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Published: December 29, 2011 11:42 PM
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK - Work on a planned museum at the World Trade Center has ground to a halt because of a financial dispute, and there is now no possibility it will open on time next year, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday.
The underground museum commemorating victims of the 9/11 attacks was scheduled to open in September on the 11th anniversary of the disaster, a year after the opening of a memorial at the site that has already drawn 1 million visitors.
But in recent months, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum foundation has been fighting with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey over who is responsible for paying millions of dollars in infrastructure costs related to the project.
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The Port Authority, which owned the trade center and is building the museum, claims that the foundation owes it $300 million. The foundation claims that the authority actually owes it $140 million, because of delays in the project.
The dispute has been simmering for some time, and some details of the work slowdown were reported in November, but Thursday marked the first time that the mayor and other officials have acknowledged that the fight would mean the museum will not open in 2012.
"There is no chance of it being open on time. Work has basically stopped," Bloomberg said. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on a recent radio program that the Port Authority was "on the verge" of suing the foundation, but both the mayor and the Port Authority said Thursday that negotiations over the matter continue.
"I'm sure we are going to work something out with the Port Authority," Bloomberg said. "They've got a difficult budget situation. I'm sympathetic to that."
Despite security hurdles and ongoing construction, tourists from around the world have already made the memorial at the site a regular stop on their visits to New York City. Since it opened to the public Sept. 12, more than 1 million people have visited the memorial plaza, officials said.
The site now draws about 10,000 visitors a day, which would put it on pace to match or exceed the 3.5 million who visit the Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building annually.
Tourists ? some reverent, some just there to gawk ? have long been a staple at ground zero, but until this summer the closest they could get were the high fences that ringed a bustling construction zone where the twin towers once stood.
Negotiating fences and legions of construction workers is still part of any trip to the memorial. All visitors must reserve free tickets in advance and pass through a security screening. But the hurdles haven't stopped people from coming. Memorial officials said visitors have hailed from all 50 states and 120 countries.
Anthoula Katsimatides, a memorial board member whose brother, John, was killed at the trade center, said the attention is welcome.
"It truly touches my heart and reaffirms the importance of this memorial to know a million people have already come here to honor and pay respects to my brother and the thousands of other loved ones who died in the attacks," she said in a written statement.
Visitors to the site today can walk on a tree-covered plaza and see the two massive pools that sit in the footprints of the fallen towers. Each pool is ringed by waterfalls, and a parapet engraved with the names of the nearly 3,000 people who died on 9/11 and in a 1993 bomb attack.
Visitors can also get a close-up look on construction of One World Trade Center, now 90 stories high and on its way to being the nation's tallest building.
The original design for the rebuilt trade center included four other office towers, a transit hub and a performing arts center, as well as the memorial and museum.
Two towers and the transit hub are under construction. On Thursday, the memorial foundation set up a board of directors for the planned performing arts center, for the first time. The board includes trade center developer Larry Silverstein, Disney executive Zenia Mucha and Brookfield Properties co-chair John Zuccotti.
More than $100 million was set aside for the center by a downtown rebuilding agency and architect Frank Gehry was hired to design it, but private fundraising never began. Only one of four arts organizations originally chosen to anchor the center is still planning on moving in and officials say construction wouldn't begin for several years.
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Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have discovered that DNA stays too tightly wound in certain brain cells of schizophrenic subjects.
The findings suggest that drugs already in development for other diseases might eventually offer hope as a treatment for schizophrenia and related conditions in the elderly.
The research, now available online in the new Nature journal, Translational Psychiatry, shows the deficit is especially pronounced in younger people, meaning treatment might be most effective early on at minimizing or even reversing symptoms of schizophrenia, a potentially devastating mental disorder associated with hallucinations, delusions, and emotional difficulties, among other problems.
"We're excited by the findings," said Scripps Research Associate Professor Elizabeth Thomas, a neuroscientist who led the study, "and there's a tie to other drug development work, which could mean a faster track to clinical trials to exploit what we've found."
A Promising New Field
Over the past few years, researchers have increasingly recognized that cellular-level changes not tied to genetic defects play important roles in causing disease. There is a range of such so-called epigenetic effects that change the way DNA functions without changing a person's DNA code.
One critical area of epigenetic research is tied to histones. These are the structural proteins that DNA has to wrap around. "There's so much DNA in each cell of your body that it could never fit in your cells unless it was tightly and efficiently packed," said Thomas. Histone "tails" regularly undergo chemical modifications to either relax the DNA or repack it. When histones are acetylated, portions of DNA are exposed so that the genes can be used. The histone-DNA complexes, known as chromatin, are constantly relaxing and condensing to expose different genes, so there is no single right or wrong configuration. But the balance can shift in ways that can cause or exacerbate disease.
DNA is the guide that cellular machinery uses to construct the countless proteins essential to life. If portions of that guide remain closed when they shouldn't because histones are not acetylated properly, then genes can be effectively turned off when they shouldn't be with any number of detrimental effects. Numerous research groups have found that altered acetylation may be a key factor in other conditions, from neurodegenerative disorders such as Huntington's disease and Parkinson's disease to drug addiction.
A Good Idea
Thomas had been studying the roles of histone acetylation in Huntington's disease and began to wonder whether similar mechanisms of gene regulation might also be important in schizophrenia. In both diseases, past research in the Thomas lab had shown that certain genes in sufferers were much less active than in healthy people. "It occurred to me that we see the same gene alterations, so I thought, 'Hey, let's just try it,'" she said.
Working with lead author Bin Tang, a postdoctoral fellow in her lab, and Brian Dean, an Australian colleague at the University of Melbourne, Thomas obtained post-mortem brain samples from schizophrenic and healthy brains held at medical "Brain Banks" in the United States and Australia. The brains come from either patients who themselves agreed to donate some or all of their bodies for scientific research after death, or from patients whose families agreed to such donations.
A great deal of epigenetic research has focused on chemical alterations to DNA itself. Histone alterations have been much more difficult to study because such research requires that the histones and DNA remain chemically intact. Many researchers feared that these bonds were disrupted in the brain after death. However, Thomas's group was able to develop a technique for maintaining the histone-DNA interactions. "While many people thought this was lost, we were able to show that indeed these interactions are preserved in post-mortem brain, allowing us to carry out these studies," said Thomas.
Compared to healthy brains, the brain samples from subjects with schizophrenia showed lower levels of acetylation in certain histone portions that would block gene expression. Another critical finding was that in younger subjects with schizophrenia, the problem was much more pronounced.
Need for New Treatment Options
Just what causes the acetylation defects among schizophrenic subjects?what keeps certain pages of the DNA guide closed?isn't clear, but from a medical perspective it doesn't matter. If researchers can reliably show that acetylation is a cause of the problem, they can look for ways to open the closed guide pages and hopefully cure or improve the condition in patients.
Thomas sees great potential. Based on the more pronounced results in younger brains, she believes that treatment with histone deacetylase inhibitors might well prove helpful in reversing or preventing the progression of the condition, especially in younger patients. Current drugs for schizophrenia tend to treat only certain symptoms, such as hallucinations and delusions, and the drugs have major side effects including movement problems, weight gain, and diabetes. If deacetylase inhibitors effectively treat a root cause of the disease and prove sufficiently non-toxic, they might improve additional symptoms and provide a major expansion of treatment options.
Interestingly, some of the cognitive deficits that plague elderly people look quite similar biologically to schizophrenia, and the two conditions share at least some brain abnormalities. So deacetylase inhibitors might also work as a treatment for age-related problems, and might even prove an effective preventive measure for people at high risk of cognitive decline based on family history or other indicators.
###
This study, "Disease- and age-related changes in histone acetylation at gene promoters in psychiatric disorders," was supported by the National Institutes of Health. Samples were provided by the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center, and Australia's Victorian Brain Bank Network. For more information on the research, see http://www.nature.com/tp/journal/v1/n12/abs/tp201161a.html
Scripps Research Institute: http://www.scripps.edu
Thanks to Scripps Research Institute for this article.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/116338/Scientists_discover_a_brain_cell_malfunction_in_schizophrenia
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NEW YORK ? Stocks opened slightly lower Wednesday as worries over the European debt crisis persist, overshadowing a strong auction of Italian government debt.
The European Central Bank said the continent's banks parked a record $590.72 billion overnight at the bank, reflecting distrust in the European banking system.
Italy held two successful bond auctions, paying much lower borrowing rates than it did in other auctions last month. The strong demand from investors raised hopes that Italy would be able to avoid sinking into a financial crisis, as smaller countries like Greece and Portugal have.
The Dow Jones industrial average was down 56 points at 12,235 as of 10 a.m. Eastern. Materials and energy companies were leading the declines. Alcoa Inc. fell 1.4 percent. Only one of the 30 stocks in the Dow average rose, AT&T Inc.
Trading was very quiet in a holiday-shortened week. Markets were closed Monday in observance of Christmas. The Dow closed 2 points lower Tuesday.
The S&P 500 was down 6 points at 1,258. The Nasdaq composite was down 17 points at 2,608.
The Bank of Italy raised $11.8 billion in two bond auctions, reflecting investor approval of the country's recently passed austerity measures. The yield on Italy's six-month bill offering was half the interest rate the country paid in a similar auction last month. The yield on the country's 10-year bond remained dangerously high, however, at 6.93 percent. It had risen to 7 percent Tuesday, a level that is considered unsustainable.
Italy is the euro zone's third-largest economy and is considered too big to save under the euro zone's current bailout funds. Investors have grown fearful over the past few months that Italy will find it difficult to pay off its massive debts, which stand at around $2.5 trillion.
Investors particularly feared that a global contagion could spread if any of the European countries defaulted on their debt. European banks held large quantities of debt from their countries.
The banks' distrust of each other was reflected in the record amounts of money they have parked with the European Central Bank. Instead of making money by lending to each another, banks have chosen to hold money at low interest rates at the ECB.
The worries were reflected in U.S. bank stocks. Bank of America Corp. fell 2 percent, while Regions Financial Corp. fell 3 percent.
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BEIJING ? Global stock markets were mixed Tuesday amid worries about weak Christmas sales in the United States and Europe and a warning by Japan's central bank about possible risks from the European debt crisis.
Tokyo lost 0.5 percent to 8,440.56 while China's benchmark Shanghai index dropped nearly 1.1 percent to 2,166.21. Seoul, Taipei, Singapore and Jakarta declined. Hong Kong and Sydney were closed.
In Europe, France's CAC 40 opened up 0.3 percent at 3,111.37 while Germany's DAX also gained 0.3 percent to 5,897.57.
Pessimistic Asian investors expect upcoming indicators including Chinese manufacturing and Christmas retail sales in key Western markets to be lackluster, said Peng Yunliang, a market strategist for Shanghai Securities.
"The markets expect these data will be no good," Peng said. "Some people think sales data from Christmas in the United States and Europe will not be as good as last year."
China's government reported Tuesday that profit growth slowed at its major industrial companies. Total profit in the January-November period rose 24.4 percent over a year earlier, down 0.9 percent from the growth rate for the first 10 months of the year.
Tokyo's Nikkei 225 declined after the Bank of Japan released notes that showed a Finance Ministry representative warning at a November meeting the world's third-largest economy faces "significant downside risks" due to Europe's debt problems.
Wall Street and European stock markets were closed Monday because Christmas fell on a Sunday this year.
Elsewhere in Asia, Seoul's Kospi shed 0.8 percent to 1,842.02 while Taiwan's Taiex lost 0.1 percent to 7,085.03. Singapore's benchmark was off 0.1 percent at 2,673.18. Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur also declined.
Chinese losses were led by media, information technology, food and travel-related companies.
Dairy shares fell after China's biggest milk producer said Monday it destroyed a batch found to be contaminated with a potentially cancer-causing toxin. Zhejiang Beingmate Scientific Industrial Trade Co., an infant formula producer, lost 6.8 percent while Bright Dairy & Food Co. shed 4.1 percent.
Asian investors are closely watching Europe, whose debt crisis already has hurt demand for exports from China and other major producers.
In the last pre-holiday U.S. trading day on Friday, the Dow Jones industrial average added 1 percent while the Nasdaq composite index gained 0.7 percent. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 0.9 percent.
Benchmark crude for February delivery was down 14 cents at $99.54 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
In currencies, the euro was up 0.1 percent at $1.3065 while the dollar held steady at 77.91 yen.
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This post is in partnership with Worldcrunch, a new global-news site that translates stories of note in foreign languages into English. The article below was originally published in Les Temps.
LOJANE -- Several dozen young men are basking in the warm mid-day sun. They are Afghan and Pakistani. Behind them, on a white wall, is graffiti extolling the glories of the UĈK -- ex-Kosovo Albanian guerilla fighters.
Over the past two years, the Macedonian village of Lojane, which borders Serbia, has become a stop-over on the illegal migration routes to Western Europe. "It started when groups of three or four would arrive periodically. It didn't disturb us at first," says Selam Mehmeti, the head of the village community. "But since this summer, it's grown to a whole other dimension: there were 500 in November." (See TIME's photoessay: Immigration in Europe.)
The story these men tell is almost always the same. Khan, a 22-year-old Afghan from Kandahar, travelled through Iran, Turkey and then Greece before arriving in Bitola, Macedonia. He then headed for Lojane so he could get into Serbia. Serbian police have already sent him back to Macedonia twice.
The latest plan is to try to go through Hungary. "After that -- from Austria on -- everything will be fine. I want to go to Paris, where I have friends. The most difficult thing is to get through Serbia."
The immigrants sleep in the "jungle" -- the fields that stretch between Lojane and Miratovac, the nearest village, some three kilometers away. Miratovac is in Serbia, but its population is entirely Albanian. "The border has been closed since 1993," Blerim, an inhabitant of Lojane, explains. "Traditionally, relations between the two villages have played an important role. Both my mother and my wife come from Miratovac."
Acting like they don't exist
Where the dirt road abruptly turns to asphalt: this is the only place to demarcate the border line between Macedonia and Serbia. Serbian police and military police are on permanent patrol, and stop anyone who tries to go across, either from Miratovac, or the neighboring town of Presevo. Busloads of illegal immigrants stopped anywhere in Serbia are also sent to Lojane.
All the immigrants say they heard about the village either on the Internet or through friends. But village head Mehmeti says that's not true: he says well-organized networks wait for the immigrants along the country's southern borders, at Gevgelija and Bitola, and bring them here. "And the ones that get caught at the Tabanovce border checkpoint, (10 km from the village) come here too." (See more international news in Global Spin.)
There is no visible presence of Macedonian police: the border is guarded only on the Serbian side, villagers say. There are also no humanitarian organizations in Lojane, even though the winter cold is going to make survival conditions for the immigrants that much worse. "Everybody acts as if they don't exist," says Mehmeti.
Despite agreements made with the European Union, Serbia and Macedonia are incapable of dealing with the new tide of clandestine immigrants, who are increasingly opting to take this route instead of the heavily monitored road from Greece to Bulgaria to the north. Skopje has only one immigration detention center that no journalists have been able to visit, and that officially just has space for several dozen people.
The village head is pleased: it's quiet today, there are "only" a few dozen illegal immigrants in Lojane. However, a line of some 15 men can be seen walking through the fields from Tabanovce. A small Macedonian border police patrol watches from the derelict gas pump located halfway between the villages of Lojane and Vaksince. They neither comment, nor pursue the men, but just keep watching instead.
See TIME's Top 10 World Stories of 2011.
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-- Les Echos
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WASHINGTON?? The U.S. economy will grow faster in 2012 ? if it isn't knocked off track by upheavals in Europe, according to an Associated Press survey of leading economists.
Unemployment will barely fall from the current 8.6 percent rate, though, by the time President Barack Obama runs for re-election in November, the economists say.
The three dozen private, corporate and academic economists expect the economy to grow 2.4 percent next year. In 2011, it likely grew less than 2 percent.
The year is ending on an upswing. The economy has generated at least 100,000 new jobs for five months in a row ? the longest such streak since 2006.
The number of people applying for unemployment benefits has dropped to the lowest level since April 2008. The trend suggests that layoffs have all but stopped and hiring could pick up.
And the economy avoided a setback when President Barack Obama signed legislation Friday extending a Social Security tax cut that was to expire at year's end. But Congress could agree only on a two-month extension.
The economists surveyed Dec. 14-20 expect the country to create 177,000 jobs a month through Election Day 2012. That would be up from an average 132,000 jobs a month so far in 2011.
Dean Maki, chief U.S. economist at Barclays Capital, says the U.S. economy remains vulnerable to an outside shock. A big threat is the risk that Europe's debt crisis will trigger a worldwide credit freeze like the one that hit Wall Street in late 2008.
A shock to the U.S. economy, he says, might not be as dangerous if it were growing at a healthier 4 percent to 5 percent annual pace. But when growth is stuck at 2 percent or 3 percent, a major global crisis could stall job creation and raise unemployment.
Beyond Europe, troubles in other areas could also upset the U.S. economy next year, the economists say. Congressional gridlock ahead of the 2012 elections and unforeseen global events, like this year's Arab Spring protests, could slow the U.S. economy. Three economists said rising nuclear tensions with Iran are a concern.
Even without an outside jolt, the economists expect barely enough job creation in 2012 to stay ahead of population growth and the return of discouraged workers into the labor force.
"I just don't know if it's going to be enough to bring the unemployment rate down," says Chad Moutray, chief economist for the National Association of Manufacturers.
The AP economists expect the unemployment rate to be stuck at a recession-level 8.4 percent when voters go to the polls in November. Unemployment was 8.6 percent in November.
A majority (56 percent) of the economists say the economy will get a lift from Federal Reserve policies. The Fed has said it plans to keep short-term interest rates near zero through at least mid-2013 if the economy remains weak. The central bank also has begun a campaign to try to push down mortgage rates and other long-term interest rates through next June.
Those surveyed also think the economy is strong enough to withstand higher oil prices. At near $100 a barrel, oil prices are up 10 percent from a year ago. But only two of the economists AP surveyed expect the higher prices to slow the economy "a lot."
The economists expect the European economy to shrink 0.5 percent in 2011 ? and fall into a recession. Europe is slowing as heavily indebted countries slash spending and banks exposed to government debt curtain lending.
Among the gravest fears is that a major country like Italy will default on its debt, wiping out some banks with large holdings of European government bonds. A worldwide credit crunch like the one that followed the 2008 failure of Lehman Bros could follow.
Story: Minister: Spain to fall back into recessionTwenty-one of the economists listed Europe as a threat to the U.S. economy next year.
"If it were a big enough downturn, given the size of Europe, it could bring the world economy down into recession," says Allen Sinai, president of Decision Economics.
But overall, the economists see only an 18 percent chance that Europe's debt troubles will cause a recession in the United States.
The economists are divided over which one step European policymakers should take now to bolster the 17-country eurozone.
More than one-fourth say the European Central Bank should aggressively try to lower the borrowing costs of the Italian and Spanish governments by buying their bonds.
Nearly one-fifth say European countries should jointly issue "Eurobonds" to help finance weaker countries.
And 17 percent say European governments should slash spending.
Still, the economists expect European policymakers to find a way to prevent the crisis from escalating into a global financial panic.
If Europe can stabilize its economies, the U.S. stock markets would rally sharply, economists say, and prospects for U.S. economic growth would brighten.
"Europe appears to be the only real impediment to keeping this recovery from happening," said Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economics.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45791407/ns/business-eye_on_the_economy/
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?Abstract? The construction of socialistic new country, is significant strategic decision which was made in the outline of China?s the Eleventh Five-Year Plan. In recent years, from the strategic altitude, the Central Party Committee has made a series of important deployment for the rural work, which has obtained positive result. As the finance took the core of the modern economy , the development of the economy in any nation and society cannot live without the substantial support of the financial. Therefore, investigating the rural finance service actuality, resolving the matters concerned to the insufficient financial support for the Agriculture, Ruralareas and Peasantry , which has great significance to the development of the farmer, the agriculture and the rural economy. Especially for ZaoZhuang which is underdeveloped area in the economy, the rural finance is major origin of the fund support for the rural economy.Gotted affected and restricted by lots of factors, The related data material indicates that the rural finance of ZaoZhuang still is the weakest link in the entire financial system, the service level does not fit for the need of the socialism new rural reconstruction. So, studing the problem of the rural finance service in Zaozhuang, studing how does the research banking industry enlarge to the rural finance development fund investment and the support, meets the service innovation of the rural finance, enhances the service quality of the rural finance, satisfies the need for the develop of the rural economy, which is a current urgent need solution important topic, which has important practical significance to solve the difficulties existing in the rural finance service of ZaoZhuang, expand the fund investment to the country, support the whole city rural development of the country.Along with the reform of financial system constant deepening, for adapting the competitive request of the market economy ,bank industry of Zaozhuang has carried on the large scale deepened adjustment from the organization layout, the service variety, the management and operation idea and other aspects. But this kind of adjustment has actually brought more disadvantageous influences to the rural finance service, displayed in: the shrinkage of the rural finance service points presented the tendency gradually, the outflow question of the rural finance service fund was day by day serious, the tendency competition of the rural finance service was not full, the supplies ability of the rural finance service obvious attenuated. The appearance of above phenomenon, has seriously affected the quality and the level of the rural finance service. This article uses the investigation and the real diagnosis analysis method, from geography factor, market factor, system factor, policy factor and so on to search the reason, and in allusion to these restriction factors, from the own development of agricultural industry, the organization system consummation of the rural finance service, the policy support to the rural finance, the servo system construction of the rural finance service and the extense of innovation ,to explores and optimizes the way and the procedure of Zaozhuang rural finance service.This article was divided to five parts: The first part of introduction, which introduced the background and the writing goal of the paper, have analyzed the present research situation in domestic and foreign regarding the rural finance service question , introduced the research way and the frame construction of the paper briefly; The second part has introduced the basic situation of Zaozhuang rural financial service, described the organization system and the service survey of Zaozhuang Banking industry financial organ , has analyzed the existence condition of the rural finance service; The third part of paper from four directions: change of the rural finance organization points layout, outflow of the service fund, attenuation of the supplies ability, competition of the service , carry on the analysis how to improve the rural finance service; the fourth part from geography factor, market factor, system factor, policy factor has carried on the reason analysis. The fifth part, the author carried on the analysis about the solution of the question existing in the rural finance service, described from speeding up the industrialization adjustment of the agricultural, enlarging policy support to the rural finance, consummating the organization system of the rural finance service, enlarging the credit investment to the country, speeding up the service servo system construction of to the rural finance, extending the innovation of the rural finance service and so on, in order to realize the improvement of the rural finance service and the powerful support of the rural finance to the construction of the socialism new rural.
Title: Study on the Rural Finance Service in Zaozhuang CitySource: http://www.economics-papers.com/study-on-the-rural-finance-service-in-zaozhuang-city.html
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'Dateline NBC,' the signature broadcast for NBC News in primetime, premiered in 1992. Since then, it has been pioneering a new approach to primetime news programming. The multi-night franchise, supplemented by frequent specials, allows NBC to consistently and comprehensively present the highest-quality reporting, investigative features, breaking news coverage and newsmaker profiles.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032600/vp/45767893#45767893
This undated photo provided by the Allen County Sheriff's Department shows Aliahna Lemmon. Numerous police officers and others are searching in Fort Wayne, Ind., for Lemmon, 9, who was last seen the morning of Friday, Dec. 23, 2011. Allen County Sheriff's Department Cpl. Jeremy Tinkel says investigators have no indication that Lemmon was abducted or what might have happened to her. (AP Photo/Allen County Sheriff's Department)
This undated photo provided by the Allen County Sheriff's Department shows Aliahna Lemmon. Numerous police officers and others are searching in Fort Wayne, Ind., for Lemmon, 9, who was last seen the morning of Friday, Dec. 23, 2011. Allen County Sheriff's Department Cpl. Jeremy Tinkel says investigators have no indication that Lemmon was abducted or what might have happened to her. (AP Photo/Allen County Sheriff's Department)
During an interview Sunday, Dec. 25, 2011 Amber Story, left, Tarah's mom, and Tarah Souders talk about Tarah's daughter Aliahna Lemmon, 9, who is missing since Friday in Fort Wayne, Ind. (AP Photo/The Journal Gazette, Cathie Rowand)
FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) ? The FBI joined the search for a missing 9-year-old Indiana girl with physical and emotional problems Monday as agents descended on the mobile home park where she lived and that's a known haven for registered sex offenders.
About a half-dozen people in black windbreakers, several of whom identified themselves as FBI agents, were at the mobile home park Monday where Aliahna Lemmon went missing from a family friend's home on Friday. Some with search dogs were seen at a nearby storage facility.
Monday's renewed search came a day after local police declined to search Sunday. Allen County sheriff's department officials also originally had not planned to search Monday either, unless new leads arose through tips from the public or interviews, Cpl. Jeremy Tinkel, a department spokesman, said earlier in the day.
Local police haven't said what they think happened to Aliahna.
Meanwhile, agents at the scene Monday wouldn't say why the FBI was involved. An agency spokesman didn't immediately return phone calls and e-mails seeking comment.
More than 100 emergency workers conducted an extensive search Saturday for Aliahna around the rundown mobile home park on Fort Wayne's north side where she was last seen. No active search was done Sunday for the girl.
According to a state website, 15 registered sex offenders live at the mobile home park that numbers about two dozen homes.
Elizabeth Watkins, 52, who has lived at the park for six months with her 4-year-old granddaughter, said it's well-known that several sex offenders live in the neighborhood.
"It's scary," she said. "I don't know how a parent could leave their child alone."
Aliahna's mother, Tarah Souders, 28, told The Journal Gazette her daughter has vision and hearing problems and suffers from attention deficit disorder and emotional problems. She also has a history of sleepwalking, family members said.
Aliahna and her sisters were staying at a family friend's nearby home because their mother had been sick with the flu and Aliahna's stepfather works at night and sleeps during the day, The Journal Gazette reported Monday.
Mike Plumadore, 39, told the newspaper Sunday that he left the three girls in his mobile home about 6 a.m. Friday and went to a gas station about a mile away to buy a cigar. Authorities have said the store's surveillance video shows him there about that time.
"I had deadbolted the door," he said. "When I got back, all the girls was here."
He said he smoked his cigar and went back to sleep, then woke up about 10 a.m. when Aliahna's mother called. After that call, he realized the door to the home was unlocked and that Aliahna was gone. He said Aliahna's sisters, both 6 years old, told him that Aliahna had left with her mom.
Plumadore said it wasn't until he talked with Aliahna's mom about 8:30 p.m. that they realized she was missing and police were notified.
Plumadore is not listed on the state's website that lists registered sex offenders.
Tarah Souders said miscommunication between the two of them caused the delay in determining that Aliahna had vanished.
"She's never wandered off," Souders said. "She's never done anything like this before."
But Aliahna does have a history of sleepwalking, even unlocking doors and going outside while sleeping, said her grandmother, Amber Story.
"I just hope that she's not suffering or in pain," Story said.
Souders said her daughter also has vision and hearing problems and suffers from attention deficit disorder and emotional problems.
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CARACAS, Venezuela ? A Venezuelan opposition politician who has prostate cancer has been freed after four years in prison.
A court granted parole to Jose Sanchez Montiel for humanitarian reasons because of his advanced prostate cancer, defense lawyer Theresly Malave told the Venezuelan television channel Globovision on Saturday.
Sanchez was sentenced last year to 19 years in prison after being convicted of complicity in the killing of a military intelligence official in 2007. Sanchez was elected to the National Assembly last year while in jail awaiting sentencing. He maintains he is innocent.
Some opposition politicians have described him as a political prisoner. Sanchez is one of four jailed opponents of President Hugo Chavez who have been paroled this year due to health problems.
Chavez and government officials deny there are any political prisoners in the country, saying that Sanchez and others have committed crimes.
The president earlier this year urged judicial authorities to consider parole for any prisoners with serious health problems. Chavez made those remarks after he had a cancerous tumor removed from his pelvic region in an operation in June. He has since undergone chemotherapy and says tests show he is cancer-free.
Sanchez was charged with being an accomplice to the killing of military intelligence agent Claudio Macias, who was found dead in a jail in the western city of Maracaibo in 2007.
Sanchez at the time was a security official for the state government in western Zulia state. Some opposition politicians have said they believe Sanchez was targeted for arrest because he was a close ally of former Zulia Gov. Manuel Rosales, a former presidential candidate who fled to Peru in 2009 after prosecutors accused him of corruption. Rosales has denied wrongdoing.
Malave said that Sanchez was barred by the court from speaking to the news media about his case.
Sanchez traveled to Maracaibo on Saturday to spend Christmas with his family, and plans to begin cancer treatment soon, Malave said.
Judicial authorities did not comment publicly on Sanchez's release.
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Browsing through the all-in-one desktops at any computer retailer, it's easy to be wowed by entertainment options and touch-friendly features, but forget about finding a fully decked-out system for less than $800. The HP Omni 120-1024 ($529.99 list) may not have all the bells and whistles of more expensive systems, but if you want a compact and attractive all-in-one for browsing the Web or light office work, it's a decent system at a price that's hard to beat.
Design and Features
Instead of the pedestal design used on previous iterations, the HP Omni utilizes an easel-back design. The screen and chassis are supported by a single bar and a hinged leg in the back, resulting in both sturdiness and some tilt adjustability. The screen bezel and chassis are covered in burnished black plastic, but the supporting bar below is a stately silvery color. The speakers along the bottom edge of the screen provided good stereo output when I played the new Avengers and Mission: Impossible trailers, though I found the sound a little thin when I listened to some Jimi Hendrix songs with the volume turned all the way up. There's also little to no bass to speak of.
The 20-inch widescreen display has a resolution of 1,600 by 900, fine for 720p playback but short of the 1080p HD picture found on the Dell Inspiron One 2305 (IO2305-4400ELS) ($799.95 list, 3 stars). The display is clear enough for any sort of document or spreadsheet work, and large enough for working on documents side by side or enjoying a full-screen movie from four or five feet away. And though it may sit on the shelf next to several touchscreen-equipped all-in-one systems, the Omni 120-1024 has no touch capability itself. The included wired keyboard and mouse are nothing fancy, but they get the job done.
On the right and left edges of the chassis you'll find a tray-loading DVD?RW optical drive, a media card reader (SD/HC, MMC, MS/Pro, xD), two USB 2.0 ports, and headphone and microphone jacks. On the rear are four more USB 2.0 ports, though you'll need two for the keyboard and mouse. There's also an audio output and an Ethernet port. What you won't find on the Omni are faster USB 3.0 ports, like the ones found on the MSI Wind Top AE2050-008US ($679.99 list, 3 stars) or an HDMI video port.
Internally, the Omni 120-1024 is equipped with 802.11n Wi-Fi and a 500GB 7,200rpm hard drive. On the hard drive there are several programs preinstalled, from a dedicated eBay website link on the desktop to ereaders (Blio and Kobo) and a handful of game samples from WildTangent. There's also a 60-day trial of Norton Internet Security 2012, Microsoft Office Starter 2010 (the full suite is preloaded, but requires a product key to activate). You'll also get HP LinkUp software, which lets this computer easily share files with any other on your home network.
Performance
The HP Omni 120-1024 is equipped with 4GB of RAM and AMD's latest Fusion Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), a single chip die shared by a dual-core E-450 (1.65GHz) processor and Radeon HD 6320 graphics processor. This approach allows for better graphics than might be offered with traditional integrated solutions, while conserving space and energy. In CineBench R11.5 the Omni 120-1024 scored 0.64, outpacing the 0.62 of the MSI Wind Top AE2050-008US and the 0.50 of the Intel Atom-equipped Acer Veriton Z290G-UD525W ($599 list, 3 stars), but falling far behind every competitor equipped with an Intel Core CPU.
The weak processor also led to slow performance in Handbrake and Photoshop CS5 multimedia tests. The Omni 120-1024 completed Handbrake in 6 minutes 30 seconds, and Photoshop in 14:24. To provide some context, the Sony VAIO VPC-L231FX/W ($999.99 list, 4.5 stars) completed those same tests in about one-third the time (Handbrake 2:22, Photoshop 5:34)?and it's far from the fastest system we've reviewed.
The AMD Radeon HD 6320 didn't help out much in the graphics department. The HP completed 3DMark 11 with a score of 548 at Entry settings, and was unable to run any of our graphics or gaming tests. Don't plan on playing much more than casual or Web-based Flash titles on this all-in-one.
The HP Omni 120-1024 offers buyers a compact and stylish all-in-one at a budget-friendly price. It's a no-muss, no fuss way to browse the Web and edit documents, but not ideal for much beyond day-to-day applications. For a more capable all-in-one, the Editors' Choice HP TouchSmart 320-1030 ($699 street, 4 stars) comes equipped with a more powerful AMD A4 desktop APU, and costs only $130 more.
BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS:
COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the HP Omni 120-1024 with several other desktops side by side.
More desktop reviews:
??? HP Omni 120-1024
??? Lenovo H330-77801HU
??? HP Omni 220-1080qd
??? HP TouchSmart 520-1070
??? Samsung Series 7 (DP700A3B-A01US)
?? more
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HAVANA (Reuters) ? Cuba is abuzz with speculation that President Raul Castro will soon announce policy changes making it easier for Cubans to travel abroad from their communist island.
Without being specific, he has promised to ease restrictions that make it difficult for most Cubans to leave the island and return, one of the biggest gripes about life under the government in power since Cuba's 1959 revolution.
Castro could disclose the reforms as soon as Friday, when he will speak to a session of the National Assembly, but there are also rumors they will be announced in early January.
The government has been tight-lipped about his plans, but Castro said in an August speech to the assembly that change is coming.
He said officials were working to update migration policy with an eye toward increasing ties with Cubans who have left the Caribbean island and are living abroad.
Today's emigrants are leaving for economic reasons, not political, he said, and "almost all still love their family and the homeland where they were born."
Cuban exiles, who send more than $1 billion a year in remittances from abroad, are an important source of money for the cash-strapped island and are expected to bankroll small businesses and real estate purchases now permitted under economic reforms by Castro.
How far he plans to go with travel changes remains to be seen, but Cubans' hopes are high.
They want him to eliminate costly and time consuming requirements for such things as government permission to both leave and return to the island and for a letter of invitation from a friend or relative in the country they intend to visit.
They also would like to see an end to limits on how long they can be away and on the right to bring their children along on trips, both of which are in place to encourage their return.
CUBAN EXODUS
Cuba imposed travel restrictions to slow an exodus that began with the 1959 revolution and has continued only partly abated. An estimated 2 million Cubans live abroad with most of those in the U.S. and particularly in Miami.
Castro said many of the rules "played their role in certain circumstances," but then "lasted unnecessarily."
Cubans agree. They say they would like to visit family members abroad and see more of the world than the island most have never left.
"Everybody has the right to travel, to know other countries for family reasons, economic reasons, work reasons, and I think it would help the development of Cuban society," student Jose Ricardo told Reuters in Havana.
"I have family in the United States and it would be good for me to go see them," said retiree Ricardo Cuesta. "It would be good for everyone."
Dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez, who has been denied exit from the country since 2004, said on Twitter that her bags are packed and she was "ready to test the limits of the possible" by going to the airport as soon as changes are announced.
"Rights are not to begged for, they are to be exercised," she said.
Even if the government loosens travel restrictions, Cubans still will face visa requirements in many countries, including the United States.
But under the "wet foot, dry foot" policy, the U.S. also allows them in if they cross the Florida Straits and set foot on the beach.
(Editing by Kevin Gray and Anthony Boadle)
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iMAME emulation app hits the App Store, humanity cheers in unison originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Dec 2011 21:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 21, 2011) ? Two Earth-sized planets have been discovered around a dying star that has passed the red giant stage. Because of their close orbits, the planets must have been engulfed by their star while it swelled up to many times its original size.
This discovery, published in the science journal Nature, may shed new light on the destiny of stellar and planetary systems, including our solar system.
When our sun nears the end of its life in about 5 billion years, it will swell up to what astronomers call a red giant, an inflated star that has used up most of its fuel. So large will the dying star grow that its fiery outer reaches will swallow the innermost planets of our solar system -- Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.
Researchers believed that this unimaginable inferno would make short work of any planet caught in it -- until now.
This report describes the first discovery of two planets -- or remnants thereof -- that evidently not only survived being engulfed by their parent star, but also may have helped to strip the star of most of its fiery envelope in the process. The team was led by Stephane Charpinet, an astronomer at the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Plan?tologie, Universit? de Toulouse-CNRS, in France.
"When our sun swells up to become a red giant, it will engulf the Earth," said Elizabeth 'Betsy' Green, an associate astronomer at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, who participated in the research. "If a tiny planet like the Earth spends 1 billion years in an environment like that, it will just evaporate. Only planets with masses very much larger than the Earth, like Jupiter or Saturn, could possibly survive."
The two planets, named KOI 55.01 and KOI 55.02, circle their host star in extremely tight orbits. Having migrated so close, they probably plunged deep into the star's envelope during the red giant phase, but survived. In the most plausible configuration, the two bodies would respectively have radii of 0.76 and 0.87 times Earth radius, making them the smallest planets so far detected around an active star other than our sun.
The host star, KOI 55, is what astronomers call a subdwarf B star: It consists of the exposed core of a red giant that has lost nearly its entire envelope. In fact, the authors write, the planets may have contributed to the increased mass loss necessary for the formation of this type of star.
The authors concluded that planetary systems may therefore influence the evolution of their parent stars. They pointed out that the planetary system they observed offers a glimpse into the possible future of our own.
The discovery of the two planets came as a surprise because the research team had not set out to find new planets far away from our solar system, but to study pulsating stars. Caused by rhythmic expansions and contractions brought about by pressure and gravitational forces that go along with the thermonuclear fusion process inside the star, such pulsations are a defining feature of many stars.
By studying the pulsations of a star, astronomers can deduce the object's mass, temperature, size and sometimes even its interior structure. This is called asteroseismology.
"Those pulsation frequency patterns are almost like a finger print of a star," Green said. "It's very much like seismology, where one uses earthquake data to learn about the inner composition of the Earth."
To detect the frequencies with which a star pulsates, researchers have to observe it for very long periods of time, sometimes years, in order to measure tiny variations in brightness.
"The brightness variations of a star tell us about its pulsational modes if we can observe enough of them very precisely," Green said. "Let's say there is one pulsational mode every 5859.8 seconds, and there is another one every 9126.39 seconds. There could be lots of stars with rather different properties that could all manage to pulsate at those two frequencies. However, if we can measure 10, or better yet, 50 pulsational modes in one star, then it's possible to use theoretical models to say exactly what the star must be like in order to produce those particular pulsations."
"The only way to do that is to have a telescope sitting in space," she added. "On Earth, we can only observe a star at night. But unless we follow it 24/7, the mathematics give us artifacts. Observing through the atmosphere means that even in the very best of cases we can only detect brightness variations to a ten-thousandth of a percent. But if you've got 50 or a 100 modes going in a star, you need to measure better than that."
For that reason, the team used data obtained from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope for this study.
Unobstructed by Earth's atmosphere and staring at the same patch of sky throughout its five-year mission, the Kepler Space Telescope sits in a prime spot to detect tiny variations in brightness of stars.
Green had been pursuing a survey to look for hot subdwarf stars in the galactic plane of the Milky Way.
"I had already obtained excellent high-signal to noise spectra of the hot subdwarf B star KOI 55 with our telescopes on Kitt Peak, before Kepler was even launched," she said. "Once Kepler was in orbit and began finding all these pulsational modes, my co-authors at the University of Toulouse and the University of Montreal were able to analyze this star immediately using their state-of-the art computer models."
This was the first time that researchers were able to use gravity pulsation modes, which penetrate into the core of the star, to match subdwarf B star models to learn about their interior structure.
While analyzing KOI 55's pulsations, the team noticed the intriguing presence of two tiny periodic modulations occurring every 5.76 and 8.23 hours that caused the star to flicker ever so slightly, at one five thousandth percent of its overall brightness. They showed that these two frequencies could not have been produced by the star's own internal pulsations.
The only explanation came from the existence two small planets passing in front of the star every 5.76 and 8.23 hours. To complete their orbits so rapidly, KOI 55.01 and KOI 55.02 have to be extremely close to the star, much closer than Mercury is to our sun. On top of that, the sun is a cool star compared to KOI 55, which burns at about 28,000 Kelvin, or 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
"Planets this close to their star are tidally locked," Green said, "meaning the same side always faces the star, just like the same face of the moon always faces the Earth. The day side of Mercury is hot enough to melt lead, so you can imagine the harsh conditions on those two small planets racing around a host star that is five times hotter than our sun at such a close distance."
The extremely tight orbits are important because they tell the researchers that the planets must have been engulfed when their host stars swelled up into a red giant.
"Having migrated so close, they probably plunged deep into the star's envelope during the red giant phase, but survived," lead author Charpinet said.
"As the star puffs up and engulfs the planet, the planet has to plow through the star's hot atmosphere and that causes friction, sending it spiraling toward the star," Green added. "As it's doing that, it helps strip atmosphere off the star. At the same time, the friction with the star's envelope also strips the gaseous and liquid layers off the planet, leaving behind only some part of the solid core, scorched but still there."
"We think this is the first documented case of planets influencing a star's evolution," Charpinet said. "We know of a brown dwarf that possibly did that, but that's not a planet, and of giants planets around subdwarf B stars, but those are too far away to have had any impact on the evolution of the star itself."
"I find it incredibly fascinating that after hundreds of years of being able to only look at the outsides of stars, now we can finally investigate the interiors of a few stars -- even if only in these special types of pulsators -- and compare that with how we thought stars evolved," Green said. "We thought we had a pretty good understanding of what solar systems were like as long as we only knew one -- ours. Now we are discovering a huge variety of solar systems that are nothing like ours, including, for the first time, remnant planets around a stellar core like this one."
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Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111221140343.htm
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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) ? Painful rashes and other skin-related side effects of newer targeted cancer drugs may jack up treatment costs, suggests a new study.
The average cost of treating each cancer patient who came into a dermatology clinic with skin, hair and nail complaints was almost $2,000, researchers reported this week. That included expenses related to doctors' appointments, dermatology medications and lab tests.
Some patients with skin problems may have to delay or alter their treatment regimen if side effects are too severe, researchers said.
"Dermatologic side effects including skin irritation and dry skin are the two topmost concerns that patients have that they did not expect during therapy," said Dr. Mario Lacouture from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Center Center in New York, who worked on the study.
"They were prepared to get hair loss, they were prepared to get some nausea and diarrhea, but they weren't expecting to get all these skin issues," he told Reuters Health.
Lacouture and his colleagues from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago tracked costs related to skin reactions in 132 patients being treated with targeted cancer-fighting drugs at their dermatology clinic between 2005 and 2008.
The majority of those patients had colon or lung cancer and the most common drug treatments included cetuximab (marketed as Erbitux) and erlotinib (Tarceva).
Patients came in with a range of dermatology-related complaints -- including painful acne, lesions and blisters on the hands and feet and nail infections. Those conditions cost anywhere from $21 to almost $11,000 to treat, depending on the patient.
The average total cost of medications, clinic visits, treatment procedures and lab tests such as blood work and wound culturing for each patient was $1,920. Dermatology drugs accounted for the greatest chunk of that, costing an average of about $840 per patient, according to findings published in the Archives of Dermatology.
Lacouture said that more than half of patients may have skin, hair and nail reactions to newer drugs that treat some of the most fatal types of cancer. That's because along with their cancer-fighting action, the drugs also attack proteins on the skin.
If skin reactions are severe, especially with certain cancer drugs including sorafenib (Nexavar) for kidney cancer, doctors may have to adjust dosages or take patients off those drugs for a period of time.
"In the majority of cases, we manage the toxicity and go ahead with the treatment, but in a small percentage of patients it does interfere," said Dr. Barbara Burtness, who has studied skin side effects of cancer treatment at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia but wasn't involved in the new study.
Lacouture said that while most of the extra costs would be covered by patients' insurance, skin problems also mean more time and transportation for appointments and co-payments.
"It adds to the out-of-pocket costs for the patient, but also it adds to the already ballooning (societal) cost of cancer," he said.
Burtness said that in the future, those costs should be taken into consideration when evaluating new cancer drugs. But she also suspected that as cancer doctors get more comfortable with the medications, they'll get used to managing any skin side effects themselves, which will cut back on patients' need to visit specialty clinics.
Researchers disagreed as to whether cancer patients should be taking anti-inflammatory medications and antibiotics to prevent any skin side effects.
Lacouture said the most important thing is for patients to be aware of how common these problems are, and to know that the sooner they are diagnosed and treated for side effects, the less likely they are to interfere with cancer treatment and patients' quality of life.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/uLPhk3 Archives of Dermatology, online December 19, 2011.
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