James Moore: The Earthquake Machine: Girl, Not Interrupted

What's a girl to do?

She's young, full of energy and dreams, and has her eyes on adventurous horizons. But even in the 2012 world where she is coming of age, her culture is laying out frilly dresses, shiny pumps and lip gloss that have the potential to turn her into little more than a support system for a future husband's ambitions. A lot more doors are open to young women in the post-feminist era but the expectations of gender don't simply disappear.

And Mary Pauline Lowry will have none of it.

Lowry is a thirty-something Austin writer whose new novel, The Earthquake Machine, explores the power of sexism and gender through a teenager's decision to shed her history, her sex, her friends, and almost everything she is in order to find a different existence. The architecture of Lowry's story is subtle, with symbols that are cast upon a stark and unforgiving landscape, which she renders as both inspiring and frightening with her near perfect choice of words.

Rhonda, the narrative's main character, has a troubled epiphany during a river trip down the Rio Grande as it passes through the canyons of Big Bend National Park. Like John Grady Cole and Lacey Rawlins of Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses, Rhonda has arrived at a decision to escape the emotional detritus of war. Cole and Rawlins went off on a teenaged Mexican adventure in order to abandon the wreckage of fathers permanently harmed by combat in World War Two. They were also rejecting the limited lives proscribed by West Texas. Rhonda, though, is running from a domestic conflict, which is no less of a war, where she suspects her pharmacist father is doping up her mother and manipulating her into suicide. Rhonda will not have the boundaries of her life drawn by the same cultural mores that are destroying her timid mother.

Crossing over is not easy in the Big Bend. The landscape announces a kind of human insignificance and boldly states that no one has meaningful troubles or the time for introspection. To the people who know the border, the Rio Grande that Rhonda is floating with her friends unifies two cultures, and you don't change much regardless of the riverbank on which you choose to stand. Rhonda feels something different, though, and after a sexual near miss with the group's river guide, she slips into the water and lets it carry her away to Mexico where she has no more goal in mind than to find J?sus, her parents' gardener who taught her perfect Spanish and became her friend. She cannot get far enough away from the tragedy that unfolded at home in Austin.

Lowry's skills are manifest from the opening pages when she establishes tension, but she becomes masterful beyond her years as a storyteller when Rhonda comes up from the river, naked, wet, hungry and born again as a boy. Rhonda encounters a peyote-eating shop owner that helps her cut her hair, provides clothes that hide her gender, and guides Rhonda to assume the name Angel. By the time she leaves the little border town of Milagros, Angel has added the Virgin of Guadalupe to her initial quest to find her friend J?sus. Strangers might see her as a boy or a girl or an androgynous creature wandering in the desert, but that doesn't stop the neophyte Angel from searching for answers to questions she can't even articulate and knows are emotionally and psychologically too profound to ignore.

A lesser writer might be accused of too many contrivances but Lowry peoples the road in front of Angel with characters that inform the soul of the little-girl-lost that she is not alone in her struggle. An expatriated American, who is suspected of dealing in "product," empowers his wife to build and remodel and saw and hammer because these are endeavors that make her happy, and when she is joyous the sex is great and the house is in harmony. A woman with calloused hands can love, too.

After the couple agrees to give Angel a ride to J?sus' hometown, a gang of banditos confronts them on the highway. Angel slips into the jungle with them where she discovers they are "banditas," and the sharp edges of sexuality and gender begin to soften for her. These are women that united to defy expectations and the law. They are raising hell instead of children and, in spite of their rebellious approach to life, find liberty in having refused to cook and clean house for a man. Even in the machismo culture of old Mexico, Angel finds females who've ignored all the gender clues laid out before them by centuries of marriage and custom.

When Angel finally reunites with the beloved J?sus, she is disappointed yet again by a man who refuses to teach her, as he had promised, a special skill. Her memory of the river guide won't leave her alone, either, and Angel seeks a physical release that leads her to the earthquake machine. She shares this double D battery fun with an elderly woman who has been living alone and miserable for decades since her husband died. Genevieve doesn't play the role of the ancient seer, though, and instead slouches sadly among the folds of her own skin and reminds Angel of what awaits a girl who ties her fate too closely to a man.

When the earth finally moves for Angel, it is both orgasmic and tragic. Lowry refuses to give her protagonist an easy time of things and she loses love almost as quickly as it is discovered, but she has learned enough to know that she can take charge. Sex might feel like it is the most important thing in the world to a post-pubescent girl, but as Angel undergoes yet another transformation, she realizes that sex, too, is "its own little death." Nothing is more transitory than beauty and lust.

Lowry may have been writing The Earthquake Machine for the young adult reader, but she has created a story that belongs on bookshelves next to other fine literature. She's as accomplished with her sentences and character development as a young Jane Smiley or Anne Tyler and often as disturbing as Jim Harrison. In the hands of a writer like Mary Pauline Lowry, the human condition can be as brightly illuminated through the plight of a teen as it can through the travails of the Joad family scratching its way westward during the Great Depression. The Earthquake Machine moves Lowry into an elite group of young female writers who know that the feminist movement is about more than equal pay for equal work and that a girl has a right to be a grrrlllll, if she chooses.

And, boy, (or maybe girl,) does she know how to tell a story.

(The Earthquake Machine will be released on Feb. 28, 2012).

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Follow James Moore on Twitter: www.twitter.com/moorethink

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/the-earthquake-machine_b_1232478.html

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Romney reports tax bill of $6.2 million for 2010-11 (Reuters)

TAMPA, Fla./WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney bowed to political pressure and cracked the books on his personal finances on Tuesday, releasing tax returns showing he will pay $6.2 million in taxes on $42.5 million in combined 2010 and 2011 income.

Unlike most Americans who earn a paycheck, Romney gets the majority of his income from investment profits, dividends and interest. One of the wealthiest men ever to run for the White House, he made his fortune buying and selling companies as a private equity financier with Bain Capital.

Romney and his wife Ann paid an effective tax rate of 13.9 percent in 2010 and expect to pay a 15.4 percent effective tax rate when they file their returns for 2011.

Those rates are roughly in line with the effective tax rates paid by most Americans, but they are far below the top income tax rate levied against wages, which is 35 percent, because the U.S. tax code favors investment income over wage income.

Romney released the tax returns after a week when his chief rival for the Republican presidential nomination, former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich, questioned whether Romney was hiding information about his finances and cast him as out of touch with most Americans.

Romney's estimated net worth is $190 million to $250 million.

The candidates are engaged in the state-by-state battle for their party's nomination to face President Barack Obama, a Democrat, in the November 6 election. The next contest is the Florida primary on January 31.

Gingrich's attacks helped him upset the former Massachusetts governor in the South Carolina primary on Saturday. Since then, Romney has fired back with attacks questioning Gingrich's character, judgment and lucrative work as a consultant.

Romney's release of his tax returns is meant to try to blunt Gingrich's criticisms on that front, but the returns could further fuel a national debate about the fairness of the tax code and rising U.S. income inequality.

Romney campaign officials said his tax rate is based mostly on blind trust investment income. They said he makes no decisions on how his money is invested. They said his holdings include amounts in funds based in the Cayman Islands and other overseas entities.

The Caymans holdings and holdings in a Swiss bank account - which was closed in 2010 after an adviser decided it could be politically embarrassing to Romney - were reported on tax returns and were not vehicles to avoid taxes, the advisers said.

Regardless, the emerging picture was of a man of great means who contributes mightily to charity. The tax returns showed he and his wife contributed $7 million in charity over the two years, much of it going to the Mormon church. That represents more than 15 percent of the Romneys' income for those years.

Romney had total capital gains income of $12.5 million for 2010 and an estimated $10.7 million for 2011.

'FULSOME RELEASE'

Top campaign officials and the director of Romney's blind trust, Brad Malt, briefed Reuters on the details ahead of a more general release of the information on Tuesday morning.

Campaign counsel Ben Ginsberg, asked why Romney was not releasing tax records for the years in the 1980s and 1990s in which Romney made his fortune at private equity firm Bain Capital, said the two years covered by the tax returns should give a broad picture of Romney's financial situation.

"We're not going to get into the game of once you give them something, they demand more," Ginsberg said. "This is a fulsome release and we're proud of it."

The tax issue may have been a factor in Romney's loss to Gingrich in the South Carolina primary last Saturday. It became a distraction to Romney's campaign, and Romney's fuzzy answers on when and if he would release his records aggravated the problem.

First he said he might release them, or might not. When the questions kept coming, he said he would put them out in April, after his 2011 forms were completed. Only after he was defeated in South Carolina did his aides say he would release them this week. Gingrich has released his returns for 2010, but has not released an estimate for last year, as Romney did.

Long considered the front-runner for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, Romney was staggered by Gingrich's lopsided win in South Carolina, and is looking to regain enough momentum to defeat Gingrich in Florida.

(Editing by Will Dunham)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120124/ts_nm/us_usa_campaign_romney_taxes

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Oldest dinosaur nest site found

A nesting site for dinosaur eggs found in South Africa is 100 million years older than the previous oldest site.

Palaeontologists found 10 separate nests, each containing clutches of up to 34 eggs measuring 6-7cm.

The fossils are of the prosauropod Massospondylus, a relative of the long-necked sauropods such as Diplodocus.

They suggest that Massospondylus returned to the site repeatedly, laying their eggs in groups in the earliest-known case of "colonial nesting".

The 190-million-year-old finds also included embryonic dinosaur skeletons, and are described in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

They were found in a 25m stretch of rock in South Africa's Golden Gate Highlands National Park.

The researchers suggest that many more sites remain embedded in the rock, which will be exposed as natural weathering processes continue.

But the current find already vastly extends what is known about dinosaurs in their earliest days on Earth.

"Even though the fossil record of dinosaurs is extensive, we actually have very little fossil information about their reproductive biology, particularly for early dinosaurs," said David Evans, associate curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum.

"This amazing series of 190-million-year-old nests gives us the first detailed look at dinosaur reproduction early in their evolutionary history, and documents the antiquity of nesting strategies that are only known much later in the dinosaur record."

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/science-environment-16697954

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AP IMPACT: Delhi ignores own quake peril warnings

(AP) ? The ramshackle neighborhoods of northeast Delhi are home to 2.2 million people packed along narrow alleys. Buildings are made from a single layer of brick. Extra floors are added to dilapidated buildings not meant to handle their weight. Tangles of electrical cables hang precariously everywhere.

If a major earthquake were to strike India's seismically vulnerable capital, these neighborhoods ? India's most crowded ? would collapse into an apocalyptic nightmare. Waters from the nearby Yamuna River would turn the water-soaked subsoil to jelly, which would intensify the shaking.

The Indian government knows this and has done almost nothing about it.

An Associated Press examination of government documents spanning five decades reveals a pattern of warnings and recommendations that have been widely disregarded. Successive governments made plans and promises to prepare for a major earthquake in the city of 16.7 million, only to abandon them each time.

The Delhi government's own estimates say nine out of every 10 buildings in the city are at risk of moderate or significant quake damage, yet the basic disaster response plan it had promised to complete nearly three years ago remains unfinished, there are nearly no earthquake awareness drills in schools and offices and tens of thousands of housing units are built every year without any earthquake safety checks.

Fearing many of the city's buildings could lie in ruins after a quake, the Delhi government began work in 2005 with U.S. government assistance to reinforce just five buildings ? including a school and a hospital ? it would need to begin a rudimentary relief operation to deal with the dead, wounded and homeless. Six years later, only one of those buildings is earthquake-ready.

"At the end of the day, people at the helm of affairs are not doing anything," said Anup Karanth, an earthquake engineering expert.

In its attitudes to disaster preparedness India is like many other poor nations ? aware of the danger but bogged down by both sheer inertia and more immediate demands on its resources.

But Delhi faces immense earthquake risks. Last September, two minor jolts sent thousands of scared residents into the streets, and experts say a big one looms on the horizon.

As far back as 1960, after a moderate quake cut power and plunged Delhi ? then a city of 2.7 million ? into darkness, the Geological Survey of India advised that all large buildings in the capital needed to have a plan for earthquake safety.

A series of reports by other agencies have expanded on that conclusion in recent years, but both the city and national governments have ignored almost all of the recommendations.

Some reports were ignored because of sheer apathy, others because of shifting priorities. In a city and country growing at lightning speed with huge problems of poverty and hunger that need more immediate solutions, earthquake preparedness has simply never been at the top of the list. Some plans begun with good intentions simply fell by the wayside.

That's what happened to the 2005 plan to prepare five important buildings in the capital for an earthquake.

Government engineers were sent to California to train. But the following year ? with only the school made earthquake ready ? all the engineers were taken off the project. They were reassigned to build stadiums for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, an athletic competition held in Delhi, said M. Shashidhar Reddy, the vice chairman of India's National Disaster Management Agency.

The scale of the problem "really hasn't sunk into the minds of the people," Reddy said.

Just last year, a Delhi government agency ordered all new home buyers to get a building safety certificate that would mark their homes as structurally sound before registering property. But it later withdrew the order, saying there weren't enough engineers trained to conduct such inspections.

"That's like saying let's not have any traffic rules because we don't have enough policemen," said Hari Kumar, who heads Geohazards India, an organization that promotes earthquake awareness.

India, a still developing country plagued by corruption, isn't alone in being unprepared. More than 80 percent of deaths from building collapses in earthquakes in the last three decades occurred in corrupt and poor countries, according to a 2011 study published in the science journal Nature.

The study by Roger Bilham, a geologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Nicholas Ambraseys, a civil and environmental engineer at Imperial College London, compared the loss of life in two magnitude 7.0 earthquakes in 2010. In Haiti, 300,000 died; in New Zealand none did, though a subsequent 6.1 quake there in early 2011 killed 182.

New Zealand, a developed nation, tied for first as the least corrupt in Transparency International's most recent Corruption Perceptions Index. Much poorer Haiti came in 175th out of 178 countries.

In Turkey, which ranked 61st, a 2010 report revealed that the earthquake-prone nation had failed to enforce stricter building codes put in place after a 1999 earthquake killed 18,000 people. Last year, two earthquakes of magnitude 7.2 and 5.7 flattened some 2,000 buildings, killed 644 people and left thousands homeless.

In contrast, Japan, which was 14th on the corruption scale, requires that all structures meet a 1981 building code and offers subsidies to retrofit buildings to meet more stringent guidelines set in 1995. About 75 percent of homes and public buildings meet the newer standards.

In India, which ranked 95th, contractors routinely flout regulations, use substandard material and add illegal floors to buildings, while bribing government inspectors to look the other way, said Reddy, the disaster management official. A 2001 quake in the western state of Gujarat killed more than 13,000.

Delhi, which sits near a highly seismically active area, is ranked four out of five on a seismic threat scale used in India.

Geologists believe the Central Himalayan Gap, a 310-mile (500 kilometer) stretch between Nepal and India, is ripe for a major quake. A 6.8 quake along the fault in March 1999 damaged many buildings in Delhi, just 125 to 300 miles (200 to 500 kilometers) from the gap.

Studies show such a large buildup of energy that a shifting of the tectonic plates could cause an 8.7-magnitude earthquake, Bilham said.

Experts also fear the potential damage from a smaller quake closer to the capital. The city lies between two fault lines, and a 4.2 quake in September woke up residents, with many fleeing their buildings. The same month, a magnitude 6.8 quake in India's remote northeast was also felt in the capital.

Either type of quake would cause moderate damage to an estimated 85.5 percent of Delhi's buildings and severe damage to another 6.5 percent, Delhi's disaster management authority said in a 2010 vulnerability assessment. It could also open cracks in the ground several centimeters wide and spread "fear and panic," the report said.

It was India's Department of Meteorology that found northeast Delhi particularly vulnerable in a never-released 2005 study obtained by the AP. That "microzone" study divided the city into nine segments to evaluate the possible impact of an earthquake in each.

While the microzone study is a positive step, the report is only rudimentary and most builders haven't even heard of it, said earthquake engineering expert Karanth, who as a student lived through the Gujarat quake.

India has developed national standards for constructing earthquake-resistant buildings, but they are not mandatory and widely ignored, said Kumar of Geohazards.

Meanwhile, many residents don't realize the danger, or wrongly believe they are safe from it.

When Karanth decided to buy an apartment in 2010, he picked a builder who promised to deliver an earthquake-resistant building. He visited the site often, took photographs of the construction and talked to the engineers in charge.

Last year, he realized the project had none of the promised earthquake safety features. "This is not one or two apartments that I'm talking about. These are thousands of apartment units being constructed," he said.

He complained and demanded an explanation.

Instead, the construction company offered to give him back his deposit.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-01-25-AS-India-Quake-Nightmare/id-4d6b297614fa4d849d4e23b046512f44

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Best Oscar song category hits weird note

"Man or Muppet" is one of two nominees for best song Oscar.

By Gael Fashingbauer Cooper

Ringo Starr supposedly was asked if he was the best drummer in the world, to which he replied "I'm not even the best drummer in the Beatles."

Dig out that old line for the Oscars best song category, which features a whopping two nominees. Hard to argue with "Man or Muppet," a hilarious tune that sneaks its way into your head and stays there. We picked this to win it all last month. If you've seen the movie, you get to picture "The Big Bang Theory" star Jim Parsons as the human version of Muppet Walter, which makes it even better.

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But its competition is "Real in Rio?" Seriously? In true Ringo Starr fashion, that's not even the best song in "Rio."

"Real in Rio" is the jaunty song from the?Carnival scene of that fun animated film. But a much better choice would have been will.i.am's catchy "Hot Wings" or Ester Dean's delightfully dancy,?"Let Me Take You To Rio."? Actually, my favorite songs from that film?are will.i.am's 'Drop It Low" and Jamie Foxx's "Fly Love."

And why only two nominees, the minimum possible??Thirty-nine songs made the short list, including two of the "Rio" songs, Zooey Deschanel's sweet "So Long" from "Winnie the Pooh," a couple more songs from "Muppets" and more.

No love for Elton John's "Hello Hello" or "Love Builds a Garden" from "Gnomeo and Juliet"? That flamingo separation scene was heart-wrenching! (Why does the Academy hate gnomes?)

"Cars 2" wasn't nominated for best animated film, which fits in with its largely negative reviews from critics (kids still enjoyed it), but?its big?song?"Collision of Worlds," which pits British and American slang against each other, is a rollicking culture clash.

And don't even mention songs from non-kid movies ... seems like they weren't even considered. Madonna's "Masterpiece," from "W.E.," won the Golden Globe (much to David Furnish's chagrin), but it wasn't eligible for an Oscar nod, apparently because it's the second, not first, song in the film's closing credits. Does that sound like a dumb rule to anyone else?

Mary J. Blige's "The Living Proof" from "The Help" went Madonna one better and actually made the short list, but didn't get picked. Ditto Chris Cornell's "The Keeper" from "Machine Gun Preacher," and Sinead O'Connor's "Lay Your Head Down" from "Albert Nobbs."

Nominating only two songs seems silly to us, but in the end, "Man or Muppet" is going to win, and that's deserved indeed. Now the only question is whether Walter the Muppet will come up on stage to collect the award. He's a very manly Muppet.

What's your pick for best Oscar song? Did any good tunes get snubbed? Tell us on Facebook.

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Source: http://entertainment.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/24/10224889-best-oscar-song-category-hits-weird-note

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Multiple attacks in Nigeria kill at least 143

The series of coordinated attacks were attributed to a radical Islamic group.

A coordinated attack by a radical Islamist sect in north Nigeria's largest city killed at least 143 people, a hospital official said Saturday, representing the extremist group's deadliest assault since beginning its campaign of terror in Africa's most populous nation.

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Soldiers and police officers swarmed Kano's streets as Nigeria's president again promised the sect known as Boko Haram would "face the full wrath of the law." But the uniformed bodies of security agents that filled a Kano hospital mortuary again showed the sect can strike at will against the country's weak central government.

Friday's attacks hit police stations, immigration offices and the local headquarters of Nigeria's secret police in Kano, a city of more than 9 million people that remains an important political and religious center in the country's Muslim north. A suicide bomber detonated a car loaded with powerful explosives outside a regional police headquarters, tearing its roof away and blowing out windows in a blast felt miles away as its members escaped jail cells there.

Authorities largely refused to offer casualty statistics as mourners began claiming the bodies of their loved ones to bury before sundown, following Islamic tradition. However, a hospital official told The Associated Press at least 143 people were killed in the attack.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the death toll to journalists. The toll could still rise, since other bodies could be held at other clinics and hospitals in the sprawling city.

State authorities enforced a 24-hour curfew in the city, with many remaining home as soldiers and police patrolled the streets and setup roadblocks. Gunshots echoed through some areas of the city into Saturday morning.

Nwakpa O. Nwakpa, a spokesman for the Nigerian Red Cross, said volunteers offered first aid to the wounded, and evacuated those seriously injured to local hospitals. A survey of two hospitals by the Red Cross showed at least 50 people were injured in Friday's attack, he said.

A Boko Haram spokesman using the nom de guerre Abul-Qaqa claimed responsibility for the attacks in a message to journalists Friday. He said the attack came because the state government refused to release Boko Haram members held by the police.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Saturday that he was "shocked and appalled" by the attacks in the former colony.

"The full horror of last night's events is still unfolding, but we know that a great many people have died and many more have been injured," Hague said in a statement. "The nature of these attacks has sickened people around the world and I send my deepest condolences and sympathies to the families of those killed and to those injured."

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/WcUcSvtM9eM/Multiple-attacks-in-Nigeria-kill-at-least-143

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Karzai says he met with Afghan insurgent faction (AP)

KABUL, Afghanistan ? Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai says he has personally met with a delegation from the insurgent faction Hizb-i-Islami for peace negotiations that he hopes "will have good results."

Karzai's Saturday announcement to parliament appears to assert his own standing in any future peace process by showing his ability to bring militant factions other than the Taliban to the negotiating table. He did not specify when the meeting took place.

The U.S. has been pushing for talks with the Taliban outside the country. Special American representative Marc Grossman is to meet Karzai on Saturday to discuss progress and plans.

Hizb-i-Islami is a radical Islamist militia that controls territory in Afghanistan's northeast. Its leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, is a former U.S. ally now listed as a terrorist by Washington.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai says he has personally met with a delegation from the insurgent faction Hizb-i-Islami for peace negotiations that he hopes "will have good results."

Karzai's Saturday announcement to parliament appears to assert his own standing in any future peace process by showing his ability to bring militant factions other than the Taliban to the negotiating table. He did not specify when the meeting took place.

The U.S. has been pushing for talks with the Taliban outside the country. Special American representative Marc Grossman is to meet Karzai on Saturday to discuss progress and plans.

Hizb-i-Islami is a radical Islamist militia that controls territory in Afghanistan's northeast. Its leader, Gulbiddin Hekmatyar, is a former U.S. ally now listed as a terrorist by Washington.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120121/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan

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Cell senescence does not stop tumor growth

Friday, January 20, 2012

Since cancer cells grow indefinitely, it is commonly believed that senescence could act as a barrier against tumor growth and potentially be used as a way to treat cancer. A collaboration between a cancer biologist from the University of Milano, Italy, and two physicists, from the National Research Council of Italy and from Cornell University, has shown that cell senescence occurs spontaneously in melanoma cells, but does not stop their growth, which is sustained by a small population of cancer stem cells. The results, published in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology on January 19 explain why it is difficult to treat cancer cells by inducing senescence alone.

The work explores the relationship between melanoma and senescence, the normal process where cells decline and eventually stop duplicating after reaching maturity. The investigators followed the long-term evolution of melanoma cell populations, monitoring the number of senescent cells. After three months, growth slowed and most of the cells turned senescent, however growth did not stop and eventually resumed its initial rate until the senescent cells had almost disappeared.

The authors mathematically modeled the experimental data using the cancer stem cell hypothesis, where a sub-group of cancer cells replicate indefinitely, and are thus unaffected by senescence. These cancer stem cells give rise to a larger population of cancer cells that can duplicate only a finite number of times. The model yielded an indirect confirmation of the presence of cancer stem cells in melanoma, an issue that is still controversial in the cancer research community.

Although a large fraction of cancer cells are susceptible to senescence, the researchers conclude that inducing senescence is unlikely to provide a successful therapeutic strategy because these cells are irrelevant for tumor growth. However, the indirect evidence of cancer stem cells in melanoma may enable the development of new methods to treat specific kinds of cancer. The challenge will be in the strong resistance to drug induced senescence that would be found in the cancer stem cells. Along this line of research, treatment of tumors would focus on targeting only these cancer stem cells, rather than every single cancerous cell.

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La Porta CAM, Zapperi S, Sethna JP (2012) Senescent Cells in Growing Tumors: Population Dynamics and Cancer Stem Cells. PLoS Comput Biol 8(1): e1002316. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002316

Public Library of Science: http://www.plos.org

Thanks to Public Library of Science 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.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/116906/Cell_senescence_does_not_stop_tumor_growth

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Science Diction: The Origin Of The Word 'Moon'

Science historian Howard Markel discusses the origins of the word moon and some of the lore surrounding it, including a 1638 book by the English bishop Francis Godwin entitled The Man in the Moone, which recounts a science fiction-style voyage to the moon.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2012/01/20/145525014/science-diction-the-origin-of-the-word-moon?ft=1&f=1007

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Comet's fiery plunge may tell us how planets form

For the first time, scientists have caught a glimpse of a comet's final minutes before it was vaporized by the sun.?The comet was flying at about 1.4 million miles an hour.

For the first time, scientists have caught a comet in the Icarus-like act of zipping too close to the sun ? and watched as it paid the ultimate price.

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In catching a glimpse of the comet's final vaporization, researchers not only have been able to piece together a detailed picture of the comet itself ? something usually reserved for spacecraft fly-bys. They also may have a found a way to use similar comets as test dummies for making key measurements of the sun's atmosphere, or corona.

And by throwing the break-up process into reverse, they may be able to answer a nagging question tied to the formation of planets in the solar system some 4.5 billion years ago: How does the clumping process that gathers tiny dust grains into ever bigger lumps and finally to planet-size objects really work?

The comet observations, published in the Jan. 20 issue of the journal Science, "are pioneering a new form of cometary study," writes Carey Lisse, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.

The comet, C/2011 N3, was discovered July 4, 2011, a scant two days before its demise, as researchers looked at data from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft, a joint NASA-European Space Agency project.

Sun-grazing comets, such as C/2011 N3, are nothing new to SOHO. It has observed more than 2,100 of them, according to NASA. It finds them with an instrument designed to mask the sun's disk so the instrument can observe the glowing corona.

But that's also a problem. Sun-grazers SOHO sees vanish behind this mask. And like Las Vegas, what goes on behind the mask stays behind the mask.

It took data from three craft ? SOHO, as well as NASA's STEREO and Solar Dynamics Observatory ? to piece together the full picture of C/2011 N3's final 20 minutes.

The C/2011 N3 belongs to a family known as Kreutz sungrazers ? a vast collection of comet fragments thought to have come from the break-up of a larger comet around 2,500 years ago. Scientists estimate that the parent object's nucleus was as large as 60 miles across. Comet Halley, which makes its closest approach to the sun every 75 years, has a nucleus roughly 7 miles across.

Based on its observations, the team, led by Lockheed Martin Corporation solar physicist Karel Schrijver, estimates that C/2011 N3 was hurtling toward the sun at about 1.4 million miles an hour ? fast enough to turn a three-day trip to the moon into a four-hour sprint. When it vanished, it had closed within 62,000 miles of the sun's surface.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/vVYBZ8PIa4U/Comet-s-fiery-plunge-may-tell-us-how-planets-form

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