The reality stars have ended their rocky romance! See more celeb pairs who are back to going solo
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Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
British official: Anti-doping fight in 'dark age'
FILE - In this Sept. 29, 2008 file photo, Colin Moynihan, the chairman of the British Olympic Association, speaks at a news conference in Sydney, Australia. Moynihan said Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011 that the global fight against doping is entering a "dark age" because of a failure to keep deliberate drug cheats out of the games. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File)
FILE - In this Sept. 29, 2008 file photo, Colin Moynihan, the chairman of the British Olympic Association, speaks at a news conference in Sydney, Australia. Moynihan said Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011 that the global fight against doping is entering a "dark age" because of a failure to keep deliberate drug cheats out of the games. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File)
LONDON (AP) ? The head of Britain's Olympic committee wants an independent review of the World Anti-Doping Agency, accusing the global body of failing to catch the worst offenders and dragging the fight against drug cheats into a "dark age."
"Never have the sanctions against the hard-line cheats been so weak since the end of the Cold War," British Olympic Association chairman Colin Moynihan said Tuesday in a speech to international sports federation leaders.
Moynihan said only 59 of the world's 204 national Olympic committees are in compliance with WADA's anti-doping code, and that law-enforcement agencies ? not WADA ? were responsible for breaking up the major doping rings and prosecuting cases such as the BALCO scandal.
It was one of the harshest public attacks ever launched by a senior Olympic official against WADA, which was formed 10 years ago to unify anti-doping rules, sanctions and policies.
"It is understandable that many in sport have concluded that (WADA) has underachieved in the 10 years it has been operational," Moynihan said in Lausanne, Switzerland. "Not least because .... the system put in place by WADA has failed to catch the major drug cheats of our time.
"Marion Jones and countless others have flourished during the WADA era ? isn't that enough to prompt an independent audit of the organization tasked with policing sport?"
Moynihan's strong words reflected his determination to defend the BOA's own tough anti-doping rule that bans British doping violators from the Olympics for life. The BOA bylaw has come under pressure since the Court of Arbitration for Sport threw out an IOC rule barring athletes who have received drug bans of more than six months from competing in the next Olympics.
"The time for a fundamental review of WADA, and what it has actually achieved, is long overdue," Moynihan said. "We now have a situation where drug cheats will be able to compete in London 2012. ... Anti-doping policy is entering a dark age."
The former British sports minister, who serves in the House of Lords, questioned WADA's banned substance list, describing it as "less than adequately based on science or logic."
Moynihan criticized WADA's "inflexible penalty system," which relies on two-year bans for a first doping offense, rather than harsher four-year sanctions. The two-year penalties, he said, allow cheats to escape without missing an Olympics.
"Regrettably, despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars in the 10 years since its creation, WADA has been unable to achieve its own, well intentioned, objectives," he said.
WADA said it had no immediate comment on Moynihan's remarks.
The IOC's "Rule 45," adopted in 2008, was deemed invalid by CAS last month on grounds that it amounts to a second punishment and is not part of the WADA code. The ruling cleared American 400-meter runner LaShawn Merritt, who completed a 21-month doping ban in July, to defend his Olympic title in London next year.
"Legal technicalities appear to have overriden moral scruples," Moynihan said, adding the CAS ruling means "convicted drug offenders will now be able to gatecrash the 2012 Olympics."
He said the IOC has offered "unequivocal support" to the BOA and its lifetime Olympic ban.
"Just as lawyers and doctors are struck off for the most serious of offenses, and never allowed to practice again, so the same should apply to the most heinous and reprehensible form of cheating in sport," Moynihan said.
Weighing a possible appeal of the BOA ban is sprinter Dwain Chambers, the former European 100-meter champion who served a two-year ban in the BALCO scandal and remains ineligible for the British Olympic team.
Moynihan said the BOA rule is consistent with EU and British law, distinguishes between inadvertent and deliberate doping, is backed by more than 90 percent of British athletes and offers a clear appeals process.
"The bylaw is fair, valid and enforceable," he said.
Since the rule on lifetime Olympic bans was introduced in 1992, it has been applied 32 times and successfully overturned 29 times on appeal for "mitigating circumstances," Moynihan said.
While some critics argue that drug cheats deserve a second chance, Moynihan said it is the clean athletes who suffer.
"We need to ask where in this case is the redemption for the clean athlete denied selection by a competitor who has knowingly cheated, taken the whole enchilada of drugs?" he said. "And what is worse, the cheat, possibly with a lifelong benefit of a course of growth hormones and other drugs, is back again."
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Mexican party website hacked on election day (AP)
MEXICO CITY ? Web users claiming to be in the hacking movement known as "Anonymous" say they are behind an attack on the website of a Mexican political party backing the gubernatorial race of President Felipe Calderon's sister.
The New Alliance Party's website shows a video of a person wearing a Guy Fawkes mask urging Mexicans to hack into official websites and email accounts to look for evidence of corruption and make it public.
Twitter users claiming to belong to "Anonymous" posted messages of the hack Sunday coinciding with the Michoacan state elections. They also say hacked the Michoacan Electoral Institute's website, which has been down for hours.
Presidential sister Luisa Maria Calderon is seeking the governor's seat in Michoacan's vote.
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Monday, November 14, 2011
Amazon to ship Kindle Fire today (Digital Trends)
Amazon just announced that it plans to ship pre-ordered units of its Android-based Kindle Fire e-reader tablet starting today, a day earlier than expected. Kindle Touch? and Kindle Touch 3G customers can expect their devices to go out tomorrow.
News of the early shipment date comes just as the first hands-on reviews of the Kindle Fire hit the Web. And so far, the device is receiving fairly solid scores among tech aficionados, but there are some downsides to the $200 super e-reader.
Software-wise, Amazon has fully concealed Android 2.3 Gingerbread with its own tweaks to the software, making it unlike any other Android tablet out there ? ?and that?s a very, very good thing,? says Sam Biddle at Gizmodo. ?From the minute you turn it on, the device is puzzlingly simple.?
This sentiment is not shared by all the reviewers, however. As The New York Times? David Pogue writes: ?[T]he Fire is not nearly as versatile as a real tablet. It is designed almost exclusively for consuming stuff, particularly material you buy from Amazon, like books, newspapers and video. It has no camera, microphone, GPS function, Bluetooth or memory-card slot. There is a serviceable e-mail program, but no built-in calendar or note pad. Most problematic, though, the Fire does not have anything like the polish or speed of an iPad. You feel that $200 price tag with every swipe of your finger.?
This touches on the two most important things to remember about the Kindle Fire. First, Amazon?s device sells for such a low price ? so low that Amazon loses money on every Fire it sells ? because, for Amazon, it?s not about the device at all; it?s about getting people to buy more stuff from Amazon. Kindle Fire is, in other words, a digital store, plain and simple. Yes, it also allows you to read magazines and books, listen to music and watch videos. But it?s made to buy these products from Amazon itself.
Second is the fact that the Kindle Fire is cheap, and that cheapness is one of the few points on which most reviewers can agree. So if you plan to buy one (or bought one already), expect to get what you paid for, and not much more.
Despite the possible downfalls, the Kindle Fire has already proven that people are clamoring for an inexpensive tablet.
This article was originally posted on Digital Trends
More from Digital Trends
Amazon?s tablet will be named the Kindle Fire
Amazon schedules event for next week; is this its tablet unveiling?
WSJ: Amazon tablet due in October
Amazon planning entire lineup of Android-powered devices?
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Nature journal libel case begins
11 November 2011
Last updated at 13:47 ET
A libel case against the scientific journal Nature has begun in the High Court, Central London.
The case has been brought against the publication by an Egyptian scientist, Prof Mohamed El Naschie.
He has claimed that an article published by the journal in November 2008 damaged his reputation.
The counsel acting for the journal told the court on Friday that the article was factually accurate and in the public interest.
Libel reform campaigners have drawn comparisons between the current case and a case brought by the British Chiropractic Association against the science writer Simon Singh, where it was claimed that libel laws were being used to suppress scientific debate.
Three years ago, Nature published an article that alleged that Prof El Naschie self-published many papers, some of which did not seem to have been independently checked by scientists working in the same field of expertise - a process known as peer review.
The article also reported that he listed several affiliations and honorary professorships with international institutions that could not be confirmed.
Prof El Naschie disputed the contents of the article and has sued the journal for libel.
In his opening statement, Andrew Caldecott QC - acting for Nature - said he would use the case to argue that the article was "true, honest opinion and responsible journalism on an issue of public interest".
Mr Caldecott read out sections from the article to the court.
The article alleged that Prof El Naschie, who was set to step down as an editor of a theoretical physics journal at the time, was facing growing criticism that he used its pages to publish numerous papers written by himself.
The article also alleged that five of the 36 papers in the December issue of Prof El Naschie's publication - Chaos, Solitons and Fractals - were written by him and 60 articles had been published since the beginning of the year.
Mr Caldecott said that the scientists contacted by Nature were expressing their honest opinion when they said that Prof El Naschie's papers were of "low quality" and that it was "obvious that there was either zero, or at the very best, very poor peer review of his own papers".
Mr Caldecott said that the article had also published Prof El Naschie's defence of his journal's publication record, saying: "We put more emphasis on the scientific content of the paper and slightly less emphasis on prestigious addresses and impressive affiliations".
The case will continue next week, when Prof El Naschie - who has chosen to represent himself - is set to outline his case, and why he felt it was necessary to bring the case against the journal.
Libel Reform campaigners have compared the action to a libel case last year that was brought against Simon Singh.
Dr Singh was being sued by the British Chiropractic Association because of comments he had made about the effectiveness of chiropractic treatments. He won an appeal that allowed him to use the fair comment defence in the case, which led to the case against him being dropped.
Dr Singh told BBC News that he believed that libel laws and the threat of libel action was inhibiting scientific debate.
"If a massive international publication journal like Nature suffers from libel and is worried about publishing scientific papers, you can imagine what it's like for small academic journals who relentlessly know there are things they need to publish and they ought to publish - but they just don't publish," he said.
Campaigners are calling for current libel laws to be reformed because, they say, the existing system can be used to suppress robust scientific debate and discussion.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/science-environment-15697636
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Sunday, November 13, 2011
Senate Defeats Measure to Block EPA Cross-State Pollution Rule (ContributorNetwork)
According to USA Today, on Thursday the United States Senate rejected a measure that seeks to block the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) rule regarding limiting air pollution that crosses state lines.
The EPA's rule requires coal plants in 27 different states to cut emissions that cross state lines. The effort to stop this rule failed in the Senate after a 56 senators opposed the effort and 41 supported it. The measure is being sponsored by Sen. Ran Paul (R-Kentucky), who claims it will kill jobs. Here are some facts about the rule and the current opposition against and support for it:
* According to the EPA, the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule requires a total of 27 states to improve air quality by reducing power plant emissions that lead to ozone and particulate pollution in other states.
* The rule was officially finalized on July 6, 2011, and replaces the EPA's 2005 Clean Air Interstate Rule.
* Although Sen. Paul's measure was backed by the Tea Party, it received opposite from East Coast Republican senators who wanted to keep Midwestern power plant emissions out of their states, reported the Huffington Post.
* Opponents of the rule argue that the costs for power companies to comply with the rule will cost about $2.4 billion in addition to killing jobs in the already strained economy.
* However, the EPA is estimating between $120 billion and $280 billion in annual health and environmental benefits.
* President Barack Obama had already expressed opposition and even threatened to veto Sen. Paul's measure if it ever made its way to his desk after being approved by congress, according to the Miami Herald.
* The Senate's vote against the measure this Thursday, which was opposed by six Republicans and 50 Democrats, has been praised by environmental and health groups, including the American Lung Association.
* In early October, the EPA planned on easing the rule and allowing certain states and companies to emit more pollutants that initially outlined in July, noted an MSNBC article.
* The changes proposed by the EPA included increasing the allowed amount of emissions from power plants, with changes ranging from 1 percent to 4 percent above the original requirement.
* NOLA reported that the State of Louisiana reached out to the EPA about the problems associated with the rule, specifically saying that it could lead to rolling blackouts in the state next summer.
* Additionally, state officials expressed their criticism of the rule, saying that Louisiana's power plants should be completely exempt and not be part of the 27 states affected by it.
Rachel Bogart provides an in-depth look at current environmental issues and local Chicago news stories. As a college student from the Chicago suburbs pursuing two science degrees, she applies her knowledge and passion to both topics to garner further public awareness.
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Saturday, November 12, 2011
Navy to promote itself during historic hoops game (AP)
CORONADO, Calif. ? The fighter jets are gone from the flight deck, and in their place is a gleaming basketball court surrounded by bright green bleachers ? a stark contrast to the gray, 95,000-ton Navy warship that buried Osama bin Laden at sea.
Friday's historic North Carolina-Michigan State basketball game aboard the USS Carl Vinson couldn't have come at a more opportune time for a Navy facing deep defense cuts.
Officials plan to seize the spotlight to showcase the Navy and its awe-inspiring, multi-billion-dollar aircraft carriers to the more than 3 million viewers expected to watch the Veterans Day game on ESPN.
The country's basketball-fan-in-chief, President Barack Obama, will be onboard for the game.
With the war in Iraq officially over and the one in Afghanistan winding down, the military is almost certain to shrink. All branches of service are feeling pressure to tout the importance of their missions and their equipment.
Navy officials say they know a basketball game will not change the budget debate, but it can't hurt efforts to get the American public excited about their branch of service as its chiefs lobby Congress to avoid cuts that could jeopardize its future military strategies.
The role of the Nimitz-class supercarriers in modern warfare has been part of that discussion with critics questioning whether anti-ship weapons have turned them into white elephants that are too expensive to risk losing in a war. In 2015, the Navy plans to add to its fleet the Gerald R. Ford, the lead ship of a new three-ship class of supercarriers. Each is expected to cost about $9 billion.
Capt. Bruce H. Lindsey, the Vinson's commanding officer, said viewers Friday will get a firsthand look at just how important carriers are to military operations, from sending aircraft into Iraq and Afghanistan, to supporting relief efforts during disasters such as the earthquakes in Haiti and Japan. The program will feature snippets about Naval life aboard the 1,092-foot floating airport.
"It's an awesome opportunity to showcase Naval aviation and your Navy," he said.
The Navy wants to show Americans how their tax dollars are being spent, said Rear Admiral Dennis Moynihan, the Navy's chief spokesman.
"It's their aircraft carrier, they have paid for it," Moynihan said. "They are the shareholders, and it's important they understand how we are spending those dollars in the Navy ... it is sort of a report to shareholders."
Critics say the United States now has too many carriers, and the Navy can do the same missions with smaller, more economical vessels.
With 11 carriers, the U.S. Navy has more than the rest of the navies on the planet combined, said Christopher Preble, a Navy veteran and foreign policy expert at the Cato Institute. Most are Nimitz-class vessels, the world's largest warships.
The amount of money needed to build a carrier could be used to build more than a half-dozen destroyer ships, Preble said.
"I'm a huge basketball fan, and I think it's good for the sailors who are going to get to see a good game and it will be neat for the players," he said. "But I don't think the Navy will be able to use this to sell the idea as to why it needs aircraft carriers."
The game will be watched by a prime Navy recruiting market ? young people. Magic Johnson and James Worthy will serve as honorary captains for their alma maters at the game, attended by 7,000 mostly active-duty military personnel off the coast of San Diego.
Obama will have the seat of his choice, but he won't be arriving on a jet like President George W. Bush did when he made an arrested landing in a fixed-wing aircraft on the USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003. Bush used the ship as a setting to announce the end of major combat operations in Iraq under a banner hung on the warship reading "Mission Accomplished." Opponents criticized it as a publicity stunt.
Morale Entertainment Foundation approached the Navy last summer with the idea of a carrier basketball game and offered to foot the bill. The Navy agreed on the condition the event not interrupt its scheduled deployments or compromise national security, Moynihan said.
Sailors prepared for the upcoming deployment of the Vinson in a few weeks while workers built the basketball court and arena on the flight deck of the floating fortress docked at the Navy base in Coronado with sweeping views of downtown San Diego.
A second basketball court is being built in the hanger deck in case of rain ? which is in the forecast. North Carolina's Tar Heels prepared its freshmen players for the opener by having them dance a routine on the deck while wearing life preservers.
Walter Chatlin III, a sailor from Houston who was deployed when the Vinson buried bin Laden at sea, watched forklifts carry the basketball court's floor boards Tuesday and said it all seemed surreal.
"I'm an operations specialist so seeing you know, seeing the jets land on the flight deck all through the deployment, and now we're going to have a college basketball game on it, seems pretty cool," he said. "We need some R and R time ... We need to get a little break before we get deployed again."
The ship is named after former U.S. Rep. Carl Vinson, a Georgia Democrat known as the father of the two-ocean Navy because of his success in pushing through bills that greatly expanded and modernized the Navy's warship fleet during his time in Congress from 1914 to 1965. He was chair of the House Armed Services Committee when Congress authorized the procurement of the first nuclear-powered aircraft carriers starting with the USS Enterprise in the late 1950s.
Carriers became the backbone of U.S. sea power after WWII, ferrying military might around the world in crises and conflicts in such places as Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
"I think we need more Carl Vinsons today," the Vinson's Capt. Lindsey said.
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Researchers begin work on Babbage Analytical Engine, hope to compute like it's 1837
Researchers begin work on Babbage Analytical Engine, hope to compute like it's 1837 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Nov 2011 16:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/jqtuFVgHgik/
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Friday, November 11, 2011
Internal Affairs
And yet it is Hoover and Tolson?s public life?the stuff we do know about?that is ultimately the most fascinating part of their story. They never openly acknowledged a sexual or romantic relationship. At the same time, they demanded?and received?a level of respect for their partnership that seems almost unthinkable in pre-Stonewall society. For some four decades, the cr?me de la cr?me of political America treated them as a recognized couple; when Edgar was invited to dinner, so was Clyde. We don?t have to make up their most intimate scenes to find a relationship worth exploring.
Hoover and Tolson met sometime in the late 1920s?perhaps, though not definitively, at the Mayflower Hotel bar as suggested in one of J. Edgar?s early scenes. In early 1928, Tolson signed on as a Bureau agent, one of many handsome young George Washington fraternity men recruited in Hoover?s early days as director. His career took off immediately. By 1931, Tolson was assistant director of the Bureau, charged with enforcing Hoover?s famously nitpicking internal policies.
Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=5847a0af7bf6853c7e604e0ffe32f24e
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Thursday, November 10, 2011
Specious Species: Fight against Seafood Fraud Enlists DNA Testing
FALSE FILLETS?: DNA testing may help the U.S. Food and Drug Administration prevent seafood fraud.
Image: ? iStockphoto.com / Flander
Escolar masquerading as white tuna. Flounder passing for Vietnamese catfish. Pricey baby cod replaced with lesser quality hake instead. Once fish is filleted and skinned, it can be difficult to distinguish, as a Boston Globe investigative report found after testing 183 pieces of fish and finding that 87 were mislabeled. This type of fraud has long vexed the seafood industry, especially for popular species such as red snapper, wild salmon and Atlantic cod, which could be mislabeled as much as 70 percent of the time. But all this fishy business could soon change.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, often criticized for less-than-rigorous inspection and enforcement efforts when it comes to seafood fraud, is rolling out new DNA-sequencing equipment in nine of its major laboratories across the country in a push to squelch this type of substitution. Officials say they are targeting cod, grouper, snapper, tuna and other high-value species (which are more likely to be substituted), and have already begun sequencing samples taken from retailers and wholesalers.
The FDA has been looking into such genetic identification?called DNA bar coding?since 2007, when toxic puffer fish from China entered the country labeled as monkfish and sickened several people. At the time the standard way of testing seafood was though protein analysis (through so-called isoelectric focusing). But the technique was not effective if fish samples were processed or cooked.
At the same time, the FDA began working with scientists from the University of Guelph's Consortium for the Barcode of Life (BOL) project, which was compiling a library of genetic data using DNA bar coding as a way to identify all the world's species. Part of that effort included the sequencing of genes of more than 8,200 varieties of fish. Although the BOL project is vast and still growing, it is not designed to be a regulatory database.
So the FDA, in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institution's Laboratories for Analytical Biology and the Division of Fishes, established its own library, ensuring results would hold up in court. "Anyone can put sequences in the BOL," says Jonathan Deeds, FDA research biologist and project head. "Most are good, but there are also a small number of guesses. We needed to have our own database."
The agency set out to validate the method and standardize it in a way that it would be consistent in each of the FDA laboratories. Whereas that process was underway, the cost of DNA-sequencing equipment came down dramatically, from approximately $400,000 per machine to $150,000. According to Deeds, the cost for the FDA to run a DNA barcode test on a fish sample (not including labor and supplies) is only $10. By comparison, tests for seafood contaminants such as polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs) or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) can run as high as $1,000 a sample.
The drop in cost is significant for the successful enforcement of labeling rules, says Gavin Gibbons, National Fisheries Institute (NFI) spokesman. "If we get to a point where there are hundreds or thousands of samples flowing into FDA labs, [testing and enforcement] could have a substantial impact on fraud."
The FDA's library went live on November 1st and is now available to the public and outside laboratories. It contains DNA bar codes from 250 species of frequently consumed fish, each identified by an expert using a specimen held at the Smithsonian as a reference. Another 400 specimens gathered in the Philippines are currently being identified; the agency is also developing a crustacean database covering species like shrimp, lobster and crab. Deeds says he expects the library to double in size in the next few months. (The cost has dropped so much that Deeds says the FDA is also starting to look at mislabeled pet foods and wild game meat using the same technique.)
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=99626acafd010f075adfd990a4617bbc
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Obama: GOP goals would hurt women (AP)
WASHINGTON ? An aggressive President Barack Obama declared Wednesday that congressional Republicans are more interested in dividing the country than in strengthening the economy and accused them of working to overturn advances achieved during his presidency.
"They're more focused on turning back the clock," he told a prominent women's legal group.
The president's criticism reiterated complaints about Republican opposition to his jobs bill and the health care law he shepherded through last year. But he tailored his comments to the largely female audience of the Women's Law Center, a legal advocacy group that is friendly to his administration.
He said Republicans want to overturn the country's new health care law and would let health insurance companies once again charge women higher rates and prevent millions of women from obtaining tests such as pap smears and breast exams. And he pointed to the defeat of a proposal that would have protected teachers against layoffs, noting that three-quarters of them are women.
"Lifting up women lifts up our economy and our country," Obama said. " Unfortunately, not everybody in Washington seems to feel the same way."
The dinner honored women who were Freedom Riders in 1961, riding buses across the south to test a U.S. Supreme Court decision banning segregation in interstate transportation.
"The Freedom Riders had faith that America could still be perfected," Obama said. "And it is only because they did that I am able to stand here as President of the United States.
The last time the president spoke to the women's legal group was in 2005, when he was a new senator from Illinois. Since then, he said, "our daughters live in a world that is fairer and more equal than it was six years ago."
The speech was an opportunity for Obama to address a key constituency ? Obama won a substantial majority of women in 2008 and his campaign team hopes to reprise that in 2012.
He drew attention to the two women he nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court ? Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. He cited the service of Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House from 2007 to 2011, and praised Hillary Clinton as "one of the most formidable presidential candidates we've ever seen" and as "one of the best secretaries of state that this country has ever known."
He marveled at the winners of the Google Science Fair, three girls who visited him in the Oval Office. One, he recalled, was 17 and had discovered a way to improve treatment for ovarian cancer.
"And when I asked another one of the winners, Lauren Hodge, if she had skipped a grade in school, she informed me very politely that she had skipped two," he said.
But the president had no admiration for his Republican adversaries.
He accused them of picking away piecemeal at his health care law and of trying to halt money to Planned Parenthood.
"These folks know they can't win on the big issues, so they're trying to make the fight about social issues that stir up their base,"he said. "They're spending their time trying to divide this country against itself rather than coming together to lift up our economy."
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Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Scientists make step towards using brain scans to predict outcome of psychotic episodes
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Public release date: 7-Nov-2011[ | E-mail |
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Wellcome Trust
Computer analysis of brain scans could help predict how severe the future illness course of a patient with psychosis will be, according to research funded by the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust. The findings could allow doctors to make more accurate decisions about how best to treat patients.
Psychosis is a condition that affects people's minds, altering the way they think, feel and behave. It can be accompanied by hallucinations and delusions. The most common forms are part of mental health conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but symptoms of psychosis can also occur in conditions such as Parkinson's disease and alcohol or drug abuse.
Many patients recover from psychosis with minimal symptoms, but for others, the psychosis can be persistent and can affect their ability to function well and lead a normal life. At present, psychiatrists have no clear method of assessing a person's risk of future episodes and predicting how the disease will progress. This is important in terms of guiding patients' and their clinicians' choices about appropriate treatments.
Now, a study led by Dr Paola Dazzan and Dr Janaina Mourao-Miranda at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London in collaboration with the Computer Science Department at University College London and published today in the journal Psychological Medicine reports the successful use of computer algorithms to analyse MRI scans and predict a patient's outcome.
Algorithms that quantify the risk of further episodes of disease are common in areas of medicine such as cardiovascular medicine and oncology, but no accurate tests are available to psychiatrists. Researchers have previously used MRI to predict outcome in psychosis, based on the analysis of specific brain regions. However, the changes in the brain associated with psychosis are often subtle and difficult to detect, and these approaches have therefore been of limited benefit for clinical practice.
Dr Dazzan and colleagues worked with a cohort of 100 patients, taking MRI brain scans when they presented to clinical services with a first psychotic episode. In addition, the researchers scanned the brains of a control group of 91 healthy individuals. The patients were followed up around six years later and classified as having developed a continuous, episodic or intermediate illness course, depending on whether their symptoms remitted or not during this time.
From this larger sample, the researchers then analysed scans from twenty-eight subjects with a continuous course of illness, the same number from patients with an episodic course and again, the same number from healthy controls. They used these scans as data to 'train' a software developed by a group led by Dr. Mourao-Miranda based on pattern recognition (a statistical approach that uses data from the whole brain rather than from a specific region) and to distinguish between the different severities of the illness. The algorithm, applied to the scans collected at the first episode of psychosis, was able to differentiate between patients who then went on to develop continuous psychosis and those who went on to develop a more benign, episodic psychosis in seven out of ten cases.
"Although we have some way to go to improve the accuracy of these tests and validate the results on independent large samples, we have shown that in principle it should be possible to use brain scans to identify at the first episode of illness both patients who are likely to go on to have a continuous psychotic illness and those who will develop a less severe form of the illness," says Dr Mourao-Miranda, a Wellcome Trust Research Career Development Fellow. "This suggests that even by the time that they have their first episode of psychosis, significant changes have already occurred to their brains."
"This is the first step towards being able to use brain imaging to provide tangible benefit to patients affected by psychosis," says Dr Dazzan. "This could in future offer a fast and reliable way of predicting the outcome for an individual patient allowing us to optimise treatments for those most in need, while avoiding long-term exposure to antipsychotic medications in those with very mild forms.
"Structural MRI scans can be obtained in as little as ten minutes and so this technique could be incorporated into routine clinical investigations. The information this provides could help inform the treatment options available to each patient and help us better manage their illness."
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Public release date: 7-Nov-2011[ | E-mail |
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c.brierley@wellcome.ac.uk
44-207-611-7329
Wellcome Trust
Computer analysis of brain scans could help predict how severe the future illness course of a patient with psychosis will be, according to research funded by the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust. The findings could allow doctors to make more accurate decisions about how best to treat patients.
Psychosis is a condition that affects people's minds, altering the way they think, feel and behave. It can be accompanied by hallucinations and delusions. The most common forms are part of mental health conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but symptoms of psychosis can also occur in conditions such as Parkinson's disease and alcohol or drug abuse.
Many patients recover from psychosis with minimal symptoms, but for others, the psychosis can be persistent and can affect their ability to function well and lead a normal life. At present, psychiatrists have no clear method of assessing a person's risk of future episodes and predicting how the disease will progress. This is important in terms of guiding patients' and their clinicians' choices about appropriate treatments.
Now, a study led by Dr Paola Dazzan and Dr Janaina Mourao-Miranda at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London in collaboration with the Computer Science Department at University College London and published today in the journal Psychological Medicine reports the successful use of computer algorithms to analyse MRI scans and predict a patient's outcome.
Algorithms that quantify the risk of further episodes of disease are common in areas of medicine such as cardiovascular medicine and oncology, but no accurate tests are available to psychiatrists. Researchers have previously used MRI to predict outcome in psychosis, based on the analysis of specific brain regions. However, the changes in the brain associated with psychosis are often subtle and difficult to detect, and these approaches have therefore been of limited benefit for clinical practice.
Dr Dazzan and colleagues worked with a cohort of 100 patients, taking MRI brain scans when they presented to clinical services with a first psychotic episode. In addition, the researchers scanned the brains of a control group of 91 healthy individuals. The patients were followed up around six years later and classified as having developed a continuous, episodic or intermediate illness course, depending on whether their symptoms remitted or not during this time.
From this larger sample, the researchers then analysed scans from twenty-eight subjects with a continuous course of illness, the same number from patients with an episodic course and again, the same number from healthy controls. They used these scans as data to 'train' a software developed by a group led by Dr. Mourao-Miranda based on pattern recognition (a statistical approach that uses data from the whole brain rather than from a specific region) and to distinguish between the different severities of the illness. The algorithm, applied to the scans collected at the first episode of psychosis, was able to differentiate between patients who then went on to develop continuous psychosis and those who went on to develop a more benign, episodic psychosis in seven out of ten cases.
"Although we have some way to go to improve the accuracy of these tests and validate the results on independent large samples, we have shown that in principle it should be possible to use brain scans to identify at the first episode of illness both patients who are likely to go on to have a continuous psychotic illness and those who will develop a less severe form of the illness," says Dr Mourao-Miranda, a Wellcome Trust Research Career Development Fellow. "This suggests that even by the time that they have their first episode of psychosis, significant changes have already occurred to their brains."
"This is the first step towards being able to use brain imaging to provide tangible benefit to patients affected by psychosis," says Dr Dazzan. "This could in future offer a fast and reliable way of predicting the outcome for an individual patient allowing us to optimise treatments for those most in need, while avoiding long-term exposure to antipsychotic medications in those with very mild forms.
"Structural MRI scans can be obtained in as little as ten minutes and so this technique could be incorporated into routine clinical investigations. The information this provides could help inform the treatment options available to each patient and help us better manage their illness."
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Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/wt-sms110711.php
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Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Giant asteroid to pass near Earth
7 November 2011
Last updated at 19:53 ET
An 400m-wide (1,300ft) asteroid will pass by the Earth on Tuesday, closer to it even than the Moon.
It poses no danger to the Earth and it will be invisible to the naked eye.
Asteroid 2005 YU55's closest approach, at a distance of 325,000km (202,000mi), will be at 2328GMT. It is the closest the asteroid has been in 200 years.
It is also the largest space rock fly-by the Earth has seen since 1976; the next visit by such a large asteroid will be in 2028.
The aircraft-carrier-sized asteroid is incredibly darkly coloured in visible wavelengths and nearly spherical, lazily spinning about once every 20 hours as it races through our neighbourhood of the Solar System.
It will trace a path across the whole sky through to Thursday.
"This is the closest approach by an asteroid that large that we've ever known about in advance," said Lance Benner of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
But he stressed that there was no chance that the pass would be anything other than a close encounter.
"2005 YU55 cannot hit Earth, at least over the interval that we can compute the motion reliably - which extends for several hundred years," he said.
Instead, the pass gives astronomers a rare opportunity to study the asteroid in detail.
In particular, two radio telescopes - the Goldstone Observatory in California, US and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, US - will be tracking radio echoes off it in a bid to understand better what it is made of and how it is shaped.
The precise details of the asteroid's path will also help scientists to predict where it will go much farther into the future.
Amateur astronomers may catch a glimpse of it with telescopes of 15cm or larger, Nasa suggests.
The Earth has several regular visitors like 2005 YU55 - most famously the Apophis asteroid. Apophis has in the past been claimed as a possible future impactor when it returns to our neighbourhood in 2029 and again in 2036.
There is, according to the latest calculations, no danger from Apophis either. However, it will pass much closer to the Earth on 13 April 2029 - at a distance of just 29,500km (18,300mi).
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/science-environment-15572634
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App Giveaway: GarageBand for iPhone and iPad
Last week, Apple’s GarageBand was updated to be a universal application for iPhone and iPad. Also last week, TiPb introduced our new Music, DJ, and Jamming Forum. In celebration of these two events, TiPb is gifting 5 copies of GarageBand for iPhone and iPad! For a chance...
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/_Fvjkb9AQ8c/story01.htm
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Monday, November 7, 2011
Lindsay Lohan Released After Four Hours in Jail
Actress spent less than five hours behind bars after receiving 30-day sentence.
By Gil Kaufman
Lindsay Lohan (file)
Photo: Kevork Djansezian/ Getty Images
Lindsay Lohan was in and out of jail on Sunday night in Los Angeles. No, the trouble actress did not run afoul of the law again, she checked into the Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood to begin her 30-day jail sentence for violating her probation.
But, due to the chronic overcrowding in L.A. jails, according to TMZ, Lohan arrived at 8:48 p.m. and was released less than five hours later at around 1:30 a.m. This was Lohan's fifth trip to jail since her first arrest for drunken driving in 2007.
Lohan was sentenced to 30 days in jail for violating her probation after a judge ruled that she failed to attend the appropriate amount of court-mandated therapy sessions and for getting removed from a community-service gig. The "Mean Girls" actress was in court last week where she admitted to violating the terms of her probation from a theft case by getting booted from a community-service assignment at the Downtown Women's Center.
Judge Stephanie Sautner was adamant that she would not put up with any more slip-ups from Lohan, telling her, "This is known as putting the keys to jail in the defendant's pocket ... the first time you violate, you will go to jail." Lohan will have to serve 12 days at the Los Angeles County morgue -- where she's already been logging some time -- and then attend four therapy sessions by December 14. Sautner warned that if Lohan does not meet all those conditions, she will put a warrant out for her arrest and sentence her to an additional 270 days in jail. Sautner revoked Lohan's probation in October following the revelation that the actress had not completed her obligations from a 2011 arrest on theft charges.
Lohan was given a few extra days to report to jail after the judge agreed to give her time to complete her nude photo shoot for Playboy magazine.
Related Photos Related ArtistsSource: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1673824/lindsay-lohan-jail.jhtml
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Sunday, November 6, 2011
Mid-October launch suggests Merry iPhone Xmas season (Appolicious)
The ramp up to the holiday shopping season looks like it?s going to be an Apple Christmas.
Although the new iPhone 4S was available for only half ?of October, it was the best-selling smartphone in the month, Canaccord Genuity is reporting.
Mike Dunn said in DigitalTrends: ?Apple?s latest and greatest merry iPhone is the best-selling phone on AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint in the month of October. To add an exclamation mark to that last statement the iPhone 4S was released on October 14, so it out sold everyone else in half the given time.?
He added that the aging iPhone 4 also was among the top three sellers for the carriers, Mike Walkley, tech analyst with Canaccord, wrote in a research note. He suggested there will be record iPhone sales in the December quarter, BGR said.
Walkley increased his fourth-quarter (Apple?s first fiscal quarter of 2012) iPhone sales estimate to 29 million units from his earlier?estimate of 27 million.
The Cupertino tech giant recently announced it sold 4 million iPhone 4S units in seven launch markets during its debut weekend. Though some critics disparaged 4S for not being a tech breakthrough, Apple fans liked the new smartphone.
Sprint, the new kid on the iPhone block, said the iPhone launch gave the carrier its ?best ever day of sales.? AT&T activated more than 1 million iPhone 4S handsets during the device?s first week of availability.
Any contenders in the wings?
Motorola Mobility is launching its new Droid RAZR Nov. 11, billed as the world?s thinnest smartphone. The old RAZR ?dumb? phone set records for thinness and for cell phone sales.
Dunn said: ?It will be very interesting to see if [RAZR] will be able to unseat the iPhone on Verizon?s network. There does not seem to be any real contenders coming out in November for Sprint so it seems as though the iPhone is safe on that network. AT&T will be releasing the HTC Vivid and Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket on Nov. 6, but with so few LTE areas it is very unlikely that they will have overwhelming sales.?
Meanwhile, U.S. Cellular said Apple made it an offer for the iPhone that it had to refuse.
Phil Goldstein reported in FierceWireless that U.S. Cellular CEO Mary Dillon told an earnings conference call the iPhone didn?t add up for the carrier financially. She said Apple's ?terms were unacceptable from a risk and profitability standpoint.? But she added that the company would be open to the iPhone in the future.
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How the major stock indexes fared Friday (AP)
Investors took few chances Friday while they waited for a confidence vote in Greece on the country's embattled prime minister. Stocks fell on concerns that the country might not go through with an austerity program needed to prevent a default on its debt. The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 61 points and fell 2 percent for the week, its first weekly loss since September.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 61.23 points, or 0.5 percent, to close at 11,983.24.
The S&P 500 fell 7.92, or 0.6 percent, to 1,253.23.
The Nasdaq composite fell 11.82, or 0.4 percent, to 2,686.15
For the week to date:
The Dow is down 247.87, or 2 percent.
The S&P 500 is down 31.86, or 2.5 percent.
The Nasdaq is down 51, or 1.9 percent.
For the year to date:
The Dow is up 405.73, or 3.5 percent.
The S&P 500 is down 4.41, or 0.4 percent.
The Nasdaq is up 33.28, or 1.3 percent.
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Saturday, November 5, 2011
John Cena?s Greatest Garden Conquests
John Cena returns to Madison Square Garden on Nov. 20 for Survivor Series, where he will team up with The Rock to take on The ?Awesome Truth.? His epic team-up with The Great One may have a ?never before, never again? feeling about it, but Cena has spent plenty of time at MSG in the past. The raucous New York City crowd is known to devour sports-entertainment, and historically has brought out the best in The Cenation Commander-in-Chief. In fact, some of his brightest moments have taken place at the Garden. WWE.com looks back at some of those past successes.
Mar. 14, 2004
At WrestleMania XX, John Cena made his WrestleMania debut to challenge Big Show for the WWE United States Championship. After surviving an early onslaught from The World?s Largest Athlete, Cena was able to turn the tide and momentum of the match. Employing hidden brass knuckles and finishing with a devastating Attitude Adjustment, he took the giant's championship in front of an astounded capacity Madison Square Garden crowd. Cena?s superlative performance made it very clear that he had much more to show WWE fans at the Mecca of entertainment.
Sep. 11, 2006
On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, John Cena returned to the Garden for Raw. It was an emotional night for all, beginning with a moment of silence for those who lost their lives five years before. Chants of ?USA? broke out all night, as the passionate and patriotic crowd made its presence known. In a punishing and lengthy Six-Man Tag Team Match, Cena led his team of Superstars to victory against the likes of Rated-RKO. Continuing his successful run in New York City, he thrilled the thousands of WWE fans in attendance and millions watching all over the world on this important and affecting night.
Jan. 27, 2008
The Royal Rumble Match ? the second at the Garden in the pay-per-view?s history - was a stirring and remarkable affair for the 20,000 fans in attendance. After incredible action and shockers during the entrance (and subsequent exit) of 29 competitors, Cena walked out as the 30th and final entrant, making a miraculous recovery and return from a serious pectoral injury. The capacity crowd exploded and the action in the ring stopped as all watched the Cenation leader make his triumphant homecoming to the squared circle. Ring rust was not an issue, as he nailed the 29th entrant, Triple H, with an Attitude Adjustment and tossed him over the top rope eight and a half minutes later. The crowd went crazy as this victory booked Cena a World Championship Match at WrestleMania XXIV. (PHOTOS)
Nov. 16. 2009
Madison Square Garden has had its share of Superstar icons competing throughout its storied history, but perhaps never more so than a Triple Threat Tag Team Match on Raw, when WWE Champion Cena joined forces with World Heavyweight Champion The Undertaker to take on DX and ?Jerishow? (Chris Jericho & Big Show). The World Champions would prevail in this colossal clash when Cena caught his old foe Triple H with an Attitude Adjustment. After the match, The Phenom, perhaps to show how little he felt he needed his partner?s help, performed a Tombstone on the vulnerable and exhausted Cena. It was a proud night for Cena, even if he did receive a rude reminder of just how much of a loner The Undertaker is. (PHOTOS)
Between a World Championship victory and epic tag team matches, Madison Square Garden has been very good to John Cena. However, the Garden has also been good to the man he is teaming up with at Survivor Series. To find out how, click here for The Rock's Greatest MSG Moments.
Source: http://www.wwe.com/shows/survivorseries/2011/cena-greatest-msg-moments
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Friday, November 4, 2011
UN's Ban: Palestinians should defer agency bids (AP)
CANNES, France ? U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon says Palestinian efforts to join other United Nations agencies beyond its cultural arm is "not beneficial for Palestine and not beneficial for anybody."
Ban said "millions and millions" of people could be affected if U.N. agencies see their funding cut as a result of the Palestinian bids. He spoke Thursday with The Associated Press on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Cannes.
The United States and Canada have cut off funding for UNESCO because the Paris-based U.N. cultural agency approved a Palestinian membership bid ? stripping it of about one-quarter of its total funding.
The U.N. chief says the Palestinian Authority's foreign minister has indicated that it will apply for membership in the 16 other U.N. specialized agencies.
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UK court rules WikiLeaks' Assange should be extradited (Reuters)
LONDON (Reuters) ? WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange should be extradited from Britain to Sweden to face questioning over alleged sex crimes, London's High Court ruled on Wednesday, rejecting his appeal against the move.
Swedish authorities want to question the 40-year-old over accusations of rape and sexual assault made by two female former WikiLeaks volunteers.
Assange's lawyer said he was considering an appeal. He has two weeks in which to do so.
However, any appeal to Britain's highest judicial body, the Supreme Court, must be made on a point of law considered to be of general public interest.
Assange's whistle-blowing website caused a stir last year by publishing more than 250,000 secret U.S. diplomatic cables.
A British judge first approved the Swedish request for the computer expert's extradition in February.
His lawyers have argued the Swedish demand is legally flawed and that the sex was consensual. Assange, who is free under strict bail conditions, has also accused the United States of putting pressure on Britain, Sweden and the media.
Last month, Assange, an Australian citizen, said WikiLeaks would stop publishing secret cables and devote itself instead to fund-raising because of a financial block on payments to the site by U.S. firms such as Visa and MasterCard.
He said if the block was not ended by the turn of the year, WikiLeaks would not be able to continue.
(Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Louise Ireland)
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Thursday, November 3, 2011
Angry Birds' 'astounding' popularity: By the numbers (The Week)
New York ? The punishingly addictive mobile game tops 500 million downloads. Just how much time has the world wasted slinging birds?
This week, Finnish gaming company Rovio Entertainment announced via an animated video press release?that its hit mobile game Angry Birds has been downloaded an "astounding" 500 million times since its 2009 debut. The implausibly addictive game lets players propel animated birds from a sling shot, all in a quest to destroy evil pigs who have stolen the birds' eggs. Here's a by-the-numbers look at the milestone:
23
Months it took for the game to reach the 500-million-download milestone. It was first released for Apple's iOS in December 2009.
266 billion
Number of levels of the game that have been played
400 billion
Number of birds that have been shot
44 billion
Number of stars collected. (Players win zero to three stars at the end of each level, depending on their performance.)
300 million
Number of minutes each day that Rovio estimates the game is played worldwide
1.825 billion
Number of hours per year that estimate equals
200,000
Number of years that the total amount of?Angry Birds game-play to date adds up to
79
Number of countries in which Angry Birds is the top downloaded game
$1 billion
Amount Rovio is estimated to be worth by Chief Marketing Officer Peter Vesterbacka
10 million
Number of Angry Birds toys sold worldwide, says Chloe Albanesius at PC World
1
Number of films based on Angry Birds currently in development, according to the U.K.'s Guardian. It's being eyed for a 2015 release.
1
Number of Angry Birds games based on a film. Angry Birds Rio, inspired by the animated movie Rio, was released in March 2011.
10 million
Number of times Angry Birds Rio was downloaded in its first 10 days of release, says Jeffrey Van Camp at Digital Trends
Sources: Box Office Mojo, Daily Tech, Digital Trends, Guardian, Mashable (2), PC World (2)
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Obama heads to G-20 amid questions on Greece (AP)
WASHINGTON ? The United States has an important role to play in helping guide Europe through its financial crisis, but it is ultimately Europe's problem to solve, the White House said Wednesday as President Barack Obama headed for an economic summit in France.
Obama left Wednesday evening on an overnight flight to France aboard Air Force One. The Group of 20 industrialized and developed nations meets Thursday and Friday in Cannes, a summit that's shadowed by the European debt crisis and Greece's surprise plans to put a bailout deal to a popular vote.
Press secretary Jay Carney said Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou's call for a referendum on the Europe bailout plan was certain to be a topic of discussion for Obama and world leaders.
Papandreou has infuriated European leaders and rocked financial markets, putting in jeopardy the long-sought deal to resolve the European debt crisis.
Without criticizing the Greek plan, Carney said it made clear the need for Europe to act.
"The events in Greece ... only underscore the need for Europe to come together and to unite behind conclusive action that resolves this crisis," Carney said at the White House.
He said that the U.S. has unique insight on the European financial crisis because of its experience dealing with its own financial crisis, as well as its position as the world's largest economy. But Carney made clear that the U.S. has no plans to offer financial support to Europe as cash-rich China may do.
"We have said that this is a European problem and that the Europeans have the capacity to resolve it, the resources necessary to resolve it, and need to take conclusive action to do so," Carney said.
"We have a role here to play because of our experience and knowledge, and of course, the fact that we are the largest economy in the world, and we can bring to bear insight and experience in a way that really no other nation can," he said.
The situation shows the limits of U.S. influence going into a summit where the focus may be on German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy and their work to resolve the crisis. Facing his own struggles with debt and deficits at home, Obama has few steps available to him overseas even though he acknowledges the threat to the struggling U.S. economy posed by the crisis in Europe.
Carney rejected the idea that that left Obama heading to the summit in France in a position of weakness, especially compared with China.
"Absolutely not," he said. "The United States is still the largest economy in the world. It is still the most powerful nation in terms of its alliances and its influence around the world. And that influence comes in a variety of ways, including the wealth of experience that we have."
"But the focus here is not on whether or not the Chinese involve themselves financially. I mean, that really is a sideshow to the focus here. The focus here is a European problem that requires a European solution."
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Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Coloradans face nation's only statewide tax vote (AP)
DENVER ? The nation's only statewide tax vote on the November ballot asks Colorado voters whether they want to temporarily raise taxes to generate $3 billion for classrooms and colleges ? a proposal that has stirred fierce opposition because of the stagnant economy.
The vote could serve as a test of voters' mood on tax increases and their frustration after endless rounds of education cuts in Colorado.
"If it should pass, it think it will get a fair amount of attention because no one is expecting anything with the words `tax increase' to pass," said Norman Provizer, a political science professor at Metropolitan State College of Denver.
Opponents, including the entire Republican delegation in Colorado's Legislature, insist tax hikes will cost jobs and won't by themselves help schools. Some Democratic leaders, including Gov. John Hickenlooper, have declined to publicly endorse the proposal, saying they see little appetite for a tax hike.
Even some supporters are skeptical.
"I doubt it will pass," Valerie Walker said after dropping off her ballot in downtown Denver. While she voted for the initiative, she said, "I just think people can't afford having additional money coming out of their pockets right now."
The money raised by Proposition 103 would help fill the void from education cuts that were induced by the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, a voter-approved initiative that strictly limits taxes and spending.
The measure would raise individual and corporate tax rates from 4.63 percent to 5 percent and Colorado's sales and use tax rate from 2.9 percent to 3 percent. The rates would be in effect from 2012 through 2016, with an estimated $2.9 billion in new revenue during that time going to K-12 schools and public colleges.
A married couple with a combined household income of $125,000 would pay about $315 more annually in income taxes, nonpartisan legislative economists estimate. Sales taxes on a $5,000 purchase would increase from $145 to $150.
While nearly 619,000 of Colorado's 3.2 million registered voters have cast ballots in the mostly mail-in election, Provizer cautioned against drawing broad conclusions from what has been a relatively low-profile campaign.
Proposition 103's supporters have raised $420,000, its opponents roughly $22,000 ? figures that pale in comparison to the millions generated by past attempts to generate or keep more state revenue under the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, often referred to as TABOR.
Funding for K-12 education in Colorado totals $2.8 billion, or nearly 40 percent of the budget. As in other states, though, Colorado schools have seen hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts. This year, lawmakers slashed more than $200 million from K-12 funding. More cuts are expected in 2012. The higher education budget was reduced this year by $125 million and stands at about $624 million.
Denver parent Phillip Garcia says Proposition 103 is worth it.
The 29-year-old nightclub promoter says his fourth-grade daughter's school has overcrowded classrooms, its teachers frazzled by the increased workload.
"I know the economy's bad, but if there's one thing worth spending money on, it's education," Garcia said.
The state Democratic Party's lukewarm support for the tax hike ? petitioned onto the ballot by a Democratic lawmaker ? has exasperated supporters. Hickenlooper, who took office in January, said he promised voters he would not back any initiative to raise taxes during his first year.
"It does frustrate me that people in leadership positions are sitting silent," said John Creighton, father of three public school students and president of the St. Vrain Valley School Board in Longmont.
He said his district already asks parents to help pay for advanced classes and extracurricular activities and that further cuts would harm basic classroom teaching.
"Everyone's looking for that perfect moment to do things, and the truth is there is no perfect moment," Creighton said.
Still other supporters argue the bad economy is a reason to vote for the tax hike.
"Who knows, this (economy) can be going on for five, 10, 15 years," said Don Schumacher, a physical therapist in Denver who voted for Proposition 103. "I think we owe it to the citizens to provide what we can as taxpayers."
Tony Gagliardi, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents small business owners, said a tax increase now will force employers to hire fewer people at a time when state unemployment is 8.3 percent.
"When the costs go up, the way (businesses) control those costs is they either don't hire or they reduce their workforce," he said.
One of them is Roger Newell, general manager and operator of A Roadrunner Appliance Service in the Denver suburb of Castle Rock.
"I have a problem with government saying we need more money and we'll raise taxes, but everyone in the private sector is having to cut back to survive," Newell said.
Other states that have recently asked voters for tax raises for education have had mixed results.
Last year, Oregon passed two measures ? one that raised certain income taxes and another that raised corporate and business taxes ? to funnel money to education, health and public safety. In Washington, voters rejected a new income tax on high-wage earners for health and education funding.
___
Ivan Moreno can be reached on Twitter: http://twitter.com/IvanJournalist
Kristen Wyatt can be reached on Twitter: http://twiter.com/APkristenwyatt
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