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Thursday, January 31, 2013
Stem cells boost heart's natural repair mechanisms
Jan. 29, 2013 ? Injecting specialized cardiac stem cells into a patient's heart rebuilds healthy tissue after a heart attack, but where do the new cells come from and how are they transformed into functional muscle?
Researchers at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, whose clinical trial results in 2012 demonstrated that stem cell therapy reduces scarring and regenerates healthy tissue after a heart attack, now have found that the stem cell technique boosts production of existing adult heart cells (cardiomyocytes) and spurs recruitment of existing stem cells that mature into heart cells. The findings, from a laboratory animal study, are published in EMBO Molecular Medicine online.
"We're finding that the effect of stem cell therapy is indirect. It stimulates proliferation of dormant surviving host heart tissue, and it attracts stem cells already in the heart. The resultant new heart muscle is functional and durable, but the transplanted stem cells themselves do not last long," said Eduardo Marb?n, MD, PhD, director of the Heart Institute. Marb?n, the article's senior author, invented the experimental stem cell procedures and technology tested in humans.
Consistent with previous studies, the researchers found that the heart's native stem cells are not responsible for the normal replenishment of lost heart cells, but they do contribute to rebuilding heart tissue after heart attack.
This study shows that existing heart cells contribute to formation of new heart cells in the normal heart: Through a gradual cycling process, dying heart cells are replaced by new ones. The researchers found that this cycling process escalates in response to heart attack, enabling existing heart cells to assist in the development of new ones. Further, these effects can be amplified through stem cell therapy.
The investigational therapy turns on genes that bolster cell production from both sources -- existing heart cells and existing stem cells -- essentially boosting the heart's normal means of cell replacement and its natural responses to injury. The injection of stem cells also improves heart structure and function.
Marb?n and his clinical and research teams in 2009 performed the first procedure in which a heart attack patient's own heart tissue was used to grow specialized stem cells that were injected back into the heart. Earlier this year, they reported results of a clinical trial that found significant reduction in the size of heart attack-caused scars in patients who underwent the experimental stem cell procedure, compared to others who did not.
Although the preliminary results are positive, the researchers do not know precisely how the research treatment works.
"Understanding the cellular sources and mechanisms of heart regeneration is the first step toward refining our strategies to more effectively regenerate healthy tissue after heart attacks," said Marb?n, the Mark S. Siegel Family Professor.
The animal study was supported by National Institutes of Health grant R01 HL083109, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine and the Cedars-Sinai Board of Governors Heart Stem Cell Center.
The process to grow cardiac-derived stem cells involved in the clinical trial was developed earlier by Marb?n when he was on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University. The university has filed for a patent on that intellectual property and has licensed it to Capricor Inc., a biotechnology company in which Dr. Marb?n is a founder and equity holder. The company provided no funding for this study.
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Konstantinos Malliaras, Yiqiang Zhang, Jeffrey Seinfeld, Giselle Galang, Eleni Tseliou, Ke Cheng, Baiming Sun, Mohammad Aminzadeh, Eduardo Marb?n. Cardiomyocyte proliferation and progenitor cell recruitment underlie therapeutic regeneration after myocardial infarction in the adult mouse heart. EMBO Molecular Medicine, 2013; DOI: 10.1002/emmm.201201737
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
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Police: Pa. man stopped for beer after breakout
BURGETTSTOWN, Pa. (AP) ? Police say a western Pennsylvania man stopped at a bar and had a beer minutes after he broke out of a police station holding cell after his arrest on an assault charge.
The Washington County public defender's office on Wednesday declined to comment on the charges filed against 40-year-old Smith Township resident Timothy Bonner.
Police say they were processing Bonner and had removed his handcuffs and placed him in the cell. That's when Bonner allegedly knocked the cell door off its hinges and ran away.
After stopping at a house to borrow shoes, police say Smith went to Richy's Bar, where a customer tells WPXI-TV (http://bit.ly/T6R6zl ) the suspect acknowledged breaking out of jail and then asked for a beer.
The customer says he bought a beer for Smith, who didn't get to enjoy it before police arrested him.
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Information from: WPXI-TV, http://www.wpxi.com
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/police-pa-man-stopped-beer-breakout-152042626.html
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Deutsche Bank posts steep Q4 loss of $2.9 billion
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) ? Reducing the value of assets and lawsuit expenses combined to push Deutsche Bank into a hefty fourth quarter loss.
The bank, which is reshaping its business to keep larger financial buffers against losses, reported Thursday a loss of ?2.15 billion ($2.91 billion) for the October-December quarter, compared to a ?186 million profit a year ago and analysts' expectations of a bare profit of ?62 million.
Meeting the new requirements means dropping some risky investments and assets. To do that, the bank took accounting losses of ?1.9 billion for the fallen value of businesses it had acquired before 2003, and for risky assets and investments that it is in the process of selling off.
Expenses for litigation the bank is facing came to ?1 billion. The bank faces lawsuits and investigations along with other big banks over the manipulation of the London Interbank Offered Rate interest benchmark in past years. The rate is used to price trillions of dollars in global contracts.
Despite its reverse in the fourth quarter, the bank did post a net profit for the full-year of ?665 million, though that was way down on 2011's ?4.32 billion.
On the revenue front, Deutsche Bank fared better. In the fourth quarter, revenue rose 14 percent to ?7.9 billion from ?6.9 billion. Full year revenue rose to ?33.74 billion from ?33.22 billion.
Co-CEOs Juergen Fitschen and Anshu Jain, who took over from Josef Ackermann last year, said the performance of the bank's core business was otherwise strong, and management recommended an unchanged dividend to shareholders of 75 euro cents a share.
They said the losses came from "the most comprehensive reconfiguration of Deutsche Bank in recent times."
Jain said that the bank's outlook for 2013 is better than it was at the same time in 2012, with the U.S. economy recovering and a calmer financial market backdrop over Europe's debts.
However, he warned on a conference call with analysts that the bank's restructuring was "a journey that will take years, not months."
Like all global banks, Deutsche Bank is being pushed from an international effort, known as Basel III, to hold more capital as a buffer against losses. Basel III is a response to the financial crisis that began in 2007 when banks started reported big losses on mortgage-backed securities in the United States and worsened with the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers.
Building larger capital buffers can mean either raising capital by selling new shares, or by exiting risky investments and holdings. Risk is also assessed so the more risky a security or asset is considered, the more capital that must be held.
Deutsche Bank has put many of these assets in a separate unit which will manage their disposal.
Jain said the bank's efforts during the year at selling off or writing down risky investments was the equivalent of selling ?8 billion in new shares.
Deutsche Bank has also announced layoffs and is reducing costs by streamlining its computer systems and office holdings.
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Scientists learn more about how inhibitory brain cells get excited
Jan. 30, 2013 ? Scientists have found an early step in how the brain's inhibitory cells get excited. A natural balance of excitement and inhibition keeps the brain from firing electrical impulses randomly and excessively, resulting in problems such as schizophrenia and seizures. However excitement is required to put on the brakes.
"When the inhibitory neuron is excited, its job is to suppress whatever activity it touches," said Dr. Lin Mei, Director of the Institute of Molecular Medicine and Genetics at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University and corresponding author of the study in Nature Neuroscience.
Mei and his colleagues found that the protein erbin, crucial to brain development, is critical to the excitement.
It was known that a protein on the cell surface called TARP gamma-2, also known as stargazing, interacts with a brain cell receptor called AMPA, ensuring the receptor finds the cells surface. It is here that the receptor can be activated by the neurotransmitter glutamate. AMPA receptor activation is essential to activation of the NMDA receptor, which enables cells to communicate, ultimately enabling learning and memory, Mei said. How TARP gamma-2 was controlled, was an unknown.
Inside the nucleus of inhibitory cells in areas of the brain that control learning and memory, the researchers found erbin interacts with TARP gamma-2, enabling it to survive. "If you do not have this mechanism, your stargazing becomes very unstable and your AMPA receptor cannot be on the surface so this neuron is inactive," Mei said. They also found that erbin is only in these inhibitory neurons, called interneurons. They're already working on what they believe to be the counterpart for excitatory cells, which account for about 80 percent of brain cells.
"Interneurons basically control firing," releasing GABA, a major inhibitory neurotransmitter, Mei said. They tone down or synchronize the activity of pyramidal cells, pyramid-shaped neurons that get both excitatory and inhibitory input then make the call on what action to take.
When scientists ablated the erbin gene in mice or kept erbin from interacting with TARP gamma-2, a protein that helps anchor the AMPA receptor on the cell surface, TARP gamma-2 couldn't do its job. The result was less receptors on the cell surface and mice that were hyperactive with impaired learning and memory.
Cell activity hinges on receptor activity and receptors must be anchored on the cell surface to work. Ensuring AMPA receptors are strategically placed is a lifelong task since the busy receptors wear out and each brain cell has tons of them, Mei said.
He and his colleagues reported in the journal, Neuron, in 2007, two genes -- neuregulin-1 and its receptor ErbB4 -- that help maintain a healthy balance of excitement and inhibition by releasing GABA at the sight of inhibitory synapses, the communication paths between neurons. Years before, they showed the genes were also at excitatory synapses, where they also could quash activation. Both genes are involved in human development and implicated in schizophrenia and cancer.
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Georgia Health Sciences University. The original article was written by Toni Baker.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Yanmei Tao, Yong-Jun Chen, Chengyong Shen, Zhengyi Luo, C Ryan Bates, Daehoon Lee, Sylvie Marchetto, Tian-Ming Gao, Jean-Paul Borg, Wen-Cheng Xiong, Lin Mei. Erbin interacts with TARP ?-2 for surface expression of AMPA receptors in cortical interneurons. Nature Neuroscience, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/nn.3320
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/5e3pfQjjfxE/130130121641.htm
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Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Locating The Best Search Engine Optimization Firm - Free Article ...
And discover the most effective Search engine optimization company, you can find only a few factors to consider. Fundamentally, you'd like to know what services the corporation provides. More services offered means more worthiness. Every business, of all sizes, have advertising financial constraints. Costs for seo should be included in the marketing and advertising budget. Rationally, you need to get just as much as it is possible to out of every advertising and marketing $.
Every web based business requires search engine optimization services when it comes to boosting on-line visibility. Within this age, internet marketing happens to be popular and it's also considered as the hallmark of business success. It truly is exactly for that reason belief that there are lots of agencies offering these types of services. Although this is the truth, they do not provide the same high quality of seo services. Therefore, there is a couple of things you need to consider to be certain when looking for these types of services you employ the most effective Seo firm.
Many business owners feel that search engine optimisation is avoidable or they try to acheive it by themselves. While it is very easy to perform the issues that the major search engines positioning teams do, it's about time consuming, to say the least. On the subject of Search engine optimization, service repair shop proprietor which doesn't have effort is certain to get hardly any traffic. There are vast amounts of web sites on-line today. Thousands, if not more, are most likely supplying the same goods and services that your business offers. To put it differently, competition is fierce.
Hiring the most effective Search engine optimization company is compared to hiring several fresh employees. One concentrates on building back links contributing business well known web-sites for a own. Another specializes in creating press announcements, a trendy approach to announce the appearance within your "brand new, fascinating web-site". Your new employees will review your current web site, propose changes that may should be made and make them your approval. But, another might focus on social networks or blog submitting.
Other advertising options that you will find suggested through the companies include becoming a "sponsored result. However, obtaining a high ranking about the free listing side need to be the first thing that employees concentrates on. Eventually, it is a way to improve your business. Although, as mentioned above, the help made available from these lenders vary. You will find hundreds of thousands of companies that claim to provide search engine positioning services. Some are, of course, greater than others. Require a free analysis and customized proposal. In the event the organization quotes a value without 1st evaluating your present website, you should be suspicious. The most beneficial Search engine optimisation firms could not are employed in that fashion.
About the author:And locate the most effective seo sem , obtain references. Treat this while you would treat the hire of a new employee. You've always wondered concerning the company's experience, or period of time in operation and y
Source: http://www.articlesxpert.com/article/331194/locating-the-best-search-engine-optimization-firm/
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Powerway to build 94.5 MW PV project in South Africa
Construction on the project in De Aar, South Africa, will begin in January 2013, and must be completed in one year. The project is one of 631 MW of PV projects that were awarded through phase one of the nation's Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Programme.
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River Thames to bathe in upgraded long-distance WiFi
Not that a view over the Thames ever gets old, but commuters should soon find it a bit easier to check their inboxes while they're on or next to the water. Californian WiFi specialist Ruckus says that its wireless steering technology -- which increases network range by up to 4x by directing signals around obstacles and interference -- has just been picked for an upgrade to BT's Thames WiFi service. The new "carrier-grade" equipment should be activated within the next couple of months and will stretch out along the full 27 meandering miles of river that are already covered by traditional antennas. With better hotspot access spreading across the Tube network, black cabs and now the water, EE's central London LTE service will have even more to prove in terms of raw speed.
[Image credit: Getty Images]
Global Reach Technology Selects Ruckus to Bring Smarter, High Capacity Wi-Fi to Users on Land and Water within the UK
Smart Wi-Fi Enables High-Speed Wi-Fi Access for Millions of Passengers Along 27 Miles of the Thames River and Reliable Public Wi-Fi Access in Leeds and Bradford
LONDON, ENGLAND (UK) and SUNNYVALE, CA - January 28, 2013 - Ruckus Wireless, Inc. (NYSE: RKUS) today announced that Global Reach Technology Ltd., an innovative supplier of Wi-Fi, cloud- and IP-based policy management services, has selected its ZoneFlex[TM] Smart Wi-Fi system for a number of high profile Wi-Fi projects in the UK that address the explosive demand for reliable, high-speed data access in densely trafficked areas around the city.
Global Reach has deployed carrier-grade Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi indoor and outdoor ZoneFlex products for its public hotspot infrastructure along 44km (27 miles) of the River Thames and onboard Thames Clippers London River Ferries to support more than 30 million people accessing the river each year. In addition to providing public Wi-Fi access through its own Thames Wi-Fi hot zone branded service, planned for Q1 2013, Global Reach is leveraging its high capacity infrastructure to offer wholesale and international roaming services across the 27 miles of river coverage.
British Telecommunications plc (BT) gives public Wi-Fi access free of charge to all its BT Broadband subscribers via the white-labeled Global Reach service to the Thames River network, while the Transport for London (TFL) authority is using the Wi-Fi infrastructure for private services such as real-time location-based information, tracking boats, network monitoring, timetables, CCTV surveillance and other services.
In addition, Global Reach has selected Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi as the standard underlying technology for the City Wi-Fi services it provides for Virgin Media Business in both Leeds and Bradford.
Carrier-Grade Wi-Fi Solutions with a difference
Global Reach has established a unique position in the market, offering a total managed infrastructure solution coupled with a complete portfolio of value-added network services such as key data on network monitoring, management information systems and customer usage behavior; architecture planning; security; content portal capabilities and gateway functions, and sophisticated policy management.
For mobile network operators and service providers, Global Reach provides bespoke wireless infrastructure and services. Additionally, its policy engine provides seamless and secure 3/4G off load to manage customer's traffic and eCRM, including content filtering, lawful intercept, bandwidth shaping, port and website blocking. Intuitive dashboards allow operators to manage their infrastructure as well as the end user customer experience with complete visibility and precision.
"To effectively deal with the demands and capacity required to deliver service on this scale, we needed a carrier-grade Wi-Fi network in which our customers could have complete confidence," said Nigel Wesley, Chief Executive Officer for Global Reach Technology. "At the end of the day, customers don't really care about how the infrastructure works - they simply want a fast, reliable and affordable Wi-Fi experience that's easy to access and use. That's precisely what we're delivering with Ruckus."
Wesley noted that while providing a reliable Wi-Fi experience in the UK is no easy task, operators are looking for value beyond vanilla connectivity. "Global Reach has developed a different model that not only delivers a carrier-grade Wi-Fi infrastructure at a much lower cost, we are also reducing the time to market for service providers and enterprise customers, allowing them to focus on monetization and bringing value to the subscriber experience."
Smarter Wi-Fi on the Water
Global Reach's Smart Wi-Fi network is one of the world's largest outdoor mesh deployments along a key transport artery weaving through the UK's capital. Four million people travel on the Thames Clippers river ferries every year, with millions more living and working along the riverbank, offices, hotels, cafes and tourist locations.
Global Reach has used new Ruckus ZoneFlex 7782-N, carrier-class 2.4/5 GHz 802.11n outdoor access points (APs) to deploy at main piers crisscrossing the Thames River. 24 Thames Clippers London river ferries are being equipped with ZoneFlex 7363 802.11n indoor dual-band Smart Wi-Fi access points, along with 3G backhaul and ZoneDirector controllers at the Global Reach network operation centers, to provide centralized administration and remote management.
"While we are fundamentally hardware agnostic, we are building carrier-quality Wi-Fi networks that mandate carrier-quality equipment," said Chris Spencer, Chief Technology Officer for Global Reach.
"With its adaptive antenna structure and high-capacity designs, Ruckus has clearly differentiated itself by delivering among the most reliable systems on the market that are distinctly designed for carriers. With the kit we've seen a significant increase in the signal strength as well as the number of concurrent users and sessions we are able to support at any one given time."
City Wi-Fi in Leeds and Bradford for Virgin Media Business
In Leeds and Bradford, Ruckus ZoneFlex 7762 outdoor dual-band 802.11n APs are being deployed on street furniture by Global Reach to provide a completely free City Wi-Fi service that is open to everyone. Global Reach manages and operates the network for Virgin Media Business, building on a partnership that was originally formed for the rollout of the acclaimed London Underground Wi-Fi service.
"There is a massive wireless land grab taking place all over the UK," concludes Wesley. "The super-connected city initiative means a great deal for places like Leeds and Bradford as they focus on growth and regeneration for local businesses, visitors and residents. The Wi-Fi networks we are building are great examples of projects that are making the vision of super-connected cities a reality and enabling future prosperity and innovation."
Filed under: Transportation, Wireless, Internet, Mobile
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/29/river-thames-wifi-upgrade/
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Analysts raise Amazon price targets as margins surprise
(Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc's better-than-expected profit margins surprised Wall Street, prompting at least five brokerages to raise their price targets on the world's largest internet retailer's stock on Wednesday.
Shares of the Kindle maker are poised to open up 9 percent on the Nasdaq, after closing at $260.35 (165.29 pounds) on Tuesday. The stock had hit a record high of $284.72 on January 25.
"We can't help but stop and wonder whether the Amazon bull case has now pivoted from one of revenue growth to one of margin expansion," Barclays Capital analysts said in a note and raised their target price on the stock to $260 from $245.
The analysts said they would now concentrate on Amazon's ability to manage costs in order to drive margin expansion and operating income growth.
Amazon on Tuesday reported fourth-quarter gross profit margins of 24 percent, higher than Wall Street expectations of about 22 percent.
J.P.Morgan Securities raised its target price on Amazon shares to $333 from $245 and said the company's fourth-quarter results suggest the retailer can continue to expand gross margins.
"We believe Amazon continues to show strong ability to take share of both overall retail and eCommerce," J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth said in a note.
A shift to a combination of third party and Amazon Web Services - a cloud computing offering - along with higher shipping efficiency is helping drive gross margin expansion, Robert W. Baird & Co said in a note.
Baird raised its price target on the internet retailer's shares to $325 from $300.
BofA Merrill Lynch, which nudged its target on Amazon shares to $315 from $300, said growth metrics at Amazon may have disappointed, but investor sentiment will be supported by a third-party shift, ongoing gross margin upside and solid U.S. margins.
(Reporting by Saqib Iqbal Ahmed in Bangalore; Editing by Roshni Menon)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/analysts-raise-amazon-price-targets-margins-surprise-100144020--finance.html
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Pavano hospitalized following spleen removal
Pitcher Carl Pavano is in a Connecticut hospital following the removal of his spleen. He was injured when he fell in snow at his home in Vermont.
The pitcher's agent said Monday the accident happened in mid-January. When Pavano didn't feel well after a workout in Connecticut, the 37-year-old right-hander went to a hospital and was diagnosed with a lacerated spleen.
Agent David Pepe said doctors were not able to control bleeding, and Pavano's spleen was removed last week. Pepe hopes Pavano will be released from the hospital this week. He would not put a timetable on the free agent's possible return to baseball.
Pavano spent the last 3 1-2 seasons with the Minnesota Twins, going 2-5 with a 6.00 ERA in 11 starts last year. He didn't pitch after June 1 because of a strained right shoulder.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pavano-hospitalized-following-spleen-removal-161513449--mlb.html
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Iran launches monkey into space, showing missile progress
DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran said on Monday it had launched a live monkey into space, seeking to show off missile systems that have alarmed the West because the technology could potentially be used to deliver a nuclear warhead.
The Defense Ministry announced the launch as world powers sought to agree a date and venue with Iran for resuming talks to resolve a standoff with the West over Tehran's contested nuclear program before it degenerates into a new Middle East war.
Efforts to nail down a new meeting have failed repeatedly and the powers fear Iran is exploiting the diplomatic vacuum to hone the means to produce nuclear weapons.
The Islamic Republic denies seeking weapons capability and says it seeks only electricity from its uranium enrichment so it can export more of its considerable oil wealth.
The powers have proposed new talks in February, a spokesman for the European Union's foreign policy chief said on Monday, hours after Russia urged all concerned to "stop behaving like children" and commit to a meeting.
Iran earlier in the day denied media reports of a major explosion at one of its most sensitive, underground enrichment plants, describing them as Western propaganda designed to influence the nuclear talks.
The Defense Ministry said the space launch of the monkey coincided "with the days of" the Prophet Mohammad's birthday, which was last week, but gave no date, according to a statement carried by the official news agency IRNA.
The launch was "another giant step" in space technology and biological research "which is the monopoly of a few countries", the statement said.
The small grey monkey was pictured strapped into a padded seat and being loaded into the Kavoshgar rocket dubbed "Pishgam" (Pioneer) which state media said reached a height of more than 120 km (75 miles).
"This shipment returned safely to Earth with the anticipated speed along with the live organism," Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi told the semi-official Fars news agency. "The launch of Kavoshgar and its retrieval is the first step towards sending humans into space in the next phase."
There was no independent confirmation of the launch.
SIGNIFICANT FEAT
In Washington, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters she could not confirm whether Iran had successfully sent a monkey into space or conducted any launch at all, saying that if it had done so "it's a serious concern."
Nuland said such a launch would violate U.N. Security Council Resolution 1929, whose text bars Iran from "any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using ballistic missile technology."
The West worries that long-range ballistic technology used to propel Iranian satellites into orbit could be put to use dispatching nuclear warheads to a target.
Bruno Gruselle of France's Foundation for Strategic Research said that if the monkey launch report were true it would suggest a "quite significant" engineering feat by Iran.
"If you can show that you are able to protect a vehicle of this sort from re-entry, then you can probably protect a military warhead and make it survive the high temperatures and high pressures of re-entering," Gruselle said.
The monkey launch would be similar to sending up a satellite weighing some 2,000 kg (4,400 pounds), he said. Success would suggest a capacity to deploy a surface-to-surface missile with a range of a few thousand kilometers (miles).
Michael Elleman, a missile expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank, said Iran had demonstrated "no new military or strategic capability" with the launch.
"Nonetheless, Iran has an ambitious space exploration program that includes the goal of placing a human in space in the next five or so years and a human-inhabited orbital capsule by the end of the decade," Elleman said. "Today's achievement is one step toward the goal, albeit a small one."
The Islamic Republic announced plans in 2011 to send a monkey into space, but that attempt was reported to have failed.
Nuclear-weapons capability requires three components - enough fissile material such as highly enriched uranium, a reliable weapons device miniaturized to fit into a missile cone, and an effective delivery system, such as a ballistic missile that can grow out of a space launch program.
Iran's efforts to develop and test ballistic missiles and build a space launch capability have contributed to Israeli calls for pre-emptive strikes on Iranian nuclear sites and billions of dollars of U.S. ballistic missile defense spending.
MANOEUVRING OVER NEXT TALKS
A spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the powers had offered a February meeting to Iran, after a proposal to meet at the end of January was refused.
"Iran did not accept our offer to go to Istanbul on January 28 and 29 and so we have offered new dates in February. We have continued to offer dates since December. We are disappointed the Iranians have not yet agreed," Michael Mann reporters.
He said Iranian negotiators had imposed new conditions for resuming talks and that EU powers were concerned this might be a stalling tactic. The last in a sporadic series of fruitless talks was held last June.
Iranian officials deny blame for the delays and say Western countries squandered opportunities for meetings by waiting until after the U.S. presidential election in November.
"We have always said that we are ready to negotiate until a result is reached and we have never broken off discussions," IRNA quoted Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi as saying.
Salehi has suggested holding the next round in Cairo but said the powers wanted another venue. He also said that Sweden, Kazakhstan and Switzerland had offered to host the talks.
In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference: "We are ready to meet at any location as soon as possible. We believe the essence of our talks is far more important (than the site), and we hope that common sense will prevail and we will stop behaving like little children."
Ashton is overseeing diplomatic contacts on behalf of the powers hoping to persuade Tehran to stop higher-grade uranium enrichment and accept stricter U.N. inspections in return for civilian nuclear cooperation and relief from U.N. sanctions.
IRAN DENIES FORDOW BLAST
Reuters has been unable to verify reports since Friday of an explosion early last week at the underground Fordow bunker that some Israeli and Western media said wrought heavy damage.
"The false news of an explosion at Fordow is Western propaganda ahead of nuclear negotiations to influence their process and outcome," IRNA quoted deputy Iranian nuclear energy agency chief Saeed Shamseddin Bar Broudi as saying.
In late 2011 the plant at Fordow began producing uranium enriched to 20 percent fissile purity, well above the 3.5 percent level normally needed for nuclear power stations.
While such higher-grade enrichment remains nominally far below the 90 percent level required for an atomic bomb, nuclear proliferation experts say the 20 percent threshold represents the bulk of the time and effort involved in yielding weapons-grade material - if that were Iran's goal.
Tehran says its enhanced enrichment is to make fuel for a research reactor that produces isotopes for medical care.
Diplomats in Vienna, where the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency is based, said on Monday they had no knowledge of any incident at Fordow but were looking into the reports.
"I have heard and seen various reports but am unable to authenticate them," a senior diplomat in Vienna told Reuters.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, which regularly inspects declared Iranian nuclear sites including Fordow, had no immediate comment on the issue.
Iran has accused Israel and the United States of trying to sabotage its nuclear program with cyber attacks and assassinations of its nuclear scientists. Washington has denied any role in the killings while Israel has declined to comment.
(Additional reporting by William Maclean and Marcus George in Dubai, Justyna Pawlak in Brussels, Fredrik Dahl in Vienna; Writing by Mark Heinrich; Editing by Robin Pomeroy, Jon Hemming and Cynthia Osterman)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/six-world-powers-hope-meet-iran-atom-talks-120752016.html
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Tuesday, January 29, 2013
ANALYSIS: The 50 Fastest Growing Online Job Trends In Q4 2012 ...
Freelance artist
Web hosting rises as Android, IPhone ?app fatigue? and facebook, twitter social media confusion flatter to deceive
By ECM Plus
ECM Plus ? Freelancer.co.uk has just released the Fast 50 report for Q4 2012, tracking trends in the online jobs market.
?The Freelancer Fast 50 report is a fairly unique leading indicator of the online economy?, said Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer.co.uk. ?As the largest outsourcing marketplace in the world with almost 7 million users and over 4 million jobs posted to date, the Freelancer Fast 50 report is uniquely placed to provide insights into ups and downs in the demand for skills, technologies, products and performance of companies through analysis of over one hundred thousand jobs per quarter being posted online? he added.
Top trends from Q4 2012:
-? Website Hosting jobs skyrocketed over 3300% (to 4,059 jobs) as more and more businesses move into the cloud, with most of these jobs involving moving established sites to the cloud, or sending new cloud-hosted sites live.
The standout performer was Amazon Web Services, which saw an increase of an incredible 466% this quarter (to 1,895 jobs) as the online retail juggernaut continues to dominate with it?s EC2 platform, expanding rapidly into new regions and deploying faster, new generation servers with improved storage capabilities.
- Microsoft desktop apps take off after the release of Windows 8: Demand for Windows Desktop apps shot up 305% this quarter as Microsoft unveiled its new operating system (to 1,923 jobs), although volumes are still low compared to other architectures. MS Word and Powerpoint saw growth spurts of 211% (to 4578 jobs) and 309% (to 1,253 jobs) respectively.
-?Are we seeing Apple AppFatigue? With a crowded marketplace of over 1 million apps now in the Apple App Store, developers for Apple mobile platforms are showing signs of app-fatigue. In Q4 Apple iOS jobs dropped for the first time since the Fast 50 report started being published; iPhone jobs dropped 3.8% (to 5,298 jobs) and those for the iPad fell 14% (to 2,036 jobs). This was reflected in Apple?s share price, which plummeted 20% over the quarter. Android on the other hand gained 7% (to 4,282 jobs) as shipments for the open platform well overtake those of Apple. ?This is a huge platform change,? Google?s Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, says of Android?s widening lead over iOS. ?This is of the scale of 20 years ago ? Microsoft versus Apple. We?re winning that pretty clearly now.?
- Software and Website QA jobs soar as eCommerce sites rushed to fortify themselves for holiday season traffic: Q4 saw a spike in Software and Website Testing jobs as online retail rushed to get their sites ready and bug free for the peak selling season. Software Testing jumped 2500% (to 5,200 jobs) while Website Testing saw an equally astounding 2055% increase (to 3,923 jobs).
-?eBay jobs rise as the online marketplace reinvents itself. After 17 years in the online auction business the company rolled out a number of dramatic changes to its website and mobile application, including new branding. These changes, in combination with a pivot to a mobile-centric and small-business friendly focus, resulted in eBay jobs gaining 22% (to 1,790 jobs) for the quarter as it diversifies its auction house into an eCommerce marketplace and goes head-to-head with tech retail giant Amazon.
-? Social media and Internet Marketing jobs continue to fall out of favour in the wake of constant platform and search index changes: Despite the boom in Internet traffic, continual changes and negative reports have left advertisers confused whether using social networks as an advertising platform will pay off in the end. According to the New York times, only 14% of digital advertising budgets are currently allocated to social networking. That doubt was reflected in the online jobs market, where Social Networking projects declined 5.1% (to 5,820 jobs). Both Facebook (down 8.4% to 7,186 jobs) and Twitter (down 6.4% to 2,240 jobs) also felt the pinch. Internet Marketing in general was flat (down 1.4% to 15,244 jobs), while SEO is still reeling from the after effects of Google?s Panda changes (down 3.3% to 10,159 jobs). Some marketers fell back to Email Marketing (up 186% to 1,003 jobs).
TABLE: Top categories ? Q4 2012
| Rank | Job Category | Q4 | Q3 | Increase |
| 1 | Web Hosting | 4059 | 118 | 3340% |
| 2 | Software Testing | 5200 | 196 | 2554% |
| 3 | Website Testing | 3923 | 182 | 2055% |
| 4 | Website Management | 4073 | 551 | 639% |
| 5 | Engineering | 2477 | 408 | 507% |
| 6 | Amazon Web Services | 1895 | 335 | 466% |
| 7 | Powerpoint | 1253 | 306 | 309% |
| 8 | Windows Desktop | 1923 | 475 | 305% |
| 9 | Word | 4578 | 1474 | 211% |
| 10 | Email Marketing | 1003 | 351 | 186% |
| 11 | Icon Design | 1007 | 429 | 135% |
| 12 | Book Writing | 1300 | 623 | 109% |
| 13 | Software Architecture | 12127 | 5897 | 106% |
| 14 | Copy Typing | 12897 | 6917 | 86% |
| 15 | 2444 | 1375 | 78% | |
| 16 | XML | 1479 | 858 | 72% |
| 17 | Technical Writing | 3495 | 2092 | 67% |
| 18 | Translation | 3297 | 2100 | 57% |
| 19 | Linux | 2185 | 1412 | 55% |
| 20 | Academic Writing | 5403 | 3506 | 54% |
| 21 | SQL | 1810 | 1308 | 38% |
| 22 | Accounting | 1035 | 757 | 37% |
| 23 | Script Install | 1947 | 1450 | 34% |
| 24 | C# Programming | 2750 | 2103 | 31% |
| 25 | User Interface / IA | 2777 | 2155 | 29% |
| 26 | Java | 3277 | 2560 | 28% |
| 27 | MySQL | 14024 | 11002 | 27% |
| 28 | CSS | 9015 | 7098 | 27% |
| 29 | Web Scraping | 3189 | 2511 | 27% |
| 30 | Research | 2669 | 2111 | 26% |
| 31 | ASP | 1500 | 1187 | 26% |
| 32 | HTML5 | 3827 | 3038 | 26% |
| 33 | 3D Animation | 1655 | 1328 | 25% |
| 34 | 3D Modelling | 1466 | 1187 | 24% |
| 35 | eBay | 1790 | 1469 | 22% |
| 36 | Illustration | 1555 | 1290 | 21% |
| 37 | Visual Basic | 1630 | 1372 | 19% |
| 38 | jQuery / Prototype | 3527 | 2972 | 19% |
| 39 | Android | 4282 | 4002 | 7% |
| 40 | Internet Marketing | 15244 | 15458 | -1.4% |
| 41 | eCommerce | 3862 | 3931 | -1.8% |
| 42 | Link Building | 6844 | 7066 | -3.1% |
| 43 | SEO | 10159 | 10505 | -3.3% |
| 44 | Shopping Carts | 2944 | 3059 | -3.8% |
| 45 | iPhone | 5298 | 5508 | -3.8% |
| 46 | Social Networking | 5820 | 6131 | -5.1% |
| 47 | 2240 | 2392 | -6.4% | |
| 48 | 6581 | 7186 | -8.4% | |
| 49 | iPad | 2036 | 2376 | -14% |
| 50 | BPO | 2946 | 4493 | -34% |
Source:
This data was extracted from 261,003 jobs posted on Freelancer.co.uk in Q3 2012, up from 230,614 in Q2. The Freelancer.co.uk Fast 50 is the leading gauge of online hiring trends.
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The tales teeth tell
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Public release date: 28-Jan-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Peter Reuell
preuell@fas.harvard.edu
617-496-8070
Harvard University
Tooth development and weaning in chimpanzees not as closely related as once thought, researchers say
For more than two decades, scientists have relied on studies that linked juvenile primate tooth development with their weaning as a rough proxy for understanding similar developmental landmarks in the evolution of early humans. New research from Harvard, however, is challenging those conclusions by showing that tooth development and weaning aren't as closely related as previously thought.
Using a first-of-its-kind method, a team of researchers led by professors Tanya Smith and Richard Wrangham and Postdoctoral Fellow Zarin Machanda of Harvard's Department of Human Evolutionary Biology used high-resolution digital photographs of chimps in the wild to show that after the eruption of their first molar tooth, many juvenile chimps continue to nurse as much, if not more, than they had in the past. Their study is described in a January 28 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"When these earlier studies were published about 20 years ago, they found a very tight relationship between the eruption of the first molar and certain developmental milestones, particularly weaning," Smith explained. "A number of researchers have tried to extrapolate that relationship to the human fossil record, but it now appears that our closest living relative doesn't fit that pattern. That suggests we should be more cautious if we want to infer what juvenile hominins were like."
Getting an inside view of chimpanzee childhood, however, is no easy task.
Most prior studies of tooth development in juvenile chimps relied on two methods of collecting data observing captive animals or studying skeletal remains of wild primates. Both, however, also came with challenges for researchers.
Studies have shown that captive chimps grow dramatically faster often reaching adult size by age 10 or 11, compared to 13 to 15 for wild chimps. That early development means the milestones researchers rely on as proxies for understanding early human species likely occur earlier than they normally would. Researchers studying skeletal remains of wild primates face a similar challenge. To properly understand those developmental landmarks, remains must be properly identified and aged, a notoriously difficult process for primates in dense tropical forests.
To solve those problems, Smith, Wrangham and Machanda developed a unique method for studying juvenile chimps in the wild. Researchers studying the Kanyawara chimpanzee community in Kibale National Park in Uganda teamed up with wildlife photographers who snapped photos of juvenile chimp's teeth whenever they opened their mouths. The detailed photos, some of which captured the same individuals over months, allowed researchers to track precisely when molars erupted, and to correlate that information with chimp's behavior more closely than ever before.
What the images revealed, Smith and Machanda said, came as a surprise.
Where earlier studies suggested that juvenile primates were weaned shortly after their first molar erupts, their study showed that, in addition to eating more solid food, chimps continued to "suckle as much, if not more, than they had before," Smith said. "They were showing adult-like feeding patterns while continuing to suckle, which was unexpected."
While questions of why juvenile chimps continue to nurse in some cases for months have yet to be answered, Machanda said those questions will likely be the subject of future studies.
"We're now working on a project that's focused on body size and growth, but we're also planning future studies that will look at their energetic condition so we can understand what they're trying to get from the mother by continuing to nurse," she said. "What's interesting, however, is that there can be conflict surrounding this where the juveniles are trying to get as much as possible from the mother and the mother is actually covering up her nipples and moving around. Sometimes they'll even throw these temper tantrums that look exactly like human babies."
"I think there are two bottom lines here," Smith said. "One, I think, is a cautionary tale. The findings in this paper are going to challenge us to find other proxies for weaning and the spacing between offspring, but the other aspect that's exciting is that we have some suggestion that we should start looking at how feeding behaviors develop in the wild.
"No one has looked at how infants become more adult-like, both in their food choice and in the time they spend feeding," she continued. "This actually appears to correlate fairly well with dental development, so, while this is a preliminary finding, we may have a new anatomical proxy for when juvenile primates begin eating like adults."
###
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 28-Jan-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Peter Reuell
preuell@fas.harvard.edu
617-496-8070
Harvard University
Tooth development and weaning in chimpanzees not as closely related as once thought, researchers say
For more than two decades, scientists have relied on studies that linked juvenile primate tooth development with their weaning as a rough proxy for understanding similar developmental landmarks in the evolution of early humans. New research from Harvard, however, is challenging those conclusions by showing that tooth development and weaning aren't as closely related as previously thought.
Using a first-of-its-kind method, a team of researchers led by professors Tanya Smith and Richard Wrangham and Postdoctoral Fellow Zarin Machanda of Harvard's Department of Human Evolutionary Biology used high-resolution digital photographs of chimps in the wild to show that after the eruption of their first molar tooth, many juvenile chimps continue to nurse as much, if not more, than they had in the past. Their study is described in a January 28 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"When these earlier studies were published about 20 years ago, they found a very tight relationship between the eruption of the first molar and certain developmental milestones, particularly weaning," Smith explained. "A number of researchers have tried to extrapolate that relationship to the human fossil record, but it now appears that our closest living relative doesn't fit that pattern. That suggests we should be more cautious if we want to infer what juvenile hominins were like."
Getting an inside view of chimpanzee childhood, however, is no easy task.
Most prior studies of tooth development in juvenile chimps relied on two methods of collecting data observing captive animals or studying skeletal remains of wild primates. Both, however, also came with challenges for researchers.
Studies have shown that captive chimps grow dramatically faster often reaching adult size by age 10 or 11, compared to 13 to 15 for wild chimps. That early development means the milestones researchers rely on as proxies for understanding early human species likely occur earlier than they normally would. Researchers studying skeletal remains of wild primates face a similar challenge. To properly understand those developmental landmarks, remains must be properly identified and aged, a notoriously difficult process for primates in dense tropical forests.
To solve those problems, Smith, Wrangham and Machanda developed a unique method for studying juvenile chimps in the wild. Researchers studying the Kanyawara chimpanzee community in Kibale National Park in Uganda teamed up with wildlife photographers who snapped photos of juvenile chimp's teeth whenever they opened their mouths. The detailed photos, some of which captured the same individuals over months, allowed researchers to track precisely when molars erupted, and to correlate that information with chimp's behavior more closely than ever before.
What the images revealed, Smith and Machanda said, came as a surprise.
Where earlier studies suggested that juvenile primates were weaned shortly after their first molar erupts, their study showed that, in addition to eating more solid food, chimps continued to "suckle as much, if not more, than they had before," Smith said. "They were showing adult-like feeding patterns while continuing to suckle, which was unexpected."
While questions of why juvenile chimps continue to nurse in some cases for months have yet to be answered, Machanda said those questions will likely be the subject of future studies.
"We're now working on a project that's focused on body size and growth, but we're also planning future studies that will look at their energetic condition so we can understand what they're trying to get from the mother by continuing to nurse," she said. "What's interesting, however, is that there can be conflict surrounding this where the juveniles are trying to get as much as possible from the mother and the mother is actually covering up her nipples and moving around. Sometimes they'll even throw these temper tantrums that look exactly like human babies."
"I think there are two bottom lines here," Smith said. "One, I think, is a cautionary tale. The findings in this paper are going to challenge us to find other proxies for weaning and the spacing between offspring, but the other aspect that's exciting is that we have some suggestion that we should start looking at how feeding behaviors develop in the wild.
"No one has looked at how infants become more adult-like, both in their food choice and in the time they spend feeding," she continued. "This actually appears to correlate fairly well with dental development, so, while this is a preliminary finding, we may have a new anatomical proxy for when juvenile primates begin eating like adults."
###
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-01/hu-ttt012513.php
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Poor Sleep Prevents Brain From Storing Memories
I also was diagnosed with sleep apnea... I was routinely waking up 1-4 times every night thinking I had to pee... It turns out my brain was waking up my body due to low O2 saturation, then the conscious part of my brain was saying "why am I awake? It must be because I have to pee" so I would...
My sleep study showed that I stopped breathing 262 times in the short 4 hours of sleep with the recorder... So the 'cure' was CPAP which I just knew wasn't going to work for me... I went to a different sleep clinic and they prescribed a dental appliance which looks like this:
http://www.sleepandhealth.com/sites/www.sleepandhealth.com/files/images/Article_images/TAP.jpg [sleepandhealth.com]
It brings the lower jaw forward which helps prevent constriction of your airway when you relax during sleep. It has an adjustment screw so you can fine tune it. You start with the screw all the way relaxed to become accustomed to wearing the appliance, and then slowly over time you turn it forward until you start to sleep well. Then you do a followup sleep study so they can compare and check the adjustment.
I can travel with it, no sore throat in the morning, no whirring next to the bed, etc.
The first night I had the appliance in, with the adjustment screw all the way relaxed, my wife kept waking up in a panic to check whether I was still breathing. I was no longer snoring and because that was a sound that was so pervasive in our marriage, she had trouble sleeping without hearing my snoring...
Now after two years, I consistently sleep through the night and get a solid 7-8 hours each night. I no longer feel a need to nap in the afternoons or evenings. I can't say my memory is back to normal, though... But I put that down to my advanced age.
After telling my dad about it, he got an appliance as well. He tried CPAP when he was first diagnosed but after a month or two of trying it, he was sleeping worse because of the damn machine and hoses and mask so he gave it up. The dental appliance changed his life. He's going on 18 months with it and his health has improved, his weight has improved, and he's finding it easier to keep his blood sugar under control.. The sleep clinic that initially prescribed and sold him the CPAP machine claimed to have heard of the dental appliances but said they didn't work so CPAP was the only solution. So he came into town and went to the clinic that I went to, to get his dental appliance.
So if you can't tolerate CPAP, then consider talking to the sleep clinic about the dental appliances. Note: they're quite expensive and they're not the same as the cheap "boil and bite" ones, which don't last very long and don't allow you to adjust the offset of the lower jaw.
Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/LYNseFnfWgU/story01.htm
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Military suicides show signs of spreading in families
Erin Trieb for NBC News
Monica Velez, pictured in Austin, Texas, had two brothers, Jose "Freddy" Velez and Andrew Velez, both of whom served the U.S. military and both are now dead -- Freddy was killed in action in Iraq, and Andrew took his own life.
By Bill Briggs, NBC News contributor
Before Army Spc. Andrew Velez left Texas for the final time, he asked his fragile sister to write him a promise ? a vow he could carry with him to Afghanistan.
Monica Velez knew she owed him that much. In the horrid weeks after each had lost their beloved brother, Freddy Velez, to enemy fire in Iraq, Monica tried to end her life with pills and alcohol. Now, she put pen to paper: ?I will not hurt myself. I will not do anything crazy. I know that Andrew loves me. I know that Freddy loved me.? Andrew folded her note and slipped it into his pocket.
?Don?t break your word to me,? he told her before heading back to war.
Seven months later, Andrew, 22, sat alone in an Army office at a base in Afghanistan. He put a gun to his head and committed suicide. Back in Texas, word reached Monica Velez who, once again, found herself in a dangerous place. Only now, she was alone. Days of alcohol and anti-depressants. Nights of dark thoughts: ?It would just be better if I was gone.?
'The storm' is coming
As the U.S. military suicide rate soared to record heights?during 2012, the families of service members say they, too, are witnessing a silent wave of self-harm occurring within their civilian ranks: spouses, children, parents and siblings.?
Some suicides and suicide attempts ? like those that ravaged the Velez family???are spurred by combat losses.
Others?may be?triggered by exhaustion and despair: As some veterans return debilitated by anxiety, many spouses realize it's now up to them???and will be for decades???to hold the family together.
Specific figures are lacking as no agency tracks civilian suicides within military families.
However, Kristina Kaufmann, a long-time Army wife, knows of three other Army wives, all friends, who took their lives in recent years.
Courtesy Kristina Kaufmann
"When you know that you are the anchor ? and if you go down, the family's going down ? the problem is that you can only do that for so long," said Kristina Kaufmann.
One was Faye Vick, described by Kaufmann as ?the perfect picture of an Army wife???pretty, nice, always with a smile.? Vick and her family lived around the corner from Kaufmann and near Fort Bragg, N.C. In 2006, when Kaufmann?s husband was in Afghanistan and Vick?s husband was deployed overseas, the 39-year-old mother placed herself, her infant and her 2-year-old son in a car inside a closed garage and started the engine, asphyxiating all three with carbon monoxide, according to Kaufmann and to local news reports at the time.
?And I know of too many others through the grapevine,? said Kaufmann, executive director of Code of Support, an Alexandria, Va.-based nonprofit that seeks to bridge the gap between civilians and military America.
?When you know that you are the anchor???and if you go down, the family?s going down???the problem is that you can only do that for so long,? said Kaufmann. ?That population (of spouses) is at the most risk. Because the storm is going to happen when everybody comes home. That?s where we are, unfortunately, going to see an uptick in lots of negative outcomes, including suicide, including suicide among the spouses.?
On Jan. 14, Department of Defense officials acknowledged that during 2012, service members committed suicide at a record pace as more than 349 people took their own lives across the four branches.?The military suicide rate is slightly lower than that of the general public. However, one active-duty member died by suicide every 25 hours last year.?
The Army sustained the heaviest branch toll at 182 suicides, which ??as NBC News reported Jan. 3?? meant that soldier suicides outpaced combat deaths for the first time, according to Pentagon officials.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta informed Congress last July that American armed forces are in the grip of a suicide "epidemic."?
One of the darkest undercurrents of the glaring statistics is that one suicide in a family boosts future suicide risks for everyone else inside the home.?They can be contagious, say experts like Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen, a psychologist in the Washington, D.C., area and the founder of Give an Hour, which develops networks of mental-health volunteers who respond to both acute and chronic situations.
Numerous researchers have explored the so-called contagion effect of suicides within families and ?there?s no question the data supports there?s at least a doubling of risk,? among surviving family members, said Dr. Alan L. Berman, Ph.D., executive director of the American Association of Suicidology. The organization strives to better understand and prevent suicide.
?It?s understood that risk, in part, is biological,"?Berman said, given that disorders like depression have a genetic component.?
?But it?s also based on social modeling behavior: The suicide of a parent presents a model (for children in that family) of how to deal with problems, and that?s no less true for a spouse.?
Added Van Dahlen: "The closer that family member is to you, the greater risk you?re at. We believe, psychologically, it opens the possibility and ends a taboo."
?The thousands of service members who have killed themselves,? she added, ?they leave in their wake thousands of family members who are now at risk for that same kind of decision."
'I completely lost myself'
The cascade of Velez family tragedies began with pure valor.
On Nov. 13, 2004, Army Cpl. Jose ?Freddy? Velez, 23, sprayed bullets at insurgent forces???covering fire to allow other U.S. soldiers time to retreat from an enemy strong point in Fallujah, Iraq. After his ammo ran dry, Freddy Velez was shot and killed. The Army awarded him the Bronze Star and Silver Star.
Courtesy Monica Velez
"There are days I'm still overwhelmed. And if I sit and think about it, I feel like I wouldn't have to live through all this pain if I just let myself go," said Monica Velez, who shared family photos of brothers Freddy and Andrew.
Andrew, then serving with another unit in Iraq, told Monica of escorting his brother?s body home to Lubbock, Texas ? a job, he said, that required unzipping his brother?s body bag at every stop to re-verify Freddy?s identity.
During the trip, Andrew called his sister repeatedly while en route home and screamed into the phone for nearly two consecutive hours, ?like somebody was killing him,? she said.
?There was nothing I could do,? Monica Velez recalled. ?The operator kept cutting in (to request additional payment for the call) and I just said, ?Add it to my credit card.? He just wailed. That travel home, I think is what eventually broke him.?
Weeks later, Monica broke.
She doesn?t know how close she came to death the first time she tried to end her life. She never was told how slow her pulse became that night. She just remembers regaining consciousness at a hospital in Killeen, Texas???home to Fort Hood, where Freddy was based. She awoke with an IV plugged into her arm. A doctor handed her a list of local psychiatrists then discharged her.
Velez tried, she said, to seek help for her deepening depression but was told that her health insurance would not cover counseling.
Her grief was rooted in a difficult childhood, she said, that forged "tighter than tight" emotional bonds between Velez and her two brothers, turning the siblings into a mutual support group.
?When Freddy passed away, I went through a really hard depression,? she said. ?I went to the emergency room for anxiety attacks. I couldn?t breathe. But nobody knew how to deal with me so they just gave me Ativan (an anti-anxiety drug) and Hydrocodone (a pain killer).
?I started drinking heavily and taking the prescriptions. And one day, I just felt it would be better off if I wasn?t around and decided to take all of the pills. Grief can bring you to that breaking moment.?
Soon after, in February 2005, Andrew sent his older sister (then 25) an email: ?We need to be stronger. We need to protect each other.?
Though he was the youngest of the siblings, Andrew always was ?the strong one,? his sister said. ?But he and Freddy were inseparable.? Near the end of 2005, Andrew told his sister he was redeploying to Afghanistan because, she said, ?I think he felt closer to Freddy there.?
From March through July of 2006, the two swapped calls and emails. In Afghanistan, Andrew grew increasingly despondent, she said, over the unraveling of his marriage and family in Lubbock. He had three children. But he worried, too, about his sister?s state of mind.
?We could both hear it in each other?s voices. He was scared I was going to do something. I was scared he was going to do something.?
He did. Andrew?s suicide on July 25, 2006, drove Monica, at first, into 20-hour workdays at a domestic violence shelter. She wasn?t sleeping or eating. Eventually, she was drinking again, ?from the morning until I passed out,? she said. ?Then, doing it again the next day.
?I completely lost myself. I resigned my job. I stopped paying my bills. I got evicted. I was prescribed anti-depressants. I noticed taking the pills and drinking got me out of the emotions. So I found myself in a dangerous place very quickly.
?Again???several trips to the ER (for overdoses). I?m not sure why I wasn?t ever held there. In my down periods, I would tell myself it would just be better off if I was gone.?
In 2008, a friend at Fort Hood, Texas, connected Velez with the Tragedy Assistance Program For Survivors (TAPS), a resource for anyone who suffers the loss of a military loved one.
?That was the first time anybody had offered to help me with the depression and the grief.? she said.
'Family units breaking down'
Kaufmann, who lost three Army-spouse friends to suicide, argues that military-family suicides should be tracked and researched by the Department of Defense to help mental-health experts begin to slow or stop the problem. She knows, however, such an accounting is not likely.?
?I get the sense that people in the military think that by including families into this kind of discussion ? particularly when you?re talking about the (broader) mental-health impacts on family members ? they look at that as something that will only add to the problem. Whereas, we believe that it would prove to be a solution,? Kauffman said.
?We?ve approached this very myopically. More than half of soldiers are married. Soldiers come with families. And the military has a maddening way of both dismissing families and holding them accountable at the same time. It?s frustrating for us, not only when we?re trying to get our husbands help, but also when you have the family units breaking down,? she added.?
NBC News requested to speak with officials at the newly formed Department of Defense suicide-prevention office about the issue of suicides within military families and whether tracking is needed. A DOD spokeswoman said, however, that the office is only working to address active-duty suicides. The interview request was not granted.
Van Dahlen, meanwhile, believes that asking DOD to track military families is an unreasonable expectation to place on the agency when it already is facing budget cuts.
Even if the DOD wants to ? and many of my colleagues there desperately would want to devote resources to this???those resources are not going to be there,? she said. Rather than putting "the screws to DOD" and doing "even more with even less," Van Dahlen believes public-private partnerships should be encouraged "to figure out how we can (address) this together."
'Like an airborne disease'
More than eight years after Freddy?s combat death, and more than six years removed from Andrew?s suicide, Monica Velez annually runs the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C., in honor of her fallen brothers.
Matt Slocum / AP file
Monica Velez cleans her brother's name, engraved in a memorial at Fort Hood, Texas.
But, now living in Austin, she acknowledges she still struggles with what she calls, ?those thoughts.?
?There are days I?m still overwhelmed. And if I sit and think about it, I feel like I wouldn?t have to live through all this pain if I just let myself go. It doesn?t just go away. But you learn how to cope. You learn better coping skills,? she said, adding she gained those tools from TAPS.
Army officers at Fort Hood have occasionally asked her, she said, for ideas to help them prevent the rising military suicide rate. She watches that tally, too.
?The numbers take my breath away. I know it can be overwhelming for the Army generals on the other end of the table trying to figure this problem out. Because it?s like an airborne disease going through the building and you?re trying to figure out how to stop it before it gets to you," she said.?
?But it?s coming at a really fast rate, and it?s inevitable.?
Related stories:
Military suicide rate set record high in 2012
The enemy within: Soldier suicides outpace combat deaths in 2012
Some wounded vets shine on 'Alive Day,' others wear black?
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FACT CHECK: The stretched case against Chuck Hagel
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Republican-leaning groups opposing President Barack Obama's choice of Chuck Hagel to head the Defense Department have let loose a barrage of claims about the former GOP senator.
They say he endorses automatic cuts to the defense budget, that he wants to decimate the nation's nuclear arsenal, that his membership on the board of a major company that had a Pentagon contract is a conflict of interest that he's ignoring.
A look at Hagel's record suggests many of the contentions are overblown.
In statements and attack ads, the groups have sought to undermine Hagel's nomination in the weeks leading up to his confirmation hearing on Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee. His opponents face a tough challenge as Democrats have begun to rally around the president's choice, and the party has the majority votes to confirm the former two-term Nebraska senator, barring surprises.
Here's a look at the validity of some of the criticism of Hagel.
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THE CLAIM: "We live in a dangerous world. Iran, North Korea, even Russia. But Barack Obama's nominee for secretary of defense wants America to back down. An end to our nuclear program. Devastating defense cuts. A weaker country."? An ad being run by Americans for a Stronger Defense in the home states of five Democratic senators up for re-election next year ? Alaska's Mark Begich, Arkansas' Mark Pryor, Louisiana's Mary Landrieu, Colorado's Mark Udall and North Carolina's Kay Hagan.
THE FACTS: Hagel has not proposed ending the nuclear weapons program, though he has supported deep cuts.
Hagel was co-author of a May 2012 study by the advocacy group Global Zero that called for an 80 percent reduction of U.S. nuclear weapons and elimination of all nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The group argued that with the Cold War over, the United States needs no more than 900 total nuclear weapons. Currently, the U.S. and Russia have about 5,000 each, either deployed or in reserve. Both countries are on track to reduce the deployed strategic warheads to 1,550 by 2018, the number set in the New START treaty that the Senate ratified in December 2010.
The study said: "These steps could be taken with Russia in unison through reciprocal presidential directives, negotiated in another round of bilateral arms reduction talks or implemented unilaterally." The report was by Hagel, former ambassadors Richard Burt and Thomas Pickering, retired Gen. James Cartwright, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and retired Gen. John J. Sheehan.
An arsenal of 900 nuclear weapons would not be an "end" to the U.S. nuclear program, but Hagel and the organization did raise the possibility of unilateral reductions. In a statement Monday, Burt and others defended Hagel and dismissed suggestions that they were "unilateralists."
The group running this anti-Hagel ad was formed recently and offers little information about itself on its website. Board member Mauricio Claver-Carone also is director of the US Cuba Democracy Advocates in Washington and favors tighter restrictions on the Castro government.
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THE CLAIM: "Opposition is growing even more due to his support for sequestration of the military: huge budget cuts that the Joints Chiefs have already warned the Senate Armed Forces Committee would result in a 'hollow force.'" ? A Jan. 22 statement from Move America Forward, a California-based group founded by conservatives in 2004 to show support for U.S. troops.
THE FACTS: The group offered no evidence Hagel supports sequestration, the budget mechanism that will mean automatic, across-the-board spending cuts March 1 if Congress does not act to avert them. The White House says he opposes the mechanism, which came into play after Hagel left the Senate.
To be sure, Hagel has spoken about cutting Pentagon spending. In a 2011 interview with the Financial Times, Hagel said, "the Defense Department, I think in many ways, has been bloated" and "has gotten everything it's wanted the last 10 years and more."
The base defense budget has nearly doubled over 10 years, to about $528 billion this year. That doesn't include the billions spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama and congressional Republicans agreed in August 2011 on a deficit-cutting plan that would cut $487 billion from projected defense spending over 10 years. Democrats and Republicans also voted for automatic cuts of $55 billion this year if a special congressional panel can't come up with a sweeping deficit-cutting plan.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has warned against the approach of across-the-board cuts, and Hagel has given no sign that he has a different view.
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THE CLAIM: "Now Hagel sits on the board of Chevron, which receives hundreds of millions in Pentagon contracts. ... How can Chuck Hagel run the Pentagon with so many ethical questions about his own record?" ? Ad by the American Future Fund, which is running a "Hagel No" campaign. The group describes itself as advocating conservative, free-market ideals.
THE FACTS: It's widely assumed that Hagel will be leaving the Chevron board, a move common for nominees who face the prospect of such ethical conflicts. The Senate Armed Services Committee has some of the most stringent rules for nominees for senior civilian positions in the Defense Department. The panel requires nominees to divest all financial interests in companies doing business with the department. Stepping down from any board would certainly be required.
The committee bases its decisions on the Defense Department list of companies with contracts valued at $25,000 or more. The list is 330 pages long and includes Chevron.
EDITOR'S NOTE _ An occasional look at political claims that take shortcuts with the facts or don't tell the full story
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fact-check-stretched-case-against-chuck-hagel-202223347--politics.html
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