Stem cells repair hearts early in life, but not in adults

ScienceDaily (July 30, 2012) ? Stem cells can actually replace dead heart tissue after a heart attack very early in life -- but those same cells lose that regenerative ability in adults, according to researchers at Cornell University and the University of Bonn.

The study, using mice as subjects, found that undifferentiated precursor cells grow new heart cells in a two-day-old mouse, but not in adult mice, settling a decades-old controversy about whether stem cells can play a role in the recovery of the adult mammalian heart following infarction -- where heart tissue dies due to artery blockage.

"While the existence of these cells in adults is controversial, if one did have fully capable stem cells in adults, why are there no new heart cells after an infarct? Whether this is due to a lack of stem cells or to something special about the infarct that inhibits stem cells from forming new heart cells is the question we addressed, taking advantage of the fact that the newborn mouse has these cells," said Michael Kotlikoff, dean of Cornell's College of Veterinary Medicine and senior author of the paper. The paper will appear Aug. 29 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Kotlikoff and his fellow researchers found that two-day-old mice grew new heart cells and almost completely recovered from infarction, proving that the injury did not inhibit stem cells from growing new heart cells. The same procedure was carried out on adult mice and no new heart cells formed, confirming that adults do not have the requisite stem cells to create new heart cells, called myocytes, though new blood vessel cells were created.

The stem cells found in the adult heart "have lost the ability to become heart cells, and are only capable of forming new vessels," Kotlikoff said. Single stem cells differentiate into all tissues at the start of life, but over time these cells become "developmentally restricted" or specialized to form only certain tissues.

Sophie Jesty, Michele Steffey, and Frank Lee are the paper's lead authors and the work is part of a long-term collaboration with Professor Bernd Fleischmann's team at the University of Bonn.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, New York State Stem Cell Science and the European Union Seventh Framework Programme.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Cornell University.

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

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Journal Reference:

1. Sophy A. Jesty, Michele A. Steffey, Frank K. Lee, Martin Breitbach, Michael Hesse, Shaun Reining, Jane C. Lee, Robert M. Doran, Alexander Yu. Nikitin, Bernd K. Fleischmann, and Michael I. Kotlikoff. c-kit precursors support postinfarction myogenesis in the neonatal, but not adult, heart. PNAS, July 30, 2012 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1208114109

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

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

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120730170158.htm

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Wine and Spirits Travel: New Finds and Old Favorites in Chicago

I try to make it in to Chicago as often as possible, but no
matter how often I do go there I always seem to find new things. In this case,
it wasn?t only the restaurants that were new to me. I was meeting with my
publisher, Dale Winespeare, at Cocktailsand Joints for the first time.


We checked into our rooms at The James Chicago, a hotel I
always loved for its modern comfort. This time they gave me a two bedroom suite,
which I settled quickly in before meeting Dale to go to Tavernita, a new restaurant with an exciting
new cocktail program.



Tavernita doesn?t just make unusual cocktails for individual
customers, they make cocktails for kegs. They also make their own sangrias and
sodas, and serve wine on tap. We were lucky enough to get to try a little bit
of everything and I was quite impressed.


I liked the Booty Collins, consisting of green tea-infused
Absolut Vodka, passion fruit, lemon and cayenne. I also loved the nutty flavor
of the Comandante Big Nose with hibiscus-infused Cruzan Rum, macadamia liqueur,
falernum, lime and nutmeg.? The Jay &
Tay is gin and tonic, in this case Plymouth Gin blended perfectly with a
homemade tonic ? that contains agave syrup and allspice.



I preferred the Red Sangria (which has some Hennessy Cognac
in it) to the white. As for the sodas, the Ginger Chile Ale is a must try, made
with fresh ginger, guindilla orange and blossom honey.


We tried a sampling of food, including the Croquettes,
little sandwiches filled with ham and cheese, and Greg?s Meatballs, which are
made from beef and pork and have a hazelnut romesco sauce which is quite spicy.
My favorite food item was the Grilled Queso, with aged cheddar, tomato
marmalade and brioche toast. Dale enjoyed the snapper, with artichokes, basil
and pine nuts.



We headed back to The James where I met with Jamie to learn
more about some of the exciting programs the hotel has going.? She told me about the seasonal menu changes
at David Burke?s Primehouse, as well as the Tails in the City program for pets,
and the Paul Frank?PJ program for kids.?
There is also now something at The James I find particularly
fascinating, the In-Room Cocktail Experience.



All of the rooms at the hotel now have supplies, including a
glass with recipes, to make your own cocktails. For under $30 (not including
the liquor), you can receive all the mixings and garnishes for some of your
favorite drinks. You can even learn how to make them right with a private
mixology lesson.



Dinner was at III Forks, restaurant in the new Lakeshore
East neighborhood. This large, modern place was very busy (even during the
week), and it?s no wonder with a huge wine list, interesting cocktails and a
varied menu that is also filled with great steak options. They also have a rooftop where you can get drinks and snacks, with a breathtaking view of the Chicago Skyline.



Dale started with an amazing crab cake and continued with
the Chicken Fried Steak, a dish that he couldn?t possible finish. I had the
onion soup and Tenderloin Tips, which were definitely tender and flavorful. We shared
some sides, the best of which was the Sweet Potato Hash (I took the leftovers
and couldn?t wait to have them the next day) and Six Cheese Potatoes.



It was tough to even think about dessert, but we were glad
we sampled the cheesecake and pecan cake before heading back to The James for
the night.

Source: http://www.wineandspiritstravel.com/2012/07/new-finds-and-old-favorites-in-chicago.html

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Cemex outsources jobs to IBM to cut costs

By Cyntia Barrera

MEXICO CITY | Mon Jul 30, 2012 7:46pm BST

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's top cement maker Cemex is outsourcing jobs worldwide to IBM in a deal that will help it save $1 billion over 10 years, the latest bid by the company to trim costs and boost its financial health.

Cemex, which was swamped by the collapse of the U.S. housing market after paying out some $16 billion to buy Australian peer Rinker, has been working its way out of a deep debt hole for the past three years.

Cemex Chief Financial Officer Fernando Gonzalez told Reuters that the deal with International Business Machines Corp would likely affect between 1,500 and 2,000 staff, but he said that was a preliminary estimate. The company did not give specifics about the types of jobs that would be outsourced.

Some jobs may be absorbed by IBM, Gonzalez said. Cemex will start passing jobs to IBM from September, and the entire transition should be complete by December 2013.

"Starting 2014 is when we will have a full year of savings ... that we hope should be of more than $100 million per year," Gonzalez said, adding that final numbers for the outsourcing plan would not be public until later this year.

The contract is IBM's largest outsourcing deal with a Mexican company and ranks among the biggest IBM has agreed in Latin America, said Bob Hoey, general manager for IBM's integrated technology services business.

CORE PROFIT IMPROVES

By cutting costs and its debt burden, Cemex is getting back on its feet. Two weeks ago, the company posted its highest quarterly operating core profit in nearly three years on a pickup in its U.S. business.

Monterrey-based Cemex employs about 42,000 people worldwide and has operations in over 50 countries.

IBM will provide Cemex with business process and information technology services. It will also include finance and accounting, and human resources back-office services.

"While $1 billion sounds pretty attractive, and it is definitely good news for the company, we won't see the real benefits until they get reflected in their profits," said Norma Lopez, an analyst with brokerage Multivalores.

Cemex is extending the maturity on a big chunk of its debt, which would help it dodge a maturity tsunami of $7.25 billion in early 2014, as it struggles with a stagnant construction market.

Cemex has proposed a debt exchange to lenders - selling assets, a pre-payment and revised financial covenants to gain breathing space. The proposal, announced in late June, has been negotiated with half of the creditors.

The exchange offer is due on August 20. So far, Cemex has reported strong participation by lenders.

Gonzalez said Cemex was reviewing operations worldwide to spot the ones that could be sold entirely, but it is open to unloading minority stakes, too. He declined to comment on which operations were being reviewed.

Cemex shares traded down 2.44 percent to 9.61 pesos on Monday afternoon, while its New York-traded stock slipped 2.95 percent to $7.23.

(Reporting By Cyntia Barrera Diaz; Editing by Sofina Mirza-Reid, Tim Dobbyn and Andre Grenon)

Source: http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/UKTechnologyNews/~3/nj_hQOjp5R8/us-mexico-cemex-idUKBRE86T0LP20120730

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3 Simple Tips to Maintaining a Positive Attitude | Healthy Lifestyle Plus

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://www.healthylifestyleplus.com/spirit/3-simple-tips-to-maintaining-a-positive-attitude/

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Moving abroad requires financial effort | Personal Finance Blog ...

Posted by admin in Loans | 0 comments

More and more people nowadays try their luck outside of their home countries. The reasons for that are diverse: Most just hope to find a better life in another country, be it because they are having social, financial or religious problems in their home country. Others do have a partner from another country and follow their heart by moving together with him. And still others are just fed up with certain things about their home country, be it the bad weather or the high taxes.

Moving to Australia

A country that has grown a lot in popularity over the last couple of years is Australia, as you can see when you click here. Many people from all over the world go there for working and traveling and enjoy the good weather, the vast landscapes and the relative convenience of being in an English-speaking country. Besides the number of young travelers, the number of people applying for visa to move to Australia for good has also increased drastically.

The long way to a visa

If you consider moving to Australia, however, you have to keep in mind that certain financial efforts need to be taken in order be able to move abroad. Costs for the journey have to be paid as well as for the luggage. Furthermore, you need to pay for a flat or a house there as well as for insurance and visa. This visa differs in price depending on your status and qualifications. Since the Australian government mainly wants individuals with specific skills and capabilities to improve the country?s economy, it is much easier and cheaper for those people to get a visa. Another way to save a huge amount of money for a visa is to obtain a sponsorship through an employer.
Those people also enjoy priority when the visa, which are only available in relatively small amounts, are given out.

Source: http://www.personal-finance-blog.com/2012/07/30/moving-abroad-requires-financial-effort/

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Afghan truckers a forgotten front in a war growing deadlier by the day

KHOSH GOMBAT, Afghanistan (Reuters) - In the cabins of their "jingle" trucks flamboyant with tinsel baubles and painted tiger patterns as they move NATO's war supplies, Habibullah thinks he and other drivers are becoming a forgotten front in an Afghan war growing more vicious.

From a dusty truck park midway between Kabul and the Pakistan border, and under the constant thump of helicopters from Jalalabad airbase over the road, Habibullah moves food and military materiel across the Taliban's eastern heartland, from Nuristan to the former al Qaeda cave stronghold of Tora Bora.

"We worry about our fate when NATO leaves, because the Taliban also call us the infidels. For them, we are not just the enemy, but also traitors," said the soft spoken 23-year-old, who contributes seven trucks to a cooperative with five owners.

It is a thankless and increasingly deadly job, and one so mired in graft that the drivers see a fraction of the cash paid by U.S. military paymasters, with the rest skimmed by middlemen or even going into the hands of insurgents for "protection".

Only this week, three of Habibullah's trucks were attacked and burned by Taliban amid the rugged mountains of Nuristan, a virtual no-go zone for NATO soldiers after heavy past losses and now garrisoned by a handful of Afghan troops and police.

A truck belonging to another company was torched and the driver shot dead across the border in Pakistan, while 22 fuel tankers were blown up in the north by insurgents there as they moved fuel and equipment.

"One of our drivers was killed. We brought his body back to Jalalabad," Habibullah said. "His wife came and grabbed me by my collar, tearing my shirt and shouting 'you killed my husband'. I had to give her some money. The Americans don't help with that."

Another driver, Lalajan, sits on a crimson carpet in a container filled with the rattle of an ageing fan against the oppressive heat and says Taliban raids are mounting this summer, as foreign combat troops look to leave the country by 2014.

The NATO-led coalition this week acknowledged that insurgent attacks had risen 11 percent in the past three months compared to last year, with a spokesman blaming a severe winter and crop failures driving poor farmers into paid Taliban ranks.

"We have between us lost 15 trucks this year so far. We had one truck break down and we sent others to help. Then out of the blue the Taliban appeared," said Lalajan, his heavily bearded face furrowing as he sits cross legged with his 4-year-old son crawling over his lap.

"I asked them, I will give you money not to attack my trucks, but they said my money was haram (forbidden). The leader burned them," he said.

No less disruptive are the frequent border closures on the Pakistan side, including a seven-month shutdown enforced on NATO traffic last November after 24 Pakistani soldiers were mistakenly killed in a U.S. airstrike.

The main Torkham border crossing only reopened in July, but Lalajan said there was still an immense backlog and some days only a few trucks could pass a border gateway which last year averaged around 160 each day.

POCKETING THE DIFFERENCE

Adding to security fragility, Lalajan said, was that Afghan drivers working from distribution hubs in Afghanistan like Bagram airbase north of Kabul could not obtain insurance, as drivers coming from Pakistan were able to.

Local drivers, except for those working for the largest transport companies, were also forced to rely on brokers who sold on contracts to smaller firms and pocketed the difference, often as much as half the job's entire worth.

For the majority of contracts paid by the military, worth around $8,000 on average, middlemen pocketed $4,000 for doing nothing other than having good connections.

Drivers then received around $300 per month in salary, but pocketed $1,000 extra in danger money for each 10- to 15-day delivery to military bases in the riskiest areas.

"The middlemen often hold our money for sometimes months, investing it in other things. Sometimes when we go to claim, the company has disappeared and we get nothing. The Americans don't care about that," Lalajan said.

Laghman province, which is home to the truckers, is one of Afghanistan's poorest, with 67 percent of people living in poverty and 78 percent underemployment, while seven in 10 people do not get adequate food each day, according to World Bank data.

Asked which road he feared most, 40-year-old driver Mohammad Qayum said the valley route to the most far-flung U.S. base in the northeast, Forward Operating Base Bostick near the Pakistan border in north Kunar, was the most dangerous.

Bostick, in a natural mountain amphitheatre visited by Reuters in June, is a frequent target for Taliban rockets aimed down at the first battalion of the U.S. 12th Infantry Regiment.

"Last year, two of my trucks were attacked going to Kunar. My nephew was inside and was burned to death," said Lalajan, nodding agreement with his friend.

Smaller cooperatives like his with 70 trucks say margins are so tight they cannot make the security payments to protect convoys and which critics say often end up in the hands of the Taliban, helping fund the insurgent war effort.

"For bigger companies that get first-hand contracts, for them it's possible. They can have 60 trucks in a convoy and can pay some money to avoid attack," he said. "But for us there are lots of Taliban groups. Which one would we pay? The attacks have been mounting."

Habibullah said the only thing keeping drivers in jobs vital to the NATO war effort currently were danger bonus payments, but even they were losing their lure as the Taliban intensified their fight and foreign troops wound back their presence.

"We don't have any faith that the government will reach any deal with the Taliban. If they reach a deal, these attacks on us will still continue, because in the eyes of the Taliban we are kaffirs (infidels)," he said.

"We think for drivers like us, as has happened with some translators, foreign borders should be opened to us. We should be allowed to leave Afghanistan."

(Additional reporting by Rafiq Sherzad in JALALABAD and Katharine Houreld in ISLAMABAD; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/afghan-truckers-forgotten-front-war-growing-deadlier-day-042912041.html

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Best and worst dressed of the London Opening Ceremony - Blogs

Our old friend, Leryn Franco, aka the Hot Paraguayan, kicks off Fourth-Place Medal?s list of the best and worst dressed delegations of the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony.

As always, our rankings our completely arbitrary. We should note that we pay special attention to national identity in this list. It?s all dependent on who?s wearing what. If the Americans rocked the Swedes outfit, it?d be a disaster ? not as big as the Ralph Lauren scarf/beret debacle, but pretty bad. Because they?re Swedes, however, thick, horizontal stripes and shorts works. They?re Scandinavian. They can pull off anything!

[ Photos: London 2012 Opening Ceremony ]

Onto the list! Our picks for the best and worst lead those respective categories. Everything else is in no particular order.

The best

The Netherlands

You can?t pull off orange pants. I can?t pull off orange pants. Only Dutch athletes can pull off orange pants.

Poland

Wimbledon finalist Agnieszka Radwanska was a vision in rose leading the Polish delegation.

Fiji

A rule to live by: Never insult a man in a grass skirt.

Sweden

A Sig Ep or Tri Delt wearing this in a college bar would rightfully earn your derision. But there?s something about the Swedish flag transformed into a rugby that?s working.

Canada

Cuts down on the ?where are you from? questions in the Olympic Village. The simplicity is glorious.

Germany

Over 200 countries marched at the Olympics. All of them would have earned ?worst dressed? status with these Opening Ceremony uniforms. But these are the Germans and there?s something so decidedly un-German about wearing baby colors.

Cook Islands

Ceremonial garb tends to fall in the middle of these lists. One on hand, we?ll never criticize tradition. On the other, they?re rarely fashion forward, as Tim Gunn might say. These Cook Islands outfits are different enough to buck that trend and make the list.

Paraguay

The silhouette is so now. That?s why we like it. Promise.

The worst

Great Britain

Are they in Abba? A cult? A recreation of Puffy and Mase in the ?Mo Money, Mo Problems? video? If the English do as well in the Olympics as they did in looking the most ridiculous at their Opening Ceremony, then it?s going to be one happy fortnight in London.

Mexico

Positives: Sombreros. Negatives: Everything else.

Cuba

If the Olympics don?t work out, a gig announcing ?Monday Night Football? in 1974 could.

Finland

Tennis shoes and skirts are only acceptable if you?re walking from work to the subway.

Argentina

Were those outfits punishment for losing the Falklands War?

Belgium

Not that these outfits are so bad ? they?re only marginally bad. They lead to one big question though: Why does one woman in the middle have on red tights and another have on a red skirt? WHY ARE THEY DIFFERENT?

Austria

Somewhere in Hollywood, a studio executive saw this picture and started writing a pitch for ?The Sound of Music II: The Von Trapp Sisters Grow Up and Go To London.?

United States

Fourth-Place Medal has covered these Ralph Lauren atrocities at length, so we won?t waste any more text now. Kidding. They look like they?re posing for third-grade class pictures at an elementary school in Cherbourg. Side note without snark: Great move by Kobe Bryant to walk with random Team USA members rather than his basketball brethren. That?s what the Olympics are all about. That and berets.

See related Olympics video:

More London Olympics content on Yahoo! Sports:
? Photos: VIP appearances at the Opening Ceremony
? Kate Middleton?s simple Olympic style
? Why Phelps won?t march at Opening Ceremony

Source: http://blog.timesunion.com/olympicssource/best-and-worst-dressed-of-the-london-opening-ceremony/580/

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