New laser surgery technique can turn your brown eyes blue (Yahoo! News)

Individuals with brown eyes may soon have a chance to make a permanent switch

Of all the features we notice about a person upon meeting them, their eyes are often the first connection we make. But some people just aren't satisfied with the color of their peepers, wishing their dark corneas away in favor of a pleasant shade of blue. Those unhappy with brown eyes may find just what they're looking for: Laguna Beach doctor Gregg Homer has developed a new procedure that can actually convert brown-colored eyes to blue in just a matter of weeks.

The operation itself is fairly straight forward: Using a laser tuned to a special frequency, the doctor actually alters the cells that produce the brown coloration in the eye. After a few weeks, the darker color begins to fade, revealing the blue pigment underneath. As the doctor explains it, the procedure only works for brown-eyed individuals, as they already have a bluish coloration hiding underneath.

According to Homer, the procedure takes just 20 seconds to complete. And because of the large number of people wishing they were born with baby blues, he has already been contacted by thousands of potential clients.?Homer and his company, Stroma Medical, have been working on the technology for over a decade, and say it will be available on a consumer basis within three years.

He estimates the procedures will cost about $5,000 each, and as the brown coloration doesn't appear to regenerate, your eyes should stay blue for the rest of your days. Unfortunately, that almost means it's completely irreversible, so if you end up regretting a hasty decision to switch, you'll never be brown-eyed again.

Not surprisingly, the practice has come under scrutiny by some who believe the color of our eyes is somehow more sacred than other parts of the human body ? like the bits that plastic surgeons alter every day. There's also the risk that long-term damage may result from the procedure, and without longitudinal research, Homer can't guarantee that problems won't arise down the road. Still, with would-be patients lining up by the thousands, it's clear that some people believe the risk is worth the reward.

[Image Credit: Look into my eyes]

(Source)

This article originally appeared on Tecca

More from Tecca:

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/techblog/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_technews/20111103/tc_yblog_technews/new-laser-surgery-technique-can-turn-your-brown-eyes-blue

troy polamalu boo at the zoo when is daylight savings time 2011 when is daylight savings time 2011 renaissance festival melanie iglesias catherine tate

Analysis: Premium Chinese beer a bitter brew for foreign brands (Reuters)

HONG KONG (Reuters) ? Chinese brewers are making an aggressive push into premium beer, lured by high margins and huge growth potential, posing a tough challenge to the foreign companies that dominate the category in the world's largest beer market.

China's beer consumption, which hit 450 million hectoliters last year -- nearly twice that of the United States -- is expected to grow 5 percent per annum in the next few years, double the 2.5 percent growth forecast for the global market this year.

Premium draught beers make up only 5 percent of China's overall beer market, compared with 50 percent in developed markets such as France and Germany, and 30 percent in the United States.

Analysts expect premium beer to account for a quarter of China's annual production in five to 10 years, largely driven by rising brand awareness and lifestyle changes following the emergence of a wealthy middle class.

For Paul Sin, a Hong Kong Chinese merchant in his 60s, drinking beer is not just a matter of taste. It is also about national pride.

"We are now able to taste good beer produced by ourselves, taste the success of our economic development with our taste bud," said Sin as he sipped a Tsingtao Draft in an upscale Hong Kong restaurant.

"Our beer is now good enough to stand side by side with Heineken and Blue Girl," he said. Blue Girl is made by South Korea's Oriental Brewery Co Ltd (INTBB.UL).

Major local brewers are likely to see their premium segment growing more rapidly than foreign brands, helped by their vast sales network, nationwide presence and cost advantage.

That could be a major threat to foreign brands such as Anheuser Busch InBev SA (ABI.BR), which dominates the premium beer segment in China with a 45 percent share.

Tsingtao Brewery Co Ltd (0168.HK) (600600.SS) is a distant second in the segment with a 15 percent share, while Heineken NV (HEIN.AS) and Carlsberg AS (CARLb.CO) trail at 7.5 percent and 6.1 percent, respectively.

PREMIUM FOCUS

Premium beers, priced 30-50 percent more than regular beers, offer bigger margins despite increased cost of production due to the need for higher quality ingredients and packaging, as well as more spending on marketing and advertising.

Production of Tsingtao's flagship products, including its green bottled Tsingtao Pure Draft labeled "stylish and intriguing," rose 11 percent in the third quarter, versus flat growth for its none-core brands.

China's largest brewer CR Snow, which uses the slogan "The Great Expedition" for its premium Snow brand, reported a 48 percent jump in the sales of premium beer in the first half, accounting for 21 percent of its sales, up from 17 percent a year earlier.

CR Snow is a joint venture between China Resources Enterprise Ltd (0291.HK) and SABMiller Plc (SAB.L).

"The industry is trying to raise average selling prices to improve margins to levels we see internationally," said London-based David Serre, who oversees Credit Suisse's global beer industry investment banking business.

"If you get the premium strategy right, get the pricing right, the profit growth prospects are truly amazing."

In the broader beer market where the top four companies together command more than 55 percent, AB InBev is the only major foreign company. The company has a 11 percent of the market, versus CR Snow's 21 percent, Tsingtao's 14 percent and Beijing Yanjing Brewery Co Ltd's (000729.SZ) 11 percent.

Encouraged by their success in regular beers, Tsingtao, CR Snow and Yanjing have been racing to pump out more premium beer to challenge the foreign dominance of the segment, which is growing more than twice faster than the overall beer market.

"I don't see that as a major near-term threat but in the long run it is potentially, yes," said Vijay Karwal, managing director and head of Asia consumer, retail and healthcare investment banking for RBS in Hong Kong.

Chinese brewers are offering premium beers at 20-25 percent cheaper than foreign brands and utilizing their extensive sales network, undercutting foreign brands.

UOB Kay Hian analyst Jason Yuan estimates gross profit margins for premium beer at 50-60 percent versus 30 percent for mainstream products.

TOO EXPENSIVE

Rapid growth of Chinese beer companies, fueled by an acquisition binge over the past decade and cut-throat price competition, have left them with lower margins, driving them to produce more premium beers that carry higher margins as Chinese consumers trade up.

Operating margins at Tsingtao and Yanjing are less than 10 percent, below the 12-17 percent at Heineken, Carlsberg and AB InBev.

Per capita beer consumption in 20 major Chinese provinces averages less than 33 liters, way below 100 in some European countries, 40 in South Korea and Japan and 65 in Brazil.

Despite soaring costs and competition, Chinese brewers' shares are one of the most expensive among beer brands.

Tisngtao is trading at 24 times estimated earnings and China Resources at 27 versus AB InBev's 15 and Carlsberg's 10.

Shares of Tsingtao, China Resources and Yanjing have soared in the past decade, with Tsingtao posting a twenty-fold jump. Tsingtao's shares in Hong Kong were little changed so far this year, beating a 14 percent fall in the benchmark Hang Seng Index (.HSI).

"Tsingtao is a long-term hold," said Nomura analyst Emma Liu, adding long-term investors should look beyond its latest results.

Tsingtao, about 20 percent owned by Japan's Asahi Group Holdings (2502.T), posted a nearly 1 percent fall in third-quarter profit as high barley costs hit margins and poor weather slowed growth in sales volume.

TOUGH TO CRACK

China, one of the fastest-growing beer markets in the world, has proven to be a tough nut to crack for most foreign brewers.

Despite two decades of efforts, foreign brands have a relatively small slice of China's overall market because of a fragmented industry, fierce competition and distribution bottlenecks.

Foreign brands such as Carlsberg and Foster's Group Ltd (FGL.AX) entered China in the 1990s, setting up shops by themselves or with small local producers, only to see their start-ups drown in a sea of cheap domestic beer.

Foreign brewers have tried different strategies, such as setting up ventures with large Chinese partners or taking strategic stakes in relatively big Chinese brewers.

This appears to be working as China's contribution to the revenue of foreign brewers has grown in recent years.

However, the prospects for foreign beer brands in China remain unclear as their local partners focus on promoting their own brands.

The most successful foreign brewers in China is probably SABMiller, which formed the CR Snow joint venture in 1990s with state-run retail, food and beverage conglomerate China Resources Enterprise.

Leveraging China Resources' extensive distribution network, CR Snow has become China's top brewer and brand.

"Over the next five to 10 years, you will find more and more mid-cap Chinese brewers becoming acquisition targets for large Chinese brewers and international brewers willing to play in China," said Credit Suisse's Serre.

(Editing by Chris Lewis and Vinu Pilakkott)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/china/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111103/bs_nm/us_beer_china

real housewives of new york justified mildred pierce cam newton emmy awards nick collins cape coral fl

Mignon R. Moore: Color Us Invisible: In the Shadows of Communities Black and Gay, Black Lesbians Forge Lives, Loves, And Family

One snowy night in January, I went to visit Elizabeth Bennett and Tracy Douglas. Elizabeth is an administrative assistant and Tracy is a dental assistant. This working-class couple and their two children (from Tracy's prior heterosexual relationship) share an apartment on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. They invited me to a card party, and when I arrived there were about 10 other black and Latina lesbians there. In one of the bedrooms, several children were playing games and watching television. I left their home with a better knowledge of how to play spades, but also with a realization that I knew very little about their lives and experiences as lesbian women. As a group they were particularly invisible, both to larger LGBT groups and activists and to the larger African-American and Latino communities they lived in as well.

I wrote Invisible Families: Gay Identities, Relationships, and Motherhood Among Black Women as a corrective to the focus of the media, LGBT activists and scholars of LGBT life on white, middle-class groups, and the persistent lack of information on gay women of color. I followed more than 100 middle-class and working-class black lesbians for three years and found that the structure of their family lives is grounded in African-American culture. The women in my book grew up in the 1960s and 1970s in large cities, small Southern towns and the Caribbean. One of my principal findings is that these women live in black communities, not "gay ghettos," and that social location shapes their identities, family formation, and other understandings in ways that differ from some white LGBT people. Reports by the Williams Institute at UCLA Law confirm that like the women I interviewed, LGBT people of color in general tend to live in areas where there are significant concentrations of other racial/ethnic minorities. This is different from the general patterns of white gay couples, who are more likely to live in areas with significant concentrations of other LGBT people.

For the women I interviewed, their experiences and the larger histories of black women in the labor market, in families, and in religious and other cultural institutions shape their lives as gay women. For example, I found that black lesbians are likely to have developed their same-sex desire within black social spaces and black neighborhoods, outside the ideologies of lesbian-feminism, and are more likely than some white lesbians to use gender presentation as a way to construct their relationships, with one partner consistently dressing in ways that are distinctly more feminine than the other.

Not surprisingly, relative to white women, black lesbians more purposefully consider racial identity and racial group membership in their creation of a lesbian sexuality. For example, while some white women may form a lesbian identity that rejects participation with elder family members or the community church, many of the women I interviewed shaped their lesbian identities to either preserve or recreate those relationships that are important to racial group membership. While Williams Institute analyses have revealed that black women in same-sex couples are more than twice as likely as white women to be raising children under 18, I also found that children in black lesbian households tend not to track mainstream stories of lesbians having children through (often expensive) alternative insemination methods. Instead, they're doing it the old-fashioned way: the most frequent route to motherhood among the women I interviewed is through a prior heterosexual relationship before accepting a gay sexuality.

This difference in conception can also impact the power dynamics between two mothers. The biological mother of the children often ends up having more of a say in the household, not just about the needs of the children but also about household organization, money management and other areas of home life. The partner's lack of a legal tie to the family further reduces her power in the relationship. This finding has important consequences for the stability of lesbian couples who have children in this way.

Reports by the Williams Institute further reveal important economic differences among same-sex couples by race. Relative to white couples, black couples are less likely to own their own homes, less likely to be employed, and more likely to live in poverty. In terms of socio-economic characteristics, they have more in common with the black communities in which they live than with the LGBT community overall. For these women, like other LGBT people of color, their sexual orientation does not provide them with a magic pass to the mythical world of rich, white gay affluence.

The women I interviewed are the types of lesbian families that are "invisible" to many LGBT scholars, activists and organization leaders, and one consequence of this invisibility is a failure to understand how they differ from more visible members of the LGBT community and determine which issues are important for their happiness and success. By ignoring LGBT people of color and their families, the movement stifles its own growth and leaves behind significant populations that are very much in need of visibility, advocacy and equal treatment.

Many public policy implications emerge from these data. Because black same-sex couples are more economically disadvantaged on average than are white same-sex couples, at the same time that they are more likely to be raising children, they are disproportionately harmed by laws that limit access of sexual minorities to certain rights, like the ability to foster and adopt children or to include children they co-parent with a same-sex partner on their health insurance plans. Such laws are most prevalent in Southern states with the largest black populations and the highest rates of parenting among black same-sex couples. When we do not understand the totality of who our families are and the needs they have, we reduce the effectiveness of the larger strategies we promote for LGBT empowerment.

A 2009 report by the Human Rights Campaign on LGBT people of color concluded that "diversity is a reality but inclusion is the real challenge." LGBT people of color are simultaneously present and excluded in the neighborhoods where they live and in mainstream LGBT organizations. They might be more active in promoting LGBT advocacy efforts if they felt those efforts included their voices and incorporated more of the issues that are important to them. My hope is that this work will encourage LGBT organizations to reach out more to people of color, and in collaboration find the best way to integrate the diverse representations of LGBT people in our portraits of the community and better address the multiple and diverse needs that exist.

On Nov. 8, 2011 at the UCLA School of Law, Dr. Moore will lead a discussion of Invisible Families. For more information, click here.

?

?

?

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mignon-r-moore/black-lesbians_b_1075251.html

recursion tower heist reviews amy schumer amy schumer ascii art ascii art andrew mason

Officials delay moves to evict St. Paul's camp

A woman protestor holds a banner by the tents outside St Paul's Cathedral in London, Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2011. It has been announced Tuesday that St Paul's Cathedral is to suspend its legal action against the Occupy London Protestors who are camped around the church. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

A woman protestor holds a banner by the tents outside St Paul's Cathedral in London, Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2011. It has been announced Tuesday that St Paul's Cathedral is to suspend its legal action against the Occupy London Protestors who are camped around the church. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Protestors relax in their tents as members of the public pass by, outside St Paul's Cathedral in London, Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2011. It has been announced Tuesday that St Paul's Cathedral is to suspend its legal action against the Occupy London Protestors who are camped around the church. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

A tent bearing a banner is seen outside St Paul's Cathedral in London, Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2011. It has been announced Tuesday that St Paul's Cathedral is to suspend its legal action against the Occupy London Protestors who are camped around the church. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

A dog is fed by a tent bearing a banner outside St Paul's Cathedral in London, Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2011. It has been announced Tuesday that St Paul's Cathedral is to suspend its legal action against the Occupy London Protestors who are camped around the church. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

(AP) ? Authorities in London on Tuesday suspended legal action to evict anti-capitalist protesters camped outside St. Paul's Cathedral, after church officials gave the tent city a reprieve

Officials had been due to hand the protesters a letter asking them to remove their tents within 48 hours, or face a court battle. But the City of London Corporation said legal action was being "paused overnight" so that officials can meet for more talks.

The corporation's policy chairman, Stuart Fraser, said the body was pausing to "give time for reflection."

"We're hoping to use a pause ? probably of days not weeks ? to work out a measured solution," he said.

The cathedral's governing body earlier said it had unanimously agreed not to join in legal action against the Occupy London camp after consultations with the bishop of London, Richard Chartres ? reversing a Friday announcement that such a move had "regrettably become necessary."

The two-week standoff over the scores of tents set up outside the iconic cathedral has been an embarrassment for the church, but an attention-getting bonanza for protesters, who are inspired by New York's Occupy Wall Street movement.

Canon Michael Colclough said the cathedral was now committed "to engage constructively with the protest and the serious issues that have been raised, without the threat of legal action hanging over us."

Protesters had aimed to stage their occupation outside the London Stock Exchange beginning Oct. 15, but were evicted from private property and moved on to the nearby cathedral.

After first being hospitable to the protesters, cathedral leaders last week closed the 300-year-old church for the first time since German planes bombed the city during World War II, citing health and safety issues. The cathedral reopened on Friday after a public outcry.

Rev. Giles Fraser, who resigned as canon chancellor at St. Paul's last week to protest the possibility violent eviction, will be part of the effort to reach out to protesters, the cathedral said.

Fraser's resignation was followed on Monday by the resignation of the cathedral's dean, the Right Rev. Graham Knowles. A part-time chaplain, Fraser Dyer, also resigned last week, saying he was "embarrassed" by the decision to resort to legal action.

The Daily Telegraph headline front-page headline on Tuesday declared: "St. Paul's branded a national joke."

In a bid to regain control of the situation, Chartres has invited a high-profile banker, Ken Costa, to lead an initiative aimed at "reconnecting the financial with the ethical." Costa, a 62-year-old South African, is a former chairman of UBS Europe and of Lazard International.

The cathedral statement made it clear that Chartres had taken command, though Anglican cathedrals traditionally enjoy a wide degree of independence from their bishops.

"The resignation of the dean," the statement said, "has given the opportunity to reassess the situation, involving fresh input from the bishop."

"The alarm bells are ringing all over the world. St. Paul's has now heard that call," Chartres said.

"Today's decision means that the doors are most emphatically open to engage with matters concerning not only those encamped around the cathedral but millions of others in this country and around the globe," he said.

The cathedral's latest move puts it at odds with civil authorities including the Corporation of London, which governs the City of London financial district.

Home Secretary Theresa May said earlier Tuesday that she hoped "that the St. Paul's authorities, the Corporation of the City of London and the police will work together to ensure the protesters can be moved as soon as possible."

Last week, the planning and transportation committee of the Corporation of London resolved to go to court to move the protest.

____

Associated Press Writer Jill Lawless contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2011-11-01-EU-Occupy-London/id-e812089c30ae4d8582719b691b6d36d4

uhs uhs google street view google street view gluten free diet oprah winfrey iaa

Euro zone factory data suggest recession (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) ? The downturn in euro zone manufacturing in October was even deeper than previously thought, according to "grim" business surveys on Wednesday that showed the currency union's debt crisis is dragging its economy back into recession.

The final Markit Eurozone Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) for October, which gauges changes in activity levels across thousands of euro zone manufacturers, fell to 47. 1, revised down from a preliminary reading of 47.3 and down from 48.5 in September.

This marks the third consecutive month the manufacturing PMI has been the 50 level that divides contraction from growth. Output and new orders indexes plunged to levels not seen since mid-2009.

The survey suggests the crisis is putting a chokehold on euro area business and, along with news that German unemployment unexpectedly rose for the first time in nearly two years to 7 percent, it adds pressure on the European Central Bank to cut interest rates.

The latest Reuters ECB poll from last week showed a rate cut was already on the cards by December and possibly as early as Thursday.

"It makes grim reading," said Alan Clarke, economist at Scotia Capital. "If there was any doubt that the euro zone was headed for recession, these data should confirm it."

The survey's factory output measure plunged to 46.6 in October from 49.6.

"Output, new orders and new export orders all suffered their fastest declines since mid-2009, against a backdrop of weak domestic market conditions, the ongoing debt crisis and a darkening outlook for the global economy," said Rob Dobson, senior economist at Markit.

Broken down by country, in Germany, the economic engine of the euro zone economy, manufacturing activity contracted for the first time in just over two years.

But the euro rose 15 pips to $1.3780 after the German data were released, on slight relief the figures weren't worse.

Spanish factory activity shrank for a sixth straight month, while conditions in Italy, increasingly the focal point of worry in the still-raging euro zone debt crisis, deteriorated much more sharply than expected to a 28-month low.

The Italy manufacturing PMI fell 5 points to 43.3, the biggest one-month fall since the survey began in 1997, suggesting an economy deep in recession.

French manufacturing was also on the back foot in October, with new orders drying up and a fall in output.

Ireland was the only euro zone economy not to report a fall in factory activity.

For the euro zone as a whole, the new orders index fell for the fifth month running, plummeting to 43.4, the fastest rate of decline since May 2009. As a reliable forward-looking indicator, that bodes poorly for factory activity in November.

While firms hired more workers for the 18th consecutive month, hiring was the weakest since June 2010. Euro zone unemployment rose to 10.2 percent in September, nudged up by Spain, where unemployment reached 22.6 percent.

The euro zone debt crisis, which has persisted for more than two years, seemed a step closer to resolution last week when leaders struck a deal that involved Greek debt write-downs and boosting the size of the rescue fund to 1.0 trillion euros.

However, details of the plan remain unclear and progress was dealt a further blow on Monday when Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou shocked markets by calling a referendum on the latest bailout deal.

Papandreou won his cabinet's backing on Wednesday for that referendum, to be held by January, but may have a much tougher time convincing euro zone leaders, who meet along with the wider G20 in Cannes this week.

The latest PMI data also pointed to the first decline in input prices in just over two years. Euro zone inflation is currently running at 3.0 percent, well above the ECB's preferred 2.0 percent ceiling.

"The only possible bright spot was an easing in inflationary pressures, allowing manufacturers to hold fire on further selling price increases," said Dobson.

Manufacturing in the euro zone's key trading partners is also slowing, according to similar reports this week.

Factory growth in the United States, measured by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) index, unexpectedly slowed in October, in line with similar trends in China, Britain and Canada, data showed on Tuesday.

- Detailed PMI data are only available under license from Markit and customers need to apply to Markit for a license.

To subscribe to the full data, click on the link below:

http://www.markit.com/information/register/reuters-pmi-subscriptions.

For further information, please phone Markit on +44 20 7260 2454 or email economics@markit.com

(Reporting by Anooja Debnath; Editing by Ross Finley/Toby Chopra)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/eurobiz/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111102/bs_nm/us_eurozone_factory

izon heart attack grill gaddafi dead steve wynn lytro camera lytro camera st. louis cardinals

Vitamin D study suggests no mortality benefit for older women

ScienceDaily (Nov. 1, 2011) ? A study of postmenopausal women found no significant mortality benefit from vitamin D after controlling for health risk factors such as abdominal obesity. The only exception was that thin-waisted women with low vitamin D levels might face some risk. The results agree with advice issued last year by the Institute of Medicine that cautioned against vitamin D having a benefit beyond bone health.

Doctors agree that vitamin D promotes bone health, but a belief that it can also prevent cancer, cardiovascular disease and other causes of death has been a major health controversy. Consistent with advice issued last fall by the Institute of Medicine, a new study finds that vitamin D did not confer benefits against mortality in postmenopausal women after controlling for key health factors such as abdominal obesity.

"There's not enough evidence to do anything about vitamin D levels if it's not in regard to bone health.""What we have is clinical trial evidence that for the most part vitamin D doesn't seem to be helpful for conditions where people thought it might," said study lead author Charles Eaton, professor of family medicine and of epidemiology in the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and a physician at Memorial Hospital in Pawtucket, R.I. "The best we can tell is that there isn't an association. Once we took into account these other factors, high levels didn't provide a benefit and low levels didn't put you at risk."

In the study, published online Oct. 26 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Eaton led an analysis of data from 2,429 postmenopausal women aged 50 to 79 who participated in the broad-based Women's Health Initiative study, in which Eaton and many co-authors were investigators. They tracked blood levels of vitamin D in the women and their mortality over a 10-year period. They not only looked at death from all causes but also focused on cancer and cardiovascular disease.

In all, 225 of the women died, including 79 from cardiovascular disease and 62 from cancer.

Eaton said he expected to find some protective effect against such mortality from vitamin D, and at first glance -- controlling only for age, ethnicity, and whether women took part in a calcium and vitamin D supplement trial -- that's what the data showed. But what was apparent in the data was that the women with the lowest levels of vitamin D also had a lot of other negative health indicators. The team therefore controlled for several more key health factors, such as smoking, history of cardiovascular disease, history of cancer, alcohol consumption, and waist circumference. The additional controls, especially waist circumference, which is a measure of abdominal obesity, eroded the statistical significance of vitamin D's seemingly protective effects down to nothing.

The one exception was that women with thinner waistlines (less than 35 inches) and with the lowest vitamin D levels seemed to have a greater risk of "all-cause" mortality within the 10-year analysis period. That result, however, was right on the borderline of statistical significance.

"If you are thin, this data suggest that maybe low vitamin D levels are potentially harmful and you should talk to your doctor about what to do about them," Eaton said.

Eaton said he and his co-authors can only speculate about why abdominal obesity was an especially important and powerful factor to control for in their analysis. In the study they note that abdominal obesity is associated with several negative health indicators that may overwhelm any modest benefit vitamin D might have. They also point out that fat tissue can store vitamin D, possibly meaning that women with larger waistlines are storing more of the vitamin than their blood serum levels alone would reveal.

More research into the connections between abdominal fat and the health effects of vitamin D could help resolve the question, Eaton said. He also said that a major new trial of vitamin D supplements and health called "VITAL" is getting underway and will likely inform the broader controversy about what vitamin D is good for.

For now, Eaton said, "there's not enough evidence to do anything about our vitamin D levels if it's not in regard to bone health."

The other authors on the paper are Anne McTiernan and Alicia Young of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle; Matthew Allison of the University of California-San Diego; Jennifer Robinson of the University of Iowa; Lisa Martin of the George Washington University Medical Center; Lewis Kuller of the University of Pittsburgh; Karen Johnson of the University of Tennessee; J. David Curb of the University of Hawaii; Linda Van Horn of Northwestern University; Simin Liu of the University of California-Los Angeles; and JoAnn Manson of Harvard Medical School.

The Women's Health Initiative was funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

Recommend this story on Facebook, Twitter,
and Google +1:

Other bookmarking and sharing tools:


Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Brown University.

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


Journal Reference:

  1. C. B. Eaton, A. Young, M. A. Allison, J. Robinson, L. W. Martin, L. H. Kuller, K. C. Johnson, J. D. Curb, L. Van Horn, A. McTiernan, S. Liu, J. E. Manson. Prospective association of vitamin D concentrations with mortality in postmenopausal women: results from the Women's Health Initiative (WHI). American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2011; DOI: 10.3945/ajcn.111.017715

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111101125820.htm

lionfish denver weather conjoined twins justin bieber paternity justin bieber paternity denver news kym johnson

Futures rally on ECB rate cut, doubt on Greek vote (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) ? Stocks rose 1 percent at the open on Thursday after the European Central Bank surprised markets by cutting interest rates and as a Greek referendum on its euro zone membership was put into question.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained 136.00 points, or 1.15 percent, to 11,972.04. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 12.66 points, or 1.02 percent, to 1,250.56. The Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 23.93 points, or 0.91 percent, to 2,663.91.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111103/bs_nm/us_markets_stocks

uganda rick ross black hawk down black hawk down dennis the menace dylan ratigan dylan ratigan

Stanford program cracks text-based CAPTCHAs, shelters the replicants among us

CAPTCHAs. In the absence of a Voigt-Kampff apparatus, they're what separate the humans from the only-posing-to-be-human. And now three Stanford researchers have further blurred that line with Decaptcha, a program that uses image processing, segmentation and a spell-checker to defeat text-based CAPTCHAs. Elie Bursztien, Matthieu Martin and John Mitchell pitted Decaptcha against a number of sites: it passed 66% of the challenges on Visa's Authorize.net and 70% at Blizzard Entertainment. At the high end, the program beat 93% of MegaUpload's tests; at other end, it only bested 2% of those from Skyrock. Of the 15 sites tried, only two completely repelled Decaptcha's onslaught -- Google and reCaptcha. So what did the researchers learn from this? Randomization makes for better security; random lengths and character sizes tended to thwart Decaptcha, as did waving text. How long that will remain true is anyone's guess, as presumably SkyNet is working on a CAPTCHA-killer of its own.

Stanford program cracks text-based CAPTCHAs, shelters the replicants among us originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Nov 2011 20:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Softpedia, ITWorld  |  sourceElie Bursztein  | Email this | Comments

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/02/stanford-program-cracks-text-based-captchas-shelters-the-replic/

gurney gurney clemency us supreme court cameron todd willingham death row naacp

Tug pilot gets year in deadly Pa. duck boat crash

This Aug. 1, 2011 photo shows Matt Devlin, of Catskill, N.Y., accompanied by his wife, Corrinne D. Devlin leaving a federal building in Philadelphia. Devlin who sunk a tour boat on July 7, 2010, is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2011 in the deaths of two Hungarian students. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

This Aug. 1, 2011 photo shows Matt Devlin, of Catskill, N.Y., accompanied by his wife, Corrinne D. Devlin leaving a federal building in Philadelphia. Devlin who sunk a tour boat on July 7, 2010, is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2011 in the deaths of two Hungarian students. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

(AP) ? A tug pilot distracted by cellphone calls amid a family emergency was sentenced Tuesday to one year and a day in prison for a deadly river crash in Philadelphia that killed two young tourists.

Pilot Matthew Devlin of Catskill, N.Y., was virtually driving blind as he pushed a barge nearly the length of a city block through a busy shipping channel on the Delaware River, prosecutors said.

Devlin spent almost an hour on the cellphone and laptop, and turned off a marine radio, stifling Mayday calls from the duck boat and other nearby vessels before the July 7, 2010 crash.

And he had moved to a lower wheelhouse so he could hear better, even though it sharply reduced his view of the river.

"Goodness gracious; everybody knew this was happening but you," U.S. District Judge Legrome Davis told Devlin.

A video played in court for the first time shows the 80-yard-long barge inching toward the idled duck boat. Six minutes later, the barge drives right over the duck boat, killing two Hungarian students and sending 35 others aboard into the Delaware River shipping channel.

"There was plenty of time to avoid this accident," Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Zauzmer said.

Devlin, 35, of Catskill, N.Y., had faced up to three years for his involuntary manslaughter plea.

Both sides agreed that a string of incredible events converged before the crash. There was a complication with the supposedly routine surgery. The duck boat overheated on the 103-degree day because someone left a radiator cap off. The captain mistook the steam for an engine fire, and turned off the boat and dropped anchor.

Half of those aboard the duck boat were from Hungary and spoke limited English.

But Davis noted that if Devlin had done just one thing differently, he could have broken that unlucky chain and avoided the crash.

Instead, Devlin failed to go on break after learning his 5-year-old son had been deprived of oxygen during the surgery. He made or received 21 cell phone calls during the next hour and did medical research on the laptop.

Devlin, a married father of two who coaches youth baseball and ropes calf in his spare time, spoke publicly about the crash Tuesday for the first time. His son has since recovered.

He said he awakes each day to images of bodies and orange flotation devices floating in the river. His wife, Corrine, feels responsible for calling him on the job that day.

"There isn't a morning I don't wake up with a tremendous pit in my stomach that I was even involved in this accident," Devlin said. "And for this past year and four months, there hasn't been one night that we have laid in bed at ease."

Szabolcs Prem, 20, and Dora Schwendtner, 16, drowned in the crash. They were part of a group of Hungarians visiting the U.S. through a church exchange.

Their families gave victim-impact statements by way of a video shot in their hometowns that showed mementos of their childhoods.

Prem's favorite song was Bruce Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia," his father said. The son hoped to move to the U.S. someday. Schwendtner's mother showed excited notes on her daughter's calendar about the upcoming trip to America.

"Two families lost the only child they had, and they're past child-bearing years," Davis said. "They send a child off with a school group to come to America and the child doesn't return. ... That's just sad."

The families have lawsuits pending against the operators of both boats, the city and others. They listened to the sentencing hearing in Hungary through an open phone line, with a lawyer and translator beside them.

Zauzmer hopes the sentence sends a message to commercial operators that "they can't be using all these wonderful devices we have while carrying out their duties."

Devlin must report to prison by Jan. 5. The sentence of more than a year makes him eligible for about two months off with good behavior.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2011-11-01-Duck%20Boat%20Accident/id-e212fdc311304d7f93f4ab7e95e85a2c

jim thorpe pa terry francona ios 5 release date ios 5 release date ios 5 update joojoo joseph addai

Doctors can learn empathy through a computer-based tutorial

ScienceDaily (Oct. 31, 2011) ? Cancer doctors want to offer a sympathetic ear, but sometimes miss the cues from patients. To help physicians better address their patients' fears and worries, a Duke University researcher has developed a new interactive training tool.

The computer tutorial includes feedback on the doctors' own audio recorded visits with patients, and provides an alternative to more expensive courses.

In a study appearing Nov. 1, 2011, in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the research team found that the course resulted in more empathic responses from oncologists, and patients reported greater trust in their doctors -- a key component of care that enhances quality of life.

"Earlier studies have shown that oncologists respond to patient distress with empathy only about a quarter of the time," said James A. Tulsky, MD, director of the Duke Center for Palliative Care and lead author of the study.

"Often, when patients bring up their worries, doctors change the subject or focus on the medical treatment, rather than the emotional concern. Unfortunately, this behavior sends the message, 'This is not what we're here to talk about.'"

Tulsky said cancer doctors have many reasons for avoiding emotionally fraught conversations. Some worry that the exchanges will cause rather than ease stress, or that they don't have time to address non-medical concerns.

Neither is true, Tulsky said, noting his research shows that asking the right questions during patient visits can actually save time and enhance patient satisfaction.

"Oncologists are among the most devoted physicians -- passionately committed to their patients. Unfortunately, their patients don't always know this unless the doctors articulate their empathy explicitly," Tulsky said. "It's a skill set. It's not that the doctors are uncaring, it's just that communication needs to be taught and learned."

The current gold standard for teaching empathy skills is a multiday course that involves short lectures and role-playing with actors hired to simulate clinical situations. Such courses are time-consuming and expensive, costing upwards of $3,000 per physician.

Tulsky's team at Duke developed a computer program that models what happens in these courses. The doctors receive feedback on pre-recorded encounters, and are able to complete the intervention in their offices or homes in a little more than an hour, at a cost of about $100.

To test its effectiveness, Tulsky and colleagues enrolled 48 doctors at Duke, the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Durham, NC, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The research team audio-recorded four to eight visits between the doctors and their patients with advanced cancer.

All the doctors then attended an hour-long lecture on communication skills. Half were randomly assigned to receive a CD-ROM tutorial, the other half received no other intervention.

The CD taught the doctors basic communication skills, including how to recognize and respond to opportunities in conversations when patients share a negative emotion, and how to share information about prognosis. Doctors also heard examples from their own clinic encounters, with feedback on how they could improve. They were asked to commit to making changes in their practice and then reminded of these prior to their next clinic visits.

Afterward, all the doctors were again recorded during patient visits, and the encounters were assessed by both patients and trained listeners who evaluated the conversations for how well the doctors responded to empathic statements.

Oncologists who had not taken the CD course made no improvement in the way they responded to patients when confronted with concerns or fears. Doctors in the trained group, however, responded empathically twice as often as those who received no training. In addition, they were better at eliciting patient concerns, using tactics to promote conversations rather than shut them down.

"Patient trust in physicians increased significantly," Tulsky said, adding that patients report feeling better when they believe their doctors are on their side. "This is exciting, because it's an easy, relatively inexpensive way to train physicians to respond to patients' most basic needs."

Although the CD course is not yet widely available, efforts are underway to develop it for broader distribution.

In addition to Tulsky, study authors include: Robert M. Arnold; Stewart C. Alexander; Maren K. Olsen; Amy S. Jeffreys; Keri L. Rodriguez; Celette Sugg Skinner; David Farrell; Amy P. Abernethy; and Kathryn I. Pollak.

Funding for the study came from the National Cancer Institute. Study authors reported no conflicts.

Recommend this story on Facebook, Twitter,
and Google +1:

Other bookmarking and sharing tools:


Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Duke University Medical Center.

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


Journal Reference:

  1. James A. Tulsky, Robert M. Arnold, Stewart C. Alexander, Maren K. Olsen, Amy S. Jeffreys, Keri L. Rodriguez, Celette Sugg Skinner, David Farrell, Amy P. Abernethy, Kathryn I. Pollak. Enhancing Communication Between Oncologists and Patients With a Computer-Based Training Program: A Randomized Trial. Annals of Internal Medicine, 2011; 155 (9): 593-601 [link]

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/Mzz-HIkUxnI/111031220247.htm

prime suspect whitney whitney person of interest james spader james spader speed of light