Monday, December 31, 2007
Mother and daughter give birth four days apart
London, Decemeber 31 : A mother and daughter have given birth to two beautiful babies - just four days apart.
Amanda Nesling, 41, delivered a 2lb baby boy Curtis Leeroy William White seven weeks early.
And days later, Nesling's 18-year-old daughter Natasha gave birth to Brooke-Ellie.
"We were both surprised at one another's pregnancy and that they would be so close together," the Mirror quoted Natasha, as saying.
Nesling's son, who was due in January, is in a special care baby unit until February.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Five High-Paying Careers in Two Years or Less
Feel like the absence of a bachelor's degree on your resume is forcing you to settle for a second-rate job? With today's myriad opportunities to earn certificates and associate degrees, you can change your career, your salary, and your life in just a short amount of time.
Check out these five high-paying careers -- no bachelor's degree required!
1. Dental Hygienist
Employment of dental hygienists is projected to grow much faster than average for all occupations through 2014, ranking among the Bureau of Labor Statistics' list of fastest-growing occupations.
To practice in a dental office, hygienists must earn an associate degree or certificate from a school accredited by the American Dental Association Commission of Dental Accreditation. A base of biology, chemistry, and math courses are advised, and program coursework will include clinical, laboratory, and classroom instruction.
Median annual earnings: $58,350.
2. Fashion Designer
In this creative field, an inherent artistic ability and eye for detail, color, balance, and proportion are necessary. Ingenuity is key, as are sewing, pattern-making, and sketching abilities.
Designers usually hold at least a two-year associate degree in fashion design or fine arts. They must be knowledgeable about textiles, ornamentation, fabrics, and fashion trends, and exhibit communication and presentation skills, problem-solving abilities, and the willingness to work occasional long hours and travel to trade and fashion shows.
Median annual earnings: $55,840.
3. Diagnostic Medical Sonographer
Also known as ultrasonographers, diagnostic medical sonographers can specialize in obstetrics and gynecology, abdominal or breast sonography, or neurosonography.
A strong background in math and science is recommended, as associate degree coursework will include anatomy, physics, and physiology. A good bedside manner enables the sonographer to explain complex procedures to patients and reassure those who fear the health matters the testing may reveal.
Median annual earnings: $52,490.
4. Forensic Science Technician
You've seen the TV shows -- these professionals collect and analyze physical evidence and document laboratory methods and findings. Computer skills and attention to detail are crucial as collection and processing of materials must be spot-on to safeguard evidence.
Forensic science technicians should develop a strong base in math and science as preparation for their associate degree, typically earned in applied science or science-related technology. Coursework will include laboratory work and hands-on learning. Once in the field, technicians can choose to specialize in a certain type of analysis or examination.
Median annual earnings: $44,010.
5. Paralegal
Lawyers assume ultimate responsibility for legal work, but they often delegate tasks to paralegals, also called legal assistants. Paralegals help prepare for trials, hearings, and meetings; investigate facts; identify appropriate laws and decisions; and, after analyzing and organizing information, prepare and present reports of their findings.
Most paralegals have an associate degree in paralegal studies, however, intensive certification programs are also available and can often be completed in just a few months.
Median annual earnings: $39,130.
All salaries listed are median annual earnings based on 2004 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
Saturday, December 29, 2007
World Saw Weird Weather in 2007
When the calendar turned to 2007, the heat went on and the weather just got weirder.
January was the warmest first month on record worldwide - 1.53 degrees above normal. It was the first time since record-keeping began in 1880 that the globe's average temperature has been so far above the norm for any month of the year.
Tornado in Brooklyn: A man removes items from the trunk of his damaged car April 8 after a tornado hit New York, an rare occurrence for the city.
And as 2007 drew to a close, it was also shaping up to be the hottest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere.
U.S. weather stations broke or tied 263 all-time high temperature records, according to an Associated Press analysis of U.S. weather data. England had the warmest April in 348 years of record-keeping there, shattering the record set in 1865 by more than 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit.
It wasn't just the temperature. There were other oddball weather events. A tornado struck New York City in August, inspiring the tabloid headline: "This ain't Kansas!"
In the Middle East, an equally rare cyclone spun up in June, hitting Oman and Iran. Major U.S. lakes shrank; Atlanta had to worry about its drinking water supply. South Africa got its first significant snowfall in 25 years. And on Reunion Island, 400 miles east of Africa, nearly 155 inches of rain fell in three days - a world record for the most rain in 72 hours.
Individual weather extremes can't be attributed to global warming, scientists always say. However, "it's the run of them and the different locations" that have the mark of man-made climate change, said top European climate expert Phil Jones, director of the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia in England.
Worst of all - at least according to climate scientists - the Arctic, which serves as the world's refrigerator, dramatically warmed in 2007, shattering records for the amount of melting ice.
2007 seemed to be the year that climate change shook the thermometers, and those who warned that it was beginning to happen were suddenly honored. Former Vice President Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" won an Oscar and he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international group of thousands of scientists. The climate panel, organized by the United Nations, released four major reports in 2007 saying man-made global warming was incontrovertible and an urgent threat to millions of lives.
Through the first 10 months, it was the hottest year recorded on land and the third hottest when ocean temperatures are included.
Smashing records was common, especially in August. At U.S. weather stations, more than 8,000 new heat records were set or tied for specific August dates.
More remarkably that same month, more than 100 all-time temperature records were tied or broken - regardless of the date - either for the highest reading or the warmest low temperature at night. By comparison only 14 all-time low temperatures were set or tied all year long, as of early December, according to records kept by the National Climatic Data Center.
For example, on Aug. 10, the town of Portland, Tenn., reached 102 degrees, tying a record for the hottest it ever had been. On Aug. 16, it hit 103 and Portland had a new all-time record. But that record was broken again the next day when the mercury reached 105.
Daily triple-digit temperatures took a toll on everybody, public safety director George West recalled. The state had 15 heat-related deaths in August.
Portland was far from alone. In Idaho, Chilly Barton Flat wasn't living up to its name. The weather station in central Idaho tied an all-time high of 100 on July 26, Aug. 7, 14 and 19. During 2007, weather stations in 35 states, from Washington to Florida, set or tied all-time heat records in 2007.
Across Europe this past summer, extreme heat waves killed dozens of people.
And it wasn't just the heat. It was the rain. There was either too little or too much.
More than 60 percent of the United States was either abnormally dry or suffering from drought at one point in August. In November, Atlanta's main water source, Lake Lanier, shrank to an all-time low. Lake Okeechobee, crucial to south Florida, hit its lowest level in recorded history in May, exposing muck and debris not seen for decades. Lake Superior, the biggest and deepest of the Great Lakes, dropped to its lowest August and September levels in history.
Los Angeles hit its driest year on record. Lakes fed by the Colorado River and which help supply water for more than 20 million Westerners, were only half full.
Australia, already a dry continent, suffered its worst drought in a century, making global warming an election issue. On the other extreme, record rains fell in China, England and Wales.
Minnesota got the worst of everything: a devastating June and July drought followed by record August rainfall. In one March day, Southern California got torrential downpours, hail, snow and fierce winds. Then in the fall came devastating fires driven by Santa Ana winds.
And yet none of those events worried scientists as much as what was going on in the Arctic in the summer. Sea ice melted not just to record levels, but far beyond the previous melt record. The Northwest Passage was the most navigable it had been in modern times. Russia planted a flag on the seabed under the North Pole, claiming sovereignty.
The ice sheets that cover a portion of Greenland retreated to an all-time low and permafrost in Alaska warmed to record levels.
Meteorologists have chronicled strange weather years for more than a decade, but nothing like 2007. It was such an extreme weather year that the World Meteorological Organization put out a news release chronicling all the records and unusual developments. That was in August with more than 145 sizzling days to go.
Get used to it, scientists said. As man-made climate change continues, the world will experience more extreme weather, bursts of heat, torrential rain and prolonged drought, they said.
"We're having an increasing trend of odd years," said Michael MacCracken, a former top federal climate scientist, now chief scientist at the Climate Institute in Washington. "Pretty soon odd years are going to become the norm."
January was the warmest first month on record worldwide - 1.53 degrees above normal. It was the first time since record-keeping began in 1880 that the globe's average temperature has been so far above the norm for any month of the year.
Tornado in Brooklyn: A man removes items from the trunk of his damaged car April 8 after a tornado hit New York, an rare occurrence for the city.
And as 2007 drew to a close, it was also shaping up to be the hottest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere.
U.S. weather stations broke or tied 263 all-time high temperature records, according to an Associated Press analysis of U.S. weather data. England had the warmest April in 348 years of record-keeping there, shattering the record set in 1865 by more than 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit.
It wasn't just the temperature. There were other oddball weather events. A tornado struck New York City in August, inspiring the tabloid headline: "This ain't Kansas!"
In the Middle East, an equally rare cyclone spun up in June, hitting Oman and Iran. Major U.S. lakes shrank; Atlanta had to worry about its drinking water supply. South Africa got its first significant snowfall in 25 years. And on Reunion Island, 400 miles east of Africa, nearly 155 inches of rain fell in three days - a world record for the most rain in 72 hours.
Individual weather extremes can't be attributed to global warming, scientists always say. However, "it's the run of them and the different locations" that have the mark of man-made climate change, said top European climate expert Phil Jones, director of the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia in England.
Worst of all - at least according to climate scientists - the Arctic, which serves as the world's refrigerator, dramatically warmed in 2007, shattering records for the amount of melting ice.
2007 seemed to be the year that climate change shook the thermometers, and those who warned that it was beginning to happen were suddenly honored. Former Vice President Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" won an Oscar and he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international group of thousands of scientists. The climate panel, organized by the United Nations, released four major reports in 2007 saying man-made global warming was incontrovertible and an urgent threat to millions of lives.
Through the first 10 months, it was the hottest year recorded on land and the third hottest when ocean temperatures are included.
Smashing records was common, especially in August. At U.S. weather stations, more than 8,000 new heat records were set or tied for specific August dates.
More remarkably that same month, more than 100 all-time temperature records were tied or broken - regardless of the date - either for the highest reading or the warmest low temperature at night. By comparison only 14 all-time low temperatures were set or tied all year long, as of early December, according to records kept by the National Climatic Data Center.
For example, on Aug. 10, the town of Portland, Tenn., reached 102 degrees, tying a record for the hottest it ever had been. On Aug. 16, it hit 103 and Portland had a new all-time record. But that record was broken again the next day when the mercury reached 105.
Daily triple-digit temperatures took a toll on everybody, public safety director George West recalled. The state had 15 heat-related deaths in August.
Portland was far from alone. In Idaho, Chilly Barton Flat wasn't living up to its name. The weather station in central Idaho tied an all-time high of 100 on July 26, Aug. 7, 14 and 19. During 2007, weather stations in 35 states, from Washington to Florida, set or tied all-time heat records in 2007.
Across Europe this past summer, extreme heat waves killed dozens of people.
And it wasn't just the heat. It was the rain. There was either too little or too much.
More than 60 percent of the United States was either abnormally dry or suffering from drought at one point in August. In November, Atlanta's main water source, Lake Lanier, shrank to an all-time low. Lake Okeechobee, crucial to south Florida, hit its lowest level in recorded history in May, exposing muck and debris not seen for decades. Lake Superior, the biggest and deepest of the Great Lakes, dropped to its lowest August and September levels in history.
Los Angeles hit its driest year on record. Lakes fed by the Colorado River and which help supply water for more than 20 million Westerners, were only half full.
Australia, already a dry continent, suffered its worst drought in a century, making global warming an election issue. On the other extreme, record rains fell in China, England and Wales.
Minnesota got the worst of everything: a devastating June and July drought followed by record August rainfall. In one March day, Southern California got torrential downpours, hail, snow and fierce winds. Then in the fall came devastating fires driven by Santa Ana winds.
And yet none of those events worried scientists as much as what was going on in the Arctic in the summer. Sea ice melted not just to record levels, but far beyond the previous melt record. The Northwest Passage was the most navigable it had been in modern times. Russia planted a flag on the seabed under the North Pole, claiming sovereignty.
The ice sheets that cover a portion of Greenland retreated to an all-time low and permafrost in Alaska warmed to record levels.
Meteorologists have chronicled strange weather years for more than a decade, but nothing like 2007. It was such an extreme weather year that the World Meteorological Organization put out a news release chronicling all the records and unusual developments. That was in August with more than 145 sizzling days to go.
Get used to it, scientists said. As man-made climate change continues, the world will experience more extreme weather, bursts of heat, torrential rain and prolonged drought, they said.
"We're having an increasing trend of odd years," said Michael MacCracken, a former top federal climate scientist, now chief scientist at the Climate Institute in Washington. "Pretty soon odd years are going to become the norm."
Last Minute Low-Cost New Year's Bash
Should you get that sudden urge to throw a swanky 11th-hour New Year’s gathering, not to worry. You and your guests can rock the night away and glide right into 2008 with these easy breezy tips.
Tune Up the Takeout Forget about slaving in the kitchen. Simply order up an array of nibblies (pizzas, pastas and salads) from your favorite Italian restaurant. Italian is always a crowd-pleaser and tends to be easy on the wallet. If you have the time, put out a buffet of gourmet toppings (grated cheese, sliced olives, etc.), so guests can enhance and customize their selections.
Go Crazy with Cocktails Create a signature drink and give it a fun name like "New Year's Nirvana." Try mixing champagne, ginger ale, and mango juice; serving mixed juice and wine drinks is more cost effective than straight champagne or wine. Be sure to offer yummy non-alcoholic drinks such as mango spritzers for designated drivers and others.
Set the Scene with Silver Deck your home in silver accents. Drag out silver platters, pitchers, and trays to hold food, candles, and other goodies. Hit your local home or drugstore to load up on holiday items-- silver ball ornaments, tinsel, and so on--at heavily discounted after-Christmas sales.
Prepare Party Props Hop on over to the local party store for silver balloons, horn blowers, and confetti to ring in the new year with a smile. Stock up on paper plates, napkins, and utensils in silver, as well.
Make a Mood Light candles all around your home to create a magical midnight mood. Stick with white votives--more affordable than pricey pillar candles, and less messy than drippy tapers. Best to place them out of reach so your guests don't accidentally knock anything over as they get their grooves on!
Load Your Pods No need for a pricey DJ when you live in the age of the MP3 player. Create a fresh mix of tunes to carry you through the night. Get the party started with upbeat cocktail music from the likes of Madeleine Peyroux, Diana Krall, and Harry Connick Jr. Then crank it up with a fresh mix of danceable tracks from Fatboy Slim, Bloc Party, Gwen Stefani, and Ja Rule. Finally, add some mellow mood music for those late-night stragglers: Travis, Thievery Corporation, Aimee Mann, Chris Isaak and Mazzy Star.
Send Kisses and Wishes Send guests off with a bag of treats for an ultra-sweet new year. Fill small silver or white bags with Hershey's Kisses and enclose a tiny handwritten card containing your wish for them for the new year.
Brain shifts to positive thoughts when confronted with death
Washington, December 29 : A dying individual's mind is ruled by happiness, not fear, for a new study has found that when faced with death, the brain instinctively moves toward happier notions and images.
The findings hold on to the belief that people are emotionally stronger when faced with their own or a loved one's death than they may have ever thought possible.
The study was led by Nathan DeWall, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky and co-researcher Roy Baumeister, of Florida State University.
"It again speaks to how resilient humans are and how this tendency to cope with threats is some sort of indicator of mental health," Live Science quoted DeWall, as saying.
The scientists believe that as humans became aware of death, they also evolved what's been called the 'psychological immune system.'
DeWall said that due to this mechanism, the thoughts and attitudes get inclined towards the positive, no matter how grim the events are.
According to him, this behaviour is normally an unconscious mental shift.
For the study, more than 100 healthy young adult volunteers were made to think about death as a reality. They were also asked to imagine the process of their own death, as well as what it might be like to be dead.
Another group of young adults was asked to think about an unpleasant event, like a trip to the dentist's office, but not death. The participants were then made to undergo standard word tests that tapped into unconscious emotional states.
In one test, participants were give a word stem - 'jo-' for example and asked to complete it to form a word (i.e., 'job', 'jog', 'joy').
The scientists said that the individuals asked to think about death were more prone than the other participants to choose the word 'joy,' as against more neutral or negative words.
During another word test, the researchers offered the participants a word and asked them to pair it with one of two other words. While one of the words was similar to the target word in its meaning, the other word was more emotionally similar.
For example, 'puppy' might be paired with either 'beetle' (another many-legged animal), or 'parade' (not an animal, but fun, enjoyable, as puppies are).
Once more, people who were primed to think about death were much more likely to choose 'parade' over 'beetle' as compared to the other participants.
The researchers said that this suggested them to unconsciously prefer the positive emotion associated with that choice.
"People really don't know that they do this. It's actually very counterintuitive. This picks up on the idea that when people are confronted with their own mortality, these sorts of concepts - positive emotion words become readily accessible to them," said DeWall.
The findings hold on to the belief that people are emotionally stronger when faced with their own or a loved one's death than they may have ever thought possible.
The study was led by Nathan DeWall, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky and co-researcher Roy Baumeister, of Florida State University.
"It again speaks to how resilient humans are and how this tendency to cope with threats is some sort of indicator of mental health," Live Science quoted DeWall, as saying.
The scientists believe that as humans became aware of death, they also evolved what's been called the 'psychological immune system.'
DeWall said that due to this mechanism, the thoughts and attitudes get inclined towards the positive, no matter how grim the events are.
According to him, this behaviour is normally an unconscious mental shift.
For the study, more than 100 healthy young adult volunteers were made to think about death as a reality. They were also asked to imagine the process of their own death, as well as what it might be like to be dead.
Another group of young adults was asked to think about an unpleasant event, like a trip to the dentist's office, but not death. The participants were then made to undergo standard word tests that tapped into unconscious emotional states.
In one test, participants were give a word stem - 'jo-' for example and asked to complete it to form a word (i.e., 'job', 'jog', 'joy').
The scientists said that the individuals asked to think about death were more prone than the other participants to choose the word 'joy,' as against more neutral or negative words.
During another word test, the researchers offered the participants a word and asked them to pair it with one of two other words. While one of the words was similar to the target word in its meaning, the other word was more emotionally similar.
For example, 'puppy' might be paired with either 'beetle' (another many-legged animal), or 'parade' (not an animal, but fun, enjoyable, as puppies are).
Once more, people who were primed to think about death were much more likely to choose 'parade' over 'beetle' as compared to the other participants.
The researchers said that this suggested them to unconsciously prefer the positive emotion associated with that choice.
"People really don't know that they do this. It's actually very counterintuitive. This picks up on the idea that when people are confronted with their own mortality, these sorts of concepts - positive emotion words become readily accessible to them," said DeWall.
Farm women are at a greater risk of asthma
Washington, December 29 : Farm women, who are exposed to some commonly used pesticides in farm work are at a greater risk of developing allergic asthma, according to a new study.
Researchers at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences said that though a large number of farm women are in contact with pesticides, there's very little information about the potential risks.
"Farm women are an understudied occupational group. More than half the women in our study applied pesticides, but there is very little known about the risks," said Jane Hoppin, Sc.D., lead author of the study.
For the study, the researchers assessed pesticide and other occupational exposures as risk factors for adult-onset asthma in more than 25,000 farmwomen in North Carolina and Iowa. They used self-reports of doctor-diagnosed adult asthma, and divided the women into groups of allergic (atopic) or non-allergic (non-atopic) asthma based on a history of eczema and/or hay fever.
Results showed an average increase of 50 percent in the prevalence of allergic asthma in all farm women who applied or mixed pesticides.
Surprisingly, even though the association with pesticides was higher among women who grew up on farms, these women still had a lower overall risk of having allergic asthma compared to those who did not grow up on farms, due to a protective effect that remains poorly understood.
"Growing up on a farm is such a huge protective effect it's pretty hard to overwhelm it. But about 40 percent of women who work on farms don't report spending their childhoods there. It is likely that the association with pesticides is masked in the general population due to a higher baseline rate of asthma," Dr. Hoppin said.
She also found that most pesticides were associated only with allergic asthma, even though non-allergic asthma is generally more common in adults.
"Asthma is a very heterogeneous disease. This finding suggests that some of the agricultural risk factors for allergic and non-allergic asthma may differ," she said.
The study also showed that some legal but rarely used compounds, such as parathion, were associated with almost a three-fold increase in allergic asthma. But even some commonly used pesticides were associated with a marked increase in allergic asthma prevalence.
Of all the compounds examined, only permethrin, a commonly used insecticide that is used in consumer items such as insect-resistant clothing to anti-malaria bed-nets, was associated with both allergic and non-allergic asthma.
Researchers say that this is the first study to examine pesticides and asthma in farm women, and it points the way for future research to clarify the relationship.
"At the end of the day, you have to remember that we're looking at cross-sectional data, thus we cannot establish a temporal association between pesticide use and asthma," said Dr. Hoppin.
"There is a difference in asthma prevalence between women who did and did not use pesticides but whether it is causal or not remains to be seen," she added.
The study was published in the first issue for January of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, published by the American Thoracic Society.
Researchers at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences said that though a large number of farm women are in contact with pesticides, there's very little information about the potential risks.
"Farm women are an understudied occupational group. More than half the women in our study applied pesticides, but there is very little known about the risks," said Jane Hoppin, Sc.D., lead author of the study.
For the study, the researchers assessed pesticide and other occupational exposures as risk factors for adult-onset asthma in more than 25,000 farmwomen in North Carolina and Iowa. They used self-reports of doctor-diagnosed adult asthma, and divided the women into groups of allergic (atopic) or non-allergic (non-atopic) asthma based on a history of eczema and/or hay fever.
Results showed an average increase of 50 percent in the prevalence of allergic asthma in all farm women who applied or mixed pesticides.
Surprisingly, even though the association with pesticides was higher among women who grew up on farms, these women still had a lower overall risk of having allergic asthma compared to those who did not grow up on farms, due to a protective effect that remains poorly understood.
"Growing up on a farm is such a huge protective effect it's pretty hard to overwhelm it. But about 40 percent of women who work on farms don't report spending their childhoods there. It is likely that the association with pesticides is masked in the general population due to a higher baseline rate of asthma," Dr. Hoppin said.
She also found that most pesticides were associated only with allergic asthma, even though non-allergic asthma is generally more common in adults.
"Asthma is a very heterogeneous disease. This finding suggests that some of the agricultural risk factors for allergic and non-allergic asthma may differ," she said.
The study also showed that some legal but rarely used compounds, such as parathion, were associated with almost a three-fold increase in allergic asthma. But even some commonly used pesticides were associated with a marked increase in allergic asthma prevalence.
Of all the compounds examined, only permethrin, a commonly used insecticide that is used in consumer items such as insect-resistant clothing to anti-malaria bed-nets, was associated with both allergic and non-allergic asthma.
Researchers say that this is the first study to examine pesticides and asthma in farm women, and it points the way for future research to clarify the relationship.
"At the end of the day, you have to remember that we're looking at cross-sectional data, thus we cannot establish a temporal association between pesticide use and asthma," said Dr. Hoppin.
"There is a difference in asthma prevalence between women who did and did not use pesticides but whether it is causal or not remains to be seen," she added.
The study was published in the first issue for January of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, published by the American Thoracic Society.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Big Hollywood divorce
Los Angeles (E! Online) - Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn are entering a state of divorce.
The Hollywood twosome, who fell in love on the set of the 1990 thriller State of Grace and later married, are seeking a divorce after 11 years of marriage, according to People.
Penn's longtime publicist, Mara Buxbaum, did not provide details on the split.
The 47-year-old actor-director and the 41-year-old Wright began dating about a year after Penn ended his four-year union to Madonna in 1989.
The couple quickly hit it off and moved in together in 1991. They had two children, 16-year-old Dylan Frances and 14-year-old Hopper Jack, and finally tied the knot in 1996.
Penn raised eyebrows in April when he appeared at a Hollywood police station in the wear hours to comfort Eve following her DUI arrest. Police described Penn as simply "a friend" of the rapper-actress and he declined to comment on the visit.
The actor, who has been making headlines in recent years as an outspoken critic of the Bush administration and the Iraq War, won an Academy Award for his stirring performance as a father whose child is murdered in 2003's Mystic River. He also scored Best Actor Oscar nominations for 1995's Dead Man Walking, 1999's Sweet and Lowdown and 2001's I Am Sam.
Aside from Grace, the Dallas-born Wright Penn costarred with her Oscar-winning hubby in 1997's She's So Lovely and 1998's Hurly Burly, and they are reuniting in Barry Levinson's suddenly aptly titled Hollywood satire, What Just Happened?, which will debut at next month's Sundance Film Festival. She has also appeared in two flicks Penn has helmed, 1995's The Crossing Guard and 2001's The Pledge, both starring Jack Nicholson.
The actress, who was previously married for two years to actor Dane Witherspoon, shot to fame playing the titular royal Buttercup in the 1987 hit The Princess Bride. She earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in 1994's Forrest Gump.
Penn's most recent directorial effort, Into The Wild, is currently being lauded by various critics groups as the best film of 2007, so far earning two Golden Globe nods and four Screen Actors Guild Award nominations.
The Breakup Test: 5 Questions to Ask Before Giving 'Em the Boot
Is it better to be the breaker-upper or the dumpee? With so much attention being paid to those poor people dumped every year, no one ever takes time to think about what it's like to be the dumper. Hardly an enviable position, the decision to break up with someone can breed feelings of guilt, paralysis and depression.
To alleviate some of this anxiety, here's a list of 5 questions to ask yourself before you give someone the boot.
Question 1: Has There Been a Major Change in My Life?Being blissfully in love with your partner 24/7 is a wonderful concept in theory, but as we all know, real-world relationships rarely live up to these expectations. Many people assume that they have to be 100 percent satisfied with their partners in order to stick with them, but good luck ever finding this perfect scenario!
A better strategy would be to adopt the 80 percent rule. Ask yourself:
Am I satisfied with my partner 80 percent of the time or more? If the answer is yes, then you're working with pretty good odds. If the answer is no, you may want to consider moving on.
Question 3: Is He/She Abusive?Abusive behavior comes in many forms. There's physical abuse where someone hits, slaps or shoves you. A verbally abusive partner degrades you with harsh words and insults. And the most difficult to identify and pinpoint: psychological abuse. This form of abuse can involve overly controlling behavior, emotional blackmail, and episodes of extreme jealousy. If your partner engages in any of the above behavior, don't just walk -- run from the relationship.
Question 4: Have I Expressed My Frustration?Many of us think that if our partner was right for us, he/she would be able to understand our needs intuitively without us ever having to communicate. While it would be great if our partners could just read our minds, the truth is that few of us are telepathic.
Good communication is required in every relationship.
So before you give your partner their walking papers, make sure to discuss your doubts and concerns so they have a chance to make it up to you.
Question 5: Am I Willing to Work at It?Whatever your gripes or complaints, there's one factor that can make or break your union: your mutual desire to work on the relationship. If you're not both committed to improving your quality of life together, there's very little hope for the future.
And remember, actions speak louder than words. If both of you make a concerted effort to work on the relationship and make the necessary changes that are required, there's really no reason to call it quits.
Minn. Child Sticks Screwdriver Into Head, Survives
An X-ray shows the screwdriver penetrated Teagan Gislason's eye socket, five centimeters into her brain. Doctors removed it after four hours, with virtually no bleeding.
Doctors said Teagan Gislason's vision appears to be fine, and the only remaining mark from the incident is a scar on her eyelid.A 2-year-old Farmington, Minn. girl stabbed herself in the eye socket with a screwdriver and somehow escaped relatively unharmed, reports CBS station WCCO-TV in Minneapolis.
Teagan Gislason returned home on Christmas Eve after nearly a week at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Gislason's father, Neil Gislason, said she hurt herself near the end of a church service at St. Paul's Lutheran in Cannon Falls, Minn.
"God was watching over her very hard," said Neil Gislason. "I think He saved her for a reason, and I can't wait to see what that reason is."
Gislason was with his three daughters at the church. He said Teagan was getting restless, and went into a room where children have adult supervision during the church service. Teagan somehow found a screwdriver, and a fellow church member saw it sticking out of her left eye socket.
An X-ray shows the screwdriver penetrated Teagan's eye socket, five centimeters into her brain. Doctors removed it after four hours, with virtually no bleeding.
One week later, Teagan is home with her family. Her vision appears to be fine, and the only remaining mark from the incident is a scar on her eyelid.
"She's our Christmas miracle," said Katie Gislason, Teagan's mother.
The family is administering antibiotics to make sure the eye doesn't become infected, and Teagan will still be regularly checked out by doctors to make sure she isn't experiencing any problems with her vision.
Thief Arrested For Stealing Baby Jesus With GPS
WELLINGTON, Fla. -- Baby Jesus has gone high tech.
Authorities said a baby Jesus stolen from a nativity scene in Wellington is safely back in the manger after it was stolen.
One person was arrested for stealing the figure Wednesday night, which was equipped with a GPS tracking device.
The tracking system was attached in response to previous thefts.
Flirting helps relationships?
I know that flirting can be a huge source of contempt in relationships. Some guys see their partners flirting with other men and go ballistic. Some women see guys flirting with other women and think he's trying to score.
And while I know that flirting can be a dangerous game if you're playing with the wrong people, I also believe that flirting can be healthy - as long as you're taking the energy you're building and putting it back into your relationship.
So, what can innocent flirting with a co-worker, stranger, or random bartender do to help your relationship? More than you may think.
Flirting Gives You Confidence
A relationship progresses after some time, and both sides fall into the same rut of Friday pizza, Saturday out, and sleepy Sunday. Same old, same old. The message: We're stuck together, we're comfortable together, and we may be perfectly content together.
All well and good, but that does as much for your romantic confidence as having spinach in your teeth. What flirting allows you to do is feel like you're impressing another person and being attractive to another person - without the baggage, stigma, and pressures of the next step. Bringing that sexual and romantic confidence back to your relationship helps you - and strengthens the relationship across the board.
Flirting Keeps You Sharp
Being wanted is one of our most basic needs. Sometimes, when we're in relationships, we don't always get that positive vibe - that we're wanted, needed, and desired.
Every once in a while, flirting can reinforce that primitive need of feeling valued. And that little innocent dialogue with some stranger in a bookstore may be all the kick-start you need to lose a little weight or change up your hair or whatever it is that you want to do to make yourself feel better about yourself. Which has benefits for everyone involved.
Flirting Lets You Build Up Sexual Energy
Some shrinks say it's OK to fantasize about anyone you want and build up a head of steam - as long as you, well, go ahead then and release that pent up energy with your partner.
So in a way, you can use flirting as a kind of foreplay. Build a little frisky tension with the barista, get warmed up, then bring home the dividends. And when you're at home, leave a copy of this list around the house. Think of it as a kind of flirting with your partner - and a fun to-do list.
Flirting Reminds You How Good You Have It
The fun of flirting is that there are no strings attached. Just some good ole banter with jokes, laughs, and some well-timed sexual innuendo. Fun at first. But when you think of the long process that comes after, it makes you realize that what you've got at home is exactly what you want.
I can hear you now: too much flirting can lead to real temptation. Here's what we told Men's Health readers to do when faced with a home-wrecking temptress.
Website to carry new bin Laden tape on Iraq
Dubai, December 28: An Islamist Web site said on Friday it would carry a new recording from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden about "foiling plots" in Iraq.
The Web site said the 56-minute recording would also be about the Islamic State in Iraq, an al Qaeda-linked group in the country.
It did not say when the video or audio recording, produced by al Qaeda's media arm As-Sahab and entitled "The Path to Foiling Plots in Iraq", would be posted.
Al Qaeda messages have been often released within three days of their announcement on Web sites.
"May God expose the cover-up by Al Jazeera, the channel of the infidels," said the Web site, which is often used to issue messages from al Qaeda.
It was not clear whether this meant bin Laden would speak about a controversy in which his supporters have accused the popular news channel of misrepresenting his comments on Iraq.
Some Islamists have said Al Jazeera misrepresented bin Laden's views by airing excerpts of comments he made in October that insurgents had made mistakes in Iraq because of fanaticism.
While the Iraqi wing of al Qaeda remains at the forefront of many groups fighting U.S. forces and the Shi'ite-led government supported by Washington, its fighters have faced growing opposition in the Sunni areas of Iraq where they operate.
Angered by deadly attacks against Iraqis who fail to follow their hardline interpretation of Islam, Sunni tribes have begun to turn against the al Qaeda militants they once backed.
An increase in U.S. troops, more efficient Iraqi security forces and new neighbourhood patrols organised by mainly Sunni Arab tribes have been credited with a decline in violence and a fall in civilian and U.S. military casualties in the past two months.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Career Do's and Don'ts from 2007
Stars like Matt Damon, Oprah Winfrey, and Rosie O'Donnell are just a few of the public figures whose actions in 2007 -- good or bad -- offer career lessons for us all.
Whether it was bravely stepping out on "Dancing With the Stars" or getting fired for romancing a subordinate, understanding the six do's and don'ts below can help you move your career forward next year.
DO leverage your strengths. Matt Damon has long been known as a widely talented actor. This year, he built on the strength of his previous two "Bourne" films with his performance in the hugely successful "Bourne Ultimatum," bolstering his status as one of the most successful action-film stars in Hollywood.
"Finding out what you are good at and then working to get better at is a much more efficient use of your time and energy than trying to become a star in an area where you may not have much talent to begin with," says Richard Phillips, founder of Advantage Career Solutions.
DON'T use inappropriate language at work. Radio host Don Imus was fired from his longtime job for racially inflammatory language about the Rutgers women's basketball team.
"In general, steer clear of topics involving sex, drugs, race, and politics. Even if you think a comment is perfectly innocuous, someone else may very well see it differently," says Alexandra Levit, author of "They Don't Teach Corporate in College." "Once people perceive you as crass, sexist, or prejudiced, no amount of hard work in the world will restore your reputation in that organization."
DO acknowledge mistakes and take action to learn from them. After an abuse scandal surfaced at Oprah Winfrey's school for girls in South Africa, the talk-show host accepted responsibility for "inadequate" employee screening. She also traveled to the school to meet with parents and address their concerns.
Andrea Nierenberg, author of "Million Dollar Networking," says, "It takes a strong person to say, 'I was wrong,' and then to take the action to correct the problem. People respect you more and know that we all make mistakes -- yet it is an admirable person who goes the extra mile to quickly correct the mistake and take another action step."
DON'T get personally involved with a subordinate. The Red Cross ousted married CEO Mark Everson for having a personal relationship with one of his employees. The organization said the relationship showed "poor judgment" and damaged his credibility.
"Besides showing poor judgment, it is also unfair to the subordinate, whose career will likely be negatively impacted," says Phillips.
DO step outside your comfort zone. Racecar driver Helio Castroneves took a risk to learn ballroom dancing and perform on TV's "Dancing With the Stars." He backed it up with hard work and won the contest, opening up his career to new possibilities.
"Living in your safety zone year after year can make you stagnant and, well, boring," says Debra Davenport, a master professional mentor and career counselor. "If you're risk-averse, try conquering smaller challenges. Then, expand your horizons as you grow more comfortable. Who knows? You might even start your own business or embark on an entirely new and wonderful career!"
DON'T badmouth people who might be good references. Rosie O'Donnell's embattled tenure on "The View" ended prematurely this year, as her clashes with cohosts Elizabeth Hasselbeck and Barbara Walters were played out in the media.
"Rosie O'Donnell is your typical example of a workplace hothead -- someone who says exactly what they're thinking when they're thinking it regardless of the consequences," says Levit. "If you can't be diplomatic and communicate in a manner that shows that you respect others' points of view, colleagues won't want you around no matter how talented you are. 'The View' continues to offer examples (see last year's Star Jones mention) of how burning your bridges is never a good idea."
Airline glitches top cause of delays
Flight delays caused by airline glitches are now creating longer passenger slowdowns than congestion in the skies, a USA TODAY analysis shows.
The data call into question a long-held notion about air travel delays — that bad weather and heavy air traffic cause the bulk of the waits that passengers endure. The newspaper's analysis shows that airline problems, such as pilot shortages, taking too long to refuel and mechanical breakdowns, are as much at the root of delays as anything else.
TRAVEL COSTS: Higher fares don't deter holiday fliers
Airline issues triggered 23.8 million minutes of delay through October this year, according to the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS). Delays attributed to the congested air-traffic system, the next largest cause, were 23.3 million.
Overall, the number of flights delayed because of congestion was slightly higher. But the average length of delay was longer for airline-caused holdups: 55 minutes compared to 47. That was a first since data have been collected.
"It's symptomatic of an entire system out of control right now," said Darryl Jenkins, an academic and airline consultant.
Jenkins and others say that one of the chief reasons that airlines are causing more delays is that they have cut staffing dramatically to respond to the financial woes encountered after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In recent months, many carriers have begun adding employees, Jenkins said.
Airlines did not dispute the BTS data, but said the system's inability to handle heavy air traffic and bad weather remain the prime causes of delays. For instance, some delays blamed on air carriers were due to weather delays earlier in the day, said David Castelveter, the spokesman for the Air Transport Association.
In recent years, most major carriers reported increases in delays caused by their own problems. Among them was Northwest Airlines, which struggled with labor problems last summer. It had more than 1.9 million minutes of such delays through October, accounting for more than 40% of all of its delays.
Northwest spokesman Roman Blahowski said the carrier may have reported delays differently than others.
The problem was more acute among regional carriers, which typically fly smaller planes under contract for the large airlines.
For example, Atlantic Southeast Airlines, which flies for Delta Air Lines, reported that 49% of its 4.7 million minutes of delay were due to the airline's operating issues. The airline did not have enough pilots to handle an increase in the schedule this year, but has aggressively hired more pilots and expects its delays to drop, said spokeswoman Kate Modolo.
Some delays attributed to regionals were the result of decisions of their major airline partners, said Roger Cohen, president of the Regional Airline Association. "Most regional carriers have little say in which flights are delayed or cancelled," Cohen said.
Unions for pilots and flight attendants said that high turnover and low staffing at regional carriers contributed to delay problems.
"It's a direct cause of the poor performance by the airlines," said Capt. John Prater, president of the Air Line Pilots Association.
Airline delays reached record levels this year.
Book argues that Bell stole phone idea (AP)
A new book claims to have definitive evidence of a long-suspected technological crime — that Alexander Graham Bell stole ideas for the telephone from a rival, Elisha Gray.
In "The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret," journalist Seth Shulman argues that Bell — aided by aggressive lawyers and a corrupt patent examiner — got an improper peek at patent documents Gray had filed, and that Bell was erroneously credited with filing first.
Shulman believes the smoking gun is Bell's lab notebook, which was restricted by Bell's family until 1976, then digitized and made widely available in 1999.
The notebook details the false starts Bell encountered as he and assistant Thomas Watson tried transmitting sound electromagnetically over a wire. Then, after a 12-day gap in 1876 — when Bell went to Washington to sort out patent questions about his work — he suddenly began trying another kind of voice transmitter. That method was the one that proved successful.
As Bell described that new approach, he sketched a diagram of a person speaking into a device. Gray's patent documents, which describe a similar technique, also feature a very similar diagram.
Shulman's book, due out Jan. 7, recounts other elements that have piqued researchers' suspicions. For instance, Bell's transmitter design appears hastily written in the margin of his patent; Bell was nervous about demonstrating his device with Gray present; Bell resisted testifying in an 1878 lawsuit probing this question; and Bell, as if ashamed, quickly distanced himself from the telephone monopoly bearing his name.
Perhaps the most instructive lesson comes when Shulman explores why historical memory has favored Bell and not Gray — nor German inventor Philipp Reis, who beat them both with 1860s telephones that employed a different principle.
One reason is simply that Bell, not Gray, actually demonstrated a phone that transmitted speech. Gray was focused instead on his era's pressing communications challenge: how to send multiple messages simultaneously over the same telegraph wire. As Gray huffed to his attorney, "I should like to see Bell do that with his apparatus."
Woman, Boyfriend Arrested in Murder of 6
A postal worker worried about an absent colleague came across a horrific scene: six people, likely three generations of the same family, shot to death on their rural property.
Within hours, the family's tragedy only deepened when police arrested the property owners' daughter and her boyfriend, according to a law enforcement official.
A sheriff's deputy cordons off a property near Seattle where six bodies, including those of two children, were found Wednesday. The property owner's daughter and her boyfriend were arrested in connection with the deaths.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the names, said the pair were Michele Anderson, 29, and Joseph McEnroe, 29, her boyfriend.
King County sheriff's Sgt. John Urquhart said the suspects went to the crime scene after investigators had arrived, were questioned and then arrested. No motive had been determine and investigators had not found a weapon.
The sheriff's office did not release the names of the suspects or the victims, but the owners of the property are Wayne Anderson, 60, and Judy Anderson, 61, according to public records. Multiple media reports said the couple, along with their son, Scott; his wife, Erica; and their two children, Olivia and Nathan, were the victims.
Urquhart would only say the victims were a boy about age 3, a girl about age 6, a man and woman in their 30s and a man and woman in their 50s, and "likely three generations" of one family.
Ben Anderson, who said he was the grandson of Wayne and Judy Anderson, told reporters outside his grandparents' property late Wednesday that money could have been a factor in the deaths.
"She felt she wasn't loved enough and everyone didn't appreciate her and she was pushed out of everyone's life," he said, referring to Michele Anderson.
A message left Wednesday night at a telephone listing for a Michele Anderson in the Carnation area was not immediately returned.
Autopsies have not been performed on the bodies, but the cause of death was apparently gunshots, Urquhart said. The six were likely killed late afternoon or early evening on Christmas Eve, he said.
Authorities are trying to determine why deputies didn't further investigate a 911 hang-up call on Christmas Eve that came from the house. The call ended after about 10 seconds, and the operator reported hearing "a lot of yelling in the background ... sounded more like party noise than angry heated arguing."
Operators twice called back, but both calls went into voice mail. About 30 minutes later, two deputies arrived at the property, but found a locked gate and did not go onto the property. The dispatchers log reported the deputies saying, "gate is locked, unable to gain access."
"They didn't go past it," Urquhart said. "I don't know why yet. That's one of the things we're looking into."
Urquhart said the bodies were found by a co-worker of one of the victims who had come to the house because one of the victims, who works for the U.S. Postal Service, did not report to work.
The bodies were found on a rural property that includes a house and a mobile home at the end of a long dirt road. The property is near this town about 25 miles east of Seattle.
Mark Bennett, a family friend, said the Andersons lived in a house there, and their daughter Michele lived on her parents' property in a mobile home with a male companion.
Bennett said he spoke with Judy and Wayne Anderson on Christmas Eve and tried to call them Christmas Day but could not reach them. He told reporters he came to the property Wednesday morning after seeing the home on television news.
"I didn't want to believe what I heard and saw, so I drove over," he said.
Urquhart declined to say where on the property the victims were found, other than to say they were "not found in the same room." As investigators searched the property, they removed a black pickup truck.
Bennett, who was not the person who found the bodies, said Wayne Anderson is a Boeing Co. engineer and Judy Anderson works for the post office in Carnation.
"It's shocking," said Don Lovett, owner of Pete's Grill and Pub in downtown Carnation. "It's a real small community out here, even being so close to a metropolitan area. We're really familiar with folks out here."
Within hours, the family's tragedy only deepened when police arrested the property owners' daughter and her boyfriend, according to a law enforcement official.
A sheriff's deputy cordons off a property near Seattle where six bodies, including those of two children, were found Wednesday. The property owner's daughter and her boyfriend were arrested in connection with the deaths.The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the names, said the pair were Michele Anderson, 29, and Joseph McEnroe, 29, her boyfriend.
King County sheriff's Sgt. John Urquhart said the suspects went to the crime scene after investigators had arrived, were questioned and then arrested. No motive had been determine and investigators had not found a weapon.
The sheriff's office did not release the names of the suspects or the victims, but the owners of the property are Wayne Anderson, 60, and Judy Anderson, 61, according to public records. Multiple media reports said the couple, along with their son, Scott; his wife, Erica; and their two children, Olivia and Nathan, were the victims.
Urquhart would only say the victims were a boy about age 3, a girl about age 6, a man and woman in their 30s and a man and woman in their 50s, and "likely three generations" of one family.
Ben Anderson, who said he was the grandson of Wayne and Judy Anderson, told reporters outside his grandparents' property late Wednesday that money could have been a factor in the deaths.
"She felt she wasn't loved enough and everyone didn't appreciate her and she was pushed out of everyone's life," he said, referring to Michele Anderson.
A message left Wednesday night at a telephone listing for a Michele Anderson in the Carnation area was not immediately returned.
Autopsies have not been performed on the bodies, but the cause of death was apparently gunshots, Urquhart said. The six were likely killed late afternoon or early evening on Christmas Eve, he said.
Authorities are trying to determine why deputies didn't further investigate a 911 hang-up call on Christmas Eve that came from the house. The call ended after about 10 seconds, and the operator reported hearing "a lot of yelling in the background ... sounded more like party noise than angry heated arguing."
Operators twice called back, but both calls went into voice mail. About 30 minutes later, two deputies arrived at the property, but found a locked gate and did not go onto the property. The dispatchers log reported the deputies saying, "gate is locked, unable to gain access."
"They didn't go past it," Urquhart said. "I don't know why yet. That's one of the things we're looking into."
Urquhart said the bodies were found by a co-worker of one of the victims who had come to the house because one of the victims, who works for the U.S. Postal Service, did not report to work.
The bodies were found on a rural property that includes a house and a mobile home at the end of a long dirt road. The property is near this town about 25 miles east of Seattle.
Mark Bennett, a family friend, said the Andersons lived in a house there, and their daughter Michele lived on her parents' property in a mobile home with a male companion.
Bennett said he spoke with Judy and Wayne Anderson on Christmas Eve and tried to call them Christmas Day but could not reach them. He told reporters he came to the property Wednesday morning after seeing the home on television news.
"I didn't want to believe what I heard and saw, so I drove over," he said.
Urquhart declined to say where on the property the victims were found, other than to say they were "not found in the same room." As investigators searched the property, they removed a black pickup truck.
Bennett, who was not the person who found the bodies, said Wayne Anderson is a Boeing Co. engineer and Judy Anderson works for the post office in Carnation.
"It's shocking," said Don Lovett, owner of Pete's Grill and Pub in downtown Carnation. "It's a real small community out here, even being so close to a metropolitan area. We're really familiar with folks out here."
Archaeological site shed light on early Caribbeans
Archeologists have discovered a major archaeological site in Puerto Rico dating back to 600 AD, that might help to reconstruct the life of the early Caribbean inhabitants.
Found by an Atlanta-area archaeology firm working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the site uncovered the outlines of a very large Taino ball court and ceremonial site.
This was accompanied with human graves, trash mounds, building imprints and a few carved petroglyphs that are among the most intricate and detailed ever discovered in the region.
"Suddenly it went from a very good site to an extraordinary site," said Chris Espenshade, who led a team of local archaeologists and workers from New South Associates of Stone Mountain, Ga. at the dig this past summer and fall.
"Part of what makes it extraordinary is that we have everything here, the midden (refuse) mound, the batey (ceremonial site), the house patterns, the burials and the rock art," he told Cox News Service.
Though Espenshade's team worked through the summer, but only in the past few months unearthed enough to determine the major scope of the site.
"It's a once-in-a-lifetime find, as preliminary estimates show the site dates to around 600 A.D.," said David McCullough, a Corps archaeologist.
"The petroglyph carvings are outstanding, with various human-looking faces and bodies. Another remarkable thing is the site is so well preserved. It was covered by the river's flooding and wasn't looted or cleared for farming," he added.
Puerto Rican archaeologists are excited by the find, which will be turned over to the island's government for preservation and future research.
Taino Indians, the original inhabitants of the region, were part of the Arawak people who settled the Caribbean, most likely venturing from the northern coast of South America, their canoes carried by ocean currents onto the string of islands that curve like an arc through the tropical sea.
How sliced bread was born
It took a mastermind and whole lot of hard work to come up with the world's first bread slicer, making it one of the greatest inventions in the culinary world.
In 1912, jeweller Otto Frederick Rohwedder started with his bright bread idea.
It took him many years, and several unsuccessful models, to devise a machine, which would not only cut the bread into slices, but also would wrap it up to keep it from going stale, reports Live Science.
The revolutionary slicing and wrapping machine was sold by Rohwedder to the Chillicothe Baking Company in 1928. Later that year only, the bread company sold the first loaf of sliced bread.
Thanks to the well-timed invention of the pop-up toaster the pre-cut slices became especially popular. The 1930's marketing campaign of Wonder Bread rose sliced bread's sales to new heights.
Miracle cure for liver fibrosis on the anvil
Washington, December 27 : A study on mice has shown that fibrosis in the liver can not only be stopped but also reverse some of the cell damage that has already occurred, paving way for the development of a modified protein leading to the first cure for such liver diseases.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, say that their findings may help treat and cure conditions leading to excessive tissue scarring such as viral hepatitis, fatty liver disease, cirrhosis, pulmonary fibrosis, scleroderma and burns.
Earlier, the UC San Diego School of Medicine research team had discovered the cause of the excess fibrous tissue growth causing liver fibrosis and cirrhosis, and also developed a procedure blocking excess scar tissue in mice.
They wanted to develop in future, a therapy that would prevent or stop damage in patients suffering from the excessive scarring related to liver or lung disease or severe burns.
In the current study, Martina Buck, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine at UCSD and the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System, and Mario Chojkier, M.D., UCSD professor of medicine and liver specialist at the VA, demonstrated that if they blocked a protein linked to overproduction of scar tissue, not only can they stop the progression of fibrosis in mice, but also reverse the earlier damage.
Liver injury like cirrhosis, caused by alcohol, initiates response from hepatic stellate cell (HSC) that gets activated by oxidative stress resulting in large amounts of collagen. Collagen is necessary to heal wounds, but too much collagen leads to scars in tissues.
It was shown in the study that HSC gets activated due to the activation of a protein called RSK, that is critical for the development of liver fibrosis.
The scientists developed an RSK inhibitory peptide to block activation of RSK after establishing that the RSK pathway would be a potential therapeutic target.
They used mice with severe liver fibrosis (similar to the condition in humans with cirrhosis of the liver) induced by chronic treatment with a liver toxin known to cause liver damage.
Mice which continued on the liver toxin were given the RSK-inhibitory peptide which blocked RSK activation and in turn stopped the HSC from proliferating. The peptide also directly activated the caspase or 'executioner' protein, killing the cells producing liver cirrhosis but not the normal cells.
"All control mice had severe liver fibrosis, while all mice that received the RSK-inhibitory peptide had minimal or no liver fibrosis," said Buck.
He explained that the excessive collagen response is blocked by the RSK-inhibitory peptide, but did not have negative effects on the liver.
"The cells continue to do their normal, healing work but their excess proliferation is controlled. Remarkably, the death of HSC may also allow recovery from liver injury and reversal of liver fibrosis," he said.
A similar activation of RSK in activated HSC was discovered in humans with severe liver fibrosis but not in control livers, indicating the importance of this pathway in human liver fibrosis. Liver biopsies from patients with liver fibrosis also showed activated RSK.
The study is an extension of the work in 2001 in the journal Molecular Cell announcing that a team led by Buck had found that a small piece of an important regulatory protein called C/EBP beta was responsible for fibrous tissue growth, or excessive scar tissue following injury or illness.
"Six years ago, we showed a way to prevent or stop the excessive scarring in animal models. Our latest finding proves that we can actually reverse the damage," said Buck.
Almost 800,000 people die from liver cirrhosis each year, and there is currently no treatment for it.
Excessive tissue repair in chronic liver disease induced by viral, toxic, immunologic and metabolic disorders all result in excessive scar tissue, and could benefit from therapy developed from the UCSD researchers' findings.
$286,000 save a man's broken jaw
Sydney, Decemeber 27 : A 286,000-dollar emergency medical evacuation from Antarctica to Christchurch in New Zealand's South Island had to be carried out in order to save a man who suffered a broken jaw.
The incident, which seemed to be a Christmas brawl, ended with a ski-equipped United States Air Force Hercules making an unscheduled flight from McMurdo Station, near New Zealand's Scott Base, to the South Pole, to pick up the injured man.
The Hercules then flew him back to the ice runway near McMurdo, and a helicopter took him to the nearby medical centre, where it was decided that his injuries were too serious to be treated in Antarctica.
The man was again flown back to the runway, and boarded the Hercules, for the flight to Christchurch.
He was accompanied by a flight nurse and a paramedic during the flight, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.
The McMurdo staff was supposed to have a day off for Christmas, but thanks to the evacuation, dozens of support workers had to return to work.
The flight cost was estimated to be around 325,000 NZ dollars - 286,000 US dollars.A spokeswoman at the Christchurch Hospital claimed that a man was admitted on Christmas Day, and was discharged the next day.
The South Pole station is among the most expensive places in the world to visit, and the winter medevacs from the pole cost around 2 million NZ dollars.
Clever parrot with a painter elephant
A particular parrot and an elephant might look like the rest of their species, but according to their owners the two are the most talented animals on Earth.
'Griffin', the parrot is as clever as a three-year-old child, and 'Hong', the elephant is a fantastic painter.
The parrot can easily understand abstract concepts such as time, place and matter. And the elephant is so good at his painting skills, that he once fooled a roomful of art experts into thinking that his daubs were produced by a human.
The duo are featured in a Five documentary series called 'Extraordinary Animals'. In the first programme Hong, a Thai elephant who creates paintings for tourists is looked at.
Alex Menamid, the caretaker of Hong, said that his paintings have a quality of line and an elegance that is very touching. "His paintings in particular have a quality of line and an elegance that is very touching," The Sun quoted Menamid, as talking about Hong.
Meanwhile, the parrot also impresses the audience with his brilliance in the documentary series. In one of the shows, the African Grey counts the number of times trainer doctor clicks her fingers and answering questions about the size and shape of objects.
Even when the order of questions is varied, Griffin gets the answers right, proving he understands what he is being asked.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Gift Returns
Don't feel guilty about returning that singing mounted fish your cousin bought you. He might be returning your gift, too. About 40 percent of Americans take back at least one gift after the holidays, says the National Retail Federation.
If you find yourself in line to return a gift this season, you're apt to discover that store policies have become stricter. Restocking fees for opened boxes or missing packaging are increasingly common, and not just for electronics. For example, Sears now
imposes a 15 percent restocking fee for some appliances, tools, and lawn and garden products.
Stores have also become more persnickety about receipts. Last summer, Target changed its policy to allow for two receiptless returns a year of items less than $20. Before that the threshold was $100.
Kmart, Lowe's, and Wal-Mart are among the retailers that now use computer systems to monitor how often customers return items without sales slips. If you bring back too many within a given period, the store might stop accepting them. Some retailers say they're trying to prevent returns of stolen goods.
HAPPY RETURNS
If returning a singing fish is essential to your sanity, follow our tips and the process should go swimmingly.
Check the policy. It's probably on the store's Web site. If not, call the customer-service line or the store. Note that some stores have more generous return policies for goods purchased at holiday time.
Handle with care. Lost tags, missing packaging, or damaged boxes make it less likely you'll get your due. Amazon.com says it won't accept returns of products missing the serial number or UPC square on the box. Best Buy and Circuit City charge a 15 percent restocking fee on some electronic items whether or not you've opened the box. But you should not have to pay a restocking fee if the item was defective when you unwrapped it.
Bring the receipt. Being able to present one makes it more likely that you'll get back the item's full value. Without a receipt, a retailer might credit you with the lowest recent price or simply deny your return altogether. Gift givers should try to include
one whenever possible.
Go to the right place. If the item was purchased by mail order or on the Internet, make sure you send it to the address the retailer specifies. The retailer might also have a location near you that takes mail-order returns. Sears, for instance, accepts Lands' End returns at its stores. But Macy's and Kohl's, which sell online and in stores, don't accept returns by mail if the merchandise was purchased in a store.
Clear your good name. If your return is denied and you don't know why, you may have been incorrectly flagged by a store's computer for committing "return fraud." You might be able to correct the matter by e-mailing the Return Exchange, a company that monitors returns for retailers, at returnactivityreport@thereturnexchange.com.
Now, mobile updates for fishermen at sea
December 26: Leading network infrastructure solutions provider ADC Krone will partner with telecom services provider Tata Indicom to enable fishermen receive updates on weather and information on catching fish in the sea on their mobile phones, the company said Wednesday.
Krone said the initiative has been taken up as a pilot project under the aegis of M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation at Veerampattinam in Tamil Nadu and would be followed soon as a commercial service.
"Fishermen will hereafter spend far less time at sea, as they will know before sailing the weather conditions, wave height and wind velocity and direction," the company said in a statement.
Some 5,000 villages on the coast will be able to use the application. The mobile coverage will extend up to six km into the sea.
"The project is aimed at equipping the fishing community with weather knowledge, concentration of fish pools and safety messages. It will also minimise loss of life," Krone managing director Bala Chandran said.
The geographic base of Indian marine fisheries has 8,118-km coastline, 2.02 million sq km of exclusive economic zone, including 0.5 million sq km of continental shelf and 3,937 fishing villages.
There are 1,896 traditional fish landing centres, 33 minor and six major fishing harbours, serving as bases for about 2,08,000 traditional non-motorised craft, 55,000 small-scale beach-landing craft fitted with outboard motors, 51,250 mechanised craft and 180 deep-sea fishing vessels.
60 Percent of Executions Happen in Texas
This year’s death penalty bombshells — a de facto national moratorium, a state abolition and the smallest number of executions in more than a decade — have masked what may be the most significant and lasting development. For the first time in the modern history of the death penalty, more than 60 percent of all American executions took place in Texas.
Over the past three decades, the proportion of executions nationwide performed in Texas has held relatively steady, averaging 37 percent. Only once before, in 1986, has the state accounted for even a slight majority of the executions, and that was in a year with 18 executions nationwide.
But enthusiasm for executions outside of Texas has dropped sharply. Of the 42 executions in the last year, 26 were in Texas. The remaining 16 were spread across nine other states, none of which executed more than three people. Many legal experts say the trend will probably continue.
Indeed, said David R. Dow, a law professor at the University of Houston who has represented death-row inmates, the day is not far off when essentially all executions in the United States will take place in Texas.
“The reason that Texas will end up monopolizing executions,” he said, “is because every other state will eliminate it de jure, as New Jersey did, or de facto, as other states have.”
Charles A. Rosenthal Jr., the district attorney of Harris County, Tex., which includes Houston and has accounted for 100 executions since 1976, said the Texas capital justice system was working properly. The pace of executions in Texas, he said, “has to do with how many people are in the pipeline when certain rulings come down.”
The rate at which Texas sentences people to death is not especially high given its murder rate. But once a death sentence is imposed there, said Richard C. Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, prosecutors, state and federal courts, the pardon board and the governor are united in moving the process along. “There’s almost an aggressiveness about carrying out executions,” said Mr. Dieter, whose organization opposes capital punishment.
Outside of Texas, even supporters of the death penalty say they detect a change in public attitudes about executions in light of the time and expense of capital litigation, the possibility of wrongful convictions and the remote chance that someone sent to death row will actually be executed.
“Any sane prosecutor who is involved in capital litigation will really be ambivalent about it,” said Joshua Marquis, the district attorney in Clatsop County, Ore., and a vice president of the National District Attorneys Association. He said the families of murder victims suffered needless anguish during what could be decades of litigation and multiple retrials.
“We’re seeing fewer executions,” Mr. Marquis added. “We’re seeing fewer people sentenced to death. People really do question capital punishment. The whole idea of exoneration has really penetrated popular culture.”
As a consequence, Mr. Dieter said, “we’re simply not regularly using the death penalty as a country.”
Over the last three years, the number of executions in Texas has been relatively constant, averaging 23 per year, but the state’s share of the number of total executions nationwide has steadily increased as the national totals have dropped, from 32 percent in 2005 to 45 percent in 2006 to 62 percent in 2007.
The death penalty developments that have dominated the news in recent months are unlikely to have anything like the enduring consequences of Texas’ vigorous commitment to capital punishment.
A Supreme Court case concerns how to assess the constitutionality of lethal injection protocols. While it is possible that states may have to revise the ways they execute people, executions will almost certainly resume soon after the court’s decision, which is expected by June.
Similarly, New Jersey’s abolition of the death penalty last week and Gov. Jon Corzine’s decision to empty death row of its eight prisoners is almost entirely symbolic. New Jersey has not executed anyone since 1963.
And while the total number of executions in 2007 was low, it would have been similar to those in recent years but for the moratorium, if extrapolated to a full year.
There do seem to be slight stirrings suggesting that other states might follow New Jersey. Two state legislative bodies — the House in New Mexico and the Senate in Montana — passed bills to abolish capital punishment, and in Nebraska, the unicameral legislature came within one vote of doing so.
Texas has followed the rest of the country in one respect: the number of death sentences there has dropped sharply.
In the 10 years ending in 2004, Texas condemned an average of 34 prisoners each year — about 15 percent of the national total. In the last three years, as the number of death sentences nationwide dropped significantly, from almost 300 in 1998 to about 110 in 2007, the number in Texas has dropped along with it, to 13 — or 12 percent.
Indeed, according to a 2004 study by three professors of law and statistics at Cornell published in The Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Texas prosecutors and juries were no more apt to seek and impose death sentences than those in the rest of the country.
“Texas’ reputation as a death-prone state should rest on its many murders and on its willingness to execute death-sentenced inmates,” the authors of the study, Theodore Eisenberg, John H. Blume and Martin T. Wells, wrote. “It should not rest on the false belief that Texas has a high rate of sentencing convicted murderers to death.”
There is reason to think that the number of death sentences in the state will fall farther, given the introduction of life without the possibility of parole as a sentencing option in capital cases in Texas in 2005. While a substantial majority of the public supports the death penalty, that support drops significantly when life without parole is included as an alternative.
Once an inmate is sent to death row, however, distinctive features of the Texas justice system kick in.
“Execution dates here, uniquely, are set by individual district attorneys,” Professor Dow said. “In no other state would the fact that a district attorney strongly supports the death penalty immediately translate into more executions.”
Texas courts, moreover, speed the process along, said Jordan M. Steiker, a law professor at the University of Texas who has represented death-row inmates.
“It’s not coincidental that the debate over lethal injections had traction in other jurisdictions but not in Texas,” Professor Steiker said. “The courts in Texas have generally not been very solicitous of constitutional claims.”
Indeed, the Supreme Court has repeatedly rebuked the state and the federal courts that hear appeals in Texas capital cases, often in exasperated language suggesting that those courts are actively evading Supreme Court rulings.
The last execution before the Supreme Court imposed a de facto moratorium happened in Texas, and in emblematic fashion. The presiding judge on the state’s highest court for criminal matters, Judge Sharon Keller, closed the courthouse at its regular time of 5 p.m. and turned back an attempt to file appeal papers a few minutes later, according to a complaint in a wrongful-death suit filed in federal court last month.
The inmate, Michael Richard, was executed that evening.
Judge Keller, in a motion to dismiss the case filed this month, acknowledged that she alone had the authority to keep the court’s clerk’s office open but said that Mr. Richard’s lawyers could have tried to file their papers directly with another judge on the court.
Tiger Escapes Zoo Cage, Kills Visitor
SAN FRANCISCO (Dec. 26) -- Investigators trying to determine how a tiger escaped its zoo enclosure on Christmas Day -- killing one man and mauling two others -- plan a thorough sweep of the zoo grounds Wednesday to look for clues.
Authorities do not believe more people were attacked, but they want to inspect the area in the daylight. Zoo officials are still uncertain how long the tiger, which last year badly mauled a zookeeper, was loose before being shot dead.
Tatiana, a female Siberian tiger, was killed Tuesday after she escaped from her cage at the San Francisco Zoo and mauled three people, killing one. Officials are trying to figure out how the animal got free.The three men who were attacked Tuesday while visiting the zoo were in their 20s, police spokesman Steve Mannina said. The attack occurred just after the 5 p.m. closing time, on the east end of the 125-acre grounds.
They suffered "pretty aggressive bite marks," Mannina said.
The two injured men were listed in critical but stable condition at San Francisco General Hospital. John Brown, an emergency room physician, told the San Francisco Chronicle that they suffered deep bites and claw cuts to their heads and upper bodies.
The Siberian tiger, named Tatiana, was the same giant cat that attacked a zookeeper just about a year ago during a public feeding, said Robert Jenkins, the zoo 's director of animal care and conservation.
The approximately 300-pound female did not leave through an open door, Jenkins said. But he could not explain how it escaped -- the tiger's enclosure is surrounded by a 15-foot-wide moat and 20-foot-high walls.
"There was no way out through the door," Jenkins said. "The animal appears to have climbed or otherwise leapt out of the enclosure."
The first attack happened right outside the Siberian's enclosure _ the victim died at the scene. A group of four responding officers came across his body when they made their way into the dark zoo grounds, Mannina said.
Then they saw the second victim. He was about 300 yards away, in front of the Terrace Cafe.
The man was sitting on the ground, blood running from gashes in his head. Tatiana sat next to him. Suddenly, the cat attacked the man again, Mannina said.
The officers started approaching the tiger, bearing their handguns. Tatiana started moving in their direction. Several of the officers then fired, killing the animal.
Only then did they see the third victim, who had also been mauled.
The zoo is open 365 days a year. Although no new visitors were let in after 5 p.m., the grounds were not scheduled to close until an hour later, and there were between 20 and 25 people still on site when the attacks happened, zoo officials said. Employees and visitors were told to take shelter when zoo officials learned of the attacks.
"This is a tragic event for San Francisco," Fire Department spokesman Lt. Ken Smith said. "We pride ourselves in our zoo , and we pride ourselves in tourists coming and looking at our city."
There are five tigers at the zoo _ three Sumatrans and two Siberians. Officials initially worried that four tigers had escaped, but soon learned only one had escaped its pen, Mannina said.
On Dec. 22, 2006, Tatiana reached through the cage's iron bars and attacked a keeper with her claws and teeth, causing deep lacerations to the worker's arms. The zoo 's Lion House was temporarily closed during an investigation.
California's Division of Occupational Safety and Health blamed the zoo for the assault and imposed a $18,000 penalty. A medical claim filed against the city by the keeper was denied.
Mayor Gavin Newsom said in a statement he was deeply saddened by the latest attack and that a thorough investigation was under way.
After last year's attack, the zoo added customized steel mesh over the bars, built in a feeding shoot and increased the distance between the public and the cats.
Tatiana arrived at the San Francisco Zoo from the Denver Zoo a few years ago, with zoo officials hoping she would mate with a male tiger. Siberian tigers are classified as endangered and there are more than 600 of the animals living in captivity worldwide.
The zoo will be closed Wednesday.
Think twice before gorging on dark chocolates
New York, December 26 : If you are eating dark chocolate with a hope that it will protect your heart, think again.
According to an editorial published in renowned British medical journal Lancet, it may not offer you health benefits.
Studies in the past had suggested that dark chocolate is good for the heart. But the editorial said fat, sugar and calories in chocolate trigger illness instead.
Plain chocolate is considered naturally rich in flavanols that is believed to protect the heart and lower blood pressure.
But according to the journal, many manufacturers remove this chemical while producing chocolate because of its bitter taste.
"When chocolate manufacturers make confectionery, the natural cocoa solids can be darkened and the flavanols, which are bitter, removed, so even a dark-looking chocolate can have no flavanol," the online edition of BBC News quoted Lancet as saying.
"Consumers are also kept in the dark about the flavanol content of chocolate because manufacturers rarely label their products with this information," the editorial noted.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Gold makes cancer diagnosis faster
A study on mice has suggested that gold nanoparticles may make diagnosis of cancer faster and less invasive.
The researchers have shown that by using tiny gold particles embedded with dyes, they could identify tumours under the skin of a living animal, which may lead to earlier detection of cancer.
Lead researcher Dr. Shuming Nie, a professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, says that the gold particles, when interspersed with antibody fragments called ScFv peptides that bind cancer cells, grab onto tumours after being injected into the body.
The scientist says that the tumour-bound particles, when illuminated with a laser beam, send back a signal that is specific to the dye.
"This is a new class of nanotechnology agents for tumour targeting and imaging," Nature Biotechnology quoted Dr. Nie as saying.
The scientists were in the process of developing light-emitting semiconductor crystals called 'quantum dots' into tools for cancer detection and treatment for several years.
According to Dr. Nie, colloidal gold (gold particles in suspension) are more beneficial as compared to quantum dots in the sense that gold appears to be non-toxic and the particles produce a brighter, sharper signal.
"The detail is like a fingerprint, and because of the enhancement provided by the gold surface, the signal from the dye tags is very bright," he said.
The researchers also said that the distinct peaks in the dye signal meant that various probes could be used at the same time.
"The tags' rich spectroscopic signatures provide the capability of using several probes at once, but that will require more sophisticated computational tools," said Dr. May Dongmei Wang, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and director of biocomputing and bioinformatics in the cancer nanotechnology center.
He added: "We are developing data processing tools and making them available to the National Cancer Institute's caBIG (cancer biomedical informatics grid) so that the research community can use them."
Dr. Nie indicated that while colloidal gold was used in the safe treatment of people with rheumatoid arthritis for several decades, they were still studying the toxicity of quantum dots, which contain the heavy metal cadmium, and their long-term fate in the body.
The researchers revealed that the gold particles were particularly appropriate tools for gathering information about head or neck tumours, which tend to be more accessible.
However, the technology needs to be adapted further for use with abdominal or lung cancers deep within the body.
Dr. Nie revealed that his lab was planning to modify the coatings of the nanoparticles to improve tumour targeting. He said that eventually the gold particles could also be used to deliver drugs to cancer cells selectively.
Technology to prevent bicycle thefts
A PhD student at the Leeds University has developed a technology that could prevent bicycle thefts and may also be useful in flagging suspicious events in public places.
Dima Damen, from the university's faculty of engineering, has created a computer system that recognises individuals parking their bicycles so that if a different person tries to collect it, security staff can be warned.
Bicycle theft is a huge problem in the UK, especially as more people are turning to bikes as a greener mode of transport.
More than 500,000 are stolen yearly and only five per cent of these are returned to their owners. Many local councils have installed closed circuit TV cameras to prevent crime, but according to Damen this is not always effective.
She said: "Currently lots of thefts are happening in front of CCTV cameras, but they go unchecked. Cameras are installed in many locations but sometimes three people are observing 25 cameras and this makes it very ineffective."
The system works by taking colour information from CCTV images when a bike is parked and storing it until it is retrieved. It then marries the stored information with the new image and if there are big differences, it notifies security staff.
Currently the system is still at the prototype stage, but initial tests proved successful as 11 out of 13 simulated thefts were detected.
A spokesman from Sustrans, a UK sustainable transport charity, said: "Any kind of new technology that could prevent bicycle theft would be welcome. Theft is a big problem in many UK cities and people need to make sure their bikes are safe."
Damen is now developing her technology to identify suspicious events in public places, such as the problem of baggage - especially in airports.
"Someone intending to leave a suspicious package won't leave it in full view of a CCTV camera, but may choose to leave it in a toilet or behind a pillar," she said.
"We think we can engineer this technology to recognise people who enter 'flagged' areas with a package or bag, but then leave without it, raising an alert for security staff. That's my next challenge," she added.
Priest kills himself to be reborn
A Hindu priest in Chhattisgarh killed himself with the promise he would come back to life after two days, police said Monday.
Manoj Baghel, described as an intensely religious man, poisoned himself in front of a small crowd Saturday at a temple in Raigarh in Chhattisgarh, police said.
He was taken to hospital, and died soon after.
Police have registered a case of suicide, but have been unable to take the 25-year-old's body for an autopsy because supporters have insisted on returning the body to the temple and waiting to see what happens.
Police expect the crowds will give up their vigil by Monday evening.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Snow Blamed for 5 Deaths in Central U.S.
A winter storm packing heavy snow walloped the central United States, causing at least 5 deaths and dozens of injuries as multi-car pileups forced authorities to close parts of several major highways.
The storm Saturday blew heavy snow from Texas to Minnesota. Much of the region was still recovering from a severe ice storm early last week that knocked out electricity for hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses.
A winter storm packing heavy snow continued to wreak havoc across the central U.S. Sunday. Here, a tow truck operator helps a stranded driver on icy conditions in Topeka, Kan., Saturday.At least three people in Minnesota and one person each in Texas and Kansas were killed in traffic accidents that authorities said were weather related. Strong winds could make traveling hazardous all weekend, said Craig Cogil, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Des Moines, Iowa. Parts of the state were expected to get between 6 and 10 inches of snow by Sunday morning, he said.
In Minnesota, a man was killed when he lost control of his car on Highway 10 in Harris and went into the opposite lane and was hit by an oncoming car, according to the Chisago County Sheriff's Office. The victim was identified as John Marvin Becklin, 46, of Harris. Authorities said weather appeared to be a factor in the collision, which happened shortly after noon.
A 17-year-old girl died in an early-morning accident when she lost control of her car in Oak Grove, crossed the center line and was struck by a pickup truck, the Anoka County Sheriff's Office said. The name of the victim, who was from Oak Grove, was being withheld until relatives had been notified.
A 33-year-old West St. Paul man was killed when the car he was driving on icy Highway 7 slid sideways into oncoming traffic and was hit by an oncoming car, according to the State Patrol. The victim's 24-year-old passenger was critically injured in the crash. Their names were not immediately released.
The Minnesota State Patrol said it handled at least 347 accident reports of vehicles that ran off roads across the state.
In Texas, one person died in a chain-reaction pileup involving more than 50 vehicles, including several tractor-trailer rigs, on Interstate 40, police said. Authorities said it would take a few days to determine exactly how many were involved.
Eighteen people were taken to hospitals, two with life-threatening injuries, Sgt. Michael Poston said.
"There were cars crashing while they (firefighters) were there," Fire Department Capt. Bob Johnson told the Amarillo Globe-News for its Sunday editions. "They could hear them (the crashes), but they couldn't see them."
Many were holiday travelers, including families with small children not dressed for the weather, Sgt. Shawn McLeland said. Other drivers spotted them and opened Christmas presents to provide warmer clothing for the children.
The tangle of twisted cars and trucks shut down the interstate for most of the day. Authorities believe the pileup was caused by blowing snow and the resulting zero visibility.
In northeast Kansas, at least one person was killed in a 30-car pileup on Interstate 70, prompting authorities to close a 40-mile stretch of the highway. The pileup occurred about 30 miles west of Topeka.
The fierce snowstorm caused another wreck involving 20 to 40 vehicles, including three tractor-trailer rigs, on Interstate 29 in St. Joseph in western Missouri. Police closed about 100 miles of I-29 to the Iowa state line.
Wind was blowing at sustained speeds of 25 to 35 mph with gusts to 45 mph in Oklahoma, where U.S. 412 near Mooreland in western Oklahoma was closed after up to 20 cars slid off the road or crashed, authorities said.
The storm also impacted flights at airports in the Midwest, as the busy pre-Christmas weekend travel was getting underway. The delays rippled across the country, affecting flights in the New York region.
Doctor in penis photo scandal leaves Mayo Clinic
A doctor at a prestigious Arizona clinic who took a photograph of a patient's tattooed penis during surgery is "no longer practicing medicine" at the center, it was confirmed Friday.
Mayo Clinic spokeswoman Lynn Closway would not reveal whether surgeon Adam Hansen had been fired or resigned following the revelations which rocked the Nobel Prize-winning medical center this week.
"I am not allowed to speak off of that statement," clinic spokeswoman Lynn Closway said. "Play it as you see it."
Hansen, chief of general surgery at the clinic in Scottsdale, had admitted taking the patient's photo after noticing it was emblazoned with the words "Hot Rod," local media have reported.
The patient at the center of the controversy is a strip-club owner who had been undergoing a gall bladder operation. The incident came to light after a member of the clinic's surgical staff contacted a local newspaper on Monday.
Deadly Snowstorm Hits Plains
A blinding snowstorm blew from the Plains to the Midwest on Saturday, causing at least 5 deaths and dozens of injuries in numerous multi-car pileups and forcing authorities to close portions of several major highways.
In Texas, one person died in a chain-reaction pileup involving more than 50 vehicles, including several tractor-trailer rigs, on Interstate 40, police said. Authorities said it would take a few days to determine exactly how many were involved.
A storm hit the Plains on Saturday, causing accidents, forcing the closure of roads, disrupting air traffic and killing at least two people. Here, a man walks through the snow in Wichita, Kan.Eighteen people were taken to hospitals, two with life-threatening injuries, Sgt. Michael Poston said.
"There were cars crashing while they (firefighters) were there," Fire Department Capt. Bob Johnson told the Amarillo Globe-News for its Sunday editions. "They could hear them (the crashes), but they couldn't see them."
In Minnesota, a man was killed when he lost control of his car on Highway 10 in Harris and was hit by a car in the opposite lane, according to the Chisago County Sheriff's Office. The victim was identified as John Marvin Becklin, 46, of Harris. Authorities said weather appeared to be a factor in the collision, which happened shortly after noon.
A 17-year-old girl died in an early-morning accident when she lost control of her car in Oak Grove and crossed the center line and was struck by a pickup truck, the Anoka County Sheriff's Office said. The name of the victim, who was from Oak Grove, was being withheld until relatives had been notified.
In Carver County, a 33-year-old West St. Paul man was killed when the car he was driving on Highway 7 slid sideways into oncoming traffic on the icy highway and was hit by an oncoming car, according to the State Patrol. The victim's 24-year-old passenger was critically injured in the crash. Their names were noit immediately released.
The Minnesota State Patrol said it handled at least 347 accident reports of vehicles that ran off roads across the state.
In the Texas pileup, many were holiday travelers, including families with small children not dressed for the weather, Sgt. Shawn McLeland said. Other drivers spotted them and opened Christmas presents to provide warmer clothing for the children.
The tangle of twisted cars and trucks shut down the interstate for most of the day. Authorities believe the pileup was caused by blowing snow and the resulting zero visibility.
In northeast Kansas, at least one person was killed in a 30-car pileup on Interstate 70, prompting authorities to close a 40-mile stretch of the highway. The pileup occurred about 30 miles west of Topeka.
The fierce snowstorm caused another wreck involving 20 to 40 vehicles, including three tractor-trailer rigs, on Interstate 29 in St. Joseph in western Missouri. Police closed about 100 miles of I-29 to the Iowa state line.
The Plains storm also blew heavy snow across Oklahoma and parts of Nebraska and Iowa, a region still recovering from a severe ice storm early last week that knocked out electricity for hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses.
"We may see some whiteouts in the open areas," said Craig Cogil, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Des Moines, Iowa. Parts of the state could get between 6 and 10 inches of snow by Sunday morning.
Strong winds could make traveling hazardous all weekend, Cogil said.
Wind was blowing at sustained speeds of 25 to 35 mph with gusts to 45 mph in Oklahoma, where U.S. 412 near Mooreland in western Oklahoma was closed after up to 20 cars slid off the road or crashed, authorities said.
The Oklahoma Highway Patrol said a six-car collision on U.S. 64 in the state's northwest corner involved an ambulance that was carrying victims from another accident. Low visibility forced the closure of some highways.
"It's really been very, very busy," Oklahoma Highway Patrol Capt. Chris West said. "We've had so many crashes today."
Farther west, Colorado roads remained icy in spots following a storm Friday. Eastbound I-70 was closed about 20 miles west of Denver for more than two hours after a wreck in which five people, including an 8-year-old girl, were injured.
In Arkansas, high winds and scattered storms knocked out power to about 6,000 customers, Entergy Arkansas officials said.
The storm also impacted flights at airports in the Midwest, as the busy pre-Christmas weekend travel was getting underway. The delays rippled across the country, affecting flights in the New York region.
In Chicago, flights in and out of O'Hare International Airport were delayed an average of one hour, and about 170 flights were canceled, airport spokesman Gregg Cunningham said.
Flights departing from Newark Liberty International Airport for O'Hare were delayed about three hours.
You can sleep your way to weight loss
Worried about overindulging this holiday season? Give yourself a special gift: sleep.
Despite the temptation to have too much of everything during this hectic season, a growing number of studies now point to the ill effects of missing even just a few hours of sleep -- from increased appetite and obesity to a greater risk of high blood pressure and diabetes.
"So many people could benefit from more sleep," says James Gangwisch, a Columbia University researcher and lead author of a new study on the health effects of missed sleep. "A lot of people don't even realize that they are sleep-deprived."
Just look at the numbers: In 1910, Americans, who didn't have television, computers and video games to distract them at night, slept an average of nine hours per night,according to a new report in the journal Sleep. Nearly a century later, adults average seven hours of sleep nightly, according to a 2003 survey by the National Sleep Foundation. About a third of adults get six hours or less per night, according to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a large, federally funded project.
That's short of the seven to nine hours nightly most of us need.
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The effects go far beyond feeling tired and cranky. Skipping sleep fuels appetite, particularly for the kind of comfort food that is high in calories. Small wonder, then, that sleep deprivation is emerging as a key risk factor for obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
In fact, when Gangwisch and his colleagues analyzed the NHANES records of nearly 9,000 adults, ages 32 to 86, they found that short sleepers -- that is, those who sleep five hours or less per night -- were nearly twice as likely to develop Type 2 diabetes as those who slept seven or more hours nightly. Results are published in the December issue of the journal Sleep.
Other research, also by Gangwisch, suggests that short sleepers are twice as likely to be obese as people who get enough sleep nightly.
With that knowledge, welcome to the seventh annual Lean Plate Club Holiday Challenge. This marks Week Five of the challenge, which is not about dieting but rather about helping you maintain your weight from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day. It's never too late to join the challenge. Just keep the numbers on the bathroom scale steady from now until 2008 begins.
It's easy to make sleep a low priority during the year, and even easier at the holidays, when schedules get stretched to the limit by parties, shopping, cooking, travel and the more mundane end-of-year activities, from submitting health insurance reports to filling out expense-account claims.
Yet just an hour less sleep per night can wreak havoc, as a 2000 study by University of Chicago researchers shows. Eve Van Cauter and her colleagues deprived healthy young adults of just an hour a night of sleep. In six days, their hunger increased and blood-sugar levels soared, putting them in a pre-diabetic state that resembled that of people decades older. The effects were reversed with a return to normal sleep.
Other studies show that missing sleep cuts leptin levels, a hormone that controls satiety and signals the brain that more food is not needed. "When leptin levels are low," Van Cauter says, "it tells the brain that we need more calories, and hunger is stimulated." That's why skipping sleep "is highly likely to promote hunger and overeating," she says.
If you can't manage to fit in more sleep, at least try to be a little more physically active. Here's why: Exercise reduces the effects of sleep deprivation on insulin resistance -- a key step toward developing Type 2 diabetes. Being more active also helps improve sleep quality.
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That's why this week's Holiday Challenge activity goal is to get 30 minutes of activity daily. You can do that by taking six walks of five minutes each or three 10-minute walks. Or you can do it all at once. Whatever works for you.
This week's food goal is to swap good fats for bad. So choose foods with healthy mono-unsaturated and polyunsaturated oil, such as olive, canola and safflower oils; as well as omega-3 fatty acids found in avocados, fish, healthy margarine and nuts, and stearic acid, found in dark chocolate.
At this busy time of the year, naps may also help, although the research is less clear on their benefits. If you do nap, try to get some winks at about 3 p.m., a time that Gangwisch says appears to be the optimum time for the body.
As he notes, getting enough sleep "gives more energy, makes you more creative and helps you feel better. If we put sleep higher on our priority list, we can have more energy to devote to the things that are important in our lives."
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