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Monday, December 31, 2012
Watch Out: Your New Year's Midnight Delivery Messages on Facebook Aren't Private (Updated)
Bad news is loud, but good news rules.
If you look behind the often dire headlines and examine the long-term trends, you'll see that crime is falling, lifespans are increasing, and poverty is ebbing. In other words, there's solid evidence for hope.
Schoolboys play in the yard of a primary school in Nyumbani, Kenya, established for aids orphans.
Ben Curtis/AP
EnlargeThere's much more good news than bad news. But bad news travels fast and commands attention. Good news is like water carving a valley or a tree gradually extending its branches. Good news is a child learning a little more each day or a business quietly prospering. We hardly notice it.
Skip to next paragraph John YemmaEditor, The Christian Science Monitor
John Yemma is Editor of The Christian Science Monitor, which publishes international news and analysis at?CSMonitor.com, in the?Monitor Weekly?newsmagazine, and in an email-delivered?Daily News Briefing. He can be reached at editor@csmonitor.com.
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Examine the data over time, and you'l find irrefutable evidence of progress: the decline of war and violent crime, the increase in life spans; the spread of literacy, democracy, and equal rights; the waning of privilege based on race, gender, heredity, beliefs (Jina Moore and a team of Monitor writers say this much more specifically in our cover story: "Progress Watch 2012").
Every so often there are vivid scenes of good news -- Neil Armstrong bouncing onto the moon, revelers atop the Berlin Wall, Nelson Mandela walking out of Robben Island prison. But most of the time good news is incremental, which causes it to be taken for granted.
Not bad news. When we hear it, we sit up and ask, "What just happened?" Bad news can make us beat our fists on the table and ask where was God and how can such a terrible thing happen. Bad news is mesmerizing. We can't look away from a collapsing high-rise or an inundated coastal town. We know the meaning of a sidewalk filled with flowers and teddy bears.
Bad news is insistent. In fairness, bad news isn't all bad. It can alert us to problems that need to be addressed. But in the grand scheme of things, there's actually not that much of it . Oh, there's always enough for a front page or a?Web bulletin or a nightly newscast, although sometimes reporters have to travel to the ends of the earth to find it. Bad news has a natural advantage, however. It pulses through humanity's central nervous system -- word of mouth, the media, the Internet. Its images are riveting and its stories are dramatic. It floods the zone.
And when there's a shortage of bad news in the present, we can always turn to the future. Welcome to worry, dread, and pessimism. Sure, things seem OK now, but just over the horizon a disaster is brewing. Don't be a sap. Bad things are on the way.
They probably are. And they'll shock us and again make us wonder if life is out of control. But in this last issue of our news magazine for 202, we're looking in the rearview mirror to see how things are going, and we're finding plenty of reason for hope.
Hope helps. It keeps us going in bleak times and amid disheartening news. But hope has much more credibility when we can point to the reason for it. Asserting that we should all cheer up is sweet. Knowing why is powerful.
Here are some reasons for hope: Extreme poverty is declining. HIV is no longer a death sentence. Technology is transforming everything from African agriculture to urban transportation. Drug violence is decreasing in Mexico. Travel is safer almost everywhere. Crime rates are falling. Somalia is emerging from a long night of anarchy. Myanmar (Burma) is coming out of its dictatorial shell. And while it's true that China and Russia are only semi-free and the Egypt and other post-dictator nations may be going down ill-considered paths, water is still carving the valley. Freedom lives in 7 billion hearts.
Bad news will make headlines in 2013. But good news will quietly rule.
?John Yemma is editor of the Monitor. He can be reached at editor@csmonitor.com.
Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/5F1OJUByzEI/Bad-news-is-loud-but-good-news-rules
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Unable to sync Family Tree Maker - Message Boards - Ancestry.co.uk
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Sunday, December 30, 2012
Windows 8 Touch screen - Budget of ?600 / $1000
1) What is your budget?
?600 / $1000 maximum
2) What size notebook would you prefer?
15" or under if possible but not important
3) Where will you buying this notebook? You can select the flag of your country as an indicator.
United Kingdom
4) Are there any brands that you prefer or any you really don't like?
Not important
6) What are the primary tasks will you be performing with this notebook?
University work, internet browsing, watching films, mid-level gaming etc.
7) Will you be taking the notebook with you to different places, leaving it on your desk or both?
To university etc.
8) Will you be playing games on your notebook? If so, please state which games or types of games?
Nothing really heavy
9) How many hours of battery life do you need?
4-6+
10) Would you prefer to see the notebooks you're considering before purchasing it or buying a notebook on-line without seeing it is OK?
I'll buy online no problem.
11) What OS do you prefer? Windows (XP or Vista or Windows 7), Mac OS, Linux, etc.
Windows 8
Screen Specifics
12) From the choices below, what screen resolution(s) would you prefer? Keep in mind screen size in conjunction with resolution will play a large role in overall viewing comfort level. Everyone is different. Some like really small text, while others like their text big and easy to read. Click here for Screen resolution information.
1080p if possible but will accept less as I know my budget is limited
13) Do you want a Glossy/reflective screen or a Matte/non-glossy screen?
Doesn't matter.
Build Quality and Design
14) Are the notebook's looks and stylishness important to you?
Yes, but I'm open to just about anything that fits my criteria so in this particular case I don't really care.
15) When are you buying this laptop?
As soon as possible
16) How long do you want this laptop to last?
A long time
Notebook Components
17) How much hard drive space do you need? Do you want a SSD drive?
500gb minimum and yes a ssd would be nice
18) Do you need an optical drive? If yes, a DVD Burner, Blu-ray Reader or Blu-Ray Burner?
No
Additional Comments
Touch screen is important as I want to use windows 8. Thank you
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Girls basketball: Union 65, Auburn 43
Originally published December 29, 2012 at 5:57 p.m., updated December 29, 2012 at 5:57 p.m.
Emily Rowe scored 14 points as Union won the non-league game over visiting Auburn.
Union (7-3) led throughout and pulled away with a 21-7 fourth quarter advantage.
UNION 65, AUBURN 43
AUBURN -- Saleagafulu 17, Vecorteret 12, Galati 4, Papillon 5, Tomac 3, Underhawk 2.
UNION -- Grace Davis 0, Tessa Vanderpool 6, Tuileisu Anderson 7, Kendra Preuninger 3, Katie Burbank 7, Hannah O'Donnell 7, Katherine Williams 0, Jessica Chatman 18, Emily Rowe 14.
Auburn 6 19 11 7--43
Union 15 13 15 21--65
JV -- Union won.
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Source: http://www.columbian.com/news/2012/dec/29/girls-basketball-union-65-auburn-43/
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MOSCOW -- Timur Bulgakov has a black belt in karate, two university degrees, a...
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Source: http://www.facebook.com/tajikistannews/posts/525738740784329
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Saturday, December 29, 2012
Mexico Archeologists Uncover 800-Year-Old Skeletons
by Naharnet Newsdesk 29 December 2012, 08:27 
Archeologists in central Mexico uncovered the bones of 12 children and adults who may have been buried 800 years ago, a National Institute of Anthropology and History expert told AFP.
The skeletons were discovered as the archeologists supervised the installation of a new drain in an old neighborhood of Cholula, a city located 120 kilometers north of the Mexican capital.
The first skull was found at the site on December 8 and by Thursday, the experts had identified the remains of 12 individuals.
They were found buried just a few centimeters below a paved section of asphalt, said archeologist Ashuni Romero Butron, who added "fortunately they were not damaged by erosion before the paving."
He said most of the 12 skeletons are complete, and their sexes will have to be determined in laboratory analysis.
The ethnic origin of the bodies is also yet to be determined, though Romero noted that 800 years ago the area was home to people from the Tolteca-Chichimeca and the Olmeca-Xicalanca cultures.
Last April, another burial site with 17 skeletons, some 700 years old, was found nearby.
Source: http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/66397-mexico-archeologists-uncover-800-year-old-skeletons
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Vigil marks 2 weeks since Conn. school massacre
NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) ? Clergy from numerous faiths came together Friday in Newtown to mark the passing of two weeks since the elementary school massacre with a vigil to pray for healing.
Religious leaders gathered with a few dozen others at a wind-swept, snowy soccer field to offer words of support for the community.
"Your faith leaders want you to know that we continue to stand with you as we all continue to deal with this great tragedy that has befallen our beloved community of Newtown," said the Rev. Jack Tanner of Newtown Christian Church. "It is only the beginning of a long healing process that we will all go through."
The vigil included representatives from Roman Catholic, Episcopal, Methodist, Congregational, Buddhist, Muslim and other places of worship.
Gunman Adam Lanza, 20, shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary on Dec. 14 and killed 20 first-grade students and six adult staff members. He also killed his mother before going on the school rampage and then committing suicide.
"We are your children, your hurting children from many faiths, many traditions, many cultures, from many parts of the earth," said the Rev. Leo McIlrath of the Lutheran Home of Southbury "We cry out to you. We are in pain and we ask for your healing."
Vicky Truitt, who works at Newtown Congregational Church, said she had been feeling worn down before the service.
"Today it was helpful, the prayers that they gave, to hear all the different denominations all together as one," Truitt said. "Even the ones where you didn't understand the words, you could understand the feeling that was behind them."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/vigil-marks-2-weeks-since-conn-school-massacre-160053131.html
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Friday, December 28, 2012
Top 10 insurance stories of 2012 ? Bankrate, Inc.
Insurance news touched the lives of every American in 2012. Dim the lights, cue the music and ready the ball to drop (no worries, it's insured),? because here's my countdown of the top 10 insurance stories of the year.
10. Bundling: Allstate continued to wash its hands of "unprofitable" business by shedding 10,000 South Carolina homeowners insurance customers who refused to bundle in their auto insurance and have their cars covered by the "good hands" people, too. The company previously purged 45,000 nonbundling North Carolina customers in November 2011, sparking protests from Bankrate readers.
9. Curbing bad habits: Insurance companies are sick of paying for our bad habits. A Cornell University study found that obesity directly contributes to $190 billion in health care costs each year, a staggering 20 percent of our national health care expenditures. Employers are choking on the cost to insure workers who smoke, a breathtaking $193 billion each year, or an additional $11,000 per smoker annually. As for intoxicants, health insurers have convinced legislatures in 25 states to pass "alcohol exclusion" laws that allow insurers the option to not cover you if you injure yourself while buzzed on alcohol or drugs.
8. Texting, driving and dodging: Federal officials say the use of mobile devices while driving causes 3,000 fatalities each year. The question is, how will the auto insurance industry respond? So far, it has largely avoided the subject.
7. Flood reform at last: The bad news? The National Flood Insurance Program, or NFIP, remains about $18 billion in the red, largely due to Hurricane Katrina. The good news? Last July, President Barack Obama signed the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012, which extends NFIP for five whole years and ushers in long-overdue reforms designed to make the program self-sustaining for the first time in its history.
6. Auto under siege: The Consumer Federation of America took auto insurers to task in 2012, accusing the industry of charging the poor more for auto coverage; bilking consumers out of "tens of millions of dollars" by manipulating computerized claims data; using personal?information such as gender, employment and education to set policy rates; and quoting excessively high rates on online shopping sites. An insurance trade group responded that car insurance rates are seeing increases in line with overall inflation.
5. New homeowners pay more: New homeowners felt the sting of weather-driven home insurance rate increases, paying on average 19 percent more in 2011, a jump from $682 a year to $810 nationally.
4. Preventive care included: For the first time in history, the federal government now requires health insurers to provide dozens of preventive screenings and services to all insured Americans without additional cost. The requirement, part of health care reform, is especially beneficial to women, as it includes free mammograms and human papillomavirus, or HPV, testing.
3. Feds to run most state exchanges: Because more than half the states chose to work against rather than with health care reform these past three years, the federal government will set up and operate the mandated health insurance exchanges in two-thirds of the states beginning in 2014.
2. Isaac and Sandy: Hurricane Isaac and Superstorm Sandy, coming just a year after lumbering Hurricane Irene, proved yet again that slow-moving, widespread drenchers can cause just as much destruction as?megastorms like Andrew and Katrina. The question lingers: Is this the new normal?
1. Obamacare survives two scares: The Affordable Care Act of 2010, Obama's landmark course adjustment for America's health care system, emerged largely unscathed from a contentious three-month U.S. Supreme Court battle, then cleared its final hurdle with the president's re-election.
A happy and prosperous new year to you all!
Follow me on Twitter: @omnisaurus
Subscribe to Bankrate newsletters today!
Source: http://www.bankrate.com/financing/insurance/top-10-insurance-stories-of-2012/
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Putin signs anti-US adoptions bill
MOSCOW (AP) ? President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed a bill banning Americans from adopting Russian children, part of a harsh response to a U.S. law targeting Russians deemed to be human rights violators.
Although some top Russian officials including the foreign minister openly opposed the bill and Putin himself had been noncommittal about it last week, he signed it less than 24 hours after receiving it from Parliament, where both houses passed it overwhelmingly.
The law also calls for closure of non-governmental organizations receiving American funding if their activities are classified as political ? a broad definition that many fear could be used to close any NGO that offends the Kremlin.
It was not immediately clear when the law would take effect, but presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying "practically, adoption stops on Jan. 1."
Children's rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said this week that 46 children who were about to be adopted in the U.S. would remain in Russia if the bill comes into effect.
The bill has angered Americans and Russians who argue it victimizes children to make a political point, cutting off a route out of frequently dismal orphanages for thousands of children.
UNICEF estimates that there are about 740,000 children not in parental custody in Russia while about 18,000 Russians are on the waiting list to adopt a child. The U.S. is the biggest destination for adopted Russian children ? more than 60,000 of them have been taken in by Americans over the past two decades.
Russians historically have been less enthusiastic about adopting children than most Western cultures.
Lev Ponomarev, one of Russia's most prominent human rights activists, hinted at that reluctance when he said Parliament members who voted for the bill should take custody of the children who were about to be adopted.
"The moral responsibility lies on them," he told Interfax. "But I don't think that even one child will be taken for upbringing by deputies of the Duma."
The law is in response to a measure signed into law by President Barack Obama this month that calls for sanctions against Russians assessed to be human rights violators.
That stems from the case of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was arrested after accusing officials of a $230 million tax fraud. He was repeatedly denied medical treatment and died in jail in 2009. Russian rights groups claimed he was severely beaten and accused the Kremlin of failing to prosecute those responsible; a prison doctor who was the only official charged in the case was acquitted by a Moscow court on Friday.
The U.S. law galvanized Russian resentment of the United States, which Putin has claimed funded and encouraged the wave of massive anti-government protests that arose last winter.
The Parliament initially considered a relatively similar retaliatory measure, but amendments have expanded it far beyond a tit-for-tat response.
Many Russians have been distressed for years by reports of Russian children dying or suffering abuse at the hands of their American adoptive parents. The new Russian law was dubbed the "Dima Yakovlev Bill" after a toddler who died in 2008 when his American adoptive father left him in a car in broiling heat for hours.
Russians also bristled at how the widespread adoptions appeared to show them as hardhearted or too poor to take care of orphans. Astakhov, the children's ombudsman, charged that well-heeled Americans often got priority over Russians who wanted to adopt.
A few lawmakers even claimed that some Russian children were adopted by Americans only to be used for organ transplants or become sex toys or cannon fodder for the U.S. Army. A spokesman with Russia's dominant Orthodox Church said that children adopted by foreigners and raised outside the church will not enter God's kingdom.
___
Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow contributed to this story.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/putin-signs-anti-us-adoptions-bill-100228125.html
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Aetna CEO: Obamacare Could Double Health Insurance Premiums ...
To provide all Americans with health insurance, premiums will have to rise to pay for it, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini told CNBC?s ?Closing Bell? on Wednesday.
?If we?re going to insure all Americans, which is a worthy and appropriate cause, then somebody has to pay for it,? Bertolini said of the expected premium increases under Obamacare.
Bertolini said that insurance premiums could double in some places just on the basis of what types of policies people buy today.
He also said that when Obamacare is fully implemented, it won?t start the way people had hoped and it won?t be cheaper.
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Continue Reading on www.cnbc.com ...
We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, vulgarity, profanity, all caps, or discourteous behavior. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain a courteous and useful public environment where we can engage in reasonable discourse. Read more.Source: http://conservativebyte.com/2012/12/aetna-ceo-obamacare-could-double-health-insurance-premiums/
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Thursday, December 27, 2012
Gracenote?s Ad Replacement System That Personalizes TV Commercials Will Start Trials In 2013
Most TV commercials are poorly targeted and show things you'd never buy. But not for long. Gracenote's new ad replacement system combines viewing habits with personal info to show you more relevant commercials. Gracenote will demo it at CES and start trials in 2013. The rev-share is still in talks, but higher CPMs could enlarge the $70 billion TV ad market and give Gracenote and partners a nice cutSource: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/3NUKeBvP8VU/
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Video: Dog reunited with 7-year-old owner
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Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/50300442/
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Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Psychological Of Pain | Pain Management Clinic ? Jakarta Indonesia
Psychological Of Pain
Psychological pain is an unpleasant feeling or a suffering of a psychological, non-physical, origin. A pioneer in the field of suicidology, described it as ?how much you hurt as a human being. It is mental suffering; mental torment.? There is no shortage in the many ways psychological pain is referred to, and using a different word usually reflects an emphasis on a particular aspect of mind life. It may be called mental pain, emotional pain, psychic pain, social pain, spiritual or soul pain, or suffering. It is sometimes also called psychalgia. A systematic comparison of theories and models of psychological pain, psychic pain, emotional pain, and suffering concluded that each describe the same profoundly unpleasant feeling. Psychological pain is believed to be an inescapable aspect of human existence.
Most people think of pain as resulting from physical injury or disease, but psychological factors play a huge role in pain perception. Pain is intimately tied to brain functions that govern behavior and decision making, including expectation, attention and learning. Recent investigations are unraveling how factors such as expectation of reward or punishment, fear, stress and mood alter perceived pain intensity and affect our choices. Scientists are not only revealing just how far pain reaches into our psyches but are also using their findings to devise ways of better controlling pain and hastening recovery from painful injuries.
Other descriptions of psychological pain are ?a wide range of subjective experiences characterized as an awareness of negative changes in the self and in its functions accompanied by negative feelings?, ?a diffuse subjective experience ? differentiated from physical pain which is often localized and associated with noxious physical stimuli?, and ?a lasting, unsustainable, and unpleasant feeling resulting from negative appraisal of an inability or deficiency of the self.?
Etiology
The adjective ?psychological? is thought to encompass the functions of beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, which may be seen as an indication for the many sources of psychological pain. One way of grouping these different sources of pain was offered by Shneidman, who stated that psychological pain is caused by frustrated psychological needs. For example, the need for love, autonomy, affiliation, and achievement, or the need to avoid harm, shame, and embarrassment. Psychological needs were originally described by Henry Murray in 1938 as needs that motivate human behavior. Shneidman maintained that people rate the importance of each need differently, which explains why people?s level of psychological pain differs when confronted with the same frustrated need. This needs perspective coincides with Patrick David Wall?s description of physical pain that says that physical pain indicates a need state much more than a sensory experience.
In the fields of social psychology and personality psychology, the term social pain is used to denote psychological pain caused by harm or threat to social connection; bereavement, embarrassment, shame and hurt feelings are subtypes of social pain. Just like physical pain, social pain is thought to serve a function of adaptation and avoidance from what caused the pain.
From an evolutionary perspective, psychological pain forces the assessment of actual or potential social problems that might reduce the individual?s fitness for survival. The way we display our psychological pain socially (for example, crying, shouting, moaning) serves the purpose of indicating that we are in need.
Neural mechanisms
Recent research in neuroscience suggests that physical pain and psychological pain may share some underlying neurological mechanisms. Brain regions that were consistently found to be implicated in both types of pain are the anterior cingulate cortex and prefrontal cortex (some subregions more than others), and may extend to other regions as well. Brain regions that were also found to be involved in psychological pain include the insular cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, thalamus, parahippocampal gyrus, basal ganglia, and cerebellum. Some advocate that, because similar brain regions are involved in both physical pain and psychological pain, we should see pain as a continuum that ranges from purely physical to purely psychological. Moreover, many sources mention the fact that we use methaphors of physical pain to refer to psychological pain experiences
Psychological factors in pain perception
The importance of psychology in the expression, understanding and treatment of pain was recognized in early theories of nociception. These theories accepted the top?down influence of midbrain and cortical structures in pain expression.36 Similarly, with the advancement of the psychology of behaviour in the 1950s and 1960s, the role of environment in shaping treatment behaviour and complaining behaviour was also further developed.19 These theories were clinical in nature as they arose from the growing problem of patients suffering from chronic unremitting pain and disability. Psychology also found its place in pain treatments after the growing recognition that the extent of complaint and disability reported by many patients could not be explained by the extent of damage or disease.
Pain, tissue damage and disability
Pain is the most common reason for patients to enter health?care settings and the most common reason given for self?medication. Pain interrupts all other activity and arrests current behaviour. It functions to prime escape or protective behaviour.15 As it is an everyday and frequent experience, there is also a common understanding of pain, both lay and professional, that it is a useful signal of damage.1 Indeed, in the majority of cases pain is a relatively reliable signal of damage and one that refers well to its spatial location. Also, the intensity of pain often refers well to the extent of damage. For example, extracting two teeth hurts about twice as much as extracting one tooth.
There is, however, a number of cases where the extent of damage does not refer well to the experience of pain.65 For example, some people report pain that has no identifiable lesion, as in many cases of back pain, headache and angina. It is also possible to have tissue damage without any pain. For example, up to 40% of patients with established reversible myocardial ischaemia do not report pain. More recently, it has been recognized that it is possible to experience pain in a location distal to the damage or to experience pain in a missing or extra limb or location. Even under laboratory conditions, where we can control the intensity of the pain?inducing stimulus, there is a great deal of variability in patient response.
The fact that pain is not a reliable indicator of tissue damage and that tissue damage is not a reliable indicator of pain.
There is also a number of cases where the extent of damage and the extent of pain together do not refer well to the experience of disability. Some patients appear not to be disabled by extensive damage and pain, whereas other patients respond with extensive disability to seemingly minor damage and pain. This variability can be witnessed in everyday practice. Anyone who is in the business of hurting people as part of their routine work will understand that different people respond differently to the same procedure under the same circumstances, and that the same people respond to the same procedure differently at different times or under different circumstances. A brief and unscientific survey of colleagues or friends as to their choice of analgesia during dental procedures will quickly exemplify this variability.
Understanding differential responding
People are different and respond differently to pain?inducing stimuli and to attempts at pain management. This is perhaps not the most astounding and revelatory of claims ever made but it can be of crucial importance for the delivery of successful pain management. If we can understand what predicts these differences we may be able to improve treatment delivery and effectiveness.
Early theories of the psychology of pain assessed global factors such as personality, gender, age and culture. These global or broad?sweep explanations seem to have an intuitive appeal and one still hears them supported in everyday practice. The evidence in support of these explanations, however, is not always persuasive or conclusive.
Personality
A number of studies have attempted to describe or uncover what may be thought of as a pain?prone personality. It was thought that those who were less hardy or less robust to the hardships of the world would show less tolerance of pain stimuli and would be more complaining of pain. In addition, there was also the idea that the pain expressed by patients was a manifestation of guilt or of loss, or that pain revealed a self?destructive, sadomasochistic style of sexual development. There is no evidence, however, to support these ideas. I mean not to negate the importance of differences in individual personalities, but rather that the search for a unified pain personality was unsuccessful. The experience of pain does not prevent personality disorders but neither is it thought to be a mask or alternative manifestation of them.
Gender
In an excellent recent review of this field, Anita Unruh reported that ?In most studies, women report more severe levels of pain, more frequent pain and pain of longer duration than do men.?59 Women are more likely to experience recurrent pain, have moderate and severe pain from menstruation and childbirth and may be at increased risk of disability arising from pain. Unruh also reported that, despite the fact that women report more pain than men, women are at greater risk of being labelled as having a psychogenic disorder and are more vulnerable to pain being explained as a purely psychological (used pejoratively in this case to mean unreal) phenomenon.
Age
Very little is known about the specific effects of age and ageing and about the psychology of pain for specific age groups. For example, effective pain management in children has been hampered by the erroneous beliefs that neonates and infants could not feel pain and that children would respond addictively to opioid analgesia. We now know these ideas to be without support. An important but unresearched area is the effects of emotional and cognitive development upon the experience of pain for children and adolescents. At the other end of the lifespan, we are also only now beginning to learn about the effects of cognitive impairment on pain experience
Culture
Early studies of the effect of culture focused upon the reports of ethnic differences in pain expression. However, the study of culture extends further than the ethnic group membership of patients. For example, a recent interesting study showed that ethnic differences (in a US sample) did not affect the report of post?operative pain or patient?controlled analgesia for post?operative pain, but did, however, affect physician prescribing behaviour.40 More recently, the study of cultural influences has extended to the broader study of the cultural construction of pain and has started to embrace the use of anthropological and sociological methods.
Specific psychological factors
Although early theories focused on global factors, more recent areas of study have developed our understanding of specific psychological traits or specific states of experience that affect the report of pain and suffering.
Fear
Pain functions to threaten danger and invoke an escape or ameliorative response. This threat component of pain is not an addition to the sensory component, nor does it follow from the sensory aspects. Instead, it is a primary and central component as it urges analgesic behaviour. Fear and anxiety processes have been studied from a number of perspectives, although they cover essentially the same issue. The most relevant to clinical practice are reviewed here.
Attention and vigilance
Threatening pain is a stimulus that orients attention to both the source of pain and the potential for escape or analgesia. Some people have increased or heightened attention to pain sensation. In particular, where the threat of pain is constant or recurrent, a pattern of vigilance to pain can develop. McCracken developed a measure of vigilance to pain with a sample of chronic low back pain patients and found that patients who report high levels of attention to pain also report higher pain intensity, increased use of health?care resources and more emotional distress. Vigilance to pain was a significant predictor of disability, distress and use of health?care resources. Hypervigilance or excessive attention to threat has also been offered as a possible explanation for the dominant anxiety and poor concentration observed in patients with diffuse idiopathic or fibromyalgia pain. One test of this hypothesis found that fibromyalgia patients reported a lower threshold and higher tolerance to an experimentally induced pain than did a sample of patients with rheumatoid arthritis, who, in turn, reported lower threshold and higher tolerance than a non?pain control sample. Using a different measure of attention to pain, we have found in our laboratory that patients who attend frequently towards diffuse bodily sensation are much more vulnerable to repeated interruption by high?intensity pain. Heightened and habitual attention to pain and bodily sensation is associated with high levels of disability and distress for patients with chronic pain.
Catastrophizing and worry
The consequences of repeated attention to threat may be the development of a fixed pattern of responding to threatening stimuli and pain. One particular response to threatening pain, which is proving to be predictive of the severity of complaint of pain, has been termed ?catastrophic thinking? or ?catastrophizing?. Put simply, this is a habitual, almost immediate, appraisal of a situation as extremely and globally catastrophic. Sullivan and colleagues have developed a measure of catastrophic thinking about pain that assesses the extent to which we magnify the outcome and effects of pain, consider ourselves helpless to respond, and have little control over whether we think this way or not. They conducted two experiments, the first with pain?free students, who they subjected to a cold?pressor procedure, and the second with patients undergoing an aversive medical procedure. They found that catastrophizers reported significantly more negative pain?related thoughts, more distress and higher pain intensity compared with non?catastrophizers. Keefe and colleagues have used a different measure of pain control and catastrophizing in studying clinical populations. For example, they studied patients with rheumatoid arthritis who had undergone knee replacement surgery and found that those who rarely catastrophized had much lower levels of pain and disability than patients who catastrophized often. Recently, we have argued that catastrophic thinking can usefully be understood as an extreme form of a normal process of worrying about pain. Chronic worry about pain and how to solve the problem of pain may lead to a pattern of catastrophic thinking.
Avoidance
One consequence of the urgency effect of pain, the fact that pain demands a change of behaviour, is that patients with pain avoid pain?inducing activity. A number of studies now show that the pain alone is insufficient to explain disability and avoidance. McCracken and colleagues, for example, demonstrated that the fear of pain made a unique and significant contribution to the prediction of disability.32 Taking this further, some authors have argued that the fear of pain is more disabling than pain itself.
In a recent study of this idea, Crombez and colleagues replicated the finding that pain?related fear is a better predictor of disability than pain, but also extended the findings to a behavioural performance test. They showed that, when instructed to engage in a behavioural performance task that involves musculoskeletal loading, chronic low back pain patients performed poorly on the task. Poor behavioural performance was predicted by elevated levels of fear of (re)injury due to movement and the fear of the effect that physical activity would have on the pain.
Pain?related fear is thought to mediate the effects of pain upon performance. A recent authoritative review of this emerging field argues that the avoidance of pain or injury?inducing activity is a normal mechanism of survival. However, when pain becomes chronic, those with marked fear of pain chronically avoid activity that leads to disability. Counter?intuitively, in many cases of chronic non?malignant pain, it may be more healthy to confront or engage in physical activity that, in the short term, produces pain and the fear of pain and (re)injury.
Depression
The experience of pain and the threat of pain can lead to negative or low affect. Chronic low affect, including persistent feelings of frustration and anger and negative or destructive self?appraisal are common effects of persistent pain. Unsurprisingly, the majority of adult chronic pain patients who present for treatment at pain clinics are also depressed to some degree. However, this depression is not brought about directly by the pain severity but by the disabling consequences of how one reacts to the chronic pain. There are a number of facets of depression that are important in understanding the pain patient.
Anger
Anger is not always associated with depression. However, it is included here as the angry pain patient is often poorly understood. Anger is a relatively common experience for pain patients and so, in turn, for the pain professional. Where there is no clear immediate object of anger (e.g. an aggressive other person or an immediate agent of injustice), it is often associated with global frustration and hostility, feelings of aggression and a feeling of being blamed. Anger in chronic pain patients is often unrecognized as a means by which patients attempt to claim self?control or self?esteem. Anger and hostility can have significant deleterious effects upon both health and treatment effectiveness. Treatment of the very angry patient requires a high degree of trust and honesty in an environment of cynicism and hostility. Aggression and overt anger often increase the probability of treatment ineffectiveness as either patient or therapist will withdraw from therapeutic contact, thereby fuelling anger. Treatments designed for the chronic pain patient should directly address in some form the effects of anger and frustration.
Self?denigration
A key component of depression is the extent to which individuals appraise their self?worth and abilities negatively (e.g. ?I?m useless and pathetic?, ?I?ll never be able to control this pain?). Early research suggested that negative self?appraisal may promote a self?fulfilling prophecy in which patients learn to be helpless and hopeless. Research with rheumatological patients did not find any convincing evidence for this case.
Rather, recent evidence indirectly suggests that what may be important about depression in chronic pain is the extent to which the pain refers critical judgement onto the self. Recent experimental studies demonstrate that patients have specific, not global, memory biases for pain information that refers negatively to the self.
Although a focus on the specific self?denigrating effects of depression and pain is only now being developed and data are certainly needed, it could have far?reaching effects on current self?management approaches to chronic pain. Simply instructing patients that the route to successful management of pain lies with them may be an invitation to fail. Indeed, many pain patients, when presented with the idea of self?management, first understand this to mean a threat to their worthiness for treatment.
Coping
The term ?coping? is often used to denote two similar events. First, it is understood to mean anything that one does in response to a stressful event, regardless of its efficacy in removing the stressor or in relieving the stress response. Secondly, it is understood to mean a positive effect of either removing the stressor or relieving the stress response. Here I take it to have the first meaning. Whenever we are faced with a stressful event such as pain, or the fear of pain, we respond. This response can have both positive and negative effects. The personality variables discussed above will have a strong effect on the response people make to pain and/or the fear of pain. However, the search for patterns of responding or types of responding has also included other ideas worth mentioning.
Action and control
First, the idea that there are passive and/or active ways of responding is commonly held. Patients who are passive in response to threat show greater distress and disability than patients who attempt to solve problems. Similarly, those who believe that they have the personal ability to have control over pain also show improved function and fitness. One interesting investigation found that if women in active labour are given some control over parts of the delivery process, positive effects can be seen in terms of reduced pain, reduced tiredness and increased energy even if this control is only at the level of monitoring.
Taking some control over the cause of pain or the method of analgesia has a beneficial effect. Those who respond actively to pain or the fear of pain are more likely to adjust effectively.
Psychological factors in pain perception
The importance of psychology in the expression, understanding and treatment of pain was recognized in early theories of nociception. These theories accepted the top?down influence of midbrain and cortical structures in pain expression. Similarly, with the advancement of the psychology of behaviour in the 1950s and 1960s, the role of environment in shaping treatment behaviour and complaining behaviour was also further developed. These theories were clinical in nature as they arose from the growing problem of patients suffering from chronic unremitting pain and disability. Psychology also found its place in pain treatments after the growing recognition that the extent of complaint and disability reported by many patients could not be explained by the extent of damage or disease.
Pain, tissue damage and disability
Pain is the most common reason for patients to enter health?care settings and the most common reason given for self?medication. Pain interrupts all other activity and arrests current behaviour. It functions to prime escape or protective behaviour. As it is an everyday and frequent experience, there is also a common understanding of pain, both lay and professional, that it is a useful signal of damage. Indeed, in the majority of cases pain is a relatively reliable signal of damage and one that refers well to its spatial location. Also, the intensity of pain often refers well to the extent of damage. For example, extracting two teeth hurts about twice as much as extracting one tooth
There is, however, a number of cases where the extent of damage does not refer well to the experience of pain. For example, some people report pain that has no identifiable lesion, as in many cases of back pain, headache and angina. It is also possible to have tissue damage without any pain. For example, up to 40% of patients with established reversible myocardial ischaemia do not report pain. More recently, it has been recognized that it is possible to experience pain in a location distal to the damage or to experience pain in a missing or extra limb or location. Even under laboratory conditions, where we can control the intensity of the pain?inducing stimulus, there is a great deal of variability in patient response.
The fact that pain is not a reliable indicator of tissue damage and that tissue damage is not a reliable indicator of pain.
There is also a number of cases where the extent of damage and the extent of pain together do not refer well to the experience of disability. Some patients appear not to be disabled by extensive damage and pain, whereas other patients respond with extensive disability to seemingly minor damage and pain. This variability can be witnessed in everyday practice. Anyone who is in the business of hurting people as part of their routine work will understand that different people respond differently to the same procedure under the same circumstances, and that the same people respond to the same procedure differently at different times or under different circumstances. A brief and unscientific survey of colleagues or friends as to their choice of analgesia during dental procedures will quickly exemplify this variability.
Understanding differential responding
Related to whether one takes action or takes part in analgesic procedures is the effect of whether one seeks to predict the effects of pain or whether one prefers to be distracted. Many experimental studies of the possible effects of distraction from, or attention to, pain and analgesia have been conducted. The key finding is that both approaches can be effective. However, the most important finding suggests that only those strategies that fit with a person?s preferred or habitual method will be effective. For example, if someone is used to managing the pain of dentistry by thinking of anything else but dentistry, giving the patient detailed information about the procedure will simply undermine an effective strategy. Crombez and colleagues reported an interesting study of what information it might be useful to have for those who pay attention to the pain.
People are intrinsically motivated to make sense of experience. Except in extreme cases of depression or in specific circumstances of prolonged restriction or incarceration, people are motivated to reach an understanding of personal events. Until a pain is understood within a system of knowledge, it will interrupt current thinking and promote worry and concern. Knowing what has caused a pain and what it may mean and does not mean is critical for effective coping. Those patients who are most difficult to help are those who repeatedly present with problems that have no known aetiology. Not knowing compounds distress and an uncertain diagnosis leads to an increased belief in illness.
Clinical implications for acute pain management
The experience and expression of pain are complicated, multifactorial events. However, most clinicians ignore these factors and do not attempt to harness their effects. Worse still, there is a large industry dedicated to the eradication of these effects as they pollute otherwise neat designs for testing the effects of pharmacological agents upon an analgesic response. For it is these effects that make up the placebo element of all analgesics. Unfortunately, the efforts to limit the placebo effect rather than understand and control it may be throwing the baby out with the bath?water
Perhaps a certain ignorance of the psychological factors is understandable. One could suggest that in most acute pain situations these factors take care of themselves and do not need attending to. I would go further and suggest that, even if the pain relief was not psychologically optimal, then in most cases it is unlikely to lead to any long?term psychological damage. However, there are certain cases where a working and applied knowledge of the above factors can improve the patient?s distress and function, reduce pain and fear of pain, improve the effectiveness of non?psychological analgesics and reduce physician distress.
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WORKING TOGETHER FOR STRONGER, SMARTER AND HEALTHIER CHILDREN BY EDUCATION, CLINICAL INTERVENTION, RESEARCH AND NETWORKING INFORMATION . Advancing of the future pediatric and future parenting to optimalized physical, mental and social health and well being for fetal, newborn, infant, children, adolescents and young adult
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Source: http://painkillerclinic.wordpress.com/2012/12/25/psychological-of-pain/
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Man who killed 2 firemen left note on killing plan
WEBSTER, N.Y. (AP) ? The ex-con who lured two firefighters to their deaths in a blaze of gunfire left a rambling typewritten note saying he wanted to burn down the neighborhood and "do what I like doing best, killing people," police said Tuesday as they recovered burned human remains believed to be the gunman's missing sister.
Police Chief Gerald Pickering said 62-year-old William Spengler, who served 17 years in prison for the 1980 hammer slaying of his grandmother, armed himself with a revolver, a shotgun and a military-style rifle before he set his house afire to lure first responders into a death trap before dawn on Christmas Eve.
"He was equipped to go to war, kill innocent people," Pickering said.
The rifle he had was a military-style .223-caliber semiautomatic Bushmaster rifle with flash suppression, the same make and caliber weapon used in the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn., Pickering said.
The chief said police believe the firefighters were hit with shots from the rifle given the distance but the investigation was incomplete.
Pickering declined to divulge the full content of the two- to three-page note left by Spengler or say where it was found, but read one line from it: "I still have to get ready to see how much of the neighborhood I can burn down, and do what I like doing best, killing people."
The human remains were found in the charred house that Spengler shared with his 67-year-old sister, Cheryl. A medical examiner will need to determine the identity and cause of death because the body is badly burned.
Spengler killed himself as seven houses burned around him Monday on a narrow spit of land along Lake Ontario in this suburb of Rochester. A friend said Spengler hated his sister but the chief said the note left by him did not give a motive.
No other bodies were found, and police late Tuesday said the on-scene investigation had been completed.
Two firefighters were shot dead in the ambush and two others are hospitalized in stable condition.
Spengler fired at the four firefighters when they arrived shortly after 5:30 a.m. Monday to put out the fire, Pickering said. The first police officer who arrived chased the gunman and exchanged shots.
Authorities said Spengler hadn't done anything to bring himself to their attention since his parole. As a convicted felon, he wasn't allowed to possess weapons. Monroe County District Attorney Sandra Doorley said Spengler led a very quiet life after he got out of prison.
A friend, Roger Vercruysse, lived next door to Spengler and recalled a man who doted on his mother, whose obituary suggested contributions to the West Webster Fire Department.
"He loved his mama to death," said Vercruysse, who last saw his friend about six months ago.
Vercruysse also said Spengler "couldn't stand his sister" and "stayed on one side of the house and she stayed on the other."
The West Webster Fire District learned of the fire after a report of a car and house on fire on Lake Road, on a narrow peninsula where Irondequoit Bay meets Lake Ontario, Monroe County Sheriff Patrick O'Flynn said.
Emergency radio communications capture someone saying he "could see the muzzle flash coming at me" as Spengler carried out his ambush. The audio posted on the website RadioReference.com has someone reporting "firefighters are down" and saying "got to be rifle or shotgun - high powered ... semi or fully auto."
Two of the firefighters arrived on a fire engine and two in their own vehicles, Pickering said. After Spengler fired, one of the wounded men fled, but the other three couldn't because of flying gunfire.
The police officer who exchanged gunfire with Spengler "in all likelihood saved many lives," Pickering said.
The dead men were identified as police Lt. Michael Chiapperini, 43, the Webster Police Department's public information officer; and 19-year-old Tomasz Kaczowka, also a 911 dispatcher.
Pickering described Chiapperini as a "lifetime firefighter" with nearly 20 years in the department, and he called Kaczowka a "tremendous young man."
The two wounded firefighters, Joseph Hofstetter and Theodore Scardino, were in stable condition Tuesday at Strong Memorial Hospital, the chief said. Both were awake and alert and are expected to recover.
Hofstetter, also a full-timer with the Rochester Fire Department, was hit once in the pelvis, and the bullet lodged in his spine, authorities said. Scardino was hit in the chest and knee.
The shooting and fires were in a neighborhood of seasonal and year-round homes set close together across the road from the lakeshore. The area is popular with recreational boaters but is normally quiet this time of year.
___
Associated Press writer Mary Esch in Albany contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/man-killed-2-firemen-left-note-killing-plan-165807219.html
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Israel revisits ban on female prayer at holy site
JERUSALEM (AP) ? Israel's prime minister has instructed a quasi-governmental Jewish organization to find a solution for non-Orthodox Jewish female groups wishing to pray at one of Judaism's holiest sites.
An official said Tuesday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked Natan Sharansky, chairman of the Jewish Agency, to look into the matter. The official spoke anonymously according to government regulations.
Last week Israeli police detained women from a liberal Jewish group who approached the Western Wall in Jerusalem carrying prayer shawls. Orthodox Jews insist those are for men only. The women seek to worship at the site without such restrictions.
Jewish Agency spokesman Benjamin Rutland said Netanyahu told Sharansky that the Western Wall "must remain a source of Jewish unity rather than division." The wall is a remnant of the biblical Jewish Temple compound.
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Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Netflix says video streaming service hit by outage
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Families across the United States will have to rely on other sources of entertainment after Netflix's video streaming service was hit by a Christmas Eve outage.
The company based in Los Gatos, Calif., apologized in a company tweet for the outage Monday night.
The company says on its Twitter page that the outage was caused by "some of Amazon's cloud infrastructure." Netflix says it was working with Amazon engineers to restore the outage, which a company spokesman told the Wall Street Journal stretched "across the Americas."
Attempts to reach Netflix by The Associated Press were unsuccessful.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/netflix-says-video-streaming-hit-outage-135801210--finance.html
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U.S. Navy SEAL commander dies in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A senior member of the U.S. Navy's elite SEAL unit has died in Afghanistan, the Defense Department said on Sunday, and media reports said the death was a possible suicide.
Commander Job Price, 42, of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, died on Saturday of a non-combat related injury in central Afghanistan's Uruzgan Province, the Pentagon said in a statement.
"This incident is currently under investigation," it said.
Price was assigned to a Naval Special Warfare unit in Virginia Beach, Virginia, the statement said.
NBC News and CNN quoted unnamed military officials as saying that the death was being looked at as a possible suicide.
Lieutenant David Lloyd, a spokesman for Naval Special Warfare Group Two, which comprises the four SEAL teams on the U.S. East Coast, declined to comment on the cause of death, saying it was under investigation.
Price was married and had a daughter. He had been a naval officer since May 1993, Lloyd said.
Captain Robert Smith, the Group Two commander, said in a statement: "The Naval Special Warfare family is deeply saddened by the loss of our teammate. We extend our condolences, thoughts and prayers to the family, friends, and NSW community during this time of grieving.
"As we mourn the loss and honour the memory of our fallen teammate, those he served with will continue to carry out the mission."
SEAL is an acronym for sea, air, land.
(Reporting by Ian Simpson; editing by Christopher Wilson)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-navy-seal-dead-afghanistan-reported-suicide-011143310.html
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Better Than Human
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GearFactor/~3/9TO55PXxjLk/
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Monday, December 24, 2012
DeepOcean Scores Gorgon Trenching Contract ... - LNG World News
DeepOcean UK, a subsidiary of DeepOcean Group Holding AS, announced it had been awarded a trenching contract by Subsea 7 on the Chevron-operated Gorgon Project in Australia.
DeepOcean will be responsible for the project management, engineering and associated trenching works of approximately 70 kilometres of main umbilical for the Gorgon and Jansz-Io field developments.? For this work scope, DeepOcean will utilise the T1 trenching spread to be mobilised on to a Subsea 7 provided vessel. Offshore works are scheduled to commence early 2013.
Tony Stokes, Director of Asia Pacific for DeepOcean, states, ?We look forward to a successful trenching campaign and are very pleased to cooperate with Subsea 7 on such a momentous project.? The award for the Gorgon Project demonstrates the demand for DeepOcean?s trenching technology building on our extensive track record with Subsea 7 globally and further complements our most recent trenching projects in Australia.?
The Gorgon Project is operated by an Australian subsidiary of Chevron and is a joint venture of the Australian subsidiaries of Chevron (47.3 percent), ExxonMobil (25 percent), Shell (25 percent), Osaka Gas (1.25 percent), Tokyo Gas (1 percent) and Chubu Electric Power (0.417 percent).
LNG World News Staff, December 24, 2012; Image: Chevron
Source: http://www.lngworldnews.com/deepocean-scores-gorgon-trenching-contract-in-australia/
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Paleo-ocean chemistry: New data challenge old views about evolution of early life
Dec. 23, 2012 ? A research team led by biogeochemists at the University of California, Riverside has tested a popular hypothesis in paleo-ocean chemistry, and proved it false.
The fossil record indicates that eukaryotes -- single-celled and multicellular organisms with more complex cellular structures compared to prokaryotes, such as bacteria -- show limited morphological and functional diversity before 800-600 million years ago. Many researchers attribute the delayed diversification and proliferation of eukaryotes, which culminated in the appearance of complex animals about 600 million years ago, to very low levels of the trace metal zinc in seawater.
As it is for humans, zinc is essential for a wide range of basic cellular processes. Zinc-binding proteins, primarily located in the cell nucleus, are involved in the regulation of gene transcription.
Eukaryotes have increasingly incorporated zinc-binding structures during the last third of their evolutionary history and still employ both early- and late-evolving zinc-binding protein structures. Zinc is, therefore, of particular importance to eukaryotic organisms. And so it is not a stretch to blame the 1-2-billion-year delay in the diversification of eukaryotes on low bioavailability of this trace metal.
But after analyzing marine black shale samples from North America, Africa, Australia, Asia and Europe, ranging in age from 2.7 billion years to 580 million years old, the researchers found that the shales reflect high seawater zinc availability and that zinc concentrations during the Proterozoic (2.5 billion to 542 million years ago) were similar to modern concentrations. Zinc, the researchers posit, was never biolimiting.
Study results appear online Dec. 23 in Nature Geoscience.
"We argue that the concentration of zinc in ancient marine black shales is directly related to the concentrations of zinc in seawater and show that zinc is abundant in these rocks throughout Earth's history," said Clint Scott, the first author of the research paper and a former UC Riverside graduate student. "We found no evidence for zinc biolimitation in seawater."
Scott, now a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, explained that the connection between zinc limitation and the evolution of eukaryotes was based largely on the hypothesis that Proterozoic oceans were broadly sulfidic. Under broadly sulfidic conditions, zinc should have been scarce because it would have rapidly precipitated in the oceans, he explained.
"However, a 2011 research paper in Nature also published by our group at UCR demonstrated that Proterozoic oceans were more likely broadly ferruginous -- that is, low in oxygen and iron-rich -- and that sulfidic conditions were more restricted than previously thought," said Scott, who performed the research in the lab of Timothy Lyons, a professor of biogeochemistry and the principal investigator of the research project.
The research team argues that ferruginous deep oceans, combined with large hydrothermal fluxes of zinc via volcanic activity on the seafloor, maintained high levels of dissolved zinc throughout the oceans and provided a relatively stable marine reservoir of the trace metal over the past 2.7 billion years.
"The key challenge in understanding the early evolution of life is recognizing the environmental conditions under which that life first appeared and diversified," Lyons said. "We have taken a very direct approach that specifically tracks the availability of essential micronutrients, and, to our surprise, zinc supplies in ancient seawater were much higher and less variable than previously imagined.
"We can imagine for the first time," he quipped, "that zinc supplements were not on the shopping lists of our early eukaryotic ancestors, and so we better find another reason to explain the mysterious delay in their rise in the ocean."
Scott, who graduated with a doctoral degree in geological sciences from UCR in 2009, and Lyons were joined in the study by Noah J. Planavsky, a former UCR graduate student in Lyons' lab; Chris L. Dupont at the J. Craig Venter Institute, La Jolla, Calif.; Brian Kendall and Ariel D. Anbar at Arizona State University; Benjamin C. Gill at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and also a former member of the Lyons lab; Leslie J. Robbins and Kurt O. Konhauser at the University of Alberta, Canada; Kathryn F. Husband and Simon W. Poulton at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom; Gail L. Arnold at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Germany; Boswell A. Wing at McGill University, Canada; and Andrey Bekker at the University of Manitoba, Canada.
The idea for the study was a direct consequence of the 2011 Nature paper by Planavsky, Scott, Lyons and others that challenged the hypothesis of broadly sulfidic oceans.
The international collaboration received funding for the study from numerous sources. In the U.S., funding came from the National Science Foundation, the NASA Astrobiology Institute and the Agouron Institute.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of California - Riverside. The original article was written by Iqbal Pittalwala.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Clint Scott, Noah J. Planavsky, Chris L. Dupont, Brian Kendall, Benjamin C. Gill, Leslie J. Robbins, Kathryn F. Husband, Gail L. Arnold, Boswell A. Wing, Simon W. Poulton, Andrey Bekker, Ariel D. Anbar, Kurt O. Konhauser, Timothy W. Lyons. Bioavailability of zinc in marine systems through time. Nature Geoscience, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/ngeo1679
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/DC5qaP7AZPY/121223152736.htm
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