BERLIN ? German officials say the European Union is considering expanding the scope of its anti-piracy mission off the Horn of Africa to allow the destruction of pirates' equipment on the beaches of Somalia.
The EU's anti-piracy force patrols the seas off the coast of the country. Somalia has been mired in violence since 1991 ? plunging it into a chaos that sprouted militants and piracy.
German Foreign Ministry spokesman Andreas Peschke said Friday that the "limited destruction of piracy logistics on the beach" is under discussion but "no deployment on land." He stressed that discussions are ongoing and no decision has been made.
Defense Ministry spokesman Stefan Paris said an EU committee on Dec. 20 called for the force's commander to draw up plans for revised rules of engagement.
Spain's royal palace released a breakdown of the royal family's finances for the first time Wednesday, saying King Juan Carlos earns euro292,552 ($382,597) a year and his son, crown Prince Felipe, roughly half that amount.
The palace said that of the monarch's gross income, just under half was personal salary and the rest was designated for expenses. The king pays 40 percent in tax on the total sum.
Queen Sofia and the princesses Cristina, Elena and Letizia receive euro370,000 ($483,553) between them, while Felipe earns euro146,375 ($191,297).
The palace is assigned an annual budget by Parliament. It totaled euro8.4 million ($11 million) in 2011.
The royal family promised recently to release the information as part of the king's commitment to making his household's accounts transparent. The figures were posted on the palace website http://www.casareal.com.
The release comes as the king's son-in-law Inaki Urdangarin, husband of Cristina, is reportedly suspected of siphoning funds from public contracts awarded from 2004 to 2006 to a nonprofit foundation he then headed.
Although Urdangarin has not been charged, the allegations have put the royal family in the spotlight at a time of hardship and economic crisis for many people in Spain, where unemployment stands at 21.5 percent.
In his yearly Christmas speech, the king expressed concern over what he described as the declining confidence among Spaniards in public institutions, a remark seen as a reference to the scandal.
The palace had its budget cut this year by around 5 percent and palace employees, including the king, had their salaries cut by up to 15 percent last year as part of a government austerity plan.
PYONGYANG, North Korea ? North Korea declared Kim Jong Il's son and successor "supreme leader" of the ruling party, military and the people during a memorial Thursday for his father in the government's first public endorsement of his leadership.
Kim Jong Un ? head bowed and somber in a dark overcoat ? stood watching from a balcony at the Grand People's Study House overlooking Kim Il Sung Square, flanked by the top party and military officials. Also on the balcony was Kim Jong Il's younger sister, Kim Kyong Hui, who is expected to play a guardian role for her young nephew.
Given Kim Jong Un's inexperience and age ? he is in his late 20s ? there are questions outside North Korea about whether he is equipped to lead a nation engaged in sensitive negotiations over its nuclear program and grappling with decades of economic hardship and chronic food shortages.
But support among North Korea's power brokers was unequivocal at the memorial service, attended by hundreds of thousands of people filling Kim Il Sung Square and other plazas in central Pyongyang.
"The fact that he completely resolved the succession matter is Great Comrade Kim Jong Il's most noble achievement," Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, told the massive audience at the Kim Il Sung Square.
"Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un is our party, military and country's supreme leader who inherits great comrade Kim Jong Il's ideology, leadership, character, virtues, grit and courage," said Kim, considered North Korea's ceremonial head of state.
Life in Pyongyang came to a standstill as mourners packed the plaza from the Grand People's Study to the Taedong River for the second day of funeral ceremonies for the late leader.
Kim Jong Il, who led his 24 million people with absolute power for 17 years, died of a heart attack Dec. 17 at age 69, according to state media. He inherited power from his father, North Korea founder Kim Il Sung, who died of a heart attack in 1994, in what was the communist world's first hereditary succession.
Attention turned to Kim Jong Un after he was revealed last year as his father's choice among three sons to carry the Kim dynasty into a third generation.
The process to groom him was rushed compared to the 20 years Kim Jong Il had to prepare to take over from his father, and relied heavily on Kim family legacy as guerrilla fighters and the nation's founders.
Kim Jong Un was made a four-star general last year and appointed a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers' Party. Since his father's death, state media have bestowed on him a series of new titles signifying that his succession campaign was gaining momentum: Great Successor, Supreme Leader and Sagacious Leader.
Kim Jong Un's leadership is not expected to become formal until top party, parliamentary and government representatives convene to confirm his ascension.
He is expected to formally assume command of the 1.2 million-strong military, and become general secretary of the Workers' Party and chairman of the party's Central Military Commission, said Yoo Ho-yeol, a professor at Korea University in South Korea.
In a speech during the memorial, Gen. Kim Jong Gak, a top political officer in the Korean People's Army, said the military will dedicate itself to protecting Kim Jong Un, calling him the "supreme leader of our revolutionary armed forces."
This week's events have been watched closely for clues to who in the military and Workers' Party will form Kim's inner circle of trusted aides during the sensitive transition to leadership.
During the mourning period, Kim made at least five visits to his father's begonia-bedecked bier when the late leader was lying in state at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, accompanied at times by the old guard that is expected to support him.
At Wednesday's funeral procession, he was accompanied by Jang Song Thaek, Kim Jong Il's brother-in-law and a vice chairman of the powerful National Defense Commission, who has family ties to the military and is expected to be crucial in giving his nephew guidance.
On Thursday, North Koreans packed the main square as well as the plaza in front of a Workers' Party monument of a hammer, sickle and writing brush.
They bowed their heads as eight artillery guns fired; military officers removed their hats while the booms resonated across the square.
North Korea's senior officials, including Kim Jong Il's sister, Kim Kyong Hui, stood in silence on the platform during the gun salute.
Workers, citizens, children and soldiers across the country then bowed for three minutes of tribute to Kim Jong Il as trains and boats blew their sirens.
State TV showed people lined up neatly in rows, or outside their places of work, on sidewalks, in squares, beneath giant portraits of Kim Jong Il.
His two other sons, Kim Jong Nam and Kim Jong Chol, were not spotted at either the funeral or memorial.
___
Associated Press Korea bureau chief Jean H. Lee and writers Hyung-jin Kim, Foster Klug and Sam Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report. Follow AP's North Korea coverage at twitter.com/newsjean, twitter.com/APKlug and twitter.com/samkim_ap.
When it comes to science, temperature matters. And when it comes to Wisconsin, things get really, really cold. When the temperature drops, the world around us changes in a practical and scientific sense. For instance, my car is less likely to work (though that may be a function of age rather than weather), and the percentage of water maintaining a crystalline configuration goes up. There are a lot of things to wonder about how a cold world functions, scientifically. These are some of my questions, and their answers:
1. Will the gasoline in my car?s tank actually ever freeze into a gas-cube?
Thankfully, no. Even though the car doors might freeze shut, the gasoline will remain conveniently liquid. Gasoline, or petrol if you?re so inclined, is a mixture of substances, namely different kinds of hydrocarbons. Each hydrocarbon freezes at a different temperature. So the overall freezing point of gasoline is hard to pinpoint, but assuredly is quite low. Hydrocarbons solidify at varying degrees of cold, with the ?warmest? freezing point around -77? F/-25? C and the coolest was -320? F/-160? C (Smittenberg et al. 18).
Bonus fact: Frozen fuel is more of a concern for airplanes, but there are ways to lower the freezing point of jet fuel. For instance, US Patent 7,666,294 B2 was issued last year to Shell Oil Company for a method of mixing in non-petroleum derived fuel to depress the point at which jet fuel freezes (Bauldreau).
2. Why is wool so warm?
On the coldest days in Wisconsin, my toes? best chance at avoiding numbness lie in a thick pair of wool socks. Wool keeps out the cold because it is an excellent insulator. Crimped and crisscrossed woolen fibers create tons of little air pockets. The tiny air masses within my socks have difficulty moving in and out of the fabric. Without convective heat transfer and contact with air of other temperatures, the spaces between wool fibers maintains a steady temperature. That temperature is warmer than winter?s, allowing wool to form a welcoming cocoon with warm, stagnant air.
3. Why do some snowflakes look intricate and lacy, while others seem shapeless?
Sometimes a snowflake drifts down from the sky and lands on my coat sleeve as a symmetrical, stunning surprise. But other times it seems as though the sky is simply dropping softly frozen clumps. Of interest for centuries, the delicacy and variability of frozen precipitation was even studied by the likes of Johannes Kepler and Ren? Descartes. In 1954, a Japanese physicist, Ukichiro Nakaya, classified types of snowflakes for the first time. The current system for making sense of snowflake formation is based on two factors: temperature and humidity.
The two main snowflake, or snow crystal, shapes, are plates and columns (Libbrecht 860). Plates are the typical hexagonal flakes and columns are elongated, blocky crystals. As a cloud?s temperature moves below 32? F(0? C), it will pass through various phases of crystalline potential (Libbrecht 860). If enough water is present in a cloud, between 32 and 23? F (0 and -5? C), plates will form, sending small six-armed flakes to the earth. In the 23 to 14? F (-5 to -10? C) range, a cloud produces columnar snow crystals.
Below 14? F (-10? C), snow?s crystalline shape switches back to plates again, but larger ones this time. In all of these temperature ranges, the amount of moisture in the air affects the final shape and size of the crystal.
The science of snowflakes is fascinating and to learn more (or just to see some awesome images) I have a couple recommendations. If you?re interested to see a graphic representation of various crystals forming at different temperature and humidities, I recommend page 860 of ?The physics of snow crystals.? Or check out old-school sketches of 80 simple but fascinating snow crystals by Magono and Lee in a modification of Nakaya?s classification system: ?Meteorological classification of natural snow crystals.?
Finally, and I have to say this is a winter wonder must, check out these stereo images of snow. As for me, I am eagerly awaiting the next snowfall, to see if I can guess the temperature and humidity of the cloud in which the snow crystals formed.
References:
Bauldreay, J. M., Heins, R. J., and Smith, J. ?Depressed freeze point kerosene fuel compositions and methods of making and using same.? Patent 7,666,294. 23 Feb 2010.
Libbrecht, K. G. ?The physics of snow crystals.? Reports on Progress in Physics. 68 (2005): 855-895.
Smittenberg, J., Hoog, H., and Henkes, R. A. ?Freezing points of a number of hydrocarbons of the gasoline boiling range and some of their binary mixtures.? Journal of the American Chemical Society. 60 (1938): 17-22.
Image Credits: Wool: Photo by Marc Pehkonen, courtesy of Fuzbaby.com; Snowflakes:Electron and Confocal Microscopy Laboratory, Agricultural Research Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture.
Thinking of forking out some cash for a new gaming rig next year? CyberPowerPC has announced the launch of the Fang 3 ? the third generation of its desktop gaming PC series. Adding four new models to the Fang lineup (Rattler, Viper, Cobra and Black Mamba), the computers are designed to run all the latest games without breaking a sweat.
The Fang 3 computers will feature 2nd Generation Intel Extreme Core I processors, the latest Intel Chipsets that support dual channel and quad channel memory, PCIe 3.0 motherboard support, CyberPowerPC?s Advanced hydro liquid cooling, Venom Boost overclocking and gaming cases. Prices for the Fang 3 series computers range from under $999 for the entry-level Rattler all the way to $4999 for the top-of-the-line Black Mamba. Find out more.
Last year, when RockMelt picked up where Flock left off, deeply tying social services into the browser interface, we were understandably a bit skeptical. But, just over 13 months later the tricked out Chrome variant is still kicking and tacking on new features. The latest beta, version five, turns the Omnibox into a full-fledged Facebook portal, allowing you to upload photos, initiate chats and load profiles without first having to launch the site. The update also sports a spruced up new tab page. We won't spoil all the surprises though, hit up the source link to download it for yourself.
We only have a few more days left until the festivities truly kick off at CES 2012 in Las Vegas, but LG has already tipped its hand with a press release promising the "world's largest" OLED panel for the show. We've seen smaller screens from LG before and it had already promised a 55-inch OLED HDTV for mid-2012, so this news is just another sign the company is ready to take its technology mainstream. LG's tech uses white OLEDs overlaid with colors, which it claims makes for a lower error rate and clearer "ultra definition" screen, with more colors than standard LCDs. Check after the break for one more promo pic of LG's super skinny 5mm prototype, we'll get a better look at it (and the inevitable competition from Korean rival Samsung) at the company's booth January 9th.
Republican presidential candidate former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks during a campaign stop, Friday, Dec. 23, 2011, in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/Rainier Ehrhardt)
Republican presidential candidate former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks during a campaign stop, Friday, Dec. 23, 2011, in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/Rainier Ehrhardt)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich failed to qualify for Virginia's Super Tuesday primary ballot, the latest setback for a candidate whose standing in polls has been slipping. Gingrich's campaign said he would pursue an aggressive write-in campaign, though state law prohibits write-ins on primary ballots.
The state party said early Saturday that Gingrich and Texas Gov. Rick Perry had failed to submit the required 10,000 signatures to appear on the March 6 ballot.
Failing to get on the ballot in Virginia, where Gingrich lives, underscores the difficulty first-time national candidates have in preparing for the long haul of a presidential campaign.
And it illustrates the advantage held by Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, who has essentially been running for president for five years. Romney's team, larger than those of most of his opponents, has paid close attention to filing requirements in each state. He will appear on the Virginia ballot along with Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who also has run a national campaign before.
Ironically, Gingrich had a slight lead over Romney in a Quinnipiac poll of Virginia Republicans released earlier in the week.
The former House speaker surged in popularity in early December and tried to use that momentum to make up for a stalled campaign organization. But his standing in polls has slipped in recent days amid a barrage of negative ads in Iowa, where the Jan. 3 caucuses begin the contest for the Republican presidential nomination.
Three other candidates ? Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman ? did not submit signatures before Virginia's deadline of 5 p.m. Thursday.
Gingrich's campaign attacked Virginia's primary system on Saturday, saying that "only a failed system" would disqualify Gingrich and other candidates and vowing to run a write-in campaign.
"Voters deserve the right to vote for any top contender, especially leading candidates," Gingrich campaign director Michael Krull said in a statement. "We will work with the Republican Party of Virginia to pursue an aggressive write-in campaign to make sure that all the voters of Virginia are able to vote for the candidate of their choice."
However, according to state law, "No write-in shall be permitted on ballots in primary elections."
"Virginia code prohibits write-ins in primaries. He can't do it," said Carl Tobias, a law professor at University of Richmond.
Tobias said Gingrich may have had trouble meeting a requirement that he must submit 400 signatures from each of Virginia's 11 congressional districts.
Gingrich's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Gingrich had been concerned enough to deliver his signatures personally. Rushing Wednesday from New Hampshire, which holds its primary on Jan. 10, he had supporters sign petitions before entering a rally in Arlington, Va.
Virginia GOP spokesman Garren Shipley said in a statement that volunteers spent Friday validating signatures on petitions that Romney, Paul, Perry and Gingrich had submitted. "After verification, RPV has determined that Newt Gingrich did not submit required 10k signatures and has not qualified for the VA primary," the party announced early Saturday on its Twitter feed. Shipley did not respond to telephone calls Saturday seeking comment.
Forty-six delegates will be at stake in Virginia's Super Tuesday primary. That's a small fraction of the 1,144 delegates needed to win the nomination. But they could prove pivotal in a close race, especially for a candidate like Gingrich, who expects to do well in Southern contests.
Gingrich already missed the deadline to appear on the ballot in Missouri's Feb. 7 primary, though he insists it doesn't matter because the state awards delegates based not on the primary but on a Republican caucus held in March.
Meanwhile, Virginia's Democrats said President Barack Obama's re-election campaign gathered enough signatures to get him on the state's primary ballot though he was the only candidate who qualified.
___
Associated Press writers Will Lester and Stephen Ohlemacher contributed to this report.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) appears to be the recipient of a Christmas Eve twitter hacking.
?I just got up to 663 in n #DoodleJump!!! Beat that!bxbsjbxj,? said two tweets from McCain?s account on Saturday.
The tweets linked to the Doodle Jump website, and to a picture of the four-legged, snozzle-nosed creature, ?The Doodler,? that is the game?s protagonist.
Doodle Jump is a popular game on iPhones and Droids, where the player guides the Doodler up a series of platforms guarded by enemies and other obstacles.
McCain?s tweets are usually policy-focused, although he occasionally uses Twitter to show support for Arizona?s sports teams.
Update:?The mystery surrounding McCain's tweets was quickly resolved.
"Inadvertent tweets - kids playing with my phone," he tweeted on Saturday.
"Don't let kids play with your phone," McCain said in a follow-up.
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Jim Irsay Says Colts QB Peyton Manning To Return In 2012 If Healthy: Colts owner Jim Irsay said on NFL Network p... bit.ly/t9SqV8Il y a environ 1 heurevia twitterfeedRetweeted by 2 people
When an international collaboration of physicists came up with a result that punched a hole in Einstein's theory of special relativity and couldn't find any mistakes in their work, they asked the world to take a second look at their experiment.
Responding to the call was Ramanath Cowsik, PhD, professor of physics in Arts & Sciences and director of the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.
Online and in the December 24 issue of Physical Review Letters, Cowsik and his collaborators put their finger on what appears to be an insurmountable problem with the experiment.
The OPERA experiment, a collaboration between the CERN physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, and the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) in Gran Sasso, Italy, timed particles called neutrinos traveling through Earth from the physics laboratory CERN to a detector in an underground laboratory in Gran Sasso, a distance of some 730 kilometers, or about 450 miles.
OPERA reported online and in Physics Letters B in September that the neutrinos arrived at Gran Sasso some 60 nanoseconds sooner than they would have arrived if they were traveling at the speed of light in a vacuum.
Neutrinos are thought to have a tiny, but nonzero, mass. According to the theory of special relativity, any particle that has mass may come close to but cannot quite reach the speed of light. So superluminal (faster than light) neutrinos should not exist.
The neutrinos in the experiment were created by slamming speeding protons into a stationary target, producing a pulse of pions ? unstable particles that were magnetically focused into a long tunnel where they decayed in flight into muons and neutrinos.
The muons were stopped at the end of the tunnel, but the neutrinos, which slip through matter like ghosts through walls, passed through the barrier and disappeared in the direction of Gran Sasso.
In their journal article, Cowsik and an international team of collaborators took a close look at the first step of this process. "We have investigated whether pion decays would produce superluminal neutrinos, assuming energy and momentum are conserved," he says.
The OPERA neutrinos had energies of about 17 gigaelectron volts. "They had a lot of energy but very little mass," Cowsik says, "so they should go very fast." The question is whether they went faster than the speed of light.
"We've shown in this paper that if the neutrino that comes out of a pion decay were going faster than the speed of light, the pion lifetime would get longer, and the neutrino would carry a smaller fraction of the energy shared by the neutrino and the muon," Cowsik says.
"What's more," he says, "these difficulties would only increase as the pion energy increases.
"So we are saying that in the present framework of physics, superluminal neutrinos would be difficult to produce," Cowsik explains.
In addition, he says, there's an experimental check on this theoretical conclusion. The creation of neutrinos at CERN is duplicated naturally when cosmic rays hit Earth's atmosphere.
A neutrino observatory called IceCube detects these neutrinos when they collide with other particles generating muons that leave trails of light flashes as they plow into the thick, clear ice of Antarctica.
"IceCube has seen neutrinos with energies 10,000 times higher than those the OPERA experiment is creating," Cowsik says.."Thus, the energies of their parent pions should be correspondingly high. Simple calculations, based on the conservation of energy and momentum, dictate that the lifetimes of those pions should be too long for them ever to decay into superluminal neutrinos.
"But the observation of high-energy neutrinos by IceCube indicates that these high-energy pions do decay according to the standard ideas of physics, generating neutrinos whose speed approaches that of light but never exceeds it.
Cowsik's objection to the OPERA results isn't the only one that has been raised.
Physicists Andrew G. Cohen and Sheldon L. Glashow published a paper in Physical Review Letters in October showing that superluminal neutrinos would rapidly radiate energy in the form of electron-positron pairs.
"We are saying that, given physics as we know it today, it should be hard to produce any neutrinos with superluminal velocities, and Cohen and Glashow are saying that even if you did, they'd quickly radiate away their energy and slow down," Cowsik says.
"I have very high regard for the OPERA experimenters," Cowsik adds. "They got faster-than-light speeds when they analyzed their data in March, but they struggled for months to eliminate possible errors in their experiment before publishing it.
"Not finding any mistakes," Cowsik says, "they had an ethical obligation to publish so that the community could help resolve the difficulty. That's the demanding code physicists live by," he says.
###
Washington University in St. Louis: http://www.wustl.edu
Thanks to Washington University in St. Louis for this article.
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Amazon-owned movie streaming company Lovefilm and Sony Pictures Television have signed a multi-year content deal giving Lovefilm customers exclusive streaming access to new and forthcoming Sony Pictures titles during the second subscription pay TV window, as well as catalogue titles and TV series, from June 2012.
The agreement with Sony Pictures Television is the latest in a line of exclusive content deals announced by Lovefilm in the UK in recent months, including deals with Warner Bros, Entertainment One, Studiocanal, Disney, Momentum and Lionsgate.
Lovefilm customers members will be able to stream Sony Pictures titles including The Social Network and action-thriller Salt at no extra cost and as part of their existing subscription.
Simon Calver, chief executive of Lovefilm, said: ?Our latest major content agreement means we?ll be able to exclusively offer our members world-class content from Sony Pictures. The number of recent high profile deals we have secured means we are able to keep expanding the service, offering our members high quality films and TV and the ability to watch as much as they want for one low monthly price.?
(Reuters) ? Bristol-Myers Squibb Co said on Thursday its liver cancer drug brivanib failed to meet the primary endpoint in a late-stage clinical trial.
Brivanib failed to meet the main goal of improving overall survival versus placebo in liver cancer patients who failed or are intolerant to sorafenib. Sorafenib is used to treat advanced primary liver cancer.
Bristol-Myers said three other trials, to evaluate brivanib in different liver cancer patient groups, will continue as planned.
"We remain committed to the development of brivanib as a potential treatment option for patients with liver cancer, and the ongoing study investigating brivanib 'first-line' is expected to complete in 2012," senior vice president Brian Daniels said in a statement.
Shares of the company closed at $35.09 on Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange.
(Reporting by Soham Chatterjee in Bangalore; Editing by Bob Burgdorfer)
COMMENTARY | The story that former Speaker Newt Gingrich said that gays should vote for President Barack Obama has been around the Internet and has been added to the dark legend that surrounds the presidential candidate.
The only problem is, according to Legal Insurrection, is that the story isn't true. Gingrich never said that.
The story is derived from an encounter that Gingrich had with a gay Iowan who queried him on same-sex marriage. Gingrich honestly told the man that if his most important issue was same-sex marriage, that Obama would be more his candidate than Gingrich. Gingrich, like many conservatives, opposes the legalization of same-sex marriage.
Obama's views on the subject are somewhat obscure. The New York Times reported that the president claimed that his position on same-sex marriage is "evolving." Officially, though, he is against a national law legalizing it.
It is understandable why the story about Gingrich not wanting gay votes, albeit false, caused a sensation. It would seem to violate one of the political rules of Gingrich's old political rival, the late House Speaker Tip O'Neill. O'Neill set down a number of political rules in a book entitled "All Politics is Local." Besides the famous rule that the title is derived from, O'Neill stated that if a politician does not ask for someone's vote, he or she is not likely to get it. It is a profound insight that illustrates the folly of writing off entire groups of people because of single issues.
Groups are often defined simplistically by issues: Gay voters care about same-sex marriage. Women care about abortion. Senior citizens care about Social Security and Medicare. Young voters care about sex, drugs, and how cool the candidate is. Each of these assessments is a caricature that belies how complex peoples' politics are.
Democrats like to imagine that one cannot be gay, female, young, or a minority and be a conservative. But if one cares about the size of government and the threat of terrorism and tyranny, one is more likely to be on the right, no matter what ones sexual orientation, gender, age, or race happens to be.
One suspects Gingrich knows that. So he wants everyone's vote-even from gay people.
Breast cancer and heart disease may have common rootsPublic release date: 20-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Leslie Shepherd shepherdl@smh.ca 416-864-6094 St. Michael's Hospital
Women who are at risk for breast cancer may also be at greater risk for heart disease
TORONTO, ON., Dec. 20, 2011Women who are at risk for breast cancer may also be at greater risk for heart disease, new research has found.
The majority of women with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer have a mutated form of the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, which normally suppress the growth of breast and ovarian tumours.
Dr. Subodh Verma, a cardiac surgeon at St. Michael's Hospital, said his research team was surprised to discover the genes also regulate heart function.
Following a heart attack, mice with the mutated BRCA1 gene had a three-to-five times higher rate of death. This was largely due to the development of profound heart failure, possibly because their heart attacks were twice as severe as those in mice who did not have the mutated gene.
A similar two-fold increase in heart failure was observed when mice with a mutated BRCA1 or BRAC2 gene were treated with doxorubicin, one of the most common chemotherapy drugs for patients with breast cancer. In addition to studies in mice, the authors also verified this observation in human tissues.
The researchers believe that the mutated BRCA1/2 prevents DNA repair in muscle cells that is essential to recovery after a heart attack.
Their findings were published in the journals Nature Communications and Journal of Biological Chemistry.
"Our findings suggest that individuals who are at risk of breast cancer may also be at a previously unrecognized risk of heart disease," Dr. Verma said. "More importantly, we now understand that breast cancer and heart disease -- the two leading causes of death for Canadian women have a common biological basis, a common soil."
Dr. Verma emphasized that these findings may have important implications for patients. Knowing that the BRCA1/2 gene is essential to DNA repair may lead to future treatments for anyone with heart disease, a leading cause of death worldwide. Women who carry this mutated gene now know they may also be at a higher risk for developing heart disease in addition to the risk of developing cancer.
Dr. Christine Brezden-Masley, an oncologist at St. Michael's and a co-author of the paper, said that while physicians knew doxorubicin was associated with heart failure, the new research shows women with the mutated BRCA1/2 gene are particularly sensitive to its toxicity.
"What this means is that when a patient has the mutated gene, I now have to think about how much doxorubicin I'm going to give them or whether we should consider an alternate therapy," Dr. Brezden-Masley said.
###
About St. Michael's Hospital
St. Michael's Hospital provides compassionate care to all who enter its doors. The hospital also provides outstanding medical education to future health care professionals in more than 23 academic disciplines. Critical care and trauma, heart disease, neurosurgery, diabetes, cancer care, and care of the homeless are among the Hospital's recognized areas of expertise. Through the Keenan Research Centre and the Li Ka Shing International Healthcare Education Center, which make up the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, research and education at St. Michael's Hospital are recognized and make an impact around the world. Founded in 1892, the hospital is fully affiliated with the University of Toronto.
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Breast cancer and heart disease may have common rootsPublic release date: 20-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Leslie Shepherd shepherdl@smh.ca 416-864-6094 St. Michael's Hospital
Women who are at risk for breast cancer may also be at greater risk for heart disease
TORONTO, ON., Dec. 20, 2011Women who are at risk for breast cancer may also be at greater risk for heart disease, new research has found.
The majority of women with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer have a mutated form of the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, which normally suppress the growth of breast and ovarian tumours.
Dr. Subodh Verma, a cardiac surgeon at St. Michael's Hospital, said his research team was surprised to discover the genes also regulate heart function.
Following a heart attack, mice with the mutated BRCA1 gene had a three-to-five times higher rate of death. This was largely due to the development of profound heart failure, possibly because their heart attacks were twice as severe as those in mice who did not have the mutated gene.
A similar two-fold increase in heart failure was observed when mice with a mutated BRCA1 or BRAC2 gene were treated with doxorubicin, one of the most common chemotherapy drugs for patients with breast cancer. In addition to studies in mice, the authors also verified this observation in human tissues.
The researchers believe that the mutated BRCA1/2 prevents DNA repair in muscle cells that is essential to recovery after a heart attack.
Their findings were published in the journals Nature Communications and Journal of Biological Chemistry.
"Our findings suggest that individuals who are at risk of breast cancer may also be at a previously unrecognized risk of heart disease," Dr. Verma said. "More importantly, we now understand that breast cancer and heart disease -- the two leading causes of death for Canadian women have a common biological basis, a common soil."
Dr. Verma emphasized that these findings may have important implications for patients. Knowing that the BRCA1/2 gene is essential to DNA repair may lead to future treatments for anyone with heart disease, a leading cause of death worldwide. Women who carry this mutated gene now know they may also be at a higher risk for developing heart disease in addition to the risk of developing cancer.
Dr. Christine Brezden-Masley, an oncologist at St. Michael's and a co-author of the paper, said that while physicians knew doxorubicin was associated with heart failure, the new research shows women with the mutated BRCA1/2 gene are particularly sensitive to its toxicity.
"What this means is that when a patient has the mutated gene, I now have to think about how much doxorubicin I'm going to give them or whether we should consider an alternate therapy," Dr. Brezden-Masley said.
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About St. Michael's Hospital
St. Michael's Hospital provides compassionate care to all who enter its doors. The hospital also provides outstanding medical education to future health care professionals in more than 23 academic disciplines. Critical care and trauma, heart disease, neurosurgery, diabetes, cancer care, and care of the homeless are among the Hospital's recognized areas of expertise. Through the Keenan Research Centre and the Li Ka Shing International Healthcare Education Center, which make up the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, research and education at St. Michael's Hospital are recognized and make an impact around the world. Founded in 1892, the hospital is fully affiliated with the University of Toronto.
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TUNIS, Tunisia -- Exactly one year ago, in a hardscrabble town in Tunisia's arid interior, the death knell sounded for the decades-old system of dictatorships across the Arab world.
With a desperate act of self-immolation, a 26-year-old Sidi Bouzid fruit-seller unwittingly unleashed a year of turmoil that toppled at least three autocrats in a region once thought to be immune to democracy.
Tunisia's new leaders are taking part in a festival starting Saturday in the town honoring the vendor, the revolution, and the protesters whose indignance snowballed into a nationwide and then region-wide phenomenon.
The changes in the Arab world over the past 12 months cannot be overstated. A region synonymous with stagnant authoritarian republics and monarchies is suddenly rife with change ? for better or worse.
The biggest winners so far appear to be the long-repressed Islamist parties, which didn't always lead the revolts but in subsequent elections in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco were the best organized and least tainted by the old regimes.
As the country that started the Arab Spring, Tunisia appears to be the farthest along in its transformation, having held its freest elections ever that brought to power a moderate Islamist party that most had thought had been oppressed out of existence.
Previously, Tunisia under former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was renowned among European tourists for its sandy beaches and cosmopolitan ways. But for many of its people, Ben Ali's presidency was 23 years of suffocating iron-fisted rule.
Now a human rights activist is president, and an Islamist politician who was jailed by Ben Ali for 15 years is the prime minister at the head of a coalition of left, liberal and religious parties.
The new president even announced on Friday that he was going to sell off his predecessor's many palaces to fund employment programs.
One year ago, Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire in front of the Sidi Bouzid town hall after he was publicly slapped and humiliated by a policewoman reprimanding him for selling his vegetables without a license. He suffered full-body burns, and died soon afterward.
Until then, he had spent his days pushing a cart to sell his vegetables, but when his wares were confiscated and his pleas for restitution ignored by town officials, something snapped and a young man who had never left Tunisia transformed the Middle East.
His act struck a chord in the impoverished interior of the country, where unemployment is still estimated at 28 percent.
The demonstrations began in Sidi Bouzid but soon spread to the nearby city of Kasserine and surrounding small towns.
At first it was just local unrest, until clandestinely shot videos started popping up on Facebook and other social networking sites, inspiring youths across the country.
The focus of the protests soon moved to the capital Tunis as tens of thousands braved tear gas and battled police along the elegant, tree-lined boulevards. An estimated 265 Tunisians died in that month of protests that slowly drew the world's attention.
And then on Jan. 14 it was over. After Ben Ali's army refused to shoot protesters and his security forces wavered, he fled to Saudi Arabia with his family .
Experts were quick to explain how Tunisia was unique and the Jasmine Revolution was an isolated event ? until 11 days later tens of thousands occupied Cairo's Tahrir Square and began chanting the same slogan heard in Tunisia: "The people want the fall of the regime."
Not even three weeks later, Egypt's army too turned on its commander in chief and 82-year-old Hosni Mubarak, who had ruled Egypt for almost three decades as the quintessential symbol of Middle East status quo, suddenly resigned.
Four days later, protesters hit the streets in Libya's second largest city of Benghazi, while Yemen began experiencing demonstrations of its own.
Morocco also sprouted a pro-democracy movement that forced the king to scrabble to make reforms, and eventually even Syria ? a nation famous for its repression ? was awash with protests.
Bouazizi's plight was familiar across the region where growth had not provided jobs, education was poor and widespread restrictions on freedoms left a sense of hopeless frustration.
One year later, many countries are freer but the economic situation remains grim.
Tourists have been frightened away by the unrest, an economic crisis in Europe has damaged traditional export markets and the messy business of democracy has been slow to produce new governments.
Six weeks after its elections, Tunisia is forming its new government, but for the people of Sidi Bouzid, it feels like nothing has changed.
Even during October's elections, when much of the country was euphoric, the young men of Sidi Bouzid sat sullenly in their cafes and complained that they had been forgotten.
Now the focus has returned to this small town surrounded by olive orchards and tall cactus groves, and a festival for the revolution will be held over the weekend.
There will be parades, poems and speeches by Tunisia's newly elected leaders, while balloons the color of the country's red flag will be released into the air.
Tunisia's leaders have promised that the interior will no longer be neglected and they say they have drawn up plans to rebalance investment away from the coast.
If they can succeed, even as the other countries in the region struggle with the complicated aftermaths of their own pro-democracy movements, Tunisia could once more inspire the Arab world.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) ? Pop star Britney Spears is engaged to her boyfriend Jason Trawick, celebrity media outlets reported on Friday after the singer posted a message on Twitter about receiving "the one gift" for which she has longed.
Television show "Access Hollywood" said host Billy Bush reached Trawick by text message, and the groom-to-be confirmed the news. "Yes, we are engaged," the show quoted Trawick as telling Bush.
Celebrity news magazine Us Weekly also reported the engagement, citing an unnamed source, saying Trawick popped the question at a private dinner Thursday on his 40th birthday, presenting the singer with a three-carat round stone and pave diamond ring. Website TMZ said the pair would be celebrating their engagement Friday night in Las Vegas.
Spears, 30, added fuel to the wedding fire with her own tweet Friday that said "OMG. Last night Jason surprised me with the one gift I've been waiting for. Can't wait to show you! SO SO SO excited!!!!"
Spears' spokesman did not return requests for comment.
The "Toxic" singer has been dating her former agent Trawick since May 2010, after a turbulent few years in her personal and professional life in which she lost custody of her children and was forced to enter rehabilitation after a public meltdown.
She was previously married to dancer Kevin Federline for two years, with whom she has two children. The singer also spontaneously married childhood friend Jason Alexander during a trip to Las Vegas in 2004. That marriage lasted 55 hours before the singer annulled the union.
(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)
After Britain's annoyed the whole of the Europe, we thought it time to look at a great British past-time: "Euro-mything".?
If you're a regular reader of the British tabloids, you'll know that almost every week a story will emerge about a ridiculous initiative the EU has come up with.
But how many of these "crazy EU directives" are actually real?
Here's an example of some of the stories that have made it into the British tabloids:
Banana's should not be too bendy.
Waters does not hydrate you.
Popular British snack "Mumbai Mix" had to change its name to "Bombay Mix".
Prunes are not laxatives.
Barmaids cannot show their cleav when serving customers.
Turnips cannot be labeled "swedes", except in one place.
Corgis are banned.
Diabetics are banned from driving.
Eggs cannot be sold by the dozen.
European sports teams have to have the European flag on their uniforms.
We've taken a look at the validity of these claims. See if you can guess whether they're real initiatives or scare stories from the UK.?
Get ready to set your house on fire! The Sims are back and are awaiting their invisible leader -- you. Players have full control over a number of Sim characters just like The Sims of old. As the omnipotent creator, gamers have the ability to cause Sims to fall in love, live their life and watch them go to the bathroom. For free! No word on a naked cheat code, though.
Members of the Woodhaven Residents? Block Association (WRBA) gathered in front of their office on December 3 to watch the annual Woodhaven Christmas Parade. Members blew whistles and horns while cheering on those that participated in the 20-block march along Jamaica Avenue. ?Community spirit is alive and kicking,? said WRBA President Ed Wendell. ?We appreciate the effort that went into this parade, and we wanted to come out and show that appreciation.? The parade is an annual tradition in Woodhaven, sponsored by the Woodhaven Business Improvement District and attracts local schools, organizations and also features the Franklin K. Lane ROTC.
On Wednesday December 7th, Hudson Resources issued a press release announcing the results of the Preliminary Economic Assessment that Wardrop completed on its Sarfartoq rare earth deposit in Greenland. In the press release the company highlights its impressive net present value, internal rate of return, and all the typical measures we have become accustomed to seeing when junior mining companies complete this milestone.
However, when digging beneath the headline numbers, we think investors should walk away from this report concerned as to whether many of the deposits currently being developed by publicly traded junior rare earth mining companies are economically viable. When we refer to economically viable in this sense, we are speaking more to the all important question with junior miners: will the proposed project generate high enough returns to attract the funds necessary to fund mine and facility development CAPEX?
As many of our subscribers would note, our newsletter is very bullish on rare earth element prices in the long term, given that we see new applications for rare earth elements being developed in the next decade. But when investors are putting money into a company with no cash flow producing assets in order to develop a mine and accompanying facilities, they are going to be conservative in their demand assumptions. Better to be suprised positively (and look like a genius) than surprised to the downside (and have angry investors).
For that reason, the Hudson Resources Preliminary Economic Assessment [PEA] raises concerns that rare earth element investors should be watching out for in the coming months. This was the first document in an upcoming wave of milestone reports for junior rare earth mining companies, which will provide significant clarity as to which projects will become producing mines (if any) and which will not be developed. These include: Matamec Exploration PEA on Zeus property (we estimate early January 2012), Ucore Rare Metals PEA on Bokan-Dotson (1Q2012), Tasman Metals PEA on Norra Karr (1Q2012), Rare Element Resources pre-feasibility study on Bear Lodge (1Q2012), Quest Rare Minerals pre-feasibility study on Strange Lake B-Zone (1Q2012).
When looking at the figures in the Hudson Resources PEA, five things stand out immediately:
1) The discount to the basket price of 43% is signifcantly smaller than the 75% discount we hear from industry insiders that concentrate sells for in China . In our discussions with individuals involved in the re-development of the rare earth supply chain outside of China, we have been told that the separation facilities in China purchase concentrate for 25% or less of the end value of the separated oxides. It is possible that given the supply crunch outside of China, concentrate only mining operations will be able to negotiate a smaller discount. Given the current decision by Hudson Resources, just as Matamec Exploration and Tasman Metals are expected (in their upcoming PEA) to only operate in the mining and concentration portion of the rare earth supply chain, we will be carefully observing which reports assign a steep discount when generating the headline results.
2) Despite being primarily presented as a deposit with a very high relative distribution of neodymium, the combined revenue contribution from cerium and lanthanum make up 50.4% of the total revenue. In our opinion, this creates increased financing risk. We do not think investors will attribute any value to cerium and lanthanum revenue for the "third and potentially fourth mine" (or at best, a minimal amount) to be developed outside of China this decade after Mountain Pass and Mt. Weld. In the medium term (2012-2015), the rest of world (ROW) demand for cerium and lanthanum will be primarily supplied by dwindling Chinese exports, and production from Mountain Pass and Mt. Weld. There are even some estimates-- cited all too often by Molycorp (MCP) bears-- that these elements, in particular cerium, could even be in surplus. As a result, incremental cerium or lanthanum production would potentially result in a flooded market, which would cause prices to crash for those respective elements given the current demand projections.
Junior rare earth mining companies raising mine development CAPEX will need to show their projects can generate significant returns for investors putting up the mine development CAPEX with only a minimal or zero revenue contribution from cerium or lanthanum, given current demand projections for those elements and the supply coming online from Mt. Weld and Mountain Pass.
3) When we used domestic Chinese prices from late November (resulting in a 10.31% discount to the basket price), we calculated that the cerium and lanthanum contribution to revenue was only 26.61% of total revenue with neodymium contributing 40.95% of total revenue. Hudson's Sarfartoq resource gets some points in our book for this. In fact, if we only assume revenue from Neodymium, Praseodymium, and Europium at domestic Chinese prices, Hudson would receive 62.4% of the total revenue it receives when we apply current domestic Chinese rare earth oxide prices for all rare earth elements in the Sarfartoq deposit. However, the problem is that-- whether we take that crazy Nd, Pr, and Eu only scenario, or the scenario where we only take out cerium and lanthanum-- the internal rate of return will be significantly impaired.
4) Using the basket price in the PEA, the project has a pre-tax IRR of only 31.17%. Once we take out cerium and lanthanum revenue-- either from the price deck used in the PEA, or domestic Chinese prices-- and adjust for the difference in basket price, we are looking at either a 34% or 50% revenue impairment. We don't yet have access to the full PEA, it will be on SEDAR within 45 days of the press release. As a result, we cannot do a formal sensitivity analysis. However, a back of the envelope analysis using the operating cost per tonne highlighted in the press release tells us that operating income could be impaired by 39-57% if investors do not assign any value to the cerium and lanthanum revenue potential. Assuming a similar degree of impairment to the cash flows, both net present value (pre-tax & pre-finance) and pre-tax IRR are significantly impaired.
5) When Molycorp went public, its business model for Phase I production at Mountain Pass included an after-tax internal rate of return of over 34% (page 75 of S-1). The investing community in the United States knew practically nothing about rare earth elements during the roadshow, as evidenced by the fact that Molycorp priced at $14/share, below the indicated $16-$18/share range. Given that this project went through the ringer that severely-- with an after-tax IRR of over 34% using trailing 3 year average prices ending prior to the second half 2010 export quotas were announced, we see no reason to believe investors will be more forgiving and accept lower returns for rare earth projects with higher cost structures, less downstream integration (Molycorp's business plan incorporated metals and alloys in addition to oxides), assumes higher rare earth prices, and the potential that the project's production will push the market for some specific elements into surplus.
As we look ahead, there are clearly rare earth element specific deficits that still exist, even after Phase I & II of Mt. Weld and Project Phoenix come online. The question we then think investors should ask of each junior rare earth company is this:
If cerium and lanthanum (the two most prevalent rare earth element in every deposit with a potential start date before 2018 and TREO ore grade exceeding 2%) are removed from the revenue stream, can this project provide to investors returns similar or superior to those Molycorp Project Phoenix Phase I offered to investors in its initial public offering?
In the Molycorp IPO, assuming the remainder of Phase I CAPEX was raised at the same share price as the initial public offering, Molycorp raised capital at $14/share, which would have resulted in a net present value of $16.30/share (34% after-tax project IRR) using 3 year trailing average prices at the time of the IPO or $22.54/share (43% after-tax project IRR) using the June 15, 2010 prices (both net present values involved an 8% discount rate). This also did not take into account the potential for the company to scale the Mountain Pass project up to Phase II production if it raised additional capital.
As this wave of NI 43-101 compliant reports are released in the junior rare earth mining sector over the coming months, investors should look past the headlines numbers and ask whether the project can attract the significant capital necessary to fund mine development if investors assign zero value to any revenue contribution from cerium or lanthanum.
The key figures we will be looking for are:
1) The potential for a 30% after-tax IRR at a conservative price deck assuming zero revenue contribution from cerium or lanthanum.
2) Net present value per share greater than the offering price following mine development CAPEX capital raise.
There is a very decent possiblity that none of the publicly traded junior rare earth miners will meet those high standards in the milestone reports scheduled to come out between now and the spring of 2012. We will discuss the consequences of that potential outcome in a future missive.
Disclosure: I am long MCP, QRM, REE.
Additional disclosure: The facts in this newsletter is believed by The Strategist to be accurate, but The Strategist cannot guarantee that they are. Nothing in this newsletter should be taken as a solicitation to purchase or sell securities. These are Mr. Evensen?s opinions and he may be wrong. Principals, Editors, Writers, and Associates of The Strategist may have positions in securities mentioned in this newsletter. You should take this into consideration before acting on any advice given in this newsletter. Investing includes certain risks including potential loss of principal. The commentary of The Strategist does not take into consideration individual investment objectives, consult your own financial adviser before making investment decisions.
On the coldest days in Wisconsin, my toes? best chance at avoiding numbness lie in a thick pair of wool socks. Wool keeps out the cold because it is an excellent insulator. Crimped and crisscrossed woolen fibers create tons of little air pockets. The tiny air masses within my socks have difficulty moving in and out of the fabric. Without convective heat transfer and contact with air of other temperatures, the spaces between wool fibers maintains a steady temperature. That temperature is warmer than winter?s, allowing wool to form a welcoming cocoon with warm, stagnant air.
Sometimes a snowflake drifts down from the sky and lands on my coat sleeve as a symmetrical, stunning surprise. But other times it seems as though the sky is simply dropping softly frozen clumps. Of interest for centuries, the delicacy and variability of frozen precipitation was even studied by the likes of Johannes Kepler and Ren? Descartes. In 1954, a Japanese physicist, Ukichiro Nakaya, classified types of snowflakes for the first time. The current system for making sense of snowflake formation is based on two factors: temperature and humidity.
The science of snowflakes is fascinating and to learn more (or just to see some awesome images) I have a couple recommendations. If you?re interested to see a graphic representation of various crystals forming at different temperature and humidities, I recommend page 860 of ?The physics of snow crystals.? Or check out old-school sketches of 80 simple but fascinating snow crystals by Magono and Lee in a modification of Nakaya?s classification system: ?Meteorological classification of natural snow crystals.?
Thinking of forking out some cash for a new gaming rig next year? CyberPowerPC has announced the launch of the Fang 3 ? the third generation of its desktop gaming PC series. Adding four new models to the Fang lineup (Rattler, Viper, Cobra and Black Mamba), the computers are designed to run all the latest games without breaking a sweat.
Colts_Insider 
Amazon-owned movie streaming company Lovefilm and Sony Pictures Television have signed a multi-year content deal giving Lovefilm customers exclusive streaming access to new and forthcoming Sony Pictures titles during the second subscription pay TV window, as well as catalogue titles and TV series, from June 2012.
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Public release date: 20-Dec-2011
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Get ready to set your house on fire! The Sims are back and are awaiting their invisible leader -- you. Players have full control over a number of Sim characters just like The Sims of old. As the omnipotent creator, gamers have the ability to cause Sims to fall in love, live their life and watch them go to the bathroom. For free! No word on a naked cheat code, though.