Body shape 'increases heart risk' Nursing Times “People with coronary artery disease have an increased risk of death if they have fat around the waist,” BBC News has reported. This news story is based on a systematic review that combined five observational studies which looked at different measures ... Bigger belly, poorer outlook for heart patientsConsumerReports.org Bulging Midriffs Signal Higher Health RisksVoice of America all 2 news articles »

BALTIMORE--The generic line on dark matter is that nobody really knows what it is because nobody has seen it. The former claim remains basically unassailable--there are many forms dark matter could take. But one research group would dispute the latter assertion. Over the past several years, the Italian DAMA (for DArk MAtter) collaboration has been making the claim that their subterranean detector has registered the signature of dark matter as Earth passes through a sea of the stuff. But despite an ever-strengthening observational case for their claim, the DAMA collaboration's finding remains a source of broad skepticism within the scientific community. [More]

Everyone craves encouragement. If you feel like you have no time, no energy, no expertise, no money, or little to give, don’t worry; that’s common to many of us. But we can all give through our words of encouragement, through which our lives can have influence, and we can spread God’s love wherever we go. In just five minutes or less, we can make a difference at a bus stop, on the metro, crossing the street, at the shop, at work, at school, online, going for a walk, and the list goes on.

Parental exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) during pregnancy is associated with decreased birth weight of offspring, compared with offspring from families without parental BPA exposure in the workplace, according to Kaiser Permanente researchers. The observational study is published in the current online issue Reproductive Toxicology...

Comedian Jeff Foxworthy took the stage to crack some jokes last Saturday night at the Celebration of American Values Freedom Experience during the NRA Annual Meeting & Exhibits in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The host of the hit TV game show Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? and star of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour came out to an excited crowd that had gathered to hear speeches later that evening by ardent Second Amendment supporters at the Consol Energy Center, home of the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Foxworthy, who had been at the arena the previous weekend filming a concert movie with pals Bill Engvall and Larry the Cable Guy, told the crowd “Last Friday night when I looked out I saw an audience. Tonight when I look out I see patriots." After the applause died down he added "It’s an honor to be here in front of you.”

A Lifetime Member of the NRA, Foxworthy acknowledged the importance of the speeches held throughout the weekend on protecting out Second Amendment rights, but admitted that "once in a while you’ve gotta laugh just a little bit.”

Launching right into the observational humor about family life and southern culture he is famous for, Foxworthy admitted receiving "old age" gag gifts for his recent 50th birthday saved him a trip to the store and that the fountain of knowledge he thought he would have amassed by that age was nowhere to be found.

Later in his set he talked about his game show Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? and oftentimes if it weren't for his answer sheet he would not know whether contestants were right or wrong.

Some of the other humorous bits brought up were wondering why only rednecks see UFOs and explaining a particularly embarrassing trip to the doctor for his first colonoscopy.

At one point in the show Foxworthy took notice of the Sign Language Interpreters translating his act for the hearing impaired and gave them a few good-natured ribbings for having to sign some particularly ridiculous jokes.

“Thank you guys for defending this place and thank you for belonging to the NRA and standing up for people’s rights,” Foxworthy told the crowd as his set came to a close. He wasn't done quite yet, though. “I couldn’t come all the way up here without leaving you with one or two ways of how to tell if you might be a redneck,” he said to a tremendous applause.

After a few of his patented one-liners he waved goodbye during a standing ovation and left everyone in a good mood for the rest of the speakers that night.

What's that? You want to hear one? Okay, but just one.

“If you think gun control means using both hands, you might be a redneck.”

Appointment made as broadcaster announces three new UK commissions at Sky Atlantic

BSkyB has promoted Elaine Pyke to director of Sky Atlantic and announced three new UK commissions for the channel.

Pyke, the head of drama at Sky, takes on the newly created role immediately and will report to director of programming Stuart Murphy.

In seven years as head of drama Pyke has been responsible for shows including Mad Dogs, Going Postal and adaptations of Martina Cole's The Take and The Runaway.

BSkyB also announced three new UK commissions for Sky Atlantic. ITV Studios has been commissioned to make a pilot, The Devil's Dinner Party, which appears to be a twist on the Come Dine With Me format the production company already makes which airs on Channel 4. "Diners are engaged in a socially uncomfortable, unpredictable battle, testing their honesty, their ambition and their ability to manipulate the group dynamic," said BSkyB.

Cineflix Productions UK has been commissioned to produce an eight-part series, called Treasure Seekers, which follows two designers who "scour the UK for amazing objects to place into some of the country's most exclusive contemporary spaces".

The third commission is an observational documentary, to be produced by Mentorn Media, called Brixham – Fish Town. The 10-part series will look at life in the "hard-working fishing port and summer tourist hot spot".

To date Sky Atlantic, which launched on 1 February, has been dominated by programming from HBO and other US broadcasters such as Boardwalk Empire, Treme and Game of Thrones.

However, Sky has said it plans to beef up the channel's UK-originated content. Sky has already commissioned UK programming for Sky Atlantic including This is Jinsy, a comedy about the bizarre residents of the fictional island of Jinsy, and Paul Abbot drama Hit and Miss.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

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Parental Exposure to BPA During Pregnancy Associated with Decreased Birth ... PR Newswire (press release) The observational study is published in the current online issue Reproductive Toxicology. Researchers explained that there was a greater magnitude of decrease in birth weight in children whose mothers were directly exposed to high BPA levels in the ... and more »

MinnPost.com (blog)

Body shape 'increases heart risk' Bramley Today “People with coronary artery disease have an increased risk of death if they have fat around the waist,” BBC News has reported. This news story is based on a systematic review that combined five observational studies which looked at different measures ... Even modest beer belly ups heart riskTimes of India Waistline helps predict survival for people with heart diseaseWebMD.Boots.com Belly fat can increase early death risk for coronary heart disease patientsTopNews New Zealand International Business Times -TopNews United States -HealthNews all 297 news articles »

If we could, an Astronomy staff member would attend every shuttle launch down in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Unfortunately, that’s not in the budget, so we rely on friends of the magazine to represent us at such events. When we found out Brenda Culbertson, an observational astronomer, astrophotographer, and outreach educator from Kansas, was traveling to Kennedy Space Center to witness the final mission of the space shuttle Endeavour, we offered her press credentials to report on the launch. Although the scheduled go was scrubbed April 29, Culbertson provided us some great details of her trip so far.

[caption image="http://cs.astronomy.com/asycs/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/astronomy.Spacecraft/0647.Vehicle_2D00_Assembly_2D00_Buidling_5F00_3.jpg" targeturl="http://cs.astronomy.com/asycs/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/astronomy.Spacecraft/7077.Vehicle_2D00_Assembly_2D00_Buidling.jpg"]Kennedy Space Center's Vehicle Assembly Building is the home of the space shuttle until its retirement later this year. // All photos by Brenda Culbertson[/caption]The last mission for the space shuttle Endeavour, STS-134, was scheduled for launch on April 29, 2011, at 3:42 p.m. EDT. I decided that if I was to witness a space shuttle launch, this would be it. Thanks to our friend David Eicher and his staff, I had a spot for a spectacular view of the launch, invitations to press conferences, and access to firsthand information when it was immediately available.

When I arrived on April 27, press from around the world were in attendance as the countdown clock ticked away. It seemed as if all of Kennedy Space Center (KSC) was standing room only throughout all of Thursday, April 28. I was not the only person covering Endeavour’s last mission, I knew, but I had no idea that I would be among such an assemblage of people.

[caption image="http://cs.astronomy.com/asycs/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/astronomy.Spacecraft/6087.STS_2D00_134_2D00_storm_5F00_300.jpg" targeturl="http://cs.astronomy.com/asycs/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/astronomy.Spacecraft/3364.STS_2D00_134_2D00_storm.jpg"]This shelf cloud indicates the heavy storm that rolled through Florida April 27, delaying the roll-away of the Rocket Support System.[/caption]That evening at 7, the Rocket Support System (RSS) was scheduled to be rolled away. Media had the opportunity to be bussed to the pad for the viewing, but a lightning storm appeared, and we had to wait at least an hour. The storm was still in the area at 8 p.m., so we were told to check again at 10:30 p.m. Much of the media people left, but those who stayed were taken to the launch pad after 10:30. The RSS was scheduled to move starting at 11:45 p.m., and it began after midnight. The support structure took about half an hour to slowly pull away from the rocket. It was an amazing sight as about 50 photographers recorded the event. I was satisfied that I had seen a milestone after the spotlights were directed at the shuttle to highlight its readiness. We arrived back at the media area around 2 a.m. and told we should return there around 6 a.m. because the place would fill up fast. A short, sleepless night was in store for me.

On Friday, the energy was high. Reporters, film crews, technicians, and other media people flowed into the press area at KSC. The place was packed and security was top notch. Everyone was ready for the last launch of space shuttle Endeavour, but there was more to do, and we could not be in a rush. For those of us who went to record the Astronaut Walkout from their building to their transport, we were in for a long trip. It took about 30 minutes to travel a mile.

[caption image="http://cs.astronomy.com/asycs/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/astronomy.Spacecraft/1220.STS_2D00_134_2D00_media_5F00_300.jpg" targeturl="http://cs.astronomy.com/asycs/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/astronomy.Spacecraft/0624.STS_2D00_134_2D00_media.jpg"]Many media outlets were on hand to witness space shuttle Endeavor's final launch.[/caption]Some entrances to KSC are in the city of Titusville, and traffic was crawling. Titusville dismissed its students after half a day, and some employers allowed their employees to leave for the day. The shuttle launch takes precedence over even regular daily tasks in the area. The causeway was packed with onlookers, and every available space around KSC was taken. I have never seen such a huge gathering of people.

On the way back from the Astronaut Walkout, I was going over my plans for photographing the launch when I heard that it was scrubbed. I asked the tour guide to repeat what she just said, but it did not change from what I heard the first time. Scrubbed. She said that more information would be given soon.

On Saturday, an announcement came that the next attempt would be no sooner than Monday, May 2. A press conference would be held to update us on the 1st as to why the launch was delayed. At the press conference, we learned that an electrical box had a problem, and a fuel line heater was not working properly because of it. The engineers would have to take the box out and examine it. As the engineers did their work, they found that they had to replace the box and retest the whole system. This would take time, so the launch was set back to be no sooner than Sunday, May 8. Endeavour’s astronauts were sent back to Houston to stay in quarantine and to rest or practice their tasks.

All of the staff who work on the shuttle were busy replacing the electrical box and checking systems. After replacing the electrical box, engineers said that the launch would be no sooner than Tuesday, May 10. The extra time would allow a more thorough examination of all systems on Endeavour.

After each delay, more and more people went away disappointed. Some of the discontentment I heard involved comments such as, “Why didn’t they check all of that out before the launch time?” and “I took vacation to come and watch the launch.” I understand disappointment, but I sure wouldn’t want Endeavour to launch with anything faulty.

I am keeping myself available as long as I can to cover the whole STS-134 mission, but if it is postponed much longer, I, too, will have to leave without recording the last Endeavour mission. But I am not disappointed. There is much more to a mission than just the launch, no matter how fantastic that might be. I have seen how the system, as a whole, works. From the astronauts to the media people and on to the volunteers, without whom things would not operate effectively, Kennedy Space Center is a smooth-working entity. It is much like a shuttle launch that flies safely into space because of all the hard work by everyone involved.

I hope I see at least the launch in person, but if I don’t, there is still NASA TV.

Related blog:
NASA: Please keep delaying STS-134, by Chris Raymond, managing editor

USA Today

New Study Questions Whether We Should All Be Ducking Salt Wall Street Journal (blog) ... in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the observational study tracking 3681 Europeans who originally had no hypertension found that people who consumed less salt were actually more likely to die from a heart attack or stroke. ... Low-Salt Diet Ineffective, Study Finds. Disagreement Abounds.New York Times Sodium won't kill you? Scientists shake up what we know about saltCBS News Is a Low Salt Diet Really Good For You?Care2.com (blog) RedOrbit -WDAM-TV -Los Angeles Times all 108 news articles »

This tweet from my friend @Frank_Antwerpes, CEO at DocCheck (a German online physician community), appeared in my Twitter stream today:

Clinical Research goes social Web: http://bit.ly/kNCHop

If you follow the link, you will find this published study: "Accelerated clinical discovery using self-reported patient data collected online and a patient-matching algorithm". Here's the abstract:

Patients with serious diseases may experiment with drugs that have not received regulatory approval. Online patient communities structured around quantitative outcome data have the potential to provide an observational environment to monitor such drug usage and its consequences. Here we describe an analysis of data reported on the website PatientsLikeMe by patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) who experimented with lithium carbonate treatment. To reduce potential bias owing to lack of randomization, we developed an algorithm to match 149 treated patients to multiple controls (447 total) based on the progression of their disease course. At 12 months after treatment, we found no effect of lithium on disease progression. Although observational studies using unblinded data are not a substitute for double-blind randomized control trials, this study reached the same conclusion as subsequent randomized trials, suggesting that data reported by patients over the internet may be useful for accelerating clinical discovery and evaluating the effectiveness of drugs already in use.

Pretty interesting, but also frightening.

This InformationWeek story presented the five advantages outlined by the authors of the study:

1. Speed. It took only nine months from initiation of the tool (March 2008) to the first public sharing of preliminary results (December 2008).
2. Patient access. There is a potential to rapidly recruit widely dispersed patients with rare conditions and to overcome selection bias favoring patients living near specialist centers.
3. Availability of control participants. Clinical outcome data were passively collected from thousands of patients who served as potential matched controls.
4. Cost. Online studies have lower marginal costs per patient as compared with thousands of dollars per patient in traditional trials.
5. Patient engagement. Patients who submitted data using the PatientsLikeMe website were connected with other patients, which may have a range of benefits.

InformationWeek did NOT list the inherent LIMITATIONS mentioned by the authors. The most important limitation cited by the authors: "Unlike randomized trials, which match the comparison groups on all possible confounding factors, subject only to chance variation, observational studies cannot control for unmeasured covariates."

In the PatientsLikeMe press release, PatientsLikeMe Co-Founder Jamie Heywood stated:

"The rising costs of healthcare and increasing complexity of managing disease require new approaches to comparative effectiveness research and real time management of disease. While there is much work to do, we have demonstrated a patient-centric approach that provides dramatic cost and time advantages."

In these days of budget cuts and R&D cutbacks, pharmaceutical companies may jump on the "Social Media Clinical Research" bandwagon. Some day -- probably not in my lifetime -- FDA may even accept results of such studies as part of the drug approval process. Drug companies, for example, may lobby the FDA to accept such studies as fulfilling post-marketing surveillance requirements imposed on them.

Thinking about the possibilities reminded me of a classic Star Trek episode titled "A Taste of Armageddon."

In that episode, the starship USS Enterprise, under the command of Captain James T. Kirk, sends a landing party to Vendikar, a city on the planet Eminiar VII. Kirk is informed that a fusion bomb just struck the city and killed half a million people. Curiously, everything in the city seems intact and there is no visible evidence or sensor readings of such an attack ever occurring. The landing party soon discovers that the entire war between the two planets is completely simulated by computers which launch wargame attacks and counterattacks, then calculate damage and select the dead. When a citizen is reported as "killed", they must submit themselves for termination by stepping inside a disintegration booth.

The advantages of computer-simulated war are similar to the advantages PatientsLikeMe noted for its Social Media Clinical Research. I imagine the most important advantage of such a computer-simulated war is COST savings! Speed also would be an advantage -- wars can be fought over a period of months rather than years. Access to and engagement of citizens seems to have been solved by the denizens of Eminiar VII. Controls are NOT necessary in warfare.

When researchers land on social communities such as PatientsLikeMe, they may also encounter anomalies such as reports of cures, side effects, trial results, etc. that conflict with "visible evidence or sensor readings," ie, scientific reality.

To which I say:

SOCIAL MEDIA, THE FINAL FRONTIER! ...of clinical research.

Systematic reviews that attempt to assess the risk of harms (adverse effects) associated with specific therapies should consider a broad range of study designs, including both systematic reviews and observational studies. These are the findings of a new study, led by Su Golder of the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, University of York, UK published in this week's PLoS Medicine.

read more

Systematic reviews that attempt to assess the risk of harms (adverse effects) associated with specific therapies should consider a broad range of study designs, including both systematic reviews and observational studies. These are the findings of a new study, led by Su Golder of the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, University of York, UK published in this week's PLoS Medicine...

News by: PubMed "Occupational Therapy"[MeSH]Author(s): Johnston K, Barras S, Grimmer-Somers KSource: J Eval Clin Pract. 2010 Dec;16(6):1333-9RATIONALE, AIMS AND OBJECTIVE: Pre-discharge occupational therapy home assessments are common practice, and considered important for falls prevention in older people. This prospective, observational cohort study describes the association between pre-discharge home assessment and falls in the first month post-discharge from a rehabilitation hospital.

Systematic reviews that attempt to assess the risk of harms (adverse effects) associated with specific therapies should consider a broad range of study designs, including both systematic reviews and observational studies. These are the findings of a new study, led by Su Golder of the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, University of York, UK published in this week's PLoS Medicine.

by Molly F. Franke, James M. Robins, Jules Mugabo, Felix Kaigamba, Lauren E. Cain, Julia G. Fleming, Megan B. Murray

Background

Randomized clinical trials examining the optimal time to initiate combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) in HIV-infected adults with sputum smear-positive tuberculosis (TB) disease have demonstrated improved survival among those who initiate cART earlier during TB treatment. Since these trials incorporated rigorous diagnostic criteria, it is unclear whether these results are generalizable to the vast majority of HIV-infected patients with TB, for whom standard diagnostic tools are unavailable. We aimed to examine whether early cART initiation improved survival among HIV-infected adults who were diagnosed with TB in a clinical setting.

Methods and Findings

We retrospectively reviewed charts for 308 HIV-infected adults in Rwanda with a CD4 count≤350 cells/µl and a TB diagnosis. We estimated the effect of cART on survival using marginal structural models and simulated 2-y survival curves for the cohort under different cART strategies:start cART 15, 30, 60, or 180 d after TB treatment or never start cART. We conducted secondary analyses with composite endpoints of (1) death, default, or lost to follow-up and (2) death, hospitalization, or serious opportunistic infection. Early cART initiation led to a survival benefit that was most marked for individuals with low CD4 counts. For individuals with CD4 counts of 50 or 100 cells/µl, cART initiation at day 15 yielded 2-y survival probabilities of 0.82 (95% confidence interval: [0.76, 0.89]) and 0.86 (95% confidence interval: [0.80, 0.92]), respectively. These were significantly higher than the probabilities computed under later start times. Results were similar for the endpoint of death, hospitalization, or serious opportunistic infection. cART initiation at day 15 versus later times was protective against death, default, or loss to follow-up, regardless of CD4 count. As with any observational study, the validity of these findings assumes that biases from residual confounding by unmeasured factors and from model misspecification are small.

Conclusions

Early cART reduced mortality among individuals with low CD4 counts and improved retention in care, regardless of CD4 count.

Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary

by Su Golder, Yoon K. Loke, Martin Bland

Background

There is considerable debate as to the relative merits of using randomised controlled trial (RCT) data as opposed to observational data in systematic reviews of adverse effects. This meta-analysis of meta-analyses aimed to assess the level of agreement or disagreement in the estimates of harm derived from meta-analysis of RCTs as compared to meta-analysis of observational studies.

Methods and Findings

Searches were carried out in ten databases in addition to reference checking, contacting experts, citation searches, and hand-searching key journals, conference proceedings, and Web sites. Studies were included where a pooled relative measure of an adverse effect (odds ratio or risk ratio) from RCTs could be directly compared, using the ratio of odds ratios, with the pooled estimate for the same adverse effect arising from observational studies. Nineteen studies, yielding 58 meta-analyses, were identified for inclusion. The pooled ratio of odds ratios of RCTs compared to observational studies was estimated to be 1.03 (95% confidence interval 0.93–1.15). There was less discrepancy with larger studies. The symmetric funnel plot suggests that there is no consistent difference between risk estimates from meta-analysis of RCT data and those from meta-analysis of observational studies. In almost all instances, the estimates of harm from meta-analyses of the different study designs had 95% confidence intervals that overlapped (54/58, 93%). In terms of statistical significance, in nearly two-thirds (37/58, 64%), the results agreed (both studies showing a significant increase or significant decrease or both showing no significant difference). In only one meta-analysis about one adverse effect was there opposing statistical significance.

Conclusions

Empirical evidence from this overview indicates that there is no difference on average in the risk estimate of adverse effects of an intervention derived from meta-analyses of RCTs and meta-analyses of observational studies. This suggests that systematic reviews of adverse effects should not be restricted to specific study types.

Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary

[ May 23, 2011; ] Do baboons have a keen sense of right and wrong? Do cats and dogs get their feelings hurt? Can fish feel pleasure? Find out from animal behavior expert Jonathan Balcombe, Ph.D., on Monday, May 23, at 7 p.m., at BookPeople, 603 N. Lamar Blvd., Austin. In his book Second Nature (Palgrave Macmillan), newly released in paperback, Dr. Balcombe makes the case that animals, once viewed only as mindless automatons, actually have rich sensory experiences and emotional complexity. In this trailblazing book, Dr. Balcombe, an ethologist and biologist affiliated with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, draws on new research, observational studies, and personal anecdotes to reveal the full spectrum of animal experience. Balcombe paints a new picture of the inner lives of animals that diverges from the struggle-or-perish image often presented in the popular media. He challenges traditional views of animals and spells out why the human-animal relationship needs a…

I’ve always felt the proponents of randomized trials  judged observational studies too harshly. Too many quote the famous Lalonde paper and write off matching approaches. Yet this is one example, with rather rotten matching data. Ironically, such randomistas don’t apply their own standards of evidence to their judgment. There probably need to be more studies like this [...]

A wake is the region of recirculating air flow immediately behind a moving solid body, caused by the air flow of surrounding air around the wind turbine. The air turbines not only produce power, they produce wakes -- similar to what forms in bodies of water -- that are invisible ripples and waves and other disturbances in the atmosphere downstream that can damage turbines and decrease efficiency. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers and collaborators will launch a study of those wakes this month, with an eye toward improving the efficiency and potential produced power of the wind farms.

The wake can be massively separated and behind the body is a reverse flow region where the flow is moving toward the body. This phenomenon is often observed in wind tunnel testing of aircraft. High-fidelity computational fluid dynamics simulations are often undertaken to model wake flows, although such modeling has uncertainties associated with turbulence modeling

The scientists will collect valuable data that will help validate the wind flow models developed at Livermore and other laboratories and universities.

"This study is part of a larger suite of observational and model development efforts under way at LLNL to help attain aggressive state and national targets for renewable energy deployment," said Jeff Mirocha of LLNL. "This field campaign dovetails with ongoing observational studies at our Site 300 that are focused on understanding the complex wind patterns occurring in hilly, coastally influenced locations, which is similar to much of California's wind resource."

The Laboratory also has been working on numerical weather prediction models to predict power generated by the wind, so that wind farms can operate more efficiently while providing more power to the nation's hungry power grids. Predictive time frames range from an hour ahead to days ahead of time.

The new project entails experiments that will help make a detailed study of wakes created by wind turbines. Those profiles could help turbine and wind farm developers improve layout and design.

The study is aimed at an improved understanding and characterization of inflow conditions on turbines in complex terrain that would help engineers better understand, model, and design for turbine loading, turbine performance and power plant performance. The goal is to integrate advanced observational capabilities with innovative approaches to atmospheric simulation.

Bob Banta, atmospheric scientist with NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory, has spent the last several years using a sophisticated instrument -- a high-resolution, scanning dopplar lidar -- to make three-dimensional portraits of wind speeds and directions in the atmosphere. For the wind technology site project, the research team aims to capture turbulence and other wake effects in a broad wedge of air up to 7 km (4.3 miles) long and 1 km (3,280 feet) high.

The researchers hope to capture the effects of ramp up and ramp down events, when winds suddenly gust high or die down, and they will gather data on what happens downstream when winds shift direction quickly.

"This generation of wind turbines is stretching up into a complicated part of the atmosphere," Lundquist said. "If we can understand how gusts and rapid changes in wind direction affect turbine operations and how turbine wakes behave, we can improve design standards, increase efficiency, and reduce the cost of energy,"

By. Andy Soos

Source: Environmental News Network

Here comes the bride … or she was there earlier

It's hard work being creative. It seems to involve riding on an endless conveyer belt of drinking, incredible ideas and hangovers that are so intense, so powerful and so earth shatteringly important that it's impossible to find time to do anything about them.

Since moving in with Sam, my levels of creativity have been boosted. In the last evening alone – aided by three bottles of wine and the dregs of a spirits collection – Sam and I devised a new gameshow (An Apple a Day hosted by Matt Damon – catchphrase "How do you like them apples?"), formatted (in our heads) an observational documentary which "charts the fascinating lives of the people who live on and around the A23 trunk road", and, with help from our friend Paul, come up with a way of combining the two most lucrative online phenomena in the shape of In-Porn Betting™.

Indeed, this was a fertile period for us as "creatives", although slightly less so for the website, which both Sam and myself were finding trouble to make the time for between daytime episodes of Only Fools and Horses on Gold. It was with this slight guilt that Sam found it possible to mobilise all four of the Enter4entertainment.com team on the streets.

"No one's going to watch this," grumbled John while filming the Palace of Westminster on his iPhone from the top deck of the number 59 bus.

"John, tomorrow there's gonna be 2 billion people – that's a third of the world's population by the way – looking at London. Thousands of journalists will descend from every corner of the globe to cover this bloody wedding and you think we should do what, let the BBC and Sky get all the glory?" Sam said with a hint of an angry pout.

"No, I accept that people will want to see Cat Deeley on CNN, I'm just not convinced they'll want to see your sweaty face via UStream talking to a webcam whilst standing on Victoria Street."

"Look, the internet isn't just about words, people expect multimedia these days," said Sam, becoming increasingly exasperated. "Besides, if we don't do a live stream, how will people know we were actually there? We could have done the whole thing by watching the telly."

As it was easier not to wind up my current landlord, I, like Daniel, chose to keep quiet while John gathered the final shots for our video trailer.

Yes it was rough around the edges, but once John had finished editing the video (complete with comedy voiceover from a fake Kate and Wills) it didn't look too bad at all. We dropped it on YouTube, embedded it on the site and sloped off to John's back garden for a celebratory beer.

Another evening of creativity began to develop, as Sam decided the company should pay for a barbecue and accompanying drinks for its hard working staff. After air-scripting a fiendishly complicated sequel for The Shawshank Redemption with the logline "Prison was never going to be enough", we turned our attention back to the website.

Despite earlier reservations, we all agreed to tackle any potential technological pitfalls head on and attempt to live stream "atmospheric coverage" from the streets of London via Sam's and John's mobile phones in tandem with a witty live blog courtesy of myself and Daniel. This was going to be brilliant, this was gonzo journalism digital style, this was … worth celebrating with another drink.

I woke the next morning disorientated and in considerable pain. Unsure where I was or why I was sharing a double futon with Daniel, I pulled myself up and opened the curtains. It appeared I was in John's front room. Good.

Unable to find my phone I turned on the TV in order to ascertain the time via the Sky Guide. Something wasn't right. BBC1 looked a lot like it was carrying a feed of William and Kate's nuptials. Yep, I was almost certain that was the case. But it was only 11.3 5am … who gets married at 11 in the morning? I guess we had missed the wedding after all.

Tim Glanfield

 

SHE MONKEYS, a coming of age film with sexual undertones from Swedish director Lisa Aschan was named Best Narrative Film at the 10th Tribeca Film Festival, which ended its 12 day run yesterday. The film, which won a top prize at the Gothenberg Film Festival and the Teddy Award as best gay film at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, is a hothouse story of emerging sexuality set amongst teenage girls in a horse acrobatics training school. Competition, both athletic and sexual, becomes the cornerstone of the relationship between two of the blond teenage girls, with the director creating an atmosphere of both dread and sexual excitement as the two push and pull to each other’s rhythms. The lucky director leaves New York with a $25,000 cash prize and an original painting by abstract artist Robert De Niro Sr, the father of Tribeca don Robert De Niro. The ceremony was held at the W Union Square Hotel in Manhattan on Thursday evening.

 

The award for Best New Narrative Director went to Park Jungbum, writer-director of the South Korea film THE JOURNALS OF MUSAN, the story of a North Korean defector who forges a new life for himself in go-go capitalist South Korea. Kivu Ruhorahoza, the Rwandan writer and director of the drama GREY MATTER, received a special jury mention. That film’s lead actor, Ramadhan "Shami" Bizimana, won the Best Actor prize for his role as a filmmaker trying to come to grips with the tragedy of genocide in his homeland. Best Actress honors were won by Dutch thespian Carice van Houten for her portrayal of a doomed South African poet in the film BLACK BUTTERFLIES. Luisa Tillinger was named Best Cinematographer for her haunting work in the Mexican film ARTIFICIAL PARADISES. A saucy script about teenage sexuality won a Best Screenplay prize for Norwegian scribe Jannicke Systad Jabobsen for the film TURN ME ON, GODDAMMIT (easily the Festival’s best film title).

BOMBAY BEACH, a documentary about the hardscrabble community that scratches a living on the site of the former Salton Sea in a desolate corner of California, won the Best Documentary prize, which also has a $25,000 cash award. Israeli director Alma Har’el has crafted an artistically innovative film----a dreamlike poem that combines observational documentary technique with choreographed dance sequences and haunting music, and a cast of memorable characters who inhabit the atmospheric ghost town. Documentary prizes were also awarded to Purcell Carson for Best Editing for the film  SEMPER FI; ALWAYS FAITHFUL and to Pablo Croce as Best New Documentary Director for the martial arts film LIKE WATER. 

For more information on these and other films at the 10th Tribeca Film Festival, visit: www.tribecafilm.com

Sandy Mandelberger, Film New York Editor

 

They left Ireland for England as young men… and never returned. As a film documents their homecoming 40 years later, Jon McGregor meets the exiles

I went to a film premiere last year. It was in the garden of a large house, on the eastern outskirts of Nottingham, that provides supported accommodation for older homeless men. There was quite a crowd when I got there; a mixture of local artists and film-makers, professionals from the worlds of care and housing support, and men living in the house. Someone had made a pot of stew and we stood around eating it and making small talk while we waited for dusk to fall so the screening could begin. It took a while to get everyone seated, and a while longer for everyone to be quiet, and then the film opened with a shot of one of the men I'd just seen talking in the garden.

"My name is Sean Lynch," he said, to the camera. "I'm from County Cavan, Ireland. I'll be coming home soon." In the garden, there was some soft cheering and a scatter of applause. On the screen, we could see Sean and others in the cold half-light of dawn, carrying their bags out to a hired minibus. At least two of them were walking with sticks. They played for time, lighting cigarettes and finishing cans of beer before helping each other to their seats. They were heading for Holyhead, and the boat to Dublin. Most of them hadn't been back to Ireland for 40 or 50 years.

They seemed wary, ambivalent. The film cut back to one of them, Tom Sweeney, in an interview filmed some weeks earlier, saying he wasn't sure he wanted to go. "I like this bed here. I like my painkillers. I like my bath and a shower. The nurse after me. I'm not fit to go back in any van. Never mind, never mind. Shall we try, love?"

Sean Lynch was 10 when he left Ireland; Tom Coffey was 18; Tom Sweeney was 18 or 19; Pat Kelly was 24. They're old men now. They were among the many thousands who came to Britain to work on the roads and building sites of a booming postwar economy and who, for various reasons, have never been able to go back. The work was casual, and often dangerous; but there was plenty of it, if you knew where to look. Hitching, walking or being driven in cramped vans, the men would follow the work around the country, setting off on a rumour or studying Construction News – known as "Paddy's prayer book", according to Sean – for the latest big jobs.

When I meet Sean, Pat and Tom Coffey a year on, they tell me about their working lives; about cooking breakfast on a shovel on the building sites (the trick, apparently, being to wedge a couple of mushrooms either side of the sausages to keep them from rolling off), about men being conned into selling their national insurance numbers, about being paid in the pub and finding work in the pub, and borrowing money in the pub that kept them tied to the gangermen until the following week's payday. "If you didn't drink, you weren't wanted," Sean says. "You were an outcast."

I want to ask the men what it had been like going back to Ireland after such a long time, what they'd found and what they'd hoped to find, how it had felt to be involved with putting the film together and watching other people watch their lives on screen as I'd done that evening in their garden a year before. But mostly they want to talk about work. Even Tom Coffey, who is otherwise very quiet and subdued, is voluble in his descriptions of work: "It was 14ft wide and 16ft deep. Yes. What a trench it was. Outside Southampton. It was the length of this room anyway. It was a trench for the fixed gas mains underneath it. They had that bridge down the road in about an hour, reopened the road in an hour. That was 35 years ago." I ask Tom what stories he'd heard about England before he'd come here. "Not good ones anyway," he says. So why did he come? "There was nothing for me there," he says softly.

I ask Pat why he'd come to England at 24, when he'd already had work with a farmer in Donegal. He starts to say something about the wages being better, but Mick Spriggs, another man who's listening in to our conversation, suddenly interrupts.

"Why does a man go anywhere?" he calls out. "He's got to go somewhere. What's the difference? He's got to live somewhere!"

"There was gold here," Sean announces, drily, leaning forward in his chair: "Gold in England!" He pauses. "We'd come to build; to build this country for you." From across the room, Mick repeats his question.

"Why does a man go anywhere?"

One of the guiding principles of Arise, You Gallant Sweeneys! is that it's not a film about these men making their return visit to Ireland; it's a film by them. All the production decisions were made by the group, the editing was done collaboratively, and the rights in the final product are owned collectively by everyone in the group, which calls itself the Long Distance Gang after the name traditionally adopted by itinerant labourers. The members of the group were initially contacted by Ian Nesbitt, a freelance artist, and Julie Cassidy Gosling, a community activist, and the planning of the trip was a group collaboration, which took over a year of talking and remembering and singing.

"We'd sing all sorts of things while we were planning," Julie remembers. "It actually helped, it made us feel very companionable. The Cliffs Of Dooneen, all sorts of things."

"Sometimes we'd have meetings where we wouldn't plan anything," Ian says. "We'd just have a bit of a sing and a bit of stew."

"Then somebody said it would be a good idea to all get in a minibus first to see if we could manage it, all getting along, do you remember?"

"Oh, yeah," Sean says, smiling.

"And Tom Sweeney saw a hole in the wall for the first time, and he said, 'Holy Mother of God, there's money coming out of that!' Can you remember? 'Holy Mother of God, would you look at the tenner coming out of the wall!'" Judging by the laughter, everyone does remember.

Tom Coffey was also involved in planning the trip, but at the last moment, with his bags packed and his money and passport ready, decided not to go. I ask him why.

"He wasn't able," Sean calls from across the room. Tom just points at himself.

"Stomach," he said. There is a silence, and then Ian asks Tom if, as well as his stomach being bad, he'd been worried that when he got to Ireland he wouldn't want to come back.

"Yes," Tom agrees.

"You had things you wanted to sort out at home," Julie reminds him, gently. "Didn't you?"

Tom nods in agreement again. I wait for him to say more, but it is clear that whatever Tom had wanted to sort out at home is none of my business.

I ask Sean whether he'd had second thoughts about the trip when he woke up that morning.

"Oh, I was going," Sean says, looking scornful. "I was ready to go. What was there to worry about?"

"Because you hadn't been back for so long?" Julie suggests.

"Oh, aye," Sean concedes. "Aye, I was a bit nervous. There's people I haven't seen for years." What had he been hoping to find? "That it hadn't changed much anyway," he says. "I'd rather that." Another man, listening in, calls out that everything changes down the years and Pat, in his low, soft voice, murmurs something about all the old people being dead.

Arise, You Gallant Sweeneys! is a film very much in the observational tradition. There are no voiceovers or captions (although there are, after much debate, subtitles); no explanations of the background to the journey or the route they're taking; just the group, and the road, and the conversations they have with each other and with the camera. The end result is a slow-paced, rambling and occasionally chaotic road trip through the half-remembered towns and villages they left behind so long ago. It's also a moving, engaging and often deeply funny exploration of exile, and memory, and loss.

There are long driving sequences – the white lines on the roads, telegraph wires, traffic jams – interspersed with scenes of the group arriving at some village, or lake, or roadside church, and clambering out of the van. Mostly the men stand around these places looking bemused. "I know England backwards," Chris Cassidy, the group's driver, says, looking across a bay at a row of heathered hills. "I been all over it working. But I don't know this country. I was too young when I left. Thousands of Irish people don't know Ireland at all, y'know?"

Along the way, we hear stories of their working lives, of why they went to England to find work, and why they never went back. There are tales of dangerous working practices, and exploitation – one man, talking about his wages not being paid, still trembles with fury 30 years later – but there are also conversations about horses, and pubs, and a man called Peter McManaman who once caught a dose of the clap. This isn't a film that's big on politics, or history, or any kind of agenda; it's a film that wants you to take these men as you find them. And often the way we find them is with a drink in hand, singing old Irish songs of exile and yearning, laughing helplessly at some joke or passing remark.

And it is, perhaps surprisingly, an often funny film. The men's wheezing laughter can be infectious, and their easy mocking of each other draws the viewer in. On the ferry, Sean and Chris have a baffling conversation about the exchange rate: "There's not 100 cents in a euro, is there? It goes up and down, doesn't it?"

One by one, the men roll into the towns where they grew up, wandering around or setting out to find someone who remembers them. And the film is haunted by a strong sense that for the most part they've left this homecoming too late. In one scene, we see Sean being shocked by the news that an old friend called Deborah has died. Moments later, speaking to another acquaintance, he says, "And Deborah? How's Deborah?" Oh, she died, comes the reply. "Dead?" Sean says, shocked all over again; "Deborah's dead? Oh, God bless her."

Tom Sweeney didn't leave it too late, though: in the film's emotional centrepiece, he meets his brother, Martin, for the first time in 50 years. As the two of them sit together on a settee, holding hands, a friend says that Martin had been told Tom was dead. "And then today there was this note on the table; well, he was dumbfounded. He didn't know whether he was dreaming or what!"

There is much left out of the film. There were times during the trip when people didn't want any filming going on, or when whoever had the camera chose not to film; and there were scenes the group as a whole decided to leave out during the editing process. And when Sean went back to Arvagh a few months later, travelling with just Ian and Julie, the cameras were left behind.

On that occasion, the three of them went to a pub where they'd been told an old friend of Sean's might be working. Not only was he there, serving drinks, but another old friend was sitting at the end of the bar with his son.

"They almost fell off their seats, didn't they?" Ian remembers. Sean nods. "And then your other mate, he had a photo of you, in his pocket. We'd walked into the village pub after 50 years, and he had a photo of you at school, in his pocket."

"And remember the next night we went back in, and nearly the whole of the town had turned out to see you?" Julie says. "Remember that? The word got round very quickly. There were cousins and second cousins and in-laws, and everyone turned out to see you, didn't they?"

"Yeah," Sean says.

"How did that feel, when you saw all those people?"

"Oh, good, yeah."

"It was good, wasn't it? You stood them all a drink, didn't you, remember?"

"Yeah."

"And Danny brought you something, remember?"

"Potcheen."

"He brought you a bottle of Potcheen, didn't he?"

"Two. Of course they had to be watered down."

"You've never forgiven me for watering them down."

"You won't water the next one down."

Sean, Julie and Ian went back to Arvagh again, just before Christmas. Sean was very ill with cancer, and it was to be his last visit there. He died in February.

At that first garden premiere of the film, the men who feature in it had mostly stood up and gone back into the house by the time it had finished. It was a cold evening, after all. But it was clear then, and has become clearer since talking to them, that they take great pride in the film, and in the stories it has enabled them to tell. (I don't really have a quote for this; when I asked what they felt about it, Sean simply said it was "all right". You'll just have to trust me that, coming from Sean, "all right" is a ringing endorsement.)

As well as their pride in the film itself, Julie tells me about the effect the project has had on the group's sense of confidence and wellbeing. When the group first met, the men were living separately, in different care homes and hostels across the city; the project has led directly to their needs for companionship and self-expression being recognised, and more of them are now living together. "It brings into question what is meant by 'wellbeing'," Julie says. "Is their definition of wellbeing any less valid just because it dares to be different?"

The final scene in the film shows Sean on the deck of the ferry, leaving Dublin again. He talks about his working life, and then he interrupts himself to make conversation with a young blond-haired woman who's caught his eye. She's friendly enough and asks about his life in Nottingham and how long he's been away. He leans forward to whisper something in her ear, something that appears, from the look on his face and the look on hers, to be a proposition.

"I don't think so!" she says, laughing, and moves away. Sean turns to the camera and smiles.

"That's me all over," he says. "I'll never change. I don't want to change. Ever!"

• Tom Coffey died in December 2010. He was taken back to Ireland for burial in Ballaghaderreen, County Roscommon.

To arrange festival or one-off screenings of Arise You Gallant Sweeneys, or to discuss distribution rights or DVD sales, please contact outsidefilm@mail.com. Even The Dogs, Jon McGregor's third novel, is published by Bloomsbury.

(MedPage Today) -- The relationship between prenatal exposure to organophospate pesticides and impaired cognition in children has received support from three observational studies conducted in primarily low-income populations.

This series is brought to you by MedPage Today, Putting breaking medical news into practice.

1. Studies Link Pesticide Exposure to Kids’ IQ. The relationship between prenatal exposure to organophosphate pesticides and impaired cognition in children has received support from three observational studies conducted in primarily low-income populations.

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Read the rest of Top stories in health and medicine this morning, April 21, 2011

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In the first-ever observational survey of cell phone use by drivers within a state, California drivers are talking and texting at a combined rate of at least nine percent, representing hundreds of thousands of drivers at any given time. Click here for more.

Background: Observational studies have shown that low folate and elevated homocysteine concentrations are risk factors for vascular disease in the general population. Randomized controlled trials in vascular patients have failed to show that folic acid reduces the risk of recurrent vascular disease, whereas such trials are lacking in the general population.

Objective: The objective was to determine whether folic acid supplementation reduces the progression of atherosclerosis as measured by common carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT)—a validated marker of atherosclerosis and predictor of vascular disease risk.

Design: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study in 819 men and postmenopausal women aged 50–70 y, free-living in the Netherlands, and with a total homocysteine concentration ≥13 µmol/L at screening was conducted. Participants received either 800 µg folic acid or placebo daily for 3 y. Rate of change in CIMT and arterial distensibility were the primary and secondary outcomes, respectively.

Results: Compared with placebo, serum folate increased by 577% and plasma total homocysteine concentrations decreased by 26% after 3 y of folic acid supplementation. The mean (±SE) rate of change in CIMT was 1.9 ± 0.9 µm/y in the folic acid arm and 1.3 ± 0.8 µm/y in the placebo arm (mean difference: 0.7 µm/y; 95% CI: –1.8, 3.1 µm/y; P = 0.59). No difference was observed (P = 0.23) between the rates of change in distensibility in the folic acid arm (–0.53 ± 0.06 x 10^–3 kPa^–1) and in the placebo arm (–0.62 ± 0.06 x 10^–3 kPa^–1).

Conclusion: Despite a considerable increase in folate concentrations and a reduction in total homocysteine concentrations, 3-y folic acid supplementation did not slow down atherosclerotic progression or arterial stiffening. This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT00110604.

The amount of coffee a middle-aged or older woman drinks does not affect her risk for developing heart failure, findings from a large observational study suggest.

"The lessons of science should be experimental also. The sight of a planet through a telescope is worth all the course on astronomy; the shock of the electric spark in the elbow outvalues all theories; the taste of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an artificial volcano, are better than volumes of chemistry." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

As a theorist, one of the challenges I face is bringing the experimental and observational sides of what we study to all of you. I understand its importance, its significance, and how it is the ultimate arbiter of our understanding. And yet, it is not my strongest suit. Nonetheless, tomorrow night (the 19^th) is an important milestone: the date I take my astronomy students up to the observatory to view the night sky!

(Image credit: Melissa Pereira, Lewis & Clark alum.)

What's sort of amazing is how much you can see through just a simple telescope -- even in less-than-ideal conditions -- even if you know almost nothing about astronomy.

Let me take you through it, assuming you live in the Northern Hemisphere and only know how to find one thing:

(Image credit: Jerry Lodriguss.)

The Big Dipper! The most easily identifiable object in the Northern Skies, if all you can do is find this guy, here's how you -- given good, dark skies -- can find a whole slew of beautiful objects! Now, before we get going, you need to know that the more light pollution you have -- i.e., the lower your elevation, the closer you are to cities, and the fuller the Moon is -- the less able you'll be to see faint and diffuse objects. Let's get on with it!

You'll need to get your bearings, and that means finding true North. In the Northern Hemisphere, we are guided by the North Star, which is easy to find if you know your Big Dipper! Simply take the last two stars in the "cup" portion of the dipper and follow them up and out of the cup; they'll run into Polaris, the bright pole star and the edge of the handle in the Little Dipper!

Here in April, the Big Dipper stars out high in the sky after Sunset, making it the ideal guidepost for your night-sky hunting. The dipper itself is made up of seven stars... or is it?

Just barely visible to the naked eye is the fact that the second star in the handle of the Big Dipper is actually a double star. But if you point your telescope at it, know what you'll find?

(Image credit: Lodriguss again!)

It's actually four stars! Mizar is a binary star system, where both stars appear very bright, and there is a faint star behind and between Alcor and Mizar, visible only through (good) binoculars or a telescope.

But the Big Dipper can not only lead you to Polaris, it can lead you to a couple of the brightest and most spectacular stars in the Northern Hemisphere. Let's start with #1!

(Image credit: Astrobob, using Stellarium.)

If you follow the curve of the handle through space for a little while, you'll come to Arcturus (make an "arc to Arcturus"), the orange giant that is the brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere! Unfortunately for you telescope enthusiasts, there's nothing remarkable about it through a telescope.

But instead of following the handle, try following the two stars that make up the top of the Dipper's cup.

(Image credit: Synaptic Sky.)

They take you, going away from the Dipper's handle, to Capella, the third brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere (and sixth overall)! Capella is notable for being the brightest star that's also close to the North Pole (and hence is the most seen bright star in the Northern Skies year-round), but through a telescope, Capella is something special.

(Image credit: Jim Napolitano.)

Capella is actually a double yellow giant! Two yellow giant stars, in close orbit around one another, that never eclipse one another! (In other words, any time you look at them, you'll always be able to see two distinct, non-overlapping stars.)

But if you get a really good telescope, you won't just see the two yellow giants...

You'll see that Capella is a pair of binaries! The two yellow giants and two red dwarf stars.

Not bad for stars, simply by being able to find the Big Dipper. What if you wanted to go beyond stars, and find a beautiful planetary nebula?

Guess what? There's one in the Big Dipper! In the 18^th Century, Charles Messier made the first catalogue of "non-cometary" objects in our night skies. Only four of them were planetary nebulae, or stellar corpses of red giants that have blown off their outer layers. One of them -- the Owl Nebula, or M97 -- is right there, just below the bottom of the "cup" of the Dipper!

(Image credit: Keith Quattrocchi.)

The two dark "eyes" give it its name, although perhaps today it would be called the Amy Winehouse nebula? While it's one of the fainter nebulae in the sky, its compactness means it's going to be visible even with substantial light pollution through a reasonably-sized telescope. Originally around the mass of our Sun, the Owl Nebula is only about 6,000 years old, with about 15% of the Sun's mass making up the glowing, "nebular" region.

But what if you're dissatisfied with stars or nebulae? What if you want to find some galaxies? Luckily for you, the Big Dipper can help you find three of the most spectacular ones. Let's start with the easiest.

Go directly "below" the last star in the handle, perpendicular to the line it makes with the Alcor/Mizar double star next to it. That's the location of the Whirlpool Galaxy, M51, one of the most spectacular (and one of the brighter) face-on spirals in our sky!

If you had a really good telescope, you might see something like this...

(Image credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI), and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA.)

Of course, you likely don't have Hubble, but with good skies, you can see the companion galaxy, NGC 5195, even with large binoculars or a small telescope! Those pink regions in M51 are real, not false color, and are emission lines from star-forming regions.

Want a challenge? Try to find one of the faintest face-on spiral galaxies near the Big Dipper:

(Image credit: Naoyuki Kurita.)

M101! Start at Mizar/Alcor, and follow the line that Mizar makes with Alcor. That should take you to a fairly bright star, labeled "81" above. Bend "down" (back towards the Dipper's handle) and follow the rough "line" of brighter stars until you've hit four in a row, and then head back "up" (away from the Dipper's handle) one last time; that fuzzy blob is M101, the Pinwheel galaxy!

Only visible in places with low light pollution, M101 is a challenge for amateur observers. But for Hubble...

(Image credit: Hubble Legacy Archive, ESA, NASA, and Robert Gendler.)

I certainly don't expect to see this, polluted by bright city skies (and a nearly full Moon tomorrow night), but it is certainly worth a try!

But there is one more candidate that I would like to try for, the great galaxy pair, M81 and M82. How to get there?

(Image credit: NASA, ESA, Z. Levay (STScI) and A. Fujii.)

Take the last star in the "cup" of the Big Dipper (the last of the pointer stars that points towards the North Star) and the one diagonally down from it. (Dubhe and Phecda, respectively.) Connect Phecda to Dubhe, and continue on in an imaginary line for the same distance, and that should plunk you down very close to a pair of bright, interacting galaxies, M81 and M82!

(Image credit: Rainer Zmaritsch & Alexander Gross.)

With dark skies and a good telescope, these are spectacular. With city skies and a moderately-sized scope, they may be visible at all... we'll see.

And those are some amazing sights available to you, even if all you have is a simple telescope, and even if all you know is the Big Dipper! And for those of you who are way ahead of me, tomorrow night, what objects do you recommend viewing with a 16" scope under heavy light pollution? I know that Saturn is up...

Read the comments on this post...

Larry A. Allen, MD, MHS From the Colorado Cardiovascular Outcomes Research Consortium and Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, University of Colorado Denver, Anschutz Medical Center, Aurora, CO.

Monday, April 18 Bard College, Fisher Center Bach’s Goldberg Variations, transcribed for a string trio, provides the backdrop for A Closer Paradigm: Bach Among Us, a music and dance performance featuring students and faculty members of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, in partnership with the Bard Dance Program; and the Bard Music Program, the Bard Conservatory of Music, and the Bard Artist Fellow Program. Annandale-on-Hudson, NY @ 8 p.m. Infinity Music Hall After leaving the legendary land Traffic, Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Dave Mason (right) performed with other legends such as the Rolling Stones, George Harrison, Jimi Hendrix, and Paul McCartney before hooking up with Fleetwood Mac. He’s renowned for his guitar playing with others and as a solo artist. Norfolk, CT @ 8 p.m. Bardavon Chris Cornell: Songbook Solo Acoustic Tour features an unplugged, up-close-and-personal performance by the Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, and lyricist who has teamed with Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam and members of Rage Against the Machine and whose songs have been performed by artists as diverse as Johnny Cash and Alice Cooper. Poughkeepsie, NY @ 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 19 Williams College, Brooks Rogers Recital Hall The Art Lande - Paul McCandless - Bruce Williamson Trio is equally welcome in the worlds of jazz and classical music, combining flexibility, precision, interactive nuance, and raw energy to present an immersion in modern music via a palette of timbres on oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, flutes, saxophones, piano, and percussion. Williamtown, MA @ 4:15 p.m. The Lion’s Den Classic American folk with Berkshire-based Tom Carroll. Stockbridge, MA @ 8 p.m. Wednesday, April 20 The Lion’s Den Fingerstyle guitarist and multi-instrumentalist David Reed (right), a founding member of the 1970s jam band Max Creek, is also known as Dr. Easy for his ability to slip seamlessly among worldbeat rhythms, with a sunny dose of reggae and calypso. Stockbridge, MA @ 8 p.m. Thursday, April 21 Vassar College, The Martel Theater of the Vogelstein Center for Drama and Film This solo performance by the multi-talented blues guitarist and theatrical composer Chic Street Man, who Billboard Magazine says has “a voice like an angel’s,” is free, but reservations are required. Poughkeepsie, NY @ 7 p.m. Infinity Music Hall Before there was iTunes, before there were MP3s or even CDs, there were albums, many of which were created as whole works of art, meant to be listened to from the first song to the last. Here’s your chance to see and hear Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy performed live, from start to finish, by Classic Albums Live, producers dedicated to presenting whole albums the way they were meant to be heard, with a changing cast of musicians appropriate for each selection. Norfolk, CT @ 8 p.m. The Lion’s Den Local favorites the Housatonic Philharmonic perform old-time traditional, Celtic, and American folk music on hammer dulcimer, banjo, fiddle, piano, spoons, and pennywhistle. Stockbridge, MA @ 8 p.m. Friday, April 22 Infinity Music Hall The Sidguys are just that—out-of-the-spotlight R&B, rock, and jazz musicians who regularly work with some of the biggest names in the business, such as Prince, Tower of Power, Bonnie Raitt, David Bowie, and Boz Scaggs. When they get together they blend their skills to push the boundaries of traditional live performance. Norfolk, CT @ 8 p.m. Towne Crier Cafe Hovering in a distinctly NYC intersection of R&B, pop, folk/rock, and country, Milton awes audiences with his unforgettable voice, personal charm, intelligent yet soullful lyrics, and keen but compassionate observational stance. He shares the bill with Red Rooster, which artfully blends Americana with an urban sound. Pawling, NY @ 8:30 p.m. Club Helsinki Hudson The roots/reggae/ska sextet The Big Takeover, fronted by mesmerizing Jamaican vocalist Neenee Rushie, plays upbeat favorites and originals. Special guests: Royal Khaoz. Hudson, NY @ 9 p.m. The Lion’s Den Rust-belt vagabond and multi-instrumentalist Greg Klyma tells smart, funny stories in song. Stockbridge, MA @ 9 p.m. Saturday, April 23 Bard College, Fisher Center The fundraising concert Notes to Haiti features Sasha and the Vocal Soul, Los Hijos De Canto, bluegrass performer Joe Tobin from Acoustic Medicine, New York singer-songwriter Tomas Doncker, award-winning spoken-word performer Tai Allen, MPOWER Elite Dance Company, Notes to Haiti Children’s Choir, and more; proceeds will benefit the Haitian People’s Support Project and to Haiti Community Support. Annandale-on-Hudson, NY @ 7 p.m. Infinity Music Hall If you missed Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Roger McGuinn, co-founder of the legendary group The Byrds, performing earlier this month at The Clark, here’s another chance to catch his performance. The L.A. Times says he’s still “...singing like a Byrd and playing as well as he had in the jingle-jangle morning of his career.” Maria Sebastian opens. Norfolk, CT @ 8 p.m. MASS MoCA, Club B-10 Songwriter, keyboard virtuoso, and producer David Liang was inspired by the Shanghai jazz bands of the early 20th century to blend jazz, hip-hop, electronica, classical music, and Chinese folk elements, incorporating traditional Chinese instruments and actual street sounds and voices with a stunning visual backdrop of film and video footage for his multimedia performance, The Shanghai Restoration Project, a dizzying portrait of a city perennially at the crossroads of culture. North Adams, MA @ 8 p.m. The Spotty Dog You can expect to be entertained by randy and rollicking country-flavored rock when Columbia County’s The Simple Machines join Chris Neumann. Hundson, NY @ 8 p.m. Towne Crier Cafe Arlen Roth, considered “the guitarist’s guitarist” and “The Master of the Telecaster,” performs with Matt Rae on guitar and Eddie Denise on bass, sharing the bill with Lexie Roth. Pawling, NY @ 8:30 p.m. The Dream Away Lodge Hudson-based indie country/folk singer songwriter Liv Carrow. Becket, MA @ 8:30-ish p.m. The Lion’s Den CJ Field & the Dammit Band play original Southern-inflected country rock. Stockbridge, MA @ 9 p.m. Club Helsinki Hudson Some-time Blues Brother Dan Akroyd has called Brooklyn-born Alexis P. Suter “America’s number one contender for the new Queen of the Blues.” She has earned similar accolades from B.B. King and Levon Helm and is on the verge of issuing her second release, Two Sides, with The Alexis P. Suter Band. Hudson, NY @ 9 p.m. Sunday, April 24 Simon’s Rock, Kellogg Music Center The Trio Appassionata—Lydia Chernicoff, violin; Andrea Casarrubios, cello; and Ronaldo Rolim, piano— performs Beethoven’s Trio in E-flat, op. 1 no. 1; Chen Yi’s Tibetan Tunes; and Tchaikovsky’s Trio in A minor. Great Barrington, MA @ 3 p.m. Towne Crier Cafe Chris Cassone is a songwriter, singer, actor, and playwright who began his career in music as an engineer, working with the likes of Peter Frampton, Ace Frehley, and Dr. John. He had a viral video hit with his YouTube homage to Putnam County, “Route 22.” Canadian-born, NYC-based singer/songwriter Dean Bastone shares the bill. Pawling, NY @ 7:30 p.m. The Lion’s Den Billed as Woodstock’s EXTRA-sensitive singer/songwriter, Erick Erickson sounds an awful lot like a more famous sensitive singer/songwriter who lives right down the road from the Red Lion Inn. Stockbridge, MA @ 8 p.m. Club Helsinki Hudson While Western Massachusetts multi-instrumentalist and virtuoso vocalist Erin McKeown slips seamlessly among styles and genres, this chameleon’s music is always characterized by winning wit and intelligence. Hudson, NY @ 8 p.m.

Another observational blog post as I try to catch up from not blogging for three months. This is what happens I spend a bunch of time on the street helping customers fulfill their cloudy dreams… :) One of the things I’ve been trying to evangelize is that for the first time since the dawn of IT, enterprise cloud projects give us a chance to realign IT with the business. Despite all of the claims over the years of business value, I think cloud really is the change opportunity the business has been looking for, although they won’t call it cloud. For decades IT costs have grown, and IT has enabled those that use it to become more efficient and grow to levels they never could have without it. But if you think way back to the first huge ‘computers’ that some of the biggest companies purchased, it wasn’t so they could have email, it was so they could have an electronic general ledger or customer database that could help them grow to new levels or provide measurably better service to existing customers. In other words, “corporate IT” was pulled in to existence by the business because there was a real, quantifiable need.

read more

New York Times (blog)

Virginia Heffernan: Too Much Relationship Vérité New York Times (blog) When “An American Family” first appeared, it exemplified the long-take, observational style of documentary filmmaking that some considered cinéma vérité, and others — including the Louds' witty son Lance, the writer and performer who died in 2001 ... and more »

GENEVA (MedPage Today) -- Even modest weight loss helps reduce blood pressure in real-world practice, researchers affirmed in an observational study.

The Tribune-Review's on familiar territory today with yet another sortie on the science of climate change. Take a look:

Researchers who reviewed global-warming "forecasting" have found that procedures followed by the United Nations' chief climate cluckers violated 81 percent of 89 relevant forecasting principles.

Along with other experts who have peeked behind the curtain of climate change, these researchers have come to a common conclusion: The alarm over man-made global warming is an anti-scientific political movement.

In a presentation to Congress, J. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania -- whose own work in forecasting methods is internationally known -- said the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has failed to demonstrate the "predictive validity" of its procedures.

A few caveats before we begin. J. Scott Armstrong is not a climate scientist. He's a professor of marketing at the Wharton School of Business but was not speaking as a representative of the that school.

More specifically, it was a presentation to the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology:

On Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 10:00 a.m. the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology will hold a hearing to examine processes used to generate key climate change science and information used to inform policy development and decision-making.

The rhetorical exercise of the hearing starts with this:

Since the dawn of science, man has tried to describe and measure the natural world. Through an iterative process of data collection, formulation of hypotheses, and testing and refining these hypotheses, a knowledge base of information is built that yield theories and allow for predictive models to be built that describe them. Experiments are conducted to test these hypotheses, theories and models. As new observations are incorporated throughout the process, the theories must be able to assimilate these new data or change to accommodate new facts. Confidence in a theory grows only if it is able to survive a rigorous testing process, it is supported by multiple and independent lines of evidence, and competing explanations can be ruled out. The American Physical Society statement on ethics and values states that: “The success and credibility of science are anchored in the willingness of scientists to:

1. Expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by others. This requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials.
2. Abandon or modify previously accepted conclusions when confronted with more complete or reliable experimental or observational evidence.

Adherence to these principles provides a mechanism for self-correction that is the foundation of the credibility of science.

By undermining the confidence in the process, this anti-science science committee is looking to undermine the science of climate change itself.

This is where Scott Armstrong comes in. From the abstract from his testimony:

The validity of the manmade global warming alarm requires the support of scientific forecasts of (1) a substantive long-term rise in global mean temperatures in the absence of regulations, (2) serious net harmful effects due to global warming, and (3) cost-effective regulations that would produce net beneficial effects versus alternatives such as doing nothing.

Without scientific forecasts for all three aspects of the alarm, there is no scientific basis to enact regulations. In effect, it is a three-legged stool. Despite repeated appeals to global warming alarmists, we have been unable to find scientific forecasts for any of the three legs.

I am not sure that that last support (the one about cost-effective regulations) is necessary for the science to be right, but I'm no professor of marketing at a business school so I'm obviously no expert in the science of climate change.

In any event, it's interesting that the committee would use the scientific criteria laid out by the American Physical Society as part of a plan to undermine climate change while ignoring that society's own statement on the matter:

Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.

The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.

If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.

You'd think that if Armstrong's critiques (which have been around for years) were so inescapably correct the APS statement from 2007 would be amended by now. In fact there was a commentary on the statement released a year ago (April, 2010). It begins like this:

There is a substantial body of peer reviewed scientific research to support the technical aspects of the 2007 APS statement.

So I am guessing the APS doesn't agree with Armstrong. I am guessing that they think they're right and, if asked, they'd think Armstrong was wrong.

On the one hand you have a whole buncha scientists who, as a society, have released a statement saying that climate change is "incontrovertible." On the other there's a marketing professor says otherwise.

Who would you trust for the correct answer? I'd trust the scientists to know the science.

And we all know that Scaife's braintrust don't.

Careers in environmental or advising organisations and conservation are popular with graduates in these disciplines

Catastrophes, such as the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, not only serve as a reminder of how unpredictable the Earth can be, but also lead many to wonder why such natural disasters have become so prevalent. These are just some of questions that students of physical geography and environmental science will have grappled with.

Physical geography is the most scientific of the subject's strands. As the name suggests, it looks at physical changes to the planet. Students learn about the processes that structure the natural world, touching on topics such as volcanic activity and geographical information systems (GIS).

Environmental science graduates learn about the biological and chemical features of the natural world and the impact humans have on it, covering hot topics such as global warming.

What skills have you gained?

Through field and laboratory work – often a major component of both degrees – you gain practical skills, together with observational skills and an ability to analyse and interpret data.

Other transferable skills include numerical analysis, verbal and written communication, project management and being able to work as part of a team.

What jobs can you do?

"Many graduates who have studied environmental science or physical geography, want to work in a job protecting the environment or advising organisations, either directly or indirectly," says Margaret Holbrough, a careers adviser at Graduate Prospects. "Specific roles include environmental adviser/consultant, environmental manager, or nature conservation officer.

"Careers in recycling or waste management, water quality or toxicology analysis, as well as in environmental health, town or transport planning, logistics and transport management or surveying, may also be of interest." Both degrees offer opportunities in research, teaching or local or central government. "Physical geography graduates could look at careers in more specialised areas, such as cartography or GIS," Holbrough says, adding that gaining some form of environmental work experience will be advantageous.

Postgraduate study?

Some careers, such as environmental health or teaching, need further study. Nearly 5% of 2009 graduates went on to a teaching qualification, while 15.6% went on to a master's or PhD.

Data supplied by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit and Graduate Prospects

In comments Sven and Arthur have been arguing about which of 3– count them 3– observational data sets reporting surface temperatures are the “outlier”. Sven votes for GISTemp, Arthur votes for HadCrut. I decided to plot each and perform a t-test on the observational data sets for various time periods. Because the data sets are [...]

The use of Motrin, Aleve and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) is associated with erectile dysfunction, according to a study by scientists affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

The apparent link surprised the scientists. They had hypothesized that the commonly used pain-killers would actually reduce the risk of erectile dysfunction since NSAIDS protect against heart disease, which has in turn been linked to the troubling condition.

To reach their surprising conclusion, Steven Jacobsen and colleagues used data from Kaiser’s HealthConnect EHR, an associated pharmacy database, and self-reports about NSAID use and erectile dysfunction from an ethnically diverse population of 80,966 men between the ages of 45 and 69.

After controlling for age, ethnicity, race, body mass index, diabetes, smoking status, hypertension, high cholesterol and coronary artery disease, the scientists found that men who used NSAIDS at least 3 times per day for at least 3 months were 2.4 times more likely to experience erectile dysfunction than those who did not consume them on a regular basis. The link persisted across all age categories.

Remarkable in its own right was the finding that overall, 29% of the men in the study reported some level of erectile dysfunction.

The authors emphasized that their findings do not prove that NSAID use causes erectile dysfunction. For example, the study findings could have been confounded by factors not considered by the scientists (such as subclinical disease or the severity of the comorbid conditions that were studied), and the chance that NSAID use was actually an indicator for other conditions that caused erectile dysfunction.

In addition, the scientists recognized that their study had some limitations. These included an inability to temporally link NSAID use and the development of ED, and possible selection bias.

As a result, they cautioned men against discontinuing NSAIDs based solely on the findings of their study. “There are many proven benefits of non steroidals in preventing heart disease and for other conditions. People shouldn’t stop taking them based on this observational study. However, if a man is taking this class of drugs and has ED, it’s worth a discussion with his doctor,” Jacobsen said in an interview.

The write-up appears in the Journal of Urology.

Pouty fathead Donald Trump is a tailor-made character for the New York Observer, which purports to monitor Manhattan's smug oligarchy with a gimlet-eyed detachment.

And his semi-coherent presidential grumblings, which count as news just about everywhere else, make ideal grist for the Observer's mill. Too bad he's the owner's father-in-law.

Here's a sentence that someone ought to write about Trump: "The Donald's incredible bullshit machine keeps churning up the landscape, spewing forth a plume of chutzpah that might have made even P.T. Barnum a bit queasy."

Actually, that was written about Trump, and published in the Observer, 13 years ago.

It's an attitude that the Observer has taken toward Trump for decades, forged by former editor Graydon Carter, who had, during his days at Spy magazine, helped brand the man a "short-fingered vulgarian."

But lately, especially in the month or so since Trump began loudly and stupidly asserting that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and grunting about a presidential run, the paper has been practically silent on the subject. Incidentally, the Observer is currently owned by Jared Kushner, who is married to Trump's daughter Ivanka.

Since early March, when Trump's latest eruption began in earnest, the Observer has published just two substantive pieces on him: A no-frills account of his Comedy Central roast, and a critical analysis of recent polling showing him leading or tied for the GOP nomination—penned by a freelancer—published this morning. Both were online-only.

Trump was mentioned in several brief blog posts, the most involved ones picking up stories about his habit of mailing defaced printouts of web stories to his critics, his booking appearances in Iowa, and an on-screen tiff with Rep. Anthony Weiner. And one editorial about the absurdities of modern life in New York (you don't say?) mentioned Trump's pseudo-candidacy in an aside.

But the story about how one of New York City's most storied and familiar figures has openly embraced a racist lie? It's AWOL.

As is the one about how Trump is once again expertly manipulating the press with empty boasts—it used to be known as a "bullshit machine"—about running for president in a bid to get attention. As is the one about how Trump's rarefied social circle is reacting to his new xenophobic turn. As is the one detailing the aspects of Trump's lavish lifestyle that his newfound friends in the Tea Party might not identify with. And so on.

When Politico's Ben Smith and I began noting via Twitter this week that the Observer seems to be abdicating a historical duty to weigh in on the intersection of wealthy dimwits, ego, reality TV, a complicit media, and the general dumbfuckification of our political culture, the paper's editor Elizabeth Spiers shot back: "Guys, we are covering it! (Which you'd know if you actually called me—or asked)," apparently establishing a new standard for reported observational Tweeting. Spiers later added, also on Twitter, that a "larger piece is in the hopper." Asked to elaborate on the record, she said only, "We're covering trump the same way we would any other prospective candidate at this stage in the election cycle." Last month, she devoted a detailed, nuanced 2,600-word feature to the prospects of Rudy Giuliani, another New York fixture and prospective candidate whose current support appears to have been eclipsed by Trump's. Asked if his paper would have any trouble covering his father-in-law's political machinations, Kushner referred questions to Spiers.

Spiers is in a spot. There's not an easy answer to the question of how your newspaper should appropriately cover your boss' loathsome father-in-law. She could swear off Trump entirely, publicly acknowledge that there's really no way to fearlessly cover him in that situation, and leave it to others. But that would be untenable if he actually does run and becomes part of the 2012 race. Or she could fire away for as long as Kushner is willing to put up with it. But the current strategy, with Trump sort of loitering around the edge of the Observer's coverage—and frequently without a disclosure of his relationship to Kushner—while he's in the middle of what certainly looks like another swindle, feels awkward for everyone.

And it kind of undermines the point of the New York Observer. Which, we should add, was recently clarified and reinforced by Spiers, who restored its old motto to the front page: "Nothing sacred but the truth."

Disclosure: I've written for the Observer and have friends who work there. And Spiers served as editor of Gawker from 2002-2003.

This post originally appeared at Gawker.

For the latest media news, visit The Wire. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• I Will Be President Before Donald Trump

Obesity, high blood pressure, smoking and advanced maternal age are all known to be risk factors for stillbirths, making some preventable. In a separate paper in the series, Zulfiqar Bhutta at Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan and colleagues highlighted 10 interventions that, if implemented, could cut the global number of still births by around half.

The interventions include folic acid supplementation before and during pregnancy, detection and treatment of syphilis, prevention of malaria and improved obstetric care. "None of these interventions are remarkably new science," says Lawn.

An additional study by Robert Pattinson at the University of Pretoria in South Africa and his colleagues comes to the conclusion that such interventions would cost a mere $2.32 per person per year - a small price to pay to avoid the grief and devastation associated with stillbirths.
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Lancet - Stillbirths: what difference can we make and at what cost?

Worldwide, 2·65 million (uncertainty range 2·08 million to 3·79 million) stillbirths occur yearly, of which 98% occur in countries of low and middle income. Despite the fact that more than 45% of the global burden of stillbirths occur intrapartum, the perception is that little is known about effective interventions, especially those that can be implemented in low-resource settings. We undertook a systematic review of randomised trials and observational studies of interventions which could reduce the burden of stillbirths, particularly in low-income and middle-income countries. We identified several interventions with sufficient evidence to recommend implementation in health systems, including periconceptional folic acid supplementation or fortification, prevention of malaria, and improved detection and management of syphilis during pregnancy in endemic areas. Basic and comprehensive emergency obstetric care were identified as key effective interventions to reduce intrapartum stillbirths. Broad-scale implementation of intervention packages across 68 countries listed as priorities in the Countdown to 2015 report could avert up to 45% of stillbirths according to a model generated from the Lives Saved Tool. The overall costs for these interventions are within the general estimates of cost-effective interventions for maternal care, especially in view of the effects on outcomes across maternal, fetal, and neonatal health.

Lancet - Stillbirths: how can health systems deliver for mothers and babies?

The causes of stillbirths are inseparable from the causes of maternal and neonatal deaths. This report focuses on prevention of stillbirths by scale-up of care for mothers and babies at the health-system level, with consideration for effects and cost. In countries with high mortality rates, emergency obstetric care has the greatest effect on maternal and neonatal deaths, and on stillbirths. Syphilis detection and treatment is of moderate effect but of lower cost and is highly feasible. Advanced antenatal care, including induction for post-term pregnancies, and detection and management of hypertensive disease, fetal growth restriction, and gestational diabetes, will further reduce mortality, but at higher cost. These interventions are best packaged and provided through linked service delivery methods tailored to suit existing health-care systems. If 99% coverage is reached in 68 priority countries by 2015, up to 1·1 million (45%) third-trimester stillbirths, 201 000 (54%) maternal deaths, and 1·4 million (43%) neonatal deaths could be saved per year at an additional total cost of US$10·9 billion or $2·32 per person, which is in the range of $0·96—2·32 for other ingredients-based intervention packages with only recurrent costs.

If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks

(MedPage Today) -- BRIGHTON, England -- Treatment with rituximab (Rituxan) in real-world clinical settings was effective for many patients with rheumatoid arthritis, even those who had no benefit from other biologic drugs, the largest observational study to date found.

For more information, contact:

David A. Aguilar
Director of Public Affairs
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
617-495-7462
daguilar@cfa.harvard.edu

Christine Pulliam
Public Affairs Specialist
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
617-495-7463
cpulliam@cfa.harvard.edu

Predicting sustained virological response in chronic hep C therapy

A study in the recently published Journal of Viral Hepatitis estimates the likelihood of sustained virological response in chronic hepatitis C therapy.

The likelihood of a sustained virological response is the most important factor for physicians and patients in the decision to initiate and continue therapy for chronic hepatitis C infection.

Dr Stefan Mauss and colleagues from Germany identified predictive factors for sustained virological response with peginterferon plus ribavirin in patients with chronic hepatitis C treated under ‘real-life’ conditions.

The study cohort consisted of patients from a large, retrospective German multicentre, observational study who had been treated with peginterferon alfa-2a plus RBV or peginterferon alfa-2b plus ribavirin between the years 2000 and 2007.

To ensure comparability regarding peginterferon therapies, patients were analyzed in pairs matched by several baseline variables.
Sustained virological response rates were 58% overall
Journal of Viral Hepatitis

The researchers determined the effect of nonmatched baseline variables and treatment modality on sustained virological response.

Among 2378 patients, sustained virological response rates were 58% overall, 47% in HCV genotype 1/4-infected patients and 77% in genotype 2/3-infected patients.

In multivariate logistic regression analysis, positive predictors of sustained virological response were HCV genotype 2 infection, HCV genotype 3 infection, low baseline viral load and treatment with peginterferon alfa-2a.

The research team found that the negative predictors of sustained virological response were higher age, elevated baseline gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase and low baseline platelet count.

Dr Mauss' team commented, "Among patients treated with peginterferon plus ribavirin in routine clinical practice, genotype, baseline viral load, age, gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase level and platelet levels all predict the likelihood of treatment success."

"In patients matched by baseline characteristics, treatment with peginterferon alfa-2a may be a positive predictor of sustained virological response when compared to peginterferon alfa-2b."


http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2893.2010.01372.x/abstract

Links
Photos of the La Silla Observatory

Contacts

Richard Hook
ESO, La Silla, Paranal, E-ELT and Survey Telescopes Public Information Officer
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6655
Cell: +49 151 1537 3591
Email: rhook@eso.org

Antidepressants Improve Hep C Therapy Adherence


An observational analysis has found that those on antidepressant medications during Hepatitis C treatment are more likely to complete interferon-based therapy.


http://www.hepatitis-central.com/mt/...

NC-Research Triangle Park, RTI Health Solutions, a business unit of RTI International, is seeking a Research Health Economist 1 in Health Outcomes. This position will be based in the Research Triangle Park, North Carolina and will support the continued business expansion of Health Outcomes and Outcomes Research.Responsibilities* Conducting health economics research projects (e.g. quantitative analysis of observational data

An observational analysis has found that those on antidepressant medications during Hepatitis C treatment are more likely to complete interferon-based therapy.

About our Firm
We are a California-based full-service Analytical Consulting company founded in San Francisco in 2003, with an offshore office in Hyderabad, India. We employ a multi-disciplinary approach combining our backgrounds in Business, Computer Science, Math, Physics and Statistics to solve complex business problems. Our clients span a diversity of industries including Retail, Automotive, Financial Services and Entertainment.


Chief Statistician
We are looking for a Marketing Statistician to join our team. We do a variety of work but love diving though huge amounts of observational data and making sense of it. We love experimental data too but have no experience/interest in survey data. We recognize that having the top notch developers to put an application framework around our models makes our work shine. This is a hands-on role.


Qualifications:
Structured programming and code management with multiple contributors
Expert-level statistical programming
Ability to “site read” a dataset using thorough EDA
Recent experience with hazard modeling (survival analysis)
Handling TB+ data prep


Other desired experience:
Aptitude/experience managing & mentoring 5 other statisticians
Seeing research out of the lab to become applied statistics
Linear & dynamic programming
Experience with SAS, R, Hadoop

• Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
• Please, no phone calls about this job!
• Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.