Monthly Archives: January 2014

Health care website frustrates Spanish speakers – Quincy Herald-Whig | Illinois & Missouri News, Sports

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By RUSSELL CONTRERAS and KELLI KENNEDY Associated Press

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - Mirroring problems with the federal health care website, people around the nation attempting to navigate the Spanish version have discovered their own set of difficulties.

The site, CuidadoDeSalud.gov, launched more than two months late.

A Web page with Spanish instructions linked users to an English form.

And the translations were so clunky and full of grammatical mistakes that critics say they must have been computer-generated - the name of the site itself can literally be read "for the caution of health."

"When you get into the details of the plans, it's not all written in Spanish. It's written in Spanglish, so we end up having to translate it for them," said Adrian Madriz, a health care navigator who helps with enrollment in Miami.

The issues with the site underscore the halting efforts across the nation to get Spanish-speakers enrolled under the federal health care law. Critics say that as a result of various problems, including those related to the website, many people whom the law was designed to help have been left out of the first wave of coverage.

Federal officials say they have been working to make the site better and plan further improvements soon. Also, administrators say they welcome feedback and try to fix typos or other errors quickly.

"We launched consumer-friendly Spanish online enrollment tools on CuidadoDeSalud.gov in December which represents one more way for Latinos to enroll in Marketplace plans," said Health and Human Services Department spokesman Richard Olague in an email to The Associated Press. "Since the soft-launch, we continue to work closely with key stakeholders to get feedback in order to improve the experience for those consumers that use the website."

Still, efforts to enroll Spanish-speakers have fallen short in several states with large Hispanic populations, and critics say the translated version of HealthCare.gov could have helped boost those numbers.

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Health care website frustrates Spanish speakers - Quincy Herald-Whig | Illinois & Missouri News, Sports

Rare genetic mutation confirmed as a cause of Tourette Syndrome

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Brain researchers say they have confirmed for the first time that a rare genetic mutation can cause some cases of Tourette syndrome, with the fault disrupting production of histamine in the brain.

The New Haven, CT, researchers at the Yale School of Medicine say the histamine effect "is a cause of the tics and other abnormalities of Tourette syndrome." Tics are repetitive movements and vocal sounds, and they are unwanted and involuntary - they cannot be controlled.

Publishing their research on mice in the journal Neuron, the authors raise the question of investigating treatment of Tourette syndrome by drugs that target histamine receptors in the brain.

Drugs with such a mode of action are already being explored by pharmaceutical companies for the treatment of separate brain disorders, schizophrenia and ADHD.

Information from the national gene database about histamine describes the chemical's role - it is a messenger molecule released by nerves, among other functions.

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Rare genetic mutation confirmed as a cause of Tourette Syndrome

Effort to demystify GMOs was tough

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POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Jan 12, 2014 LAST UPDATED: 05:59 a.m. HST, Jan 12, 2014

NEW YORK TIMES

KONA From the moment the bill to ban genetically engineered crops on Hawaii island was introduced in May, it garnered more vocal support than any the County Council here had ever considered, even the perennially popular bids to decriminalize marijuana.

Public hearings were dominated by recitations of the ills often attributed to genetically modified organisms, or GMOs: cancer in rats, a rise in childhood allergies, out-of-control superweeds, genetic contamination, overuse of pesticides, the disappearance of butterflies and bees.

Like some others on the nine-member council, Greggor Ilagan was not even sure at the outset of the debate exactly what genetically modified organisms were: living things whose DNA has been altered, often with the addition of a gene from a distant species, to produce a desired trait. But he could see why almost all of his colleagues had been persuaded of the virtue of turning the island into what the bill's proponents called a "GMO-free oasis."

"You just type 'GMO' and everything you see is negative," he told his staff. Opposing the ban also seemed likely to ruin anyone's re-election prospects.

Yet doubts nagged at the councilman, who was serving his first two-year term. The island's papaya farmers said that an engineered variety had saved their fruit from a devastating disease. A study purporting that a diet of GMO corn caused tumors in rats, mentioned often by the ban's supporters, turned out to have been thoroughly debunked.

And University of Hawaii biologists urged the council to consider the global scientific consensus, which holds that existing genetically engineered crops are no riskier than others, and have provided some tangible benefits.

"Are we going to just ignore them?" Ilagan wondered.

Urged on by Margaret Wille, the ban's sponsor, who spoke passionately of the need to "act before it's too late," the council declined to form a task force to look into such questions before its November vote. But Ilagan, 27, sought answers on his own. In the process, he found himself, like so many public and business leaders worldwide, wrestling with a subject in which popular beliefs often do not reflect scientific evidence.

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Effort to demystify GMOs was tough

NYC Commuters are Suspended in Time in Stainless

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Artist Adam Magyar uses sophisticated software and high-speed camera rigs of his own design to capture beautifully haunting slow-motion footage of commuters, trains and passengers inside NYC's Grand Central Terminal.

Magyar compiled the footage into a 24-minute short film called Stainless. Josh Hammer describes the "long-running techno-art project" in a must-read profile on Magyar and his work, recently published over at Matter:

In a growing body of photographic and video art done over the past decade, Magyar bends conventional representations of time and space, stretching milliseconds into minutes, freezing moments with a resolution that the naked eye could never have perceived. His art evokes such variegated sources as Albert Einstein, Zen Buddhism, even the 1960s TV series The Twilight Zone. The imagessleek silver subway cars, solemn commuters lost in private worldsare beautiful and elegant, but also produce feelings of disquiet. "These moments I capture are meaningless, there is no story in them, and if you can catch the core, the essence of being, you capture probably everything," Magyar says in one of the many cryptic comments about his work that reflect both their hypnotic appeal and their elusiveness. There is a sense of stepping into a different dimension, of inhabiting a space between stillness and movement, a time-warp world where the rules of physics don't apply.

Magyar's aesthetic is absolutely captivating; if you're into this style of art, you'll definitely want to read up on him and his work.

[Adam Magyar via Matter]

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NYC Commuters are Suspended in Time in Stainless

Freedom executive had felonies, benefited from stimulus

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CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Freedom Industries, the company responsible for contaminating the water of 300,000 Kanawha Valley residents, was founded by a two-time convicted felon, benefited from the 2009 federal stimulus and at least two of its executives have longstanding ties to the Charleston business community.

Since the chemical spill on Thursday, Freedom Industries executives have entirely avoided media requests, except for a brief news conference Friday night.

On Sunday morning, Charles Ryan Associates, a prominent Charleston public relations firm hired by Freedom, abruptly dropped the chemical distributor as a client.

"I made the decision not to represent them," said Susan Lavenski, who was handling Freedom for Charles Ryan. She would not give any details as to why she would not longer represent the company.

Freedom Industries was founded in 1992 by Gary Southern and Carl Lemley Kennedy II, according to filings with the West Virginia secretary of state. The company's website, however, says it was founded in 1986.

"Our friends and our neighbors, this incident is extremely unfortunate, unanticipated and we are very, very sorry for the disruption to everybody's daily life that this incident has caused," Southern, the company's president, said at the news conference Friday night. "It has been an extremely long day, I'm having trouble talking at the moment. I would appreciate it if we could wrap this thing up."

He has not spoken publicly since.

Kennedy is still listed as "incorporator" with the secretary of state, but a woman who answered the phone at Freedom Industries on Friday said he left the company "years ago."

As recently as 2005, Kennedy owned 5 percent of Freedom Industries, according to a bankruptcy filing. That stake was valued at $675,000, according to Kennedy's filing, meaning that in 2005 Freedom Industries was valued at $13.5 million.

That valuation has almost certainly increased over the past eight years. In 2008, the company employed 45 people, sold 10 million gallons of material and earned $26 million, according to newspaper records.

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Freedom executive had felonies, benefited from stimulus

Freedom Industries: Meet The Chemical Provider At The Center Of The West Virginia Chemical Spill

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On its website, Freedom Industries says it was founded in 1986 and has two production facilities. The Etowah River Terminal, where the leak occurred, can store 4 million gallons worth of chemicals. According to WOWKTV, Freedom bought the property in December.

The website says it is a full service producer of specialty chemicals for the mining, steel, and cement industries [and] a leading producer of freeze conditioning agents, dust control palliatives, flotation reagents, water treatment polymers and other specialty chemicals.The leaked chemical, 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (MCHM), is used in a coal cleaning process.

Kanwaha County Commission President Kent Carper saidyesterdaythat a containment wall meant to prevent chemicals from reaching soil at Freedom Industries was in need of $1 million in repairs, but was never fixed.

Carper said county officials have requested the U.S. Chemical Safety Board and Environmental Protection Agency investigate the spill.

According to NBC, who spoke to the state Department of Environmental Protection, Freedom Industries is exempt from DEP inspection because it only stores chemicals and does not produce them, despite the Freedom Industries' claiming on its website that it is producer. Whether the Etowah River Terminal facility does produce chemicals or is only a storage facility is unclear.

The West Virginia Gazette reports that the spill was discovered by Department of Environmental Protection air-quality officials after they received complaints of an odor around the facility. Freedom Industries did not report the spill to regulatory agencies, but company president Gary Southern said it was unaware of the leak by 10:30 a.m. on Jan 9.

The DEP has ordered Freedom Industries to move its coal processing chemicals to a safer site. Governor Earl Ray Tomblin has responded by saying he will work on tightening regulation on chemical storage facilities.

Many residents are frustrated with both Freedom Industries and West Virginia American Water, who owns the treatment plant where the MCHM made its way into the water supply. On Friday, one angry resident threatened that he was on his way to teach everyone [at Freedom Industries] a lesson.

The spill reportedly originated from a 35,000-gallon storage tank along the Elk River. From there, MCHM made its way through the soil and into the river. The chemicals then rode the river down to the West Virginia American Water-owned Kanawha Valley Water Treatment Plant, where the chemicals saturated a special filter system and flowed into the water supply.

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Freedom Industries: Meet The Chemical Provider At The Center Of The West Virginia Chemical Spill

FUKUSHIMA Breaking news; California Officials Confirm BEACHES RADIOACTIVE kevin d. blanch 1/9/13 – Video

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FUKUSHIMA Breaking news; California Officials Confirm BEACHES RADIOACTIVE kevin d. blanch 1/9/13 - Video

8 ways to take up stargazing in 2014

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Stargazing Live has again proved a big hit for the BBC and sparked renewed interest in the thrilling sights to be found in the night sky. SIMON PARKIN looks at how to take the next steps into amateur astronomy in Norfolk

His first glimpse through a telescope at the age of 10 sparked a passion that this week again saw Mark Thompson bring the stars into the nations front rooms as part of the BBC2 Stargazing Live.

I remember it vividly, said Mark, also the One Shows astronomer and president of the Norwich Astronomical Society. I looked through the big telescope and saw Saturn, looking exactly like it did in books. Creamy brown with the trademark rings, it looked as if it was just hanging in this huge, black, velvety sky.

I dont think Ive ever seen Saturn looking better, although Ive definitely seen it more clearly since. It was incredible. I was hooked from that moment on and Ive never looked back.

Stargazing Live, which is back on our screens for a foruth series this week, aims to encourage us to forgo the comfy sofa in favour of gazing skywards to take in the glorious sight of the star-filled night sky.

The programmes, fronted by Wonders of the Solar System presenter Professor Brian Cox and comedian Dara OBriain, best known for his comedy skills but also the science-mad holder of a physics degree, also featured Mark co-presenting from various locations on to topics including how to unravel the mysteries of the universe, how best to observe the moons of Jupiter and how to use a telescope.

This year the programme has also featured live shots of stars from Kelling Heath Holiday Park, near Holt.

The three-programme event has again been a big hit attracting more than four million viewers and proving that if you present it in the right way the general public does have an interest in science and with the dark winter nights there is no better time to continue that interest.

There are a number of events happening in Norfolk (see panel right) that seek to follow up on the interest generated and encourage us to take the next step from watching on our sofa to getting out into the dark to see for ourselves.

How often have you gazed into the velvety night sky and wished you knew which constellation was which, how to spot a planet or even how to find the North Star? says Mark. A lot of people think astronomy, the universe, is a big scary subject but people can understand quite a lot of it. Its a great leveller and I think this is one of the appeals of it.

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8 ways to take up stargazing in 2014

How Powerful is Forex Megadroid With Its New Artificial Intelligence 2014 – Video

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How Powerful is Forex Megadroid With Its New Artificial Intelligence 2014 - Video