Monthly Archives: June 2012

Falklands 30 year anniversary: Argentina's islands claim based on 'myth'

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Mrs Kirchner attempted to persuade the committee that the Argentines and the British should open discussions about the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands with a view to placing the island under Argentinian rule.

But Mr Edwards dismissed the claims as based "myth and rumour".

One of the big problems we face always is that when Argentina goes anywhere in the world they will always finish a meeting with do you support our right to negotiate with the United Kingdom over the sovereignty of the Falklands, he told Radio 4s Today programme from New York.

It is a very innocent question. But inside that innocent question is that the sovereignty of our Islands is written into the Argentina constitution, so any negotiations have a pre-determined outcome.

We believe the Argentine claim is based on myth and rumour, which dates back to 1985 when the put the latest case to the United Nations.

Argentina has claimed that Britain is illegally occupying what they call the Islas Malvinas and that the population of 3,000 has been put there by the British.

Mr Edwards had earlier told The Daily Telegraph: "All nations of the world have the right to determine their own future.

That is enshrined in the United Nations charter. It is the cornerstone of the United Nations charter and denying people that basic human right is against the United Nations charter.

"So if Britain and Argentina discuss the sovereignty of the islands without including the Falkland Islands that would be wrong. But the Argentinians believe we are an implanted population and we have no rights."

On Thursday night, Mrs Kirchner addressed a United Nations decolonisation committee over her country's claim to the islands.

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Falklands 30 year anniversary: Argentina's islands claim based on 'myth'

IAIS Heads To Cayman Islands to Discuss Solvency II and Financial Stability

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GEORGE TOWN, Grand Cayman--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

The impacts of Solvency II and other international regulation on captive insurance companies will be a topic of conversation in the Cayman Islands next week.

Hosted by the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA), senior members from the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) and industry participants will be gathering 18 21 June for the IAIS Global Seminar and Committee Meetings to discuss and exchange ideas on current international regulatory initiatives affecting the insurance industry, including Solvency II Europes latest insurance regulation that introduces tighter capital and corporate governance requirements for commercial re/insurers.

As the Cayman Islands robust and transparent legislative and regulatory platform is already in compliance with international standards, CIMA continues to analyze Solvency IIs potential impact on the captive insurance market before it considers adapting the new equivalency requirements. Approximately 90% of Caymans insurance business is comprised of North American-based captive insurance companies, which are private self-insurance vehicles which do not carry the consumer risk as does a commercial re/insurer, and therefore require a different regulatory model.

Bermuda, which has been pushing ahead to meet the Solvency II requirements, has been told that the Europeans will consider segmented equivalence for Bermuda, which will allow captives to be treated differently, but this exemption has not yet been tested.

Said Clayton Price, Chairman of the Insurance Managers Association of Cayman (IMAC): IMAC stands firmly behind CIMAs balanced and pragmatic approach to Solvency II. The Cayman Islands has a completely transparent regulatory model that has withstood the test of time, and is now the second largest captives domicile, holding more than $11.8 billion in premiums. He went on to say: It is the unintended consequences that need to be carefully considered. Unless captives are carved out of this regulation that has been designed for commercial re/insurers, we believe that Solvency II will needlessly drive up capital costs for our North American clients. As a result of CIMAs considered stance on Solvency II, we are already seeing new captives redomestisticating here.

Key personnel from the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA), including Mr. Karel Van Hulle, who is the Head of Unit for Insurance and Pensions, Director General Internal Market and Services for the European Commission, are expected to attend the session along with CIMAs Head of Insurance Gordon Rowell.

The IAIS is the global standard-setting body for regulation of the insurance industry. The Cayman Islands is a founding member of the IAIS Executive Committee and not only adheres to the IAIS Core Principles of Insurance Supervision, but actively assisted in the development of the revised Core Principles.

Insurance Managers Association of Cayman (IMAC) is a non-profit organisation run by the insurance managers of the Cayman Islands. In operation since 1981, IMACs aim is to act as both regulatory liaison with the Cayman Islands Government and to promote the Cayman Islands as a domicile of choice for captive insurance companies.

IMAC hosts the worlds largest captive insurance conference, attracting nearly 1,300 captive managers, service providers and directors annually.

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IAIS Heads To Cayman Islands to Discuss Solvency II and Financial Stability

Doctors, scientists making waves in united fight

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Published on Jun 17, 2012

From left: NCCS-Vari Translational Research Laboratory director Teh Bin Tean, NCCS-Vari lab researcher Ong Choon Kiat and head of the computational systems biology and human genetics laboratory at Duke-NUS, Associate Professor Steve Rozen. They are part of the team that has made waves in cancer research, especially in cancers prevalent in the region. -- ST PHOTO: NG SOR LUAN

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Doctors, scientists making waves in united fight

Fish Shed Light on Human Melanoma

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Newswise BETHESDA, MD June 15, 2012 A transparent member of the minnow family is providing researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City with insight into human melanoma a form of skin cancer that may lead to new or repurposed drug treatments, for skin and other cancers.

The experiments will be reported at the Model Organisms to Human Biology: Cancer Genetics Meeting, June 17-20, 2012, at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C., which is sponsored by the Genetics Society of America. The meeting will bring together investigators who study cancer-relevant biology in model organisms such as fruit flies, yeast, fungi, worms, and mice with investigators studying human cancer. Each session includes both speakers from the model organism research community and those focusing on human cancer research.

Each year in the United States, 8,700 people die from malignant melanoma. Yariv Houvras, MD, PhD, at Weill Cornell Medical College and Craig Ceol, PhD, at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, along with their colleagues, discovered that a previously-identified human gene, SETDB1, accelerated the progression of cancer when a copy of the gene was inserted into the zebrafish genome. This led researchers to believe that this gene may have a similar effect in humans. In fish with the human SETDB1 gene, melanomas appear earlier and spread faster, which is easily seen through the transparent skin of the zebrafish.

Zebrafish are valuable models for people. Their generation time is three to four months, and each female lays hundreds of eggs every two to three days. In addition, researchers can easily manipulate its genes, many of which have human counterparts, and they can even see inside the developing embryos because they are transparent.

In the work that will be presented at the meeting on Monday, June 18, the researchers used the fish to probe a part of human chromosome 1 that is involved in melanoma. In humans, cancer gets underway when a sequence of genes mutate, including a key gene called BRAF. About 60 percent of human melanomas have a specific BRAF mutation, and a drug targeting mutant BRAF, Vemurafenib, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last year for the treatment of patients with metastatic melanoma. Its not unusual for cancers to have multiple genetic mutations, so the researchers reasoned that additional genes found in the amplified region on chromosome 1 could also drive melanoma.

And thats where the zebrafish came in. The researchers delivered SETDB1 into single-cell zebrafish embryos that already had BRAF mutations, and the resulting adult fish had the human gene in every melanocyte. They discovered that SETDB1 is a master regulator, playing an important role in the regulation of many other genes and accelerating the cancer. SETBD1 acts by altering regions of the genome using a biochemical process called methylation, and in doing so prevents many genes from being turned on and making their appropriate protein products.

Methylation of chromatin is an epigenetic change that is, it doesnt alter the underlying DNA sequence. SETDB1 acts by binding to DNA and changing the methylation pattern, which it does at several thousand places in the human genome, according to the studies performed by Dr. Houvras and colleagues.

This is a very exciting area. Many new connections are being made between chromatin-modifying enzymes and cancer, Dr. Houvras explains. The FDA has already approved a drug that inhibits DNA methylation, Decitabine, for a blood disorder called myelodysplasia. Within the next few years drugs that inhibit histone methylation will be tested in clinical trials. These drugs may target SETDB1 and other histone methyltransferases and help treat specific cancers that rely on these pathways, Dr. Houvras notes.

The zebrafish may be easy to work with, however this project was anything but. The researchers scaled up their experiments to follow several thousand fish for six months. They performed over 35,000 individual observations, Dr. Houvras says, as they watched fish develop melanomas individually.

The role of SETDB1 in the cancer isnt black-and-white. In humans its highly expressed in 5 percent of normal melanocytes, in 15 percent of benign nevi, and in 70 percent of malignant melanomas. Moles that overexpress the gene may be more likely to progress to cancer, the researchers speculate which could be very useful information, and all thanks to the zebrafish.

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Fish Shed Light on Human Melanoma

New federal health-care tax on medical devices concerns Florida manufacturers

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Included as a measure in the federal health-care reform act, an excise tax set to take effect in 2013 would be imposed on medical devices sold and made in the United States. It is one of many taxes included in the health-care bill to pay for insurance subsidies for 30 million uninsured Americans.

NAPLES Greg Riemer didn't back out of a deal to acquire a small Florida business to expand his company that makes components for medical devices, even though he knew his profit margin soon may drop.

MRPC, his family-owned company based in Wisconsin that's been in business since 1921, went forward two months ago with buying ETI Incorporated, a Tampa-area maker of custom silicone injection molding.

ETI's expansion plans may hinge on what the Senate does this summer with a medical device excise tax set to take effect in 2013. However, the Democrat-controlled Senate isn't expected to repeal the tax like the House did recently.

Included as a measure in the federal health-care reform act, the excise tax would be imposed on medical devices sold and made in the United States. It is one of many taxes included in the health-care bill to pay for insurance subsidies for 30 million uninsured Americans.

The Florida manufacturers consortium says the state is a leader for medical device manufacturers with 528 companies, and more component makers. The industry employs more than 20,000 Floridians with an average wage of $63,000. The vast majority of the companies are small firms with 25 or fewer employees.

Riemer knows with certainty what the trickle-down effect will be if the tax of 2.3 percent on sales revenue not on profits is allowed to take effect in January.

"The reality of any tax on a business is it ultimately gets pushed down to some sort of consumer," said Riemer, the company president. "Suppliers like us are asked to take price reductions."

Naples-based Arthrex Inc., which manufactures 6,000 medical devices for minimally invasive orthopedic surgery and achieved more than $1 billion in revenue in 2010, is keeping a close eye on what's happening with the health-care reform act and tax.

"We are following the action in both the legislative and judicial branches," Jon Cheek, vice president of finance for Arthrex, said in a statement. "Short of a Supreme Court decision to overturn the entire reform package, we do not expect closure on this until after the November election. Although Arthrex will incur significant cash flow reduction as a result of this tax, we have not changed our assessment of future demand, and therefore remain committed to our growth plans as previously set forth."

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New federal health-care tax on medical devices concerns Florida manufacturers

Texas leaders split on health care ruling outcome, costs

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AUSTIN --- Any day now the United States Supreme Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the landmark legislation the then-Democrat-controlled Congress passed two years ago and President Barack Obama signed into law.In the long history of the high court, few rulings have been as anticipated as this one.

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Texas leaders split on health care ruling outcome, costs

Possible outcomes in pivotal health care law case

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WASHINGTONSome are already anticipating the Supreme Court's ruling on President Barack Obama's health care law as the "decision of the century." But the justices are unlikely to have the last word on America's tangled efforts to address health care woes. The problems of high medical costs, widespread waste, and tens of millions of people without insurance will require Congress and the president to keep looking for answers, whether or not the Affordable Care Act passes the test of constitutionality.

With a decision by the court expected this month, here is a look at potential outcomes:

Q: What if the Supreme Court upholds the law and finds Congress was within its authority to require most people to have health insurance or pay a penalty?

A: That would settle the legal argument, but not the political battle.

The clear winners if the law is upheld and allowed to take full effect would be uninsured people in the United States, estimated at more than 50 million.

Starting in 2014, most could get coverage through a mix of private insurance and Medicaid, a safety-net program. Republican-led states that have resisted creating health insurance markets under the law would face a scramble to comply, but the U.S. would get closer to other economically advanced countries that guarantee medical care for their citizens.

Republicans would keep trying to block the law. They will try to elect presidential candidate

Obama would feel the glow of vindication for his hard-fought health overhaul, but it might not last long even if he's re-elected.

The nation still faces huge problems with health care costs, requiring major changes to Medicare that neither party has explained squarely to voters. Some backers of Obama's law acknowledge it was only a first installment: get most people covered, then deal with the harder problem of costs.

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Possible outcomes in pivotal health care law case

Ruling could throw health care into chaos

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By Jack Torry and Peggy O'Farrell Staff Writers 7:05 PM Saturday, June 16, 2012

WASHINGTON The U.S. Supreme Court is on the verge of ruling on the new health care law, a decision that could throw health care into temporary chaos as providers and patients scramble to adjust to a wave of uncertainty in the system.

The justices might issue their decision as early as this week. They could deliver a staggering political blow to President Barack Obama by striking down the 2010 law, the signature achievement of the presidents first term that was designed to extend health care to millions of Americans currently without insurance.

The court also could stun conservative Republicans by giving their seal of approval to the law. Republicans in Congress joined by GOP state attorneys general objected that it unconstitutionally forced individuals to buy health insurance.

Instead, a growing number of analysts suggest that five of the justices will cobble together a fractured series of opinions that could leave parts of the law intact while striking down other sections. Such a ruling could create a chaotic situation for hospitals, physicians and patients.

I think hospitals wants clear direction either way, not just in the Supreme Court decision, but in all areas of public policy, said Jonathan Archey, a lobbyist for the Ohio Hospital Association. Whatever the Supreme Court does, were still going to have the issues that the (law) was designed to deal with.

Just about everyone will be affected by the courts decision: Business owners, health care providers, consumers, insurers and public administrators are all anxiously waiting for the justices decision.

SUBHEAD

For Marty Grunder, owner of Grunder Landscaping in Miamisburg, the law means more regulations for small-business owners already burdened by red tape.

It scares me, just in that its more regulation that we dont totally understand, and entrepreneurs, I feel, already have enough regulations to deal with, Grunder said. I hear administrators on both sides of the aisle telling everyone how important small business owners are and were the backbone of the American economy, and thats true. But I dont see a whole lot of action from the Obama side that makes me feel warm and fuzzy about whats going on here.

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Ruling could throw health care into chaos

Possible outcomes in pivotal health care law case – Sat, 16 Jun 2012 PST

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June 16, 2012 in Health

MARK SHERMAN and RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR Associated Press

J. Scott Applewhite photo

This Jan. 25, 2012 file photo shows the U.S. Supreme Court Building in Washington. Some are already anticipating the Supreme Courts ruling on President Barack Obamas health care law as the decision of the century. But the justices are unlikely to have the last word on Americas tangled efforts to address health care woes. The problems of high medical costs, widespread waste, and tens of millions of people without insurance will require Congress and the president to keep looking for answers, whether or not the Affordable Care Act passes the test of constitutionality. With a decision by the court expected this month, a look at potential outcomes.() (Full-size photo)

WASHINGTON (AP) Some are already anticipating the Supreme Courts ruling on President Barack Obamas health care law as the decision of the century.

But the justices are unlikely to have the last word on Americas tangled efforts to address health care woes. The problems of high medical costs, widespread waste, and tens of millions of people without insurance will require Congress and the president to keep looking for answers, whether or not the Affordable Care Act passes the test of constitutionality.

With a decision by the court expected this month, here is a look at potential outcomes:

___

Q: What if the Supreme Court upholds the law and finds Congress was within its authority to require most people to have health insurance or pay a penalty?

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Possible outcomes in pivotal health care law case - Sat, 16 Jun 2012 PST

Area health care officials say reform will continue one way or another

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Gail Amundson is trying to remember who said something to the effect of "a mind stretched by a new idea never goes back to the same shape."

Turns out she's paraphrasing words from an influential U.S. Supreme Court Justice of the past, Oliver Wendell Holmes, in reference to what promises to be one of the current Supreme Court's most influential decisions in decades - the much anticipated ruling on the groundbreaking law nicknamed "Obamacare," which is expected later this month.

Amundson's point echoes a point made by Methodist Medical Center CEO Debbie Simon and many others in the health care industry.

No matter what the Supreme Court decides, the Affordable Care Act has stretched the country's idea of health care and it's not going back. More than 50 provisions of the law have already been implemented, many of them not only accepted but well-liked, according to opinion polls.

"Health care is in the process of remaking itself as we speak," says Amundson, CEO of Quality Quest for Health of Illinois. "The health care reform bill contributed to that in a significant way."

Adds Simon, "Health care reform, in one way or another, will continue."

Considering the nation's health care costs, the billion-dollar question is what's "one way or another" and how will it be financed?

Even before the Supreme Court's long-awaited ruling, three major insurers have already announced they intend to continue several of the law's most popular provisions, including allowing young people to stay on their parents' insurance plans until the age of 26 and eliminating co-pays for preventive health care benefits, such as immunizations.

And even before that, four years before President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, the forerunner of Quality Quest, a collaboration of employers, insurers, health care providers and health care recipients, began the process of remaking health care in central Illinois.

Many of the law's components are already evident locally, such as health care providers' moves to electronic records or OSF Saint Francis Medical Center's involvement as a pilot accountable care organization, designed to improve quality while lowering costs.

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Area health care officials say reform will continue one way or another

Prenatal genetic test offers more information, raises questions

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CHICAGO - The latest advance in prenatal genetic testing purports to offer parents more detailed information than ever about the child they are expecting. But for some, the new answers could lead to another round of questions.

The technology allows doctors to detect small or subtle chromosomal changes in a fetus - such as missing or extra pieces of DNA - that could be missed by standard tests.

Most parents will get results confirming a normal pregnancy. But some will learn that their baby has a birth defect, a developmental problem or other medical condition, and in a small number of cases the test will detect things that no one knows quite how to interpret.

The information can allow parents to prepare for early intervention and treatment, but it also could raise questions about terminating the pregnancy or lead to nagging worry over uncertain results.

The Reproductive Genetics Institute in Chicago, which has helped pioneer the rapidly developing field of prenatal diagnosis and testing, recently began offering the procedure - array comparative genomic hybridization, or array CGH for short - to any pregnant woman who wants it.

"The technology has been available for a number of years . but it has almost never been used prenatally," said Dr. Norman Ginsberg, an obstetrician specializing in prenatal genetic testing at the institute. "We think this is the beginning of the next generation of how we'll look at things."

Other medical experts see the technology as promising but have concerns about using it as a first-line test because of the potential drawbacks and the lack of published research. The availability of array CGH also raises fundamental, sometimes delicate, questions for parents.

How much do they want to know about their child's genetic makeup before he is born? How will they deal with the uncertainty of some test results, such as detection of chromosomal changes that have not been associated with diseases? Should the technology be used to identify diseases in their children that would not emerge until adulthood?

"This technology is giving genetic counselors and physicians a challenge in that there is more to discuss with patients, and it gives patients a lot more to think about in terms of what kinds of information they want to know about their baby prior to delivery," said Jennifer Hoskovec, director of prenatal genetic counseling services at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston.

Array CGH is just one of the newer microarray technologies expected to become widely available to parents.

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Prenatal genetic test offers more information, raises questions

Genetic factors linked to gay men

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PADOVA, Italy, June 16 (UPI) -- Researchers in Italy suggest sexually antagonistic genetic factors in mothers may promote homosexuality in men and fertility in female relatives.

However, it is not clear whether and how the genetic factors are expressed to simultaneously induce homosexuality in men and increased fertility in their mothers and maternal aunts, the researchers said.

Andrea Camperio Ciani of the University of Padova in Italy discovered mothers and maternal aunts of gay men tend to have significantly more offspring than those of straight men.

The study, scheduled to be published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, said it appeared at least one gene on the X chromosome resulted in more men being gay and women having more children.

"Using questionnaires, we investigated fecundity -- fertility -- in 161 female European subjects and scrutinized possible influences, including physiological, behavioral and personality factors," Ciani said in a statement. "We compared 61 females who were either mothers or maternal aunts of homosexual men. One hundred females who were mothers or aunts of heterosexual men were used as controls."

The analysis showed both mothers and maternal aunts of homosexual men show increased fecundity compared with corresponding maternal female relatives of heterosexual men.

A two-step statistical analysis found mothers and maternal aunts of homosexual men had fewer gynecological disorders; fewer complicated pregnancies; less interest in having children; less emphasis on romantic love; placed less importance on their social life; showed reduced family stability; were more extraverted; and were divorced or separated from their spouses more frequently.

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Genetic factors linked to gay men

New York Law Firm’s MesotheliomaHelp.net Site Publishes Interview with Gene Therapy Author

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New York mesothelioma lawyer Joseph W. Belluck says indications that research may lead to a gene therapy approach to mesothelioma treatment provides a source of hope to asbestos-disease victims.New York, NY (PRWEB) June 16, 2012 Gene therapy may one day be a viable part of mesothelioma treatment, New York-based geneticist and author Ricki Lewis says in an exclusive interview on the ...

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New York Law Firm’s MesotheliomaHelp.net Site Publishes Interview with Gene Therapy Author

Megan Whitmarsh's rendered sculptural and painted objects on view at Jack Hanley Gallery

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NEW YORK, NY.- Jack Hanley Gallery presents a solo exhibition by Megan Whitmarsh. Using hand-stitching and embroidery, Whitmarsh renders sculptural and painted objects that evoke popular culture as well as abstract and gestural painting. The result, a giant fabric collage of personal and cultural ephemera, reckons both past and present imagery in a rueful Pop art.

The word revolution to the cultural mind may signify a permanent change to existing conditions, but the literal meaning is to rotate back to a point of departure. Something can be transformed, but not eliminated entirely - a rule of thumb. To Whitmarsh, this reading provokes a needed multiplicity and contrast. By faithfully recreating and re-interpreting familiar objects and forms from the 70s to today, her work acknowledges and projects the shifts in our collective material history.

Megan Whitmarsh lives and works in Los Angeles. She received her MFA from the University of New Orleans, and her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute. In addition to her detailed hand embroidery, she works in a variety of low-tech media, including stop-action animation, soft sculpture, self-published comic books, painting and drawing. She has shown internationally in locations such as New York, Seoul, Los Angeles, Reykjavik, Toronto, Miami, Brussels & Barcelona.

Artist's Statement I will create a layered, textile-based installation of recursive artworks launched from recognizable cultural iconography (e.g., Joni Mitchell, science fiction, New Wave, the Muppets, New Age); resulting in a rueful sort of Pop art that explores the oscillation between mass culture and subjective narrative.

I consider art a practice of transformation. We cannot expect to make new energy; instead we must reinvent, recycle, and transform what exists already. Making art is my attempt to synthesize my optimistic vision of the future with my pragmatic appraisal of the world I inhabit.

I am a child of the 70s whose sense of futurism is informed by Star Wars (fucked-up dusty robots) instead of Tomorrow Land. A future with entropy and drug use and weeds growing in the cracks between the scratched plexiglass windows of the geodesic domes. Bits of yarn and dusty houseplants. If this sounds bleak, I don't mean for it to. Perhaps the healthiest kind of futurism is one that admits entropy and flux. Perfection is suspicious; worn and dusty can mean well-loved, too. Who loves the Stepford Wife?

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Megan Whitmarsh's rendered sculptural and painted objects on view at Jack Hanley Gallery

Cycling, Cubo-Futurism and the 4th Dimension. Jean Metzinger's work at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection

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VENICE.- Opening June 9 (through September 16, 2012), the exhibition Cycling, Cubo-Futurism and the 4th Dimension. Jean Metzingers At the Cycle-Race Track focuses on a painting acquired by Peggy Guggenheim in 1945 and now permanently on view in her museum in Venice. Exactly one hundred year years after At the Cycle-Race-Track (1912) was painted, the exhibition reveals how Jean Metzinger (1883 -1956) adapted the avant-garde pictorial language of Cubism to subject matter combining the popular sport of cycle-racing with attempts to depict speed and to define in paint the fourth dimensionalluded to in the number 4 in the stadium grandstand. Metzinger, though less celebrated today than contemporaries such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, figured prominently among the Cubists that exhibited together in Salle 41 of the 1911 Salon des Indpendants in Paristhe event at which the Cubist movement crystallized in the perception of Parisian art and art critical circles. At the Cycle-Race Track is by an artist who is central to our understanding of Cubism, one of the most original pictorial styles in twentieth century art. Together with Albert Gleizes, Metzinger published Du Cubisme (1912), the first book-length account of the aims and methods of Cubism.

At the Cycle-Race Track illustrates the final yards of the Paris-Roubaix race, and portrays its winner in 1912, Charles Crupelandt. The Paris-Roubaix has earned several nicknames: Hell of the North, owing to the extreme hardship of cycling over the cobbled pav roads of northern France, Queen of the Classics, the Easter Race. Metzingers painting was the first in Modernist art to represent a specific sporting event and its champion. He folded into the image his concepts of multiple perspective, simultaneity, and time, according to his belief that the fourth dimension was crucial to a new art that could compete with the classical French tradition of Jacques-Louis David and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Metzinger belonged to a group of intellectuals and artists, including Guillaume Apollinaire, Albert Gleizes and Frantiek Kupka, that frequented the household of the Duchamp brothers, Marcel Duchamp, Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Jacques Villon, in Puteaux, a suburb of Paris, and who, inspired by their admiration for Maurice Princet, known as the the mathematician of the Cubists, discussed such matters as non-Euclidean geometry, theoretical mathematics, the golden section and non-visible dimensions. The combination of a sporting subject chronicling a new passion in French popular culture and an ambitious intellectual and visual apparatus central to the nascent Cubist movement qualifies Metzingers At the Cycle-Race Track as a masterpiece.

This exhibition is inspired by and curated by Erasmus Weddigen, who first discovered the identity of the cyclist in At the Cycle-Race Track and its precise date. It will include two further paintings of racing cyclists by Metzinger, and a third, recently rediscovered painting, treating the subject of time and the fourth dimension, and signifying the end of Metzingers research into the dynamics of movement. These works will be exhibited together to the public for the first time. Images of cyclists by Italian FuturistsUmberto Boccioni, Fortunato Depero, Gino Severini and Mario Sironiwill also be displayed. Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913) by Boccioni and works by Marcel Duchamp will further reference the elasticity of space. Paintings by Georges Braque and Louis Marcoussis will illustrate the presence of sand as the volumetric third dimension in art.

The exhibition documents the passion, then and now, for cycle racing, and for the Paris-Roubaix race in particular, with early and modern bicycles loaned by the collection of Ivan Bonduelle, a long-term loan to Muse Rgional du Vlo La Belle Echappe, La Fresnaye-sur-Chdouet, Museo del Ciclismo Madonna del Ghisallo, and designer Marco Mainardi of Studio Dimensione Servizi. In addition, the racing cycle of Fabian Cancellara, winner of the Paris-Roubaix race in 2006 and 2010, is loaned by the RADIOSHACK NISSAN TREK. The theoretical and sporting themes of the show come together in the exhibition of a stationary bicycle, to be used by the audience, designed to illustrate theories of space and time formulated by Albert Einstein, loaned by the University of Tbingen, Germany.

Paul Wiedmer (b. 1947), a Swiss artist living and working in Lazio and Burgdorf, Switzerland, has created a new sculpture for this exhibition. It will be on view in the Nasher Sculpture Garden. Titled Cyclosna this work deals with concepts such as the eternity of time and the connection between the past, the present and the future. It will reference other works on display and allude to the philosophical nature of cycle-races.

Erasmus Weddigen is an independent art historian and restorer. From 1970 to 1986 he was Head Conservator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern. Since 1997, with his wife Sonya Weddigen-Schmid, he has operated the Saveart conservation studio in Bern.

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Cycling, Cubo-Futurism and the 4th Dimension. Jean Metzinger's work at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection

Fair shot, freedom, class warfare: Economic glossary of campaign '12 shows big divide

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If sometimes it seems like the two candidates for president are speaking different languages, the reason is simple:

They are.

President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney use distinct vocabularies. Each has a campaign glossary of sorts to define himself, criticize the other guy, highlight opposing economic philosophies.

Fair shot or economic freedom? The nation's welfare or class warfare? You're-on-your-own economics or the heavy hand of government?

The president has tried to cast himself as the champion of the middle class. He claims Romney wants to perpetuate failed economic policies that favor the rich and privileged business interests over everyday workers. Obama regularly denounces tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires and frequently talks about the importance of "playing by the rules."

Romney has portrayed himself as Mr. Turnaround, the hands-on guy whose 25 years in the private sector give him the ideal resume to revive an economy he contends has gone from bad to worse under the president. His speeches are filled with patriotic references to the Founding Fathers and regular mentions of "free enterprise" and "prosperity."

"In a lot of ways, it's the standard party line Democrat, working-class rhetoric, Republican, business class," says Mitchell McKinney, professor of communication at the University of Missouri.

"Both are playing to the base. ... Obama has to address those disparities in the economy without seeming that he is anti-business, anti-capitalist. ... Romney wants to tout the making of money and successful working of the capitalist system but not highlight in any way the downside. In that sense they both have fine lines they're trying to walk."

Both men have tripped on their own rhetoric.

There was Obama's recent retreat from his assertion that "the private sector is doing fine" and Romney's declaration that "corporations are people." In coming months, McKinney says, the candidates, surrogates and big-money political groups will repeat certain words and phrases "so America comes to accept their narrative as reality. Clearly, words do matter."

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Fair shot, freedom, class warfare: Economic glossary of campaign '12 shows big divide