WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama has signed into law a five-year extension of the U.S. government's authority to monitor the overseas activity of suspected foreign spies and terrorists.
The warrantless intercept program would have expired at the end of 2012 without the president's approval. The renewal bill won final passage in the Senate on Friday.
Known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the law allows the government to monitor overseas phone calls and emails without obtaining a court order for each intercept.
The law does not apply to Americans. When Americans are targeted for surveillance, the government must get a warrant from a special 11-judge court of U.S. district judges appointed by the Supreme Court.
The European Union said Satuday it expects Colombia to "assuage" concerns over impunity generated by a recently approved justice reform amplifying the jurisdiction of military tribunals.
In a press statement, the European High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Catherine Ashton, said she had "taken note of the adoption of the constitutional reform regarding the military jurisdiction in Colombia."
The reform amplified the Colombian military's jurisdiction over crimes allegedly committed by its own members. The reform was rejected by the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights who have claimed the reform will grant impunity to the military whose members are suspected of having committed at least 3,000 extrajudicial killings of civilians.
According to Ashton, "the EU had expressed a number of concerns on this sensitive issue. We have received reassurances that this reform will not lead to impunity for perpetrators of human rights violations, in line with Colombia's international commitments."
"The EU expects that remaining concerns will be assuaged by the forthcoming implementing legislation. The application of the new rules ? in particular with regard to the treatment of the pending investigations of alleged extrajudicial executions by state agents ? will be crucial to demonstrate that the worries expressed so far are unfounded," the E.U.'s top foreign affairs affairs said.
Scientologists may be facing their most daunting court case yet, and all it took was for someone to stop calling them a cult. After a years long legal battle, federal prosecutors in?Belgium now believe their investigation is complete enough to charge the Church of Scientology and its leaders as a criminal organization on charges of extortion, fraud, privacy breaches, and the illegal practice of medicine. "The decision follows years of investigation that was triggered by a complaint by the Labour Mediation Service in the Brussels Region. ...
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There are two means to measure the success of company sites. You can examine the web page ranking within the internet search engines along with the search engine result page. If you are a business site owner, you ought to make use of search engine optimization while taking advantage of the many tools and resources the web needs to offer your company.
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If you are a company site owner, you ought to make use of search engine optimization while benefitting from the many devices and resources the web has to provide your company.
The downside to being a company site owner is that you have to ensure that web traffic can actually find your company internet site. Assist from SEO will not just help with increasing sales for your company internet site however additionally increase the flow of net traffic to your company internet site. If you could get a decent ranking with your business website within the major search engines, you will stand a terrific opportunity of success, for your business site.
SEO specialists can improve the traffic to your comercial internet site, while assisting your company to be competitive with other on-line companies.
Consumer Reports finds the Toyota Prius to be the best overall value for the automotive dollar in its annual Best New-Car Value analysis.
The Prius has the right combination of performance, reliability and low estimated ownership costs of $ .49 cents per mile less than half that of the average car, to unseat the perennial pack leader Honda Fit. The Fit as has held the best new-car value title for the past four years.
Toyota and Lexus models placed at the top of six of the 10 categories that Consumer Reports analyzed. The automakers hybrid cars, in particular, represent excellent values overall, with great fuel economy and reliability along with low depreciation working in their favor. Toyota hybrid models topped three of the categories and placed second, behind the non-hybrid version of the same model, in an additional category.
In creating its annual Best and Worst New-Car-Value list, Consumer Reports mines its performance, reliability, and owner-cost data to calculate a value score for some 200 different vehicles ranging from small cars like the Prius to luxury sedans such as the BMW 750Li.
The Prius may not be the most exciting vehicle to drive, nor the cheapest to purchase, but its extremely reliable, roomy, rides well, gets great fuel economy, and is inexpensive to operate, says Rik Paul, automotive editor at Consumer Reports.
The scores were calculated based on the five-year owner cost for each vehicle, along with Consumer Reports road-test score and the organizations own predicted-reliability. In short, the better a car performs in Consumer Reports road tests and reliability ratings, and the less it costs to own over time, the better its value. The five-year owner cost estimates factor in depreciation, fuel, insurance premiums, interest on financing, maintenance and repairs, and sales tax. Depreciation is by far the largest owner-cost factor.
The 10 vehicle categories Consumer Reports included in this analysis: Small Hatchbacks, Small Sedans, Family Sedans, Upscale Sedans, Luxury Sedans, Sporty Cars/Convertibles, Wagons/Minivans, Small SUVs, Midsized SUVs, and Large/Luxury SUVs.
Some consumers seem to mistake size for value, buying their cars by the pound. But our data shows that rarely pays off. Price and fuel economy are the most important cost factors, and thats where small cars have a big advantage, Paul says.
Consumer Reports analysis shows small cars provide the highest value on average than any other car category, and large and luxury cars and SUVs deliver about 25-percent below-average value. Even the worst small cars tend to deliver about average value, and the best large SUVs and luxury cars rate about average. Usually family sedans deliver value that is 50 percent above the average vehicle. Notably, only one car in this category, the Chrysler 200, rates below average.
Best Value Small Hatchbacks: Toyota Prius Four
Worst Value Small Hatchbacks: Ford Focus SE
Best Value Family Sedan: Toyota Camry Hybrid XLE
Worst Value Family Sedan: Chrysler 200 Limited (V6)
Almost every category Consumer Reports evaluated contained good values, even if theyre not the cheapest vehicles to own. For example, the Lexus RX 350 is a luxury SUV that costs almost $ 50,000 to purchase and is relatively expensive to operate, at 93 cents a mile. But it has an excellent reliability history and offers a lot for the money in terms of features and performance, making it stand out against its competitors.
Best Value Large /Luxury SUV: Lexus RX 350
Worst Value Large /Luxury SUV: Nissan Armada Platinum
Consumer Reports analysis shows that forshoppers seeking space and good value, should consider a wagon, minivan, or small SUV. All three categories offer better-than-average value. The best is the fuel-efficient Toyota Prius V, which offers almost twice the value of an average car, with lots of room, above-average reliability, and very low owner cost, at just 51 cents per mile. And the small Mazda5 minivan isnt far behind.
Best Value Minivan/Wagon: Toyota Prius V Three
Worst Value Minivan/Wagon: Chrysler Town & Country Touring-L
Best Value Small SUV: Honda CR-V EX
Worst Value Small SUV: Mini Cooper Countryman S
No matter what type of car consumers are looking for, Consumer Reports value analysis will help shoppers get the most for their money. The complete rankings for the best and worst value vehicles for all 10 categories are available at http://www.ConsumerReports.org starting December 27 or in the February Issue of Consumer Reports Magazine. .
Consumer Reports is the worlds largest independent product-testing organization. Using its more than 50 labs, auto test center, and survey research center, the nonprofit rates thousands of products and services annually. Founded in 1936, Consumer Reports has over 8 million subscribers to its magazine, website and other publications. Its advocacy division, Consumers Union, works for health reform, food and product safety, financial reform, and other consumer issues in Washington, D.C., the states, and in the marketplace.
One of the most irritating things about enjoying videos, movies and TV shows online is the sheer number of places you must navigate to in order to get the content. Each of the major television networks has its own channel, some of which serve up some full episodes some of the time, while others just serve up teaser clips and ongoing snippets, like the opening monologues for "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson."
Dec. 26, 2012 ? As anyone familiar with the X-Men knows, mutants can be either very good or very bad -- or somewhere in between. The same appears true within cancer cells, which may harbor hundreds of mutations that set them apart from other cells in the body; the scientific challenge has been to figure out which mutations are culprits and which are innocent bystanders. Now, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine have devised a novel approach to sorting them out: they generated random mutations in a gene associated with lymphoma, tested the proteins produced by the genes to see how they performed, and generated a catalog of mutants with cancer-causing potential.
"Our goal was to correlate various mutations with potential to promote lymphoma," says Joel Pomerantz, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine's Institute for Cell Engineering. For the study, to be reported in a January 2013 issue of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Pomerantz and his research team focused on the protein CARD11. CARD11 plays a key role in signaling the presence of infection, which leads infection-fighting white blood cells to grow and divide. Certain mutations can turn CARD11 permanently "on," causing out-of-control cell division that results in cancers called lymphomas, which strike about 75,000 Americans each year.
To find out which genetic mutations would increase CARD11's activity, Pomerantz and his team made copies of the CARD11 gene in a way that made random mutations likely. They then used the faulty copies to make mutant proteins, and tested the ability of those proteins to trigger the signaling reaction that is CARD11's specialty. This let the researchers figure out which mutations increased the protein's activity, and by how much -- information that can be compared to emerging data about CARD11 mutations found in human lymphomas. "We found that several of the overactive mutations we'd identified have already been found in patients," Pomerantz says.
Noting that CARD11 is part of the NF-?B signaling pathway, a target of some cancer therapies, Pomerantz says the new cataloging technique could lead to more personalized treatment. "We imagine eventually being able to correlate response to a particular therapy with a particular mutation," he says. For now, Pomerantz and his team are delving deeper into what gives the bad CARD11 mutants their special powers, looking for mechanisms to explain how certain changes increase the protein's activity.
Other authors on the paper are Waipan Chan and Thomas B. Schaffer, both of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Johns Hopkins Medicine, via Newswise.
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Journal Reference:
W. Chan, T. B. Schaffer, J. L. Pomerantz. A Quantitative Signaling Screen Identifies CARD11 Mutations in the CARD and LATCH Domains That Induce Bcl10 Ubiquitination and Human Lymphoma Cell Survival. Molecular and Cellular Biology, 2012; 33 (2): 429 DOI: 10.1128/MCB.00850-12
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Technology has progressed to a point where most people do not even consider trying to fix a piece of electronic equipment that no longer functions properly. Many items have become much cheaper to dispose of than to have repaired. However, this has led to the amount of electronic waste found in local landfills becoming a growing concern.
There are components inside most electronic devices that contain lead and other materials known to be hazardous. When circuit boards are created, materials used to secure the components in place are composed of materials and compounds that can be hazardous if allowed to reach certain levels. Even small items, such as phones and used ink cartridges from printers can become a problem over time.
One solution to this problem is to recycle used electronics. Rather than replacing one's computer whenever the next evolution is released, try simply upgrading. Most have slots in the mother board that are designed to accommodate plug in components. Many even allow one to expand the memory by simply plugging in a new chip.
If upgrading existing equipment is not feasible, one might consider donating it to charity. There are many families in the world that are not wealthy enough to afford the latest innovations in technology. However, there are organizations that collect donations of items and redistribute them among the needy. Others operate thrift stores where individuals can obtain gently used items for a fraction of the retail cost.
For businesses, disposing of used equipment may not be the best option anyway. Trying to replace equipment, such as printers, every time an item fails to operate can become prohibitively expensive. Oddly enough, most electronic items, including printers, have very few moving parts to break down. Many of these are of relatively simple design and easily fixed by a knowledgeable technician.
Often, printers fail to operate properly because of software issues or failure to communicate with computers or networks to which they are connected. These problems are a bit more difficult to track down and fix, but most business printers are much too costly to just throw out. Fortunately, there is help available for businesses and individuals who want to limit the amount of electronic waste they send to landfills.
Printer repair is a simple expedient that can help to reduce waste of one of the shortest lived pieces of electronic equipment. Printers tend to fail more often than other items because they do have moving parts that can break.
Geoffrey Livingston advices whenever possible, attempt to fix your office equipment before tossing it away. San Jose Printer Repair service Computer Extras Express can help service all major brands of printers. They also repair plotters, scanners, copiers, and computers.
As the Gulf Coast struggles to recover from an outbreak of tornadoes, millions across the nation are waking up this morning on the busiest travel day of the Christmas season to cope with more severe weather that promises to upset the travel plans of millions.
"Traveling will definitely be affected as people go home for the holidays," Bob Oravec, lead forecaster for the National Weather Service, told ABC News. "Anywhere from the Mississippi Valley into the Ohio Valley and the Northeast, there's definitely going to be travel issues as we have heavy snow and some very high winds."
That large storm has been pounding not just the Gulf Coast but most of the South from Oklahoma to Arkansas, and Texas, where Dallas had a rare white Christmas.
In Lubbock, Texas, more than an inch of snow fell, making it difficult for some drivers to stay on the road. At Dallas Fort Worth airport, flights have been delayed as crews worked to de-ice planes.
Oklahoma got about 7 inches of snow across the state, making for treacherous road conditions. A 21-car pile-up in Oklahoma City temporarily shut down a major roadway through the state. No one was seriously injured.
Arkansas also got a rare Christmas Day snow storm, with an estimated 10 inches falling on Fayetteville, Ark., limiting roadway visibility.
All of that snowy weather in the South left a white trail everywhere it went, and today it's expected to bring at least six to eight inches to the lower Midwest. Today's severe weather could cause potential delays at airports in St. Louis, Louisville, Ky., Indianapolis and Cincinnati.
In Northern California, residents were socked with the third storm in three days. Wet weather spread from the Bay area through the Sierras and delayed inbound flights at San Francisco International airport, and caused a landslide in Oakland, almost crushing one driver to death.
"I heard the thing bounce kind of directly right off my roof and I feel pretty lucky," storm damage victim John Monaghan told ABC News.
The severe weather system in the South has been pushing overnight, and a front with heavy rain and wind is forecast for the Northeastern corridor late tonight and into Thursday morning.
"The big cities from Washington up to Philadelphia and New York City will mostly be in the form of rain," Oravec said. "There may be a brief period of snow from the nation's capitol this morning up into Philadelphia and then to New York City. But the track of the storm currently suggests that the precipitation will definitely change over to rain."
If you hadn't noticed, Dropbox is on a major photographykick lately, and it's not stopping just because the holidays are nearly in full swing. Its new Android beta helps users deal with their photos by the bushel, either sharing or scrapping multiple photos at once as well as organize them into photos. Anyone less than photographically inclined will still see a few interface tweaks that partly mirror the earlier iOS updates, as well as a new option to receive betas as soon as they're posted. There's inherent risks to using unfinished code, so take that into account before getting involved; it's still hard to resist when Dropbox has been handing out free storage to Android device buyers like candy.
Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock took to Twitter Monday to show off his very buff bod and posted a pic on the social media site where his muscle man legs are on full display for his lucky followers.
"Sometimes the most important victories are just for yourself. LEGS. #5KneeSurgeries #RupturedDiscs #StillFindAWay," the Scorpion King actor wrote.?
See Dwayne Johnson in the G.I. Retaliation trailer!?
The A-list athlete sported a sweatshirt, gym shorts and tennis shoes for the impressive Twitpic. He posed with his head down and his fist in the air as he flaunted his shocking strength.
The former WWF wrestler plays a bodybuilder in his upcoming flick, Pain & Gain, in which he costars with Mark Wahlberg.
Looks like he's done his work for the role.?Keep up the squats, Rock!?
The new Accountability Review Board (ARB)?report on the Sept. 11 Benghazi attacks states that the loss of life and damage to U.S. property "rests solely and completely with the terrorists who perpetrated the attacks," but the "grossly inadequate" security surrounding the mission is what made the raid so successful.?
The Special Mission's security reliance on two militias ? the poorly skilled?Libyan February 17 Martyrs? Brigade" and the unarmed Blue Mountain Libya (BML) ? was "misplaced."
When Ambassador Stevens? got there, the February 17 militia "had stopped accompanying Special Mission vehicle movements in protest over salary and working hour."
The report's authors found little evidence that the February 17 guards "offered any meaningful defense" of the Special Mission, even though that was their job.
The BML members ? who were in charge of opening/closing the front gate, patrolling the compound, and giving warning of an attack ? also did the opposite as attackers approached since there was no warning given and "the speed with which attackers entered raised the?possibility that BML guards left the C1 pedestrian gate open."?
The result is that men with AK-47s rushed in and began trashing the place while Ambassador Stevens and Information Management Officer (IMO) Sean Smith ? guarded by a lone security officer ? were ushered into a bathroom, where they both died of smoke inhalation.
SEE ALSO:?Three State Department Officials Resign After Benghazi Report Shreds Mission Security
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S.current account deficit shrank to its narrowest in nearly two years in the third quarter as weak domestic demand and lower oil prices curbed imports, a government report showed on Tuesday.
The Commerce Department said the current account gap, which measures the flow of goods, services and investments into and out of the country, fell to $107.5 billion, the lowest level since the fourth quarter of 2010, from $118.1 billion in the second quarter.
That represented 2.7 percent of gross domestic product, the smallest share since the second quarter of 2009, and down from 3.0 percent in the second quarter.
The smaller deficit, if sustained, should help support the dollar, even as the Federal Reserve continues its aggressive easing policy to boost economic growth.
"With imports falling further in October, look for the current account gap to decrease again in the fourth quarter," said Sal Guatieri, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto.
"Next year, faster growth in emerging markets should support exports, extending the improvement in the trade balance. A gradually shrinking current account deficit means the U.S. is becoming less dependent on foreign funding, which should be a long-term positive for the greenback."
Economists polled by Reuters expected the third-quarter current account gap to narrow to $103.4 billion from a previously reported $117.4 billion.
The shortfall on the current account has shrunk from a peak of 6.5 percent of GDP in the fourth quarter of 2005, in part because of a significant increase in the volume of oil exports.
In the third quarter, the deficit on goods tumbled to $173.9 billion from $185.7 billion in the prior quarter, while the services surplus rose to $49.4 billion from $48.3 billion.
The surplus on income decreased to $50.8 billion from $52.1 billion in the second quarter, putting a wrinkle on the report. The drop reflected an increase in dividend payments abroad.
But foreign investment in the United States rebounded $282.0 billion after decreasing $143.6 billion in the second quarter. There was also an increase in purchases of U.S. Treasuries and shares during the quarter.
"The third quarter also saw a marked increase in investment into U.S. currency and U.S. Treasury securities, likely a function of the increased uncertainty seen in the markets during the period," said TD Securities' Gennadiy Goldberg.
(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by James Dalgleish)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Oracle says its latest quarterly earnings rose 18 percent as companies splurged on more software and other technology toward the end of the year.
The results announced Tuesday are an improvement from Oracle's previous quarter, when the company's revenue dipped slightly from a year earlier.
The latest quarter spanned September through November. That makes Oracle the first technology bellwether to provide insights into corporate spending since the Nov. 6 re-election of President Obama and negotiations to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff began to heat up.
Oracle Corp. earned $2.6 billion, or 53 cents per share, in its fiscal second quarter. That compares with net income of $2.2 billion, or 43 cents per share, last year.
Create and measure success, month by month, with a CEO (or Executive) Calendar.
Being a CEO (or manager or front line worker) typically means having more things to handle than you can actually pay attention to.? Most humans can track 3-5 important goals, and most businesses have 8-12 key elements.
Top executives aren?t any smarter than the rest of us ? they just use advanced tricks like ?distributed cognition,? offloading their brains, working just the right amount on just the right things.
It?s easier than you think.
One great tool is the CEO (or Executive) Calendar. This directs your focus across the different areas you?re responsible for, at different times throughout the year. You?ll want to touch each area each month.? The calendar helps you dive? deeper at the right times during the year.
Using the CEO Calendar means (a) you won?t have to worry about remembering, (b) you can much more easily delegate work, and (c) you can anticipate needs and delegate early.? I?m astonished at how few executives do this ? and how common it is among the really top performers.
For example, suppose you?ve set a target in May of making your senior staff ?more strategic.?? Then in February you can assign ?read over the Strategic Plan and send me a one-page summary? of how they see their department affected by it; in March you can give them feedback and ask for a revision, and in April you can ask them to draft an Operating Plan for their department based on that strategy.
By May, your ?make my top people more strategic? goal is within reach based on that prior work.
Here?s another. You could assign this to each person with budget authority that reports to you: ?Identify one rising star in your department.? Have them draft your budget. Then, give them coaching on how to do it better.? Send me both their draft, and an outline of your coaching guidance.?? If budgets are due in month M, then you would assign this in month M minus 2, and expect it back in month M minus 1.? (I.e. if budgets are due in October, then you?d assign this no later than August for a September delivery.)
With the calendar in place, you?re ready to empower your assistant to remind people of their deliverables in time to get them to you. Your assistant should also be reminding you to schedule time to review these priorities.
(More ambitiously, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer describes creating an annual ?time budget? in this Wall Street Journal interview.)
Below is a sample CEO Calendar you can use as a basis of your own.? The real trick is to pick Quarterly Focus topics that really make sense for who you are, what your role is, and what the firm needs from you.? Within that Focus, pick three monthly topics to work on.
Q1: Strategy
Q2: Teamwork
Q3: Self Improvement
Q4: Culture
Q1: Strategy
Jan ? Strategic Plan
Feb ? Compare 2012 to industry benchmarks
Mar ? Refresh Operating Benchmarks and Operating Plans
?
Q2: Teamwork
Apr ? Cost Control and Lean Office / Lean IT (Lean Grid)
May ? Making Your Sr. People ?More Strategic?
Jun ? Motivating and Measuring ? ?The Progress Principle?
?
Q3: Self Improvement
Jul ? Self Management and Emotional Maturity
Aug ? Email, Meetings, Commitments, Accountability
Sep ? CEO Disease and ?Becoming Trusted?
?
Q4: Culture
Oct ? Constructive Conflict
Nov ? Mentoring and Coaching
Dec ? Staff Reviews and Benchmarking
?
The Tom on Leadership column and blog will follow this calendar for 2013.
Hybrid tunnel may help guide severed nerves back to healthPublic release date: 17-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Matthew Swayne mls29@psu.edu 814-865-9481 Penn State
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Building a tunnel made up of both hard and soft materials to guide the reconnection of severed nerve endings may be the first step toward helping patients who have suffered extensive nerve trauma regain feeling and movement, according to a team of biomedical engineers.
"Nerve injury in both central nervous system and peripheral nervous system is a major health problem," said Mohammad Reza Abidian, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, Penn State. "According to the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center, there are approximately 290,000 individuals in the US who suffer from spinal cord injuries with about 12,000 new injuries occurring each year."
Spontaneous nerve regeneration is limited to small lesions within the injured peripheral nerve system and is actively suppressed within central nervous system. When a nerve in the peripheral nervous system is cut slightly, nerve endings can regenerate and reconnect. However, if the distance between the two endings is too far, the growth can go off course and fail to connect.
The researchers, who published their results in the current issue of Advanced Healthcare Materials, developed a novel hybrid conduit that consisted of a soft material, called a hydrogel, as an external wall along with an internal wall made of an electrically-active conducting polymer to serve as a tunnel that guides the regrowth and reconnection of the severed nerve endings.
Abidian said that the method could offer advantages over current surgeries that are used to reconnect severed nerves.
"Autografts are currently the gold standard for bridging nerve gaps," said Abidian. "This is an operation that takes the nerve from another portion of the body -- for instance -- from a tendon, and then it is grafted onto the injured nerve."
However, the operation can be painful and there are often mismatches in size between the severed nerve endings and the new grafted portion of the nerve, Abidian said.
The researchers used agarose, a hydrogel that is permeable and more likely to be accepted by the body. However, because the hydrogel expands in water and fluids, the expansion would collapse the tunnel and reduce the ability of the nerve endings to regenerate and connect, Abidian said. They created a second design by adding a conducting polymer, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) -- PEDOT -- to the design to form a wall that can mechanically support and reinforce the hydrogel. PEDOT is a stable material that can conduct electricity to help electrical signals pass through the nerve.
To make sure nutrients and oxygen would reach the regenerating nerve endings, the team created a spiral PEDOT design that maintained the structural integrity of the wall, but allowed some nutrients and air to reach the nerve.
The researchers tested the three designs -- plain hydrogel, hydrogel with fully-coated PEDOT wall, and hydrogel with a partially coated PEDOT wall -- by implanting the device in 10 mm nerve gaps in rats and measuring the muscle mass and strength of muscle contractions at the end of the nerves. These measurements can indicate whether the separated nerve has reconnected.
They also looked at optical images of cross sections of the nerve to assess its relative health.
According to Abidian, the spiral PEDOT design generated significantly more muscle mass than the other designs, although it did not generate as much muscle mass as the autograft, which was used as the control design in the study.
The pictures of the spiral PEDOT design showed that the health of the nerve itself was nearly indistinguishable from a nerve photographed after an autograft operation.
Abidian said that the next step will be to secure funding to test the design when the gaps between severed nerves are so large that even autograft operations are ineffective. He also said that he hopes the design can be used to create other types of medical implants, such as neural interfaces.
"This design shows that, yes, it can work," said Abidian. "But now we have to see if electrical signals and chemicals can also pass through much longer gaps to guide and modulate axonal regeneration."
###
Abidian worked with Eugene Daneshvar, graduate student in biomedical engineering; Brent Egeland, resident surgeon in plastic surgery; Daryl Kipke, professor in biomedical engineering, principal investigator at the Neural Engineering Lab and director of the Center for Neural Communication Technology; Paul Cederna, section head of plastic surgery and associate chair of the department of surgery and Melanie Urbanchek, research assistant professor in the section of plastic surgery, all of the University of Michigan, on the study.
The Army Research Office supported this work.
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Hybrid tunnel may help guide severed nerves back to healthPublic release date: 17-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Matthew Swayne mls29@psu.edu 814-865-9481 Penn State
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Building a tunnel made up of both hard and soft materials to guide the reconnection of severed nerve endings may be the first step toward helping patients who have suffered extensive nerve trauma regain feeling and movement, according to a team of biomedical engineers.
"Nerve injury in both central nervous system and peripheral nervous system is a major health problem," said Mohammad Reza Abidian, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, Penn State. "According to the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center, there are approximately 290,000 individuals in the US who suffer from spinal cord injuries with about 12,000 new injuries occurring each year."
Spontaneous nerve regeneration is limited to small lesions within the injured peripheral nerve system and is actively suppressed within central nervous system. When a nerve in the peripheral nervous system is cut slightly, nerve endings can regenerate and reconnect. However, if the distance between the two endings is too far, the growth can go off course and fail to connect.
The researchers, who published their results in the current issue of Advanced Healthcare Materials, developed a novel hybrid conduit that consisted of a soft material, called a hydrogel, as an external wall along with an internal wall made of an electrically-active conducting polymer to serve as a tunnel that guides the regrowth and reconnection of the severed nerve endings.
Abidian said that the method could offer advantages over current surgeries that are used to reconnect severed nerves.
"Autografts are currently the gold standard for bridging nerve gaps," said Abidian. "This is an operation that takes the nerve from another portion of the body -- for instance -- from a tendon, and then it is grafted onto the injured nerve."
However, the operation can be painful and there are often mismatches in size between the severed nerve endings and the new grafted portion of the nerve, Abidian said.
The researchers used agarose, a hydrogel that is permeable and more likely to be accepted by the body. However, because the hydrogel expands in water and fluids, the expansion would collapse the tunnel and reduce the ability of the nerve endings to regenerate and connect, Abidian said. They created a second design by adding a conducting polymer, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) -- PEDOT -- to the design to form a wall that can mechanically support and reinforce the hydrogel. PEDOT is a stable material that can conduct electricity to help electrical signals pass through the nerve.
To make sure nutrients and oxygen would reach the regenerating nerve endings, the team created a spiral PEDOT design that maintained the structural integrity of the wall, but allowed some nutrients and air to reach the nerve.
The researchers tested the three designs -- plain hydrogel, hydrogel with fully-coated PEDOT wall, and hydrogel with a partially coated PEDOT wall -- by implanting the device in 10 mm nerve gaps in rats and measuring the muscle mass and strength of muscle contractions at the end of the nerves. These measurements can indicate whether the separated nerve has reconnected.
They also looked at optical images of cross sections of the nerve to assess its relative health.
According to Abidian, the spiral PEDOT design generated significantly more muscle mass than the other designs, although it did not generate as much muscle mass as the autograft, which was used as the control design in the study.
The pictures of the spiral PEDOT design showed that the health of the nerve itself was nearly indistinguishable from a nerve photographed after an autograft operation.
Abidian said that the next step will be to secure funding to test the design when the gaps between severed nerves are so large that even autograft operations are ineffective. He also said that he hopes the design can be used to create other types of medical implants, such as neural interfaces.
"This design shows that, yes, it can work," said Abidian. "But now we have to see if electrical signals and chemicals can also pass through much longer gaps to guide and modulate axonal regeneration."
###
Abidian worked with Eugene Daneshvar, graduate student in biomedical engineering; Brent Egeland, resident surgeon in plastic surgery; Daryl Kipke, professor in biomedical engineering, principal investigator at the Neural Engineering Lab and director of the Center for Neural Communication Technology; Paul Cederna, section head of plastic surgery and associate chair of the department of surgery and Melanie Urbanchek, research assistant professor in the section of plastic surgery, all of the University of Michigan, on the study.
The Army Research Office supported this work.
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SHAWNEE ON DE, PA (PRWEB) October 17, 2012
Sophyto Gluten Free Skin Care Line from the UK has been getting a lot of attention from the media lately. According to the Sophyto website, they have been featured in Vogue, The Metro, Australian Womens Weekly and Womens Health & Fitness, this line is not only gluten-free, but also free from parabens, animal byproducts, animal testing, fragrances, artificial colors, fillers and processed nutrients. Of the botanical ingredients found within the product line, 90 percent are certified organic. Sophyto skincare is formulated for all skin types to restore youthfulness, moisture and pH balance. The line consists of a cleanser, brightening treatment, anti-aging serum and moisturizer.
Sophyto Gluten Free Skin Care products were created in 2008, following eight years of research and development. According to the Sophyto website, celebrities like Debbie Gibson, Kim Poirier, Darren Darnborough, Jodelle Ferland and Daryl Hannah have publicly endorsed Sophyto products. Company Founder Karen Drake Sinclair released her line of natural beauty care to be sold in professional spas and doctors offices. Retailers do not always carry ground-breaking new products, so most people go to health practitioners to find them.
Holistic Health Coach Tricia Cardone is now carrying the entire Sophyto line as a natural extension of her services. Tricia has over 15 years of experience in holistic field of healthy living and nutrition. She is a Certified Holistic Health Counselor specializing in gluten-free, dairy-free living. Her blog packed full of nutrition data and healthy recipes was rated one of the Top 100 Health Coach Blogs in 2012 by the Institute for the Psychology of Eating.
Much of my health advice is tailored to people who want to live a healthier lifestyle and suffer from gluten sensitivities and auto-immune health concerns, Tricia Cardone explains. Im really excited to offer this line to my coaching clients and to my online customers as a way to promote a healthier lifestyle. I feel it is important to use products that do not contain harsh chemicals or other allergenic ingredients so the Sophyto line is really a slam-dunk.
She adds, Diet is a huge factor in how our skin looks and feels. But, naturally, it also matters what products you use on your skin as well. In my holistic health practice, I really look at how the foods we eat and the products we use affect the body. Interested individuals can find the Sophyto Gluten Free Skin Care Line in Tricia Cardones online store at http://www.NHTHealthyLiving.com. You can also visit her blog at http://www.APassionForHealthyLiving.com where you can contact Tricia directly for one-on-one health coaching.
About: TRICIA CARDONE, CN, CHHC, Tricia is a graduate of the prestigious Institute for Integrative Nutrition
The Basal Temperature Test is not to be used as a replacement for a proper medical assessment.? Instead it can help you determine whether you may have a thyroid imbalance and a low functioning thyroid gland in particular.? Low thyroid function can cause many symptoms ranging from fatigue to difficulty losing weight.? Check out my blog ?Is an Underactive Thyroid Making You Overweight??
Because the thyroid gland reflects the body?s metabolic rate and heat is generated during metabolism, assessing body temperature can give clues regarding the function of the thyroid gland.
1.? Shake down a thermometer until the mercury falls below 95 degrees Fahrenheit if using an older thermometer.? Place it by your bed at night when you retire.
2.? Upon waking, before getting up (yes, even to use the bathroom) place the thermometer under your armpit for 10 minutes.? Digital thermometers may automatically stop before that.? That?s fine.? Try to lay in bed as still as possible during this time.? Rest and close your eyes.? Don?t get up until after the 10 minutes have passed or until a digital thermometer has registered your temperature.
3.? Record the temperature, time, and date.
4.? Conduct the same test for at least three mornings at the same time each day.
Assessing Your Basal Temperature Test
A healthy resting temperature ranges between 97.8 to 98.2 degrees Fahrenheit or 36.6 to 36.8 degrees Celsius.? Natural fluctuations can occur during menstrual cycles.? If you are still menstruating, perform the test on the second, third, and fourth days of the menstrual cycle.
Post-menopausal women or men can conduct the tests any days of the month.
If your temperature is consistently lower than the range indicated above for at least three days, this may be an indication of hypothyroidism.? Conversely, temperatures consistently higher than this may indicate hyperthyroidism but can also suggest a possible infection.? If so, you should see a physician.
If you are working with a naturally-minded physician, be sure to bring the results of your three days of basal temperature tests.? If your doctor wants to conduct blood tests to confirm your results, ask him or her to test for thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), free T3, free T4, and thyroid antibodies.? All four tests give a more accurate picture of the health of your thyroid gland than testing solely for TSH like many doctors do.? Actually, many people test normal for their TSH even when they have all the symptoms of hypothyroidism.? Check out my blog ?Is an Underactive Thyroid Making You Overweight?? for more information.
Source: ?Datis Kharrazian, DHSc, DC, MS, Why Do I Still Have Thyroid Symptoms? (Elephant Printing: 2010).
Subscribe to my free e-magazine World?s Healthiest News to receive monthly health news, tips, recipes and more. Follow me on Twitter @mschoffrocook and Facebook.? Copyright Michelle Schoffro Cook, PhD.
It?s not even Christmas, but Twinkies fans may be able to start looking forward to an Easter present.
Bankrupt Hostess Brands has received a number of bids from companies interested in buying the maker of Twinkies, Ho Hos, and Wonder bread, including retail heavyweights such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Kroger Co, Bloomberg News reported Friday, quoting an unnamed person familiar with the matter.
The person asked not to be named because of the confidentiality of the bidding process, Bloomberg reported.
Bloomberg reported that around two dozen possible buyers had emerged, including Wal-Mart , Kroger ?Mexican bakery giant Grupo Bimbo SAB and Alpha Baking Company.?
Wal-Mart, Kroger and Grupo Bimbo declined to comment ; Alpha did not respond to a request for comment from NBC News.?
?Hostess does possess several iconic American brands,? said Erin Lash,?an equity analyst at Morningstar. Despite concerns about obesity, the snack business is fast-growing, she said. ?We?re not surprised there?s interest in those brands.?
Anthony Michael Sabino, a bankruptcy attorney and a professor at St. John's University, said bankruptcy judge Robert Drain was motivated to move quickly. Bidding will likely take place by early January, since the assets ? if not the treats themselves ? could become stale.?
?I think this will move a at a fairly decent pace. He knows what?s at stake here.?
?You could very well see the sale closing by Valentine?s Day or early March,? he said. ?There?s a very good chance that, by Easter, there are going to be Twinkies on the shelves again.?
Bloomberg said the liquidation sale could yield up to $1 billion. Sabino said it was more likely that the company would be broken up and purchased by more than one buyer, with the snack cakes viewed as the most valuable division. Besides Twinkies, Ho Hos and Wonder bread,?Hostess made its eponymous cupcakes, Ding-Dongs, Sno Balls and the Drake?s line of snack cakes.
It?s too early to tell which bidder will end up as the new owner of the Twinkie. Wal-Mart, in the middle of its busiest quarter, has the advantage from a cash-flow standpoint, Sabino said. ?In terms of ability to crank out the best offer, that might be Kraft or Grupo Bimbo.?
Lash said Kraft didn?t seem to be a likely buyer, though. ?Kraft has been more focused on divestitures,? she said. She also said two other companies speculated to be potential bidders, the Campbell Soup Company and Kellogg?s, were still digesting recent acquisitions and unlikely to add another so soon.?
Hostess shut down its operations last month, laying off most of its 18,500 workers, after failing to come to an agreement with its bakers? union as it tried to emerge from its second bankruptcy in a decade.?
Dec. 13, 2012 ? What is everyone looking at? It's a common question in social settings because the answer identifies something of interest, or helps delineate social groupings. Those insights someday will be essential for robots designed to interact with humans, so researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute have developed a method for detecting where people's gazes intersect.
The researchers tested the method using groups of people with head-mounted video cameras. By noting where their gazes converged in three-dimensional space, the researchers could determine if they were listening to a single speaker, interacting as a group, or even following the bouncing ball in a ping-pong game.
The system thus uses crowdsourcing to provide subjective information about social groups that would otherwise be difficult or impossible for a robot to ascertain.
The researchers' algorithm for determining "social saliency" could ultimately be used to evaluate a variety of social cues, such as the expressions on people's faces or body movements, or data from other types of visual or audio sensors.
"This really is just a first step toward analyzing the social signals of people," said Hyun Soo Park, a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering, who worked on the project with Yaser Sheikh, assistant research professor of robotics, and Eakta Jain of Texas Instruments, who was awarded a Ph.D. in robotics last spring. "In the future, robots will need to interact organically with people and to do so they must understand their social environment, not just their physical environment."
Though head-mounted cameras are still unusual, police officers, soldiers, search-and-rescue personnel and even surgeons are among those who have begun to wear body-mounted cameras. Head-mounted systems, such as those integrated into eyeglass frames, are poised to become more common. Even if person-mounted cameras don't become ubiquitous, Sheikh noted that these cameras someday might be used routinely by people who work in cooperative teams with robots.
The technique was tested in three real-world settings: a meeting involving two work groups; a musical performance; and a party in which participants played pool and ping-pong and chatted in small groups.
The head-mounted cameras provided precise data about what people were looking at in social settings. The algorithm developed by the research team was able to automatically estimate the number and 3D position of "gaze concurrences" -- positions where the gazes of multiple people intersected.
But the researchers were surprised by the level of detail they were able to detect. In the party setting, for instance, the algorithm didn't just indicate that people were looking at the ping-pong table; the gaze concurrence video actually shows the flight of the ball as it bounces and is batted back and forth.
That finding suggests another possible application for monitoring gaze concurrence: player-level views of ball games. Park said if basketball players all wore head-mounted cameras, for instance, it might be possible to reconstruct the game, not from the point of view of a single player, but from a collective view of the players as they all keep their eyes on the ball.
Another potential use is the study of social behavior, such as group dynamics and gender interactions, and research into behavioral disorders, such as autism.
More information on gaze concurrence, including a video, is available on the project website (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~hyunsoop/gaze_concurrence.html). The researchers reported their findings Dec. 3 at the Neural Information Processing Systems Conference in Lake Tahoe, Nev. The research was sponsored by the Samsung Global Research Outreach Program, Intel and the National Science Foundation.
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?By LESLIE COLLINS Northeast News December 12, 2012?
Christmas has been commercialized and any department store, large or small, will remind you that Christmas is only days away. Even the grocery stores have joined in, blasting Christmas themed music and running holiday specials.
Christmas payday loans. The flyer pictured above, distributed by a local payday loan company, advertises that residents can take out a payday loan interest-free. However, the fine print clarifies that the interest-free deal is only for loans that require one payment. If a loan requires multiple payments, only the first or next payment will be interest-free.
Beyond the good cheer and giving spirit, every store wants a piece of your paycheck this Christmas. And that paycheck may eventually become smaller if the ?fiscal cliff? hits.
Northeast News? managing editor recently received a flyer in the mail from a local payday lender encouraging cash-strapped residents to use payday loans to purchase Christmas gifts for their loved ones. While it may sound like a solution in theory, using payday loans for Christmas shopping could turn into a financial nightmare, making you regret Christmas all year-long.
?It?s almost suicidal,? former Missouri state Rep. John Burnett said. ?The interest rates are so high that for the average consumer to use that as a source of income for extra expenses like we do at Christmas would be really almost suicidal financially speaking.?
In Missouri, residents are allowed to borrow up to $500 and renew their payday loans up to six times. The Annual Percentage Rate (APR) can soar up to 1,950 percent, since Missouri allows lenders to charge fees and interest up to 75 percent of the loan amount. However, the average APR charged in Missouri is 444.61 percent, according to the January 2011 Missouri Division of Finance report. According to a July 2009 Better Business Bureau study of the Missouri payday loan industry, Missouri allows the highest APR compared to the 43 states that have either banned payday loans or set APR caps. Only seven states have an uncapped APR. In addition, the study found that of the nine contiguous states, Missouri is the only one that allows residents to renew a payday loan.
?It?s a good idea if you can pay it back in a one-time payment,? said Central Bank of Kansas City President Bill Dana. ?If you don?t have the money today and you get a paycheck on the 31st and want to borrow the money on the 23rd to buy your Christmas presents, then maybe it makes sense.
?But, the reality is most folks automatically renew their payday loans and they fall back into the same issues of money management that they had before, and they never pay it off or it takes them a long time to pay off.?
Compounding the situation is that those who generally use payday loans are those who can?t get a loan from a bank or get a credit card, Dana said.
?Their credit is so poor they end up using a payday loan company,? Dana said. ?I think in most cases it?s (payday loan industry) abusive and in worst cases, predatory against a low income consumer that probably should not be getting that loan.?
According to a 2007 survey conducted by the Missouri Division of Finance, the average age of those using a payday loan in Missouri is 43 and the average annual income is $24,607.
Of the borrowers surveyed, 12 percent were on disability or using Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
A number of payday lenders simply rewrite the loan instead of renewing, Burnett said.
?So, you can really get into a spiral, just a really horrible spiral,? he said.
Asked how long it takes for someone to pay off a payday loan, Burnett said the average length is eight to 10 months in Missouri.
?It looks easy because if you get a $100 loan and they charge you $15 until payday to pay it, it seems logical that you can pay the $15 along with the $100,? Dana said. ?But most folks would rather roll it over and renew the loan. They keep delaying the (full) payment. That?s how the interest rate compounds to that big number.?
If a consumer was charged 15 percent interest every two weeks on a $100 loan, that would add up to $390 in interest alone in one year, Dana said.
?That?s $390 to borrow $100 and that doesn?t include any principal,? Dana said. ?You still owe the $100 after that.?
Asked why Missouri allows such high interest rates, Burnett said, ?It?s just raw capitalism. The legislation was written by the industry and they took advantage of everything they could. It was a new industry when they wrote it.?
?The political power of these payday lenders in Missouri is incredible,? Burnett continued. ?They have the lobbyists and the legislators cornered.?
The payday loan industry isn?t shy about doling out money to political campaigns or to lobbying expenses, he said.
For eight years, Burnett served as a state representative, and all but one year he sponsored legislation to cap the annual rate for payday loans at 36 percent.
?Most years we didn?t even get a hearing on it,? he said.
Earlier this year, Missourians for Responsible Lending tried to garner enough signatures to place similar legislation on the ballot, but lawsuits delayed their collection of signatures and they were a few signatures shy in several Congressional districts.
Years ago the practice of charging astronomical interest rates was a federal crime, he said.
?We called them loan sharks,? Burnett said. ?It was common for people to be arrested for charging interest rates that are half of what they charge now legally.?
Instead of using a payday loan for Christmas shopping, Dana suggested talking to your local bank or borrowing money from relatives or friends. People could also forgo giving presents this year, he said.
?The best way to do it is to save through the year, so you?re ready for next year,? Dana said.
Burnett also suggested looking into layaway programs at the big box retailers.
?The big joke was you can always borrow from your family, but most of the consumers that are stuck with payday loans don?t have families that can support them,? Burnett said. ?You just have to tighten your belt.?
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Public release date: 17-Dec-2012
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