USSR and the USA. Batman and Joker. Christoph Waltz and... well, everyone. It's pretty tough to look at the world's best-known rivalries and exclude one of history's finest -- that being, of course, Sonic and Mario. The gritty battle between Nintendo and Sega gave fans on both sides plenty to converse about over the years, and one might say that the video game industry as a whole benefited from the back-and-forth. Now that Sega is a shell of its former self, though, the company's most iconic character is turning to its archrival in search of shelter. On the console side, Nintendo will be the exclusive home for Sonic games going forward, with the Wii U and 3DS set to become the homes for the next three titles -- details of which should be revealed "in the coming weeks." (Update: Looks as if Nintendo has outed a few more details. Sonic Lost World and Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games have been name-checked in particular.)
Meanwhile, Android users will be pleased to know that Sonic the Hedgehog was released today in the Google Play store. It's available for $2.99, while iOS users are also being granted a free update to coincide.
ST. LOUIS (AP) ? For the second straight time, the St. Louis Blues stunned the goalie that stoned everyone last spring.
Barret Jackman said his eyes were closed when his first career playoff goal sailed past Jonathan Quick and into the net with 50.6 seconds to go in a 2-1 victory Thursday night. It gave the Blues a 2-0 series lead against the defending Stanley Cup champion Los Angeles Kings.
"He probably didn't think I was going to shoot, the way my hands are," Jackman said. "The building erupted and it's a pretty good feeling."
Quick knows he's to blame for the Kings' predicament. He was often spectacular in Game 1, but spoiled it with a stickhandling gaffe that led to Alex Steen's short-handed overtime goal. Quick thought he'd glove the puck on Jackman's innocent-appearing wrist shot.
"I've got to stop that. I've got to stop that," said Quick, the 2012 Conn Smythe Trophy recipient. "It's my fault. Two games in a row. I've got to be better."
Jackman, a rugged, stay-at-home type who totaled three goals and 12 points in the regular season, joined a rush and scored off a pass from Chris Stewart.
"A great little floater he sent to the net," said teammate Patrik Berglund, who tied it earlier in the third period. "A great screen so he couldn't see it."
Berglund's deflection tied it early in the third period for St. Louis, which was swept by the Kings in the second round last season while getting outscored 15-6.
"We stole one there," said forward David Perron, who assisted on the first goal. "The biggest thing is to come back as soon as we can to Earth and get ready for Game 3."
Dustin Brown scored for the Kings, who'll try to rebound in Game 3 Saturday night.
"It's our own fault that we're in this position," defenseman Drew Doughty said. "We've been fully prepared for their game, fully prepared for what they're going to do against us, and we just haven't stepped up to the plate.
"Tonight was a better effort, but we were only good for two periods."
The Kings led 3-0 in every playoff series last year and are down 2-0 in a playoff series for the first time since 2002, when they lost in seven games to Colorado.
"It's four games to win a series, so we've just got to focus on the next one," Brown said. "We've got to take care of our home ice. That's it."
The Blues responded after coach Ken Hitchcock called a timeout with just under three minutes remaining. They have won eight in a row at home, allowing one goal in all eight games.
Brown lost his edge on a drive to the net and barreled into Brian Elliott midway in the third period, leaving both players shaken up a bit. Brown recovered quickly enough to stay on for the ensuing faceoff.
Berglund tied it at 3:44 of the third with his fourth career playoff goal, charging the net and having a rebound go off his skate and past Quick. He was skidding to a stop when Quick poke-checked a wrist shot by Alex Pietrangelo and it took less than a minute for the goal to be upheld on video review.
Jaden Schwartz lured Quick out of the net on a break-in a little over a minute later, but didn't get off a shot.
Quick was bent over in pain for several seconds during warm-ups after stopping a shot, then left the ice early. The goalie also spent most of the national anthem bent over as if he were an NFL offensive lineman, but then busily went to work scratching the crease with no evidence he was hurt.
Elliott was not made available to media after the game, leading to speculation he was injured, but Hitchcock said, "He's fine, no problem."
The Kings got off to a much better start in Game 2, carrying the play most of the first period. They needed just 6 seconds to convert on a 5-on-3 advantage for their first lead of the series, with Jackman whistled for interference on the heels of a high-sticking call on Ryan Reaves.
LA's strong play carried over to the second period, with Quick making a nice glove save against Steen on the Blues' lone shot on two power plays; Steen scored the Game 1 winner in overtime.
The Kings threatened on break-ins by Brown and Justin Williams. Brown, among the league leaders with eight power-play goals, then deflected Brad Richards' high wrist shot from the slot and the puck dropped to ice level and slid between Elliott's pads at 9:55. Richards had two goals and three assists during the Kings' three-game sweep of St. Louis in the regular season.
NOTES: Blues penalty killers had to stop just two chances in Game 1, although it would have been three if Steen hadn't pickpocketed Quick for the NHL's first short-handed winner in overtime since Fernando Pisani of Edmonton against Carolina in the 2006 Cup finals, and the first in franchise history. ... Blues did not sell out either of the first two games, with attendance of 18,681 for Game 2 about 1,000 shy of capacity. ... Brett Hull, the Blues' career leading goal scorer, was introduced to a huge ovation late in the second period.
The middle of the country is experiencing May snowfall records in what seems to be a never-ending winter. The Weather Channel's Mike Seidel reports.
By Ian Johnston, Staff Writer, NBC News
A rare May snowstorm that's hit the Plains and Upper Midwest was expected to continue into Friday and even Saturday in places, the National Weather Service said.
However, it added that the ?rather unusual weather pattern? was ?beginning to abate over the Upper Midwest.?
A number of winter storm advisories were in place early Friday for parts of Missouri, Montana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Wyoming, and Oklahoma.
The worst affected areas in the mainland U.S. -- southern Montana and northern Wyoming -- could see 5 to 9 inches of snow from Friday morning to the time it finally stops early Saturday evening.
The weather service said the other areas could see anything from freezing rain and sleet in northwestern Michigan to up to 3 inches of snow in northeastern Oklahoma.
There was also a winter weather notice for Alaska, where Denali National Park and other areas could see up to 10 inches of snow.
The weather service said ?widespread showers and thunderstorms? were expected to develop over the Deep South and into Florida through the end of the week.
?Rainfall amounts of several inches are possible where heavy rain persists the longest,? it said.
On Thursday, weather.com reported that the storm had "dumped up to 13 inches of snow in Owatonna, Minn.,? while up to 14 inches of snow was measured in Ellsworth, Wis. Up to nine inches fell in Dodge County, Minn., on Thursday.
In some parts of the country, spring still feels far away. The snowfall in the Rockies, Plains and Dakotas is setting records and may not end until Friday. NBC's Brian Williams reports
?This is a record for me,? Brian Wagstrom, director of public works in Minnetonka, Minn., told NBC station KARE. ?This is the latest that we have ever put plows on this time of the year.?
Jim Eulberg, director of public works in the South Dakota town of Worthington, had to tell his crews to give up spring street sweeping and ready the plows.
?When you?re looking at the calendar, you?re thinking this is the stuff we should be doing. Not dealing with ice storm damage and plowing,? Eulberg told NBC station KDLT.
NBC News' Matthew DeLuca contributed to this report.
Related:
This story was originally published on Fri May 3, 2013 6:25 AM EDT
Sand tiger sharks have been known for devouring each other in the womb. Scientists now believe that they can explain why.
By Mai Ng?c Ch?u,?Contributor / May 1, 2013
Michael Kandler, left, and Thomas Ulrich, right, measure the sand tiger shark named 'Sharkline' at the sea center in Burg on the island of Fehmarn, northern Germany, in 2010.
Heribert Proepper/AP
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Why do sand tiger shark embryos devour each other in the womb? A new study examines this form of extreme sibling rivalry.
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Analyzing shark embryos found in dead sand tiger sharks at different stages of pregnancy, a team of researchers has found that, though female sharks commonly mate with multiple males, their offspring all tend to belong to the same father.
This finding suggests that shark embryos cannibalize their brothers from other dads, an illustration that sexual selection can still occur after fertilization.
"In some species, the struggle for paternity continues beyond the point where the female [mates with] the male," said Demian Chapman, a Stony Brook?marine biologist, in an interview with LiveScience's Tia Ghose.
Sand tiger sharks, also known as sand sharks, sand tigers, or gray nurse sharks, have sharp teeth that protrude in all directions, even when they shut their mouths. Despite their fearsome name and appearance, they are known to attack humans only when provoked. Because of this, sand tigers are?the most common sharks found in public aquariums.
They mature at between 6.5 and 10.5 feet. Female sand sharks have two uteri that bear hundreds of eggs. Though mating with many male sharks, every 12-month pregnancy produces just two offspring, each about 3.3 feet long.
Since the 1980s, according to Chapman, scientists examining pregnant sand tiger sharks found?embryos in the stomachs of other embryos. This in utero cannibalism, taking place about five months into the gestation, allows the remaining embryo to feed itself on its siblings' bodies and the mother's nutrient supply. As a result, the baby sand tiger at birth is already big enough to protect itself from predators.
What triggers the embryonic killings, however, remains unknown.
To better understand embryonic cannibalism, Chapman and his team investigated DNA specimens of pregnant sand tigers that had been caught in protective nets off Richards Bay, South Africa from 2008 to 2012.
Of 15 female sharks studied, five had six to nine embryos in each uterus, which indicated they were in the early stage of their pregnancy and the embryonic cannibalism hadn't yet occurred. The remaining sharks carried just two embryos, a sign that?the competition was over.
Genetic analysis showed that those pregnant sharks were more likely to have mated with at least two males. The embryos that hadn't eaten one another were half siblings. In the remaining mothers that had only the two embryos remaining, the litters shared the same father.
Writing in Biology Letters, the authors said this result demonstrated that, despite the mothers having more than two partners, their babies are full siblings, suggesting that embryonic cannibalism helped eliminate other fathers' offspring.?
?For most species, we think of sexual selection as ending when males fertilize eggs, because once the male?s fertilized eggs he?s won, there will be some genetic representation in the next generation,? Chapman told The Washington Post. ?This is demonstrating that embryonic cannibalism is actually whittling down the number of males producing offspring.?
Talking to LiveScience, James J. Gelsleichter, a North Florida marine biologist who didn't participate in the study, said this study opens up to some questions, for instance, what makes one father's embryos successful over another's?
One theory is that embryos from the first male to fertilize the female simply grows bigger first, consuming other embryos.
"Sexual selection?is very much like an evolutionary arms race, and the males and females are basically one-upping each other," said Gelsleichter.
While embryonic cannibalism is rare in nature, according to the study's authors, cannibalism?is common in the animal kingdom.
Many animals are known to kill and eat members of their own species. For instance, tadpoles croak?not only when attacked but when they cannibalize their kin.
The female praying mantis tends to eat the male after mating.?And male lions sometimes kill?cubs that aren't their own,?to?assume control of a new pride.
Scientists?in 2010 suggested that the?Tyrannosaurus rex may have also eaten its own kind. ?
WASHINGTON (AP) ? An overnight fire at the Labor Department's headquarters shut the building down for most employees early Friday, but the agency's monthly employment report was released as scheduled.
Department employees and members of the news media involved in the release of the report were allowed in the building as usual.
But all other Labor employees who were scheduled to work in the Frances Perkins building received administrative leave.
District of Columbia fire department spokesmanLon Walls said the fire was reported around 4:35 a.m., but the sprinkler system extinguished it before firefighters arrived. He said the cause is under investigation.
Fillichio did not immediately have information on how extensive the damage was. The building on Constitution Avenue opened in 1975.
The April jobs report showed unemployment hitting a four-year low, with employers adding 165,000 jobs in April and upwardly revised figures for the previous two months.
SCHENECTADY, N.Y. (AP) ? An early morning fire swept through a two-story wood frame house in eastern New York on Thursday, killing four people, including three children, authorities said.
A fourth child was injured and taken to a burn unit at Westchester Medical Center.
The fire in Schenectady, just west of the capital of Albany, broke out shortly after 4 a.m. It was the third fire of the night in the city of about 66,000 people and struck shortly after firefighters fought another blaze about a half-mile away.
The investigation will look for any connections between the two nearby fires, but Fire Chief Michael Della Rocco said they are believed to be unrelated.
Two adults and four children lived in the upstairs unit, Della Rocco said. The father was killed along with three of his children. Della Rocco said they haven't been able to locate the mother, who was not in the house at the time of the fire.
The building burned quickly and completely largely because it was made in a late 19th- and early 20th-century building style known as "balloon construction" in which studs run from the ground to the roof without the fire-breaks required by modern codes, Della Rocco said.
The house, gray with maroon trim, was tucked closely between two other two-story homes on a residential street where many of the houses are two-family. The second-floor was gutted and the roof gone. The fire curled siding on the house next door, separated by a narrow alley barely the width of a car and filled with charred debris.
City fire investigators were working with state and federal agencies to try to determine the cause. Della Rocco said the building will be condemned and demolished.
Krystal Ashline knew the family and said the children ranged in age from about 11 months to 7 years.
"The kids were great kids," she said. "My kids played with them. He was a really good father. He was the one who mainly took care of the kids.
"It's a tragedy," she said. "It just broke my heart."
Shane Conway, who lives on the first floor of the house, told The Daily Gazette that he awoke around 4:30 a.m. to the shouts of his stepfather's girlfriend.
"I got up, got everyone out, made sure my son got out," Conway told the newspaper.
Three children and four adults escaped the first-floor dwelling.
James Moloney, who also lives downstairs, said he could hear what he thought were smoke detector alarms.
"I wanted to go back in to see if I could get any of them, but you can't," Moloney told the newspaper. "It was fully engulfed."
Annette Singh said the neighborhood is a mix of people from Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad. She said people generally help each other out there.
But Ashline said the street is plagued by drugs and crime, including shootings and assaults.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) ? Fresh off a huge victory over President Barack Obama on gun control, the message from the National Rifle Association is clear: The fight has just begun.
The powerful gun rights lobby gathers in Houston this weekend for its annual convention and organizers anticipate a rollicking, Texas-sized party ? both to celebrate the victory in Washington and recharge the troops for more political struggles as gun control advocates tally their own successes in states around the country.
"If you are an NRA member, you deserve to be proud," Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's brash, no-compromises chief executive wrote last week to the organization's 5 million members, telling them they "exemplify everything that's good and right about America."
The NRA couldn't have picked a friendlier place to stage its annual event. More than 70,000 people are expected to attend the three-day "Stand and Fight"-themed event, which includes a gun trade show, political rally and strategy meeting.
Texas, with its frontier image and fierce sense of independence, is one of the strongest gun rights states in the country. More than 500,000 people are licensed to carry concealed handguns, including Gov. Rick Perry, who once bragged about shooting a coyote during a morning jog.
Concealed handguns are allowed in the state Capitol, where simply showing a license allows armed visitors to bypass metal detectors.
Friday's big event is a political forum with speeches from several state and national conservative leaders, including Perry, former GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, former Pennsylvania senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum and Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican Texas firebrand who has become one of the top tea party voices in Washington since being elected last year. LaPierre speaks to the convention Saturday before the "Stand and Fight" rally at night.
NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam predicted the convention will draw the largest crowd in its history.
"The geography is helpful," Arulanandam said. "The current (political) climate helps."
For NRA member Mike Cox, a concealed handgun license instructor from rural Wimberley, the recent Senate vote showed not only the power of the NRA, but demonstrated to its members the need to dig in and recruit more members.
"There's a lot of enthusiasm right now," Cox said. "This isn't over by any means."
Gun control advocates say they will have a presence around the NRA convention, with plans for a vigil for victims of gun violence, a petition drive to support background checks and a Saturday demonstration outside the George R. Brown Convention Center.
Sandy Phillips, whose daughter Jessica Ghawi was killed in the Colorado theater shooting last July, met privately with Cruz in San Antonio this week. Phillips said Cruz refused to budge on expanding background checks and told her he considered it the first step toward government confiscation of guns.
"They're always good at saying the right thing, 'I'm so sorry for you loss and da da da da da,'" Phillips said. "If you're really sorry for my loss, do something about it."
In an interview Thursday with The Associated Press, Cruz called efforts by Obama and gun control advocates to push for expanded background checks an attempt to "undermine the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms."
Despite polls that show most Americans favor some expansion of background checks, Ladd Everitt, spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, said a big challenge facing gun control advocates is matching the NRA's grassroots organizing, or as he called it "closing the passion gap."
"The NRA knows this issue is very much in play. People were sickened by that Senate vote," Everitt said.
Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, has said he will re-introduce the bill to require criminal and mental health background checks for gun buyers at shows and online. And despite their loss on the federal level, gun control advocates have scored some significant victories at the state level.
Lawmakers in Colorado passed new restrictions on firearms, including required background checks for private and online gun sales and a ban on ammunition magazines that hold more than 15 rounds. Connecticut recently added more than 100 firearms to the state's assault weapons ban and now requires background checks for private gun sales.
Maryland and New York have passed sweeping new guns laws, and in Washington state, supporters of universal background checks recently announced a statewide campaign to collect 300,000 signatures to put the issue straight to voters.
"There have been significant victories (at the state level). We expect that to continue and we're not giving up on the federal level," Everitt said.
John Ridlehuber, a gun dealer from Lott, Texas, a rural hamlet of about 700 people, said NRA members see no room for compromise on new gun restrictions. Gun rights advocates have given up far too much ground over the years, he said.
"We have capitulated in far too many places. We should never give anything up again," Ridlehuber said. "We're not the bad guys. We're the good guys."
___
Associated Press writer Alan Fram in Washington contributed to this report.
Troubling levels of toxic metals found in lipstickPublic release date: 2-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sarah Yang scyang@berkeley.edu 510-643-7741 University of California - Berkeley
Berkeley A new analysis of the contents of lipstick and lip gloss may cause you to pause before puckering.
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Public Health tested 32 different lipsticks and lip glosses commonly found in drugstores and department stores. They detected lead, cadmium, chromium, aluminum and five other metals, some of which were found at levels that could raise potential health concerns. Their findings will be published online Thursday, May 2, in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
Prior studies also have found metals in cosmetics, but the UC Berkeley researchers estimated risk by analyzing the concentration of the metals detected and consumers' potential daily intake of the metals, and then comparing this intake with existing health guidelines.
"Just finding these metals isn't the issue; it's the levels that matter," said study principal investigator S. Katharine Hammond, professor of environmental health sciences. "Some of the toxic metals are occurring at levels that could possibly have an effect in the long term."
Lipstick and lip gloss are of special concern because when they are not being blotted on tissue or left as kiss marks, they are ingested or absorbed, bit by bit, by the individual wearing them, the study authors said. The researchers developed definitions for average and high use of lip makeup based on usage data reported in a previous study. Average use was defined as a daily ingestion of 24 milligrams of lip makeup per day. Those who slather on the lip color and reapply it repeatedly could fall into the high use category of 87 milligrams ingested per day.
Using acceptable daily intakes derived from this study, average use of some lipsticks and lip glosses would result in excessive exposure to chromium, a carcinogen linked to stomach tumors. High use of these makeup products could result in potential overexposure to aluminum, cadmium and manganese as well. Over time, exposure to high concentrations of manganese has been linked to toxicity in the nervous system.
Lead was detected in 24 products, but at a concentration that was generally lower than the acceptable daily intake level. However, the lead levels still raised concerns for young children, who sometimes play with makeup, since no level of lead exposure is considered safe for them, the researchers said.
The study authors say that for most adults, there is no reason to toss the lip gloss in the trash, but the amount of metals found do signal the need for more oversight by health regulators. At present, there are no U.S. standards for metal content in cosmetics. The authors note that the European Union considers cadmium, chromium and lead to be unacceptable ingredients at any level in cosmetic products.
"I believe that the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) should pay attention to this," said study lead author Sa Liu, a UC Berkeley researcher in environmental health sciences. "Our study was small, using lip products that had been identified by young Asian women in Oakland, Calif. But, the lipsticks and lip glosses in our study are common brands available in stores everywhere. Based upon our findings, a larger, more thorough survey of lip products and cosmetics in general is warranted."
###
Ann Rojas-Cheatham, director of research and training at the Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice in Oakland, Calif., co-authored the study. The National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health Education Research Center helped support this research.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Troubling levels of toxic metals found in lipstickPublic release date: 2-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sarah Yang scyang@berkeley.edu 510-643-7741 University of California - Berkeley
Berkeley A new analysis of the contents of lipstick and lip gloss may cause you to pause before puckering.
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Public Health tested 32 different lipsticks and lip glosses commonly found in drugstores and department stores. They detected lead, cadmium, chromium, aluminum and five other metals, some of which were found at levels that could raise potential health concerns. Their findings will be published online Thursday, May 2, in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
Prior studies also have found metals in cosmetics, but the UC Berkeley researchers estimated risk by analyzing the concentration of the metals detected and consumers' potential daily intake of the metals, and then comparing this intake with existing health guidelines.
"Just finding these metals isn't the issue; it's the levels that matter," said study principal investigator S. Katharine Hammond, professor of environmental health sciences. "Some of the toxic metals are occurring at levels that could possibly have an effect in the long term."
Lipstick and lip gloss are of special concern because when they are not being blotted on tissue or left as kiss marks, they are ingested or absorbed, bit by bit, by the individual wearing them, the study authors said. The researchers developed definitions for average and high use of lip makeup based on usage data reported in a previous study. Average use was defined as a daily ingestion of 24 milligrams of lip makeup per day. Those who slather on the lip color and reapply it repeatedly could fall into the high use category of 87 milligrams ingested per day.
Using acceptable daily intakes derived from this study, average use of some lipsticks and lip glosses would result in excessive exposure to chromium, a carcinogen linked to stomach tumors. High use of these makeup products could result in potential overexposure to aluminum, cadmium and manganese as well. Over time, exposure to high concentrations of manganese has been linked to toxicity in the nervous system.
Lead was detected in 24 products, but at a concentration that was generally lower than the acceptable daily intake level. However, the lead levels still raised concerns for young children, who sometimes play with makeup, since no level of lead exposure is considered safe for them, the researchers said.
The study authors say that for most adults, there is no reason to toss the lip gloss in the trash, but the amount of metals found do signal the need for more oversight by health regulators. At present, there are no U.S. standards for metal content in cosmetics. The authors note that the European Union considers cadmium, chromium and lead to be unacceptable ingredients at any level in cosmetic products.
"I believe that the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) should pay attention to this," said study lead author Sa Liu, a UC Berkeley researcher in environmental health sciences. "Our study was small, using lip products that had been identified by young Asian women in Oakland, Calif. But, the lipsticks and lip glosses in our study are common brands available in stores everywhere. Based upon our findings, a larger, more thorough survey of lip products and cosmetics in general is warranted."
###
Ann Rojas-Cheatham, director of research and training at the Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice in Oakland, Calif., co-authored the study. The National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health Education Research Center helped support this research.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Mothers who are mildly iodine deficient are more likely to have children who perform poorly in spelling, grammar and literacy, according to a new study from Australia.
Severe iodine deficiency during pregnancy is known to cause serious mental disabilities in children, but researchers examined the test scores of nine year olds whose mothers were only slightly iodine deficient during pregnancy and found the kids performed between 6 percent and 10 percent worse than peers born to mothers with sufficient iodine.
"This is to show in areas where there is even mild deficiency it can have long-term impacts on children," said Kristen Hynes, the study's lead author from the University of Tasmania in Sandy Bay.
Throughout life, everyone needs iodine to make thyroid hormones, but it's also crucial that pregnant women get enough of the element to support their children's brain development.
Past research has found that women who are severely iodine deficient give birth to children with motor, cognitive and auditory defects, Hynes' team writes in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
Little is known, however, about what impact a mother's mild iodine deficiency might have on her child.
The U.S. Institute of Medicine recommends the average adult get 150 micrograms (mcg) of iodine every day. Pregnant women are told to get 220 mcg every day and women who are breastfeeding are told to get 290 mcg.
The main source of iodine in the American diet is milk, but it can also be found in some fish and vegetables as well as in "iodized" table salt.
One cup of reduced-fat milk contains about 56 mcg of iodine and one serving of baked cod has about 99 mcg, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
For the new study, Hynes and her colleagues used data on about 228 pregnant women who were patients at The Royal Hobart Hospital in Tasmania between 1999 and 2001 and the children they delivered at the time.
The researchers compared the standardized test scores of the nine-year-old children born to women whose urinary iodine levels fell below 150 mcg (mildly deficient) during pregnancy to the children of women whose iodine levels exceeded 150 mcg (sufficient).
The children of women who were iodine deficient scored about 371 points on the national student test for spelling and about 377 points for grammar. That compared to about 412 points for spelling and 408 points for grammar among children of women who had sufficient levels of iodine while pregnant.
The average score for all of Tasmania at that time was about 390 for spelling and about 410 for grammar in that age group.
The researchers also found that children born to mothers who were mildly iodine deficient scored about 6 percent lower on English literacy scores, compared to those whose mothers had sufficient iodine levels.
Hynes told Reuters Health her group suspects that iodine deficiency may have some impact on a child's auditory pathways to the brain, which may hurt their ability to quickly process the information they hear.
"It's really only a theory at this stage," she cautioned.
The researchers can't say for certain whether the mothers' iodine deficiency led to their children's poor scores, but she said there is an association.
"I think people working in education will realize this is important, but there are a lot of other things going on as well," Hynes said.
Dr. Elizabeth Pearce, who researches iodine but was not involved in the study, said the findings support recommendations that soon-to-be pregnant, pregnant and breastfeeding women take an iodine supplement, but added that it's important to not get too much of the mineral.
"Very excessive intake in susceptible people can lead to thyroid dysfunction and goiter," said Pearce, an associate professor of medicine at Boston University.
The NIH says the upper safe limit of iodine is 1,100 mcg a day.
"People should not read this and think more iodine is better," she said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/ZCksYH The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, online April 30, 2013.
Sander Daniels sends along this info on a survey of small business attitudes in the U.S. A discussion of their methods is here. As I wrote when linking to their survey last year, I don?t know what to make of all of this?who knows what to make of their sample or the responses to these questions??but I?m impressed that they seem to describe exactly what they did.
Do frogs live underground? The answer is yes, some amphibians, such as salamanders and frogs have been often reported to dwell in subterranean habitats, some of them completely adjusted to the life in darkness, and others just spending a phase of their lifecycle in an underground shelter. Up until 2010, however, no one suspected that the Mediterranean anuran frog Rana iberica - commonly known as Iberian brown frog and usually found in streams - also participates in underground adventures. A new study published in the open access journalSubterranean Biology confirms the first report of Rana iberica reproduction in a cave-like habitat, with all life stages observed in the galleries.
Serra da Estrela Natural Park is located in north-central Portugal and is the largest protected area and one of the most biodiverse regions in Portugal and the Iberian Peninsula. Several drainage galleries were created for water capture in the 1950s, even before the establishment of the boundaries of the Natural Park. It is namely in these artificial subterranean habitats that the Iberian brown frog was discovered dwelling underground by biologists.
"The unusual sighting of R. iberica motivated a series of subsequent visits that started in 2011 up until December 2012 to understand the use of this artificial subterranean habitat by this species.", explains the lead author of the study Dr. Gon?alo M. Rosa. "All life stages were observed in the gallery during the study period, particularly adults, which were observed every month of the year."
The Iberian brown frog does not only seek refuge in the drainage galleries as a sporadic visitor. During long observations, adults from the species have been noted in the galleries,often standing on the ground or in crevices, swimming underwater or even climbing up the walls. There is evidence of mating activity, and batches of eggs have been found stuck to submerged rocks in the subterranean stream. Recently hatched tadpoles were also observed, initially remaining stationary above the egg mass for about two weeks, then swimming in the streams and feeding on the dead egg mass. The galleries are used by other amphibians as well, and larvae of the fire salamander Salamandra salamandra gallaica have been recorded twice while preying on brown frog tadpoles.
The choice of the artificial drainage gallery for a habitat of the Iberian brown frog may appear odd initially. However, it seems that the animals find a refuge in the cool and humid tunnels, often containing a small stream. These artificial subterranean habitats are in fact often used as a refuge for many species. They are, for example, particularly important for the salamander Chioglossa lusitanica, an Iberian endemic of conservation concern. Scientists express their fear that such preferences for underground habitats might in fact be a sign for the ecological dangers of the dramatic climate changes experienced by the Iberian region. Monitoring the subterranean activity of various species might provide important cues for future conservation efforts.
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Rosa GM, Penado A (2013) Rana iberica (Boulenger, 1879) goes underground: subterranean habitat usage and new insights on natural history. Subterranean Biology 11: 15?29, doi: 10.3897/subtbiol.11.5170
Pensoft Publishers: http://www.pensoft.net
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The first time anyone outside of Florida?s Space Coast heard of Rep. Bill Posey, he was talking about Barack Obama?s birth certificate. It was March 2009. Posey had been in office for two months, and he was the first to propose a bill requiring presidential nominees to hand over ?documentation as may be necessary to establish that the candidate meets the qualifications for eligibility.? He was Internet-famous overnight. Stephen Colbert was asking him to prove that he, Posey, wasn?t part alligator. ?There is no reason to say that I'm the illegitimate grandson of an alligator,? said the congressman.
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Posey?s been re-elected twice since then, and on April 17, he got the chance to stare down the president?s science czar, John Holdren. Posey and fellow Republicans on the Science, Space, and Technology Committee wanted Holdren to explain why the National Science Foundation was wasting so much money from an asked-for budget of $7.6 billion.
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Posey read off titles of NSF-funded research projects. ? ?Picturing Animals in National Geographic for the years 1988 to 2008? costing $227,000,? said Posey. ? ?Kinship, Women's Labor and China's Economic Performance in the 17th to 21st Centuries? costing $267,000. ?Regulating Accountability and Transparency in China's Dairy Industry.? ? I mean, it's just hard to conceive how those are important to our national security or our national interest.?
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Holdren wasn?t moved, but he?d heard this before?and he?d hear it again. After the hearing, committee chairman Lamar Smith of Texas sent a letter to the NSF asking what the ?intellectual merit? of this research was. Shortly thereafter, as first reported by Science magazine, Smith was drafting legislation that would require the NSF to prove that grants wouldn?t embarrass anybody. Was the research ?in the interests of the United States to advance the national health, prosperity, or welfare, and to secure the national defense by promoting the progress of science?? Could the NSF say that it was ?the finest quality, is groundbreaking, and answers questions or solves problems that are of utmost importance to society at large??
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Smith is attempting a version of the strategy used successfully by Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn last month. By amending the continuing resolution that?s funding the government this year, Coburn managed to prohibit any funds for NSF-funded political science unless it was somehow ?promoting national security or the economic interests of the United States.? He?d tried to put the ax to NSF?s political science funds before, and failed. But that tighter definition allowed him to argue that the funds could exist, as long as they weren?t squandered.
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?Studies of presidential executive power and Americans? attitudes toward the Senate filibuster hold little promise to save an American?s life from a threatening condition or to advance America?s competitiveness in the world,? explained Coburn. ?In fact, a number of polls have been conducted over the last decade on the public?s views of the Senate filibuster.?
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Attacking government-funded social science is popular, especially on the right. Last week, Texas Republican Rep. Ted Poe and Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul introduced a bill that would change the American Community Survey, sent annually to a random selection of 3.2 million people, from mandatory to optional. If Americans didn?t want to fill it out, even if that would render it mostly useless as data, the private sector would do just fine.
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When I asked Poe to explain how that information would be collected without the Community Survey, he said, ?There are other ways to get the same information about the dynamics of business, and where to locate a business. You can do it through polling. You don?t have to force people to participate.?
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Social scientists don?t agree, but it?s difficult for them to justify their own funding in a time of severe government cutbacks. Since March 1, when Congress and the president failed to replace sequestration with anything less idiotic, the human faces of austerity have included children whose Head Start programs are being cut, older people who are going without Meals on Wheels, and?less heart-tugging?business travelers and tourists whose flights were delayed. (We fixed that last one.)
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All of those victims have infinitely more marquee value than social science professors. The new attempts to claw away at research have gone on for months, and the academics haven?t put up a compelling defense beyond one event on the Hill and the yeoman blogging of some professors like John Sides. ?Going forward,? Sides wrote after Coburn?s win, ?a coordinated lobbying effort is needed not only to roll back the restrictions on political science but to defend the NSF?s core mission as a promoter of scientific research in the public good, broadly defined.?
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So far that lobbying effort doesn?t exist. Instead, Republicans are able to challenge NSF funding in order to pursue long-term political goals without too many people noticing.
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Which goals? Well, last month the General Social Survey found that, over 40 years, the fraction of American homes containing guns had slipped from 50 percent to 35 percent. That validated one of the Democrats? gun-safety talking points?that ?gun nut? culture was new, and less legitimate than hunting culture. That gun study was funded in part by the NSF. So are studies that send scientists to measure glaciers in Greenland; so was Earth: The Operator?s Manual, a 2012 documentary about climate change, for people who don?t have the time to measure glaciers.
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Is there a private sector ready to fund science and social science if the government stops? Not yet, not really. It?s been 17 years since a Republican-backed gun bill blocked the Centers for Disease Control from collecting certain data on guns and public health. There?s a Kickstarter-ish proposal to fund this research. It?s raised less than a third of the aspirational $25,000.
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So Democrats and the administration are stuck defending NSF money in hearings that don?t get a lot of attention. Confronted by Posey, Holdren said what the academics wanted him to say. ?I think there has been many beneficial results from the research funded by NSF,? he said, ?and the social behavioral and economic sciences that have contributed, for example, to a better understanding of how our democracy works and how to make it stronger, that have contributed to making our government more efficient.?
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Posey slightly softened his tone. ?I'm not advocating we stop all the social-science study spending,? he said. ?I just think it might be appropriate that much of that be left to the private sector.? How much, though? Someone should probably conduct a study.
"Happier, healthier,?more productive." That was the goal of mobile app Astrid, and now Yahoo is taking up the mission as it's just acquired the social productivity platform. Co-founded by a former Palantir engineer, Tim Su, AngelPad-backed Astrid says that it has four million users, who as of September 2012 logged 30 million plans on the platform.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Looking for a new way to get that jolt of caffeine energy? Food companies are betting snacks like potato chips, jelly beans and gum with a caffeinated kick could be just the answer.
The Food and Drug Administration is closely watching the marketing of these foods and wants to know more about their safety.
The FDA said Monday it will look at the foods' effects on children in response to a caffeinated gum introduced this week by Wrigley. Alert Energy Gum promises "the right energy, right now."
The agency is already investigating the safety of energy drinks and energy shots, prompted by consumer reports of illness and death.
Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner of foods, said Monday that the only time FDA explicitly approved the added use of caffeine in a food or drink was in the 1950s for colas. The current proliferation of caffeine added to foods is "beyond anything FDA envisioned," Taylor said.
"It is disturbing," Taylor said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We're concerned about whether they have been adequately evaluated."
Taylor said the agency will look at the potential impact these "new and easy sources" of caffeine will have on children's health and will take action if necessary. He said that he and other FDA officials have held meetings with some of the large food companies that have ventured into caffeinated products, including Mars Inc., of which Wrigley is a subsidiary.
Wrigley and other companies adding caffeine to their products have labeled them as for adult use only. A spokeswoman for Wrigley, Denise M. Young, said the gum is for "adults who are looking for foods with caffeine for energy" and each piece contains about 40 milligrams, or the equivalent amount found in half a cup of coffee. She said the company will work with FDA.
"Millions of Americans consume caffeine responsibly and in moderation as part of their daily routines," Young said.
Food manufacturers have added caffeine to candy, nuts and other snack foods in recent years. Jelly Belly "Extreme Sport Beans," for example, have 50 mg of caffeine in each 100-calorie pack, while Arma Energy Snx markets trail mix, chips and other products that have caffeine.
Critics say it's not enough for the companies to say they are marketing the products to adults when the caffeine is added to items like candy that are attractive to children. Major medical associations have warned that too much caffeine can be dangerous for children, who have less ability to process the stimulant than adults. The American Academy of Pediatrics says caffeine has been linked to harmful effects on young people's developing neurologic and cardiovascular systems.
"Could caffeinated macaroni and cheese or breakfast cereal be next?" said Michael Jacobson, director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which wrote the FDA a letter concerned about the number of foods with added caffeine last year. "One serving of any of these foods isn't likely to harm anyone. The concern is that it will be increasingly easy to consume caffeine throughout the day, sometimes unwittingly, as companies add caffeine to candies, nuts, snacks and other foods. "
Taylor said the agency would look at the added caffeine in its totality ? while one product might not cause adverse effects, the increasing number of caffeinated products on the market, including drinks, could mean more adverse health effects for children.
Last November, the FDA said it had received 92 reports over four years that cited illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths after consumption of an energy shot marketed as 5-Hour Energy. The FDA said it had also received reports that cited the highly caffeinated Monster Energy Drink in several deaths.
Agency officials said then that the reports to the FDA from consumers, doctors and others don't necessarily prove that the drinks caused the deaths or injuries but said they were investigating each one. In February, FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg again stressed that reports to the agency of adverse events related to energy drinks did not necessarily suggest a causal effect.
FDA officials said they would take action if they could link the deaths to consumption of the energy drinks, including forcing the companies to take the products off the market.
In 2010, the agency forced manufacturers of alcoholic caffeinated beverages to cease production of those drinks. The agency said the combination of caffeine and alcohol could lead to a "wide-awake drunk" and has led to alcohol poisoning, car accidents and assaults.
May 1 (Reuters) - Post position for Saturday's 139th Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs after Wednesday's draw (listed as barrier, HORSE, jockey, trainer) 1. BLACK ONYX, Joe Bravo, Kelly Breen 2. OXBOW, Gary Stevens, D. Wayne Lukas 3. REVOLUTIONARY, Calvin Borel, Todd Pletcher 4. GOLDEN SOUL, Robby Albarado, Dallas Stewart 5. NORMANDY INVASION, Javier Castellano, Chad Brown 6. MYLUTE, Rosie Napravnik, Tom Amoss 7. GIANT FINISH, Jose Espinoza, Tony Dutrow 8. GOLDENCENTS, Kevin Krigger, Doug O'Neill 9. OVERANALYZE, Rafael Bejarano, Todd Pletcher 10. PALACE MALICE, Mike Smith, Todd Pletcher 11. ...
May 1, 2013 ? An interdisciplinary team of researchers has created the first digital cameras with designs that mimic those of ocular systems found in dragonflies, bees, praying mantises and other insects. This class of technology offers exceptionally wide-angle fields of view, with low aberrations, high acuity to motion, and nearly infinite depth of field.
Taking cues from Mother Nature, the cameras exploit large arrays of tiny focusing lenses and miniaturized detectors in hemispherical layouts, just like eyes found in arthropods. The devices combine soft, rubbery optics with high performance silicon electronics and detectors, using ideas first established in research on skin and brain monitoring systems by John A. Rogers, a Swanlund Chair Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his collaborators.
"Full 180 degree fields of view with zero aberrations can only be accomplished with image sensors that adopt hemispherical layouts -- much different than the planar CCD chips found in commercial cameras," Rogers explained. "When implemented with large arrays microlenses, each of which couples to an individual photodiode, this type of hemispherical design provides unmatched field of view and other powerful capabilities in imaging. Nature has developed and refined these concepts over the course of billions of years of evolution." The researchers described their breakthrough camera in an article, "Digital Cameras With Designs Inspired By the Arthropod Eye," published in the May 2, 2013 issue of Nature.
Eyes in arthropods use compound designs, in which arrays of smaller eyes act together to provide image perception. Each small eye, known as an ommatidium, consists of a corneal lens, a crystalline cone, and a light sensitive organ at the base. The entire system is configured to provide exceptional properties in imaging, many of which lie beyond the reach of existing human-made cameras.
The researchers developed new ideas in materials and fabrication strategies allowing construction of artificial ommatidia in large, interconnected arrays in hemispherical layouts. Building such systems represents a daunting task, as all established camera technologies rely on bulk glass lenses and detectors constructed on the planar surfaces of silicon wafers which cannot be bent or flexed, much less formed into a hemispherical shape.
"A critical feature of our fly's eye cameras is that they incorporate integrated microlenses, photodetectors, and electronics on hemispherically curved surfaces," said Jianliang Xiao, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at University of Colorado Boulder and coauthor of the study.
"To realize this outcome, we used soft, rubbery optics bonded to detectors/electronics in mesh layouts that can be stretched and deformed, reversibly and without damage."
The fabrication starts with electronics, detectors and lens arrays formed on flat surfaces using advanced techniques adapted from the semiconductor industry, said Xiao, who began working on the project as a postdoctoral researcher in Rogers' lab at Illinois. The lens sheet -- made from a polymer material similar to a contact lens -- and the electronics/detectors are then aligned and bonded together. Pneumatic pressure deforms the resulting system into the desired hemispherical shape, in a process much like blowing up a balloon, but with precision engineering control.
The individual electronic detectors and microlenses are coupled together to avoid any relative motion during this deformation process. Here, the spaces between these artificial ommatidia can stretch to allow transformation in geometry from planar to hemispherical. The electrical interconnections are thin, and narrow, in filamentary serpentine shapes; they deform as tiny springs during the stretching process.
According to the researchers, each microlens produces a small image of an object with a form dictated by the parameters of the lens and the viewing angle. An individual detector responds only if a portion of the image formed by the associated microlens overlaps the active area. The detectors stimulated in this way produce a sampled image of the object that can then be reconstructed using models of the optics.
Over the last several years, Rogers and his colleagues have developed materials, mechanics principles and manufacturing processes that enable classes of electronics that can bend, twist, and stretch like a rubber band. This device technology has been used in fields ranging from photovoltaics, to health/wellness monitors, to advanced surgical tools and digital cameras with designs of the mammalian eye.
"Certain of the enabling ideas build on concepts that originated in our labs a half dozen years ago," Rogers remarked. "Ever since, we have been intrigued by the possibility of creating digital fly's eye cameras. Such devices are of longstanding interest, not only to us but many others as well, owing to their potential for use in surveillance devices, tools for endoscopy, and other applications where these insect-inspired designs provide unique capabilities."
The other co-lead authors of the paper are Young Min Song, Yizhu Xie, and Viktor Malyarchuk, all of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Co-authors include Ki-Joong Choi, Rak-Hwan Kim and John Rogers at Illinois; Inhwa Jung of Kyung Hee University in Korea; Zhuangjian Liu of the Institute of High Performance Computing A*star in Singapore; Chaofeng Lu of Zhejiang University in China and Northwestern University; Rui Li, of Dalian University of Technology in China; Kenneth Crozier of Harvard University; and Yonggang Huang of Northwestern.
The research was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Illinois College of Engineering, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
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Young Min Song, Yizhu Xie, Viktor Malyarchuk, Jianliang Xiao, Inhwa Jung, Ki-Joong Choi, Zhuangjian Liu, Hyunsung Park, Chaofeng Lu, Rak-Hwan Kim, Rui Li, Kenneth B. Crozier, Yonggang Huang, John A. Rogers. Digital cameras with designs inspired by the arthropod eye. Nature, 2013; 497 (7447): 95 DOI: 10.1038/nature12083
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Public release date: 2-May-2013
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"Happier, healthier,?more productive." That was the goal of mobile app