RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) ? The Confederations Cup has the final many wanted: a long-awaited matchup between world champion Spain and host Brazil.
The most dominant national team in recent years and the most successful team ever in international play will meet Sunday at Maracana Stadium for the title of the eight-nation warmup tournament for next year's World Cup.
It will be the first meeting between the nations since 1999 and their first competitive match since Brazil's 1-0 win on Socrates' goal in the first round of the 1986 World Cup in Mexico.
"It's the match everyone wanted to happen," said 21-year-old Brazilian forward Neymar, the star of the five-time world champions. "The entire world wanted it and everybody will be watching it."
With more than 70,000 Brazilian fans packing the iconic venue, Brazil will be seeking its third straight Confederations Cup title. Spain enters unbeaten in a world record 29 competitive matches over three years since losing its 2010 World Cup opener to Switzerland.
"For us it's a dream game," Spain coach Vicente Del Bosque told FIFA.
Brazil was eliminated in the quarterfinals in the last two World Cups and hasn't won a significant title since the 2009 Confederations Cup in South Africa. Spain won the 2010 World Cup along with the 2008 and 2012 European Championships.
"They are the current world champions, they have to be praised," Brazil captain Thiago Silva said. "But anything can happen in a final, and I'm certain that Brazil will be fully prepared for the matchup."
Spain hasn't lost in 26 matches overall since a 1-0 defeat against England at Wembley in 2011. Brazil struggled after coach Luiz Felipe Scolari replaced Mano Menezes in November, winning only one of its first six matches. Scolari, who coach Brazil to the 2002 World Cup title, enters the final with a five-game winning streak.
"There is no doubt it will be an even match," Brazil right back Daniel Alves said Saturday. "There is mutual respect between these two national teams."
Brazil beat Japan, Mexico and Italy in the group stage before defeating South American champion Uruguay 2-1 in the semifinals. Spain defeated the Uruguayans in its opener, then routed Tahiti and beat Nigeria before getting past Italy on penalty kicks in the semifinals.
"It's the match everybody has been waiting for," said Brazil assistant coach Carlos Alberto Parreira, who led the national team to the 1994 world title. "We all know how good Spain is, but Brazil is going through a sensational moment and is full of confidence."
While the host hasn't played since Wednesday, Spain endured overtime and the shootout in the semifinal against Italy in the heat of Fortaleza on Thursday. Del Bosque has said Spain will not use fatigue as an excuse, and Scolari also downplayed the issue.
"They were able to rest all of their starters when they played Tahiti, so basically they had to play one game less than we did," he said.
Both coaches will have all of their top players available for the match at the renovated Maracana.
Four players who will be in Sunday's final were nominated for the Golden Ball award handed to the best player at the Confederations Cup: Brazil's Neymar and Paulinho and Spain's Andres Iniesta and Sergio Ramos.
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JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry extended his Middle East peace mission on Saturday, shuttling between Jerusalem and Amman for more talks with Palestinian and Israeli leaders on reviving their stalled negotiations.
Cancelling a scheduled trip to Abu Dhabi, Kerry flew from Jerusalem to the Jordanian capital Amman for yet another meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. He returned later via Tel Aviv to see Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the third time.
"Because Secretary Kerry's meetings on the peace process remain ongoing in Jerusalem and Amman, we will no longer be able to make a stop in Abu Dhabi," State Department deputy spokesperson Marie Harf said. Kerry had apologized to the United Arab Emirates for his change in plans.
An Israeli official involved in the talks said Kerry's visit could yield an announcement that Israeli and Palestinian delegates would meet under U.S. and Jordanian auspices.
"There is such a possibility, but it is not certain," the official told Reuters. A U.S. official declined to comment.
Direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations broke down in late 2010 in a dispute over Israel's settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, territories that Palestinians want within a future independent state.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat greeted Kerry on Saturday at Abbas's residence in Amman before the president joined them. Abbas and Kerry had met in Amman less than 24 hours earlier.
Erekat asked how Kerry's sessions with Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres on Friday went. Kerry responded: "It was good, it was interesting."
State Department officials said Abbas and Kerry met privately for about two hours before advisers joined them.
"U.S. efforts are continuing (but) until now no results that can lead to the resumption of negotiations," a Palestinian source, with knowledge of the talks, told Reuters.
SENSE OF URGENCY
It was unclear whether Kerry would be able to announce a resumption of talks before his scheduled departure for Asia on Sunday, but U.S. officials have compared his shuttle diplomacy to Henry Kissinger's Middle East peace efforts in the 1970s.
Kerry saw Netanyahu for several hours on Thursday as well as on Friday and had a Jewish Sabbath dinner with Peres. Israeli officials gave no details of those meetings.
Kerry - now on his fifth visit as a peace broker - has said he would not have returned to the region so soon if he did not believe he could make progress. He has been guarded about his plans to break the stalemate, while warning time is running out.
He is keen to clinch a deal to resume talks before the United Nations General Assembly, which has already granted de facto recognition to a Palestinian state, convenes in September.
Netanyahu is concerned that the Palestinians, in the absence of direct peace talks, could use the U.N. session as a springboard for further statehood moves circumventing Israel.
With the Middle East engulfed in turmoil from protests in Egypt to the Syrian civil war, which is spilling into neighboring countries, Kerry has said it is time for "hard decisions" by Israel and the Palestinians.
"It is urgent because time is the enemy of a peace process," he said in Kuwait last week. "The passage of time allows a vacuum to be filled by people who don't want things to happen."
State Department officials believe the sides will return to negotiations once there is an agreement on confidence-building measures - such as a partial Israeli amnesty for Palestinian security prisoners - and a formula for fresh talks.
As an incentive for talks, Kerry is also working on a $4 billion economic plan led by ex-British prime minister Tony Blair, which would channel new investments in Palestinian areas via the private sector to boost jobs and economic growth.
(Additional reporting by Dan Williams in Jerusalem and Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Michael Pe?a and Djimon Hounsou will attempt their first exorcism when Lionsgate's "The Vatican Tapes" starts filming next month.
Dougray Scott ("My Week With Marilyn"), Kathleen Robertson ("Boss"), Peter Andersson ("The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"), Olivia Dudley ("CSI: Miami"), John Patrick Amedon ("The Last Stand") and Russian actor Alex Sparrow have also joined the ensemble cast for the upcoming thriller, which begins principle photography in July, Lionsgate and partner Lakeshore Entertainment announced on Friday.
The film, directed by Neveldine ("Crank"), follows a 27-year-old woman (Dudley) who begins to have a devastating effect on anyone close to her, causing serious injury and death. A local priest (Pe?a) believes she is possessed, but when Vicar Imani (Hounsou) and Cardinal Bruun (Anderson) are called from the Vatican to exorcise the demon, it proves to be an ancient satanic force more powerful than they imagined.
"Fast & Furious 6" writer Chris Morgan developed the story with Christopher Borrelli, who wrote the screenplay.
Lakeshore's Tom Rosenberg and Gary Lucchesi will producer, along with Chris Cowles.
June 28, 2013 ? The comic-book hero Superman uses his X-ray vision to spot bad guys lurking behind walls and other objects. Now we could all have X-ray vision, thanks to researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Researchers have long attempted to build a device capable of seeing people through walls. However, previous efforts to develop such a system have involved the use of expensive and bulky radar technology that uses a part of the electromagnetic spectrum only available to the military.
Now a system being developed by Dina Katabi, a professor in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and her graduate student Fadel Adib, could give all of us the ability to spot people in different rooms using low-cost Wi-Fi technology. "We wanted to create a device that is low-power, portable and simple enough for anyone to use, to give people the ability to see through walls and closed doors," Katabi says.
The system, called "Wi-Vi," is based on a concept similar to radar and sonar imaging. But in contrast to radar and sonar, it transmits a low-power Wi-Fi signal and uses its reflections to track moving humans. It can do so even if the humans are in closed rooms or hiding behind a wall.
As a Wi-Fi signal is transmitted at a wall, a portion of the signal penetrates through it, reflecting off any humans on the other side. However, only a tiny fraction of the signal makes it through to the other room, with the rest being reflected by the wall, or by other objects. "So we had to come up with a technology that could cancel out all these other reflections, and keep only those from the moving human body," Katabi says.
Motion detector
To do this, the system uses two transmit antennas and a single receiver. The two antennas transmit almost identical signals, except that the signal from the second receiver is the inverse of the first. As a result, the two signals interfere with each other in such a way as to cancel each other out. Since any static objects that the signals hit -- including the wall -- create identical reflections, they too are cancelled out by this nulling effect.
In this way, only those reflections that change between the two signals, such as those from a moving object, arrive back at the receiver, Adib says. "So, if the person moves behind the wall, all reflections from static objects are cancelled out, and the only thing registered by the device is the moving human."
Once the system has cancelled out all of the reflections from static objects, it can then concentrate on tracking the person as he or she moves around the room. Most previous attempts to track moving targets through walls have done so using an array of spaced antennas, which each capture the signal reflected off a person moving through the environment. But this would be too expensive and bulky for use in a handheld device.
So instead Wi-Vi uses just one receiver. As the person moves through the room, his or her distance from the receiver changes, meaning the time it takes for the reflected signal to make its way back to the receiver changes too. The system then uses this information to calculate where the person is at any one time.
Possible uses in disaster recovery, personal safety, gaming
Wi-Vi, being presented at the Sigcomm conference in Hong Kong in August, could be used to help search-and-rescue teams to find survivors trapped in rubble after an earthquake, say, or to allow police officers to identify the number and movement of criminals within a building to avoid walking into an ambush.
It could also be used as a personal safety device, Katabi says: "If you are walking at night and you have the feeling that someone is following you, then you could use it to check if there is someone behind the fence or behind a corner."
The device can also detect gestures or movements by a person standing behind a wall, such as a wave of the arm, Katabi says. This would allow it to be used as a gesture-based interface for controlling lighting or appliances within the home, such as turning off the lights in another room with a wave of the arm.
Venkat Padmanabhan, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research, says the possibility of using Wi-Vi as a gesture-based interface that does not require a line of sight between the user and the device itself is perhaps its most interesting application of all. "Such an interface could alter the face of gaming," he says.
Unlike today's interactive gaming devices, where users must stay in front of the console and its camera at all times, users could still interact with the system while in another room, for example. This could open up the possibility of more complex and interesting games, Katabi says.
President Obama remarks on the situation with admitted NSA leaker Edward Snowden, saying he has no plans to disrupt relations with Russia and China, nor to scramble jets to capture the "29-year-old hacker."
By Jim Maceda, F. Brinley Bruton and Matthew DeLuca, NBC News
President Obama said he should not have to speak personally with the leaders of Russia and China regarding self-professed NSA leaker Edward Snowden, and said he was ?not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker? during a press conference in Senegal on Thursday.
The president was on the first leg of a trip to Africa when he struck the seemingly dismissive tone regarding the former defense contractor who claimed to have leaked details of two top-secret government data-gathering programs before initiating an international manhunt that has grown to involve the governments of China, Ecuador, and Russia.
Obama said that the revelations first published in British newspaper The Guardian and The Washington Post ? and the ensuing search for Snowden, who has been charged with theft of government property and two offenses of espionage statutes ? have the makings of a big-screen spy caper, but that he would not engage in ?wheeling and dealing and trading and a whole host of other issues, simply to get a guy extradited so he can face the justice system here in the United States.?
Snowden, 30, is believed to still be hiding at a Moscow airport awaiting a ruling on his request for asylum from the government of Ecuador. Snowden flew to Russia from Hong Kong over the weekend but has not been seen since his arrival. Russian officials told Reuters that he remains in a transit area at Sheremetyevo airport.
He was not aboard an Aeroflot flight that departed Moscow to Havana on Thursday, the first stop on an anticipated escape route to the South American country.
?Now I get why it?s a fascinating story from a press perspective and I?m sure there will be a made-for-TV movie somewhere down the line,? Obama said, adding that ?in terms of U.S. interests, the damage was done with respect to the initial leaks.?
Dolores Ochoa / AP
A man reads a newspaper with the Spanish headline "Snowden stuck at Moscow airport" in Quito, Ecuador, on Wednesday.
Snowden?s case resolved ?some pretty significant vulnerabilities? at the National Security Agency, Obama said. Snowden worked for defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton before being fired, and said in an interview with the South China Morning Post that he took the job to gain access to sensitive information. NBC News could not independently verify the report.
?There have been some useful conversations that have taken place between the United States government and the Russian government,? Obama said. ?And my continued expectation is that Russia ? there are other countries that have talked about potentially providing Mr. Snowden asylum ? recognize that they are part of an international community and that they should be abiding by international law.?
The U.S. is worried that Snowden might have other documents in his possession that he may ?dribble out,? Obama said.
?I continue to be concerned about the other documents that he may have. That?s part of the reason why we?d like to have Mr. Snowden in custody,? Obama said. ?But what I think we?re going to continue to do is make sure that we are following the various channels that are well established and the rules that are well established to get this thing done.?
Ecuador?s communications minister said on Thursday that his country renounced hundreds of millions of dollars in trade tariff benefits, the Associated Press reported. Communications Minister Fernando Alvarez said the trade benefits being considered for renewal by U.S. lawmakers had become an ?instrument of blackmail? as the country considered granting asylum to Snowden.
Ecuador ?does not accept threats from anybody, and does not trade in principles, or submit to mercantile interests, as important as they may be,? Alvarez said, according to the AP.
In Washington, the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has threatened to lead the effort to remove preferential trade treatment for Ecuadorian goods if the country decides to offer asylum to Snowden.?
"Edward Snowden is a fugitive who has endangered? the national security of the United States," Sen. Robert Menendez?said in a statement?released late on Wednesday.??"Trade preferences are a privilege granted to nations, not a right. ?I urge [Ecuadorean] President Correa to do the right thing by the United States and Ecuador, and deny Snowden's request for asylum."
In 2012, Ecuador exported some $5.4 billion worth of oil, $166 million of cut flowers, $122 million of fruits and vegetables and $80 million of tuna to the United States.?
Menendez said he would lead efforts to stop the renewal of Ecuador's duty-free access to America markets under the Generalized System of Preferences program, which expires on July 31.??He also said he'd try and block renewal of the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act, which also expires at the end of July.
The ongoing incident has also heightened tensions with China, as the country?s defense minister said that the U.S. Internet monitoring program revealed in documents leaked by Snowden ?has revealed the concerned country?s true face and hypocritical behavior.? Defense ministry spokesman Yang Yujun did not explicitly name the United States in his comments, Reuters reported.
Also on Thursday, a government official in Switzerland said the country still has questions about Snowden's time?working in Geneva as a CIA operative, Reuters reported. Swiss?Foreign Minister?Didier Burkhalter said they received a "diplomatic" response from the U.S. to questions about Snowden's time in the country from 2007 and 2009, but "have decided to discuss these points further in the future with the Americans."
NBC News' Ghazi Balkiz and Reuters contributed to this report.
Related:
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This story was originally published on Thu Jun 27, 2013 5:02 AM EDT
Human-caused global warming played a role in making this past summer Australia's hottest on record, a new study suggests.
The summer of 2012-2013 probably won't retain its title for long; researchers say record-breaking scorching summers are five times more likely to occur now in Australia due to climate change.
"Our research has shown that, due to greenhouse gas emissions, these types of extreme summers will become even more frequent and more severe in the future," study author Sophie Lewis of the University of Melbourne said in a statement.
Australia's summer occurs from December to February, during the Northern Hemisphere's winter. In those three months between 2012 and 2013, the country's average temperature was 83.5 degrees Fahrenheit (28.6 degrees Celsius), 2 degrees F (1 degree C) above normal, according to Australia's Bureau of Meteorology. It broke the previous summer temperature record, set in the 1997-1998 season, by 0.18 degree F (0.1 degree C).
Unusually high temperatures gripped nearly the entire country, with just three percent of Australia experiencing below-normal temperatures. Bush fires and flooding, combined with the extreme heat, prompted Australians to call it the "angry summer."
Lewis and colleagues looked at climate observations and more than 90 climate model simulations of summer temperatures in Australia over the past 100 years. They found that human influences likely stoked the record heat during a summer when Australians may have otherwise expected cooler temperatures.
"This extreme summer is not only remarkable for its record-breaking nature but also because it occurred at a time of weak La Ni?a to neutral conditions, which generally produce cooler summers," Karoly said. "Importantly, our research shows the natural variability of El Ni?o Southern Oscillation is unlikely to explain the recent record temperatures." The El Ni?o Southern Oscillation is a climate cycle that can impact weather and cliamte systems around the globe; it's El Ni?o phases features warmer-than-normal sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean, while the La Ni?a phase features cooler-than-normal temperatures.
Climate describes weather that occurs over long periods, such as decades, centuries or millennia, and scientists are typically quick to point out that no individual storm, heat wave or unusual season can be directly blamed on climate change. But researchers have said that global warming can make some events, on average, more severe and more frequent than they would have been in the past.
The research has been accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Today we have a guest blog from Jennifer Young who has created the skin care collection Defiant Beauty?which she created for people who have been diagnosed with cancer.? The changes to your skin after cancer treatment can be quite dramatic, and Jennifer?s blog below sheds some light on why this may happen and what we can do to minimise the effects.
Over to you Jennifer...
Our clients tell us that travelling after treatment for cancer is very different to holidays ?before?. Not only is travel insurance that covers cancer more of an issue but their skin isn?t the same and their tolerance to heat seems to have changed as well. The body goes through a lot during treatment for cancer and there are many reasons for those changes. A lot of the chemotherapy drugs used in the treatment of cancer are known to cause skin-related side effects in some individuals. Radiation treatment also impacts skin health, both at the time of treatment and post treatment 1 Clients tell us of problems being exacerbated by exposure to the sun and describe their skin reaction as an extreme photosensitivity resulting in a red rash and then dry and scaly skin. There are a number of things that can be done to help with this skin condition, ranging from avoiding the sun to protecting the skin when in the sun. Here are a few ideas for your holidays (I am so British- it?s my assumption that there?s no sun without travel). ????????? Make sure you know that where the shade is/will be and when ????????? Keep your sensitive areas covered with loose fitting, light cotton or bamboo clothing ????????? Don?t use heavily fragranced body care products ????????? Use UV protection ????????? Keep your skin moisturised
Moisturising the skin may be trickier than it at first appears. Often Skin becomes extra sensitive after and during treatment for cancer. The majority of our clients tell us that they are no longer able to tolerate the skin care brands that they used to love and they now wish to avoid ingredients that they now discover are included in many skincare ranges.? On average, creams and lotions have about 5 times the number of ingredients used in oils and balms, so that?s five times as many ingredients for sensitive skinned cancer patients and survivors to react to. Our Defiant Beauty products are oil-based, we have no water containing products such as creams or lotions. This is for very good reason. In order to make a cream or lotion, water and oil must be mixed and emulsified in order for the cream or lotion to form. This emulsification process requires the addition of emulsifiers to the formulation. Preservatives are also needed as water is included and so bacteria, moulds and fungus could and will grow if they are not included. There are many more ingredients that need to be added to the formulation so that the oil/water mix feels soft and smooth on the skin and has an appropriate pH.? Water is a useful ingredient but oils are more moisturising and easily absorbed, therefore those ingredients best known to be soothing and healing are oils. Furthermore sensitive skin is not only a problem for those who have had treatment for cancer, many medications can affect the balance of the skin, we tend to forget that the skin is an organ too, and therefore the above advice can apply to anyone who is experiencing skin sensitivity due to their medication. 1.???? Shamban, A., 2011.Heal Your Skin. John Wiley and Sons Inc New jersey
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Insurancewith is a trading name of Infinity Insurance Solutions a division of Travel Insurance Facilities Group who are authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority Insurancewith travel insurance policies are administered through Travel Administration Facilities a division of Travel Insurance Facilities Group. ? Infinity Insurance Solutions, Suite 1, 2nd Floor 7 York Road Woking GU22 7XH. All rights reserved
Nurse practitioners can boost quality of care for older patients with chronic conditionsPublic release date: 26-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Enrique Rivero erivero@mednet.ucla.edu 310-794-2273 University of California - Los Angeles Health Sciences
U.S. residents today are living longer than previous generations, thanks to improved public health and medical treatment. But they're also living longer with chronic geriatric health conditions like dementia, urinary incontinence, depression and debilitating falls, which often require complex medical care.
Doctors spend significant time and resources treating individuals with chronic conditions, and the average family physician can become severely overtaxed managing care for such patients. The picture becomes even worse with chronic geriatric conditions.
Several heath care treatment models have been designed over the years to improve medical care for chronic geriatric ailments. One model, for instance, helped improve patient care by teaming geriatricians in an academic medical center setting with nurse practitioners to co-manage care. But can the same model work in community-based primary care settings?
The answer is yes, according to a UCLA-led study published in the June issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The study's findings highlight the crucial role nurse practitioners can play in treating chronic geriatric conditions.
"It is becoming increasingly clear that care of chronic geriatric conditions is better when it's done in teams," said the study's lead author, Dr. David Reuben, chief of the geriatrics division in the department of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "There are some things that nurse practitioners do better than doctors and some things that doctors do better than nurse practitioners."
Reuben noted that while doctors are generally good at treating acute medical conditions and those requiring highly complex decision-making, some chronic conditions tend to be "swept by the wayside" because physicians either don't have the time or are simply not as skilled in dealing with them.
In addition, doctors often can't make the time to deal with both patient symptoms and the management of chronic illnesses that may not have acute symptoms. "There just isn't enough time in the office to do both," Reuben said.
For the current study, researchers screened 1,084 patients at two primary care facilities in Southern California for four chronic geriatric conditions: falls, urinary incontinence, dementia/Alzheimer's disease, and depression. Of those patients, 658 had at least one condition; 485 of the 658 patients were then randomly selected for medical review.
Of those 485 patients, 237 (49 percent) were seen by a nurse practitioner, for co-management with a primary care physician of at least one condition. The rest were seen only by a primary care physician.
The researchers examined whether a set of measures known as "quality indicators" were performed for each condition. For example, if a patient had a history of falls, did the care provider assess whether the patient might be taking medications that increase the risk of falls and assist the patient in reducing or stopping the use of that drug?
The study authors found that the percentage of quality indicators that were satisfied for patients whose cases were co-managed by a nurse practitioner and a physician was higher than for those seen only by a physician.
For falls, 80 percent of quality indicators were satisfied for co-managed cases, compared with 34 percent for physicians alone; for urinary incontinence, 66 percent of indicators were satisfied, compared with 19 percent; for dementia, 59 percent were satisfied, compared with 38 percent; and for depression, 63 percent were satisfied, compared with 60 percent.
Much of the difference was due to the fact that the nurses were likely to take far more detailed patient histories and to perform other assessments. For instance, the pass rates that is, whether the measure was performed for taking a patient's history of falls was 91 percent for co-managed cases, versus 47 percent; vision testing was 87 percent, versus 36 percent; and discussion of treatment options for urinary incontinence was 79 percent, versus 28 percent.
The findings were limited by several facts, the researchers said. Some cases that primary care physicians considered "mild" were not referred for co-management, the study was conducted in only two facilities within a single geographic area, and it was a one-time intervention with minor revisions as the study went along rather than a longer, continuous learning process.
###
Grants from the UniHealth Foundation; a Career Development Award from the Health Services Research and Development Service of the Veterans Affairs Health Administration (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs) through the VA Greater Los Angeles Health Services Research and Development Center of Excellence (Project # VA CD2 08-012-1); and the National Institute on Aging (5P30AG028748) funded this study.
Other researchers on this study included David A. Ganz, Heather E. McCreath, Karina D. Ramirez and Neil S. Wenger of UCLA, and Carol P. Roth of the RAND Corp. Ganz and Wenger are also associated with RAND, and Ganz is associated with Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System.
The UCLA Division of Geriatrics within the department of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA offers comprehensive outpatient and inpatient services at several convenient locations and works closely with other UCLA programs that strive to improve and maintain the quality of life of seniors. UCLA geriatricians are specialists in managing the overall health of people age 65 and older and treating medical disorders that frequently affect the elderly, including memory loss and dementia, falls and immobility, urinary incontinence, arthritis, arthritis, high blood pressure, heart disease, osteoporosis and diabetes. As a result of their specialized training, UCLA geriatricians can knowledgably consider and address a broad spectrum of health-related factors including medical, psychological and social when treating patients.
For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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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.
Nurse practitioners can boost quality of care for older patients with chronic conditionsPublic release date: 26-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Enrique Rivero erivero@mednet.ucla.edu 310-794-2273 University of California - Los Angeles Health Sciences
U.S. residents today are living longer than previous generations, thanks to improved public health and medical treatment. But they're also living longer with chronic geriatric health conditions like dementia, urinary incontinence, depression and debilitating falls, which often require complex medical care.
Doctors spend significant time and resources treating individuals with chronic conditions, and the average family physician can become severely overtaxed managing care for such patients. The picture becomes even worse with chronic geriatric conditions.
Several heath care treatment models have been designed over the years to improve medical care for chronic geriatric ailments. One model, for instance, helped improve patient care by teaming geriatricians in an academic medical center setting with nurse practitioners to co-manage care. But can the same model work in community-based primary care settings?
The answer is yes, according to a UCLA-led study published in the June issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The study's findings highlight the crucial role nurse practitioners can play in treating chronic geriatric conditions.
"It is becoming increasingly clear that care of chronic geriatric conditions is better when it's done in teams," said the study's lead author, Dr. David Reuben, chief of the geriatrics division in the department of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "There are some things that nurse practitioners do better than doctors and some things that doctors do better than nurse practitioners."
Reuben noted that while doctors are generally good at treating acute medical conditions and those requiring highly complex decision-making, some chronic conditions tend to be "swept by the wayside" because physicians either don't have the time or are simply not as skilled in dealing with them.
In addition, doctors often can't make the time to deal with both patient symptoms and the management of chronic illnesses that may not have acute symptoms. "There just isn't enough time in the office to do both," Reuben said.
For the current study, researchers screened 1,084 patients at two primary care facilities in Southern California for four chronic geriatric conditions: falls, urinary incontinence, dementia/Alzheimer's disease, and depression. Of those patients, 658 had at least one condition; 485 of the 658 patients were then randomly selected for medical review.
Of those 485 patients, 237 (49 percent) were seen by a nurse practitioner, for co-management with a primary care physician of at least one condition. The rest were seen only by a primary care physician.
The researchers examined whether a set of measures known as "quality indicators" were performed for each condition. For example, if a patient had a history of falls, did the care provider assess whether the patient might be taking medications that increase the risk of falls and assist the patient in reducing or stopping the use of that drug?
The study authors found that the percentage of quality indicators that were satisfied for patients whose cases were co-managed by a nurse practitioner and a physician was higher than for those seen only by a physician.
For falls, 80 percent of quality indicators were satisfied for co-managed cases, compared with 34 percent for physicians alone; for urinary incontinence, 66 percent of indicators were satisfied, compared with 19 percent; for dementia, 59 percent were satisfied, compared with 38 percent; and for depression, 63 percent were satisfied, compared with 60 percent.
Much of the difference was due to the fact that the nurses were likely to take far more detailed patient histories and to perform other assessments. For instance, the pass rates that is, whether the measure was performed for taking a patient's history of falls was 91 percent for co-managed cases, versus 47 percent; vision testing was 87 percent, versus 36 percent; and discussion of treatment options for urinary incontinence was 79 percent, versus 28 percent.
The findings were limited by several facts, the researchers said. Some cases that primary care physicians considered "mild" were not referred for co-management, the study was conducted in only two facilities within a single geographic area, and it was a one-time intervention with minor revisions as the study went along rather than a longer, continuous learning process.
###
Grants from the UniHealth Foundation; a Career Development Award from the Health Services Research and Development Service of the Veterans Affairs Health Administration (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs) through the VA Greater Los Angeles Health Services Research and Development Center of Excellence (Project # VA CD2 08-012-1); and the National Institute on Aging (5P30AG028748) funded this study.
Other researchers on this study included David A. Ganz, Heather E. McCreath, Karina D. Ramirez and Neil S. Wenger of UCLA, and Carol P. Roth of the RAND Corp. Ganz and Wenger are also associated with RAND, and Ganz is associated with Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System.
The UCLA Division of Geriatrics within the department of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA offers comprehensive outpatient and inpatient services at several convenient locations and works closely with other UCLA programs that strive to improve and maintain the quality of life of seniors. UCLA geriatricians are specialists in managing the overall health of people age 65 and older and treating medical disorders that frequently affect the elderly, including memory loss and dementia, falls and immobility, urinary incontinence, arthritis, arthritis, high blood pressure, heart disease, osteoporosis and diabetes. As a result of their specialized training, UCLA geriatricians can knowledgably consider and address a broad spectrum of health-related factors including medical, psychological and social when treating patients.
For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.
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Supermoon: The moon will come within 222,000 miles of Earth and become a 'supermoon' (turn full) around 7:30 a.m. EDT Sunday.
By Associated Press / June 22, 2013
A 'supermoon' rises behind the Temple of Poseidon in Cape Sounion, Greece. The phenomenon occurs when the moon passes closer to Earth than usual. The event this Sunday will make the moon appear larger than normal, but the difference is so small that without magnification most skywatchers won?t notice.
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The biggest and brightest full moon of the year graces the sky early Sunday as our celestial neighbor swings closer to Earth than usual.
While the moon will appear 14 percent larger normal, skywatchers won't be able to notice the difference with the naked eye. Still, astronomers say it's worth looking up and appreciating the cosmos.
"It gets people out there looking at the moon, and might make a few more people aware that there's interesting stuff going on in the night sky," Geoff Chester of the U.S. Naval Observatory said in an email.
What makes it a 'supermoon'? The Christian Science Monitor explains:
Supermoons occur once a year. This month's super-strawberry moon will be (slightly) larger and brighter than others because its full-moon phase comes as the moon makes its closest approach to Earth.
The moon's orbit around the third rock from the sun traces an elliptical path.? At closest approach, or perigee, the moon swings to within 362,570 kilometers (224,793 miles) of Earth, while its most-distant point, or apogee is 405,410 km. But those are averages.
Sunday night, the moon's perigee will come within 356,989 km of Earth, about 2 percent closer than average. And the moon reaches full status about 20 minutes after perigee.
Some viewers may think the supermoon looks more dazzling but it's actually an optical illusion. The moon looms larger on the horizon next to trees and buildings.
The moon will come within 222,000 miles of Earth and turn full around 7:30 a.m. EDT, making it the best time to view.
As in any supermoon event, high tides are forecast because of the moon's proximity, but the effect is expected to be small.
This supermoon is also a strawberry moon, according to the Old Farmer's Almanac. The first full moon in June is called a strawberry moon, marking the harvest of strawberries after their short growing season ends.
But you can forget about the myths that swirl every time a supermoon appears. There's no link to higher crime or bizarre behavior. Scientists say that's just lunacy.
(Reuters) - Less than a week after the Federal Reserve set off a cascade of selling in global markets, two of its top officials downplayed the notion of an imminent end to monetary stimulus and said on Monday the market reaction was not yet cause for concern.
The Fed is center stage for investors after Chairman Ben Bernanke last week said the central bank expected to reduce its bond-buying later this year, and to halt the stimulus program altogether by mid-2014 if the economy improves as forecast.
Bernanke's road map to the end of the Fed's third round of quantitative easing, or QE3, left ample room for adjustment and interpretation - and his colleagues provided a bit of their own on Monday, appearing to try to assuage fears in the marketplace.
Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota said investors, who drove stock and bond prices lower in the last few days, were wrong to view the central bank as having become more keen to tighten policy than it was before last week's policy meeting.
"I thought there was a sense out there ... that the committee had taken more of a hawkish turn in terms of thinking about policy... I thought that was a misperception that should be clarified," Kocherlakota told reporters on a conference call.
Perhaps the most dovish of the Fed's 19 policymakers, he highlighted underlying messages in both Bernanke's comments and the Fed's policy statement that were "pretty accommodative," including the central bank's expectation that it will not sell off its mortgage bonds in the years ahead.
The resulting rise in longer-term bond yields is "not a cause for concern" so far, Kocherlakota added. "But obviously, if these higher yields were to harden over a longer period of time, that would be restrictive to economic conditions.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury bond eased slightly on Monday after flirting with a nearly two-year high, having posted last week its biggest weekly jump in a decade.
The S&P 500 stock index <.spx> has fallen 5 percent over the last four sessions as investors consider how less Fed accommodation and a cash squeeze in China could hurt the U.S. economy.
If the strong selloff continues, there is the risk that tighter financial conditions could choke off the slow U.S. economic recovery that is showing signs of durability and even acceleration this year.
Richard Fisher, the hawkish head of the Dallas Fed, said of the market reaction that the "big money" investors appear cautious after a 30-year bull market in bonds, adding the strength of the U.S. dollar reflects confidence in the economy.
In a speech in London, Fisher strongly backed Bernanke's timetable for QE3, repeating the unprecedented stimulus should be slowly removed. He added that the Fed's ultimate "exit strategy" is still a ways out in the future.
"Even if we reach a situation this year where we dial back (stimulus), we will still be running an accommodative policy," he said. In a favorite line, Fisher repeated: "I'm not in favor of going from wild turkey to cold turkey overnight.
As it stands, the Fed is buying $85 billion in Treasury paper and mortgage-backed securities each month to stimulate investment, hiring and economic growth.
Since Bernanke's comments on Wednesday, financial markets have pulled forward the date when they expect the Fed to start raising interest rates, currently near zero, to around September 2014, even though a majority of Fed policymakers do not expect lift-off in rates until 2015.
In Basel, the influential head of the New York Fed, William Dudley, did not comment specifically on the current policy stance but spoke generally about the need for policies to be "more accommodative than otherwise" in the wake of financial crises.
The U.S. central bank must consider financial instability when formulating its policies, Dudley said in comments that gave a brief boost to U.S. bond markets in early trading.
"The stance of monetary policy needs to be judged in light of how well the transmission channels of monetary policy are operating," Dudley told the Bank for International Settlements.
"When financial instability has disrupted the monetary policy transmission channels, following simple rules based on long-term historical relationships can lead to an inappropriately tight monetary policy.
Dudley, who repeated that the Fed has fallen short of its employment and inflation objectives, is a close ally of Bernanke and a strong backer of the unprecedented efforts to accelerate the U.S. recovery from the 2007-2009 recession.
While neither Kocherlakota nor Fisher have votes on the Fed's policy committee this year, Dudley has a permanent vote.
(Additional reporting by Marc Jones and Francesco Canepa in London, and Alister Bull in Washington; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
FILE - This May 11, 2013 file photo shows actress Halle Berry at the 20th Annual EIF Revlon Run/Walk For Women in Los Angeles. Berry is scheduled to testify on Tuesday in favor of California legislation that would limit the ability of paparazzi to photograph the children of celebrities. The hearing before the Assembly Committee on Public Safety is set for midmorning, although it's not clear exactly when Berry is expected to speak. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, file)
FILE - This May 11, 2013 file photo shows actress Halle Berry at the 20th Annual EIF Revlon Run/Walk For Women in Los Angeles. Berry is scheduled to testify on Tuesday in favor of California legislation that would limit the ability of paparazzi to photograph the children of celebrities. The hearing before the Assembly Committee on Public Safety is set for midmorning, although it's not clear exactly when Berry is expected to speak. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, file)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) ? Actress Halle Berry is scheduled to testify on Tuesday in favor of California legislation that would limit the ability of paparazzi to photograph the children of celebrities.
The hearing before the Assembly Committee on Public Safety is set for midmorning, although it's not clear exactly when Berry is expected to speak.
She read a statement before Tuesday's hearing, saying she understands she must give up some privacy but felt she had to do something to allow her child to move around freely and safely.
Berry has tangled with paparazzi before. In April, she shouted and cursed at photographers at Los Angeles International Airport, telling them to get away from her young daughter, the Los Angeles Times reported (http://lat.ms/14mCKMV ).
The bill by state Sen. Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, would change the definition of harassment to include photographing or recording a child without the permission of a legal guardian, by following the child or guardian's activities or by lying in wait.
It also increases the penalties for people convicted of such behavior. The first conviction would require imprisonment of at least 10 days, up from the current five days.
The goal is also to protect the children of public officials, including judges and law enforcement, said Greg Hayes, spokesman for the senator.
Opponents, including The Motion Picture Association of America, say it infringes on free speech.
Jim Ewert, general counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association, told the Times the bill could criminalize legitimate news gathering.
"It's what journalists do," he said. "They take pictures."
Maria Sharapova of Russia reacts after winning the first set against Kristina Mladenovic of France during their Women's first round singles match at the All England Lawn Tennis Championships in Wimbledon, London, Monday, June 24, 2013. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
Maria Sharapova of Russia reacts after winning the first set against Kristina Mladenovic of France during their Women's first round singles match at the All England Lawn Tennis Championships in Wimbledon, London, Monday, June 24, 2013. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
Maria Sharapova of Russia serves to Kristina Mladenovic of France during their Women's first round singles match at the All England Lawn Tennis Championships in Wimbledon, London, Monday, June 24, 2013. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
Kristina Mladenovic of France serves to Maria Sharapova of Russia during their Women's first round singles match at the All England Lawn Tennis Championships in Wimbledon, London, Monday, June 24, 2013. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
LONDON (AP) ? Done with her pre-tournament verbal volleying with Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova improved to 11-0 in first-round matches at Wimbledon by beating 37th-ranked Kristina Mladenovic of France 7-6 (5), 6-3 Monday.
The third-seeded Sharapova, who won her first Grand Slam title at the All England Club in 2004, struggled through the opening set. But at 5-all in the tiebreaker, Sharapova hit a cross-court backhand winner to earn a set point, which she quickly converted with an over-the-shoulder backhand volley winner off Mladenovic's lob.
Sharapova drew attention over the weekend by delivering a sharp news-conference rebuke to Williams over critical comments attributed to the top-seeded American in a recent magazine article.
Williams has won their last 13 head-to-head matches, including the French Open final this month.
Television is no longer the only game in town for distributing and watching video.?The Internet and the social web have provided content creators and advertisers with a cost-effective way to distribute video.
"Social" video ?is video that is influenced ? in any part of the pipeline, from production to distribution ? by social media.?For audiences, discovery is no longer about flipping through channels or a TV guide, it's about listening to friends' recommendations and glancing at social media feeds.
Just how big is social media-influenced video? It's big, having eclipsed non-social video on the Web in audience size (see chart, top right).?And it's only getting bigger.?
In a new report?from?BI?Intelligence,?we look at?the general state of social video, examine social video audiences and their demographics, analyze how marketers and advertisers are getting into the mix, compare the major social video platforms, and?detail how social is influencing video as a content medium.
Access The Full Report And Data By Signing Up For A Free Trial Today >>
Here's an overview of the?rise of social video:
Social media-influenced video has eclipsed non-social video on the Web in terms of audience size:?Online video audiences are expected to double in 2016, reaching 1.5 billion?globally, according to Cisco. A majority now , and an increasingly significant portion of them in the future, will discover or watch video and TV content on social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and new mobile-focused social video apps like Vine.?comScore found that 63 million U.S. users watched a video on Facebook alone during April 2013. In the U.S.,Facebook had the fastest-growing online video audience?of major Web properties over the last 10 months, and is only second to Google in terms of video audience size.
Social media is having a profound effect on this content medium:?Video length is shrinking, in part to accommodate the preferences of social media audiences who like to snack on video. The intersection of mobile devices and social media will likely be crucial to video's future.?Videos are increasingly discovered and shared on mobile devices, but through social media channels. Video content that is well-suited to small screens and social contexts will do well.
Advertisers want to be next to social video: 85% of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video in April 2013, and?video advertising is now up to 13.2 billion monthly views?in the U.S. alone.?Data?shows that consumers are more likely to enjoy a brand video and remember the brand involved if they come across it thanks to a social media recommendation. Also, socially-referred video starts are more likely to be completed?than non-social video, according to Adobe.
And social is key to the all-valuable viral video: Brands are keen to spur video virality. The push for ?earned media? is driving this. For a brand, a video that goes ?viral,? and earns millions of views on YouTube means that a brand has earned millions of impressions that it didn't have to pay for. Brands are experimenting with cracking the code to videos that will tap the right emotions and trigger mass sharing.?
In full,?the?report:
For full access to the report on Social Video sign up for a free trial subscription today.
GOMA, Congo (AP) ? Congo's government said it will not immediately apply a cessation clause ending refugee status for more than 120,000 Rwandans who fled to Congo after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and are still there.
Rwanda has accepted Congo's arguments in favor of a phased approach to the refugees' repatriation, Congolese interior minister Richard Muyej said Saturday. Rwanda had in 2011 asked Congo to apply a cessation clause on June 30, 2013.
"We thought we should do this in stages to give a chance to all the refugees to go home" Muyej said after a meeting between officials from each country in Rwanda's capital, Kigali. "Happily we had a convivial meeting and have now agreed on this approach."
The Rwandan government has repeatedly said that since peace has now returned to the country its citizens no longer need to live in exile.
Refugee issues have soured relations between the two countries for nearly two decades.
Rwanda has often accused Congo, and the international community, of protecting Rwandan refugees who took part in the genocide and allowing them to rearm on Congolese soil. Rebels in Congo have also claimed they are fighting for their compatriots' right to return from exile in Rwanda.
Muyej said it was important to agree on refugee issues so these would no longer be excuses for conflict.
Julien Paluku, governor of North Kivu province where most of the Rwandan refugees have settled told the Associated Press that the two countries have agreed on the next steps to resolve the issues.
Rwandan refugees will first be identified, registered and asked if they want to return. A follow up meeting will be held in October after which a repatriation plan will be drawn up and the parties will consider whether to apply a cessation clause.
Rwanda's minister for refugees Seraphine Munkatabana said her government understands there are preliminary steps to be taken by October to allow the cessation clause to be activated, according to U.N. Radio Okapi in Congo.
Refugees who do not want to return will have a choice between applying for a residence permit, or for Congolese nationality, which may be granted on a case-by-case basis but not collectively, Paluku added.
Congolese refugees in Rwanda are also welcome to come back, Paluku said. "The areas they will return to (mainly in North Kivu) are now largely secure," he said.
When asked if the refugees would be able to return to their homesteads and farm their land, he said:
"People cannot come back and claim what they did not have before, but the government must ensure they get back what is rightfully theirs."
Land disputes are among the reasons why there are more than two million internally displaced people within Congo as well as an estimated 72,000 Congolese refugees in Rwanda.
George Zimmerman listens to a jury consultant in court this week. Opening arguments in the murder trial will be??
On paper, Seminole County, Fla., criminal case No. 2012-001083-CFA is a second-degree murder trial, one that could send George Zimmerman to prison for life.
But in the court of public opinion, the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin has roused a national conversation about racial profiling, self-defense, gun control, vigilantism, civil rights and more.
A trial that speaks to something more than just the individuals involved is good for civic discourse, says Jason Johnson, a political science and communications professor at Hiram College in Ohio.
?That is a very good result of this case,? Johnson told Yahoo News. ?Depending on your demographics and your experience, there are different parts of this case that pop out to you.?
Opening arguments in the high-profile trial, which will be streamed live on Yahoo, begin at 9 a.m. ET Monday.
Zimmerman was a volunteer crime watchman in his gated Sanford, Fla., community when he shot and killed Martin during a scuffle on a dark neighborhood sidewalk in February 2012.
Minutes before the shooting, Zimmerman phoned police to report Martin, 17, as a suspicious person and, against the advice of a 911 dispatcher, continued to follow him through the neighborhood. Martin, a Miami high school student, had been at a nearby convenience store and was walking back to a family friend?s house where was he visiting.
[PHOTOS: See pictures of key players and evidence in the case]
Zimmerman, who is of mixed heritage and self-identifies as Hispanic, says he shot Martin in self-defense. He maintains that the teen attacked him, pounded his head into the pavement and tried to get his holstered handgun. Martin died at the scene from a single gunshot to the chest. Sanford police didn?t initially arrest Zimmerman, who suffered a bloody nose and head lacerations in the fight.
While no one witnessed the confrontation, Martin had been on his cellphone with his girlfriend shortly before the scuffle. The woman, identified in court records as Witness No. 8, could provide key testimony for the state's argument that Zimmerman pursued Martin. A neighbor heard the pair fighting and was on the phone with 911 when the fatal shot was fired. Faint screaming is heard in the background of the call. Prosecutors say it was Martin. Zimmerman says it was him. On Friday, Judge Debra Nelson is expected to rule if audio experts will be allowed to testify.
Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, the parents of Trayvon Martin, listen as the charges against George Zimmerman??
Many viewed the early lack of charges against Zimmerman as unequal justice for a black victim. More than 2 million people signed an online Change.org petition demanding ?Justice for Trayvon Martin,? and demonstrators protested in Sanford and elsewhere across the country. President Barack Obama drew criticism from some when he addressed the tragedy during a public briefing in the White House Rose Garden.
?All of us have to do some soul-searching to figure out how does something like this happen,? Obama said 19 days before Zimmerman was eventually charged by a special prosecutor assigned to take over for local police.
?But my main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon. And I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves and that we're going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened.?
Johnson, the professor, says the president?s remarks proved to be pivotal.
?That?s when we knew that this case was going to be about more than this particular kid getting killed,? Johnson says. ?It was going to be about notions of violence, and respect, and profiling in America in general.?
These issues have nothing to do with Martin?s death, says Robert Zimmerman, George?s father. He recently released an e-book titled, ?Florida v. Zimmerman: Uncovering the Malicious Prosecution of My Son.?
?Every attempt was made to portray the events as a white, racist, neighborhood watch volunteer stalking, pursuing, and then murdering a little black boy simply getting candy for his little brother,? Robert Zimmerman writes in the book. ?Absolutely none of this portrayal was at all accurate, and clearly known not to be true by individuals involved.?
[RELATED: A look at the jurors for George Zimmerman's trial]
Zimmerman, himself a former judge, contends prosecutors are on a ?politically motivated witch hunt? fueled by ?race-baiters? seeking fortune and fame.
?A wholly justified and necessary action by George turned into a national issue,? he writes. ?What Americans have been told by the media for well over a year will finally be exposed and the truth presented. The egregious and self serving conduct of the Scheme Team, prosecutors, and others will hopefully be fully exposed.?
According to public documents, an FBI investigation didn't uncover any evidence that Martin?s death was motivated by race. However, Johnson said the case still has racial components that can?t be overlooked.
?Race is a lot more nuanced than we often report and discuss in public discourse,? he said. ?This is one of those cases that?s going to demonstrate how nuanced it really is.?
While the country debates the role race played, Sanford continues to heal from the community unrest. For several months, many of the town?s clergy have been gathering with federal and local mediators to share their congregation?s concerns.
Next week they?ll play peacekeepers at the trial. Four seats in the courtroom are set aside for local ministers, while other pastors plan to mingle among spectators outside the courthouse.
I was just wondering if anyone would be interested in doing an rp based on the Harry Potter universe, but rather than at Hogwarts it take place at an American wizarding school. I'm really hoping to get this started up, and I am definitely open to any suggestions!
LONDON (AP) ? Greece returned to stalk financial markets Friday at the end of a turbulent week that's been dominated by the admission from the U.S. Federal Reserve that it may be done with its monetary stimulus next year.
Though trading had shown signs of settling down, developments in Athens provided investors with a clear reminder that the country's problems are a long way from being fixed.
"The euro area's problems are back in the spotlight with an all-familiar cast," said Neil Mellor, an analyst at Bank of New York Mellon.
The catalyst behind the turn of events was the confirmation from one of the country's governing parties to pull its two cabinet ministers from the cabinet following a dispute over state broadcaster ERT.
Even without the support of the Democratic Left, the government led by conservative Prime Minister Antonis Samaras can survive as the other coalition partner, socialist Pasok, remains. However, the majority in Parliament will be paltry and raises questions over the government's ability to survive for long and pursue the package of austerity measures and reforms demanded by the country's bailout creditors.
As a result, the yield, or interest rate, on Greece's 10-year bonds was up 0.59 percentage point at 11.14 percent, slightly down on its earlier 2013 high of 11.45 percent. The main stock market in Athens was down 6 percent.
The return of Greece to the forefront of investor attentions fed through into markets in Europe and stock indexes, which had been trading higher earlier in the day, were falling again. The euro was a notable casualty too, trading 0.7 percent lower at $1.3137.
In Europe, Germany's DAX was down 1 percent at 7,849, while the CAC-40 in France fell 0.5 percent lower at 3,679. The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was 0.4 percent lower at 6,137.
In the U.S., the Dow Jones industrial average was up 0.2 percent at 14,792 while the S&P 500 index rose 0.1 percent to 1,589.
Despite the worries over Greece, trading was not as frantic as in the aftermath of Wednesday's comments from U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that the central bank's bond purchases would likely slow down this year and end in 2014.
Bernanke's admission had prompted widespread concerns among investors, who have grown used to the central bank's money-creation policies over the past few years. Stocks have taken a particular pounding, with the Dow Jones index suffering a 560 point slide on Thursday alone. Other assets, such as commodities, including gold, and U.S. Treasuries, have also suffered drastic drops.
The main point of interest for markets is the uncertainty over the Fed's exit strategy. The new money the Fed has created through its bond-buying program over nearly five years has been designed to shore up the U.S. economy. However, it has also been a major factor behind market developments.
The prospect that the policy will be unwound sooner than many investors thought prompted the big moves over the past couple of days despite U.S. economic data pointing to a solid recovery that may be able to sustain itself without outside support from the Fed. Stocks, government bonds, in particular U.S. Treasuries, got hammered, while the dollar surged.
Elsewhere, markets were echoing developments in stocks ? for example, early oil price gains evaporated, and the benchmark New York price was down 88 cents at $94.26 a barrel.
Earlier in Asia, Japan's Nikkei 225, the region's biggest benchmark, bucked the losing trend in Asia, as the yen weakened against the dollar. That helps the country's exporters by making their products more competitive abroad. The Nikkei rose 1.7 percent to close at 13,230.13.
Before you read this blog post, navigate to your favorite search engine, type in ?Detroit petroleum coke,??and peruse the results for a moment (don?t forget to come back and keep reading).
If you?re new to this issue, you might be able to quickly piece together a story about a ??three-story pile of toxic by-product?? that has helped ??Detroit?s riverfront gain national attention? amidst ?growing outrage, and calls for action?? from ?worried residents.? You may see that even with ??study results released?, concerns linger? and ??unanswered questions?? remain as to the ecological and human health risks posed by the growing pile of oil refinery waste on the banks of the Detroit River. On the other hand, you could be left thinking the headlines are making a big deal out of something that is ??not hazardous?? or even ??not that much of a problem at all?. And maybe the bright side of the issue is that it ??helps a struggling coal plant stay in business.?
If you dig in beyond the headlines, you get the full story (or at least what journalists, activists, and politicians know at this point):
The Marathon oil refinery in southwest Detroit started refining petroleum from the Alberta oil sands last fall. That refining process creates petroleum coke as a waste product?petcoke, if you will. Residents don?t think it looks as cute as it sounds, however, especially when it?s piled three stories high on the banks of the Detroit River. While a black mountain of Canadian oil waste waves its welcome to travelers crossing into the U.S. over the bridge from Windsor, Ontario, residents on both sides of the border are waving their fingers at Koch Carbon, Detroit Bulk Storage, and Marathon for their roles in creating an eyesore and potential public health problem. Samples have been collected and tested, public meetings have been held, bills have been introduced, articles have been written, and some of the petcoke has begun meandering back to Canada to be burned in a Nova Scotia powerplant.
It?s kind of a mess. An environmental, political, economic, and social mess that is, unfortunately, all too familiar to Detroit residents.
Detroit resident Jos? Luis Barrera, like other frequent visitors to Riverside Park, wonders what effect the petcoke piles will have on him and his family. After showing off his friend's catch for the day, he talked about hearing reports on the radio and wondering whether the petcoke could be responsible for the ?death-like smell? he experienced one day and the more frequent train traffic he has heard in the middle of the night. Riverside Park sits between the two petcoke piles along the Detroit River.
Since the headlines first appeared this spring, I?ve been following the fate of the petcoke from my home 40 miles away in Ann Arbor. So, I know which questions have been raised and investigated publicly?where it came from, who owns it, and where it?s going?but how many of those answers were reaching local residents?
I went down to Riverside Park, nestled between the two piles of petcoke on the bank of the Detroit River, to find out.
When I asked fishermen, -women, and ?kids lined up along river what they had heard about the petroleum coke pile around the corner, answers ranged from ??petroleum what??? to ??illegal dumping? and it might hurt the water?? (to which another resident replied, ?It better not hurt my fish!?).
Longtime southwest Detroit resident and frequent Riverside Park patron, Jos??Luis Barrera, has seen and heard about the piles, and he?s still waiting for answers to two questions: (1) is it hazardous, and (2) why is it here?
Well, Jos??Luis, you couldn?t have chosen more pertinent or more perplexing questions.
Is it hazardous?
Short answer: it depends.
The long answer is past the scope of this blog post, but let?s at least try to scratch the surface here.
Stephen Boyle has been actively asking and answering questions about petcoke. He explained the intricacies of the EPA?s hazardous waste guidelines at a recent community meeting while sporting a t-shirt from HELPPA.org that calls attention to the broader issue of oil sands development.
Is it technically classified as a hazardous material? Not according to the EPA (Canada hasn?t thought about it yet). Marathon?s own Material Data Safety Sheet explains that petcoke itself is not classified as a hazardous waste by the EPA, but it could be when ?discarded, spilled, or disposed of.? Stephen Boyle, an activist with Detroit Coalition Against Tar Sands (D-CATS) interprets the EPA?s language to mean that this particular pile of petcoke is indeed hazardous waste because it?s being stored on land while it waits for the next step in its lifecycle (check out Section 261.4.12(i) to try your own interpretation).
Is it a hazard, though? As in, could it possibly do harm? Yes. It?s a big pile of carbon-sulfur-selenium-vanadium chunks sitting next to a river. Use your imagination to consider what kind of harm could be done through an action of your choice (everything from coke-eating birds to kids playing King or Queen of the Mountain is acceptable here).
So, maybe the more relevant question is how much of a risk it poses for the citizens and creatures of Detroit and Windsor. What is the probability of harm actually being done? Answering that question means looking more closely at that pile of petcoke and tracing where the pieces and particles go, how they get there, and what effect they have along the way and at their final destination (be it a person, plant, animal, or powerplant plume miles away).
My own search through the literature didn?t reveal any studies on the environmental exposures and outcomes of a petcoke pile exactly like this, but a recent study coming out of the oil sands area of Alberta saw trace metal uptake in algae and aquatic invertebrates when petcoke was used in constructed wetlands. But that?s a story for another day.
Why is it here?
Short answer: Detroit Bulk Storage put it there.
The long answer here is worth digging into. This deeper question has been at the center of countless environmental justice debates over the years, and it still pops up despite recent strides in bringing environmental justice considerations into planning and policy.
While it has grown from being focused on the disproportionate amount of toxic waste stored or dumped near minority and low-income communities to taking a more holistic approach to environmental health and community well-being, environmental justice developed its roots while answering this question across the U.S.
Dr. Dorceta Taylor, leading environmental justice scholar and advocate at the University of Michigan, points her students towards five main arguments for why hazardous material so often shows up in the backyards of people of color:
Deliberate discrimination: Minority and low income communities are deliberately targeted to host such lovely amenities as PBC dumpsites and incinerators.
Just plain economic common sense: If a company has the choice between cheap land with easy access to transportation and more expensive land that may be far from transportation and workers, which do you think it will choose?
Path of least resistance: A 1984 report on resistance to waste-incinerators in California identified characteristics of communities that were least likely to put up a fight. Among those characteristics were low income, low education, and lack of civic involvement. While the report did not explicitly encourage companies to seek out these neighborhoods for all their waste-dumping needs, the implications were clear for many industries.
The old chicken-or-egg question: Which came first?the polluting industry or the people? Maybe residents choose to move close to hazardous facilities for jobs or cheap rent. That may happen, but studies have revealed more complexity than that, with neighborhood dynamics changing in response to the new facilities moving to town.
Zoning and residential segregation: Historical housing discrimination has set up a system in some cities that puts low-income residential areas near industrial districts or has placed barriers to residency in non-industrial neighborhoods by stipulating lot sizes, excluding multi-family dwellings, or enforcing owner-occupancy rules.
So, what?s going on in southwest Detroit? Which of these patterns might? help explain this growing pile of petcoke, beyond the long line of buying, selling, and transporting that moved the coke from the refinery to the lots by the river?
Let?s consider some facts. The area around the petcoke piles is home to:
An oil refinery, a steel plant, a major international shipping route and bridge crossing, freight infrastructure, cheap vacant land, and Michigan?s most polluted zipcode;
A largely Black and Hispanic population that saw more hospitalizations from asthma between 2007-2009 than the average combined rate for the tri-county area;
A housing and zoning structure based on historical discriminatory practices;
A network of community organizers, activists, concerned citizens, and representatives at all levels of government that is actively working to understand the situation, educate each other, and create change.
So, again?.why is this pile here?
A dwindling pile of petcoke near W. Jefferson and S. Clark in Detroit awaits the next leg of its journey after making its way from the oil sands of Alberta to the oil refinery of Detroit. Where to next??
Maybe this question is also a bit too complex for this post. To figure out why a pile of petroleum coke is growing near W. Jefferson and 14th Street in Detroit requires first asking broader questions that breech international and academic borders?questions of policy, science, history, and human nature.
As organizers and activists acknowledge, this petcoke pile is just one very visible piece in the intricate system of global resources. It?s a system that connects people, profits, smoke plumes, and piles of waste where the physical realities of shared water, soil, and air meet the systemic realities of disproportionate burdens and benefits all along the trail of the energy source.
The good news for Detroit residents like Jos?? Luis (who is probably still waiting for satisfying answers to his original questions) is that things are moving in Detroit. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, urged by lawmakers and residents, is now working to ensure the petcoke storage meets state standards for air and water quality management.
While permits could change the nature of petcoke storage in Detroit, the long and short-term ripple effects from this incident could be felt by residents of Detroit, the Alberta oil sands, and everywhere in between. The obvious and not-so-obvious questions will keep coming from those residents. We just might have to follow more than the news headlines to find the answers?
To Learn More:
Petroleum Coke: The coal hiding in the tar sands
Detroit Petcoke News and Resources
Principles of Environmental Justice
Thanks to the residents who let me interrupt their fishing and to the activists and experts who shared stories and insights.
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Public release date: 26-Jun-2013
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