Single protein targeted as root biological cause of several childhood psychiatric disorders

ScienceDaily (Oct. 31, 2012) ? A new research discovery has the potential to revolutionize the biological understanding of some childhood psychiatric disorders. Specifically, scientists have found that when a single protein involved in brain development, called "SRGAP3," is malformed, it causes problems in the brain functioning of mice that cause symptoms that are similar to some mental health and neurological disorders in children. Because this protein has similar functions in humans, it may represent a "missing link" for several disorders that are part of an illness spectrum. In addition, it offers researchers a new target for the development of treatments that can correct the biological cause rather than treat the symptoms.

This discovery was published in November 2012 print issue of The FASEB Journal.

"Developmental brain disorders such as schizophrenia, hydrocephalus, mental retardation and autism are among the most devastating diseases in children and young adults," said Dusan Bartsch, Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Department of Molecular Biology at the Central Institute of Mental Health at the University of Heidelberg in Mannheim, Germany. "We hope that our findings will contribute to a better understanding, and in the end, to better treatments for these disorders."

Bartsch and colleagues made this discovery using mice with the SRGAP3 protein inactivated. Then they conducted several experiments comparing these mice to normal mice. The mice with inactive SRGAP3 showed clear changes in their brains' anatomy, which resulted in altered behavior similar to certain symptoms in human neurological and psychiatric diseases. An involvement of SRGAP3 in different brain disorders could indicate that these disorders are possibly connected, as SRGAP3 is a key player in brain development. These different disorders could be connected via the SRGAP3 protein because they all emerge from disturbed development of the nervous system.

"Since Freud put biological psychiatry on the map, we've slowly increased our understanding of how mental health is dictated by chemistry," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "Eventually we'll understand the complex biology underlying most psychiatric illnesses, from genes to proteins to cell signaling to overt behaviors. Along the way, as in this report, we're likely to find single targets close to the roots of apparently different mental illnesses."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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

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Journal Reference:

1. R. Waltereit, U. Leimer, O. von Bohlen und Halbach, J. Panke, S. M. Holter, L. Garrett, K. Wittig, M. Schneider, C. Schmitt, J. Calzada-Wack, F. Neff, L. Becker, C. Prehn, S. Kutscherjawy, V. Endris, C. Bacon, H. Fuchs, V. Gailus-Durner, S. Berger, K. Schonig, J. Adamski, T. Klopstock, I. Esposito, W. Wurst, M. H. de Angelis, G. Rappold, T. Wieland, D. Bartsch. Srgap3-/- mice present a neurodevelopmental disorder with schizophrenia-related intermediate phenotypes. The FASEB Journal, 2012; 26 (11): 4418 DOI: 10.1096/fj.11-202317

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

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

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/nkAXGRfGBPI/121031132752.htm

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Butternut Manicotti Recipe | Healthy Vegetable Recipes

Posted on October 31, 2012 by FitNut ?

This Butternut Manicotti Recipe is a new creation born out of my own ?butternut inspirations?. There is always room for your own creativity, so don?t be afraid to make it your own! This recipe is lighter on the cheese than the traditional variety

1 box manicotti noodles
1 lb bulk hot Italian sausage
? large butternut squash shredded
1 small container of ricotta cheese
1 small package of dry cheese curds
1 small onion
1 jar of spaghetti sauce
1 tsp Sea Salt
? tsp Red Pepper
1 tsp oregano
1 clove minced garlic

Brown sausage in medium saucepan, drain and set aside to cool. I like to run the meat through the food processor a little to create a finer consistency. Mix cheeses with diced onion and oregano in a large bowl. Add sausage, shredded butternut, and remaining seasonings. Mix until all ingredients are evenly distributed.

Prepare manicotti noodles as directed on the box. Allow to cool so that they are easier to handle. In a large cake pan, smear the bottom of the pan with a little spaghetti sauce to keep manicotti from sticking. Gently stuff manicotti noodles with stuffing mixture. Make them as full as you can without splitting the noodles! Line the stuffed manicotti in the cake pan. Pour remaining spaghetti sauce over the manicotti. Place in a pre-heated oven at 375 degrees for 40 minutes. Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. Great Gluten Free Alternative to Traditional Spaghetti Sauce!
2. Gluten Free Scalloped Sweet Potatoes Recipe
3. Simple Food Substitutions
4. Quinoa Pistachio Granola Recipe
5. Food Substitutions Can Add Nutrients

Source: http://fitnessnutritiondenverboulder.com/butternut-manicotti-recipe/

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Obama to visit storm victims as campaign rolls on

President Barack Obama, accompanied by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, second from left, and others, speaks about superstorm Sandy during a visit to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Headquarters in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Barack Obama, accompanied by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, second from left, and others, speaks about superstorm Sandy during a visit to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Headquarters in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney lifts bottles of water to load into a truck as he participates in a campaign event collecting supplies from residents and local relief organizations for victims of superstorm Sandy,Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012, at the James S. Trent Arena in Kettering, Ohio. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

President Barack Obama speaks during the his visit to the Disaster Operation Center of the Red Cross National Headquarter to discuss superstorm Sandy, Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012, in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

President Barack Obama, accompanied by American Red Cross President and CEO Gail J. McGovern, gestures while speaking during the his visit to the Disaster Operation Center of the Red Cross National Headquarter to discuss superstorm Sandy, Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012, in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Republican vice presidential candidate, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., speaks to volunteers and supporters at a campaign office in Hudson, Wis., Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012, where volunteers were collecting storm relief supplies. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama put campaign battleground travel on hold to tour the ravaged New Jersey coast Wednesday, while down-to-the-wire campaigning resumed in swing state Florida that is critical to Republican Mitt Romney's victory plan.

Obama is emphasizing his incumbent's role for a third straight day, skipping voter contact in the handful of states that will decide the election to meet with officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Washington headquarters and visit victims of Hurricane Sandy around Atlantic City. Obama planned to resume campaign travel Thursday with gusto, making stops in Nevada, Colorado and Wisconsin.

The president's actions have forced Romney to walk a careful line and make tough choices. The former Massachusetts governor must show respect for the superstorm's casualties all along the Eastern Seaboard. But Romney can ill afford to waste a minute of campaign time, with the contest virtually deadlocked in several key states and the election six days away.

Florida is among the most closely fought and the biggest prize among the swing states, with 29 electoral votes. Without victory in Florida, Romney will have an uphill and limited path to electoral victory.

Romney has stops scheduled with former Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio in some of the most populous areas of the state ? Tampa, Jacksonville and Coral Gables in the Miami area. The Obama campaign dispatched Vice President Joe Biden to play defense in Florida on Wednesday, with stops in the smaller, more conservative markets of Sarasota and Ocala aimed at narrowing the margin where Republicans usually fare well.

GOP running mate Paul Ryan was campaigning across his home state of Wisconsin before planning to take his children trick or treating. Wisconsin is part of the Romney-Ryan campaign's eleventh-hour strategy of trying to put Democratic-leaning states in play and forcing Obama to shift resources to areas he has expected to win.

In tempered remarks, Ryan never explicitly criticized Obama and asked for prayers and donations for storm victims. The move reflected advice from his top aides to eschew partisanship for fear of appearing too shrill and strike a more civil tone in his critique of the president heading into the heart of the crisis. Plus, Romney and Ryan are still making attempts to win over moderate and undecided voters who have little patience for unbridled partisanship.

Ryan argued that Wisconsin was a battleground that will help decide the election and urged supporters to work hard for the next week so they have no regrets. "When we wake up a week from this morning, let's make sure we did everything we could," Ryan said.

After tamping down his partisan tone Tuesday at an Ohio event that chiefly emphasized victims' relief, Romney planned a full-blown return to the trail Wednesday. Sandy largely spared Florida, so Romney calculates he can campaign there without appearing callous.

On Thursday, Romney planned to focus on Virginia with stops in Roanoke, Doswell and Virginia Beach. Friday is all about Ohio, culminating with a guest-filled rally in suburban Cincinnati to kick off the campaign's final four days. Set to join Romney, Ryan and their wives in West Chester, Ohio, are golf legend Jack Nicklaus, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Romney also planned to get in last-minute voter outreach in tossup New Hampshire, with a big final campaign event Monday night before heading to Boston for Election Day.

Obama's revised schedule also is a political gamble. Rather than use the campaign's final Wednesday to woo voters in tossup states, he will go before cameras with New Jersey's Republican governor, Chris Christie. Christie is one of Romney's most prominent supporters, and a frequent Obama critic. But Christie praised Obama's handling of the storm, a political twist the president's visit is sure to underscore.

Obama also stopped at FEMA headquarters Wednesday. News photographers were allowed to accompany him inside, but not reporters.

While Obama and Romney were moving cautiously, their campaigns are exchanging sharp words in Ohio and expanding their operations into three Democratic-leaning states, a move that will reshape the contest's final six days.

Romney's campaign is running ads in Minnesota and Pennsylvania, and a pro-Romney group is doing the same in Michigan. Obama was leading in all three, but his campaign is taking the threat seriously. It sent former President Bill Clinton to Minnesota on Tuesday and is buying airtime in all three states, although senior Obama adviser David Axelrod flatly said they are safe.

"I will shave off my mustache of 40 years if we lose any of those three states," Axelrod said in an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

Republican strategists differ on the Romney campaign's thinking. Some think Romney's aides fear losing all-important Ohio, and they hope for a stunning last-minute breakthrough elsewhere to compensate. Others say the GOP camp has so much money ? and so few chances to buy useful airtime in saturated states ? that it can spend millions of dollars on a long-shot without scrimping in a battleground.

"If they didn't have so much money, they wouldn't be able to do something with so little chance of success," said Democratic strategist Tad Devine.

Democratic groups bitterly complained about a TV ad the Romney camp is running in the Toledo and Youngstown areas of Ohio. The ad suggests that Jeep will move its Toledo car-making facility to China, a claim Jeep executives deny.

Democrats called the ad a brazen lie and a sign of desperation. Even some Republicans worried that Romney has gone too far in a state where voters follow the auto industry closely.

The carmakers also objected to the ads, but Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul on Wednesday said the manufacturers don't refute any facts in the ad.

___

Associated Press writer Philip Elliott in Eau Claire, Wis., Ken Thomas in Washington and Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee, Fla., contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-10-31-Presidential%20Campaign/id-5394ec47a56249458c63ce88abbeea64

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Myst linking book replica goes on sale with full PC inside, won't quite take us to other worlds (video)

Most of us who remember Myst are content to relive the halcyon days of click-and-watch puzzle games by loading up the iPhone port. Mike Ando is slightly more... dedicated. He just spent the past six years building a replica of the Cyan game's signature, Age-traveling link books that includes a full Windows XP PC with a 1.6GHz Atom, a 2-hour battery, a 5-inch touchscreen and every playable game from the Myst series stored on a CF card. And while we've seen books hiding devices before, Ando's attention to detail might just raise the eyebrows of hardcore custom PC and gaming fans alike: he went so far as to gut and emboss a 135-year-old copy of Harper's New Monthly Magazine to match Cyan's reference tome as closely as possible. It's tempting for anyone who cut their teeth on CD-based gameplay through Myst, but perfect devotion to one of the better-known fictional worlds will cost an accordingly steep $15,625. We wouldn't have minded seeing some real intra-world travel for the cash outlay.

Continue reading Myst linking book replica goes on sale with full PC inside, won't quite take us to other worlds (video)

Filed under: Gaming, Alt

Myst linking book replica goes on sale with full PC inside, won't quite take us to other worlds (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Oct 2012 02:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/31/myst-linking-book-replica-goes-on-sale-with-full-pc-inside/

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UBS to slash 10,000 jobs in fixed income exit

ZURICH (Reuters) - UBS unveiled plans to wind down its fixed income business and fire 10,000 bankers in one of the biggest bonfires of finance jobs since the implosion of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

The move will focus the Zurich-based lender and wealth manager around its private bank and a smaller investment bank, ditching much of the trading business that saw it lose $50 billion in the financial crisis and one suspected rogue trader lose $2.3 billion last year.

Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti, a former Merrill Lynch banker who took over after the trading scandal, is spearheading the three-year investment banking overhaul that is aimed at saving 3.4 billion Swiss francs ($3.63 billion), on top of existing cuts of 2 billion francs.

The Swiss bank will separate many fixed-income activities in order to wind down positions in businesses it will exit as they are no longer profitable due to far tougher capital rules on riskier business introduced after the crisis.

Current investment bank co-head Carsten Kengeter will leave UBS's top management board to head the discontinued unit.

The remaining investment bank, comprised of equities, foreign exchange trading, corporate advice, and precious metals trading, will be run by Andrea Orcel, a recent Ermotti hire from Bank of America who currently co-runs the unit with Kengeter.

"The net impact of all these changes will be transformational for the firm," chairman Axel Weber and Ermotti told shareholders in a letter. "Our overall earnings should be less volatile, more consistent and of higher quality."

The measures translate to a 15 percent staff cut, taking UBS's overall staff to 54,000, from 63,745 now.

Roughly 2,500 jobs will be cut in Switzerland, with the remainder mainly in London and the United States, where UBS runs considerable trading operations out of Stamford, Connecticut.

A smaller investment bank will leave UBS to focus on its private bank, which looks after the affairs of rich people. It is the second-largest operation of its kind in the world after Bank of America with 1.6 trillion francs in assets.

UBS shares, which soared 7.3 percent on Monday in anticipation of the announcement, were indicated to open up 0.9 percent in an otherwise weaker market, according to pre-market indications from bank Julius Baer.

"Overall, I think it's a good move to abandon activities which don't earn anything and concentrate on those which create value for shareholders," Bank Sarasin analyst Rainer Skierka said. He rates UBS stock at neutral.

INVESTMENT BANK LOSSES

UBS was one of the banks hardest hit by the financial crisis when its fixed-income unit racked up more than $50 billion in losses after gorging on subprime securities, forcing it to seek a bailout from the Swiss government in 2008.

After settling a damaging U.S. tax probe in 2009, the bank had just started to rebuild client confidence when the $2.3 billion trading scandal surfaced in September last year.

Kweku Adoboli, who worked on the bank's London-based exchange-traded equities funds desk, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of fraud and four of false accounting over the costly bets. His trial is under way in London.

Ermotti's overhaul comes against the backdrop of far tougher regulation on riskier securities trading activities, and represents a return to advisory roots stemming from UBS's purchase of Warburg, a British merchant bank, in 1995.

The expected UBS cuts will add to existing cuts of 3,500 jobs, part of the tens of thousands of jobs the financial sector has shed globally since the financial crisis of 2008.

The bank aims to pay out more than 50 percent of profits to shareholders from 2015, after paying a symbolic dividend of 0.10 francs a share last year. It has put away funds in the third quarter for an unspecified dividend this year, financial chief Tom Naratil told journalists.

The costs related to the investment banking split will also lead to a fourth-quarter and full-year loss, when taken together with charges on the bank's own debt, UBS said.

UBS's private bank also faces challenges, with profits falling as Swiss banking secrecy is weakened by repeated demands from foreign governments determined to recoup tax on undeclared funds held in offshore accounts.

The unit secured 7.7 billion francs in net new money from clients in the third quarter, which represents the highest result in a third quarter -- traditionally a slow one for the business due to summer holidays -- in five years.

UBS's rival Credit Suisse said last week it was also cutting more costs as part of efforts to bolster its profits and capital position.

UBS swung to a third-quarter net loss of 2.172 billion francs, hit by the restructuring charges as well as 863 million francs in charges on the value of its own debt. Analysts in a Reuters poll had forecast a net profit of 457 million francs.

UBS targets a drop in risk-weighted assets to below 200 billion francs by the end of 2017, from 301 billion currently. Of this the investment bank will soak up roughly 70 billion, less than half of what it accounts for today.

($1 = 0.9366 Swiss francs)

(Reporting By Katharina Bart, Editing by Emma Thomasson and David Cowell)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ubs-slash-10-000-jobs-fixed-income-exit-054642079--sector.html

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D-Link Wireless AC1200 Dual Band USB Adapter (DWA-182)

D-Link has the distinction of being the first networking hardware vendor with a pre-draft 802.11ac wireless adapter on the market. The Wireless AC1200 Dual Band USB Adapter (DWA-182) ($79.00, street) can connect notebooks and laptops to pre-draft 802.11ac routers and can do so through push-button WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup).However, during testing, I was unable to connect via WPS to a draft 802.11ac router other than D-Link's. Even when connected to D-Link's own 802.11ac router, the D-Link Amplifi Cloud Router 5700 (DIR-856L) , throughput reached nowhere near the touted speeds of up to 857 Mbps on the 5GHz band?and only slighted boosted performance over that of an 802.11n adapter.

Of course, I don't expect any router?to come close to theoretical speeds in real-world environments. However, because the DWA-182 is 802.11ac-capable, when it's paired with an 802.11ac router, I so expect that throughput should be faster than with an 802.11n adapter. Since network speed is only as fast as your slowest link, I expected an 802.11ac adapter tested with an 802.11ac router to provide faster throughput than testing the same 802.11ac router with an 802.11n adapter. Remember, 802.11 only provides theoretical throughout of up to 450 Mbps on the 5GHz band.?

?The DWA-182 supports both 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. It's also backward compatible, so you can use it with just about any wireless router?so long as you aren't trying to use WPS.

The adapter is rather wide, measuring 3.8 by 1.1 by 0.5 inches (LWH). If a notebook has stacked USB ports, the DWA-182, when connected to the uppermost port, will likely block the bottom one.

WPA and WPA2 as well as 128-bit WEP, and of course WPS, are all supported. The WPS button and a tiny, blue LED are located on the top of the adapter.

Setup
The adapter is so new that my Windows 7 laptop was unable to install or recognize drivers for it upon connection.? This isn't a problem since D-Link ships a CD with the DWA-182. The CD contains not only the driver, install guide, and user manual, but also free trials of Norton Internet Security 2012 and Norton Online Backup.

The CD kicks off an installation wizard. During install, the wizard prompts to either manually type in the SSID and password to the network you want to connect to, or to use WPS.

I opted to install via WPS. The wizard instructs to click the WPS button on the router and then click the "Connect Now" button on-screen. I first tried connecting to a Linksys draft 802.11ac router but the WPS connection failed. I had no problems connecting to D-Link's AC router, the DIR-865L via WPS.

Now of course, I could manually connect to the Linksys 802.11ac router. However, WPS is a standard and is not supposed to be a proprietary technology; that would defeat the purpose of easy push-button setup of wireless devices. Hopefully, the failure of the DWA-182 to not connect to the Linksys router can be attributed to some wonkiness due to this being pre-draft 802.11ac technology and vendor incompatibility issues won't be a problem when products come to market that are fully 802.11ac? certified.

?During install, you can also opt to scan for wireless networks in proximity and connect to them if you don't know the name of the SSID. It's an easy setup but WPS should work for any WPS-capable router.

Wireless Utility
The installation process also includes the install of D-Link's Wireless Connection Manager. I typically don?t like third-party wireless managers sitting on top of the Windows native wireless management because the utility usually makes adjusting any settings through Windows Network and Sharing interface useless.? D-Link's utility did not prevent me from using Windows wireless networking settings, though.

?The utility displays all wireless networks in proximity. You can connect to a network through the manager and it shows signal strength, the channel the network is on and whether the network is secured or not. I like the fact that it shows percentage of signal strength and the channel the wireless network is operating on, information that Windows does not show natively.

Networks you connect to most frequently are listed in the utility under My Wireless Networks, and there's a quick link to D-Link support. The utility is not necessary to use, but it does provide a bit more insight into a wireless networks than the operating system alone.

Performance
I was disappointed with performance. I did not see anywhere near the speeds vendors are claiming about 802.11ac, and just a sight bump in performance in 5 GHz 802.11ac mode. Below is a table comparing throughput testing D-Link's DIR-865L router using a standard 802.11n 3xe3 wireless adapter versus the DWA-182 in Mixed 11ac mode:

802.11n testing was performed with an HP Elitebook with an integrated Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 AGN wirelessly connected to the DIR-865L; a Windows server machine with a Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet card connected to a LAN port on the DIR-865L and Ixia's IxChariot throughput script.

11ac testing was performed with the same equipment and script but for the exception: the Intel Centrino wireless adapter was disabled on the Elitebook and the DWA-182 adapter installed.

My testing environment has lots of RF interference, and I never see in actual testing the theoretical throughput speeds that vendors put on the packaging of wireless networking products?nor do I ever expect to. Still, I expected better throughput than the numbers in the chart from the DWA-182.

Only 802.11ac Adapter, But Do You Need It?
All of the makers of network hardware are rushing to get pre-draft 802.11ac technology to market and I think it's a waste at this point for the consumer. This includes the DWA-182. I'm just not seeing throughput from any of the products that nears the faster-than-Gigabit Ethernet speeds 11ac is supposed to deliver. This doesn't mean we won't see those speeds in the future, and the near future?we will. But robust 11ac isn't here yet. Unless you have just got to have an early 11ac adopter, the DWA-182 is for you?mainly because it's the only USB wireless adapter available. However, with no performance gains over 802.11n, I don?t see a use-case for this adapter for most wireless router owners. I'm also troubled by the inability of the adapter to connect to router that is not D-Link's. The DWA-182 earns 2.5 stars thanks mainly to easy setup and a cool wireless utility manager.?

More?Networking Reviews:
??? Axis M1031-W Network Camera
??? D-Link Wireless AC1200 Dual Band USB Adapter (DWA-182)
??? Linksys WUMC710 Wireless-AC Wi-Fi 5GHz Universal Media Connector Bridge with 4-Port Switch
??? Tufin T-80
??? Norton Hotspot Privacy
?? more

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/Y5o3X3UxmS0/0,2817,2411420,00.asp

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Hurricane Sandy puts renewed pressure on food supply in Haiti

Before arriving in the United States, Sandy lingered over flood-prone Haiti for three days, sparking concerns about food security and risk of cholera.

By Ezra Fieser,?Correspondent / October 30, 2012

Residents of Leogane, Haiti find higher ground as the water level continues to rise, Friday, Oct. 26. Residents of Leogane have had five consecutive days of rain in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, which caused serious flooding and claimed at least 26 lives in the impoverished country.

Carl Juste/The Miami Herald/AP

Enlarge

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Before turning its sights on the United States, Hurricane Sandy left a fresh disaster in Haiti, killing dozens and flooding cities and farmland. The storm set off fears of renewed challenges, including spiking food prices and a new cholera outbreak.

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Sandy lingered over Haiti for three days, dumping sheets of rain on a flood-prone country where some 370,000 survivors of the January 2010 earthquake still live in makeshift homes and tents.

Government officials said at least 52 people died and 15 were still missing after the rains swamped wide swaths of land, particularly in the south, an important crop-growing region. News agencies reported that at least 18,000 people were in temporary shelters.

?In and around the [southern] city of Les Cayes, there is flooding everywhere,? says P?l?g Charles, a spokesman for the charity Oxfam UK, from his office in the capital Port-au-Prince. ?It?s disastrous.? But we won?t know how bad it really is for several days.?

Contaminated water and devastated crops

Mr. Charles says that Oxfam has already received reports of some 150 new cases of cholera since the storm pulled out of the Caribbean this weekend. ?We will not know for five to seven days if there is a new outbreak,? he says, ?but we?re very worried about the spread.?

Cholera can spread quickly in contaminated water, and has killed more than 7,000 Haitians and sickened hundreds of thousands others since an outbreak began in October 2010.

Sandy was the second deadly storm to hit the country since late August, when Hurricane Isaac killed at least two dozen.

?Most of the agricultural crops that were left from Hurricane Isaac were destroyed during Sandy,? Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe told Reuters. At least a dozen bridges were destroyed and a key route that connects Haiti and the Dominican Republic was severely damaged, according to the government.?

The impact on food security is a top concern for government officials. Recent spikes in food costs have contributed to social unrest in recent months, marked by nationwide demonstrations to protest double-digit rises in the costs of staples like rice and cooking oil.

'No roof to protect you'

Officials have yet to estimate the financial damage Sandy caused, but, Lamothe said, ?The economy took a huge hit ? even by international standards.? He told the news agency that the government was planning to appeal for international funds.

Kysseline Cherestal, a senior policy analyst for the charity ActionAid USA, which works in Haiti, says many of those whose homes were damaged by Sandy have also been without work for days.?Not only have they lost their tents or had their homes damaged, but they were not able to work so they lack the means to buy necessities,? Ms. Cherestal says. The charity is responding with emergency food rations and sanitation kits.

Cherestal, who spoke from rain-soaked Washington, D.C., says ?things are very dire in Haiti right now.

?Imagine living through this storm with no roof to protect you from the rain and mud. That?s what people in Haiti are suffering through.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/ujzEKgzu8-I/Hurricane-Sandy-puts-renewed-pressure-on-food-supply-in-Haiti

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Breast-cancer checks save lives despite over diagnosis

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/breast-cancer-checks-save-lives-despite-over-diagnosis-103331401.html

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Fantastic Ideas For An Effective Residence Improvement Project ...

It is essential to have a working understanding to anything you do in life. Understanding the activity at hand is very important to make sure your property improvement project goes smoothly. You surely do not want to boost your home in such a way to your roof leaks or your basement stairs are hazardous. Read these suggestions on residence improvement ahead of you commence working on your house.

Whenever your property improvement work demands the use of the street, inform your neighbors as far in advance as you can. Often it is necessary to block traffic on your street for deliveries or significant gear. Your neighbors will appreciate a tiny warning just before you inconvenience them this way.

An economical way to update your bathroom is to acquire new accessories. Shower curtain rods, towel racks and even toilet paper holders come in assorted shapes and finishes. It is prevalent for house improvement outlets to carry such products in groups in order to facilitate simple installation.

Prior to you begin staining or painting wood, use sandpaper in order to make the surface smooth then wipe the item making use of a damp rag. Making use of fine-grit sandpaper is the finest way to smooth the surface. The damp rag is valuable to remove dust and dirt, which will make the finish a lot smoother.

When you are planning a project about the residence, be positive that you have a friend that can aid you if you must need to have it. This will help to minimize the threat in case the individual you select does not operate out well. You never know what could occur if tempers flare although working on your residence improvement project.

When improving the exterior of your residence, you can conserve funds and add safety by putting in motion detecting lights. You can save income on your electric bill. Instead of burning your lights all night, motion sensing lights only come on when they detect movement. Intruders will also believe twice about approaching your residence, considering that their presence is highlighted when the lights flick on.

Take great care of your septic tank. You can purchase some chemicals that speed up decomposition and avoid overflowing. As you map out your residence renovation projects, take care not to disturb your septic system. If needed, find a detailed blueprint of your house and make certain you steer clear of pricey errors.

Install peepholes in all of your outside doors. This will increase your home?s safety, as you will be in a position to see who is at your door just before you open it. Any individual can afford and install a peephole thanks to their low price and ease of installation. You only want a drill and some time. Along with the added sense of safety you?ll gain from this, a peephole also tends to make the door look a lot more desirable.

Happily, the vast majority of home improvement tasks are basic and simple for even a novice. You have to know what you are undertaking before you do it. Besides giving you some handy pointers, this report has also hopefully made you see how crucial educating and preparing your self is. Best of luck to you!

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Source: http://traffic-secrets.org/fantastic-ideas-for-an-effective-residence-improvement-project

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Government report criticises growth strategy

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's growth strategy of tax cuts and deregulation will not provide a fast track to economic prosperity and needs to be reassessed, according to a government-commissioned review published on Wednesday.

Lord Heseltine, the former Conservative Party deputy prime minister, warned in his six-month study on the government's economic policy that "continuing as we are is not an acceptable option."

Heseltine, who was asked to write a sweeping economic review by the government, called for a "war psychology" to overcome the economic crisis and urged for an end to ministerial uncertainty on crucial issues such as energy and aviation because "the world will not stand still ? and nor must we".

However, despite cutting remarks into every aspect of Britain's low growth, the report was welcomed by the government.

"I wanted Lord Heseltine to do what he does best: challenge received wisdom and give us ideas on how to bring government and industry together. He has done exactly that. This is a report bursting with ideas and we will study it very carefully," Chancellor George Osborne said.

In the 228-page report, entitled No Stone Unturned, Heseltine makes 89 recommendations, including the need to strengthen controls on foreign takeovers to block deals deemed unfavourable to Britain.

Ministers only intervene in foreign takeovers in cases that may affect national security or when media companies are involved.

Mergers are formally assessed if the company being taken over has an annual turnover of 70 million pounds or more, or if the new entity would control 25 percent or more of its market.

If not an issue of national security, the assessment is largely seen through the interests of the consumer as opposed to the wider strategic needs of British industry.

"I reject the notion that regulation in itself hinders growth. Good, well designed, regulation can stop the abuse of market power and improve the way markets work to the benefit of business employees and consumers," Heseltine wrote in the report.

He avoided criticising ministers directly, but said that "it takes too long for decisions to be made" by the government and the message amongst Britons is "that the UK does not have a strategy for growth and wealth creation".

The report challenges government policy on a vast range of specific issues such as immigration, ways to boost infrastructure spending and the lack of a decision on where to build a four runway airport around London.

"The review raises a number of important issues that impact on the government's ability to interact effectively with business throughout the country," business minister Vince Cable said.

"Lord Heseltine's findings show where government can improve its performance in delivering better interventions. We will now need time to consider its numerous recommendations and will respond in the coming months."

(Reporting by Stephen Mangan; Editing by Stacey Joyce)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/government-report-criticises-growth-strategy-022103870--business.html

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MOOC Manifest Destiny | xED Book

So. This morning,?Inside Higher Ed?announced that Coursera has contracted with Antioch University to license MOOC courses for credit, as part of Antioch?s bachelor?s degree programs.

This is, as Steve Kolowich pointed out in the article, a step towards lowering the cost of a degree for students.

It is also, he noted, ?a first step for Coursera and its partners toward developing a revenue stream from licensing its courses.?

It?s revenue time in MOOCland. It?s where we start to see how some of the ?disruption or bust? rhetoric that?s seized higher ed since last spring plays out in reality.

This is the part I?ve been waiting to watch?since EdX was announced last May.?Will xMOOCs diversify the ways we approach higher ed? Or are they a Trojan horse by which the most elite institutions corner a market share on neoliberal revenue models?

MOOCS ? The Manifest Destiny Model
Both can end up being true, I suppose, if Coursera and Antioch?s announcement sets the tone for things to come.

This revenue model relies, at its core, on embracing the MOOC as an inevitable juggernaut: about finding salvation for parts of higher ed, at least, in a grand new narrative that promises lower cost to students AND a for-profit model.

The MOOC as Manifest Destiny: a story for our times. Or higher ed as envisioned by venture capitalists.

Education is About Money, Yes
My problem, to be frank, isn?t with the venture capitalists. Nor with the fact that they ?approach higher ed as a business: I?ve worked in universities for fifteen years now. I see higher ed as a network of practices and systems developed in an era of population growth and public investment in education.

As the latter two have declined, the former become brittle and vulnerable.?Operating as a business is a part of the reality of academia in a post-public-purse era.

Education is Not Only About Money
But it isn?t the only reality. Nor is it the narrative that brought most of the people currently engaged or enrolled in higher ed ? and I mean ?enrolled? in the broad network sense: as?students, yes, but also staff, admin, faculty of various stripes and levels of job security, and the many of us with feet in multiple categories ? into the field.

For the vast numbers of us engaged in higher ed as part of the old social contract of upward mobility and means to a better life, this brave new world may have even less promise than the status quo.

Manifest Destiny = A Mythology of Power
In times of change, we humans tell ourselves stories. When we feel powerless and uncertain, we are particularly vulnerable to grand stories, ones that make us feel as if history is on our side. That where the MOOC as Manifest Destiny comes in.

It appeals to the interests of the venture capitalists, the libertarians, and the media, if all for slightly different reasons. It also appears to appeal to the interests of undergrads. And it may, certainly in the short term and if a credential is their primary goal.

But it does not speak to the interests and investments of time and learning made by the motley collection of people who have bought into higher ed as more than simply a business.?And it does not speak to the interests of the broader cultural story of education.

The stories we tell ourselves matter.

In rolling ahead based on a logic that focuses on profit in the guise of cost-savings to current students, we?re making education a story that rests ultimately on money.

And we?re doing so based on some very misleading math.

Where the Money Comes From: A Word Problem
The only part of math I was ever good at was word problems: I cannot for the life of me remember which direction a formula operates in. But if Michael is on a train speeding towards Mary at 80km per hour, I am a Past Master of sorting out when they both hit Las Vegas.

And while as a story it may be compelling, it?s as math that the MOOC as Manifest Destiny narrative begins to look specious.

Antioch students pay less money for their undergraduate degrees thanks to Antioch licensing courses through Coursera. Coursera makes money from the deal. Happy stories, both of them.

But where does the money come from?

Less money does not magically convert into more money unless somewhere along the line, some part of the equation has been cut.

In the Coursera-Antioch partnership model it?s localized course delivery. Which has increasingly devolved to sessionals and adjuncts, anyhow. Easy to cut. After all, sessionals do not tend to have the same reputation ? whether deserved or no ? as tenured scholars in the classroom, and certainly don?t have the same levels of institutional status and privilege behind them.

They?re what gets dropped from the equation of MOOCs as Manifest Destiny. Masses of scholars and teachers with already-fragile employment, most of whom have invested years ? and significant amounts of money in their own education.

Those very sessional and adjunct positions have traditionally been the entry-level positions IN the academy. Recently, they?ve become a bit of an extended holding tank for people aspiring to those positions.

That holding tank embodies the flaws of the current system ? or systems, plural, because higher ed is not a monolith. But that loose collection of unwieldy networks that we call academia has been, for centuries, a very real field of work for millions of people.

The math of cheaper education for profit only works out if you actually gut the entire system by which professors learn to be professors.

Higher Ed BY Venture Capital, FOR Venture Capital
Doing so also guts the narrative of higher ed as more?than simply business, by stripping away the possibility of education being an end in itself, and a system that eventually absorbs and employs its brightest.

It?s not that I object to Coursera making money, or to Antioch saving their students money. But carried to their logical conclusions, the narratives around those two particular occurrences begin to sound like higher ed by venture capitalists, and only for venture capitalists.

They?re not my idea of a destiny for education.

What about you? Do we have cultural stories that still carry enough power to engage and enrol people in other narratives about what education ? even MOOC education ? is for?

Source: http://www.xedbook.com/?p=61

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Hurricane Sandy Predicted to Bring ?Life-Threatening? Surge

Hurricane Sandy grew stronger before dawn on Monday as it churned northward through the Atlantic Ocean en route to what forecasters agreed would be a devastating landfall, possibly within 100 miles of New York City.

At 5 a.m., the huge storm was producing sustained winds of 85 miles an hour after turning due north, according to the National Hurricane Center. It was expected to veer again to the northwest later Monday morning and take dead aim at the coastline of New Jersey.

With a wary eye on its expected path, residents and emergency management officials braced for the impact of the storm in more than half a dozen states, including Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina and Connecticut. Far in advance of the hurricane?s expected landfall, residents were ordered to evacuate, with many seeking refuge in shelters. Mass transit systems ground to a halt and people stocked up on water and food supplies.

Forecasters say the storm is on a scale that weather historians say has little precedent along the East Coast. Landfall is predicted on Monday night somewhere between central New Jersey and southern Delaware. But most of the eastern United States will feel Sandy?s effects, making the exact landfall spot less important than the overall trajectory.

"One of the biggest storms of our lifetimes is unfolding right now," said the anchor Kelly Cass as The Weather Channel started its fourth day of nonstop coverage.

Hurricane force winds extend up to 175 miles from the center of the storm; tropical storm force winds extend up to 485 miles from the center. This means that portions of the coast between Virginia and Massachusetts will feel hurricane force winds as the storm moves toward land, according to forecasters. Tropical-storm-force winds could stretch all the way north to Canada and all the way west to the Great Lakes, where flood warnings were issued on Sunday.

Some states expected snow with blizzard warnings issued for mountainous stretches of West Virginia, Virginia and Maryland.

Officials warned that the powerful surge the storm was creating in the ocean, combined with the strong winds, could wreak destruction in the Northeast for days. As many as 10 million people were expected to lose electricity as Sandy toppled trees and light poles and ripped down power lines.

As the storm bore down on some of the nation?s most densely populated areas, city and state officials went into emergency mode. The New York City subway system and all of the region?s commuter trains and buses were shut down. The major stock exchanges called off all trading for Monday and Broadway theaters canceled their shows on Sunday evening and Monday.

Warning that the flooding would be ?life-threatening,? forecasters and government officials implored residents in the areas designated for evacuation not to try to ride this storm out.

?We?re going to have a lot of impact, starting with the storm surge,? said Craig Fugate, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. ?Think, ?Big.? ?

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg ordered the evacuation of more than 370,000 people in low-lying communities from Coney Island in Brooklyn to Battery Park City in Manhattan and gave 1.1 million schoolchildren a day off on Monday. The city opened evacuation shelters at 76 public schools. In New York City, the subway closing began at 7 p.m. to darken every one of the city?s 468 stations for the second time in 14 months, as officials encouraged the public to stay indoors and worked to prevent a storm surge from damaging tracks and signal equipment in the tunnels.

The closing this year seemed more ominous. The shutdown before Tropical Storm Irene last year began at noon on a Saturday, and service resumed before the workweek started on Monday. This time, officials warned, it might be Wednesday before trains were running again. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority?s commuter rail lines, which sustained the heaviest damage during Tropical Storm Irene, were suspended, and New Jersey Transit shutdown by 2 a.m.

James Barron reported from New York and Brian Stelter from Rehoboth Beach, Del. Reporting was contributed by Patrick McGeehan, Matt Flegenheimer, Christine Hauser, John Leland, Colin Moynihan, Sharon Otterman, William K. Rashbaum, Marc Santora, Sam Sifton, Nate Schweber, Michael Schwirtz, Kate Taylor and Vivian Yee from New York; Angela Macropoulos from Fire Island, N.Y.; Jeff Lebowitz and Michael Winerip from Long Beach, N.Y.; Sarah Maslin Nir from East Hampton, N.Y.; Elizabeth Maker from Milford, Conn.; Kristin Hussey from Stamford, Conn.; Stacey Stowe from Yonkers; Matthew L. Wald from Washington; Jon Hurdle from Philadelphia; Sarah Trefethen from New Bern, N.C., and Thomas Kaplan from Cape May, N.J.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/us/hurricane-sandy-churns-up-east-coast.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch (Retina Display)

• Pros

  High-resolution Retina display. Includes two Thunderbolt ports. Standard 8GB of memory. Good battery life. Supports Power Nap.

• Cons Pricey. Requires Retina-optimized apps for best user experience.
• Bottom Line

  The Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch (Retina Display) is the best way to carry the pixels of a large-screen monitor with you on the road. It's ideal for people who make their living with visuals.

By Joel Santo Domingo

Apple's new MacBook Pro 13-Inch (Retina Display) ($1,999 list) gives the insanely picky visual artist a new, more portable sidekick. The MacBook Pro has been redesigned with many of the features that made the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Retina Display) so attractive to the graphics arts set. If you absolutely must have a display with greater-than-HD resolution and you need to take that show on the road, you want this laptop. It's pricey to be sure, but it is the most portable machine for those with projects (or egos) that need all those pixels on the screen and the powerful components to back them up. It's our new Editors' Choice for high-end ultraportable laptops.

Design and Features
The MacBook Pro 13-inch (Retina Display) retains the general Apple design ID, with a black chiclet backlit keyboard and one-piece glass multitouch trackpad, matte-finish aluminum all around, and a glass-covered 13.3-inch widescreen surrounded by a black bezel. The laptop is compact, measuring 0.75 by 12.35 by 8.62 inches (HWD), which is thinner than the previous 13-inch MacBook Pro. But it feels sturdy in your hand: At a weight of 3.57 pounds, it's a little heavier than some ultrabooks we've reviewed recently, but the MacBook Pro isn't beholden to the ultrabook specs. The Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (Mid 2012) is lighter by slightly more than half a pound (2.96 pounds), so that's where you should go if you need portability more than you do the Retina Display.

Because the new MacBook Pro uses flash storage instead of a spinning hard drive, the system boots up and launches apps much more quickly. Flash storage also lets the MacBook Pro use Apple's Power Nap, which updates social media, email, contacts, and location tracking over Wi-Fi even while the laptop is asleep. Speaking of Wi-Fi, the system supports dual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) 802.1a/b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 like the other recent MacBooks. Our midpriced review model came with 256GB of flash storage, which is quite usable even for users who need to run Windows through Boot Camp or other virtual environments like Parallels Desktop. You can forgo half the storage (128GB) to save $300, or you can up the total to 512GB (for $500) or 768GB (for $1,000). If you need still more beyond that, or you don't want to shell out the bucks for more flash storage, two USB 3.0 ports and two Thunderbolt ports are available for connecting external drives.

Like the optical drive, FireWire 800 has fallen out of favor at Apple, because that venerable (and relatively slow) port is missing from both Retina display?equipped MacBook Pros. You can also use the built-in SDXC card slot for extra storage, though the card will stick out a bit while in use. A full-size HDMI port, headset/headphones jack, and a MagSafe 2 charging port are the other user-accessible openings on the side panels. There's no VGA or DVI port, but you can use a third-party adapter with the Thunderbolt port, or you can use AirPlay on an Apple TV for an easy wireless connection to a HDTV. Also on the chassis are dual microphones (for noise cancellation during FaceTime sessions), and the underside of the chassis has slits (like the 15-inch) for both cooling and to help the speakers channel sound out to the sides and give you better stereo sound

Other Apple Laptops & Notebooks

By Joel Santo Domingo Lead Analyst

Joel Santo Domingo is the Lead Analyst for the Desktops team at PC Magazine Labs. He joined PC Magazine in 2000, after 7 years of IT work for companies large and small. His background includes...

Follow Joel Santo Domingo Twitter: @JoelSD ');}} '); } }

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/ZHkYosN7YmQ/0,2817,2411425,00.asp

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Review: A practical guide to writing in Chinese - Analysis & Opinion ...

By Katrina Hamlin

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.

Mo Yan may have won the Nobel, but in China celebrity blogger Han Han rules online. More than half a billion readers have visited his irreverent blog. He?s also a hit on Sina Weibo, China?s answer to Twitter, where his first post attracted 750,000 followers.

In a new compilation of translated blogs, ?This Generation?, Han Han comments on everything that matters to modern China?s Gen Y ? from the state of Sino-Japanese relations to the price of a KFC burger. He dissects the latest news with gusto, and he condemns and criticises as he goes.

Chinese media is subject to careful control from the powers that be, so the writer?s cheek may surprise foreign readers. But it?s not easy for Han Han. ?It?s a real brainteaser to work out how to write anything at all,? he concedes. His posts are deleted from time to time, and he is very conscious (and contemptuous) of the ?fifty-centers?, who he believes are paid to post comments more amenable to the establishment.

But Han Han has found a way to work within his limits. He has mastered the art of saying just enough to make his point without being silenced. He has learnt how and when to shut up, and that restraint allows him a considerable degree of expression.

His lavish but ironic praise of Han Feng is a good example. The Communist Party member whose salacious diaries were leaked in 2009 was arrested and eventually expelled from the party. Han Han carefully recounts Han Feng?s working day, which consisted of bribery, boozy banquets, and extra-marital affairs, and then rushes to his defence. The cadre accepted only 60,000 yuan in bribes; he attended no more than eight-nine banquets; he kept only a mistress, and no second wife. This particular official is really not so bad ? because there are so many others who are so much worse: ?To sum up, in the current scheme of things Han Feng is a more than satisfactory official.?

The art of shutting up can take the Chinese writer a long way. Earlier this month, Mo Yan became the first Chinese citizen to win the Nobel prize for literature with the full support of his own government. Mo Yan, a pen name, means ?Shut up?; like Han Han the author has succeeded in speaking out without shouting. His writing does take on sensitive topics, including the one child policy and rural poverty. He does not always toe the party line on these matters, but he has seldom been censored.

It?s not only professional writers who play the game. China?s 500 million netizens are quick learners. Although the censors are out in force (Sina Weibo advertised for more ?Monitoring Editors? earlier this year), users know how to carry out fluid discussions while dodging censor-attracting keywords. They also take full advantage of the time it takes a censor to discover a new post, and interesting material is rapidly replicated before the original is removed.

A lingering question is how much further netizens and public voices like Han Han could or should push these boundaries. Both Han Han and Mo Yan are criticized for excessive self-censorship. Han Han makes his points well, but much is left unsaid. He sometimes sound more like an entertainer than a serious commentator.

In the end ?This Generation? is a pragmatic guide to public expression in China. Han Han?s immodest subtitle, ?Dispatches from China?s Most Popular Literary Star?, goes some way towards explaining ? if not justifying ? the decision to avoid riskier content. He has an audience, and a very large one, because he has not been shut up entirely.

Source: http://blogs.reuters.com/breakingviews/2012/10/29/review-a-practical-guide-to-writing-in-chinese-2/

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Musicians: Iranian national symphony orchestra disbanded for lack of funds

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Actor Ed Begley Jr Goes Green at Real Estate Awards and Gift of ...

You might remember him best from his role in St. Elsewhere or from his comedy roles in Christopher Guest movies like This is Spinal Tap, but actor Ed Begley Jr is also a lean, green, environmental machine who says that his biggest responsibility is helping out Mother Nature. Speaking at the Real Estate Foundation of BC?s 2012 Land Awards last week, the Hollywood star was the toast of the night. Award winners, guests and VIPs enjoyed a gala dinner night which ended with a book signing, a live dance band and great memories. Also last week, at the Westin Bayshore, the Canucks Place Children?s Hospice?s Gift of Time Gala saw lots of North Shore faces mixing and mingling in their black tie best. Decorated to look like a magical wonderland, this premiere gala event always attracts Vancouver?s elite for a very worthwhile cause.

01 ? Real Estate Foundation of BC?s chief executive officer Jack Wong, left, welcomes movie star and environmental activist Ed Begley Jr to the Land Awards Gala.

02 ? Actor Ed Begley Jr receives thanks for delivering the evening?s keynote speech from Real Estate Foundation of BC?s board chair Kelly Lerigny.

03 ? PR pros Shawn Poole and Jill Batie, from Hill + Knowlton, help put on the ritz for the Ed Begley Jr / real estate party.

04 ? Squamish Nation cultural ambassador Chief Ian Campbell, left, sits with Globe and Mail publisher Matt O?Grady at the Land Awards gala head table.

05 ? Canucks Place galas wouldn?t be complete without at least some Canucks faces in the crowd. From left: Sportsnet?s Dan Murphy, former Canucks goalie ?Captain? Kirk McLean and voice of the Canucks John Shorthouse.

06 ? North Vancouver guests Jerome Atherton, left, and Shala and Karim Chandani enjoy pre-dinner conversation at Gift of Time gala.

07 ? West Vancouver?s John and Karen MacPhail are long-time generous supporters of many Vancouver charities.

08 ? Gift of Time committee member, and West Vancouver girl Mirjana Popescu looks beautiful in an electric blue, off-the-shoulder gown.

09 ? She?s the new 2013 face of Guess and he?s all about the smiles. West Vancouver dentist Geoff Gillespire is the envy of all with the stunning Ashley Morris on his arm at Gift of Time gala.

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By Catherine Barr ? Oct 26 and 27, 2012

Also as seen in print in the North Shore Outlook Newspaper on Nov 1, 2012

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Source: http://www.catherinebarr.com/vancouver_celebrities/actor-ed-begley-jr-goes-green-at-real-estate-awards-and-gift-of-time-gala/2325/

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