It's a common human trait that, when faced with a series of calamities, the brain will retreat into a fantasy world in which everything is the exact opposite of reality. Could this be the inspiration for RIM's four new cartoon characters, which the company hopes will spread its "Be Bold" marketing message? The pattern certainly seems to fit. From left to right: there's GoGo Girl, who "saves the day with a brilliant strategy" (translation: we don't have a strategy). Then comes Justin Steele, who's "always ready to stick up for his friends" (translation: we don't have friends). Trudy Foreal "isn't afraid to call it as she sees it" (translation: our shareholders are complaining). Finally, the adventurous Max Stone is "able to jump out of a plane" (translation: we're going to crash).
Update: RIM has provided a little update stating that this is "not a new ad campaign." Still, it's fun to imagine what might have been.
(Reuters) ? People trying to lose weight may swear by specific diet plans calling for strict proportions of fat, carbs and protein, but where the calories come from may not matter as much as simply cutting back on them, according to a study.
Researchers whose results were published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found there were no differences in weight loss or the reduction of fat between four diets with different proportions of fat, carbohydrates and protein.
"The major predictor for weight loss was 'adherence'. Those participants who adhered better, lost more weight than those who did not," said George Bray, at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who worked on the study.
Earlier research had found that certain diets -- in particular, those with very low carbohydrates -- worked better than others, Bray told Reuters Health in an email, but there had been no consensus among scientists.
Bray and his colleagues randomly assigned several hundred overweight or obese people to one of four diets: average protein, low fat and higher carbs; high protein, low fat and higher carbs; average protein, high fat and lower carbs; or high protein, high fat and lower carbs.
Each of the diets was designed to cut 750 calories a day.
After six months and again at two years after starting the diets, researchers checked participants' weight, fat mass and lean mass.
At six months, people had lost more than 4.1 kg (9 lbs) of fat and close to 2.3 kg (5 lbs) of lean mass, but they regained some of this by the two-year mark.
People were able to maintain a weight loss of more than 3.6 kg (8 lbs) after two years. Included in this was a nearly 1.4 kg (3 lb) loss of abdominal fat, a drop of more than seven percent.
But many of the people who started in the study dropped out, and the diets of those who completed it were not exactly what had been assigned.
For example, the researchers had hoped to see two diet groups get 25 percent of their calories from protein and the other two groups get 15 percent of their calories from protein. But all four groups ended up getting about 20 percent of their calories from protein after two years.
"If you're happier doing it low fat, or happier doing it low carb, this paper says it's OK to do it either way. They were equally successful," said Christopher Gardner, a Stanford University professor uninvolved in the study.
"They did have difficulties with adherence, so that really tempers what you can conclude," he added.
In the end, he said, people should choose the diet that's easiest for them to stick with. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/zUm9ep
(Reporting from New York by Kerry Grens; editing by Elaine Lies and Ron Popeski)
NEW YORK?? January has turned out strong for equities with just two trading days to go. If you're afraid to miss the ride, there's still time to jump in. You just might want to wear a neck brace.
The new year lured buyers into growth-related sectors, the ones that were more beaten down last year. The economy is getting better, but not dramatically. Earnings are beating expectations, but at a lower rate than in recent quarters. Nothing too bad is coming out of Europe's debt crisis ? and nothing good, either ? at least not yet.
"No one item is a major positive, but collectively, it's been enough to tilt it towards net buying," said John Schlitz, chief market technician at Instinet in New York.
Still, relatively weak volume and a six-month high hit this week make some doubt that the gains are sustainable.
But then there's the golden cross.
Many market skeptics take notice when this technical indicator, a holy grail of sorts for many technicians, shows up on the horizon.
As early as Monday, the rising 50-day moving average of the S&P 500 could tick above its rising 200-day moving average. This occurrence ? known as a golden cross ? means the medium-term momentum is increasingly bullish. You have a good chance of making money in the next six months if you put it to work in large-cap stocks.
In the last 50 years, according to data compiled by Birinyi Associates, a golden cross on the S&P 500 has augured further gains six months ahead in eight out of 10 times. The average gain has been 6.6 percent.
That means the benchmark is on solid footing to not only hold onto the 14 percent advance over the last nine weeks, but to flirt with 1,400, a level it hasn't hit since mid-2008.
The gains, as expected, would not be in a straight line. But any weakness could be used by long-term investors as buying opportunities.
"The cross is an intermediate bullish event," Schlitz said. "You have to interpret it as constructive, but I caution people to take a bullish stance, if they have a short-term horizon ."
Less than halfway into the earnings season and with Greek debt talks over the weekend, payrolls data next week and the S&P 500 near its highest since July, there's plenty of room for something to go wrong. If that happens, the market could easily give back some of its recent advance.
But the benchmark's recent rally and momentum shift allow for a pullback before the technical picture deteriorates.
"We bounced off 1,325, which is resistance. We're testing 1,310, which should be support. We are stuck in that range," said Ken Polcari, managing director at ICAP Equities in New York.
"If over the weekend, Greece comes out with another big nothing, then you will see further weakness next week," he said. "A 1 (percent) or 2 percent pullback isn't out of the question or out of line."
On Friday, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite closed their fourth consecutive week of gains, while the Dow Jones industrial average dipped and capped three weeks of gains. For the day, the Dow dropped 74.17 points, or 0.58 percent, to close at 12,660.46. The S&P 500 fell 2.10 points, or 0.16 percent, to 1,316.33. But the Nasdaq gained 11.27 points, or 0.40 percent, to end at 2,816.55.
For the week, the Dow slipped 0.47 percent, while the S&P 500 inched up 0.07 percent and the Nasdaq jumped 1.07 percent.
Next week is filled with heavy-hitting data on the housing, manufacturing and employment sectors.
Personal income and consumption on Monday will be followed by the S&P/Case-Shiller home prices index, consumer confidence and the Chicago PMI ? all on Tuesday.
Wednesday will bring the Institute for Supply Management index on U.S. manufacturing and the first of three key readings on the labor market ? namely, the ADP private-sector employment report. Jobless claims on Thursday will give way on Friday to the U.S. government's non-farm payrolls report. The forecast calls for a net gain of 150,000 jobs in January, according to economists polled by Reuters.
Another hectic earnings week will kick into gear with almost a fifth of the S&P 500 components posting quarterly results. Exxon Mobil, Amazon, UPS, Pfizer, Kellogg and MasterCard are among the names most likely to grab the headlines.
With almost 200 companies' reports in so far, about 59 percent have beaten earnings expectations ? down from about 70 percent in recent quarters.
Copyright 2012 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
MEXICO CITY ? Several Nobel prize laureates are joining the PEN International writers group in condemning attacks on journalists in Mexico.
Mario Vargas Llosa and Toni Morrison are among those participating in a full-page ad in the newspaper El Universal, signed by 170 of the world's most acclaimed writers. It recognizes the courage of journalists in a country were attacks have increased dramatically with drug violence in recent years.
Friday's ad says attacks on journalists "impede the ability to live a secure life free of censorship."
Attacks on Mexican journalists generally go unprosecuted.
Mexico's national human rights commission says 74 journalists were killed from 2000 to 2011. The Committee to Protect Journalists says 51 were slain in that time.
VATICAN CITY ? The Vatican has rewritten its 2010 anti-money laundering law after European inspectors found that it didn't fully meet their tough standards to combat the financing of terrorism.
The new law, a copy of which was obtained Friday by The Associated Press, requires the Vatican to create a list of terror organizations based on the one issued by the United Nations and requires the Vatican to enter into agreements with other countries to exchange financial information.
The Holy See has been working for years to comply with European Union norms on money-laundering and terror financing in a bid to shed its image as a secrecy-obsessed tax haven and join the so-called "white list" of countries that share tax information to crack down on tax cheats.
A lunar sample collected by Apollo astronauts suggests that other-Earthly geophysics drove the moon's churning interior
By John Matson
?|
January 26, 2012?|
CHIP OFF THE OLD ROCK: A piece of lunar sample 10020, a rock that appears to carry the signature of a past magnetic field on the moon.Image: NASA
The moon of today is a static orb with little to no internal activity; for all intents and purposes it appears to be a dead, dusty pebble of a world. But billions of years ago the moon may have been a place of far more dynamism?literally.
A new study of a lunar rock scooped up by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin during their Apollo 11 mission indicates that the ancient moon long sustained a dynamo?a convecting fluid core, much like Earth's, that produces a global magnetic field. The age of the rock implies that the lunar dynamo was still going some 3.7 billion years ago, about 800 million years after the moon's formation.
That is longer than would be expected if the lunar dynamo were powered primarily by the natural churning of a cooling molten interior, as is the case on Earth. The moon's small core should have cooled off rather quickly and put an end to any dynamo-generated magnetic field within a few hundred million years. So researchers may have to explore alternate explanations for how a dynamo could be sustained?explanations that depart from thinking of the lunar interior in terms of Earthly geophysics.
A standard-issue, Earth-like dynamo "would have died out on the moon much, much before 3.7 billion years ago," says Erin Shea, a graduate student in geology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and lead author on a study in the January 27 issue of Science. "We have to start thinking outside the box about what generates a lunar dynamo."
The first clues that the moon had a dynamo came from a number of lunar samples that appear to record the presence of a magnetic field at the time of their formation. Specifically, the magnetic field is locked in metallic particles in similar orientations. But some of that magnetism could be explained by short-lived magnetic fields rather than by a dynamo. A meteor impact, for instance, can shock a magnetic signature into nearby rocks.
So researchers investigating whether the moon had a more long-lived magnetic field look for evidence of lunar paleomagnetism encoded in rocks that formed slowly in the presence of that field. Such slow-cooling rocks would remain largely unaffected by transient magnetic fields that came and went during solidification. Shea and her colleagues based their study on a rock collected July 20, 1969, the day that humankind took its first "giant leap" onto the lunar surface. The sample is a basalt from volcanic flows early in lunar geologic history, and it would have taken about two weeks to cool?roughly 10 times as long as a short-lived magnetic field from an impact would be expected to persist.
Using a high-resolution magnetometer, the researchers found that the lunar sample indeed formed in the presence of a magnetic field, perhaps even one as strong as Earth's magnetic field today. "What this sample tells us is that at some point the moon did have a dynamo," Shea says. "This magnetic field lasted much longer than we had considered before."
A similar paleomagnetic study in 2009 by some of Shea's co-authors demonstrated the presence of a lunar dynamo some 4.2 billion years ago. That is just at the cusp of what would be possible with an Earth-like dynamo driven by a cooling interior alone. "Even then it's not trivial," says Ian Garrick-Bethell, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz (U.C.S.C.), who was the lead author of the 2009 study.
"It's nice because this sample is also very pristine, like the previous sample that I studied," Garrick-Bethell says. He notes that the new sample not only cooled slowly but also shows no evidence of having been shocked and reheated since its initial formation. "It's a high-quality recorder of magnetic fields," Garrick-Bethell says. "If this sample does have any remnant [magnetization] in it, combined with the pristine nature of the sample, it suggests that there really was a dynamo."
Map shows states that have adopted California clean car standards
Map shows states that have adopted California clean car standards
FILE - In this June 28, 2011 file photo, other autos are reflected in the curved bumper of a Toyota Prius hybrid auto bearing California DMV decals in Los Angeles. California is poised to vote on new rules that would require automakers to build cars and trucks by 2025 that emit about three-quarters less smog producing pollutants and also mandate that one of every seven new cars sold in the state be a zero emission or plug-in hybrid vehicle. The California Air Resources Board will begin hearing testimony Thursday, Jan. 26. 2012 in Los Angeles on its ?Advanced Clean Car? program, and is expected to continue on Friday. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)
FILE - In this Thursday, May 26, 2011 file photo, a motorcyclist rides between lanes as traffic backs up on US highway 101 before the start of the Memorial Day weekend in Mill Valley, Calif. California is poised to vote on new rules that would require automakers to build cars and trucks by 2025 that emit about three-quarters less smog producing pollutants and also mandate that one of every seven new cars sold in the state be a zero emission or plug-in hybrid vehicle. The California Air Resources Board will begin hearing testimony Thursday, Jan. 26. 2012 in Los Angeles on its ?Advanced Clean Car? program, and is expected to continue on Friday. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
FILE - Traffic jams up on eastbound 91 freeway near Corona, Calif. Wednesday, Dec. 29, 2010. California is poised to vote on new rules that would require automakers to build cars and trucks by 2025 that emit about three-quarters less smog producing pollutants and also mandate that one of every seven new cars sold in the state be a zero emission or plug-in hybrid vehicle. The California Air Resources Board will begin hearing testimony Thursday, Jan. 26. 2012 in Los Angeles on its ?Advanced Clean Car? program, and is expected to continue on Friday. (AP Photo/Orange County Register, Bruce Chambers) MAGS OUT; LOS ANGELES TIMES OUT
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Auto dealers say California's proposed rules to require carmakers to build more electric and other less-polluting hybrid cars and trucks by 2025 will cost consumers more money and will stifle the industry's growth.
Consumer groups say customers might pay more for the vehicles but will save in lower fuel and other costs.
Both sides submitted testimony Thursday during a meeting of the state's air quality board, which was poised to vote on rules to require that vehicles emit about 75 percent less smog-producing pollutants.
The new standards, which also include big cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, would begin with new cars sold in 2015, and get increasingly more stringent until 2025. The rules also mandate that one of every seven new cars sold in 2025 in the state be a zero-emission or plug-in hybrid vehicle.
California Air Resources Board Chairman Mary Nichols said she hopes the rules lead "the nation and the world."
"We can't afford to wait. We have to act on these issues now," she said at the panel's meeting. "Our projections show continued growth in population and vehicle miles traveled, which will affect air quality for years to come."
Other states often adopt California's smog emissions standards because they are stricter than federal ones.
Fourteen states, including Washington, New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts, have adopted the state's current emissions goals, which is why the new regulations could have a wide-ranging effect. Of those states, 10 also adopted the zero-emission vehicle standards.
But the California New Car Dealers Association and other industry groups representing those who sell cars said the board is overestimating consumer demand for electric vehicles and other so-called "zero-emission vehicles."
Some dealer groups have estimated that $3,200 would be added to the average cost of a car because of the required technological changes, and that consumers have been slow to adopt them.
Jonathan Morrison, of the state dealers' association, said car retailers are supportive of new technologies that are accepted by their customers, but said the acceptance of electric and other vehicles has been slow.
"Consumers do not make purchasing decisions based upon regulatory mandates," he said.
The board's research staff disputes those estimates and says increases in hybrid and other sales continue to rise as more cars hit the market. They argue that fuel cost savings will make up for any vehicle price increase.
"Our research shows a $1,400 to $1,900 car price increase. But over the life of the vehicles, the owners save $6,000 in reduced fuel and maintenance costs," board spokesman David Clegern said.
One of the nation's foremost consumer groups, the Consumers' Union, the policy and advocacy division of Consumer Reports, supports the regulations.
The rules will "protect consumers by encouraging the development of cleaner, more efficient cars that save families money, help reduce the American economy's vulnerability to oil price shocks and reduce harmful air pollution," according to a letter from the group.
Automakers including Ford Motor Corp., Chrysler Group LLC, General Motors Co., Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. and others said they generally supported the regulations in short statements delivered during the hearing.
The overall goal of the state is to have 1.4 million zero-emission and plug-in hybrids on California roads by 2025. But the program also looks ahead to 2050, laying groundwork for a goal of having 87 percent of the state's fleet of new vehicles fueled by electricity, hydrogen fuel cells or other clean technologies.
Yet the rules do provide some flexibility for automakers by giving them the ability to claim credits toward the state's zero-emission mandates if the company's other models exceed the federal greenhouse gas emissions mandates. The credits could be applied toward those zero-emission vehicle mandates starting in 2018 through 2021.
However, this aspect of the plan was not supported by many of the U.S. car makers, who said it could take hundreds of thousands of electric and other clean vehicles off the road in that time period, hurting the emerging market.
"This greenhouse gas over-compliance provision runs counter to the goals of the zero-emission vehicle mandates," said Robert Babick, speaking on behalf of GM. "We don't see how this provision makes the program better."
The board is scheduled to resume hearing testimony on Friday morning in Los Angeles.
A new video by Rhys Millen?and the gang has been making the interweb rounds today.? In his latest piece Rhys plays a few holes at a local golf course and uses his rally-spec Hyundai Veloster as the proverbial ?golf kart?.? It is a fun little video and worth a few minutes of your time.? Check it out below.
"We are a big supporter and believer of private equity," says James Leech, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan president/CEO. Leech says private equity has produced good results for pension plans and in the last 20 years his pension plan has produced over 2...
CAIRO (Reuters) ? The head of Egypt's ruling military council said Tuesday he had decided to lift a state of emergency from Wednesday except in certain cases, a move one lawmaker said did not amount to a full cancellation of laws in place since 1981.
"I have taken a decision to end the state of emergency," Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi said in a televised address, adding that it would still apply in dealing with cases of "thuggery." He did not spell out what that meant.
"This is not a real cancellation of the state of emergency," said Essam Sultan, a newly elected member of parliament from the
Wasat Party, a moderate Islamist group.
"The proper law designates the ending of the state of emergency completely or enforcing it completely, nothing in between," he said.
WASHINGTON ? An Idaho man accused of firing shots at the White House pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges that he tried to assassinate President Barack Obama.
A lawyer for Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez entered the plea on his client's behalf during a brief appearance in U.S. District Court in Washington. Ortega did not say anything during the proceedings and will remain held without bond. He has another court date next month.
Prosecutors say Ortega used an assault rifle with an attached scope to fire a series of shots at the White House from long range on the night of Nov. 11. Obama and his wife, Michelle, were out of town at the time. In the months before the shooting, investigators say, he had had become obsessed with Obama, referred to him as the anti-Christ and told at least one person that he planned to "take care of" the president.
Prosecutors say he drove away after the shooting and crashed his car, then took off on foot. Authorities searching his car found a semi-automatic rifle, 12 spent shell casings and three fully-loaded magazines, and bullet impact points were located in the area of the White House that's known to be the living quarters of the First Family. Authorities recovered a bullet from a window frame on the Truman Balcony.
He was arrested on Nov. 16 at the same hotel where he had stayed before the shooting, authorities say.
Ortega, of Idaho Falls, Idaho, was indicted last week on 17 counts including trying to assassinate the president, transporting a firearm across state lines and assaulting officers or employees of the United States with a deadly weapon. Those charges refer to three Secret Service employees who authorities say were on the grounds of the White House at the time of the shooting.
Ortega's federal public defender, David Bos, has previously argued that prosecutors have not established that Ortega was present at the shooting or that the president was the target of the attack. Bos declined to comment after the hearing.
Ortega could face up to life in prison if convicted of trying to assassinate the president.
The hearing took place in the same week that a lawyer for John Hinckley, who was found not guilty by reason of insanity in a 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, is making his case for extended time away from the psychiatric hospital where Hinckley has been confined.
____
Eric Tucker can be reached at http://twitter.com/etucker
Google's so desperate for the boys to come to its yard that it won't be long before it buys a milkshake factory. Until then, it's relaxing its ban on nicknames for Google+ users: now amusingly nicknamed composer W.G. "Snuffy" Walden can get back to being himself. Just remember that any name change will carry through Google's entire online service, so try to avoid anything too raunchy if you also use Gmail for work. If you use a pseudonym (say "Madonna") then you'll have to submit scanned copies of you getting papped in Hollywood before you'll be able to use your assumed name. The service will be quietly rolling out to users in the next week, to add your own hilarious nickname, just edit your profile's name and hit the More Options text to the right.
>>weather making news tonight, but not the kind we are used to seeing in january. a violent, fast-moving storm swept across the south and brought tornados and serious damage. at least two people were killed. 100 others injured.
weather channel
meteorologist
eric fisher
joins us from center point, alabama, near birmingham. good evening to you.
>> reporter: savannah, we just put the disastrous year of
2011
to bed and here we stand amidst the rubble and broken homes. twisters opened up wounds in this part of the country that has only just begun to heal. the turbulent weather packed strong winds, spawning two dozen reported tornados and leaving behind a
path of destruction
.
>>as soon as i had gotten in the
bath tub
and put the pillow
over my head
there was this destruction, the whole roof went away.
>> reporter: alabama was the hardest hit. some neighborhoods in the birmingham area now look like war zones. it's an all-too-familiar sight for this region. some tracked near areas devastated by historic deadly tornados last april.
>>i don't know how you start over from this. we're thankful to be alive. i want to move, i know that. i don't know where, but somewhere that does not have tornados.
>> reporter: residents were left to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives. this time after a rare mid-winter
tornado outbreak
.
>>we were anticipating more like having to be ready for ice or snow or frozen rain, not tornados.
>> reporter: many residents had
little time
to seek shelter before their homes began to crumble.
>>we made it in the
nick of time
. the good lord blessed us and we're glad we're here. we lost our house, but at least we have -- i'm sorry. we've got our family and that's all that matters right now.
>> reporter: in arkansas where the
national weather service
confirms a tornado touched down,
russ smith
and his family fled their home for stronger shelter. they returned to find their house is in pieces.
>>lord spared us and helped us to make the decision to get out of here and it saved our lives.
>> reporter: latest word is that the winds topped out at 150 miles per hour. that's the strength rarely seen in the month of january.
>>the
weather channel
's
eric fisher
and the aftermath of the storm.
PHILADELPHIA ? A few inches of snow coated the Northeast on Saturday in a storm so rare this season in the East that some welcomed it.
"We've been very lucky, so we can't complain," said Gloria Fernandez of New York City, as she shoveled the sidewalk outside her workplace. "It's nice, it's fluffy and it's on the weekend," she said of the snow, which hadn't fallen in the city since a rare October storm that that dumped more than 2 feet of snow in parts and knocked out power to nearly 3 million homes and businesses in the region.
By midafternoon, 4.3 inches of snow had fallen in Central Park and 3.4 inches at LaGuardia Airport in New York. Most of eastern Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia, and central New Jersey saw about 4 inches of snow, with a few places reporting up to 6 inches. Flurries and freezing rain fell around Washington, D.C.
Up to 10 inches was predicted for southeastern Massachusetts, noteworthy in a season marked by a lack of snow throughout the Northeast. The quick-moving storm was expected to move out to sea overnight.
Road conditions were fair Saturday, officials said. Crews in Pennsylvania and New Jersey began salting roads around midnight and plowing soon after. By midmorning, the snow had turned to sleet in Philadelphia north through central New Jersey and had stopped falling altogether by early afternoon.
"It's a fairly moderate snowstorm, at best," said weather service forecaster Bruce Sullivan.
Few accidents were reported on the roads, helped by the weekend's lack of rush hour traffic, but New Jersey transportation spokesman Joe Dee cautioned drivers to build in more time for trips. Though temperatures will warm up this afternoon he said, forecasters expect the wet ground to freeze again overnight.
Flights arriving at Philadelphia Airport were delayed up to two hours because of snow and ice accumulation and about 35 flights had been canceled, but most departing flights were leaving on time, airport spokeswoman Victoria Lupica said.
New York City had 1,500 snow plows at the ready, each equipped with global positioning systems that will allow supervisors to see their approximate location on command maps updated every 30 seconds, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a morning news conference.
The equipment was installed last year following a post-Christmas storm in 2010 that left plows stuck and stranded in drifts and left swaths of the city unplowed for days. Bloomberg said the GPS system has already led to "vastly improved communication" between supervisors and plow operators.
In Connecticut, where the October storm did the most damage and some lost power for more than a week, about 6 inches of snow was forecast. State police had responded to dozens of accidents by midmorning but said none appeared to be serious.
As always, some benefited from the snow. Enough accumulated through the week for snowmobiling and ice fishing in New Hampshire, where cross-country ski trails and snowshoeing were open at Bretton Woods and other places.
CAIRO (Reuters) ? Egypt's parliament sits for the first time Monday since Hosni Mubarak was deposed after a historic election that put Islamists, repressed under the former president, in the driving seat.
The Muslim Brotherhood's party was the biggest winner in the first free vote in decades. It has vowed to guide Egypt in the transition to civilian rule after generals took charge after Mubarak was pushed out of office in February.
The rise of the Islamists marks a sea change from Mubarak's era when parliament was a compliant body stuffed with members of his National Democratic Party and the Muslim Brotherhood was officially banned though semi-tolerated.
Generals will remain in charge until after a presidential election in June when they have promised to handover power, although many Egyptians suspect the army may seek to cling on to power from behind the scenes even after that.
"It will be a historical session in Egypt's transition to democracy and civilian rule," Mohamed Beltagy, a leading member of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), said before the first session, due to begin at 11 a.m. (0900 GMT).
One of the first steps in Monday's session will be electing the speaker, set to be the FJP's nominee, Mohamed el-Katatni.
Youth movements, who put national pride before religion when they galvanised Egyptians in the 18-day revolt against Mubarak, said they would demonstrate outside the assembly to ensure protesters killed in the uprising were not forgotten.
"We do not contest the popular mandate of parliament, but it better deliver on the rights of martyrs and wounded. We fear political parties may vie for political gain and ignore the youth," activist Mohamed Fahmy said.
Liberals were pushed into third place behind the FJP and ultraconservative Islamist Salafis led by al-Nour party, the surprise runners up. The FJP says it controls almost half the 498 elected seats, with a few re-runs still to be held.
REVIVAL
Although Islamists dominate, it is unclear whether they will form a single bloc in parliament, which will have a key role in drafting the new constitution. The Brotherhood has said it wants to be inclusive and ensure all voices in Egypt are heard.
Monday's session marks the revival of an assembly that in the early 20th century was a vibrant forum for the nation's aspirations and filled with deputies who vied with the monarch and Egypt's British overlords.
Parliament's independent voice was extinguished after a 1952 coup that toppled the king and swept military-backed autocrats to power. Mubarak was a former air force commander and the ruling military council is now led by Mubarak's defense minister for 20 years, Mohamed Hussein Tantawi.
"The Egyptian military seems at this point determined to carve out an exception to democratic rule for its area of power and interest," Human Rights Watch's executive director Kenneth Roth said Sunday at the launch of the group's annual report in Cairo.
Parliamentarians see the new assembly as bringing Egypt a step closer to ending military rule.
"We say that we respect and appreciate the army but the military council must be held accountable for any mistakes ... No one is above accountability," the Brotherhood's general guide, Mohamed Badie, said last week.
But the Islamist group has also previously said it does not seek a confrontation with the military.
Some analysts have suggested the army will not fully abandon politics unless the Brotherhood and other prominent political parties offer guarantees that it will not face legal retribution over the killing of protesters.
Mubarak, 83, is now on trial for his role in the deaths of 850 people during the uprising. Scores of people have been killed in sporadic eruptions of violence since then, including demonstrations against army rule in November and December.
Several youth groups say they will hold peaceful protests in front of parliament in central Cairo to ensure the new assembly supports those wounded or families of those killed in protests.
A Brotherhood source said its members would form a human chain around parliament to stop any protest turning violent.
(Additional reporting by Tamim Elyan; Editing by Edmund Blair and Janet Lawrence)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? The United States said on Friday it was appealing a World Trade Organization ruling against U.S. dolphin-safe labeling measures for tuna in a longrunning spat with Mexico closely watched by environmentalists.
"Our dolphin-safe labeling measures for tuna products provide information for American consumers as they make food purchasing decisions for their families," said Andrea Mead, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Trade Representative.
"Our decision to appeal the WTO ruling in this case demonstrates the commitment of the United States to our dolphin-safe labeling measures," Mead said in a statement.
Under the United States' dolphin-safe labeling provisions, producers of tuna products - whether foreign or domestic - have the option of labeling tuna products that meet the standards of the U.S. provisions as dolphin safe, USTR said.
One such condition, challenged by Mexico, is that the label cannot be used if dolphins are purposefully chased and encircled in order to catch tuna. Some Mexican fishing vessels use this method when fishing for tuna.
The United States has argued the matter should be addressed through dispute settlement proceedings of the North American Free Trade Agreement, rather than the WTO.
However, Mexico has preferred to go through the Geneva-based world trade body.
If the United States loses the appeal, it could require to amend its dolphin-safe labeling laws or face possible Mexican trade sanctions.
(Reporting by Doug Palmer, Editing by Doina Chiacu)
The solvent tetrachloroethylene (PCE) widely used in industry and to dry clean clothes is a neurotoxin known to cause mood changes, anxiety, and depression in people who work with it. To date the long-term effect of this chemical on children exposed to PCE has been less clear, although there is some evidence that children of people who work in the dry cleaning industry have an increased risk of schizophrenia. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Environmental Health found that exposure to PCE as a child was associated with an increased risk of bipolar disorder and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
From 1968, until the early 1980s, water companies in Massachusetts installed vinyl-lined (VL/AC) water pipes that were subsequently found to be leaching PCE into the drinking water supply. Researchers from Boston University followed the incidence of mental illness amongst adults from Cape Cod, born between 1969 and 1983, who were consequently exposed to PCE both before birth and during early childhood.
While there was no increase seen in the incidence of depression, regardless of PCE exposure, people with prenatal and early childhood exposure to PCE had almost twice the risk of bipolar disorder, compared to an unexposed group, and their risk of PTSD was raised by 50%.
Dr Ann Aschengrau from Boston University School of Public Health warned, "It is impossible to calculate the exact amount of PCE these people were exposed to - levels of PCE were recorded as high as 1,550 times the currently recommended safe limit. While the water companies flushed the pipes to address this problem, people are still being exposed to PCE in the dry cleaning and textile industries, and from consumer products, and so the potential for an increased risk of illness remains real."
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BioMed Central: http://www.biomedcentral.com
Thanks to BioMed Central for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
Treating brain tumors with whole brain radiation therapy can damage healthy brain tissue, but a new study in mice reveals that limiting the oxygen supply, or hypoxia, can alleviate some of the cognitive impairment caused by the radiation. The results are reported in the Jan. 18 issue of the online journal PLoS ONE.
The researchers, led by William Sonntag of University of Oklahoma, exposed the mice to a clinically relevant regimen of radiation, which caused progressive deterioration of spatial learning starting about two months post-radiation.
However, when mice were treated with chronic hypoxia for about three weeks, beginning one month after radiation exposure, they showed significant improvement in this area, which was maintained for at least two months after returning to normal oxygen levels.
The radiation treatment also caused an early decline in contextual learning and memory, but these deficiencies were transient and dissipated within three months post-radiation.
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Warrington JP, Csiszar A, Mitschelen M, Lee YW, Sonntag WE (2012) Whole Brain Radiation-Induced Impairments in Learning and Memory Are Time-Sensitive and Reversible by Systemic Hypoxia. PLoS ONE 7(1): e30444. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0030444
Public Library of Science: http://www.plos.org
Thanks to Public Library of Science for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
Aid groups warned that a drought was coming to the Horn of Africa in 2011, and say now that a late response by donor nations unnecessarily cost thousands of lives.?
Scientists and aid organizations gave the world plenty of time to prepare, but a late response by the world?s donor nations cost 50,000 to 100,000 lives during last year?s drought in the Horn of Africa region.
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That is the message of a joint report by Oxfam International, Save the Children and other charities, released today, during the global meetings at Davos, Switzerland, and at the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Now, with a new drought looming in the West African nations of Mauritania, Niger, Mali, and Chad, the joint report, ?The Dangerous Delay,? is calling for an overhaul of the world?s aid delivery system to avoid more preventable deaths from starvation.
?The humanitarian community needs to come together and raise its voice louder so governments and donors know the gravity?of?crises such as the one in the?Horn?of?Africa,? said Carolyn Miles, President and CEO?of?Save the Children in a statement. ?By the time the world sees starving children on TV, it?s too?late. Tens?of?thousands?of?deaths could have been prevented had aid groups and governments received funding earlier to scale up programs.??
Aid groups estimate that 50,000 to 100,000 people died of hunger between April and August 2011, more than half of them children. Even today, the UN warns that as many as 750,000 Somalis could die in the ongoing food crisis in Somalia.
What makes the deaths in the Horn of Africa so galling for many activists is the fact that the world had advance warning. Unlike the famine in the Horn of Africa in 1984, which caused an estimated 1 million deaths in Ethiopia alone, aid organizations had received alerts from a massive computerized system called the Famine Early Warning System, which is comprised of ground sensors, satellite imagery, and field observations. FEWS-Net and other systems alerted aid groups as early as August 2010 that drought conditions were worsening, but slow funding from international donors meant that aid groups could not mount a full-scale response until July 2011, when the drought was in full force.
Despite conventional wisdom that the divorce rate is still increasing, the fact of the matter is that the divorce rate in the United States is the lowest it has been since it peaked in the early 1980s. Nevertheless, couples getting married today have about a 40-45% chance of getting divorced. These figures do not include couples who remain married but who have high conflict relationships that are emotionally harmful to both partners and their children and detrimental to job performance; as well as the marriages where one or both partners have "fallen out of love" and have low levels of positive connections (e.g., fun, friendship, sex).
Many factors influence risk for divorce. For example, sociological studies show that couples with higher levels of education are less likely to divorce. In addition, research by Drs. Galena Rhoades, Scott Stanley and myself at the University of Denver's Center for Marital and Family Studies shows that couples who live together without a commitment to marry, and then marry are at higher risk for divorce than couples who do not live together at all, or live together after engagement.
The social-economic costs of serious relationship distress, destructive relationship conflict, and divorce are enormous, with some estimates reaching billions of dollars a year (given there are close to 1 million divorces a year, if one assumes that each divorce costs an average of $1000 per divorce that estimate comes to 1 billion dollars). Costs include increased health care expenditures for both children and adults, decreased educational attainment for children, declines in economic status (particularly for woman and children), eroded professional performance, legal costs including stress on our legal system.
How can we help couples to have healthier and happier marriages? Early in my work I was interested in "divorce prevention." Since then we have learned that there are at times good divorces where the interests of at least one partner is best served by termination of the marriage. For example, in cases of infidelity (which researchers are now calling extra-marital involvement, partially to take into account non-sexual relationships where partners are emotionally involved with another and lying about the other relationship) and aggression (intimate partner violence), divorce may be viewed as a positive life decision for one of the involved partners.
When marital problems arise, couples therapy is one option that many people think about. However most couples marry and divorce without seeking marital therapy from a couples therapist, and those that do often wait too long and do not see a therapist trained in empirically supported interventions. Access to such services should be an important priority for the nation and careful consideration should be given to expanding health insurance plans to include coverage for empirically based services for treating relationship distress.
In the most successful cases of couples therapy, partners that work through substantial issues are happier than before therapy, yet generally do not reach the level of happiness they had before problems developed. Many couples at the end of therapy have said to me, "Howard, thanks, and I wish I had seen you or taken one of your workshops 20 years ago, when we young, happy, and in love."
However couples therapy is only part of the answer to the question of how to increase relationship health. The most important answer is in one word: Education.
Relationship education includes classes, workshops, and online learning where partners can learn the skills and principles that over 30 years of research has shown to be associated with relationship happiness. In controlled clinical trials, couples who complete a relationship education program communicate better, handle conflicts and negative emotions more constructively, have lower risk of divorce and higher levels of relationship happiness.
My message to couples: Don't wait until things get really nasty or until you have lost that loving feeling. Even if you are at the end of your rope, it's still not too late. Access to pre-marital and early interventions have been expanded in the past five years and there is federal funding through the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) for relationship education services, particularly for lower income families. Chances are high that couples can find a class close to home and learn skills to use now and in the future.
If you want to see where your relationship is at take the relationship quiz at www.loveyourrelationship.com and get immediate feedback. You can also contact us at the website to find a class in your area or get other research-based relationship resources.
Click here for more information on the statistics presented above and related statistics on marriage and divorce.
The official Nordstrom app lets you browse the store's collections and purchase clothes right from your Android device. When the app opens, you'll see the main menu which can be filtered by Department or Brand. If you select the Department filter, you'll get a list of different shopping departments: Women, Men, Juniors, Designer Collections, Baby & Kids, Shoes, Handbags & Accessories, Jewelry & Watches, Beauty & Fragrance, At Home & Gifts, Sale and Weddings. Brands will bring up every different brand that is carried by Nordstrom, or too long to spew out here.
There is always a menu that you can access via the action bar or menu button. Options are Your Style, Shop, Wish List, Events and Bag. Your Style allows you to browse various styles handpicked by Nordtrom. Shop brings you right back to the area of the app where you can shop, Wish List saves everything that you would like to place onto your wish list, Events displays upcoming things to do at your local store and Bag is simply your cart.
You can purchase items directly from the app and either have it shipped to you or schedule an in-store pick-up.
Overall, the official Nordstrom app is very nicely done. Fans of the department store will find it to be a good experience and I'm sure will find that they're shopping more because they can do it anywhere. If you like Nordstrom or just want to check out a good shopping app, please find links to the free app after the break.
Because nearly every ebook reader on the iPhone has its own store (and the ones that don't have the problem of not having their own store), what's best is very subjective. That said, we feel Kindle is your best option at the moment because it doesn't tie you to a specific platform, has a wide selection of books, and will let you read some other file formats.
Free, hybrid app that works on all iDevices
Easily buy a book or send a sample directly to your iPhone from Amazon's online store
Only store the books you want
Convert documents over email for viewing with Kindle
Make notes in books or documents
Bookmark locations for viewing later
Simple, straightforward interface
Very large selection of ebook content through Amazon.com
Only keep the books on your device that you want and archive the rest, available for download at any later date
Adjust font size
Easily jump to different locations in a book or document
Kindle was the first major ebook platform so it has had a good amount of time to mature and do things well. It's certainly not perfect, but buying an ebook and managing your content is ridiculously simple. Kindle can also support a few other document types (such as Microsoft Word docs, text files, and PDFs) through email conversion. While that may seem tedious, it's often a lot faster than plugging in your device and transferring the files manually. Whatever you choose to read, Kindle provides a pretty good experience. You can select text size, change the background and text colors for better reading under certain lighting conditions, jump around to different chapters or sections of a book, and search for content. It's easy to use, has a nice and focused feature set, and plenty of content that's easy to access.
As mentioned at the very beginning of this post, no ebook reader is really all that great. Like most other options, Kindle's store is filled with DRM-protected content and that comes with a variety of restrictions. For example, only very recently did Amazon offer the ability to copy selections of text from some books, and that's still not possible on the iPhone version (at the time of this writing). When you buy content from Amazon, you're stuck with Amazon. We think this is easier to accept because Amazon has developed ways for you to read Kindle content on virtually any computer or mobile device. You can even read in your web browser if you've managed to find a platform Kindle doesn't directly support. But you're still locked down to Amazon nonetheless. In my experience with Kindle, it also tends to have a few hiccups here and there when transferring media. These issues have always been easy enough to resolve, but they do happen with more frequency than I experienced with other ebook apps on iOS and other platforms.
Kobo (Free) is a very nicely designed ebook app for reading free books. It boasts the availability of one million free and affordable books. It also has support for Instapaper and makes it really easy to both share content and get content on your device.
iBooks (Free) is the ereader you'd expect from Apple. It sports a great interface, is simple to use, and lets you easily by books directly from the app. As far as the user interface is concerned, most will consider it better than Kindle. (I don't like it, personally, but I seem to be in the minority here.) It can also read PDFs without the need to email them (although that's not to say it's any less tedious to get them into the app). With all of that said, the iBooks store tends to have higher prices than you'll find at Amazon and if you buy from iBooks, your content is forever stuck on the Apple mobile platform. You can't even read them on your Mac, which may not be the ideal experience for some but is helpful with reference books and for the small minority who does like reading on a computer screen. The content lockdown is really the primary reason why iBooks isn't the top choice. We don't like the DRM any of the stores provide, but at least Amazon offers a means to port the content to practically any device.
eBookMobi ($2) is a hybrid app (meaning it works on all iDevices natively) that supports multiple languages and reads comic books as well as ebooks. The multi-language support will let you read foreign language content and translate it into your primary language if you're struggling to understand a word. It supports non-DRM Palm OS ebooks, non-DRM ePub ebooks, PDF files, RTF files, Word documents, CHM files, and a variety of comic/manga formats. If you need a very versatile app and don't care about a bookstore, eBookMobi is $2 well spent.
Nook (Free) is what you get if you've already purchased ebook content from Barnes and Noble's ebook store and want to be able to view it on your iPhone. There aren't many other reasons why you'd use this app.
Got another ebook reader you love that wasn't mentioned here? Share it in the comments!
Lifehacker's App Directory is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools in a number of given categories.
CMU will tap advanced computer methods to help doctors make sense of their patients' DNAPublic release date: 10-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Byron Spice bspice@cs.cmu.edu 412-268-9068 Carnegie Mellon University
Ion Torrent Systems sponsors multi-university research effort
PITTSBURGHScientists at Carnegie Mellon University say advanced computational tools will be the key to a new research project that, if successful, could enable doctors to routinely use information extracted from a patient's DNA to diagnose and guide treatment of diseases.
Ion Torrent, a unit of Life Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: LIFE), is sponsoring the project during its first year, and more funding is expected to come through federal grants and other sources. Robert F. Murphy, director of the Lane Center for Computational Biology in Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science, will lead a multidisciplinary team of researchers that will collaborate with scientists at the Baylor College of Medicine and Yale University.
The ultimate dream, Murphy said, is to develop what Ion Torrent Founder and CEO Jonathan M. Rothberg dubbed "doctor in a box" software. Doctor-in-a-box would take a patient's DNA sequence and use it to diagnose disease, identify a patient's susceptibility to disease, and predict which therapies might be most effective or cause the fewest side effects. The size and complexity of the human genome, which was first sequenced in its entirety in 2003, has stymied efforts to date to create such software.
"There's just way too much information for doctors to make sense of it all," Murphy said. But new machine learning tools statistically driven software that can detect associations within mountains of data may soon be able to translate the genetic and other hereditary information encoded in the human genome in a way that is clinically relevant to doctors and patients, he added. His team isn't the first to use machine learning to analyze whole genomes, however it will employ some unique software developed at Carnegie Mellon.
The Lane Center includes a number of faculty who are leaders in aspects of the problem, including Eric Xing, Ziv Bar-Joseph, Kathryn Roeder, Russell Schwartz and Seyoung Kim.
The team's software will be trained specifically to analyze the type of whole-genome sequence data produced by Ion Torrent's unique sequencing technology, which is ideal for clinical applications because it is designed to sequence the entire human genome in a day for just $1,000. Up to now, routine clinical use of whole genome sequencing has been impractical because it's taken weeks to complete at a cost of about $10,000. Now that Ion Torrent can reduce the time and expense, the next step is creating a tool to enable doctors to easily integrate whole genome sequencing into medical practice, Rothberg said.
"The promise of 'doctor-in-a-box' is that by using artificial intelligence, like we've seen with IBM's 'Watson' computer, we will be able to associate the variations in the human genome with the vast amount of information we have about human health," said Rothberg (E'85). "The work the Carnegie Mellon team is undertaking opens up the possibility that practicing physicians will be able to diagnose disease, identify disease susceptibility and guide therapy selection as easily as they can now use Apple's Siri on the iPhone."
"It's an enormous undertaking," Murphy agreed, "but we are creating a framework that will allow us to tackle this problem one piece at a time and to do so at a scale that makes sense when all of those pieces are put together."
The sheer size of the problem necessitates collaboration with other groups trying to understand the genome, so Murphy said the team intends to make its software available as open source.
During the first year, researchers will focus on identifying the genomic features associated with a single disease or patient population, which has yet to be selected. Researchers at Baylor's Human Genome Sequencing Center and Yale's Center for Genome Analysis will perform the whole genome sequencing of patients and provide longitudinal medical records, such as disease treatments and outcomes and results of clinical tests.
This information, scrubbed of patient identity information, will be analyzed by the Carnegie Mellon researchers, who include biologists, statisticians and computational biologists, as well as other computer scientists. Machine learning programs will tease out the relationships between the genomic data and the clinical outcomes for each of the anonymous patients, while incorporating information from biomedical literature regarding gene and protein expression and disease pathways.
This analysis will yield models based on personal genome sequences that can be used to predict disease susceptibility and treatment responsiveness, as well as choose preventive therapies.
To provide impetus to the research program, Rothberg will sponsor an "Analyzing the $1,000 Genome" Conference to be held at Carnegie Mellon sometime in the summer or fall of 2012. The scientific conference will highlight outstanding work on computational analysis of genome sequences and foster discussion of new directions and strategies for extending this research.
In addition to Murphy, the research program leadership includes Jaime Carbonell, director of CMU's Language Technologies Institute; Tom Mitchell, director of CMU's Machine Learning Department; Richard Gibbs, director of Baylor's sequencing center; and Shrikant Mane, director of Yale's genome center.
Rothberg also established the Rothberg Research Awards in Human Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon to support the university's faculty and students in creatively pushing research boundaries in how the brain thinks, learns and ages.
###
About Carnegie Mellon University: Carnegie Mellon (www.cmu.edu) is a private, internationally ranked research university with programs in areas ranging from science, technology and business, to public policy, the humanities and the arts. More than 11,000 students in the university's seven schools and colleges benefit from a small student-to-faculty ratio and an education characterized by its focus on creating and implementing solutions for real problems, interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation. A global university, Carnegie Mellon's main campus in the United States is in Pittsburgh, Pa. It has campuses in California's Silicon Valley and Qatar, and programs in Asia, Australia, Europe and Mexico. The university is in the midst of a $1 billion fundraising campaign, titled "Inspire Innovation: The Campaign for Carnegie Mellon University," which aims to build its endowment, support faculty, students and innovative research, and enhance the physical campus with equipment and facility improvements.
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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.
CMU will tap advanced computer methods to help doctors make sense of their patients' DNAPublic release date: 10-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Byron Spice bspice@cs.cmu.edu 412-268-9068 Carnegie Mellon University
Ion Torrent Systems sponsors multi-university research effort
PITTSBURGHScientists at Carnegie Mellon University say advanced computational tools will be the key to a new research project that, if successful, could enable doctors to routinely use information extracted from a patient's DNA to diagnose and guide treatment of diseases.
Ion Torrent, a unit of Life Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: LIFE), is sponsoring the project during its first year, and more funding is expected to come through federal grants and other sources. Robert F. Murphy, director of the Lane Center for Computational Biology in Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science, will lead a multidisciplinary team of researchers that will collaborate with scientists at the Baylor College of Medicine and Yale University.
The ultimate dream, Murphy said, is to develop what Ion Torrent Founder and CEO Jonathan M. Rothberg dubbed "doctor in a box" software. Doctor-in-a-box would take a patient's DNA sequence and use it to diagnose disease, identify a patient's susceptibility to disease, and predict which therapies might be most effective or cause the fewest side effects. The size and complexity of the human genome, which was first sequenced in its entirety in 2003, has stymied efforts to date to create such software.
"There's just way too much information for doctors to make sense of it all," Murphy said. But new machine learning tools statistically driven software that can detect associations within mountains of data may soon be able to translate the genetic and other hereditary information encoded in the human genome in a way that is clinically relevant to doctors and patients, he added. His team isn't the first to use machine learning to analyze whole genomes, however it will employ some unique software developed at Carnegie Mellon.
The Lane Center includes a number of faculty who are leaders in aspects of the problem, including Eric Xing, Ziv Bar-Joseph, Kathryn Roeder, Russell Schwartz and Seyoung Kim.
The team's software will be trained specifically to analyze the type of whole-genome sequence data produced by Ion Torrent's unique sequencing technology, which is ideal for clinical applications because it is designed to sequence the entire human genome in a day for just $1,000. Up to now, routine clinical use of whole genome sequencing has been impractical because it's taken weeks to complete at a cost of about $10,000. Now that Ion Torrent can reduce the time and expense, the next step is creating a tool to enable doctors to easily integrate whole genome sequencing into medical practice, Rothberg said.
"The promise of 'doctor-in-a-box' is that by using artificial intelligence, like we've seen with IBM's 'Watson' computer, we will be able to associate the variations in the human genome with the vast amount of information we have about human health," said Rothberg (E'85). "The work the Carnegie Mellon team is undertaking opens up the possibility that practicing physicians will be able to diagnose disease, identify disease susceptibility and guide therapy selection as easily as they can now use Apple's Siri on the iPhone."
"It's an enormous undertaking," Murphy agreed, "but we are creating a framework that will allow us to tackle this problem one piece at a time and to do so at a scale that makes sense when all of those pieces are put together."
The sheer size of the problem necessitates collaboration with other groups trying to understand the genome, so Murphy said the team intends to make its software available as open source.
During the first year, researchers will focus on identifying the genomic features associated with a single disease or patient population, which has yet to be selected. Researchers at Baylor's Human Genome Sequencing Center and Yale's Center for Genome Analysis will perform the whole genome sequencing of patients and provide longitudinal medical records, such as disease treatments and outcomes and results of clinical tests.
This information, scrubbed of patient identity information, will be analyzed by the Carnegie Mellon researchers, who include biologists, statisticians and computational biologists, as well as other computer scientists. Machine learning programs will tease out the relationships between the genomic data and the clinical outcomes for each of the anonymous patients, while incorporating information from biomedical literature regarding gene and protein expression and disease pathways.
This analysis will yield models based on personal genome sequences that can be used to predict disease susceptibility and treatment responsiveness, as well as choose preventive therapies.
To provide impetus to the research program, Rothberg will sponsor an "Analyzing the $1,000 Genome" Conference to be held at Carnegie Mellon sometime in the summer or fall of 2012. The scientific conference will highlight outstanding work on computational analysis of genome sequences and foster discussion of new directions and strategies for extending this research.
In addition to Murphy, the research program leadership includes Jaime Carbonell, director of CMU's Language Technologies Institute; Tom Mitchell, director of CMU's Machine Learning Department; Richard Gibbs, director of Baylor's sequencing center; and Shrikant Mane, director of Yale's genome center.
Rothberg also established the Rothberg Research Awards in Human Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon to support the university's faculty and students in creatively pushing research boundaries in how the brain thinks, learns and ages.
###
About Carnegie Mellon University: Carnegie Mellon (www.cmu.edu) is a private, internationally ranked research university with programs in areas ranging from science, technology and business, to public policy, the humanities and the arts. More than 11,000 students in the university's seven schools and colleges benefit from a small student-to-faculty ratio and an education characterized by its focus on creating and implementing solutions for real problems, interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation. A global university, Carnegie Mellon's main campus in the United States is in Pittsburgh, Pa. It has campuses in California's Silicon Valley and Qatar, and programs in Asia, Australia, Europe and Mexico. The university is in the midst of a $1 billion fundraising campaign, titled "Inspire Innovation: The Campaign for Carnegie Mellon University," which aims to build its endowment, support faculty, students and innovative research, and enhance the physical campus with equipment and facility improvements.
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Because nearly every ebook reader on the iPhone has its own store (and the ones that don't have the problem of not having their own store), what's best is very subjective. That said, we feel Kindle is your best option at the moment because it doesn't tie you to a specific platform, has a wide selection of books, and will let you read some other file formats. 
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Public release date: 10-Jan-2012
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