IMF managing director Christine Lagarde says she hopes that 2012 will be a year of healing for Europe. The euro partners have to agree on more, says Lagarde, who adds the IMF needs an additional $500 billion in lending capacity to build a stronger fire...
Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/cnbc/46099532/
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A Second Take on Meeting the Press: From an up-close look at Rachel Maddow's sneakers to an in-depth look at Jon Krakauer's latest book ? it's all fair game in our "Meet the Press: Take Two" web extra. Log on Sundays to see David Gregory's post-show conversations with leading newsmakers, authors and roundtable guests. Videos are available on-demand by 12 p.m. ET on Sundays.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608/vp/46090664#46090664
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Windows and Mac OS X don't always get along so well when they're required to co-exist on the same drive, but that doesn't mean they can't. Hackintosh master tonymacx86 outlines the best practices for setting up a dual-boot environment on your hackintosh in this charming video. You'll get all the information in the video above, but here's an outline of the steps you should take for reference:
Pretty easy! For a more in-depth look at the process, while also throwing Linux into the mix, check out our triple-booting guide.
tonymacx86 Public Service Announcement: Dual Booting | tonymacx86 Blog
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Partial map of the Internet based on the January 15, 2005 data found on opte.org. Each line is drawn between two nodes, representing two IP addresses. The length of the lines are indicative of the delay between those two nodes. View full size image
Image: Creative Commons | The Opte Project
The raging battle over SOPA and PIPA, the proposed anti-piracy laws, is looking more and more likely to end in favor of Internet freedom ? but it won't be the last battle of its kind. Although, ethereal as it is, the Internet seems destined to survive in some form or another, experts warn that there are many threats to its status quo existence, and there is much about it that could be ruined or lost.
Physical destruction
A vast behemoth that can route around outages and self-heal, the Internet has grown physically invulnerable to destruction by bombs, fires or natural disasters ? within countries, at least. It's "very richly interconnected," said David Clark, a computer scientist at MIT who was a leader in the development of the Internet during the 1970s. "You would have to work real hard to find a small number of places where you could seriously disrupt connectivity." On 9/11, for example, the destruction of the major switching center in south Manhattan disrupted service locally. But service was restored about 15 minutes later when the center "healed" as the built-in protocols routed users and information around the outage.
However, while it's essentially impossible to cripple connectivity internally in a country, Clark said it is conceivable that one country could block another's access to its share of the Internet cloud; this could be done by severing the actual cables that carry Internet data between the two countries. Thousands of miles of undersea fiber-optic cables that convey data from continent to continent rise out of the ocean in only a few dozen locations, branching out from those hubs to connect to millions of computers. But if someone were to blow up one of these hubs ? the station in Miami, for example, which handles some 90 percent of the Internet traffic between North America and Latin America ? the Internet connection between the two would be severely hampered until the infrastructure was repaired.
Such a move would be "an act of cyberwar," Clark told Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience.
Content cache
Even an extreme disruption of international connectivity would not seriously threaten the survival of Web content itself. A "hard" copy of most data is stored in nonvolatile memory, which sticks around with or without power, and whether you have Internet access to it or not. Furthermore, according to William Lehr, an MIT economist who studies the economics and regulatory policy of the Internet-infrastructure industries, the corporate data centers that harbor Web content ? everything from your emails to this article ? have sophisticated ways to back up and diversely store the data, including simply storing copies in multiple locations.
Google even stores cached copies of all Wikipedia pages; these were accessible on Jan. 18 when Wikipedia took its own versions of the pages offline in protest of SOPA and PIPA.
This diversified storage plan keeps the content itself safe, but it also offers some protection against loss of access to any one copy of the data in the event of a cyberwar. For example, if power were cut to a server, you may be unable to reach a website on its home server, but you mayfind a cached version of the content stored on another, accessible server. Or, "If you wanted data that was not available from a server in country X, you may be able to get substantively the same data from a server in country Y," Lehr said.
Internet arms race
The redundancy of so much online content and of connectivity routes makes the Internet resilient to physical attacks, but a much more serious threat to its status quo existence is government regulation or censorship. In the early days of Egypt's Arab Spring uprising, the government of Hosni Mubarak attempted to shut down the country's Internet in order to cripple protesters' ability to organize; it did this by ordering the state-controlled Internet Service Provider (ISP), which grants Internet access to customers, to cut service.
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=3723b979a22b777edbfd647dc0143495
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TUESDAY, Jan. 17 (HealthDay News) -- A new blood test may hold promise as a means of early detection and diagnosis for often deadly pancreatic cancers.
Reporting Tuesday at the annual Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium in San Francisco, researchers said the test, which measures levels of a protein known as PAM4, was able to identify two-thirds of patients who had pancreatic cancer at an early stage of their disease.
Early pancreatic tumors typically fly under the radar, causing no symptoms and going undetected until they have spread. This partially accounts for the dismal prognosis faced by most people diagnosed with the illness.
That's why any means of spotting these cancers early would be critical. According to the researchers, PAM4 is a protein that is present in normal cells but is greatly elevated in cancerous ones.
"When a person gets cancer, this protein spills into the bloodstream," explained Dr. Igor Astsaturov, an assistant professor of medical oncology at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. Astsaturov, who was not involved with the study, said the results were "certainly welcome news."
When the researchers combined PAM4 with another test, CA19-9, which is already approved to monitor pancreatic cancer during treatment, the combination showed even stronger results and correctly identified 85 percent of patients with pancreatic ductal adenomcarcinoma (PDAC), by far the most common form of pancreatic cancer.
More study of PAM4 may even point to possible targets for therapy, the authors stated.
"For providers of care for patients with pancreatic cancer, hampered by their inability to readily detect these cancers in some cases, especially in earlier stages, this shows tremendous promise that blood-based assay can add to our ability to diagnose pancreatic cancer at an earlier stage, thereby impacting patients lives," said Dr. Morton S. Kahlenberg, a gastrointestinal cancers expert with the American Society of Clinical Oncology and moderator of a Tuesday press briefing on the findings.
In previous research by the same group of authors, the PAM4 test was able to identify 82 percent of patients with PDAC. That study included about 80 participants, said study author David V. Gold, director of laboratory administration and a senior member with Garden State Cancer Center in Morris Plains, N.J.
The current study updates those results by including blood samples from almost 300 people previously diagnosed with PDAC, 99 with other types of cancer, 126 with benign pancreatic disease and 79 healthy controls.
Meanwhile, the test had relatively few false positives, mistakenly identifying only 19 percent of benign pancreatic disease patients and 23 percent of chronic pancreatitis patients.
The tests did not appear to be helpful in finding other forms of pancreatic cancer, the researchers stressed.
A second abstract being presented at the symposium also demonstrated the potential utility of these types of diagnostic "biomarkers," this time in identifying which people with Barrett's esophagus are more likely to develop esophageal cancer.
Barrett's esophagus involves changes to the esophageal lining, which sometimes continues into cancer. People with long-term gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) are at particular risk.
Right now, doctors use endoscopy and standard biopsies along the length of the esophagus to monitor for cancer However, this isn't able to sort out tiny changes that separate those at very high risk for cancer from those at much lesser risk.
In this study, "optical biomarkers," which combine a special microscope with a broad-band white-light source, was able to sort out three characteristics of the cell nucleus that signaled a person was at risk for cancer.
In 60 patients with Barrett's esophagus, the biomarkers were able to correctly identify 89 cases of cancer and 76 percent of those without cancer.
If these biomarkers were affirmed in future studies, it would preclude the need for repeated biopsies in people with Barrett's, the authors said.
Data presented at medical meetings is typically considered preliminary until published in peer-reviewed medical journals.
More information
Find out more about pancreatic cancer at the U.S. National Cancer Institute.
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Reporting from Seattle?
In a new package of policies criticized even by some hunters, the Alaska Board of Game on Tuesday opened the door to aerial gunning of bears by state wildlife officials. It also debated a measure that would allow more widespread snaring of bears ? including grizzlies, which are officially considered threatened across most of the U.S.The controversial "intensive management" moves are the latest in a series of increasingly aggressive control methods targeting bears and wolves in Alaska. In some parts of the state, wolf pups can be gassed in their dens, bear cubs and sows can be hunted, and wolves shot from helicopters.
The board deferred until March the decision on whether to permit baiting and snaring of black bears and grizzlies in additional areas, a practice utilized for the last four years as part of a pilot project in central Alaska.
But it removed the historical blanket prohibition against aerial hunting of bears and specifically authorized state game agents to begin helicopter and fixed-wing hunting of bears along the Dalton Highway corridor in the high Arctic, where a precarious population of musk oxen has been threatened by predators.
"That potentially does open up that [aerial] method for other places as well ? to take bears with aerial shooting and land-and-shoot," David James, Region 3 supervisor for the state Department of Fish and Game's Division of Wildlife Conservation, said in an interview. "It would no longer be illegal to do that anywhere else in the state."
The stepped-up measures are designed to appease long-standing concerns among a broad swath of Alaskans about declining populations of moose and caribou, upon which much of rural Alaska depends for food.
The National Park Service is arguing forcefully ? and so far unsuccessfully ? that techniques such as snaring, baiting, trapping and using artificial lights to hunt down bears in their dens should not be used on bears and wolves in the 19 million acres of federal wildlife refuges in Alaska.
"In this larger war on bears and wolves, the Board of Game has created a number of hunting methods which we find objectionable," said Jim Stratton, Alaska director for the National Parks Conservation Assn. "It's all being done to manipulate the population of predators, to reduce them so you can grow more moose and caribou, and that is in direct conflict with how the park service is supposed to manage their land. They have a management policy which specifically says you don't manipulate the population of one species to benefit the hunting of another."
Opponents have also raised humanitarian concerns, arguing that methods such as snaring often leave bears to writhe in distress for long periods before they are finally shot.
"I personally disagree with the snaring of the bear," said Terry Holliday, president of the state chapter of Safari Club International, one of Alaska's premier hunting organizations ? though he said he supported reducing predators to boost game populations.
"If they want a lower bear population, they can do it in different ways," he said. "It's not humane. You shoot something, you kill it. If it's properly done, it's bang, and it's over, with the animal not suffering. But when you go out and you start snaring animals and whoever's doing it, say, the weather's bad and you can't get back for several days, here's a bear sitting there in a snare with a bucket on its foot."
Critics of the new measures, including Democratic former Gov. Tony Knowles, say they're in conflict with the wildlife management advice of most scientists. Over-hunting by humans, including that by trophy hunters from outside Alaska, is responsible for much of the decline in moose and caribou, they contend.
But in some ways, the Department of Fish and Game has its hands tied. The Alaska Legislature in 1994 passed an unusual law directing state officials to adopt an "intensive management" policy across crucial parts of the state. The policy was aimed at maximizing the production of human food species ? if necessary, at the expense of bears, wolves and other predators.
The last three administrations, all Republican, have enthusiastically implemented the directive. The Board of Game, appointed by the governor and dominated by hunting advocates, has steadily increased the menu of options available to target predators. Many were strongly pushed by the state's recent wildlife conservation director, Corey Rossi, a friend of former Gov. Sarah Palin's family.
Rossi resigned last week after facing criminal charges alleging that he filed false state reports in connection with a black bear hunt in 2008.
State game officials have argued for even stronger tactics against predators because they say traditional bear hunts ? which often target large males ? fail to eliminate the females and cubs that they say must be eradicated if there are to be meaningful declines in predator populations.
Opponents of the policies say indiscriminate methods such as snaring can quickly push bear populations ? abundant now ? into steep decline, especially since grizzlies are so slow to reproduce.
"In a state once known for its scientific approach to wildlife management, we have entered a time tunnel back to the times of the Wild West," said Valerie Connor, conservation director for the Alaska Center for the Environment.
The state's 4-year-old pilot project permits baiting and snaring of bears in an area about 40 miles across Cook Inlet from Anchorage. A year ago, that was expanded to include snaring of grizzly bears.
Bruce Dale, Region 4 wildlife conservation supervisor, said the technique was used in Quebec, Canada; Maine; and other locations in which researchers want to examine or collar bears. A total of 24 grizzlies were killed at the snares near Anchorage last year; 93 were killed by hunters without snares. The black bear snare total was 56, with 263 otherwise shot.
"Some people would just like to have this as a legal method to take bears," Dale said of the proposal to expand legal snaring and aerial gunning across about 10,000 square miles of the Kuskokwim River watershed.
State wildlife agents may have to do some of the removals themselves if hunters aren't lured by the expanding opportunities.
"We're still trying to determine whether these new legal methods to reduce bear populations [are] going to be effective enough to increase moose calf survival," Dale said. "Because there's really limited interest in hunting bears among residents today."
kim.murphy@latimes.com
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Original Oldboy helmer Chan-wook Park is making his U.S. directorial debut with Stoker, which is due to hit theaters before the end of 2012. He will also lend a helping hand to fellow Korean filmmaker Joon-ho Bong on the latter?s own first English-language project, titled Snow Piercer (which Park will produce).
Captain America himself, Chris Evans, is set to headline the movie, which is based on Bong?s screenplay. Evans looks to be in good company, seeing how the likes of award-winners Jamie Bell and Tilda Swinton are currently in the midst of negotiations to co-headline Bong?s latest cinematic tale.
Bong spoke to Collider (all the way back in 2009) about Snow Piercer, which he says is based on a French graphic novel titled ?Le Transperceneige.? Variety has also confirmed that the apocalyptic story takes place ?in a new ice age? and revolves around a pack of survivors who are forced to live together on a train. However, even with the world?s end upon them, differences in class and social standing still separate the main characters, making it all the more difficult for them to peacefully co-exist with their fellow passengers.That sounds like the promising setup for a darker character study from Bong, who?s best known in the States for his tongue-in-cheek cult classic monster horror flick, The Host.?His status as a director has only improved since that 2006 release, thanks to his acclaimed 2009 crime drama Mother, so it?s no surprise that Bong?s first foray into U.S. filmmaking is attracting some big name talent (much like Park?s Stoker?has).
Bong's 'The Host' weaves together horror-comedy with social commentary
Evans, with this move, continues to balance out his Marvel comic book blockbuster roles with more personal indie titles, as he did in 2011 with appearances in The First Avenger and the drug drama Puncture ? and will do so again the near future, with roles in The Avengers, The Iceman, and now Snow Piercer. It?s a smart strategy, on Evan?s part ? one that should also allow him to avoid running in circles as an actor (re: end up being typecast).
Bell actually takes a similar approach to selecting his roles as Evans, seeing how the former also likes to balance out parts in big-budget fare such as King Kong and The Adventures of Tintin with roles in more personable productions like?Retreat and Jane Eyre. Swinton, of course, generally sticks to non-mainstream parts (her role in the Chronicles of Narnia movies aside) as evidenced by her much-buzzed-about recent turn in We Need to Talk About Kevin and an upcoming role in Wes Anderson?s Moonrise Kingdom.
That?s all to say: there?s an excellent cast being assembled for Bong?s?Snow Piercer, which is tentatively expected to begin principal photography by March 2012 ? so, dedicated movie geeks, you may want to keep an eye out for this one.
Source: Collider,?Variety
Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1924334/news/1924334/
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WASHINGTON ? Kevin Martin scored 25 points, Samuel Dalembert added 20 and the Houston Rockets broke away in the third quarter Monday to beat John Wall and the Washington Wizards 114-106.
Wall scored a career-high 38 points on 13 of 22 shooting. He began the game making under 35 percent this season.
Luis Scola had 18 and Kyle Lowry had 16 for the Rockets in their highest-scoring game of the season.
Houston outscored the Wizards 25-6 during an eight-minute stretch in the third quarter. Dalembert hit all six of his shots in the period.
The Rockets made 25 of 26 foul shots in winning their third straight game.
Washington fell to 1-12 despite its highest point total of the season. Jordan Crawford had 17 points.
After the Rockets took a 19-point lead late in the third quarter, Washington closed to 101-96 on Wall's jumper with 4:47 to play. Wall scored 18 in the fourth quarter.
Crawford ended the first quarter with a 38-foot 3-point shot to give Washington a 28-27 lead. In the second quarter, Houston went on a 17-4 run to take a 52-44 lead with 3:32 remaining in the second quarter.
JaVale McGee scored the first two baskets of the second half to tie it at 58. That's when Houston pulled away, making it 83-64 with 3:56 left in the third quarter. One of the few Wizards' highlights came when McGee tossed the ball off the backboard during a breakaway and dunked.
After that dunk, which cut Houston's lead to 64-60, the Rockets outscored Washington 19-4.
NOTES: Washington F Andray Blatche, who missed three games with a sprained right shoulder, returned and had 11 points and 12 rebounds. Blatche and Wall were assessed with technical fouls within a minute in the third quarter. ... Wizards F Rashard Lewis was out with sore knees. ... Rockets swingman Courtney Lee missed his eighth straight game with a strained right calf. ... Houston coach Kevin McHale fired Washington's Flip Saunders when he was general manager of the Minnesota Timberwolves in February 2005. It was their first on-court meeting as NBA coaches. ... The Rockets have held double-digit leads in their last six games. Last year, they never had double-digit leads in more than five straight.
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COMMENTARY | Jon Huntsman has decided to suspend his candidacy for the Republican nomination, according to The Ticket. As a political consultant, I see Huntsman's super PAC as a wild card moving forward. He has a few options as to what to do with the money and could use it to make the future more interesting for Mitt Romney or for himself.
The Washington Post has pointed out the ruling that allows candidates without a political post taking over their own super PAC. Since Huntsman is not serving in government, he would be able to take over the money in the account or could give more direct influence on how the money can be used in the future.
Of course, there is the chance Huntsman's super PAC is dry. I would be surprised by this, but it is a potential reason why he would drop out of the race. My guess, though, is a realization coming to the candidate and his staff that their ability to raise funds could not match the speed in which it would need to be spent to improve his standings in the field.
There are two intelligent uses for Huntsman's super PAC in the near future. First, I could see the candidate using some of the money to support Romney. This would take a step in helping Romney knock the other candidates down a step and could open a door for Huntsman in the future. If Romney wins the election in November, a cabinet position might be out of the question for a particular former candidate who helped out.
The second idea would be to hold onto the money for a future run. He could spend money to keep him in the public eye or he might bank the money and watch it grow until the next time he might have a chance at running. Either way, Huntsman would have a leg up on other candidates in the future since his base account money should be ahead of theirs. This could set up a potential early onslaught by the former ambassador.
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COMMENTARY | President Barack Obama raised more than $200 million for his re-election campaign in 2011 and plans to raise more than the $750 million he spent in 2008 for his fall campaign against the Republican nominee. At some point, Americans have to step back and say "That's just crazy."
Every modern president seems to raise the bar on fundraising by trumping whatever record held up until that point. Reuters reported the Obama campaign is attempting to spread a campaign contributor program that has been very successful in attracting maximum contributors. A major incentive to becoming a maximum contributor (by donating $5,000 to the campaign) is the access it gives to the president and his advisers.
Obama certainly changed that game with a record amount in 2008. I'm not sure what the answer to this new level of campaign spending insanity is, but most intelligent people would agree that spending close to $1 billion on a presidential race is ridiculous, even for a country as large as the U.S.
Maybe the answer is to shorten the campaign period, but that tends to empower the incumbent. Requiring each campaign to spend the same amount further empowers an incumbent, as they have ready access to media -- something a challenger may not possess. Public financing of presidential campaigns just seems un-American. And mandatory media access would never work in a country where television markets widely differ from region to region.
It's for those very reasons that the fundraising process becomes more ingenious with every electoral cycle and the money raised skyrockets as well. Obama's staffers have proven themselves to be very proficient at fundraising for the president. In fact, they are the best ever. So until we devise a new system, expect every candidate to challenge the record fundraising of the previous election. If Mitt Romney is the GOP nominee -- and that appears more likely every day -- he will be able to give Obama's fundraising a better challenge than John McCain did in the last contest.
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Penn State University President Rodney Erickson speaks during a town hall meeting with alumni Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012, in King of Prussia, Pa. Erickson answered questions from alumni unhappy about how the school handled a child sex abuse scandal, the firing of longtime football coach Joe Paterno and a lack of transparency over the case. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Penn State University President Rodney Erickson speaks during a town hall meeting with alumni Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012, in King of Prussia, Pa. Erickson answered questions from alumni unhappy about how the school handled a child sex abuse scandal, the firing of longtime football coach Joe Paterno and a lack of transparency over the case. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Penn State University President Rodney Erickson speaks during a town hall meeting with alumni Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012, in King of Prussia, Pa. Erickson answered questions from alumni unhappy about how the school handled a child sex abuse scandal, the firing of longtime football coach Joe Paterno and a lack of transparency over the case. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Penn State University President Rodney Erickson, right, speaks with a member of the audience before a town hall meeting with alumni Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012, in King of Prussia, Pa. Erickson answered questions from alumni unhappy about how the school handled a child sex abuse scandal, the firing of longtime football coach Joe Paterno and a lack of transparency over the case. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Penn State University President Rodney Erickson speaks during a town hall meeting with alumni Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012, in King of Prussia, Pa. Erickson answered questions from alumni unhappy about how the school handled a child sex abuse scandal, the firing of longtime football coach Joe Paterno and a lack of transparency over the case. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Penn State University President Rodney Erickson speaks during a town hall meeting with alumni Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012, in King of Prussia, Pa. Erickson answered questions from alumni unhappy about how the school handled a child sex abuse scandal, the firing of longtime football coach Joe Paterno and a lack of transparency over the case. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa. (AP) ? Penn State University's president told alumni that the school's crisis can be blamed on one person: former football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. But many alumni are still grieving over the firing of longtime football coach Joe Paterno.
In a sometimes heated 90-minute exchange Thursday night at a hotel near Philadelphia, university president Rodney Erickson laid the blame for the school's crisis on Sandusky.
"It grieves me very much when I hear people say 'the Penn State scandal.' This is not Penn State. This is 'the Sandusky scandal,'" he said. "We're not going to let what one individual did destroy the reputation of this university."
The 650 people attending the second of three alumni sessions, however, didn't receive his remarks well.
"It's a shroud of secrecy still," said Joseph Weiss of the Class of 1988. "You said it's not a Penn State scandal, but it is, because perception is reality."
Erickson will be in New York on Friday for the final alumni town hall event aimed at repairing the school's image following the child molestation charges filed against Sandusky, a retired defensive coordinator. He may not have an easy time of it if his previous stops in Pittsburgh and suburban Philadelphia are any indication.
Most of the questions from alumni Thursday concerned Paterno, and the deep pain his firing has caused them. Several asked if Erickson plans to apologize to Paterno.
Erickson said it was not his place, since the board had fired Paterno. He frequently reminded the audience that he reports to the board, and can't tell them what to do.
The response elicited groans and heckling at times. But several alumni thanked Erickson for holding the sessions, when board members have not.
"They seem to be hiding under a rock someplace," said John Lagana, 74, of Chester Springs, Class of '62. "I'm a big Joe Pa fan, and I think he was treated unjustly."
Many alumni called for the board to resign, or worried about their diplomas being tarnished. Several said they were astonished that more wasn't done to manage the looming crisis during the grand jury investigation.
The 67-year-old Sandusky is charged with sexually abusing 10 boys over a 15-year period. He maintains his innocence and remains out on $250,000 bail while awaiting trial.
Two Penn State administrators are facing charges they lied to a grand jury investigating Sandusky and failed to properly report suspected child abuse. Gary Schultz, a former vice president, and Tim Curley, the athletic director, have denied the allegations and await trial.
Retired journalist Francine Cheeks, of Philadelphia, said she was surprised at the "unrelenting" focus on Paterno.
"Sue and Joe Paterno are not the primary victims in this whole scheme," said Cheeks, Class of 1965. "It's children whose lives have been affected, and maybe destroyed, allegedly."
Her college roommate, Marcia Hannah, of Wayne, fears the worst isn't over for Penn State. She said the school wasn't prepared for the media crush that followed the arrest of Sandusky and the school officials, and doubts they're preparing now for their trials.
"They're going to get buried again," she said. "This university is not taking care of itself."
Former Penn State and pro football star Franco Harris scheduled a competing event at the King of Prussia hotel after broad dissatisfaction with Erickson's first talk in Pittsburgh on Wednesday.
But even some critics say Erickson shouldn't be getting all the blame for what many view as a floundering public relations effort.
A 2002 alumnus, Ryan Bagwell, who's seeking a trustee seat in voting that will start next week, said Erickson "takes his marching orders from the Board of Trustees," which has "sent him out on this three-day spree."
"We want to hear from the trustees," Bagwell said. "We want them to explain why they made the decisions they did."
Two cousins who attended Thursday night's alumni meeting said they aren't sure the current trustees are the right people to move the university forward.
John Cohrac, a Class of 1990 graduate from Pottstown, said he hoped to ask Erickson why there hasn't been the transparency he promised. He and Mike Cohrac, a Class of 1999 graduate from Phoenixville, said they would still support the school's football program but might withhold donations to the academic side until they get answers from the trustees about how they handled the sex abuse scandal.
Erickson has said openness and communication are his guiding principles and the school "will do better in the future."
The chairman and vice chairman of the Board of Trustees released a statement Thursday evening responding to questions raised at the Pittsburgh meeting, including about the firing of Paterno. Paterno, they said, was removed in November instead of being allowed to retire after the season because of "extraordinary circumstances."
"The details of his retirement are being worked out and will be made public when they are finalized," said the statement from Chairman Steve Garban and Vice Chairman John Surma. "Generally speaking, the University intends to honor the terms of his employment contract and is treating him financially as if he had retired at the end of the 2011 football season."
Representatives for the Paterno family said Thursday the trustees' statement came as a surprise.
Paterno's son Scott Paterno responded it was becoming apparent that the coach's firing Nov. 9, "with no notice or hearing, was not handled well."
The fired coach "strongly believed everyone involved is entitled to due process," his son said in a statement, adding that his parents still were "unwavering in their loyalty and dedication to Penn State."
Paterno has described the scandal as one of the great sorrows of his life and has said that in hindsight he wishes he had done more after allegations against Sandusky were raised.
While many alumni are unhappy about the way the school fired Paterno, some said there were no good options in the situation.
"I don't think there was any graceful way to handle that problem," said John Burness, a former senior vice president of public affairs for Cornell University, Duke University and the University of Illinois.
Harris, who played for Paterno from 1968 to 1971 before helping the Pittsburgh Steelers win four Super Bowls, castigated the Board of Trustees for showing "no courage" by firing Paterno. Harris stepped down as chairman of the Pittsburgh Promise, a scholarship foundation, after Mayor Luke Ravenstahl complained about the statements, but he was reinstated in December.
Burness also said that people who are seeking quick changes to the Penn State Board of Trustees forget there's a reason it's difficult to make such changes.
"It isn't a simple thing to do, and it shouldn't be a simple thing to do," he said, since a key goal is for trustees to have a high degree of independence.
___
Associated Press writers Kevin Begos in Pittsburgh and Genaro C. Armas in State College contributed to this report
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PARIS ? France's prime minister said Saturday his country will push ahead with cost-cutting measures after its top-tier debt rating was downgraded, a blow with repercussions across financially beleaguered Europe.
Other European countries from Austria to Cyprus assailed ratings agency Standard & Poor's after a raft of downgrades Friday night that renewed questions about the power such agencies wield. The move may make it more expensive for struggling countries to borrow money, reduce debts and avoid a new recession.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said downgrades of nine eurozone countries underline the fact that Europe has a "long road" ahead to win back investors' confidence. Her own country, the engine of Europe's economy, was not downgraded.
Merkel and French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said the downgrades should push European countries to quickly implement a planned pact to strengthen budget discipline. Germany and France have piloted rescue efforts for other eurozone countries as the continent has been swept up in crisis after crisis over the past two years.
Fillon struck a somber, measured tone when responding Saturday to the downgrade, which was particularly wounding to France's self-image and could hurt bailout efforts. France is central to those efforts, and the downgrade, by pushing up its own borrowing costs, could make it harder for France to help others.
Fillon said the downgrade confirmed his conservative government's plans for more reforms to bring down debts, despite worries that more austerity measures could suffocate growth.
He said the government wouldn't adjust the budget yet, saying it had been devised with an assumption of higher borrowing costs. S&P had warned 15 European nations in December that they were at risk for a downgrade.
The downgrade, three months before France holds presidential elections, was "an alert that should not be dramatized any more than it should be underestimated," he said.
Standard & Poor's stripped France of its coveted AAA status, knocking it down one notch to AA+. It dropped Italy even lower. Germany retained its top-notch rating, but Portugal's debt was consigned to junk.
Cyprus' finance minister called Standard & Poor's two-notch downgrade of his eurozone country to junk status "arbitrary and unfounded."
Kikis Kazamias said on Saturday that the agency ignored the island's deficit-cutting measures as well as the discovery of significant offshore natural gas deposits. He said the action illustrates once more how credit ratings agencies exacerbate Europe's debt crisis.
Austria's chancellor criticized S&P's decision to strip his country of the top AAA rating, and noted that his coalition government is working on an austerity package.
Werner Faymann wrote on his Facebook page that "Austria's economic data remain very good." He added that the decision showed "that Austria must become more independent from the financial markets."
The downgrade brought a downbeat end to a mildly encouraging week for Europe's heavily indebted nations and served as a reminder that the 17-country eurozone faces another tough year.
France's downgrade to AA+ lowers it to the level of U.S. long-term debt, which S&P downgraded last summer.
Stocks fell Friday as downgrade rumors reached the trading floors of Europe and the United States. But the declines were nothing like the wrenching swings of last summer and fall.
Speaking to fellow conservatives in the northern German city of Kiel, Merkel stressed the importance of a new treaty enshrining tougher fiscal rules. Most European Union leaders agreed in early December to draw up the pact.
"We are now called upon ... to implement quickly the fiscal pact and implement it decisively ? without trying to water it down everywhere," Merkel said.
The chancellor sought to allay concerns that the downgrade of France, the 17-nation eurozone's No. 2 economy after Germany, would complicate the work of the bloc's temporary rescue fund, the euro440 billion ($560 billion) European Financial Stability Facility. However, she did underline the urgency of putting its permanent successor, the European Stability Mechanism, in place quickly.
France's presidential elections could complicate Europe's internal discussions. President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has been at the heart of the debate, is highly unpopular and far from certain of winning a second term.
The man who tops polls ahead of the April and May elections, Socialist Francois Hollande, said the downgrade was a punishment for conservative Sarkozy's policies. He said Saturday that austerity measures were stifling growth and France's competitiveness.
Elie Cohen, economist with France's National Center for Scientific Research, said the Standard & Poor's decision casts doubt on Sarkozy's choices and European leaders' ability to handle the crisis.
"From the moment France was downgraded, it boomerangs on (Sarkozy's) own economic record, and it becomes one factor in the electoral battle," Cohen told AP Television News. Cohen said France's economic standing had been weakening for a long time, and the downgrade was overdue.
___
Geir Moulson in Berlin, Cecile Brisson and Jeffrey Schaeffer in Paris and Menelaos Hadjicostis in Nicosia, Cyprus, contributed to this report.
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ScienceDaily (Jan. 12, 2012) ? Scientists have long seen evidence of social behavior among many species of animals, both on the earth and in the sea. Dolphins frolic together, lions live in packs, and hornets construct nests that can house a large number of the insects. And, right under our feet, it appears that nematodes -- also known as roundworms -- are having their own little gatherings in the soil. Until recently, it was unknown how the worms communicate to one another when it's time to come together. Now, however, researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Boyce Thompson Institute at Cornell University have identified, for the first time, the chemical signals that promote aggregation.
"We now have an expanded view of a very fundamental type of communication, which is recognizing other members of the same species and getting together with them," says Jagan Srinivasan, a senior research fellow in biology at Caltech and lead author of the study detailing this process, which was published in the January issue of PLoS Biology.
The researchers looked at the lab-friendly Caenorhabditis elegans worm -- a relatively safe version of the phylum, whose parasitic cousins include hookworms, whipworms, and trichinas, which cause trichinosis -- to gather data.
According to Paul Sternberg, Thomas Hunt Morgan Professor of Biology at Caltech and a corresponding author on the paper, nearly 25 percent of the world's human population is infected with some type of parasitic nematode; animals and plants can fall prey to the nasty worms, too. Since nematode parasites live inside a host and attack it internally, knowing how the worms communicate via chemicals could be very important to the fields of biomedicine and agriculture.
"One of the ways to eradicate them would be to have some sort of a chemical that can attract them in order to kill them more efficiently," explains Srinivasan.
Sternberg and Srinivasan are not new to the idea of chemical signaling among C. elegans. In 2008, their research showed how the worms secrete chemicals as a sexual attractant. This time, they worked to find chemical cues that control the social behavior of aggregation. What they found is a complex "language," in which the worms combine different chemicals into compounds, building a molecular library of signals that regulate behavior. They did this by testing a previously identified family of chemicals in mutant worms -- made to not produce the chemicals on their own -- to measure the behavioral effects of the different chemical combinations.
"We're starting to get a hold on the chemical 'alphabet' that makes up these words, which have different meanings in different social contexts," says Srinivasan. "It's a modular code that tells us that within the physiology of the organism, there is a lot going on in terms of how the environment is interpreted and read out for social communication."
For example, one class of chemicals the researchers found encourages worm-to-worm company, while a different class of compounds being expressed at the same time keeps other worms away. This suggests that the worms release different amounts of each compound based on what each worm is trying to communicate. If the worm is starting a new colony, it probably just wants a certain number of worms around to find and share food -- too many and the colony may not thrive. However, if there is a big piece of fruit, the worm may call on a large group to help access the food source.
"The amazing thing here is that for one chemical, if it's modified even just a little bit, the meaning is changed," says Sternberg, who is also an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "That's what makes it more like a language. If I say a Chinese word, and my intonation is wrong, the word has a different meaning."
Next, the team will explore whether or not the same chemical compounds are made by other nematodes. They will also work to figure out how the worms' nervous system senses and sorts the different compounds.
"Understanding the worm's language is just a first step," says Srinivasan. "We hope that by learning more about how social recognition occurs in the worm nervous system, we can eventually provide insights into how the human brain encodes social information, too."
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? Is health-care relief finally in sight?
Health spending stabilized as a share of the nation's economy in 2010 after two back-to-back years of historically low growth, the government reported Monday.
Experts debated whether it's a fleeting consequence of the sluggish economy, or a real sign that cost controls by private employers and government at all levels are starting to work.
The answers will be vital for Medicare's sustainability, as well as for workplace coverage.
U.S. health care spending grew by 3.9 percent in 2010, reaching $2.6 trillion, according to the report by the Health and Human Services department.
That's an average of $8,402 per person ? far more than any other economically advanced country.
Still, the increases for 2010 and 2009 were the lowest measured in 51 years. And health care as a share of the economy leveled off at 17.9 percent, the first time in a decade there's been no growth.
The main reason for the slowdown was that Americans were more frugal in their use of health care, from postponing elective surgery to using generic drugs and thinking twice about that late-night visit to the emergency room.
"Although medical goods and services are generally viewed as necessities, the latest recession has had a dramatic effect on their utilization," said the report published in the journal Health Affairs. "Though the recession officially ended in 2009, its impact on the health care sector appears to have continued into 2010."
Independent economists issued conflicting assessments.
"I think it could signal slower growth in the future," said Ken Thorpe, professor of health policy at Emory University in Atlanta. "Any discussion about reducing the deficit is going to focus on how we reduce the growth in health-care costs. And employers are adopting more effective tools to keep putting downward pressure on health-care cost increases."
But his counterpart Len Nichols at George Mason University in Virginia said people are getting less medical care because too many have lost jobs and insurance, and they just can't afford to pay.
"The slowdown is mostly due to postponement of care, due to anticipated inability to pay," said Nichols. If he's right, that could mean costs will spike once the economy is on solid footing.
The report provided relief for a jittery White House facing a 2012 reelection campaign in which President Barack Obama's health care overhaul is a top target for Republicans.
The nonpartisan number crunchers at HHS found that the health care law barely contributed to cost increases in 2010 ? just one-tenth of 1 percentage point. Major provisions expanding coverage to more than 30 million uninsured don't take effect until 2014, well after the presidential election.
The federal government's share of the total health care tab ? another issue in this year's political debate ? grew to 29 percent in 2010, up from 23 percent as recently as 2007. Counting state and local spending, the overall government share stood at 45 percent of the total.
Medicare spending grew by 5 percent in 2010. That was slower growth than in 2009, due mainly to reductions in what the government paid private Medicare Advantage insurance plans. Medicaid spending increased by 7.2 percent, less than the 2009 rate because of fewer people covered by the program.
However, the main finding of the report was a continued slowdown in the use of services across major health-care categories, one its authors termed "dramatic." Higher copayments for those with private insurance are part of the reason.
Hospital care, which accounts for just over 30 percent of what Americans spend, grew more slowly because of a decline in a key measure of inpatient admissions, and slower growth in emergency room visits, outpatient appointments, and outpatient surgery.
Spending on doctor visits and related care ? about 20 percent of the total ? grew at a historically low rate of 2.5 percent, due to an overall drop in visits and a milder 2010 flu season. But spending on dental care increased faster than in 2009.
Prescription drugs, about 10 percent of overall spending, also saw a slower increase ? just 1.2 percent in 2010. That was not only due to the continuing shift to generic drugs, but also slower growth in the overall volume of medications that Americans took.
Will less health care hurt consumers?
That remains to be seen, but current evidence suggests it won't. Americans are no healthier than their counterparts in other developed countries, which spend far less. And research suggests that as much as 30 percent of tests and treatments for U.S. patients may be of little or no benefit.
The HHS experts refused to speculate about the implications of the slowdown, although their report stressed the connection to a weak economy. More may be known by the summer, when another team in the same HHS unit will update projections for future health care spending.
___
Online:
HHS report in Health Affairs: http://tinyurl.com/6nyuzrr
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