EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton, left, and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif share a light moment at the start of the two days of closed-door nuclear talks on Tuesday.
Fabrice Coffrini/AP
EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton, left, and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif share a light moment at the start of the two days of closed-door nuclear talks on Tuesday.
Fabrice Coffrini/AP
Iran's proposal for easing the standoff over its nuclear program seems to be getting initial positive reviews at Tuesday's start of multiparty talks in Geneva.
A spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the Iranian delegation had made a PowerPoint presentation outlining their plan at the beginning of the two-day session. The spokesman said the plan had been received with "cautious optimism" but gave no further details of the close-door meeting, describing the proceedings as "confidential."
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said there'd been a "good" first reaction to Tehran's proposals, according to Reuters.
"The discussions bring together Iran officials and representatives of the "P5+1 group", made up of Britain, China, France, Russia and the US plus Germany.
In a Facebook entry posted at the weekend, [Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad] Zarif said the talks were the 'start of a difficult and relatively time-consuming way forward.'"
The talks are the first since moderate President Hassan Rouhani was elected four months ago. Since then, Rouhani has ratcheted down the bombastic rhetoric of his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As The Associated Press writes, the talks are seen as "a key test of Iran's overtures to the West."
Foreign Policy says: "While there is little optimism that this week's talks will resolve the matter of Iranian nuclear weapons development entirely, U.S. officials have hinted that progress made could result in immediate relief from U.S. imposed sanctions."
Update At 1:45 p.m. ET:
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney warned "despite positive signs" from the Geneva talks that "no one should expect a breakthrough overnight."
After nearly two years of seeming dormancy, Taylor Momsen and her band, The Pretty Reckless, just released the music video for their latest single, "Going to Hell."
“FINALLY our first video in over 2 years #goingtohellishere,” the 20-year-old songstress tweeted about the release the video to her fans today (October 16).
Currently on tour to promote the new single, The Pretty Reckless's new album is slated for release next year. The 20-year-old Momsen also tweeted today, saying, "#GoingtoHell tonight in Vancouver at Rio Theatre. Check out the new video."
Stay linked to GossipCenter for the latest news and updates about Taylor Momsen and The Pretty Reckless's continuing rise to fame!
Longtime 20th Century Fox domestic marketing president Tony Sella is on his way out.
Insiders say Sella is believed to have informed Fox CEO-chairman Jim Gianopulos Friday that he has decided to leave the movie studio following a dramatic restructuring announced last week that puts international presidents Paul Hanneman and TomasJegeus in charge of worldwide marketing and distribution over Sella.
Under the new structure, Sella reports to them, and not Gianopulos.
His exit is being negotiated and it wasn't immediately clear when he'll formally leave. Fox declined comment.
Sella -- who has sometimes been a polarizing figure within the studio -- ran Fox's domestic marketing department with Oren Aviv; Aviv was shown the door last week as part of the blueprint putting Hanneman and Jegeus.
Sella, who couldn't be reached for comment, has worked at Fox for more than two decades. In 2002, he and Pamela Levine were named co-presidents of domestic theatrical marketing. Levine left Fox nearly three years ago, with Aviv coming aboard.
Master P and his lovely wife Sonya Miller have been married for 24 years, but all of that is coming to an end!
The world assumed there was No Limit to what their love could endure, but the unhappily married couple is proving us all wrong and calling it quits!
Well, technically speaking, Master P isn't calling anything. It was his soon-to-be ex who filed the court paperwork!!
Aww!!! After 24-years we can't believe they're throwing in the towel. By comparison, River Phoenix didn't even live that long!
In addition to their famous adult child, Lil Romeo, Sonya has four underage children by Master P. She sought child support for them once in 2011 while they were separated, and will go after full custody and spousal support now.
In the new film adaptation of Twelve Years A Slave, Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Solomon Northup, a black man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841.
Jaap Buitendijk/Fox Searchlight Pictures
In the new film adaptation of Twelve Years A Slave, Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Solomon Northup, a black man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841.
Jaap Buitendijk/Fox Searchlight Pictures
There's a true American saga on screens this weekend.
Twelve Years a Slave tells the story of Solomon Northup. He was an African-American musician from New York — a free man, until he was kidnapped in Washington, D.C., and sold into slavery. After an unlikely rescue from a Louisiana cotton plantation, he returned home and wrote a memoir, first published 160 years ago.
But the end of Northup's story is an unsolved mystery that has confounded historians for years.
A Story Brought To Life
Northup was drugged, kidnapped and sold into slavery not far from the National Mall in 1841. What is now the Federal Aviation Administration headquarters was once the site of "a slave pen within the very shadow of the Capitol," as Northup described it in his book, which he dictated to writer David Wilson.
Carol Wilson, a history professor at Maryland's Washington College, has studied hundreds of documented kidnappings of African-Americans before the Civil War. She says Northup's story is unique.
"First of all, that he could spend over a decade in slavery and then still get out — but also that he wrote an account, and it's really one of the most valuable narratives of a slave that we have because he experienced slavery as a free person," she says.
This kind of documentation is rare, says John Ridley, who wrote and produced the new film adaptation of Twelve Years a Slave.
"Even though we think we've seen every slave narrative, the reality is that very few of these stories have really ever been told and brought to life," he says.
The film is a visceral portrayal of the brutality of slavery — so is the book.
"When he's being whipped, you feel it. When he triumphs over something, or pulls a fast one on his owner, you're there with him, too," says Clifford Brown, who teaches at Union College in New York and has co-authored the new biography Solomon Northup: The Complete Story of the Author of Twelve Years a Slave.
He says Northup's return home in 1853 made headlines. His memoir was published later that year.
His Final Request
After the book came out, Northup hit the lecture circuit, produced two unsuccessful stage plays about his experience and sued his kidnappers. There is also some evidence that he helped fugitive slaves escape through the Underground Railroad.
An illustration from the memoir Twelve Years A Slave shows Solomon Northup in his "plantation suit."
But by the end of the Civil War, Northup had disappeared from the public record.
"We know where his son is buried. We know where his father is buried. But we don't know where he's buried. It's a mystery," Brown says.
Brown and his co-authors, David Fiske and Rachel Seligman, have tried to solve that mystery for almost two decades. They've visited graveyards and combed through old death notices. They've even spoken with Northup's descendants, including Clayton Adams, Northup's great-great-great-grandson.
Adams shared a copy of Northup's book with his wife, India, when they were dating.
"I told her, 'I have this one book here that was very interesting and based on a true story,' " he says. After a few days, Adams' wife finished the book — and then learned that she was dating one of the author's descendants.
"I think I was just in awe that I knew someone that could actually have their history documented, which unfortunately, a lot of African-Americans don't have," India says.
Adams says he wishes he knew how the story of Northup ended. "It still is open. It's not closed," he says.
Adams describes reading the last words of Northup's book as heartbreaking; "I hope henceforward to lead an upright though lowly life, and rest at last in the church yard where my father sleeps," Northup wrote.
"So after all of that ordeal, his last request in his book, the last line is that he just wished when he dies he could lay right next to the grave of his father," Adams says.
He says the line still haunts him "every time I read it or think about it."
Increase seen in donor eggs for in vitro fertilization, with improved outcomes
Public release date: 17-Oct-2013 [
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Contact: Janet Christenbury Jmchris@emory.edu 404-727-8599 The JAMA Network Journals
Between 2000 and 2010 in the United States the number of donor eggs used for in vitro fertilization increased, and outcomes for births from those donor eggs improved, according to a study published by JAMA. The study is being released early online to coincide with its presentation at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and the International Federation of Fertility Societies joint annual meeting.
During the past several decades, the number of live births to women in their early 40s in the United States has increased steadily. The prevalence of oocyte (egg) donation for in vitro fertilization (IVF) has increased in the United States, but little information is available regarding maternal or infant outcomes to improve counseling and clinical decision making, according to background information in the article.
Jennifer F. Kawwass, M.D., of the Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, and colleagues examined trends in use of donor oocytes in the United States and assessed perinatal outcomes. The study used data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Surveillance System (NASS); fertility centers are mandated to report their data to the system, which includes data on more than 95 percent of all IVF cycles performed in the United States. Good perinatal outcome was defined as a single live-born infant delivered at 37 weeks or later weighing 5.5 lbs. or more.
The researchers found that at 443 clinics (93 percent of all U.S. fertility centers) the annual number of donor oocyte cycles performed in the United States increased from 10,801 in 2000 to 18,306 in 2010, as did the percentage of such cycles that involved frozen oocytes or embryos (vs. fresh) (26.7 percent to 40.3 percent) and that involved elective single-embryo transfer (vs. transfer of multiple embryos) (0.8 percent to 14.5 percent). Good perinatal outcomes increased from 18.5 percent to 24.4 percent. Average age remained stable at 28 years for donors and 41 years for recipients. Recipient age was not associated with likelihood of good perinatal outcome.
"Use of donor oocytes is an increasingly common treatment for infertile women with diminished ovarian reserve for whom the likelihood of good perinatal outcome appears to be independent of recipient age. To maximize the likelihood of a good perinatal outcome, the American Society of Reproductive Medicine recommendations suggesting transfer of a single embryo in women younger than 35 years should be considered. Additional studies evaluating the mechanisms by which race/ethnicity, infertility diagnosis, and day of embryo culture affect perinatal outcomes in both autologous [donor and recipient are the same person] and donor IVF pregnancies are warranted to develop preventive measures to increase the likelihood of obtaining a good perinatal outcome among ART users," the authors write.
(doi:10.1001/jama.2013.280924; Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com)
Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
Editorial: Outcomes of Donor Oocyte Cycles in Assisted Reproduction
Evan R. Myers, M.D., M.P.H., of Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, N.C., comments on the findings of this study in an accompanying editorial.
"Given the promising data presented by Kawwass et al on perinatal outcomes after use of donor oocytes, the use of oocyte donors is likely to at least remain constant and may even increase. More complete data on both short- and long-term outcomes of donation are needed so donors can make truly informed choices and, once those data are available, mechanisms can be put in place to ensure that the donor recruitment and consent process at clinics is conducted according to the highest ethical standards."
(doi:10.1001/jama.2013.280925; Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com)
Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
###
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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.
Increase seen in donor eggs for in vitro fertilization, with improved outcomes
Public release date: 17-Oct-2013 [
| E-mail
| Share
]
Contact: Janet Christenbury Jmchris@emory.edu 404-727-8599 The JAMA Network Journals
Between 2000 and 2010 in the United States the number of donor eggs used for in vitro fertilization increased, and outcomes for births from those donor eggs improved, according to a study published by JAMA. The study is being released early online to coincide with its presentation at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and the International Federation of Fertility Societies joint annual meeting.
During the past several decades, the number of live births to women in their early 40s in the United States has increased steadily. The prevalence of oocyte (egg) donation for in vitro fertilization (IVF) has increased in the United States, but little information is available regarding maternal or infant outcomes to improve counseling and clinical decision making, according to background information in the article.
Jennifer F. Kawwass, M.D., of the Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, and colleagues examined trends in use of donor oocytes in the United States and assessed perinatal outcomes. The study used data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Surveillance System (NASS); fertility centers are mandated to report their data to the system, which includes data on more than 95 percent of all IVF cycles performed in the United States. Good perinatal outcome was defined as a single live-born infant delivered at 37 weeks or later weighing 5.5 lbs. or more.
The researchers found that at 443 clinics (93 percent of all U.S. fertility centers) the annual number of donor oocyte cycles performed in the United States increased from 10,801 in 2000 to 18,306 in 2010, as did the percentage of such cycles that involved frozen oocytes or embryos (vs. fresh) (26.7 percent to 40.3 percent) and that involved elective single-embryo transfer (vs. transfer of multiple embryos) (0.8 percent to 14.5 percent). Good perinatal outcomes increased from 18.5 percent to 24.4 percent. Average age remained stable at 28 years for donors and 41 years for recipients. Recipient age was not associated with likelihood of good perinatal outcome.
"Use of donor oocytes is an increasingly common treatment for infertile women with diminished ovarian reserve for whom the likelihood of good perinatal outcome appears to be independent of recipient age. To maximize the likelihood of a good perinatal outcome, the American Society of Reproductive Medicine recommendations suggesting transfer of a single embryo in women younger than 35 years should be considered. Additional studies evaluating the mechanisms by which race/ethnicity, infertility diagnosis, and day of embryo culture affect perinatal outcomes in both autologous [donor and recipient are the same person] and donor IVF pregnancies are warranted to develop preventive measures to increase the likelihood of obtaining a good perinatal outcome among ART users," the authors write.
(doi:10.1001/jama.2013.280924; Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com)
Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
Editorial: Outcomes of Donor Oocyte Cycles in Assisted Reproduction
Evan R. Myers, M.D., M.P.H., of Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, N.C., comments on the findings of this study in an accompanying editorial.
"Given the promising data presented by Kawwass et al on perinatal outcomes after use of donor oocytes, the use of oocyte donors is likely to at least remain constant and may even increase. More complete data on both short- and long-term outcomes of donation are needed so donors can make truly informed choices and, once those data are available, mechanisms can be put in place to ensure that the donor recruitment and consent process at clinics is conducted according to the highest ethical standards."
(doi:10.1001/jama.2013.280925; Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com)
Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
###
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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.
Twitter’s offices in San Francisco. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/WIRED
Nielsen recently released its first Twitter TV Ratings top 10 list, a new metric that measures not how many people watch a given television show — the basis for traditional TV ratings — but how rather how much activity they generate on Twitter. Just how different are the two metrics? Take look at the Breaking Bad finale: While it came in No. 1 on the list as the most tweeted about show in America, its traditional TV ratings didn’t even crack the top 10.
Nor did many of the most-watched shows make the same sort of splash on Twitter. The most-watched shows during the the week Breaking Bad topped the Twitter Ratings chart were Sunday Night Football, The Big Bang Theory, NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles, The Crazy Ones, two other NFL programs and The Voice. How many of them showed up on the Twitter TV top 10? Only The Voice.
It turns out the shows most seen on Twitter aren’t always the shows most seen on TV, and the discrepancy illustrates just how much more there is to learn about what a tweet about a TV show means. It also offers networks and advertisers a way to gauge the relationship between viewership and Twitter traffic, but knowing the volume of tweets is just the beginning, and there’s a lot of data in those tweets that’s still silent.
For example, were people tweeting so much about Breaking Bad simply because it was the finale? Do shows like Glee and Jimmy Kimmel Live do well because they have younger audiences that are more tuned-in to Twitter? Are people tweeting that they love The Voice or that they’re angry at who’s winning? That information is out there, but it doesn’t come out in numbers on the reach of a given tweet (Nielsen tracks the number of tweets, people tweeting about a show, and also how many people see those tweets)
“Social provides a lot of opportunity, but it’s difficult to relate what’s being said online – especially on Twitter – to what’s being done in the real world. People say one thing and they do another,” Brian Blau, a Gartner analyst who researches social analytics tools, told WIRED. “How do you help these businesses figure out what the differences are?”
In other words, we may know that a lot of people are tweeting about a show, but are they watching it? And, if so, are they enjoying it? Who these tweeters are and how they feel about, say, an episode of Scandal isn’t something you can determine from knowing that there are nearly 713,000 tweets about it.
One thing that has potential to change this, Blau noted, is Twitter’s new deal with Comcast, which was announced last Wednesday. The two companies are pairing up on a new feature called “See It,” which will essentially turn Twitter into a remote control. Launching in November, “See It” will create a Twitter card for any show mentioned in a tweet that will allow users to click to watch, On Demand stream, or DVR the show mentioned. That feature, Blau said, will give much more effective data on how often a tweet leads to someone tuning in. And that seems to be what Comcast, which has 24 million U.S. subscribers, is looking for. As the company’s chief business development officer Sam Schwartz told All Things D, “we want to make the conversation on Twitter lead to consumption.”
Nielsen has determined there is a two-way relationship between Twitter and ratings, even if no one is quite sure exactly how it works. Back in August, the media measurement company released a study that looked at 221 primetime episodes and found that the live ratings for a given episode had a “statistically significant” impact on tweets related to the show for nearly half of the episodes sampled and – conversely – the volume of tweets caused a significant change to the live ratings of 29 percent of the episodes. Translation: For nearly a third of the episodes sampled, the more tweets, the higher the ratings. Interesting, but even Nielsen is still a little unsure what it means.
“This round of causation research was only looking to see if there’s a ‘there there’ with respect to tweets influencing ratings,” a Nielsen rep told Variety when the report was released. “Now that we’ve seen statistically significant evidence of this, the next wave of research will be around understanding how/why.”
Granted, most of this information is generated in order to give networks and advertisers a better idea of the kind of traction TV shows are getting on social networks, but the metrics are likely going to be interesting to fans as well as ad buyers. Think about it. Joss Whedon’s cult favorite space cowboy show Firefly never got great Nielsen numbers, but if there had been Twitter TV Ratings back when it was on the air, fans could’ve pointed to the show’s presumably significant level of social engagement as a sign of its niche popularity.
So what’s next in terms of looking at engagement beyond the numbers? Nielsen’s SocialGuide, which the company acquired last year to work on its social TV measurements, is working to broaden its Twitter metrics to include demographic data like age and gender in 2014, according to a Nielsen spokesperson. There’s also a plan to include tweets in Spanish.
What Nielsen probably won’t track, simply because it doesn’t lend itself to straight-forward numbers, is the idea of sentiment — how people actually feel about the things they are discussing. Is someone tweeting about the Breaking Bad finale because they loved it or hated it? There no distinction in the current Twitter TV Ratings. And while several analytics firms – including Bluefin Labs, which Twitter acquired earlier this year – do monitor sentiment, it’s a notoriously difficult thing to measure. There’s no foolproof way for text-analyzing machines to understand sarcasm and slang, for example.
“The vendors that are experts at this claim 90 percent of the conversation that they measure, they have an accurate measure of sentiment or an accurate measure of the subject of the conversation,” Blau said. “Skeptics tell me that that’s very high – 90 percent is at the upper bound – but the realistic numbers are much lower, in the 50 to 70 percent [range]. Will it ever be 100 percent? The answer is no.”
Of course, the bigger question is: Does it matter? Some say “any press is good press,” and perhaps all tweets are good tweets. Even if everyone’s talking about how terrible or WTF a show is, if the volume is high enough it might cause people to tune in just to see what all the fuss is about. It’ll be especially interesting to see how this plays out in the new arrangement between Twitter and Comcast. Based on the screenshot examples released by the cable provider, it appears the Twitter cards will at least initially be attached to tweets from the official show Twitter feeds, but if/when the cards are attached to random users tweets, you might see an update that reads “Tonight’s #GreysAnatomy was the worst ever!” followed by a card asking if you’d like to watch it now.
In a blog post announcing the gambit, Comcast Cable’s head of business development Sam Schwartz used the example of seeing friends tweeting about Sharknado, which got a lot of tweets even if many of them were mocking (or at least ironic). “If I had only seen an ad about a sharks-meet-a-natural-disaster movie, frankly, there would be little chance that I would tune in,” Schwartz said. “However, all these tweets pique my curiosity, I click on the See It button in one of the tweets, and then use it to set a reminder to watch the movie later that night.” So maybe love it or hate it or love-hate it — it really doesn’t matter just so long as there are eyeballs.
Metrics like age, gender and sentiment are still only the beginning. There’s still a lot of other data — and combination of data — embedded in the world of Twitter for networks and advertisers to mine, even if analyzing it may prove the bigger challenge. “It’s complicated,” said Clark Fredricksen, vice president of research firm eMarketer told WIRED. “On the one hand, you have the internet, which is the most accountable, measurable media channel in history, compared to TV, which is arguably the most difficult channel to measure.” In other words, social media provides an embarrassment of riches that viewership numbers don’t. We just need to figure out how to read it.
“It’s probably fair to say we’re past version 1.0 of social analytics tools. Version 1.0 is giving people basic high-level statistics – counts, followers, and maybe the first order of statistics saying what does some of this data mean?” Blau added. “[Now] we’re into version 2.0 of social analytics, where they’ve realized how to get access to the data, they’ve had their first level, they’ve realized what their customers want now in terms of information and all those smart data scientists in the world are hopefully coming up with algorithms to give them that.”
It’s official. The outspokenly politically correct couple Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard finally tied the knot. You may recall that these two sanctimonious vegetarians publicly stated that they would not get married until all their gay and lesbian friends had a similar ability to do so. Of course, that didn’t stop them from creating a child earlier this year, which if my sex-ed memory serves me, their gay and lesbian friends have no ability to do. Not phased by moral inconsistencies, Kristen and Dax waited until DOMA was overturned earlier in the summer to declare how awesomely happy they were for gay justice and that they would now be getting married. Which means we can officially start the divorce clock. Self-righteous couples can never co-exist for very long. They have to live with that unnerving feeling that their spouse thinks they are better than they are. And, they do.
Clostridium difficile, a bacterium that causes severe diarrhea, can be difficult to treat with antibiotics.
Stefan Hyman/University of Leicester
Clostridium difficile, a bacterium that causes severe diarrhea, can be difficult to treat with antibiotics.
Stefan Hyman/University of Leicester
Not all viruses are bad for us. Some of them might even help up us fight off bacterial infections someday.
Naturally occurring viruses called bacteriophages attack specific types of bacteria. So researchers at the University of Leicester decided to try and take advantage of phages' bacteria-destroying powers to treat infections with Clostridium difficile, a germ that that can cause severe diarrhea and inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract.
Over the last six years, microbiologist Martha Clokie has isolated hundreds of phages that can kill various strains of C. difficile. Now her lab has teamed up with the pharmaceutical company AmpliPhi to try and turn phages into a product, perhaps a pill, that could be used in humans.
There's no guarantee the approach will work, and so far it hasn't been put to a rigorous test in humans infected with C. difficile. Still, there are some good reasons to check it out.
C. difficile is difficult to treat with antibiotics and is resistant to many of them. Another problem is that the germ often strikes when people take antibiotics to treat other infections. The antibiotics kill good bacteria along with the bad, weakening the gut's defenses against C. diff.
Doctors are using fecal transplants and synthetic poop as possible solutions. But Clokie says that phages could be a useful alternative. "We're simply harnessing the natural enemy of the bacteria," she tells Shots.
Unlike bacteria, Clokie says, phages are very specific about what they attack—right down to the sub-species. In fact, a single phage wouldn't be able to take on all the strains of C. difficle. So Clokie is working to develop a cocktail of viruses that would be able to kill the most common strains.
While the bacteria can evolve and try to outsmart the viruses, the viruses can do the same, Clokie says. They've been involved in this arms race for thousands of years.
As long as they can come up with the right cocktail, there's a very good chance that this phage therapy could work, according to Tim Lu, an associate professor of bioengineering at MIT. "If you know what you want to kill, it's kind of like a silver bullet targeting that bacteria," he tells Shots.
And delivering the phages to a person's gut shouldn't be a challenge, Lu says.
Phages are already approved for use in meat and poultry production. Manufacturers sometimes spray food with phages that target listeria, a common food-borne bacterium.
But using phage therapy in humans is a bit more complicated. "Phages were discovered before antibiotics came around," Lu says. And they've been used in humans, he says. But the problem is, they have yet to be tested in well-controlled clinical trials.
There's also the question of intellectual property. Phages are naturally occurring, and therefore they're difficult to patent, which could discourage pharmaceutical companies.
Ultimately, Lu says, "The science is real." The stuff does work. But, he says, "It's a change in the way we think about treating infections, I think that's the biggest hurdle in a way."
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Aeos is a land of magic and diverse peoples. It is a dark but beautiful world besieged by many evils. From his Dark Throne in Halleoth, the Dark Lord of Aeos aims to bring the land under his will. Your fate, however, is in your hands...
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In the innermost sanctum of Clintonland, it is difficult to imagine that Hillary and Bill, two of the savviest politicians in the country, are not pinching themselves to make sure that it's all real. Perhaps they're dancing a jig together, or knocking back shots and howling at the moon out of sheer, giddy joy at their good luck. (OK, Hillary's not howling, but Bill might be.) Or maybe they are just quietly kvelling over the latest turn of events.
Because the trend lines are unmistakable, and they're looking better all the time: If she wants to run in 2016, Hillary Rodham Clinton could have the easiest walk into the White House of any candidate in either party since, well, one has to go back a very long way. Maybe to Reagan in '84. LBJ in '64, or Eisenhower in '52, or even FDR in 1932, 1936 and 1940. The presidency is looking like it's hers to lose, more than ever.
More from NJ: Hillary Clinton, Welcome to the White House
The reasons are becoming more obvious with each passing crisis of Republicanism, but are even starker now in the wake of the GOP's embarrassing implosion over the shutdown and debt-ceiling fight. This is an opposition party in such a state of extreme dysfunction that talk of a third-party split in 2016 is almost irrelevant. Why would you need a third-party split to win—as Bill did, recall, cheating George H.W. Bush out of a second term in 1992 thanks to the Ross Perot candidacy—when the base and establishment of the GOP are no longer on speaking terms?
More from NJ: Ted Cruz Is Finished
Remember when poor Mitt Romney, who even in the best of fettle was not a very smooth or relaxed guy, twisted himself into an unrecognizable pretzel to win over the base? When a man who'd been a fairly effective Massachusetts governor felt he had to disown his greatest achievement, universal health care, and virtually emasculate himself before the general election in order to triumph in the primaries, thus losing all credibility (or at least identity) by the fall? When Romney believed he had to out-Santorum Rick Santorum, the man once voted the second dumbest senator, and go even more conservative on immigration than not-ready-for-prime-time Rick "Oops" Perry?
More from NJ: Obama Wins! Big Whoop. Can He Lead?
Well, guess what, it's only gotten worse for reasonable Republicans who might have a shot at winning a general election against a popular Democratic nominee. Whatever rational, impressive candidate lays claim to the GOP nomination in 2016 -- say, the popular, newly trimmed-down but currently-all-too-moderate New Jersey governor, Chris Christie -- is now going to have to out-Cruz Ted Cruz. And that's just not possible. Finding a place to the right of Ted Cruz, as brazen a demagogue who has come along in American politics since Huey Long, is like reaching the edge of the Internet and then trying to go beyond. You can't do it. Nor would you want to try. Nor could you ever win a general election doing so.
Hillary, meanwhile, can cruise to the Democratic nomination. She is head and shoulders above any possible challenger, the polls consistently show. Yes, OK, we all said that before the 2008 campaign too, when suddenly a phenom named Barack Obama came along. But let's be real: The Obama candidacy was like a perfect storm, a hundred-year event, a freakish thing. Martin O'Malley is never going to be mistaken for a phenom. Nor is Andrew Cuomo. Joe Biden? Democrats love him, but he can't touch her either. And you can be sure the Clintons are not going to make the same mistakes they did in 2008, bypassing the smaller Democratic caucus states because they underestimated the Obama insurgency.
The demographic numbers tell a grim tale for any potential GOP candidate at the same time as they look like manna from electoral heaven for Hillary. The Republican Party, still in the grip of tea-party extremism, is more and more becoming the party of disaffected and aging white voters. Even many Republican strategists are conceding that no GOP presidential nominee can win that way. But the party is not building itself a bigger tent fast enough: Strapped down by House extremists who can't think beyond the demands of their scarlet-red districts, or beyond the next two years, the GOP is not likely to embrace immigration reform despite Marco Rubio's efforts, thus continuing to alienate the burgeoning Hispanic vote that so doomed Romney. As my colleague Ron Brownstein wrote recently: "Absent big GOP gains with minorities, [Clinton] could win, even comfortably, just by maintaining Obama's showing with whites … [But] the first 2016 polling instead has generally shown her trimming Obama's deficit among whites both nationally and in key states."
GOP strategists will say they're changing the rules, cutting the number of primary debates so the next Republican nominee is not subjected to the same "traveling circus" (as national chairman Reince Priebus called it) that Romney was. But that's not going to change the tenor of those debates, in which the candidates will have to outflank each other on the right. They also say, well, you'll see, the tea party movement is fading, or at least becoming more manageable. But it's not, as we saw when 144 Republicans in the House voted against the reopening of the government and extension of the debt ceiling Wednesday night, costing John Boehner the support of most of what used to be known as "his" caucus. More to the point, several of those who might be considered serious GOP 2016 contenders for the presidency also voted in favor of the first default in American history in order to stay in the tea party's good graces, including Paul Ryan, Cruz, Rubio and Rand Paul (supplying the first fodder for those Hillary 2016 attack ads). We'll no doubt see a resumption of GOP extremism in coming months when the two parties battle over spending cuts leading up to the next debt-ceiling deadline on Feb. 7. The tea party is still dictating terms to the GOP establishment, and those terms are just too conservative for the general electorate. And who is now the point man for the GOP in budget negotiations? Ryan.
Yes, Hillary has some vulnerabilities. There are still plenty of Clinton haters out there. John Kerry appears to be eclipsing her record as secretary of State already, and then there's Benghazi, which the Republicans will resurrect gleefully if she runs. But in truth the mistakes of Benghazi, which branded Clinton as the first secretary of State to lose an ambassador in the field since 1979, are not going to stand up to scrutiny. It's wild conspiracy theory, utterly unproven (in fact it's been disproven), to say that Clinton covered up what was known about the Benghazi attack. It won't work in 2016.
So, if she wants it, the broad center of American politics – and the White House—may well be Hillary Clinton's for the taking. We await her decision. But she and Bill must be feeling pretty good about it now. Maybe even a bit giddy.
This month Washington is consumed by the impasse over reopening the government and raising the debt limit. It seems likely that this episode, like the 1995-96 government shutdowns and the 2011 debt limit scare, will be remembered mainly by the people directly involved. But there is a chance future historians will see today’s crisis as the turning point where American democracy was shown to be dysfunctional – an example to be avoided rather than emulated.
Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, returns to his office after a meeting with House Republicans at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013. Earlier, Senate leaders reached a last-minute agreement to avert a threatened Treasury default and reopen the government after a partial, 16-day shutdown. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, returns to his office after a meeting with House Republicans at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013. Earlier, Senate leaders reached a last-minute agreement to avert a threatened Treasury default and reopen the government after a partial, 16-day shutdown. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The budget agreement Congress reached Wednesday cheered investors and removed the threat of a catastrophic debt default that could have triggered another recession.
Yet the temporary nature of the deal means a cloud will remain over a sluggish U.S. economy that was further slowed by the government's partial shutdown.
Political fights over taxing and spending will persist over the next few months. The risk of another government shutdown and doubts about the government's borrowing authority remain. Businesses and consumers may still spend and invest at the same cautious pace they have since the Great Recession officially ended more than four years ago.
The agreement, expected to be approved by the House and Senate late Wednesday, will reopen the government but only until Jan. 15. The deal would enable the United States to keep borrowing to pay its bills, but not past Feb. 7.
The deal followed a two-week shutdown and came a day before a Treasury Department deadline to raise the nation's $16.7 trillion debt limit.
"The good news is that we avoid hitting the debt ceiling and all the risks that entails," said Joel Prakken, co-founder of Macroeconomic Advisers, a forecasting firm. "The bad news is ... this hasn't produced any clarity. We're going to be right back at this again after the turn of the year."
The stock market soared on the news. The Dow Jones industrial average jumped 206 points. Bond investors celebrated, too. They sharply drove down the yield on the one-month Treasury bill, which would have come due around the time a default could have occurred. And the yield on the 10-year Treasury, a benchmark for rates on mortgages and other loans, fell.
Investors may now turn to what typically moves stock prices: corporate earnings and economic data. Wall Street is in the midst of earnings season.
"We can go back to focusing on the true reason why stocks are higher: the rebound in housing, rising corporate profits, the resurgence in manufacturing," said Doug Cote, chief investment strategist for ING U.S. Investment Management.
By itself, the partial government shutdown will have only a limited effect on economic growth, analysts said. Most forecast that the shutdown will dent growth by about 0.15 percentage point per week. But federal employees will receive back pay, suggesting that much of the lost spending could be made up.
Standard & Poor's estimated that the shutdown has shaved at least 0.6 percentage point from the economy's annual growth rate in the October-December quarter. It calculated that that means the shutdown took $24 billion out of the economy.
S&P now expects the economy to grow at a tepid annual rate of roughly 2 percent this quarter. In September, it had predicted a 3 percent growth rate.
"The U.S. economy dodged a bullet today," said Paul Edelstein, an economist at IHS Global Insight. "But the reprieve will be short. ... The stage is set for another showdown in January."
IHS lowered its forecast for growth in the October-December quarter to a 1.6 percent annual rate from a 2.2 percent rate.
The new deadlines to fund the government and raise the borrowing limit that are now a few months away could also weigh on growth in the first quarter of 2014.
A study by Prakken's firm found that uncertainty over future government policies tends to raise borrowing costs for businesses and consumers, depress stock markets and lower business and consumer confidence. Uncertainty surrounding government tax and budget policies has remained far above historical norms since 2009, Prakken said.
Higher borrowing costs typically make companies less likely to invest and hire. Lower stock markets reduce household wealth and can cut into consumer spending. Macroeconomic Advisers estimates that these factors have slowed growth by 0.3 percentage point each year since 2010.
A report from the Federal Reserve on Wednesday offered fresh evidence of the economic impact of the shutdown and debt limit fight. The Fed's report on economic conditions in its 12 banking districts found that employers in several districts were reluctant to hire because of uncertainty surrounding budget policies and the new health care law.
Manufacturing growth slowed in the New York region in October, builders were less confident in the housing recovery and growth slowed in four Fed districts. All the reports cited the federal shutdown and impasse over the debt limit as reasons for the declines.
Several companies have also cited the shutdown as a likely drag on sales and earnings. Stanley Black & Decker, the tool maker, on Wednesday lowered its profit forecast for this year. It blamed, in part, "uncertainty created by the U.S. government's (budget cuts) and shutdown and its impact on business, consumer confidence and spending levels."
Linear Technology, a semiconductor company, on Tuesday lowered its revenue outlook for the final three months of the year because of the shutdown.
Some analysts think the Fed is now unlikely to slow its monthly bond purchases until well into next year. The Fed has been buying $85 billion a month in Treasury and mortgage bonds to try to keep long-term interest rates low.
The full economic effect of the budget standoff could take a month or more to assess because the release of so much economic data has been delayed. And Drew Matus, an economist at UBS, says that much of the economic data will be distorted by the effect of the shutdown, making it harder to discern underlying trends.
Weekly applications for unemployment benefits, for example, spiked last week, partly because of workers who were temporarily laid off by government contractors and other affected companies. Those figures are collected by the states.
"We're in the dark," says Robert DiClemente, chief U.S. economist at Citigroup. "It's going to be a while until we have good answers to all these questions."
___
AP Business Writer Ken Sweet contributed to this report from New York.
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Follow Chris Rugaber on Twitter at http://Twitter.com/ChrisRugaber
Mention "Duck Dynasty," and the first things that come to mind are likely the Robertson family's giant, bushy beards and camouflage gear. Yet in a 2001 photo obtained by Life & Style, the stars of A&E's hit show look more like Abercrombie & Fitch models than the scruffy guys viewers have come to know.
Courtesy of Life & Style
Gone is the backwoods look. Instead, from left, Willie, Alan, Ms. Kay, Jase and Jep are sporting clean-shaven faces, healthy tans, nice 'dos and no camo. In fact, they look much more like the multi-millionaires that they are — thanks to their family-run duck-call business — than they do on their hit show. (Dare we say that Willie even resembles "Chicago Fire" star Taylor Kinney?)
Granted, the photo was taken eight years before their first show, Outdoor Channel's "Duck Commander," but the change in appearance over 12 years (and a hit cable program) is pretty astounding. Even cooler, mom Kay, 62, actually looks younger now.
Art Streiber / A&E
From left, Si, Ms. Kay, Jase, Korie, Willie and Phil Robertson.
Los Angeles (AFP) - Porn mogul Larry Flynt urged US authorities Thursday to spare the life of a man sentenced to death for shooting him 35 years ago, leaving him paralyzed and wheelchair-bound.
Joseph Paul Franklin is due to be executed next month after being convicted over the March 1978 attack on Flynt outside a Georgia courthouse, where he was fighting obscenity charges.
In an opinion column for industry journal The Hollywood Reporter, the 70-year-old said he would like to physically hurt Franklin the way he had been damaged by being shot, but did not want him dead.
"In all the years since the shooting, I have never come face-to-face with Franklin," Flynt wrote.
"I would love an hour in a room with him and a pair of wire-cutters and pliers, so I could inflict the same damage on him that he inflicted on me. But, I do not want to kill him, nor do I want to see him die."
Flynt said Franklin had "targeted me because of a photo spread I ran in Hustler magazine featuring a black man and a white woman. He had bombed several synagogues... He hated blacks, he hated Jews."
The Missouri Supreme Court has ordered Franklin to be put to death by lethal injection on November 20.
"I have every reason to be overjoyed with this decision, but I am not," Flynt said.
"I have had many years in this wheelchair to think about this very topic.
"As I see it, the sole motivating factor behind the death penalty is vengeance, not justice, and I firmly believe that a government that forbids killing among its citizens should not be in the business of killing people itself."
Flynt has fought several prominent legal battles involving the First Amendment -- the right to free speech guaranteed in the US Constitution -- and has unsuccessfully run for public office.
He won a seminal free speech case in 1988 before the US Supreme Court, and was the subject of a 1996 biopic by director Milos Forman, "The People vs Larry Flynt," starring Woody Harrelson and Courtney Love.
Space may be the final frontier of exploration, but there's plenty of Earth left unmapped, too—from the giant canyon recently discovered beneath Greenland to American waters that have been left largely unexplored. But that’s quickly changing, thanks in part to Bob Ballard’s latest project.
(Reuters) - Medical products maker Baxter International Inc reported a 7 percent fall in third-quarter earnings, hurt by charges related to its $4 billion acquisition of Swedish dialysis products company Gambro AB.
Net earnings fell to $544 million, or 99 cents per share, from $583 million, or $1.06 per share, a year earlier.
Excluding special items, the maker of dialysis equipment, drug infusion pumps and blood therapy products reported earnings of $1.19 per share.
On that basis, analysts on average had expected a profit of $1.19 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Worldwide sales rose 9 percent to $3.8 billion, in line with analysts' expectations.
The results included after-tax special items of about $111 million for costs associated with acquisition of Gambro.
(Reporting by Zeba Siddiqui in Bangalore and Susan Kelly in Chicago; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)
On Dec. 23, 1973, cars formed a double line at a gas station in New York City. The Arab oil embargo caused gas shortages nationwide and shaped U.S. foreign policy to this day.
Marty Lederhandler/AP
On Dec. 23, 1973, cars formed a double line at a gas station in New York City. The Arab oil embargo caused gas shortages nationwide and shaped U.S. foreign policy to this day.
Marty Lederhandler/AP
Forty years ago this week, the U.S. was hit by an oil shock that reverberates until this day.
Arab oil producers cut off exports to the U.S. to protest American military support for Israel in its 1973 war with Egypt and Syria. This brought soaring gas prices and long lines at filling stations, and it contributed to a major economic downturn in the U.S.
The embargo made the U.S. feel heavily dependent on Middle Eastern oil, which in turn led the U.S. to focus on instability in that region, which has since included multiple wars and other U.S. military interventions.
"The oil crisis set off an upheaval in global politics and the world economy. It also challenged America's position in the world, polarized its politics at home and shook the country's confidence," author and oil analyst Daniel Yergin wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.
While these concerns linger, the world energy market has changed dramatically over the past four decades. U.S. energy production is rising. Less than 10 percent of U.S. oil comes from the Middle East. Global prices are relatively stable.
All this has spurred debate about whether the U.S. is too focused on the Middle East and its oil when it does not appear to pose much of an economic threat to America. We won't try to answer that question today, but we did want to point out things that were very different back in the fall of 1973:
Leon Mill spray-paints a sign outside his Phillips 66 station in Perkasie, Pa., in 1973 to let his customers know he's out of gas. An oil crisis was the culprit, squeezing U.S. businesses and consumers who were forced to line up for hours at gas stations.
AP
Leon Mill spray-paints a sign outside his Phillips 66 station in Perkasie, Pa., in 1973 to let his customers know he's out of gas. An oil crisis was the culprit, squeezing U.S. businesses and consumers who were forced to line up for hours at gas stations.
AP
Saudi Arabia was a leading proponent of the 1973 embargo. For many Americans, Saudi Arabia was the symbol of the wealthy Arab monarchies that were inflicting so much pain on the U.S. Yet today, Saudi Arabia is one of the closest U.S. allies in the region and is currently pumping oil at high levels to keep world markets stable and offset lower production in places like Iraq, Iran and Nigeria.
Iran and the U.S. were allies. Under the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran kept on producing and exporting throughout the six-month embargo that lasted until March 1974. After the shah was overthrown in 1979, the U.S. and Iran became sworn rivals, a confrontation that has lasted more than three decades. Iran is now the target of Western sanctions that took effect last year and have cut the Islamic Republic's oil exports by half, from 2.5 million barrels a day to around 1.2 million.
In response to the oil shock, Congress passed fuel economy standards. That 1975 measure required automakers to raise mileage from 13.5 miles per gallon to 27 mpg. Last year, the standards were again doubled, and vehicles must average 54 mpg by 2025. As a result, Americans are driving more without increasing the amount of gas they are using.
Soaring oil prices remade the global energy industry. As oil prices skyrocketed in the 1970s, producers were willing to travel to more remote and difficult places to drill, including Alaska, the North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the Canadian oil sands. World oil production today is 50 percent higher than it was in 1973. Also, the crisis prompted efforts to find and develop other power sources, from natural gas to wind to solar.
The U.S. is less dependent on the Middle East today. In the years that followed the 1973 embargo, a cutoff of Middle Eastern oil was regarded as a grave national threat.
Here's President Jimmy Carter in his 1980 State of the Union address:
"An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America. Such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force."
In reality, Middle Eastern oil has never been a huge part of the overall U.S. supply. Imports from the Middle East never accounted for more than 15 percent of the U.S. oil supply and now they account for only about 9 percent.
The U.S. now imports more oil from Canada than anywhere else. Saudi Arabia is the only Middle Eastern nation among the top five nations sending oil to America.
By limiting supply, OPEC was able to cause oil price spikes in the 1970s and '80s. But it has much less power today, and a number of top producers, such as Saudi Arabia, work to stabilize prices rather than disrupt the market.
"For the last four decades, Washington's energy policy has been based on the faulty conclusion that the country could solve all its energy woes by reducing its reliance on Middle Eastern oil," Gal Luft and Anne Korin write in Foreign Affairs.
"The crux of the United States' energy vulnerability was its inability to keep the price of oil under control, given the Arab oil kingdoms' stranglehold on the global petroleum supply," the authors write.
So the oil industry is a very different place. But not everything has changed:
The Israelis and the Arabs are still feuding. The 1973 Middle East war was essentially a draw, and Israel and Egypt then made peace before the decade was over. Israel also has a peace treaty with Jordan, but it is still at odds with its other immediate neighbors, the Palestinians, Lebanon and Syria. And Israel considers its biggest threat to be Iran, arguing that Tehran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, which Iran denies.
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