The long-standing connection between depression and heart problems might be traceable to the fact that depressed people are less physically active than others, a new study of heart patients shows. A greater tendency in depressed people to smoke and to fail to take medications regularly may also play a role, researchers report in the Nov. 26 Journal of the American Medical Association.http://Louis1J1Sheehan.us
Previous studies have suggested that depression seems to increase the risk of heart problems in people with no history of them, and that depression often coincides with worsening health in people who have an existing heart condition. Yet the medical reason for this association is unknown, and it’s not even clear whether depression leads to heart problems or vice versa.
Scientists have investigated possible side effects from antidepressant drugs, chemical imbalances in the brain, stress, diet, chronic inflammation, smoking and a lack of exercise as reasons for the link between depression and heart problems.
To sort out these possibilities, researchers began a study in 2000, identifying people visiting clinics in the San Francisco Bay area who had chronic but stable coronary heart disease. Of the 1,017 patients enrolled, tests showed that one-fifth, average age 63, had symptoms of depression at the start of the study. The other four-fifths were age 68 on average and weren’t depressed. Researchers monitored the health of all the volunteers using lab tests, checkups, interviews, death records. Follow-up averaged five years, and researchers logged the final data entries in early 2008.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
During the study, the scientists periodically asked volunteers whether they had had any episodes of “heart trouble” or stroke that had necessitated a visit to a hospital. In cases where a volunteer had died or couldn’t respond, relatives or other caregivers provided information.
By the end of the study, 341 incidents were reported. These included cases of heart failure, heart attacks, strokes or deaths. After accounting for past medical histories and other differences between the depressed and nondepressed groups, the researchers calculated that people with depression had a 31 percent increased risk of having at least one such incident during the study, says study coauthor Mary Whooley, an internist at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco.
The depressed people were also slightly more likely to have high levels of inflammatory proteins in the blood, which may have explained some of these participants’ added coronary risk. http://Louis1J1Sheehan.us Inflammatory cells and proteins contribute to plaque formation and vessel damage.
But the clearest differences between groups were behavioral, Whooley says. When researchers accounted for differences between the groups in smoking habits, exercise habits and discipline in taking medications, the heart risk apparently imparted by depression evaporated.
Meanwhile, the depressed people were nearly twice as likely to smoke and were more likely than the nondepressed group to fail to take medications on schedule. The depressed group also exercised less.
“This particular finding is important,” says cardiovascular epidemiologist Viola Vaccarino of Emory University in Atlanta. “In this particular group, behavioral risk factors, especially low physical activity, seem to explain away the depression risk.”
But she cautions that this explanation might not hold for other groups. For example, it’s unclear whether these findings apply to people who are outwardly healthy with no signs or history of heart trouble, but may nonetheless be at risk of heart disease.
On the other end of the spectrum, these findings also might not apply to people with acute coronary ailments, such as recurring chest pain. “It doesn’t really make any sense to ask them to up their physical activity,” Vaccarino says.
Meanwhile, Whooley and her coauthors note that it’s also difficult to determine whether a relative lack of physical inactivity is the cause or the result of depression, since the effect probably goes both ways.
Whooley and Vaccarino agree that it can be very difficult to change the behavior of depressed patients, who often aren’t very motivated, even while on medication. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire “They’ll [exercise] for a few months, then stop,” Whooley says.
She hopes these new findings make doctors more aware of the risks that depressed patients with heart disease run in maintaining a sedentary lifestyle and other detrimental behaviors.
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* My observation is that when man have no true motive, no aim in his lfe he more drepress, and victim of many desease.Today in techological era more and more people lossing motive in life so we are experiences more drepression.
Ramesh Raghuvanshi Ramesh Raghuvanshi
Dec. 1, 2008 at 12:58am http://Louis1J1Sheehan.us
* Depression isn't just linked to lack of exercise, although that is a major factor. Depression makes people refrain from social contact. It makes them eat too much or too little. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire It makes them quit taking medicines they know they need to take, or take too much, or take them at the wrong times. Depression robs people of their motivation, all right, but it also robs them of their judgment, of their reason to do anything that anybody says is good for them. "Why should I take my medicine?" the depressed person wonders. "It won't do any good. Why should I keep doing these exercises? It's a lot of work and it isn't helping. I still don't feel good. My doctor doesn't care if I live or die. My family doesn't care if I live or die. I'm hurting, I'm tired, so very, very tired. You know, I don't care if I live or die either. I'm just going to give up." And then they do. You can't make a depressed person care again by writing prescriptions, either. It doesn't what's written on that little piece of paper or who writes it. That isn't the answer. They need TLC and that doesn't come in paper and ink or in a little bottle at the pharmacy.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
outlook 1.out.9987 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire Women with rapidly lethal ovarian cancer are more likely to harbor tumors lacking a normal complement of two enzymes that facilitate the silencing of genes, a new study shows. Meanwhile, patients who survive significantly longer tend to have ample supplies of both compounds, scientists report in the Dec. 18 New England Journal of Medicine.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Data on patients with other cancers also linked better survival to adequate levels of one of these enzymes, the researchers find
If confirmed, the new finding might enable doctors to make more precise prognoses for patients with ovarian cancer and possibly other malignancies by testing for these enzymes in tumor tissue. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire The work may also contribute to a further understanding of RNA interference, in which microRNAs or another type of genetic fragment called small interfering RNAs stop biosynthesis of proteins in a cell.
Dicer and Drosha, the enzymes measured in the new study, facilitate the RNA interference process. Human cells make thousands of kinds of RNA fragments, which scientists believe serve as safeguards that keep abnormal proteins — or the wrong amount of them — from being manufactured from their gene blueprints.
Dicer and Drosha also appear in normal cells, where the enzymes perform their work unnoticed much of the time. “We are trying to understand why this machinery is altered in cancer cells,” says Anil Sood, a gynecologic oncologist at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Earlier work suggested that in cancerous cells a lack of Dicer might contribute to the malignant nature of the cells.
Sood and his colleagues analyzed Dicer and Drosha concentrations in ovarian tumor tissue from 111 patients, dividing the samples into those that contained high or low levels of the enzymes. The team found that 39 percent of women had the lower amounts of both enzymes.
On average, women with higher levels of both enzymes survived more than11 years from the time of their diagnosis, whereas those with lower amounts of Dicer and Drosha lived 2.7 years on average, the team reports.
When the scientists accounted for differences between the groups that included age, stage of the cancer and initial response to chemotherapy, women with ample Dicer and Drosha still showed a median survival that was four times longer than those with a shortage of the enzymes.
The researchers then analyzed information obtained from other sets of patients with lung, breast and ovarian cancer. The team found that shortages of both enzymes led to bleaker survival prospects in the ovarian cancer group. http://Louis1J1Sheehan.us But only low Dicer levels worsened survival in people with the other two cancers.
Apparently, low amounts of these enzymes allow some genes to remain switched on and encode proteins when they would be better off shut down, Sood says.
The study “provides evidence for a simple mechanism, based on the biologic characteristics of microRNAs, for formulating a prognosis and potentially guiding therapy in ovarian cancer,” say Frank Slack and Joanne Weidhaas of Yale University, writing in the same issue of NEJM.
The researchers are still missing an explanation for the shortage of Dicer and Drosha in some of these cancer patients in the first place. “I wish we had the exact answer,” says Sood. He and his team found mutations in genes encoding the enzymes, but these defects didn’t seem related to Dicer or Drosha amounts, he says.http://Louis1J1Sheehan.us
The long-term hope is to harness these RNA fragments as drugs to fight cancer, but that research is still at a theoretical stage, he says.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Data on patients with other cancers also linked better survival to adequate levels of one of these enzymes, the researchers find
If confirmed, the new finding might enable doctors to make more precise prognoses for patients with ovarian cancer and possibly other malignancies by testing for these enzymes in tumor tissue. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire The work may also contribute to a further understanding of RNA interference, in which microRNAs or another type of genetic fragment called small interfering RNAs stop biosynthesis of proteins in a cell.
Dicer and Drosha, the enzymes measured in the new study, facilitate the RNA interference process. Human cells make thousands of kinds of RNA fragments, which scientists believe serve as safeguards that keep abnormal proteins — or the wrong amount of them — from being manufactured from their gene blueprints.
Dicer and Drosha also appear in normal cells, where the enzymes perform their work unnoticed much of the time. “We are trying to understand why this machinery is altered in cancer cells,” says Anil Sood, a gynecologic oncologist at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Earlier work suggested that in cancerous cells a lack of Dicer might contribute to the malignant nature of the cells.
Sood and his colleagues analyzed Dicer and Drosha concentrations in ovarian tumor tissue from 111 patients, dividing the samples into those that contained high or low levels of the enzymes. The team found that 39 percent of women had the lower amounts of both enzymes.
On average, women with higher levels of both enzymes survived more than11 years from the time of their diagnosis, whereas those with lower amounts of Dicer and Drosha lived 2.7 years on average, the team reports.
When the scientists accounted for differences between the groups that included age, stage of the cancer and initial response to chemotherapy, women with ample Dicer and Drosha still showed a median survival that was four times longer than those with a shortage of the enzymes.
The researchers then analyzed information obtained from other sets of patients with lung, breast and ovarian cancer. The team found that shortages of both enzymes led to bleaker survival prospects in the ovarian cancer group. http://Louis1J1Sheehan.us But only low Dicer levels worsened survival in people with the other two cancers.
Apparently, low amounts of these enzymes allow some genes to remain switched on and encode proteins when they would be better off shut down, Sood says.
The study “provides evidence for a simple mechanism, based on the biologic characteristics of microRNAs, for formulating a prognosis and potentially guiding therapy in ovarian cancer,” say Frank Slack and Joanne Weidhaas of Yale University, writing in the same issue of NEJM.
The researchers are still missing an explanation for the shortage of Dicer and Drosha in some of these cancer patients in the first place. “I wish we had the exact answer,” says Sood. He and his team found mutations in genes encoding the enzymes, but these defects didn’t seem related to Dicer or Drosha amounts, he says.http://Louis1J1Sheehan.us
The long-term hope is to harness these RNA fragments as drugs to fight cancer, but that research is still at a theoretical stage, he says.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Friday, April 10, 2009
budget 1.bud.0003 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
In his not-exactly-State-of-the-Union address to Congress Tuesday night, the President Obama promised that his administration would boost support for science. This morning, we got an inkling of what he was referring to. The official “outline” of the first Obama budget was released at 11 a.m. And this broad-brush blueprint asks Congress to fatten the National Science Foundation, for example, with an extra $7 billion — a hefty 16 percent increase over last year’s funding.
The new budget document argues that “investments in science and technology foster economic growth, create millions of high-tech, high-wage jobs that allow American workers to lead the global economy” and more. For that reason, the budget document says, the president’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2010 is aimed at beginning to move toward a doubling of federal funding for basic research over the next 10 years. The actual increase in the coming year would be $950 million, it says.
The Energy Department would see lots of boosts. Most of the dollar figures mentioned in today’s budget document reflect money already targeted to be spent from the stimulus. This includes $3.4 billion for low-carbon coal technologies, including the carbon sequestration. But in addition to the $1.6 billion in the recently passed economic stimulus package for basic energy research at DOE, the new budget would provide “substantially increased support for the [DOE] Office of Science.” What does that mean? We’ll have to wait a month or so for the actual line-item budget blueprint to see. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire But we already know that Energy Secretary Steven Chu has been a big booster for this, something he views as his agency’s crown jewel.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Words you wouldn’t have seen in George W. Bush’s budget documents: statements like the president’s intention to make “climate change research and education a priority.” Yep, that’s what it says in today’s document. Toward that end, there’s not only money in the NSF budget for climate science, but also the call for spending $1.3 billion for development and lofting of “vital weather satellites and climate sensors.” (I guess some of that will have to go toward replacing the carbon-monitoring satellite that crashed shortly after takeoff a couple days ago.) http://Louis1J1Sheehan.us
There is a curious and fairly long section of text under the Environmental Protection Agency heading that describes plans to begin “a comprehensive approach to transform our energy supply and slow global warming.” Global warming has never been a big EPA issue. Most efforts to limit our carbon footprint are managed through programs at Commerce and Energy. http://Louis1J1Sheehan.us But in today’s outline, the administration describes its hope to jump-start an ambitious cap-and-trade program for greenhouse-gas emissions. This program would look to cut greenhouse emissions 14 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and approximately 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050. Talks of cap-and-trade proposals have been floating around for years. It looks like this president is committed to finally making something happen.
In his Tuesday night address, the president hinted at big boosts for biomedical research. Today’s outline calls for investing more than $6 billion in research at the National Institutes of Health “as part of the administration’s multi-year commitment to double cancer research funding.” Today’s budget outline explains that this influx of funds would “build upon the unprecedented $10 billion” for NIH research in the economic stimulus.
The president’s new budget also advocates expanding research that compares the effectiveness of competing medical treatments — something you can read more about in the upcoming March 14 print Science News, set to be available online Friday.
The EPA would get a boost in funding, but largely for infrastructure improvements and things like a new Great Lakes restoration program.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (once called the National Bureau of Standards) is a small but important Commerce Department agency charged with making sure new “yardsticks” exist for helping develop new technologies — ones that will keep the nation competitive with other economic powerhouses. In recent years, NIST has been marginalized, with large sections of it targeted for elimination (but usually rescued by Congress, sometimes at the 11th hour). In a turnabout, the Obama administration acknowledges that NIST’s health is important to the nation’s technology infrastructure — infrastructure being a priority in the stimulus. Under the president’s budget plan, NIST would get money to keep important programs alive and would be designated the headquarters for administering $4.7 billion in stimulus money “to expand broadband deployment, adoption, and data collection.”
Something you don’t see in today’s budget outline is any mention of beefing up research programs at the Department of Agriculture. USDA’s research service has been hurting in recent years. And a failure to boast about turning that around suggests that the president won’t be trying to turn that around — at least not in the coming year.
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* How can a total of several billions (7 for NSF, 6 for NIH) come to only "$950 million" in all?
Merry Maisel
Merry Maisel Merry Maisel Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Mar. 3, 2009 at 7:27pm
* Boosting government spending in the name of science is not the same thing as boosting science. Some money that the private and voluntary sectors would otherwise spend on research will instead be spent on efforts to steer the grants, or consumed by taxes, with no guarantee that government-sponsored activities produce more science.
Anton Sherwood Anton Sherwood
Feb. 27, 2009 at 5:02pm
* I think Obama has a good sense of what to spend money on and a sincere desire for the greater good. I hope that greed and lack of integrity in our country don't ruin things. We should have the guillotines ready just in case.
Randell Grenier Randell Grenier
Feb. 27, 2009 at 3:21pm
* That's not good. USDA is one of the highest ROI programs in science.
The new budget document argues that “investments in science and technology foster economic growth, create millions of high-tech, high-wage jobs that allow American workers to lead the global economy” and more. For that reason, the budget document says, the president’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2010 is aimed at beginning to move toward a doubling of federal funding for basic research over the next 10 years. The actual increase in the coming year would be $950 million, it says.
The Energy Department would see lots of boosts. Most of the dollar figures mentioned in today’s budget document reflect money already targeted to be spent from the stimulus. This includes $3.4 billion for low-carbon coal technologies, including the carbon sequestration. But in addition to the $1.6 billion in the recently passed economic stimulus package for basic energy research at DOE, the new budget would provide “substantially increased support for the [DOE] Office of Science.” What does that mean? We’ll have to wait a month or so for the actual line-item budget blueprint to see. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire But we already know that Energy Secretary Steven Chu has been a big booster for this, something he views as his agency’s crown jewel.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Words you wouldn’t have seen in George W. Bush’s budget documents: statements like the president’s intention to make “climate change research and education a priority.” Yep, that’s what it says in today’s document. Toward that end, there’s not only money in the NSF budget for climate science, but also the call for spending $1.3 billion for development and lofting of “vital weather satellites and climate sensors.” (I guess some of that will have to go toward replacing the carbon-monitoring satellite that crashed shortly after takeoff a couple days ago.) http://Louis1J1Sheehan.us
There is a curious and fairly long section of text under the Environmental Protection Agency heading that describes plans to begin “a comprehensive approach to transform our energy supply and slow global warming.” Global warming has never been a big EPA issue. Most efforts to limit our carbon footprint are managed through programs at Commerce and Energy. http://Louis1J1Sheehan.us But in today’s outline, the administration describes its hope to jump-start an ambitious cap-and-trade program for greenhouse-gas emissions. This program would look to cut greenhouse emissions 14 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and approximately 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050. Talks of cap-and-trade proposals have been floating around for years. It looks like this president is committed to finally making something happen.
In his Tuesday night address, the president hinted at big boosts for biomedical research. Today’s outline calls for investing more than $6 billion in research at the National Institutes of Health “as part of the administration’s multi-year commitment to double cancer research funding.” Today’s budget outline explains that this influx of funds would “build upon the unprecedented $10 billion” for NIH research in the economic stimulus.
The president’s new budget also advocates expanding research that compares the effectiveness of competing medical treatments — something you can read more about in the upcoming March 14 print Science News, set to be available online Friday.
The EPA would get a boost in funding, but largely for infrastructure improvements and things like a new Great Lakes restoration program.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (once called the National Bureau of Standards) is a small but important Commerce Department agency charged with making sure new “yardsticks” exist for helping develop new technologies — ones that will keep the nation competitive with other economic powerhouses. In recent years, NIST has been marginalized, with large sections of it targeted for elimination (but usually rescued by Congress, sometimes at the 11th hour). In a turnabout, the Obama administration acknowledges that NIST’s health is important to the nation’s technology infrastructure — infrastructure being a priority in the stimulus. Under the president’s budget plan, NIST would get money to keep important programs alive and would be designated the headquarters for administering $4.7 billion in stimulus money “to expand broadband deployment, adoption, and data collection.”
Something you don’t see in today’s budget outline is any mention of beefing up research programs at the Department of Agriculture. USDA’s research service has been hurting in recent years. And a failure to boast about turning that around suggests that the president won’t be trying to turn that around — at least not in the coming year.
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Found in: Biomedicine, Body & Brain, Climate Change, Earth Science, Environment, Matter & Energy, Science & Society and Technology
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Comments 4
* How can a total of several billions (7 for NSF, 6 for NIH) come to only "$950 million" in all?
Merry Maisel
Merry Maisel Merry Maisel Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Mar. 3, 2009 at 7:27pm
* Boosting government spending in the name of science is not the same thing as boosting science. Some money that the private and voluntary sectors would otherwise spend on research will instead be spent on efforts to steer the grants, or consumed by taxes, with no guarantee that government-sponsored activities produce more science.
Anton Sherwood Anton Sherwood
Feb. 27, 2009 at 5:02pm
* I think Obama has a good sense of what to spend money on and a sincere desire for the greater good. I hope that greed and lack of integrity in our country don't ruin things. We should have the guillotines ready just in case.
Randell Grenier Randell Grenier
Feb. 27, 2009 at 3:21pm
* That's not good. USDA is one of the highest ROI programs in science.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
crime 3.cri.1 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . Math as a tool for tracking down criminals has never been as precise as the TV show Numb3rs depicts. But mathematicians are developing better ways to at least estimate where a person on a crime spree might live. http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de
Using information about the layout of a city, such as the location of similar crimes during the past few years, beefed up mathematical tools could improve estimates of where a criminal lives based on where he or she commits crimes, according to new research presented January 7 at the annual Joint Mathematics Meetings.
"I feel like I'm in a gold mine and I'm the only one who knows what gold looks like," says Mike O'Leary, an applied mathematician at Towson University in Maryland who performed the new research. "There are so many good mathematical problems in this field" of criminology. http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de
A well established principle of criminology is that perpetrators will tend to commit more crimes close to their homes simply because of convenience and the realities of transportation. So older techniques estimate where a criminal lives based on the locations of a string of unsolved crimes that are all attributed to that criminal.
But those techniques ignore the actual geography of a city, assuming instead that the likelihood of a criminal striking near his or her home drops off evenly in all directions regardless of geography.
"They don't have any way to incorporate yet data about geography," O'Leary says. "Mathematically they just don't have the tools for it."
To find the perpetrator of a type of crime, such as robbing a convenience store, O'Leary's methods would use historical records of incidences of similar crimes to generate a likelihood distribution for that crime for the whole city. This distribution inherently contains geographic information such as where the major roads are located and where easy targets are located. The analysis also folds in census data about neighborhood demographics, as well as a mathematical analysis of how far from home criminals of different ages typically strike. Younger criminals tend to commit crimes closer to home.
Other researchers have also developed software tools in recent years that attempt to incorporate geographic information. However, "Up until now the majority of the research has been done by social scientists such as myself," comments Ned Levine, a geographical researcher at Ned Levine & Associates in Houston who developed crime-analysis software called CrimeStat. O'Leary has "added some insights into the mathematics that previously we were struggling with,” he says. “He's really cleaning up the mathematics."
At their best, such analyses, including O’Leary’s, are prone to error and only give police a starting point — perhaps for checking whether people previously convicted of the same crime live in the area identified by the techniques. O'Leary is working on computer software that performs his analysis. The code for the software will be made freely available, and the complete software package will be free for police departments to use.
"It's a lot of fun," O'Leary says. "I can't wait until this goes and does something." Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Using information about the layout of a city, such as the location of similar crimes during the past few years, beefed up mathematical tools could improve estimates of where a criminal lives based on where he or she commits crimes, according to new research presented January 7 at the annual Joint Mathematics Meetings.
"I feel like I'm in a gold mine and I'm the only one who knows what gold looks like," says Mike O'Leary, an applied mathematician at Towson University in Maryland who performed the new research. "There are so many good mathematical problems in this field" of criminology. http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de
A well established principle of criminology is that perpetrators will tend to commit more crimes close to their homes simply because of convenience and the realities of transportation. So older techniques estimate where a criminal lives based on the locations of a string of unsolved crimes that are all attributed to that criminal.
But those techniques ignore the actual geography of a city, assuming instead that the likelihood of a criminal striking near his or her home drops off evenly in all directions regardless of geography.
"They don't have any way to incorporate yet data about geography," O'Leary says. "Mathematically they just don't have the tools for it."
To find the perpetrator of a type of crime, such as robbing a convenience store, O'Leary's methods would use historical records of incidences of similar crimes to generate a likelihood distribution for that crime for the whole city. This distribution inherently contains geographic information such as where the major roads are located and where easy targets are located. The analysis also folds in census data about neighborhood demographics, as well as a mathematical analysis of how far from home criminals of different ages typically strike. Younger criminals tend to commit crimes closer to home.
Other researchers have also developed software tools in recent years that attempt to incorporate geographic information. However, "Up until now the majority of the research has been done by social scientists such as myself," comments Ned Levine, a geographical researcher at Ned Levine & Associates in Houston who developed crime-analysis software called CrimeStat. O'Leary has "added some insights into the mathematics that previously we were struggling with,” he says. “He's really cleaning up the mathematics."
At their best, such analyses, including O’Leary’s, are prone to error and only give police a starting point — perhaps for checking whether people previously convicted of the same crime live in the area identified by the techniques. O'Leary is working on computer software that performs his analysis. The code for the software will be made freely available, and the complete software package will be free for police departments to use.
"It's a lot of fun," O'Leary says. "I can't wait until this goes and does something." Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Monday, January 5, 2009
jets 3.jet.004005 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
The two top toymakers in the United States posted disappointing third-quarter results yesterday and softened expectations for the crucial holiday season, citing a wobbly economy and cautious retailers. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire.
The No. 1 toy maker, Mattel Inc., said third-quarter earnings slid 5 percent from a year earlier, with overall sales down 2 percent. Sales of Barbie dolls in the United States fell 26 percent. Mattel said it was struggling to hang on to shelf space at retailers. http://louisjsheehanesquire.blogsavy.com
The other toy maker, Hasbro Inc., posted higher third-quarter earnings as it cut costs, but the results were weaker than expected, with revenue down 2 percent as sales of its once-hot Beyblade battling tops continued falling. http://louisjsheehanesquire.blogsavy.com
Hasbro shares slipped 6.5 percent to $17.26, while Mattel shares were down 2.6 percent at $17.50. Both toymakers said the retail environment remained challenging.
"We are currently dealing with broad consumer uncertainty related to higher gasoline prices and a lackluster employment picture, which translates into uninspiring consumer confidence levels," Robert A. Eckert, the chief executive of Mattel, said.
On a conference call, Mr. Eckert said most retailers were allocating shelf space based on past performance and would rather "chase demand" than buy goods early.
Sean McGowan, an analyst at Harris Nesbitt, said: "Both companies are facing the fact that some of their products are declining. I don't think anybody's not buying a particular toy because it costs more to drive to the toy store or Wal-Mart."
Roughly 50 percent of toy sales are in the fourth quarter, according to the NPD Group, a market information company. Adding to the dismal retail landscape, Toys "R" Us Inc., the No. 2 toy seller after Wal-Mart Stores Inc., is evaluating its business and analysts have estimated the company will close 100 to 200 stores in 2005.
Mattel said third-quarter earnings fell to $255.9 million, or 61 cents a share, from $270 million, or 61 cents, while sales fell 2 percent, to $1.67 billion. http://louisjsheehanesquire.blogsavy.com
Hasbro, based in Pawtucket, R.I., said third-quarter net income rose to $88.7 million from $85.8 million, while earnings fell to 45 cents a share from 48 cents.
Analysts, on average, estimated profit of 51 cents a share from Hasbro, according to Reuters Estimates.
Hasbro's revenue fell 2 percent, to $947.3 million. The chief executive, Alfred J. Verrecchia, said the company was confident that it could increase earnings as it cut costs and achieved its operating margin goal of 12 percent or better by 2005. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
The No. 1 toy maker, Mattel Inc., said third-quarter earnings slid 5 percent from a year earlier, with overall sales down 2 percent. Sales of Barbie dolls in the United States fell 26 percent. Mattel said it was struggling to hang on to shelf space at retailers. http://louisjsheehanesquire.blogsavy.com
The other toy maker, Hasbro Inc., posted higher third-quarter earnings as it cut costs, but the results were weaker than expected, with revenue down 2 percent as sales of its once-hot Beyblade battling tops continued falling. http://louisjsheehanesquire.blogsavy.com
Hasbro shares slipped 6.5 percent to $17.26, while Mattel shares were down 2.6 percent at $17.50. Both toymakers said the retail environment remained challenging.
"We are currently dealing with broad consumer uncertainty related to higher gasoline prices and a lackluster employment picture, which translates into uninspiring consumer confidence levels," Robert A. Eckert, the chief executive of Mattel, said.
On a conference call, Mr. Eckert said most retailers were allocating shelf space based on past performance and would rather "chase demand" than buy goods early.
Sean McGowan, an analyst at Harris Nesbitt, said: "Both companies are facing the fact that some of their products are declining. I don't think anybody's not buying a particular toy because it costs more to drive to the toy store or Wal-Mart."
Roughly 50 percent of toy sales are in the fourth quarter, according to the NPD Group, a market information company. Adding to the dismal retail landscape, Toys "R" Us Inc., the No. 2 toy seller after Wal-Mart Stores Inc., is evaluating its business and analysts have estimated the company will close 100 to 200 stores in 2005.
Mattel said third-quarter earnings fell to $255.9 million, or 61 cents a share, from $270 million, or 61 cents, while sales fell 2 percent, to $1.67 billion. http://louisjsheehanesquire.blogsavy.com
Hasbro, based in Pawtucket, R.I., said third-quarter net income rose to $88.7 million from $85.8 million, while earnings fell to 45 cents a share from 48 cents.
Analysts, on average, estimated profit of 51 cents a share from Hasbro, according to Reuters Estimates.
Hasbro's revenue fell 2 percent, to $947.3 million. The chief executive, Alfred J. Verrecchia, said the company was confident that it could increase earnings as it cut costs and achieved its operating margin goal of 12 percent or better by 2005. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Thursday, December 25, 2008
bright 4.bri.000203 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . Progressively larger brains evolved in primates of all stripes, not just humans. We can thank a common capacity for solving a broad range of problems, from coordinating social alliances to inventing tools, according to a new study.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . http://ljsheehan.livejournal.com
This conclusion challenges a popular theory that big, smart brains arose primarily because they afforded advantages when it came to negotiating complex social situations during human evolution.http://ljsheehan.livejournal.com
"The ability to learn from others, invent new behaviors, and use tools may have [also] played pivotal roles in primate-brain evolution," say Simon M. Reader of McGill University in Montreal and Kevin N. Laland of the University of Cambridge in England. In an upcoming report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the two zoologists chronicle links between an array of intelligent behaviors and enhanced brain size in primates.http://ljsheehan.livejournal.com
Reader and Laland examined approximately 1,000 scientific studies of behavior in 116 of the world's 203 known primate species. They identified 553 instances of animals discovering new solutions to survival-related problems, 445 observations of individuals learning skills and acquiring information from others, and 607 episodes of tool use.
The researchers then consulted previously obtained data on brain size relative to body size in different primates. In particular, they focused on the volume of the structures that make up what scientists call the executive brain, a frontal region thought to be crucial for complex thinking.
Species that have the proportionately largest executive brains are the ones that most often innovate, learn from others, and use tools, Reader and Laland contend. These three facets of intelligence vary together as primate brains enlarge, they say. There's no evidence in any species of an evolutionary trade-off between these traits, such as an increase in innovation accompanying a decline in social learning.
A related report by neuroscientist Barbara L. Finlay of Cornell University and her colleagues concluded that different brain regions in mammals enlarged all together during mammalian evolution, not in piecemeal fashion related to specific functions. Whole-brain evolution was driven by changes in the timing of early brain development in individuals, says Finlay. In all species, late-generated structures�including the executive brain�have grown the largest, Finlay's team asserted in the April 2001 Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
Reader and Laland provide "important new evidence" that wide-ranging thinking skills shared by many primate species encouraged the evolution of large brains, comment psychologist Robert M. Seyfarth and biologist Dorothy L. Cheney, both of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, in a comment published with the new report.
They suggest that intellectual accomplishments unique to people, such as language use, may have playe
This conclusion challenges a popular theory that big, smart brains arose primarily because they afforded advantages when it came to negotiating complex social situations during human evolution.http://ljsheehan.livejournal.com
"The ability to learn from others, invent new behaviors, and use tools may have [also] played pivotal roles in primate-brain evolution," say Simon M. Reader of McGill University in Montreal and Kevin N. Laland of the University of Cambridge in England. In an upcoming report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the two zoologists chronicle links between an array of intelligent behaviors and enhanced brain size in primates.http://ljsheehan.livejournal.com
Reader and Laland examined approximately 1,000 scientific studies of behavior in 116 of the world's 203 known primate species. They identified 553 instances of animals discovering new solutions to survival-related problems, 445 observations of individuals learning skills and acquiring information from others, and 607 episodes of tool use.
The researchers then consulted previously obtained data on brain size relative to body size in different primates. In particular, they focused on the volume of the structures that make up what scientists call the executive brain, a frontal region thought to be crucial for complex thinking.
Species that have the proportionately largest executive brains are the ones that most often innovate, learn from others, and use tools, Reader and Laland contend. These three facets of intelligence vary together as primate brains enlarge, they say. There's no evidence in any species of an evolutionary trade-off between these traits, such as an increase in innovation accompanying a decline in social learning.
A related report by neuroscientist Barbara L. Finlay of Cornell University and her colleagues concluded that different brain regions in mammals enlarged all together during mammalian evolution, not in piecemeal fashion related to specific functions. Whole-brain evolution was driven by changes in the timing of early brain development in individuals, says Finlay. In all species, late-generated structures�including the executive brain�have grown the largest, Finlay's team asserted in the April 2001 Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
Reader and Laland provide "important new evidence" that wide-ranging thinking skills shared by many primate species encouraged the evolution of large brains, comment psychologist Robert M. Seyfarth and biologist Dorothy L. Cheney, both of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, in a comment published with the new report.
They suggest that intellectual accomplishments unique to people, such as language use, may have playe
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
face 6.fac.000200 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . Something strange recently happened to me in Tennessee. I wasn’t actually in Tennessee when it happened. The strangeness emanated from there–actually, from one spot in Tennessee–and eventually reached me here up in New England.
It started with a column I wrote in the October issue of Discover, about the evolution of the human face. Sometimes people write letters to the magazine about my pieces. My editors dropped a note to let me know that all at once they got 40 60 letters about my column. All from the outskirts of Memphis.http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com All pretty much identical in style and substance. Some had been written on a computer, but some were written by hand–young hands, judging from their appearance.
Here’s a sample…
“I enjoyed reading your article and was interested in the research done on how the face and its muscles work to make expressions. I however believe that the brain and facial expressions are not a byproduct of years of evolution but instead a fingerprint of intelligent design. You claim in your article, that the muscles of the face are the result of the transition of life from land to water, but where is the fossil record for the jump? None have been found. There is no proof of the evolution of water to land creatures.”
And a second…
“I would like to show you what I think may have happened. First off, there is the law of entropy. This law states that everything is in a state of going deeper into chaos. The brain could not have formed going from a blob of amino acid to a highly complex organ that is capable of generating the power that is does. That is going into a state of unity and order. According to natural laws, this is impossible. Only a creator is capable of doing this.”
And a third
“If the face is an irreducibly complex machine, which it is, it cannot evolve because the original face would be missing parts, which would make the whole machine non-fuctioning. This rules out the possibility of evolution in human faces.”
I don’t know if all these letters came from a single class or club. http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com In any case, the folks at Discover asked me if I’d write something in response. So–to my correspondents from Tennessee:
Thank you all for your letters. I appreciate that you took the time to read my article. While I can’t write to all forty sixty of you individually, I want to respond to the overall gist of your letters.
A number of you stated that there is no evidence that the human face–or even humans, period–evolved. For instance, one writer claimed that there is no fossil record of the transition of life from water to land.
new-tetra600.jpg
Actually, there is a fossil record, and it’s getting more and more detailed every year. The best source of information at the moment is a new review written by three experts on the subject. They explain how paleontologists have found a number of fossils of fish with some–but not all–of the features found in land vertebrates. They’ve also found a lot of early land vertebrates that still had not yet evolved some of the anatomy found on land vertebrates today. The illustration above, from the review, shows just how many fossils of these early land vertebrates and their relatives have been discovered in rocks between 400 and 300 million years ago.
This is what you’d expect if life evolved.
When scientists compare the traits on all those species, they can judge which species are most closely related to each other, and use that information to draw an evolutionary tree. The land vertebrates alive today, including mammals, reptiles, and amphibians are represented by the brown and green arrows. The closest living fish relatives, according to this research, are lungfish and coelacanths (Dipnoi and Actinistia on the tree). As the tree shows, there are 19 different lineages paleontologists have discovered the branched off between our common ancestor with lungfish 410 million years ago, and the common ancestor of all land vertebrates alive today, which lived some 350 million years ago. Those extinct lineages mark the evolution, step by step, of our legs, arms, wrists, ankles, fingers, and toes. Do they mark every generation through this transition? Of course not–but no paleontologist would ever dream of finding fossils of every individual that ever lived. Instead, they judge how well each new fossil fits into the overall picture.
Scientists can also use other lines of evidence to test their hypothesis for how vertebrates came on land. http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com The tree I’ve reproduced here makes it clear that our closest living aquatic relatives are lungfish and coelacanths–two very rare lineages that make up a half dozen species or so all told. Recently scientists compared a lot of DNA from from several species of fish–including lungfish–and land vertebrates. They got the same result looking at genes that paleontologists get looking at bones: lungfish are our closest relatives.
The support that comes from different studies gives scientists confidence that they can look at fish to track the evolution of our faces. http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com On fossils, they can look at scoops and troughs in bones that mark the places where muscles attached. And they can study muscles in the heads of living fish. A lamprey doesn’t have a dimpled smile, let alone a jaw. But it does have some of the same muscles as we have in our faces. These muscles develop from the same place in the heads of lamprey embryo and a human embryo. More closely related animals share more face muscles with us. Our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, have just about every muscle in our own face, and they produce the same expressions when they are stimulated. (See the illustration at the top of the post, from this review of face evolution from fish to humans.)
This is, again, the sort of pattern you’d expect from evolution. So there is, in fact, a lot of evidence documenting the evolution of the face from our fish ancestors–and more coming to light each year.
But many of you also make a different sort of claim: that evolution could not have possibly produced the face.
Let me explain why this is not the case.
One person wrote in that the laws of entropy, which drives the universe to chaos. “The brain could not have formed going from a blob of amino acid to a highly complex organ.”
But think about what happens every time a brain develops from nothing in a human embryo. How can this order emerge, if entropy rules? Because the laws of entropy do not prevent order from arising in a particular place. An embryo takes in energy to form its complex body, and it pumps out heat, increasing the entropy in the environment. Entropy is likewise not a problem for evolution, if there is enough energy to increase local order and a place to push the disorder. And our planet, getting energy from the sun and releasing heat back into space, provides just those conditions.
Some of you claimed that the face could not evolve because it is an “irreducibly complex” system. If you take one part away from it, it does not work. But that’s not actually the case. Think about it–chimpanzees and other primates have most of the facial muscles that we do–but not all of them. In other words, they are missing some parts of the human face. But their faces are not “non-functioning” as one letter-writer claimed. They make plenty of faces–although they cannot make as many faces as we can.
You don’t even have to leave our own species to see that our faces are not “irreducibly complex.” Many people are lacking one or more muscles in the face, but their faces work normally. http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com Botox paralyzes some muscles in the face–knocking out several parts of this supposedly irreducibly complex face. It may be hard for people with Botox to frown, but they can still smile and produce other facial expressions. That’s hardly non-functional.
The links in my response take you to several scientific papers. Actually, there are many, many more on the topics I’ve discussed. I’d encourage you to take the plunge and learn more about the face and its evolution. I’d hope you’d find it as fascinating as I do.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
It started with a column I wrote in the October issue of Discover, about the evolution of the human face. Sometimes people write letters to the magazine about my pieces. My editors dropped a note to let me know that all at once they got 40 60 letters about my column. All from the outskirts of Memphis.http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com All pretty much identical in style and substance. Some had been written on a computer, but some were written by hand–young hands, judging from their appearance.
Here’s a sample…
“I enjoyed reading your article and was interested in the research done on how the face and its muscles work to make expressions. I however believe that the brain and facial expressions are not a byproduct of years of evolution but instead a fingerprint of intelligent design. You claim in your article, that the muscles of the face are the result of the transition of life from land to water, but where is the fossil record for the jump? None have been found. There is no proof of the evolution of water to land creatures.”
And a second…
“I would like to show you what I think may have happened. First off, there is the law of entropy. This law states that everything is in a state of going deeper into chaos. The brain could not have formed going from a blob of amino acid to a highly complex organ that is capable of generating the power that is does. That is going into a state of unity and order. According to natural laws, this is impossible. Only a creator is capable of doing this.”
And a third
“If the face is an irreducibly complex machine, which it is, it cannot evolve because the original face would be missing parts, which would make the whole machine non-fuctioning. This rules out the possibility of evolution in human faces.”
I don’t know if all these letters came from a single class or club. http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com In any case, the folks at Discover asked me if I’d write something in response. So–to my correspondents from Tennessee:
Thank you all for your letters. I appreciate that you took the time to read my article. While I can’t write to all forty sixty of you individually, I want to respond to the overall gist of your letters.
A number of you stated that there is no evidence that the human face–or even humans, period–evolved. For instance, one writer claimed that there is no fossil record of the transition of life from water to land.
new-tetra600.jpg
Actually, there is a fossil record, and it’s getting more and more detailed every year. The best source of information at the moment is a new review written by three experts on the subject. They explain how paleontologists have found a number of fossils of fish with some–but not all–of the features found in land vertebrates. They’ve also found a lot of early land vertebrates that still had not yet evolved some of the anatomy found on land vertebrates today. The illustration above, from the review, shows just how many fossils of these early land vertebrates and their relatives have been discovered in rocks between 400 and 300 million years ago.
This is what you’d expect if life evolved.
When scientists compare the traits on all those species, they can judge which species are most closely related to each other, and use that information to draw an evolutionary tree. The land vertebrates alive today, including mammals, reptiles, and amphibians are represented by the brown and green arrows. The closest living fish relatives, according to this research, are lungfish and coelacanths (Dipnoi and Actinistia on the tree). As the tree shows, there are 19 different lineages paleontologists have discovered the branched off between our common ancestor with lungfish 410 million years ago, and the common ancestor of all land vertebrates alive today, which lived some 350 million years ago. Those extinct lineages mark the evolution, step by step, of our legs, arms, wrists, ankles, fingers, and toes. Do they mark every generation through this transition? Of course not–but no paleontologist would ever dream of finding fossils of every individual that ever lived. Instead, they judge how well each new fossil fits into the overall picture.
Scientists can also use other lines of evidence to test their hypothesis for how vertebrates came on land. http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com The tree I’ve reproduced here makes it clear that our closest living aquatic relatives are lungfish and coelacanths–two very rare lineages that make up a half dozen species or so all told. Recently scientists compared a lot of DNA from from several species of fish–including lungfish–and land vertebrates. They got the same result looking at genes that paleontologists get looking at bones: lungfish are our closest relatives.
The support that comes from different studies gives scientists confidence that they can look at fish to track the evolution of our faces. http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com On fossils, they can look at scoops and troughs in bones that mark the places where muscles attached. And they can study muscles in the heads of living fish. A lamprey doesn’t have a dimpled smile, let alone a jaw. But it does have some of the same muscles as we have in our faces. These muscles develop from the same place in the heads of lamprey embryo and a human embryo. More closely related animals share more face muscles with us. Our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, have just about every muscle in our own face, and they produce the same expressions when they are stimulated. (See the illustration at the top of the post, from this review of face evolution from fish to humans.)
This is, again, the sort of pattern you’d expect from evolution. So there is, in fact, a lot of evidence documenting the evolution of the face from our fish ancestors–and more coming to light each year.
But many of you also make a different sort of claim: that evolution could not have possibly produced the face.
Let me explain why this is not the case.
One person wrote in that the laws of entropy, which drives the universe to chaos. “The brain could not have formed going from a blob of amino acid to a highly complex organ.”
But think about what happens every time a brain develops from nothing in a human embryo. How can this order emerge, if entropy rules? Because the laws of entropy do not prevent order from arising in a particular place. An embryo takes in energy to form its complex body, and it pumps out heat, increasing the entropy in the environment. Entropy is likewise not a problem for evolution, if there is enough energy to increase local order and a place to push the disorder. And our planet, getting energy from the sun and releasing heat back into space, provides just those conditions.
Some of you claimed that the face could not evolve because it is an “irreducibly complex” system. If you take one part away from it, it does not work. But that’s not actually the case. Think about it–chimpanzees and other primates have most of the facial muscles that we do–but not all of them. In other words, they are missing some parts of the human face. But their faces are not “non-functioning” as one letter-writer claimed. They make plenty of faces–although they cannot make as many faces as we can.
You don’t even have to leave our own species to see that our faces are not “irreducibly complex.” Many people are lacking one or more muscles in the face, but their faces work normally. http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com Botox paralyzes some muscles in the face–knocking out several parts of this supposedly irreducibly complex face. It may be hard for people with Botox to frown, but they can still smile and produce other facial expressions. That’s hardly non-functional.
The links in my response take you to several scientific papers. Actually, there are many, many more on the topics I’ve discussed. I’d encourage you to take the plunge and learn more about the face and its evolution. I’d hope you’d find it as fascinating as I do.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
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