Clemson, KSU tumble; top 5 stay same in AP ranking (AP)

NEW YORK ? Clemson and Kansas State tumbled in The Associated Press college football poll after losing for the first time this season, and the top five teams in the rankings held their ground heading into the showdown between No. 1 LSU and No. 2 Alabama.

Clemson slipped five spots after losing 31-17 at Georgia Tech and Kansas State fell seven spots to No. 17 after getting thumped 58-17 by Oklahoma.

LSU received 47 first-place votes from the media panel, Alabama had 10 and No. 5 Boise State had one.

No. 3 Oklahoma State and No. 4 Stanford held on to their spots after victories, while the Broncos were idle.

Georgia Tech's upset pushed the Yellow Jackets back into the rankings at No. 22 and Auburn jumped back in at No. 25.

The losses by Clemson and Kansas State leave six undefeated teams in major college football ? the top five and No. 14 Houston.

The Harris poll has the same top five as the AP poll. In the USA Today coaches' poll, the only difference in the top five is Stanford is No. 3 and Oklahoma State is fourth.

The rest of the top 10 in the AP rankings had Oregon at No. 6, Oklahoma moving up four spots to No. 7, Arkansas at No. 8 and Nebraska and South Carolina right behind.

Clemson at 11th was followed by Atlantic Coast Conference rival Virginia Tech.

Michigan is No. 13, its best ranking since Nov. 4, 2007.

Michigan State is No. 15, followed By Penn State, Kansas State, Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona State.

The final five were Southern California, Georgia Tech, Cincinnati, West Virginia and Auburn.

The defending national champion Tigers have fallen out of the rankings three times this season, only to work their way back in.

Falling out after losses were two Big 12 teams.

Texas A&M (5-3) was upset at home 38-31 in overtime by Missouri and is unranked for the first time this season.

Texas Tech moved into the rankings last week for the first time this season by beating Oklahoma. The Red Raiders followed that up with a 41-7 loss at home to Iowa State and are unranked again.

Texas Tech accomplished a rare feat with their dramatic swing, becoming only the second team since the AP expanded to a Top 25 in 1989, to receive no votes in the rankings one week, be ranked the next week, then receive no votes the following week.

Washington did that in in September 2009, when the Huskies beat No. 3 USC 16-13 to jump into the rankings at No. 24, then lost to Stanford 34-14 the following week.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/sports/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111030/ap_on_sp_co_ap_po/fbc_t25_college_fb_poll

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Obama lauds contributions of Italian Americans (Providence Journal)

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Economy's mojo and Washington's no-go

Economic indicators are up slightly. Do consumers and investors perceive an end to the great political uncertainty in Washington (and Europe)?

Is the Great Uncertainty of 2010-11 coming to an end?

Skip to next paragraph

Consumer spending is up, ever so slightly. Wall Street indexes ticked up this past week. The American economy grew faster than expected. Europe may now have a handle on Greek debt.

There are even hints of Washington breaking the budget impasse in November. But hints only.

Ever since the Great Recession of 2008-09, the economy has been stuck in a cautionary mode about the staying power of the recovery. And one big cause is investor and consumer uncertainty about government action ? or inaction.

?We are uncertain about the future,? say William Dunkelberg, chief economist for the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents small, job-creating firms. ?And government is a high source of our uncertainty.?

People want durable decisions from Washington in order to make calm, long-term investments in their future. Instead, they are asking these still-unanswered questions:

Will taxes be raised or lowered? Will they be only temporary? Can Washington help raise home values or not? Will the new health-care law be implemented or repealed? Will proposed regulations be suspended or imposed?

President Obama is very aware of the impact of all this iffyness. In September he paused the Environmental Protection Agency?s implementation of proposed rules on power plants because of what he called a ?regulatory uncertainty? on the economy. Indeed, energy companies have long pleaded with Washington to make up its mind about climate-change rules ? regardless of how soft or stiff they are ? so they can make decades-long investments.

On Wednesday, a World Trade Organization (WTO) report warned of too much unpredictability in the global economy ? reflected in financial volatility and rising trade protectionism.

?These risks are aggravated by perceptions in markets that governments? responses to these challenges have been inadequate so far,? the WTO report stated. It recommended that a coming summit of Group of 20 leaders tackle the uncertainty with decisive action.

The political stalemates and showdowns in Washington have pushed economists to even measure the costs of ?policy-induced economic uncertainty.? A study from Stanford University has devised an index based on newspaper stories about the topic, the number of temporary tax provisions, and disagreements among economic forecasters.

The study found that the high level of uncertainty since the recession ?reflects deliberate policy decisions, harmful rhetorical attacks on business and ?millionaires,? failure to tackle entitlement reforms and fiscal imbalances, and political brinkmanship.?

If policy certainty were able to return to prerecession levels, an additional 2.5 million jobs would be created over 18 months, the report claims.

Other studies estimate the cost to the economy of not knowing when the Federal Reserve will sell its $1 trillion holdings of mortgage securities ? perhaps triggering inflation ? or when the Fed will raise interest rates.

The 2012 elections are a year away with political lines likely to only harden. Washington needs to quickly sort out its disputes.

It is what the people want, perhaps even more than jobs.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/khZgzE_i-To/Economy-s-mojo-and-Washington-s-no-go

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Billboard battle: 'Wanted' posters v. blight fight (Providence Journal)

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A Geologist's-Eye-View of the Van Earthquake

The death toll from Sunday?s magnitude 7.2 earthquake in the Van Province in eastern Turkey has now risen to over 500 people, and will undoubtedly continue to rise as rescuers continue to search the hundreds of buildings that collapsed during the shaking. The tectonic forces ultimately responsible are quite straightforward to explain, but as is often the case, the picture becomes more complicated when we take a closer look ? a fact that has consequences for the people caught up in this disaster.

The big tectonic picture

The most well-known seismic hazard in Turkey is probably the North Anatolian Fault, a major strike-slip fault which runs along the south of the Black Sea and underneath Istanbul, and has a long history of damaging earthquakes. The East Anatolian Fault, another strike slip fault that runs southwest from eastern Turkey to the Mediterranean, is another well-known source of large earthquakes.

The earthquake on the 23rd October had a compressional focal mechanism and occurred in a region where three plates intersect: the Arabian and Eurasian plates are crashing into each other, and the Anatolian 'microplate' is running away.

But Sunday?s earthquake occurred some way to the east of these structures, in a high region known as the East Anatolian Plateau that has also seen its fair share of large earthquakes in the past. The focal mechanism shows that the latest rupture was due to movement on a thrust fault, a response to the crust around it being compressed in a north-south direction. As the figure to the left illustrates, this region is on the boundary between two regions with very different tectonics. To the east, in Iran, there is a great deal of convergence and mountain building as the Arabian plate to the south moves northwards into the Eurasian plate, as part of a belt of mountain building that runs all the way from the Alps to the Himalayas. To the west is the strike-slip faulting concentrated on the North and East Anatolian Faults, which is, surprisingly, in response to the exact same continental collision. The bit of crust that makes up Turkey is apparently strong enough that rather than internally deforming in response to the Arabian plate encroaching on its territory, it is getting pushed westwards out of the way, with the motion largely occurring on the North Anatolian and East Anatolian Faults.

Caught in the midst of this fundamental shift in the way the crust is deforming, the geology and the geological history of the Van Region is very complicated. Rather than large throughgoing structures, it is a mish-mash of lots of smaller faults.

A map of active faults on the East Anatolian Plateau. It's complicated. The red circle is the location of the October 23rd earthquake. Source: Kocyigit et al. 2001

Geological evidence suggests that up until a few million years ago, thrust faulting was quite common in this area, but more recently strike-slip faulting has taken over. Recent small earthquakes in this region have definitely been largely strike-slip: in the figure below, most of the beachball-like focal mechanisms are split into four quarters, which tells us those earthquakes were on strike-slip faults.

However, this figure also tells us that seismometers have recorded a few compressional thrust fault ruptures (where the focal mechanisms are split into three slices, with a red/blue central slice), just like Sunday?s event. And one of the areas that has experienced some of these thrust earthquakes is along the eastern shore of Lake Van. It appears that some peculiarities of the structure and local crustal stresses in this region mean that some thrust faulting is still happening here.

Focal mechanisms of smaller earthquakes in East Anatolia in the last 20 years. Lake Van is in the black box. Source: Barazangi et al. 2006)

Complicated areas like this are very challenging for geologists to interpret, and make detailed assessments of seismic risk extremely difficult too. There is a lot of deformation that must take place in response to the encroaching plates to the north and south, and the escaping microplate to the west, so the seismic hazard is high; but it is also diffuse, being distributed over many faults that may in aggregate produce significant earthquakes every few decades, but individually may not rupture more than once every few thousand years. In contrast, in western Turkey the seismic risk is also high, but mainly focused on the North and East Anatolian faults, which take up the lion?s share of the deformation required for Turkey?s exit from the continental collision zone. Geologists might not be able to predict the ?when?, but at least they have a better handle on the ?where?.

Damage and building codes

Of course, as always when an earthquake occurs in a region with lots of people living in it, the casualties are as much determined by how resilient the buildings in the area are as the size and location of the earthquake. In the wake of the magnitude 7.6 Izmet earthquake that ruptured a 150 kilometre section of the North Anatolian Fault in 1999, killing 20-30,000 people, the Turkish government has stepped up efforts to enforce building codes designed to stop things like catastrophic collapses of structurally weak multi-story buildings. However, lack of compliance with these regulations has long been an issue, and it is clear from images from the town of Ercis, which appears to have borne the brunt of the damage in the region, that many buildings have collapsed that perhaps would not have if they had been built up to spec.

A collapsed building in the earthquake zone. Source: BBC

Assessments from the earthquake zone of ??concrete thinned with gravel, insufficient steel girders and supports knocked out to create more space? certainly reinforce this impression: in a dramatic TV demonstration, one emergency worker apparently crumbled some concrete from a collapsed building to dust with his hand. However, since many of these buildings probably predate the last decade, it is hopefully more a symptom of past neglect, and the challenges of undoing that neglect when your entire country is earthquake prone, rather than an indictment of more recent practices. The complicated tectonic picture in this region discussed above may also have complicated matters by making it difficult to identify, and prioritise for strengthening, the towns and buildings most at risk in the area.

Aftershocks and future seismic risks

The global seismometer network has recorded almost 50 aftershocks of magnitude 4 or greater in the past 5 days, the largest of which was a magnitude 6.0 ten hours after the main shock on Sunday.

Aftershocks of the Van earthquake (which is the largest circle on this plot) reported by the USGS,23-27th October.

The aftershocks are already dying down ? only 6 of the reported aftershocks occurred yesterday ? but the stress changes in the region due to this earthquake may interact in complicated and hard-to-predict ways with other faults in the area, and may lead to a heightened chance of further large earthquakes in the months and years ahead. Unfortunately, we?ll just have to wait and see.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=0b0e2b849af3fb3415003862d9109c53

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Wounding of war veteran rallies Oakland protesters (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? Doctors in Oakland, California, struggled on Wednesday to save the life of an Iraq war veteran who became a rallying cry for the Occupy Wall Street movement after he was badly wounded in clashes between protesters and police.

Scott Olsen, 24, a former U.S. Marine who served two tours of duty in Iraq, was struck in the head by a tear gas canister fired on Tuesday by police trying to prevent protesters from reclaiming a public square, protest organizers said.

Police had forcibly cleared Frank Ogawa Plaza, which had served as a base for two weeks of protests in Oakland against economic inequality, in a predawn sweep of the area earlier that same day, arresting 85 protesters at a makeshift encampment there.

A spokesman for Highland General Hospital in Oakland confirmed Olsen was listed in critical condition from injuries sustained in the protest but could not say how he was hurt.

Oakland police have acknowledged officers fired tear gas and so-called "bean-bag" projectiles to disperse demonstrators on Tuesday night but declined to discuss how Olsen may have been hurt except to say the matter was under investigation.

Olsen is believed to be the most seriously injured person yet in confrontations between police and activists protesting against a financial system they believe benefits mostly corporations and the wealthy since anti-Wall Street protests began last month in New York.

News of his injury ignited a furor among supporters of the protests. Activists in Oakland and elsewhere took to Twitter and other social media urging demonstrators back into the streets en masse.

SURVIVED TWO TOURS IN IRAQ

Olsen, originally from Onalaska, Wisconsin, had been camping overnight with the Occupy San Francisco protest before joining the Oakland movement, said his friend, Adele Carpenter, who spoke to Reuters by phone from the hospital waiting room.

"The irony is not lost on anyone here that this is someone who survived two tours in Iraq and is now seriously injured by the Oakland police force," said Carpenter, 29.

She said Olsen had been active in several anti-war veterans groups and had ventured across the bay to Oakland in a gesture of solidarity after learning of protesters' difficulties in that city.

Keith Shannon, 24, who said he served with Olsen in Iraq, told Reuters his friend suffered a 2-inch skull fracture and brain swelling and had been sedated and placed on a respirator in the hospital's emergency room trauma center while neurosurgeons decided whether to operate.

Shannon and Carpenter both said Olsen had been conscious when he first arrived at the hospital at about 11 p.m. on Tuesday.

A hospital spokesman said on Wednesday night that Olsen remained listed in critical condition and would soon be moved to an intensive care unit.

"Scott is quiet until you get to know him. He's always smiling a lot, and is sharp-witted," Shannon said, describing his friend and roommate as someone who had "always been interested in politics."

"Even though he has a good job, and Wall Street technically hasn't affected him, he's trying to help other people," Shannon said. He added that he and Olsen both now work as systems administrators at a software firm and are roommates in Daly City, south of San Francisco.

Olsen served two tours in Iraq from 2006 to 2010 with the 3rd battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, Shannon said, adding that he and Olsen deployed together and were assigned to a tactical communications unit.

During his first tour, Olsen was sent to the Iraqi town of Al-Qa'im, a community along the Euphrates river. His second deployment was in Haditha, a town where a group of U.S. Marines were accused of unlawfully killing 24 civilians in 2005.

(Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Cynthia Johnston)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iraq/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111027/us_nm/us_usa_wallstreet_protests_veteran

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Dancehall Star Vybz Kartel Charged With Second Murder

Kartel, currently in custody in Jamaica, has been charged in the murder of a promoter.
By Gil Kaufman

Vybz Kartel
Photo: Getty Images

On the day he was slated to appear in a Jamaican courtroom to answer to murder and gun charges, dancehall star Vybz Kartel (born Adijah Palmer) was hit with a second murder count in connection with the August slaying of Clive "Lizard" Williams.

Kartel, one of the most popular contemporary dancehall stars on the island, had earlier been charged with the murder of 27-year-old promoter Barrington "Bossie" Burton. Police say Burton was killed on July 12 as he stood with a group of friends in a park. The singer, who has been charged in that case along with two other men, has been in custody since September 30, when police arrested him with a large quantity of marijuana in a hotel room.

In the Burton case, Kartel, 35, was charged with murder, conspiracy to commit murder, illegal possession of a firearm and possession of marijuana, according to a report in the Jamaican Gleaner. The music star was charged in the second murder on Monday. Assistant Police Commissioner Ealan Powell told the paper that Kartel is being investigated "in connection with a number of murders, shootings and gunrunning."

After Kartel's initial arrest, a police military squad raided several of his homes and found a burned, decomposed body in one of them. Police have not yet located Williams' body, but a police source told the Gleaner that they have "graphic descriptions" of how Williams was killed.

Kartel, known for his violent, sexually explicit lyrics, has become a favorite go-to flavor addition for a number of mainstream R&B and hip-hop stars, including Eminem, Busta Rhymes, Rihanna and Lil Wayne.

Related Artists

• Vybz Kartel

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1673205/vybz-kartel-murder-charge.jhtml

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Fukushima Nuclear Plant Released Far More Radiation than Government Said

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The disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in March released far more radiation than the Japanese government has claimed. So concludes a study1 that combines radioactivity data from across the globe to estimate the scale and fate of emissions from the shattered plant.

The study also suggests that, contrary to government claims, pools used to store spent nuclear fuel played a significant part in the release of the long-lived environmental contaminant caesium-137, which could have been prevented by prompt action. The analysis has been posted online for open peer review by the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics .

[More]

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=b9d92cf2019f2264e395663d8ef7b905

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[OOC] The Rednex Gang

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Miss Winter

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Can I be the female gun? I'll start the character right away.

Am I crazy? Well, that depends. Define crazy.

MotherDragons

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May I be the sheild?

Self-Proclaimed Artist
Writer of Fan-Fiction and Short Stories
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Unique

XMatthewxHitomiX

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Sure....just please make a good profile..I am no very good and..um..another person was not so good either >,>'

Miss Winter

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Alright, my character has been submitted. I hope you like him.

XMatthewxHitomiX

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May I reserve the silent deadly male gun.

peachyme123

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May I get twin 1? I'm gonna make her very traditional yet new! :P

Aixulram

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I don't reserve..just make amazing characters and I will accept them (:

Miss Winter

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Fly on wall sees things it wishes it hadn?t

?Where there are humans,

you?ll find flies,

and Buddhas.?

?Kobayashi Issa

Each day, in each country, a housefly is born. Lots of houseflies really. Houseflies have been being born around us for thousands of years. They are born of what everyone else abandons, corpses, cakes, and excrement. And yet their story is inescapably a version of our story. They spread early out of Africa, bound to us. You find them wrapped in mummies, their bodies held tight against the bodies of pharaohs [1]. You find them in ancient latrines, as larvae, tunneling through what we would rather be done with. At picnics they sit on hot dogs. In bedrooms, they look down from walls. In war and tragedy, they mouth what we cannot even countenance. They brushed upon Gandhi, Mother Theresa and Caesar, but also Mussolini and you. And before they brushed upon you (or Mussolini) they brushed upon, well, you don?t want to know.

Fly foot (AKA tarsus)

Actually, you might want to know. Or at least some scientists think you might want to know. So it is that there is now a large book worth of scientific studies of just what can be found living on flies. All of these studies are interesting, some are a bit disgusting, and a new study from a pig farm in North Carolina is the kind of thing that might just change how you live your life.

Although we have seen houseflies for millennia, complained about them in a thousand languages using a hundred thousand adjectives, in some ways they are still among the least known guests at the table. No one knows where they come from (only that they had already found us as of five thousand years ago). No one knows what they did before they found us (though one imagines it involved decay). What we do know about houseflies is that they gather a little bit of life from everything they touch and redistribute it, a sort of Robin Hood of germs.

Some of the bacteria living on houseflies are their partners. Housefly eggs and larvae depend on beneficial bacteria (such as the species Klebsiella oxytoca) bestowed upon them by their mothers. These bacteria produce compounds that kill fungi and, in doing so, help hungry young flies outcompete those same fungi for their otherwise rapidly decaying food [2]. Others though are hangers on, gathered by accident as the flies bump around the world. When a fly lands, its sticky hairs become covered in bacteria, which can then be transferred to whatever the flies land on next (insert image 1 here). Flies also store bacteria (gathered from their food) in their alimentary tract. These germs are brought to new places in fly poop, but also?as one treatise on flies delicately puts it? ?in small droplets of regurgitated matter which have been called vomit spots.?

Just where do houseflies pick up these other bacteria, the ones the give back to us in vomit spots, feces and footsteps? Well, they find them in what we have abandoned, the remains on which they can survive. Once, houseflies emerged from horseshit by the billions (insert image 2 here). When that ran out (thanks to the invention of cars), they turned to our garbage and so we collected it more frequently and took it far away. When the garbage become rare (some places, though not everywhere), they found the dog waste we left behind in cities. And now that New Yorkers, for instance, in their fancy shoes and dark clothes, gather the dog poop in bags, the flies have found those places we have taken our waste to hide it from them (and from ourselves . At garbage dumps flies flock in dense halos. They are born too out of the rough parts of towns?smoke signals of neglect. They have even found the places we have moved our animals, the modern mangers of chickens and pigs where waste is dumped into vast pools (insert image 3 here). Here, their naked children eclose as writhing maggots only to be born again later to their, hairy, adult, flying forms.

It is among these last flies that my friend Coby Schal recently decided to spend some of his days [3]. Coby has studied insects at pig farms for a while. There are probably worse places to study insects, though I can?t think of them right now. Coby has looked at the movement of roaches from one pig farm to another, but what he wanted to study with the flies was something different. Along with colleagues at Kansas State University, Coby wanted to know just what was being carried aloft as those flies rose. Flies, incidentally, take care in their rise. They bend their legs a little and, ever so gingerly, bounce, while flapping their wings.

Horse and housefly. This is not really the relationship I was talking about, but this drawing was too funny to resist. Certainly, the idea of houseflies riding into cities on horses is right, it is just that they would be riding a little further back. From the funny houseflies collection.

Coby and his colleagues found fecal bacteria in 93.7% of the flies at the pig farm (The aptly named Enterococcus faecalis was the most common species). This came as no surprise. Houseflies the world over carry fecal bacteria. The surprise was many of those bacteria were resistant to antibiotics, such as tetracycline and erythromycin, antibiotics used to treat human bacterial diseases [4]. Such resistant forms, so-called superbugs, can kill, and while finding them on flies near pig farms does not guarantee they are making their way from the farms to our bodies via flies, it certainly suggests the possibility.

But why would the flies in pig farms tend to have antibiotic resistant bacteria? Herein lies the secret you might not have heard. Most pigs in the U.S., as well as most farm animals more generally, are fed antibiotics. By some estimates, eighty percent of antibiotics produced in the U.S. are used on animals. The antibiotics are not used to treat infections. Instead they serve solely to promote rapid growth, to make your bacon or burger cheaper and faster. As an evolutionary side effect when pigs are fed those antibiotics their weak bacteria, those susceptible to the antibiotics being used, die. Those most likely to survive are the lineages resistant to antibiotics, the tough mothers. If isolated on pig farms, all of this is imprudent but not tragic in as much as it seems isolated, faraway from our daily lives. Then the flies enter the story.

Canoe ride anyone? This is a typical waste pond at a pig facility. From a distance (or in a photo) it seems pleasant enough, but that pleasantness is an illusion.

Houseflies can fly and they can do so more effectively than you might imagine. They fly with the wind, but even against it. Individual houseflies have been recorded having traveled more than ten miles [5]. Consider the geography of farms. Imagine the flies rising up from them and flying toward you. Whatever new resistant strains of bacteria they bear may be closer than you think. They might be tapping at your window now or, as Chekhov said of them, ?brushing against the ceiling,? their bodies bouncing along as they leave their bacteria behind.

Humans tend to dislike successful animals. We scorn the murders of crows, the flocks of starlings and the even the ants that boil up around and into our houses. Their bodies seem vulgar. The flies though, we conclude, are not just loathsome but dirty and even, in the context of Coby Schal?s new study, potentially deadly. This is one lesson to take from the flies, but the wrong one. The real truth they offer, if we pay attention, is more about the nature of humans than it is the nature of flies. Anopheles mosquitoes are vectors of malaria, but houseflies, well, they are vectors of what we leave behind, carrying it back to us, as though to say, ?Over here! You forgot something?? They are the messenger nobody asked for, bearing the messages nobody wants, whether about the overuse of antibiotics or some other of our failings. And so go ahead and kill the messenger, but heed the message. Meanwhile, billions of fly eggs are ready to hatch out of whatever we leave behind.

1-Panagiotakopulu E, Buckland PC, Kemp BJ (2010) Underneath Ranefer?s floors?urban environments on the desert edge. J Archaeol Sci, 37:474?481

2-Zvereva EL (1986b) Peculiarities of competitive interaction between larvae of the house fly Musca domestica and microscopic fungi. Zoologicheskii Zhurnal 65:1517?1525, Lam K, Thu K, Tsang M, Moore M, Gries G. 2009. Bacteria on housefly eggs, Musca domestica, suppress fungal growth in chicken manure through nutrient depletion or antifungal metabolites. Naturwissenschaften, 96 :1127-1132.

3-Well, and to send his students, postdocs and technicians, to spend theirs.

4-Ahmad A., A. Ghosh, C. Schal, and L. Zurek. 2011. Insects in confined swine operations carry a large antibiotic resistant and potentially virulent enterococcal community. BMC Microbiology, 11:23.

5-Chakrabarti S, Kambhaampati Zurek L. 2010. Assessment of house fly dispersal between rural and urban habitats in Kansas, USA. J Kans Entomol Soc, 83:172-188.

Images:

Image 1. Fly foot (AKA tarsus)

Image 2. Horse and housefly. This is not really the relationship I was talking about, but this drawing was too funny to resist. Certainly, the idea of houseflies riding into cities on horses is right, it is just that they would be riding a little further back. From the funny houseflies collection.

Image 3. Canoe ride anyone? This is a typical waste pond at a pig facility. From a distance (or in a photo) it seems pleasant enough, but that pleasantness is an illusion.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=59652006c462deb0601bb858959b6f37

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Yoga eases back pain in largest U.S. yoga study to date

ScienceDaily (Oct. 24, 2011) ? Yoga classes were linked to better back-related function and diminished symptoms from chronic low back pain in the largest U.S. randomized controlled trial of yoga to date, published by the Archives of Internal Medicine as an "Online First" article on October 24. But so were intensive stretching classes.

"We found yoga classes more effective than a self-care book -- but no more effective than stretching classes," said study leader Karen J. Sherman, PhD, MPH, a senior investigator at Group Health Research Institute. Back-related function was better and symptoms were diminished with yoga at 12 weeks; and clinically important benefits, including less use of pain medications, lasted at least six months for both yoga and stretching, with thorough follow-up of more than nine in 10 participants.

In the trial, 228 adults in six cities in western Washington state were randomly assigned to 12 weekly 75-minute classes of either yoga or stretching exercises or a comprehensive self-care book called The Back Pain Helpbook. Nine in 10 of them were primary-care patients at Group Health Cooperative. Participants in the trial typically had moderate -- not severe -- back pain and relatively good mental health, and most had been at least somewhat active before the trial started.

The class participants received instructional videos and were encouraged to practice at home for 20 minutes a day between their weekly classes. Interviewers who didn't know the patients' treatment assignments assessed their back-related function and pain symptoms at six weeks, 12 weeks, and six months.

In 2005, Dr. Sherman and her colleagues conducted a smaller study that found yoga effective for easing chronic low back pain. "In our new trial," she said, "we wanted both to confirm those results in a larger group and to see how yoga compared to a different form of exercise of comparable physical exertion: stretching.

Both the yoga and stretching classes emphasized the torso and legs:

• The type of yoga used in the trial, called viniyoga, adapts the principles of yoga for each individual and physical condition, with modifications for people with physical limitations. The yoga classes also used breathing exercises, with a deep relaxation at the end.
• The stretching classes used 15 different stretching exercises, including stretches of the hamstrings and hip flexors and rotators. Each was held for a minute and repeated once, for a total of 52 minutes of stretching. Strengthening exercises were also included.

"We expected back pain to ease more with yoga than with stretching, so our findings surprised us," Dr. Sherman said. "The most straightforward interpretation of our findings would be that yoga's benefits on back function and symptoms were largely physical, due to the stretching and strengthening of muscles."

But the stretching classes included a lot more stretching than in most such classes, with each stretch held for a relatively long time. "People may have actually begun to relax more in the stretching classes than they would in a typical exercise class," she added. "In retrospect, we realized that these stretching classes were a bit more like yoga than a more typical exercise program would be." So the trial might have compared rather similar programs with each other.

"Our results suggest that both yoga and stretching can be good, safe options for people who are willing to try physical activity to relieve their moderate low back pain," Dr. Sherman concluded. "But it's important for the classes to be therapeutically oriented, geared for beginners, and taught by instructors who can modify postures for participants' individual physical limitations."

In an invited commentary, Timothy S. Carey, MD, MPH, of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, called Dr. Sherman's study "an excellent example of a pragmatic comparative effectiveness trial," noting that the Institute of Medicine has identified chronic back pain as a priority condition for such studies.

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health, funded the trial.

Dr. Sherman's coauthors were Daniel C. Cherkin, PhD, Robert D. Wellman, MS, Andrea J. Cook, PhD, Rene J. Hawkes, and Kristin Delaney, MPH, of Group Health Institute; and Richard A. Deyo, MD, MPH, of Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. Drs. Sherman, Cherkin, and Cook are also on the faculty of the University of Washington School of Public Health.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Group Health Research Institute.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Journal References:

1. Karen J. Sherman; Daniel C. Cherkin; Robert D. Wellman; Andrea J. Cook; Rene J. Hawkes; Kristin Delaney; Richard A. Deyo. A Randomized Trial Comparing Yoga, Stretching, and a Self-care Book for Chronic Low Back Pain. Archives of Internal Medicine, 2011; DOI: 10.1001/archinternmed.2011.524
2. Timothy S. Carey. Comparative Effectiveness Studies in Chronic Low Back Pain: Comment on 'A Randomized Trial Comparing Yoga, Stretching, and a Self-care Book for Chronic Low Back Pain'. Archives of Internal Medicine, 2011; DOI: 10.1001/archinternmed.2011.519

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://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111024164708.htm

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RT on DVD & Blu-Ray: Captain America and Winnie the Pooh

Plus, a dramedy, a little-seen sci-fi hit, a Coppola classic, and a dino trilogy.

This turned out to be one of those good weeks on home video, thanks to a few rather notable releases. Criterion is offering some good ones (minor Antonioni film Identification of a Woman, Island of Lost Souls, and a Blu-ray of Dazed and Confused), and giant monster classic Destroy All Monsters gets the Blu-ray treatment. A decent martial arts epic (Shaolin) hits shelves, as well as a Certified Fresh Finnish dark comedy based on an evil Santa Claus (Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale). Aside from those, however, the ones we'll be focusing on include one of Marvel's big summer hits, a reboot of a beloved storybook character, and a British sci-fi hit. Then we've got a quiet dramedy, a controversial shock flick, one of Coppola's classics on Blu-ray, and Spielberg's big dino trilogy. See below for the full list!

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1923816/news/1923816/

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The Class War Has Begun

New York Magazine:

During the death throes of Herbert Hoover?s presidency in June 1932, desperate bands of men traveled to Washington and set up camp within view of the Capitol. The first contingent journeyed all the way from Portland, Oregon, but others soon converged from all over?alone, in groups, with families?until their main Hooverville on the Anacostia River?s fetid mudflats swelled to a population as high as 20,000. The men, World War I veterans who could not find jobs, became known as the Bonus Army?for the modest government bonus they were owed for their service.

Read the whole story: New York Magazine

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/24/the-class-war-has-begun_n_1027774.html

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Study Finds No Cancer/Cell Phone Link (talking-points-memo)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS Feeds and Widgets via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/151867542?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Turkish forces kill 32 Kurdish militants: report (Reuters)

ISTANBUL (Reuters) ? Turkish troops killed 32 Kurdish militants in clashes in Cukurca Kazan valley, in Hakkari province in southeast Turkey, state-run television TRT reported on Saturday, in the third day of an offensive to avenge the deaths of 24 soldiers this week.

A total of 53 Kurdish militants have been killed so far in the operation, TRT reported without citing a source. The television channel did not provide a timeframe for the latest killings, adding that clashes continue in the area.

Turkish security officials estimated earlier in the week that their forces, numbering about 1,000 inside Iraq, had killed 21 fighters from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

The Turkish military said it had deployed troops from 22 battalions for ground attacks in five different areas on either side of the border, and it had also launched air strikes.

Turkey's leaders have vowed revenge after one of the worst losses of life suffered by the army since the separatist insurgency began in 1984, when PKK guerrillas mounted a series of deadly night-time raids on army outposts in Turkey's mountainous southeast on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Seda Sezer)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111022/wl_nm/us_turkey_pkk

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Cellphones don't increase cancer risk: Study - Page 1 ...

SAN FRANCISCO?-- A Danish study that monitored 350,000 cell phone users over an 18-year period found no link between mobile phone subscriptions and an increased risk of cancer.

The new study, conducted by the Danish Cancer Society and published in published in the British Medical Journal, is actually an update of an older study that adds five years of follow-up data running through 2007. It found no increased risk of tumors or other forms of cancer believed to be associated with cell phone use, even among those who held mobile phone subscriptions for more than a decade.

The study's approach has one clear weakness, however ? it looks only at records of cell phone subscriptions, and not actual cell phone usage.

?

Cdn. parliamentary committee calls for more study

Devra Davis, a cancer epidemiologist and president of Environmental Health Trust, a group that actively campaigns for warning labels on cell phones, pointed out other flaws with the study: ?In order for any study of a relatively rare disease like brain tumors to find a change in risk, millions must be followed for decades," Davis explains in a lengthy critique of the study.

?

She added that it "excludes those who would have been the heaviest users?namely more than 300,000 business people in the 1990s who are known to have used phones four times as much as those in this study.?

The authors of the study concede that their findings cannot be considered definitive and that a "small to moderate increase in risk for subgroups of heavy users or after even longer induction periods than 10-15 years cannot be ruled out" without larger studies.

The Denmark study comes just months after World Health Organization research determined that cell phones should be considered "possibly carcinogenic." The international INTERPHONE study, released last year, also found no connection between cell phone use and cancer, but was widely criticized for being partially funded by the wireless industry.

?

?

A?small number of epidemiology studies have shown brain cancer rates might be elevated in long-term/heavy cell phone users, the department noted. But, it added, other epidemiology studies on cell phone users, laboratory studies and animal cancer studies have not supported this association. The International Agency for Research on Cancer's (IARC) recent classification of RF energy as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" is an acknowledgement that limited data exists that suggests RF energy might cause cancer, the department said. At present, it added, the scientific evidence is far from conclusive and more research is required.

?

(From PC World U.S., with adds by Howard Solomon, Network World Canada)

Source: http://www.itworldcanada.com/news/cellphones-dont-increase-cancer-risk-study/144179

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Multnomah County judge hears legal wrangling as grand jury looks ...

With a grand jury convened, Multnomah County prosecutors and Portland Officer Dane Reister's lawyer legally wrangled today in court on what the jury reviewing Reister's June 30 shooting of another man can consider.

Reister, who mistakenly fired lethal rounds from a beanbag shotgun and wounded a man in June, had five years earlier mistakenly fired a loaded riot-suppression launcher during training, striking an officer posing as a protester with a smoke round.

Reister's attorney, Janet Hoffman, urged the presiding judge to prevent prosecutors from sharing with grand jurors Reister's 2006 firearms mistake. She also argued that the district attorney's office should not be allowed to instruct the grand jury to consider a "negligent wounding" statute in its review of Reister's most recent shooting.

The grand jury reviewing Reister's June shooting of William Kyle Monroe, now 21, began Wednesday and is expected to last through early November. The district attorney's office has retained an expert from out of state to review Reister's most recent shooting.

After two hours of unprecedented arguments about what the state should be allowed to present to a sitting grand jury. Presiding Judge Jean Kerr Maurer said she'd issue her ruling on Monday at 11 am.

Hoffman said Reister's two firearms mistakes are "totally dissimilar," and the 2006 incident would have a "hugely prejudicial effect" on the grand jury.

In 2006, Reister thought he was "dry firing" a TL-1 launcher at an officer posing as a rioter during a training exercise at Camp Rilea. He thought his weapon was unloaded, but it wasn't and when he pulled the trigger, he fired a 37 mm smoke projectile that struck another Officer Zach Kenney in the leg. It caused a minor injury, a red welt on Kenney's thigh that was treated with an ice pack.? (Both sides submitted to the court an agreed upon statement of facts, describing Reister's 2006 firearms mistake)

Speaking of Reister's wounding of William Kyle Monroe in Southwest Portland by lethal shotgun rounds, Hoffman said: "It was a mistake that that particular ammunition was in that firearm. It was no mistake absolutely to shoot him."

Reister received a letter of reprimand after the 2006 firearms mistake. But the lesson he took from that incident 5 years ago, Hoffman said, was: "Be sure to know if your firearm is loaded."

"That is not applicable to the loading of the firearm in the dark, dim basement" of the parking garage across from Central Precinct, where Reister loaded the wrong ammunition into his beanbag shotgun June 30, Hoffman argued.

Norm Frink, a chief deputy district attorney, argued just the opposite. He said Reister's 2006 error was directly relevant. In both shootings, Reister was unaware of what his less-lethal firearm was loaded with, Frink said.

"His state of mind was the same. He incorrectly perceived the status of the ammunition in that less-lethal firearm," Frink said.

In a separate but related matter,Reister's lawyer also urged the judge not to allow the grand jury to consider whether the Portland officer's wounding of Monroe represented "negligent wounding," an Oregon statute that is not part of the criminal code. It brings a lower standard of proof than a criminally negligent charge, which would require a showing of "gross deviation" from a reasonable person's standard of care.

Under Oregon's negligent wounding statute, "any person who, as a result of failure to use ordinary care under the circumstances, wounds any other person with a bullet or shot from any firearm, or with an arrow from any bow, shall be punished by imprisonment in the county jail for a period not to exceed six months, or by a fine not to exceed $500, or both."

Reister's lawyer argued that state lawmakers intended the negligent wounding charge for hunters, and not for police officers.

"It is not applicable to the lawful use of force, which officers have," Hoffman said.

But the district attorney's office argued that while the "negligent wounding" statute may have started out as focused on hunters, it was revised to include "any person."

The language of the negligent wounding statute contains nothing to exempt police from the wording 'any person,' argued deputy district attorney Jeff Howes.

Hoffman countered that state statutes often refer to police as "peace officers," not as "persons."

--Maxine Bernstein

Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2011/10/armultnomah_county_judge_h_da_of.html

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Ice Cream Sandwich already unofficially ported, Nexus S 4G gets first dibs

Well, that was fast. Just two days (barely) after the Android 4.0 SDK was released, a resourceful dev claims to already have the code up and running on a handset that isn't the Galaxy Nexus. Android Central forum user Breezy is working on delivering a taste of Ice Cream Sandwich to the Nexus S 4G. It's already pretty clear that particular handset will be getting the upgrade at some point, but we know how impatient you can be. Breezy hasn't released his ROM just yet, because there's still some bugs to work out -- like the non-functioning WiFi, Bluetooth, cellular data and the wonky touchscreen. So, while you wait for him to get the kinks ironed out, enjoy the additional photo after the break, which sports the same alternate orange theme.

Continue reading Ice Cream Sandwich already unofficially ported, Nexus S 4G gets first dibs

Ice Cream Sandwich already unofficially ported, Nexus S 4G gets first dibs originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Oct 2011 21:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/20/ice-cream-sandwich-already-unofficially-ported-nexus-s-4g-gets/

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