This publicity photo released by Twentieth Century Fox shows Melissa McCarthy, left, as Detective Shannon Mullins, and Sandra Bullock as FBI Special Agent Sarah Ashburn, in a scene from the film, "The Heat." The movie releases June 28, 2013. (AP Photo/Twentieth Century Fox, Gemma La Mana)
This publicity photo released by Twentieth Century Fox shows Melissa McCarthy, left, as Detective Shannon Mullins, and Sandra Bullock as FBI Special Agent Sarah Ashburn, in a scene from the film, "The Heat." The movie releases June 28, 2013. (AP Photo/Twentieth Century Fox, Gemma La Mana)
This publicity photo released by Twentieth Century Fox shows Tom Wilson, center, as Capt. Woods trying to separate warring law enforcement partners Melissa McCarthy, left, as Detective Shannon Mullins, and Sandra Bullock as FBI Special Agent Sarah Ashburn, in a scene from the film, "The Heat." (AP Photo/Twentieth Century Fox, Gemma La Mana)
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? The buddy-cop movie has been around for decades, typically starring two mismatched male characters, except for those few instances where the buddies are actually a man and a dog, as in 1989's "K-9" and "Turner & Hooch."
Now Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy are getting into the mix with "The Heat," and advance ticket sales show fans are warming quickly to the concept.
Movie website Fandango says "The Heat," from 20th Century Fox, is the most popular offering this weekend, comprising 35 percent of nationwide ticket sales.
"It's taking a genre that very much appeals to one demographic, and inserting stars who appeal to another demographic," which makes the film equally appealing to men and women, said Dave Karger, chief correspondent for Fandango. "It has the action and it has the comedy which the guys are probably going to go for, then the female-friendship angle, too. Women just love Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy and are excited to see a big summer movie with two women in the lead."
The standard buddy-cop formula is at play here, with Bullock playing an uptight, lonely FBI agent who's paired with McCarthy's foul-mouthed, no-nonsense Boston police officer to take down a drug dealer. But having women play the incompatible cops makes the film unusual, if not downright groundbreaking. (The 1988 movie "Feds" focused on the comedy of two women accepted to the FBI training academy.)
"As insane as it sounds, it's such a unique thing to have two women," Karger said. "They thought of putting a dog in there before they thought of putting a woman in there, but that's Hollywood for you."
It's not only unusual to see two women take on the buddy-cop genre, but two women over 40 opening a big summer picture, said Tatiana Siegel, who covers the film industry for the trade publication The Hollywood Reporter.
"You might see two women in a movie like a Sundance movie, but this is a major, heavily marketed summer movie with franchise potential that in the past would have featured two men starring in it," Siegel said.
But she adds that the film is no great risk for Fox because of its relatively modest budget and the star-power of McCarthy and Bullock.
Karger said "Bridesmaids" cleared the way for this film: "Clearly the massive success of 'Bridesmaids' allowed a movie like this to exist."
"The Heat" is directed by "Bridesmaids" director Paul Feig, who declined to be interviewed for this story.
Box-office analyst Paul Dergarabedian predicts that "The Heat" could beat its buddy-action competitor, "White House Down," also opening Friday, which stars Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx.
If "The Heat" wins the box-office race, it would be "a huge coup" for actresses, Siegel said.
"Actresses in general are paid less than their male counterparts," she said. "If this movie finishes first, it speaks volumes about the work of two actresses and how audiences are more than willing to support movies like this."
___
AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen is on Twitter: www.twitter.com/APSandy .
We transmit almost a thousand petabytes of data over the ?nets every month?an amount that?s growing exponentially, thanks to your narcissistic obsession with Snapchat. In fact, we?re quickly closing in on the limits of how much data optical fiber can transmit. Luckily, scientists at Boston University recently unveiled what could be the next generation of bandwidth tech.
Iran sees itself as a key defender of Shiites in other countries, but only when strategically helpful.?
By Scott Peterson,?Staff writer / June 28, 2013
A Shiite cleric prays at the shrine of Saint Ali Akbar, in northern Tehran, Iran, Sunday, June 23. A divide between Shiites and Sunnis are now more virulent than ever in the Arab world because of Syria's civil war.
Vahid Salemi/AP
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The savage beating to death this week of four Shiite Muslims by a Sunni mob in Egypt set off a predictable chain reaction in Iran, which has long cast itself as the protector of Shiites around the world.?
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Iran condemned the Cairo killings and ?any act of extremism and violence which contradicts Islam,? and called upon ?the sensible and revolutionary Egyptian nation, through its prudent leaders [to] exercise vigilance vis-?-vis plots to foment discord among various schools of Islam.?
A prominent Shiite cleric in Iran?s religious center of Qom went further, speaking about an ?anti-Shia project in Egypt [which has] caused the intensification of sectarian [violence], emergence of crimes and legalization of bloodshed.?
But even though Iran has stepped up the rhetoric, it has done little else ? evidence that the Islamic Republic?s willingness and ability to intervene on behalf of embattled fellow Shiites depends?more?on strategic?than religious?calculations, analysts say.
The Cairo killings come amid an escalation of sectarian tensions between the two main denominations all over, especially in Syria.?That divide presents a dilemma for Iran, which has always presented its 1979 Islamic revolution as a pan-Islamic model?for Sunnis and Shiites alike.?
For example, although Iran?s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is officially referred to as the ?Leader of the World?s Shia," in a 2008 speech he says, ?Even those who were not Shia Muslims were attracted to the Islamic revolution. Millions of our Sunni brothers in Arab, African, and Asian countries were attracted to the Islamic revolution, and this [1979 revolution] was a blow to the enemies.?
Playing into Western hands
?Iran?s response to this massacre in Egypt is quite typical of how it has approached sectarian division,? says Roxane Farmanfarmaian, who teaches politics and international relations at Cambridge University in Britain.
?Iran has consistently stated that Muslims must act and stand together, and that any division or conflict between the Sunni and Shia only plays into Western hands that think of Islam as violent,? says Ms. Farmanfarmaian. ?It will support Shia when it?s geopolitically important and useful, but it has to have that extra dimension before it supports Shia?per se.?
Mr. Morsi has condemned the killing of Shiites as a ?heinous crime.? And the country?s leading Sunni religious establishment, Al-Azhar, said the killings were against Islam and urged the ?harshest punishment.? But?Morsi ? the Muslim Brotherhood president who will mark one year as Egypt?s first democratically elected president on?June 30???is also accused of giving free rein to fundamentalist Sunnis known as Salafists, who consider Shiites heretics.
Spilling over from the Syrian war
Many of the most troublesome sectarian tensions today are spilling over from the Syrian war, afflicting Lebanon and Iraq.?Iran?s critics accuse it of deepening?those?divisions with its support of the Syrian government, even though fellow Syria?allies Russia and China?have no pro-Shiite agenda.?
Speaking in April, Khamenei sought to?minimize?the split. He said that the Assad regime is not Shiite (although?its Alawite roots are a Shiite sect), nor are its opponents Sunni, even though ?Western propaganda and dependent regional media? try to depict it that way.
Yet even the fighters themselves have?increasingly?described their?battle as a sectarian fight. As Iran and Hezbollah (with Russia) have enabled Assad?s forces to make recent military gains, the Sunni states of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and Jordan (with the US and Europe) have bolstered support for the opposition.
New risks
Iranian leaders have long recognized that specific talk?from them?about defending Islam?s minority Shiites does not go over well with majority Sunnis,?and adds stress to?religious faultlines that date back 14 centuries.?
And in apparent recognition of the new risks of sectarian hatred spiraling out of control, Iran?s President-elect Hassan Rohani has stated that a top priority after he is sworn in will be mending relations with Saudi Arabia. He took similar conciliatory steps a decade ago as the head of Iran?s Supreme National Security Council.
The pragmatism in Iran's selective support of fellow Shiites can be found in Bahrain, the?tiny Persian Gulf sheikhdom where Shiites?began?pro-democracy protests in?early 2011. Iran?did nothing to prevent Saudi Arabia from sending military forces to bolster the government as it crushed the protests.
Such signals from Tehran means Iran ?is not going to go out on a limb for Shia?per se, it?s going to go out on a limb for unity,? says Farmanfarmaian. ?When it comes down to being ?Shia vs. political expediency,? as in the case of Bahrain, [Iran] certainly sees no reason to show up on those beaches and get into a war.?
In March 2011, Khamenei said: ?Do not make [Bahrain ] a Sunni and Shia issue; this would be the biggest favor ? for the enemies of the Islamic nation?. There exists no Sunni-Shia conflict.?
Then last February, Khamenei explained the result: ?The rulers of Bahrain claimed that Iran is involved in the events of Bahrain. This is a lie. No, we are not involved,? he said. ?If we had interfered, the conditions would have been different in Bahrain.?
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DAKAR (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Thursday he would not start "wheeling and dealing" with China and Russia over a U.S. request to extradite former American spy agency contractor Edward Snowden.
Obama, who appeared concerned that the case would overshadow a three-country tour of Africa that he began in Senegal, also dismissed suggestions that the United States might try to intercept Snowden if he were allowed to depart Moscow by air.
"No, I'm not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker," he told a news conference in Dakar, a note of disdain in his voice. Snowden turned 30 last week.
Obama said regular legal channels should suffice to handle the U.S. request that Snowden, who left Hong Kong for Moscow, be returned. Obama said he had not yet spoken to China's President Xi Jinping or Russian President Vladimir Putin about the issue.
"I have not called President Xi personally or President Putin personally and the reason is ... number one, I shouldn't have to," Obama said sharply.
"Number two, we've got a whole lot of business that we do with China and Russia, and I'm not going to have one case of a suspect who we're trying to extradite suddenly being elevated to the point where I've got to start doing wheeling and dealing and trading on a whole host of other issues," he said.
Snowden fled the United States to Hong Kong in May, a few weeks before publication in the Guardian and Washington Post of details he provided about secret U.S. government surveillance programs, then flew to Moscow on Sunday. He had been expected to fly on to Havana on Monday but did not board the aircraft.
The American, who faces espionage charges in the United States and has asked Ecuador for political asylum, has not been seen since his arrival in Moscow. Russian officials said he remained in a transit area at Sheremetyevo airport.
CHINA, ECUADOR HIT BACK
Snowden's case has raised tensions between the United States and both China and Russia. On Thursday, Beijing accused Washington of hypocrisy on the issue of cyber security.
Obama's remarks seemed calibrated to exert pressure without leading to lasting damage in ties with either country.
Andy Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, said Obama was trying to play down the Snowden saga and minimize the impact on the United States.
"The more the administration can play it down, the more latitude they'll have in the diplomatic arena to work out a deal for him," he said.
Obama predicted there would be a made-for-TV movie about the ongoing saga, but indicated that damage to U.S. interests was largely limited to revelations from Snowden's initial leak.
"I continue to be concerned about the other documents that he may have," Obama said. "That's part of the reason why we'd like to have Mr. Snowden in custody."
Snowden's revelations of widespread snooping by the U.S. National Security Agency in China and Hong Kong have given Beijing considerable ammunition in an area that has been a major irritant between the countries.
China's defense ministry said the U.S. government surveillance program known as Prism "has revealed the concerned country's true face and hypocritical behavior". It did not name the country.
"This 'double standard' approach is not conducive to peace and security in cyber space," ministry spokesman Yang Yujun told reporters, according to state news agency Xinhua.
In Ecuador's capital Quito, the government said it was waiving preferential rights under a U.S. trade agreement to demonstrate its principled stand on Snowden's asylum request.
In a deliberately cheeky touch from the leftist government of President Rafael Correa, Ecuador also offered a multi-million donation for human rights training in the United States.
Ecuadorean officials added that the U.S. fugitive's case had not been processed because he had not yet reached any of its diplomatic missions.
"USEFUL" CONVERSATIONS
Obama said the United States expected all countries who were considering asylum requests for the former contractor to follow international law.
In Washington, the U.S. State Department warned of "grave difficulties" for U.S.-Ecuador relations if the Andean country were to grant Snowden asylum, but gave no specifics.
The White House said last week that Hong Kong's decision to let Snowden leave would hurt U.S.-China relations. Its rhetoric on Russia has been somewhat less harsh.
Obama acknowledged that the United States did not have an extradition treaty with Russia, but he said such a treaty was not necessary to resolve all of the issues involved.
He characterized conversations between Washington and Moscow as "useful" and said the United States would continue to press.
Putin has rejected U.S. calls to expel Snowden to the United States and said on Tuesday the fugitive should choose his destination and leave the airport as soon as possible. Ecuador has said it could take weeks to decide on his asylum request.
Washington is focused on how former Booz Allen Hamilton systems administrator Snowden gained access to National Security Agency secrets while working at a facility in Hawaii.
Obama said the leaks exposed "pretty significant vulnerabilities" at the NSA that had to be resolved.
In Baltimore, NSA Director Keith Alexander said the leaks had caused "significant and irreversible damage" and hurt the United States as well as its allies.
"I believe the irresponsible release of classified information will have a long-term detrimental impact on the intelligence community's ability to detect future attacks," Alexander told the AFCEA International Cyber Symposium.
"I worry there will be more leaks."
(Corrects seventh paragraph to show Snowden went to Hong Kong in May)
(Additional reporting by Brian Ellsworth and Alexandra Valencia in Quito, Lidia Kelly in Moscow, Sui-Lee Wee in Beijing, Deborah Charles in Baltimore and Steve Holland and Laura MacInnis in Washington; Writing by Jeff Mason; Editing by Mike Collett-White)
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency 's Virtual Robotics Challenge (VRC) is over and the agency has announced the winning teams that are receiving not just a cash prize, but a real, life-size, humanoid robot to compete in the challenge's next round.
DARPA announced the winners today (June 27). They are:
Team IHMC, Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, Pensacola, Fla. (52 points)
WPI Robotics Engineering C Squad (WRECS), Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Mass. (39 points)
MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. (34 points)
Team TRACLabs, TRACLabs Inc., Webster, Texas (30 points)
TORC, TORC / TU Darmstadt / Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Va. (27 points)
Team K, Japan (25 points)
TROOPER, Lockheed Martin, Cherry Hill, N.J. (24 points)
Case Western University, Cleveland, Ohio (23 points)
The purpose of the VRC is to advance the frontier of robots so that they can replace humans in disaster situations, or as DARPA program manager Gill Pratt said at a news conference before the contest, "To make our society ? and that means society around the world ? more resilient to both natural and manmade disasters.
For example, a robot could enter a building to turn off a gas leak, or search a collapsed factory for survivors. If sophisticated robots like this had existed when the earthquake and tsunami hit the Fukushima nuclear reactor in 2011, Pratt said, the disaster would not have been nearly as bad. [VIDEO: "Printable Robots Fold Up Like Origami Figures"]
"If in the first 24 hours it had been possible to vent the reactors, then these explosions would not have occurred," he said. "Human beings tried to do it, but had to turn around."
Current robots aren't up to the task. The ones used in disasters are clunky things, typically with treads, and are used for little more than reconnaissance. But DARPA envisions a future where humanoid robots can go anywhere a person can go. That means being able to climb stairs, open doors and even drive cars, with minimal interaction from a human controller.
The 26 teams selected for the virtual finals had to guide a virtual robot through three trials in a simulated world ? kind of like playing an incredibly complex video game. The virtual robots had to enter a car and drive it down a winding road, walk over muddy, rubble-strewn terrain, and pick up a fire hose and connect it to a spigot.
In December, teams from around the world will send their state-of-the-art robots through eight trials. The winners from this month's competition will be competing using a DARPA-supplied robot, which will be loaded with their custom software.
The winners are given use of an Atlas robot, developed by Boston Dynamics and based on the company's Petman platform. The Atlas is impressive, Pratt said. "It will be able to walk on its own, balance on its own. I've seen it take a hit from a medicine ball and not fall over."
The DARPA challenge is a step toward more sophisticated robot use in society, but that day may not arrive for a while. While DARPA hopes that the lessons learned from the VRC and the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) will translate someday to commercial uses, nothing concrete is on the table yet. And eight years after Stanford's self-driving car completed DARPA's Grand Challenge, driverless cars aren't (yet) commercially available.
However, Pratt said, when December 2014 and the DRC finals roll around, "We're going to see a demonstration that is very evocative ?that will make very clear that we can do it."
The government only had prize funding for six teams to move forward, but JPL, which already has a DARPA-funded robot, decided to give some of its funding and Atlas robot to the Lockheed Martin team; the rest of the funding is going to a newly formed team made from a merger of Team K and Case Western.
That team, now known as HKU, will using an Atlas robot donated by Hong Kong University to participate in December. So seven VRC teams are proceeding to the physical challenge.
This story was provided by TechNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
NEW YORK ? June 26, 2013 ?Related Companies, one of the nation?s most prolific real estate development and investment firms, and Highbridge Principal Strategies (HPS), a global credit and private investment firm, today announced the formation of a joint venture that will manage a new real estate credit investment platform.?
Related, along with funds they control, and HPS will invest $800 million in available capital primarily in real estate debt, specifically gap financing for real estate projects in transition across the United States.
Brian Sedrish, an experienced real estate investment professional, will join the joint venture as a Managing Director and serve as portfolio manager for the platform, which will evaluate opportunities to invest in first lien mortgages, mezzanine loans, and preferred equity positions in both land deals and non-stabilized assets, focusing on transitional real estate investments, such as re-development, conversions and new construction.
?We are pleased to partner with Related, one of the most successful developers, owners and operators of real estate assets in the U.S., and to welcome Brian to the team,? said Alex Popov, managing director at HPS.
?This joint venture will combine our due diligence and established credit structuring capabilities with Related?s 40 year track record in sourcing, developing, and managing real estate assets, to take advantage of attractive investment opportunities created by significant financing gaps in the residential and commercial real estate market.?
The joint venture will source investment opportunities across the nation with a focus on gateway cities including New York, Boston, Chicago, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami and select secondary markets that demonstrate strong supply/demand imbalances.
?We look forward to partnering with HPS and combining our extensive real estate experience and access to deal flow with their extensive mezzanine credit experience to invest in financing opportunities secured by all property types throughout the country,? said Justin Metz, Managing Principal of Related Fund Management, the fund management platform of Related.
?Together with HPS, we have identified an opportunity to capitalize on the demand for financing solutions and recapitalizations in the current market, and to make debt investments secured by non-income producing assets, which are not eligible for securitization.?
Brian Sedrish said, ?I am delighted to join this joint venture and to lead this investment platform.? Related and HPS have identified an opportunity that offers investors the ability to take advantage of attractive supply and demand dynamics in the residential and commercial markets while minimizing potential downside by engaging a world-class real estate developer and operator.?
Brian Sedrish was previously dead of acquisitions for the Commercial Real Estate Division (Special Situations) at Deutsche Bank, where he was responsible for the purchase of distressed debt, the acquisition of non-performing and sub-performing pools of mortgages and the origination of high yield loans across the United States.
Prior to joining Deutsche Bank, ?Sedrish was employed by Fortress Investment Group?s Drawbridge Special Opportunities Fund, where he focused on originating and purchasing high yield loans in the real estate sector and opportunistically acquiring real estate related assets across all sectors and geographic regions.? He also previously held positions with Goldman Sachs and Lazard Fr?res & Co. Mr. Sedrish received a MPA from Harvard University, an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and a BA from the University of Michigan.
June 26, 2013 ? Further evidence of climate change shifting atmospheric circulation in the southern Australian-New Zealand region has been identified in a new study.
The study, in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, demonstrates that mid-latitude high pressure zones (30oS-45oS) are being pushed further into the Southern Ocean by rising global temperatures associated with greenhouse warming. This is despite more frequent occurrences of strong El Ni?os in recent decades, which should have drawn the high pressure zones in the opposite direction toward the equator.
"What we are seeing," says study lead author, Mr Guojian Wang "is a 'tug of war' between stronger El Ni?os driving the winds north and the greenhouse gas-warming effect driving the winds south."
Mr Wang, said the result confirms the robustness of the Southern Hemisphere circulation changes over the past three to four decades as the global temperature rose, "so much so that it overode the influence from strong El Ni?os during this period."
Study co-author, Dr Wenju Cai said the most conspicuous change is a rising sea level pressure in the mid-latitude bands and a decreasing sea level pressure over the Southern high latitudes (55o-70oS), a pattern referred to as the Southern Annular Mode. The changing pressures indicate a poleward or southward expansion of the tropical and subtropical atmospheric zones.
In turn, this indicates that over the long-term, there is a relationship between a rising global mean temperature and an upward trend of the Southern Annular Mode.
"The research reinforces our past work that climate change is altering Southern Hemisphere circulation and increases our confidence in this conclusion," Dr Cai said.
Dr Cai has previously reported on changes in atmospheric circulation that have been shifting and strengthening the Pacific Ocean winds poleward and in turn strengthening the ocean circulation, pushing the East Australian Current further south down the Australian coast.
He said during El Ni?o, the warmer ocean releases heat to the atmosphere and global average temperatures increase. At the same time, warm ocean surface temperatures along the equator cause the tropical and subtropical atmospheric belts to move toward the equator, generating a 'negative' phase of the Southern Annular Mode.
"On year-to-year time scales, higher global temperatures are associated with a negative phase of the Mode but over the past 35 years, when El Ni?o has been strong and conducive to a negative trend, we are seeing an opposite trend with the circulation systems moving southward impacting on regional climate," he said.
The project was funded through the Australian Climate Change Science Program.
1 in 5 grade 7-12 students report having a traumatic brain injury in their lifetimePublic release date: 26-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Michael Torres michael.torres@camh.ca 416-595-6015 Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
June 26, 2013One in five adolescents surveyed in Ontario, Canada said they have suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) that left them unconscious for five minutes or required them to be hospitalized overnight, a statistic researchers in Toronto say is much higher than previously thought.
Sports such as ice hockey and soccer accounted for more than half the injuries, said Dr. Gabreila Ilie, lead author of the study and a post-doctoral fellow at St. Michael's Hospital.
Traumatic brain injuries, such as concussions, were reported more often by males than females, by those with lower school grades and by those who used alcohol or cannabis in the previous 12 months, she said.
The study is published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Dr. Ilie said this is one of the first studies of traumatic brain injury to focus only on adolescents and to include all of their self-reported TBIs. Most previous studies were based their reporting only on hospital records. Concussion is the most common form of traumatic brain injury.
The data used in the study were from the 2011 Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey (OSDUHS) developed by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). The survey, one of the longest ongoing school surveys in the world, contains responses from almost 9,000 students from Grades 7-12 in publicly funded schools across Ontario. The OSDUHS began as a drug use survey, but is now a broader study of adolescent health and well-being. For the first time in 2011, questions about traumatic brain injury were added to the survey.
"The questions about TBI were added to the OSDUHS because there were no current data on prevalence in the adolescent population," said Dr. Robert Mann, a senior scientist at CAMH and director of the OSDUHS.
"Early research has indicated that there may be links between TBIs and mental health and substance use during adolescence we plan to study this in the near future."
The survey found that 20 per cent of adolescents in Ontario said they had had a traumatic brain injury in their lifetime. It found that 5.6 per cent of them had had such an injury in the past 12 months.
Dr. Ilie said this suggests the prevalence of TBI among young people is much higher than previously known, because many head injuries remain uncounted when they are not being reported to parents, teachers, sports coaches or health care workers. In Canada, 50 per cent of all injuries that kill and disable youth involve a TBI.
This new research found that 46.9 per cent of the TBIs reported by adolescent females occurred during sports (e.g., hockey, skate boarding); the figure was 63.5 per cent for males.
Students who reported drinking alcohol occasionally/frequently and those who reported using cannabis 10 or more times over the past 12 months had more than five times and more than three times the odds, respectively, of acquiring a traumatic brain injury in the past 12 months than students who reported abstinence. The survey also showed that students who reported overall poor grades at school (below 60 per cent) had almost four times the odds of a lifetime acquired brain injury than students who reported grades at or above 90 per cent.
"Traumatic brain injury is preventable," said Dr. Ilie. "If we know who is more vulnerable, when and how these injuries are occurring, we can talk to students, coaches, and parents about it. We can take preventive action and find viable solutions to reduce their occurrence and long-term effects."
Brain injuries among adolescents are particularly concerning because their brains are still developing. There is growing evidence that people who have had one or more concussions are at greater risk of future concussions, and evidence that multiple brain injuries can result in lasting cognitive impairment, substance use, mental health and physical health harms.
###
This study is part of a team project grant awarded to Dr. Michael Cusimano, a neurosurgeon and concussion researcher at St. Michael's by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation. The work was also supported by grants to Dr. Robert Mann, a senior member of the research team and a scientist at CAMH from AUTO21.
About St. Michael's Hospital
St Michael's Hospital provides compassionate care to all who enter its doors. The hospital also provides outstanding medical education to future health care professionals in more than 23 academic disciplines. Critical care and trauma, heart disease, neurosurgery, diabetes, cancer care, care of the homeless and global health are among the Hospital's recognized areas of expertise. Through the Keenan Research Centre and the Li Ka Shing International Healthcare Education Centre, which make up the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, research and education at St. Michael's Hospital are recognized and make an impact around the world. Founded in 1892, the hospital is fully affiliated with the University of Toronto.
About CAMH
The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) is Canada's largest mental health and addiction teaching hospital, as well as one of the world's leading research centres in its field. CAMH combines clinical care, research, education, policy development and health promotion to help transform the lives of people affected by mental health and addiction issues. CAMH is fully affiliated with the University of Toronto, and is a Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization Collaborating Centre. For more information, please visit http://www.camh.ca.
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1 in 5 grade 7-12 students report having a traumatic brain injury in their lifetimePublic release date: 26-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Michael Torres michael.torres@camh.ca 416-595-6015 Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
June 26, 2013One in five adolescents surveyed in Ontario, Canada said they have suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) that left them unconscious for five minutes or required them to be hospitalized overnight, a statistic researchers in Toronto say is much higher than previously thought.
Sports such as ice hockey and soccer accounted for more than half the injuries, said Dr. Gabreila Ilie, lead author of the study and a post-doctoral fellow at St. Michael's Hospital.
Traumatic brain injuries, such as concussions, were reported more often by males than females, by those with lower school grades and by those who used alcohol or cannabis in the previous 12 months, she said.
The study is published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Dr. Ilie said this is one of the first studies of traumatic brain injury to focus only on adolescents and to include all of their self-reported TBIs. Most previous studies were based their reporting only on hospital records. Concussion is the most common form of traumatic brain injury.
The data used in the study were from the 2011 Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey (OSDUHS) developed by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). The survey, one of the longest ongoing school surveys in the world, contains responses from almost 9,000 students from Grades 7-12 in publicly funded schools across Ontario. The OSDUHS began as a drug use survey, but is now a broader study of adolescent health and well-being. For the first time in 2011, questions about traumatic brain injury were added to the survey.
"The questions about TBI were added to the OSDUHS because there were no current data on prevalence in the adolescent population," said Dr. Robert Mann, a senior scientist at CAMH and director of the OSDUHS.
"Early research has indicated that there may be links between TBIs and mental health and substance use during adolescence we plan to study this in the near future."
The survey found that 20 per cent of adolescents in Ontario said they had had a traumatic brain injury in their lifetime. It found that 5.6 per cent of them had had such an injury in the past 12 months.
Dr. Ilie said this suggests the prevalence of TBI among young people is much higher than previously known, because many head injuries remain uncounted when they are not being reported to parents, teachers, sports coaches or health care workers. In Canada, 50 per cent of all injuries that kill and disable youth involve a TBI.
This new research found that 46.9 per cent of the TBIs reported by adolescent females occurred during sports (e.g., hockey, skate boarding); the figure was 63.5 per cent for males.
Students who reported drinking alcohol occasionally/frequently and those who reported using cannabis 10 or more times over the past 12 months had more than five times and more than three times the odds, respectively, of acquiring a traumatic brain injury in the past 12 months than students who reported abstinence. The survey also showed that students who reported overall poor grades at school (below 60 per cent) had almost four times the odds of a lifetime acquired brain injury than students who reported grades at or above 90 per cent.
"Traumatic brain injury is preventable," said Dr. Ilie. "If we know who is more vulnerable, when and how these injuries are occurring, we can talk to students, coaches, and parents about it. We can take preventive action and find viable solutions to reduce their occurrence and long-term effects."
Brain injuries among adolescents are particularly concerning because their brains are still developing. There is growing evidence that people who have had one or more concussions are at greater risk of future concussions, and evidence that multiple brain injuries can result in lasting cognitive impairment, substance use, mental health and physical health harms.
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This study is part of a team project grant awarded to Dr. Michael Cusimano, a neurosurgeon and concussion researcher at St. Michael's by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation. The work was also supported by grants to Dr. Robert Mann, a senior member of the research team and a scientist at CAMH from AUTO21.
About St. Michael's Hospital
St Michael's Hospital provides compassionate care to all who enter its doors. The hospital also provides outstanding medical education to future health care professionals in more than 23 academic disciplines. Critical care and trauma, heart disease, neurosurgery, diabetes, cancer care, care of the homeless and global health are among the Hospital's recognized areas of expertise. Through the Keenan Research Centre and the Li Ka Shing International Healthcare Education Centre, which make up the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, research and education at St. Michael's Hospital are recognized and make an impact around the world. Founded in 1892, the hospital is fully affiliated with the University of Toronto.
About CAMH
The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) is Canada's largest mental health and addiction teaching hospital, as well as one of the world's leading research centres in its field. CAMH combines clinical care, research, education, policy development and health promotion to help transform the lives of people affected by mental health and addiction issues. CAMH is fully affiliated with the University of Toronto, and is a Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization Collaborating Centre. For more information, please visit http://www.camh.ca.
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Investors are growing more bearish on the prospects for gold, as a recent survey by J.P. Morgan points out only 44% of respondents think bullion will move higher in the next 12 months.
That level marks a sharp decline from 71% last year, but investors are still bullish for the long term, with 60% of them anticipating gold will rise in the next three years.
Analyst John Bridges pointed out gold fund managers are more optimistic about gold equities than gold for the 36-month period. Yet generalists and resource funds expect gold stocks to underperform or perform in line with the metal.
Perhaps the most noteworthy result from the survey of 91 funds was the attitude towards inflation, as 53% of respondents said they think operating cost inflation has peaked and 57% believe the same for capital cost inflation. That?s a sharp increase from 35% and 32%, respectively, in the previous survey.
?If costs are truly under control perhaps investors should be more aggressive with winners being greedy when others are fearful,? Mr. Bridges told clients, noting that while the majority still expect inflation to drive gold higher, the percentage expecting deflation has increased to 22%.
?Some expect that inflation will only come to lift gold after a period of deflation,? he added.
While 78% of investors continue to anticipate an inflationary environment, 22% of them think deflation is possible, up from 15% a year earlier.
Mr. Bridges is confident there will be opportunities for both investors and miners to buy quality assets during this downturn, but stressed timing will be key.
He expects companies such as Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd., Coeur d?Alene Mines Corp. and Hecla Mining Co. will act counter-cyclically?to buy stakes in assets, or buy them outright, in this depressed market.
As for the method of these acquisitions, investors reduced their preference for cash as a mode for M&A, which Mr. Bridges attributes to the desire to preserve much-needed liquidity in this down cycle. He noted more investors now prefer a mix of cash and stock, which balances liquidity needs with equity dilution.
June 19, 2013 ? Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug, and more than half take two, Mayo Clinic researchers say. Antibiotics, antidepressants and painkilling opioids are most commonly prescribed, their study found. Twenty percent of patients are on five or more prescription medications, according to the findings, published online in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
Researchers find the data valuable because it gives insight into prescribing practices. The statistics from the Rochester Epidemiology Project in Olmsted County, Minn. are comparable to those elsewhere in the United States, says study author Jennifer St. Sauver, Ph.D., a member of the Mayo Clinic Population Health Program in the Mayo Clinic Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery.
"Often when people talk about health conditions they're talking about chronic conditions such as heart disease or diabetes," Dr. St. Sauver says. "However, the second most common prescription was for antidepressants -- that suggests mental health is a huge issue and is something we should focus on. And the third most common drugs were opioids, which is a bit concerning considering their addicting nature."
Seventeen percent of those studied were prescribed antibiotics, 13 percent were taking antidepressants and 13 percent were on opioids. Drugs to control high blood pressure came in fourth (11 percent) and vaccines were fifth (11 percent). Drugs were prescribed to both men and women across all age groups, except high blood pressure drugs, which were seldom used before age 30.
Overall, women and older adults receive more prescriptions. Vaccines, antibiotics and anti-asthma drugs are most commonly prescribed in people younger than 19. Antidepressants and opioids are most common among young and middle-aged adults. Cardiovascular drugs are most commonly prescribed in older adults. Women receive more prescriptions than men across several drug groups, especially antidepressants: Nearly 1 in 4 women ages 50-64 are on an antidepressant.
For several drug groups, use increases with advancing age.
"As you get older you tend to get more prescriptions, and women tend to get more prescriptions than men," Dr. St. Sauver says.
Prescription drug use has increased steadily in the U.S. for the past decade. The percentage of people who took at least one prescription drug in the past month increased from 44 percent in 1999-2000 to 48 percent in 2007-08. Spending on prescription drugs reached $250 billion in 2009 the year studied, and accounted for 12 percent of total personal health care expenditures. Drug-related spending is expected to continue to grow in the coming years, the researchers say.
The study was funded by the National Institute on Aging and the Mayo Clinic Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery.
Fire officials in California are asking the public to work with them as they face one of the most significant fire seasons they've seen in many years.
By Daniel Arkin, Staff Writer, NBC News
Southern California fire officials warned Monday that the state should take caution during a brutal fire season that projections suggest could be the worst to hit the region in a century.
?We?re going to have a very volatile fire season,? Los Angeles County Fire Chief Daryl Osby said at a Monday afternoon news conference, who noted it could be the worst in 100 years.
The warning comes nearly a week after a monstrous wildfire began to cut a deadly path through Colorado Springs, killing two people and destroying nearly 500 homes. The Black Forest Fire ? the most destructive blaze in Colorado history ? was 75 percent contained Monday.
California officials advised that projected weather conditions ? a menacing mix of warm, dry Santa Ana winds and scant rainfall ? may make the looming fire season the most devastating in 100 years.
?Fire conditions in southern California are at levels we have not seen in many, many years,? California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Director Ken Pimlott said Monday. ?That is the case across all of California.?
The blazes on the forecast are expected to wreak extensive havoc across wide swaths of the state, endangering lives and natural resources, Pimlott said.
?These aren?t fires that just burn out in the forest and in the brush lands,? Pimlott said. ?These are fires that directly impact the state?s natural resources and the very water that we drink and the air that we breathe.?
Officials are bracing for roughly 2,600 fires across 51,000 acres ? a 75 percent increase from the annual average over the last five years, according to Pimlott.
A 30,000-acre drought-fueled powerhouse blaze ripped through the region in early June, forcing thousands of evacuations and threatening thousands of buildings. The fire destroyed at least six homes.
The devastation wrought by the massive Colorado wildfire should serve as a ?wake up call? for Californians, Pimlott said.
?All we need to do right now is look on the news and see what?s occurring in Colorado and Colorado Springs,? Pimlott said. ?The exact same conditions exist in California.?
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Performance artist Erdem Gunduz became the new symbol of anti-government protests in Turkey on Tuesday after his eight-hour vigil in Taksim Square earned him the nickname "the Standing Man".
Images of Gunduz standing quietly in the large, open square, the cradle of three weeks of often violent unrest, have struck a chord with sympathizers more used to witnessing stone-throwing youths battling police tear gas and water cannon.
Twitter lit up with messages of support, although Gunduz sought to play down his importance in demonstrations that have shaken Turkey's image of stability in the volatile Middle East.
"Maybe the media and people will learn something from this silent standing, this resistance," Gunduz said in an interview with Hurriyet TV. "Maybe they will feel some empathy. I am just an ordinary citizen of this country. We want our voices to be heard."
Gunduz said he was protesting in solidarity with demonstrators who were evicted at the weekend from Gezi Park adjoining Taksim, an intervention by police that triggered some of the most violent clashes to date.
What began in May as a protest by environmentalists upset over plans to build on Gezi Park has grown into a broader movement against Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, presenting the greatest public challenge to his 10-year leadership.
The prime minister, whose AK Party has won three successive election victories with an ever growing share of the vote over the past decade, rallied hundreds of thousands of supporters at meetings in Istanbul and Ankara over the weekend and has pledged to again crush his opponents in elections next year.
VIGILS IN OTHER CITIES
From the early evening on Monday, Gunduz stood silently, facing the Ataturk Cultural Centre which was draped in Turkish flags and a portrait of Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Ataturk laid the secular foundations of the republic some 90 years ago, and while Gunduz's intentions were not clear, some protesters have accused Erdogan of pursuing a new order based on religious principles - something he denies.
By 2 a.m. (2300 GMT) on Tuesday, when the police moved in, about 300 people had joined Gunduz. Ten people, who refused to be moved on by police, were detained.
On Tuesday, hundreds more men and women staged copycat protests in Istanbul, the capital Ankara and the city of Izmir on the Aegean coast.
Interior Minister Muammer Guler indicated on Tuesday that there would be no police swoop against similar "standing man" protests. "If this protest does not harm public order or influence life generally, we will not intervene in such protests," he told reporters in parliament.
Overnight there were copycat demonstrations in places where people suffered violent deaths both in the latest unrest and further in the past.
Three men stood at the place where Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was shot dead in 2007, two kilometers north of Taksim Square, photographs posted on social media showed.
A group of women and men also stood facing a former hotel in the central city of Sivas, where 37 people, mostly from the Alevi minority, died in a 1993 fire started during an Islamist protest against the presence at a meeting there of a translator of Salman Rushie's "The Satanic Verses".
Official investigations into both the Dink and Sivas cases have attracted considerable criticism in Turkey.
In the province of Hatay on the Syrian border, a man stood with his hands in his pockets beside a makeshift shrine for Abdullah Comert, who was killed during clashes there between police and protesters, another online photograph showed.
Others gathered at the place where a man died during the protests in the capital Ankara and there were similar protests in Izmir.
Advertising giant WPP is taking another step into the world of startup investments, this time specifically in mobile and social media. WPP Ventures, an investment arm of WPP digital, today announced a stake in Muzy, a social media platform arranged in a Pinterest-style grid layout that lets users incorporate links to images, games, text and more, which they then share with their friends, or with the world at large. The site, in some regards, has flown under the radar, but it has some 20 million users and is adding 1 million each month. Terms of the investment were not disclosed but we are trying to find out.
Onetime Journey frontman Steve Perry has revealed that he recently was diagnosed with melanoma skin cancer, and that he has undergone two surgeries to remove the cancer cells.
"They think they got it all," wrote the "Don't Stop Believin'" singer, who fronted Journey from 1977-87 and 1995-98, on his Fan Asylum personal blog last Thursday.
Perry, who included with the post a photo of himself and former MTV DJ Martha Quinn taken after the surgery (Quinn also tweeted a similar photo, below), said that the diagnosis came after a "routine mole" was removed from his face.
He said he believed "no other treatments were required."
But there was a second, more tragic aspect to the birthday post he sent to his fans.
Perry, 64, wrote of how he fell for a woman named Kellie Nash after seeing her during a 2011 edit session of Lifetime's breast cancer special "Five." Nash a psychologist who was undergoing cancer treatment, caught his eye with her smile and he asked his friend if she could connect the two of them.
But his friend warned Perry that Nash might not have long to live; she was in Stage 4 of the cancer. He emailed her anyway, and the two became a couple. "I never felt like this before," he wrote. "I had finally found her."
Nash died of her cancer in December 2012. "She helped me in so many ways," wrote Perry.
"She was so strong, so courageous and we really loved each other so very much," he wrote. "I've been trying to grieve and not run from this loss so for the last 5 months that's what I've been doing along with recalling everything being in Love with Kellie taught me."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? A contractor at the National Security Agency who leaked details of top-secret U.S. surveillance programs dropped out of sight in Hong Kong on Monday, ahead of a likely push by the U.S. government to have him sent back to the United States to face charges.
Edward Snowden, 29, who provided the information for published reports last week that revealed the NSA?s broad monitoring of phone call and Internet data from large companies such as Google and Facebook, checked out of his Hong Kong hotel hours after going public in a video released on Sunday.
In Washington, several lawmakers called for the extradition and prosecution of the ex-CIA employee behind one of the most significant security leaks in U.S. history. Members of the U.S. Congress said they would be briefed on the topic on Tuesday; the U.S. Justice Department is in the initial stages of a criminal investigation.
?If anyone were to violate the law by leaking classified information outside the legal avenues, certainly that individual should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,? Eric Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House of Representatives, said on CBS?s ?This Morning.?
Snowden, who asked the Washington Post and Britain?s Guardian newspapers to identify him and his role, said he leaked the information because he believed the United States had built a vast and secret espionage machine to spy on Americans.
The former technical assistant at the CIA, who had been working at the NSA as an employee of contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, said he had become disenchanted with President Barack Obama. Snowden said that Obama had continued the overly intrusive surveillance policies of George W. Bush, Obama?s predecessor.
?I don?t want to live in a society that does these sort of things ? I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under,? Snowden told the Guardian, which published a video interview with him, dated June 6, on its website.
Snowden, who the Guardian said had been working at the NSA for four years as a contractor for outside companies, copied the secret documents at the NSA office in Hawaii three weeks ago and told his supervisor he needed ?a couple of weeks? off for epilepsy treatments, the paper said. He flew to Hong Kong on May 20.
Staff at a luxury hotel in Hong Kong told Reuters that Snowden had checked out at noon on Monday. Ewen MacAskill, a Guardian journalist, said that Snowden was still in Hong Kong.
?He didn?t have a plan. He thought out in great detail leaking the documents and then deciding rather than being anonymous, he?d go public. So he thought that out in great detail. But his plans after that have always been vague,? MacAskill said.
?A REAL BATTLE?
?I?d imagine there?s now going to be a real battle between Washington and Beijing and civil rights groups as to his future,? MacAskill said. ?He?d like to seek asylum in a friendly country but I?m not sure if that?s possible or not.?
The United States and Hong Kong signed an extradition treaty in 1996, a year before the former British colony was returned to China. It allows for the exchange of criminal suspects in a formal process that may also involve the Chinese government.
The treaty went into force in 1998 and provides that Hong Kong authorities can hold Snowden for 60 days, following a U.S. request that includes probable cause, while Washington prepares a formal extradition request.
Regina Ip, a Hong Kong lawmaker and former security secretary, said it would be wise for Snowden to leave Hong Kong.
?We do have bilateral agreements with the U.S. and we are duty-bound to comply with these agreements. Hong Kong is not a legal vacuum, as Mr. Snowden might have thought,? Ip said.
But Simon Young, a professor of law at the University of Hong Kong, said that going to the former British colony was probably a good decision because there are strong protections for people making asylum claims under its extradition laws.
?He?s come really at probably the best moment in time because our asylum laws are in a state of limbo,? Young said.
Snowden?s revelations launched a broad debate on privacy rights and the limits of security programs in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
Many members of Congress have expressed support for the surveillance program but raised questions about whether it should be more tightly supervised and scaled back.
?In my mind, things that may have been appropriate in the aftermath of 9/11 and in the weeks and months and even years after that, may no longer be appropriate today,? Republican Representative Luke Messer of Indiana said on MSNBC.
He said the leaks were obviously a violation of law.
?Our system of security can?t work if folks who have access to classified information are allowed willy-nilly on their own to decide what to leak, so the young man?s going to have to be prosecuted,? Messer said.
New Camden County Foreclosure,?just steps from the rivers and waterways.? A large brick ranch in St Mary?s Georgia.? St Mary?s is a small, quiet coastal town located right on the water.? It?s?an easy drive to Jacksonville, Savannah?or The Golden Isles.? This is a three bedroom, two bath home located in Plantation Oaks subdivision.? This home is located on a quiet street. It has a large living room with fireplace and access to screen porch, separate dining room, updated kitchen and laundry room and a?private? fenced backyard. ?All three bedrooms are a decent size and the master bedroom has its own private?bath. Let Chapman Hall Coastal be your one stop shop for all your Coastal Georgia foreclosures. Please call John to set up an appointment to view this home or to see a list of others.
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Public release date: 26-Jun-2013
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