Cameramen film as the Soyuz-FG rocket booster with Soyuz TMA-11M space ship carrying new crew to the International Space Station, ISS, blasts off at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2013. The rocket carrying the Olympic flame successfully blasted off Thursday from earth ahead of the Sochi 2014 Winter Games.(AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)
Cameramen film as the Soyuz-FG rocket booster with Soyuz TMA-11M space ship carrying new crew to the International Space Station, ISS, blasts off at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2013. The rocket carrying the Olympic flame successfully blasted off Thursday from earth ahead of the Sochi 2014 Winter Games.(AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)
Twitter signage is draped on the facade of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2013 in New York. Twitter set a price of $26 per share for its initial public offering on Wednesday evening and will begin trading Thursday under the ticker symbol "TWTR" in the most highly anticipated IPO since Facebook's 2012 debut. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin talks to the media before Billy Graham's 95th birthday party at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, N.C., Thursday Nov. 7, 2013. (AP Photo/The Asheville Citizen-Times, Erin Brethauer) NO SALES
Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about Friday:
1. SAY GOODBYE TO TRANS FATS
The FDA announces that it is requiring the food industry to phase them out.
2. WHAT'S A SIGN THAT IRAN TALKS ARE PROGRESSING
Kerry is flying to Geneva to join the negotiations aimed at restricting the Iranians' nuclear activities.
3. TYPHOON SLAMS THE PHILIPPINES
It's one of the strongest such storms ever recorded, with the U.S. Navy measuring wind gusts up to 235 mph.
4. OBAMA SAYS HE'S SORRY PEOPLE ARE LOSING HEALTH INSURANCE
He pledges the government will do everything it can to help those "in a tough position."
5. TWITTER STOCK SOARS
Shares go on sale to the public and immediately climb more than 70 percent above the offering price.
6. WHO'S LIKELY TO BE SUSPECTED IN ARAFAT'S DEATH
Besides Israel, the Palestinians could fall under a cloud, since he was holed up in his West Bank compound for months before he died, surrounded by staff.
7. MILITANT WHO PLOTTED ATTACK ON TEEN TO LEAD PAKISTANI TALIBAN
Mullah Fazlullah, the ruthless commander behind the shooting of activist Malala Yousafzai, is chosen unanimously. The previous chief was killed by a U.S. drone.
8. WHY OUTRAGE IS SPREADING IN KENYA
A 16-year-old girl is reportedly gang-raped and thrown into a pit latrine. Her alleged attackers' only punishment: Being told to mow grass.
9. BILLY GRAHAM MARKS A MILESTONE
The evangelist, joined by hundreds at his North Carolina home, celebrates his 95th birthday.
10. OLYMPIC TORCH GETS RIDE TO SPACE STATION
The Sochi symbol of peace will be taken on a spacewalk Saturday.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The head of the Secret Intelligence Service, where James Bond works, has returned from the dead.
Played by Judi Dench, M was killed off in the most recent Bond adventure, "Skyfall." But Dench resurrected the character in a video released Thursday as part of the Weinstein Co.'s appeal to the Motion Picture Association of America to change the rating of Dench's latest starring vehicle, "Philomena."
The MPAA has given the film an R rating for language, but the Weinstein Co. wants it changed to PG-13. Company co-founder Harvey Weinstein appeared on "CBS This Morning" on Thursday to discuss his fight with the ratings organization.
He previously battled the MPAA over the rating for the 2011 documentary "Bully" and the title of "The Butler" this year, which became "Lee Daniels' The Butler."
Weinstein introduced the Dench video, which shows the actress in M's office, saying, "Just when you thought I was dead." She then appears to send an agent on a mission, asking, "Are you familiar with MPAA?"
Nvidia's Tegra 4i processor, the first of its chips with integrated support for LTE cellular data, is on course to appear in products early next year, the company's CEO said Thursday.
The Tegra 4i is smaller than the current Tegra 4 and aimed at mainstream, midmarket phones. Despite its integrated LTE modem, it's not as powerful as the Tegra 4, which is aimed at high-end phones and devices such as tablets and gaming handhelds.
Speaking to reporters and analysts on a conference call, CEO Jen Hsun Huang said the Tegra 4i has been certified by AT&T, the number-two wireless carrier in the U.S., and that products should be appearing soon.
"We are excited about that," he said of the AT&T certification. Nvidia expects the first products with the chip to be announced in the first quarter of 2014 and to ship sometime in the second quarter.
However, he left the door open to confusion by adding that the rollout "will likely be global, but not U.S."
"You really need to have CDMA in the U.S. to be successful, so we're not targeting the U.S. with respect to phones," Huang said. "We're targeting outside of the U.S."
A spokesperson for Nvidia declined to clarify the CEO's remarks.
AT&T's network isn't based on CDMA, so it could still offer phones or tablets running the new chip. Huang may have meant the impact of Tegra 4i phones will be limited in the U.S. because of their incompatibility with the networks of Verizon and Sprint.
He didn't give a detailed timeframe for the devices, but it's likely some will be unveiled at January's International CES in Las Vegas or February's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Tegra is an important part of Nvidia's product line-up and is playing an instrumental role in helping the company expand into new business areas. Chief among these is automotive, which already accounts for about a quarter of Nvidia's Tegra business, said Huang.
During the quarter from August to October, the company's Tegra business more than doubled from the previous quarter thanks to demand for the Tegra 4.
The chip was used in 15 mobile devices, including Nvidia's own Shield gaming handheld and Microsoft's Surface RT tablet.
The Shield is an Android-based gaming device that looks like an oversize game console controller, but also packs its own display. Huang said Nvidia developed the Shield to help grow the Android gaming market.
"We have to create devices that enable great gaming on Android to happen," he said. "Our investments are modest, our expectations are modest and our distribution is modest. We're going to let the market tell us how they like it, and we'll take it from there."
Martyn Williams covers mobile telecoms, Silicon Valley and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Martyn on Twitter at @martyn_williams. Martyn's e-mail address is martyn_williams@idg.com
Martyn Williams, IDG News Service , IDG News Service
Martyn Williams covers mobile telecoms, Silicon Valley and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. More by Martyn Williams, IDG News Service
FILE - This Oct. 7, 2013 file photo shows American actress Kate Mulgrew from the Netflix original series "Orange Is The New Black," in New York. Mulgrew, known for her roles in “Star Trek: Voyager” and “Ryan’s Hope” has a deal with Little, Brown and Company, the publisher announced Thursday. Mulgrew, 58, will tell the story of being an unmarried mother who gave up her daughter for adoption during the start of her career, her reunion with her daughter in 2001 and “the costs and rewards of a passionate life.” The book is currently untitled and scheduled to come out in May 2015. (Photo by Diane Bondareff/Invision/AP, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Kate Mulgrew has figured out a way to introduce her two great passions, acting and writing, to each other: She's working on a memoir.
Little, Brown and Company announced a deal Thursday with Mulgrew, the actress known for her roles in "Star Trek: Voyager" and "Ryan's Hope." The 58-year-old Mulgrew will tell the story of being an unmarried mother who gave up her daughter for adoption during the start of her career, her reunion with her daughter in 2001 and "the costs and rewards of a passionate life."
The book is untitled and scheduled to come out in May 2015.
Mulgrew also stars in the Netflix series "Orange is the New Black" and has been in such stage productions as "Tea at Five" and "Equus."
Cost-effective method accurately orders DNA sequencing along entire chromosomes
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
7-Nov-2013
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Contact: Leila Gray leilag@uw.edu 206-685-0381 University of Washington
A major step toward improving the quality of rapid, inexpensive genome assembly
A new computational method has been shown to quickly assign, order and orient DNA sequencing information along entire chromosomes. The method may help overcome a major obstacle that has delayed progress in designing rapid, low-cost -- but still accurate -- ways to assemble genomes from scratch. Data gleaned through this new method can also validate certain types of chromosomal abnormalities in cancer, research findings indicate.
The advance was reported in Nature Biotechnology by several University of Washington scientists led by Dr. Jay Shendure, associate professor of genome sciences.
Existing technologies can quickly produce billions of "short reads" of segments of DNA at very low cost. Various approaches are currently used to put the pieces together to see how DNA segments line up to form larger stretches of the genetic code.
However, current methods produce a highly fragmented genome assembly, lacking long-range information about what sequences are near what other sequences, making further biological analysis difficult.
"Genome science has remained remarkably distant from routinely assembling genomes to the standards set by the Human Genome Project," said the researchers. They noted that the Human Genome Project tapped into many different techniques to achieve its end result. Many of these are too expensive, technically difficult, and impractical for large-scale initiatives such as the Genome 10K Project, which aims to sequence and assemble the genomes of 10,000 vertebrate species.
Members of the Shendure lab that developed what they hope will be a more scalable strategy were Joshua N. Burton, Andrew Adey, Rupali P. Patwardhan, Ruolan Qiu, and Jacob O. Kitzman.
To more completely assemble genomes, they tapped into a technology called Hi-C, which measures the three-dimensional architecture and physical territories of chromosomes within the nuclei of cells. Hi-C maps the physical interactions between regions of the chromosomes in a genome, including contact within a chromosome and with other chromosomes. The results indicate which regions tend to occur near each other within three-dimensional space in a cell's nucleus.
The researchers speculated that this interaction data, because it offers clues about the position of and distances between various regions of the chromosome, might reveal how DNA sequences are grouped and lined up along entire chromosomes. They wondered if the interaction data could show them which regions of the genome are near each other on each chromosome.
Their investigation of this possibility led them to create what they named LACHESIS (an acronym for "ligating adjacent chromatin enables scaffolding in situ"). The map of physical interactions generated by Hi-C was interpreted by the LACHESIS computational program to assign, order and orient genomic sequences into their correct position along chromosomes, including DNA positioned close to the centromere, the "pinch waist" gap in the chromosome shape.
The researchers combined their new approach with other cheap and widely used sequencing methods to generate chromosome-scale assemblies of the human, mouse and fruit fly genomes. The researchers were able to cluster nearly all scaffolds -- collections of short DNA segments whose position relative to each other is unknown -- into groups that corresponded to individual chromosomes.
They then ordered and oriented the scaffolds assigned to each chromosome group, and validated their results by comparing them to the high-quality reference genomes for these species that were generated by the Human Genome Project. In the case of human genomes, they achieved 98 percent accuracy in assigning tens of thousands of sequences of contiguous DNA to chromosome groups and 99 percent accuracy in ordering and orienting these sequences within chromosome groups.
"We think the method may fundamentally change how we approach the assembly of new genomes with next-generation sequencing technologies," noted Shendure.
While he and his team cite many areas in which the computational and experimental methods can be improved, the approach is an important step in his lab's long-term goal to facilitate the assembly, for a variety of species, of low-cost, high-quality genomes that meet the rigorous standards set by the Human Genome Project.
###
The research was supported by grants HG006283 and T32HG000035 from the National Human Genome Research Institute, and graduate research fellowships from the National Science Foundation.
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Cost-effective method accurately orders DNA sequencing along entire chromosomes
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
7-Nov-2013
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]
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Contact: Leila Gray leilag@uw.edu 206-685-0381 University of Washington
A major step toward improving the quality of rapid, inexpensive genome assembly
A new computational method has been shown to quickly assign, order and orient DNA sequencing information along entire chromosomes. The method may help overcome a major obstacle that has delayed progress in designing rapid, low-cost -- but still accurate -- ways to assemble genomes from scratch. Data gleaned through this new method can also validate certain types of chromosomal abnormalities in cancer, research findings indicate.
The advance was reported in Nature Biotechnology by several University of Washington scientists led by Dr. Jay Shendure, associate professor of genome sciences.
Existing technologies can quickly produce billions of "short reads" of segments of DNA at very low cost. Various approaches are currently used to put the pieces together to see how DNA segments line up to form larger stretches of the genetic code.
However, current methods produce a highly fragmented genome assembly, lacking long-range information about what sequences are near what other sequences, making further biological analysis difficult.
"Genome science has remained remarkably distant from routinely assembling genomes to the standards set by the Human Genome Project," said the researchers. They noted that the Human Genome Project tapped into many different techniques to achieve its end result. Many of these are too expensive, technically difficult, and impractical for large-scale initiatives such as the Genome 10K Project, which aims to sequence and assemble the genomes of 10,000 vertebrate species.
Members of the Shendure lab that developed what they hope will be a more scalable strategy were Joshua N. Burton, Andrew Adey, Rupali P. Patwardhan, Ruolan Qiu, and Jacob O. Kitzman.
To more completely assemble genomes, they tapped into a technology called Hi-C, which measures the three-dimensional architecture and physical territories of chromosomes within the nuclei of cells. Hi-C maps the physical interactions between regions of the chromosomes in a genome, including contact within a chromosome and with other chromosomes. The results indicate which regions tend to occur near each other within three-dimensional space in a cell's nucleus.
The researchers speculated that this interaction data, because it offers clues about the position of and distances between various regions of the chromosome, might reveal how DNA sequences are grouped and lined up along entire chromosomes. They wondered if the interaction data could show them which regions of the genome are near each other on each chromosome.
Their investigation of this possibility led them to create what they named LACHESIS (an acronym for "ligating adjacent chromatin enables scaffolding in situ"). The map of physical interactions generated by Hi-C was interpreted by the LACHESIS computational program to assign, order and orient genomic sequences into their correct position along chromosomes, including DNA positioned close to the centromere, the "pinch waist" gap in the chromosome shape.
The researchers combined their new approach with other cheap and widely used sequencing methods to generate chromosome-scale assemblies of the human, mouse and fruit fly genomes. The researchers were able to cluster nearly all scaffolds -- collections of short DNA segments whose position relative to each other is unknown -- into groups that corresponded to individual chromosomes.
They then ordered and oriented the scaffolds assigned to each chromosome group, and validated their results by comparing them to the high-quality reference genomes for these species that were generated by the Human Genome Project. In the case of human genomes, they achieved 98 percent accuracy in assigning tens of thousands of sequences of contiguous DNA to chromosome groups and 99 percent accuracy in ordering and orienting these sequences within chromosome groups.
"We think the method may fundamentally change how we approach the assembly of new genomes with next-generation sequencing technologies," noted Shendure.
While he and his team cite many areas in which the computational and experimental methods can be improved, the approach is an important step in his lab's long-term goal to facilitate the assembly, for a variety of species, of low-cost, high-quality genomes that meet the rigorous standards set by the Human Genome Project.
###
The research was supported by grants HG006283 and T32HG000035 from the National Human Genome Research Institute, and graduate research fellowships from the National Science Foundation.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
FILE - In this Nov. 8, 2011 file photo, a Predator B unmanned aircraft taxis at the Naval Air Station in Corpus Christi, Texas. Widespread drone access to U.S. skies faces significant hurdles and will take longer than Congress had anticipated, federal officials acknowledged Thursday as they released a long-term roadmap for drone integration. For the next several years, domestic use of drones will be limited to permits granted by the Federal Aviation Administration on a case-by-case basis to operators who agree to procedures to reduce safety risks, the agency said. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
FILE - In this Nov. 8, 2011 file photo, a Predator B unmanned aircraft taxis at the Naval Air Station in Corpus Christi, Texas. Widespread drone access to U.S. skies faces significant hurdles and will take longer than Congress had anticipated, federal officials acknowledged Thursday as they released a long-term roadmap for drone integration. For the next several years, domestic use of drones will be limited to permits granted by the Federal Aviation Administration on a case-by-case basis to operators who agree to procedures to reduce safety risks, the agency said. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Widespread drone access to U.S. skies faces significant hurdles and will take longer than Congress had anticipated, federal officials acknowledged Thursday in releasing a long-term roadmap for domestic use of drones.
For the next several years, use of drones will be limited to permits granted by the Federal Aviation Administration on a case-by-case basis to operators who agree to procedures to reduce safety risks, the agency said.
Last year, Congress directed the FAA to grant drones widespread access by September 2015. But the agency has missed several deadlines for steps necessary to make that happen.
Among the concerns are whether remotely controlled drones will be able to detect and avoid other aircraft as well as do planes with pilots on board. There are also security concerns, including whether drones' navigation controls can be hacked or disrupted.
"Government and industry face significant challenges as unmanned aircraft move into the aviation mainstream," Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a statement.
The roadmap has one big gap: privacy, one of the most widespread concerns associated with drones. It addresses only the use of drones at six initial test sites, which have not yet been selected. Test site operators must have a publicly available privacy plan and abide by state and federal privacy laws. The plan must be reviewed annually with opportunity for public comment.
Beyond that, the agency said, privacy isn't within its purview. "The FAA's mission does not extend to regulating privacy, but we have taken steps to address privacy as it relates to the six ... test sites," the agency said in response to questions from The Associated Press.
"The FAA is also actively engaged in interagency efforts to develop privacy safeguards as (drones) are integrated into the national airspace," the statement said.
FAA officials have long contended that, as a safety agency steeped in technology, they have little expertise on addressing broad public privacy worries.
The FAA estimates that within five years of being granted widespread access, roughly 7,500 commercial drones, many of them smaller than a backpack, will be buzzing across U.S. skies.
Industry-local government consortiums around the country are competing fiercely to be selected for one of the test sites. The Teal Group, an industry forecaster in Fairfax, Va., estimates worldwide annual spending on drone research, development, testing, and evaluation procurement will increase from $6.6 billion in 2013 to $11.4 billion in 2022.
The roadmap addresses current and future policies, regulations, technologies and procedures that will be required as demand for drones grows.
___
Follow Joan Lowy on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/AP_Joan_Lowy
Episode VII may still be in the throes of pre-production, but Lucasfilm has confirmed that the Star Wars saga will continue on December 18th, 2015, with shooting officially set to start in spring 2014 and leaving just 771 days left to speculate. ...
Of course, last night’s UFC FN 31 headliner will be remembered for the crushing left hand Tim Kennedy used to put away Rafael Natal, but early on in the fight it was the latter who landed more strikes. Kennedy never was in trouble and he kept purusing Natal, but if not for the fight ending blow, round one probably would have gone to “Sapao.”
Well, a reason for this could be because Kennedy was apparently injured heading into the fight. Not only that, but it was a leg injury, which could explain why he appeared to be a step behind Natal, until, well, that leaping left hook. Speaking to the media afterwards, the decorated soldier revealed he tore his quad during the last week of his training camp, and here’s how (comments via MMA Fighting.com):
“I tore my quad coming into this camp,” Kennedy said “The very last week of fight camp, just a stupid thing happened. A lady walked over the track and it was either run over a 65 year-old lady – probably kill her – or try to decelerate in about two meters. I chose to decelerate and just fell to the ground, grabbing my leg screaming not great words.”
“If they had to roll me into the cage to fight Natal, I would’ve fought him,” Kennedy continued. “In the cage, once they hoisted me up and lifted me into the cage, Natal would’ve had to shoot me and bludgeon me to death until I quit.”
So, if you weren’t impressed with Kennedy’s performance before, this news might change that. It was certainly a massive win for the vet, who although he defeated Roger Gracie by UD in his Octagon debut, it didn’t electrify audiences like last night’s KO.
Now it will be interesting to see who Kennedy fights next. Considering his run in Strikeforce and his recent wins with the UFC, chances are it will be top ten middleweight.
Stay tuned to MMA Frenzy.com for all your UFC news and coverage.
Getting into the holiday spirit a little earlier than the rest of us, Lea Michele, Chris Colfer, and Naya Rivera filmed a holiday episode of "Glee" on Thursday (November 7).
While Rachel wore a red tutu with her green top and pointy elf hat, Santana sported a sexy sleeveless ensemble with Kurt stuck in tights with his outfit.
Recently, the 27-year-old actress got a special shoutout from one of her favorite pop stars on Twitter as the gang features her songs on Thursday's episode.
Encouraging her fans to tune in, Lea tweeted, "#Glee is back tonight! Who's excited?! Hope you guys love it! #GleeSeason5 #KatyOrGaga, " to which Katy Perry replied, "I'm sups excited for tonight's episode of #GLEE, who's with me?!" Clearly indicating her side, Ms. Michele wrote, "I am @katyperry! Ps I love you. #fangirling."
GENEVA (AP) — Officials say U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will fly to Geneva on Friday to participate in nuclear negotiations with Iran and other major powers.
The officials say Kerry will travel to the talks after a brief stop in Israel, where he will hold a third meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel's intense interest in Iran's nuclear ambitions is a likely topic between Netanyahu and Kerry as well as Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Iran's plan to cap some of the country's atomic activities in exchange for selective relief from crippling economic sanctions has been accepted by six world powers, the country's chief nuclear negotiator said Thursday.
Kerry's last-minute decision to join the talks suggests a deal could be imminent.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Kerry has not been formally invited by the Europeans to join the talks.
Google already hopes to prevent security threats in Chrome by blocking downloads, and it's now planning a similarly cautious approach for extensions. The company has announced that all extensions for the browser's Windows beta and stable versions must be hosted in the Chrome Web Store as of January. While developers and corporate users will still get to install add-ons from local sources, the rest of us will have to go through the official portal. The safeguard should reduce the chances that deceptive extensions hijack the app, according to engineering lead Erik Kay. Google tells us that there aren't any plans to put similar limits on other platforms, since most complaints about bad extensions come from Windows surfers. The policy could go a long way toward protecting Chrome, albeit at the expense of choice -- developers who don't want to go use the Web Store will soon be out of luck.
Getting into the holiday spirit a little earlier than the rest of us, Lea Michele, Chris Colfer, and Naya Rivera filmed a holiday episode of "Glee" on Thursday (November 7).
While Rachel wore a red tutu with her green top and pointy elf hat, Santana sported a sexy sleeveless ensemble with Kurt stuck in tights with his outfit.
Recently, the 27-year-old actress got a special shoutout from one of her favorite pop stars on Twitter as the gang features her songs on Thursday's episode.
Encouraging her fans to tune in, Lea tweeted, "#Glee is back tonight! Who's excited?! Hope you guys love it! #GleeSeason5 #KatyOrGaga, " to which Katy Perry replied, "I'm sups excited for tonight's episode of #GLEE, who's with me?!" Clearly indicating her side, Ms. Michele wrote, "I am @katyperry! Ps I love you. #fangirling."
Solar activity playing a minimal role in global warming, research suggests
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
7-Nov-2013
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Contact: Michael Bishop michael.bishop@iop.org 01-179-301-032 Institute of Physics
Changes in solar activity have contributed no more than 10 per cent to global warming in the twentieth century, a new study has found.
The findings, made by Professor Terry Sloan at the University of Lancaster and Professor Sir Arnold Wolfendale at the University of Durham, find that neither changes in the activity of the Sun, nor its impact in blocking cosmic rays, can be a significant contributor to global warming.
The results have been published today, 8 November, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters.
Changes in the amount of energy from the Sun reaching the Earth have previously been proposed as a driver of increasing global temperatures, as has the Sun's ability to block cosmic rays. It has been proposed that cosmic rays may have a role in cooling the Earth by encouraging clouds to form, which subsequently reflect the Sun's rays back into space.
According to this proposal, in periods of high activity the Sun blocks some of the cosmic rays from entering the Earth's atmosphere, so that fewer clouds form and the Earth's surface temperatures rise.
In an attempt to quantify the effect that solar activitywhether directly or through cosmic raysmay have had on global temperatures in the twentieth century, Sloan and Wolfendale compared data on the rate of cosmic rays entering the atmosphere, which can be used as a proxy for solar activity, with the record of global temperatures going back to 1955.
They found a small correlation between cosmic rays and global temperatures occurring every 22 years; however, the changing cosmic ray rate lagged behind the change in temperatures by between one and two years, suggesting that the cause may not be down to cosmic rays and cloud formation, but may be due to the direct effects of the Sun.
By comparing the small oscillations in cosmic ray rate, which was taken from data from two neutron monitors, and temperature with the overall trends in both since 1955, Sloan and Wolfendale found that less than 14 per cent of the global warming seen during this period could be attributable to solar activity.
Furthermore, the researchers reviewed their own previous studies and surveyed the relevant literature to find other evidence of a link between solar activity and increasing global temperatures existing. Their findings indicated that overall, the contribution of changing solar activity, either directly or through cosmic rays, was even less cannot have contributed more than 10 per cent to global warming in the twentieth century.
They concluded that the paleontological evidence, derived from carbon and oxygen isotopes, was "weak and confused" and that a more-up-to-date study linking cosmic rays with low-level cloud cover was flawed because the correlation only occurred in certain regions rather than the entire globe.
Sloan and Wolfendale also discussed the results from the CLOUD experiment at CERN, where researchers are looking at ways in which cosmic rays can ionize, or charge, aerosols in the atmosphere, which can then influence how clouds are formed. They also examined instances where real-world events produced large-scale ionization in the atmosphere.
Events such as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and nuclear weapons testing would have been expected to have affected aerosol production in the atmosphere, but no such effects could be seen.
Professor Sloan said: "Our paper reviews our work to try and find a connection between cosmic rays and cloud formation with changes in global temperature.
"We conclude that the level of contribution of changing solar activity is less than 10 per cent of the measured global warming observed in the twentieth century. As a result of this and other work, the IPCC state that no robust association between changes in cosmic rays and cloudiness has been identified."
From Friday 8 November, this paper can be downloaded from http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/4/045022/article
###
Notes to Editors
Contact
1. For further information, a full draft of the journal paper or contact with one of the researchers, contact IOP Press Officer, Michael Bishop:
Tel: 0117 930 1032
E-mail: michael.bishop@iop.org
For more information on how to use the embargoed material above, please refer to our embargo policy.
IOP Publishing Journalist Area
2. The IOP Publishing Journalist Area gives journalists access to embargoed press releases, advanced copies of papers, supplementary images and videos. In addition to this, a weekly news digest is uploaded into the Journalist Area every Friday, highlighting a selection of newsworthy papers set to be published in the following week.
Login details also give free access to IOPscience, IOP Publishing's journal platform.
To apply for a free subscription to this service, please email Michael Bishop, IOP Press Officer, michael.bishop@iop.org, with your name, organisation, address and a preferred username.
Cosmic rays, solar activity and the climate
3. The published version of the paper 'Cosmic rays, solar activity and the climate' (T Sloan and A W Wolfendale 2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 045022) will be freely available online from Friday 8 November. It will be available at http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/4/045022/article
Environmental Research Letters
4. Environmental Research Letters is an open access journal that covers all of environmental science, providing a coherent and integrated approach including research articles, perspectives and editorials.
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We combine the culture of a learned society with global reach and highly efficient and effective publishing systems and processes. With offices in the UK, US, Germany, China and Japan, and staff in many other locations including Mexico and Russia, we serve researchers in the physical and related sciences in all parts of the world.
IOP Publishing is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Institute of Physics. The Institute is a leading scientific society promoting physics and bringing physicists together for the benefit of all. Any profits generated by IOP Publishing are used by the Institute to support science and scientists in both the developed and developing world. Go to ioppublishing.org.
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Solar activity playing a minimal role in global warming, research suggests
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
7-Nov-2013
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Contact: Michael Bishop michael.bishop@iop.org 01-179-301-032 Institute of Physics
Changes in solar activity have contributed no more than 10 per cent to global warming in the twentieth century, a new study has found.
The findings, made by Professor Terry Sloan at the University of Lancaster and Professor Sir Arnold Wolfendale at the University of Durham, find that neither changes in the activity of the Sun, nor its impact in blocking cosmic rays, can be a significant contributor to global warming.
The results have been published today, 8 November, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters.
Changes in the amount of energy from the Sun reaching the Earth have previously been proposed as a driver of increasing global temperatures, as has the Sun's ability to block cosmic rays. It has been proposed that cosmic rays may have a role in cooling the Earth by encouraging clouds to form, which subsequently reflect the Sun's rays back into space.
According to this proposal, in periods of high activity the Sun blocks some of the cosmic rays from entering the Earth's atmosphere, so that fewer clouds form and the Earth's surface temperatures rise.
In an attempt to quantify the effect that solar activitywhether directly or through cosmic raysmay have had on global temperatures in the twentieth century, Sloan and Wolfendale compared data on the rate of cosmic rays entering the atmosphere, which can be used as a proxy for solar activity, with the record of global temperatures going back to 1955.
They found a small correlation between cosmic rays and global temperatures occurring every 22 years; however, the changing cosmic ray rate lagged behind the change in temperatures by between one and two years, suggesting that the cause may not be down to cosmic rays and cloud formation, but may be due to the direct effects of the Sun.
By comparing the small oscillations in cosmic ray rate, which was taken from data from two neutron monitors, and temperature with the overall trends in both since 1955, Sloan and Wolfendale found that less than 14 per cent of the global warming seen during this period could be attributable to solar activity.
Furthermore, the researchers reviewed their own previous studies and surveyed the relevant literature to find other evidence of a link between solar activity and increasing global temperatures existing. Their findings indicated that overall, the contribution of changing solar activity, either directly or through cosmic rays, was even less cannot have contributed more than 10 per cent to global warming in the twentieth century.
They concluded that the paleontological evidence, derived from carbon and oxygen isotopes, was "weak and confused" and that a more-up-to-date study linking cosmic rays with low-level cloud cover was flawed because the correlation only occurred in certain regions rather than the entire globe.
Sloan and Wolfendale also discussed the results from the CLOUD experiment at CERN, where researchers are looking at ways in which cosmic rays can ionize, or charge, aerosols in the atmosphere, which can then influence how clouds are formed. They also examined instances where real-world events produced large-scale ionization in the atmosphere.
Events such as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and nuclear weapons testing would have been expected to have affected aerosol production in the atmosphere, but no such effects could be seen.
Professor Sloan said: "Our paper reviews our work to try and find a connection between cosmic rays and cloud formation with changes in global temperature.
"We conclude that the level of contribution of changing solar activity is less than 10 per cent of the measured global warming observed in the twentieth century. As a result of this and other work, the IPCC state that no robust association between changes in cosmic rays and cloudiness has been identified."
From Friday 8 November, this paper can be downloaded from http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/4/045022/article
###
Notes to Editors
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To apply for a free subscription to this service, please email Michael Bishop, IOP Press Officer, michael.bishop@iop.org, with your name, organisation, address and a preferred username.
Cosmic rays, solar activity and the climate
3. The published version of the paper 'Cosmic rays, solar activity and the climate' (T Sloan and A W Wolfendale 2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 045022) will be freely available online from Friday 8 November. It will be available at http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/4/045022/article
Environmental Research Letters
4. Environmental Research Letters is an open access journal that covers all of environmental science, providing a coherent and integrated approach including research articles, perspectives and editorials.
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Twitter is now a publicly traded company, opening at a price of $45.10 a share, 73 percent higher than its initial IPO price.
The micro-blogging company became the latest social network to launch an initial public offering, as traders spent the morning getting ready to begin trading the company's stock.
[ For a quick, smart take on the news you'll be talking about, check out InfoWorld TechBrief -- subscribe today. ]
The company begin trading under the stock symbol TWTR on the New York Stock Exchange shortly before 11 a.m. today.
For Twitter, as well as for the social networking world, the IPO will be a milestone and a bellwether. Facebook, the largest social network in the world, had a troubled IPO disappointing IPO launch last year.
Now all eyes are on Twitter, a company that has yet to make a profit, to see if the company has charmed Wall Street, creating investor enthusiasm and pulled off a successful trading debut.
Late yesterday, Twitter closed its books and priced 70 million shares at $26. That values Twitter at $14.1 billion, though that number could climb if underwriters pull more optional shares in for trading.
Financial analysts earlier today said the Twitter's shares would start trading at $44 to $45.
Most thought a Twitter executive, like CEO Dick Costolo or co-founder Biz Stone, might ring the bell to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Twitter, however, handed that illustrious job over to Patrick Stewart, the actor famous for portraying Capt. Jean Luc Picard in the Star Trek TV series.
To mark the occasion, Twitter tweeted, "#Ring!"
With Twitter poised to be flush with new cash, industry analysts are turning their attention t o how company executives might use the money.
While some analysts say Twitter will build up its infrastructure and invest in mobile and video technologies, they also say this influx of money also means that Twitter will become an even tougher competitor for Facebook, Instagram and Google+.
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, in an an interview on CNBC this morning, said he was please with the IPO launch. "I really wouldn't change anything about the way we've approached the process this time," he said. "I think that the team has just done a tremendous job preparing... for everything we were going to go through, and being thoughtful, and methodical about everything we've done along the way."
He also sight to calm concerns that Twitter has not yet made a profit.
Getting ready to celebrate a birthday in Studio City, CA, "Twilight" stunner Ashley Greene loaded up her car with party balloons, snacks and, of course, booze.
Looking sexy retrieving her party favors, the 26-year-old wore her hair done up, sporting a hot pink hoodie, cute denim shorts and black slip-on's.
In related news, Ashley is awaiting the release of her brand new horror flick, "Random," currently in post-production, and set to premiere in the United States at the end of this year.
According to the synopsis, "When a college girl who is alone on campus over the Thanksgiving break is targeted by a group of outcasts, she must conquer her deepest fears to outwit them and fight back."
A moderate Republican group that is fed up with the recent onslaught of uncompromising GOP lawmakers and candidates is preparing a multimillion dollar campaign against hardline conservative forces during the 2014 midterm elections.
The Main Street Partnership, a center-right activist group led by Steve LaTourette, an Ohio Republican who left Congress earlier this year to join a lobbying firm, aims to spend as much as $8 million to defend sitting Republican lawmakers facing threats from conservative primary challengers.
Through a combination of direct mail, online ads and support for grassroots organizing, the Partnership plans to defend several moderate Republican incumbents next year. The group also plans to launch a direct strike on the Club for Growth, a free-market advocacy network that supports conservative challengers to incumbent GOP lawmakers.
“To this moment in time we’ve never really fought back, and it’s time to take our party back from these guys,” LaTourette, who left Congress earlier this year, told Yahoo News in an interview. “The center-right of the party has really been out-manned and out-maneuvered by the very conservative wing of the party when it comes to fundraising, when it comes to the ability to put boots on the ground and deliver a message in Republican primaries.”
To date, groups like the Club for Growth and the Senate Conservatives Fund have already formally endorsed a number of conservative challengers to sitting Republicans with records they deem as insufficiently conservative.
Some Republicans see these efforts as counterproductive because it forces the incumbents to devote resources to a primary fight that they could be spending on defeating Democrats in the general election.
They point to cases in the last two election cycles when tea party candidates defeated more centrist primary opponents only to go on to embarrassing defeats in the general election. The Partnership on Wednesday released a video that pointed to some of those failed candidates — particularly Christine “I am not a witch” O'Donnell in Delaware and Todd “legitimate rape” Akin in Missouri. (The Club for Growth did not endorse either of those candidates.)
LaTourette also said inaction in Congress had reached a point of frustration, particularly the failure of House Republicans to find a compromise deal to avoid the so-called “fiscal cliff” last year and the debate over the government shutdown and debt ceiling last month.
The Partnership also hopes it can ward off some of the new conservative challengers next year by targeting the groups that support them. To accomplish this, LaTourette intends to launch a website called “The Club for Democratic Growth” in an attempt to undermine the Club for Growth, he told Yahoo News.
“We are going to spend some time educating people as to exactly who they are, and who they are is a small collection of very, very wealthy people who have been able to gain a disproportionate voice in Republican politics,” LaTourette said. “We will be profiling one of their board members or champions on a regular basis with their own words. … We’re going to use their words against them.”
Going up against the Club would be a tall order for the Partnership. While LaTourette’s goal is to spend about $8 million for the campaign, the group has only raised about $2 million so far. In 2012, the group’s political action committee spent just $1.1 million.
When reached by phone Thursday, a spokesman for the Club said the group was not concerned about the Partnership’s plans for next year.
“We don’t really care what some lobbyist has to say about us,” Club spokesman Barney Keller told Yahoo News.
“What groups like this don’t understand is that all that matters to the voters are the candidates and the policies that the candidates support," Keller said. "If being a big government liberal was a ticket to winning a Republican primary then more big government liberals would win Republican primaries. All we do is provide candidates with the resources they need to get the message out and then the voters are the ones picking the candidates.”
New method predicts time from Alzheimer's onset to nursing home, death
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
7-Nov-2013
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Contact: Elizabeth Streich eas2125@cumc.columbia.edu 212-305-3689 Columbia University Medical Center
Draws on information from a single patient visit
NEW YORK, NY (Nov. 7, 2013) A Columbia University Medical Center-led research team has clinically validated a new method for predicting time to full-time care, nursing home residence, or death for patients with Alzheimer's disease. The method, which uses data gathered from a single patient visit, is based on a complex model of Alzheimer's disease progression that the researchers developed by consecutively following two sets of Alzheimer's patients for 10 years each. The results were published online ahead of print in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.
"Predicting Alzheimer's progression has been a challenge because the disease varies significantly from one person to anothertwo Alzheimer's patients may both appear to have mild forms of the disease, yet one may progress rapidly, while the other progresses much more slowly," said senior author Yaakov Stern, PhD, professor of neuropsychology (in neurology, psychiatry, and psychology and in the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain and the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center) at CUMC. "Our method enables clinicians to predict the disease path with great specificity."
"Until now, some methods of predicting the course of Alzheimer's have required data not obtained in routine clinical practice, such as specific neuropsychological or other measurements, and have been relatively inaccurate. This method is more practical for routine use," said Nikolaos Scarmeas, MD, a study co-author and associate professor of neurology, in the Taub Institute and the Sergievsky Center. "It may become a valuable tool for both physicians and patients' families."
The new method also may be used in clinical trialsto ensure that patient cohorts are balanced between those with faster-progressing Alzheimer's and those with slower-progressing diseaseand by health economists to predict the economic impact of Alzheimer's disease.
The prediction method is based on a Longitudinal Grade of Membership (L-GoM) model, developed by a research team also led by Dr. Stern and published in 2010.
The L-GoM includes 16 sets of variables, such as ability to participate in routine day-to-day activities; mental status; motor skills; estimated time of symptom onset; and duration of tremor, rigidity, or other neurological symptoms. It also includes data obtained postmortem (time and cause of death).
"The benefit of the L-GoM model is that it takes into account the complexity of Alzheimer's disease. Patients don't typically fall neatly into mild, moderate, or severe disease categories. For example, a patient may be able to live independently yet have hallucinations or behavioral outbursts," said Dr. Stern, who also directs the Cognitive Neuroscience Division at CUMC. "Our method is flexible enough to handle missing data. Not all 16 variables are needed for accurate predictionsjust as many as are available."
Results can be presented as expected time to a particular outcome. Two 68-year-old Alzheimer's patients, for example, had similar mental status scores (one a mini-mental status score (mMMS) of 38/54, the other of 39/54) at initial visit. The first patient was more dependent on his caregiver and had psychiatric symptoms (delusions). These and other subtle differences in the initial presentation of the two patients resulted in different predictions of time until death. The method accurately predicted that the first patient would die within three years, while the other would survive more than 10 years.
"In addition to time to nursing home residence or death, our method can be used to predict time to assisted living or other levels of care, such as needing help with eating or dressing, or time to incontinence," said first author Ray Razlighi, PhD, assistant professor of neurology at CUMC and adjunct assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University.
Development of the method began in 1989, when Dr. Stern received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to begin the Predictors of Severity in Alzheimer's Disease study. "The fact that work on this prediction method began nearly 25 years ago underlines the difficulties of studying Alzheimer's disease," said Richard Mayeux, MD, MS, neurology chair, the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Professor of Neurology, Psychiatry and Epidemiology and co-director of the Taub Institute and the Sergievsky Center.
Dr. Stern and colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital and Johns Hopkins first followed 252 non-familial Alzheimer's patients every six months for 10 years. Eric Stallard, an actuary at Duke and a co-author of the paper, used the resultant data to create an L-GoM model of Alzheimer's progression. They published their results in 2010 in Medical Decision Making. The researchers then followed a separate group of 254 patients and used data from only a single patient visit to predict outcomes for this group.
Dr. Stern and his team are now developing a computer program that would allow clinicians to input the variables and receive a report. They expect the program to become available within the next two years. Eventually, such a program might be incorporated into electronic health records. "At our Alzheimer's center, patients are already filling out much of their clinical information electronically," said Dr. Stern.
The researchers are also testing the method with a third cohort. While the first two sets of patients were primarily white, educated, and of high socioeconomic status, the new cohort follows a diverse group of participants from CUMC's Washington Heights-Inwood Columbia Aging Project (WHICAP), an ongoing, community-based study of aging and dementia comprising elderly, urban-dwelling residents. Because participants may be dementia-free when they join the study, the researchers are able to capture the age of dementia onset and track symptom development over time.
###
The paper is titled, "A New Algorithm for Predicting Time to Disease Endpoints in Alzheimer's Disease Patients." The method's formula is detailed in supplementary material for the paper. The other contributors are: Anatoliy I. Yashin (Duke); Jason Brandt and Marilyn Albert (Johns Hopkins); Deborah Blacker (Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard); and Bruce Kinosian (Philadelphia VA Medical Center).
The study was supported by a grant to Dr. Stern from the National Institute on Aging (R01 AG007370). The authors declare no financial or other conflicts of interest.
The Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain at Columbia University Medical Center is a multidisciplinary group that has forged links between researchers and clinicians to uncover the causes of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other age-related brain diseases and discover ways to prevent and cure these diseases. It has partnered with the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center at Columbia University Medical Center, which was established by an endowment in 1977 to focus on diseases of the nervous system, and with the Departments of Pathology & Cell Biology and of Neurology to allow the seamless integration of genetic analysis, molecular, and cellular studies and clinical investigation to explore all phases of diseases of the nervous system. For more information visit The Taub Institute at http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/dept/taub/.
Columbia University Medical Center provides international leadership in basic, preclinical, and clinical research; medical and health sciences education; and patient care. The medical center trains future leaders and includes the dedicated work of many physicians, scientists, public health professionals, dentists, and nurses at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Mailman School of Public Health, the College of Dental Medicine, the School of Nursing, the biomedical departments of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and allied research centers and institutions. Columbia University Medical Center is home to the largest medical research enterprise in New York City and State and one of the largest faculty medical practices in the Northeast. For more information, visit cumc.columbia.edu or columbiadoctors.org.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
New method predicts time from Alzheimer's onset to nursing home, death
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
7-Nov-2013
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]
Share
Contact: Elizabeth Streich eas2125@cumc.columbia.edu 212-305-3689 Columbia University Medical Center
Draws on information from a single patient visit
NEW YORK, NY (Nov. 7, 2013) A Columbia University Medical Center-led research team has clinically validated a new method for predicting time to full-time care, nursing home residence, or death for patients with Alzheimer's disease. The method, which uses data gathered from a single patient visit, is based on a complex model of Alzheimer's disease progression that the researchers developed by consecutively following two sets of Alzheimer's patients for 10 years each. The results were published online ahead of print in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.
"Predicting Alzheimer's progression has been a challenge because the disease varies significantly from one person to anothertwo Alzheimer's patients may both appear to have mild forms of the disease, yet one may progress rapidly, while the other progresses much more slowly," said senior author Yaakov Stern, PhD, professor of neuropsychology (in neurology, psychiatry, and psychology and in the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain and the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center) at CUMC. "Our method enables clinicians to predict the disease path with great specificity."
"Until now, some methods of predicting the course of Alzheimer's have required data not obtained in routine clinical practice, such as specific neuropsychological or other measurements, and have been relatively inaccurate. This method is more practical for routine use," said Nikolaos Scarmeas, MD, a study co-author and associate professor of neurology, in the Taub Institute and the Sergievsky Center. "It may become a valuable tool for both physicians and patients' families."
The new method also may be used in clinical trialsto ensure that patient cohorts are balanced between those with faster-progressing Alzheimer's and those with slower-progressing diseaseand by health economists to predict the economic impact of Alzheimer's disease.
The prediction method is based on a Longitudinal Grade of Membership (L-GoM) model, developed by a research team also led by Dr. Stern and published in 2010.
The L-GoM includes 16 sets of variables, such as ability to participate in routine day-to-day activities; mental status; motor skills; estimated time of symptom onset; and duration of tremor, rigidity, or other neurological symptoms. It also includes data obtained postmortem (time and cause of death).
"The benefit of the L-GoM model is that it takes into account the complexity of Alzheimer's disease. Patients don't typically fall neatly into mild, moderate, or severe disease categories. For example, a patient may be able to live independently yet have hallucinations or behavioral outbursts," said Dr. Stern, who also directs the Cognitive Neuroscience Division at CUMC. "Our method is flexible enough to handle missing data. Not all 16 variables are needed for accurate predictionsjust as many as are available."
Results can be presented as expected time to a particular outcome. Two 68-year-old Alzheimer's patients, for example, had similar mental status scores (one a mini-mental status score (mMMS) of 38/54, the other of 39/54) at initial visit. The first patient was more dependent on his caregiver and had psychiatric symptoms (delusions). These and other subtle differences in the initial presentation of the two patients resulted in different predictions of time until death. The method accurately predicted that the first patient would die within three years, while the other would survive more than 10 years.
"In addition to time to nursing home residence or death, our method can be used to predict time to assisted living or other levels of care, such as needing help with eating or dressing, or time to incontinence," said first author Ray Razlighi, PhD, assistant professor of neurology at CUMC and adjunct assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University.
Development of the method began in 1989, when Dr. Stern received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to begin the Predictors of Severity in Alzheimer's Disease study. "The fact that work on this prediction method began nearly 25 years ago underlines the difficulties of studying Alzheimer's disease," said Richard Mayeux, MD, MS, neurology chair, the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Professor of Neurology, Psychiatry and Epidemiology and co-director of the Taub Institute and the Sergievsky Center.
Dr. Stern and colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital and Johns Hopkins first followed 252 non-familial Alzheimer's patients every six months for 10 years. Eric Stallard, an actuary at Duke and a co-author of the paper, used the resultant data to create an L-GoM model of Alzheimer's progression. They published their results in 2010 in Medical Decision Making. The researchers then followed a separate group of 254 patients and used data from only a single patient visit to predict outcomes for this group.
Dr. Stern and his team are now developing a computer program that would allow clinicians to input the variables and receive a report. They expect the program to become available within the next two years. Eventually, such a program might be incorporated into electronic health records. "At our Alzheimer's center, patients are already filling out much of their clinical information electronically," said Dr. Stern.
The researchers are also testing the method with a third cohort. While the first two sets of patients were primarily white, educated, and of high socioeconomic status, the new cohort follows a diverse group of participants from CUMC's Washington Heights-Inwood Columbia Aging Project (WHICAP), an ongoing, community-based study of aging and dementia comprising elderly, urban-dwelling residents. Because participants may be dementia-free when they join the study, the researchers are able to capture the age of dementia onset and track symptom development over time.
###
The paper is titled, "A New Algorithm for Predicting Time to Disease Endpoints in Alzheimer's Disease Patients." The method's formula is detailed in supplementary material for the paper. The other contributors are: Anatoliy I. Yashin (Duke); Jason Brandt and Marilyn Albert (Johns Hopkins); Deborah Blacker (Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard); and Bruce Kinosian (Philadelphia VA Medical Center).
The study was supported by a grant to Dr. Stern from the National Institute on Aging (R01 AG007370). The authors declare no financial or other conflicts of interest.
The Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain at Columbia University Medical Center is a multidisciplinary group that has forged links between researchers and clinicians to uncover the causes of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other age-related brain diseases and discover ways to prevent and cure these diseases. It has partnered with the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center at Columbia University Medical Center, which was established by an endowment in 1977 to focus on diseases of the nervous system, and with the Departments of Pathology & Cell Biology and of Neurology to allow the seamless integration of genetic analysis, molecular, and cellular studies and clinical investigation to explore all phases of diseases of the nervous system. For more information visit The Taub Institute at http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/dept/taub/.
Columbia University Medical Center provides international leadership in basic, preclinical, and clinical research; medical and health sciences education; and patient care. The medical center trains future leaders and includes the dedicated work of many physicians, scientists, public health professionals, dentists, and nurses at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Mailman School of Public Health, the College of Dental Medicine, the School of Nursing, the biomedical departments of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and allied research centers and institutions. Columbia University Medical Center is home to the largest medical research enterprise in New York City and State and one of the largest faculty medical practices in the Northeast. For more information, visit cumc.columbia.edu or columbiadoctors.org.
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Episode VII may still be in the throes of pre-production, but Lucasfilm has confirmed that the Star Wars saga will continue on December 18th, 2015, with shooting officially set to start in spring 2014 and leaving just 771 days left to speculate. ...
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