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Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/video/cnbc/52277259/
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Sunday, June 23, 2013
Vegetables Respond to a Daily Clock, Even After Harvest
Copyright ? 2013 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.
IRA FLATOW, HOST:
This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. You open the door of your fridge and the light goes on, right? What if the light in your fridge could stay on and be programmed to help your veggies taste better or be more nutritious? Why? Well, it turns out that that head of cabbage on your grocery shelf isn't just sitting there as long as it's not too far after harvesting. Researchers have found that it can still respond to daily cycles of light and darkness and build up its own circadian rhythms, changing its biochemistry to adapt to the daily cycles.
Why is that important? Joining me now is Janet Braam. She is chair and professor of biochemistry and cell biology at Rice University in Houston and one of the authors of a paper published this week on this research in the journal Current Biology. Welcome to the program.
DR. JANET BRAAM: Thank you.
FLATOW: So our veggies are sitting there in the supermarket, and they're doing what?
BRAAM: Well, they are still alive. They are still responding to external stimuli. What we've shown is perhaps surprisingly, they can respond to light-dark cycles and really change their metabolite accumulation to different times of day.
FLATOW: They change their metabolism as the sort of a circadian rhythm for my cabbage?
BRAAM: Right, right. So when the crops are growing in the field, they respond to the light-dark cycles, and they - all plants have a circadian rhythm, so they have patterns of behavior that they control or they - that are under the influence of their circadian clock. And when you harvest vegetables and fruits, these vegetables and fruits really stay very much alive even though they've been removed from the whole plant. But then when we store them under constant conditions like in constant light in the grocery store, their circadian rhythms begin to dampen. And so then they lose the ability to show these rhythmic behaviors.
FLATOW: And when they're doing the rhythmic behaviors, there's got to be a good reason why they're in a behavior; they're doing something.
BRAAM: Right. We know from basic plant biology research that plants have these circadian clocks, and we know that they use them in part to respond or to prepare for seasonal changes. But in addition, we recently found that these circadian clocks are also very important for plant defense against insect attack. So plants are able to turn on their defenses at a time when insects are most likely to seed. So in that way, they can prepare for attack before it actually happens. And this is clearly advantageous. Plants are much more resistant to insects if their clocks are functioning properly.
FLATOW: And when they get - when you put them under the 24-hour harsh light of a grocery stand, you just wrecked that whole circadian rhythm?
BRAAM: Right. The plants are confused. They don't know what time - when it's day and when it's night, and so their circadian rhythms dampen and go away.
FLATOW: And so they may lose that ability to fight off bugs that might land on them?
BRAAM: Yes. Their ability to fight off bugs has certainly decreased when their circadian rhythms are lost.
FLATOW: Do they also, during this cycle, get - put out stuff that makes them more nutritious for us at any one point in that cycle?
BRAAM: Well, what we've shown is that with cabbage, cabbage is related to the research plant that we work on, that research plant makes these particular chemical compounds that send off insects. So the insects don't like to eat the plants...
FLATOW: Right.
BRAAM: ...because these chemicals taste bad or make the insects sick. But these same chemicals that are in our model plants are also in things like cabbages and broccoli, cauliflower. And what we've shown is that those chemicals accumulate with circadian periodicity in these post-harvest vegetables just like they do in our model plant. But in - for us, eating these vegetables like cabbage, those chemical compounds are - have been found to be potent anti-cancer compounds. So they have anti-cancer activities.
FLATOW: You mean like antioxidants, things like that?
BRAAM: Yes. Some of them are antioxidants or they activate antioxidant processes in our cells.
FLATOW: So...
BRAAM: And so - yeah.
FLATOW: Yeah. So I guess, ideally, if you wanted to keep all that going, you would have the lights in the supermarket go on and off for like just mimicking daylight.
BRAAM: Right. So look - yeah.
FLATOW: And when you brought it home, if you put it in the refrigerator, you might do the same thing.
BRAAM: Right. That's one possibility from - that you might make - have a conclusion from our research. So we showed that if you take these post-harvest cabbage and put them under light-dark cycles, these chemical compound cycles - dependent on time of day - and then it might make a difference at what time of day you actually eat your vegetables. You could plan to eat it at the time of day when those chemicals are at their optimal level.
FLATOW: Do you know what time of day that is?
BRAAM: We've only just begun to look at this, right? So we've only used one kind of treatment of 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness. And we've only looked at cabbage so far. And under our experimental conditions, we find that these chemicals accumulate most in the day, it may be midday, and they go down at night. And there's about a two-fold difference.
FLATOW: Wow.
BRAAM: But much more would need to be done to know really when the best time of day would be to eat different kinds of vegetables.
FLATOW: OK. So you started with cabbage. Are there any other veggies that look enticing, so to speak, for you to study or sort of similar to a cabbage cycle?
BRAAM: Well, what we did after we found that this result worked with cabbage, we decided to try to see how broad a phenomenon this might be. We started with other leafy vegetables like spinach and lettuce, and we could show that in the lab, we could re-entrain their circadian rhythms also. And then since those worked, we then went back to the grocery store and bought things like zucchini and blueberries and sweet potatoes and carrots. And of all these we could show could perceive these light-dark signals and reactivate their clock and show rhythmic behaviors.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. Now, I'm picturing a big head of cabbage. And, you know, cabbage has lots of leaves on it.
BRAAM: Yes.
FLATOW: Is the light only getting to the outermost leaves, or does it filter into the inner leaves as, you know, does it work on the circadian rhythm on the entire cabbage, and where is the clock located in the cabbage?
(LAUGHTER)
BRAAM: So cabbage is made of a collection of leaves and some of the leaves are on the outside. And I would imagine that under certain circumstances where there's just light shining on the head of cabbage...
FLATOW: Yeah.
BRAAM: ...probably only the outer leaves are perceiving those lights signals. However, the circadian clock can also be sent by - set by temperature changes. And so in the field, if this cabbage is growing, I would imagine both the inner and outer leaves maintain their circadian rhythmicity. But we really haven't looked at any of that yet. So these are just speculation on my part. But in plants, the circadian clock or each individual cell is believed to have a circadian clock. And they all run autonomously or mostly autonomously. And so they all get set in synchrony by these external stimuli.
FLATOW: Yeah. So what you're saying in terms of the fewer, even a gardener or someone who has plants, that it's not healthy for the plant to keep it under the light 24 hours a day. If you want to grow it in your basement or, you know, some place, you got to give them some dark time. You have to give them some circadian rhythm.
BRAAM: Our work with - yeah. Right. Our work would suggest that especially with defense against insects and fungi that circadian periodicity is important to maintain. So keeping a light-dark cycle would be important.
FLATOW: Mm hmm. Don't just keep those grow lights on all the time.
That's right.
(LAUGHTER)
FLATOW: All right. So where do you go from here? What would be your next step?
BRAAM: Well, we're interested in understanding, one, what are all the metabolites or small molecules that are under the control of the circadian clock in these post-harvest vegetables and fruits? So in things like zucchini and carrots and sweet potato, we would expect a different sweet of metabolites to be regulated by the clock. So we'd like to know what those are. And then we'd like to know what kind of conditions could be used to make this a practical - if it turns out that we can really make a difference in nutritional quality then...
FLATOW: Right.
BRAAM: ...we would want to design a simply way to keep the clock running. And we know that plants can respond to just pulses of light in ways that can control or set their clock. And so we'd like to investigate what are the simplest ways that we can use to make this practical.
FLATOW: Well, we wish you good luck, Dr. Braam.
BRAAM: Thank you very much.
FLATOW: Thank you for taking time to be with us today.
BRAAM: Thank you.
FLATOW: Janet Braam is chair and professor of biochemistry and cell biology at Rice University in Houston.
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Officials: Suicide attack kills 4 northern Iraq
BAGHDAD (AP) ? Officials say a suicide car bomb in northern Iraq has killed at least four people.
A police officer says the bomber rammed his explosive-laden vehicle into a police patrol in a village outside the city of Mosul on Saturday morning. He says that three civilian bystanders and one policeman were killed, and six people were wounded. Mosul is 360 kilometers (220 miles) northwest of Baghdad.
A medical official confirmed the casualty figures. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information.
With violence spiking sharply in recent months to levels not seen since 2008, al-Qaida in Iraq and other militant groups have been gathering strength in Mosul and surrounding cities.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/officials-suicide-attack-kills-4-northern-iraq-085528210.html
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Saturday, June 22, 2013
New Report Finds that Arab Spring Adds to Global Restrictions on ...
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New Report Finds that Arab Spring Adds to Global Restrictions on Religion
("The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life," June 20, 2013)
Washington, D.C. ? A new study by the Pew Research Center finds that the already high level of restrictions on religion in the Middle East and North Africa ? whether resulting from government policies or from social hostilities ? continued to increase in 2011, when most of the political uprisings known as the Arab Spring occurred. The findings run contrary to expectations expressed by many world leaders that the uprisings would lead to greater freedoms for the people of the region, including fewer restrictions on religious beliefs and practices.
Before the Arab Spring, government restrictions on religion and social hostilities involving religion were higher in the Middle East and North Africa than in any other region of the world. Government restrictions in the region remained high in 2011, while social hostilities markedly increased. For instance, the number of countries in the region experiencing sectarian or communal violence between religious groups doubled from five to 10.
The new study also finds that the Americas, Europe, sub-Saharan Africa and the Asia-Pacific region all had increases in overall restrictions on religion in 2011. Government restrictions declined slightly in Europe, but social hostilities increased. Asia and the Pacific had the sharpest increase in government restrictions, though the level of social hostilities remained roughly the same. By contrast, social hostilities edged up in sub-Saharan Africa, but government restrictions stayed about the same. Both government restrictions and social hostilities increased slightly in the Americas.
Globally, the share of countries with high or very high restrictions on religion rose from 37% in the year ending in mid-2010 to 40% in 2011, a five-year high. Because some of the most restrictive countries are very populous, more than 5.1 billion people (74%) were living in 2011 in countries with high government restrictions on religion or high social hostilities involving religion, the brunt of which often falls on religious minorities.
These are among the key findings of the fourth in a series of reports by the Pew Research Center?s Forum on Religion & Public Life analyzing the extent to which governments and societies around the world impinge on religious beliefs and practices. The new study scores 198 countries and territories (comprising more than 99.5% of the world?s population) on the same two indexes used in the previous studies: The Government Restrictions Index (GRI) measures government laws, policies and actions that restrict religious beliefs or practices, and the Social Hostilities Index (SHI) measures acts of religious hostility by private individuals, organizations and social groups. Other key findings include:
Reports of harassment or intimidation of Muslims increased. Muslims were harassed by national, provincial or local governments or by individuals or groups in society in 101 countries in 2011, up from 90 countries the year before. Christians continued to be harassed in the largest number of countries (105), although this represented a decrease from the previous year (111 countries). Jews were harassed in 69 countries, about the same as the year before (68 countries).
Among the world?s 25 most populous countries, Egypt, Indonesia, Russia and Pakistan had the most restrictions on religion. Two countries had record high levels of restrictions or hostilities. Egypt ? the most populous country in the Middle East-North Africa region ? had a higher level of government restrictions in 2011 than any country in the world previously had in the five years covered by the study. Pakistan had the highest level of social hostilities in the world across the five years of the study. Indeed, the country had all 13 types of hostilities measured by the study and was the first country to score 10 out of 10 points on either restrictions index.
Increases in social hostilities, in particular, contributed to increases in overall religious restrictions. In Egypt, for instance, attacks on Coptic Christian communities went up during 2011. In China, increasing numbers of Buddhist monks, nuns and laypeople protested government policies toward Tibet by setting themselves on fire. And in Nigeria, there was rising violence between Muslims and Christians, including attacks by the Islamist group Boko Haram.
The number of countries with overall increases in restrictions compared with the previous year outnumbered those with decreases. However, a larger share of countries (35%) had a decrease in at least one of the 20 types of government restrictions or 13 types of social hostilities measured by the study compared with the previous year (28%). Examples include a relaxation of registration requirements for religious groups in Austria; efforts to overturn a centuries-old law barring the British monarch from marrying a Catholic; and elimination of a requirement in Jordan that groups, including religious groups, obtain prior permission from the government before holding public meetings or demonstrations.
Government or societal initiatives to reduce religious restrictions or hostilities were reported in 150 of 198 countries, or 76% of the countries and territories studied. The most common types of initiatives, in descending order of prevalence, were interfaith dialogue, efforts to combat or redress religious discrimination, educational and training initiatives, and land- or property-related initiatives.
The full report ? including a summary of results, index scores by region, results by country, the methodology and an interactive graphic showing the levels of restrictions in the world?s 25 most populous countries ? is available on the Pew Forum?s website.
The Pew Research Center?s work on global restrictions on religion is part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, an effort funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation to analyze religious change and its impact on societies around the world.
Related Sections | General | Islam
Source: http://wwrn.org/articles/40057/
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Some immigrants excluded from health care overhaul
PHOENIX (AP) ? President Barack Obama has championed two sweeping policy changes that could transform how people live in the United States: affordable health care for all and a path to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants illegally in the country.
But many immigrants will have to wait more than a decade to qualify for health care benefits under the proposed immigration overhaul being debated by Congress, ensuring a huge swath of people will remain uninsured as the centerpiece of Obama's health care law launches next year.
Lawmakers pushing the immigration bill said adding more recipients to an already costly benefit would make it unaffordable.
Health care analysts and immigration proponents argue that denying coverage will saddle local governments with the burden of uninsured immigrants. They also fear a crisis down the road as immigrants become eligible for coverage, but are older, sicker and require more expensive care. Those placed on provisional status would become the nation's second-largest population of uninsured, or about 25 percent, according to a 2012 study by the Urban Institute.
"All health research shows that the older you get, the sicker you become, so these people will be sicker and will be more expensive on the system," said Matthew O'Brien, who runs a health clinic for immigrants in Philadelphia and researches health trends at Temple University.
The Affordable Care Act will make health insurance accessible for millions of uninsured people starting in January through taxpayer-subsidized private policies for middle-class families and expanded access to Medicaid, the program for low-income people funded by federal and state dollars. The proposed immigration overhaul explicitly states immigrants cannot receive Medicaid or buy coverage in new health care exchanges for more than a decade after they qualify for legal status, and only after certain financial and security requirements have been met.
Immigrants with provisional status may obtain insurance through employers once they have legal status to work, but many are unskilled and undereducated, and tend to work low-wage jobs at small businesses that don't have to provide the benefit under the health care law. Immigrants illegally in the country also can access community health centers, but the officials who run those clinics said they are overwhelmed by the demand.
"We can't help everybody," said Bethy Mathis, executive director of Wesley Community Center in Phoenix. The clinic serves 7,000 patients a year who seek everything from vaccinations and relief from minor medical problems to care for long-term health conditions such as diabetes.
Debate over whether immigrants illegally in the country should be eligible for federal benefits nearly sank Obama's health care reform before it was passed by Congress in 2010. For lawmakers pushing immigration reform, there was no question that immigrants would continue to be excluded.
"That's one of the privileges of citizenship," said Republican Sen. John McCain, one of the so-called Gang of Eight pushing the immigration bill, during a conference call with reporters. "That's just what it is. I don't know why we would want to provide Obamacare to someone who is not a citizen of this country."
The issue has received more attention in recent weeks. Some House Republicans have threatened to kill the immigration bill unless immigrants are required to pay for all their health care costs even after they receive green cards or become citizens. Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, meanwhile, said she wants the government to distribute at least $250 million to state and local governments because they are the ones who will feel the financial pain of immigrants being left out of the health care law.
Pregnant women, children, seniors and the disabled are eligible for emergency Medicaid services regardless of their immigration status.
The politics behind the bill offer little solace to immigrant families struggling with growing medical bills.
Isabel Castillo came to the U.S. illegally with her parents when she was a child. She's now 28 and has not gone for an annual physical exam since 2007. Every pain triggers debate over whether it's worth a medical visit or not.
"You are like, 'God, should I go, should I wait? The bill is going to be so high,'" Castillo said. "You just wait until you can't tolerate the pain anymore and then you go to the emergency room."
Immigrants who are U.S. citizens are also affected by the limits on health care access if they provide for family members here illegally.
High school student Jacqueline Garcia of Phoenix works two jobs to support her 13-year-old brother and 52-year-old grandmother, who has severe diabetes. The woman's mobility is limited, her vision and memory are fading and she sometimes suffers from seizures. The children were born in the United States and are being raised by the grandmother, who does not have lawful status and as a result does not qualify for Medicaid.
"Every time she gets sick, I have to take her to the doctor. It's really expensive," Garcia said. "What if my grandmother doesn't make it for the 10 years? I mean, I am always going to be struggling. That's too long."
Opponents said they understand the concerns of immigrants not getting health care, but it becomes an issue of the added expense.
"We aren't saying people shouldn't get health care. The question is who is going to pay for it?" said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a national group that opposes the immigration overhaul. "They would all be on Medicaid or heavily subsidized in some other way."
Critics of the decision said immigrants are eager to pay for affordable health care insurance and already support federal benefits by paying sales and income taxes. They note that adults unable to overcome health emergencies are less likely to contribute to the workforce and society.
"The risk of them being uninsured if they are in the country illegally is the same risk of anyone else in the country not being insured," said Stephen Zuckerman, a health economist for the Urban Institute. "It's always more expensive to treat people at a more advanced stage of disease."
In North Carolina, Jessica Sanchez-Rodriguez said she has undergone a series of surgeries and medicines to treat her spina bifida, a developmental congenital disorder, and an ailment that leads to brain swelling. Her parents brought her illegally from Mexico when she was 11 months old. As a minor, she received subsidized medical care, but she was cut off when she turned 18 in February.
Her family is trying to raise money for a $55,000 surgery to connect a catheter to her bladder.
"It's terrible," Sanchez-Rodriguez said. "I have to go to school with these pains."
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Saturday, June 1, 2013
Friday, May 17, 2013
Lois Lerner's husband's law firm hosted campaign organizing | The ...
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) official who apologized for targeting conservative nonprofit groups for extra scrutiny is married to an attorney whose firm hosted a voter registration organizing event for the Obama presidential campaign, praised President Obama?s policy work, and had one of its partners appointed by Obama to a key ambassadorship.
IRS Exempt Organizations Division director Lois G. Lerner, who has been described as ?apolitical? in mainstream press coverage of the IRS scandal, is married to tax attorney Michael R. Miles, a partner at the law firm Sutherland Asbill & Brennan. The firm is based in Atlanta but has a number of offices including in Washington, D.C., where Miles works.
The 400-attorney firm hosted an organizing meeting at its Atlanta office?for people interested in helping with voter registration for the Obama re-election campaign.
This is not the first of Lerner?s connections to the president to surface. Earlier this week The Daily Caller reported that Lerner personally signed the tax-exemption approval for a shady charity run by Obama?s half-brother, after an inexplicably brief one-month application process. (Related: Lois Lerner approved exemption for Obama brother?s ?charity?)
?Come learn more about how you can create, organize, and host a voter registration event here in Atlanta in the coming weeks. We will be meeting at at 7:30pm at 999 Peachtree St. NE, in the law offices of Sutherland, Asbill, and Brennan,??read an event posting on my.barackobama.com.
Longtime Sutherland partner David Adelman, the former Democratic minority whip of the Georgia state senate, serves as ambassador to the Republic of Singapore in the Obama administration.
?Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP announces that its partner and Georgia State Sen. David I. Adelman, has been confirmed by the U.S. Senate to be the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Singapore. President Obama nominated Sen. Adelman on November 20, 2009,? according to a Sutherland press release dated March 19, 2010.
?Sutherland has a great tradition of excellence.? It has been a privilege to be a part of such a fine firm,? Adelman said at the time of his confirmation, according to the Sutherland press release.
?I am humbled by the confidence President Obama and Secretary Clinton have in me, and I look forward to building on the strong U.S.-Singapore relationship,? said Adelman, who joined Sutherland in 1993 and spent his entire career in private practice with the firm.
Sutherland heaped praised on Obama?s work in the U.S. Senate on legal issues pertaining to employee misclassification, which Sutherland works intensely enough on to have launched the website workerclassification.com.
?The subject of worker classification is likely to take on increased importance in light of the recent election of Barack Obama as President. While in the Senate, President Obama showed an interest in strengthening workers? rights, particularly with respect to whether they should be classified as employees,? according to a Sutherland press release dated April 28, 2009.
?Along with others, he introduced the Independent Contractor Proper Classification Act of 2007. This legislation sought to give regulatory authority to the IRS to establish standards for properly classifying workers and to repeal the Section 530 safe harbor provisions that currently allow employers to rely on industry practice or professional advice as a reasonable basis for classifying workers. Also as a senator, President Obama, along with others, introduced the Employee Misclassification Prevention Act on September 29, 2008, which sought ?to provide a special penalty for employers who misclassify employees as nonemployees,? according to the Sutherland press release.
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