Monday, November 21, 2011

Newt Gingrich pushes back against critics

Faced with growing criticism about his many years as a Washington insider, Newt Gingrich has launched a new website "Answering the Attacks." But some across the political spectrum continue to raise questions about his professional and personal record.

Newt Gingrich says he welcomes the scrutiny that comes with being a well-paid Washington insider for more than 30 years. Well, at least he?s resigned to it. As one who brought down a former House Speaker (Jim Wright) and went after a sitting president (Bill Clinton), he knows how the political attack system works.

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?Somebody who is a front-runner for the presidency of the United States should get a thorough vetting,? he acknowledged during an appearance at Harvard University Friday. ?That's fine, it?s the nature of the process. If I'm able to answer them in a way that the American people feel comfortable, then I think I'll be a legitimate front-runner."

Faced with an unfolding story about the millions of dollars he?s made through various business ventures tied to political influence (plus continually repeated stories about his marital history), the Gingrich campaign has just launched a new website called ?Answering the Attacks.?

IN PICTURES:?Newt, now and then

"Now that our campaign to rebuild the America we love is gaining momentum, those who want to see us fail are on the attack, digging through Newt's past to try and stop us," the page states.
?
"See an attack that is not answered?" site visitors are asked. "Let us know here. This page will grow as we receive more feedback to help you answer the attacks."
?
?One can easily see Gingrich simply citing this page as a blanket, ?we've-answered-that? response to future inquiries,? notes Jonathan Martin at Politico.com. ?But the sheer volume of issues, and anticipation that more will come, is a reminder of the difficulty the former speaker could have as the glare grows more intense in the weeks ahead.?

The website ?menu? of charges and answers so far is long: Rep. Paul Ryan?s Medicare plan, the health insurance mandate, ethanol, the Fairness Doctrine, global warming and cap-and-trade, the immigration DREAM Act, agriculture subsidies, TARP, zero-based budgeting in foreign aid as it relates to Israel (?one of America?s closest friends and a key strategic ally?), the government shutdown when he was House Speaker, the ethics investigation of him when he was in Congress, lobbying, his relationship with housing mortgage giant Freddie Mac, and his ?personal life.?

(You can also ?read more about the remarkable Newt Gingrich record ? advocating, explaining, and achieving conservative reforms in government.?)

Gingrich?s defensive push-back comes as the list of his big-name clients continues to grow: Freddie Mac,?Microsoft,?General Electric, I.B.M., the?US Chamber of Commerce, and the pharmaceutical trade group?PhRMA?(Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America).

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/C_o7BsbW99E/Newt-Gingrich-pushes-back-against-critics

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Sunday, November 20, 2011

A failing sense of smell can be reversed

A failing sense of smell can be reversed [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 20-Nov-2011
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Contact: Lorinda Klein
lorindaann.klein@nyumc.org
212-404-3533
NYU Langone Medical Center / New York University School of Medicine

A new animal study suggests that with training, smell can improve

NEW YORK, November 20, 2011 In a new study scientists at NYU Langone Medical Center have shown that the sense of smell can be improved. The new findings, published online November 20, 2011, in Nature Neuroscience, suggest possible ways to reverse the loss of smell due to aging or disease.

Smell is unique among our senses, explains Donald A. Wilson, PhD, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at NYU Langone Medical Center and senior research scientist at the Emotional Brain Institute at Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, who led the study. The olfactory bulb, a structure beneath the frontal cortex that receives nerve impulses from the nose, also has direct connections to the amygdala, which controls emotions and physiology, and to higher-order regions like the prefrontal cortex, involved in cognition and planning. "Unlike information from your eyes and ears that has gone through many connections to reach the frontal cortex, the olfactory system is just two connections away," says Dr. Wilson. "The result is an immediate pathway from the environment through our nose to our memory."

Although impairment in the sense of smell is associated with Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, and even normal aging, exactly why smell weakens remains a mystery, but recent laboratory research led by Dr. Wilson reveals how it may occur. "We located where in the brain loss of smell may happen," he says. "And we showed that training can improve the sense of smell, and also make it worse."

Dr. Wilson and Julie Chapuis, PhD, a post-doctoral fellow, placed thirsty rats in boxes with a snout-sized hole in each of three walls and exposed them to brief blasts of odors through the middle hole. There were three smells in all: a mix of 10 chemicals from fruits, oils, cleaning agents, etc.; the same mixture with one chemical replaced by another; and the same mixture minus one of the chemicals. When the rodents identified one smell, they were rewarded with a sip of water by going to the hole in the left side wall, for another smell they received water by going to the right side wall.

. Rats could readily distinguish between odors when a chemical had been replaced in one mixture, but when one component had simply been removed, they could not differentiate. The researchers then anesthetized the rats and inserted electrodes into their brains. Within the olfactory bulb, each smell produced a different pattern of electrical activity. But in the piriform (olfactory) cortex, a half-inch-sized area of the rat cerebral cortex, the odors that rats could tell apart produced distinct patterns of activity, while those the rats could not distinguish produced identical patterns.

Drs. Wilson and Chapuis then trained a new group of rats to discriminate between the odors the first animals couldn't tell apart by rewarding them over and over with sips water for choosing the appropriate hole. "We made them connoisseurs," says Dr. Wilson. In the rats' piriform cortex, activity patterns elicited by these similar odors were now different as well.

They trained a third group of animals to ignore the difference between odors the first rats could readily distinguish by giving them water at the same hole after exposure to either odor. This effectively dulled their sense of smell: the rats couldn't tell one smell from the other, even for a reward. Their loss of discrimination was reflected in the piriform cortex, which now produced similar electrical patterns in response to both odors.

"Our findings suggest that while olfactory impairment may reflect real damage to the sensory system, in some cases it may be a 'use it or lose it' phenomenon," says Dr. Wilson. This opens the door for potential smell training therapies that could help restore smell function in some cases. "Odor training could help fix broken noses," he says.

###

ABOUT NYU Langone Medical Center

NYU Langone Medical Center, a world-class, patient-centered, integrated, academic medical center, is one on the nation's premier centers for excellence in clinical care, biomedical research and medical education. Located in the heart of Manhattan, NYU Langone is composed of three hospitals Tisch Hospital, its flagship acute care facility; the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, the world's first university-affiliated facility devoted entirely to rehabilitation medicine; and the Hospital for Joint Diseases, one of only five hospitals in the nation dedicated to orthopaedics and rheumatology plus the NYU School of Medicine, which since 1841 has trained thousand of physicians and scientists who have helped to shape the course of medical history. The medical center's tri-fold mission to serve, teach and discover is achieved 365 days a year through the seamless integration of a culture devoted to excellence in patient care, education and research. For more information, go to www.NYULMC.org.


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A failing sense of smell can be reversed [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 20-Nov-2011
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Lorinda Klein
lorindaann.klein@nyumc.org
212-404-3533
NYU Langone Medical Center / New York University School of Medicine

A new animal study suggests that with training, smell can improve

NEW YORK, November 20, 2011 In a new study scientists at NYU Langone Medical Center have shown that the sense of smell can be improved. The new findings, published online November 20, 2011, in Nature Neuroscience, suggest possible ways to reverse the loss of smell due to aging or disease.

Smell is unique among our senses, explains Donald A. Wilson, PhD, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at NYU Langone Medical Center and senior research scientist at the Emotional Brain Institute at Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, who led the study. The olfactory bulb, a structure beneath the frontal cortex that receives nerve impulses from the nose, also has direct connections to the amygdala, which controls emotions and physiology, and to higher-order regions like the prefrontal cortex, involved in cognition and planning. "Unlike information from your eyes and ears that has gone through many connections to reach the frontal cortex, the olfactory system is just two connections away," says Dr. Wilson. "The result is an immediate pathway from the environment through our nose to our memory."

Although impairment in the sense of smell is associated with Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, and even normal aging, exactly why smell weakens remains a mystery, but recent laboratory research led by Dr. Wilson reveals how it may occur. "We located where in the brain loss of smell may happen," he says. "And we showed that training can improve the sense of smell, and also make it worse."

Dr. Wilson and Julie Chapuis, PhD, a post-doctoral fellow, placed thirsty rats in boxes with a snout-sized hole in each of three walls and exposed them to brief blasts of odors through the middle hole. There were three smells in all: a mix of 10 chemicals from fruits, oils, cleaning agents, etc.; the same mixture with one chemical replaced by another; and the same mixture minus one of the chemicals. When the rodents identified one smell, they were rewarded with a sip of water by going to the hole in the left side wall, for another smell they received water by going to the right side wall.

. Rats could readily distinguish between odors when a chemical had been replaced in one mixture, but when one component had simply been removed, they could not differentiate. The researchers then anesthetized the rats and inserted electrodes into their brains. Within the olfactory bulb, each smell produced a different pattern of electrical activity. But in the piriform (olfactory) cortex, a half-inch-sized area of the rat cerebral cortex, the odors that rats could tell apart produced distinct patterns of activity, while those the rats could not distinguish produced identical patterns.

Drs. Wilson and Chapuis then trained a new group of rats to discriminate between the odors the first animals couldn't tell apart by rewarding them over and over with sips water for choosing the appropriate hole. "We made them connoisseurs," says Dr. Wilson. In the rats' piriform cortex, activity patterns elicited by these similar odors were now different as well.

They trained a third group of animals to ignore the difference between odors the first rats could readily distinguish by giving them water at the same hole after exposure to either odor. This effectively dulled their sense of smell: the rats couldn't tell one smell from the other, even for a reward. Their loss of discrimination was reflected in the piriform cortex, which now produced similar electrical patterns in response to both odors.

"Our findings suggest that while olfactory impairment may reflect real damage to the sensory system, in some cases it may be a 'use it or lose it' phenomenon," says Dr. Wilson. This opens the door for potential smell training therapies that could help restore smell function in some cases. "Odor training could help fix broken noses," he says.

###

ABOUT NYU Langone Medical Center

NYU Langone Medical Center, a world-class, patient-centered, integrated, academic medical center, is one on the nation's premier centers for excellence in clinical care, biomedical research and medical education. Located in the heart of Manhattan, NYU Langone is composed of three hospitals Tisch Hospital, its flagship acute care facility; the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, the world's first university-affiliated facility devoted entirely to rehabilitation medicine; and the Hospital for Joint Diseases, one of only five hospitals in the nation dedicated to orthopaedics and rheumatology plus the NYU School of Medicine, which since 1841 has trained thousand of physicians and scientists who have helped to shape the course of medical history. The medical center's tri-fold mission to serve, teach and discover is achieved 365 days a year through the seamless integration of a culture devoted to excellence in patient care, education and research. For more information, go to www.NYULMC.org.


[ 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/nlmc-afs111611.php

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30-50 Ultrabooks Are Expected To Launch At CES 2012, But Can They Break The CES Curse?

cesEvery year at the global electronic bazaar that is the Consumer Electronic Show, there is a product de jour. A certain product segment seemingly overloads the trade show. iPad killers were out in force at 2011's show. 2010 was all about 3D TVs while netbooks was the popular product in 2009. It seems that utltrabooks might be 2012's hot product. But can they break the dreaded CES curse (a term I coined for the purpose of this post) that plagued the previous hot products?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/OImXARlCtHE/

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Technology's ?1m Nobel prize on the starting blocks

Paul Marks, senior technology correspondent

133117899main.jpgDavid Cameron talks with Ron Dennis, the Executive Chairman of McLaren Automotive, during a visit to the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking (Image: Oli Scarff - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

A ?1 million prize for technological innovation was launched in London today - and although the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering (QEPE) may sound like a UK-centric affair, the big money competition will be open to engineers the world over.?To be run?by the Royal Academy of Engineering, the idea is to compete with the circa ?1 million prizes handed out for science research by the Nobel Foundation.

By offering a ?1 million prize, the eleven blue chip companies funding it hope to spur innovation and reward the successful appliance of science in solving the world's over-arching problems, such as combating climate change. It will awarded every two years from 2013 for "outstanding advances in engineering that have created significant benefit to humanity".

photo-1pic2.jpg(Image: New Scientist)

The QEPE has strong political backing. Britain's deputy prime minister Nick Clegg said he hoped the prize would encourage children who currently hanker after entering TV talent shows like X Factor, or becoming soccer stars, to begin numbering engineering among their professional ambitions. He also believes that the prize, alongside the opening of new innovation centres, will bolster Britain's flagging patenting rates, which are in a state of long-term decline.

Prime Minister David Cameron, meanwhile, hopes the QEPE will encourage a revival in British engineering - which begs the question: why is it then open to all nations to enter? "By doing it in this way you're not only going to give engineering a boost, but also Britain a boost too - and I think the two go together very clearly," he told New Scientist.

Subscribe to New Scientist Magazine

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/1a2d266d/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Conepercent0C20A110C110Ctechnology0Enobel0Eprize0Eon0Ethe0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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Saturday, November 19, 2011

Occupy vs Tea Party: what their Twitter networks reveal

Peter Aldhous, San Francisco bureau chief

According to some political commentators, Occupy Wall Street is the left's answer to the Tea Party - driven by a similar anger towards elites. But the social networks of people tweeting about the two movements suggest that they have rather different dynamics.
?
Those tweeting about the Tea Party emerge as a tight-knit "in crowd", following one another's tweets. By contrast, the network of people tweeting about Occupy consists of a looser series of clusters, in which the output of a few key people is being vigorously retweeted.

The Occupy network also has many casual unconnected tweeters, shown to the bottom right of the diagram below. Whether Occupy takes off as a coherent movement may depend on its success in bringing these potential recruits into the fold.
?
occupy_larger.jpg
(Image: Marc Smith of the Social Media Research Foundation)

This view of how the two movements are impacting the Twitterverse comes from Marc Smith of the Social Media Research Foundation in Belmont, California. "These are very differently organised groups," he says. "Occupy is much more diffuse and diverse."

Smith has analysed tweets containing "occupywallstreet" or "teaparty", drawing connections between the Twitter users involved if one follows one other (shown in grey), or if they retweeted, replied or mentioned one another (shown in blue).

The Occupy network above visualises almost 1400 tweets posted in less than 30 minutes on 15 November. The size of each user depends on their number of followers. The clusters, with users shown in different colours, are defined by an algorithm that looks for "islands" after subtracting the influence of people who "bridge" different parts of the network.

Occupy's clusters look like a series of firework explosions, as supporters retweet the posts of a few key individuals and organisations. The blue cluster at the bottom left, for instance, is formed around activist filmmaker Michael Moore ; the orange cluster immediately above is centred on the New York Civil Liberties Union.

The equivalent Tea Party network for 15 November, analysing a similar number of tweets posted over about three hours, looks rather different:

teaparty_larger.jpg
(Image: Marc Smith of the Social Media Research Foundation)

Here there are two main clusters, the blue one on the left containing Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul and his supporters. (The diffuse cluster in the lower centre of the diagram consists not of Tea Party supporters, but critics of the movement from the political left.)

Compared to Occupy, the Tea Party supporters have a much denser network of following relationships. "The Tea Party is an 'in group' thing," Smith argues. But for now, at least, the conversation within this group is muted compared to that surrounding Occupy - not only is the rate of tweets much slower, but fewer of the relationships show up in blue, indicating an active response to a post.

Do these patterns represent fundamental differences in the social structure of the two movements, or are we just looking at the contrast between a movement in the first flush of public and media attention, and one that has matured over a couple of years? That's not clear, but Smith intends to keep taking his snapshots to see how the networks evolve.

One key pattern to watch will be the number of disconnected Twitter users at the bottom right of each diagram. These can be viewed as the potential for growth for each movement, Smith suggests. Right now, that looks large for Occupy, and not so impressive for the Tea Party.
?

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/1a2c6171/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Conepercent0C20A110C110Coccupy0Evs0Etea0Eparty0Ewhat0Etheir0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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New judge assigned in Penn State sex abuse case (AP)

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. ? A new judge was assigned Wednesday to handle the child sex abuse charges against former Penn State football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, whose televised defense earlier this week drew a rebuke from a lawyer for one of his accusers.

The change removed a State College judge with ties to a charity founded by Sandusky for at-risk children, The Second Mile.

Harrisburg attorney Ben Andreozzi said he represents a client who will testify against Sandusky, who is accused of abusing eight boys, some on campus, over 15 years.

"I am appalled by the fact that Mr. Sandusky has elected to re-victimize these young men at a time when they should be healing," Andreozzi said in a statement released by his office. "He fully intends to testify that he was severely sexually assaulted by Mr. Sandusky."

Sandusky's lawyer, Joe Amendola, appeared with him on NBC's "Rock Center" on Monday night and cast doubt on the evidence in the case.

"We anticipate we're going to have at least several of those kids come forward and say, `This never happened. This is me. This is the allegation. It never occurred,'" Amendola said.

Andreozzi said he has his "finger on the pulse" of the case and knows of no accusers changing their stories or refusing to testify.

"To the contrary, others are actually coming forward, and I will have more information for you later this week," Andreozzi said.

Sandusky, 67, appeared on the show by phone and said he had showered with boys but never molested them.

Also Wednesday, a central Pennsylvania police chief said his department did not receive reports from a then-Penn State graduate assistant who said he saw Sandusky raping a boy on campus in a football locker room shower in 2002.

The assistant, Mike McQueary, wrote in an email to a friend that was made available to The Associated Press that he had discussions with police about what he saw. In the email, McQueary did not specify which police department he spoke to.

State College borough police chief Tom King said McQueary didn't make a report to his department.

The university has its own police force. Penn State administrators said they were looking into whether McQueary contacted campus police.

Penn State campus police referred all questions on the Sandusky matter to the university's public information office. When asked about McQueary's assertion in the email about "discussions" with police, university spokeswoman Annemarie Mountz said the school and police "were looking into it."

The football building is on university property, so campus police would be the most likely to respond for a police call. But it was unclear if university, State College or state police would have been contacted if any such discussion did take place.

Mountz also noted the 23-page grand jury report was the state attorney general's summary of testimony, so it's unclear what McQueary's full testimony was.

Sandusky is due in court on Dec. 7, and the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts announced Wednesday that it was bringing in a Westmoreland County senior district judge to preside over his preliminary hearing. Robert E. Scott is taking over the hearing from Centre County District Judge Leslie Dutchcot.

Dutchcot has donated money to The Second Mile, where authorities say Sandusky met his victims.

The office said Scott has no known ties to Penn State or The Second Mile.

Amendola defended the decision to have his client go on television, telling the Centre Daily Times on Wednesday the move was designed to demonstrate he had a defense.

"The more people who hear him explain that he didn't commit the acts of which he's been charged, the better off he's going to be down the road," Amendola told the newspaper.

It remains unclear how many accusers have surfaced more than a week after state police and the attorney general's office said at a news conference they were seeking additional potential victims and witnesses.

State police spokeswoman Maria Finn said investigators have told her that published accounts reporting how many people have come forward are inaccurate and they are not disclosing their internal figures.

Some plaintiffs' lawyers are starting to advertise on their websites for potential Sandusky victims, vowing to get justice. Jeff Anderson, a St. Paul, Minn., attorney, has long represented clergy abuse victims and told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he has been retained by several people he described as Sandusky victims.

"There's a great deal of fury and confusion," particularly because Sandusky is free on bail, Anderson said. "Getting (them) help and cooperating with law enforcement is our first priority."

The "time for reckoning," in the form of civil lawsuits, will come later, Anderson said.

Anderson declined to say whether his clients are among the eight boys who were labeled as victims in the grand jury report.

Berks County lawyer Jay Abramowitch, who has represented about 150 child sex victims, many of them in clergy abuse cases, said he is following the Penn State case closely. He declined to say if he was representing anyone accusing Sandusky of abuse.

"The real significance of what happened in the Sandusky situation is that people are beginning to understand the cover-up that goes on in any structural organization that employs a pedophile," he said. "And that's why these pedophiles are running wild."

"What's the answer? One of the answers is to allow these victims the right to go to court and file suit against not only the pedophile but the group that employed them ... and didn't do anything," Abramowitch said.

Abramowitch long fought to get around the legal time limit for victims to sue the Roman Catholic Church for decades-old abuse. In 2005, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected his argument that the suits should go through on grounds the church had concealed the abuse.

In State College, Penn State announced a physician and member of its board of trustees who played football and wrestled for the school would serve as acting athletic director. The school named Dr. David M. Joyner, an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in sports medicine and a business consultant, as the interim replacement for Tim Curley.

Curley is on leave as athletic director as he defends himself against criminal charges that he failed to properly alert authorities when told of an allegation of a sexual assault by Sandusky against a child and that he lied to a grand jury. He maintains his innocence.

Joyner's position on the board, where he has been a trustee since 2000, is being suspended as he takes on the new duties.

Gov. Tom Corbett again defended the pace of the investigation, which he helped launch and oversaw while serving as attorney general until January.

"Could anybody guarantee he wasn't out there touching children? There are no such guarantees, unless he was sitting in jail," Corbett, a Republican, said in Philadelphia. "But we did what we thought was in the best interests of the investigation in getting a good case put together."

Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., introduced a bill that would require all adults to report child abuse and neglect to police or local child protective agencies.

And new details were emerging about how the case ended up in the hands of the state attorney general's office.

Former Centre County District Attorney Michael Madeira said that his wife's brother was Sandusky's adopted son.

"I reviewed it, and I made the decision it needed to be investigated further," Madeira said. "But the apparent conflict of interest created an impediment for me to make those kinds of decisions."

The scandal's fallout extended to former Pittsburgh Steelers great Franco Harris, whose relationship with a southwestern Pennsylvania racetrack and casino was put on hiatus after he chastised Penn State's trustees for showing "no courage" for firing coach Joe Paterno, who has not been charged with a crime and is not considered a target of prosecutors.

Harris, who played for Paterno from 1968 to 1971, had recently signed as a spokesman for The Meadows Racetrack and Casino in Washington, Pa.

___

Scolforo reported from Harrisburg. Dale and AP writer Kathy Matheson reported from Philadelphia.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111116/ap_on_sp_co_ne/fbc_penn_state_abuse

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