The Rock is taking this "no pain, no gain" thing to heart. Dwayne Johnson announced he's set to undergo surgery next week for an abdominal injury.
"Saw my Dr who had to push my intestines back thru the tear in my abdomen. Kinda romantic," the pro-wrestler-turned-movie star tweeted on Sunday. "Surgery is next week. #BringItOn."
VIDEO: Michael Bay talks Dwayne Johnson's baby oil routine
As it happened, Johnson was MIA for last night's Hollywood premiere of his new action flick, the Michael Bay-directed "Pain and Gain" costarring Mark Wahlberg.
A rep for the 40-year-old thesp was unavailable for comment.
But news of the operation comes after Johnson got back in the ring earlier this month to take on rival John Cena at Wrestlemania 29, a title match he subsequently lost.
"Pain and Gain" hits theaters this Friday.
PICS: Here are some other celebs not feeling too hot these days
Some of us can't say no ? and I'm using "us" in the broadest sense, to include not just humans, but wallabies, fruit flies, birds and monkeys. We can't control our appetites.
There are monkeys, Charles Darwin wrote in his book The Descent of Man, who "have a strong taste for tea, coffee, and spirituous liquors; [who] smoke tobacco with pleasure." And some of them, usually a small percentage, go too far. Here's Darwin's description of a group of monkeys waking up from a hard night of drinking.
On the following morning they were very cross and dismal; they held their aching heads with both hands, and wore a most pitiable expression: when beer or wine was offered them, they turned away with disgust, but relished the juice of lemons.
Modern examples are everywhere. This BBC video shows a bunch of monkeys hunting for refreshments at a hotel beach on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts. They can, if they like, suck on daiquiris and mai tais or they can choose Fanta orange soda. There is, of course, variation, but as the narrator explains, monkey drinking roughly parallels human drinking. Some of us drink a little. Some of us a lot. And the heavy drinkers suffer similarly.
Drunk Worms
Some chemicals give pleasure. The problem is, in some of us, the natural urge for good times gets untamed. Then pleasure becomes a hunger that won't abate. "Alcohol can make male fruit flies hypersexual and pursue more same-sex mating, perhaps because the ethanol interferes with their reproductive signaling mechanisms," Dr. Barbara Natterson-Horowitz writes in her bestseller Zoobiquity. Even little worms get drunk. (They move more slowly and lay fewer eggs).
The book describes bighorn sheep in the Canadian Rockies who hunt for psychoactive lichen with such passion they "grind their teeth down to the gums scraping it off rocks. There are immature zebra fish, who when given a sprinkle of cocaine on one side of a fish tank, will stay on that [oh so promising] side for long periods, waiting for another fix."
Sick Or Slacker?
All animals are wired for pleasures that will lead them to reproduce, hunt for food, protect their young. The wiring is chemical and those chemicals are ancient. Humans have receptors for opiates in our brains, but so do insects, amphibians, and some of the Earth's oldest fish. And in every population, when the wiring gets overloaded, some animals can't get sober. Dr. Natterson-Horowitz says those animals are sick.
"These animal examples also challenge anyone who would stigmatize addicts or moralize about the disease," she writes. "What you might see as a personal failing in your no-account uncle who ruins every Thanksgiving with his drunken antics is not a uniquely human impulse."
True, but humans (I might argue) have reason, foresight and the ability to correct behavior we know is self-destructive. Other animals can't.
Dr. Natterson-Horowitz has this answer: "True, Uncle Bill can choose between a trip to the liquor store and a trip to his AA meeting. But if a fruit fly had the same option, it too, might sometimes take a rain check on sour coffee in a Styrofoam cup in favor of a warm, soothing hit of ethanol."
Yes, we have our weak moments. We all do. In non-human species, the problem seems a little bit sadder.
Case in point, she writes:
In Tasmania, a leading producer of medical opium, users sometimes sneak into the fields. Ignoring security cameras, they hop fences and gorge on poppy straw and sap. Dosed on the drug, they flail around in circles, damaging crops. Sometimes they pass out in the fields and have to be carried away in the morning. And there's no way to prosecute these trespassing scofflaws, no rehab to send them to. Because these freeloading opium eaters are wallabies.
Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and her co-author Kathryn Bowers' book Zoobiquity: The Astonishing Connection Between Human and Animal Health, takes a broad look at human and animal health; how what hurts and helps animals can shed light on our own medical problems.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose on Friday as earnings from Google and other companies boosted technology shares, but it wasn't enough to prevent the S&P 500 from suffering its worst week since November.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 10.37 points or 0.07 percent, to end unofficially at 14,547.51. The S&P 500 <.spx> gained 13.64 points or 0.88 percent, to finish unofficially at 1,555.25. The Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> added 39.69 points or 1.25 percent, to close unofficially at 3,206.06.
For the week, the Dow and the S&P 500 each fell 2.1 percent and the Nasdaq lost 2.7 percent. It was the largest weekly percentage decline of the year for all three indexes.
(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Jan Paschal)
UnitedHealth Group, the largest provider of Medicare Advantage plans, warned Thursday that funding cuts for the privately-run versions of the federal Medicare program will force it to reconsider its expectations for earnings growth next year.
CEO Stephen Hemsley told analysts that the government-subsidized coverage for elderly and disabled people faces a reimbursement cut of about 4 percent next year. That's on top of other possible federal funding reductions and an expected 3 percent rise in medical costs.
"We did not expect the fastest-growing, most popular and most effective of the Medicare benefit options serving America's seniors would be underfunded to this extent in 2014," Hemsley said.
More than 13 million people were enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans last year, or about 27 percent of the Medicare population, according to the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation.
Insurers offer hundreds of different Medicare Advantage plans around the country. The coverage typically provides extras such as dental and vision care, or rates that are lower than standard Medicare.
UnitedHealth, which is the nation's largest health insurer, has nearly 2.9 million people enrolled, and the plans brought in about 20 percent of the insurer's revenue last year.
Shares of UnitedHealth and other insurers that provide Medicare Advantage coverage slid in February after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released data that pointed to payment cuts as steep as 8 percent next year. The government then softened the blow to a reduction of about 4 percent.
But UnitedHealth said that cut, combined with the other reductions, will be tough to stomach. UnitedHealth said it may have to trim benefits, change provider networks or leave some markets to preserve Medicare Advantage profitability.
Hemsley, UnitedHealth's CEO, called the reimbursement cut "a significantly greater rate setback than anyone could have expected."
The company also said widespread government spending cuts that started earlier this year and hit Medicare will make it hard for the insurer to reach the top end of its forecast for 2013 earnings of $5.25 to $5.50 per share. Analysts expect earnings of $5.51 per share, according to FactSet, a research firm.
Analysts had labeled UnitedHealth's 2013 earnings forecast conservative after it came out last fall, and the insurer normally raises it several times through the year. But so far, the company has just backed the initial projection.
Thursday's outlook warning came as UnitedHealth reported that its first-quarter earnings sank 14 percent, largely due to a lower gain the company recorded due to leftover insurance claims.
UnitedHealth earned $1.19 billion, or $1.16 per share, in the three months that ended March 31. That figure doesn't count a portion of earnings that went to shareholders of Amil Participacoes SA, a Brazilian health benefits and care provider that UnitedHealth is in the process of buying for about $4.9 billion.
The performance was down from $1.39 billion, or $1.31 per share, a year ago. Revenue rose 11 percent to $30.34 billion in the three months that ended March 31.
Analysts expected earnings of $1.14 per share on $30.54 billion in revenue.
The insurer booked a $280 million gain in the quarter because claims left over from previous quarters came in lower than expected, which allowed it to release money held in reserve. That compares to a $530 million gain in last year's quarter. The lower total means actual claims came in closer to what the insurer projected.
UnitedHealth, based in Minnetonka, Minn., is the first major U.S. health insurer to announce earnings every quarter. Many analysts and investors see it as a bellwether for the managed care sector.
Company shares fell 3.77 percent, or $2.34, to close at $59.69 on Thursday. UnitedHealth shares had climbed 14 percent so far this year, as of Wednesday.
UnitedHealth's stark warning about next year ? not its performance so far this year ? motivated investors to sell, said Sheryl Skolnick, an analyst who covers insurers for the CRT Capital Group, an institutional broker and dealer.
"That was a negative surprise," she said.
Skolnick said the problem for investors is that UnitedHealth can't say yet how much its profitability will be affected by the Medicare Advantage business.
Wall Street, as a rule, dislikes uncertainty, and UnitedHealth won't release a forecast for 2014 until later this year.
"The markets are adjusting to that new reality today," Skolnick said.
Research harnesses solar-powered proteins to filter harmful antibiotics from waterPublic release date: 19-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: M.B. Reilly reillymb@ucmail.uc.edu 513-556-1824 University of Cincinnati
New research, just published, details how University of Cincinnati researchers have developed and tested a solar-powered nano filter that is able to remove harmful carcinogens and antibiotics from water sources lakes and rivers at a significantly higher rate than the currently used filtering technology made of activated carbon.
In the journal "Nano Letters," Vikram Kapoor, environmental engineering doctoral student, and David Wendell, assistant professor of environmental engineering, report on their development and testing of the new filter made of two bacterial proteins that was able to absorb 64 percent of antibiotics in surface waters vs. about 40 percent absorbed by the currently used filtering technology made of activated carbon. One of the more exciting aspects of their filter is the ability to reuse the antibiotics that are captured.
Kapoor and Wendell began development of their new nano filter in 2010 and testing in 2012, with the results reported in a paper titled "Engineering Bacterial Efflux Pumps for Solar-Powered Bioremediation of Surface Waters."
The presence of antibiotics in surface waters is harmful in that it breeds resistant bacteria and kills helpful microorganisms, which can degrade aquatic environments and food chains. In other words, infectious agents like viruses and illness-causing bacteria become more numerous while the health of streams and lakes degrades.
So, according to Wendell, the newly developed nano filters, each much smaller in diameter than a human hair, could potentially have a big impact on both human health and on the health of the aquatic environment (since the presence of antibiotics in surface waters can also affect the endocrine systems of fish, birds and other wildlife).
Surprisingly, this filter employs one of the very elements that enable drug-resistant bacteria to be so harmful, a protein pump called AcrB. Wendell explained, "These pumps are an amazing product of evolution. They are essentially selective garbage disposals for the bacteria. Our innovation was turning the disposal system around. So, instead of pumping out, we pump the compounds into the proteovesicles." (The new filtering technology is called a proteovesicle system.)
One other important innovation was the power source, a light-driven bacterial protein called Delta-rhodopsin which supplies AcrB with the pumping power to move the antibiotics.
The bacterial protein system has a number of advantages over present filtration technology:
The operation of the new filtering technology is powered by direct sunlight vs. the energy-intensive needs for the operation of the standard activated carbon filter.
The filtering technology also allows for antibiotic recycling. After these new nano filters have absorbed antibiotics from surface waters, the filters could be extracted from the water and processed to release the drugs, allowing them to be reused. On the other hand, carbon filters are regenerated by heating to several hundred degrees, which burns off the antibiotics.
The new protein filters are highly selective. Currently used activated carbon filters serve as "catch alls," filtering a wide variety of contaminants. That means that they become clogged more quickly with natural organic matter found in rivers and lakes.
Said Wendell, "So far, our innovation promises to be an environmentally friendly means for extracting antibiotics from the surface waters that we all rely on. It also has potential to provide for cost-effective antibiotic recovery and reuse. Next, we want to test our system for selectively filtering out hormones and heavy metals from surface waters."
In relation to the work published in this paper, Wendell and Kapoor tested their solar-powered nano filter against activated carbon, the present treatment technology standard outside the lab. They tested their innovation in water collected from the Little Miami River.
Using only sunlight as the power source, they were able to selectively remove the antibiotics ampicillin and vancomycin, commonly used human and veterinary antibiotics, and the nucleic acid stain, ethidium bromide, which is a potent carcinogen to humans and aquatic animals.
###
[ | 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.
Research harnesses solar-powered proteins to filter harmful antibiotics from waterPublic release date: 19-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: M.B. Reilly reillymb@ucmail.uc.edu 513-556-1824 University of Cincinnati
New research, just published, details how University of Cincinnati researchers have developed and tested a solar-powered nano filter that is able to remove harmful carcinogens and antibiotics from water sources lakes and rivers at a significantly higher rate than the currently used filtering technology made of activated carbon.
In the journal "Nano Letters," Vikram Kapoor, environmental engineering doctoral student, and David Wendell, assistant professor of environmental engineering, report on their development and testing of the new filter made of two bacterial proteins that was able to absorb 64 percent of antibiotics in surface waters vs. about 40 percent absorbed by the currently used filtering technology made of activated carbon. One of the more exciting aspects of their filter is the ability to reuse the antibiotics that are captured.
Kapoor and Wendell began development of their new nano filter in 2010 and testing in 2012, with the results reported in a paper titled "Engineering Bacterial Efflux Pumps for Solar-Powered Bioremediation of Surface Waters."
The presence of antibiotics in surface waters is harmful in that it breeds resistant bacteria and kills helpful microorganisms, which can degrade aquatic environments and food chains. In other words, infectious agents like viruses and illness-causing bacteria become more numerous while the health of streams and lakes degrades.
So, according to Wendell, the newly developed nano filters, each much smaller in diameter than a human hair, could potentially have a big impact on both human health and on the health of the aquatic environment (since the presence of antibiotics in surface waters can also affect the endocrine systems of fish, birds and other wildlife).
Surprisingly, this filter employs one of the very elements that enable drug-resistant bacteria to be so harmful, a protein pump called AcrB. Wendell explained, "These pumps are an amazing product of evolution. They are essentially selective garbage disposals for the bacteria. Our innovation was turning the disposal system around. So, instead of pumping out, we pump the compounds into the proteovesicles." (The new filtering technology is called a proteovesicle system.)
One other important innovation was the power source, a light-driven bacterial protein called Delta-rhodopsin which supplies AcrB with the pumping power to move the antibiotics.
The bacterial protein system has a number of advantages over present filtration technology:
The operation of the new filtering technology is powered by direct sunlight vs. the energy-intensive needs for the operation of the standard activated carbon filter.
The filtering technology also allows for antibiotic recycling. After these new nano filters have absorbed antibiotics from surface waters, the filters could be extracted from the water and processed to release the drugs, allowing them to be reused. On the other hand, carbon filters are regenerated by heating to several hundred degrees, which burns off the antibiotics.
The new protein filters are highly selective. Currently used activated carbon filters serve as "catch alls," filtering a wide variety of contaminants. That means that they become clogged more quickly with natural organic matter found in rivers and lakes.
Said Wendell, "So far, our innovation promises to be an environmentally friendly means for extracting antibiotics from the surface waters that we all rely on. It also has potential to provide for cost-effective antibiotic recovery and reuse. Next, we want to test our system for selectively filtering out hormones and heavy metals from surface waters."
In relation to the work published in this paper, Wendell and Kapoor tested their solar-powered nano filter against activated carbon, the present treatment technology standard outside the lab. They tested their innovation in water collected from the Little Miami River.
Using only sunlight as the power source, they were able to selectively remove the antibiotics ampicillin and vancomycin, commonly used human and veterinary antibiotics, and the nucleic acid stain, ethidium bromide, which is a potent carcinogen to humans and aquatic animals.
###
[ | 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.
Resurgence of endangered deer in Patagonian 'Eden' highlights conservation success
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
The Huemul, a species of deer found only in the Latin American region of Patagonia, is bouncing back from the brink of possible extinction as a result of collaboration between conservationists and the Chilean government, says a new study.
By controlling cattle farming and policing to prevent poaching in the Bernardo O'Higgins National Park ? a vast "natural Eden" covering 3.5 million hectares ? conservation efforts have allowed the deer to return to areas of natural habitat from which it had completely disappeared.
Researchers are hailing the findings as an example of collaborations between local government and scientists leading to real conservation success, and a possible model for future efforts to maintain the extraordinary biodiversity found in this part of Chile.
The study by researchers from Cambridge, the Wildlife Conservation Society and CONAF, the Chilean national forestry commission, is released today in the journalOryx, published by conservation charity Fauna and Flora International.
A national symbol that features on the Chilean coat-of-arms, Huemul deer are estimated to have suffered reductions of 99 per cent in size since the 19th century, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
Researchers believe 50 per cent of this decline has come in recent years, with only 2,500 deer now left in the wild.
The Huemul is a naturally tame and approachable animal, which led to it becoming easy prey for hunters, particularly with the arrival of European colonists in the area who would hunt Huemul for meat to feed their dogs.
Recent increases by local farmers in the practice of releasing cattle indiscriminately into national parkland for retrieval later in the year has damaged the habitats of endemic wildlife such as the Huemul, and, coupled with continued hunting of the species, deer populations plummeted.
The joint efforts of conservationists and researchers with government and private initiatives created a small number of field stations in this remote natural paradise on the tip of South America ? one of the least populated areas of the world, requiring a boat trip of two days along the region's stunning fjords to reach.
This created a base for monitoring endangered species and natural habitats, as well as a team of park rangers enforcing conservation laws that ? although they had been in place since the late sixties ? had never been policed on the ground.
The impact was almost immediate, within five short years ? from 2004 to 2008 ? the Huemul population in the national park not only stabilised but also began to increase, with deer coming down from the hostile mountain areas it had sought refuge in and back to the sea-level valleys where it naturally thrives.
"National parks are at the heart of modern conservation, but there has to be an investment in management and protection on the ground. You can't just have a 'paper park', where an area is ring-fenced on a map but physically ignored," said Crist?bal Brice?o, a researcher from Cambridge's Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, who co-authored the study.
"Our results suggest that synergistic conservation actions, such as cattle removal and poaching control, brought about by increased infrastructure, can lead to the recovery of species such as the threated Huemul."
For Brice?o, the "scattering" of endangered species as habitats are encroached on creates not only external threats - but also extremely limited mating diversity.
This leads to levels of inbreeding that can reach "a critical extent from which there's no return", causing susceptibility to disease and increased extinction risk, as with another Chilean mammal that Brice?o is researching called Darwin's Fox ? named for the scientific genius that first discovered it ? with barely 500 now left in the world.
The Huemul's success offers encouragement for Brice?o and others in the field: "I think it's beautiful that this has turned out to be an example of real hope for an endangered species, an example we would like to replicate."
###
University of Cambridge: http://www.cam.ac.uk
Thanks to University of Cambridge for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
BEIJING (AP) ? A new case of bird flu in China's capital, a 4-year-old boy who displayed no symptoms, is adding to the unknowns about the latest outbreak that has caused 63 confirmed cases and 14 deaths, health officials said Monday.
The boy, who tested positive for the H7N9 virus, is considered a carrier of the strain and has been placed under observation to see if he develops symptoms, health authorities said. Medical teams found the boy in a check of people who had contact with a 7-year-old girl, who was confirmed as Beijing's first case of H7N9 over the weekend: a neighbor of the boy bought chicken from the girl's family.
Beijing Health Bureau deputy director Zhong Dongpo said that, as puzzling as the case is, the boy adds another data point to medical experts limited understanding of H7N9.
"This is very meaningful because it shows that the disease caused by this virus has a wide scope. It's not only limited to critical symptoms. There can also be slight cases, and even those who don't feel any abnormality at all. So we need to understand this disease in a rational and scientific way," Zhong said at a news briefing.
The H7N9 strain was not previously known to infect humans before cases turned up in China this winter, and Zhong and other medical experts said no evidence exists that the virus can be passed from one person to another. Close contact with infected birds is a likely source of transmission. Making the virus hard to detect is that infected poultry display slight or no symptoms, unlike the H5N1 strain which kills birds and raged across the region in the middle of the last decade.
The appearance of cases with mild or no symptoms in humans could make tracing even more difficult, but may also mean that many people infected do not get seriously ill and recover quickly, making the virus is less deadly than it appears.
Most of the cases have occurred in eastern China. In recent days, with hospitals and health officials on alert, cases have turned up in Beijing and the populous central province of Henan. The confirmed death toll from the virus ticked up by one Monday, a 77-year-old woman in Jiangsu, while three more cases were confirmed in eastern provinces, for a total of 63, according to reports from provincial health bureaus.
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_s7EJDA4UmlRrxkzGFEvfY58ZEbHjgHjsYzsyKG0ahSGKvpx0PLMETHv2SIEsANYWuRmNtjPyEi05bPbVHmo_J69t2seW0L0UUfh5LeqDY=s0-d){kind=small}
Public release date: 19-Apr-2013
Share ]