CAIRO (AP) — A hammering 6-1 loss to Ghana was more than just a blow to Egypt's faltering hopes for a spot in next year's World Cup finals. The humiliation immediately became entangled in Egypt's bitterly divisive politics.
Supporters of Egypt's ousted Islamist president crowed that the debacle was payback for the military coup that removed Mohammed Morsi.
Politics even intruded during Tuesday night's World Cup qualifier match, held in the Ghanaian town of Kumasi. Some Ghana fans in the stands held up a four-finger gesture symbolizing support for Morsi and the Islamists — apparently to taunt the Egyptian fans, some of whom replied with angry thumbs-down gestures.
"The coup team has been defeated," proclaimed one Morsi supporter, Mohammed Ibrahim, on Twitter.
Another blamed military chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who removed Morsi. "You jinxed us, el-Sissi," Mohammed Dardeer wrote on Facebook, calling the general "religiously defiled."
Egypt has been profoundly polarized by the July 3 coup. Since the ouster of Morsi — the country's first freely elected president — the new military-backed government has waged a fierce crackdown on his Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist allies.
Supporters of the military say Morsi and the Islamists tried to take over Egypt and represent a violent, radical force. Morsi supporters, in turn, accuse the military of wrecking a fledgling democracy and leading the country back into autocracy.
"It cannot be a coincidence," Alaa Sadeq, a career sports commentator turned Morsi supporter, wrote on his Twitter account after the loss. "Can success be on the side of a nation being run by a coup?"
The pro-Morsi camp was quick to note that the Pharaohs' lone goal was scored by the team's star, Mohammed Aboutrika, who openly sympathizes with the Brotherhood.
Egypt's soccer addicts have been buzzing for months that Aboutrika's political persuasion may be causing divisions in the locker room. In one incident, he got into an acrimonious political argument with an army officer assigned to escort the team to its hotel when it returned home from a foreign trip after nighttime curfew.
Brotherhood opponents accused pro-Morsi fans of rooting against their own team. That too had a political overtone: Many accuse the Brotherhood of being more loyal to its international Islamist agenda than its own nation.
"Pro-Morsi supporters who are cheering for Ghana are simply sick and twisted," wrote Nervana Mahmoud, a well-known anti-Brotherhood activist, on Twitter.
Brotherhood "people hope that Egypt loses," tweeted Mahmoud Salem, a prominent blogger known as "Sandmonkey."
Heading into the match, the government had given a pro-military spin to the team.
The sports minister said the Pharaohs were taking to Ghana "the spirit of October," referring to the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war that is touted in Egypt as a victory for its military. The minister also accompanied the team to Kumasi.
Even the airing of the match got pulled into politics. The Qatar-based Al-Jazeera network accused Egypt's state television of violating its exclusive broadcast rights by airing the match on its terrestrial channel. Egyptian authorities loathe Al-Jazeera for its perceived pro-Brotherhood bias, an accusation the network denies.
State TV chairman Essam el-Ameer insisted it was "our right" to air the match and "we will do it again with any matches we want."
"We will never surrender the rights of our people," he told the official Al-Ahram newspaper Wednesday.
The entanglement of sports and politics is not uncommon in this soccer-mad nation. Egypt's losses to Algeria in qualifiers for the 2010 World Cup finals sparked a stone-throwing assault on the Algerian Embassy in Cairo and a diplomatic spat between the two countries.
The return leg against Ghana will be played in Egypt on Nov. 19. But the Pharaohs' coach, American Bob Bradley, admitted that after Tuesday's heavy loss it was "nearly impossible" for the Egyptians to win a spot in the 2014 finals in Brazil.
The Pharaohs last reached the World Cup finals in 1990.
Egyptians have been desperately looking for something to cheer about after 2 ½ years of turmoil, including a 2012 soccer riot that killed 74 people.
Tuesday's lopsided score was all the more painful because it came on the first day of a major Muslim holiday, the Eid al-Adha, or the feast of sacrifice.
"Ghana slaughters the Pharaohs on Eid al-Adha," said Al-Ahram al-Masai, alluding to the Islamic tradition of sacrificing a sheep, goat or cow to mark the holiday.
Helena Bonham Carter isn't shy about the challenges of tackling the role of Elizabeth Taylor for BBC America's Burton and Taylor.
The Oscar-nominated actress was adamant that she not do an impersonation of the legendary star -- "She's so inimitable," says Bonham Carter. Instead, she did "extensive" research, meeting with Taylor's closest friends (and even an astrologist!) to help her collect "characteristics."
Burton and Taylor, which focuses only on a sliver of time, takes place in the 1980s as tragic lovers Richard Burton and Taylor -- then twice-married and twice-divorced -- prepare to star in the stage revival of Noel Coward's Private Lives. It would be the former couple's final project together.
Bonham Carter talks to The Hollywood Reporter about the challenges of portraying Taylor, what surprised her the most and her approach to the role.
What sort of preparation did you do to play Elizabeth Taylor?
It was pretty extensive. There's always the pressure to play someone who's well-known and she's so tremendously well-known. She was a screen icon. But I have to say I felt I had to do it -- not because I felt I could play her, which is a stupid idea because no one can really play her, she's so inimitable -- because I loved the piece and I loved the writing and I found it a lovely chamber piece in a way. I loved the love story that could've happened between anybody; it transcends them. I felt I couldn't do an impersonation because I don't really look like her, and my job was to capture some essence. I read her biographies and met with some girlfriends of hers and I met with an astrologist to help distill somebody and their qualities. My aunt analyzes handwriting so she was a great distiller of somebody's character. I went around collecting characteristics.
What were the discussions like when you were mapping out your performance?
When I talked to [director] Richard Laxton, we decided it was going to be a creature. It was not going to be Elizabeth. It was as if Elizabeth and I had a baby. (Laughs.) A collage. As I became involved with her, I was more and more in awe and had more respect for her. I think everybody involved in the project, their respect for her increased ten-thousand-fold. It was her humor, really, that made me want to do [the film]. When you play a part, they often leave you with something and she left with lots of gifts, like her sense of humor.
What was the most surprising characteristic or aspect of Elizabeth's personality that the public may not be aware of?
I think the humor, to be honest. I don't think people -- unless they met her -- realized that. And also, the "I couldn't give a f---" attitude. She was amazingly good at remaining famous but she had the strength of character to deal with it. She was incredibly wise. At a young age, at 16 or 17, she realized Elizabeth Taylor was a commodity. It had little to do with necessarily her real self. She never confused the two, which can often happen when people are young and famous. She never let go of her own private sense of self.
What most impressed you after playing her?
She was a woman. Not a lot of woman these days are women. She had the curves, she had the boobs, she had the sexuality and she was in touch with her sexuality too. She loved food and she loved sex. I find these days people forget to enjoy the food. Her appetite for all things sexual and sensual is a great example of a great legacy. She had fun. They [Elizabeth and Richard] had a great time together.
What did you take from Elizabeth and Richard's relationship?
They always had profound respect for each other as actors, and they were each other's No. 1 support and fan. Ultimately and profoundly, there was something very stable, sane and healthy about their relationship. What attracted her originally to him was his vulnerability that touched her, and she definitely had something in her that needed to heal broken people. He, in reverse, gave her some respect. They offered each other a lot privately. It wasn't just mad lust. There's a reason they kept on trying to attempt to be together. My take on it is they were both addicts. I think it was probably difficult for Richard to be with Elizabeth without having all the drinks they habitually had.
Did your perception change after this movie?
She was very down-to-earth. She wasn't neurotic. She wasn't a victim. She was always her own mistress. People loved her more by the end of filming.
You had to physically transform for this role. What was that moment like, seeing yourself with the hair, makeup and wardrobe?
It was fun dressing up as her. You've got the furs, the diamonds, the twinklies. You know, I'm not glamorous -- I'm just innately not. But having the wig and the contact lenses -- at first I couldn't see a thing -- it just appealed to me. A lot of the time, I'm keeping alive the little girl who likes dressing up when it comes to acting. It was great padding the bra for my boobs. In the beginning, I thought "This is such a stupid job to do" because I don't look like Elizabeth Taylor -- but at least it was in her 50s. Before I signed on [to do the movie], I said the only way I'm going to do it is if Jenny Shircore, an amazing makeup artist, and Carol Hemming, who I've worked with so long, and [costume designer] Susanna Buxton could create her silhouette. It's not going to be exact because I don't look like her and it should be like, "I want to play a tribute to this woman." I deliberately chose to put the mole on the other side of my face because it's not about an exact science. If I could conjure some essences or a sketch of her humanity, then that's my job.
Last fall, Lifetime did its own Elizabeth Taylor biopic with Lindsay Lohan, Liz & Dick. Did you watch it?
I didn't watch it. We have a very different ambition. Theirs probably is spread over more years than ours. [Burton and Taylor is] not a biopic by any standard and it doesn't strive to be that. It just covers a drama in their lives over a particular passage of time in their late 50s.
Burton and Taylor premieres Wednesday at 9 p.m. on BBC America.
Video cameras have traditionally been used to document the world in a pretty straightforward manner. But they've become so small, and so versatile, that you can do some incredible things with them. Like the crazy world
Director Michael Bay is talking for the first time since being assaulted in Hong Kong while filming Transformers 4!
The Hollywood heavy-hitter took to his personal blog to get the facts straight about what went down on the set this week. According to Bay, this was all an attempt at extortion!
It all started on their first day of shooting when the crew had to deal with a group of greedy brothers! Michael explained:
"…some drugged up guys were being belligerent asses to my crew for hours in the morning of our first shoot day in Hong Kong. One guy rolled metal carts into some of my actors trying to shake us down for thousands of dollars to not play his loud music or hit us with bricks."
The film had previously paid a fair price to all of the vendors on the street where they were shooting for their inconvenience. But the Mak brothers, as police later identified them as, wanted MORE money!
Michael put his foot down and told them that wasn't going to happen! He described the confrontation:
"I personally told this man and his friends to forget it we were not going to let him extort us. He didn’t like that answer. So an hour later he came by my crew as we were shooting, carrying a long air conditioner unit. He walked right up to me and tried to smack my face, but I ducked."
OMG! Who uses an A/C unit as a weapon?!
Security soon pounced on the guy but it took SEVEN of them to bring him down!
Bay described the assailant as being like a zombie in Brad Pitt's movie World War Z because in addition to his super strength, he actually tried to bite one of the guards!
Holy hell! That is scary!
In the end, it took 15 Hong Kong police in riot gear to take away the four men charged with the attack! They were all placed under arrest and dragged from the set.
Michael's injuries weren't serious and he refused medical attention. And as he puts it, they had a great day shooting after all of this went down!
Verizon is trying out a scheme where it'll offer same-day delivery for phones ordered online—first in Philadelphia, then hopefully in NYC, Dallas, San Francisco and Pittsburgh. Just in case you really, really need that new handset right now.
Charlie Parker started playing as a boy, when his mother gave him a saxophone to cheer him up after his father left. He went on to spearhead a musical revolution.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Charlie Parker started playing as a boy, when his mother gave him a saxophone to cheer him up after his father left. He went on to spearhead a musical revolution.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Charlie "Bird" Parker was one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. In his brief life, Parker created a new sound on the alto saxophone and spearheaded a revolution in harmony and improvisation that pushed popular music from the swing era to bebop and modern jazz.
In Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker, scholar and author Stanley Crouch tells the story of Parker's early years and his rise to prominence. But Crouch says he didn't want to tell the same old story of young black musicians overcoming obstacles.
"These guys, they thought about life," he says. "Oh yes, they thought about being colored, but they also thought about life. And people came to hear you because you played life. It wasn't because you played, 'Oh, I'm just a poor colored man over here, just doing some poor colored things. I'm thinking about my poor colored girl and how the white man is not going to let us blah blah.' That wasn't what they were playing."
'I Put Quite A Bit Of Study Into The Horn'
Crouch's book opens with a triumphant moment in Parker's career. It's February 1942 and the 21-year-old alto player is on the bandstand at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom, performing with the Jay McShann Orchestra for a live radio broadcast. He steps up to solo and Crouch explains what happens next:
When the band started throwing up stock riffs behind him, Parker sidestepped the familiar shapes, issuing his responses from deep in left field.
... Each chorus was getting hotter; it was clear, from the position of his body and the sound of his horn, that Charlie Parker was not going to give in. All the nights he had worked on it, the flubs, the fumblings, the sore lips, mouth, and tongue, the cramped fingers — they all paid off that afternoon. Suddenly, the man with the headphones was signaling McShann, Don't stop! Don't stop! Keep on playing!
In 1980, the late pianist and bandleader Jay McShann described how Parker's sound grabbed him the first time he heard it.
"One particular night, I happened to be coming through the streets and I heard the sound coming out. And this was a different sound, so I went inside to see who was blowing," he said. "So I walked up to Charlie after he finished playing and I asked him, I said, 'Say man,' I said, 'where are you from?' I said, 'I thought I met most of the musicians around here.' Well, he says, 'I'm from Kansas City.' But he says, 'I've been gone for the last two or three months. Been down to the Ozarks woodshedding.' "
All that woodshedding — practicing in isolation, running through every tune in every key — took Parker's playing to the next level. In a 1954 radio interview, Parker told fellow alto player Paul Desmond that that was his goal from the beginning.
"I put quite a bit of study into the horn, that's true," he said. "In fact, the neighbors threatened to ask my mother to move once when we were living out West. She said I was driving them crazy with the horn. I used to put in at least 11 to 15 hours a day. ... I did that for over a period of three or four years."
Crouch says Parker was intense about everything. When he was researching Kansas City Lightning, Parker's friend Bob Redcross told him that Parker had a deep intellectual curiosity.
"They read history books. They went to museums," Crouch says. "Redcross told me, once he said, 'Yes, Charles and I, we would sit and we would discuss Sherlock Holmes, or we would talk about history. We were always reading magazines. We were always doing stuff that people don't think that we did.'"
Stanley Crouch's previous works include The Artificial White Man: Essays on Authenticity and Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz.
Zack Zook/Courtesy of Harper
Stanley Crouch's previous works include The Artificial White Man: Essays on Authenticity and Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz.
Zack Zook/Courtesy of Harper
Finding Redemption In 'Beautiful Notes'
Then there are the more well-known stories about Parker: He dropped out of high school and picked up a heroin habit; he married his teenaged sweetheart, then abandoned her and his child; he missed rehearsals and didn't show up for gigs. In 1942, McShann fired him.
"We told Bird to take a little vacation because we were in Detroit, and he got feeling pretty good there, you know," McShann remembered. "And so we says, 'Why don't you take a little vacation, Bird, and just cool it. And so he did."
Parker may have neglected his personal and professional relationships, but Crouch says he was never unfaithful to his music.
"The thing to me that's most inspirational about Charlie Parker is that he felt that you could only redeem yourself for bad things by doing something that was beautiful," he says. "He felt that he could give the world beautiful notes."
Crouch is currently writing the second volume of his Parker biography, which will cover the saxophonist's New York career, the 1940s bebop revolution and Parker's death in 1955 at the age of 34.
Adrian Peterson fathered a 4th child -- his 2nd secret child -- and the mother was a waitress at a popular Minnesota nightclub, TMZ has learned.
We've confirmed ... the child is a 3-month-old little girl who's living with her mom in Minnesota.
Sources close to the situation tell us the child's last name on her birth certificate is listed as "Peterson."
On the day Peterson's 2-year-old son Ty passed away, the mother of AP's 4th child posted an emotional message on her Facebook page about the situation.
"Today has been a long day finding out my [daughter's] brother passed away and knowing that she never even got to meet him."
Sources connected to the situation tell us ... the mother of AP's 4th child first met the NFL star while serving him as a VIP waitress at a place called Seven -- a steakhouse, sushi joint and ultralounge all wrapped in one.
It's unclear how involved Adrian has been in the child's life -- but the mother recently posted a photo showing the child decked out in Minnesota Vikings gear, so we're guessing they're cool.
Peterson has fathered 3 other children -- a 6-year-old daughter, a 2-year-old son and another son, who died just months after AP learned he was the father.
We called AP & the child's mother for comment -- so far, no word back.
Contact: Donna Krupa dkrupa@the-aps.org American Physiological Society
Study using animal model is published in the American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology
Bethesda, Md. (Oct. 15, 2013)The hormone prolactin is probably best known for its role in stimulating milk production in mothers after giving birth. But prolactin also has an important function in the liver. This organ has the highest number of prolactin receptors in the body, ports that allow this hormone to enter liver cells. There, prolactin signals these cells to multiply and new blood vessels to grow to fuel this organ's expansion.
Wondering if these properties might be useful to encourage the liver to regrow after surgery to remove part of itsometimes necessary to treat cancer or other liver diseases, or to donate liver tissue for transplantsCarmen Clapp of the Universidad Nacional Automoma de Mexico and her colleagues worked with animal models on both ends of a prolactin spectrum: rats that overproduced the hormone, and mice specially bred to have no prolactin receptors, the equivalent of a dearth of the hormone since prolactin can't enter these animals' cells.
The researchers found that the animals with extra prolactin had larger livers, regenerated their livers faster after partial removal, and were significantly more likely to survive that liver surgery compared to the animals that couldn't process prolactin.
The article is entitled "Prolactin Promotes Normal Liver Growth, Survival, and Regeneration in Rodents." It appears in the American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, published by the American Physiological Society. It is available online at http://bit.ly/17SPu23.
Methodology
The researchers made rats overproduce prolactin by implanting two extra anterior pituitary glandsthe gland that produces prolactinin the animals' backs. To make sure the surgery itself wasn't responsible for any effects they saw, they compared these rats to others that had a sham surgery, in which they made incisions but didn't implant extra anterior pituitary glands. To confirm that prolactin itself was responsible for the effects they saw in the overproducers, the researchers injected some of the rats that had the real surgery with a drug that deactivated extra prolactin, bringing the overproducers' prolactin down to baseline levels.
As a contrast to these prolactin overproducers, the researchers also studied mice that were genetically engineered to not have prolactin receptors. Thus, even though these mice made prolactin, their bodies behaved as if they had none of the hormone because their cells couldn't process it.
The researchers measured the ratio of liver to body weight in each of the rats and mice. They tested how readily liver and liver blood vessel cells were dividing in some of the animals from each group. They also removed portions of the animals' livers, comparing how quickly animals from each group regenerated liver tissue. Additionally, they tested the animals' levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6), a chemical produced by cells and is kept in check by prolactin. IL-6 can stimulate the liver to repair itself at low levels but can hinder this self-repair at higher levels.
Results
The researchers found that rats that overproduced prolactin had larger livers in proportion to their body weight compared to rats that had normal prolactin levels and those that overproduced prolactin but received the nullifying drug. These overproducers also had significantly larger livers in proportion to their body weight compared to the mice that couldn't process prolactin. Liver cells and liver blood vessel cells were multiplying more readily in the prolactin overproducers than in animals in the other groups.
After the researchers removed portions of the animals' livers, the prolactin overproducers regenerated their livers more quickly than animals from the other groups. Mice that didn't process prolactin not only had smaller livers than the normal mice but were also significantly more likely to die in the days after surgery. Tests showed that these mice had elevated levels of IL-6, a factor that could be partially responsible for their slower healing and increased mortality.
Importance of the Findings
These findings suggest that prolactin is important both for normal liver growth and for regenerating the liver after part of it is removed, with extra prolactin providing a boost for repair mechanisms. Consequently, enhancing prolactin levels could provide a way to improve regeneration when the liver becomes damaged or diseased, or after surgery.
"The use of current medications known to increase prolactinemia (prolactin production) constitute potential therapeutic options in liver diseases, liver injuries, or after liver surgery and warrants further investigation," the study authors write.
###
Study Team
In addition to Carmen Clapp, the study team also includes Bibiana Moreno-Carranza, Maite Goya-Arce, Claudia Vega, Norma Adan, Jakob Triebel, Fernando Lopez-Barrera, and Gonzalo Martinez de la Escalera, of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Andres Quintanar-Stephano of the Universidad Autonoma de Aguascalientes, and Nadine Binart of Universite Paris-Sud.
Physiology is the study of how molecules, cells, tissues, and organs function in health and disease. Established in 1887, the American Physiological Society (APS) was the first US society in the biomedical sciences field. The Society represents more than 11,000 members and publishes 14 peer-reviewed journals with a worldwide readership.
NOTE TO EDITORS: To schedule an interview with Dr. Moreno-Carranza, please contact Donna Krupa at dkrupa@the-aps.org, @Phyziochick, or 301.634.7209. The article is available online at http://bit.ly/17SPu23.
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Milk-maker hormone may help liver regenerate
Public release date: 15-Oct-2013 [
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Contact: Donna Krupa dkrupa@the-aps.org American Physiological Society
Study using animal model is published in the American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology
Bethesda, Md. (Oct. 15, 2013)The hormone prolactin is probably best known for its role in stimulating milk production in mothers after giving birth. But prolactin also has an important function in the liver. This organ has the highest number of prolactin receptors in the body, ports that allow this hormone to enter liver cells. There, prolactin signals these cells to multiply and new blood vessels to grow to fuel this organ's expansion.
Wondering if these properties might be useful to encourage the liver to regrow after surgery to remove part of itsometimes necessary to treat cancer or other liver diseases, or to donate liver tissue for transplantsCarmen Clapp of the Universidad Nacional Automoma de Mexico and her colleagues worked with animal models on both ends of a prolactin spectrum: rats that overproduced the hormone, and mice specially bred to have no prolactin receptors, the equivalent of a dearth of the hormone since prolactin can't enter these animals' cells.
The researchers found that the animals with extra prolactin had larger livers, regenerated their livers faster after partial removal, and were significantly more likely to survive that liver surgery compared to the animals that couldn't process prolactin.
The article is entitled "Prolactin Promotes Normal Liver Growth, Survival, and Regeneration in Rodents." It appears in the American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, published by the American Physiological Society. It is available online at http://bit.ly/17SPu23.
Methodology
The researchers made rats overproduce prolactin by implanting two extra anterior pituitary glandsthe gland that produces prolactinin the animals' backs. To make sure the surgery itself wasn't responsible for any effects they saw, they compared these rats to others that had a sham surgery, in which they made incisions but didn't implant extra anterior pituitary glands. To confirm that prolactin itself was responsible for the effects they saw in the overproducers, the researchers injected some of the rats that had the real surgery with a drug that deactivated extra prolactin, bringing the overproducers' prolactin down to baseline levels.
As a contrast to these prolactin overproducers, the researchers also studied mice that were genetically engineered to not have prolactin receptors. Thus, even though these mice made prolactin, their bodies behaved as if they had none of the hormone because their cells couldn't process it.
The researchers measured the ratio of liver to body weight in each of the rats and mice. They tested how readily liver and liver blood vessel cells were dividing in some of the animals from each group. They also removed portions of the animals' livers, comparing how quickly animals from each group regenerated liver tissue. Additionally, they tested the animals' levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6), a chemical produced by cells and is kept in check by prolactin. IL-6 can stimulate the liver to repair itself at low levels but can hinder this self-repair at higher levels.
Results
The researchers found that rats that overproduced prolactin had larger livers in proportion to their body weight compared to rats that had normal prolactin levels and those that overproduced prolactin but received the nullifying drug. These overproducers also had significantly larger livers in proportion to their body weight compared to the mice that couldn't process prolactin. Liver cells and liver blood vessel cells were multiplying more readily in the prolactin overproducers than in animals in the other groups.
After the researchers removed portions of the animals' livers, the prolactin overproducers regenerated their livers more quickly than animals from the other groups. Mice that didn't process prolactin not only had smaller livers than the normal mice but were also significantly more likely to die in the days after surgery. Tests showed that these mice had elevated levels of IL-6, a factor that could be partially responsible for their slower healing and increased mortality.
Importance of the Findings
These findings suggest that prolactin is important both for normal liver growth and for regenerating the liver after part of it is removed, with extra prolactin providing a boost for repair mechanisms. Consequently, enhancing prolactin levels could provide a way to improve regeneration when the liver becomes damaged or diseased, or after surgery.
"The use of current medications known to increase prolactinemia (prolactin production) constitute potential therapeutic options in liver diseases, liver injuries, or after liver surgery and warrants further investigation," the study authors write.
###
Study Team
In addition to Carmen Clapp, the study team also includes Bibiana Moreno-Carranza, Maite Goya-Arce, Claudia Vega, Norma Adan, Jakob Triebel, Fernando Lopez-Barrera, and Gonzalo Martinez de la Escalera, of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Andres Quintanar-Stephano of the Universidad Autonoma de Aguascalientes, and Nadine Binart of Universite Paris-Sud.
Physiology is the study of how molecules, cells, tissues, and organs function in health and disease. Established in 1887, the American Physiological Society (APS) was the first US society in the biomedical sciences field. The Society represents more than 11,000 members and publishes 14 peer-reviewed journals with a worldwide readership.
NOTE TO EDITORS: To schedule an interview with Dr. Moreno-Carranza, please contact Donna Krupa at dkrupa@the-aps.org, @Phyziochick, or 301.634.7209. The article is available online at http://bit.ly/17SPu23.
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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.
Members of the Muslim Brotherhood and supporters of ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi shout slogans against the military and interior ministry in front of Amr Ibn El-Aas mosque after Eid al-Adha prayers in Cairo on Tuesday. A crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood has expanded now to charities and mosques linked to the Islamist group.
Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters /Landov
Members of the Muslim Brotherhood and supporters of ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi shout slogans against the military and interior ministry in front of Amr Ibn El-Aas mosque after Eid al-Adha prayers in Cairo on Tuesday. A crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood has expanded now to charities and mosques linked to the Islamist group.
Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters /Landov
Mohammed is a teacher, and for the past 17 years, he has also worked with an Islamic charity in Cairo. But a little more than two weeks ago that charity was shut down.
Security forces raided its office, took everything and began searching for the head of the board of directors because he's connected to the Muslim Brotherhood — the Islamist group of ousted President Mohammed Morsi.
Mohammed, who asked that only his first name be used, fled.
“ We had hoped the political crisis here would not affect charitable work. But now, people will suffer. These are dark and depressing days.
- Mohammed, a teacher and volunteer with a Muslim Brotherhood-linked charity
He left his job and his home, worried he'd be arrested. Thousands of people have already been rounded up, some just on suspicion of being connected to the Brotherhood.
This week marked Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, one of the holiest days on the Islamic calendar and a time when charities work overtime to help the poor. But Mohammed doesn't know how he can help this year.
The organization he worked for supported 2,000 families, providing school uniforms for the children, a monthly stipend, and for Eid, gift baskets and money.
"We had hoped the political crisis here would not affect charitable work," Mohammed says. "But now, people will suffer. These are dark and depressing days."
Since the military coup on July 3 that removed Morsi, the authorities have been systematically trying to break the Brotherhood and reclaim control of the country. The crackdown, which began with the group's leaders and rank-and-file, has now spread to mosques and charitable organizations.
Mosques As A Political Base
Using its vast social network, the Brotherhood dominated elections after Egypt's 2011 uprising. Mosques and charities were major parts of that network, but those outlets are closing for the Brotherhood.
A physician collects medical equipment and medicines from the remains of the partially destroyed Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque compound hospital in Cairo on Aug. 15.
Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images
A physician collects medical equipment and medicines from the remains of the partially destroyed Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque compound hospital in Cairo on Aug. 15.
Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images
"All of these charities that are either controlled by members of the Muslim Brotherhood or affiliated loosely with the Muslim Brotherhood are now seen as a potential space for organizing politically by the authorities," says Heba Morayef, Egypt director for Human Rights Watch. "I think that's why they want to go after them and control them."
And they're doing it with the mosques, too. Morayef says under the autocratic leaders of Egypt's past, the mosques were always tightly controlled to ward off opposition political organizations.
But after Morsi was elected president, the Brotherhood began to send its own people to the pulpits. Many Egyptians accuse the organization of using religion to bolster its political standing and control the state.
"We will see a reversal and much tighter control overall over the mosques," Morayef says.
Licensing Preachers, Closing Mosques
Recently, the Ministry of Endowments banned all preachers who are not licensed through Al Azhar, the 1,000-year-old center of Islamic learning in Cairo. Already-licensed preachers must now be vetted and re-accredited. And the ministry is shutting down all small, unregistered mosques.
The reason? Officials say it's to distance religion from politics.
As a result, places like Mohamed Atteya's small outdoor prayer space are no longer functioning. A preacher and engineer, Atteya shut it down when the new rules were announced.
Many Egyptians support the new controls; they say they will keep extremism at bay. But 70-year-old Atteya worries.
He has stopped preaching at his makeshift downtown mosque. He says he didn't want any problems as an unlicensed preacher.
"Since there is a decision, whether I agree or I do not agree, I have to obey it," he says. "This is the regulations. ... I am an old man."
But, he says, what's happening is wrong. The mosque is for all Muslims, not just for the state. He says the military-backed government is enforcing stricter regulations than ever before, even during the reign of Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted in 2011.
"They are afraid of the popularity of the Muslim [Brotherhood]. [It] is not a group, but it is an idea, and this idea, it is very difficult to be taken from the hearts of the people," Atteya says.
When there is a conflict in society, the imam of a mosque should never take sides, he adds. That's because those who pray behind the preacher are from both sides of the conflict, he says, so one side will be angered and the instability will grow.
All those who pray at the mosques are Muslims, he says, adding that the authorities shouldn't have a monopoly on God — nor should anyone else.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose on Friday, with the S&P 500 index heading for its best week in more than three months and earnings from Google, Morgan Stanley and others lifting sentiment.
The S&P 500, which rose above Thursday's intraday record of 1732.92 and all-time closing high of 1732.90, was on pace for its third straight day of gains.
In addition to earnings, the market's rise was based on expectations that the Federal Reserve will delay trimming its stimulus measures due to the damage inflicted on the economy by the partial U.S. government shutdown that ended on Thursday.
The market was also relieved that Washington had reached a deal to end the fiscal stalemate.
"Truthfully most of this is the market pricing in the high likelihood that there will be a continuation of monetary policy through the spring," said Jeff Buetow, chief investment officer at Innealta Capital in Austin, Texas, which manages $3 billion in assets.
"With the insanity that took place over the past few weeks, I think the Fed is probably going to put some of the long-term decisions on hold," Buetow said.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 26.01 points, or 0.17 percent, at 15,397.66. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 11.26 points, or 0.65 percent, at 1,744.41. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 47.49 points, or 1.23 percent, at 3,910.64.
Google Inc shares were up 13 percent to $1,007.51 a day after the search engine company posted results that beat forecasts. Google, whose stock hit $1,000 for the first time, led the S&P technology sector, up 1.6 percent, to outperform all other sectors.
Health was the only declining sector, down 0.6 percent on predictions from UnitedHealth that the new healthcare law's provision to decrease private Medicare payments could hurt earnings. [ID:nL1N0I70E9] UnitedHealth shares fell 3.2 percent to $69.08.
Morgan Stanley shares rose 2.5 percent to $29.64 after the company reported a 50 percent rise in quarterly revenue as higher income from equities sales and trading offset a drop in its fixed-income business.
General Electric said its third-quarter profit and revenue fell as its finance business shrunk, but Wall Street looked beyond those numbers to GE's improving profit margins and growing order demand. GE shares rose 4.2 percent to $25.71.
Of the 98 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported so far, 62.2 percent have topped Wall Street expectations, just shy of the 63 percent average since 1994 but below the 66 percent beat rate over the past four quarters, according to Thomson Reuters data through Friday.
On revenue, 53.1 percent of the S&P 500 components have beaten expectations, short of the 61 percent rate since 2002 but above the 49 percent beat rate over the past four quarters.
(Reporting by Julia Edwards; Editing by Leslie Adler and Kenneth Barry)
Android 4.4 Kit Kat and the new Nexus 5 are just around the corner. We've got all the leaks in theworld to prove it. But we don't know when, and so of course, people have been speculating. Like lunatics.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A Mogadishu court in March released a man with the same names as a Norwegian-Somali named as one of the gunmen who attacked Kenya's Westgate mall.
Kenyan and Western officials on Friday said that Hassan Abdi Dhuhulow has been identified as one of four gunmen seen attacking the mall on Sept. 21.
A news release from the National Union of Somali Journalists from March 28 says that a court freed Abdi Hassan Dhuhulow because there was no proof he had assisted in the killing of a Somali journalist in Mogadishu.
There was no way to immediately confirm the two men are the same.
Who are the "hostage-takers" now? Convinced by opinion polls that the media will let them get away with it, Democrats are now refusing to pass a "clean" continuing resolution to end the government shutdown, as well as a straightforward debt ceiling increase, in order to undo the sequester cuts that went into effect earlier this year. They are the ones holding a gun to Republicans' heads, threatening default if their demands are not met.
Juliette (Bitsie Tulloch, left) and Rosalee (Bree Turner) aren't standing idly by when "Grimm" returns next Friday.
The guys of NBC's fairy-tale crime drama "Grimm" usually find themselves at the center of most of the action, but the ladies aren't slouches either.
When the show returns on Oct. 25, Juliette (Bitsie Tulloch), Adalind (Claire Coffee) and Rosalee (Bree Turner) aren't going to be standing around and looking pretty, they're going to be right in the thick of things. After all, Nick (David Giuntoli) has been captured (and turned into a zombie), and it looks like Juliette and Rosalee will have to combine their strengths to help find him.
Meanwhile, Adalind, the former Hexenbiest, is still using her charm and her smarts to try to regain her powers.
A video called "The Ladies of Grimm" that NBC is sharing first with TODAY shows just how big a role the women will be playing in the new season.
"They're very self-assured, they know what they want," teases Coffee in the clip.
"I think you're going to see a lot more of that in season three," Tulloch adds of the female action. The actress also noted that Juliette is no damsel in distress. "It's been alluded to that she's kind of a bad ass!"
"It just presents women who are strong, women who are smart, and women who are taking action," Coffee says in the video as scenes of the ladies taking tough situations into their own hands roll by. "The women of 'Grimm' kick ass!"
"Grimm" season three premieres Oct. 25 at 9 p.m. on NBC.
Like Puppet, Chef, and Ansible, Salt is an open source server management and automation solution with commercial, officially supported options. Based on command-line-driven server and client services and utilities, Salt is primarily focused on Linux and Unix server management, though it offers significant Windows management capabilities as well. While Salt may look simple on its face, it's surprisingly powerful and extensible, and it has been designed to handle extremely large numbers of clients.
Salt uses a push method of communication with clients by default, though there's also a means to use SSH rather than locally installed clients. Using the default push method, the clients don't actively check in with a master server; rather, the master server reaches out to control or modify each client based on commands issued manually or through scheduling. But again, Salt can also operate in the other direction, with clients querying the master for updates. Salt functions asynchronously, and as such, it's very fast. It also incorporates an asynchronous file server for file deployments.
NEW YORK (AP) — Andrea Bocelli will receive a graduate degree in Italy next week.
The 55-year-old tenor says he'll receive a master's degree in vocal performance from The Conservatory of Music, Giacomo Puccini in La Spezia, Italy, on Tuesday.
Bocelli will present his thesis, titled "The Value and Meaning of Opera Singing at the Beginning of the Third Millennium," later this month. The 70-page dissertation includes contributions from Placido Domingo.
He'll also release a CD/DVD, "Love in Portofino," on Tuesday. The renowned performer has sold 80 million albums internationally.
Bocelli has a law degree from the University of Pisa.
If there's one thing you can count on in a large crowded city like New York, it's that there's always someone waiting on the subway platform. So while we love this gorgeous $48 backpack from Mojo featuring a subway door screen print that actually opens to reveal a platform, we're left a little unsettled by the lack of passengers waiting to cram on.
UnitedHealth Group Inc.'s third-quarter earnings inched up 1 percent in a rare performance that failed to trump Wall Street expectations.
The nation's largest health insurer also gave a less-than-reassuring vibe to investors by narrowing its 2013 forecast instead of raising it.
The Minnetonka, Minn.,-based company on Thursday raised the bottom end of its previous forecast for 2013 earnings by a nickel to $5.40 to $5.50 per share. UnitedHealth hasn't changed the top end of that forecast since it made its first prediction last November. It normally raises the range a few times during the course of a year.
Analysts polled by FactSet expect $5.52 per share for 2013.
Shares of UnitedHealth, which investors sent to a record high last month, dropped nearly 3 percent, or $2.19, to $73 about 45 minutes before the market opening.
UnitedHealth earned $1.57 billion, or $1.53 per share, in the quarter that ended Sept. 30. That's up from $1.56 billion, or $1.50 per share, a year ago. Revenue jumped 12 percent to $30.62 billion.
Analysts expected earnings of $1.53 per share on $30.86 billion in revenue.
The insurer's largest expense, medical costs, rose 13 percent to $22 billion in the quarter, due in part to cuts in Medicare Advantage funding.
UnitedHealth is the nation's largest provider of Medicare Advantage plans, which offer government-subsidized coverage for elderly and disabled people. The insurer has nearly 2.9 million people enrolled in the plans, and they brought in about 20 percent of its revenue last year.
UnitedHealth executives have been warning for several quarters now that that funding cuts to this program will pressure their business. Medicare Advantage plans took a hit earlier this year when federal budget cuts took away money after insurers had set rates for the year.
These plans also face more cuts to help fund the federal health care overhaul, which aims to provide insurance coverage for millions of uninsured people.
UnitedHealth also took a balance sheet hit in this year's quarter because it recorded a lower gain of $290 million when leftover insurance claims came in lower than it expected. That allowed the insurer to release money held in reserve, and it compares to a $390 million gain recorded last year.
The lower total basically means actual claims came in closer to what the insurer projected.
Health insurance is UnitedHealth's largest business, but it also provides information technology services and pharmacy benefits management through it its Optum segment. Total revenue from that segment jumped 33 percent in the third quarter to $9.6 billion.
UnitedHealth is the largest health insurer based on revenue and enrollment and the first health insurer to report earnings every quarter. Many see it as a bellwether for other insurers.
Its stock had climbed more than 38 percent so far this year as of Wednesday, and the shares reached a new, all-time high price of $75.88 on Sept. 16.
Strong quarterly performances and dividend payouts have drawn investors to UnitedHealth and other insurers that also have done well this year. Analysts say investors also have steadily gained more confidence in the sector as they realized that the health care overhaul won't hurt the industry as much as some originally worried.
Citi analyst Carl McDonald said in a Thursday morning research note that UnitedHealth "didn't have a terrible quarter by any means." But the high stock price means the bar for a good performance has risen the past couple of years.
Trailerpop, An App That Makes Movie Trailers A Game, Looks To Tap Video Advertising
When I was a kid I was amazed by advances in technology. I went to a friend’s house when I was in fifth grade and his father had a PC – an IBM PC, I believe – with a built-in hard drive. We loaded King’s Quest and Colossal Cavern in seconds and he even had a menu of apps that you could select by tapping a key. As a kid who grew up with tapes and later floppy disks, this was close to magic.
A few years later I got a dot-matrix printer and Print Shop. Up went the long, flowery banners (“Welcome home, Mom!”) and birthday cards. Fast-forward further and I was using a primitive desk top publishing app to make flyers for my “Acoustic Folk Poetry” band that I started with my buddy Rick. Then I mastered CDs, made DVDs of my wedding, and fired up a 3D printer that could churn out copies of my head. All of those were like making love outside Hogwarts – surprisingly close to magic. That changed over the past decade – I was probably most excited by the iPhone – but almost everything we see these days is an iteration of the old CPU/screen/input system paradigm. Nothing since has truly amazed me. Until now.
Now we have real magic. It’s here. It’s not always perfect nor is it quite consumer-ready but the $1,400 Makerbot Digitizer is one of the coolest things I’ve seen this decade.
The Digitizer is essentially a turntable, a webcam, and some lasers. It uses Makerbot’s conveyor app to control the motion of objects on the turntable and then scans the points generated by the laser during the rotation. It works best with light, matte objects like ceramics, clays, and non-glossy plastics but with a little glare-reducing baby powder you can scan just about everything as long as its taller than two inches and small enough to fit on the platform.
To scan you simply load up the Digitizer software – an excellent, intuitive system that should be a model for all 3D printer and scanner makers – and, once you calibrate the system using an included, laser-cut object, you press Digitize. Nine minutes later you have a scan. The system interpolates missing information which can be good or bad, depending on the lighting, and then asks if you want to take a photo of your object. You then slide away a filter over the camera to reveal the bare webcam, shoot your, photo, and then share or print your object.
The process is addicting. When you put one object on you want to put another and another. Sharing these objects is an amazing feeling – it’s essentially the equivalent of dot-matrix teleportation. It will be amazing, then, when we get to the laser printed version of object teleportation. Are the scans perfect? No. Because of vagaries of materials, reflections, and ambient light a perfect scan is impossible. This scan, for example is far from a perfect replica of the original statute. The statue itself has tarnished to an even, matte finish but even with some effort I couldn’t get all of the detail. The Digitizer is like a mimeograph machine rather than a true scanner. It grabs only the important parts of an image and reproduces the rest the best it can. For example, the scanner couldn’t tell what to do with the lens on this OMO camera, below, and so essentially gave up, filling it in. I was able to scan the lens by turning the camera on its side.
Take a look at this statue scan. I printed it fairly small just as a test but it grabbed a certain amount of detail on the statue but elided quite a bit more. In the end I created an approximate, not an exact, copy of the statue. Or take this beer stein for example. The handle sort of disintegrated but I suspect I could have gotten a far better scan if I dusted it down in baby powder. Scanning requires work and trade-offs but, in the end, you get approximately what you’re looking for.
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Is the system perfect? Yes and no. When it works it works wonderfully. However, I’ve had some minor hang-ups in OS X that the Makerbot team as seen and is working on fixing. That said, I got a good scan 95% of the time and most of the errors were my own fault caused by excitement or ignorance of good scanning technique.
At $1,400 the system is also expensive. While I didn’t take apart the case it’s clear that the R&D and engineering that went into this – plus the fact that it was made entirely in Brooklyn – add a premium price to what is essentially a solid webcam and some Class 1 lasers. The hardcore among you will scoff at the price but when you want your scanner to work the first time, right out of the box, this product can’t be beat. There are better, far more expensive scanners out there but this hits the sweet spot at the intersections affordability, usability, and utility.
Can you do this all yourself? Absolutely. A Kinect, a webcam, some lasers, and even your iPhone can create passable 3D models. But nothing I’ve seen can consistently produce quality results in a package that is nearly foolproof and surprisingly robust. I could imagine an archeologist taking this device to digs, an artist setting this up in a studio, or an engineer using this to model aerodynamics. It’s tough enough to withstand rough treatment by kids and adults and the quality, while in no way perfect, is close enough for the vast majority of uses.
What the Digitizer gets right is that it hides away all of the vagaries of 3D scanning and just leaves the magic. The system itself looks like something Jeff Bridges would use in Tron and the lasers, the ticking turntable, and the black case make it clear that this object is from the near future. This product leaves almost every other home computing advance in the dust and I feel like a kid again, amazed at hard drives, printers, and the ability to create things out of thin air.
Tristram Stuart, founder of Feeding the 5000, is helping to organize several disco soup events across Europe for World Food Day. Stuart is shown here in New York, where he attended the first U.S.-based disco soup event in September.
Courtesy of Feeding the 5000
Tristram Stuart, founder of Feeding the 5000, is helping to organize several disco soup events across Europe for World Food Day. Stuart is shown here in New York, where he attended the first U.S.-based disco soup event in September.
Courtesy of Feeding the 5000
Wednesday is World Food Day, an occasion food activists like to use to call attention to world hunger. With 842 million chronically undernourished people on Earth, it's a problem that hasn't gone away.
This year, activists are trying to make the day a little spicier with pots full of disco soup to highlight the absurd amount of food thrown away that could feed people: one-third of all the food produced every year.
What is disco soup, you ask? It's the tasty outcome of a party designed to bring strangers together to cook food that would otherwise end up in the trash. Oftentimes, the soup is donated to the hungry. Oh, and as the name suggests, there's music involved, too.
The first disco soup party was held in Germany in early 2012 by some folks affiliated with the Slow Food Youth Network Deutschland. The organizers collected discarded fruits and vegetables from a market, blasted some disco music and made a huge pot of soup.
Two months later, a group in France threw a disco soup party, and attracted 100 people. More parties followed, in Australia, South Korea, Ireland and beyond. You can check out an earnest little video of another French disco food event here:
The idea eventually caught the attention of Tristram Stuart, a British food waste activist and writer who started Feeding the 5000, a campaign named for an event held in London in 2009 and 2011, where 5,000 members of the public were given a free lunch made with perfectly edible ingredients bound for the rubbish bin.
Stuart is adamant that consumers and businesses in the developed world have a moral obligation to reverse "the global scandal" of food waste. In addition to throwing events to cook up blemished but edible produce, his campaign is also working to change European Union legislation on feeding food waste to pigs through the Pig Idea project.
For World Food Day, Feeding the 5000 is hosting a "flagship" disco soup party in Brussels. And the group says more pots full of disco soup will be bubbling away today in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Greece and Macedonia. The event hub is the Disco Anti Food Waste Day Facebook page.
And what if you don't like disco? Can you still have a disco soup event?
"We play anything that gets people dancing as they peel and chop the vegetables and fruit," Dominika Jarosz, event coordinator for Feeding the 5000, tells The Salt in an email.
While there are no disco soup events scheduled for Oct. 16 in the U.S., Feeding the 5000 says disco soup is starting to get traction here. The first U.S. disco soup event was held on Sept. 20 in New York, with the support of Slow Food NYC, the Natural Gourmet Institute, chef Paul Gerard of the East Village restaurant Exchange Alley and the United Nations Environment Program.
In advance of the soup blitz, Stuart visited local farms in New York and New Jersey and gleaned blemished tomatoes, over-sized watermelons, squash, eggplants and other fresh produce that the farmers were unable to sell. A rotating crew of DJs provided a soundtrack at the soup-making party at the Chelsea Super Pier, and most of the food was donated to the Bowery Mission. Such events, he says, help raise awareness among food donors like grocery stores and farmers and help them forge long-term relationships with organizations that feed the hungry.
Americans may be getting more motivated to address food waste, but we have to hand it to the Europeans, who do seem to be out in front on the issue. It was a group of Austrians, after all, who started a reality cooking show centered around Dumpster diving.
Food waste was also a talking point for world leaders who spoke up on World Food Day. "Reducing food waste is not, in fact, only a strategy for times of crisis, but a way of life we should adopt if we want a sustainable future for our planet," Nunzia De Girolamo, Italy's minister for agriculture, food and forestry policy, said at a ceremony Wednesday at the Food and Agriculture Organization's headquarters in Rome.
Adrian Peterson fathered a 4th child -- his 2nd secret child -- and the mother was a waitress at a popular Minnesota nightclub, TMZ has learned.
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