I love my tiny little Mazda, but I'll be honest -- I still don't completely understand how it works. That's never really bothered me before (I'd much rather geek out over a phone or something) but a Kickstarter project from a small team in Boston has me itching to pay more attention to what's really going on under the hood. Long story short, Dash combines a Bluetooth 4.0-enabled dongle that plugs into your car's on-board diagnostics port with a smartphone app that gives you up-to-date information how on your car is holding up.
If you spend time worrying that you'll end up on the street in your old age with your belongings stuffed into plastic bags in a shopping cart, you have good company.
A new survey shows that almost half of American women fear they will become "bag ladies" some day, and the anxiety ripples across all income groups.
Even among women with household earnings above $200,000, 27 percent harbor the bag-lady fear, according to a new online survey?issued by Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America.
While Allianz is promoting the survey to encourage women to seek more financial-planning advice, the underlying concern is valid, according to a labor economist who studies aging and income issues.
Because women typically earn less and have more sporadic work histories, their pensions and benefits are less sturdy, said Barbara Butrica, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute?s Income and Benefits Policy Center. ?They are starting retirement at a disadvantage,? she said.
Women also tend to live longer than men.??So she?ll have to make that income last a lot longer time,? Butrica said.
Among the over-65 set, non-married women have the highest poverty rates. While only 4 percent of married women over 65 fell below the poverty line in 2010, that number rose to?14 percent for widows over 65 and 18 percent for divorced women over 65, Butrica said.
For men over 65 living in poverty, 4 percent were married; 11 percent were widowers and 12 percent were divorced. The gender differences are even more striking, Butrica said, when you consider that in 2010, only 29.5 percent of men age 65 or older were not married, compared with 56.3 percent of women. Those numbers come from the Social Security Administration's 2012 report on ?Income of the Population 55 or Older, 2010.?
But should?even women with very good jobs?fret about being homeless one day?
?It?s highly unlikely. But it could happen,? Butrica said, citing the likelihood that a catastrophic illness is more likely to strike as you get older. ?The fact that these women are thinking about it is a good thing.?
From 2012: Honeybees may be victims of widely used insecticides. NBC's Anne Thompson reports.
By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News
This past winter has been exceptionally rough for honeybees ??and although it's too early to say exactly why, the usual suspects range from pesticides that appear to cause memory loss to pests that got an exceptionally early start last spring.
Friday marked the start of an annual survey that asks beekeepers to report how many bees they lost over the winter, conducted by the Bee Informed Partnership, the Apiary Inspectors of America and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The advance word is that the results will be brutal.??The New York Times, for example, quoted beekeepers as saying the losses reached levels of 40 to 50 percent?? which would be double the average reported last year.
One beekeeper in Montana was quoted as saying that his bees seemed health last spring, but in September, "they started to fall on their face, to die like crazy."
Dennis vanEngelsdorp, an entomologist at the University of Maryland who is one of the leaders of the survey team, said he can't predict what the past winter's average loss figure will be. The beekeepers' reports are being solicited online for the next two weeks, and the figures are due for release on May 7.
"What I can say is, when we were in California this year, the strength of the colonies that were there was significantly lower than it was in previous years," vanEngelsdorp told NBC News.?
Pesticides at issue That's consistent with a mysterious ailment known as colony collapse disorder, which has stirred scientists' concern for the past decade. The malady almost certainly due to combination of factors ??including the Varroa mite, a single-celled parasite known as Nosema, several varieties of viruses, and pesticides. Researchers point to one particular class of pesticides, known as neonicotinoids, as a prime suspect.
Neonicotinoid-based pesticides are commonly applied as a coating on corn seeds, but the chemicals can persist in the environment. Although they have low toxicity for mammals, they've been found to have a significant neurotoxic effect on insects, including bees. Several European countries have banned neonicotinoids, the European Union has been looking at a wider ban, and the Environmental Protection Agency is considering new limitations as well. Just last week, a lawsuit called on the EPA to suspend the use of two types of neonicotinoids immediately.
Two recently published studies add to the concern: This week, researchers report in Nature Communications that neonicotinoids block the part of a bee's brain that associates scents with foods. They suggest that without that functionality, the bees effectively forget that floral scents mean food is nearby, and thus die off before they can pollinate. A study published in January in the Journal of Experimental Biology found a similar link to problems with scent-related learning and memory.
Mild winter, dry summer Although neonicotinoids are currently front and center in the debate over colony collapse disorder, they're not necessarily the primary reason for this winter's dramatic dip in bee colonies.
VanEngelsdorp noted that the winter of 2011-2012 was easy on the bees: Losses amounted to just 21.9 percent, compared with a 2006-2011 average of 33 percent. However, the mild winter was kind to the bees' pests as well. VanEngelsdorp speculated that Varroa mites may have gained an early foothold in the hives last spring. By the time beekeepers started their treatments on the usual schedule, it was too late to keep the mites from weakening the colonies. That would help explain why the past winter's losses were worse than usual.
Scott Bauer / USDA via AP
A worker bee carries a Varroa mite, visible in this close-up view.
California beekeeper Randy Oliver, who discusses industry trends on the Scientific Beekeeping blog, said the past summer's drought was also a factor: "When there's a drought, the bees are in poor shape with the food," he told NBC News. He said he and other beekeepers predicted that there'd be heavy winter losses last July, when the scale of the drought became clear.
Heavy losses are bad news, and if bee colonies are becoming progressively weaker, that's worse news. It's not just because of the honey: The Department of Agriculture says that bee pollination is responsible for more than $15 billion in increased crop value each year. A bee scarcity increases costs for the farmers who need them for pollination, and that could lead to higher food prices. But Oliver said it's important to keep a sense of perspective about the bad news.
"The situation with the bees is not dire," he said. "The bees are doing OK. There's no danger that the bees will go extinct. ... That's just not true."
More about bees:
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's?Facebook page, following?@b0yle on Twitter?and adding the?Cosmic Log page?to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out?"The Case for Pluto,"?my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
KAUFMAN, Texas (AP) ? A sheriff's deputy says authorities are investigating the deaths of a North Texas county district attorney and his wife who were found dead in a home.
Kaufman County Sheriff's Office spokesman Lt. Justin Lewis said Saturday that the county District Attorney, Mike McLelland, and his wife, Cynthia, were found dead in a home in an unincorporated part of the county. Authorities have blocked off the street where the couple's last known address is located.
Lewis said he couldn't discuss the investigation in further detail, including how the couple died and whether investigators believe their deaths are linked to the Jan. 31 slaying of an assistant Kaufman County district attorney, Mark Hasse.
The Dallas Morning News reports that Kaufman Police Chief Chris Aulbaugh confirmed the couple was shot at their home.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? U.S. special operations forces handed over their base in a strategic district of eastern Afghanistan to local Afghan special forces on Saturday, senior U.S. commanders said. The withdrawal satisfies a demand by Afghan President Hamid Karzai that U.S. forces leave the area after allegations that the Americans' Afghan counterparts committed human rights abuses there on U.S. orders.
The transfer of authority ends a particularly rocky episode in the strained relations between the U.S. and Karzai. He had insisted that U.S. forces leave Nirkh district in Wardak province over the alleged torture, kidnapping and summary execution of militant suspects there ? charges U.S. officials firmly denied.
The incident shows the larger struggle of Karzai's government to assert its authority over security matters, even as its green security forces try to assume control of much of the country from coalition forces on a rushed timeline, ahead of the scheduled withdrawal of most of coalition forces by December 2014.
"As we pledged, our forces have transitioned Nirkh district to Afghan national security forces and they have now assumed full responsibility for security in this key district," Gen. Joseph Dunford, the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said in a statement released Saturday.
"The rest of Wardak will continue to transition over time as Afghan forces continue to grow in capability and capacity," he added.
Maj. Gen. Tony Thomas, the top U.S. special operations commander in Afghanistan, told The Associated Press in an interview that the transition of authority took place Saturday. "What it means is we brought in an Afghan special forces team to take the place of ours," Thomas said.
Attaullah Khogyani, spokesman for the governor of Wardak province outside Kabul, confirmed that U.S. special operations forces withdrew and were replaced by a joint Afghan security forces team.
Karzai had originally demanded the U.S. special operations forces pull out from the entire province, a gateway and staging area for Taliban and other militants for attacks on the capital Kabul. But he scaled down his demands to just the single district after negotiations with Dunford and other U.S. officials.
"President Karzai was specific, it's only for Nirkh, that was a provocative point," Thomas said. "American special operations forces are integral in the defense of Wardak from now until the foreseeable future."
U.S. commandos will also continue to visit the Afghan team in Nirkh.
"We're going to support them from a distance," Thomas said. "The reality is there was such a groundswell of support (from locals) in Wardak after the initial allegations that we're keeping several teams down there to work with the Afghan security forces for the future, with an idea that we'll transition over time."
The American special operations troops are paired with and live alongside locally recruited and trained teams known as Afghan local police. Thomas said most of the local police will be paired with Afghan security forces by the end of the summer, with the Americans making occasional visits as they will do in Nirkh, to assess whether they need logistic or other support.
One Wardak government official expressed relief that the agreement crafted with Karzai did not mean the complete pullout of U.S. forces from the province, saying that local officials were worried their new forces would not yet be able to keep hardcore insurgents out of the area.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because his comments run counter to public statements made by Karzai that the Afghan security forces are ready for complete independence in Wardak.
Meanwhile, Taliban militants attacked a police convoy Saturday morning in Ghazni province in eastern Afghanistan, kicking off a fierce gunbattle, according to deputy provincial police chief Col. Mohammad Hussain.
The police requested a coalition air strike, which hit the militants' position and killed 15 fighters but also wounded nine civilians including a woman and child, Hussain said. He did not report any police casualties.
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Associated Press writer Rahim Faiez contributed to this report.
Follow Kimberly Dozier on Twitter at http://twitter.com/KimberlyDozier
Rory McIlroy hits a shot out of a third-hole bunker during the first round of the Houston Open golf tournament, Thursday, March 28, 2013, in Humble, Texas. (AP Photo/Conroe Courier, Jason Fochtman)
Rory McIlroy hits a shot out of a third-hole bunker during the first round of the Houston Open golf tournament, Thursday, March 28, 2013, in Humble, Texas. (AP Photo/Conroe Courier, Jason Fochtman)
Steve Wheatcroft prepares to putt on the 15th hole during the first round of the Houston Open golf tournament, Thursday, March 28, 2013, in Humble, Texas.(AP Photo/Bob Levey)
Rory Mcllroy, of Northern Ireland, hits out of a bunker on the 13th hole during the second round of the Houston Open golf tournament, Friday, March 29, 2013 in Humble, Texas. (AP Photo/Jon Eilts)
HUMBLE, Texas (AP) ? A late birdie might just be enough to give Rory McIlroy two more rounds before the Masters.
Steve Wheatcroft, a Monday qualifier for the Houston Open, had another 67 to take the lead among early starters Friday at Redstone Golf Club.
Far down the leaderboard was McIlroy, struggling to make the cut for the first time this year against a full field. He two-putted from 85 feet away on the fringe on the par-5 eighth hole and made par on his final hole for a 2-under 70. That put him at 1-under 143, which appeared to be safe for playing on the weekend.
Wheatcroft was at 10-under 134 and had a three-shot lead. The PGA Tour hasn't had a Monday qualifier win a tournament since Arjun Atwal in August 2010.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) ? North Korean leader Kim Jong Un warned Friday that his rocket forces were ready "to settle accounts with the U.S.," unleashing a new round of bellicose rhetoric after U.S. nuclear-capable B-2 bombers dropped dummy munitions in joint military drills with South Korea.
Kim's warning, and the litany of threats that have preceded it, don't indicate an imminent war. In fact, they're most likely meant to coerce South Korea into softening its policies, win direct talks and aid from Washington, and strengthen the young leader's credentials and image at home.
But the threats from North Korea and rising animosity from the rivals that have followed U.N. sanctions over Pyongyang's Feb. 12 nuclear test do raise worries of a misjudgment leading to a clash.
Kim "convened an urgent operation meeting" of senior generals just after midnight, signed a rocket preparation plan and ordered his forces on standby to strike the U.S. mainland, South Korea, Guam and Hawaii, state media reported.
Kim said "the time has come to settle accounts with the U.S. imperialists in view of the prevailing situation," according to a report by the North's official Korean Central News Agency.
Later Friday at the main square in Pyongyang, tens of thousands of North Koreans turned out for a 90-minute mass rally in support of Kim's call to arms. Men and women, many of them in olive drab uniforms, stood in arrow-straight lines, fists raised as they chanted, "Death to the U.S. imperialists." Placards in the plaza bore harsh words for South Korea as well, including, "Let's rip the puppet traitors to death!"
Small North Korean warships, including patrol boats, conducted maritime drills off both coasts of North Korea near the border with South Korea on Thursday, South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said in a briefing Friday. He didn't provide more details.
The spokesman said that South Korea's military was mindful of the possibility that North Korean drills could lead to an actual provocation. He also said that the South Korean and U.S. militaries are watching closely for any signs of missile launch preparations in North Korea. He didn't elaborate.
North Korea, which says it considers the U.S.-South Korean military drills preparations for invasion, has pumped out a string of threats in state media. In the most dramatic case, Pyongyang made the highly improbable vow to nuke the United States.
On Friday, state media released a photo of Kim and his senior generals huddled in front of a map showing routes for envisioned strikes against cities on both American coasts. The map bore the title "U.S. Mainland Strike Plan."
Portions of the photo appeared to be manipulated, though an intriguing detail ? a bandage on Kim's left arm ? appeared to be real.
Experts believe the country is years away from developing nuclear-tipped missiles that could strike the United States. Many say they've also seen no evidence that Pyongyang has long-range missiles that can hit the U.S. mainland.
Still, there are fears of a localized conflict, such as a naval skirmish in disputed Yellow Sea waters. Such naval clashes have happened three times since 1999. There's also the danger that such a clash could escalate. Seoul has vowed to hit back hard the next time it is attacked.
North Korea's threats are also worrisome because of its arsenal of short- and mid-range missiles that can hit targets in South Korea and Japan. Seoul is only a short drive from the heavily armed border separating the Koreas.
"The North can fire 500,000 rounds of artillery on Seoul in the first hour of a conflict," analysts Victor Cha and David Kang wrote recently for Foreign Policy magazine. They also note that North Korea has a history of testing new South Korean leaders; President Park Geun-hye took office late last month. "Since 1992, the North has welcomed these five new leaders by disturbing the peace," they wrote.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told reporters Thursday that the decision to send B-2 bombers to join the military drills was part of normal exercises and not intended to provoke North Korea. Hagel acknowledged, however, that North Korea's belligerent tones and actions in recent weeks have ratcheted up the danger in the region, "and we have to understand that reality."
U.S. Forces Korea said the B-2 stealth bombers flew from a U.S. air base in Missouri and dropped dummy munitions on an uninhabited South Korean island range on Thursday before returning home. The Pentagon said this was the first time a B-2 had dropped dummy munitions over South Korea, and later added that it was unclear whether there had ever been any B-2 flights there at all.
The statement follows an earlier U.S. announcement that nuclear-capable B-52 bombers participated in the joint military drills.
Pyongyang uses the U.S. nuclear arsenal as a justification for its own push for nuclear weapons. It claims that U.S. nuclear firepower is a threat to its existence and provocation.
The two Missouri-based stealth bombers used in the South Korean drills probably weren't nuclear-armed, but experts say they're the aircraft that would likely be sent if Washington ever decides it does want to drop nuclear bombs on North Korea. The United States doesn't forward-deploy nuclear weapons in South Korea, Okinawa, Guam or Hawaii.
"The B-2 can reach targets from North Korea to Iran directly from Missouri, which is what the United States did in the early stages of operations against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq," analyst Jeffrey Lewis wrote in a post on ArmsControlWonk.com earlier this month.
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AP writers Jon Chol Jin in Pyongyang, North Korea, Sam Kim in Seoul and Eric Talmadge in Tokyo contributed to this report.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The world's biggest banks won a major victory on Friday when a U.S. judge dismissed a "substantial portion" of the claims in private lawsuits accusing them of rigging global benchmark interest rates.
The 16 banks had faced claims totaling billions of dollars in the case, which had been considered the biggest legal threat that they faced aside from investigations being pursued by regulators in the United States, Europe and Britain.
The banks include: Bank of America Corp, Citigroup Inc , Credit Suisse Group AG , Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC Holdings PLC , JPMorgan Chase & Co , Royal Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Scotland and WestLB AG .
They had been accused by a diverse body of private plaintiffs, ranging from bondholders to the city of Baltimore, of conspiring to manipulate the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), a key benchmark at the heart of more than $550 trillion in financial products.
In a significant setback for the plaintiffs, U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan granted the banks' motion to dismiss federal antitrust claims and partially dismissed the plaintiffs' claims of commodities manipulation. She also dismissed racketeering and state-law claims.
Buchwald did allow a portion of the lawsuit to continue that claims the banks' alleged manipulation of Libor harmed traders who bet on interest rates. Small movements in those rates can mean sizable gains or losses for those gambling on which way the rates move.
The ruling comes at a time when the banking industry is facing legal and regulatory challenges on multiple fronts, including how they originated and sold mortgage loans, as well as questions of whether some have become so big they pose a systemic risk to the global financial system.
While the door was left open for private litigants to refile lawsuits, Buchwald's decision may make it more likely that banks will talk settlement with a significant win in their pocket. The decision also could cast doubt on some of the highest analyst projections about potential Libor damages, and quell some concerns that the banks have not reserved enough for litigation expenses.
The judge's decision comes amid a sprawling regulatory probe in the United States, UK and Europe that has resulted in three banks ? Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, Barclays Plc and UBS AG ? agreeing to a $2.6 billion settlement. More banks are expected to settle in the coming months. Those settlements yielded a trove of internal bank emails that Judge Buchwald said could be used if the plaintiffs want to revise their claims.
As of March 5, at least 22 lawsuits had been consolidated before Buchwald. Several had sought class action status. Others such as Charles Schwab Corp were asserting claims directly on their own behalf.
In a 161-page opinion, Buchwald said she recognized her ruling might be a surprise since several defendants had paid billions of dollars in penalties to government regulatory agencies.
"We recognize that it might be unexpected that we are dismissing a substantial portion of plaintiffs' claims, given that several of the defendants here have already paid penalties to government regulatory agencies reaching into the billions of dollars," the judge said.
But she said unlike government agencies, private plaintiffs needed to meet many requirements under the statutes to bring a case.
"Therefore, although we are fully cognizant of the settlements that several of the defendants here have entered into with government regulators, we find that only some of the claims that plaintiffs have asserted may properly proceed," she wrote.
Michael Hausfeld, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, noted the judge had granted the parties the ability to amend and refile their lawsuit.
"We have the decision under evaluation," he said. "We are considering filing an amended complaint or taking an appeal, but we haven't decided yet."
Representatives for the various banks either declined comment or did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
ALLEGED MANIPULATION
The plaintiffs' lawsuits, like the regulatory probes, center on the way the London interbank offered rate is set?and whether the plaintiffs were harmed by the alleged manipulation of Libor.
Libor, a family of benchmark rates, is set every day in London by a panel of international banks. Banks submit what it costs to borrow from one another for durations ranging from overnight to one year. The rate underpins hundreds of trillions of dollars of investments and trades.
The plaintiffs alleged that the banks on the Libor panel conspired to send in artificial rates.
Three banks have reached settlements with authorities to date. Most recently, Royal Bank of Scotland agreed to pay $612 million to U.S. and British authorities. UBS agreed in December to pay $1.5 billion. Barclays agreed to pay $453 million in June.
The three settlements appeared to do little in convincing Judge Buchwald that the plaintiffs' case should proceed.
But the judge left the door open for the plaintiffs to use information that has emerged in the regulatory settlements. In the Barclays case, for example, one trader asked another to submit a three-month dollar Libor rate of 5.36 percent or higher. The next day, Barclays' submission was 5.36 percent.
"Because the Barclays settlements brought to light information that plaintiffs might not previously have been able to learn, we grant plaintiffs leave to move to amend their complaint," she said.
The cases are In Re: Libor-Based Financial Instruments Antitrust Litigation, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 11-md-2262.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York, additional reporting by Luciana Lopez; editing by Leslie Gevirtz, G Crosse)
The proliferation of sensor-studded cellphones could lead to a wealth of data with socially useful applications ? in urban planning, epidemiology, operations research and emergency preparedness, among other things. Of course, before being released to researchers, the data would have to be stripped of identifying information. But how hard could it be to protect the identity of one unnamed cellphone user in a data set of hundreds of thousands or even millions?
According to a paperappearing this week in Scientific Reports, harder than you might think. Researchers at MIT and the Universit? Catholique de Louvain, in Belgium, analyzed data on 1.5 million cellphone users in a small European country over a span of 15 months and found that just four points of reference, with fairly low spatial and temporal resolution, was enough to uniquely identify 95 percent of them.
In other words, to extract the complete location information for a single person from an "anonymized" data set of more than a million people, all you would need to do is place him or her within a couple of hundred yards of a cellphone transmitter, sometime over the course of an hour, four times in one year. A few Twitter posts would probably provide all the information you needed, if they contained specific information about the person's whereabouts.
The first author on the paper is Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, a graduate student in the research group of Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Science Sandy Pentland. He's joined by C?sar Hidalgo, an assistant professor of media arts and science; Vincent Blondel, a visiting professor at MIT and a professor of applied mathematics at Universit? Catholique; and Michel Verleysen, a professor of electrical engineering at Universit? Catholique.
Focusing the debate
Hidalgo's group specializes in applying the tools of statistical physics to a wide range of subjects, from communications networks to genetics to economics. In this case, he and de Montjoye were able to use those tools to uncover a simple mathematical relationship between the resolution of spatiotemporal data and the likelihood of identifying a member of a data set.
According to their formula, the probability of identifying someone goes down if the resolution of the measurements decreases, but less than you might think. Reporting the time of each measurement as imprecisely as sometime within a 15-hour span, or location as imprecisely as somewhere amid 15 adjacent cell towers, would still enable the unique identification of half the people in the sample data set.
But while its initial application may be discouraging, de Montjoye and Hidalgo hope that their formula will provide a way for researchers and policy analysts to reason more rigorously about the privacy safeguards that need to be put in place when they're working with aggregated location data.
"Both C?sar and I deeply believe that we all have a lot to gain from this data being used," de Montjoye says. "This formula is something that could be useful to help the debate and decide, OK, how do we balance things out, and how do we make it a fair deal for everyone to use this data?"
Everybody's different
In the data set that the researchers analyzed, the location of a cellphone was inferred solely from that of the cell tower it was connected to, and the time of the connection was given as falling within a one-hour interval. Each cellphone had a unique, randomly generated identifying number, so that its movement could be traced over time. But there was no information connecting that number to the phone's owner.
The researchers randomly selected a representative sampling from the set of 1.5 million cellphone traces and, for each trace, began choosing points at random. For 95 percent of the traces, just four randomly selected points was enough to distinguish them from all other traces in the database. In the worst (or, from another perspective, best) case, 11 measurements were necessary.
The researchers suspect that similar relationships might hold for other types of data. "I would not be surprised if a similar result ? maybe requiring more points ? would, for example, extend to web browsing," Hidalgo says. "The space of potential combinations is really large. When a person is, in some sense, being expressed in a space in which the total number of combinations is huge, the probability that two people would have the same exact trajectory ? whether it's walking or browsing ? is almost nil."
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice
Thanks to Massachusetts Institute of Technology for this article.
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Mar 26 (Reuters) - Leading money winners on the 2013 PGATour on Monday (U.S. unless stated): 1. Tiger Woods $3,787,600 2. Brandt Snedeker $2,859,920 3. Matt Kuchar $2,154,500 4. Steve Stricker $1,820,000 5. Phil Mickelson $1,650,260 6. Hunter Mahan $1,553,965 7. John Merrick $1,343,514 8. Dustin Johnson $1,330,507 9. Russell Henley $1,313,280 10. Kevin Streelman $1,310,343 11. Keegan Bradley $1,274,593 12. Charles Howell III $1,256,373 13. Michael Thompson $1,254,669 14. Brian Gay $1,171,721 15. Justin Rose $1,155,550 16. Jason Day $1,115,565 17. Chris Kirk $1,097,053 18. ...
We've been tracking the sun-powered plane known as Solar Impulse for years as it roved hither and yon. Today, Solar Impulse's pilots, Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg, came to NASA's Ames research center to announce their plan to fly across America. The cross-country tour will begin in the Bay Area and end in New York, with stops in Phoenix, Dallas and Washington DC in between. Solar Impulse will also land in either Atlanta, Nashville or St. Louis, with the plane and its pilots set to stay in each locale for about a week to ten days to talk about the project before moving on. For the next month, Piccard and Borschberg will perform test flights around the Bay Area in preparation, and the plan is for the journey to start on May 1st, with an estimated arrival in Gotham sometime in early July.
The point of this new flight is to inspire and educate the public in general of the benefits of renewable energy and efficiency, and to encourage school children and university students in particular to "think off the grid" and innovate and invent on their own. To that end, the pilots will be broadcasting live transmissions and allowing the public to speak with them as they fly, in addition to providing access to flight planning information on the Solar Impulse website. Read on to learn a bit more about the Solar Impulse project and it's future plans.
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's services sector grew in January at its strongest pace in five months, official data showed on Thursday, potentially easing concerns that the economy is back in recession.
The Office for National Statistics said service output rose 0.3 percent in January from December, its best performance since August.
On a year-on-year basis, output was up 0.8 percent, the ONS said in a statement.
The data, which feeds into the ONS' calculation of gross domestic product, offers an early glimpse of how the biggest sector of Britain's economy fared in the first quarter.
Previously released data has shown manufacturing output fell in January at the fastest pace since June, heightening fears that the economy made a weak start to the year.
Britain's economy contracted in the last quarter of 2012 and may be in its third recession in less than five years.
Services make up more than three quarters of British GDP and economists were awaiting Thursday's index to get a better sense of whether the country would escape a new recession.
Helping services in January was activity in the transport, storage and communications sector as well as in business services and finance.
Cold weather and snowfall in the month held back trade at some smaller retailers and at pubs and bars, an ONS official said.
A separate survey of Britain's services industry released earlier this month - the Markit/CIPS Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) - showed that the sector grew at its fastest pace in five months in February.
The ONS said on Thursday that in the three months to the end of January, services output was down 0.2 percent compared with the three months to the end of October when the London Olympics helped the economy. It was the weakest performance under that measure since June.
Separately, the statistics office reported that productivity across all sectors of the economy, as measured by output per hour, fell 0.5 percent in the fourth quarter compared with the third quarter.
Unit wage costs rose 0.5 percent in the October-December period compared with the previous three months.
The Android-powered $99 OUYA game console becomes available at retail on June 4th -- a date which was revealed this week during the Game Developers Conference. OUYA's calling June 4th its "official launch date," despite Kickstarter backers receiving units starting this month. Essentially, the two month waiting period between Kickstarter boxes and retail availability is being used as a consumer beta, giving OUYA time to adjust its software after getting feedback from early adopters.
It's not clear if bundles will be available, but the game console itself and a controller (as well as power and HDMI cables, plus two AA batteries for the controller) are included in the $99 package. Major retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, and others are on board, so it shouldn't be too hard locating one in June should your interested be piqued -- and yes, pre-orders are available. Of course, it's a pretty small little game console, so it might be a bit tough locating the thing with your eyes.
A new era in sports science journals: The launch of BMC Sports Science, Medicine and RehabilitationPublic release date: 28-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Dr Hilary Glover hilary.glover@biomedcentral.com 44-020-319-22370 BioMed Central
Open access publisher BioMed Central is proud to announce the launch of BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation, another addition to the BMC-series portfolio.
The journal's scope includes all aspects of sports medicine and the exercise sciences, including rehabilitation, traumatology, cardiology, physiology, and nutrition. It is journal policy to publish work deemed by peer reviewers to be a coherent and sound addition to scientific knowledge and to put less emphasis on interest levels, provided that the research constitutes a useful contribution to the field.
Deborah Kahn, BioMed Central's Publishing Director says, "This new journal is intended to move the BMC series into an exciting and fast growing field. The broad scope and open access nature of BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation offers authors and readers from a wide range of disciplines a unique venue to serve their communities' needs."
BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation also incorporates the recently closed Sports Medicine, Arthroscopy, Rehabilitation, Therapy & Technology (SMARTT) with an expanded scope and new Editorial Board. BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation will fill its own niche in the BMC series alongside other companion journals including BMC Physiology, BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders and BMC Surgery.
The launch articles reflect the breadth and scope of the new journal and include a study on the 'Determinants of pain, functional limitations and health-related quality of life six months after total knee arthroplasty' by Franois Desmeules et al. and an interview with Section Editor Michael Carmont examining the discipline of sports traumatology research. A systematic review by Emily Churton and Justin W Keogh also published amongst the launch articles highlights the constraints influencing sports wheelchair propulsion performance and injury risk.
BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation fills a key niche in the sports science field and Per Renstrom, PhD, Emeritus Professor at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden has said, "Sports Medicine by its very nature is multidisciplinary and the new BMC Sports Science, Medicine, and Rehabilitation with its broad scope and inclusive editorial policy will offer a home for diverse research in this area. The field of sports science and medicine is an area with a very high public interest and the transparent open peer review process on the journal shall provide a greater trust in the research the journal reports."
BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation is accepting submissions; please use the online submission system to submit your manuscript. For all enquiries about the journal, please contact: newjournals@biomedcentral.com.
1. A new era in sports science: the launch of BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation
Elizabeth Moylan and Genevieve Horne
BMC Sports Science, Medicine, and Rehabilitation 2013, 5:1
Determinants of pain, functional limitations and health-related quality of life six months after total knee arthroplasty: results from a prospective cohort study
Franois Desmeules, Clermont E Dionne, tienne L Belzile, Rene Bourbonnais, Franois Champagne and Pierre Frmont
BMC Sports Science, Medicine, and Rehabilitation 2013, 5:2
Constraints influencing sports wheelchair propulsion performance and injury risk
Emily Churton and Justin W Keogh Keogh
BMC Sports Science, Medicine, and Rehabilitation 2013, 5:3
A case report of semitendinosus tendon autograft for reconstruction of the meniscal wall supporting a collagen implant
Juan D Ayala Mejias, Roselyn, C Sciamanna, Manuel Perez-Espaa Muniesac and Luis Alcocer Prez-Espaa
BMC Sports Science, Medicine, and Rehabilitation 2013, 5:4
An interview with Michael Carmont, Section Editor for the Surgery, traumatology, and rehabilitation section on sports traumatology research: acute, overuse and chronic problems, early return to play and long-term outcomes
Michael Carmont
BMC Sports Science, Medicine, and Rehabilitation 2013, 5:5
Articles available at journal website http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcsportsscimedrehabil/ or here
http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcsportsscimedrehabil/content/5/1/1
http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcsportsscimedrehabil/content/5/1/2
http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcsportsscimedrehabil/content/5/1/3
http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcsportsscimedrehabil/content/5/1/4
http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcsportsscimedrehabil/content/5/1/5
Please name the journal in any story you write. If you are writing for the web, please link to the article. All articles are available free of charge, according to BioMed Central's open access policy.
2. BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation (http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcsportsscimedrehabil/) is an open access, peer reviewed journal that considers articles on all aspects of sports medicine and the exercise sciences, including rehabilitation, traumatology, cardiology, physiology, and nutrition. It is journal policy to publish work deemed by peer reviewers to be a coherent and sound addition to scientific knowledge and to put less emphasis on interest levels, provided that the research constitutes a useful contribution to the field.
3. BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com/) is an STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) publisher which has pioneered the open access publishing model. All peer-reviewed research articles published by BioMed Central are made immediately and freely accessible online, and are licensed to allow redistribution and reuse. BioMed Central is part of Springer Science+Business Media, a leading global publisher in the STM sector. @BioMedCentral
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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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.
A new era in sports science journals: The launch of BMC Sports Science, Medicine and RehabilitationPublic release date: 28-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Dr Hilary Glover hilary.glover@biomedcentral.com 44-020-319-22370 BioMed Central
Open access publisher BioMed Central is proud to announce the launch of BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation, another addition to the BMC-series portfolio.
The journal's scope includes all aspects of sports medicine and the exercise sciences, including rehabilitation, traumatology, cardiology, physiology, and nutrition. It is journal policy to publish work deemed by peer reviewers to be a coherent and sound addition to scientific knowledge and to put less emphasis on interest levels, provided that the research constitutes a useful contribution to the field.
Deborah Kahn, BioMed Central's Publishing Director says, "This new journal is intended to move the BMC series into an exciting and fast growing field. The broad scope and open access nature of BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation offers authors and readers from a wide range of disciplines a unique venue to serve their communities' needs."
BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation also incorporates the recently closed Sports Medicine, Arthroscopy, Rehabilitation, Therapy & Technology (SMARTT) with an expanded scope and new Editorial Board. BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation will fill its own niche in the BMC series alongside other companion journals including BMC Physiology, BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders and BMC Surgery.
The launch articles reflect the breadth and scope of the new journal and include a study on the 'Determinants of pain, functional limitations and health-related quality of life six months after total knee arthroplasty' by Franois Desmeules et al. and an interview with Section Editor Michael Carmont examining the discipline of sports traumatology research. A systematic review by Emily Churton and Justin W Keogh also published amongst the launch articles highlights the constraints influencing sports wheelchair propulsion performance and injury risk.
BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation fills a key niche in the sports science field and Per Renstrom, PhD, Emeritus Professor at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden has said, "Sports Medicine by its very nature is multidisciplinary and the new BMC Sports Science, Medicine, and Rehabilitation with its broad scope and inclusive editorial policy will offer a home for diverse research in this area. The field of sports science and medicine is an area with a very high public interest and the transparent open peer review process on the journal shall provide a greater trust in the research the journal reports."
BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation is accepting submissions; please use the online submission system to submit your manuscript. For all enquiries about the journal, please contact: newjournals@biomedcentral.com.
1. A new era in sports science: the launch of BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation
Elizabeth Moylan and Genevieve Horne
BMC Sports Science, Medicine, and Rehabilitation 2013, 5:1
Determinants of pain, functional limitations and health-related quality of life six months after total knee arthroplasty: results from a prospective cohort study
Franois Desmeules, Clermont E Dionne, tienne L Belzile, Rene Bourbonnais, Franois Champagne and Pierre Frmont
BMC Sports Science, Medicine, and Rehabilitation 2013, 5:2
Constraints influencing sports wheelchair propulsion performance and injury risk
Emily Churton and Justin W Keogh Keogh
BMC Sports Science, Medicine, and Rehabilitation 2013, 5:3
A case report of semitendinosus tendon autograft for reconstruction of the meniscal wall supporting a collagen implant
Juan D Ayala Mejias, Roselyn, C Sciamanna, Manuel Perez-Espaa Muniesac and Luis Alcocer Prez-Espaa
BMC Sports Science, Medicine, and Rehabilitation 2013, 5:4
An interview with Michael Carmont, Section Editor for the Surgery, traumatology, and rehabilitation section on sports traumatology research: acute, overuse and chronic problems, early return to play and long-term outcomes
Michael Carmont
BMC Sports Science, Medicine, and Rehabilitation 2013, 5:5
Articles available at journal website http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcsportsscimedrehabil/ or here
http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcsportsscimedrehabil/content/5/1/1
http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcsportsscimedrehabil/content/5/1/2
http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcsportsscimedrehabil/content/5/1/3
http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcsportsscimedrehabil/content/5/1/4
http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcsportsscimedrehabil/content/5/1/5
Please name the journal in any story you write. If you are writing for the web, please link to the article. All articles are available free of charge, according to BioMed Central's open access policy.
2. BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation (http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcsportsscimedrehabil/) is an open access, peer reviewed journal that considers articles on all aspects of sports medicine and the exercise sciences, including rehabilitation, traumatology, cardiology, physiology, and nutrition. It is journal policy to publish work deemed by peer reviewers to be a coherent and sound addition to scientific knowledge and to put less emphasis on interest levels, provided that the research constitutes a useful contribution to the field.
3. BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com/) is an STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) publisher which has pioneered the open access publishing model. All peer-reviewed research articles published by BioMed Central are made immediately and freely accessible online, and are licensed to allow redistribution and reuse. BioMed Central is part of Springer Science+Business Media, a leading global publisher in the STM sector. @BioMedCentral
[ | 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.
From Channing Tatum and Dwayne Johnson kicking Cobra butt in G.I. Joe: Retaliation to Saoirse Ronan fighting against an alien species on Earth in The Host, here are the movies to check out this weekend. Plus, don't miss the films that have already hit theaters! Will you be grabbing your popcorn and catching one of them this weekend?
BERLIN (AP) ? In gritty backstreets of Berlin and other major German cities, housewives wearing head scarves shop for lamb and grape leaves. Old men pass the time in cafes sipping coffee, chatting in Turkish and reading Turkish newspapers.
More than 3 million people of Turkish origin live in Germany ? the legacy of West Germany's Cold War-era program to recruit temporary foreign labor during the boom years of the 1950s and 1960s when the country rebuilt after World War II.
What started as a temporary program has changed the fabric of German urban life ? from mosques on street corners to countless shops selling widely popular Doener kebab fast food sandwiches.
Germany's experience with "guest workers" offers lessons for the U.S. as it debates immigration reform, including whether to provide a path to citizenship for unskilled foreign laborers, or whether there should be additional temporary-only visas for such workers. President Barack Obama has urged Congress to begin debate in April after lawmakers return from a two-week recess.
Decades after Germany's formal guest worker program ended in the early 1970s, the country is still wrestling with ways to integrate Turks ? the second biggest group among the estimated 15 million-strong immigrant community after ethnic Germans who moved from the former Soviet Union and for Soviet bloc countries ? into German society.
"When you bring people to work, it's quite hard to tell them to go back one day," said Goecken Demiragli, a social worker whose grandmother came to Berlin from Turkey in 1968. "That was the biggest mistake: to think that if you don't need them, they will go."
Initially, the Germans felt they didn't need an integration path.
They foresaw a temporary program of rotating labor, where workers from Turkey, the Balkans and southern Europe would spend a couple of years on an assembly line and then go home to be replaced by others if industry still needed them.
But factory managers grew tired of retraining new workers every couple of years and convinced authorities to allow contract extensions.
Many immigrants, especially young Turkish men who faced grinding unemployment at home, opted to stay in Germany, bringing their families and building lives here despite discrimination in education, housing and employment.
Although immigrants could stay legally with government-issued residence permits, they could not apply for citizenship for 15 years, although the period has been shortened in recent years. Without fluent German, and state-supported language programs, many were unable to pursue good educations and well-paying jobs.
As a result, the Turkish community remains the least integrated immigrant group in Germany, according to the private Berlin Institute for Population and Development.
Immigration critics blame the Turks for refusing to abandon traditions of rural Turkey, failing to learn German and take advantage of educational opportunities. Critics note that more than 90 percent of marriages by ethnic Turks are to other Turks ? in part because of cultural restrictions against marrying outside the Muslim faith.
Over the years, the existence of a parallel society of marginalized people speaking a different language and following different religious and social customs has triggered a backlash in a country which only recently has considered itself a nation that welcomes immigrants.
Neo-Nazis have focused on the Turks in their campaign against immigration. Next month, the surviving member of a small neo-Nazi cell goes on trial in Munich for allegedly killing 10 people ? eight of them Turkish immigrants ? over seven years. The cell allegedly got away with the killings for years because police assumed they were the work of Turkish immigrant gangs.
Thilo Sarrazin, once a top official of Germany's central bank, wrote in a 2010 best-seller that immigrants were dumbing down German society and that Turkish and Arab immigrants were reluctant to integrate. The firestorm that followed forced Sarrazin out of his bank post, but his book sold over 1.5 million copies.
Others fault successive German governments for being slow to recognize the immigration problem and moving only in recent years to put in place programs to combat discrimination, provide German language training and offer a speedier path to full citizenship.
"The West German government should have devised comprehensive integration measures as part of family reunification policies but did not," a 2009 study for the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute. "Consequently, integration problems began to take root in West Germany."
In the meantime, an entire generation grew up feeling estranged, living in urban ghettoes apart from the mainstream and unable to take part in political life. Even well-educated Turks who have assimilated believe that stigma remains alive today.
"There's this categorization ... that you are not the same as the others," said Demiragli, the social worker, who was born in Germany but did not get citizenship until she was 16. "That is a feeling that grows in you if you do not have strong parents who can support you and give you the feeling that you are still special."
Overt discrimination has abated since the 1970s and 1980s when real estate ads in German newspapers contained phrases like "Only for Germans" or "No Foreigners." But Turkish residents say subtle barriers remain.
"Now it's more hidden," said Bekir Yilmaz, head of a Turkish community organization in Berlin. "You look for housing, you make a telephone call, you can speak German well but when you stand in front of the landlord, they say, 'Oh, the apartment is taken.'"
Yilmaz believes the problem has worsened since the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. and the war on terror smeared the image of Muslims.
"The West had its enemy in communism but communism is gone. Now it's the Muslims," Yilmaz said. "The Turks here are no enemy. They have lived here for years, and their children born here. This has nothing to do with reality."
German attitudes toward immigration and citizenship also proved an obstacle to full and rapid integration. Although attitudes are changing, Germany never perceived itself as an immigrant society like the United States. German society values conformity.
Unlike the United States, Germany does not automatically grant citizenship to anyone born on German soil. Even though the naturalization process has been shortened, it still takes years and requires knowledge of the German language and history.
In 2000, a new law granted German citizenship to German-born children of longtime legal residents. By age 23, those children must decide whether to keep German citizenship or their parents' nationality.
Chancellor Angela Merkel's government has refused calls from Turkish and other immigrant communities to allow dual citizenship. Many immigrants are reluctant to apply for German citizenship because they want to hold on to their original nationality.
"I think we should have a dual citizenship here in Germany," said Ayvaz Harra, a German citizen of Turkish origin who sells bread in a Berlin market. "My family has property in Turkey and I would like to inherit it. Right now it's not possible."
But others believe the core problem was the government's failure to foresee the long-term effects of the temporary labor program.
"The problem here is that there is a picture of how Germans should live and if somebody is living differently, it doesn't fit," Demiragli said. "I think that in 20 to 30 years it will be a totally mixed community, especially here in Berlin. If we get over that 20 years, I think it will be a totally different situation."
Vicki Gilbert sits on stone steps in Wiltshire, England in this undated photo made available by the family on Tuesday, March 26, 2013. In 2010, Gilbert was diagnosed with breast cancer and then found she carries the mutated BRCA1 gene which may make her pre-disposed to ovarian cancer. Gilbert decided to have ovaries removed to prevent the potential onset of further cancer, and her breast cancer is in remission. A huge international effort involving more than 100 institutions and genetic tests on 200,000 people has uncovered dozens of signposts in DNA that can help reveal further a person?s risk for breast, ovarian or prostate cancer, scientists reported Wednesday, March 27, 2013. It?s the latest mega-collaboration to learn more about the intricate mechanisms that lead to cancer. (AP Photo)
Vicki Gilbert sits on stone steps in Wiltshire, England in this undated photo made available by the family on Tuesday, March 26, 2013. In 2010, Gilbert was diagnosed with breast cancer and then found she carries the mutated BRCA1 gene which may make her pre-disposed to ovarian cancer. Gilbert decided to have ovaries removed to prevent the potential onset of further cancer, and her breast cancer is in remission. A huge international effort involving more than 100 institutions and genetic tests on 200,000 people has uncovered dozens of signposts in DNA that can help reveal further a person?s risk for breast, ovarian or prostate cancer, scientists reported Wednesday, March 27, 2013. It?s the latest mega-collaboration to learn more about the intricate mechanisms that lead to cancer. (AP Photo)
This undated photo provided by the family on Tuesday, March 26, 2013 shows Vicki Gilbert in Wiltshire, England. In 2010, Gilbert was diagnosed with breast cancer and then found she carries the mutated BRCA1 gene which may make her pre-disposed to ovarian cancer. Gilbert decided to have ovaries removed to prevent the potential onset of further cancer, and her breast cancer is in remission. A huge international effort involving more than 100 institutions and genetic tests on 200,000 people has uncovered dozens of signposts in DNA that can help reveal further a person?s risk for breast, ovarian or prostate cancer, scientists reported Wednesday, March 27, 2013. It?s the latest mega-collaboration to learn more about the intricate mechanisms that lead to cancer. (AP Photo)
NEW YORK (AP) ? A huge international effort involving more than 100 institutions and genetic tests on 200,000 people has uncovered dozens of signposts in DNA that can help reveal further a person's risk for breast, ovarian or prostate cancer, scientists reported Wednesday.
It's the latest mega-collaboration to learn more about the intricate mechanisms that lead to cancer. And while the headway seems significant in many ways, the potential payoff for ordinary people is mostly this: Someday there may be genetic tests that help identify women with the most to gain from mammograms, and men who could benefit most from PSA tests and prostate biopsies.
And perhaps farther in the future these genetic clues might lead to new treatments.
"This adds another piece to the puzzle," said Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research U.K., the charity which funded much of the research.
One analysis suggests that among men whose family history gives them roughly a 20 percent lifetime risk for prostate cancer, such genetic markers could identify those whose real risk is 60 percent.
The markers also could make a difference for women with BRCA gene mutations, which puts them at high risk for breast cancer. Researchers may be able to separate those whose lifetime risk exceeds 80 percent from women whose risk is about 20 to 50 percent. One doctor said that might mean some women would choose to monitor for cancer rather than taking the drastic step of having healthy breasts removed.
Scientists have found risk markers for the three diseases before, but the new trove doubles the known list, said one author, Douglas Easton of Cambridge University. The discoveries also reveal clues about the biological underpinnings of these cancers, which may pay off someday in better therapies, he said.
Experts not connected with the work said it was encouraging but that more research is needed to see how useful it would be for guiding patient care. One suggested that using a gene test along with PSA testing and other factors might help determine which men have enough risk of a life-threatening prostate cancer that they should get a biopsy. Many prostate cancers found early are slow-growing and won't be fatal, but there is no way to differentiate and many men have surgery they may not need.
Easton said the prospects for a genetic test are greater for prostate and breast cancer than ovarian cancer.
Breast cancer is the most common malignancy among women worldwide, with more than 1 million new cases a year. Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men after lung cancer, with about 900,000 new cases every year. Ovarian cancer accounts for about 4 percent of all cancers diagnosed in women, causing about 225,000 cases worldwide.
The new results were released in 13 reports in Nature Genetics, PLOS Genetics and other journals. They come from a collaboration involving more than 130 institutions in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. The research was mainly paid for by Cancer Research U.K., the European Union and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
Scientists used scans of DNA from more than 200,000 people to seek the markers, tiny variations in the 3 billion "letters" of the DNA code that are associated with disease risk.
The scientists found 49 new risk markers for breast cancer plus a couple of others that modify breast cancer risk from rare mutated genes, 26 for prostate cancer and eight for ovarian cancer. Individually, each marker has only a slight impact on risk estimation, too small to be useful on its own, Easton said. They would be combined and added to previously known markers to help reveal a person's risk, he said.
A genetic test could be useful in identifying people who should get mammography or PSA testing, said Hilary Burton, director of the PHG Foundation, a genomics think-tank in Cambridge, England. A mathematical analysis done by her group found that under certain assumptions, a gene test using all known markers could reduce the number of mammograms and PSA tests by around 20 percent, with only a small cost in cancer cases missed.
Among the new findings:
? For breast cancer, researchers calculated that by using all known markers, including the new ones, they could identify 5 percent of the female population with twice the average risk of disease, and 1 percent with a three-fold risk. The average lifetime risk of getting breast cancer is about 12 percent in developed countries. It's lower in the developing world where other diseases are a bigger problem.
? For prostate cancer, using all the known markers could identify 1 percent of men with nearly five times the average risk, the researchers computed. In developed countries, a man's average lifetime risk for the disease is about 14 to 16 percent, lower in developing nations.
?Markers can also make a difference in estimates of breast cancer risk for women with the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutations. Such women are rare, but their lifetime risk can run as high as 85 percent. Researchers said that with the new biomarkers, it might be possible to identify the small group of these women with a risk of 28 percent or less.
For patients like Vicki Gilbert of England, who carries a variation of the BRCA1 gene, having such details about her cancer risk would have made decision-making easier.
Gilbert, 50, found out about her genetic risk after being diagnosed with the disease in 2009. Though doctors said the gene wouldn't change the kind of chemotherapy she got, they suggested removing her ovaries to avoid ovarian cancer, which is also made more likely by a mutated BRCA1.
"They didn't want to express a definite opinion on whether I should have my ovaries removed so I had to weigh up my options for myself," said Gilbert, a veterinary receptionist in Wiltshire. "...I decided to have my ovaries removed because that takes away the fear it could happen. It certainly would have been nice to have more information to know that was the right choice."
Gilbert said knowing more about the genetic risks of cancer should be reassuring for most patients. "There are so many decisions made for you when you go through cancer treatment that being able to decide something yourself is very important," she said.
Dr. Charis Eng, chair of the Genomic Medicine Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, who didn't participate in the new work, called the breast cancer research exciting but not ready for routine use.
Most women who carry a BRCA gene choose intensive surveillance with both mammograms and MRI and some choose to have their breasts removed to prevent the disease, she said. Even the lower risk described by the new research is worrisomely high, and might not persuade a woman to avoid such precautions completely, Eng said.
___
AP Medical Writer Maria Cheng contributed to this report from London.
___
Online:
Nature Genetics: http://www.nature.com/ng
PLOS Genetics: http://www.plosgenetics.org
Breakthrough Breast Cancer: http://www.breakthrough.org.uk/
I love my tiny little Mazda, but I'll be honest -- I still don't completely understand how it works. That's never really bothered me before (I'd much rather geek out over a phone or something) but a Kickstarter project from a small team in Boston has me itching to pay more attention to what's really going on under the hood. Long story short, Dash combines a Bluetooth 4.0-enabled dongle that plugs into your car's on-board diagnostics port with a smartphone app that gives you up-to-date information how on your car is holding up.
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