LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Lindsay Lohan is due in court Wednesday to give a judge her first progress update under strict new probation requirements intended to keep close tabs on the troubled actress.
Lohan has been reporting regularly for work at the Los Angeles County morgue since being repeatedly threatened with a long jail sentence if she failed to complete the terms of her probation, which include community service and counseling sessions.
The hearing is without the usual drama that precedes Lohan's recent court appearances, which have focused on the actress' shortcomings by missing court-ordered therapy sessions and getting booted from a community service assignment at a women's shelter. The "Mean Girls" star spent less than five hours at a jail last month as part of a 30-day sentence imposed by Judge Stephanie Sautner for Lohan's continued misbehavior.
The judge is requiring the starlet to report on her progress monthly and it appears Lohan has been successful in meeting the goals of Wednesday's hearing.
"She's been doing fine," Deputy Chief Coroner Ed Winter said Tuesday, saying the actress has been showing up, working and leaving without incident.
He said he did not know how many hours Lohan had completed.
Her spokesman, Steve Honig, said Lohan has met or exceeded the terms of her probation imposed by Sautner last month.
"She's working very diligently to keep up her days so she can finish up with probation," he said.
Lohan remains on probation for a 2007 drunken driving case and a misdemeanor grand theft case filed after she took a $2,500 necklace without permission.
She has consistently struggled with the terms of her various sentences, which have included jail terms, rehab, community service and counseling.
Her appearance Wednesday comes days before a Playboy issue featuring Lohan in a mostly-nude pictorial hits newsstands. The magazine was forced to release the issue online early after photos of the Marilyn Monroe-inspired spread leaked out online.
___
Follow Anthony McCartney at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP
Defensive measures: Toward a vaccine for Ebola Public release date: 5-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Joseph Caspermeyer Joseph.Caspermeyer@asu.edu Arizona State University
On August 26, 1976, a time bomb exploded in Yambuku, a remote village in Zaire, (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). A threadlike virus known as Ebola had emerged, soon earning a grim distinction as one of the most lethal, naturally occurring pathogens on earth, killing up to 90 percent of its victims, and producing a terrifying constellation of symptoms known as hemorrhagic fever.
Now, Charles Arntzen, a researcher at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, along with colleagues from ASU, the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix, and the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Fort Detrick, MD, have made progress toward a vaccine against the deadly virus.
The group's research results appear in today's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, along with a companion paper by their collaborators at Mapp Pharmaceuticals in San Diego, CA, led by Larry Zeitlin. Arntzen's group demonstrated that a plant-derived vaccine for Ebola provided strong immunological protection in a mouse model.
If early efforts bear fruit, an Ebola vaccine could be stockpiled for use in the United States, should the country fall victim to a natural outbreak or a bioterrorism event in which a weaponized strain of the virus were unleashed on soldiers or the public.
To date, Ebola outbreaks have been mercifully rare. For researchers like Arntzen however, this presents a challenge: "With other lethal viruses like HIV there is a common pattern of occurrence, allowing for vaccine testing. For example, an AIDS vaccine study is now underway at two locations in Thailand, which were chosen because of a current high incidence of the disease."
By contrast, Ebola events are fleeting, episodic and largely unpredictable. For this reason, Arntzen stresses that an Ebola vaccine would most likely not be used prophylacticallythat is, as a means of protecting large populations, as in the case of common vaccines against diseases like influenza or polio. Instead, the idea is to have a sizeable store of the vaccine on hand in the event of a sudden outbreak, either natural or nefarious.
A killer up close
Ebola belongs to a family of viruses known as filoviridae, which take their name from their serpentine, filamentous structure (see Figure 1). Filoviridae fall into two broad categories known as Ebola-like and Marburg-like viruses. In the original Ebola outbreak in Yambuku, situated along the Ebola River, 280 of the 318 identified cases died. Soon thereafter, an additional 284 cases and 151 deaths occurred in nearby Sudan. In Yambuku, the small local hospital was shut down, after 11 of its 17 staff members died.
The likely reservoir for the disease is bats. Primates including monkeys can become infected from eating bats or from fruit the bats may have dropped. Infected animals can then spread the disease to humans through bites, or when the primates are consumed for fooda practice prevalent in some regions of Africa.
The course of the disease is pitiless, sometimes producing hemorrhagic fever, which causes severe bleeding from mucous membranes, including the gastroinestinal tract, eyes, nose, vagina and gingiva. The very high mortality and gruesome symptoms of the disease have riveted public attention and have been the focus of numerous films and books, notably Richard Preston's The Hot Zone.
Arntzen notes that while no human vaccine against Ebola currently exists, a number of strong candidates have emerged. While some have yielded good results in animal models, in terms of protection against the virus, they have practical shortcomings. "All of these existing vaccine candidates are genetically modified live viruses," he says. Vaccines of this sort require very careful conditions of storage and have a tendency to lose potency over a period of months. "If you've got something that you're going to have to keep at liquid nitrogen temperatures for years at a time, in hopes that there will never be an outbreak, it makes it impractical. "
Fighting pathogens with plants
Of the vaccines available to doctors today, some (like influenza) are produced in eggs, some in cultured animal cells, and others in yeast. Arntzen's team has taken a different approach to vaccine production by converting tobacco plants into living pharmaceutical factories. They created a DNA blueprint for their Ebola vaccine, and used a specialized bacterium to infuse it into the leaves of tobacco. "The blueprint converts each leaf cell into a miniature manufacturing unit," Arntzen says.
In the current study, the vaccine blueprint was designed by fusing a key surface protein (known as GP1) from the Ebola virus with a monoclonal antibody customized to bind to GP1. The resulting molecules' opposite ends attract each other, like a group of rod-shaped magnets. When the vaccine molecules bind to each other, they form an aggregate called an Ebola Immune Complex (EIC). "In immunology, that means you've got something that is much easier for our immune system to recognize," Arntzen says. "Because it has many copies of an identical molecule, it's called a repeating array." (See Figure 2)
Within two weeks after the vaccine "blueprint" is delivered to tobacco leaves, enough of the EIC accumulates to allow its purification from other leaf cell components. The researchers then vaccinated mice with the purified sample, and showed that their immune system gave a strong response.
For the ultimate validation of the vaccine however, it was necessary to show that the vaccinated mice could withstand an Ebola virus infection. Because of the dangers in handling the virus, these experiments were conducted by skilled researchers at a high containment facility operated by the US Army Medical Research Institute in Maryland. It was found that the level of protection of the vaccinated mice was equivalent to that seen in prior experiments with the best, previously available experimental vaccine.
The advantages of using tobacco to manufacture a vaccine are significant. The initial costs for plant growth are much cheaper than design of traditional pharmaceutical facilities. In addition, the material extracted from tobacco leaves can be easily purified, and then might be spray dried or freeze-dried, yielding a highly stable compound, storable at ambient temperatures for extended periods. This will be essential for an Ebola vaccine, since it will primarily be stockpiled to use only if there is a disease outbreak.
Vaccines typically contain adjuvantsimmune modulating factors that improve a vaccine's protective qualities. Most vaccines contain alum (or aluminum hydroxide), which is an FDA approved adjuvant. In the case of the plant-derived Ebola vaccine, alum did not improve the survival rates in mice when it was co-administered with EIC. Instead, the group found that a Toll-like receptor (TLR) agonist known as PIC, when delivered in tandem with EIC, dramatically improved survival.
Toll-like receptors are part of the body's innate immune systeminvolved in processes of inflammation, where defensive cells like macrophages and dendritic cells are attracted to the site of infection. Arntzen explains that the TLR agonist PIC acts to mimic a site of inflammation, amplifying the immune response, without causing tissue damage. In experiments using a combination of PIC and EIC, mice achieved an 80 percent survival rate against a lethal challenge of Ebolacommensurate with the best existing vaccine candidates.
The road ahead
In their companion PNAS paper, Arnzen's collaborators at Mapp Biopharmaceuticals outline the process for creating the monoclonal antibodies used for this research. Treatment for an Ebola infection, Arntzen says, would likely involve the injection of fast acting antibodies to attack the virus directlya process known as passive immunization, combined with a vaccine to stimulate the protective immune response (active immunization). This approach is commonly used in the case of other viral infections, particularly rabies. "Our two papers offer a nice back to back picture," Arntzen says. "We can manufacture both of these post-Ebola exposure reagents for a defensive stockpile, using tobacco."
The next steps for a plant-derived filovirus vaccine will involve using the EIC platform to design protection against the full range of these threadlike viruses. The method, with its straightforward purification protocol might also be used in the case of other pathogens including hepatitis C or dengue fever, where the extraction of glycoproteins has thus far been difficult.
Should efforts succeed in producing a post-exposure therapeutic that could be stockpiled by the U.S. military, the vaccine could also be made available to the Center for Disease Control for immediate use in the event of a remote outbreak.
###
A nonreplicating subunit vaccine protects mice against lethal Ebola virus challenge
Waranyoo Phoolcharoen, John M. Dye, Jacquelyn Kilbourne, Khanrat Piensook, William D. Pratt, Charles J. Arntzen, Qiang Chen, Hugh S. Mason, and Melissa M. Herbst-Kralovetz.
Design and testing of an Ebola virus post-exposure immunoprotectant: enhanced potency of a fucose free monoclonal antibody
Larry Zeitlin, James Pettitt, Corinne Scully, Natasha Bohorova, Do Kim, MichaelyPauly, Andrew Hiatt, Long Ngo, Herta Steinkellner, Kevin Whaley, Gene Olinger
Arizona State University Regents Professor Charles Arntzen holds the Florence Ely Nelson Presidential Endowed Chair and has appointments at The Biodesign Institute's Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, School of Life Sciences.
Written by: Richard Harth
Science Writer: The Biodesign Institute
richard.harth@asu.edu
[ | 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.
Defensive measures: Toward a vaccine for Ebola Public release date: 5-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Joseph Caspermeyer Joseph.Caspermeyer@asu.edu Arizona State University
On August 26, 1976, a time bomb exploded in Yambuku, a remote village in Zaire, (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). A threadlike virus known as Ebola had emerged, soon earning a grim distinction as one of the most lethal, naturally occurring pathogens on earth, killing up to 90 percent of its victims, and producing a terrifying constellation of symptoms known as hemorrhagic fever.
Now, Charles Arntzen, a researcher at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, along with colleagues from ASU, the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix, and the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Fort Detrick, MD, have made progress toward a vaccine against the deadly virus.
The group's research results appear in today's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, along with a companion paper by their collaborators at Mapp Pharmaceuticals in San Diego, CA, led by Larry Zeitlin. Arntzen's group demonstrated that a plant-derived vaccine for Ebola provided strong immunological protection in a mouse model.
If early efforts bear fruit, an Ebola vaccine could be stockpiled for use in the United States, should the country fall victim to a natural outbreak or a bioterrorism event in which a weaponized strain of the virus were unleashed on soldiers or the public.
To date, Ebola outbreaks have been mercifully rare. For researchers like Arntzen however, this presents a challenge: "With other lethal viruses like HIV there is a common pattern of occurrence, allowing for vaccine testing. For example, an AIDS vaccine study is now underway at two locations in Thailand, which were chosen because of a current high incidence of the disease."
By contrast, Ebola events are fleeting, episodic and largely unpredictable. For this reason, Arntzen stresses that an Ebola vaccine would most likely not be used prophylacticallythat is, as a means of protecting large populations, as in the case of common vaccines against diseases like influenza or polio. Instead, the idea is to have a sizeable store of the vaccine on hand in the event of a sudden outbreak, either natural or nefarious.
A killer up close
Ebola belongs to a family of viruses known as filoviridae, which take their name from their serpentine, filamentous structure (see Figure 1). Filoviridae fall into two broad categories known as Ebola-like and Marburg-like viruses. In the original Ebola outbreak in Yambuku, situated along the Ebola River, 280 of the 318 identified cases died. Soon thereafter, an additional 284 cases and 151 deaths occurred in nearby Sudan. In Yambuku, the small local hospital was shut down, after 11 of its 17 staff members died.
The likely reservoir for the disease is bats. Primates including monkeys can become infected from eating bats or from fruit the bats may have dropped. Infected animals can then spread the disease to humans through bites, or when the primates are consumed for fooda practice prevalent in some regions of Africa.
The course of the disease is pitiless, sometimes producing hemorrhagic fever, which causes severe bleeding from mucous membranes, including the gastroinestinal tract, eyes, nose, vagina and gingiva. The very high mortality and gruesome symptoms of the disease have riveted public attention and have been the focus of numerous films and books, notably Richard Preston's The Hot Zone.
Arntzen notes that while no human vaccine against Ebola currently exists, a number of strong candidates have emerged. While some have yielded good results in animal models, in terms of protection against the virus, they have practical shortcomings. "All of these existing vaccine candidates are genetically modified live viruses," he says. Vaccines of this sort require very careful conditions of storage and have a tendency to lose potency over a period of months. "If you've got something that you're going to have to keep at liquid nitrogen temperatures for years at a time, in hopes that there will never be an outbreak, it makes it impractical. "
Fighting pathogens with plants
Of the vaccines available to doctors today, some (like influenza) are produced in eggs, some in cultured animal cells, and others in yeast. Arntzen's team has taken a different approach to vaccine production by converting tobacco plants into living pharmaceutical factories. They created a DNA blueprint for their Ebola vaccine, and used a specialized bacterium to infuse it into the leaves of tobacco. "The blueprint converts each leaf cell into a miniature manufacturing unit," Arntzen says.
In the current study, the vaccine blueprint was designed by fusing a key surface protein (known as GP1) from the Ebola virus with a monoclonal antibody customized to bind to GP1. The resulting molecules' opposite ends attract each other, like a group of rod-shaped magnets. When the vaccine molecules bind to each other, they form an aggregate called an Ebola Immune Complex (EIC). "In immunology, that means you've got something that is much easier for our immune system to recognize," Arntzen says. "Because it has many copies of an identical molecule, it's called a repeating array." (See Figure 2)
Within two weeks after the vaccine "blueprint" is delivered to tobacco leaves, enough of the EIC accumulates to allow its purification from other leaf cell components. The researchers then vaccinated mice with the purified sample, and showed that their immune system gave a strong response.
For the ultimate validation of the vaccine however, it was necessary to show that the vaccinated mice could withstand an Ebola virus infection. Because of the dangers in handling the virus, these experiments were conducted by skilled researchers at a high containment facility operated by the US Army Medical Research Institute in Maryland. It was found that the level of protection of the vaccinated mice was equivalent to that seen in prior experiments with the best, previously available experimental vaccine.
The advantages of using tobacco to manufacture a vaccine are significant. The initial costs for plant growth are much cheaper than design of traditional pharmaceutical facilities. In addition, the material extracted from tobacco leaves can be easily purified, and then might be spray dried or freeze-dried, yielding a highly stable compound, storable at ambient temperatures for extended periods. This will be essential for an Ebola vaccine, since it will primarily be stockpiled to use only if there is a disease outbreak.
Vaccines typically contain adjuvantsimmune modulating factors that improve a vaccine's protective qualities. Most vaccines contain alum (or aluminum hydroxide), which is an FDA approved adjuvant. In the case of the plant-derived Ebola vaccine, alum did not improve the survival rates in mice when it was co-administered with EIC. Instead, the group found that a Toll-like receptor (TLR) agonist known as PIC, when delivered in tandem with EIC, dramatically improved survival.
Toll-like receptors are part of the body's innate immune systeminvolved in processes of inflammation, where defensive cells like macrophages and dendritic cells are attracted to the site of infection. Arntzen explains that the TLR agonist PIC acts to mimic a site of inflammation, amplifying the immune response, without causing tissue damage. In experiments using a combination of PIC and EIC, mice achieved an 80 percent survival rate against a lethal challenge of Ebolacommensurate with the best existing vaccine candidates.
The road ahead
In their companion PNAS paper, Arnzen's collaborators at Mapp Biopharmaceuticals outline the process for creating the monoclonal antibodies used for this research. Treatment for an Ebola infection, Arntzen says, would likely involve the injection of fast acting antibodies to attack the virus directlya process known as passive immunization, combined with a vaccine to stimulate the protective immune response (active immunization). This approach is commonly used in the case of other viral infections, particularly rabies. "Our two papers offer a nice back to back picture," Arntzen says. "We can manufacture both of these post-Ebola exposure reagents for a defensive stockpile, using tobacco."
The next steps for a plant-derived filovirus vaccine will involve using the EIC platform to design protection against the full range of these threadlike viruses. The method, with its straightforward purification protocol might also be used in the case of other pathogens including hepatitis C or dengue fever, where the extraction of glycoproteins has thus far been difficult.
Should efforts succeed in producing a post-exposure therapeutic that could be stockpiled by the U.S. military, the vaccine could also be made available to the Center for Disease Control for immediate use in the event of a remote outbreak.
###
A nonreplicating subunit vaccine protects mice against lethal Ebola virus challenge
Waranyoo Phoolcharoen, John M. Dye, Jacquelyn Kilbourne, Khanrat Piensook, William D. Pratt, Charles J. Arntzen, Qiang Chen, Hugh S. Mason, and Melissa M. Herbst-Kralovetz.
Design and testing of an Ebola virus post-exposure immunoprotectant: enhanced potency of a fucose free monoclonal antibody
Larry Zeitlin, James Pettitt, Corinne Scully, Natasha Bohorova, Do Kim, MichaelyPauly, Andrew Hiatt, Long Ngo, Herta Steinkellner, Kevin Whaley, Gene Olinger
Arizona State University Regents Professor Charles Arntzen holds the Florence Ely Nelson Presidential Endowed Chair and has appointments at The Biodesign Institute's Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, School of Life Sciences.
Written by: Richard Harth
Science Writer: The Biodesign Institute
richard.harth@asu.edu
[ | 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.
A divergent collective memory could help explain why the political crisis lasted so long in BelgiumPublic release date: 6-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Researchers from various Belgian (UCL-Louvain, ULB-Brussels, HUB-Brussels, KULeuven, U. Antwerp) and American universities (New School, Harvard) have conducted research and reflections that give insights into the political crisis in Belgium, which has now been resolved, nearly 18 months after the general elections in June 2010. Their focus was on the way memories of past events affect current political and inter-group relations. According to the researchers, the political crisis could be partly explained by divergent and sometimes opposite memories which the two linguistic groups hold about the past.
These divergent memories come from multiple domains: linguistic, historical and economic.
Many Dutch-speaking Flemish do not accept that many French speakers do not speak Dutch. This reactivates vivid memories of contempt and humiliation felt when Flanders was dominated by French-speaking elites. This also strengthens their conviction that the Dutch language and Flemish culture are threatened and that the Flemish identity must be protected.
French speakers have difficulties in accepting the current economic growth in Flanders. This triggers memories of previous prosperity in their region. At the same time, Dutch speakers feel as if they were still oppressed and victims of the Belgian state, despite the fact that the economic power is now in their region.
The debate over amnesty for WWII collaborators also reflects deep discrepant collective memories. This debate has already occurred in many other European countries but not in Belgium, as many French speakers refuse to engage in the debate. This refusal leads to acute feelings of injustice among the Flemish, together with anger, spite and resentment.
The great success of the Flemish nationalist party N-VA in the general elections in 2010 could have been partly guided by resentment related to the past among many Flemish citizens. A recent study (Swyngedouw et Abts, 2011) has shown that many left-wing Flemish voted for the N-VA despite the party's right-wing program with regards to socio-economic issues. These data suggest that linguistic and memory issues are currently highly important in Flanders' political choices over more traditional ideological aspects opposing liberals and conservatives.
These examples demonstrate how discrepant collective memories on the part of Flanders and Wallonia help shape mutual feelings. The inability of the diverging representations of the past to coexist prevents Belgian citizens from developing a strong national identity and a clear sense of common belonging.
Unable to integrate the different facets of their national past, the Belgian authorities helped feelings of vexation and resentment flourish among citizens. In order to counteract this absence of a common identity, the Belgian state should, according to the researchers, play a federative role (which it never has so far) and to acknowledge the various memories shared by the Belgian linguisitic communities.
###
The work has been coordinated by Olivier Luminet, professor at the Research Institute for Psychological Sciences at the Universit Catholique de Louvain (UCL), Belgium. The contributors come from various disciplines in the social sciences and humanities: psychology (clinical, social and cognitive), history, political sciences and literature.
Contributors include:
Valrie Rosoux, Laurence van Ypersele and Susann Heenen-Wolff (UCL); Olivier Klein, Laurent Licata, Ariane Bazan, Nicolas Van der Linden and Aurlie Mercy (ULB); Marnix Beyen (UA); Elke Brems (KULeuven et HUB); Anne Verougstraete, William Hirst (New School University), Ioana Apetroaia Fineberg (Harvard University)
Contact : Olivier Luminet, professor at the Psychological Sciences Research Institute - UCL : 32-10-47-87-01 or 32-497-12-10-24 or Olivier.Luminet@uclouvain.be
The study is published as a special issue of the SAGE journal, Memory Studies, and is free to access for a limited period at: http://mss.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/11/22/1750698011424034.full.pdf+html
The work will be translated and published into French and Dutch by the following publishers: Mardaga and Snoeck.
SAGE is a leading international publisher of journals, books, and electronic media for academic, educational, and professional markets. Since 1965, SAGE has helped inform and educate a global community of scholars, practitioners, researchers, and students spanning a wide range of subject areas including business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technology, and medicine. An independent company, SAGE has principal offices in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC. http://www.sagepublications.com
[ | 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.
A divergent collective memory could help explain why the political crisis lasted so long in BelgiumPublic release date: 6-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Researchers from various Belgian (UCL-Louvain, ULB-Brussels, HUB-Brussels, KULeuven, U. Antwerp) and American universities (New School, Harvard) have conducted research and reflections that give insights into the political crisis in Belgium, which has now been resolved, nearly 18 months after the general elections in June 2010. Their focus was on the way memories of past events affect current political and inter-group relations. According to the researchers, the political crisis could be partly explained by divergent and sometimes opposite memories which the two linguistic groups hold about the past.
These divergent memories come from multiple domains: linguistic, historical and economic.
Many Dutch-speaking Flemish do not accept that many French speakers do not speak Dutch. This reactivates vivid memories of contempt and humiliation felt when Flanders was dominated by French-speaking elites. This also strengthens their conviction that the Dutch language and Flemish culture are threatened and that the Flemish identity must be protected.
French speakers have difficulties in accepting the current economic growth in Flanders. This triggers memories of previous prosperity in their region. At the same time, Dutch speakers feel as if they were still oppressed and victims of the Belgian state, despite the fact that the economic power is now in their region.
The debate over amnesty for WWII collaborators also reflects deep discrepant collective memories. This debate has already occurred in many other European countries but not in Belgium, as many French speakers refuse to engage in the debate. This refusal leads to acute feelings of injustice among the Flemish, together with anger, spite and resentment.
The great success of the Flemish nationalist party N-VA in the general elections in 2010 could have been partly guided by resentment related to the past among many Flemish citizens. A recent study (Swyngedouw et Abts, 2011) has shown that many left-wing Flemish voted for the N-VA despite the party's right-wing program with regards to socio-economic issues. These data suggest that linguistic and memory issues are currently highly important in Flanders' political choices over more traditional ideological aspects opposing liberals and conservatives.
These examples demonstrate how discrepant collective memories on the part of Flanders and Wallonia help shape mutual feelings. The inability of the diverging representations of the past to coexist prevents Belgian citizens from developing a strong national identity and a clear sense of common belonging.
Unable to integrate the different facets of their national past, the Belgian authorities helped feelings of vexation and resentment flourish among citizens. In order to counteract this absence of a common identity, the Belgian state should, according to the researchers, play a federative role (which it never has so far) and to acknowledge the various memories shared by the Belgian linguisitic communities.
###
The work has been coordinated by Olivier Luminet, professor at the Research Institute for Psychological Sciences at the Universit Catholique de Louvain (UCL), Belgium. The contributors come from various disciplines in the social sciences and humanities: psychology (clinical, social and cognitive), history, political sciences and literature.
Contributors include:
Valrie Rosoux, Laurence van Ypersele and Susann Heenen-Wolff (UCL); Olivier Klein, Laurent Licata, Ariane Bazan, Nicolas Van der Linden and Aurlie Mercy (ULB); Marnix Beyen (UA); Elke Brems (KULeuven et HUB); Anne Verougstraete, William Hirst (New School University), Ioana Apetroaia Fineberg (Harvard University)
Contact : Olivier Luminet, professor at the Psychological Sciences Research Institute - UCL : 32-10-47-87-01 or 32-497-12-10-24 or Olivier.Luminet@uclouvain.be
The study is published as a special issue of the SAGE journal, Memory Studies, and is free to access for a limited period at: http://mss.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/11/22/1750698011424034.full.pdf+html
The work will be translated and published into French and Dutch by the following publishers: Mardaga and Snoeck.
SAGE is a leading international publisher of journals, books, and electronic media for academic, educational, and professional markets. Since 1965, SAGE has helped inform and educate a global community of scholars, practitioners, researchers, and students spanning a wide range of subject areas including business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technology, and medicine. An independent company, SAGE has principal offices in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC. http://www.sagepublications.com
[ | 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.
MONDAY, Dec. 5 (HealthDay News) -- People with higher levels of nerve activity may have an easier time losing weight, a small study suggests.
Researchers looked at 42 overweight or obese people who took part in a 12-week weight-loss program that cut their daily calorie intake by 30 percent. The participants' resting sympathetic nerve activity was measured at the start of the study.
The sympathetic nervous system, which spreads throughout the body, regulates many functions, including control of resting metabolic rate and the use of calories from food consumption.
The researchers found that successful weight losers had significantly higher resting sympathetic nerve activity than those who had trouble shedding pounds. They also found that successful weight losers showed large increases in nerve activity after they ate a carbohydrate test meal. This did not occur in those who were weight-loss resistant.
The study will appear in the February 2012 issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
"We have demonstrated for the first time that resting muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) is a significant independent predictor of weight-loss outcome in a cohort of overweight or obese subjects," lead author Nora Straznicky, of the Baker IDI Heart & Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia, said in a journal news release.
"Our findings provide two opportunities. First, we may be able to identify those persons who would benefit most from lifestyle weight-loss interventions such as dieting. Secondly, the findings may also help in developing weight-loss treatments through stimulating this specific nervous activity."
More information
The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases explains how to select a safe and successful weight-loss program.
COMMENTARY | Donald Trump will moderate an upcoming Republican debate and may potentially run as a third-party candidate, according to Fox News. When these two points are coupled with certain actions of his earlier this year, I have come to believe "The Donald" might actually support President Barack Obama. The reality star might actually be the greatest agent for the president.
A moderator of a debate is able to steer the direction of the evening. The moderator decides who gets the most time to speak and what each candidate is able to speak about. Someone who is working for the president could do a ton of damage to any of the candidate's campaign. This argument is not enough to point out how Trump might be an agent for President Obama, but it is just the tip of the iceberg.
Trump has also stated how he might run under a third-party ticket if he does not like the candidate chosen by the party. Logic would state that a third-party Republican would hurt the GOP's chances as the extra candidate would take votes from the official party candidate. How convenient for President Obama.
Earlier this year, the billionaire theatrically hinted at tossing his hat into the presidential race. He quickly jumped to the top of the polls until he began pressing the birther argument against the president. He drove the argument into the ground and became the target of jokes from the Democrats and Republicans. One of major potential arguments about the president's legitimacy died with Trump's campaign.
Many of the presidential candidates have met with the real estate mogul in the last five months. Michele Bachmann's campaign went off the tracks soon after their meeting. Rick Perry lost his position at the top of the polls soon after meeting with the "campaign adviser." The first harassment accusers against Herman Cain came out just days after he traveled to Trump Tower. Newt Gingrich will meet with Trump on Monday. What will happen to his campaign?
Granted, Mitt Romney met with Trump as well, but it was the only candidate meeting out of the eyes of the press. No cameras were allowed to run during the private meeting. While this could be a coincidence, it might not be. Nobody has done more work for President Obama than Donald Trump. How will he hurt the Republicans next?
DENVER (Reuters) ? Brooke Mueller, the ex-wife of actor Charlie Sheen, was arrested for cocaine possession and assault in Aspen, Colorado, the ski resort town where Sheen was arrested for assaulting Mueller in December 2009.
The Aspen Police Department said in a news release that officers were conducting "a routine walk through" of the Belly Up bar late Friday night when a woman reported she was assaulted by Mueller.
"The woman identified Brooke Mueller, 34, of Los Angeles, California as the aggressor," the release said.
Mueller was arrested at a second bar sometime after midnight and charged with felony possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, and misdemeanor assault, police said.
Mueller posted a $11,000 bond and was released. She has a December 19 court date.
On Christmas Day 2009, police were called to an Aspen home the couple was renting for the holidays and arrested Sheen for assaulting Mueller during an argument. Sheen pleaded guilty to the charge in August 2010 and was ordered to serve 30 days in a California drug and rehabilitation facility.
The couple divorced earlier this year.
Sheen was fired from his role on TV's "Two and a Half Men," sitcom after he ranted against his employers and posted videos on the Web in which he bragged about his "winning" ways and the "tiger blood" he had running through in his veins.
He will return to television in summer 2012, in a new "Anger Management" series on FX.
NEW YORK ? From humble origins as a natural gas distributor, Enron became a trading operation with the Midas touch. It made bets on oil, water, Internet traffic, even the weather. Wall Street's brightest worked there. Its stock tripled in two years.
Virtually no one knew how it had made so much money.
Ten years ago Friday came the answer: It hadn't.
Enron's bankruptcy on Dec. 2, 2001, revealed a fraudulent illusion. Investors swore they would not be so profoundly deceived again. But it was only the beginning of a decade when so much in the economy was not as it seemed.
Can't-lose Wall Street guys turned out to be cheats. Home values did not go up forever. Promising signs of recovery after the Great Recession turned out to be nothing, and hard times endure.
The theme was shredded faith ? that and debt, the more the better.
"We have faith in the big score," financial historian Charles Geisst says, trying to explain why Americans have, time and again, believed in what was too good to be true.
In the simple story of the past decade, a journey from corporate scandals to a housing bubble, then to a collapse and a frustratingly slow recovery, the villain is Wall Street and the victim Main Street. The reality is more complicated.
THE BEGINNING
One reason people didn't know how Enron made money was that it was an amalgam of 3,000 private deals that came to light in its collapse, partnerships with names like Raptor, Condor and Chewbacca.
Behind those obscure names, Enron shunted billions of dollars of debt off its books. Investors were safe as long as they didn't ask too many questions. The company borrowed from Wall Street banks, mutual funds and insurers, pledging its hot stock as collateral.
The collapse wiped out $11 billion in stock value, nearly 10 percent in the 401(k) retirement accounts of Enron employees.
A month later, an outspoken, Harley-riding CEO with an uncanny ability to pull profits out of a seemingly dull New Hampshire manufacturer appeared on BusinessWeek's list of top corporate managers. His name was Dennis Kozlowski. By the end of 2002, he was indicted for stealing $150 million from shareholders, and his company, Tyco International, was bankrupt.
Several other heroes of capitalism toppled after him. Bernard Ebbers drove WorldCom into bankruptcy after misleading investors in his high-flying company in an $11 billion accounting fraud. John Rigas, who turned a $300 purchase into a cable TV empire, was convicted of fraud after prosecutors said he ran Adelphia Communications like a "personal piggy bank," including using $26 million of company money to buy timberland next to his home to preserve his view.
Martha Stewart, who built her cooking and decorating business on an image of homespun goodness, faced a grilling from regulators that suggested a life more tawdry than tidy: She had dumped shares of a drug company on what appeared to be an illegal tip from her Merrill Lynch broker. She was convicted of lying, though never accused of insider trading. The amount the one-time billionaire saved by selling early was $51,000.
It was a time of plummeting stocks, trashed retirement accounts, lost jobs and lost trust. One headline from 2002: "Scandals Shred Investors' Faith."
Regulators cracked down, offering hope. Congress created a board to police the accounting industry. It also passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, requiring executives to sign off on financial statements so they could be criminally liable for posting phony numbers.
Investors were thought more vigilant, too. But they got sloppy again, and almost immediately.
Around the time of Enron's collapse, press reports detailed how Italy, years earlier, had struck complicated "currency swap" deals with banks so it could borrow money without having to recognize the debt on its books. Later, Greece was shown to have camouflaged its debt in a similar way.
In 2002, no one seemed to care. By the end of the year, Italy was paying about 4 percent a year in interest on its national bonds, roughly what the U.S. was offering and a sign that few investors were worried.
THE HOUSING BUBBLE
In 2003, as jurors heard how Kozlowski got Tyco to pitch in $1 million for his wife's birthday party, featuring an ice sculpture of Michelangelo's David that urinated vodka, the seeds of a new crisis were being planted.
American consumers had run up debt to record levels by the end of 2003, and more of them than ever were filing for bankruptcy. Yet the stocks of companies extending mortgages to the riskiest borrowers, so-called subprimes, were rising fast.
Subprime was a euphemism for people who had too little income, too much debt, a bad record of paying lenders back ? or all three. As home prices rose, worry that they would not meet their mortgage payments was replaced with faith that, even if they couldn't, they could always sell the home for more than they borrowed and return the money.
Lenders eventually grew so cocky that they seemed willing to give money to virtually anyone who wanted a home. They also offered mortgages on top of mortgages ? so-called home equity loans that allowed people to tap their magically rising values to raise cash for flat-screen TVs or Caribbean vacations. Or to pay their credit card bills.
"If your home keeps appreciating, why not use the equity," Robert Cole, CEO of mortgage lender New Century, said at the time.
If the lenders were duping Americans, they made easy targets.
Long before the housing boom, Americans were borrowing more, saving less and increasingly convinced they would not suffer the consequences. In the 1980s, Americans saved more than 6 percent of what they earned each year in income. Their debts totaled 70 percent of take-home pay. By 2007, they were saving nearly nothing, and debt had exploded to 140 percent of income.
"People were using their homes like automated teller machines," says David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates and a big critic of lending during the boom. "At some point, people have to own up to their mistakes."
Stoking all this borrowing was the Federal Reserve, which had slashed benchmark interest rates to 46-year lows after the 2000-2001 tech-stock bust, pushing the cost of loans lower. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that buy mortgages from lenders, played a role by targeting ever-riskier loans.
The biggest, most sophisticated Wall Street firms fooled themselves, too.
Banks bought subprime lenders whole. Elegant mathematical formulas from their "risk management" departments told them their gambles were fine. Standard & Poor's and other credit rating agencies provided reassurance by slapping their highest ratings on bundles of risky mortgages.
Wall Street was gripped by what chronicler Roger Lowenstein called a "mad, Strangelovian" logic. Not content to bundle thousands of subprime mortgages into mortgage securities, banks bundled the bundles into something called collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs. Next, they created bundles of bundles of bundles, called CDO-squared.
They created something known as synthetic CDOs that didn't even contain mortgages but merely referenced them, exchanging cash between two parties taking opposing bets that a mortgage lender unconnected to them would get its money back.
Adding to the confusion, it wasn't clear which financial firms held many of the original mortgages on which everyone was betting. They had been bought and sold so many times among investors that no one could follow the paper trail.
By 2006, the men who had wounded a nation's faith in capitalism were finally getting justice. Enron's former president, Jeffrey Skilling, began serving 24 years in prison. Kenneth Lay, the chairman, died before he could be sentenced. Rigas, the cable titan, got 15 years, Ebbers and Kozlowski 25 each.
But we were about to discover that the lies we tell ourselves can be more damaging.
THE COLLAPSE
In 2007, subprime lenders went bust, one after another. Then all the mounting debt, made possible by years of half-truths and self-deceptions, turned the fall of a single industry into a worldwide financial crisis.
In March 2008, investors fearing bad mortgage bets at Bear Stearns pulled money out of the bank, leaving it to collapse into the arms of a rival.
Unable to untangle the web of mortgage risk, they began to wonder who was next. They focused on Lehman Brothers, and as that bank teetered, it became clear that the danger of complexity wasn't the only lesson from Enron that had been ignored.
Lehman had hidden debt just like Enron.
Using a financing technique called Repo 105, the bank had borrowed money in a series of deals structured to make it seem as though it had been "selling" assets to raise money. Lenders demanded money back, triggering a run on the bank and leaving ordinary investors scrambling to understand just how much the company had borrowed.
Lehman's bankruptcy in September 2008 froze credit worldwide and helped turn the U.S. recession into the worst since the Great Depression. Stocks eventually fell to 12-year lows, retirement accounts were devastated, and many Americans' biggest asset, their home, plummeted in value.
By the end of 2008, Bernard Madoff was arrested for lying to investors in a $60 billion Ponzi scheme over two decades. A few months later, President Barack Obama started talking up the strengths of the economy, but that soon proved a bit of a mirage, too.
More than a year later, the White House announced its "Recovery Summer," a series of public projects to goose economic growth. But a year and half later, the unemployment rate is stuck at 9 percent and economic growth uninspiring.
A sad footnote: After an overhaul of Wall Street rules last year, broker MF Global turned to the same Lehman-like Repo 105 deals to fuel its bet on indebted European governments. The heavy borrowing helped send the firm run by ex-New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine into bankruptcy, throwing 1,000 people out of work and creating chaos in markets as brokerage customers scrambled to get their money back.
A month after the firm's collapse, regulators still can't find $1.2 billion of customer funds.
THE RECKONING
Now Europe is paying for years of using government debt to fund early retirements and long vacations that its citizens really couldn't afford. Streets are choked with protesters, governments are toppling and interest rates rising, some to crippling highs.
Rosenberg, the prescient housing critic, sees trouble for America, too.
Frightened investors are buying Treasury bonds, which is making it cheaper than ever for Washington to borrow despite its trillion-dollar-plus deficits. The danger is that low rates could lull Americans into believing that, even if they themselves can't borrow recklessly, it's OK for their government to.
"A government debt bubble is already creating misery in Europe," Rosenberg says. "If we don't watch out, we'll face the same problem."
Stocks have barely moved in the decade of lost faith. On the Friday before the Enron bankruptcy, the S&P 500 closed at 1,139. Last Friday it closed 19 points above that. The incomes of many middle-class Americans haven't kept up with inflation. Home prices are still falling.
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Public release date: 5-Dec-2011
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