Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, May 08, 2012.
OND is a regular
community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing near 12:00AM Eastern Time.
Creation and early water-bearing of the OND concept came from our very own Magnifico - proper respect is due.
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This diary is named for its "Hump Point" video: Run Devil Run/The Big Guns by Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins
Please feel free to browse and add your own links, content or thoughts in the Comments section.
Any timestamps shown are relative to each publication.
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Top News |
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N.C.'s Amendment 1 Doesn't Just Screw Over Gay People
By Samantha Oltman
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Update [9:20 PM EST]: With 35 percent of precincts reporting, voters have passed Amendment 1 by a 58-42 margin.
North Carolinians vote today on Amendment 1, a measure that would amend the state constitution—for the first time ever—to ban gay marriage. It's worth noting that gay marriage is already illegal in North Carolina. But if the amendment passes, which the latest poll suggests it will (with a 55-39 margin), North Carolina will join the 30 other states, including California, Ohio, and Texas, that have amended their constitutions to prohibit marriage between same-sex couples.
But Amendment 1 could also have troubling implications for straight couples. Thanks to the law's vague wording, critics argue it would likely strip away many of the legal rights associated with domestic partnerships or legal unions.
. . .
Domestic violence laws protecting people in an unmarried partnerships might be weakened. . .
Unmarried parents could no longer have the same child custody and visitation rights as married parents. . .
Private agreements between unmarried couples might not longer have a legal basis. . .
The law could interfere with unmarried partners' end-of-life arrangements, such as wills, trusts, and medical powers of attorney. . .
Employers would no longer have to provide benefits, such as health insurance, to the partners of unmarried employees./td>
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Male bias in science awards seen
By (UPI)
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When men chair committees selecting scientific awards recipients, males win the awards 95 percent of the time, a study published in a U.S. journal says.
Researchers writing in Social Studies of Science say although women have begun to win more awards for their scientific achievements in the past 20 years, compared to men they win more service and teaching awards and fewer prestigious scholarly awards than would be expected from their representation in the nomination pool.
. . .
"The fact that women are honored twice as often for service as for scholarship may arise from … the tacit assumption that scientists and rigorous scholars are men, and that women are incongruent with the scientist role," the study authors wrote. "Professional societies must inform leadership and awards committees about such bias."
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The War Between Data and Storytelling
By Kevin Drum
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Today David Brooks and Paul Krugman are having yet another of those infuriating New York Times arguments where they're not allowed to actually say they're arguing with each other because Times editors apparently think we'd all keel over in shock if they were allowed to mention each other by name. So it's all "many people on the left" and "the renewed push by conservatives" and similar circumlocutions.
. . .
Ahem. In any case, today's argument is about whether our economic problems are cyclical or structural. If they're cyclical, it means we're in an ordinary slump and can get out of it by the proper application of monetary and fiscal policy. If they're structural, it means we have deep-seated issues that may take years or decades to address. Low interest rates and deficit spending just won't be enough.
. . .
But for some reason, what really struck me today was the way that both Brooks and Krugman play to type. Krugman the liberal is all about the data: he hauls out charts, models, "signatures," and international comparisons. Brooks, by contrast, barely admits that data even bears on this question. He's all about telling a plausible story: the chickens of globalization, failing education, high federal debt, and political sclerosis have finally come home to roost, so what do you expect? Of course the economy is in tatters.
You see this play out on TV too. Conservatives tell a story, and Krugman then explains impatiently that the data simply doesn't back up what they're saying. Every week it plays out the same way. It's like a kabuki show.
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Health care increasingly out of reach for millions of Americans
By Phil Galewitz
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. . .
Tens of millions of adults under age 65 – both those with insurance and those without – saw their access to health care worsen dramatically over the past decade, according to a study abstract released Monday.
The findings suggest that more privately insured Americans are delaying treatment because of rising out-of-pocket costs, while safety-net programs for the poor and uninsured are failing to keep up with demand for care, say Urban Institute researchers who wrote the report.
. . .
The 2010 health care law, which will expand health coverage to 30 million people starting in 2014, won’t necessarily solve all those access problems, the study said. That’s because the law, which is under review by the Supreme Court, may not alter the trend toward private insurance policies with larger deductibles and higher co-payments or address some of the barriers within public coverage. While the law does increase payments temporarily to primary care doctors who see people covered by Medicaid, it will not force more doctors into the program, or require states to provide dental coverage to adults.
. . .
The study underscores what’s at stake in the law’s coverage expansion: People with private or public health insurance have significantly better access to care than the uninsured. If the law is overturned or scaled back, “we would be likely to see further deterioration in access to care for all adults – uninsured and insured alike,” it concludes.
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Has the airport experience become horrible?
By Vanessa Barford
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. . .
In April, a man stripped off in protest of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) at Portland Airport and the father of a three-year-old boy was so enraged his son was patted down by an airport screener in Chicago in 2010 he posted a video of the incident on YouTube.
. . .
Common complaints include confusing signs, chaotic carousel crowding, rampant profiteering, having to remove shoes at security, lack of free wi-fi and lack of information on delays and cancellations.
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"By necessity security has got an awful lot worse over the last 10 years, as controls had to be enhanced after 9/11. But whether the controls put in place in a rush were the best ones, and developed in mind of the public experience - I doubt it," he says.
But Yates argues that instead of "virtually stripping people naked" by taking off their coats, belts and shoes in the security hall, much more automated, technologically advanced ways of screening should be put in place.
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'Al-Qaeda bomber' was CIA informant
By (Al Jazeera)
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US and Yemeni officials said the supposed would-be bomber at the heart of an al-Qaeda airliner plot was actually an informant working for the CIA.
They said the informant was working for the CIA and Saudi Arabian intelligence when he was given the bomb. He then turned the device over to the authorities.
. . .
Al Jazeera's John Terrett, reporting from Washington, said there has been “very limited comment on this story throughout the day from the [Obama] administration”.
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International |
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U.S. to Continue Pressing for Assad’s Resignation
By (RIA Novosti)
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The United States will continue its efforts to make Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down, the country’s envoy to the UN, Susan Rice, said.
. . .
She said al-Assad’s resignation will be in line with the six-point plan by UN and Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan, because the plan envisages democratization of the country’s political system, which should eventually result in the incumbent government’s resignation.
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Moscow has twice vetoed UN Security Council resolutions over what it called a pro-rebel bias since the start of the uprising against Assad, but has given its full backing to Annan’s peace plan.
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As The Clock Ticks, Americans Train Afghan Troops
By Tom Bowman
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. . .
A massive white generator, the size of a garden shed, sits in the dusty heat, giving off a constant hum. It powers the lights, computers and air conditioners for the Afghan army battalion in the Panjwei District. More than 500 Afghan soldiers are housed in a collection of old tents and wooden buildings on one side of this American outpost.
. . .
The fuel is just one problem. This American training team also is trying to wean the Afghans off American bottled water, get them to fix their own radios, and plan their own missions.
The Americans hope to create more than 100 of these training teams in Afghanistan in the coming months.
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Why aren’t women’s issues on the agenda at Rio+20?
By Carmen Barroso
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In just two months, world leaders will gather in Rio to hammer out a new set of agreements on what sustainable development means, and more importantly, how both rich and developing nations can get there before it’s too late. Day by day, the buzz is building around this historic Earth Summit. But there’s a problem: The big plans being hatched for the occasion — nicknamed Rio+20 — leave women out.
Of course there will be scores of women leaders at the Earth Summit. But key issues that matter to women — reproductive health, gender equality, girls’ education — are notable for their absence from the agenda. That needs to change.
The fact is, sustainable development isn’t sustainable if it doesn’t include empowering women to control their own bodies, educate themselves and their kids, and have a voice in government at all levels. As long as women continue to die each day because they are denied access to sexual and reproductive health and rights — such as care during pregnancy and the right to live free of violence and discrimination — we cannot talk about sustainable development goals.
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China: The world's cleverest country?
By Sean Coughlan
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China's results in international education tests - which have never been published - are "remarkable", says Andreas Schleicher, responsible for the highly-influential Pisa tests.
These tests, held every three years by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, measure pupils' skills in reading, numeracy and science.
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While there has been intense interest in China's economic and political development, this provides the most significant insight into how it is teaching the next generation.
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"Shanghai is an exceptional case - and the results there are close to what I expected. But what surprised me more were the results from poor provinces that came out really well. The levels of resilience are just incredible.
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Niger worst place to be mother - Save the Children
By (BBC)
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The West African state of Niger is the worst place in the world to be a mother, according to Save the Children.
The ranking comes in the charity's annual index which compares conditions for mothers in 165 countries.
It considers a number of factors including health, education, economic status and nutrition.
Niger is severely affected by a regional food crisis. It replaces Afghanistan at the bottom of the Save the Children index.
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Secrecy blankets trade talks
By Carey L Biron
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The latest round of negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), potentially the largest free -trade agreement to be signed by the United States, began Tuesday with a blanket of secrecy over their content.
Despite claims by the US government of considerable transparency in the process, the talks, being held in Dallas, are covering material that has remained almost completely out of the public's eye.
"Because the negotiations have been conducted in extreme secrecy, we have no idea yet what is in the text," says Rashmi Rangnath, a director with Public Knowledge, an advocacy group here in Washington. "What we do know is that lack of transparency tends to skew the text of such agreements in favor of large corporations."
Although a draft of the chapter on intellectual property rights was leaked in February, much of the rest of the 26 chapters have been kept away from public scrutiny.
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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In video, Sen. Mark Kirk says he’s anxious to get back to work
By ABDON M. PALLASCH
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Sen. Mark Kirk on Tuesday gave the public its first close-up glimpse of himself since he suffered a stroke in January, releasing a 2 1/2-minute video that shows his progress and struggles.
In the video, the Highland Park Republican speaks confidently — and occasionally haltingly — into the camera and talks about being anxious to walk the 45 steps up to the Capitol to begin working again.
“I suffered a stroke on the 21st of January and thanks to the doctors, nurses and professionals of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, the RIC, I’m walking again,” Kirk says directly into the camera.
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In latest jab, Obama offers Congress a 'to-do' list
By KATHLEEN HENNESSEY
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Taking another jab at his favorite punching bag, President Barack Obama on Tuesday offered Congress a "to-do" list for the year, drawing attention and gently mocking lawmakers in the unpopular and gridlocked Congress.
. . .
The president's list includes items he has previously announced and Congress has failed to embrace. That includes a proposal to allow more homeowners to refinance their mortgages and a plan to give tax credits to companies that relocate in the United States. Obama also wants to expand a tax credit for clean energy manufacturers and give a 10 percent income tax credit to employers who hire. The president also called for the creation of a job corps for veterans.
. . .
Republicans want the Obama to stop proposing what they call "job killing" environmental regulations, stop new taxes and stop blocking the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a project the administration decided to postpone making a decision on until after the November election.
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US drug company to pay $1.6bn over Depakote mis-selling
By (BBC)
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A US drug company has agreed to pay out $1.6bn (£1bn) after improperly marketing a mood-stabilising drug in a settlement thought to be the largest of its kind involving a single drug.
Abbott Laboratories encouraged its sales teams to market Depakote for uses that were not approved by regulators, the US justice department said.
The drug should be used in epilepsy and bipolar disorder cases.
However, it was sold to treat conditions such as dementia and autism.
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Kansas Republicans look to profit off abortion taxes
By Stephen C. Webster
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. . .
Massive in scope, H.B. 2598 includes provisions being considered in other states as well, like offering doctors immunity from malpractice lawsuits if they do not inform expectant mothers of prenatal health problems that could lead to an abortion; a removal of important tax credits provided to most healthcare institutions; requiring doctors to lie to patients by claiming that abortions may cause breast cancer; forcing women to hear the heartbeat of their fetus before an abortion; and even prohibiting state employees from contributing to the teaching of basic sexual health facts.
The sales tax, however — an innocuous-sounding 6.5 percent — is layered, effectively making it a repeating tax on every service rendered, every product purchased and every sale made in furtherance of an abortion. It also strips certain tax credits for companies that do business with women’s health providers, making such requests a potentially costly proposition.
“This is a complete turnaround in this idea of small government,” Elizabeth Nash, state issues manager for the Guttmacher Institute, told Raw Story. “Somebody spent hours, if not days, combing through the entire Kansas tax code to find every spot where you could possibly prevent abortion providers from being a non-profit healthcare provider. It’s really amazing. The bill is 68 pages long. Somebody spent days trying to figure out how to manipulate the tax code to disqualify abortion providers. That is a level above and beyond what we have ever seen.”
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Welcome to the "Hump Point" of this OND.
News can be sobering and engrossing - at this point in the diary, an offering of brief escapism:
Random notes related to this video:
. . . For all the Southern influences on her record, Ms. Lewis's main inspiration was more Northern: Laura Nyro and Labelle's 1971 collection of Brill Building and Motown classics "Gonna Take a Miracle." Ms. Lewis thought the Watsons - whom she met in Los Angeles through her band mate and ex-boyfriend Blake Sennett - would be perfect at that style of gospel-flavored backing vocals; they agreed.
. . .
Ms. Lewis, who is Jewish by birth ("although everyone assumes I'm a little shiksa," she says) and currently lives alone in Los Angeles, said the religious inquiries on "Rabbit Fur Coat" partly reflect her own spiritual musings. "God ... he's a funny guy," she said. "I'm not a religious person by any means. But I'm curious. And most of the time I feel really left out in the religious-slash-political climate of the country these days. Like, am I really missing out here? Everyone seems so completely faithful, and so happy about it."
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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Big Oil Goes Mining for Big Data
By Jessica Leber
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The world isn't running out of oil and natural gas. It is running out of easy oil and gas. And as energy companies drill deeper and hunt in more remote regions and difficult deposits, they're banking on information technology to boost production.
. . .
Whatever these programs are called, they'll play a huge role in the future of energy companies. The ones that are most successful at operating remotely and using data wisely will claim big rewards. Chevron cites industrywide estimates suggesting 8 percent higher production rates and 6 percent higher overall recovery from a "fully optimized" digital oil field.
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Much of the software innovation that's key to the digitization of big oil is happening at oil service contracting companies, such as Halliburton and Schlumberger, and big IT providers including Microsoft and IBM.
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Big rise in North Pacific plastic waste
By Jonathan Amos
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The quantity of small plastic fragments floating in the north-east Pacific Ocean has increased a hundred fold over the past 40 years.
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"When you go out into the North Pacific, what you find can be highly variable. So, to find such a clear pattern and such a large increase was very surprising," she told BBC News.
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The team found a strong association between the presence of Halobates and the micro-plastic in a way that was just not evident in the data from 40 years ago.
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This Scripps study follows another report by colleagues at the institution that showed 9% of the fish collected during the same Seaplex voyage had plastic waste in their stomachs.
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Conservative thinktanks step up attacks against Obama's clean energy strategy
By Suzanne Goldenberg
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A network of ultra-conservative groups is ramping up an offensive on multiple fronts to turn the American public against wind farms and Barack Obama's energy agenda.
A number of rightwing organisations, including Americans for Prosperity, which is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, are attacking Obama for his support for solar and wind power. The American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), which also has financial links to the Kochs, has drafted bills to overturn state laws promoting wind energy.
. . .
"These documents show for the first time that local Nimby anti-wind groups are co-ordinating and working with national fossil-fuel funded advocacy groups to wreck the wind industry," said Gabe Elsner, a co-director of the Checks and Balances, the accountability group which unearthed the proposal and other documents.
Among its main recommendations, the proposal calls for a national PR campaign aimed at causing "subversion in message of industry so that it effectively because so bad that no one wants to admit in public they are for it."
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U.S. coal lobbies frantically to save its doomed-ass self
By David Roberts
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. . .
Politically speaking, Obama can not come out and tell the frank truth about coal. Its political roots are too deep in his own party. But in his energy rhetoric and strategy, he is implicitly acknowledging what is increasingly obvious: Coal is not compatible with a safe, secure, prosperous 21st century. It is responsible for most local air pollution — soot, mercury, ozone, coal ash, etc. — and, projecting out, it’s going to be responsible for the bulk of climate change, especially when burned in Asia. The only way to use coal without exacerbating climate change is to add wildly expensive carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) facilities that raise costs by a third and don’t do anything to eliminate local pollutants. Proper economic analysis of the actually existing coal sector shows that it imposes costs greater than the value of the electricity it creates.
. . .
Big Coal is doing everything it can to blame the decline of coal — which is now providing just 42 percent of U.S. electricity, down from its once-lofty 50+ percent heyday — on Obama and EPA regulations. But here’s the thing that must haunt the dreams of coal executives: Even if they can do some political damage to Obama with this attack, it won’t stop coal’s descent. Its descent is not primarily about EPA regs. It’s primarily about cheap natural gas. The election won’t change that.
U.S. coal’s only hope at this point is export to Asia. Stoking the culture war won’t do much to achieve that. As for the U.S., the trend here, as in most other developed democracies, is toward cleaner electricity. All this frantic lobbying gets attention in the media and the Beltway bubble, but in the end, the coal industry, like Dale Earnhardt Jr., is just driving in circles.
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The Future of Grocery Bags Is Here and It Involves Pockets
By Andrew Liszewski
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They might be helping the environment, but with everything banging around in that large re-usable shopping bag, your fresh fruits and vegetables don't always get from the store to the stove unscathed. So Quirky teamed up with food blogger Darya Pino to design a better bag.
Made with a strategic combination of cotton, canvas, and nylon mesh, the Mercado bag's got six interior pockets and three large compartments so you can separate softer delicate items like produce, from harder items like cans and bottles. It's probably also the perfect bag for the obsessively organized, since you can spend hours at the checkout resorting your groceries until you find the perfect arrangement to get everything home safely.
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Science and Health |
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Is a New Form of Life Really So Alien?
By (ScienceDaily)
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The idea of discovering a new form of life has not only excited astronomers and astrobiologists for decades, but also the wider public. The notion that we are the only example of a successful life form in the galaxy has, for many, seemed like an unlikely statistic, as we discover more and more habitable planetary bodies and hear yet more evidence of life's ability to survive in extreme conditions.
A new essay, published May 8 in the online, open-access journal PLoS Biology, examines what really constitutes 'life' and the probability of discovering new life forms.
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How could a truly new life form arise? Joyce explains that an organism could either arise directly through chemistry, or spin off from existing biology. For the former, a life form would self-organize "into a bit-generating system." It's thought that this is how life originated on Earth; from a primordial soup of chemicals in an aqueous environment that generated self-replicating molecules, which then mutated and evolved. Joyce argues, "A life form that arises directly from bit-free chemistry would be considered 'new' from the outset, while one that derives from a biological cell would have a long way to go before reaching the threshold."
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Chemistry: Scientists Unlock Mystery of How 'Handedness' Arises in Proteins, Other Functional Molecules
By (ScienceDaily)
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The overwhelming majority of proteins and other functional molecules in our bodies display a striking molecular characteristic: They can exist in two distinct forms that are mirror images of each other, like your right hand and left hand. Surprisingly, each of our bodies prefers only one of these molecular forms.
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"Objects like our hands are chiral, while objects like regular triangles are achiral, meaning they don't have a handedness to them," said Mason, the senior author of the study. "Achiral objects can be easily superimposed on top of one another."
. . .
"We discovered that just two physical ingredients -- entropy and particle shape -- are enough to cause chirality to appear spontaneously in dense systems," Mason said. "In my 25 years of doing research, I never thought that I would see chirality occur in a system of achiral objects driven by entropic forces."
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Origin of domesticated horses pinpointed
By (UPI)
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Scientists at Cambridge University report a genetic database of more than 300 horses sampled from across the Eurasian Steppe shows the extinct wild ancestor of domestic horses, Equus ferus, was domesticated in the western region of the steppe, and that herds then were repeatedly restocked with wild horses as they spread across Eurasia.
"The spread of horse domestication differed from that of many other domestic animal species, in that spreading herds were augmented with local wild horses on an unprecedented scale," zoologist Vera Warmuth said in a Cambridge release. "If these restocking events involved mainly wild mares, we can explain the large number of female lineages in the domestic horse gene pool without having to invoke multiple domestication origins."
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Black pepper fights formation of fat cells
By (UPI)
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. . .
Soo-Jong Um, Ji-Cheon Jeong and colleagues at Sejong University in Seoul said black pepper and the black pepper plant were used for centuries in traditional Eastern medicine to treat gastrointestinal distress, pain, inflammation and other health disorders.
. . .
The study, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, found piperine -- the pungent-tasting substance that gives black pepper its characteristic taste -- blocks the formation of new fat cells.
Using laboratory studies and computer models, the researchers found piperine interferes with the activity of genes that control the formation of new fat cells.
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Nurse Practitioners: One Answer to the Nation’s Primary Care Shortage
By Karyn Lee Boyar
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I was teaching a group of nursing students at a major New York City hospital a few months ago when one young student came to me, pale and perspiring. She had been feeling sick for at least five days, but had not yet sought medical care. After moving from Los Angeles last year, she was unable to find a physician who would accept new patients. As an experienced family nurse practitioner and educator, I am all too often witness to the United States’ alarming shortage of primary care providers.
A 2010 report issued by New York’s Primary Care Coalition found that New York spent over a billion dollars on unnecessary ER use and pinpointed the loss of primary care providers as a driving factor. In addition to the added expense of an ER visit, people become sicker as they wait for care and the number of hospitalizations increase.
. . .
The scope of nurse practitioners’ practice is controlled by state laws and the difference among states is staggering. Only 17 states currently license them to treat patients with complete autonomy. In Louisiana they may work without physician supervision, whereas in New York they must sign collaborative agreements with physicians in order to treat patients. In Florida, they must sign collaborative agreements and their prescriptive privileges are limited; they are not allowed to prescribe narcotics and other controlled substances. I urge all states to follow the lead of 17 forward thinking states and dissolve the need for collaborative practice agreements.
Collaborative agreements only serve to create barriers to patient care. Services and treatments to patients may be delayed, as diagnostic tests and procedures, home care and hospitalizations must be authorized by the MD. Worse, if the physician moves or terminates the agreement, practitioners and patients both lose. This can be especially devastating in clinics run by nurse practitioners in rural areas, where the primary care provider shortage is particularly acute. With autonomy, nurse practitioners would have greater incentive to start new community practices.
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'One in six cancers worldwide are caused by infection'
By Michelle Roberts
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The Lancet Infectious Diseases review, which looked at incidence rates for 27 cancers in 184 countries, found four main infections are responsible.
These four - human papillomaviruses, Helicobacter pylori and hepatitis B and C viruses - account for 1.9m cases of cervical, gut and liver cancers.
Most cases are in the developing world.
The team from the International Agency for Research on Cancer in France says more efforts are needed to tackle these avoidable cases and recognise cancer as a communicable disease.
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Technology |
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Twitter sides with Occupy protester in NY court battle over tweet history
By Adam Gabbatt
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Twitter has moved to quash a court order issued by the Manhattan district attorney that would require it to hand over the tweets of a writer and Occupy Wall Street protester arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge last October.
In a motion filed in the criminal court in New York on Monday Twitter argued that it should not be forced to give the prosecutor three months worth of tweets by Malcolm Harris, who was arrested on the bridge along with 700 other activists.
. . .
Twitter filed a ten-page memorandum against Sciarrino's order on Monday, writing that its terms of service "make absolutely clear that its users own their content", giving users the right to move to quash subpoenas themselves.
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Microsoft Study: Bandwidth Caps Change Internet Users' Behavior
By Tiffany Kaiser
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. . .
Marshini Chetty, a Microsoft Research intern and postdoctoral researcher from Georgia Tech's School of Interactive Computing, conducted a study that shows negative user experiences associated with bandwidth caps. However, Chetty believes the pressure put on Internet users could be relieved with the right data usage monitoring tools.
. . .
According to Chetty, there are three main reasons for anxiety related to bandwidth caps: invisible balances, mysterious processes and multiple users.
. . .
"People's behavior does change when limits are placed on Internet access -- just like we've seen happen in the smartphone market -- and many complain about usage-based billing, but no one has really studied the effects it has on consumer activity," said Chetty. "We would also hear about people 'saving' bandwidth all month and then binge downloading toward the end of their billing period.
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Cultural |
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'Where Wild Things Are' author Maurice Sendak dies
By HILLEL ITALIE
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Maurice Sendak didn't think of himself as a children's author, but as an author who told the truth about childhood.
"I like interesting people and kids are really interesting people," he explained to The Associated Press last fall. "And if you didn't paint them in little blue, pink and yellow, it's even more interesting."
Sendak, who died early Tuesday in Danbury, Conn., at age 83, four days after suffering a stroke, revolutionized children's books and how we think about childhood simply by leaving in what so many writers before had excluded. Dick and Jane were no match for his naughty Max. His kids misbehaved and didn't regret it, and in their dreams and nightmares fled to the most unimaginable places. Monstrous creatures were devised from his studio, but none more frightening than the grownups in his stories or the cloud of the Holocaust that darkened his every page.
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"His art gave us a fantastical but unromanticized reminder of what childhood truly felt like," Colbert said in a statement. "We are all honored to have been briefly invited into his world."
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Massachusetts bans bake sales
By Samantha Stainburn
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Massachusetts is banning bake sales in its public schools starting Aug. 1, the Boston Herald reported.
The state’s new nutrition rules forbid the sale or serving of unhealthy food that’s not part of the regular lunch program in hallways, cafeterias, vending machines or school stores from 30 minutes before the school day begins until 30 minutes after it ends, the Boston Herald reported. Bake sales are banned, as are cupcakes brought to school for junior’s classmates on his birthday.
Officials are even encouraging schools to apply the ban 24/7, which would end sales of foods like hot dogs and baked goods at evening, weekend and community events, the Boston Herald reported.
. . .
“The goal is to raise money,” Maura Dawley of Scituate, Mass., told the Boston Herald. “You’re going to be able to sell pizza. You’re not going to get that selling apples and bananas. It’s silly.”
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How offensive is the word 'lunatic'?
By Daniel Nasaw
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Two US senators have proposed to excise the word "lunatic" from federal law, calling it outdated and offensive. What are the word's origins and why is it so offensive?
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Advocates say the moves are not merely politically correct word-policing, but legitimate attempts to ease the debilitating stigma attached to mental illness and developmental disability.
. . .
Not only is the word "lunatic" older than the current understanding of mental illness - it is far older than the English language itself.
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The OED says the word originally referred to a kind of insanity supposedly dependent on the phases of the moon.
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Vive la femme?
By Alexandra Topping
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Just a few weeks ago François Hollande – then still a candidate vying to become the president of France – wrote a letter to one of the country's leading women's organisations. "The struggle for equality, for women's rights … is not a 'women's matter', but the struggle of every citizen," he said.
The pitch for the female – and feminist – vote became a feature of Hollande's ultimately successful presidential campaign. Among his overtures were the promise of equal representation of women in parliament, to reinstate the ministry of women's rights and to support a new law against sexual harassment.
But French women have heard all this before, notably from Nicolas Sarkozy, who promised equal representation of women in his government when he came to power in 2007. And with the shadow of Dominique Strauss-Kahn – a man accused of sexual assault, sexual harassment and "procuring" women for parties – hanging over his Socialist party, can Hollande really position himself as the first feminist president of France?
He has vocal supporters. During his campaign, a collection of 150 feminists – traditionally, though not solely, aligned with the left — signed a petition supporting his bid to become the next president of the republic. Thalia Breton, spokeswoman for campaign group Osez La Féminisme, said that Hollande had "engaged positively" with the debate, particularly on the creation of a ministry for women and domestic violence. "There are holes in his project and he could go further, but certainly we have far more chance of advancing the equality of women with François Hollande at the helm than Nicolas Sarkozy," she said.
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