Video: Cain clears the air

Penn State reportedly planning Paterno's exit

Penn State administrators are discussing how to manage Joe Paterno's departure as the football coach, the New York Times reported Tuesday, citing two unnamed people briefed on talks among the school's top officials.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/45214164#45214164

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Political giving by labor unions depressed in 2011 (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? Members of labor unions are guarding their pocketbooks this election season, according to a new analysis, which may hurt Democrats in Congress in the 2012 elections.

Union political action committees donated just under $15 million to federal candidates in the first three quarters of this year, down 26 percent from $20.4 million for the same period four years ago, according to an analysis of union giving compiled for Reuters by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The trend is bad news for the party as it fights next year to re-elect President Barack Obama, keep its majority in the U.S. Senate and make gains in the House of Representatives.

Reasons for the downturn include the impact of a weak economy, a lack of enthusiasm for politics among Democrats, and new strategies by unions to redirect their efforts, according to unions and labor experts.

"As things heat up next year, the situation may be different, but the reality is there will be a lot of people who have not voted to create jobs," said Jim Spellane, a spokesman for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union.

Organized labor is facing battles in several states for its own existence, with Republicans seeking to overhaul employment rules and severely limit collective bargaining rights of public sector workers.

A major test comes on Tuesday in Ohio, where voters will decide whether to repeal a law backed by Republicans limiting bargaining for police and other state workers.

AFL-CIO spokesman Jeff Hauser said the drop reflects a conscious decision by that giant umbrella union to focus more on "year-round mobilization and political independence."

Obama is unlikely to be hit much by the slowdown in labor giving. Already far ahead in 2012 fund-raising, he is expected to top his record-breaking $750 million haul from 2008.

Things will be tougher in Congress, whose members face historically low approval ratings from a public frustrated with unemployment stuck above 9 percent. Democrats are not likely to take back control of the House, and they may also lose their majority in the Senate to Republicans, analysts say.

Giving by union political action committees (PACs) to candidate PACs is also down, though not by as much. Union-affiliated PACs gave about $27.5 million to candidates in 2007, compared to $25.4 million this year, according to CRP data.

BUSINESS VS. UNIONS

Nearly all unions favor Democrats. Labor contributed about half of million dollars to Obama in 2008, and spent millions more in advertising. Unions gave $96 million to congressional candidates in 2010.

Republicans benefit to a larger extent than Democrats from donations from the business community, whose giving far outstrip unions. Corporate interests hold a 15-to-1 edge in political donations over organized labor, according to CRP.

"At the end of the day, corporations have more money than unions. A lot more money than unions," said Trevor Potter, who was Republican presidential candidate John McCain's lawyer during his 2008 run for the White House.

A major benefit of union support is organizing ability. Unions provide armies of volunteers for telephone banks, help get voters to polling places and spread candidates' messages.

That is one area where the AFL-CIO says it is stepping up its efforts.

"We're redoubling our efforts to keep working people mobilized, not only before federal elections but year round, even year and odd year alike" from local to federal elections, Hauser said.

A lack of a Republican candidate is also failing to inspire union members, compared to the contest four years ago.

"There is an enthusiasm deficit right now but I think much of that will go away when there is an actual Republican candidate and the stakes of the 2012 elections become clear," said labor professor Harley Shaiken of the University of California at Berkeley.

(Editing by Alistair Bell and Philip Barbara)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/democrats/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111108/pl_nm/us_usa_campaign_unions

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Scientists make step towards using brain scans to predict outcome of psychotic episodes

[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 7-Nov-2011
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Craig Brierley
c.brierley@wellcome.ac.uk
44-207-611-7329
Wellcome Trust

Computer analysis of brain scans could help predict how severe the future illness course of a patient with psychosis will be, according to research funded by the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust. The findings could allow doctors to make more accurate decisions about how best to treat patients.

Psychosis is a condition that affects people's minds, altering the way they think, feel and behave. It can be accompanied by hallucinations and delusions. The most common forms are part of mental health conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but symptoms of psychosis can also occur in conditions such as Parkinson's disease and alcohol or drug abuse.

Many patients recover from psychosis with minimal symptoms, but for others, the psychosis can be persistent and can affect their ability to function well and lead a normal life. At present, psychiatrists have no clear method of assessing a person's risk of future episodes and predicting how the disease will progress. This is important in terms of guiding patients' and their clinicians' choices about appropriate treatments.

Now, a study led by Dr Paola Dazzan and Dr Janaina Mourao-Miranda at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London in collaboration with the Computer Science Department at University College London and published today in the journal Psychological Medicine reports the successful use of computer algorithms to analyse MRI scans and predict a patient's outcome.

Algorithms that quantify the risk of further episodes of disease are common in areas of medicine such as cardiovascular medicine and oncology, but no accurate tests are available to psychiatrists. Researchers have previously used MRI to predict outcome in psychosis, based on the analysis of specific brain regions. However, the changes in the brain associated with psychosis are often subtle and difficult to detect, and these approaches have therefore been of limited benefit for clinical practice.

Dr Dazzan and colleagues worked with a cohort of 100 patients, taking MRI brain scans when they presented to clinical services with a first psychotic episode. In addition, the researchers scanned the brains of a control group of 91 healthy individuals. The patients were followed up around six years later and classified as having developed a continuous, episodic or intermediate illness course, depending on whether their symptoms remitted or not during this time.

From this larger sample, the researchers then analysed scans from twenty-eight subjects with a continuous course of illness, the same number from patients with an episodic course and again, the same number from healthy controls. They used these scans as data to 'train' a software developed by a group led by Dr. Mourao-Miranda based on pattern recognition (a statistical approach that uses data from the whole brain rather than from a specific region) and to distinguish between the different severities of the illness. The algorithm, applied to the scans collected at the first episode of psychosis, was able to differentiate between patients who then went on to develop continuous psychosis and those who went on to develop a more benign, episodic psychosis in seven out of ten cases.

"Although we have some way to go to improve the accuracy of these tests and validate the results on independent large samples, we have shown that in principle it should be possible to use brain scans to identify at the first episode of illness both patients who are likely to go on to have a continuous psychotic illness and those who will develop a less severe form of the illness," says Dr Mourao-Miranda, a Wellcome Trust Research Career Development Fellow. "This suggests that even by the time that they have their first episode of psychosis, significant changes have already occurred to their brains."

"This is the first step towards being able to use brain imaging to provide tangible benefit to patients affected by psychosis," says Dr Dazzan. "This could in future offer a fast and reliable way of predicting the outcome for an individual patient allowing us to optimise treatments for those most in need, while avoiding long-term exposure to antipsychotic medications in those with very mild forms.

"Structural MRI scans can be obtained in as little as ten minutes and so this technique could be incorporated into routine clinical investigations. The information this provides could help inform the treatment options available to each patient and help us better manage their illness."

###



[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share 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.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 7-Nov-2011
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Craig Brierley
c.brierley@wellcome.ac.uk
44-207-611-7329
Wellcome Trust

Computer analysis of brain scans could help predict how severe the future illness course of a patient with psychosis will be, according to research funded by the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust. The findings could allow doctors to make more accurate decisions about how best to treat patients.

Psychosis is a condition that affects people's minds, altering the way they think, feel and behave. It can be accompanied by hallucinations and delusions. The most common forms are part of mental health conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but symptoms of psychosis can also occur in conditions such as Parkinson's disease and alcohol or drug abuse.

Many patients recover from psychosis with minimal symptoms, but for others, the psychosis can be persistent and can affect their ability to function well and lead a normal life. At present, psychiatrists have no clear method of assessing a person's risk of future episodes and predicting how the disease will progress. This is important in terms of guiding patients' and their clinicians' choices about appropriate treatments.

Now, a study led by Dr Paola Dazzan and Dr Janaina Mourao-Miranda at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London in collaboration with the Computer Science Department at University College London and published today in the journal Psychological Medicine reports the successful use of computer algorithms to analyse MRI scans and predict a patient's outcome.

Algorithms that quantify the risk of further episodes of disease are common in areas of medicine such as cardiovascular medicine and oncology, but no accurate tests are available to psychiatrists. Researchers have previously used MRI to predict outcome in psychosis, based on the analysis of specific brain regions. However, the changes in the brain associated with psychosis are often subtle and difficult to detect, and these approaches have therefore been of limited benefit for clinical practice.

Dr Dazzan and colleagues worked with a cohort of 100 patients, taking MRI brain scans when they presented to clinical services with a first psychotic episode. In addition, the researchers scanned the brains of a control group of 91 healthy individuals. The patients were followed up around six years later and classified as having developed a continuous, episodic or intermediate illness course, depending on whether their symptoms remitted or not during this time.

From this larger sample, the researchers then analysed scans from twenty-eight subjects with a continuous course of illness, the same number from patients with an episodic course and again, the same number from healthy controls. They used these scans as data to 'train' a software developed by a group led by Dr. Mourao-Miranda based on pattern recognition (a statistical approach that uses data from the whole brain rather than from a specific region) and to distinguish between the different severities of the illness. The algorithm, applied to the scans collected at the first episode of psychosis, was able to differentiate between patients who then went on to develop continuous psychosis and those who went on to develop a more benign, episodic psychosis in seven out of ten cases.

"Although we have some way to go to improve the accuracy of these tests and validate the results on independent large samples, we have shown that in principle it should be possible to use brain scans to identify at the first episode of illness both patients who are likely to go on to have a continuous psychotic illness and those who will develop a less severe form of the illness," says Dr Mourao-Miranda, a Wellcome Trust Research Career Development Fellow. "This suggests that even by the time that they have their first episode of psychosis, significant changes have already occurred to their brains."

"This is the first step towards being able to use brain imaging to provide tangible benefit to patients affected by psychosis," says Dr Dazzan. "This could in future offer a fast and reliable way of predicting the outcome for an individual patient allowing us to optimise treatments for those most in need, while avoiding long-term exposure to antipsychotic medications in those with very mild forms.

"Structural MRI scans can be obtained in as little as ten minutes and so this technique could be incorporated into routine clinical investigations. The information this provides could help inform the treatment options available to each patient and help us better manage their illness."

###



[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share 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.


Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/wt-sms110711.php

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Boxing great Joe Frazier dies at 67 of cancer (AP)

PHILADELPHIA ? Joe Frazier had to throw his greatest punch to knock down "The Greatest." A vicious left hook from Frazier put Muhammad Ali on the canvas in the 15th round in March 1971 when he became the first man to beat him in the Fight of the Century at Madison Square Garden.

"That was the greatest thing that ever happened in my life," Frazier said.

It was his biggest night, one that would never come again.

Frazier, who died Monday night after a brief battle with liver cancer at 67, will forever be associated with Ali. No one in boxing would ever dream of anointing Ali as The Greatest unless he, too, was linked to Smokin' Joe.

"I will always remember Joe with respect and admiration," Ali said in a statement. "My sympathy goes out to his family and loved ones."

They fought three times, twice in the heart of New York City and once in the morning in a steamy arena in the Thrilla in Manila in the Philippines. They went 41 rounds together. Neither gave an inch and both gave it their all.

In their last fight in Manila in 1975, they traded punches with a fervor that seemed unimaginable among heavyweights. Frazier gave almost as good as he got for 14 rounds, then had to be held back by trainer Eddie Futch as he tried to go out for the final round, unable to see.

"Closest thing to dying that I know of," Ali said afterward.

Ali was as merciless with Frazier out of the ring as he was inside it. He called him a gorilla, and mocked him as an Uncle Tom. But he respected him as a fighter, especially after Frazier won a decision to defend his heavyweight title against the then-unbeaten Ali in a fight that was so big Frank Sinatra was shooting pictures at ringside and both fighters earned an astonishing $2.5 million.

The night at the Garden 40 years ago remained fresh in Frazier's mind as he talked about his life, career and relationship with Ali a few months before he died.

"I can't go nowhere where it's not mentioned," he told The Associated Press.

Bob Arum, who once promoted Ali, said he was saddened by Frazier's passing.

"He was such an inspirational guy. A decent guy. A man of his word," Arum said. "I'm torn up by Joe dying at this relatively young age. I can't say enough about Joe."

Frazier's death was announced in a statement by his family, who asked to be able to grieve privately and said they would announce "our father's homecoming celebration" as soon as possible.

On Tuesday, former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson posted his condolences on Twitter. Tyson wrote, "As a young fighter it has always been an honor to be compared" to Frazier.

Also, the International Boxing Hall of Fame announced its flags in Canastota, N.Y., will fly at half-staff in memory of Frazier. Frazier was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1990.

Manny Pacquiao learned of the death shortly after he arrived in Las Vegas for his fight Saturday night with Juan Manuel Marquez. Like Frazier in his prime, Pacquiao has a powerful left hook that he has used in his remarkable run to stardom.

"Boxing lost a great champion, and the sport lost a great ambassador," Pacquiao said.

Don King, who promoted the Thrilla in Manila, said Frazier always fought with courage and for respect.

"One cannot underestimate the contribution Smokin' Joe and Ali made to progress and change by creating the space, through their talent, for black men to be seen, visible and relevant," King said. "The Thrilla in Manila helped make America better."

Though slowed in his later years and his speech slurred by the toll of punches taken in the ring, Frazier was still active on the autograph circuit in the months before he died. In September he went to Las Vegas, where he signed autographs in the lobby of the MGM Grand shortly before Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s fight against Victor Ortiz.

An old friend, Gene Kilroy, visited with him and watched Frazier work the crowd.

"He was so nice to everybody," Kilroy said. "He would say to each of them, `Joe Frazier, sharp as a razor, what's your name?'"

Frazier was small for a heavyweight, weighing just 205 pounds when he won the title by stopping Jimmy Ellis in the fifth round of their 1970 fight at Madison Square Garden. But he fought every minute of every round going forward behind a vicious left hook, and there were few fighters who could withstand his constant pressure.

His reign as heavyweight champion lasted only four fights ? including the win over Ali ? before he ran into an even more fearsome slugger than himself. George Foreman responded to Frazier's constant attack by dropping him three times in the first round and three more in the second before their 1973 fight in Jamaica was waved to a close and the world had a new heavyweight champion.

"He would not back up from King Kong," Foreman said. "I know, I knocked Joe down six times. When our fight was over, Joe was on his feet looking for me."

Two fights later, he met Ali in a rematch of their first fight, only this time the outcome was different. Ali won a 12-round decision, and later that year stopped Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle in Zaire.

There had to be a third fight, though, and what a fight it was. With Ali's heavyweight title at stake, the two met in Manila in a fight that will long be seared in boxing history.

Frazier went after Ali round after round, landing his left hook with regularity as he made Ali backpedal around the ring. But Ali responded with left jabs and right hands that found their mark again and again. Even the intense heat inside the arena couldn't stop the two as they fought every minute of every round with neither willing to concede the other one second of the round.

"They told me Joe Frazier was through," Ali told Frazier at one point during the fight.

"They lied," Frazier said, before hitting Ali with a left hook.

Finally, though, Frazier simply couldn't see and Futch would not let him go out for the 15th round. Ali won the fight while on his stool, exhausted and contemplating himself whether to go on.

"It was unworldly what we had just seen," Arum said. "Two men fighting one of the great wars of all time. It's something I will never forget for all the years I have left."

It was one of the greatest fights ever, but it took a toll. Frazier would fight only two more times, getting knocked out in a rematch with Foreman eight months later before coming back in 1981 for an ill advised fight with Jumbo Cummings.

"They should have both retired after the Manila fight," former AP boxing writer Ed Schuyler Jr. said. "They left every bit of talent they had in the ring that day."

Born in Beaufort, S.C., on Jan. 12, 1944, Frazier took up boxing early after watching weekly fights on the black and white television on his family's small farm. He was a top amateur for several years, and became the only American fighter to win a gold medal in the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo despite fighting in the final bout with an injured left thumb.

"Joe Frazier should be remembered as one of the greatest fighters of all time and a real man," Arum told the AP in a telephone interview Monday night. "He's a guy that stood up for himself. He didn't compromise and always gave 100 percent in the ring. There was never a fight in the ring where Joe didn't give 100 percent."

After turning pro in 1965, Frazier quickly became known for his punching power, stopping his first 11 opponents. Within three years he was fighting world-class opposition and, in 1970, beat Ellis to win the heavyweight title that he would hold for more than two years.

Foreman finally took the title from him in a 1973 fight that was as shocking as it was vicious. Foreman knocked Frazier down six times to win in two rounds, and the first knockdown inspired a call at ringside that is among the most famous in sports history.

"Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!" Howard Cosell yelled into his ABC microphone.

In Philadelphia, a fellow Philadelphia fighter, longtime middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins, said Frazier was so big in the city that he should have his own statue, like the fictional Rocky character.

"I saw him at one of my car washes a few weeks ago. He was in a car, just hollering at us, 'They're trying to get me!' That was his hi," Hopkins said. "I'm glad I got to see him in the last couple of months. At the end of the day, I respect the man. I believe at the end of his life, he was fighting to get that respect."

He was a fixture in Philadelphia where he trained fighters in a gym he owned and made a cameo in "Rocky."

Mayor Michael Nutter said Frazier "represented the heart and soul of boxing in our great city. In the ring and in the neighborhoods, he carried himself with dignity and courage. He was a true ambassador for our city."

It was his fights with Ali that would define Frazier. Though Ali was gracious in defeat in the first fight, he was as vicious with his words as he was with his punches in promoting all three fights ? and he never missed a chance to get a jab in at Frazier.

Frazier, who in his later years would have financial trouble and end up running a gym in his adopted hometown of Philadelphia, took the jabs personally. He felt Ali made fun of him by calling him names and said things that were not true just to get under his skin. Those feelings were only magnified as Ali went from being an icon in the ring to one of the most beloved people in the world.

After a trembling Ali lit the Olympic torch in 1996 in Atlanta, Frazier was asked what he thought about it.

"They should have thrown him in," Frazier responded.

He mellowed, though, in recent years, preferring to remember the good from his fights with Ali rather than the bad. Just before the 40th anniversary of his win over Ali earlier this year ? a day Frazier celebrated with parties in New York ? he said he no longer felt any bitterness toward Ali, who suffers from Parkinson's disease and is mostly mute.

"I forgive him," Frazier said. "He's in a bad way."

___

Tim Dahlberg reported from Las Vegas.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111108/ap_on_sp_bo_ne/box_obit_frazier

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Falcons keep Colts winless with rout

Delone Carter,  Brent Grimes,,  Sean Weatherspoon,  Curtis Lofton

By MICHAEL MAROT

updated 4:38 p.m. ET Nov. 6, 2011

INDIANAPOLIS - Julio Jones' hamstring looked just fine Sunday.

The rookie receiver caught touchdown passes of 50 and 80 yards and then set up a late field goal with a 19-yard run, leading the Atlanta Falcons to a 31-7 rout of the winless Indianapolis Colts.

After missing two games with a strained left hamstring, Jones finished with three catches for a season-high 131 yards. He added two carries for 33 yards to give Atlanta (5-3) its third straight victory overall and first road win in a series that dates to 1966.

Miami's win at Kansas City left the Colts (0-9) as the only team in the NFL without a victory. They have lost five straight home games for the first time since 2001, and this defeat was every bit as lopsided as the score made it appear.

Minus injured quarterback Peyton Manning all season, Indianapolis is in danger of falling to 0-10 for the first time since 1997, before the Manning era began.

But the Colts have collapsed everywhere, not simply at one position.

They gave up 14 points off two turnovers Sunday, were shut out on offense and went nearly 30 minutes without a first down. Plus, their top two tight ends ? Dallas Clark (lower leg) and Brody Eldridge (hand) ? didn't finish the game.

Indy has been outscored 75-14 in the first half and 120-24 over the past three weeks. The problems started early again Sunday.

Running back Delone Carter fumbled on the game's second play. Five plays after that, Michael Turner plunged in from 1 yard out to make it 7-0.

Two series later, Jones made a remarkable adjustment between three defenders to haul in Matt Ryan's 50-yard lob pass at the goal line. The officials initially ruled it incomplete before Atlanta coach Mike Smith challenged the call and won on replay. That made it 14-0 late in the first quarter.

The Falcons were just getting started.

Jones made it 21-0 when he caught a 10-yard pass and outran the Indy defense for an 80-yard score.

The Colts finally scored when Jerraud Powers made a juggling interception and returned it 6 yards for a TD.

But with Curtis Painter and the Colts' offense struggling, it didn't matter much.

Ryan threw a 1-yard TD pass to Tony Gonzalez late in the third quarter, and Jones' long run set up Matt Bryant for a 20-yard field goal early in the fourth to close out the scoring.

Ryan was 14 of 24 for 275 yards with three scores and one interception. Turner ran 19 times for 71 yards.

Painter was 13 of 27 for 98 yards with one interception, and Donald Brown led the Colts with 16 carries for 70 yards.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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??Matt Moore threw for 244 yards and three touchdowns, Reggie Bush had 92 yards rushing and another score and the Miami Dolphins won their first game of the season in a big way, 31-3 over the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/45183250/ns/sports-nfl/

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The White House vs. UFO believers (The Week)

New York ? More than 17,000 Americans demand that Team Obama tell the nation exactly what it knows about aliens ? and the administration obliges

It's not every day that Team Obama talks about E.T. But in a recent post on the official White House website, a high-ranking official in the president's Office of Science & Technology Policy took the time to respond to a burning question from UFO conspiracy theorists. Here's what happened:

How did the White House wind up talking about UFOs?
The White House has a petition site called "We the People" that allows users to pose questions. If a petition gets enough signatures, it is reviewed by the White House staff and receives an official response. And two petitions, signed by a total of more than 17,000 people, demanded that the government come clean if it was hiding knowledge of extraterrestrial life. The?petitioners?wrote:?"The people have a right to know. The people can handle the truth."

What did the White House say?
"Thank you for signing the petition and asking the Obama administration to acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence here on Earth," the White House's Phil Larson cordially replied. "The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race." And, perhaps to the dismay of conspiracy theorists, Larson stated flatly: "In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public's eye."

And that's all there is to it??
Well, not exactly. At least one conspiracy theorist unsatisfied with the White House's response is still "sure" that "there are many secret government programs that the president doesn't know exist,"?says Melissa Bell at The Washington Post.?And Larson did leave the possibility of alien life open for debate, admitting that?"among the trillions and trillions of stars,"?the odds are "pretty high" that a planet like our own may support life,?says Britain's?Daily Mail. But because the distance between planets is so vast, the likelihood of contact with actual extraterrestrials is still "extremely small."

Sources: Daily Mail, LA Times, Telegraph, Washington Post,?WhiteHouse.gov

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Harvey Gotliffe, Ph.D.: 'Wee the People,' No More; 'We the People,' Know More

Those in power and those who deem themselves powerful, may have finally discovered that there is a preamble to the U.S. Constitution that reads, "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

The people know, and many of today's Occupy protesters have not only read the Constitution, but have found meaning in its words.

They are angry, disenchanted and upset with corporations, financial institutions, government agencies, elected officials, their lobbyist cohorts, and those individuals of extreme wealth and power who have limited concern for the general welfare of the other ninety-nine percent of the people.

Some have placed themselves far apart from and far above the rest, and at times against the law of the land and the unwritten law of common decency. Although they may be different in nature and in their goals, many have similar, undesirable traits of being self-indulgent, duplicitous, lying, cheating, greedy, manipulative, and inept.

They have misconstrued the conception of promoting the general welfare, to mean that they are the generals and they are looking first and foremost after their own financial welfare.

The Yiddish language may best befit describing the actions of many of today's problem creators who want the protesters to gey avek, just go away. Until protestors came on the scene and made der tuml (caused chaos), these goniffs (thieves) thought that they could get away with their narishkeyt; absurd, detrimental nonsense. Many of those in power have quietly and covertly elevated themselves into self-proclaimed, controlling roles but the people are now shouting "genug iz genug," enough is enough. Apropos Yiddish expressions can be found on web sites such as www.theoyway.com.

The people know that many in Congress seem to be in business for themselves and at times their sole objective seems to be getting reelected at any cost, even if it means abdicating their role as representatives of "we the people." Many are beholden to the intermediary lobbyists and those entities they represent including financial institutions and corporations.

The administration pretends to be immune to such under-the-table actions, so amidst pre-planned hoopla, the "people's president" visited the Bay Area in October to do his own lobbying for campaign funds. The attendees at a fancy San Francisco hotel paid a minimum of $7,500 to hear him voice the usual campaign platitudes, and larger contributions garnered a photograph with Obama. In September, at the exclusive suburban residence of Facebook's COO, faithful fawners paid $35,800 to enjoy a prosaic dinner with him. The attendees are definitely not part of the 99 percent crowd, and their only protest might have been that their filet mignon was not cooked precisely to their taste.

The people know this and that is why in a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, the President's disapproval rating matched his approval rating of 46 percent, while Congress hardly worked to earn its 84 percent disapproval rating.

The people are finding out that if they raise their voices in protest, they can bring about change, and have more change in their own pockets. When Bank of America offered their customers a chance to pay a $5 a month fee to get to their own money by using the debit card the bank "forced" upon them, people said "No." When the bank received a deluge of complaints with the threat of closing accounts, it reluctantly relented and cancelled their benevolent offer.

The guileless politicians watch in confused and frightened awe and all but a few are maintaining a wait-and-see-what's-best-for-me attitude about how to use the protests to their advantage or to the disadvantage of their opponents. All the while they are watching the action from afar on the television news.

When mediocre broadcast media coverage is not focusing on the juicier, easier-to-report Perry's verbal gaffs or Cain's alleged physical improprieties, they turn to the protests. The people know that the inept broadcast media are an insidious culprit in this drama, and they are bewildered as how to cover the protesters.

But the sensation-chasing broadcast media have sought out to cover the far-less-than 1 percent of the protesters whose disruptive physical actions are more suited for their cameras than people peacefully protesting. They have an insatiable need to present camera-ready scenes of hooligans and anarchists destroying property. These people are there for their own selfish, destructive reasons while damaging the people's legitimate movement for change.

Complaints are coming from city officials, protesters, concerned citizens, the cable media's false pundits, and the tea party. The latter gained its own notoriety by the media's overblown coverage of their early activities. Now the Richmond (VA) Tea Party is complaining that city officials are favoring Occupy Richmond because the protesters received a free pass, while they had to pay for permits and portable toilets for their events. That's the price they had to pay for their sit-in.

The media, politicians, financial institutions and corporations don't know what to do about the legitimate protests and sincere Occupy protesters, but the people know that now is time to act. In their own way, they are doing something tangible and overt to try and form a far more perfect Union than the one that has been given to them by those they elected to office.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harvey-gotliffe-phd/occupy-movement_b_1077179.html

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Why cooking counts

[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 7-Nov-2011
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Peter Reuell
preuell@fas.harvard.edu
617-496-8070
Harvard University

Study finds cooking increases energy from meat, may have driven human evolution

Next time you're out to dinner, you may want to think twice before ordering your steak rare.

In a first-of-its kind study, Harvard researchers have shown that cooked meat provides more energy than raw meat, a finding that suggests humans are biologically adapted to take advantage of the benefits of cooking, and that cooking played a key role in driving the evolution of man from an ape-like creature into one more closely resembling modern humans.

Conducted by Rachel Carmody, a student in Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the research also raises important questions about the way modern humans eat.

"The results of this paper are equally relevant to human evolution and to the way we think about food today," Carmody said. "It is astonishing that we don't understand the fundamental properties of the food we eat. All the effort we put into cooking food and presenting it mashing it up, or cutting it, or slicing or pounding it we don't understand what effect that has on the energy we extract from food, and energy is the primary reason we eat in the first place."

Though earlier studies had examined specific aspects of what happens during the cooking process, surprisingly Carmody said, none had ever fully examined whether cooking affected the in vivo energy value of food.

"There had been no research that looked at the net effects we had pieces that we could not integrate together, so we didn't know what the overall answer was," Carmody said. "We knew some of the mechanisms that might be at play, but we didn't know how they combined."

To examine those effects, Carmody designed a unique experimental model. Over forty days, she fed two groups of mice a series of diets that consisted of either meat or sweet potatoes prepared in four ways raw and whole, raw and pounded, cooked and whole, and cooked and pounded.

Over the course of each diet, researchers tracked changes in each mouse's body mass, as well as how much they used an exercise wheel. The results, Carmody said, clearly showed that cooked meat delivered more energy to the mice that raw.

It's a finding, she said, that holds exciting implications for our understanding of how humans evolved.

Though early humans were eating meat as early as 2.5 million years ago, without the ability to control fire, any meat in their diet was raw, and probably pounded using primitive stone tools. Approximately 1.9 million years ago, however, a sudden change occurred. The bodies of early humans grew larger. Their brains increased in size and complexity. Adaptations for long-distance running appeared.

Though earlier theories suggested the changes were the product of increased meat in their diet, Carmody's research points to another possible hypothesis that cooking provided early humans with more energy, allowing for such energetically-costly evolutionary changes.

Although that theory that had been advanced years earlier by Richard Wrangham, the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology and Master of Currier House, it wasn't until Carmody's work that scientists had hard evidence to either support or refute it.

"I'm a biologist by training," Wrangham said. "If you want to understand the anatomical, physiological and behavioral features of a species, its diet is the first thing you ask about. If you want to know what makes a giraffe tick, it's the fact that it eats leaves from the tops of trees. If you want to understand the shape of a flea, it's because it eats blood. But with humans everyone had said what's key about humans is the fact that we are variable, that we are good at solving problems, so human adaptation in general is the result of our brains. But this, right away, strays from the fundamental biological concept of diet.

"That's why Rachel's work is so important," he continued. "For the first time, we have a clear answer to the why cooking is so important cross culturally and biologically because it gives us increased energy, and life is all about energy."

The impacts of Carmody's work, however, aren't limited to the early days of human evolution. The findings also lay bare the shortcomings in the Atwater system, the calorie-measurement tool used to produce modern food labels.

"That system is based on principles that don't reflect the in vivo energy availability," Carmody said. "Although it measure what has been digested, the human gastrointestinal system includes a whole host of bacteria, and those bacteria metabolize some of our food for their own benefit.

"Atwater doesn't discriminate between food that is digested by the human or the bacteria, and increasing evidence suggests that the bacteria take a pretty good portion of the food we eat," she continued. "In fact, research has shown that one of the ways to increase the value humans get, relative to the bacteria, is by processing food, and cooking is one way to do that."

Carmody's research could also inform how food scientists tackle one of the thorniest of dietary challenges the prevalence of obesity in Western nations, and malnutrition in developing parts of the world.

"As human evolutionary biologists, we think about energetic gain as being something positive, because it allows for growth and reproduction, and it's a critical component of a species' evolutionary fitness," Carmody said. "But the question in the modern world is: If we now have the problem of excess as opposed to deficit, is that still a positive?

"This research illuminates that that way we've been thinking about food energy value historically, and the way we derive recommendations whether for areas that are experiencing famine or areas where people suffer from energetic excess have been based on assumptions that are not biologically relevant. Instead, they've been based on the treatment of the human body as an efficient digestion machine, when, in fact, it's not, and the degree to which it's not is affected by food processing, including cooking."

###

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, Harvard Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology and the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study.



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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.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 7-Nov-2011
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Peter Reuell
preuell@fas.harvard.edu
617-496-8070
Harvard University

Study finds cooking increases energy from meat, may have driven human evolution

Next time you're out to dinner, you may want to think twice before ordering your steak rare.

In a first-of-its kind study, Harvard researchers have shown that cooked meat provides more energy than raw meat, a finding that suggests humans are biologically adapted to take advantage of the benefits of cooking, and that cooking played a key role in driving the evolution of man from an ape-like creature into one more closely resembling modern humans.

Conducted by Rachel Carmody, a student in Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the research also raises important questions about the way modern humans eat.

"The results of this paper are equally relevant to human evolution and to the way we think about food today," Carmody said. "It is astonishing that we don't understand the fundamental properties of the food we eat. All the effort we put into cooking food and presenting it mashing it up, or cutting it, or slicing or pounding it we don't understand what effect that has on the energy we extract from food, and energy is the primary reason we eat in the first place."

Though earlier studies had examined specific aspects of what happens during the cooking process, surprisingly Carmody said, none had ever fully examined whether cooking affected the in vivo energy value of food.

"There had been no research that looked at the net effects we had pieces that we could not integrate together, so we didn't know what the overall answer was," Carmody said. "We knew some of the mechanisms that might be at play, but we didn't know how they combined."

To examine those effects, Carmody designed a unique experimental model. Over forty days, she fed two groups of mice a series of diets that consisted of either meat or sweet potatoes prepared in four ways raw and whole, raw and pounded, cooked and whole, and cooked and pounded.

Over the course of each diet, researchers tracked changes in each mouse's body mass, as well as how much they used an exercise wheel. The results, Carmody said, clearly showed that cooked meat delivered more energy to the mice that raw.

It's a finding, she said, that holds exciting implications for our understanding of how humans evolved.

Though early humans were eating meat as early as 2.5 million years ago, without the ability to control fire, any meat in their diet was raw, and probably pounded using primitive stone tools. Approximately 1.9 million years ago, however, a sudden change occurred. The bodies of early humans grew larger. Their brains increased in size and complexity. Adaptations for long-distance running appeared.

Though earlier theories suggested the changes were the product of increased meat in their diet, Carmody's research points to another possible hypothesis that cooking provided early humans with more energy, allowing for such energetically-costly evolutionary changes.

Although that theory that had been advanced years earlier by Richard Wrangham, the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology and Master of Currier House, it wasn't until Carmody's work that scientists had hard evidence to either support or refute it.

"I'm a biologist by training," Wrangham said. "If you want to understand the anatomical, physiological and behavioral features of a species, its diet is the first thing you ask about. If you want to know what makes a giraffe tick, it's the fact that it eats leaves from the tops of trees. If you want to understand the shape of a flea, it's because it eats blood. But with humans everyone had said what's key about humans is the fact that we are variable, that we are good at solving problems, so human adaptation in general is the result of our brains. But this, right away, strays from the fundamental biological concept of diet.

"That's why Rachel's work is so important," he continued. "For the first time, we have a clear answer to the why cooking is so important cross culturally and biologically because it gives us increased energy, and life is all about energy."

The impacts of Carmody's work, however, aren't limited to the early days of human evolution. The findings also lay bare the shortcomings in the Atwater system, the calorie-measurement tool used to produce modern food labels.

"That system is based on principles that don't reflect the in vivo energy availability," Carmody said. "Although it measure what has been digested, the human gastrointestinal system includes a whole host of bacteria, and those bacteria metabolize some of our food for their own benefit.

"Atwater doesn't discriminate between food that is digested by the human or the bacteria, and increasing evidence suggests that the bacteria take a pretty good portion of the food we eat," she continued. "In fact, research has shown that one of the ways to increase the value humans get, relative to the bacteria, is by processing food, and cooking is one way to do that."

Carmody's research could also inform how food scientists tackle one of the thorniest of dietary challenges the prevalence of obesity in Western nations, and malnutrition in developing parts of the world.

"As human evolutionary biologists, we think about energetic gain as being something positive, because it allows for growth and reproduction, and it's a critical component of a species' evolutionary fitness," Carmody said. "But the question in the modern world is: If we now have the problem of excess as opposed to deficit, is that still a positive?

"This research illuminates that that way we've been thinking about food energy value historically, and the way we derive recommendations whether for areas that are experiencing famine or areas where people suffer from energetic excess have been based on assumptions that are not biologically relevant. Instead, they've been based on the treatment of the human body as an efficient digestion machine, when, in fact, it's not, and the degree to which it's not is affected by food processing, including cooking."

###

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, Harvard Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology and the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study.



[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share 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.


Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/hu-wcc110411.php

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