Martha Waggoner The Associated Press 2009-11-03 11:51:00
North Carolina police say a real estate developer known as an active member of his church shot and killed his wife and two teen children and then committed suicide in their Fayetteville home.
Authorities did not hint at a motive into the slayings by William Maxwell in an upscale neighborhood of the city Monday night.
Police said Tuesday that 47-year-old Maxwell killed his wife, Kathryn, and their children, 17-year-old Connor and 15-year-old Cameron, before turning a gun on himself.
Friends and neighbors say the Maxwells were a friendly family who kept a meticulous yard and were active in their church and their children's religious high school.
Six bodies that were found in the home of a convicted rapist were women, officials said.
Police found two of the bodies when they went to the home of Anthony Sowell to arrest him on a rape charge. Mr Sowell, 50, of Cleveland, spent 15 years in prison for a rape in 1989.
A spokesman for the Cuyahoga County coroner said that five of the victims had been strangled. The other body was too decomposed to determine a cause of death.
A review of The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7:
Why the Official Report about 9/11 is Unscientific and False, A book by David Ray Griffin
The headline, "Just Say No to NIST" (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) is purposely patterned after Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No to Drugs." In the case of David Griffin's new book, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7, the NIST lies, half truths, omissions, and the outright corruption of honest science are the administration's dope, administered by NIST, to lull inquiring minds into believing the fantasy of their lies.
NIST's violations of scientific method, as Griffin clearly explains, represent what he terms the "politicization of science," used to delude Americans to accept the Bush administrations' conspiracy theory. That is, the World Trade Center Tower 7, the Tower not hit by an airliner, fell into its own footprint in six seconds at 5:20 PM on 9/11 as a result of minor fires, not explosives planted in the 47-story steel-framed building to create a classic internal demolition - uncannily resembling so many we've seen in movies or on TV.
David Edwards and Daniel Tencer Raw Story 2009-11-03 08:29:00
Confronted by an impassioned rape survivor at a town hall Saturday night, Sen. David Vitter tried everything from sympathizing to deflecting blame onto the Obama administration for his decision to vote against an anti-rape amendment.
Finally, amid shouts from protesters, the Louisiana Republican simply walked away.
Vitter was one of 30 Republican senators who voted against Sen. Al Franken's amendment, passed in the Senate last month, that would de-fund government contractors who prevent employees from seeking justice when they have been raped.
The inspiration for the amendment was Jamie Leigh Jones, who was allegedly gang-raped by co-workers at Halliburton subsidiary KBR while on assignment in Baghdad, and was then prevented from pursuing the matter in courts.
At the town hall meeting Saturday, a woman identifying herself as a "rape survivor" confronted Vitter and asked him why he voted against the amendment.
President Barack Obama Wednesday signed the fiscal 2010 National Defence Authorization Act during a ceremony at the White House.
Obama hailed the act, which contains $680.2 billion in military budget authority, as transformational legislation that targets wasteful defence spending.
The authorization act contains $130 billion to fund overseas contingency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and it also provides $6.7 billion for thousands of all-terrain, mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles now arriving in Afghanistan.
The president was accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden, congressional leaders and other senior officials, including Defence Secretary Robert M. Gates and Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Chicago - Nearly half of all U.S. children and 90 percent of black youngsters will be on food stamps at some point during childhood, and fallout from the current recession could push those numbers even higher, researchers say.
The estimate comes from an analysis of 30 years of national data, and it bolsters other recent evidence on the pervasiveness of youngsters at economic risk. It suggests that almost everyone knows a family who has received food stamps, or will in the future, said lead author Mark Rank, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis.
Roger Boyes and Philippe Naughton The Times 2009-11-03 17:54:00
David Cameron was put firmly on the spot today when a Czech constitutional court removed the last possible legal barrier to the Lisbon treaty. The judges' decision to give the green light to the controversial EU accord means that it should come into force by the end of the year after a long-awaited flick of the pen from Vaclav Klaus.
It dashes the hopes of the Conservatives, who had relied on the Czech President to delay its ratification until after the next general election in the UK.
The court in Brno had spent the past week considering a petition by 17 Eurosceptic Czech senators but it ruled this morning that the treaty could proceed. The treaty did not, said the chief judge Pavel Rychetsky, contravene the letter or the principles of the country's constitution.
Prompted by the recent terrorist attack on an Athens police station, university teachers yesterday took the lead in trying to organize a movement against violence and called on other groups to join them in a common protest.
The Hellenic Federation of University Teachers' Associations (POSDEP) issued a statement saying that the latest "cycle of violence" had prompted it to take action.
Richard Ford and Mark Henderson Times Online 2009-11-02 12:56:00
The Government is facing mass resignations from the official advisory body on drugs after the sacking of its chairman, The Times has learnt.
Two members of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs quit yesterday in protest at Alan Johnson's dismissal of David Nutt in a row over the relative harm caused by drugs and alcohol.
Les King, an expert chemist, was the first to resign. He said that the Home Secretary had denied Professor Nutt his right to free speech and called for the council to become truly independent of politicians. He was swiftly followed by Marion Walker, a pharmacist and clinical director with the substance misuse service at the Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.
Sixth-formers are facing the toughest competition yet for university entry because of an early increase in applications and a shortage of places for next year.
Documents seen by The Times show that most of the extra places pledged by the Government for 2010 have already been spoken for. A rise of at least 15 per cent in applications, compared with the same time last year, is expected to be announced by Ucas today, increasing the shortage of places.
The pressure on A-level students is likely to be more intense than this summer, when there was a rise of 10 per cent applying, a record level of interest and tens of thousands of capable candidates missing out. The deadline for submissions to the university admissions service for next year is not until January, but already leading institutions are reporting high rates of return on Ucas forms.
A doctor who carried out a second post-mortem examination on the body of Timothy Hampton says the nuclear expert's fall from the UN building in Vienna was murder.
The 47-year-old British scientist, who was involved in monitoring nuclear activities, was found dead last week at the bottom of a staircase in the United Nations' building.
The doctor who first examined Hampton's body concluded that there were 'no suspicious circumstances'. Following objections raised by his widow, Olena Gryshcuk, and her family as to the reliability of the assessment, another physician was asked to repeat the autopsy.
One Baby Policy Blamed for Killing Babies in China
Some of the Chinese people are known to be eating babies and the news circulated through the internet or via Email communication is shocking the world.
An Email report received by The Seoul Times confirmed that news with several vivid and appalling pictures of human embryos fetuses being made into a soup for human consumption.
The report went on. A town in the southern province of Canton (Guangdong) is now on trend taking baby herbal soup to increase overall health and stamina and the power of sexual performance in particular.
Quentin Bryce was hailed as a breath of fresh air when she was sworn in as Australian Governor-General last year. She was female (a first for Australia), she was liberal-minded, and she promised to be an outspoken advocate for Aborigines and other disadvantaged people.
While few fault her energy and commitment to the job, it seems all is not well at Government House, her official residence in Canberra. A staggering 30 staff - one third of the total - have quit their jobs since she arrived in September last year.
Ms Bryce's official secretary, Stephen Brady, defended his boss when grilled about the exodus by a parliamentary budget committee this week. But one former employee told The Australian: "She is just a very difficult person to work for. She plays favourites, and if she doesn't like you, you are history. She freezes you out."
No role for Abdullah Abdullah as president says he will clean up government, while people view election result with suspicion
Hamid Karzai vowed to tackle corruption in his government and reach out to his political opponents today, but gave no commitments to specific action in his first speech since being re-appointed as president of Afghanistan.
Speaking at the presidential palace in Kabul, Karzai echoed the commitments that his western backers had pushed him to accept, including appointing a clean government and making progress in peace negotiations with the Taliban.
He said his government would be one of national unity and hoped that "no one feels themselves isolated from this future government". But he did not offer a place in the government to his main opponent in the elections, Abdullah Abdullah, and he pointedly avoided commenting on any role for his rival.
Jon Boone & Richard Norton-Taylor Guardian.co.uk 2009-11-03 08:40:00
Pressure was growing on Hamid Karzai today to form a unity government after the Afghan president was declared the winner of the country's election following the cancellation of a runoff vote.
The decision by the Independent Election Commission (IEC) to declare Karzai president, taken just one day after his rival Abdullah Abdullah announced he would not participate in a fresh vote scheduled for Saturday, was welcomed by the west, despite doubts about the strength of Karzai's mandate.
Diplomats and world leaders warned that he must reach out to Abdullah after the IEC, which has been heavily criticised for being biased in the president's favour, declared that Karzai would serve another five years in office.
Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times 2009-10-29 22:10:00
The United States has withdrawn its troops from its four key bases in Nuristan, on the border with Pakistan, leaving the northeastern province as a safe haven for the Taliban-led insurgency to orchestrate its regional battles.
The US has retained some forces in Nuristan's capital, Parun, to provide security for the governor and government facilities. The American position concerning the withdrawal is that due to winter conditions, supply arteries are choked, making it difficult to keep forces in remote areas. The US has pulled out from some areas in the past, but never from all four main bases.
The move by the top US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChystal, follows the death on October 3 of eight US soldiers as well as a number of Afghan National Army forces when their outpost in Kamdesh was attacked by more than 300 militants. On July 13, 2008, nine American soldiers were killed when their outpost in Wanat was attacked by small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades.
Nuristan is strategically located in the Hindu Kush mountains, the vast and rugged region in which al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his associates are believed to hide.
Mazar-e-Sharif - Persistent accounts of Western forces in Afghanistan using their helicopters to ferry Taliban fighters, strongly denied by the military, is feeding mistrust of the forces that are supposed to be bringing order to the country.
One such tale came from a soldier from the 209th Shahin Corps of the Afghan National Army, fighting against the growing insurgency in Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan. Over several months, he had taken part in several pitched battles against the armed opposition.
"Just when the police and army managed to surround the Taliban in a village of Qala-e-Zaal district, we saw helicopters land with support teams," he said. "They managed to rescue their friends from our encirclement, and even to inflict defeat on the Afghan National Army."
The revelation by the New York Times on Wednesday that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, has long been on the payroll of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), is only the tip of a much bigger iceberg of heavy dependence by US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) counter-insurgency forces on Afghan warlords for security, according to a recently published report and investigations by Australian and Canadian journalists.
United States and other NATO military contingents operating in the provinces of Afghanistan's predominantly Pashtun south and east have been hiring private militias controlled by Afghan warlords, according to these sources, to provide security for their forward operating bases, other bases and to guard convoys.
An X-ray machine which produces ''naked'' images of passengers has been introduced at Manchester Airport, enabling staff to instantly spot any hidden weapons or explosives.
You would think after 4 years of trials at Heathrow, that British airports would now be able to work out whether or not they could and more importantly, should, use the various varieties of body scanners that are now available
A security guard has been sacked after he was caught using the security cameras at Darwin International Airport to perv on women.
The pervert was among a group of other security officers who allegedly gathered around the screens in the security room - but instead of looking out for suspected terrorists or criminal activity inside the airport they checked out women's breasts.
A source told the Northern Territory News the men - and one female worker - used the hi-tech security surveillance system to zoom in on well-endowed women wearing low-cut tops as they walked through the airport.
One woman was allegedly watched on the screen for at least five minutes as she went through a ground-level security check point. The group all worked for national security company MSS Security.
Private companies will take fingerprints from job applicants as part of a trial to improve the accuracy of Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) background checks.
The trial, disclosed to The Register in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, will see employment agencies gather biometric data from some applicants to establish their identity.
The role has until now been performed by the police. When a CRB check is matched to a record on the police national computer, fingerprints are sometimes used to verify whether the person applying for a job is the same person who committed the crime.
A senior FBI technologist declared last month that after decades of evaluation, the agency sees no point in facial recognition.
Speaking at last month's Biometrics 2009 conference in London, James A Loudermilk II, a senior level technologist at the FBI, outlined the agency's future biometrics' strategy.
He said that 18,000 law enforcement agencies contribute fingerprints and DNA samples to the FBI's databases and, at their peak, they submit 200,000+ identity verification queries a day. It's a big operation, and it's only going to grow, he said.
Under the Next Generation Identification initiative, an irisprint database is likely to be added to the existing fingerprint and DNA databases.
Scott Horton Harper's Magazine 2009-11-02 18:12:00
"When the history of this distinguished court is written, today's majority decision will be viewed with dismay," writes Guido Calabresi, the former Yale Law dean and a man widely viewed as the most illustrious living member of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. He is lodging his dissent in a 7-4 decision of the en banc court concluding that a Canadian software engineer named Maher Arar has no right to sue government officials. What has Calabresi so worked up?
Washington - November 3 - The military coup led by SOA graduates in Honduras has once again exposed the destabilizing and deadly effects that the School of the Americas (SOA/ WHINSEC) has on Latin America. Torture survivors and human rights activists from across the Americas, including Bertha Oliva, the founder of the Committee of the Family Members of the Disappeared (COFADEH) from Honduras and human rights defenders from Colombia will travel to Fort Benning, Georgia to participate in the mobilization.
* The SOA graduate-led military coup in Honduras and the increasing U.S. military involvement in Colombia put a renewed focus on the School of the Americas (SOA/ WHINSEC) and the policies it represents.
* Thousands from across the Americas will converge on November 20-22 at Fort Benning, GA for a vigil and civil disobedience actions to speak out against the SOA/ WHINSEC and to demand a change in U.S. foreign policy.
* The vigil will commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 1989 SOA graduate-led Jesuit massacre in San Salvador, and the many other thousands of victims of SOA/ WHINSEC violence.
A series of controversial Israeli films are provoking outrage and plaudits in equal measure at the London Film Festival.
The best documentary award has gone to one of the year's most controversial films.
Defamation is a polemic by Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir. In his expose of America's Anti-Defamation League (ADL), he claims anti-Semitism is being exaggerated for political purposes. He argues that American Jewish leaders travel around the world exploiting the memory of the Holocaust to silence criticism of Israel.
At one point, an ADL leader admits to Shamir that "we need to play on that guilt".
Shamir says his film, Defamation, started out as a study of "the political games being played behind the term anti-Semitism".
"It became more a film about perceptions and the way Jews and Israelis choose to see themselves and define themselves - a lot of the time unfortunately choosing the role of eternal victims as a way of life."
Washington - The US government has no precise figure for how many contractors are employed in Iraq and Afghanistan, inviting the risk of fraud and security threats, a US commission warned on Monday.
"It is both peculiar and troubling that eight years after the overthrow of the Taliban regime, in Afghanistan, and more than six years since the overthrow of Baathist regime in Iraq, we still don't know how many contractor employees are working in the region," said Michael Thibault, co-chairman of the commission on wartime contracting.
The independent commission found that "there is no single source for a clear, complete and accurate picture of contractor numbers, locations, contracts and cost," Thibault said at a commission hearing.
"How can contractors be properly managed if we aren't sure how many there are, where they are and what are they doing?"
Erich Follath and Holger Stark Spiegel Online 2009-11-02 19:40:00
In September 2007, Israeli fighter jets destroyed a mysterious complex in the Syrian desert. The incident could have led to war, but it was hushed up by all sides. Was it a nuclear plant and who gave the orders for the strike?
The mighty Euphrates river is the subject of the prophecies in the Bible's Book of Revelation, where it is written that the river will be the scene of the battle of Armageddon: "The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East."
Today, time seems to stand still along the river. The turquoise waters of the Euphrates flow slowly through the northern Syrian provincial city Deir el-Zor, whose name translates as "monastery in the forest." Farmers till the fields, and vendors sell camel's hair blankets, cardamom and coriander in the city's bazaars. Occasionally archaeologists visit the region to excavate the remains of ancient cities in the surrounding area, a place where many peoples have left their mark -- the Parthians and the Sassanids, the Romans and the Jews, the Ottomans and the French, who were assigned the mandate for Syria by the League of Nations and who only withdrew their troops in 1946. Deir el-Zor is the last outpost before the vast, empty desert, a lifeless place of jagged mountains and inaccessible valleys that begins not far from the town center.
The Iraqi government has been busy signing a series of billion-dollar deals with major international oil companies who are attempting to gain access to Iraq's vast oil wells. But in poverty-stricken areas of the oil-rich southern city of Basra, residents say they have not seen any of the wealth generated by the deals.
The Palestinian leadership accused the US of caving in over Israeli settlements after Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, praised Israel for making concessions.
Having failed to force Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, to meet US demands for a total settlement freeze, Mrs Clinton switched tack during a one-day visit to Jerusalem when she called on both sides to resume peace talks.
"What the Prime Minister has offered in specifics of a restraint on the policy of settlements . . . is unprecedented," Mrs Clinton said.
She did not give details of the concessions but even under the Oslo peace talks in the 1990s Israel never halted the expansion of settlements. The first serious reversal came in 2005 when Ariel Sharon forced thousands to leave the Gaza Strip.
Jon Menon and Andrew MacAskill Bloomberg 2009-11-03 17:51:00
Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Lloyds Banking Group Plc will receive 31.3 billion pounds ($51 billion) in a second bailout from the U.K. taxpayer as the two banks agreed to cap bonuses.
The Treasury will inject 25.5 billion pounds of capital into RBS, for a total of 45.5 billion pounds, making it the costliest bailout of any bank worldwide. The government will fund about a quarter of Lloyds's 21 billion-pound fundraising. Both banks said they won't pay cash bonuses to workers earning more than 39,000 pounds this year.
Lufthansa, the German flag carrier, has withdrawn bmi from sale and will concentrate on trying to turn around the loss-making airline itself.
After it became clear that an acceptable price could not be achieved, the company confirmed that it was no longer in talks with buyers.
Wolfgang Prock-Schauer, the former head of Jet Airways in India, will become chief executive of bmi today. He has been set the task of restructuring the airline.
If Lufthansa is able to stem the losses and the aviation market recovers, the company will consider putting bmi back on the market.
Crises expose the system's irrationalities and wasteful resource allocations. For example, Madoff and his many, smaller imitators reveal the tips of corruption icebergs. More important, the crisis-induced fiscal emergencies looming in most of the 50 states demonstrate several absurdities in our economic system.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) in Washington, DC monitors and calculates the gap between the fifty states' tax revenues and expenditures. The above recent CBPP chart compares the total state budget shortfalls in both the last recession and the current one. Today's record shortfalls measure how many billions states will need to raise in additional taxes or cut their expenditures (or combinations of both) in this and coming years.
New York - CIT Group Inc's CIT.N bankruptcy filing, while long expected, could still trigger a financing crunch for many of the hundreds of thousands of small businesses it finances.
CIT filed for bankruptcy protection on Sunday, and said its creditors have already approved the century-old commercial lender's reorganization plan.[ID:nN01408863]
The bankruptcy followed a failed struggle to refinance its debt amid the credit crunch and recession, and paves the way for it to restructure.
Under the plan announced on Sunday, the lender expects to reduce total debt by about $10 billion.
But the company's long-term prospects are uncertain and the bankruptcy could leave more than one million small and medium-sized businesses looking for another source of funding, lawyers said.
David Streitfeld New York Times 2009-11-02 10:31:00
Phoenix - Newly empowered by the Supreme Court, the attorneys general of several states hit hard by the housing collapse are exploring consumer fraud suits against major mortgage lenders.
Frustrated by the banks' inability or unwillingness to stop an avalanche of foreclosures, the states are considering lawsuits over the creation and marketing of millions of bad loans as well as the dismal pace of mortgage modifications.
Such cases would have been impossible until recently, because federal regulators had exclusive oversight of national banks. But a 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision in June allowed the states to exercise their own supervision, giving them significant leverage.
"We tried to use the tool to be persuasive with the banks," Arizona's attorney general, Terry Goddard, said in an interview. "But their waterfall of excuses, the abysmal numbers of modifications, tells us persuasion is not working."
As a result, he said, "we're moving much closer to litigation."
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Telegraph UK 2009-11-01 10:22:00
Japan is drifting helplessly towards a dramatic fiscal crisis. For 20 years the world's second-largest economy has been able to borrow cheaply from a captive bond market, feeding its addiction to Keynesian deficit spending - and allowing it to push public debt beyond the point of no return.
The rocketing cost of insuring against the bankruptcy of the Japanese state is telling us that the model has smashed into the buffers. Credit default swaps (CDS) on five-year Japanese debt have risen from 35 to 63 basis points since early September. Japan has suddenly decoupled from Germany (21), France (22), the US (22), and even Britain (47).
Regime-change in Tokyo and the arrival of Yukio Hatoyama's neophyte Democrats - raising $550bn (£333bn) to help fund their blitz on welfare and the "new social policy" - have concentrated the minds of investors at long last. "Markets are worried that Japan is going to hit a brick wall: the sums are gargantuan," said Albert Edwards, a Japan-veteran at Société Générale.
Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), told the US Congress last week that the debt path was out of control and raised "a real risk that Japan could end up in a major default".
A 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will likely become a new ocean eventually, researchers now confirm.
The crack, 20 feet wide in spots, opened in 2005 and some geologists believed then that it would spawn a new ocean. But that view was controversial, and the rift had not been well studied.
A new study involving an international team of scientists and reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters finds the processes creating the rift are nearly identical to what goes on at the bottom of oceans, further indication a sea is in the region's future.
Moose eat plants; wolves kill moose. What difference does this classic predator-prey interaction make to biodiversity?
A large and unexpected one, say wildlife biologists from Michigan Technological University. Joseph Bump, Rolf Peterson and John Vucetich report in the November 2009 issue of the journal Ecology that the carcasses of moose killed by wolves at Isle Royale National Park enrich the soil in "hot spots" of forest fertility around the kills, causing rapid microbial and fungal growth that provide increased nutrients for plants in the area.
"This study demonstrates an unforeseen link between the hunting behavior of a top predator -- the wolf -- and biochemical hot spots on the landscape," said Bump, an assistant professor in Michigan Tech's School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science and first author of the research paper. "It's important because it illuminates another contribution large predators make to the ecosystem they live in and illustrates what can be protected or lost when predators are preserved or exterminated."
Bump and his colleagues studied a 50-year record of more than 3,600 moose carcasses at Isle Royale. They measured the nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium levels in the soil at paired sites of wolf-killed moose carcasses and controls. They also analyzed the microbes and fungi in the soil and the leaf tissue of large-leaf aster, a common native plant eaten by moose in eastern and central North America.
The trawler, the Diasan Shinsho-maru, capsized off Chiba'as its three-man crew was trying to haul in a net containing dozens of huge Nomura's jellyfish.
Each of the jellyfish can weigh up to 200 kg and waters around Japan have been inundated with the creatures this year. Experts believe weather and water conditions in the breeding grounds, off the coast of China, have been ideal for the jellyfish in recent months.
The crew of the fishing boat was thrown into the sea when the vessel capsized, but the three men were rescued by another trawler, according to the Mainichi newspaper. The local Coast Guard office reported that the weather was clear and the sea was calm at the time of the accident.
Children with weak memories are more likely to engage in risky behaviors like gambling, using alcohol and drugs and fighting, new research shows.
Daniel Romer of the University of Pennsylvania led the study that followed a group of 387 boys and girls, ages 10-12, in the Philadelphia area.
The implications of the findings, which Romer says are unprecedented, are that kids might be unwilling or even unable to think through the potential consequences of impulsive behavior.
"The kids who are impulsive, they might actually have the working memory, they just don't use it as much," Romer told Discovery News.
If the findings are accurate, Romer says that children who might potentially engage in risky behavior in the future could be identified and steered into a healthier adulthood before they even start their decline.
A new study suggests that the inner sense of our cardiovascular state, our "interoceptive awareness" of the heart pounding, relies on two independent pathways, contrary to what had been asserted by prominent researchers.
The University of Iowa study was published online this week in the journal Nature Neuroscience by researchers in the department of neurology in the Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine and the graduate programs in neuroscience and psychology.
The researchers found that, in addition to a pathway involving the insular cortex of the brain -- the target of most recent research on interoception -- an additional pathway contributing to feeling your own heartbeat exists. The second pathway goes from fibers in the skin to most likely the somatosensory cortex, a part of the brain involved in mapping the outside of the body and the sense of posture.
Night-shift workers should avoid drinking coffee if they wish to improve their sleep, according to research published in the journal Sleep Medicine.
A new study led by Julie Carrier, a Université de Montréal psychology professor and a researcher at the affiliated Hôpital du Sacré-Cœur Sleep Disorders Centre, has found the main byproduct of coffee, caffeine, interferes with sleep and this side-effect worsens as people age.
"Caffeine is the most widely used stimulant to counteract sleepiness, yet it has detrimental effects on the sleep of night-shift workers who must slumber during the day, just as their biological clock sends a strong wake-up signal," says Carrier. "The older you get, the more affected your sleep will be by coffee."
Twenty-four men and women participated in the study: one group was aged 20 to 30, while a second group was aged 45 to 60. Everyone spent two sleepless nights in lab rooms before being allowed to sleep. "We all know someone who claims to sleep like a baby after drinking an espresso. Although they may not notice it, their sleep will not be as deep and will likely be more perturbed," says Professor Carrier.
Three-year-old children who are exposed to more TV appear to be at an increased risk for exhibiting aggressive behavior, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
"Early childhood aggression can be problematic for parents, teachers and childhood peers and sometimes is predictive of more serious behavior problems to come, such as juvenile delinquency, adulthood violence and criminal behavior," according to background information in the article. Various predictive factors for childhood aggression have been studied. These include parents' discipline style, neighborhood safety and media exposure. "After music, television is the medium children aged 0 to 3 years are exposed to the most." Although the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen media for children younger than age 2, studies have found consistent use of television in that age group.
Jennifer A. Manganello, Ph.D., M.P.H., of University at Albany, State University of New York, Rensselaer, and Catherine A. Taylor, Ph.D., M.S.W., M.P.H., of Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, analyzed data from 3,128 mothers of children born from 1998 to 2000 in 20 large U.S. cities to examine associations of child television exposure and household television use with aggressive behavior in children. Parents were interviewed at the time of the child's birth and at one and three years. At three years, they were asked to report time the child spent watching TV directly as well as household TV use on a typical day. Aggression also was assessed at 3 years of age using a 15-item aggressive subscale for 2- and 3-year-old children. Demographic information and other risk factors for aggression were also noted.
Researchers from the University of Copenhagen and the Technical University of Denmark along with other collaborators in Denmark and the US found that the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa can 'switch on' production of molecules that kill white blood cells -- preventing the bacteria being eliminated by the body's immune system.
P. aeruginosa is responsible for many hospital-acquired infections and also causes chronic infections in those with pre-existing medical conditions such as cystic fibrosis (CF). The bacteria cause persistent lung infections by clumping together to form a biofilm, which spreads over the lungs like a slime. Such biofilms are generally resistant to antibiotics as well as the host immune response.
The study showed that P. aeruginosa uses a well-studied communication system called quorum sensing (QS) to detect approaching white blood cells and warn other bacteria in the biofilm. In response to this signal, the bacteria increase their production of molecules called rhamnolipids. These molecules sit on the biofilm surface to form a shield that destroys any white blood cells that encounter it. Interrupting quorum sensing to halt the "launch a shield" response could be a way of treating these bacteria that can resist antibiotics as well as the host immune system.
Adults who had experienced physical abuse as children have 56 per cent higher odds of osteoarthritis compared to those who have not been abused, according to a new study by University of Toronto researchers.
University of Toronto researchers investigated the relationship between self-reported childhood physical abuse and a diagnosis of osteoarthritis (OA). After analyzing representative data from the 2005 Canadian Community Health Survey, the researchers determined a significant association between childhood physical abuse and osteoarthritis in adulthood.
The study is published in the November issue of the journal Arthritis Care & Research.
Decreased physical activity may have little to do with the recent spike in obesity rates among U.S. adolescents, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Prompted by growing concern that the increase was due to decreased physical activity associated with increased TV viewing time and other sedentary behaviors, researchers examined the patterns and time trends in physical activity and sedentary behaviors among U.S. adolescents based on nationally representative data collected since 1991. The review found signs indicating that the physical activity among adolescents increased while TV viewing decreased in recent years.
Though hot tubs, whirlpools and spas are widely used for relaxation and fun, they can pose serious risk for injury. Over the past two decades, as recreational use of hot tubs has increased, so has the number of injuries. A recent study conducted by the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital found that from 1990-2007, the number of unintentional hot tub-related injuries increased by 160 percent, from approximately 2,500 to more than 6,600 injuries per year.
According to the study, published in the online issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 73 percent of the patients with hot tub-related injuries were older than 16 and approximately one half of all injuries resulted from slips and falls. Lacerations were the most commonly reported injuries (28 percent) and the lower extremities (27 percent) and the head (26 percent) were the most frequently injured body parts.
"While the majority of injuries occurred among patients older than 16, children are still at high risk for hot tub-related injuries," said study author Lara McKenzie, PhD, principal investigator at the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital. "Due to the differing mechanisms of injury and the potential severity of these injuries, the pediatric population deserves special attention."
A team of Bulgarian archaeologists have discovered a new tomb of an aristocrat from Ancient Thrace near the southern town of Nova Zagora.
The team led by archaeologist Veselin Ignatov found a burial tomb of 12 square meters date back to the end of 1st century and beginning of 2nd century AD. It is located outside of the village of Karanovo.
The burial site of the Thracian aristocrat contains a number of interesting items including a silver treasure of vessels and artifacts that were place there to be used by the aristocrat in his afterlife.
Those include two silver cups with images of love god Eros, and a number of other ornate silver and bronze vessels.
The archaeologists have also found a chariot and fragments of a shield. The expedition called Karanovo 2009-2010 has just started to uncover their new find, and Ignatov expects a lot more valuable items to be discovered.
A metal-detecting enthusiast has unearthed a 2,000-year-old treasure hoard worth an estimated £1 million in a field near Stirling.
The amateur hunter, who has not been identified, found four gold neckbands dating to the Iron Age.
He informed Scotland's Treasure Trove Unit which sent a team to excavate the site, the Daily Record newspaper reported. The bands, or "torcs", made from twisted gold, are thought to date from the 1st and 3rd century BC.
A similar one found in Newark, Nottinghamshire, in 2005 sold for £350,000. The Scottish Archaeological Finds Allocation Panel will now value the latest discovery. A spokesman for the National Museums of Scotland said: "There has been a significant find."
Astronomers have tracked down a gigantic, previously unknown assembly of galaxies located almost seven billion light-years away from us. The discovery, made possible by combining two of the most powerful ground-based telescopes in the world, is the first observation of such a prominent galaxy structure in the distant Universe, providing further insight into the cosmic web and how it formed.
"Matter is not distributed uniformly in the Universe," says Masayuki Tanaka from ESO, who led the new study. "In our cosmic vicinity, stars form in galaxies and galaxies usually form groups and clusters of galaxies. The most widely accepted cosmological theories predict that matter also clumps on a larger scale in the so-called 'cosmic web', in which galaxies, embedded in filaments stretching between voids, create a gigantic wispy structure."
These filaments are millions of light years long and constitute the skeleton of the Universe: galaxies gather around them, and immense galaxy clusters form at their intersections, lurking like giant spiders waiting for more matter to digest. Scientists are struggling to determine how they swirl into existence. Although massive filamentary structures have been often observed at relatively small distances from us, solid proof of their existence in the more distant Universe has been lacking until now.
We all know adolescents get testy from time to time. Thank goodness we don't have young tyrannosaurs running around the neighborhood.
In a new scientific paper, researchers from Northern Illinois University and the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford report that adolescent tyrannosaurs got into some serious scraps with their peers.
The evidence can be found on Jane, the museum's prized juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex, discovered in 2001 in Montana.
Jane's fossils show that she sustained a serious bite that punctured through the bone of the dinosaur's left upper jaw and snout in four places, the researchers report. The injury wasn't life threatening and eventually healed over, according to the scientists. The bite did leave scars, however.
"Jane has what we call a boxer's nose," says Joe Peterson, an NIU Ph.D. candidate in geology and lead author of the study published in the November issue of the journal Palaios. "Her snout bends slightly to the left. It was probably broken and healed back crooked."
Stunned Derek Bridges has revealed how he shot extraordinary footage which UFO experts say shows aliens beaming a BUFFALO into their spaceship.
Pensioner Derek filmed the eerie scene from his window after spotting pulsating glowing orbs hovering over a neighbouring farm late at night.
The two bright lights hover high over fields, while an animal appears to dangle below before vanishing into them.
A high-pitched screeching noise can be heard before the UFOs finally disappear into the night.
Grandfather Derek, 69, said: "I couldn't believe my eyes. I'm convinced it is the real thing."
He told how he spotted the bizarre lights over a neighbouring farm as he looked out of his window while getting ready for bed at his house near Basingstoke, Hampshire.
Hallsville - An East Texas couple saw a mysterious object in the sky. So, they decided to catch it on tape.
"Michelle Hampton" is still stunned by the video she and her husband took Saturday morning around 6:00 on their back porch.
"I had no idea what it was. I've never seen anything like this before ever and I don't think I ever will be seeing anything like this. So at least we got it on tape," said Michelle Hampton of Hallsville.
"We looked up and saw a shiny object in the sky and I don't know what it was, but it was going crazy," said Hampton. "You could tell it was doing something but you really couldn't tell what it was. It was getting bigger and changing different colors. It would get smaller and bigger and go everywhere."
Nicholos Wethington Space Fellowship 2009-11-02 12:04:00
This has taken awhile to filter into the Western press, but an asteroid exploded over the town of Bone, Indonesia on October 8th at around 11am local time.
Initially, locals called the police to report that a plane had crashed, or that an earthquake shook the ground, as reported in theJakarta Globe. The Jakarta Post quoted Thomas Djamaluddin, head of the Lapan Center for Climate and Atmosphere Science Implementation as saying that the explosion was due to a meteorite or bit of space junk that had entered the Earth's atmosphere. As it turns out after further analysis, the explosion was due to an asteroid about 5-10 meters (15-30 feet) in diameter exploding in the air between 15 and 20 km (nine to 12 miles) above sea level. Nobody was injured as a result of the explosion, but it evidently caused quite a scare with the local population!
In a press release from the Near Earth Object (NEO) program, the explosion was detected by many International Monitoring System (IMS) infrasound stations, five of them 10,000 km (6200 miles) away, and one 18,000 km (11,100 miles) from the blast. These stations monitor seismic waves, infrasound (low frequency soundwaves), hydroacoustic, and radionuclide emissions as part of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). They are well equipped to monitor explosions of nuclear weapons, but also detect other events such as meteorite impacts and asteroid explosions, tsunamis and earthquakes.
When considering what might cause us grief in 2012, few if any researchers consider the start of the Mayan Long Count calendar to have any importance. This is surprising, because the reason for the calendar beginning on August 11 3114BC might contain clues about 2012 itself. After all, the Mayan culture did not exist 5,000 years ago, so either they randomly chose an ancient date on a whim, or an earlier civilization was behind the calendar, and they knew something important occurred on that date.
What could happen in 3114BC, and also in 2012AD? No civilization has lasted that long, so they are unlikely to be man-made events. Any natural events that occur so infrequently on Earth are virtually impossible to predict (volcanic eruptions for example). So that leaves us with astronomical events. The astrology of the pair of dates has been well studied, so we can rule out alignments of the stars and planets. That leaves the Sun, which we barely understand today, and comets. Is there a comet with a periodicity of 5000 years, due to return in 2012? Without any evidence from 3114BC it is impossible to say. Given that we are now near the end of the Mayan 5th age, could their calendar be designed to cover five orbits of a comet? And end catastrophically in 2012?
Most people have not heard of Comet Caesar (it doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry), and hopefully this will remain so. However, if we are to suffer a terrible tragedy in 2012, it is currently my leading candidate, and the purpose of this article is to explain why.
Was it Kim Jong-il? Or was it a fake North Korean leader that entertained Bill Clinton on that mission to Pyongyang to retrieve the two imprisoned American journalists?
In the absence of fact, the Hermit Kingdom has long been a free-fire zone for outlandish rumour. And they got more outlandish than ever after Mr Kim reputedly suffered a stroke in August 2008. Mr Kim was variously said to be close to death, about to be toppled by a coup, or desperately fixing the succession for his youngest son. Or was he really someone else?
The mainstay of the Kim-is-fake cottage industry is a Japanese university professor called Toshimitsu Shigemura, who once claimed that the real Mr Kim died in 2003, and that everything since has been make-believe. One Mr Kim, he maintains, even flatly confessed to a Japanese visitor, "I am a double."
Neilsville, Wisconsin - The call came into the 911 dispatcher: "I don't want to hurt anybody. I'm drunk." And with that, Mary Strey, 49, of Granton, reported herself as a drunken driver about three miles northeast of Neilsville in central Wisconsin.
Clark County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Jim Backus said Monday that Strey's call on Oct. 24 led deputies to cite her for misdemeanor drunken driving with a blood-alcohol level double the legal limit to drive. She makes her first court appearance Dec. 10.
