Bashful? Buy the little blue pill online

FILE - In this Friday, March 2, 2012, file photo, counterfeit Viagra pills, top and bottom left, are displayed alongside real ones, top and bottom right, in a lab at Pfizer in Groton, Conn. In a first for the drug industry, Pfizer Inc. told The Associated Press on May 6, 2013, that it will sell erectile dysfunction pill Viagra directly to patients on its website. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)

FILE - In this Friday, March 2, 2012, file photo, counterfeit Viagra pills, top and bottom left, are displayed alongside real ones, top and bottom right, in a lab at Pfizer in Groton, Conn. In a first for the drug industry, Pfizer Inc. told The Associated Press on May 6, 2013, that it will sell erectile dysfunction pill Viagra directly to patients on its website. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)

This undated photo provided by pfizer shows Viagra pills. In a first for the drug industry, Pfizer Inc. told The Associated Press on May 6, 2013, that it will sell erectile dysfunction pill Viagra directly to patients on its website. (AP Photo/pfizer, William Vazquez)

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) ? Men who are bashful about needing help in the bedroom no longer have to go to the drugstore to buy that little blue pill.

In a first for the drug industry, Pfizer Inc. told The Associated Press that the drugmaker will begin selling its popular erectile dysfunction pill Viagra directly to patients on its website.

Men still will need a prescription to buy the blue, diamond-shaped pill on viagra.com, but they no longer have to face a pharmacist to get it filled. And for those who are bothered by Viagra's steep $25-a-pill price, Pfizer is offering three free pills with the first order and 30 percent off the second one.

Pfizer's bold move blows up the drug industry's distribution model. Drugmakers don't sell medicines directly to patients. Instead, they sell in bulk to wholesalers, who then distribute the drugs to pharmacies, hospitals and doctors' offices.

But the world's second-largest drugmaker is trying a new strategy to tackle a problem that plagues the industry. Unscrupulous online pharmacies increasingly offer patients counterfeit versions of Viagra and other brand-name drugs for up to 95 percent off with no prescription needed. Patients don't realize the drugs are fake or that legitimate pharmacies require a prescription.

Other major drugmakers likely will watch Pfizer's move closely. If it works, drugmakers could begin selling other medicines that are rampantly counterfeited and sold online, particularly treatments for non-urgent conditions seen as embarrassing. Think: diet drugs, medicines for baldness and birth control pills.

"If it works, everybody will hop on the train," says Les Funtleyder, a health care strategist at private equity fund Poliwogg who believes Pfizer's site will attract "fence-sitters" who are nervous about buying online.

The online Viagra sales are Pfizer's latest effort to combat a problem that has grown with the popularity of the Internet.

In recent years, Americans have become more comfortable with online shopping, with many even buying prescription drugs online. That's particularly true for those who don't have insurance, are bargain hunters or want to keep their medicine purchases private.

Few realize that the vast majority of online pharmacies don't follow the rules.

The Internet is filled with illegitimate websites that lure customers with spam emails and professional-looking websites that run 24-hour call centers. A January study by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, which accredits online pharmacies, found that only 257 of 10,275 online pharmacy sites it examined appeared legitimate.

Experts say the fake drugs such websites sell can be dangerous. That's because they don't include the right amount of the active ingredient, if any, or contain toxic substances such as heavy metals, lead paint and printer ink. They're generally made in filthy warehouses and garages in Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America.

Online buyers are "playing Russian roulette," says Matthew Bassiur, vice president of global security at New York-based Pfizer.

"The factories are deplorable. I've seen photographs of these places," he says. "You wouldn't even want to walk in them, let alone ingest anything made in them."

Pfizer, which invented the term "erectile dysfunction," has long been aggressive in fighting counterfeiters. It conducts undercover investigations and works with authorities around the globe, with good reason.

Counterfeit versions of Viagra and dozens of other Pfizer medicines rob the company of billions in annual sales.

Viagra is one of its top drugs, with $2 billion in worldwide revenue last year. And it's the most counterfeited drug in the U.S., according to the company.

A 2011 study, in which Pfizer bought "Viagra" from 22 popular Internet pharmacies and tested the pills, found 77 percent were counterfeit. Most had half or less of the promised level of the active ingredient.

Viagra is appealing to counterfeiters because it carries a double whammy: It's expensive and it treats a condition with an "embarrassment" factor.

Crooks running the illegal online pharmacies brazenly explain their ultra-low Viagra prices ? often $1 to $3 a pill ? by claiming they sell generic Viagra.

Generics are copycat versions of brand-name prescription drugs. They can legally be made after a drugmaker's patent, or exclusive right to sell a drug, ends. Generic drugmakers don't have to spend $1 billion or so on testing to get a new drug approved, so their copycat versions often cost up to 90 percent less than the original drug.

But there is no such thing as generic Viagra. Pfizer has patents giving it the exclusive right to sell Viagra until 2020 in the U.S. and for many years in other countries.

Many patients are unaware of that.

Dr. David Dershewitz, an assistant urology professor at New Jersey Medical School who treats patients at Newark's University Hospital, says erectile dysfunction is common in men with enlarged prostates, diabetes and other conditions, but most men are too embarrassed to discuss it.

He says well over half of his patients who do broach the issue complain about Viagra's price. Some tell Dershewitz that they go online looking for bargains because they can't afford Viagra.

"The few that do admit to it have said that the results have been fairly dismal," but none has suffered serious harm, he says.

For Pfizer, that's a big problem. People who buy fake drugs online that don't work, or worse, harm them, may blame the company's product. That's because it's virtually impossible to distinguish fakes from real Viagra.

"The vast majority of patients do believe that they're getting Viagra," said Vic Cavelli, head of marketing for primary care medicines at Pfizer, which plans to have drugstore chain CVS Caremark Corp. fill the orders placed on viagra.com.

The sales lost to counterfeits threaten Pfizer at a time when Viagra's share of the $5 billion-a-year global market for legitimate erectile dysfunction drugs has slipped, falling from 46 percent in 2007 to 39 percent last year, according to health data firm IMS Health.

The reason? Competition from rival products, mainly Eli Lilly and Co.'s Cialis ? the pill touted in those ubiquitous commercials featuring couples in his-and-hers bathtubs in bizarre places.

Judson Clark, an Edward Jones analyst, forecasts that Viagra sales will decline even further, about 5 percent each year for the next five years, unusual "for a drug in its prime."

Clark says he thinks Pfizer's strategy will prevent sales from declining, but he's unsure how well it will work.

"It's a very interesting and novel approach," he says. "Whether it returns Viagra to growth is hard to say."

___

On the Net:

Link to accredited pharmacies: http://www.nabp.net/programs/accreditation/vipps/find-a-vipps-online-pharmacy

___

Linda A. Johnson at http://twitter.com/LindaJ_onPharma

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-05-06-US-Viagra-Online-Sales/id-3d7890bc3eb54d40b5f68fc6154d2976

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Seagate Central review: media sharing for the home, plus backup too

We really enjoy the ability to consume content on any device from just about anywhere we may roam. The cloud has been a big part of making that happen, but there are still a few things the cloud can't do nearly as well as local storage -- namely, share large files and provide continuous full backups of large media libraries. Attempting to bridge that gap is the Seagate Central. Ranging in price from $189 to $259, depending on whether you get it with 2TB, 3TB or 4TB of space, the Central connects to your home network and gives you a single place to store or back up your content, making it accessible both at home and on the go. That's the idea, anyway. But what about the reality?

Gallery: Seagate Central review

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Storage, HD

Comments

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/4iMGfV4wEck/

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All hospitals should require drug, alcohol tests for physicians

Public release date: 7-May-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Mark Guidera
mguider1@jhmi.edu
443-898-2320
Johns Hopkins Medicine

To improve patient safety, hospitals should randomly test physicians for drug and alcohol use in much the same way other major industries in the United States do to protect their customers. The recommendation comes from two Johns Hopkins physicians and patient safety experts in a commentary published online April 29 in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

In addition, the experts say, medical institutions should take a cue from other high-risk industries, like airlines, railways and nuclear power plants, and mandate that doctors be tested for drug or alcohol impairment immediately following an unexpected patient death or other significant event.

"Patients might be better protected from preventable harm. Physicians and employers may experience reduced absenteeism, unintentional adverse events, injuries, and turnover, and early identification of a debilitating problem," write authors Julius Cuong Pham, M.D., Ph.D., an emergency medicine physician at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, and Peter J. Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality. Gregory E. Skipper, M.D., of the drug and alcohol treatment center Promises, in Santa Monica, CA. also contributed.

Pham, Pronovost and Skipper note that "mandatory alcohol-drug testing for clinicians involved with unexpected deaths or sentinel events is not conducted in medicine," even though physicians are as susceptible to alcohol, narcotic and sedative addiction as the general public. (A sentinel event is an incident which results in death or serious physical harm.)

The authors recommend in their commentary that hospitals take a number of steps as a model to address this overlooked patient safety issue. They are:

• Mandatory physical examination, drug testing or both, before a medical staff appointment to a hospital. This already occurs in some hospitals and has been successful in other industries.
• A program of random alcohol-drug testing.
• A policy for routine drug-alcohol testing for all physicians involved with a sentinel event leading to patient death.
• Establishment of testing standards by a national hospital regulatory or accrediting body. The steps could be limited to hospitals and their affiliated physicians at this time, since hospitals have the infrastructure to conduct adverse event analysis and drug testing, note the authors. Hospitals also have the governing bylaws to guide physician conduct and an existing national accrediting body, The Joint Commission, the authors add.

In cases in which a physician is found to be impaired, a hospital could "suspend or revoke privileges and, in some cases, report this to the state licensing board," the authors write. Impaired physicians would undergo treatment and routine monitoring as a condition for continued licensure and hospital privileges.

"Patients and their family members have a right to be protected from impaired physicians," argue the authors in the JAMA commentary. "In other high-risk industries, this right is supported by regulations and surveillance. Shouldn't medicine be the same? A robust system to identify impaired physicians may enhance the professionalism that peer review seeks to protect."

###

Read the entire commentary: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1682565

---

[ | 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.

Public release date: 7-May-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Mark Guidera
mguider1@jhmi.edu
443-898-2320
Johns Hopkins Medicine

To improve patient safety, hospitals should randomly test physicians for drug and alcohol use in much the same way other major industries in the United States do to protect their customers. The recommendation comes from two Johns Hopkins physicians and patient safety experts in a commentary published online April 29 in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

In addition, the experts say, medical institutions should take a cue from other high-risk industries, like airlines, railways and nuclear power plants, and mandate that doctors be tested for drug or alcohol impairment immediately following an unexpected patient death or other significant event.

"Patients might be better protected from preventable harm. Physicians and employers may experience reduced absenteeism, unintentional adverse events, injuries, and turnover, and early identification of a debilitating problem," write authors Julius Cuong Pham, M.D., Ph.D., an emergency medicine physician at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, and Peter J. Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality. Gregory E. Skipper, M.D., of the drug and alcohol treatment center Promises, in Santa Monica, CA. also contributed.

Pham, Pronovost and Skipper note that "mandatory alcohol-drug testing for clinicians involved with unexpected deaths or sentinel events is not conducted in medicine," even though physicians are as susceptible to alcohol, narcotic and sedative addiction as the general public. (A sentinel event is an incident which results in death or serious physical harm.)

The authors recommend in their commentary that hospitals take a number of steps as a model to address this overlooked patient safety issue. They are:

• Mandatory physical examination, drug testing or both, before a medical staff appointment to a hospital. This already occurs in some hospitals and has been successful in other industries.
• A program of random alcohol-drug testing.
• A policy for routine drug-alcohol testing for all physicians involved with a sentinel event leading to patient death.
• Establishment of testing standards by a national hospital regulatory or accrediting body. The steps could be limited to hospitals and their affiliated physicians at this time, since hospitals have the infrastructure to conduct adverse event analysis and drug testing, note the authors. Hospitals also have the governing bylaws to guide physician conduct and an existing national accrediting body, The Joint Commission, the authors add.

In cases in which a physician is found to be impaired, a hospital could "suspend or revoke privileges and, in some cases, report this to the state licensing board," the authors write. Impaired physicians would undergo treatment and routine monitoring as a condition for continued licensure and hospital privileges.

"Patients and their family members have a right to be protected from impaired physicians," argue the authors in the JAMA commentary. "In other high-risk industries, this right is supported by regulations and surveillance. Shouldn't medicine be the same? A robust system to identify impaired physicians may enhance the professionalism that peer review seeks to protect."

###

Read the entire commentary: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1682565

---

[ | 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.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-05/jhm-ahs050713.php

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Dropbox Announces Its First Developer Conference, The Invite-Only DBX On July 9th In SF

Dropbox doesn't want to be a storage service. It wants to be the data layer uniting your information on all apps. To get more apps and enterprises integrated with its platform, today it announced DBX, the six year-old startup's first developer conference. To be held July 9th at San Francisco, you can request an invite for a $350 ticket to, DBX which could help Dropbox drive enterprise sales.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/elSSTYaVDKE/

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Why Baby's Hungry Cry Tugs at Women (But Not Men)

The idea that women are hard-wired to respond to babies is supported in a small new brain scan study from Italy.

Women in the study who listened to the sounds of a baby crying in hunger showed a change in activity in certain brain regions, but men showed no change.

The study included nine men and nine women, some of whom were parents. Most participants were in their 30s. Researchers at the University of Trento asked participants to let their minds wander, and then played a recording of about 15 minutes of white noise, interrupted with periods of silence and the sounds of a hungry infant crying.

In women's brains, there was a decrease in activity in two areas known to be active during mind wandering ? the dorsal medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate areas. By contrast, these regions in men's brains remained active when they heard the baby's cries, according the study.

The study shows that "women interrupt mind wandering when exposed to the sounds of infant hunger cries, whereas men carry on without interruption," the researchers wrote.

The brain patterns were not different between parents and nonparents in the study, the researchers said. This suggests that women may be predisposed to care for infants other than their own, the researchers said, though more study is needed to see whether this idea is held up.

Previous studies have shown that women are more likely than men to say that hearing an infant cry evokes feelings of sympathy and caregiving, while men are more likely to say that crying evokes irritation and anger.

Other work has shown that mothers' suffering from postpartum depression have muted brain activity patterns when they hear their baby cry, compared with nondepressed women.

The study was published in the February issue of the journal Neuroreport.

Pass it on: Hungry baby's cry affects the mother's brain, and evokes sympathy and caring.

Follow Karen Rowan?@karenjrowan. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily?@MyHealth_MHND, Facebook?&?Google+. Originally published on MyHealthNewsDaily.

Copyright 2013 MyHealthNewsDaily, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/why-babys-hungry-cry-tugs-women-not-men-171814583.html

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Obama tees off in bipartisan golf match

By Alasdair Fotheringham ISCHIA, Italy, May 5 (Reuters) - Team Sky took a morale-boosting victory in the Giro d'Italia team time trial as overall contender Bradley Wiggins moved up to second overall and gained time on his rivals on Sunday. Second in the short, hilly and very technical second stage were Spanish squad Movistar, nine seconds back, with Astana, led by Wiggins's key rival Vincenzo Nibali, third at 14 seconds. The first Team Sky rider to cross the line in Saturday's first stage, Italian Salvatore Puccio, took the overall leader's pink jersey. ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-plans-monday-bipartisan-golf-game-163637852.html

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Senate bill lets states tax Internet purchases

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Attention online shoppers: The days of tax-free shopping on the Internet may soon end for many of you.

The Senate is scheduled to vote Monday on a bill that would empower states to collect sales taxes for purchases made over the Internet. The measure is expected to pass because it has already survived three procedural votes. But it faces opposition in the House, where some Republicans regard it as a tax increase. A broad coalition of retailers is lobbying in favor of it.

Under current law, states can only require retailers to collect sales taxes if the store has a physical presence in the state.

That means big retailers with stores all over the country like Walmart, Best Buy and Target collect sales taxes when they sell goods over the Internet. But online retailers like eBay and Amazon don't have to collect sales taxes, except in states where they have offices or distribution centers.

As a result, many online sales are tax-free, giving Internet retailers an advantage over brick-and-mortar stores.

The bill would empower states to require businesses to collect taxes for products they sell on the Internet, in catalogs and through radio and TV ads. Under the legislation, the sales taxes would be sent to the states where a shopper lives.

The measure pits brick-and-mortar stores against online services.

As Internet sales have grown, "It's putting pressure on the brick-and-mortar competitors and it's putting pressure on state and local sales tax revenues," said David French, senior vice president of government relations for the National Retail Federation. "It's time for Congress to create a level playing field so that all retailers are treated fairly."

On the other side, eBay says the bill doesn't do enough to protect small businesses. Businesses with less than $1 million in online sales would be exempt. EBay wants to exempt businesses with up to $10 million in sales or fewer than 50 employees.

"Complying and living under the tax laws of 50 states is a major undertaking because the process of complying with tax law goes far beyond just filling out the right forms," said Brian Bieron, eBay's senior director of global public policy.

"You have to deal with the fact that all of these government agencies can audit you and can question you and can actually take you into court and sue you if they think you are doing something wrong," Bieron said.

Supporters say the bill makes it relatively easy for Internet retailers to comply. States must provide free computer software to help retailers calculate sales taxes, based on where shoppers live. States must also establish a single entity to receive Internet sales tax revenue, so retailers don't have to send them to individual counties or cities.

Opponents say online businesses would still have to use resources to account for the taxes they collect and to periodically send the money to each state.

Support for the legislation crosses party lines: The main sponsor, Sen. Mike Enzi, is a conservative Republican from Wyoming. He has worked closely with Sen. Dick Durbin, a liberal Democrat from Illinois.

Supporters say the bill is not a tax increase. In many states, shoppers are required to pay unpaid sales tax when they file their state income tax returns. However, states complain that few taxpayers comply.

In the Senate, lawmakers from three states without income taxes are leading the opposition. They argue that businesses based in their states should not have to collect taxes for other states.

Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon and Delaware have no state or local sales taxes, though Delaware's two senators support the bill.

Delaware has long benefited from shoppers in neighboring states visiting Delaware to take advantage of the tax-free shopping, said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del. Tax-free Internet shopping threatens Delaware's advantage, he said.

Many governors ? Republicans and Democrats ? have been lobbying the federal government for years for the authority to collect sales taxes from online sales.

The issue is getting bigger for states as more people make purchases online. Last year, Internet sales in the U.S. totaled $226 billion, up nearly 16 percent from the previous year, according to Commerce Department estimates.

States lost a total of $23 billion last year because they couldn't collect taxes on out-of-state sales, according to a study by three business professors at the University of Tennessee. About $11.4 billion was lost from Internet sales; the rest was from purchases made through catalogs, mail orders and telephone orders, the study said.

The study was done for the National Conference of State Legislatures.

___

Follow Stephen Ohlemacher on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stephenatap

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/senate-bill-lets-states-tax-internet-purchases-071827312.html

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Senate bill to let states tax Internet purchases

This photo taken May 2, 2013, shows Sarah Davis, co-owner of Fashionphile.com, posing with her bags in a company warehouse in the Carlsbad, Calif. The Internet company sells rare, vintage, and discontinued previous owned bags and is facing the complicated task of dealing with new state regulations on Internet sale taxes. (AP photo/Lenny Ignelzi)

This photo taken May 2, 2013, shows Sarah Davis, co-owner of Fashionphile.com, posing with her bags in a company warehouse in the Carlsbad, Calif. The Internet company sells rare, vintage, and discontinued previous owned bags and is facing the complicated task of dealing with new state regulations on Internet sale taxes. (AP photo/Lenny Ignelzi)

This photo taken May 2, 2013, shows Sarah Davis and Ben Hemmnger, co-owners of Fashionphile.com, posing in the lobby of their Carlsbad, Calif. office. The Internet company sells rare, vintage, and discontinued previous owned bags and is facing the complicated task of dealing with new state regulations on Internet sale taxes. (AP photo/Lenny Ignelzi)

Chart shows U.S. online sales and projections

This photo taken May 2, 2013, shows Sarah Davis and Ben Hemmnger, co-owners of Fashionphile.com posing in the lobby of their Carlsbad, Calif. office. The internet company sells rare, vintage, and discontinued previous owned bags and is facing the complicated task of dealing with new state regulations on Internet sale taxes. (AP photo/Lenny Ignelzi)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Senate is aiming to help traditional retailers and financially strapped state and local governments with a vote Monday that would widely subject online shopping ? for years a largely tax-free frontier ? to state sales taxes.

Support for the Senate legislation crosses party lines and it was expected to pass. But opposition from some conservatives who view it as a tax increase will make it a tougher sell in the House. President Barack Obama has conveyed his support for the measure.

Under current law, states can only require retailers to collect sales taxes if the store has a physical presence in the state.

That means big retailers with stores all over the country like Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Target collect sales taxes when they sell goods over the Internet. But online retailers like eBay and Amazon don't have to collect sales taxes, except in states where they have offices or distribution centers.

As a result, many online sales are tax-free, giving Internet retailers an advantage over brick-and-mortar stores.

"We ought to have a structure in place in the states that treats all retail the same," said Matthew Shay, president and CEO of the National Retail Federation. "Small retailers are collecting (sales tax) on the first dollar of any sale they make, and it's only fair that other retailers who are selling to those same customers the same product have those same obligations."

Internet giant eBay is leading the fight against the bill, along with lawmakers from states with no sales tax and several prominent anti-tax groups. The bill's opponents say it would put an expensive obligation on small businesses because they are not as equipped as national merchandisers to collect and remit sales taxes at the multitude of state rates.

"Giant retailers have a requirement to collect sales taxes nationwide because they have physical presence nationwide," eBay president John Donahoe wrote in an online column over the weekend. "Likewise, today small retail stores and online retailers collect sales taxes for the one state where they are located. That's a fair requirement."

"If the bill passes, small online businesses would have the same tax compliance obligations and face the same enforcement risks as giant retailers, despite the fact that they are usually located in just one state."

The bill would empower states to require businesses to collect taxes for products they sell on the Internet, in catalogs and through radio and TV ads. Under the legislation, the sales taxes would be sent to the state where the shopper lives.

Businesses with less than $1 million in online sales would be exempt. EBay wants to exempt businesses with up to $10 million in sales or fewer than 50 employees.

Some states have sales taxes as high as 7 percent, plus city and county taxes that can push the combined rate even higher. For example, the combined state and local sales tax is 9 percent in Los Angeles and 9.25 percent in Chicago. In New York City, it's 8.5 percent and in Richmond, Va., 5 percent. In many states, shoppers are already required to pay unpaid sales tax when they file their state income tax returns. However, states complain that few taxpayers comply.

Many governors ? Republicans and Democrats ? have been lobbying the federal government for years for the authority to collect sales taxes from online sales.

The issue is getting bigger for states as more people make purchases online. Last year, Internet sales in the U.S. totaled $226 billion, up nearly 16 percent from the previous year, according to government estimates.

States lost a total of $23 billion last year because they couldn't collect taxes on out-of-state sales, according to a study done for the National Conference of State Legislatures, which has lobbied for the bill. About half of that was lost from Internet sales; half from purchases made through catalogs, mail orders and telephone orders, the study said.

Supporters say the bill makes it relatively easy for Internet retailers to comply. States must provide free computer software to help retailers calculate sales taxes, based on where shoppers live. States must also establish a single entity to receive Internet sales tax revenue, so retailers don't have to send it to individual counties or cities.

Opponents worry the bill would give states too much power to reach across state lines to enforce their tax laws. States could audit out-of-state businesses, impose liens on their property and, ultimately, sue them in state court.

In the Senate, lawmakers from three states without sales taxes are leading the opposition: Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon. They argue that businesses based in their states should not have to collect taxes for other states.

Delaware also has sales tax, though Delaware's two senators support the bill.

Grover Norquist, an anti-tax advocate, and the conservative Heritage Foundation oppose the bill, and many Republicans have been wary of crossing them.

Even so, the issue has a bipartisan flavor. The main sponsor, Sen. Mike Enzi, is a conservative Republican from Wyoming. He has worked closely with Sen. Dick Durbin, a liberal Democrat from Illinois.

In the House, Republican Speaker John Boehner has not commented publicly about the bill, giving supporters hope that he could be won over.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which would have jurisdiction over the bill, has cited problems with the legislation but not rejected it outright.

"While it attempts to make tax collection simpler, it still has a long way to go," Goodlatte said in a statement. Without more uniformity in the bill, he said, "businesses would still be forced to wade through potentially hundreds of tax rates and a host of different tax codes and definitions."

Goodlatte said he's "open to considering legislation concerning this topic but these issues, along with others, would certainly have to be addressed."

___

Follow Stephen Ohlemacher on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stephenatap

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-05-06-Internet%20Sales%20Tax/id-802530c5b45b462db68b6d69a533fbc7

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In 'Iron Man 3,' Ben Kingsley Never Took His Eyes Off Robert Downey Jr.

'You have to anticipate and joy in the movements and twists and turns,' Kingsley tells MTV News of his cinematic sparring partner.
By Todd Gilchrist

Robert Downey Jr. in "Iron Man 3"
Photo: Marvel Studios

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1706821/iron-man-3-ben-kingsley-robert-downey-jr.jhtml

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Feds: Hepatitis B no barrier to health practice

Peter Nguyen was a promising medical student when his school learned that he had tested positive for the hepatitis B virus. He said he was blackballed by school administrators and forced to halt his studies.

"I knew the stigma" that came with a hepatitis diagnosis, Nguyen said. But he thought that a medical school, of all places, would understand. "I came there expecting help. Instead, I was greeted with discrimination."

Nguyen's prospects of becoming a physician are a lot brighter today. The U.S. Department of Justice recently declared in a legal settlement that hepatitis B patients are protected by federal disability law. And, separately, federal health officials have issued a revised set of guidelines that make it clear that health care workers and students who carry the hepatitis B virus ? HBV for short ? generally pose little or no risk to patients.

Taken together, advocates say, the new health guidelines and the Justice Department settlement remove barriers to practice, handing HBV-positive health professionals and students a pair of powerful tools to combat discrimination.

"It gives us so much more leverage. We no longer have to wring our hands," said Joan Block, executive director and co-founder of the Hepatitis B Foundation, a nonprofit in Doylestown, Pa. She said Nguyen was among several students who contacted the foundation in 2011 to report they'd either been forced out of school, or had their admissions rescinded, because of an HBV diagnosis.

Hepatitis B is a contagious and potentially fatal liver disease spread through blood and other bodily fluids. The virus that causes it is most commonly transmitted through unprotected sex. Intravenous drug use is another major risk factor.

It can also be passed from an infected mother to her baby at birth, which is how Nguyen contracted it. Even though he'd been vaccinated as a child, the virus was already in his body.

As many as 1.4 million Americans have chronic hepatitis B. It's not clear how many of them are health practitioners. But some 25 percent of medical and dental students ? and many practicing doctors, surgeons and dentists ? were born to mothers from countries in Asia and other regions of the world where the virus is endemic, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC last issued guidelines for management of health workers and students with hepatitis B in 1991. A lot had changed in two decades. Universal infant vaccination had slashed the number of new cases by more than 80 percent. New drug therapies had proved effective at reducing the amount of virus in a carrier's blood to very low or undetectable levels, greatly minimizing the risk of transmission.

And there had been only a single case of hepatitis B transmission from a health provider to a patient at least since 1991 ? an orthopedic surgeon who was unaware of his hepatitis infection and had a very high amount of the virus in his body. He infected two to eight patients, according to the CDC.

While the old guidelines stated that a hepatitis B diagnosis by itself shouldn't preclude doctors, dentists, nurses and other health professionals from seeing patients, "we were concerned that with a 20-year-old set of guidance, it was not really considered as relevant as it could be," said Dr. John Ward, director of the CDC's Division of Viral Hepatitis.

He said the new guidelines offer a "powerful message that in the great majority of clinical encounters between a health care provider and a patient, there is minimal or no risk of hepatitis B virus transmission."

Released last summer, the updated CDC guidelines were cited by the Justice Department in March as the agency announced a settlement with a New Jersey medical school over claims it violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by excluding two applicants with hepatitis B. While the state-run University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey denied liability, it agreed to admit qualified HBV-positive students and provide training to staff.

It was the first case in which the Justice Department pursued an ADA complaint on behalf of people with hepatitis B.

"This is a historic decision," Block said. "We can now pull out the DOJ settlement and really guide these people: 'What you're facing is discrimination, and here are the tools to help.' That's powerful."

Nguyen said he had no idea he was a carrier until he started medical school. That's when he began to feel persistently tired and lost the ability to concentrate. Given a family history of liver cancer ? of which hepatitis is the leading cause ? his doctor had him tested. It came back positive.

Nguyen alerted the school and said he was told by an administrator that he would never be able to complete the required surgical rotation because "no operating room in the country will let you in."

"That's when I started almost panicking," Nguyen said. "To this point I had been a good student. All the sudden my world was crashing, with all this debt and all the things I had worked for in jeopardy."

He said the school began making life more difficult for him, to the point where he felt he had no choice but to leave.

With successful treatment, the virus is now undetectable in his blood and Nguyen said he is feeling better ? and plotting a return to his medical studies. He said he's leaning toward a career in hepatology, so he can help others like him.

The specialty is "definitely at the top of the list," Nguyen said. "I understand the risk and the mental strain. I have a lot of compassion for those individuals."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/feds-hepatitis-b-no-barrier-health-practice-144109082.html

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Sigma DP3 Merrill

The DP3 Merrill ($999 direct) is the most recent entry into the Sigma's DP family of compact cameras. It has the longest lens of the bunch, a short-telephoto design with macro focusing capability, but uses the same 46-megapixel Foveon X3 image sensor as the DP1 Merrill and DP2 Merrill. The APS-C sensor is as big as you'd find in an SLR, but its design requires you to use Sigma's software for Raw processing. It's not a camera for everyone, but if you're willing to put the time in you'll end up wtih impressively sharp photos. Our Editors' Choice for prime-lens compact cameras is still the Ricoh GR, but the GR sports a wide-angle lens that sees the world in a different way than the DP3's narrow 75mm-equivalent lens.

Foveon Image Sensor, Design, and Features
The Foveon X3 image sensor that is at the heart of the DP3 is a design unique to Sigma. It uses three layers to record information,?each one sensitive to a different color channel. Traditional digital cameras use a single-layer sensor with a Bayer overlay, which has grids of red, blue, and green pixels to create a color image. Each layer of the DP3's sensor boasts a 15.4-megapixel resolution?because of this, Sigma advertises it as a 46-megapixel camera, even though the resulting, printable images are limited to 15.4 megapixels in size.

The sensor design omits the low-pass filter, which is a trend on higher-end cameras. But because of its design, which by its nature omits the Bayer color-array filter, there's no danger of moir? entering into your shots. The downside to the unique design is that there's no support for the Raw format in Lightroom or similar software programs?you'll have to use Sigma's Raw software to process photos. The software leaves a lot to be desired, but you can use it as a basic converter to convert the Raw imaes into TIFF format, which can then be imported into Lightroom or the workflow application of your choice.

In terms of design, the DP3 is essentially a brick with a lens, measuring 2.6 by 4.8 by 3.2 inches, and weighing in at 14.1 ounces. Its body is the same size as the DP1 and DP2 in terms of height and width, but it's got the biggest lens of the three. The size isn't out of line with the?Leica X2 (2.7 by 4.9 by 2 inches), but that camera's 36mm-equivalent lens doesn't jut out nearly as far. The DP3 doesn't support an EVF, but you can slide a fixed optical finder into its hot shoe; you'll have to trust its autofocus system, but our tests showed that to be accurate, albeit slow.

The lens is a 50mm focal length, which translates into 75mm in terms of full-frame photography. It has a maximum aperture of f/2.8 and can focus as close as 8.9 inches. That's not close enough for the 1:2 magnification that is typical for dedicated macro lenses in this focal range, but it does get you 1:3 magnification, which is quite impressive for a compact camera with a big image sensor. Some shooters may feel limited by the narrow field of view, especially since you can't change the lens. Foveon fans can choose from the DP1 or DP2, both of which feature a wider lens, and enthusiasts with big camera budgets can take a look at the full-frame Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1; it's got a faster, wider 35mm f/2 lens, but costs nearly three times as much as the DP3.

The DP3 is only available in one color, a pleasantly minimal flat black finish. Buttons are labeled in white?for shooting functions?and red?for playback functions. On top you'll find the power button, Mode button, a control wheel, and the shutter. The rear houses the Auto Exposure lock, a four-way controller with a center select button (the up direction lets you select the focus mode, the bottom the focus point), an image playback button, a button to control the amount of information shown on the rear display, the menu button, and the QS button.

The QS (Quick Set) button grants access to seven quick shooting controls. Press it once and you can adjust the ISO, exposure compensation, drive mode, and image format settings. Press it a second time and the menu switches to white balance, image compression, color balance, and image format (in the same place as the first menu) settings. It's a well-designed interface, and lets you adjust settings without diving into the menu system.

The 3-inch rear display packs a 920k-dot resolution. It's sharp and gives you a good idea about the quality of the images you are capturing. The display is just as sharp as the 1.2-million-dot display on the Ricoh GR, but it's not as bright; that camera has an extra layer of white pixels that make it possible to view on even the brightest days.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/NCnII962xJc/0,2817,2418459,00.asp

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Acer Aspire R7: The Craziest Thing to Happen to Laptops in Years

This is either brilliant or absolutely insane. Acer's new R7 ultrabook is the weirdest change to laptop design in years.

Read more...

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/YqAz6ZDyIHI/acer-aspire-r7-the-craziest-thing-to-happen-to-laptops-489047202

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'Going negative' pays for nanotubes

May 3, 2013 ? A Rice University laboratory's cagey strategy turns negatively charged carbon nanotubes into liquid crystals that could enhance the creation of fibers and films.

The latest step toward making macro materials out of microscopic nanotubes depends on cage-like crown ethers that capture potassium cations. Negatively charged carbon nanotubes associate with potassium cations to maintain their electrical neutrality. In effect, the ethers help strip these cations from the surface of the nanotubes, resulting into a net charge that helps counterbalance the electrical van der Waals attraction that normally turns carbon nanotubes into an unusable clump.

The process by Rice chemist Angel Mart?, his students and colleagues was revealed in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano.

Carbon nanotubes have long been thought of as a potential basis for ultrastrong, highly conductive fibers -- a premise borne out in recent work by Rice professor and co-author Matteo Pasquali -- and preparing them has depended on the use of a "superacid," chlorosulfonic acid, that gives the nanotubes a positive charge and makes them repel each other in a solution.

Mart? and first authors Chengmin Jiang and Avishek Saha, both graduate students at Rice, decided to look at producing nanotube solutions from another angle. "We saw in the literature there was a way to do the opposite and give the surface of the nanotubes negative charges," Mart? said. It involved infusing single-walled carbon nanotubes with alkali metals, in this case, potassium, and turning them into a kind of salt known as a polyelectrolyte. Mixing them into an organic solvent, dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), forced the negatively charged nanotubes to shed some potassium ions and repel each other, but in concentrations too low for extruding into fibers and films.

That took the addition of ether molecules known as 18-crown-6 for their crown-like atomic arrangements. The crowns have a particular appetite for potassium; they strip the remaining ions from the nanotube walls and sequester them. The tubes' repulsive qualities become greater and allow for more nanotubes in a solution before van der Waals forces them to coagulate.

At critical mass, nanotubes suspended in solution run out of room and form a liquid crystal, Mart? said. "They align when they get so crowded in the solution that they cannot pack any closer in a randomly aligned state," he said. "Electrostatic repulsions prevent van der Waals interactions from taking over, so nanotubes don't have another choice but to align themselves, forming liquid crystals."

Liquid crystalline nanotubes are essential to the production of strong, conductive fiber, like the fiber achieved with superacid suspensions. But Mart? said going negative means nanotubes can be more easily functionalized -- that is, chemically altered for specific uses.

"The negative charges on the surface of the nanotubes allow chemical reactions that you cannot do with superacids," Mart? said. "You may, for example, be able to functionalize the surface of the carbon nanotubes at the same time you're making fiber. You might be able to crosslink nanotubes to make a stronger fiber while extruding it.

"We feel we're bringing a new player to the field of carbon nanotechnology, especially for making macroscopic materials," he said.

Co-authors of the paper are Rice graduate students Changsheng Xiang and Colin Young James Tour, the T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science. Pasquali is a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and of chemistry. Mart? is an assistant professor of chemistry and bioengineering.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Rice University. The original article was written by Mike Williams.

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

---

Journal Reference:

1. Chengmin Jiang, Avishek Saha, Changsheng Xiang, Colin C. Young, James M. Tour, Matteo Pasquali, Angel A. Mart. Increased Solubility, Liquid-Crystalline Phase, and Selective Functionalization of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Polyelectrolyte Dispersions. ACS Nano, 2013; : 130416090924009 DOI: 10.1021/nn4011544

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

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/03BAx5HAItY/130503114718.htm

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The Stir: 7 Sneaky Ways to Win an Argument With Your Husband

Written by Adriana Velez on CafeMom's blog, The Stir.

It's another Monday night, and you're just getting home. Your kids are whining about something, dinner has to be made, and your husband is doing that thing that always pisses you off. So you start arguing with each other. Wouldn't you love to learn how to win that argument for once? And quickly?

A recent article in The New York Times revealed some surprising negotiating tactics that can help you win. And by "win" I mean win-win, for both of you. (You knew that, right?) Because hopefully your ultimate goal as a couple is peace, love, and understanding. So get out your cushions, couples -- I'm not kidding.

1. Watch out for transitions. Researchers say the biggest fights happen when family members are either saying hello or goodbye: When you're trying to get the kids off to school, when you're coming home from work, when you're trying to get the kids off to bed. The worst time is between 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. So be aware of that, and if you find yourself getting testy during a transition, bite your tongue and save that argument for a better time.

2. Sit at the same level. Weird, but true -- the levels where you sit or stand can influence your argument. If you're both at the same level, you're more likely to deal with each other as equals.

3. Get comfy. Another weird one -- people are more flexible during an argument or discussion if they're sitting in soft chairs or sofas than when they're sitting on hard chairs.

More From Our Partners: The Top 5 Mistakes That Lead To Divorce

4. Set a timer. Apparently people make the most important points in their opening statements. After that, people end up just repeating themselves and yelling. So it actually helps to set a time limit (make sure each person gets equal time). If you haven't reached an agreement, call a time-out and take a five-minute break before getting back together again.

These tips were all new to me. Here's a couple more that I've tried and found worked pretty well.

5. Make gentle physical contact. If you haven't reached the boiling point, sometimes holding hands or even touching toes can help you feel connected even if you're not seeing eye to eye at the moment.

6. Don't use his talking time to prep your arguments. When he's explaining his side of things, do you ever find yourself tuning him out and planning what you'll say next? You really need to stop and hear your partner. Pause after he finishes talking if you need time to think about your response.

7. Stop what you're doing. This is no time to multitask. If you and your husband have something important to discuss, you both need to give it your full attention. Don't fold laundry and argue at the same time. Even if you think you can still listen, it gives the message that your relationship and the conflict aren't worth your full attention -- and it makes your spouse feel like you're not listening.

Do you have any other negotiating tactics that have worked for you?

More from The Stir:

7 Things You Should Consider Before Getting Back Together With Your Ex

14 Ways You Can Tell He's 'Husband Material'

Here's How Much a Divorce REALLY Costs

What NOT to Say to Your Spouse If You Want to Stay Married (VIDEO)

?

Follow The Stir on Twitter: www.twitter.com/The_Stir

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-stir/7-sneaky-ways-to-win-an-a_b_3134402.html

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Lindsay Lohan checks in to Betty Ford clinic

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Lindsay Lohan has checked into a rehab and will not face a probation violation for leaving another treatment facility after a few minutes, a prosecutor said Friday.

Santa Monica Chief Deputy City Attorney Terry White said he has received confirmation that Lohan has checked in to a rehab facility and he is satisfied with her location. He declined to say where Lohan is receiving treatment, but a source close to the actress who was not authorized to speak publicly said she has checked in to the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

The "Liz & Dick" star is required to spend 90 days in rehab as part of a plea deal in a misdemeanor case filed after a June car accident.

Lohan has also re-hired longtime attorney Shawn Holley to handle her case. White said he was in contact with Holley on Thursday evening after hours of uncertainty about the actress' whereabouts.

Attorney Mark Jay Heller told a judge during a hearing Thursday that Lohan had checked in to a different rehab facility, but the starlet left it after a few minutes.

White was given several days to investigate that facility, which a state official said was not licensed to perform residential drug or alcohol rehab treatment.

Lohan's sentence called for her to spend three months at a lockdown rehab facility and also receive 18 months of psychotherapy to avoid a return to jail.

She pleaded no contest in March to lying to police and reckless driving.

Lohan has spent time at Betty Ford before. She served another mandatory rehab sentence at the treatment center, although her stay there was not without drama. Lohan, 26, got into an altercation with a rehab worker and within weeks of her release was charged with taking a necklace from a Los Angeles jewelry store without permission.

Lohan remains on probation in the theft case.

Holley has represented Lohan throughout numerous court proceedings, but the actress opted to have Heller, a New York lawyer unversed in California law, represent her in recent months.

___

Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lindsay-lohan-checks-betty-ford-clinic-151114826.html

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PFT: Reid says Albert to play LT, Fisher to be RT

AP

NFL teams have different options when it comes to filling out the quarterback depth chart.? They can have an unquestioned starter and obvious backups, or they can throw the quarterbacks in a blender and see who earns the job.

Or they can pretend to have a clear-cut starter and undermine him with a backup who says he supports the starter but actually wants to take his job.

That?s what the Jets did last year by adding Tim Tebow to the team.? Even though Tebow tried to say and do all the right things on multiple occasions, he wanted to play.? Which means that he wanted Sanchez to not play.

On Thursday, Sanchez reflected on their relationship, making it clear that there was tension.

?If you were Tim?s agent or my agent, would you say that?s the absolutely best position for either of us?? Probably not,? Sanchez told reporters.? ?Tim wanted to play, I wanted to play, only one guy plays at this position.? So I guess it wasn?t the most advantageous, but that?s the way things happen. We both competed [with] our best, tried to be the best of friends we could, and honestly under different circumstances we would be really good friends, it?s just hard when you?re competing like that.? There?s just a professionalism about it that you don?t get too close to guys like that.? You?re just professional, and you?re cool and if the guy has a flat tire on the side of the road, I?m going to stop, I?m not just going to blow by him, but at the same time, I?m not sending him gifts on his birthday or anything.?

This year, the Jets have abandoned the fa?ade, embracing the notion that not just Mark Sanchez and Geno Smith but all five quarterbacks currently on the roster are competing.? Which means that Sanchez will view the rookie the same way he regarded Tebow.

?I don?t see why it would be any different,? Sanchez said.? ?I will help [Smith] out as much as I can, but when we have to compete, we have to compete, that?s the way it goes.?

Which means that the quarterback position will continue to display dysfunction, with five guys clamoring for one job.? While competition could make the guy who emerges from the scrum better, like so many quarterback controversies the guy who wins the job for Week One essentially becomes the guy who wins the privilege of being the first one to get benched.

That?s why the far better approach for any NFL team is to have a starter and obvious backups.? It keeps the locker room from picking sides, the media from stirring up trouble, and the fans from ripping their hair out.

Eventually, that could happen for the Jets, with Smith getting the job once he?s deemed ready to handle it.? Until then, the Jets will keep Sanchez and his guaranteed salary of $8.25 million around, because they?ll be paying him whether he?s on the team or not.

Which means that, essentially, the Jets have done a 180 from 2012.? Last year, they pretended there wasn?t a competition when in fact there really was one.? This year, the organization has launched a competition with an obvious preferred winner in mind.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/05/02/reid-says-albert-will-play-left-tackle-fisher-will-play-right/related/

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Entering the market? Business model trumps business plan.

We should really use the business model to guide our launch and early development of the venture, Cornwall writes. It is a tool that makes change and updating simple and highly effective.

By Dr. Jeffrey R. Cornwall,?Guest blogger / May 3, 2013

A man stands in front of a bike store in Fredericksburg, Va. Both the business model and the business plan are important tools for the entrepreneur's arsenal, Cornwall writes.

Suzanne Carr Rossi/The Free Lance-Star/AP/File

Enlarge

There has been a growing debate about business plan versus business model. ?The lines are being drawn. ?However, I would chime in to say that both sides of this debate are right, and sides are both wrong. ?To mix metaphors, let?s not throw the baby out with the bath water, even though that may be one ugly baby!

Skip to next paragraph Dr. Jeffrey R. Cornwall

Jeff is the Jack C. Massey Chair in Entrepreneurship and Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn.

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We have moved to much more of a focus on business modeling here at Belmont University. ?Why? ?Because my own experience as an entrepreneur and as an entrepreneurship educator is that the business plan is just a tool.

In that past, we did not teach much about business models because they were considered to be something that each of us developed a skill for in our own way. ?So we taught what is easiest to teach ? something concrete and easy to evaluate. ?A business plan has a format and a process that lends itself to educational settings, especially considering that many who teach entrepreneurship have never launched a business and have not really learned to develop business models.

But then a few years ago, some valid and elegantly simple tools came along to help conceptualize and teach business models. ?The most popular of these is Osterwalder?s Business Model Canvas. ?But there are many others coming out and many are trying to improve upon Osterwalder?s work. ?Since we have started using more of these tools, our students here at Belmont now can much more easily conceptualize a business model. ?They can see all of the moving parts and identify things that just don?t make sense before the codify it into a business plan.?

Fossil of great ape sheds light on evolution

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Researchers who unearthed the fossil specimen of an ape skeleton in Spain in 2002 assigned it a new genus and species, Pierolapithecus catalaunicus. They estimated that the ape lived about 11.9 million years ago, arguing that it could be the last common ancestor of modern great apes: chimpanzees, orangutans, bonobos, gorillas and humans. Now, a University of Missouri integrative anatomy expert says the shape of the specimen's pelvis indicates that it lived near the beginning of the great ape evolution, after the lesser apes had started to develop separately but before the great ape species began to diversify.

Ashley Hammond, a Life Sciences Fellow in the MU Department of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences, is the first to examine the pelvis fragments of the early hominid. She used a tabletop laser scanner attached to a turntable to capture detailed surface images of the fossil, which provided her with a 3-D model to compare the Pierolapithecus pelvis anatomy to living species.

Hammond says the ilium, the largest bone in the pelvis, of the Pierolapithecus catalaunicus is wider than that of Proconsul nyanzae, a more primitive ape that lived approximately 18 million years ago. The wider pelvis may be related to the ape's greater lateral balance and stability while moving using its forelimbs. However, the fingers of the Pierolapithecus catalaunicus are unlike those of modern great apes, indicating that great apes may have evolved differently than scientists originally hypothesized.

"Pierolapithecus catalaunicus seemed to use a lot of upright behaviors such as vertical climbing, but not the fully suspensory behaviors we see in great apes alive today," Hammond said. "Today, chimpanzees, orangutans, bonobos and gorillas use forelimb-dominated behaviors to swing below branches, but Pierolapithecus catalaunicus didn't have the long, curved finger bones needed for suspension, so those behaviors evolved more recently."

Hammond suggests researchers continue searching for fossils to further explain the evolution of the great apes in Africa.

"Contrary to popular belief, we're not looking for a missing link," Hammond said. "We have different pieces of the evolutionary puzzle and big gaps between points in time and fossil species. We need to continue fieldwork to identify more fossils and determine how the species are related and how they lived. Ultimately, everything is connected."

The study, "Middle Miocene Pierolapithecus provides a first glimpse into early hominid pelvic morphology," will be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Human Evolution. The Department of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences is in the MU School of Medicine. Co-authors included David Alba from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain and the University of Turin in Italy, Sergio Alm?cija from Stony Brook University in New York, and Salvador Moy-Sol from the Miquel Crusafont Institute of Catalan Palaeontology at Autonomous University of Barcelona.

###

University of Missouri-Columbia: http://www.missouri.edu

Thanks to University of Missouri-Columbia 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/128094/Fossil_of_great_ape_sheds_light_on_evolution

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May Day protests: From Bangladesh to Europe, angry workers rally in the tens of thousands

But this year's May Day demonstrations come on the heels of the tragic Bangladesh factory collapse, a potent symbol for many of the importance of workers' rights.

By Ryan Lenora Brown,?Correspondent / May 1, 2013

Workers and protesters hold a huge banner march to the government office during a May Day rally in Hong Kong, Wednesday. Hundreds of workers, local labor right groups, and striking dockworkers join the annual rally to demand better wages and working conditions.

Vincent Yu/AP

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In Dhaka, Bangladesh, a raucous crowd descended on the city center with signs and drums, chanting and waving banners demanding the death penalty for the owner of a factory where more than 400 people died in a building collapse last week.

Skip to next paragraph Ryan Lenora Brown

Correspondent

Ryan Brown edits the Africa Monitor blog and contributes to the national and international news desks of the Monitor. She is a former Fulbright fellow to South Africa and holds a degree in history from Duke University.?

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In Jakarta, Indonesia, some of the tens of thousands of demonstrators marching through the city came dressed as ants ? complete with bright red outfits and antennae ? to depict the exploitation of workers.?

And in Greece, trains, buses, and ferries sat vacant and hospitals nearly empty as thousands of public sector employees walked off the job in a one-day strike.

Each year, May 1, better known as May Day, is marked with labor rallies and strikes around the world. And this year's holiday came at a particularly prescient moment in many parts of the world.?

From Europe, where the bite of austerity has left many facing down unemployment and reduced benefits, to South and Southeast Asia, a region cluttered with precariously-built factories similar to the one that collapsed last week in Bangladesh, demonstrators gathered to vent outrage and demand reform.

?My brother has died. My sister has died. Their blood will not be valueless,? yelled one Bangladeshi protestor through a crackling loudspeaker, according to the Associated Press.

As the march wove through downtown Dhaka, rescue workers in the industrial suburb of Savar continued their search for bodies and survivors in the rubble of Rana Plaza, which collapsed suddenly on April 24 with thousands of garment workers inside.

The disaster at the factory, which manufactured clothing for several low-end Western retailers, touched off global outrage about the working conditions of garment workers across the developing world. In Phnom Pehn, Cambodia, workers rallied for higher wages and safer working conditions. In Manila, Philipines, where labor unions are banned, workers marched to demand the right to organize. And in Hong Kong, thousands turned out in support of striking dock workers, calling for wages that would help close the income gap between the country?s rich and its poor.

And that was all before Europe woke up.

There has "never been a May 1 with more reason to take to the streets,? one Spanish union leader told Reuters during a march in Madrid this morning, where protestors carried signs reading "austerity ruins and kills" and "reforms are robbery.? (Read the Monitor's feature about how Spaniards are increasingly flocking to the countryside to cut costs and find new jobs.)

In Greece, where the government recently announced that it would lay off 180,000 civil servants over the next two years ? the first such cuts in 100 years ? a strike shut down public transit across Athens. ?

And in France, which saw unemployment rose again last month, marchers carried banners reading, ?It?s too much! Alternatives exist? and ?Where are the real socialists in our government??

An exception to the doom and gloom of this year?s May Day was Russia, where a festive celebration of the holiday harks back to Soviet times. Indeed, many of those who gathered in the streets of Moscow were buoyant, Euronews reported.

?The atmosphere is excellent. It?s a holiday for us, the beginning of something new, bright, and joyful,? one demonstrator told reporters.

May 1 is a national holiday in some 80 countries around the world, and its ties to labor advocacy date back to 1886, when American police killed 10 protestors at a rally for an eight-hour workday in Chicago?s Haymarket Square. International socialist organization and labor unions declared it a day of commemoration and action soon after.

Ironically, however, May Day is not celebrated in the United States. In the early 1890s, fearing the ?socialist? overtones of the holiday, President Grover Cleveland quickly declared an alternate holiday, beginning the American tradition of celebrating Labor Day on the first Monday of September.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/kAIVFhNRNbc/May-Day-protests-From-Bangladesh-to-Europe-angry-workers-rally-in-the-tens-of-thousands

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