Furloughed park ranger Rich Lechleitner, left, visits with friend Jana Gardiner co-owner of Ashford Creek Pottery Tuesday Oct. 15, 2013 as Mount Rainier National Park in Washington remained closed due to the partial government shutdown. Gardiner, a 33 year resident of Ashford has seen only a trickle of visitors since the shutdown closed Mount Rainier National Park. (AP Photo/The News Tribune, Dean J. Koepfler)
Furloughed park ranger Rich Lechleitner, left, visits with friend Jana Gardiner co-owner of Ashford Creek Pottery Tuesday Oct. 15, 2013 as Mount Rainier National Park in Washington remained closed due to the partial government shutdown. Gardiner, a 33 year resident of Ashford has seen only a trickle of visitors since the shutdown closed Mount Rainier National Park. (AP Photo/The News Tribune, Dean J. Koepfler)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Barriers went down at federal memorials and National Park Service sites, and thousands of furloughed federal workers returned to work across the country Thursday after 16 days off the job due to the partial government shutdown.
Among the sites reopening were Gettysburg National Park in Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Capitol visitors center. Hundreds of others across the country were ready to follow suit throughout Thursday.
"Just to be able to get back to serving the public is so important," said Greg Bettwy as he prepared to return to his job in Washington with the Smithsonian Institution's human resource department. Bettwy said he watched his spending carefully during the shutdown — choosing store brands at the grocery store and forgoing a trip to see a Penn State football game.
The Office of Personnel Management announced that workers should return to work on their next regularly scheduled work day — Thursday for most workers. Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of workers have been furloughed since the shutdown began Oct. 1. The office encouraged agencies to be flexible for a smooth transition by allowing telework and excused absences in some cases.
In Washington, the Capitol's visitor center planned to resume tours Thursday, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum was reopening, and the Smithsonian — overseer of many of Washington's major museums — proclaimed on Twitter, "We're back from the (hashtag)shutdown!" The National Zoo was set to reopen Friday, though its popular panda cam was expected to be back online Thursday.
The returning workers' presence will be felt on the roads and rails in the Washington region, where commutes have been less crowded over the past two weeks. The regional transit agency, Metro, reported a 20 percent drop in ridership when the shutdown began and has said it lost a few hundred thousand dollars each day.
Osman Naimyar, a taxi cab driver in Washington, said his business dropped by 15 to 20 percent during the shutdown, and he was pleased to see it end.
"More business. More money," he said.
Workers began filing in well before dawn at the U.S. Geological Survey's campus in Reston, about 20 miles outside of Washington.
"Feels kind of strange," said Kathleen Faison of Ashburn, a training specialist at the survey, as she headed into the office. "I kind of wish they would have kept us out until Monday."
Faison said during the first few days of the shutdown, she followed the news closely, anticipating that she could be called back any day. But by week two, "I just kind of fell into my own personal routine," she said.
She said she considered teleworking for the first day or two but eventually decided "I might as well just get back into the swing of things."
Hydrologist Julian Wayland, carrying his lunch in a paper bag, said he wasn't sure how much work had piled up during the shutdown. His primary job is determining the age of groundwater samples.
"We're definitely behind," he said. "I'm glad it's over."
In Ohio, visitor centers, restrooms and other areas at Cuyahoga Valley National Park were back in service.
The National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, also was reopening on a normal basis. It had been open only one day during the shutdown.
Nationwide, the impasse had shuttered monuments and national parks. In Florida, the closure of the Everglades National Park had put almost all Florida Bay off limits, but commercial fishermen were set to return Friday. Parks across the country made similar plans.
The shutdown also mostly closed down NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department. Critical functions of government went on as usual, but the closure and potential default weighed on the economy and spooked the financial markets.
Standard & Poor's estimated the shutdown has taken $24 billion out of the economy.
____
Crary reported from New York. Associated Press writer Matthew Barakat in Reston, Va., contributed to this report.
MOSCOW (AP) — The skinny man in a baggy, wrinkled shirt carting groceries back to his car could have been any Silicon Valley programmer, were it not for the Russian license plate on the car behind him.
The grainy photograph is the first to show NSA leaker Edward Snowden in his new life in Russia after leaving the Moscow airport.
The force behind the scoop? A father-and-son team who like to see themselves as Russia's Murdochs.
With a well-oiled system of paying for scoops, the Gabrelyanovs have been able to crawl into every crevice of Russian life from show business to the security services. Their website Lifenews, which published the photo confirmed authentic by Snowden's lawyer, is part of an expanding empire that has come to dominate Russia's media landscape in the decades since the elder Gabrelyanov started off as a provincial tabloid publisher.
A key reason for their recent success: obsequious loyalty to the Kremlin. The father, Aram Gabrelyanov, refers to President Vladimir Putin as the "father of the nation"— a fealty that was rewarded when one of Putin's oldest friends spent $80 million to become a key shareholder in the Gabrelyanovs' holding company, News Media, providing it with a flood of cash for investment.
Its purchasing power and carefully cultivated contacts are what brought Lifenews its first Snowden exclusive: a picture of the systems analyst leaving the airport after Russia granted him asylum on Aug. 1. That was followed on Oct. 7 by the image of Snowden carrying groceries in Moscow. With its savvy for scoops, the company often works as a de facto arm of Kremlin power — humiliating Putin's opponents by catching them in all sorts of misdeeds.
But it isn't just the Kremlin that values the Gabrelyanovs.
The public feeds on their coverage, too, because they are among the few people in Russian media still able to break news — even if it's with a strong establishment slant — enabling them to generate the clicks and the buzz that sterile state media can no longer muster.
Aram Gabrelyanov, who resembles a miniaturized, fleshier version of James Gandolfini, can usually be found barking orders across the sleek newsroom to his army of young journalists. Born to an Armenian builder father, Gabrelyanov has a warm, southern sense of humor, and it's hard for him to go five minutes without whipping out an anecdote.
He first got the bug for tabloid journalism while at university in Soviet times, where he tricked the KGB agent on campus into letting him into the library where foreign publications were kept.
That exposure served him well when he moved to the provincial town of Ulyanovsk in the late 1980s, where he rapidly moved up in the local publishing world. He then relocated to the capital and, after a few hit-and-miss years, made it big in 2001 with his national tabloid Zhizn — Life — which now has a circulation of 1.6 million.
Today, News Media Holding earns $1.5 billion per year. In addition to Life, they own Izvestia, once the official newspaper of the Soviet government, as well as another tabloid and three websites. The younger son and heir to the empire, 24-year-old Ashot, runs Lifenews.ru and also a new TV station. There is no substantive division between the holding's publications, which freely feed one another information and scoops that are then retailored for each audience. The elder son, 26-year-old Artem, directs their comic book line, with a host of Russified superheroes that includes an Orthodox priest.
The Gabrelyanovs pay their staff extravagantly — in some cases, $10,000 per month — with the understanding that a large chunk of that should be spent on payments to "agents," or the people in law enforcement and hospitals who can feed scoops. Gabrelyanov said he paid between $10,000 and $30,000 for the shots of Snowden leaving the airport, and Life journalists have won some of their biggest breaks by bribing their way into hospitals to film Russian mega-stars on their deathbeds.
Aram Gabrelyanov defends the "agent" system as the key to his empire's success: "We categorically won't retreat from this system, it's our business."
One former Life editor-in-chief even boasted about the tactics.
"Before us nobody had ever done anything as systematic, and paid them for it. We spanned the entire city," said Timur Marder, who started as an intern in Ulyanovsk in 1995 and worked his way up the publication ladder to lead Life in 2005 before quitting in 2009 over a personal dispute.
"There were many times," Marder said, "when our journalists arrived at the scene before investigators, the police or the ambulance."
For many of their scoops, the Gabrelyanovs' publications have been widely believed to have relied on tips from Russia's security apparatus — and many of those officials frequently make a flattering appearance on the pages of his papers.
That proximity to the security services also has been demonstrated by their hardline stance on Russia's opposition movement, to which they take a hatchet much more aggressively than state-controlled media. When protests erupted in Russia following manipulated parliamentary elections in 2011, Lifenews published phone calls of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov insulting his fellow activists and protesters as "hamsters" and "scared penguins." When questioned on the subject, the Gabrelyanovs insisted that they hadn't tapped Nemtsov's phone but had "received" the files — suggesting they came from the security services.
This go-for-the-jugular mentality has allowed Lifenews's star to rise, while viewership of state-controlled television is in steep decline.
Vasily Gatov, an analyst at Novosti Medialab, said state-media have lost their capacity to cover major events. "They think too long about whether we should cover this or not," said Gatov. "He (Gabrelyanov) doesn't wait; he trusts his feelings and his judgment."
Aram Gabrelyanov tries to portray News Media as an outsider organization and insists that it has few high-up contacts and doesn't need them. "You can't recruit the president of the United States," he said, "but you can probably recruit his cleaning lady."
That quip clashes with the fact that Gabrelyanov has spent the last few years cozying up to Kremlin insiders.
It was in the mid-2000s, as Putin was consolidating his power, that Gabrelyanov jumped on the political bandwagon and established one simple rule in his company: Don't mess with Putin. "We do what we can to make him a symbol that unites the country," he said.
The loyalty was rewarded when, in 2008, Putin's old friend Yuri Kovalchuk — dubbed "the Kremlin's banker" — bought just under half the company for $80 million. The resulting cash flow allowed the Gabrelyanovs to expand their empire, by opening the Lifenews website and a host of other outlets in the same year.
Gabrelyanov insists he's won the clout to be an independent voice.
"When some bureaucrat talks to me," he said, "I have a question: Who the hell are you and why should I listen to you?"
LONDON (AP) — American actor Ben Foster is cycling into the lead as Lance Armstrong in a new movie about the disgraced American cyclist.
Director Stephen Frears said filming started Wednesday on the untitled project, and Foster is already proving to be a champion in the saddle.
Frears claims Foster is a "really, really good actor and now he's a very good cyclist. The cyclists were pleased with him."
The movie follows the rise of Armstrong, his cancer battle, retirement and exposure by journalist David Walsh.
Irish star Chris O'Dowd plays Walsh, with Guillaume Canet and Jesse Plemons in supporting roles.
Frears says Armstrong is endlessly complex and there could be many more films made about him. He spoke at Wednesday's London Film Festival gala for his latest movie, "Philomena," staring Judi Dench.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama, in a rebuke to proposals by House Republicans for steep cuts in food stamps for the poor, urged Congress on Thursday to pass a farm bill "that protects children and vulnerable adults in time of need."
Obama put the long-delayed bill, more than a year overdue, among three priorities for resolution by end of the year. Also on the list were immigration reform and a budget agreement.
Food stamps, the major U.S. antihunger program, are the make-or-break issue for the $500 billion, five-year farm bill. House Republicans want to tighten eligibility rules and save $39 billion over a decade. The Democratic-run Senate suggested $4.5 billion could be squeezed out by closing certain loopholes.
In remarks at the White House, Obama said "we should pass a farm bill, one that American farmers and ranchers can depend on; one that protects vulnerable children and adults in times of need; one that gives rural communities opportunities to grow and the long-term certainty that they deserve."
The administration has threatened twice to veto large cuts in food stamps. It said Congress should instead end the $5 billion-a-year "direct payment" subsidy to farmers and scale back on federal subsidies for crop insurance.
Obama credited the Senate for writing "a solid, bipartisan" bill. "If House Republicans have ideas that they think would improve the farm bill, let's see them. Let's negotiate. What are we waiting for? Let's get this done," said Obama.
In response, the House Agriculture Committee said the four leaders of the House and Senate committees met on Wednesday to get negotiations moving. The first meeting of the 41 "conferees" from the House and Senate, appointed to write a compromise farm bill, was expected by the end of the month.
An estimated 3.8 million people would lose food stamp benefits in 2014 under the House bill, mostly by shortening the time able-bodied adults can receive benefits and by eliminating a provision, created as part of welfare reform, that allows benefits to people with more assets than usually permitted.
A near-record 47.8 million people received benefits at latest count. Enrollment surged by more than 20 million people since the recession of 2008-09. Republican say continued high enrollment is a sign the program needs reform. Democrats say it shows weak economic recovery.
(Reporting by Charles Abbott; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)
It looks like Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream will live on -- in Jamie Foxx. The Django Unchained actor, 45, has been tapped to play the late iconic civil rights activist in an upcoming biopic directed by Oliver Stone, the Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps filmmaker confirmed to The Wall Street Journal.
"We're looking for a way to relate to this extraordinary man," Stone told the Journal of the film, which is described by the paper as an "authorized version" of MLK's life story. According to The Wrap, several members of the King family are expected to serve as executive producers.
The director/screenwriter -- who has won Academy Awards for his work on Midnight Express, Platoon, and Born on the Fourth of July -- has long been drawn to scripts with historical and political significance. He previously directed 1991's JFK, 1995's Nixon, and 2008's W. (about George W. Bush). He also has a past with Foxx: The two last worked together on the 1999 football drama Any Given Sunday.
Foxx is no stranger to biopics, either. He won an Oscar for bringing Ray Charles to life in the 2004 biopic Ray. He's currently filming the new movie adaptation of Annie with Quvenzhane Wallis.
Tell Us: Do you think Jamie Foxx will be a good Martin Luther King Jr.?
Philadelphia, PA, October 15, 2013 Some people grow out of their childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and some don't. In fact, around 50% of individuals diagnosed as children continue to suffer from ADHD as adults.
Researchers are trying to understand the reasons why, and relatedly, whether there are any differences that distinguish the two groups. Gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, and symptom severity have already been ruled out as potentials. So, perhaps there is a distinguishing variable in the brain? Dr. Philip Shaw at the National Human Genome Research Institute and his colleagues conducted a study to find out.
They already knew from prior work that cortical structure is thinner in adults with ADHD, particularly in regions of the brain that play important roles in cognitive functioning and attention. However, that work was cross-sectional, meaning it was conducted at a single point in time, so any changes over time weren't captured. Thus, they focused on those same regions in this study, but conducted a longitudinal study so they could link trajectories of symptoms with trajectories of brain development, particularly the structure of cortical regions that control attention.
They recruited 92 children with ADHD, with a mean age of 11, who underwent repeated structural imaging scans and clinical assessments over the years, including as adults at a mean age of 24 years. For comparison, they also scanned 184 volunteers without ADHD.
They found that ADHD continued into adulthood in 37 (40%) of the participants diagnosed with childhood ADHD, and these individuals showed increased rates of thinning. In contrast, the cortical thickness of individuals who achieved remission of their ADHD developed toward the normal range.
"We find that differences in patterns of brain growth are linked with differences in the adult outcome of childhood ADHD. Differences in these regions specifically a thinner cortex are found in childhood ADHD," Shaw further explained. "However, for the group whose ADHD improved with age, these differences tend to resolve and by adulthood, these regions did not differ significantly from individuals who never had ADHD. By contrast, for the group with persistent ADHD, childhood differences persisted in the 'attention' regions of the brain."
These findings seem to suggest that the trajectory of cortex development differentiates people who recover from childhood ADHD from people whose disorder continues into adulthood.
"The development of the cortex seems to be a critical factor influencing the recovery from childhood ADHD. However, there is much that we do not understand about this relationship," commented Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry. "Cortical thinning may be related to the pruning of connections in the brain, in this case, connections with the prefrontal cortex. The current data would seem to suggest that excessive trimming of connections is a risk factor for the persistence of ADHD into adulthood. But we do not yet understand which connections are being trimmed, why these connections disappear, and how this loss of connections contributes to ADHD symptoms."
More work will be necessary to answer these questions, but Shaw concludes that "understanding how differences in brain development are tied to the course of ADHD is the first step in developing tools to help us predict the outcome of childhood ADHD."
###
The article is "Trajectories of Cerebral Cortical Development in Childhood and Adolescence and Adult Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder" by Philip Shaw, Meaghan Malek, Bethany Watson, Deanna Greenstein, Pietro de Rossi, and Wendy Sharp (doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2013.04.007). The article appears in Biological Psychiatry, Volume 74, Issue 8 (October 15, 2013), published by Elsevier.
Notes for editors
Full text of the article is available to credentialed journalists upon request; contact Rhiannon Bugno at +1 214 648 0880 or Biol.Psych@utsouthwestern.edu. Journalists wishing to interview the authors may contact Philip Shaw at +1 301 451 4010 or shawp@mail.nih.gov.
The authors' affiliations, and disclosures of financial and conflicts of interests are available in the article.
John H. Krystal, M.D., is Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine and a research psychiatrist at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System. His disclosures of financial and conflicts of interests are available here.
About Biological Psychiatry
Biological Psychiatry is the official journal of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, whose purpose is to promote excellence in scientific research and education in fields that investigate the nature, causes, mechanisms and treatments of disorders of thought, emotion, or behavior. In accord with this mission, this peer-reviewed, rapid-publication, international journal publishes both basic and clinical contributions from all disciplines and research areas relevant to the pathophysiology and treatment of major psychiatric disorders.
The journal publishes novel results of original research which represent an important new lead or significant impact on the field, particularly those addressing genetic and environmental risk factors, neural circuitry and neurochemistry, and important new therapeutic approaches. Reviews and commentaries that focus on topics of current research and interest are also encouraged.
Biological Psychiatry is one of the most selective and highly cited journals in the field of psychiatric neuroscience. It is ranked 4th out of 135 Psychiatry titles and 13th out of 251 Neurosciences titles in the Journal Citations Reports published by Thomson Reuters. The 2012 Impact Factor score for Biological Psychiatry is 9.247.
About Elsevier
Elsevier is a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The company works in partnership with the global science and health communities to publish more than 2,000 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier's online solutions include ScienceDirect, Scopus, SciVal, Reaxys, ClinicalKey and Mosby's Suite, which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, helping research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.
A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC, a world leading provider of professional information solutions. The group employs more than 30,000 people, including more than 15,000 in North America. Reed Elsevier Group PLC is owned equally by two parent companies, Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. Their shares are traded on the London, Amsterdam and New York Stock Exchanges using the following ticker symbols: London: REL; Amsterdam: REN; New York: RUK and ENL.
Media contact
Rhiannon Bugno
Editorial Office
+1 214 648 0880
Biol.Psych@utsouthwestern.edu
[
| E-mail
| Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Recovery from childhood ADHD may depend on the pattern of brain development
Philadelphia, PA, October 15, 2013 Some people grow out of their childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and some don't. In fact, around 50% of individuals diagnosed as children continue to suffer from ADHD as adults.
Researchers are trying to understand the reasons why, and relatedly, whether there are any differences that distinguish the two groups. Gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, and symptom severity have already been ruled out as potentials. So, perhaps there is a distinguishing variable in the brain? Dr. Philip Shaw at the National Human Genome Research Institute and his colleagues conducted a study to find out.
They already knew from prior work that cortical structure is thinner in adults with ADHD, particularly in regions of the brain that play important roles in cognitive functioning and attention. However, that work was cross-sectional, meaning it was conducted at a single point in time, so any changes over time weren't captured. Thus, they focused on those same regions in this study, but conducted a longitudinal study so they could link trajectories of symptoms with trajectories of brain development, particularly the structure of cortical regions that control attention.
They recruited 92 children with ADHD, with a mean age of 11, who underwent repeated structural imaging scans and clinical assessments over the years, including as adults at a mean age of 24 years. For comparison, they also scanned 184 volunteers without ADHD.
They found that ADHD continued into adulthood in 37 (40%) of the participants diagnosed with childhood ADHD, and these individuals showed increased rates of thinning. In contrast, the cortical thickness of individuals who achieved remission of their ADHD developed toward the normal range.
"We find that differences in patterns of brain growth are linked with differences in the adult outcome of childhood ADHD. Differences in these regions specifically a thinner cortex are found in childhood ADHD," Shaw further explained. "However, for the group whose ADHD improved with age, these differences tend to resolve and by adulthood, these regions did not differ significantly from individuals who never had ADHD. By contrast, for the group with persistent ADHD, childhood differences persisted in the 'attention' regions of the brain."
These findings seem to suggest that the trajectory of cortex development differentiates people who recover from childhood ADHD from people whose disorder continues into adulthood.
"The development of the cortex seems to be a critical factor influencing the recovery from childhood ADHD. However, there is much that we do not understand about this relationship," commented Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry. "Cortical thinning may be related to the pruning of connections in the brain, in this case, connections with the prefrontal cortex. The current data would seem to suggest that excessive trimming of connections is a risk factor for the persistence of ADHD into adulthood. But we do not yet understand which connections are being trimmed, why these connections disappear, and how this loss of connections contributes to ADHD symptoms."
More work will be necessary to answer these questions, but Shaw concludes that "understanding how differences in brain development are tied to the course of ADHD is the first step in developing tools to help us predict the outcome of childhood ADHD."
###
The article is "Trajectories of Cerebral Cortical Development in Childhood and Adolescence and Adult Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder" by Philip Shaw, Meaghan Malek, Bethany Watson, Deanna Greenstein, Pietro de Rossi, and Wendy Sharp (doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2013.04.007). The article appears in Biological Psychiatry, Volume 74, Issue 8 (October 15, 2013), published by Elsevier.
Notes for editors
Full text of the article is available to credentialed journalists upon request; contact Rhiannon Bugno at +1 214 648 0880 or Biol.Psych@utsouthwestern.edu. Journalists wishing to interview the authors may contact Philip Shaw at +1 301 451 4010 or shawp@mail.nih.gov.
The authors' affiliations, and disclosures of financial and conflicts of interests are available in the article.
John H. Krystal, M.D., is Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine and a research psychiatrist at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System. His disclosures of financial and conflicts of interests are available here.
About Biological Psychiatry
Biological Psychiatry is the official journal of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, whose purpose is to promote excellence in scientific research and education in fields that investigate the nature, causes, mechanisms and treatments of disorders of thought, emotion, or behavior. In accord with this mission, this peer-reviewed, rapid-publication, international journal publishes both basic and clinical contributions from all disciplines and research areas relevant to the pathophysiology and treatment of major psychiatric disorders.
The journal publishes novel results of original research which represent an important new lead or significant impact on the field, particularly those addressing genetic and environmental risk factors, neural circuitry and neurochemistry, and important new therapeutic approaches. Reviews and commentaries that focus on topics of current research and interest are also encouraged.
Biological Psychiatry is one of the most selective and highly cited journals in the field of psychiatric neuroscience. It is ranked 4th out of 135 Psychiatry titles and 13th out of 251 Neurosciences titles in the Journal Citations Reports published by Thomson Reuters. The 2012 Impact Factor score for Biological Psychiatry is 9.247.
About Elsevier
Elsevier is a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The company works in partnership with the global science and health communities to publish more than 2,000 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier's online solutions include ScienceDirect, Scopus, SciVal, Reaxys, ClinicalKey and Mosby's Suite, which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, helping research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.
A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC, a world leading provider of professional information solutions. The group employs more than 30,000 people, including more than 15,000 in North America. Reed Elsevier Group PLC is owned equally by two parent companies, Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. Their shares are traded on the London, Amsterdam and New York Stock Exchanges using the following ticker symbols: London: REL; Amsterdam: REN; New York: RUK and ENL.
Media contact
Rhiannon Bugno
Editorial Office
+1 214 648 0880
Biol.Psych@utsouthwestern.edu
[
| E-mail
| Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Microsoft is updating all of its built-in Windows 8.1 apps—like Xbox Music, Mail, Calendar, People and all the rest—ahead of the operating system's release later today. Excited?
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A baggage handler arrested after dry ice bombs exploded at Los Angeles International Airport planted the devices as a prank, police said Wednesday.
The motive was disclosed a day after the arrest of Dicarlo Bennett, a 28-year-old employee for the ground handling company Servisair.
"I think we can safely say he is not a terrorist or an organized crime boss. He did this for his own amusement," said Los Angeles police Deputy Chief Michael Downing, who heads the department's counter-terrorism and special operations bureau.
No one was hurt on Sunday when two plastic bottles packed with dry ice exploded in an employee bathroom and on the airport's tarmac. An unexploded device was found Monday night.
As a result of the incident, airport officials plan to meet with law enforcement authorities to examine potential security enhancements at the nation's second-busiest airport.
The meeting also will explore the handling and transport of dry ice and other hazardous materials and possible improvements to those procedures.
Arif Alikhan, deputy executive director for Homeland Security and Law Enforcement at Los Angeles World Airports, said such meetings are routine after problems.
"We'll look at all layers of security existing at the airport, including technology, physical infrastructure, the partnership of tenants, awareness of employees to potential hazardous items like dry ice," Alikhan said.
Workers at the airport must pass a criminal background check before they can get a security badge for access to restricted areas.
On Tuesday, police arrested Bennett, who was booked for possession of a destructive device near an aircraft and held on $1 million bail.
It was not immediately clear whether Bennett had a lawyer. A message left on a phone number listed at an address for Bennett was not returned.
Despite the arrest, travelers saw stepped-up security patrols at all terminals as well as the airfield, Los Angeles Airport Police spokeswoman Belinda Nettles said.
Dry ice is routinely used by aircraft catering companies and restaurants to keep perishable food safe.
Bennett took dry ice from a plane and placed a loaded bottle in an employee bathroom, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation who wasn't authorized to speak publicly and asked to remain anonymous.
The commotion caused by the explosion delayed several flights. Remnants of another device were found the same night on a tarmac outside the main international terminal.
Police had pursued a theory that the bombs were placed by a disgruntled employee due to a labor dispute.
Servisair said in an emailed statement that it had no comment beyond confirming that Bennett was an employee of Servisair at the time of incident.
The bombs were made by putting dry ice in 20-ounce plastic bottles. When a bottle is capped, pressure builds up due to a chemical reaction and can cause an explosion.
The LAX explosions recalled a May incident at Disneyland, in which police said an employee placed dry ice-packed bottles in a food cart and trash can. Both exploded; no one was injured.
NEW YORK (AP) — Nothing much interferes with "South Park" lampooning its targets.
But Comedy Central says an ill-timed power outage shut the show down Tuesday night, preventing completion of this week's scheduled episode.
Comedy Central said Wednesday that all the computers at South Park Studios were down for hours, from animation to editing to sound. The planned episode, "Goth Kids 3: Dawn of the Posers," couldn't be finished.
A repeat, "Scott Tenorman Must Die," was scheduled Wednesday night instead.
"South Park" co-creator Trey Parker says he regrets missing an air date but acknowledges. But he says after years of tempting fate by delivering the show on a last-minute basis, "I guess it was bound to happen."
Hikers and campers can now keep their cameras charged with FlameStower, which uses heat from a campfire, stove or even candles to charge any device powered by a USB connection. While this can seem superfluous — powering up while getting away from it all — creators Andrew Byrnes and Adam Kell says the device can also bring power to people in developing countries where wireless technology has leapfrogged others, places where people have cellphones but not electricity.
Byrnes and Kell were both studying materials science at Stanford University and at first thought about a generator wired to a toaster, but they quickly dismissed that idea. They spoke to a business school professor, who told them something that's been their guiding principle since — build something that can cook a pot of rice and charge a cellphone at the same time.
The technology is fairly simple. The FlameStower has a blade that extends out over the fire, while the other end is cooled by a reservoir of water. That means one part of the blade is hotter than the other. The temperature difference generates electricity, and semiconductors amplify the voltage to a useful amount. It gives you the same charge as connecting your phone to a laptop. The Mars Curiosity Rover uses the same technology, though its heat source comes from decaying radioactive materials.
This phenomenon of heat to electricity is called the Seebeck effect, and it doesn't generate a lot of energy, which means it wasn't that useful until people started walking around with cameras and smartphones.
"Now you have these tools that are insanely powerful, and increasingly are stingy on their energy use, so that value of the low amount of electricity is getting higher," Byrnes says.
He and Kell want to bring the FlameStower not only to stores in the U.S. but to developing countries as well. Kell recently returned from a trip to rural Kenya and Ethiopia to refine the FlameStower for users there, because around 65 percent of people in Africa have cellphones, but only 42 percent have electricity.
"[The cellphone] has been the first technology that people in rural villages are actually buying," Kell says.
Kell says products sold in developing countries are usually made to be cheaper than their counterparts in the U.S., with the exception of energy, which is much more expensive and less reliable.
Kell and Byrnes aren't the only people to come up with something like this. The BioLite CampStove and PowerPot are both pots that will charge a device and cook your food or boil water at the same time. But Kell says they weren't as successful in developing countries because people there often want to use their own pots, so the FlameStower founders made something that can work on any stove or fire.
At the moment a FlameStower costs $80, and the project is being funded on Kickstarter until late October.
James Blake addresses the crowd during an interview with Mary Joe Fernandez after losing on day three of the 2013 U.S. Open.
Matthew Stockman/Getty Images
James Blake addresses the crowd during an interview with Mary Joe Fernandez after losing on day three of the 2013 U.S. Open.
Matthew Stockman/Getty Images
Neither of them is over 35 years old. One of them played in ATP World Tour events just months ago; the other did so last year. But none of that will keep recently retired tennis players Andy Roddick, 31, and James Blake, 33, from joining a circuit of senior players.
The pair will be playing in the PowerShares Series, a touring set of one-day tournaments featuring tennis legends such as Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, John McEnroe and Ivan Lendl. By joining the tour, Roddick could eventually get a chance to play alongside his former coach, Jimmy Connors.
We will pause here to acknowledge that any of the people listed above would make short work of us on any court, under any conditions. And it can be debated that the PowerShares Series isn't a traditional senior tour, as its minimum age requirement is that players be just 30.
"I am looking forward to playing on the PowerShares circuit," Roddick says, in a report on the Tennis site. "Having a chance to stay connected with tennis and compete on a limited basis through events like these fits perfectly with my life these days."
A look at the PowerShares site shows that it features a Tennis article identifying it as "the newly-named senior circuit" last year, when it changed its name from the Champions Series. The tour was founded in 2005 by a group that includes former tennis star Jim Courier, who plays in many events.
If you're wondering about the age cutoff for other senior tours, so were we:
In tennis, the ATP Champions Tour requires that players be retired and meet career criteria, such as holding a world No. 1 ranking or being a Grand Slam finalist.
While some sources report the Champions Tour requires that players are at least 35, Roddick is scheduled to play a tour event in early 2014, when he'll still be 31. The Champions Tour is also said to require a player be at least two years past their retirement; details about its policies weren't available for review at the time of this post.
In professional golf, the standard minimum age to join a senior tour is 50.
Future versions of Grand Theft Auto—at least those set in Switzerland—could include a detailed and incredibly accurate 3D model of the Matterhorn for thrill-seeking gamers to explore, thanks to a swarm of drones that recently scanned, mapped, and photographed the iconic peak.
SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - Former San Diego Mayor Bob Filner, who resigned from the helm of California's second-largest city following a string of sexual harassment allegations, has been charged with false imprisonment and battery, the San Diego Superior court said on Tuesday.
Filner was charged with felony false imprisonment and two misdemeanor counts of battery involving three women, and a hearing would be held later on Tuesday, the court and state prosecutors said.
(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento and Marty Graham in San Diego; Writing by Cynthia Johnston)
The official debt ceiling deadline may not be until Thursday, but last weekend the government made zombies out of thousands of small businesses around the country. The Halloween shopping season, one of the most profitable times of the year for so-called "pop-up" retailers is about to become yet another casualty of government shutdown.
Pop-up retailers are those tiny seasonal shops that fill otherwise vacant store fronts or kiosks in malls. Through their own initiative or with the help of companies like PopUpInsider, entrepreneurs all over the country set up short-term operations catering to all things Halloween. The reason is simple: Halloween means money.
In September the National Retail Federation released it's annual forecast for Halloween sales. The numbers are almost frightening:
Americans were expected to spend $6.9 billion between costumes, candy and decorations
66% of adults would participate
21.7 million American pets were to be subjected to the humiliation of getting stuffed into a costume at a cost to their owners of more than $330 million
$360 million was earmarked for greeting cards
Roughly $2 billion was expected to be spent on candy with another $2 billion on decorations, second only to Christmas
Of the $2.2 billion spent on non-pet costumes more than half was going towards adult costumers.
That last point is the most important for entrepreneurs. More than 85% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 44 expect to dress up for Halloween. Halloween costumes for grown ups are made out of all but disposable material and sold for prices anywhere from $25 to well over $100. That's before accessories, makeup and the $15 plastic handcuffs to lend a certain authenticity to your "dirty cop" outfit.
Halloween isn't the biggest top-line holiday of the year but in terms of margin not even roses on Valentine's day comes close to 158 million Americans playing dress-up on the same night.
Unfortunately most of that spending happens by the second week of October."Because of this shutdown, because people are so freaked out about it, and because consumer confidence is so low, we're going to see a dive," says retail expert & author Hitha Prabhakar, looking dazzling in her tiara.
The outfits worn during our interview are a good example of the margins at risk for retailers. I spent $19.99 for my stately felt crown and $34.99 on Hitha's dazzling tiara. By retail math --margin % = 1-(cost/price)-- it's safe to say Party City made at least $30 from our little props. Given what the government has done to these retailers it seemed the least I could do.
So, how "freaked out" is the country about the shutdown? According to Gallup the weekly drop in U.S. Economic Confidence for the week ending October 6th was the largest seen since 2008. A separate Gallup poll measuring the change in spending habits from month to month showed the drop from August to September was the largest on record.
The government could end the shutdown this afternoon and it wouldn't save this year's Halloween. Stores like Ricky's in New York expect to get 25% of their sales from Halloween every year. It's not going to happen in 2013. Halloween is all about discretionary spending, as Prabhakar says. In this environment Americans simply don't feel secure enough to spend.
Every day we wait it gets worse for the merchants. Halloween is dead and buried and Christmas isn't looking so red hot. If the government doesn't get it's act together soon our economic future could be riding on President's Day next February. Should that be the case maybe we'll find a use for some of those unsold fright costumes after all.
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When you're working your way through all the ingredients in a complex recipe, you can easily lose track of how much of this or that you've measured. Or at least Japanese designer Atsuhiro Hayashi does, which inspired him to create a set of measuring spoons with numbers in relief that leave no question as to how much has been portioned.
A variety of well-photographed vistas enhance surprisingly enlightening science doc.
Opens
Friday, October 11 (Lily Films)
Director
Deborah Koons Garcia
You could base a semester-long college course -- more than one, actually -- on Deborah Koons Garcia's Symphony of the Soil, a science doc stuffed with information that makes "the living skin of the Earth" sound much more interesting than one might think dirt could be. Artfully made and full of engaging, very smart people, the doc is eye-opening enough to have some niche theatrical appeal and should enjoy a long life on video and in classrooms.
Dirt, we learn, is made of three components, and the film takes us to the far-flung places where they're found in their pure form: In Norway, we see glacial-runoff sludge that is purely mineral in composition, with no organic matter; elsewhere we dig in peat moss that is nothing but organic; on a pristine beach, we find coral that has been ground up by the tides into a fine sand.
An assortment of scientists explain how elements combine to form many different kinds of soil; at sites where erosion has exposed a cross-section of layered earth, they show how plants and atmosphere change the composition of each stratum. A trip to Hawaii affords us the chance to compare very recent dirt, just 50 years old, to other terrain dating back 300, 20,000, and 4 million years. Our guides are never shy about getting their hands dirty, and the fascination they have with the processes of decomposition and nutrient extraction is surprisingly contagious.
Though it's accompanied by a sometimes grand orchestral score, the doc is less ostentatiously artsy than its title suggests. But it does maintain a more philosophical mood than they typical nature film, working to convey the essential role its subject plays in supporting all life on the planet. Eventually it warms up to discussions of agriculture and the quest to undo the damage decades of industrial farming has done to croplands; its long and convincing argument for the expansion of organic farming will resonate with Slow Food advocates, but never turns the film into a cookie-cutter eco-advocacy film.
What could be better than the Indiana Jones film Raiders of the Lost Ark in IMAX 3-D? How about Raiders of the Lost Ark in real life? New York City-based prank collective Improv Everywhere brought the film's famous boulder scene to Central Park -- and you have to see the chaos (and hilarity) that ensued! Check out the clip below:
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), left, seen here speaking with Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) in an elevator Sunday, says that undoing the sequester cuts is "one of the sticking points" in budget talks. Congress is struggling to find a solution to end the government shutdown, now in its thirteenth day.
Andrew Burton/Getty Images
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), left, seen here speaking with Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) in an elevator Sunday, says that undoing the sequester cuts is "one of the sticking points" in budget talks. Congress is struggling to find a solution to end the government shutdown, now in its thirteenth day.
Andrew Burton/Getty Images
The federal government shutdown is in its 13th day, with little sign of a budget deal that could win the approval of both houses of Congress as well as the White House. The debate now includes efforts to avoid a default if the government's debt limit isn't raised by Oct. 17.
Sunday afternoon, the White House reiterated its position after a phone call with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, saying that she and President Obama agree on the need for "a clean [continuing resolution] and a one-year clean debt limit increase that would prevent a first-ever default of our nation's credit."
The reference to "clean" legislation stems from House Republicans' efforts to gut the Affordable Care Act's new health care system known as Obamacare.
But there were signs Sunday that while health care may have been the key issue in the House debate, in the Senate, which is now leading the discussion, a solution may hinge on the next round of sequestration cuts that will take effect in January.
"[Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell and Republicans want to continue current spending at $986.7 billion and leave untouched the new round of cuts in January, commonly known as sequester, that would reduce the amount to $967 billion," the AP reports. "Democrats want to figure out a way to undo the reductions, plus a long-term extension of the debt limit increase and a short-term spending bill to reopen the government."
Here's a roundup of what else people are saying about the state of affairs:
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., discussed undoing the sequester cuts — "one of the sticking points," he said — on CBS's Face the Nation:
"The dispute has been how to undo sequester. Republicans want to do it with entitlement cuts, in other words, take entitlement cuts and then put that money into undoing at least part of the sequester. Democrats want to do it with a mix of mandatory cuts, some entitlements, and revenues.
"And so how do you overcome that dilemma? We're not going to overcome it in the next day or two. But if we were to open up the government for a period of time that concluded before the sequester took place — which is Jan. 15 — we could have a whole bunch of discussions.
"And I am more optimistic than most we could come to an agreement. That was one place where the House Republicans and the president were not, you know, at total loggerheads."
On the same program, host Bob Schieffer asked Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., how "a freshman senator, less than a year in office, Ted Cruz, was able to lead your party into what some in your party are calling a box canyon here? How did this happen?"
"There was already fertile ground because of those many members of the House who were elected in 2010 on the promise that they would repeal and replace Obamacare," McCain said said.
"And by the way, there were many of us who fought it back to 2009. We still want it changed. But to say that we were going to defund it just after the 2012 elections — every speech I gave all over the country were repeal and replace "Obamacare." Well, we lost. So we still can fight provisions of it. And the irony of all this is the rollout is a fiasco. That should be what's on the front page of newspapers across America."
McCain also criticized the president, saying that Obama hadn't been active enough in looking for solutions to get around the impasse.
"I hope the president will become engaged," McCain said. "Maybe we need to get — maybe we need to get Joe Biden out of the witness protection program," he said, referring to the vice president's ability to broker deals in Congress.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., told host Candy Crowley on CNN's State of the Union: that she believes a deal will come before Thursday's deadline:
"I think you see the fact that Senator Reid, Senator McConnell are now talking and we've gotten to a stage where some of the demands that we've heard from House Republicans who put ideological things on the budget and shut the government down if they didn't defund Obamacare, if they didn't get something on on birth control, that's behind us now."
Later, she added,
"We have situations now where a plane manufacturer in Duluth, Minn., can't get their inventory out of a warehouse to be able to try to sell it overseas, where they do exports all the time, because the Transportation Department shut down and they can't get approvals. We have fishermen off Alaska that are going to lose their market on crab to Russia. It's an unbelievable thing. We have to get this government open again."
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., tells George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week that any deal should start in the House.
"Here's what I'm worried about: a deal coming out of the Senate that a majority of Republicans can't vote for in the House. That really does compromise Speaker Boehner's leadership. And after all this mess is over, do we really want to compromise John Boehner as leader of the House? I don't think so.
"So I'm not going to vote for any plan that I don't think can get a majority of Republicans in the House — understanding that defunding Obamacare and delaying it for a year is not a realistic possibility now."
Later, Graham said:
"We're in a free-fall as Republicans, but Democrats are not far behind. And after listening to all of us talk now, I probably understand why 60 percent of Americans want to vote all incumbents out.
"To my colleagues in the House on both sides, and to my friends in the Senate: we are ruining both institutions."
How federal judges view the shutdown — particularly after a sequester that took a toll on the judiciary — is the topic of a Politico report today.
Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf, who writes a blog (called Hercules and the Umpire) apart from his bench duties in Nebraska, wrote last week that "It is time to tell Congress to go to hell. It's the right thing to do."
"Court budgets have essentially been slashed to the bone, with us losing nationwide thousands of judicial employees performing very important tasks...We're being told to furlough where we're already cut to the bone," Judge Richard Roberts, whose district court is near the Capitol, tells Politico.
The website also notes that Judge Amy Berman Jackson rebuffed an attempt to keep a House-related court case moving, despite the shutdown. Here's how she responded to House lawyers who sought to keep their inquiry into Operation Fast and Furious moving along:
"While the vast majority of litigants who now must endure a delay in the progress of their matters do so due to circumstances beyond their control, that cannot be said of the House of Representatives, which has played a role in the shutdown that prompted the stay motion," Jackson wrote.
And earlier today on NPR's Weekend Edition, you could hear a report on Senate Chaplain Barry C. Black, who hasn't spared the chamber from a bit of scolding during the shutdown.
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