Breast cancer survivor and Cumberland Foreside resident, Laurie Hyndman, pays it forward.
?We are grateful for Laurie?s energy, enthusiasm, and dedication to the Center,? says Michele Johns, Executive Director of the Cancer Community Center (CCC) of Laurie?s recent appointment to the Center?s Board of Directors and ongoing support of the CCC.
?I walked out of my doctor?s office having just had the diagnosis confirmed. I had breast cancer,? says Hyndman. ?I drove straight to the Cancer Community Center to sit down with my pal, Michele Johns. I hadn?t been there before, but I knew what the center did. Needless to say, I never ever thought I?d need the CCC?s services. Michele armed me with literature about breast cancer, shared the many program offerings that might help me on my journey and, most importantly, offered her love and support. What a difference that can make.
As my family and I navigated the swirling seas of treatment, fear, and hope, we were astonished by the outpouring of concern and support we received from so many people. I was familiar with the Buddy Program and did sense that a lifeline to someone who had been through this herself would help with all of my questions, silly and serious, and would simply understand what I was going through. Turns out I was right and my Buddy was a wonderful source of hope.
There is no good reason to get cancer, but there is a good outcome for so many of us. To be able to give back to another cancer patient, share my experience, offer hope ? that is the greatest reward. The Center gives me so many opportunities to give back and to pay it forward.?
The Maine Buddy Program? is a statewide, one-to-one initiative connecting individuals impacted by cancer with a trained volunteer Buddy who has had a similar cancer experience. The Cancer Community Center finds Buddy matches for cancer patients, caregivers, and those who have lost a loved one to cancer. Buddies are available at any stage of one?s treatment or loss experience. Matches are made using a wide variety of individual criteria including the type of cancer, treatment, age, and geographic location.? Most Buddy relationships take place by phone giving the CCC the ability to accommodate Buddy requests across the state.
?I am struck by the positive feedback we, as board members, hear from CCC buddies and support group participants,? says Michele Johns. ??The Center fields daily calls from people in need and matches them with one of over 200 trained volunteer Buddies or connects them with one of 14 cancer specific support groups.? ?
The Breast & Gynecological Support Group meets every 2nd and 4th Tuesday from 6-7:30 pm at the CCC (778 Main St, South Portland). To become a breast cancer Buddy to someone in need or to learn how you can get a Buddy, call 774-2200 or visit the Cancer Community Center website.
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About the Cancer Community Center
The Cancer Community Center is the place to start when you don?t know where to begin. Since its inception in 1998, the Center has helped thousands of adults coping with the effects of cancer through free support, information and activities. The Center provides a warm, welcoming atmosphere for any adult impacted by cancer, caregivers, friends and family.??
NEW YORK (AP) ? They were two young women living alone and in fear in Albania, where they say they were ripe targets for sex traffickers notorious for kidnapping their victims and forcing them into prostitution in other countries.
Both fled to the United States, and now appeals courts in Chicago and New York are confronting a vexing question about their fate: Should their claim that all young single women living alone in Albania face persecution qualify them for asylum?
So far their answer is no.
But a recent 2-to-1 ruling by the federal appeals panel in Chicago led the remaining judges on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to vacate the decision and stage a rare hearing of the full court Thursday to consider the issue.
The close scrutiny by the judges is appropriate, says Simona Agnolucci, a lawyer who submitted legal papers on behalf of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies in San Francisco.
"It's modern slavery," she said. "These characteristics ? their gender, their youth, and their singlehood ? are what put them at risk in Albanian society and in the world at large."
She wrote to the 7th Circuit that the issue is relevant beyond Albania's borders, since "women worldwide are subjected to trafficking and forced prostitution because of their gender."
Although fewer than 10,000 asylum applications were granted from 1990 through 1993, they have ranged between 20,000 and 30,000 in the last decade, with about 25,000 being granted in 2011. The number of Albanian applicants granted asylum has fallen from 894 in 2002 to 156 in 2012. Also, the United States settled 56,000 refugees into the U.S. in 2011, with nearly 17,000 Burmese refugees from Thailand and Malaysia, 9,388 from Iraq, 2,032 from Iran and 7,685 from Somalia.
To win asylum in the United States, someone who has fled another country must establish a well-founded fear of persecution based on religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Appropriately defining a social group is where the Albanian women have fallen short in the courts' eyes.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati in 2005 rejected claims almost identical to those now being made. That court ruled that if a group eligible for asylum is defined "simply as young, attractive Albanian women ? then virtually any young Albanian woman who possesses the subjective criterion of being 'attractive' would be eligible for asylum in the United States."
The opinion was cited on Tuesday when the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the claims of a young Albanian woman who entered the U.S. in December 2004 with a fake Italian passport. She later sought asylum on grounds that the Albanian mafia had twice tried to kidnap and force her into prostitution and that she feared she, like her sister and cousin, would be kidnapped and killed in Albania.
Scott A. Keillor, an immigration lawyer in Ypsilanti, Mich., who argued the 6th Circuit case, said his client was forced to return to Albania. He said the last he heard, she was trying to return to the United States.
"My case sadly gets cited a lot," Keillor said.
Keillor said U.S. asylum laws seem arbitrary.
"There's a lot of black and white, you fit into a category or you don't. They say: 'Well that's not a particular social group that can be readily identifiable,'" he said.
At Thursday's hearing in Chicago, Judge Richard A. Posner asked Cleveland attorney Scott E. Bratton why weak men in prison or people living in dangerous neighborhoods with high murder rates would not constitute social groups for asylum purposes.
Bratton, who represents Johana Cece, a 33-year-old Aurora, Ill., woman in the Chicago case, said the number of women in Albania who would be in danger similar to his client was relatively small because there were not many single young women living alone in the country with a population of 2.8 million. He said his client would not comment publically. She did not return a phone message for comment.
In court papers, he and other lawyers cited similar asylum cases, such as classes of young women who are threatened with female genital mutilation, women who escaped servitude after being abducted by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC, women in Jordan who flouted repressive moral norms and faced a high risk of honor killing and women in Cameroon who feared circumcision.
Andrew MacLachlan, a Justice Department lawyer in the Office of Immigration Litigation, told the 7th Circuit that Cece was essentially seeking asylum because of her fear of persecution.
"Under the particular circumstances of this case, the validity of the social group proposed by the petitioner would eviscerate the asylum statute," he said.
___
Associated Press Writer Tom Hays contributed to this report.
That's the winning formula of one of the world's smallest predators, the soil bacteria Myxococcus xanthus, and a new study by scientists at Rice University and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) Medical School shows how M. xanthus uses the formula to spread, engulf and devour other bacteria.
The study, featured on the cover of this month's online issue of the journal PLOS Computational Biology, shows how the simple motions of individual bacteria are amplified within colonies of M. xanthus to form millions-strong waves moving outward in unison. The findings answer longstanding questions about how the waves form and the competitive edge they provide M. xanthus.
"When the cells at the edge of the colony are moving outward, they are unlikely to encounter another M. xanthus cell, so they keep moving forward," said lead author Oleg Igoshin, assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice. "When they are traveling the other way, back toward the rest of the colony, they are likely to encounter other cells of their kind, and when they pass beside one of these and touch, they get the signal to turn around."
Igoshin said the net effect is that the cells "spend more time moving outward than inward, and as a result, they spread faster."
M. xanthus is an oft-studied model organism in biology but, Igoshin said, it is one of the few well-studied organisms that lends itself to the study of systems biology, a rapidly growing field of life sciences that aims to model and discover emergent phenomena -- like the rippling waves of M. xanthus colonies -- that have a basis in genetics but only become apparent when cells cooperate.
"Most of the model bacteria that biologists selected for study in the lab were chosen because they were very good at growing on their own in a test tube and not sticking to the wall or to one another," Igoshin said. "When we were choosing model organisms, we lost a lot of the social properties that systems biologists like to study. M. xanthus is different in that people chose to study it because it grew into cool patterns and structures arising from cooperative behavior."
As a computational biologist, Igoshin specializes in creating mathematical models that accurately describe the behavior of living systems. Such models are useful for understanding the cellular and even genetic basis of emergent phenomena.
In the case of M. xanthus waves, Igoshin and Rice graduate student Haiyang Zhang and postdoctoral fellow Peng Shi created an agent-based model, a computer program that simulated the actions and interactions of individual cells to examine how they collectively produced M. xanthus waves.
The model showed that just three ingredients were needed to generate the rippling behavior:
When two cells moving toward one another have side-to-side contact, they exchange a signal that causes one of them to reverse.
A time interval after each reversal during which cells cannot reverse again.
Physical interactions that cause the cells to align.
To verify the model's accuracy, Igoshin's team partnered with UTHealth's Heidi Kaplan, associate professor of microbiology and molecular genetics. Kaplan and graduate students Zalman Vaksman and Douglas Litwin, both of the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston, used time-lapse images from microscopes to examine the behavior of M. xanthus waves. The experiments confirmed the relationships between wavelength, reversal time and cell velocity that had been predicted by the model.
"We also found an interesting flip side for the behavior, which was counterintuitive and unexpected," Kaplan said. "The same behavior that causes the waves to spread quickly and to cover newly found prey also allows M. xanthus cells to stay on a patch of food and not drift away until the food is devoured."
The exact biochemical signals that the cells use to sense their prey and signal one another to reverse are still a mystery, but the new study helps to narrow the field. For example, many signals between bacteria do not require physical contact, but the study found that the reversing behavior requires contact between cells.
"If the mechanism for this behavior can be found, it could prove useful for synthetic biologists who are interested in programming touch-induced functions into synthetic organisms," Igoshin said.
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The computer modeling was performed on three NSF-funded Rice supercomputers -- STIC, SUG@R and DAVinCI -- that are jointly managed and operated by Rice's Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology and Rice's Department of Information Technology.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Rice University. The original article was written by Jade Boyd.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Zhang H, Vaksman Z, Litwin DB, Shi P, Kaplan HB, et al. The Mechanistic Basis of Myxococcus xanthus Rippling Behavior and Its Physiological Role during Predation. PLoS Comput Biol, 2012 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002715
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.
Now accepting?members to the Taekwondo-Hapkido Martial Arts Sports Club.??Taekwondo is one of the most popular martial arts around the world.? It premiered in the 1988 Summer Olympics as a demonstration sport.? Many players practice for exercise, sport, hobby and self-defense.? Hapkido is closely related to Taekwondo with emphasis on arm locks and takedowns.? Please email Master Phillips?if you are interested and committed to learn martial arts.
This announcement is represented by a registered student organization.
Bill Lindsay, the affable, consensus-seeking presiding officer of the Suffolk County Legislature since 2006, is a victim of occupational exposure to asbestos.? It happened not during his government service but in his prior work as an electrician and as an official of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers inspecting job sites at which fellow electricians suspected they were being exposed to asbestos.
At the start of this year, Lindsay was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer caused by asbestos. This came shortly after he was unanimously re-elected to a seventh term as the legislature?s presiding officer, after county executive the Number 2 position in Suffolk County government.
Lindsay was an electrician for 15 years and for 23 years business agent and business manager of Local 25 of the IBEW, which covers electricians in Nassau and Suffolk Counties.? In working as an electrician, ?a lot of the time? he recounted last week, he had to ?scrape off the asbestos fireproofing? from beams before attaching electrical conduits to them. ?You ended up breathing in asbestos.?
And although ?asbestos was outlawed in 1972,? he noted, there were still large amounts of it in existing structures. As an IBEW official he would regularly go to where ?my members? were concerned about being exposed to asbestos. ?I implemented a program for my members in which a sample of the fireproofing would be sent to a laboratory for examination.?? This was needed because ?a lot of landlords lied about asbestos??claimed it didn?t exist in their buildings. The tests presented the proof.
But, in going repeatedly to the scenes of likely asbestos contamination, Lindsay was exposed, too, in addition to his exposure when he worked as an electrician. Of mesothelioma, he noted, ?You only get it from asbestos.?
Indeed, the website www.MesotheliomHelp.net opens under the heading ?Mesothelioma?The Cancer Caused by Asbestos,? with information on the connection including a 2010 National Academy of Sciences study. ?Asbestos is a known carcinogen and is proven to cause mesothelioma,? it states. ?Often called ?asbestos cancer,? mesothelioma is highly aggressive and is resistant to many standard cancer treatments.?
?The good news,? said Lindsay last week, ?is that on August 11 the doctor told me I was cancer-free. The bad news is that they took out my lung.?
His remaining lung has ?really picked up functionality and is operating at 94 percent,? he said. He?s generally ?feeling good?It depends on the day.? ?Lindsay will be 66 in November. He plans to continue on the legislature through the end of next year when its term-limit of six two-year terms kicks in for him. He then intends to retire. If there is a medical downturn before that, ?I would retire immediately.?
Lindsay, a Holbrook Democrat, has been popular with his peers as presiding officer. His approach as the legislature?s leader, he explained, has been to ?have a personal relationship with every legislator and work together to make a better government.?
What Lindsay has been hit with is mirrored in the millions of people similarly struck by cancer. The World Health Organization determined in 2010 that cancer had become the world?s leading cause of death, overtaking heart disease. Why the cancer epidemic? Report after report attributes it mainly to the toxic substances in the water we drink, the food we eat, the consumer products we use, the air we breathe. As the President?s Cancer Panel stated in a 2010 report, ?Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now,? we are ?bombarded continually with myriad combinations of these dangerous exposures.? ?It urged President Obama ?most strongly to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our nation?s productivity, and devastate American lives.? It emphasized that there are safe ?alternatives? to cancer-causing agents.
The U.S. government has generally failed to act because of the power of those poisoning people. I wrote a book on this in 1982, ?The Poison Conspiracy.? Asbestos, for example, was known as a carcinogen as far back as 1929 and nothing was done?and safe alternatives were always available. As to the corporations responsible, consider Johns Manville, the global giant in manufacturing asbestos products. In 1982, faced with thousands of asbestos injury lawsuits, it declared bankruptcy.
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Karl Grossman has covered Long Island politics for over 50 years.
This photo taken Sept. 27, 2012 shows President Barack Obama waving as he walks from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. Republicans lashed out at President Barack Obama and senior administration officials over their evolving description of the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya, a late campaign-season broadside challenging the veracity and leadership of an incumbent on the upswing. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
This photo taken Sept. 27, 2012 shows President Barack Obama waving as he walks from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. Republicans lashed out at President Barack Obama and senior administration officials over their evolving description of the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya, a late campaign-season broadside challenging the veracity and leadership of an incumbent on the upswing. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
In this photo taken Sept. 27, 2012, Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks in Springfield, Va. Republicans lashed out at President Barack Obama and senior administration officials over their evolving description of the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya, a late campaign-season broadside challenging the veracity and leadership of an incumbent on the upswing. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)
FILE - In this Sept. 8, 2012 file photo, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. is interviewed in Cernobbio, Italy. Republicans lashed out at President Barack Obama and senior administration officials over their evolving description of the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya, a late campaign-season broadside challenging the veracity and leadership of an incumbent on the upswing. (AP Photo/Giuseppe Aresu, File)
FILE - This Aug. 28, 2012 file photo shows Republican National Committee Reince Priebus speaking at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla. Republicans lashed out at President Barack Obama and senior administration officials over their evolving description of the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya, a late campaign-season broadside challenging the veracity and leadership of an incumbent on the upswing. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)
FILE - This Aug. 30, 2012 file photo shows US United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice speaking at the United Nations. Republicans lashed out at President Barack Obama and senior administration officials over their evolving description of the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya, a late campaign-season broadside challenging the veracity and leadership of an incumbent on the upswing. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Republicans lashed out at President Barack Obama and senior administration officials over their evolving description of the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya, a late campaign-season broadside challenging the veracity and leadership of an incumbent on the upswing.
Desperate to reverse the apparent trajectory of the White House race, Republicans sense a political opportunity in Obama's reluctance to utter the words "terrorist attack" as well as the varying explanations emerging from the administration about the assault in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
Talk of Watergate-style scandal, stonewalling and cover-up echoed in the GOP ranks on Thursday, from the head of the party to members of Congress to Mitt Romney's campaign staff. This full-throated criticism comes five days before the first debate between Obama and Romney, with Republicans determined to cast the president as dishonest and ineffectual on both foreign and domestic policy.
"Amid Middle East turmoil and six weeks before the election, President Obama refuses to have an honest conversation with the American people," Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican Party, wrote in an article for the website Real Clear Politics. "The country deserves honesty, not obfuscation, from our president."
Republicans say the administration has been slow to call the assault a terrorist attack and has criticized its initial insistence that the attack was a spontaneous response to the crude anti-Islam video that touched off demonstrations across the Middle East.
Since then, it has become clear that the Benghazi assault was distinct from the mobs that burned American flags and protested what they considered the blasphemy in the movie, but didn't attack U.S. personnel. Republicans have also suggested that the administration had intelligence suggesting the deadly attack might happen and ignored it.
"I think it's pretty clear that they haven't wanted to level with the American people. We expect candor from the president and transparency," Romney told Fox News this week.
The White House and Democrats accused the GOP of politicizing national security, with officials specifically mentioning Romney's quick swipe at Obama as an extremist sympathizer as the crisis was still unfolding in North Africa around Sept. 11.
"The Republican approach is to shoot first and ask questions later," Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said in an interview. "The administration wants to do an investigation and be as accurate as possible. That's the difference between partisan politics and trying to govern."
Democrats also used the criticism to recall the former Massachusetts governor's missteps during his summertime overseas trip and his omission in his prime-time speech at the Republican National Convention of any mention of U.S. military forces fighting in Afghanistan.
"Every time Mitt Romney has attempted to dip his toe into foreign policy quarters, it's been an unmitigated disaster," Obama campaign press secretary Jen Psaki said aboard Air Force One.
National security has provided few political openings for Romney and the GOP as Obama has shed the Democrats' past reputation for weakness by ordering the successful raid that killed terrorist leader Osama bin Laden and undercut al-Qaida. An Associated Press-GfK poll earlier this month found Obama with an edge over Romney on who Americans think can do a better job of protecting the country, 51 percent to 40 percent.
The economy and jobs are the dominant issues in the election, with few voters likely to cast their ballots based on events in Libya or conflicts overseas. Underscoring the general weariness after more than 10 years of war, some of the fiercest GOP defense hawks in Congress have suggested the United States withdraw its forces from Afghanistan, an even bolder step than Obama.
But the administration has struggled to present a coherent description of the assault in Libya, prompting questions from Republicans and Democrats about whether the United States had prior intelligence, whether the attack was planned and whether security was sufficient.
In that same AP poll, Americans approved of Obama's handling of Libya by just 45-41 percent. The poll was conducted within days of the assault.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Thursday called it a terrorist attack.
"What terrorists were involved I think still remains to be determined by the investigation," he told reporters at the Pentagon. "But it clearly was a group of terrorists who conducted that attack."
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and White House press secretary Jay Carney called the violence a terrorist attack last week. But Obama has declined several chances to call the incident a terrorist attack. He said last week that extremists used an anti-Islam video as an excuse to assault U.S. interests.
And just five days after the attack, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said the attack was a spontaneous reaction to the video. Her assessment was at odds with Libya's interim President Mohammed el-Megarif, who said there was no doubt the perpetrators had predetermined the date of the assault. Panetta said Thursday it was a "planned attack."
The FBI is investigating, but the apparent contradictions have prompted demands for information from Congress and a flurry of scathing letters to the administration.
So far, U.S. intelligence has indicated that heavily armed extremists numbering 50 or more attacked the consulate, relying on gun trucks for added firepower. They established a perimeter, limiting access to the compound. A first wave of attacks forced the Americans to flee to a fallback building, where a second group of extremists attacked with mortar fire. Stevens died of apparent smoke inhalation when he was caught inside one of the consulate buildings, which had been set on fire.
Officials have not singled out one responsible group, but have focused their attention on Ansar al-Shariah, a Libyan militant group led by a former detainee at the U.S. military-run prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that there has been a "thread of intelligence reporting" about groups in eastern Libya trying to coalesce, but no specific threat to the consulate.
Since the fall of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi last year, militias, weapons and terrorists are common in Libya.
"It was just unbelievable that Ambassador Rice and Secretary Clinton and the White House spokesman and others would say that there was no evidence ? that this was a spontaneous attack, yet they say, 'come on, honey, bring your mortars, we're going to a spontaneous demonstration,'" Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said on CBS' "This Morning."
McCain, who called the administration's statements "disgraceful," joined three other Republican senators this week in a letter to Rice pressing her on her "troubling statements that are inconsistent with the facts."
Eight Republicans who head House committees sent a letter to Obama criticizing a "pre-9/11 mindset" of "treating an act of war solely as a criminal matter." They said they would return to Washington from their nearly two-month recess for briefings beyond the back-to-back sessions Clinton and others held last week.
Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., have asked for communications between the State Department and the U.S. mission in Libya leading up to the attacks.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., has written the State Department's Thomas Nides asking him to provide the panel with a detailed accounting of the attacks on U.S. missions in Libya, Egypt and Yemen on Sept. 11, information on security and whether there was any prior intelligence.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., a member of the panel, said the purpose of this letter is a bipartisan effort to get information.
"I do think it is legitimate and appropriate to ask questions," Coons said in an interview. "Some have sadly overreached and clearly are politicizing this incident."
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Associated Press writers Robert Burns in Washington and Steve Peoples in Springfield, Va., contributed to this report.
ROME ? Franco Fiorito, a member of the regional council of Lazio, the Italian region that includes Rome, was known ironically among his friends as Batman. It was a nickname he earned when he managed to fall off a Harley Davidson still on a kickstand.
But rather than a superhero, he looks like an actor out of ?The Sopranos? with his slicked-back hairstyle, striped double-breasted suit, bulky figure and bigger than life personality. ??
Fiorito, a member of Silvio Berlusconi?s People of Freedom party (PDL), was accused earlier this month of embezzling at least $1.5 million of public funds to pay for everything from oyster dinners, to hotels, aides and apartments.
Fiorito, who has since resigned, fought the allegations by telling investigators that fellow party members behaved worse than he did ? putting the spotlight on regional president Renata Polverini.
The scandal proved too much for Polverini, who resigned on Monday, and damaged the reputation of Berlusconi?s already weakened party.
She denied allegations of any wrong-doing on her part, but admitted that the scandal had exposed infighting within the PDL party and had stripped the regional council of some legitimacy. ??
But most importantly, it stands as a symbol of a political class that has lost touch with the electorate, and carries on living a lavish lifestyle financed with public funds at a time when most Italians struggle to get by.
?Why did they call him Batman? He sounds more like the joker to me,? said Carla Cecchini, a receptionist from Rome who was waiting at a bus stop in Rome on Wednesday morning. ?He is not even that smart. We know they are all thieves, but this guy didn?t even try to hide it. He is shameless.?
Toga party photos Apparently Fiorito is not as brazen as another member of the regional council.
Only days ago, pictures emerged of a lavish toga party organized in 2010 by Carlo de Romanis, a 32-year- old member of Berlusconi?s party. ?
Romanis organized the party to celebrate his election to the regional council and his return to Rome after eight years working at the European Parliament in Brussels.
The theme of the party, ?Ulysses returns home and fights his enemies,? was taken seriously by his 2,000 guests. They showed up dressed up as ancient Roman maidservants, gladiators, patricians in laurel wreaths and minotaurs, drinking from ancient-looking jars. Pictures emerged of guests feeding each other grapes, as well as men wearing pig masks fondling female guests.
?A party worthy of the last days of ancient Rome, when the narcissistic and decadent elite kept enjoying a lavish lifestyle while the empire was falling apart all around them.
The similarities might not be so far-fetched. Even though Carlo ?Ulysses De Romanis? insists the $30,000 he paid for the party came from his own pocket, it still upset many Italians who are tired of seeing the political elite enjoying the lifestyle of emperors while they feel the strain of the recent austerity measures and the economic crisis.
Alex Biasco, a DJ in Milan, told NBC News that the Italian public is partly to blame as well. He said they like to complain about the widespread abuse of office, without acting to bring about any changes.
?Look at the Spanish: they fill the squares in Madrid to demand the resignation of unfit politicians,? said Biasco.? ?While in Italy we have had politicians who stole for decades, who are corrupt to the core?and yet, Italians only fill their squares when their soccer teams win.?
Luca Orsenigo, a 38-year-old telecom manager from Milan, had a similar complaint.?
?We got to this point because we deserve it. Instead of going to prison, these people are invited to defend themselves on talk-shows," said Orsenigo, referring to the many TV appearances Fiorito enjoyed after the scandal broke. "As long as these people go unpunished, nothing will change?
Cocaine bust More proof of widespread corruption among Italian governmental institutions came on Tuesday, when the head of the postal service in the Italian Senate was arrested for cocaine trafficking, police said.
Orlando Ranaldi, 53, is accused of being part of a criminal gang 10 Italians and Albanians who ran a cocaine ring in southern Rome. While not a politician, Orlando held a managerial position in Italy?s upper house of parliament. ?
?"I only hope that he didn't push inside the Senate," Senator Felice Belisario of the Italy of Values party told Reuters.
Roberta, a housewife from Rome who gave only her first name, jumped to her own conclusions. ??
?They are all living the high life, and I can?t believe the guy wasn?t doing ?favors? to the political elite,? she said. ?
The recent revelations of Champagne-filled toga parties, embezzlement of public funds and cocaine heists have only contributed to widening the gap between the political elite and the electorate.?
?Once again we are showing the world how corrupt we are.? But Italians, thank God, are not all like Batman and Ulysses,? Alessandra Scolaro, a website designer and member of the People of Freedom party from the Veneto region, told NBC News. ?The best Italians are those who wake up every morning and go to work. And those who make us proud by raising the bar of Italian creativity in the arts and fashion industries. This is the real Italy.?
While Italians aren?t likely to descend to the squares to protest and try to get rid of the political class the hard way, they will have the opportunity to bring change in the general elections next spring.?
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You want me to climb what? A new report suggests better, common-sense ways for testing whether children are physically fit.
By Maggie Fox, NBC News
Forget sit-ups and push-ups. The best way to tell whether schoolchildren are physically fit is a common-sense test of body mass index, whether they can run without getting out of breath, and grip strength, a committee of experts said on Thursday.
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As America?s children become fatter and more unfit, schools and the government need to keep tabs on just how fit ? or unfit ? they are, the Institute of Medicine panel said. Ironically, most schools have stopped doing this over the past 30 years. A report issued by the panel is intended to kick-start the process.
?We are very concerned that not a lot of kids meet physical activity guidelines, and that?s why we need to be monitoring their fitness,? says exercise expert Russell Pate of the University of South Carolina, who chaired the panel.? ?The big message here is that between the 1950s and 1980s we were monitoring fitness in American kids?and then they stopped doing it. It has?literally been since the mid-1980s that this has been done in a nationally representative sampe of American kids."
At the same time, schools crushed by budget cuts and?the pressure to bring up test scores in reading and math have shortened recess and physical education or even cut them out completely.
Right now, says Pate, there?s not a systematic way to prove that kids are less fit than they were in the 1980s, although common sense and obesity statistics would suggest this is the case. The President?s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition says fewer than one in five kids get the exercise they need. The report suggests ways to test this.
The good news: The much-hated baseball throw and sit-ups are out, Pate told NBC News. ?Some of the approaches that were common are really no longer seen as state of the art,? Pate says.
So what do they recommend? First off, the body mass index or BMI measurement. This comparison of height to weight really does do a good job of singling out who is overweight, the panel says.
For health experts doing national surveys, it?s important to measure not only BMI but waist circumference ? which shows how much unhealthy abdominal fat someone is carrying, as well as skinfold thickness, another measure of fat versus muscle. But schools can simply use BMI, which is very accurate for most of the population, the report says.
Shuttle runs and treadmill tests are very good ways to test cardiorespiratory fitness, they said. The shuttle run does require some equipment and training. ?Kids run back and forth from lines that are 20 meters apart,? Pate said. ?There is a device that beeps periodically. The kids run back and forth between the lines, keeping up with the pace of the beeper.? The beeper ups the pace, and the children run until they can no longer keep up.
Musculoskeletal fitness is a bit trickier to measure because it combines strength, endurance and power. ?Growing evidence supports use of the handgrip strength test and the standing long jump as health-related musculoskeletal fitness test items in youth,? ?the report reads. While neither is a complete measure of all three factors, they?re both pretty good indicators, the committee concluded. Modified pull-ups and push-ups are also alternatives, they said.
Pate notes that many?adults and kids?cannot do even one traditional pull-up. ?The problem with a traditional pull-up is you get a lot of zero scores -- you get a lot of kids that can?t do any,? he said. The modified version has the bar just 3-4 feet off the ground, and the child can hang on at an angle with his or her feet on the ground and pull up that way. ?They are partially supported,? Pate said.
Just last month, the President?s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition said it was phasing out the Youth Fitness Test, which dated back to 1966. The new Presidential Youth Fitness Program prescribes a complex set of standards, not all of which jibe with the Institute of Medicine recommendations.
Pate said it's all a work in progress, with national health leaders setting up a nationally representative survey of fitness in youth.
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How is a Kindle like a cuttlefishPublic release date: 26-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: M.B. Reilly reillymb@ucmail.uc.edu 513-556-1824 University of Cincinnati
Over millions of years, biological organisms from the chameleon and cuttlefish to the octopus and squid have developed color-changing abilities for adaptive concealment (e.g., camouflage) and communication signaling (e.g., warning or mating cues).
Over the past two decades, humans have begun to develop sophisticated e-Paper technology in electronic devices that reflect and draw upon the ambient light around you to create multiple colors, contrast and diffusion to communicate text and images.
And given the more than 100 million years head start that evolution has provided to these animals and their cellular systems, it's not surprising that e-Paper devices lag behind in optical performance, especially color generation.
In an effort to close that gap, a multidisciplinary team led by University of Cincinnati researchers is out today with a paper that aims to help biologists who work with these color-changing creatures and engineers who work with e-Paper technology. The paper "Biological vs. Electronic Adaptive Coloration: How Can One Inform the Other?" is in the "The Journal of The Royal Society Interface" (electronic version) and will be featured on the cover of the upcoming print issue.
Authors are Eric Kreit, a recent doctoral graduate in UC's College of Engineering and Applied Science (CEAS); Lydia M. Mthger and Roger T. Hanlon, research scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass.; Patrick B. Dennis and Rajesh R. Naik, scientists at the Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright Patterson Air Force Base; Eric Forsythe, scientist at the Army Research Laboratory; and Jason Heikenfeld, associate professor of electronic and computing systems, also in the University of Cincinnati's College of Engineering and Applied Science (CEAS).
According to UC's Kreit, "Our main goals were threefold: To allow display engineers to learn from millions of years of natural selection and evolution. To teach biologists the most advanced mechanisms and performance measurements used in human-made reflective e-Paper and to give all scientists a clearer picture of the long-term prospects for capabilities such as adaptive concealment and what can be learned from now you see me, now you don't mechanisms."
WAYS IN WHICH ANIMALS AND ELECTRONICS ARE ALIKE
One of the researchers' key findings is that there are numerous approaches to change the reflective color of a surface and that the highest-performance approaches developed by both humans and nature share some powerful common features. Both use pigment, and both change or achieve color expression by either spreading or compacting that pigment. Animals use muscle fiber to spread or compact pigment, and electronics make use of an electric field to do so.
However, even if the basic approach for color change is similar, humanity has never developed anything as complex or sophisticated as the biology and physics of cephalopod skin. (Cephalopods are a diverse ocean group and include 700 species of cuttlefish, squid and octopus and are the acknowledged masters of color change on the planet).
According to Heikenfeld, "The highest performance human-made approaches have been only recently developed, well after numerous other approaches were tried. Perhaps in the past, if we had more closely trusted nature's ability to find the best solution, we would be further along today in creating better display technology."
ANIMALS ARE EFFICIENT USERS OF AVAILABLE LIGHT
Biological organisms that change color are very efficient at using available light. The animal's skin either reflects light to achieve a bright-color effect or absorbs light to achieve stunning, multi-colored effects.
In their use of available light, the biological organisms are more efficient than electronic devices, which generally require large amounts of electric power to generate an internal/emissive light to generate bright color.
Said Roger Hanlon, "Cephalopod skin is exquisitely beautiful and radiant, and can be changed in milliseconds, all without generating any intrinsic light from within the skin; there are elegant solutions from biology waiting to be translated to our consumer and industrial world."
In fact, overall, animals "outscore" synthetic devices when it comes to sophistication and integrated systems; required energy use for color change; size scalability (cephalopods' adaptive coloration works over a wide range of sizes in the organisms' class from small-size cuttlefish to large-size octopus and squid); and surface texture (cephalopods can selectively adapt or "crinkle" their skins to match a variety of three-dimensional textures, which provides additional light scattering and shadowing).
ELECTRONIC DEVICES ACHIEVE COLORS FASTER AND ACHIEVE MORE COLORS
Human-developed technology is far superior to cephalopods or other color-adapting animals when it comes to speed. In other words, human-made electronics can achieve color and a color change faster than the response time of a biological organism.
In addition, synthetic devices can provide a greater range of colors and more efficient dark or black state. In other words, a device can achieve a black screen, but most biological organisms cannot achieve such darkened coloring. This is, in part, due to the fact that an organism like a marine animal generally has no reason, in terms of survival adaptation or signaling, to go to a dark or black state. Such an adaptation would actually make them more visible, not less, to predators.
###
FUNDING
This research was funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory, National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Army Research Laboratory, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Office of Naval Research.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
How is a Kindle like a cuttlefishPublic release date: 26-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: M.B. Reilly reillymb@ucmail.uc.edu 513-556-1824 University of Cincinnati
Over millions of years, biological organisms from the chameleon and cuttlefish to the octopus and squid have developed color-changing abilities for adaptive concealment (e.g., camouflage) and communication signaling (e.g., warning or mating cues).
Over the past two decades, humans have begun to develop sophisticated e-Paper technology in electronic devices that reflect and draw upon the ambient light around you to create multiple colors, contrast and diffusion to communicate text and images.
And given the more than 100 million years head start that evolution has provided to these animals and their cellular systems, it's not surprising that e-Paper devices lag behind in optical performance, especially color generation.
In an effort to close that gap, a multidisciplinary team led by University of Cincinnati researchers is out today with a paper that aims to help biologists who work with these color-changing creatures and engineers who work with e-Paper technology. The paper "Biological vs. Electronic Adaptive Coloration: How Can One Inform the Other?" is in the "The Journal of The Royal Society Interface" (electronic version) and will be featured on the cover of the upcoming print issue.
Authors are Eric Kreit, a recent doctoral graduate in UC's College of Engineering and Applied Science (CEAS); Lydia M. Mthger and Roger T. Hanlon, research scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass.; Patrick B. Dennis and Rajesh R. Naik, scientists at the Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright Patterson Air Force Base; Eric Forsythe, scientist at the Army Research Laboratory; and Jason Heikenfeld, associate professor of electronic and computing systems, also in the University of Cincinnati's College of Engineering and Applied Science (CEAS).
According to UC's Kreit, "Our main goals were threefold: To allow display engineers to learn from millions of years of natural selection and evolution. To teach biologists the most advanced mechanisms and performance measurements used in human-made reflective e-Paper and to give all scientists a clearer picture of the long-term prospects for capabilities such as adaptive concealment and what can be learned from now you see me, now you don't mechanisms."
WAYS IN WHICH ANIMALS AND ELECTRONICS ARE ALIKE
One of the researchers' key findings is that there are numerous approaches to change the reflective color of a surface and that the highest-performance approaches developed by both humans and nature share some powerful common features. Both use pigment, and both change or achieve color expression by either spreading or compacting that pigment. Animals use muscle fiber to spread or compact pigment, and electronics make use of an electric field to do so.
However, even if the basic approach for color change is similar, humanity has never developed anything as complex or sophisticated as the biology and physics of cephalopod skin. (Cephalopods are a diverse ocean group and include 700 species of cuttlefish, squid and octopus and are the acknowledged masters of color change on the planet).
According to Heikenfeld, "The highest performance human-made approaches have been only recently developed, well after numerous other approaches were tried. Perhaps in the past, if we had more closely trusted nature's ability to find the best solution, we would be further along today in creating better display technology."
ANIMALS ARE EFFICIENT USERS OF AVAILABLE LIGHT
Biological organisms that change color are very efficient at using available light. The animal's skin either reflects light to achieve a bright-color effect or absorbs light to achieve stunning, multi-colored effects.
In their use of available light, the biological organisms are more efficient than electronic devices, which generally require large amounts of electric power to generate an internal/emissive light to generate bright color.
Said Roger Hanlon, "Cephalopod skin is exquisitely beautiful and radiant, and can be changed in milliseconds, all without generating any intrinsic light from within the skin; there are elegant solutions from biology waiting to be translated to our consumer and industrial world."
In fact, overall, animals "outscore" synthetic devices when it comes to sophistication and integrated systems; required energy use for color change; size scalability (cephalopods' adaptive coloration works over a wide range of sizes in the organisms' class from small-size cuttlefish to large-size octopus and squid); and surface texture (cephalopods can selectively adapt or "crinkle" their skins to match a variety of three-dimensional textures, which provides additional light scattering and shadowing).
ELECTRONIC DEVICES ACHIEVE COLORS FASTER AND ACHIEVE MORE COLORS
Human-developed technology is far superior to cephalopods or other color-adapting animals when it comes to speed. In other words, human-made electronics can achieve color and a color change faster than the response time of a biological organism.
In addition, synthetic devices can provide a greater range of colors and more efficient dark or black state. In other words, a device can achieve a black screen, but most biological organisms cannot achieve such darkened coloring. This is, in part, due to the fact that an organism like a marine animal generally has no reason, in terms of survival adaptation or signaling, to go to a dark or black state. Such an adaptation would actually make them more visible, not less, to predators.
###
FUNDING
This research was funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory, National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Army Research Laboratory, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Office of Naval Research.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Nebraska athletic director Tom Osborne jokes about his health as he announces his retiring as of Jan. 1, during a news conference held in Lincoln, Neb., Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2012. The 75-year-old Osborne said "the perception" that you're getting old "can get in the way." He also said he didn't want to be a distraction. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)
Nebraska athletic director Tom Osborne jokes about his health as he announces his retiring as of Jan. 1, during a news conference held in Lincoln, Neb., Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2012. The 75-year-old Osborne said "the perception" that you're getting old "can get in the way." He also said he didn't want to be a distraction. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)
Nebraska athletic director Tom Osborne announces his retirement as of Jan. 1, during a news conference in Lincoln, Neb., Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2012. The 75-year-old Osborne said "the perception" that you're getting old "can get in the way." He also said he didn't want to be a distraction. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)
FILE - In this April 17, 2010, file photo, Nebraska athletic director Tom Osborne looks on before the annual Red-White spring NCAA college football game in Lincoln, Neb. Osborne is retiring as of Jan. 1. The 75-year-old Osborne announced his decision Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2012, at a news conference. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)
FILE - In this April 16, 2011, photo, Nebraska athletic director Tom Osborne stands on the field before the annual Red-White spring NCAA college football game in Lincoln, Neb. Osborne is retiring as of Jan. 1. The 75-year-old Osborne announced his decision Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2012, at a news conference. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)
University of Nebraska-Lincoln Chancellor Harvey Perlman speaks to reporters after athletic director Tom Osborne, right, announced he is retiring as of Jan. 1, during a news conference held in Lincoln, Neb., Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2012. The 75-year-old Osborne said "the perception" that you're getting old "can get in the way." He also said he didn't want to be a distraction. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) ? Tom Osborne, who put together one of the most successful coaching runs in college football history before serving in Congress and taking the reins as Nebraska's athletic director five years ago, is retiring.
The 75-year-old Osborne announced at a news conference Wednesday that he would step down Jan. 1, though he will stay for an additional six months to assist in the transition to a new athletic director.
"At some point, whether you're able to function or not, just the perception that you're getting old can get in the way," Osborne said. "I don't want to be one of those guys everybody is walking around wringing their hands trying to figure out what are we going to do with him? That happens sometimes."
Osborne, who had double-bypass heart surgery in 1985, said he has no health issues that led to his decision.
"I'm probably healthier today than when I was a member of Congress. That takes a big toll on you," he said.
Basketball coach Tim Miles tweeted news of Osborne's retirement announcement shortly before Osborne spoke to reporters. Miles said Osborne leaves "an unreal legacy" at Nebraska.
Associate athletic director Jamie Williams, who played tight end for Osborne in the early 1980s, said, "They don't make a lot of Tom Osbornes. There aren't a lot of living legends left that you can rub elbows with every day. For him to say he's going off to pasture, I told him we have more dragons to slay. Sometimes fishing becomes more important."
Osborne said he told chancellor Harvey Perlman in August that he planned to retire after the football season. Perlman said a search firm had been hired to identify candidates to succeed Osborne, and that he has already interviewed some of them.
"The decision will be his," Osborne said, referring to Perlman. "I'll support him any way I can."
Besides the success his Cornhuskers teams enjoyed from 1973-1997, Osborne served in Congress and lost a gubernatorial bid before returning to the university in 2007 to take over the athletic department. He oversaw the rebuilding of the football program he loves and shepherded the school's move from the Big 12 to the Big Ten.
Under Osborne's watch, the athletic department has built a new basketball practice facility and entered into a public-private partnership to build a 16,000-seat basketball arena in downtown Lincoln that will open for the 2013-14 season. He also oversaw an expansion project that will increase Memorial Stadium's capacity to more than 90,000 next year.
Perlman had asked Osborne to take over the athletic department at a time of turmoil. The football program was struggling under Bill Callahan, and staff morale was low under athletic director Steve Pederson.
Osborne recalled Wednesday that when he first met with athletic department executives, a few of them told him they were receiving counseling because of stress. Several staff members either had quit or were considering quitting.
"I wouldn't say things were awful," Osborne said, "but things were a little fragmented. Some people had quit and some people were thinking about quitting. People pulled together very quickly. Hopefully, it has worked out well."
Osborne fired Callahan after the 2007 season and hired Bo Pelini, who made the Huskers competitive again and led them to the Big 12 championship game in 2009 and 2010. Among Osborne's other key personnel moves: hiring Miles from Colorado State last March to coach the men's basketball program and hiring former major-leaguer Darin Erstad in 2010 to coach baseball at his alma mater.
Osborne is most widely known for his coaching. Every one of his 25 teams won at least nine games, and three of his last four teams won national championships. He retired with a career record of 255-49-3, an .836 winning percentage that ranked fifth all-time among Division I coaches, and 13 conference titles. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1998, the year after he retired.
Osborne turned to politics after his coaching days. By overwhelming margins, voters in the western Nebraska district elected him to the House of Representatives in 2000, 2002 and 2004. In perhaps the greatest upset in Nebraska political history, Osborne lost to incumbent Dave Heineman in the 2006 Republican gubernatorial primary.
Osborne finished his third term after the crushing defeat, then returned to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he taught classes in leadership and business ethics before taking the reins of the athletic department.
"I feel we're well positioned," Osborne said. "We worked hard on the culture and part of that has not just been internal. We've tried to link this place with the former players. ... Whatever we've accomplished couldn't happen if we didn't have a united fan base. It would be hard to find one equal to our fans around the country. It allows a program in a state of 1.8 million to be competitive with programs in densely populated areas."
Perlman praised Osborne for stabilizing the athletic department.
"There are people you can admire from a distance and then when you get up close you see all the warts," he said. "That's not been my experience with Tom. It's been fun to interview head coaches with him and to see the national respect and awe they have of his reputation."
Williams said he hoped Osborne would stay involved in Nebraska athletics long after the new athletic director is hired.
"But at some point," Williams said, "he has to do more fishing."
Osborne joked that his wife approved of his decision.
"It leaves me with a great deal of fear and trepidation," he said with a smile, "because she keeps reminding me the garage hasn't been cleaned in three years and I can see a whole list of things popping up."
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Bill Lindsay, the affable, consensus-seeking presiding officer of the Suffolk County Legislature since 2006, is a victim of occupational exposure to asbestos.? It happened not during his government service but in his prior work as an electrician and as an official of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers inspecting job sites at which fellow electricians suspected they were being exposed to asbestos.
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Public release date: 26-Sep-2012
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