eiffel balky: January 2013

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Expansion costs hit H&M earnings

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Hennes & Mauritz , the world's No.2 fashion retailer, posted an unexpected drop in quarterly earnings, hit by competition in tough European markets and the cost of its expansion drive to take on bigger rival Inditex.

The Swedish group does the bulk of its business in Europe, where the region's debt crisis and rising unemployment have dampened consumer spending.

At the same time, it has been making long-term investments in online shopping and new chains of stores, such as the recently-launched "& Other Stories," in a bid to catch up with the broader offering of Spanish rival Inditex , which runs the Zara chain and a string of other brands.

"These long-term investments have created cost increases and to a great extent have not yet generated any revenue," chief executive Karl-Johan Persson said on Wednesday.

"However, we consider these investments to be both necessary and wise as they aim to secure future expansion and profits and thereby further strengthen H&M's position," he added.

Pretax earnings in the September-November period fell to 6.6 billion Swedish crowns ($1.0 billion) from a year-earlier 6.8 billion, hit also by a strong crown. Analysts had on average forecast an unchanged profit.

WEAK SALES

H&M said a tough economic backdrop led to widespread price promotions and markdowns in the fashion industry, although its own level of markdowns in relation to sales was the same as in the fourth quarter of the year before.

Stocks were somewhat higher than planned at the end of the period, although the group said markdowns in the first quarter would also be around the same level as the year earlier.

Bernstein analysts said this would be a challenge, particularly given the likely disruption to sales from snow.

"These are disappointing results, as management continues to step up investment in both the product and longer term initiatives, yet sales performance has not rebounded," they said.

H&M predicted local-currency sales growth in January, the second month of its fiscal year, of 5 percent, the weakest figure since October, due to cold weather.

Its shares were down 2.8 percent to 228.5 crowns by 0945 GMT, within a European retail index <.sxrp> down 0.2 percent.

H&M, present in 48 markets, said it would open a net 325 stores this year, with most planned in China and the United States. It would also launch online sales in the United States.

It saw expansion opportunities in big European markets like Russia, Germany, Britain, Italy, Poland and France as well.

"For the medium term, they're trying to develop more brands, they're entering five new countries this year, they're laying down 12 percent more space ... So in terms of their own strategy, I actually think that they are sticking to it, and it makes long-term sense," said UBS analyst Adam Cochrane.

H&M said its gross profit margin, which disappointed in the third quarter, shrank to 61.6 percent from 61.9 percent, matching forecasts. It proposed an unchanged dividend, as expected, of 9.50 crowns per share.

($1 = 6.3815 Swedish crowns)

(Reporting by Anna Ringstrom. Editing by Patrick Lannin and Mark Potter)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/h-m-q4-pretax-lags-consensus-keep-store-072502345--finance.html

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Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Ex-Ill. Gov. Ryan released from halfway house

Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan arrives at a halfway house in Chicago Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013, after serving five-plus years in federal prison on corruption charges. The 78-year-old Ryan began serving his 6 1/2-year sentence in November 2007 in Oxford, Wis., and was released from another prison in Terra Haute, Ind., to enter the halfway house under a work-release program. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, center,is accompanied with his son George H. Ryan Jr., left, as he arrives at a halfway house in Chicago Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013, after serving five-plus years in federal prison on corruption charges. The 78-year-old Ryan began serving his 6 1/2-year sentence in November 2007 in Oxford, Wis., and was released from another prison in Terra Haute, Ind., to enter the halfway house under a work-release program. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, center, arrives at a halfway house in Chicago Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013, after serving five-plus years in federal prison on corruption charges. The 78-year-old Ryan began serving his 6 1/2-year sentence in November 2007 in Oxford, Wis., and was released from another prison in Terra Haute, Ind., to enter the halfway house under a work-release program. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

Former Illinois Gov. Jim Thompson, attorney for former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, speaks to the media after accompanying Ryan to a halfway house Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013, in Chicago, after Ryan served more than five years in federal prison on corruption charges. The 78-year-old Ryan began serving his 6 1/2-year sentence in November 2007 in Oxford, Wis., and was released from another in Terra Haute, Ind. to enter the halfway house under a work-release program. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

CHICAGO (AP) ? Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan was back at his longtime home on Wednesday following his pre-dawn release from a federal prison after serving more than five years for corruption.

He first reported to a halfway house in Chicago but in a development that took observers by surprise was allowed to go to his spacious home in Kankakee, where he'll be under home confinement for at least several weeks, his attorney Jim Thompson said.

Speaking from Ryan's living room, Thompson said Ryan was beaming and surrounded by his smiling grandchildren

"If you could see his and his grandkids' smiling faces," Thompson, himself a former governor, said by phone from Ryan's home. "He is surrounded by happy faces."

Thompson said officials decided Ryan didn't require the services halfway houses provide, which include ensuring ex-cons can use a checkbook.

Ryan will still be subject to strict rules, including prohibitions against speaking to the media or leaving the house. Thompson added that Ryan was granted retirement status by authorities, so he won't be required to find a job.

Ryan was sentenced to 6 ? years on Nov. 7, 2007, and his term officially ends July 4 after compiling 305 days credit for good conduct, said Bureau of Prisons spokesman Chris Burke.

Looking relaxed and thinner than before prison, Ryan walked past throngs of reporters into a Chicago halfway house earlier in the morning.

Ryan, 78, left the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., at around 1 a.m. on Wednesday ? five months before his prison term officially ended, having qualified for early release to the Salvation Army-run Freedom Center.

Wearing a gray business suit and tie, Ryan smiled faintly but didn't speak to reporters as he walked into the red-bricked facility on the city's West Side just before 7 a.m.

"Today is another step in a long journey for George Ryan," Thompson told reporters after Ryan went inside.

Thompson said later that authorities decided that Ryan did not need the services the facility requires, which including explaining how ex-cons can use a checkbook, he said.

Ryan was mostly quiet during the 200-mile drive from Indiana to Chicago, said Thompson, who accompanied him on the journey. They made a detour to Michigan Avenue to take in the Christmas lights still up along the city's iconic shopping street, he said.

"He's in decent spirits. It is such a stark change from penitentiary life," Thompson said. "He has to become accustomed again to being on the outside."

Ryan, a Republican, drew nationwide attention in 2003 when he deemed Illinois' capital punishment laws flawed and emptied death row. That reignited a nationwide debate and led the state to abolish its death penalty in 2011.

Some activists working to abolish the death penalty have suggested Ryan could speak nationwide on the issue.

His release means Illinois no longer has the dubious distinction of having two former governors behind bars simultaneously. Ryan's successor, Rod Blagojevich, is now Illinois' lone imprisoned governor. The Democrat is serving a 14-year term for corruption at a federal prison in Colorado.

A jury convicted Ryan in 2006 of racketeering, conspiracy, tax fraud and making false statements to the FBI. Jurors found that Ryan had steered state business to insiders as secretary of state and then as governor for vacations and gifts. He also was accused of stopping an investigation into secretary of state employees accepting bribes for truck driver's licenses.

Ryan's wife of 55 years died in 2011. Officials allowed him to leave prison to visit her when she was sick with cancer, but he wasn't allowed to attend her funeral. Ryan has suffered from his own health problems, including kidney disease.

For decades, the Salvation Army has run a community program where inmates live for a short time, take classes to learn basic skills and receive counseling, among other things.

___

Follow Michael Tarm at www.twitter.com/mtarm

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-01-30-Illinois%20Governor-Ryan's%20Release/id-b29e166f995748e3a534d4dd576a39f1

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U.N.'s Ban says aid response for Syria "very limited"

KUWAIT (Reuters) - The United Nations is receiving only limited support for its aid to millions of Syrians, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in published remarks, adding its humanitarian work needed "generous" help from a donor pledging conference on Wednesday.

The gathering in the Gulf Arab state of Kuwait will seek $1 billion of aid for Syria's neighbors sheltering 700,000 registered refugees, and another $500 million to bankroll humanitarian work for 4 million Syrians inside their country.

So far, the United Nations has received pledges covering just 18 percent of the target, unveiled last month as the scale of Syria's humanitarian crisis escalated sharply, and which aims to fund operations for the first half of this year.

Ban was quoted by the official Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) as saying what while the need for humanitarian aid was rising "the level of response the U.N. is receiving is very much limited."

"That is why I am appealing to the whole international community to render their generous support."

Some 4 million Syrians inside the country need food, shelter and other aid and more than 700,000 more have escaped to neighboring countries since the 22-month-old conflict began, according to the U.N.

KUNA reported Ban as saying that on a visit to refugee camps in Jordan and Turkey six weeks ago he heard stories of refugees who had fled Syria "and particularly stories from children, who were very much concerned about their own future."

"That really saddened and humbled me."

Robert Watkins, U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon, which has seen the biggest influx of refugees from the Syrian bloodshed, told Reuters that the United Nations had received promises of major donations at the Kuwait conference.

"We have every reason to be optimistic that there will a very good presence and new pledges that will be coming up at this conference," he said.

U.S. President Barack Obama announced an additional $155 million, bringing the total U.S. humanitarian aid to the Syrian crisis to some $365 million, the State Department said.

Watkins said the fact that the conference was being held in Kuwait could encourage other wealthy Gulf Arab states, who have led regional opposition to President Bashar al-Assad, to support the international aid effort.

In New York, U.N.-Arab League mediator Lakhdar Brahimi warned the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad may be able to cling to power for now but the country is "breaking up before everyone's eyes," diplomats told Reuters.

Brahimi suggested that attempts to end the 22-month-old conflict, which has claimed more than 60,000 lives according to U.N. figures, had not progressed in the last two months. He said it was up to the Security Council to end its impasse.

(Reporting by Sylvia Westall, Writing by William Maclean; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-n-ban-says-aid-response-syria-very-062658569.html

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Government mistrust deters older adults from HIV testing

Jan. 29, 2013 ? One out of every four people living with HIV/AIDS is 50 or older, yet these older individuals are far more likely to be diagnosed when they are already in the later stages of infection. Such late diagnoses put their health, and the health of others, at greater risk than would have been the case with earlier detection.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 43 percent of HIV-positive people between the ages of 50 and 55, and 51 percent of those 65 or older, develop full-blown AIDS within a year of their diagnosis, and these older adults account for 35 percent of all AIDS-related deaths. And since many of them are not aware that they have HIV, they could be unknowingly infecting others.

Various psychological barriers may be keeping this older at-risk population from getting tested. Among them are a general mistrust of the government -- for example, the belief that the government is run by a few big interests looking out for themselves -- and AIDS-related conspiracy theories, including, for example, the belief that the virus is human-made and was created to kill certain groups of people.

Now, a team of UCLA-led researchers has demonstrated that government mistrust and conspiracy fears are deeply ingrained in this vulnerable group and that these concerns often -- but in one surprising twist, not always -- deter these individuals from getting tested for HIV. The findings are published Jan. 29 in the peer-reviewed journal The Gerontologist.

"Our work suggests that general mistrust of the government may adversely impact peoples' willingness to get tested for HIV/AIDS," said Chandra Ford, an assistant professor of community health sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and the study's primary investigator. "HIV/AIDS is increasing among people 50 and older, but there's not a lot of attention being paid to the HIV-prevention needs of these folks. Older adults are more likely to be diagnosed only after they've been sick, and as a result, they have worse prognoses than younger HIV-positive people do.

"Also, the CDC recommends that anyone who's in a high-risk category should be tested every single year," she said. "These findings mean that the CDC recommendations are not being followed."

The researchers sought to test the association between mistrust of the government, belief in AIDS conspiracy theories and having been tested for HIV in the previous year. For the cross-sectional study, they worked with data from 226 participants ranging in age from 50 to 85. Participants were recruited from three types of public health venues that serve at-risk populations: STD clinics, needle-exchange sites and Latino health clinics.

Of the participants, 46.5 percent were Hispanic, 25.2 percent were non-Hispanic blacks, 18.1 percent were non-Hispanic whites and 10.2 percent were of other races or ethnicities. The data were collected between August 2006 and May 2007.

The researchers found that 72 percent of the participants did not trust the government, 30 percent reported a belief in AIDS conspiracy theories and 45 percent had not taken an HIV test in the prior 12 months. The more strongly participants mistrusted the government, the less likely they were to have been tested for HIV in the prior 12 months.

Several of the findings surprised the researchers -- for example, the fact that HIV testing rates among this population were not higher at the locations where the participants were recruited, given that these locations attract large numbers of people with HIV.

"This finding is concerning because the venues all provide HIV testing and care right there," Ford said.

And there was an even bigger, perhaps counterintuitive surprise. The more strongly participants believed in AIDS conspiracy theories, the more likely they were to have been tested in the previous 12 months.

"We believe they might be proactively testing because they believe it can help them avoid the threats to personal safety that are described in many AIDS conspiracies," Ford said. "For instance, if I hold these conspiracy beliefs and a doctor tells me I tested negative, I might get tested again just to confirm that the result really is negative."

By contrast, individuals who reported mistrusting the government may not have been tested because the venues where they were recruited were, in fact, government entities, Ford said.

The study has some weaknesses. For instance, the study design did not allow the researchers to determine whether the participants held their beliefs before or after being tested; thus, the researchers couldn't tell what prompted their mistrust of the government or conspiracy beliefs. Also, it's possible that the prevalence of these theories is higher in this group than it is in the general public and that some participants may have been afraid to tell the truth.

The next step in the research is to study other groups of older adults to determine if these views are more widely held than just among the at-risk population the researchers studied.

Steven P. Wallace, Sung-Jae Lee and William Cunningham, all of UCLA, and Peter A. Newman of the University of Toronto co-authored the study.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Health Sciences.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

C. L. Ford, S. P. Wallace, P. A. Newman, S.-J. Lee, W. E. Cunningham. Belief in AIDS-Related Conspiracy Theories and Mistrust in the Government: Relationship with HIV Testing Among At-Risk Older Adults. The Gerontologist, 2013; DOI: 10.1093/geront/gns192

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/5R2fZxkn8Ew/130129171343.htm

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People Don?t Take Smoke Breaks Anymore, They Take Facebook Breaks

People don't take smoke breaks anymore -- they take Facebook breaks." Now, there's a beauty that I heard this afternoon at the IBM Connect event here in Orlando. You can blame it on the digital natives -- the young ones who feed their activity streams to network and create their digital personas. For them, it's not so unusual. It actually makes a lot of sense considering how data is?changing?who we are and what we represent.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/DVVPIBHk86s/

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Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Boko Haram commander declares Nigeria cease-fire

A leader of the Islamist group Boko Haram announced a cease-fire, raising questions that the group may be split over whether to make peace.?

By Ibrahim Mshelizza and Tim Cocks,?Reuters / January 28, 2013

A girl kneels near the graves of victims of a suicide bomb attack at St. Theresa's Church in Madalla, on the outskirts of Nigeria's capital Abuja, in December 2012. Boko Haram has killed hundreds in its campaign to impose sharia law in northern Nigeria.

Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters/File

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A purported commander of Nigerian Islamist sect Boko Haram declared a unilateral cease-fire on Monday, raising fresh questions about possible rifts within the secretive militant movement as it was not clear if he was speaking for the group.

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Sheik Abu Mohammed Ibn Abdulazeez, a man local security sources say is a sect member, twice made statements last year saying Boko Haram is ready for peace talks with the government.

But the group, whose attacks have left hundreds dead since it launched an uprising to try to carve an Islamic state out of Nigeria in 2009, has continued its insurgency unabated. The latest statement is likely to be greeted with scepticism.

In the remarks in English sent to journalists in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, Boko Haram's headquarters, Abdulazeez said Boko Haram had declared "a ceasefire throughout the country with immediate effect ... following a series of meetings with government officials."

It added that he had "the consent and approval of our leader Abubakar Shekau and I call on all members to stop hostilities."

It is unclear if Abdulazeez really is speaking on behalf of Shekau ? who has not come out to confirm or denounce him ? or whether he represents a rival faction of the Islamist movement seen as the main security threat to Africa's top oil exporter.

The statement came through the usual channels Boko Haram have used to deliver messages; through the Borno state journalists' union. It was signed by Abdulazeez who also called to confirm it, union members said.

Shekau denied claims by the government that behind-the-scenes peace talks were being held in October last year, but he has remained silent since Abdulazeez made contact with press in November.

The timing of the alleged cease-fire is likely to be seen as odd given Nigeria's involvement in military efforts to dislodge Islamists in neighbouring Mali, with whom Boko Haram are known to have links. Nigeria's participation in Mali was expected to provoke a violent backlash from Boko Haram.

"We have adopted this measure as a result of the hardship women and children are subjected to, and I urge all members to abide by this directive," Abdulazeez's statement said.

"I urge law enforcement agencies to reciprocate this good gesture," it added.

There was no immediate comment from Nigerian security forces.

Northern Nigeria's conflict has killed around 3,000 people since late 2009, according to Human Rights Watch.

Even if Abdulazeez does not represent Shekau, his statement could add to evidence that military pressure has fragmented Boko Haram, which is now believed to consist of various splinter groups more or less extreme than Shekau's main faction, including ones who have trained with Al Qaeda's Saharan wing.

Gunmen killed 23 people in northern Nigeria in attacks that appeared to target gamblers and people selling "forbidden" meat that Islamist militants disapprove of.

On Sunday, gunmen killed eight in Borno state, an attack that could have been carried out by Islamists or criminal gangs taking advantage of growing lawlessness.

Abdulazeez's statement said any attacks from now on would be the work of "armed robbers and other criminals."

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/UlqNbl4bRJY/Boko-Haram-commander-declares-Nigeria-cease-fire

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Antigua to Reject Intellectual Property Rights of US Companies as ...

By Dennis Crouch

The Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda has won its case against the United States at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and is now authorized and moving forward with the granted sanction ? suspension of all American-owned intellectual property rights within the Antigua borders. This trade sanction comes as a response to the US campaign against off-shore on-line gambling. That campaign has decimated an Antiguan industry and was found to violate the US WTO trade obligations. Antigua has been negotiating with the US for the past decade on some mechanism to resolve the dispute.

In a press release, Hon. Carl Roberts High Commission from Antigua to the UK indicated the following: "For nearly a decade, Antigua has sought to resolve the dispute with the United States Government over the US failure to abide by American treaty obligations with regard to remote gaming." Colin Murdoch, Trade Ambassador for Antigua goes on: "This decision [to suspend US IP rights] did not come easily. After countless proposals from our government have been more or less ignored by the Office of the USTR - numerous decisions by the WTO declaring the United States Government's position illegal - and failure of the United States Government to provide meaningful proposals to end the dispute, the WTO provides this remedy not to encourage illicit behavior by nations; but rather to provide them with a way to secure their legal rights as sovereign nations."

At this point, the Antiguan government has not indicated the exact date when suspension will begin or whether the suspension will apply to both IP procurement and enforcement. About 10 patent applications were filed in Antigua in both 2010 and 2011.

The Land of 365 Beaches may soon become the hot site for unlicensed but legal copyright streaming. Companies may want to proactively register their .AG domain as well.

Source: http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2013/01/antigua-to-reject-us-intellectual-property-rights-as-wto-authorized-trade-sanction-for-killing-offshore-online-gambling.html

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Monday, January 28, 2013

crush christianity: Back Pain | latest news on : business, health and ...

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Source: http://crush-christianity.blogspot.com/2013/01/back-pain-latest-news-on-business.html

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Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat from Iowa, will not seek reelection

Tom Harkin, considered one of the most liberal Democratic senators, announced Saturday, he will not seek reelection in 2014. Harkin's departure could leave Democrats vulnerable in Iowa. ?

By Reuters / January 26, 2013

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. talks about the fiscal cliff with reporters, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 28. On Saturday, Harkin announced he will not run for reelection in 2014.

Susan Walsh/AP

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Democratic U.S. Senator Tom?Harkin?of?Iowa?said on Saturday he will not seek re-election in 2014, saying he felt that after 40 years in?Congress, it will be "somebody else's turn."

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Harkin, 73, is one of the most liberal senators and has focused much of his long congressional career on farm policy and legislation aiding people with disabilities.

Iowa, site of the early presidential caucuses, is considered a political swing state, putting Democrats' long-held?Senate?seat at risk. Republican?Charles Grassley?is?Iowa's other U.S. senator.

"I don't by any means plan to retire completely from public life at the end of this?Congress,"?Harkin?said in a statement. "But I am going to make way for someone new in this?Senate?seat. I think that is right not just for me, but for?Iowa, as well."

In his remaining two years in office,?Harkin?said he will focus on implementing President?Barack Obama's healthcare reforms, expanding job opportunities for people with disabilities and expanding access to education.

Harkin?was first elected to the?House of Representatives?in 1974 and the?Senate?in 1984.

"When the current?Congress?is over, I will have served in the?United States?House of Representatives?and the U.S.Senate?for a total of 40 years. After 40 years, I just feel it's somebody else's turn," he said.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/RRFF-aW3hXc/Senator-Tom-Harkin-Democrat-from-Iowa-will-not-seek-reelection

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Injecting botox into stomach does not promote weight loss

Jan. 28, 2013 ? Gastric injections of botulinum toxin A (BTA) can delay gastric emptying but do not make obese individuals feel more full, alter their eating behaviors, or cause them to lose weight, according to the February issue of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

In attempts to help people lose weight, researchers have tested ways to slow gastric emptying (movement of food from the stomach to the small intestine) and increase satiation (feeling full). Gastric injections of BTA have been reported to delay gastric emptying, increase satiation, and reduce body weight, but with inconsistent results.

Botulinum toxin -- a protein and neurotoxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum -- reduces muscle activity by blocking the release of acetylcholine from neurons.

Mark Topazian et al. compared the effects of injecting different doses of BTA into the stomachs of 60 individuals with mild-to-moderate obesity.

Study participants were each given 1 injection of BTA (100, 300, or 500 U), or placebo, in the gastric antral muscularis propria, guided by endoscopic ultrasound. Gastric emptying of solids was measured by scintigraphy. Topazian et al. also measured participants' body weights every 2 weeks, along with satiation (based on maximum tolerated volume in a caloric liquid drink test), calorie intake (based on a questionnaire), gastrointestinal symptoms, and psychological aspects of eating.

Two weeks after the injections, the mean half-time for gastric emptying of solids increased by 0.8, 14, 24, and 14 minutes among subjects given placebo, 100, 300, or 500 U BTA, respectively.

Sixteen weeks after the injections, mean body weights were reduced by 2.2, 0.2, 2.3, and 3.0 kg in these groups, respectively -- not a statistically significant difference.

Nor were there significant differences among groups in satiation volume, caloric intake, gastrointestinal symptoms, or psychological aspects of eating among groups.

So, although stomach injection of BTA slows gastric emptying, it does not increase the feeling of fullness or lead to loss of body weight. The authors say is unlikely that higher doses of BTA than those tested would induce additional delays in gastric emptying or weight loss.

Previous studies have associated gastrointestinal symptoms with eating behaviors. Topazian et al. did observe that a higher maximum tolerated volume, a physiological measure of satiation, correlated with less control over eating. They propose that educating obese patients about physiological differences in stomach volume might help them improve their ability to control how much they eat.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Gastroenterological Association.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

Mark Topazian, Michael Camilleri, Felicity T. Enders, Jonathan E. Clain, Ferga C. Gleeson, Michael J. Levy, Elizabeth Rajan, Vandana Nehra, Ross A. Dierkhising, Maria L. Collazo?Clavell, Nicholas J. Talley, Matthew M. Clark. Gastric Antral Injections of Botulinum Toxin Delay Gastric Emptying but Do Not Reduce Body Weight. Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, 2013; 11 (2): 145 DOI: 10.1016/j.cgh.2012.09.029

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/fN4hrzaVQog/130128163405.htm

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Sunday, January 27, 2013

Teresa Giudice: I Give It to My Husband Every Night!

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/01/teresa-giudice-i-give-it-to-my-husband-every-night/

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Sundance: Filmmaker Pelosi shoots first, asks permission later | The ...

Courtesy | HBO Former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey is the subject of the documentary "Fall to Grace."

In "Fall to Grace," filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi profiles former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey, who resigned in 2004 after declaring himself a "gay American."

The short film ? screening in Sundance?s Documentary Shorts Program II and airing on HBO in March ? tells how McGreevey left politics behind to do good works. After resigning, he attends divinity school with a goal of becoming an Episcopal priest while he spends time working with female inmates at a New Jersey correctional facility.

?Fall to Grace?

The last screening of Alexandra Pelosi?s short documentary about former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey will be Saturday, Jan. 26, at 8:30 p.m. at the Holiday Village Cinema 1, Park City. It?s part of the Documentary Shorts Program II.

"Maybe it?s just because I?ve been around politicians all my life and I?m fascinated by the life cycle of the politician," said Pelosi, the daughter of U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. "Jim doesn?t have anything nice to say about politicians. He?s a recovering politician."

"Fall to Grace" isn?t so much about politics or even a whitewashed profile of McGreevey, but instead unfolds a story of faith and redemption.

Pelosi said she knows Sundance audiences might be suspicious of McGreevey?s motives. "I have all these snarky, New York media-type friends ? the kind that work at HBO ? who say things like, ?Well, why would he do this?? And he?s doing something. Which is more than most people are doing."

The backstory of her short film is worth a documentary all by itself. Pelosi?s work certainly fits in the model of a shoestring Sundance indie film. Her biggest expense during filming was the $1.75 train fare from her apartment in New Jersey to meetings with McGreevey at the correctional facility.

"If you don?t have a camera crew, it costs nothing," Pelosi said. "It was a zero-expense project. It was just getting on the train and going to the jail."

When she needed to hire an editor, she sought support from HBO. Despite her track record of making nearly 10 HBO documentaries during the past decade by herself, officials weren?t convinced a McGreevey documentary was a good idea before they saw her footage.

"When I looked at just a little bit of it, I immediately endorsed it," said Sheila Nevins, the president of HBO documentaries. "She?s a filmmaker sprite, and she?s a very fine documentary filmmaker."

Added Lisa Heller, HBO?s vice president of documentaries: "She?s a one-woman show. I mean, we have people who go with big crews and a lot of support. She?s out there on her own, and it is shocking how high quality her material is when it comes back."

story continues below

That?s Pelosi?s style, to shoot first and ask permission later. "People still don?t take me seriously," she said. "The camera?s rolling in their face and they still don?t realize it?s going to end up on HBO."

She?s also underestimated because of her shoestring filming methods. "When [subjects] see an old mom with a camcorder, they?re not intimidated or afraid," said the 42-year-old Pelosi. "When my kids have events at their schools, the parents have nicer cameras than I shoot my documentaries with. So if someone sees me filming, they don?t think, ?There?s a documentary crew. What are they doing? Did they get permission to be here???"

She started her filmmaking career on advice from Karl Rove, the former aide to President George W. Bush. Working as an NBC News producer during the 2000 presidential campaign, the daughter of the first female speaker of the House would often whip out a small, hand-held camera.

"Karl Rove would walk by and see me filming, and he?d say, ?Oh, I get it. It?s better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission,??" Pelosi said. "And then I would just keep going until someone would tell me to turn it off. And, ironically, no one ever told me to turn it off."

The footage from the 2000 campaign became her first documentary, "Journeys with George," which she submitted to Sundance. When it wasn?t accepted, "That broke me. I was like, ?OK, I?m not going to be a filmmaker.??"

The irony was that Bush "used to say to me, ?We?re going to go to Sundance!??" It became a refrain, with Bush comparing Pelosi to filmmaker Michael Moore. "But he used to call me Roger Moore because he would mix it up," Pelosi said. "Then I didn?t get in, and that was sort of crushing. After that, I never applied again."

Until this year, when Pelosi submitted "Fall to Grace" to Sundance the same way every other filmmaker does ? sent off the film and hoped for the best. "People assume because of my last name I know people," she said. "I don?t know anybody. I don?t even know who to call."

Pelosi is thrilled the TV network is paying her way to the festival. "I couldn?t even pay for the airfare to go to Sundance," she said. "And do you know how much the hotels cost?"

Plus there?s the expense of finding baby sitters for her 5- and 6-year-old sons. "I can?t be gone for a week," she said. "I don?t have a nanny. I have to raise my own kids. They?re already mad I?m going to Sundance. I?m, like, ?You don?t understand. I?ve worked my whole life to get to Sundance.? It was something I always dreamed of. And here I am reborn at the age of 42.

"And my kids are, like, ?Who?s going to pick us up from school on Monday???"

spierce@sltrib.com

Source: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/entertainment2/55612623-223/pelosi-documentary-mcgreevey-sundance.html.csp

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Saturday, January 26, 2013

Towns' Next Hit From Hurricane Is to Tax Revenue

New York City and county governments in New York are far less reliant on property taxes than localities, so they are expected to have an easier time weathering a drop in the value of the tax base caused by storm damage. The city, for example, has its own income and business taxes.

What's more, the city and county governments in both states have a much broader property tax base than small localities.

The $50.7 billion Hurricane Sandy relief bill approved this month by the House of Representatives provides up to $300 million in low-interest loans for localities facing shortfalls. The Senate has supported a similar provision in its own relief package.

But some local officials said such financing was not nearly enough. States themselves have not yet sent aid, and senior state officials said they were not inclined to do so until federal money was exhausted.

"It's a pretty inescapable conclusion that there will be an impact on the tax base," said Michael Drewniak, chief spokesman for Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.

"In many instances, we had homes completely wiped out or severely damaged to the point they were rendered uninhabitable," Mr. Drewniak said. "That left behind rebuildable land but, in the meantime, no 'improvements' to tax. In other cases, people may find it cost prohibitive to rebuild at all, depending on their individual circumstances."

It could be a year or two before the aftereffects are fully understood, given that localities will have to assess damaged properties before lowering property taxes on them.

That process, in fact, could be contentious. Some localities take as long as two years to incorporate revised assessments into taxpayers' bills. In the meantime, homeowners may balk at paying the higher tax when their properties are seriously damaged or destroyed.

But legally, they must pay every penny until the property has been reassessed.

Corinne DiSomma, the tax receiver for Babylon, N.Y., was duty-bound last month to send out thousands of property tax bills ? her annual "Christmas cards," as friends tease. They were based on July 1 values, no matter that scores of homes, in addition to her own, were heavily damaged in the storm.

Dan Tergesen's home burned down in Babylon when the storm kept firefighters from reaching it in time. Local officials, he said, have since advised him that any reduction of his tax bill could be slow in coming, and "of course, they want me to rebuild my house as quickly as possible, so I am back on the tax rolls."

Localities are also facing the prospect that homeowners will demand that property taxes be cut because of perceived decreases in the value of land beneath their homes.

Assessors rarely mark down land. But some homeowners may argue that their beachfront properties are worth less because buyers, newly sensitive to extreme weather, will avoid areas seen as vulnerable.

"We feel our market value will go down significantly, not just on the house but also the land," said Kathy Barisciano, the president of the Ortley Beach Voters and Taxpayers Association, in Toms River. Ms. Barisciano said she has been telling town officials that they must take into consideration the fact that buyers may avoid Ortley Beach because of uncertainty over whether its battered beaches will be replenished and fortified against future storms.

Still, some officials said they were trying to find a silver lining.

In the Village of Mastic Beach, a newly incorporated patch of Long Island with 7,500 pieces of property, damage was reported at 400 homes.

"Definitely, it's going to hurt the tax base of the village," Mayor Bill Biondi said. "We're a fairly new village, and in the two years, we've been hit with two hurricanes."

But Mr. Biondi said he was hopeful that property tax revenues would rise again once people rebuilt bigger, sturdier homes. He noted that 100 homes in the flood zone were going up on pilings.

"We may get hit the first year," he said, "and then I'm really hoping to bounce back bigger and better."

?Griff Palmer contributed reporting.

Source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100407717

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Y Combinator Backs Its First Non-Profit, Watsi; Paul Graham Says ...

Back in August, we wrote about the launch of a startup non-profit organization called Watsi, which offers anyone and everyone the opportunity to fund ?low-cost, high impact treatment? for those who lack access to necessary care. Again, considering the fact that there are more than one billion people who are unable to afford adequate medical services (or don?t have access to them), Watsi?s mission has enormous (global) implications. And, honestly, it?s a pleasure to see a startup tackling such a big problem, in spite of the fact that it?s inherently complex, thorny and nearly impossible to solve.

Today, we?ve learned that Watsi also caught the attention of Paul Graham and the Y Combinator crew. In a post published this morning, the YC co-founder says that he (like us) discovered Chase Adams? venture as part of a discussion on Hacker News. ?After about 30 seconds of looking at the site,? he says, the ?revolutionary? potential became clear. As a result, Watsi is officially the first non-profit that Y Combinator has funded and accelerated to date as part of YC?s 2012/13 program.

For those unfamiliar, Watsi is crowdfunding for a good cause, a Kickstarter for funding quality medical care in third-world countries ? applying that familiar model to global healthcare. The platform allows donors to be able to make direct, personal connections with their beneficiaries (donating as little as $5 or as much as they want) in an attempt to put a face on what can be very inhuman and impersonal statistics around global healthcare (or the lack thereof).

Screen shot 2013-01-25 at 1.56.42 PM

Like Kickstarter?s businesses, each person has his or her own profile which includes pictures and a synopsis of the person, describes their condition, what they need, where they?re from and so on. Again, while there have been scams that have operated on similar premises before, Watsi is the real deal and isn?t just out to make a buck.

Founder Chase Adam tells us that Watsi is hoping to fight the traditionally high costs of healthcare by working with doctors, providers and payors (when they exist) to donate their time, research, materials and equipment to reduce overhead. In turn, because the procedures sought by Watsi campaigns take place abroad, they tend not to have the same cost one would find in the U.S., and thus, they don?t have to raise the same amount.

What?s more, as Graham describes in his post, peer-to-peer fundraising channels have the tendency to be disruptive when introduced to unfamiliar spaces and markets. Although it takes work and the willingness to set the bar high (in spite of regulatory friction, legacy infrastructure, distribution, pay channels, etc), it also can come with a ?much higher level of transparency.?

Watsi offers 100 percent of the donations it collects from the crowd to the person in need (specifically to fund their medical treatments), thanks in part to Watsi.org being funded separately. Graham also says that the startup is paying ?all their operational costs from their own funding, and none from your donations,? and in turn, even stomach credit card processing fees. A noble gesture in its own right.

That, in practice means, that more of your money goes to people in need, not to funding the administrative costs of the company itself, or towards grabby hands in between. It?s the same theory behind Crowdtilt?s (another YC company) move to support non-profit organizations (and tax-deductible donations) on its crowdfunding platform.

It?s great to see the Y Combinator partners so excited about giving back. ?I?ve never been so excited about anything we?ve funded,? Graham concludes. And Harj Taggar just had this to say, via tweet:

What?s more, since we last covered Watsi in August, we?ve learned that the company has been building some solid early traction. The platform has funded 75 treatments thus far, raised about $60,000 for patients, received 1,300 donations and is now operating in eight countries. In all, Adams tells us that 20 percent have donors have already returned to donate for a second time and 30 percent of giving is coming from outside the U.S. and that Watsi is currently seeing about 28 percent average week-over-week growth. Pretty impressive for five months of work. Stay tuned for more.

Go check out Watsi here, in PG?s post here and find a more extensive background in our prior coverage here.

Screen shot 2013-01-25 at 1.19.13 PM

Y Combinator is a venture fund which focuses on seed investments to startup companies. It offers financing as well as business consulting along with other opportunities to 2-4 person companies looking to take an idea to a product. Y Combinator looks for companies with ?good? ideas over companies with experience and a business model. The company made its first investments in Summer 2005. Y Combinator selects companies to finance and consult with twice a year. They are located in...

? Learn more

Watsi is an online peer-to-peer crowdfunding platform that allows users to fund life-changing medical treatments for underserved people in developing countries. Watsi is a U.S. 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

? Learn more

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/25/y-combinator-backs-its-first-non-profit-watsi-paul-graham-says-hes-never-been-so-excited-to-invest/

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Video shows plane struck by lightning, passengers? ho-hum reactions

What's scarier?being in an airplane struck by lightning or being in an airplane stuck by lightning and finding yourself surrounded by people who aren't freaking out?

[Related: Dangerous airplane stunt caught on tape]

We tend to go with the latter, and we cite the above video as proof. The U.K.'s Telegraph reports that a passenger named Bertan Atay recorded a short clip of the passengers aboard his Turkish Airline flight after an engine caught fire. The Telegraph says the "video captures the panic and confusion" of the moment, but we'd have to disagree. Everyone appears oddly calm, like the site of an engine fire wasn't cause for concern.

[Related: Airplane's parachute credited with saving three lives]

The passengers do allow themselves to murmur a bit once the lights go out, but that's about as panicked as they seem to get. And, fortunately, everything turned out OK. The pilot declared an emergency and brought the plane down to safety. No one was hurt.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/video-shows-plane-struck-lightning-passengers-ho-hum-231546799.html

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Some People Are Paying $125 to Downgrade From Windows 8 to Windows 7

We think there's a lot to love about Windows 8, but not everybody feels that way. Some people hate it. Luckily, this computer store is offering a service to help the clueless users who want nothing more than to go back to Windows 7. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/1VGLTNoittk/finally-a-downgrade-service-for-people-who-hate-windows-8

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Friday, January 25, 2013

Respect, Love & Happiness For All Members Of Your Family : The ...

Posted by admin on Friday, January 25, 2013

I am very lucky to have two amazing dogs at home. Don?t get me wrong they do have their moments ? Charlotte eats poop (the topic of our next Wellness Wednesday post) and Tega? not much to complain about she?s just a big cat trapped in the body of a Ridgeback. Bringing a baby home was never a concern of mine. Well, babies quickly grow into toddlers and this may get me into some trouble here but I am about to compare toddlers to puppies, after all this is my first toddler.

Puppy training is a matter of equipping the pup with the skills he or she needs to function successfully in life situations. We know it?s important to teach our dogs how to behave around children, this part of puppy training. It?s equally if not more important to teach our children how to behave around dogs.

Just like puppies, toddlers need to learn what is acceptable behaviour and what isn?t. This is especially important when it comes to interacting with their 4 legged friends or as it is in my household, 4 legged siblings.?Dogs are part of the family and as such they deserve the same respect we show to one another.

Learning how to respectfully treat an animal should be a part of all toddler ?training? not just those with a dog at home. ?Here is a cute reminder of how to treat our friends and family members.

DON?T STEAL TOYS

RESPECT MEAL TIME

DON?T HANDLE ROUGHLY

RESPECT PERSONAL SPACE

HUGGING IS NOT A LOVING GESTURE IN DOG LANGUAGE

ENCOURAGE GENTLE AND CALM PETTING

OPEN HAND REWARD FOR CALM, POLITE BEHAVIOUR

ONCE EVERYONE UNDERSTANDS HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY INTERACT ENCOURAGE APPROPRIATE PLAY

Larayna and I often play hide and seek with Tega and Charlotte, it?s super fun!

Give it a try:

First have your toddler (with your assistance) put the dog in a sit/stay.

Then with a treat in your hand go hide, try not to take too long.

Yell out ?find us? when you are ready. The dogs will come racing to find you.

Once you are found have your toddler ask the dog to sit then offer the treat with an open hand.

It?s a fun game to play inside during these very cold days!

Enjoy more respect, love and happiness in your mulit-species household.

If you are looking for a more elaborate version of this post check out Animal Behaviorist Dr. Sophia Yin?s website.

http://drsophiayin.com

photo credit to the wide world of the internet.

Source: http://thebonehouse.ca/index.php/2013/01/respect-love-happiness-for-all-members-of-your-family/

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Notre Dame's Te'o says had no part in forming hoax

Jan 24 (Reuters) - Notre Dame football player Manti Te'o said he was the victim of an elaborate online hoax and denied in an interview broadcast on Thursday having had any part in the construction of the dramatic story of his dying girlfriend.

"No, I did not," Te'o said in the interview with Katie Couric broadcast on the daytime talk show "Katie." "I think what people don't realize is that the same day that everybody else found out about this situation, I found out."

The reported deaths of Te'o's grandmother and purported girlfriend, both on Sept. 12, and his response to the tragedies, were often repeated stories during Notre Dame's bid for a national championship last season. His grandmother did die that day.

Te'o, who was a finalist for college football's highest individual honor for helping drive Notre Dame to an undefeated regular season, admitted he maintained the public deception after he learned the truth that she had never existed, but he did not do so for personal gain.

Couric asked Te'o to respond to several theories people have raised since the hoax was revealed, including that he might be gay and created the relationship to hide his sexual orientation.

"No, far from it," Te'o said when asked by Couric if he were gay. "Far from that."

Te'o sat with his hands often clasped and responded in a soft tone to Couric's questions, telling her he did not know if the Lennay Kekua story had supported his Heisman trophy candidacy.

It was his first on-camera interview since sports blog Deadspin.com broke the story on Jan. 16 that Kekua did not exist. Couric also interviewed his parents, Brian and Ottilia Te'o, who defended their son.

Notre Dame, one of the most powerful institutions in U.S. collegiate athletics, held a news conference within hours of the Deadspin.com story to say that Te'o had been duped.

Te'o had told sports network ESPN in an off-camera interview on Friday that an acquaintance, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, had told him he was behind the hoax.

CONFESSED HOAX

Te'o said in the interview with Couric that Tuiasosopo, who he had spoken to twice before and had believed was Kekua's cousin, confessed the hoax to him on Jan. 16.

Te'o said he received a telephone call from the person claiming to be Kekua on Dec. 6 - two days before the Heisman presentation - and he wasn't really certain she never existed until Tuiasosopo's confession to him.

"My whole reality was she was dead, and now all of the sudden she's alive. At that time I didn't know that it was just somebody's prank."

He went along with the Kekua story the day of the Heisman presentation, though he knew at a minimum that she was alive, and did not tell his parents until Christmas, he said.

"Part of me was saying that if you say she is alive what would everybody think? What are you going to tell everybody who follows you, who you inspire? What are you going to say? At that time, on Dec. 8, two days after I just found out she was alive, as a 21-year-old, I wasn't ready for that."

Te'o said he "wasn't forthcoming" about the extent of his relationship with Kekua, that they had never met in person, but reporters did not ask him directly if they had met in person.

He said he was most sorry for having told his father he had seen Kekua in person when he was in Hawaii, a story that his father repeated to media when asked.

When asked why he wouldn't simply want a girlfriend he could spend time with on campus, Te'o said he was drawn to Kekua because her background appeared similar to his own.

"What I went through was real," Te'o said. "The feelings, the pain, the sorrow, that was all real. That is something I can't fake."

Te'o said he did not know how the hoax would affect his position in the National Football League draft.

"As far as my draft status, I hope and pray that good happens obviously, but as long as my family is OK, I can live with whatever happens," he said. (Reporting by David Bailey; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Tim Dobbyn)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/notre-dames-teo-says-had-no-part-forming-001009213--nfl.html

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Thursday, January 24, 2013

Cosmic Ray Hunting Balloon Sets Record for Longest Flight

It's tough to be a balloon over Antarctica. Most don't last more than a few weeks, but the Super-TIGER cosmic ray detector has been floating over the South Pole for 46 days and counting.

The Super-TIGER mission officially shattered the record for longest-running balloon-borne experiment in Antarctica on Saturday (Jan. 19), scientists said. The project launched from the southernmost continent's Ross Ice Shelf on Dec. 9, and has already surpassed the previous record of 42 days, set by another cosmic ray detector, Cream I, which flew in the winter of 2004 to 2005.

"At 42 days of flight Super-TIGER is now the longest scientific balloon mission! We have over 50 million events!" mission scientists wrote on the project's Facebook page Jan. 19. "Records are made to be broken!"

Before Super-TIGER's launch, experiment principal investigator W. Robert Binns, a physicist at Washington University in St. Louis, said "he would be deliriously happy if the balloon carrying the cosmic ray detector stayed up 30 days," according to a Washington University statement. [Extreme Living: Scientists at the End of the Earth]

Super-TIGER has circled the South Pole two and a half times, floating at a height of about 130,000 feet (40,000 meters), which is roughly three or four times higher than passenger jets fly.

From its high-up perch, the balloon-borne instrument can catch cosmic rays (charged particles from deep space) which are typically blocked from reaching the ground by Earth's atmosphere.

And lifting off from Antarctica is a boon, because the wind over the South Pole, called the polar vortex, tends to bring balloons back around in a circle to where they started, making them easy to retrieve after they've come back to the ground. Furthermore, the sun never sets during Antarctic summer, which helps balloons stay aloft.

"If you fly from northern Canada as we used to do, the helium in the balloon cools at night and the balloon starts to descend," Binns said in a statement. "The only way you can keep it up there is by dropping about 100 pounds of ballast. So because of the day/night cycle, flights are limited to about 40 hours, or two days. In Antarctica you can stay up much longer because you don?t have that problem."

But while Antarctica is perfect for balloons, it's less than ideal for humans. A day when the wind chill is above minus 75 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 59 degrees Celsius) is considered pleasant.

"Wednesday we had great weather here in McMurdo ? just about freezing," team member Ryan Murphy wrote today (Jan. 23) on his blog, Super-TIGER on the Ice.

However, the close-knit group of scientists who stay at McMurdo Station, the home base for U.S. research in Antarctica, find ways to amuse themselves. The scientists have regular Wednesday night soccer games, Murphy wrote, and the Super-TIGER team even worked with researchers back at Washington University to photograph a "trophy" to commemorate their record-setting flight.

"Through the Photoshop skills of the team back at Wash U, we now have a picture of an awesome real-looking trophy for the longest Antarctic balloon flight," Murphy wrote of a bowling trophy made to look like an official NASA commemoration of Super-TIGER's achievement. "This trophy does not exist. But I kind of wish it did."

Super-TIGER isn't the only balloon-borne experiment launched this season from the South Pole. The Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST) experiment launched Dec. 25 to study star formation in the Milky Way, while the EBEX telescope took flight on Dec. 19 to survey the cosmic microwave background radiation left over from the Big Bang.

Follow Clara Moskowitz on Twitter?@ClaraMoskowitz?or SPACE.com?@Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook?&?Google+.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cosmic-ray-hunting-balloon-sets-record-longest-flight-125030186.html

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Love triumphs over hate to make exotic new compound: Compound could be useful in batteries, semiconductors, memory devices

Jan. 24, 2013 ? Northwestern University graduate student Jonathan Barnes had a hunch for creating an exotic new chemical compound, and his idea that the force of love is stronger than hate proved correct. He and his colleagues are the first to permanently interlock two identical tetracationic rings that normally are repelled by each other. Many experts had said it couldn't be done.

On the surface, the rings hate each other because each carries four positive charges (making them tetracationic). But Barnes discovered by introducing radicals (unpaired electrons) onto the scene, the researchers could create a love-hate relationship in which love triumphs.

Unpaired electrons want to pair up and be stable, and it turns out the attraction of one ring's single electrons to the other ring's single electrons is stronger than the repelling forces.

The process links the rings not by a chemical bond but by a mechanical bond, which, once in place, cannot easily be torn asunder.

The study detailing this new class of stable organic radicals will be published Jan. 25 by the journal Science.

"It's not that people have tried and failed to put these two rings together -- they just didn't think it was possible," said Sir Fraser Stoddart, a senior author of the paper. "Now this molecule has been made. I cannot overemphasize Jonathan's achievement -- it is really outside the box. Now we are excited to see where this new chemistry leads us."

Sir Fraser is the Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern. In the late 1980s, he was one of the early pioneers to introduce an additional type of bond, the mechanical bond, into chemical compounds.

The new Northwestern compound has attractive electronic characteristics and can be made quickly and inexpensively. Down the road, it may be possible to expand this first linked pair into a longer chain-like polymer where this methodology could be useful in new technologies for batteries, semiconductors and electronic memory devices.

Driven by curiosity, Barnes only began to look at the radical chemistry of the ring cyclobis (paraquat-p-phenylene) two years ago, nearly 25 years after the ring was first made.

"I wondered what would happen if we took it all the way to the max," said Barnes, the paper's first author and a member of Stoddart's group. "Can we take two of these rings, each with four positive charges, and make them live together?"

The rings repel each other like the positive poles of two magnets. Barnes saw an opportunity where he thought he could tweak the chemistry by using radicals to overcome the hate between the two rings.

"We made these rings communicate and love each other under certain conditions, and once they were mechanically interlocked, the bond could not be broken," Barnes said.

Barnes' first strategy -- adding electrons to temporarily reduce the charge and bring the two rings together -- worked the first time he tried it. He, Stoddart and their colleagues started with a full ring and a half ring that they then closed up around the first ring (using some simple chemistry), creating the mechanical bond.

When the compound is oxidized and electrons lost, the strong positive forces come roaring back -- "It's hate on all the time," Barnes said -- but then it is too late for the rings to be parted. "That's the beauty of this system," he added.

Most organic radicals possess short lifetimes, but this unusual radical compound is stable in air and water. The compound tucks the electrons away inside the structure so they can't react with anything in the environment. The tight mechanical bond endures despite the unfavorable electrostatic interactions.

The two interlocked rings house an immense amount of charge in a mere cubic nanometer of space. The compound, a homo[2]catenane, can adopt one of six oxidation states and can accept up to eight electrons in total.

"Anything that accepts this many electrons has possibilities for batteries," Barnes said.

"Applications beckon," Stoddart agreed. "Now we need to spend more time with materials scientists and people who make devices to see how this amazing compound can be used."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Northwestern University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

J. C. Barnes, A. C. Fahrenbach, D. Cao, S. M. Dyar, M. Frasconi, M. A. Giesener, D. Benitez, E. Tkatchouk, O. Chernyashevskyy, W. H. Shin, H. Li, S. Sampath, C. L. Stern, A. A. Sarjeant, K. J. Hartlieb, Z. Liu, R. Carmieli, Y. Y. Botros, J. W. Choi, A. M. Z. Slawin, J. B. Ketterson, M. R. Wasielewski, W. A. Goddard, J. F. Stoddart. A Radically Configurable Six-State Compound. Science, 2013; 339 (6118): 429 DOI: 10.1126/science.1228429

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/matter_energy/technology/~3/XJ_pqCmMTeI/130124150756.htm

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