Matthew Schneider, left, special assistant to NHL Players Association executive director Donald Fehr, Winnipeg Jets' Ron Hainsey, center, and Steve Fehr, players union special counsel, arrive at NHL headquarters in New York, Friday, Sept. 28, 2012. With the clock ticking down to the start of the season, the NHL and its locked-out players are talking again. (AP Photo/ Louis Lanzano)
Matthew Schneider, left, special assistant to NHL Players Association executive director Donald Fehr, Winnipeg Jets' Ron Hainsey, center, and Steve Fehr, players union special counsel, arrive at NHL headquarters in New York, Friday, Sept. 28, 2012. With the clock ticking down to the start of the season, the NHL and its locked-out players are talking again. (AP Photo/ Louis Lanzano)
NEW YORK (AP) ? The NHL and the Players' Association are meeting for the third straight day to try to resolve the lockout.
The sides met for about four hours Saturday, and they agreed to meet again Sunday. The agenda likely will include discussions on health and safety issues.
Core economic issues still weren't on the agenda Saturday when the opposing groups got together again at the NHL office.
Sunday's talks came three days after the league canceled the remaining preseason games. The regular season is scheduled to start Oct. 11.
If a deal isn't reached soon, regular-season games will be in danger of being lost. The NHL canceled the entire 2004-05 season because of a lockout that eventually led to the collective bargaining agreement that expired this month.
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ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2012) ? By mimicking nature's own sensing mechanisms, bioengineers at UC Santa Barbara and University of Rome Tor Vergata have designed inexpensive medical diagnostic tests that take only a few minutes to perform. Their findings may aid efforts to build point-of-care devices for quick medical diagnosis of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), allergies, autoimmune diseases, and a number of other diseases. The new technology could dramatically impact world health, according to the research team.
The rapid and easy-to-use diagnostic test consists of a nanometer-scale DNA "switch" that can quickly detect antibodies specific to a wide range of diseases. The research is described in an article published this month in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
The design was created by the research group of Kevin W. Plaxco, a professor in UCSB's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. He noted that, despite the power of current diagnostic tests, a significant limitation is that they still require complex laboratory procedures. "Patients typically must wait for days or even weeks to receive the results of most STD tests," said Plaxco. "The blood sample has to be transported to the lab, its content analyzed by trained personnel, and the results sent back to the doctor's office. If we can move testing to the point of care, it eliminates the lag between testing and treatment, which would enhance the effectiveness of medical interventions, and, for infectious diseases like STDs, reduce transmission."
The key breakthrough underlying this new technology came from observing nature. "All creatures, from bacteria to humans, monitor their environments using amazing 'molecular nanoswitches' that signal the presence of a specific target by changing their structure," said Alexis Vall?e-B?lisle, a postdoctoral scholar and co-first author of the study. "For example, on the surface of our cells, there are millions of receptor proteins that detect various molecules by switching from an 'off state' to an 'on state.' The beauty of these switches is that they are able to work directly in very complex environments such as whole blood."
Plaxco's research group teamed with Francesco Ricci, professor at University of Rome Tor Vergata and co-first author of the paper, to build synthetic molecular switches that signal their state via a change in electric current. This change in current can be measured using inexpensive electronics similar to those in the home glucose test meter used by diabetics to check their blood sugar. Using these "nature-inspired" nanoswitches, the researchers were able to detect anti-HIV antibodies directly in whole blood in less than five minutes.
"A great advantage of these electrochemical nanoswitches is that their sensing principle can be generalized to many different targets, allowing us to build inexpensive devices that could detect dozens of disease markers in less than five minutes in the doctor's office or even at home," said Ricci.
The authors noted that it may take several years to bring the devices to the market.
The additional co-authors are Fan Xia of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China; and Takanori Uzawa of Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan.
This work was funded by the National Institute of Health, the Fond Qu?b?cois de la Recherche sur la Nature et les Technologies; the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR) project "Futuro in Ricerca;" and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, through the Grand Challenges Explorations Grant.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of California - Santa Barbara.
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Journal Reference:
Alexis Vall?e-B?lisle, Francesco Ricci, Takanori Uzawa, Fan Xia, Kevin W. Plaxco. Bioelectrochemical Switches for the Quantitative Detection of Antibodies Directly in Whole Blood. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2012; 134 (37): 15197 DOI: 10.1021/ja305720w
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.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - If history is a guide, Democrat Barack Obama will have a tough time in the first presidential debate on Wednesday, Republican Mitt Romney will be particularly aggressive, and both will risk committing a damaging gaffe if they wander off their talking points. The 90-minute showdown in Denver - the first of three televised Obama-Romney encounters in October that will set the tone for the final month of the presidential campaign - will feature two experienced and competent debaters who are at their best in scripted settings. ...
The National Hockey League (NHL) and union representing its locked-out players reached agreement on drug testing and player safety on Friday, but did not address the core economic issues standing in the way of a new labor deal. ?We?re taking baby steps right now.? Mathieu Schneider, a special assistant to the NHL Players Association?s executive director, told reporters in New York. ?We are not really discussing anything that has to do with the core economics,? he said. The NHL locked out its players on Sept. 16 when the previous labor deal expired with the two sides at odds over how to divide a US$3.3 billion revenue pie. The lockout, which is the NHL?s fourth work stoppage in 20 years, has already forced the league to cancel its entire preseason schedule.
BASEBALL
Twins drop Nishioka
Japanese infielder Tsuyoshi Nishioka was released on Friday by the Minnesota Twins after a disappointing year with one season remaining on his Major League Baseball contract. The 28-year-old Osaka native was dropped for a US$250,000 buyout to avoid playing him US$3 million next season in the final year of a deal signed in 2010. Nishioka, who helped Japan win the 2006 World Baseball Classic, suffered a broken leg in a collision with New York Yankees outfielder Nick Swisher after playing only 68 games in the 2011 season. Nishioka, who had batted .226 with 19 runs batted in and 14 runs scored before the injury, went hitless in three at-bats for the Twins this season and spent most of the season with their top developmental team, hitting .258 with two home runs and 34 runs batted in over 101 games.
FOOTBALL
Children?s coach fired
The coach of a children?s gridiron team in suburban Los Angeles and the league president have been suspended after allegations in the Orange County Register by parents of a bounty scheme. The bounty system, allegedly used last season to provide payments to 10-year-olds and 11-year-olds for deliberately injuring opponents, follows a similar scheme that led to National Football League bans this year for the New Orleans Saints. The report says parents claim coach Darren Crawford and an assistant offered players on the Red Cobras of the Tustin (California) Junior Pee Wee league cash for hard hits that knocked football rivals out of playoff games. One player suffered a mild concussion as a result of such a hit. National Pop Warner officials said that Crawford and Pat Galentine, who serves as president of the Tustin league, have been suspended until an investigation into the claims has been conducted.
ICE HOCKEY
Kane to play in KHL
Winnipeg Jets forward Evander Kane has reached a deal to play for Dinamo Minsk of the Russia-based Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) for the duration of the National Hockey League (NHL) lockout. Kane became the first Canadian player to sign with a KHL team even as NHL officials and players union leaders renewed talks in hopes of saving a full NHL season in the wake of club owners locking out players almost two weeks ago. The Belarus club announced the agreement on Friday, exactly 40 years to the day after Canada defeated the Soviet Union in ice hockey?s legendary Summit Series. Kane scored 30 goals for the Jets last season and signed a six-year NHL contract extension worth US$31.5 million just before the lockout began.
A 1728 oil painting by Cornelis Troost depicting an anatomy lesson using a cadaver
Amsterdam Museum/Wikimedia Commons.
Two hundred years ago, a Scottish medical student named Robert Christison watched a human vivisection.
It was inadvertent; the subject was meant to be dead. But in the days before people willingly left their bodies to science, surgeons stole them. The aftermath of judicial hangings was a competition between ?the relatives and the [surgical] students?the former to carry off the body intact, the latter to dissect it,? Christison wrote in his autobiography. ?Thus dissection was apt to be performed with indecent, sometimes with dangerous haste. It was no uncommon occurrence that, when the operator proceeded with his work, the body was sensibly warm, the limbs not yet rigid.? Hangings were sometimes ineffective, and the condemned survived. No wonder then that occasionally, in their rush, surgeons got it wrong and opened up a body to demonstrate its anatomy only to discover it was not yet a corpse.
Even if you're in less of a rush, simple observation has always been worryingly fallible when it comes to distinguishing life from death. When I was a junior doctor, I recall the hairs on the back of my neck slowly rising as I walked toward a patient's room. His family had just stopped me at the end of their visit, saying ?I think we'll come back tomorrow, we've been sitting with him for an hour and he's seemed awfully quiet.? He would forever remain that way. I found I often made the reverse mistake: Walking into the room of an elderly patient, it could take some time to recognize their stillness as that of sleep.
Preceding generations adopted technological aids to help them. Holding a mirror over a face to see if it misted up could be genuinely useful. The stethoscope?invented by a French doctor, Rene Laennec, who was embarrassed by putting his ear to his patient's bosom?meant that respiration and heart sounds could be listened for more accurately. All this helped, but it didn't fully solve the problem.
The precise division between life and death has always been unclear. In the 18th century, the chemistry of living (organic) and nonliving (inorganic) things was held to be fundamentally different. Into the former, God placed a spark of life?meaning that biochemical processes were absolutely different from the chemical reactions that could be created by mankind or the natural world. That belief was shown false in the 1820s, when a German chemist, Friedrich W?hler, synthesized the first organic molecules. But even today it lingers on: The vague way in which organic is used as a euphemism for healthy and good is its relic. Throughout the 19th century, the exact spark of life remained an object of great interest, and also of great doubt.
Discussions of the soul tended to lead nowhere, since that word meant so many different things to different people. It was hard to prove when the soul left the body because it was something whose nature and identity no one could agree on. Hence a favorite distinction between the living and the dead rested directly on the word of God. Leviticus 17:11 and 17:14 were clear: Blood?was the stuff of life. William Harvey, who discovered how blood circulated, wrote that it was ?the first to live and the last to die.? Blood was life. So long as it was liquid, life remained.
Hence Christison's alarm as he watched the surgeon cut into the warm body. ?Fluid blood gushed in abundance from the first incisions through the skin ? Instantly I seized [the surgeon's] wrist in great alarm, and arrested his progress; nor was I easily persuaded to let him go on, when I saw the blood coagulate on the table exactly like living blood.? Peer pressure overcame his qualms, however, and he not only released the surgeon but remained part of the attentive audience. He was convinced that the man was alive, but he became willing to watch all the same.
John Hunter, the greatest surgeon of the 18th century, also believed that those whose blood was liquid were still alive, yet he had no problem slicing their hearts out?or even, in the interests of science, tasting them. (Wishing to explore human sexual function, he acquired the corpse of a man who died in the moment before ejaculation. When held in the mouth, Hunter reported, the dead man's semen had a slightly spicy taste.) An appetite for knowledge has never been a guarantee of compassion or of respect for the wishes of the dead.
In the years since Hunter, though, these concerns have genuinely advanced. We're better at saying where life ends and better at honoring the physical remains and the last wishes of our fellows?which is not to say there isn't still room for improvement. For many decades, we accepted that people died when their heart stopped beating, that is, when it stopped circulating blood. Why did we hold onto that notion, even long after we understood that electrical activity was the fundamental substrate for our lives? Once more, the limitation was partly technical?a heartbeat is relatively easy to detect?and partly not. The idea that blood was the stuff of life lingered on, aided by the dual meaning of ?heart? it helped bequeath to our language and our thoughts. Did the body Christison saw being opened still have a beating heart? Was it, in any real way, alive? It certainly was in Cristison?s eyes, but whether it would have been in ours is harder to say.
Once we became confident about the primacy of electrical activity in the brain as the sign of life, we were able to be more positive. The need for donated organs pushed changes in our definition of death, especially because an organ-transplant recipient?s prospects for survival are much better when the organ is taken from a donor with a beating heart. In 1968, the wonderfully named Ad Hoc Committee of Harvard Medical School argued that death should no longer be regarded as occurring when the heart stopped, but when electrical activity ceased in the brain. Once that was gone, so was the person.
If you're the kid who got pulled up on stage by Carrie Underwood for your first-ever kiss, and you have the guts to request that it be "lip-to-lip," well, the next day of school is going to be interesting.
"It was crazy," Chase Kurnick, the12-year-old recipient of that now-famous first kiss, said of the frenzy that surrounded him as he tried to get to class. "It took me like five minutes to get to one class down the hallway. They were just fist-bumping me, high-fiving me -- everyone's like?'I'm so jealous.'"
Kurnick joined TODAY's Willie Geist and Savannah Guthrie Friday to talk about his once-in-a-lifetime encounter, which began when he attended Underwood's Saturday night show in Louisville, Ky. and held up a sign asking her to be his first kiss. (He also brought the sign to TODAY.) Underwood agreed, and ushered him onstage. Kurnick's parents, sitting in seats nearby at the show (and standing to the side during Chase's interview), were stunned.?
"My thought was, 'Well, of course (it's happening),'" said dad John. "Chase was determined, but we were shocked that it actually happened."
And he wasn't going to put up with a friendly little smooch: "I wasn't just going to go up there and get just a little kiss on the cheek. If I'm going to get it, I'm gonna get it right," he said.
For those wondering, yes, Chase (who wore a T-shirt with the hashtag #liptolip on it) has brushed his teeth -- but not washed his lips. And he has his sights set on another star, if she's willing to pucker up:
This is not a plug for Apple, as if Apple needs it. ?I will openly admit to being madly in love with my iPad, however. ?I use the thing for everything. ?It entertains my children at restaurants when we find ourselves waiting for a long time to be served. ?It helps me keep my hectic schedule straight. ?It lets me blog from virtually anywhere. ?It leaves me with no excuse not to capture videos of life?s moments because I am way to busy to figure out how my real camcorder works. ?It totally caters to my reading addiction. ?Flipping through my app screen the other day, I wondered if any apps I use that would resonate with other adoptees. ?What are the adoptee-related stories behind why I?ve downloaded some of the apps I have that might make other adoptees chuckle?
App Name: Heredis? ? ? Price: ?FREE
I just downloaded ?Heredis? by BSD Concept and am getting the hang of it. ?This app allows you to enter in?genealogical?information on-the-go and displays your input in a really pretty family tree. ?Even almost three years after reunion, I have a hard time keeping my aunts, uncles, and cousins all straight (9 biological aunts/uncles and I have about 30 first cousins!). ?I wish I would have found something like this sooner so that I could use it to take down information when visiting with biological relatives to make all my family info easier to remember.
App Name: Poetry? ? ?Price: ?FREE
The Poetry app by The Poetry Foundation is one of my all-time favorite apps ever. ?It cleverly allows you to match categories and themes found in poems and pulls up a lists of suggested poetry to read based on the themes you select. ?Or, you can just hit ?spin? and it will match themes for you and randomly select a poem for you to read. ?I use it to find calming things to read to patients who are unresponsive but can still hear. ?I use it when I?m stressed. ?I especially love that there?s a ?family? category. ?I was thrilled to find an amazing poem on adoption reunions from the perspective of an adoptee (get the app, see if you can find it!).
App Name: ?Plaxo? ? ?Price: ?FREE
I feel terribly but I will admit to losing all of my contacts (in other words, Christmas card list) not once, not twice, but at least three times because of computer issues in the past. ?Which means I have had to ask family members to give me their addresses over and over again. ?Embarrassing. ?I like that I can enter names and addresses on my iPad or computer through my account at Plaxo?s website?sort of like Dropbox?and they sync so that everything is backed up and accessible no matter where I am.
App Name: ?Evernote? ? ?Price: ?FREE
On Evernote, you can take notes, audio recordings, clippings from the web, and pictures and keep them all on one ?note.? ?I love to use this app to collect oral histories. ?You can organize your ?notes? by topic (by tagging) and Evernote pins on a map each geographical location each note was made in. ?I used this app to capture the oral history of an original mother for a project and it worked perfectly. ?I am planning on interviewing various family members about our family history using Evernote and will pass down each multimedia project to future generations.
App Name: ?Ancestry? ? ?Price: ?FREE
If you are unlike me and do a good job at keeping up with your family tree, Ancestry made an app for you to update your ancestry tree and work on your tree away from home with this mobile app. ?I downloaded in the spirit of good intentions. ?I will get back to it?.someday.
App Name: ?Living Earth HD?? ? Price: $1.99
This app lets you view a stunning representation of planet Earth, including city lights from the sky at night. ?I love it because I can use it to tell the time and weather wherever my loved ones are. ?I can also follow developing storms. ?It even has a nifty alarm clock.
And of course, do not forget iTunes so that you can listen to LGA Podcasts. ?Did you know that you can add LGA on your app home screen so that it is only one click away? ?Just visit www.landofgazillionadoptees.com in your Internet browser on your device, click at the top of your browser, select ?add to home screen? from the drop-down list. ?LGA will show up in a little icon right there on your home screen with all of your apps for you to click on at your convenience.
AgriLife Research to participate in $3.3 million wheat disease studyPublic release date: 27-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Dr. Charlie Rush crush@ag.tamu.edu 806-354-5804 Texas A&M AgriLife Communications
AMARILLO Texas A&M AgriLife Research in Amarillo will participate in a $3.3 million grant to look at wheat diseases caused by mite-vectored viruses, according to Dr. Charlie Rush, plant pathologist.
The project, "A Predictive Model to Increase Adoption of IPM of a Mite-Virus Disease Complex in Wheat," is a Coordinated Agricultural Project, or CAP, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
Rush and two others in his plant pathology unit Dr. Fekede Workneh and Jacob Price will be part of a 22-member team from Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, Montana and North Dakota universities and the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service.
According to the study outline, the Great Plains region of the U.S. from Montana south to Texas produces more than 1 billion bushels of wheat annually or 50 percent of U.S. wheat production. In the southern half of the region, the use of wheat to supplement forage for livestock adds significantly to the importance of the crop and the economic vitality of the region. And stakeholders have identified wheat viruses as a major priority that constrains wheat production.
Wheat streak mosaic virus will be the primary focus, Rush said, along with Triticum mosaic virus and High Plains virus. All three viruses are vectored by the wheat curl mite and cause similar disease symptoms on infected wheat plants. The mite can't fly but is carried by the wind from plant to plant, and there is no chemical control at this time.
"To control the diseases caused by these viruses, we really have to learn to control the mite," he said.
Dr. Gary Hines, a University of Nebraska entomologist, is the program director. Rush said he and Hines have been talking for years about this project and have finally pulled everything together.
The scientists plan to determine the impact of environmental conditions, alternate hosts and management tactics on mite populations and disease incidence, as well as the risk in geographically and environmentally diverse production regions across the Great Plains.
They will identify the primary interactions that occur in this wheat-mite-virus complex across the region and increase producer implementation of integrated management principles for managing the complex across the Great Plains, Rush said.
"We plan to develop an accurate forecasting model that will improve growers' ability to anticipate and take action," Rush said. "We plan to deploy that model through Extension and educational curricula."
Wheat streak commonly starts at the edge of a field and then the mite, which is carrying the virus, will move on the wind across the field, he said. When the mite begins feeding on a plant, the virus is transmitted and the plant becomes infected. Once the plant is infected, it takes about a week or two, depending on temperature, for the disease symptoms to appear.
One of the things the AgriLife Research scientists will study is the disease threshold for management purposes.
"We know in March and April that you can tell if wheat streak is in the field and how widespread it might be," Rush said. "At that time, we can determine if the producer needs to discontinue fertilizing and watering, which he might be applying extra of, if he thinks the field is yellow due to reasons other than wheat streak."
If it is yellow due to wheat streak, he said, it will not get better no matter how much water and fertilizer are added, so the producer is just wasting money on those inputs.
"Once wheat streak gets going in a field, there's really nothing a producer can do," Rush said. "We want to look at management practices that might keep it from getting that bad. We know planting date is a key factor. Planting late breaks the cycle, but in this region, dual-purpose wheat is the norm and leaves fields open to early infestation by the wheat curl mite."
Rush said this study will allow them to look at the problem from a Great Plains' perspective, instead of the state view previously used.
"We want to first understand the common areas, and once we understand the primary factors, we can develop a disease risk assessment model," he said.
This grant will take advantage of existing facilities and personnel, such as those associated with the Great Plains Diagnostic Network, which is already set up in all these states, Rush said. That group already coordinates diagnostics of diseases and trains first detectors.
"Being able to access those scientists' expertise made it simple to pull together a strong team to work on this issue," he said.
The team will replicate the same work from Texas to Montana, Rush said, planting and monitoring a common susceptible control wheat variety; varieties such as Ron L, Mace and TAM 112, each of which offers a different type of resistance; and local cultivars from each state.
"We will record weather data, cultural practices and even hail storms," Rush said. "Hail plays an important role on volunteer and wheat streak the following year. In our area and in Oklahoma, we will focus to a high degree on native pasture and Conservation Reserve Program grasses, because we think those are important to the vector and disease carryover."
Scientists will do individual studies and then group studies so the entire project will provide a tremendous amount of information over the five years of the grant, Rush said.
Helping guide the study will be a program advisory board made up of growers, industry and commodity representatives from each state who will help identify the areas that impact them the most.
"With their help, we will be able to identify the most important aspects of wheat diseases caused by mite-vectored viruses and get something that is useful and valuable to the producers," Rush said.
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AgriLife Research to participate in $3.3 million wheat disease studyPublic release date: 27-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Dr. Charlie Rush crush@ag.tamu.edu 806-354-5804 Texas A&M AgriLife Communications
AMARILLO Texas A&M AgriLife Research in Amarillo will participate in a $3.3 million grant to look at wheat diseases caused by mite-vectored viruses, according to Dr. Charlie Rush, plant pathologist.
The project, "A Predictive Model to Increase Adoption of IPM of a Mite-Virus Disease Complex in Wheat," is a Coordinated Agricultural Project, or CAP, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
Rush and two others in his plant pathology unit Dr. Fekede Workneh and Jacob Price will be part of a 22-member team from Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, Montana and North Dakota universities and the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service.
According to the study outline, the Great Plains region of the U.S. from Montana south to Texas produces more than 1 billion bushels of wheat annually or 50 percent of U.S. wheat production. In the southern half of the region, the use of wheat to supplement forage for livestock adds significantly to the importance of the crop and the economic vitality of the region. And stakeholders have identified wheat viruses as a major priority that constrains wheat production.
Wheat streak mosaic virus will be the primary focus, Rush said, along with Triticum mosaic virus and High Plains virus. All three viruses are vectored by the wheat curl mite and cause similar disease symptoms on infected wheat plants. The mite can't fly but is carried by the wind from plant to plant, and there is no chemical control at this time.
"To control the diseases caused by these viruses, we really have to learn to control the mite," he said.
Dr. Gary Hines, a University of Nebraska entomologist, is the program director. Rush said he and Hines have been talking for years about this project and have finally pulled everything together.
The scientists plan to determine the impact of environmental conditions, alternate hosts and management tactics on mite populations and disease incidence, as well as the risk in geographically and environmentally diverse production regions across the Great Plains.
They will identify the primary interactions that occur in this wheat-mite-virus complex across the region and increase producer implementation of integrated management principles for managing the complex across the Great Plains, Rush said.
"We plan to develop an accurate forecasting model that will improve growers' ability to anticipate and take action," Rush said. "We plan to deploy that model through Extension and educational curricula."
Wheat streak commonly starts at the edge of a field and then the mite, which is carrying the virus, will move on the wind across the field, he said. When the mite begins feeding on a plant, the virus is transmitted and the plant becomes infected. Once the plant is infected, it takes about a week or two, depending on temperature, for the disease symptoms to appear.
One of the things the AgriLife Research scientists will study is the disease threshold for management purposes.
"We know in March and April that you can tell if wheat streak is in the field and how widespread it might be," Rush said. "At that time, we can determine if the producer needs to discontinue fertilizing and watering, which he might be applying extra of, if he thinks the field is yellow due to reasons other than wheat streak."
If it is yellow due to wheat streak, he said, it will not get better no matter how much water and fertilizer are added, so the producer is just wasting money on those inputs.
"Once wheat streak gets going in a field, there's really nothing a producer can do," Rush said. "We want to look at management practices that might keep it from getting that bad. We know planting date is a key factor. Planting late breaks the cycle, but in this region, dual-purpose wheat is the norm and leaves fields open to early infestation by the wheat curl mite."
Rush said this study will allow them to look at the problem from a Great Plains' perspective, instead of the state view previously used.
"We want to first understand the common areas, and once we understand the primary factors, we can develop a disease risk assessment model," he said.
This grant will take advantage of existing facilities and personnel, such as those associated with the Great Plains Diagnostic Network, which is already set up in all these states, Rush said. That group already coordinates diagnostics of diseases and trains first detectors.
"Being able to access those scientists' expertise made it simple to pull together a strong team to work on this issue," he said.
The team will replicate the same work from Texas to Montana, Rush said, planting and monitoring a common susceptible control wheat variety; varieties such as Ron L, Mace and TAM 112, each of which offers a different type of resistance; and local cultivars from each state.
"We will record weather data, cultural practices and even hail storms," Rush said. "Hail plays an important role on volunteer and wheat streak the following year. In our area and in Oklahoma, we will focus to a high degree on native pasture and Conservation Reserve Program grasses, because we think those are important to the vector and disease carryover."
Scientists will do individual studies and then group studies so the entire project will provide a tremendous amount of information over the five years of the grant, Rush said.
Helping guide the study will be a program advisory board made up of growers, industry and commodity representatives from each state who will help identify the areas that impact them the most.
"With their help, we will be able to identify the most important aspects of wheat diseases caused by mite-vectored viruses and get something that is useful and valuable to the producers," Rush said.
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PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) ? North Korea's parliament passed a law Tuesday to add one more year to compulsory education in the socialist nation in the first publicly-announced policy change under leader Kim Jong Un.
Deputies to the Supreme People's Assembly convened in the capital for the second time in six months ? a notable departure from the once-a-year sessions during late leader Kim Jong Il's rule.
The session is being watched closely for policy changes under new young leader Kim Jong Un, who took over as leader after his father's death in December.
According to the official Korean Central News Agency, the parliament voted to extend state-sponsored schooling from 11 to 12 years. Kim was among those attending the session, KCNA said.
North Korea's constitution guarantees free education for its schoolchildren. However, the dispatch did not say how much adding another year to schooling would cost the government.
There were no other immediate details about further policy changes if any during the session at the austere Mansudae Assembly Hall in the capital Pyongyang.
The Supreme People's Assembly has 687 elected deputies from across the country who meet to discuss and pass laws and policies, as well as elect or recall figures serving in leadership posts of top state organizations, according to Kim Song Chun, an official from the parliament's Presidium.
At the last session in April, Kim Jong Un was made first chairman of the powerful National Defense Commission, the body's top post.
The Presidium did not release an agenda for the one-day session, and foreign reporters were denied access to the session.
Holding a second parliamentary session within six months of the April gathering could mark a return to regular governance, said John Delury of Yonsei University in South Korea.
He noted that North Korea's founding leader Kim Il Sung often held two sessions a year, but his son, Kim Jong Il, held no sessions during his first three years in power, a time when Kim was observing the traditional three-year period of mourning for a parent.
"This was part of a general trend under Kim Jong Il of holding less frequent and less regular meetings of key party and government organs," Delury said. "So the striking thing is that Kim Jong Un seems to be reversing that trend by regularizing and re-institutionalizing governance."
Delegates to the current legislature were elected in March 2009.
According to North Korean law, the legislators have to win approval of a committee ? made up of more than 100 voters ? to stand in the elections. The law allows for a contest between multiple candidates, but in the last polls all the deputies ? from the ruling Workers' Party ? were elected unopposed from every constituency.
North Korea claims to allow other political parties but politics is overwhelmingly dominated by the Workers' Party, founded by Kim Il Sung.
Before closing the session, the parliament also made legislative personnel changes, filling two vacancies on the Presidium and replacing the chairman of the Budget Committee with senior Workers' Party official Kwak Pom Gi.
__
Associated Press writer Hyung-jin Kim contributed to this report from Seoul, South Korea. Follow Jean Lee, AP's Korea bureau chief, at twitter.com/newsjean.
CHICAGO (CBS) ? An off-duty Cook County prosecutor has been placed on administrative duty after allegedly biting a man on the leg during a scuffle outside a lingerie shop in the Lakeview neighborhood over the weekend.
CBS 2?s Suzanne Le Mignot reports her arrest was apparently caught on video and posted on YouTube.
Tuesday night, the Cook County State?s Attorney?s office confirmed 31-year-old Sarah Naughton has been charged with misdemeanor battery and trespassing in the incident. She has been placed on administrative duty, and won?t be allowed to litigate cases while the case is pending.
A YouTube video purportedly showing Naughton?s arrest shows a woman directing several derogatory words toward a female police officer trying to keep the woman still, while she?s in handcuffs.
LISTEN: WBBM Newsradio?s Mike Krauser Reports
Police said, before she was arrested, Naughton and a man went inside the Taboo Tabou lingerie shop at 854 W. Belmont Av. Witnesses told police both appeared to be intoxicated and were causing a disturbance.
Naughton allegedly bit the manager of the cigar shop next door on his leg, breaking his skin.
The woman, who appears to be Naughton, continues her guttural cries for several minutes on the YouTube video. Through sometimes slurred speech, she says she can?t feel her hands, while in handcuffs.
?I cannot feel my hands! I cannot feel my hands,? she says in the video. Then she tells police she has asthma and can?t breathe, and she asks for an inhaler.
Published reports said Naughton allegedly pulled out a badge while inside Taboo Tabou, allegedly telling store employees, ?You can?t do this to me. Do you know who I am??
Naughton has been released on a recognizance bond.
Toyota's just-arrived RAV4 EV will soon get a much smaller cousin -- albeit a very elusive one. An electric version of the iQ city car will arrive in Japan (as the eQ) and the US (as the iQ EV) this December, but the automaker is significantly scaling back its 2010 promises of several thousand cars sold per year to just 100 fleet-oriented vehicles. The charging times, costs and range of EVs "do not meet society's needs," vice chairman Takeshi Uchiyamada says to explain the smaller ambitions. It's easy to understand the cautious approach after seeing the car's final details. While they're not out of line with the specs of other EVs, the eQ's 3-hour fast charge, 62-mile range and ¥3.6 million ($46,130) price wouldn't have regular customers flocking to dealerships. Most of Toyota's energy is instead being funneled into its tried-and-true hybrids, with 21 due on the market by 2015, as well as plans to deliver the company's first hydrogen fuel cell car by the same year. Eco-conscious drivers may be disappointed that Toyota isn't moving as aggressively into a pure electric realm as some of its rivals, but we'd rather see smartly planned baby steps than an overly risky plunge.
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Have A Great Day!!!
Los Angeles, California (PRWEB) June 27, 2012
Lifestyle Intervention creator and personal transformation, behavioral health expert, Michael Cartwright proudly announced today that the second annual Lifestyle Intervention Conference has named Bree Boyce as the host of the highly anticipated 2012 wellness event at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.
Michael Cartwright has assembled the best team of authorities in the world to lead the charge against Americas obsession with overconsumption and Bree Boyces addition to the lineup already has the industry abuzz.
Bree Boyce has taken the nation by storm since receiving the title of Miss South Carolina 2011; however, Bree is not your typical titleholder. Most beauty queens would not advertise that they once weighed 234 pounds and were struggling to breathe. At 17, she had reached her highest weight, 234 pounds, and started having health challenges. Her doctor warned her that her knees and joints couldn?t handle the excessive weight and she was placed on an inhaler to make it through the day. She was told that more serious problems were unavoidable if she didn?t slim down. After being on the diet roller coaster most of her teenage years, she was finally able to make a crucial shift in her mindset that allowed Bree to make a lifestyle change that she could commit to. The old fashioned formula of hard work, discipline and full commitment to a new lifestyle was Brees strategy for extraordinary success.
Bree has established herself as a premiere advocate on health and fitness, and childhood obesity, which is one of the most relevant health topics in our nations history and at the core of the Lifestyle Intervention Conference, which is why her involvement as host for this years event is in perfect alignment with Michael Cartwrights vision of healthy lifestyle choices for the planet. Bree knows the challenges of obesity on all levels and most importantly, what it takes to escape the deadly cycle.
Conference Co-Host and founder Michael Cartwright said, Bree Boyce embodies the very essence of the Lifestyle Intervention Conference and the vision our team has for creating the healthiest America possible. We are both humbled and thrilled to have Ms. Boyce as the host of our event, her story of hope and transformation is truly amazing; however, it is her commitment to inspiring change in kids and adults, that makes her involvement such a gift. Mr. Cartwright added, We are launching an attack on process addictions and overconsumption across the country and any team with Bree Boyce is a winning team.
The 2012 Lifestyle Intervention Conference unfolds at Las Vegas Bellagio from October 1st3rd and will offer extensive continuing education courses for Dietitians, Social Workers, Trainers, Psychologists and more. For more information visit http://www.lifestyleintervention.org or call 888.231.0911.
About The Lifestyle Intervention Conference
Michael Cartwright and Brad Lamm joined forces in 2011 to develop a new frontier for health, wellness and awareness. In less than a year, the Lifestyle Intervention Conference has become the premier event for the worlds top health, wellness and addiction leaders. For 2012, Mr. Cartwright and experts from his various, industry-leading facilities such as FitRx and The Greenhouse have once again assembled the best minds in the world and the Lifestyle Intervention Conference is poised to shift consciousness to yet another level. Created with the intention of building a network of resources within the community of providers who serve those struggling with obesity, food addiction and now including a focus on process addictions, The Lifestyle Intervention Conference continues to be the most critical, industry-changing event to impact the health, fitness and wellness communities in decades.
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I think affirmative action has never been needed in the first place. It's just another form of discrimination, period. If you want to raise up classes of people who have previously been discriminated against, enact progressive tax rates, make education cheaper for everyone, and support schools in low-income neighborhoods. That way you support all disadvantaged people without any favoritism towards any particular, formerly-disadvantaged group. The remedy for discrimination you don't like isn't discrimination you do like; it's to end discrimination altogether. In my view, that includes ending affirmative action.tsarstepan wrote:
NON-USers? Do you have or did your country ever have an equal governmental or institutional policy?
Germany does not have affirmative action. (Not yet, anyway. They're talking about quota for women on the boards of large German corporations.) Germany does have free college education for everyone who qualifies on their strength as a student. And all K-12 schools are paid out of the same piggy-bank within the state budget. This short-cuts the vicious cycle where poor neighborhoods have bad schools, graduates from bad schools have trouble getting into good colleges, non-poor people move to the richest neighborhood they can afford so their children get a good education, and housing segregation begets educational segregation and vice versa. In my view, the results argue for the German way and against the American way.
CLEWISTON ? Succeeding at golf isn?t child?s play, but at the Tribalwide Junior Golf Tournament, children enthusiastically came out to putt. Although their levels of experience varied, their youthful exuberance enabled them to have a fun day on the links.
Youth from ages 6-18 enjoyed some friendly competition at the Clewiston Golf Course on Aug. 25. Depending on their ages, the 36 golfers played either six- or nine-hole games on the 18-hole championship course.
?Golf is a great game you can play for your entire lives, even when you are old like me,? Amos Mazzant, Ahfachkee?s head golf coach, told the competitors before the tournament began. ?I?m glad to see so many of you out here to play.?
Playing golf requires more than hitting a ball straight down the fairway and sinking putts. It teaches life lessons, including commitment to practice, patience and focus.
?It?s a tough game; it?s an adult game,? said Nashoba Gonzalez, 13, of Big Cypress. ?Staying focused is a challenge; it?s a very complicated game. I?ve been practicing all summer, so I?m ready to win.?
This was the first Tribal youth tournament, but Tribalwide Recreation director Richard Blankenship plans to hold one every few months.
?The turnout was much greater than we expected,? Blankenship said. ?It was an excellent event ? outstanding. I give a lot of credit to the golf instructors.?
Those instructors were Mazzant, in Big Cypress; Jason Tommie, in Brighton; and Elliot Young, in Hollywood.
?I like working with the kids,? Young said. ?I?m shocked at how many were here. This is just the beginning for them.?
Before teeing off, the young golfers practiced putting on the green by the clubhouse. Veteran student golfer Quenton Cypress, 17, gave some pointers to the other kids.
?I like playing golf; it?s peaceful and quiet,? said Cypress, of Big Cypress, who has played on the Ahfachkee team for two years. ?But it?s very challenging at the same time.?
Kids teed off in groups of two, three and four and walked the course. Parents and other adults followed closely in golf carts and shared tips with the young golfers at every turn. Josh Jumper, Recreation site manager in Big Cypress, led a foursome, whom he coached along the way.
?I like golf,? said Morgan King, 12, of Brighton. ?You get to play with your family and friends. It?s a lot of fun.?
Mazzant made his way around the fairways, watching his students as they played and offering advice as needed. Many of them had never been on a golf course, let alone played in a tournament.
?I teach them in a cow pasture next to the Junior Cypress Arena,? Mazzant said. ?We recently had to move because they needed the pasture for some horses. We have an artificial green in a chickee to practice putting.?
Participants all had a great experience and may have improved their games a bit for the next time.
?We?re just here to have fun,? said Ashley Gonzalez, 16, of Big Cypress. ?Let?s rock ?n? roll and hit some balls.?
So I just found out that Lazard is incorporated in Bermuda to avoid paying massive income taxes from income earned outside the United States. Becoming a Bermuda company is a paper transaction, as easy as securing a mail drop there and paying some fees, while keeping the working headquarters back in the United States to maintain American government security, and access to the legal system and courts. It's f*cking genius.
Many insurance companies are based there, but I was wondering why more companies don't do this to save billions for their stakeholders. I guess that patriotism is one factor they must consider. JPM paid almost $8 billion in taxes last year, but wouldn't it be more patriotic to reinvest that money in operations, dividends, and other investments? I guess it would look bad if Bank of America were incorporated in Bermuda, but doesn't making money trump everything else? I guess it pays for Lazard to be completely out of the public eye and clear of the media, while remaining one of the world's top investment banks.
Would you guys care America's largest corporations used tax havens to maximize their profit, or should congress pass a law to prohibit this and tax the hell out of corporations that pay us our salaries?
"A man generally has two reasons for doing anything. One that sounds good, and the real one." - J.P. Morgan
ScienceDaily (Sep. 24, 2012) ? Eat fish, but avoid fish with the most pollutants. This is the conclusion drawn by a group of researchers at Ume? University in Sweden after having weighed the risks of mercury content against the advantages of healthful fatty acids.
The work was done as part of an international collaborative effort.
Fish is healthful food, and several studies have shown that people who eat fish have a lower risk of cardiovascular diseases than those who eat very little or no fish. At the same time, some fish contain environmental pollutants that can be hazardous to our health. One such pollutant that is suspected of increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease is methyl mercury, which is found in varying degree in different kinds of fish. If people eat fish with much pollutants, this would lead to increased risk of disease, but at the same time if people are overly cautious and eat too little fish, the risk of disease also increases.
In order to attain a better understanding of what the golden mean might be, researchers at Ume? University, in collaboration with researchers from Finland and elsewhere, examined how the risk of heart attack (acute myocardial infarction) is contingent on the amount of omega-3 fats and mercury from fish that people have in their body. The content was measured in blood and hair samples from people that had previously participated in health studies in northern Sweden and eastern Finland. The Swedish blood samples were from the Medical Biobank in Ume?. Those who experienced a heart attack after the health check-up were compared with those who did not.
The findings are now being published in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN). It turned out that mercury was linked to increased risk, and omega-3 fatty acids to decreased risk, of having a heart attack. The increased risk from mercury was noticeable only at high levels of this environmental pollutant in the body and if the level of the protective omega-3 fatty acids was concomitantly low. In other words, what is important is the balance between healthful and hazardous substances in fish. The environmental pollutant in this study was mercury. For organic pollutants like PCB and dioxin, the problem complex is similar, but no study of this kind has yet been undertaken.
The conclusion is simple: Eat fish, but avoid fish with the most pollutants. The Swedish National Food Agency recommends that people should eat fish 2-3 times a week, but their intake of predatory fish (e.g. pike, perch, pike-perch), which contain a great deal of mercury, should be limited (see link below). This study supports that recommendation. According to a recent study from the National Food Agency, 7 of 10 Swedes eat too little fish.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Ume? universitet.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
M. Wennberg, U. Stromberg, I. A. Bergdahl, J.-H. Jansson, J. Kauhanen, M. Norberg, J. T. Salonen, S. Skerfving, T.-P. Tuomainen, B. Vessby, J. K. Virtanen. Myocardial infarction in relation to mercury and fatty acids from fish: a risk-benefit analysis based on pooled Finnish and Swedish data in men. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2012; 96 (4): 706 DOI: 10.3945/ajcn.111.033795
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.
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