LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - "Casino Royale" director Martin Campbell is taking on another intrigue-filled project, this time with ABC.
The network has ordered a pilot for the drama "Reckless," which Campbell, left, will executive produce.
The pilot involves David, a resourceful problem-solver whose wife is unjustly imprisoned during a political uprising overseas. Desperately to rescue her, he tries every legal option, but after being stymied by the U.S. government in the name of diplomacy, David moves outside of the law -- and enters "a world of political intrigue, dangerous alliances and high emotional stakes."
Chris Black ("Star Trek: Enterprise") is writing the ABC Studios project.
ABC has also ordered a pilot for the dramedy "Murder in Manhattan." Written by Maria Maggenti ("Monte Carlo"), the hour-long project follows a mother and daughter who team up as amateur sleuths in New York City.
Jan. 29, 2013 ? Women with harmful mutations in the BRCA gene, which put them at higher risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer, tend to undergo menopause significantly sooner than other women, allowing them an even briefer reproductive window and possibly a higher risk of infertility, according to a study led by researchers at UC San Francisco.
Moreover, the study showed that carriers of the mutation who are heavy smokers enter menopause at an even earlier age than non-smoking women with the mutation.
While the authors note that further research is needed, given the size and demographics of the study, women with the abnormal gene mutation should consider earlier childbearing, and their doctors should encourage them to initiate fertility counseling along with other medical treatments, the scientists said.
The study will be published online in Cancer on January 29, 2013.
This is the first controlled study to explore the association between BRCA1 and BRCA 2 and the age at onset of menopause, the authors said.
"Our findings show that mutation of these genes has been linked to early menopause, which may lead to a higher incidence of infertility,'' said senior author Mitchell Rosen, MD, director of the UCSF Fertility Preservation Center and associate professor in the UCSF Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences. "This can add to the significant psychological implications of being a BRCA1/2 carrier, and will likely have an impact on reproductive decision-making,'' Rosen said.
Mutations in either of the genes BRCA 1 or BRCA 2 can produce a hereditary, lifetime risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer. Some women decide to reduce their risk by undergoing prophylactic surgery to remove at-risk tissue, including their breasts and ovaries. The abnormal genes are the most identified inherited cause of breast cancer -- carriers are five times more likely to develop breast cancer than those without the mutations, according to the National Cancer Institute.
The new study was designed to determine whether women with the BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation have an earlier onset of menopause compared with unaffected women.
The researchers looked at nearly 400 female carriers of mutations in the BRCA gene in northern California and compared their onset of menopause to that of 765 women in the same geographic area without the mutation. Most of the women in the study were white because almost all of the BRCA1/2 carriers within the UCSF cancer risk registry are white.
The scientists found that women with the harmful mutation experienced menopause at a significantly younger age -- 50 years -- compared to age 53 for the other midlife women.
Heavy smokers (more than 20 cigarettes a day) with the abnormal gene had an even earlier onset of menopause -- 46 years. By comparison, only seven percent of white women in northern California had undergone menopause by that age, said the authors. Smoking has been shown to alter menstrual cycles and estrogen status, among other impacts.
The authors point out that while their study shows a possible increased risk of infertility for the mutation carriers, further study is needed. They also said that data regarding the age of natural menopause is limited because most women with the mutation are recommended to undergo risk-reducing surgery after they complete childbearing.
"Women with the mutation are faced with challenges in reproductive choices,'' said study co-author Lee-may Chen, MD, a professor in the UCSF Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Services. "These data may help women understand that their childbearing years may be even more limited by earlier menopause, so that they can make decisions about their reproductive choices and cancer risk-reducing surgery.''
The first author of the study is Wayne T. Lin, MD, MPH, who at the time of the research was a resident at UCSF and is now a fellow at the Brigham and Women's Hospital at Harvard Medical School. Other authors include Marcelle Cedars, MD, a UCSF professor and director of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Services ; and Mary Beattie, MD, clinical professor in the UCSF Department of Medicine. Study data was collected from the Cancer Risk Program at UCSF and the northern California site of the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation, a project of the University of California Davis and Kaiser Permanente.
Funding for the study was provided by National Institutes of Health grants NR004061, AG012505, AG012535, AG012531, AG012539, AG012546, AG012553, AG012554, and AG012495. Support was also provided by the UCSF Cancer Risk Program Patient Registry, which is supported by the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. The Study of Women's Health Across the Nation has grant support from the NIH, Department of Health and Human Services through the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Nursing Research, and the NIH Office of Research on Women's Health.
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Many remember him as Fez in the popular sitcom, ?That 70?s Show?, but nowadays actor and activist Wilmer Valderrama has moved forward becoming more than just the shadow behind the funny character.
Beyond his participation in the Fox? successful TV show, the actor, just in the past year, has starred in more than six different TV series, NBC ?s ?Awake? and Fox? ?Raising Hope? begin some of the most prominent.
In the big screen he has also made a name for himself in films like ?From Prada to Nada? and ?Larry Crowne.?
Born in Miami from Colombian and Venezuelan parents but rised between Venezuela and the United States, Valderrama has made sure to keep himself relevant both in the entertainment industry and in the political arena, which he has entered in recent years, through his Latino roots.
?I think it?s, to me, that struggle and that drive that my dad had when I was growing up that really made me understand that we were here to do one thing. And that was to work and to maximize the opportunities that we had,? said the actor to NBC Latino. ?Go to those days makes me appreciate so much more, makes me even more hungry to do more.?
The activist, who serves as a spokesperson for This Shirt Helps, an initiative created to provide aid to different causes, has also worked hard as a co-founder of Voto Latino, an organization dedicated to bringing new and diverse voices into the political process.
Most recently, he was also part of the Latino inauguration celebration in Washington DC, where he hosted along with actress Rosario Dawson.
?I see a future politician here. Wilmer, when you choose to run, make sure I am on your campaign,? said Dawson after his speech.
To celebrate Wilmer Valderrama's 33th birthday, and take some time to remember and just laugh, we have put together a gallery above of some of his best moments as Fez in ?That 70?s Show?.
After months of blasphemy laws, destruction of precious monuments, and brutal punishments, locals dance at arrival of French and nature's cloudbursts.
By John Thorne,?Correspondent / January 28, 2013
Chadian soldiers assisted by Malian gendarmes, patrol the streets of Gao, Northern Mali, Monday. French and Malian troops held a strategic bridge and the airport in the northern town of Gao on Sunday as their force also pressed toward Timbuktu, another stronghold of Islamic extremists in northern Mali, officials said.
Jerome Delay/AP
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In Timbuktu, rains out of season are a portent of hope. Rain fell unexpectedly here today in a gentle spatter on streets and houses, and on the French and Malian soldiers who drove through town and the crowds who turned out to applaud them.
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?Today, to see this, I feel joy, joy,? says Adaraoui Maiga, Timbuktu?s acting mayor, who joined the procession. For the first time in nearly a year, he wore an official sash striped green, yellow, and red after the Malian flag.
Timbuktu?s liberation, following that of the city of Goa, concludes a one-two combination blow struck by French and Malian forces over the weekend against Islamist militants who overran northern Mali last year in the wake of an ethnic Tuareg rebellion.
For French commanders and Mali?s interim government, hard work still lies ahead. Islamist fighters are scattered, but may launch a guerrilla war. Meanwhile, there are schools to re-open, electricity and phone networks to restore, and state administration to rebuild.
But today at least, in Timbuktu, people are celebrating. French and Malian flags fly in union, and cries of ?Vive la France!? and ?Vive Mali!? ring in the streets.
The procession ? part victory-lap, part signal to locals that liberation is real ? meandered through the streets. Malian soldiers hopped down from their gun-trucks to mingle; the French waved from atop armored personnel carriers.
?I?m so happy today that France is here!? says Moussa Maiga, a middle-aged man watching soldiers drive by. ?I don?t want them to leave.?
For now Mr. Maiga?s wish will come true. France wants to hand off to Malian and other West African troops as soon as possible, but has also pledged to stay in Mali until the country is stable.
?This rain, at this time, gives me hope that things will be put back in order,? says Inamoi Kunta, a middle-aged woman who watched troops pass from beneath a cane awning. ?We were convinced the Islamists would be punished for all they made us suffer.?
Opposite her stands the abandoned headquarters of the "Commission for Ordering the Virtuous and Forbidding the Damnable" - the now-defunct morality police established here by the radicals, in the name of Islam.?
Mrs. Kunta ran afoul of them four months ago when she went to her door unveiled for a breath of air. A commission member pounced. To escape a beating with his rifle, Kunta let him take a scissors to a so-called grigri in her hair ? a protective talisman or charm that Islamists deemed heretical.
Kunta got off lightly. Across the north, ad-hoc Islamist courts ordered the beating of cigarette smokers, the stoning of alleged adulterers, and the amputation of hands from those accused of stealing, according to human rights reports.?
Timbuktu suffered a different kind of violence last summer when Islamists wrecked the graves of Sufi leaders that were venerated as access points to God ??a practice in some forms of Islamic mysticism that deeply conservative Muslims often call blasphemous.
Rain fell today on Timbuktu's Djingareyber cemetery, fell on graves and mausoleums busted up in the past year. As Kunta sees it, the Islamists invited downfall by daring offend ?those who have always brought us good.?
Brutality, bullying, and a certain joylessness about the rebels' governing style, almost surely played a role, too. The quick collapse by Islamists as French and Malian forces bore down on the town suggests a lack of popular support.
?This is the first cigarette I?ve smoked in public in eight months,? says Ciss? Al Mansour, a Timbuktu cook left jobless by crisis, taking a drag at a roadside butcher stall. Beside him, music was thumping from a stereo.
?Under the Islamists, you could never see this ? people listening to music together in the open air,? he says.
Meanwhile, a butcher threw hanks of meat on the grill, and a crowd gathered. It was only a matter of time ? and it was a very short time ? before the girls were dancing.
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My husband had just left for a 3:00PM-11:00 PM shift at work. I was home with my two little girls and my two stepsons were on their way home from school. I walk into the bathroom and see the floor is covered in water.
The toilet had overflowed at a very inconvenient time. Then again, what would be a convenient time? Not only that, but I heard something behind the shower curtain. I open it up and find my bathtub filled with about six inches of dirty water.
I didn?t panic at this point because it just so happens that my father in law is a plumber. He also happened to be the one picking up my boys from school and dropping them off. How convenient!
He pulled up in the driveway with the boys and I asked him to come in and look at the bathroom. He knew right away that it was a main sewer blockage. His demeanor didn?t give me that sense of relief I was looking for.
He went outside and came back in much more confident. He said our house had a pipe leading to the outside that connected to the main sewer line. This was a very good thing because then he was able to get to the blockage. If we had not had this, like many houses don?t, we would have been looking at a very expensive fix. It could have been more than a thousand dollars. We are a family of six living on an extremely tight budget. I was very relieved to have this pipe to say the least.
My father in law went home to get his tools, which was just a few minutes away. In the meantime, I was texting my husband to try and tell him the news without sending him into complete panic mode.
During this time, we could not use our upstairs or downstairs bathrooms. We couldn?t use the sink or washer either. Of course, the moment when the toilets are shut down is when you have to go to the bathroom.
My two year old is in the middle of potty training, so she had a potty chair that came in handy for my nine year old. Ha Ha! My 12 year old refused to go in it and it was too cold outside. My mother in law came to the rescue and took the boys to their Auntie?s house.
My father in law comes back with his tools. It involves sticking a tool all the way through the pipe until the blockage was found. Sure enough, there was a big blockage. I thought it was a good sign. I had it in my head that he would just pull out what was in there and we would move on. He looks at me and says that he hopes it?s not tree roots because he doesn?t have the tool to cut that. I saw dollar signs immediately. So, I sat their waiting and he pulls some things out. He looks at me and says, ?Tree roots.?
This was the last thing I wanted to hear. We sat discussing the options and trying to figure out how to get these taken care of. He called a guy from our church who owns a plumbing, heating, and cooling business.
Instead of him coming out and charging us a lot of money, he drops off his tool for my father in law to use. The guy lives one block over, so it was convenient on his way home. This was such an answer to prayer. It was cold and rainy, and it was completely dark by this point. My father in law spent a lot of time cutting roots and cleaning it out.
About four hours later we had use of everything again. I had to deep clean the bathroom with bleach, but that was the worst part for me. We were so blessed to have all these events happen in the perfect order. I sent my husband a text and his response was Praise God! I couldn?t agree with him more. It?s times like this that remind me of why it?s important for me to help others when I can.
This whole experience reminded me how important it is to think about the resources we have close to home. Many times, someone knows somebody who can help much cheaper than if you had called an outside source. Many times we panic and call a company right away to come deal with things like this.
There may be people in your family, your church, place of employment, and even friends that can help save you time and a lot of money. Always remember to use your own gifts and talents to pay it forward and help someone else when you get the chance. It will be a blessing to them and more than likely an even bigger blessing to you.
? 2013, Fat Guy Skinny Wallet. All rights reserved.
Tagged as: close friends, family, plumbing, resources, saving money
OBAMA IN VEGAS:President Obama maps out his immigration plan at this afternoon in Las Vegas where, a senior administration official tells ABC's Reena Ninan, he will focus largely on what he's discussed before. The president won't put forward a bill - instead he'll support the Senate's principles outlined yesterday and explain what else needs to be done. The White House feels Las Vegas is a community symbolic of the growing Latino population in both the state and the nation and since immigration reform is a pledge the president made during the campaign, the White House says he wants to deliver.
EL DIABLO IS IN THE DETAILS: Even the senators who wrote the immigration reform proposal outlined yesterday admitted there's lots of work still ahead. One land mine: Some Republicans want to link getting green cards to whether the border is secure. Border security still a gray issue. If the Gang of Eight's efforts fall apart the president's team will step in with its own proposal, Ninan notes.
SECRET CONGRESSIONAL GROUP WORKING ON IMMIGRATION ALTERNATIVE: A separate bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House of Representatives is on the verge of finalizing its own designs for comprehensive immigration reform, ABC's John Parkinson reports. The discussions, which top aides close to the talks discussed on the condition that they not be identified, are described as "Washington's best-kept secret." Multiple sources say those involved in the talks include Democratic Reps. Xavier Becerra (California), Luis Gutierrez (Illinois), Zoe Lofgren (California), and Republican Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (Florida), Sam Johnson (Texas) and John Carter (Texas). The House's not-yet-finalized proposal is expected to address five general areas of immigration reform, according to aides close to the negotiations. Secure the border, implement a permanent E-verify system nationwide, reform the visa system, address the predicament of how to handle immigrants already in the country illegally in a "fair" and "legal manner" while determining how to handle those who have applied for legal immigration and are currently waiting in line, and reform the immigration system for future applicants. http://abcn.ws/WnjOfh
THE ROUNDTABLE:
ABC's RICK KLEIN: What could possibly go wrong? The bipartisan Senate proposal is on the table, with boldfaced names like McCain, Rubio, Graham, Schumer, Durbin, and Menendez signed on. The House isn't far behind. And the president takes up the mantle himself today, as he lobbies the public to force action at last on immigration reform ? Wait, this could get interesting, after all. The White House has had mixed results with letting Congress handle the details of much of anything. But these are the kinds of details that members of Congress from both parties have spent months if not years wrestling through; witness the twin failures of immigration reform, in 2006 and 2007, under the leadership of a different president. The real question for the White House: Will heavy involvement - and pushing in directions the Gang of Eight doesn't want to go - be more harmful for helpful?
ABC's MICHAEL FALCONE: At yesterday's bi-partisan news conference announcing the Gang of Eight's immigration reform principles, Sen. John McCain's answer about why Republicans were so eager to move on the issue was telling. "Elections, elections," the Arizona senator said. "The Republican Party is losing the support of our Hispanic citizens." He's right: Hispanic voters are becoming a larger share of the electorate and GOP presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, won just 27 percent of the vote among the group compared to 71 percent who supported President Obama. There was also something striking about watching Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a member of the immigration reform group, launch into Spanish during the press conference. Neither Rubio's language skills nor his familiarity with the immigration issue are breaking news, but I imagine it will give other potential 2016 Republicans pause.
ABC's SHUSHANNAH WALSHE: Currently, the prevailing theory about Sarah Palin is that because she doesn't have the megaphone of Fox News anymore, the "Palin moment" is now officially over. It might be true, but there have been so many "Ends of Sarah Palin" that it's almost hard to keep track. She was over when she lost the 2008 campaign, she was over when she quit the Alaska governorship, she was over when she decided to do a reality show, she was over when she decided not to run for president. Now she's over because she severed her ties with Fox. But the reality is different. Even after she decided to resign as governor and to pass up a 2012 presidential bid, people who both love her and hate her still just couldn't get enough information about her. Palin still got an incredible amount of coverage and her voice was heard - loud and clear. It's yet another example of what she's able to pull off that others who came before or after just aren't: She's been written off since Day One, but she keeps coming back.
ABC's JASON RYAN: The FBI has released new gun background check data yesterday showing that the week after the Newtown massacre (December 14, 2012) was the busiest for gun background checks ever, followed by the week President Obama announced new gun control proposals on January 16, 2013. As ABC News has reported, gun sales have been booming since Newtown. After previously denying journalists access to gun data, National Instant Check System figures show that overall in December 2012 there were more than 2.78 million background checks carried out to purchase firearms surpassing the previous record from November 2012 when more than 2 million checks were performed. The number of total sales during the first month of the new year will be released in the first few days of February.
VIDEO OF THE DAY: MEET DEFIANT DEMOCRAT, HEIDI HEITKAMP. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., defied the odds in November when she won the closest senate race in the country, and now that she's arrived in Washington, she's defiant as ever. But now, instead of defying the pollsters, she's defying the Democratic caucus by taking divergent opinions on issues central to the President Obama's second term agenda, ranging from gun control to the environment. Heitkamp, who says growing the economy is her top priority, is concerned that the president is changing his focus to issues like climate change and gun control. "I think, you know the one thing that has gotten lost by everyone is one of the best ways that we can perform here is by getting people back to work, making sure that this economic recovery, slow as it is, gets amped up and moves forward," Heitkamp tells ABC's Jonathan Karl, host of "Politics Confidential." "It's one of the reasons why I've been such a big proponent of the Keystone Pipeline. There's a shovel ready, private sector jobs program, good paying jobs." WATCH: http://yhoo.it/TQOxTJ
BUZZ
IMMIGRATION REFORM PLAN INCLUDES A PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP. The Senate's plan does not grant undocumented immigrants automatic "amnesty," rather it requires them to go through an arduous process that includes undergoing a background check, paying fines, back taxes and learning English and American civics over the course of a number of years, reports ABC-Univision's Jordan Fabian. The new law would grant eligible undocumented immigrants permission to live and work in the U.S. legally, but would not confer permanent legal status, or a green card, until the border is deemed to be secure. Young people brought into the U.S. illegally as minors and some agricultural workers would face an easier path to citizenship. "We will never put these people on a path to citizenship until we have secured the border," New York Sen. Chuck Schumer said yesterday. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who helped lead the last effort on a comprehensive immigration bill in 2007 said, "We have been too content for too long to allow individuals to mow our lawns, grow our food, clean our homes, and even watch our children while not affording them any of the benefits that make our country so great." http://abcn.ws/YBGY4Q
OBAMA TALKS GUN VIOLENCE WITH POLICE CHIEFS.President Obama is enlisting the help of police chiefs from communities devastated by mass shootings as he continues a public push for Congress to act on his proposals to curb gun violence, ABC's Mary Bruce notes. "No group is more important for us to listen to than our law enforcement officials," the president told reporters before a White House meeting yesterday with sheriffs and police chiefs from across the country. "They are where the rubber hits the road." The president and members of his cabinet met with the police chiefs who responded to the deadly shootings in Aurora, Colo., Oak Creek, Wis., and Newtown, Conn, along with representatives from the Major Cities Chiefs Police Association and the Major County Sheriffs' Association. "I welcome this opportunity to work with them; to hear their views in terms of what will make the biggest difference to prevent something like Newtown or Oak Creek from happening again," Obama said.
CHICK-FIL-A CEO AND GAY ACTIVIST FIND COMMON GROUND. The leader of a national gay-rights group says he's coming out-as a friend of Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy, ABC's Chris Good reports. "I've gotten to know Dan, he's gotten to know me. He's shared concerns about young people, about Chick-fil-A being used for certain purposes," Shane Windmeyer, executive director of Campus Pride, told ABC News. Last year, Cathy sparked a national controversy by telling a radio host that "we're inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage. And I pray God's mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude that thinks we have the audacity to redefine what marriage is all about." Windmeyer said that Cathy called him last year, during the heat of the controversy that led national gay-rights groups to protest Chick-fil-A. Cathy reached out seeking advice and understanding, Windmeyer said. Windmeyer was a guest of Cathy's at this year's Chick-fil-A Bowl between LSU and Clemson at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. The activist also says Chick-fil-A has stopped donating to anti-gay groups, according to his review of the company's 990 tax forms. http://abcn.ws/WxuchC
GOVERNMENT WASTE IN THE SPOTLIGHT. The Government Accountability Office is due to produce its biannual report on the areas of the government that present the highest risk for squandering tax payer dollars in the next couple weeks. Though the GAO does not preview this list ahead of time, ABC's Sarah Parnass takes a look at what might be targeted: http://abcn.ws/113uncb
WHO'S TWEETING?
@DavidMDrucker : How central to immigration reform's success is @marcorubio?I'll predict that if he ever backs out bill is dead in House. W/ him: it passes.
@ByronYork: Speaking of deal killers, what will Chairman Leahy do to Gangof8 plan in Sen Judiciary Committee? http://ow.ly/hdUOC
@onetoughnerd: Speaking at @GOVERNING Magazine conference in DC today about how we're reinventing Michigan. http://ow.ly/hdUkP #govlive
@JoshDorner: 4 years ago today, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. It was opposed by all but 8 Congressional Republicans.
@kjplotkin: RT @BobbyJindal: Let's Meet, Mr. President http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bobby-jindal-to-fix-medicaid-listen-to-governors/2013/01/28/ff5c8e5e-6711-11e2-85f5-a8a9228e55e7_story_1.html ?
You Are Here: Home ? News ? Refrain Smoking By 40 Reduces Future Health Risk, Says Research
British, American and Canadian researchers scrutinized the histories of smoking and also the death records for 88,496 men and 113,752 women in US over these past seven years. ?Those individuals who ceased smoking at the age of 40 where about 90% of the hazards of enduring to smoke? commented Dr. Prabhat Jha, the author of research and the leader of Centre for Global Health Research based at St. Michael?s Hospital, Toronto.
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Although the graph of smokers who give up smoking by 30 were closed the death rates of people who never smoked.? This graph was taken after considering their risk to lungs, stroke, heart attack, and cancers. ?However, the only message is that it?s never too late to give up smoking. But the investigators also warned that it is not completely safe to smoke cigarettes until the age of 40 and then quit it because the hazards still remain significant as compared to those who never smoked and had same rates of body fats, food consumption and alcohol usage.
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Researchers even say that females who are chain smokers or the one who smoke like men departs their life like men. ?This is really very important study not only for its matter because it possibly reflects the wider population of Canada and US. Moreover, the focal point of this research is to spread the awareness of smoking on the first generation of females who initiated smoking during their teenage and continued through their adulthood?, says Dr. Graham Berlyne, the head of medicinal practice at St. Joseph?s Health Centre in Toronto and also a respirologist.
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Berlyne further added saying that,? the years of passive smoking are not wiped away but the harms done is cut shorted and the lungs have little higher capacity to live and can still work even after losing some capabilities?. In a study, a resident of Toronto, Tracy Hager, 39, is suing lozenges and patches of nicotine to quit smoking. From the last six weeks she has not lit up cigarette but her two teenagers have initiated smoking. ?It is really very disappointing, but for this situation I can?t actually blame anyone except myself?, commented Tracy Hager who is utilizing this research as a motivation to give up her smoking habit.
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However, similar conclusions were driven in the previous researches. The investigators noted proves coming out from India and China points to related patterns in decreasing the expectancy of life for smokers. Furthermore, in the countries with high incomes it was mostly noticed that there were more ex-smokers then the one who started currently. ?But that?s not the case in countries with low to middle income.
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They entitled higher prices for cigarettes by the way of excise taxes, prohibits on tobacco promotion and advertising, restrictions on smoking in public places, and trouble-free admittance to termination efforts.
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Huge Global Problem
Among the complete population of smokers about 1.3 billion smokers reside in middle and low income countries. ?Although, in many of the countries with high income, about more than half population of smokers have quit smoking. Nevertheless, this case is still very rare in the nations with poor income. However, it this current smoking trend persists, cigarette smoking will definitely take lives of one biliion people in the 21st century. The reports say, in the 20th century about 100 million people died due to smoking.
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?For controlling the rate of deaths and diseases due to smoking, taxation is the only most efficient way to get adults to abstain from smoking and prevent teens from starting it? advices Prabhat Jha to the government who is also an associate lecturer in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at Canada?s University of Toronto.
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Thus, it has become an utmost important to have a look on death rates due to smoking which actually can be kept under control by doing changes in your lifestyle. This research was endowed by National Institutes of Health US, the Bill and the Canadian institutes of fitness research.
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Jan. 28, 2013 ? Red coloration -- historically seen as costly in vertebrates -- might represent some physiological benefit after all, according to research published in the journal Physiological and Biochemical Zoology.
Pheomelanin, which is responsible for red hair and freckles in humans and orange and chestnut coloration in other animals, is known to increase the damage to skin cells and melanoma risk when present in large amounts. Furthermore, its creation involves the consumption of glutathione, a beneficial antioxidant.
In an attempt to unearth the factors favoring the evolution of pheomelanin in spite of its costs, Ismael Galv?n and Anders P. M?ller of the University of Paris-Sud examined the survival from one breeding season to the next of a wild European population of barn swallows, as well as the annual survival rates of 58 species of American birds.
A recent hypothesis claims that the consumption of cysteine (a component of glutathione) that occurs when pheomelanin is produced can be beneficial under conditions of low stress. Cysteine, which is mainly acquired through diet, can be toxic at high levels, so the production of pheomelanin may help to sequester excess quantities of this amino acid.
Galv?n and M?ller measured birds' blood levels of uric acid and analyzed the coloration of their chestnut throat feathers (an indication of pheomelanin content). When they compared birds that had similar uric acid levels (and therefore similar capacities to excrete excess amino acids), they found that both the European barn swallows and the American birds with larger amounts of pheomelanin in their feathers survived better.
This study is the first to propose that the costs/benefits of pheomelanin may depend on prevailing environmental conditions, and its results suggest that the production of this pigment may even be beneficial in some circumstances. Given that all higher vertebrates, including humans, present pheomelanin in skin, pelage, and plumage, Galv?n and M?ller's findings increase the scant current knowledge on the physiological consequences of pheomelanin and open new avenues for research that will help us understand the evolution of pigmentation.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Chicago Press Journals.
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Journal Reference:
Ismael Galv?n, Anders P. M?ller. Pheomelanin-Based Plumage Coloration Predicts Survival Rates in Birds. Physiological and Biochemical Zoology, 2013; : 000 DOI: 10.1086/668871
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
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Jan. 28, 2013 ? A new optical prescription for automobile side-view mirrors may eliminate the dreaded "blind spot" in traffic without distorting the perceived distance of cars approaching from behind. As described in a new paper? in the Optical Society's (OSA) journal Optics Letters, objects viewed in a mirror using the new design appear larger than in traditional side-view mirrors, so it's easier to judge their following distance and speed.
Today's motor vehicles in the United States use two different types of mirrors for the driver and passenger sides. The driver's side mirror is flat so that objects viewed in it are undistorted and not optically reduced in size, allowing the operator to accurately judge an approaching-from-behind vehicle's separation distance and speed. Unfortunately, the optics of a flat mirror also create a blind spot, an area of limited vision around a vehicle that often leads to collisions during merges, lane changes, or turns. The passenger side mirror, on the other hand, possesses a spherical convex shape. While the small radius of curvature widens the field of view, it also causes any object seen in it to look smaller in size and farther away than it actually is. Because of this issue, passenger side mirrors on cars and trucks in the United States must be engraved with the safety warning, "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear." In the European Union, both driver and passenger side mirrors are aspheric (One that bulges more to one side than the other, creating two zones on the same mirror).The inner zone -- the section nearest the door -- has a nearly perfect spherical shape, while the outer zone -- the section farthest from the door -- becomes less and less curved toward the edges. The outer zone of this aspheric design also produces a similar distance and size distortion seen in spherical convex designs.
In an attempt to remedy this problem, some automotive manufacturers have installed a separate, small wide-angle mirror in the upper corner of side mirrors. This is a slightly domed square that provides a wide-angle view similar to a camera's fisheye lens. However, drivers often find this system to be a distracting as well as expensive addition.
A simpler design for a mirror that would be free of blind spots, have a wide field of view, and produce images that are accurately scaled to the true size of an approaching object -- and work for both sides of a vehicle -- has been proposed by researchers Hocheol Lee and Dohyun Kim at Hanbat National University in Korea and Sung Yi at Portland State University in Oregon. Their solution was to turn to a progressive additive optics technology commonly used in "no-line multifocal" eyeglasses that simultaneously corrects myopia (nearsightedness) and presbyopia (reduced focusing ability).
"Like multifocal glasses that give the wearer a range of focusing abilities from near to far and everything in between, our progressive mirror consists of three resolution zones: one for distance vision, one for close-up viewing and a middle zone making the transition between the two," says Lee. "However, unlike glasses where the range of focus is vertically stacked [from distance viewing on top to close-up viewing on bottom], our mirror surface is horizontally progressive."
Lee says that a driver's side mirror manufactured with his team's new design would feature a curvature where the inner zone is for distance viewing and the outer zone is for near-field viewing to compensate for what otherwise would be blind spots. "The image of a vehicle approaching from behind would only be reduced in the progressive zone in the center," Lee says, "while the image sizes in the inner and outer zones are not changed."
The horizontal progressive mirror, Lee says, does have some problems with binocular disparity (the slight difference between the viewpoints of a person's two eyes) and astigmatism (blurring of a viewed image due to the difference between the focusing power in the horizontal and vertical directions). These minor errors are a positive trade off, the researchers feel, to gain a mirror with a greatly expanded field of view, more reliable depth perception, and no blind spot.
To prove the merits of their design, the researchers used a conventional glass molding process to manufacture a prototype horizontal progressive mirror. They were able to produce a mirror with more than double the field of view of a traditional flat mirror.
Other wide-angle designs have also been proposed, but the new design described January 28 in the Optics Letters paper offers a particularly easy-to-manufacture approach to the problem of blind spots by seamlessly integrating just three zones.
The researchers claim that the manufacturing cost of their proposed mirror design would be cheaper than the mirror design with the added small wide-angle viewing section. Since mirror designs are stipulated by national automobile regulations, the new design would need to be approved for use in the United States before appearing on cars here.
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Journal Reference:
Hocheol Lee, Dohyun Kim, and Sung Yi. Horizontally progressive mirror for blind spot detection in automobiles. Opt. Lett., 38, 317-319 (2013) [link]
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In breast cancer metastasis, researchers identify possible drug targetPublic release date: 27-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jeffrey Norris jeff.norris@ucsf.edu 415-502-6397 University of California - San Francisco
The spread of breast cancer to distant organs within the body, an event that often leads to death, appears in many cases to involve the loss of a key protein, according to UC San Francisco researchers, whose new discoveries point to possible targets for therapy.
In the January 27, 2013 online edition of Nature Cell Biology, UCSF scientists describe for the first time how the protein, known as GATA3 which is abnormal or absent in many cases of human breast cancer normally acts downstream in biochemical pathways to prevent the distant spread of cancer, an event called metastasis.
The discovery points to a biochemical control point that simultaneously holds in check several key events required for tumor cells to successfully spread.
"When GATA3 is present, it turns off many genes that are active in metastasis," said Zena Werb, PhD, a UCSF professor of anatomy who led the research. "We now have identified the molecular mechanisms involved."
The key finding of the new study is that GATA3 acts downstream biochemically to activate a molecule obscure until now called microRNA29b. MicroRNA29b in turn stops protein production from other genes that play vital roles in metastasis.
The absence or loss of GATA3 can free cancerous cells to break free from their defined roles and tethers within a tumor, to move away from the tumor mass, to induce cancer-promoting inflammation, and to stimulate the development of new blood vessels that can help spreading cancerous cells regrow as tumors in new locations.
"People knew that some of these genes were turned on in some cancers, but they did not know they were turned on because GATA3 and microRNA29b were turned off," Werb said. "If you have 20 genes that are becoming less active all at once due to microRNA29b, it could have a profound effect."
Working with mice, the researchers found that restoring microRNA29b to one of the most deadly types of breast cancer stopped metastasis. But the researchers also found that if they knocked out the microRNA29b, tumors spread even in the presence of GATA3, suggesting that microRNA29b can be the driver of metastasis.
In the mouse models of breast cancer studied by Werb's team, GATA3 normally restrains cancerous cells from breaking away from the main tumor and migrating to other organs.
It might be possible, Werb said, to develop drugs that inhibit breast cancer metastasis by re-activating these controls in cancerous cells that have lost the normal protein.
Many researchers who study early stages of cancer focus on abnormal genes and proteins that cause cells to expand their numbers rapidly, a hallmark of cancer.
However, the ability to spread to distant places and to eventually cause lethal complications requires not only cell division and tumor growth, but also changes in how the cancerous cell negotiates with its surroundings. This relationship must be altered to permit cancer to spread, according to earlier research findings by Werb and others.
"Many of the key processes in cancer that GATA3 suppresses take place outside the cell, in the surrounding environment," she said.
GATA3 is a master control for luminal cells, which line the milk-carrying ducts of the breast. In essence, GATA3 dictates the defining characteristics of a normal breast cell, Werb said.
Luminal breast cancers are the most common form of the disease, and the hormones estrogen and progesterone drive their growth. Loss of the normal GATA3 protein as luminal breast cancers evolve is associated with a greater risk of death, Werb said, and occurs in roughly 10 percent of luminal breast cancer cases.
But, along with many other proteins, GATA3 also is absent in "triple negative," breast cancers, which are more often fatal. Triple negative breast cancers, which disproportionately affect black women and younger women, do not depend on the hormones, nor do they require a third growth factor, called HER2.
Triple negative breast cancers, which account for roughly one-in-five breast cancers, have been more difficult to target successfully with newer treatments.
"The targeting we would like to do is to give back microRNA29b specifically to breast tumor cells to prevent metastasis," Werb said.
###
UCSF Co-authors who contributed to the research include medical student Jonathan Chou, PhD, technician Jeffrey Lin, research specialist Audrey Brenot, PhD, and postdoctoral fellows Jung-whan Kim, PhD, and Sylvain Provot, PhD.
The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense.
UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care.
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
In breast cancer metastasis, researchers identify possible drug targetPublic release date: 27-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jeffrey Norris jeff.norris@ucsf.edu 415-502-6397 University of California - San Francisco
The spread of breast cancer to distant organs within the body, an event that often leads to death, appears in many cases to involve the loss of a key protein, according to UC San Francisco researchers, whose new discoveries point to possible targets for therapy.
In the January 27, 2013 online edition of Nature Cell Biology, UCSF scientists describe for the first time how the protein, known as GATA3 which is abnormal or absent in many cases of human breast cancer normally acts downstream in biochemical pathways to prevent the distant spread of cancer, an event called metastasis.
The discovery points to a biochemical control point that simultaneously holds in check several key events required for tumor cells to successfully spread.
"When GATA3 is present, it turns off many genes that are active in metastasis," said Zena Werb, PhD, a UCSF professor of anatomy who led the research. "We now have identified the molecular mechanisms involved."
The key finding of the new study is that GATA3 acts downstream biochemically to activate a molecule obscure until now called microRNA29b. MicroRNA29b in turn stops protein production from other genes that play vital roles in metastasis.
The absence or loss of GATA3 can free cancerous cells to break free from their defined roles and tethers within a tumor, to move away from the tumor mass, to induce cancer-promoting inflammation, and to stimulate the development of new blood vessels that can help spreading cancerous cells regrow as tumors in new locations.
"People knew that some of these genes were turned on in some cancers, but they did not know they were turned on because GATA3 and microRNA29b were turned off," Werb said. "If you have 20 genes that are becoming less active all at once due to microRNA29b, it could have a profound effect."
Working with mice, the researchers found that restoring microRNA29b to one of the most deadly types of breast cancer stopped metastasis. But the researchers also found that if they knocked out the microRNA29b, tumors spread even in the presence of GATA3, suggesting that microRNA29b can be the driver of metastasis.
In the mouse models of breast cancer studied by Werb's team, GATA3 normally restrains cancerous cells from breaking away from the main tumor and migrating to other organs.
It might be possible, Werb said, to develop drugs that inhibit breast cancer metastasis by re-activating these controls in cancerous cells that have lost the normal protein.
Many researchers who study early stages of cancer focus on abnormal genes and proteins that cause cells to expand their numbers rapidly, a hallmark of cancer.
However, the ability to spread to distant places and to eventually cause lethal complications requires not only cell division and tumor growth, but also changes in how the cancerous cell negotiates with its surroundings. This relationship must be altered to permit cancer to spread, according to earlier research findings by Werb and others.
"Many of the key processes in cancer that GATA3 suppresses take place outside the cell, in the surrounding environment," she said.
GATA3 is a master control for luminal cells, which line the milk-carrying ducts of the breast. In essence, GATA3 dictates the defining characteristics of a normal breast cell, Werb said.
Luminal breast cancers are the most common form of the disease, and the hormones estrogen and progesterone drive their growth. Loss of the normal GATA3 protein as luminal breast cancers evolve is associated with a greater risk of death, Werb said, and occurs in roughly 10 percent of luminal breast cancer cases.
But, along with many other proteins, GATA3 also is absent in "triple negative," breast cancers, which are more often fatal. Triple negative breast cancers, which disproportionately affect black women and younger women, do not depend on the hormones, nor do they require a third growth factor, called HER2.
Triple negative breast cancers, which account for roughly one-in-five breast cancers, have been more difficult to target successfully with newer treatments.
"The targeting we would like to do is to give back microRNA29b specifically to breast tumor cells to prevent metastasis," Werb said.
###
UCSF Co-authors who contributed to the research include medical student Jonathan Chou, PhD, technician Jeffrey Lin, research specialist Audrey Brenot, PhD, and postdoctoral fellows Jung-whan Kim, PhD, and Sylvain Provot, PhD.
The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense.
UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care.
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PRAGUE (Reuters) - Leftist former prime minister Milos Zeman won the Czech Republic's first direct presidential election on Saturday, beating a conservative opponent he had accused of favoring foreign interests in a bitter campaign.
Zeman, a 68-year-old who favors more integration within the European Union, won by 54.8 to 45.2 percent over Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, results from 99.9 percent of voting districts showed.
Economic forecaster Zeman, a Communist Party member before the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, will steer Czechs closer to Europe's mainstream.
The anti-EU rhetoric of outgoing President Vaclav Klaus, who succeeded late playwright Vaclav Havel, has pushed the country towards the margins of the 27-member bloc.
Czech presidents do not wield much day-to-day power but represent the country abroad and appoint prime ministers, central bankers and judges.
Zeman said he wants to overcome divisions provoked by the election in the central European country of 10.5 million people. The final stage of the campaign was marked by doubts cast on the national loyalties of Schwarzenberg, a prince from a centuries-old aristocratic family who lived much of his life in Austria.
Zeman promised to tackle graft, an issue which has dominated political debate for years.
"I want to be president of the bottom 10 million. These include voters of Milos Zeman as well as Karel Schwarzenberg. I do not want to be president of mafias that act as parasites on this society," Zeman said.
Zeman served as Social Democrat prime minister in 1998-2002 under a power-sharing deal with Klaus's right-wing party that critics saw as a breeding ground for corruption.
Schwarzenberg conceded defeat and congratulated Zeman, but relations between the centre-right cabinet and new president may be strained.
Zeman, who has a folksy manner and a well-advertised appetite for sausages and alcohol, appeals to poorer and rural voters, unlike the government, which has raised taxes, cut social benefits and suffered several corruption scandals.
During his premiership, Zeman was credited with privatizing the main banks and attracting foreign investment. Opponents criticize his friendship with former communist officials and businessmen with links to Russia.
Previously, Czech presidents were elected by parliamentary votes that involved a lot of back-room dealing, which led to popular demand for a constitutional change approved last year.
GHOSTS OF THE PAST
The finale of the campaign was marked by appeals to nationalism, unusual for the Czech Republic, whose biggest trading partner is Germany.
Zeman accused Schwarzenberg of backing the cause of some three million ethnic Germans, known as Sudeten Germans, who were expelled from then-Czechoslovakia after World War Two.
Schwarzenberg has said that in today's world, the expulsion could be seen as a war crime, but denied allegations he would open the door for demands to return confiscated property.
Klaus backed Zeman in the vote, saying he wanted a president who had lived in the country all his life, unlike Schwarzenberg, whose family has large land holdings in Austria where he lived in exile during the 1948-1989 communist rule.
Schwarzenberg said the election was won by lies.
"The difference of 10 percentage points was the result of this kind of campaign," he said. "It is impossible to defend against certain type of bad-mouthing."
(Reporting by Jan Lopatka; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Jason Webb)
For the first time, the Czech Republic directly elected a president, choosing former Prime Minister Milos Zeman. Zeman took office as prime minster in 1998, and has taken favorable positions toward the European Union.
By Karel Janicek,?Associated Press / January 26, 2013
Presidential candidate Milos Zeman smiles while addressing the media after the announcement of the preliminary results of the presidential elections in Prague, Czech Republic, Saturday. He won the election with about 54.8 percent.
Petr David Josek/AP
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A former left-leaning prime minister staged a big return to power Saturday by winning the?Czech?Republic's first directly elected presidential vote.
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With all the votes counted, Milos Zeman won 54.8 percent of the vote for the largely ceremonial post, the?Czech?Statistics Office reported. His opponent, conservative Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, had 45.2 percent.
"Long live Zeman!" his supporters chanted at his campaign headquarters in Prague.
"I promise that as a president elected in a direct popular vote I will try to be the voice of all citizens," Zeman said.
Voters seemed to punish Schwarzenberg for the government's unpopular austerity cuts that aimed to reduce the budget deficit.
"It definitely didn't help me," Schwarzenberg said, adding he will continue to serve as foreign minister.
Since Czechoslovakia split into Slovakia and the?Czech?Republic in 1993, the?Czech?Republic has had two presidents elected by Parliament: Vaclav Havel and Vaclav Klaus. But bickering during those votes led lawmakers to give that decision to the public.
The 68-year-old Zeman will replace the euro-skeptic Klaus, whose second and final term ends March 7.
Zeman is considered more favorable toward the 27-nation European Union, to which the country belongs. People in his inner circle also have close business ties with Russia so "he might become an advocate of closer relations with Russia," said Josef Mlejnek, an analyst from Prague's Charles University.
Zeman is not opposed to pre-emptive strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities and opposes Kosovo's independence.
In the campaign, one of the top issues became the 1945 expulsion of 3 million ethnic Germans from then-Czechoslovakia in a move approved by the Allies. Schwarzenberg said?Czechs?should not be proud of this action, prompting attacks from both Zeman and Klaus.
"Nationalism took over the campaign," said Mlejnek.
A chain smoker who likes a good drink, Zeman made international headlines as prime minister with his outspoken comments. He once compared the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to Adolf Hitler, drawing condemnations from the EU and the Arab League, and called Austrians who opposed a?Czech?nuclear plant "idiots."
After the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S., Zeman and his interior minister said they believed that hijacker Mohamed Atta met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in Prague in April 2001. That purported meeting was cited as evidence of a possible al-Qaida connection to Iraq. The 9/11 commission later said such a meeting never happened.
In 2002, Zeman outraged German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder by calling ethnic those Germans "Hitler's fifth column." In protest, Schroeder canceled his official trip to Prague.
During his four years in office beginning in 1998, Zeman's government privatized the ailing bank sector but was criticized for a lack of transparency in privatizing state-owned property and for often failing to run public tenders for state contracts.
Under the?Czech?constitution, the president has the power to pick the prime minister after a general election and to appoint members of the Central Bank board. With the approval of Parliament's upper house, the president also appoints Constitutional Court judges.
Otherwise the president has little executive power and the country is run by the government chosen and led by the prime minister.
CAIRO (AP) ? Violence erupted across Egypt on Friday as tens of thousands took to the streets to deliver an angry backlash against President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood, demanding regime change on the second anniversary of the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak. At least seven people were killed.
Two years to the day after protesters first rose up against the autocratic ex-president, the new phase of Egypt's upheaval was on display: the struggle between ruling Islamists and their opponents, played out against the backdrop of a worsening economy.
Rallies turned to clashes in multiple cities around Egypt, with police firing tear gas and protesters throwing stones. At least six people, including a 14-year-old boy, were killed in Suez, where protesters set ablaze a building that once housed the city's local government. Another person died in clashes in Ismailia, another Suez Canal city east of Cairo.
At least 480 people were injured nationwide, the Health Ministry said, including five with gunshot wounds in Suez, raising the possibility of a higher death toll.
Early on Saturday, army troops backed by armored vehicles deployed in the area outside the building housing the local government in Suez. The Third Field Army from which the troops were drawn announced that the deployed force was there to protect state institutions and that it was not taking sides.
Friday's rallies brought out at least 500,000 Morsi opponents, a small proportion of Egypt's 85 million people, but large enough to show that antipathy toward the president and his Islamist allies is strong in a country fatigued by two years of political turmoil, surging crime and an economy in free fall. Protests ? and clashes ? took place in at least 12 of Egypt's 27 provinces, including several Islamist strongholds.
"I will never leave until Morsi leaves," declared protester Sara Mohammed as she was treated for tear gas inhalation outside the presidential palace in Cairo's Heliopolis district. "What can possibly happen to us? Will we die? That's fine, because then I will be with God as a martyr. Many have died before us and even if we don't see change, future generations will."
The opposition's immediate goal was a show of strength to force Morsi to amend the country's new constitution, ratified in a national referendum last month despite objections that it failed to guarantee individual freedoms.
More broadly, the protests display the extent of public anger toward the Muslim Brotherhood, which opponents accuse of acting unilaterally rather than creating a broad-based democracy.
During his six months in office, Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected and civilian president, has faced the worst crises since Mubarak's ouster ? divisions that have left the nation scarred and in disarray. A wave of demonstrations erupted in November and December following a series of presidential decrees that temporarily gave Morsi near absolute powers, placing him above any oversight, including by the judiciary.
The Brotherhood and its Islamist allies, including the ultraconservative Salafis, have justified their hold by pointing to a string of election victories over the past year. The opposition contends they have gone far beyond what they say is a narrow mandate ? Morsi won the presidency with less than 52 percent of the vote. Brotherhood officials depict the opposition as undemocratic, using the streets to try to overturn an elected leadership.
The extent of the estrangement was evident late Thursday when, in a televised speech, Morsi denounced what he called a "counter-revolution" led by remnants of Mubarak's regime.
Early Saturday, Morsi called on Egyptians to express their views "peacefully and freely," without violence. Writing on his Twitter account, he offered his condolences to the families of those killed and pledged to bring the culprits to justice.
His tweets appeared to be an attempt to project an image of himself as president of all Egyptians, in the face of repeated opposition claims that he has been biased in favor of the Brotherhood, from which he hails and to which he remains loyal.
Unlike in 2012, when both sides made a show of marking Jan. 25, the Brotherhood stayed off the streets on Friday's anniversary. The group said it was honoring the occasion with acts of public service, such as treating the sick and planting trees.
On the horizon are key elections to choose a new lower house of parliament. The opposition is hoping to leverage public anger into a substantial bloc in the legislature, but must still weld together an effective campaign in the face of the Islamists' strength at the ballot box. Last winter, the Brotherhood and Salafis won around 75 percent of the lower house's seats, though the body was later disbanded by court order.
Pending the election of a new lower house, Morsi gave legislative powers to parliament's Islamist-dominated upper house, a normally toothless chamber elected by only about 7 percent of Egypt's 50 million voters in balloting last year.
Friday's protests re-created the tone of the 18-day uprising against Mubarak, including the same chants, this time directed against Morsi: "Erhal! Erhal!" ?"Leave! Leave!" ? and "The people want to topple the regime."
Clashes erupted outside the presidential palace in Cairo when youths tried to push through a police barricade. In other cities, protesters tried to break into Brotherhood offices as well as government and security buildings.
Clashes between protesters and police outside the state TV building in central Cairo continued into the small hours of Saturday. Some of the protesters held sit-ins in major squares and streets, insisting they would not disperse until Morsi leaves office.
Standing near Tahrir Square, retiree Ahmed Afifi said he joined the protests because he was struggling to feed his five children on less than $200 a month.
"I am retired and took another job just to make ends meet," Afifi said, his eyes filling with tears. "I am close to begging. Under Mubarak, life was hard, but at least we had security. ... The first people hit by high prices are the poor people right here."
Tens of thousands massed in Cairo's Tahrir Square, where the 2011 uprising began, and outside Morsi's palace, where banners proclaimed "No to the corrupt Muslim Brotherhood government" and "Two years since the revolution, where is social justice?" Others demonstrated outside the state TV and radio building overlooking the Nile.
In the Nile Delta towns of Menouf and Shibeen el-Koum, protesters blocked railway lines, disrupting train services to and from Cairo. In Ismailia on the Suez Canal, protesters stormed the building housing the provincial government, looting some of its contents. There were also clashes outside Morsi's home in the Nile Delta province of Sharqiyah.
The demands of the loosely knit opposition were varied. Some on the extremist fringe want Morsi to step down and the constitution rescinded. Others are calling for the document to be amended and early presidential elections held.
"There must be a constitution for all Egyptians, a constitution that every one of us sees himself in," Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei said in a televised message posted on his party's website.
Democracy campaigner and best-selling novelist Alaa al-Aswany marched with ElBaradei to Tahrir. "It is impossible to impose a constitution on Egyptians ... and the revolution today will bring this constitution down," he said.
Morsi's opponents complain that he has kept government appointments almost entirely within the Brotherhood, installing its members to everything from governorships and chiefs of state TV and newspapers, down to preachers in state-run mosques.
Many were also angered by the constitution and the way Islamists pushed it through in an all-night session and then brought it to a swift referendum in which only a third of voters participated. The result is a document that could bring a much stricter implementation of Shariah, or Islamic law, than modern Egypt has ever seen.
Looming over the struggle between the Islamists and opposition is an economy in tatters since Mubarak's ouster. The vital tourism sector has slumped, investment has shriveled, foreign currency reserves have tumbled, prices are on the rise and the local currency has been sliding.
More pain is likely in coming months if the government implements unpopular new austerity measures to secure a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.
____
Associated Press reporters Aya Batrawy and Mariam Rizk contributed to this report.
With projections of 9.5 billion people by 2050, humanity faces the challenge of feeding modern diets to additional mouths while using the same amounts of water, fertilizer and arable land as today.
Cornell University researchers have taken a leap toward meeting those needs by discovering a gene that could lead to new varieties of staple crops with 50 percent higher yields.
The gene, called Scarecrow, is the first discovered to control a special leaf structure, known as Kranz anatomy, which leads to more efficient photosynthesis. Plants photosynthesize using one of two methods: C3, a less efficient, ancient method found in most plants, including wheat and rice; and C4, a more efficient adaptation employed by grasses, maize, sorghum and sugarcane that is better suited to drought, intense sunlight, heat and low nitrogen.
"Researchers have been trying to find the underlying genetics of Kranz anatomy so we can engineer it into C3 crops," said Thomas Slewinski, lead author of a paper that appeared online in the journalPlant and Cell Physiology. Slewinski is a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of senior author Robert Turgeon, professor of plant biology.
The finding "provides a clue as to how this whole anatomical key is regulated," said Turgeon. "There's still a lot to be learned, but now the barn door is open and you are going to see people working on this Scarecrow pathway."
The promise of transferring C4 mechanisms into C3 plants has been fervently pursued and funded on a global scale for decades, he added.
If C4 photosynthesis is successfully transferred to C3 plants through genetic engineering, farmers could grow wheat and rice in hotter, dryer environments with less fertilizer, while possibly increasing yields by half, the researchers said.
C3 photosynthesis originated at a time in Earth's history when the atmosphere had a high proportion of carbon dioxide. C4 plants have independently evolved from C3 plants some 60 times at different times and places. The C4 adaptation involves Kranz anatomy in the leaves, which includes a layer of special bundle sheath cells surrounding the veins and an outer layer of cells called mesophyll. Bundle sheath cells and mesophyll cells cooperate in a two-step version of photosynthesis, using different kinds of chloroplasts.
By looking closely at plant evolution and anatomy, Slewinski recognized that the bundle sheath cells in leaves of C4 plants were similar to endodermal cells that surrounded vascular tissue in roots and stems.
Slewinski suspected that if C4 leaves shared endodermal genes with roots and stems, the genetics that controlled those cell types may also be shared. Slewinski looked for experimental maize lines with mutant Scarecrow genes, which he knew governed endodermal cells in roots.
When the researchers grew those plants, they first identified problems in the roots, then checked for abnormalities in the bundle sheath. They found that the leaves of Scarecrow mutants had abnormal and proliferated bundle sheath cells and irregular veins.
In all plants, an enzyme called RuBisCo facilitates a reaction that captures carbon dioxide from the air, the first step in producing sucrose, the energy-rich product of photosynthesis that powers the plant. But in C3 plants RuBisCo also facilitates a competing reaction with oxygen, creating a byproduct that has to be degraded, at a cost of about 30-40 percent overall efficiency. In C4 plants, carbon dioxide fixation takes place in two stages. The first step occurs in the mesophyll, and the product of this reaction is shuttled to the bundle sheath for the RuBisCo step. The RuBisCo step is very efficient because in the bundle sheath cells, the oxygen concentration is low and the carbon dioxide concentration is high. This eliminates the problem of the competing oxygen reaction, making the plant far more efficient.
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