Few people are better equipped to imagine the future of online journalism than Emily Bell. As Bell told me when we talked in the New York office, she believes that online journalism has a future - both in terms of content sitting behind paywalls, ad-supported news, and content subsidized by organizations or wealthy individuals.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/jSNcdkT_prQ/
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SACRAMENTO (Reuters) - California Governor Jerry Brown is undergoing treatment for early-stage prostate cancer with an excellent prognosis for recovery, and the 74-year-old Democrat is expected to keep up a full work schedule, his office said on Wednesday.
"Fortunately, this is early-stage localized prostate cancer, which is being treated with a short course of conventional radiotherapy," Dr. Eric Small, Brown's oncologist, said in a statement.
"The prognosis is excellent, and there are not expected to be any significant side effects," he added. Small is the co-director of the urology program at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center.
The announcement came as California lawmakers prepare for a 2013 legislative session that will kick off a historic year in which Democrats have supermajority control of both houses - the first time any party has had such a grip on the Legislature in 79 years.
Brown, who had a cancerous growth removed from the right side of his nose in April 2011, will complete his treatment for prostate cancer in early January, around the same time the Legislature is due to convene, his office said.
He is expected to keep a full work schedule, it added.
Brown is riding a string of successes in recent months. Voters in November approved a tax hike he championed, while soundly rejecting a measure he opposed that would have gutted union political power.
He also oversaw approval of a high-speed rail project and has been reining in an unwieldy budget deficit that has plagued California in recent years.
AFFECTS ONE IN SIX MEN
Brown's office did not immediately respond to questions as to when the governor was diagnosed with prostate cancer, how long he had been undergoing treatment, or where he was being treated.
During Brown's outpatient cancer treatment in 2011, doctors removed basal carcinoma cells and did reconstructive surgery to his nose.
The California Democratic and Republican parties both wished the governor a speedy recovery. Also weighing in was a Twitter account set up for the governor's dog, a Welsh corgi named Sutter, that said the dog would take good care of his owner.
One in every six men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during his lifetime, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. It is the most common cause of cancer-related death for men over 75 years of age.
Brown became one of the youngest governors of California when he took office in 1975 at age 36, going on to serve two consecutive terms. He later returned to that office in 2011 and is now the oldest governor the state has ever had.
Brown faded from public view after two failed presidential runs, but resurrected his political career in 1998, transforming himself into a quirky, pragmatic mayor of Oakland.
After eight years in Oakland, Brown was elected California attorney general and held the post until he was elected governor again in 2010.
(Reporting by Mary Slosson; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Peter Cooney)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/california-governor-brown-treated-early-stage-prostate-cancer-005507221.html
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Dec. 11, 2012 ? Researchers from the UK and Australia have uncovered a new element of the honeybee's genetic makeup, which may help to explain why bees are so sensitive to environmental changes.
Scientists from the University of Sheffield, Queen Mary, University of London and the Australian National University, have found that honeybees have a 'histone code' -- a series of marks on the histone proteins around which their DNA is wrapped in order to fit into the nucleus of a cell. This code is known to exist in humans and other complex organisms in order to control changes in cell development -- but this is the first time it's been discovered in the honeybee.
Histone codes can also be affected by nutrition and environmental factors, so the scientists believe the finding may be another part of the puzzle to explain how eating royal jelly ensures honeybee larvae turn into queens and not workers. "The development of different bees from the same DNA in the larvae is one of the clearest examples of epigenetics in action -- mechanisms that go beyond the basic DNA sequence," explains Dr Mark Dickman from the University of Sheffield's Faculty of Engineering. "From our knowledge of how the histone code works in other organisms, we think that the marks on the histone proteins might act as one of the switches that control how the larvae develop."
The scientists believe their findings will open the door to further study of the interplay between environment, nutrition and how the honey bee develops. The first step will be to identify exactly how larval diet influences the histone code to ensure development into either a queen or a sterile worker.
But the potential impact is much wider, as Dr Paul Hurd, from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, explains; "Indirect dietary-mediated effects are also of particular relevance to insect pollinators. Prime examples are from systemic pesticides used on agricultural crops, which accumulate inside nectar and pollen and therefore enter honey bee diet, in some cases with detrimental effect. By studying the impact of diet and particular chemicals on the histone code during honey bee development and behaviour, we may be able to identify how certain pesticides contribute to the decline of some colonies."
Professor Maleszka of the Australian National University adds; "We really need to begin looking beyond classical genetics to understand many of the current problems honey bees face including Colony Collapse Disorder.
There are rarely single genes that cause a given disease; it's more often interactions between a number of genes that's heavily influenced by environmental factors. Histone codes are flexible and have the capacity to act as an interface between genome and environment."
The work is published in the latest issue of Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and was supported in the UK by the Royal Society and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and by the Australian Research Council and National Health and Medical Research Council.
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/diL2AQ-YDJI/121211101942.htm
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Once installed, just add as many actions as you choose, select the days of the week and the times of day you want to use as triggers, and what actions you want the app to take. Silence can toggle Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Airplane mode, and ringer settings. Just set your schedule, tell the app whether you want the settings changed back to default at the end of the time period you set, and enable it. Silence's beauty is in the fact that it's fast, free, easy on the battery, and incredibly simple to use?much simpler than more advanced alternatives.
Obviously, advanced users can get the same effect out of tools like Tasker and Locale to name a few, but if all you want is scheduled sound and notification changes, Silence does the trick, for free, in an elegant and easy-to-use package. It's perfect if you're looking for an easier way to control these settings, or if you know someone who would love these features but aren't interested in paying for or getting their hands dirty with a more advanced app.
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KINGSTON, Jamaica ? The hurricane season just ended, and particularly the trail of death and destruction carved out by Hurricane Sandy in October, has left many with a reminder of just how devastating natural disasters can be. Climate change is a compounding factor that regional fisheries managers cannot ignore.
This is why for the next three days, more than 90 collaborators from across the region will be focusing on these issues, as they convene a workshop on formulation of a strategy, action plan and programme proposal on disaster risk management (DRM), climate change adaptation in fisheries and aquaculture in the CARICOM region in New Kingston, Jamaica, from Monday, December 10 to Wednesday, December 12.
?The Caribbean is said to be one of the most disaster-prone regions in the world based on the frequency and severity of hazard impacts, as well as the significant damage, destruction and social and economic losses experienced. We are very mindful of the potential devastating impact of both man-made and natural hazards such as tropical storms, hurricanes, floods, droughts, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes and tsunamis. Over the past two to three decades, these hazards have had devastating impacts on the people, their property and livelihoods, and on the social and economic development of our countries,? said executive director of the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism (CRFM), Milton Haughton.
Haughton noted that fishers, fish farmers and fishing communities, particularly those in coastal areas, are vulnerable.
?It is not surprising, therefore, that the subject of climate change and disaster risk management has been recognized as a fundamental development challenge in the Caribbean requiring special attention by policy makers,? he added.
The CRFM executive director informed that, at the request of the CRFM, the FAO has provided support to assist the countries of the region with the development of a regional strategy, action plan and program proposal on disaster risk management and climate change adaptation in fisheries and aquaculture, in an effort to implement adaptation and mitigation.
It is in this vein that government officials responsible for fisheries, climate change and disaster risk management, along with fisher folk and civil society representatives, will meet in Jamaica this week to discuss the topic.
?This should help us as a region to better understand the impacts of climate change on the fisheries and marine ecosystem, and implement adaptation and mitigation measures to protect food security and the livelihoods of coastal communities in the region,? Haughton elaborated.
?We need to act now to climate-proof and protect the vulnerable coastal fishing communities and their livelihoods, and build ecosystem resilience into our aquaculture and fisheries management policies,? he urged.
Days earlier at the same meeting venue, the regional collaborators convened two and a half days of talks to provide input on the zero draft of the international guidelines for securing sustainable small-scale fisheries (SSF Guidelines), which will be presented for adoption to the 31st Session of the FAO Committee on Fisheries (COFI) in July 2014.
?The preparation of the SSF guidelines is expected to contribute to policy development at the national and regional levels,? said FAO senior fishery officer Helga Josupeit. ?In addition, both the process and the final product are expected to have considerable impact on guiding policies and practices for securing small-scale fisheries and creating benefits, especially in terms of food security and poverty reduction.?
Josupeit explained that small-scale fishers, fish workers and their communities across the world should feel a sense of ownership of the SSF guidelines, thus contributing to the process of turning resource users into resource stewards.
Prior to the meetings on the draft SSF guidelines, the participants in the meeting undertook a performance review of the CRFM. They have also provided their initial input into a new 8-year strategic plan to span 2013-2021.
These milestone meetings are convened by the CRFM in collaboration with the FAO Western Central Atlantic Fishery Commission (WECAFC), the Caribbean Community Climate Change Center (CCCCC), and the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), through funding and technical assistance provided by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.
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Dec. 10, 2012 ? Efforts to help overweight patients avoid diabetes through lifestyle changes need not rely on intensive, one-on-one focused programs, a new clinical study from the Stanford University School of Medicine and the Palo Alto Medical Foundation Research Institute has found.
The study, published Dec. 10 in the Archives of Internal Medicine, opens up a practical way for primary care physicians to help their patients at high risk for developing diabetes.
Researchers have known for 10 years that intensive intervention programs led by lifestyle coaches to encourage weight loss through healthier diet and exercise help reduce type-2 diabetes incidence. The Diabetes Prevention Program clinical research study, the results of which were published in 2002, found this strategy led to a 58 percent decrease in the incidence of type-2 diabetes, a result that surpassed the benefit of drug treatment.
The new study -- headed by Jun Ma, MD, PhD, an associate investigator at the research institute and an affiliate member of the Stanford Prevention Research Center -- builds off the DPP's strategy but makes full use of online resources and, in one group, a take-home DVD. If implemented, the new interventions could increase the accessibility and reach of existing educational, coach-based diabetes prevention programs, and free up time for primary care doctors, who are often frustrated with high patient loads that prevent them from providing the individualized care these patients need.
"The big issue in diabetes prevention is how to take what clearly worked for DPP -- which was very intensive and one-on-one focused -- and get it to the point where it could be established as a program in large group practices," said Randall Stafford, MD, PhD, professor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center and a senior investigator on the study.
Diabetes currently affects 25.8 million people in the United States, or 8.3 percent of the population. The disease is a major cause of heart disease and stroke, and is the leading cause of kidney failure, nontraumatic lower-limb amputation and new cases of blindness among adults. In 2007, diabetes-related medical costs in the United States were estimated at $174 billion. Effective health interventions that reach a maximum amount of pre-diabetic patients -- those at the highest risk for developing diabetes -- are urgently needed to curb the burden of the disease.
What the DPP sported in effectiveness, it lacked in its ability to broadly reach patients at the level of primary care. In the new study, Ma and Stafford set out to determine whether restructuring the DPP to take advantage of online connectivity and health monitoring could be achieved without sacrificing the benefits seen in the original program.
Pre-diabetic patients were recruited from Palo Alto Medical Foundation and randomized into three groups: a coach-led group intervention, a self-directed DVD intervention or usual care. In addition to offering practical ways to start eating healthier foods and exercising more, the curriculum in both the coach-led and DVD-based interventions also focused on the mental and behavioral strategies necessary to make the changes stick. This lifestyle instruction was delivered over a three-month intensive intervention phase.
Following the first three months of intervention, the participants regularly received encouraging messages to help them follow through with what they had learned in the initial intervention phase. During this 12-month maintenance phase, participants received supportive emails within an electronic health-record system, and monitored their health goals through the publicly available American Heart Association'sHeart360 website. The primary outcome tested in the study was a change in body mass index (a calculation based on a person's height and weight), although other factors, including weight loss, waist circumference, blood pressure and blood glucose, were also measured.
The results show that participants responded to both the coach-led and self-directed interventions, although the coach-led group fared slightly better. At the beginning of the study, the participants had an average BMI of 32; a BMI of 30 or more is considered obese. After the 15-month trial, the average drop in BMI was 2.2 for the coach-led group, 1.6 for the self-directed group and 0.9 for the group that received usual care. The average weight loss was 13.9 pounds for the coach-led group, 9.9 pounds for the self-directed group and 5.3 pounds for usual care. Both interventions also led to a dip in waistline circumference as compared to the usual-care group.
Though the study was too small to generate statistically significant findings along gender lines, they turned up a hint of a gender difference: While men responded with equal success to both the coach-led and self-directed interventions, women responded better to the coach-led approach.
Stafford points out that the suggested differences between genders highlights the need for options when it comes to lifestyle interventions. "It suggests that a one-size-fits-all program isn't necessarily what we need. We need some way to offer people different styles of intervention," said Stafford.
Narrow demographics were a primary limitation of the study. Participants were all from a single clinic in Silicon Valley, and a large majority were white (78 percent), college-educated (97 percent) and earned more than $75,000 per year (88 percent). Stafford acknowledged the limited demographics of the study, but said he hopes that similar lifestyle interventions will work in more diverse populations. His group is currently conducting a National Institutes of Health-funded study testing the effectiveness of weight-loss interventions in a low-income, Latino population.
If implemented, the approaches -- especially the self-directed DVD -- could extend the reach and lower the cost of lifestyle intervention programs. In addition to the cost-benefit of the intervention programs themselves, the real savings will come from diabetes prevention. "Diabetes is an expensive disease to treat and its complications are both personally devastating and societally costly," said Stafford. If patients respond to self-directed programs by losing a modest amount of weight, this could be enough to prevent or significantly delay the onset of type-2 diabetes in high-risk populations, ultimately reducing the burden of this chronic disease.
Other Stanford co-authors were instructors Veronica Yank, MD, and Lisa Rosas, PhD. They also collaborated with other researchers at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation Research Institute.
The study was supported by grants from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and the American Heart Association, as well as internal funding from the Palo Alto Medical Foundation Research Institute.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Stanford University Medical Center. The original article was written by Jessica Shugart.
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/xqzH8IXgfCs/121210163743.htm
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