profiles," he explained. "As for this specific study, I had read about self-expansion theory and I began wondering if we ever truly cut ties with someone when we break up. We might not see that person anymore, but when we develop a relationship with someone, we take on some of their interests and traits and, in many cases, hang on to them long after we break up. Facebook offered a unique way of examining the extent to which those traces of past relationships remain in our profiles."

Carpenter said the study's sample included 276 respondents who answered questions about their relationship histories and social networking sites uses, while a subset of the sample (149 participants) answered additional questions about their current romantic partners.

In addition to receiving wide media attention about his 2012 study, "Narcissism on Facebook: Self-promotional and Anti-social Behavior" (published in the journal, Personality and Individual Differences, March 2012), Carpenter served as an invited Oxford Union Society speaker on the motion, "This House Believes Social Media has Successfully Reinvented Social Activism," in England in May last year.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Western Illinois University.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. Christopher J. Carpenter, Erin L. Spottswood. Exploring romantic relationships on social networking sites using the self-expansion model. Computers in Human Behavior, 2013; 29 (4): 1531 DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2013.01.021

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/Z5NyT0nG8Ac/130423110713.htm

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Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Quitting smoking for the baby you plan to have together | Scope Blog

Pregnancy, Public Health, Women's Health Keith Humphreys on April 23rd, 2013

My best friend finally succeeded in his efforts to stop smoking when he experienced a highly motivating life change: Fatherhood.?Likewise, many women discover that wanting to have a safe and healthy pregnancy gives them unprecedented desire to kick their tobacco habit.?Knowing the research and clinical evidence may be useful to parents-to-be who have some questions about smoking:

  1. Quitting smoking is very hard ? does it really make enough difference to be worth it?? Yes.?To get one sense of the impact of smoking on fetal development, recall the widespread panic in the 1980s about ?crack cocaine babies.? Subsequent research has shown that the damage to fetuses of cigarette smoking is in fact worse than that of crack cocaine use.?Even if it didn?t benefit the fetus (and later, the infant) for a mother to quit smoking, it would still be worth using the extra motivation to quit that pregnancy provides for the sake of the mother?s long term health.
  2. When is the best time to try to quit? Early. In an excellent lecture I saw last week, Professor Zachary Stowe, MD, with the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, pointed out that the soonest a woman can know she is pregnant is 4-6 weeks after conception, at which point fetal organogenesis is well underway.?Further, Stowe and other researchers have conducted research identifying nicotine and its metabolites in the fetal compartment even after the mother has stopped smoking.?Dr. Stowe therefore suggests that rather than waiting to quit until after stopping birth control or after pregnancy has been confirmed by a test, a mother-to-be should wait two weeks after quitting smoking before going off birth control.?Note: Even if you didn?t do this, quitting smoking at any point later in the pregnancy is still good for the fetus (and for you too).
  3. I smoke, but I?m not carrying the baby, so why does it matter whether I quit??This isn?t just about mom.?Passively absorbed smoke contributes to nicotine in the fetal compartment, meaning that even if the mother quits, smoking by her partner may affect the fetus.?Also, an added benefit to a couple of quitting together is suggested by research and clinical experience in addiction treatment: Relapse is more likely when the visible, auditory and olfactory cues of substance use remain in the environment.?Hence, a mom-to-be is going to have a much harder time quitting cigarettes if her partner remains a smoker.?More positively, if two people quit together they can remove those cues from the environment and also have built-in social support for resisting the cravings they both may experience.
  4. Where can we get help with smoking cessation? Free resources are just a click away here.?If you need extra support, consult your physician, who can help you both with smoking cessation and with other conditions you may have (e.g., depression) that make it hard to quit.

Addiction expert Keith Humphreys, PhD, is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford and a career research scientist at the Palo Alto VA. He recently completed a one-year stint as a senior advisor in the Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington.

Previously: Craving a cigarette but trying to quit? A supportive text message might help, Exercise may help smokers kick the nicotine habit and remain smoke-free, Kicking the smoking habit for good and Can daily texts help smokers kick their nicotine addiction?
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Source: http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2013/04/23/quitting-smoking-for-the-baby-you-plan-to-have-together/

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Cinnamon challenge: Avoid this dangerous trend, say doctors

The cinnamon challenge, swallowing a spoonful of ground cinnamon in 60 seconds without water, is both dangerous and increasingly popular. Doctors and others are urging teens not to take the cinnamon challenge.

By Lindsey Tanner,?Associated Press / April 22, 2013

Dejah Reed, an Ypsilanti, Mich., teen was hospitalized for a collapsed lung after trying the cinnamon challenge. A new report advises against taking the challenge that involves daring someone to swallow a spoonful of ground cinnamon in 60 seconds without water.

Courtesy of Frederick Reed / AP

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Don't take the cinnamon challenge. That's the advice from doctors in a new report about a dangerous prank depicted in popular YouTube videos but which has led to hospitalizations and a surge in calls to U.S. poison centers.

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The fad involves daring someone to swallow a spoonful of ground cinnamon in 60 seconds without water. But the spice is caustic, and trying to gulp it down can cause choking and related problems, the report said.

At least 30 teens nationwide needed medical attention after taking the challenge last year, said the report, published online Monday in Pediatrics.

The number of poison control center calls about teens doing the prank "has increased dramatically," from 51 in 2011 to 222 last year, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers.

Thousands of YouTube videos depict kids attempting the challenge, resulting in an "orange burst of dragon breath" spewing out of their mouths and sometimes hysterical laughter from friends watching the stunt, said report co-author Dr. Steven E. Lipshultz, a pediatrics professor at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

Cinnamon is made from tree bark and contains cellulose fibers that don't easily break down. Dr. Stephen Pont, a spokesman for the American Academy of Pediatrics and an Austin, Texas pediatrician, said the report is "a call to arms to parents and doctors to be aware of things like the cinnamon challenge" and to pay attention to what their kids are viewing online.

A teen whose lung collapsed after trying the cinnamon challenge heartily supports the new advice and started her own website ??http://nocinnamonchallenge.com?? telling teens to "just say no" to the fad.

Dejah Reed, 16, said she took the challenge four times. The final time was in February last year, with a friend who didn't want to try it alone.

"I was laughing very hard, and I coughed it out and I inhaled it into my lungs," she said. "I couldn't breathe."

Ms. Reed was hospitalized for four days and has had ongoing breathing problems, which she'd never experienced before. She said she'd read about the challenge on Facebook and other social networking sites and "thought it would be cool" to try.

Now Reed says, "It's not cool ? and it's dangerous."

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/yfrkIWRxSnA/Cinnamon-challenge-Avoid-this-dangerous-trend-say-doctors

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The crystal's corners: New nanowire structure has potential to increase semiconductor applications

The crystal's corners: New nanowire structure has potential to increase semiconductor applications [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 23-Apr-2013
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Tom Robinette
tom.robinette@uc.edu
513-556-1825
University of Cincinnati

University of Cincinnati research describes discovery of a new structure that is a fundamental game changer in the physics of semiconductor nanowires

There's big news in the world of tiny things.

New research led by University of Cincinnati physics professors Howard Jackson and Leigh Smith could contribute to better ways of harnessing solar energy, more effective air quality sensors or even stronger security measures against biological weapons such as anthrax. And it all starts with something that's 1,000 times thinner than the typical human hair a semiconductor nanowire.

UC's Jackson, Smith, recently graduated PhD student Melodie Fickenscher and physics doctoral student Teng Shi, as well as several colleagues from across the US and around the world recently have published the research paper "Optical, Structural and Numerical Investigations of GaAs/AlGaAs Core-Multishell Nanowire Quantum Well Tubes" in Nano Letters, a premier journal on nanoscience and nanotechnology published by the American Chemical Society. In the paper, the team reports that they've discovered a new structure in a semiconductor nanowire with unique properties.

"This kind of structure in the gallium arsenide/aluminum gallium arsenide system had not been achieved before," Jackson says. "It's new in terms of where you find the electrons and holes, and spatially it's a new structure."

EYES ON SIZE AND CORNERING ELECTRONS

These little structures could have a big effect on a variety of technologies. Semiconductors are at the center of modern electronics. Computers, TVs and cellphones have them. They're made from the crystalline form of elements that have scientifically beneficial electrical conductivity properties. Many semiconductors are made of silicon, but in this case they are made of gallium arsenide. And while widespread use of these thin nanowires in new devices might still be around the corner, the key to making that outcome a reality in the coming years is what's in the corner.

By using a thin shell called a quantum well tube and growing it to about 4 nanometers thick around the nanowire core, the researchers found electrons within the nanowire were distributed in an unusual way in relation to the facets of the hexagonal tube. A close look at the corners of the tube's facets revealed something unexpected a high concentration of ground state electrons and holes.

"Having the faceting really matters. It changes the ballgame," Jackson says. "Adjusting the quantum well tube width allows you to control the energy which would have been expected but in addition we have found that there's a highly localized ground state at the corners which then can give rise to true quantum nanowires."

The nanowires the team uses for its research are grown at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia one partner in this project that extends to disparate parts of the globe.

AFFECTING THE SCIENCE OF SMALL IN A BIG WAY

The team's discovery opens a new door to further study of the fundamental physics of semiconductor nanowires. As for leading to advances in technology such as photovoltaic cells, Jackson says it's too soon to tell because quantum nanowires are just now being explored. But in a world where hundreds of dollars' worth of technology is packed into a 5-by-2.5 inch iPhone, it's not hard to see how small but powerful science comes at a premium.

The team at UC is one of only about a half dozen in the US conducting competitive research in the field. It's a relatively young discipline, too, Jackson says, and one that's moving fast. For such innovative science, he says it's important to have a collaborative effort. The team includes scientists from research centers in the Midwest, the West Coast and all the way Down Under: UC, Miami University of Ohio and Sandia National Laboratories in California here in the US; and Monash University and the Australian National University in Australia.

The team's efforts are another example of how UC not only stands out as a leader in top-notch science, but also in shaping the future of the discipline by providing its students with high-quality educational and research opportunities.

"We're training students in state-of-the-art techniques on state-of-the-art materials doing state-of-the-art physics," Jackson says. "Upon completing their education here, they're positioned to go out and make contributions of their own."

###

Additional contributors to the paper are Jan Yarrison-Rice of Miami University, Oxford, Ohio; Bryan Wong of Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore, Calif.; Changlin Zheng, Peter Miller and Joanne Etheridge of Monash University, Victoria, Australia; and Qiang Gao, Shriniwas Deshpande, Hark Hoe Tan and Chennupati Jagadish of the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


The crystal's corners: New nanowire structure has potential to increase semiconductor applications [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 23-Apr-2013
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Tom Robinette
tom.robinette@uc.edu
513-556-1825
University of Cincinnati

University of Cincinnati research describes discovery of a new structure that is a fundamental game changer in the physics of semiconductor nanowires

There's big news in the world of tiny things.

New research led by University of Cincinnati physics professors Howard Jackson and Leigh Smith could contribute to better ways of harnessing solar energy, more effective air quality sensors or even stronger security measures against biological weapons such as anthrax. And it all starts with something that's 1,000 times thinner than the typical human hair a semiconductor nanowire.

UC's Jackson, Smith, recently graduated PhD student Melodie Fickenscher and physics doctoral student Teng Shi, as well as several colleagues from across the US and around the world recently have published the research paper "Optical, Structural and Numerical Investigations of GaAs/AlGaAs Core-Multishell Nanowire Quantum Well Tubes" in Nano Letters, a premier journal on nanoscience and nanotechnology published by the American Chemical Society. In the paper, the team reports that they've discovered a new structure in a semiconductor nanowire with unique properties.

"This kind of structure in the gallium arsenide/aluminum gallium arsenide system had not been achieved before," Jackson says. "It's new in terms of where you find the electrons and holes, and spatially it's a new structure."

EYES ON SIZE AND CORNERING ELECTRONS

These little structures could have a big effect on a variety of technologies. Semiconductors are at the center of modern electronics. Computers, TVs and cellphones have them. They're made from the crystalline form of elements that have scientifically beneficial electrical conductivity properties. Many semiconductors are made of silicon, but in this case they are made of gallium arsenide. And while widespread use of these thin nanowires in new devices might still be around the corner, the key to making that outcome a reality in the coming years is what's in the corner.

By using a thin shell called a quantum well tube and growing it to about 4 nanometers thick around the nanowire core, the researchers found electrons within the nanowire were distributed in an unusual way in relation to the facets of the hexagonal tube. A close look at the corners of the tube's facets revealed something unexpected a high concentration of ground state electrons and holes.

"Having the faceting really matters. It changes the ballgame," Jackson says. "Adjusting the quantum well tube width allows you to control the energy which would have been expected but in addition we have found that there's a highly localized ground state at the corners which then can give rise to true quantum nanowires."

The nanowires the team uses for its research are grown at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia one partner in this project that extends to disparate parts of the globe.

AFFECTING THE SCIENCE OF SMALL IN A BIG WAY

The team's discovery opens a new door to further study of the fundamental physics of semiconductor nanowires. As for leading to advances in technology such as photovoltaic cells, Jackson says it's too soon to tell because quantum nanowires are just now being explored. But in a world where hundreds of dollars' worth of technology is packed into a 5-by-2.5 inch iPhone, it's not hard to see how small but powerful science comes at a premium.

The team at UC is one of only about a half dozen in the US conducting competitive research in the field. It's a relatively young discipline, too, Jackson says, and one that's moving fast. For such innovative science, he says it's important to have a collaborative effort. The team includes scientists from research centers in the Midwest, the West Coast and all the way Down Under: UC, Miami University of Ohio and Sandia National Laboratories in California here in the US; and Monash University and the Australian National University in Australia.

The team's efforts are another example of how UC not only stands out as a leader in top-notch science, but also in shaping the future of the discipline by providing its students with high-quality educational and research opportunities.

"We're training students in state-of-the-art techniques on state-of-the-art materials doing state-of-the-art physics," Jackson says. "Upon completing their education here, they're positioned to go out and make contributions of their own."

###

Additional contributors to the paper are Jan Yarrison-Rice of Miami University, Oxford, Ohio; Bryan Wong of Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore, Calif.; Changlin Zheng, Peter Miller and Joanne Etheridge of Monash University, Victoria, Australia; and Qiang Gao, Shriniwas Deshpande, Hark Hoe Tan and Chennupati Jagadish of the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-04/uoc-tcc042313.php

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