During a segment on MSNBC?s The Cycle on Wednesday, host Tour? and legal analyst Lisa Bloom engaged in a tense exchange. Tour? interrupted Bloom after she failed to attribute racial motives to the language George Zimmerman used when assessing the threat he thought Trayvon Martin posed before shooting him. Bloom accused Tour? of drawing inferences from Zimmerman?s statements and ascribing motives to him that cannot be gleaned just from the recorded phone calls alone.
Bloom was asked to react to testimony given by a friend of Trayvon Martin?s who said that the late Florida teen had referred to Zimmerman as a ?crazy ass cracker? moments before he was shot. Reporter Luke Russert noted that this is the only confirmed instance where a racial epithet was used before Martin was shot.
Bloom noted that Zimmerman used profane language when describing Martin to a 911 dispatcher and later with police. She did, however, note that the language Zimmerman used was not ?racially insensitive.?
?Whoa,? Tour? interrupted. ?There was a trifecta of stereotypes used against Trayvon Martin in the initial phone call, so let?s not go too far there.?
?What are you referring to?? Bloom asked.
Tour? said that Zimmerman saying ?they always get away? and believing that Martin was carrying a gun suggests that the accused assailant was buying into racial stereotypes. Tour? said that Zimmerman was ?criminalizing black men? in those comments and fueled the perception that this was a ?radicalized situation.?
?First of all, some of what you said is not what George Zimmerman said on that recorded phone call,? Bloom said. ?Some of that is inferences that we?re drawing.?
LONDON (Reuters) - Factory output in China, the world's second largest economy, weakened to a nine-month low in June, combining with a continued recession in the euro zone to threaten a global recovery led by the United States.
A day after the Federal Reserve suggested the U.S. economy was firmly on a recovery path - enough so to withdraw some monetary stimulus - data showed China's economy was stuttering.
Faltering demand pushed the flash China HSBC Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) down to 48.3 in June from 49.2, increasing pressure on the People's Bank of China to loosen the monetary reins.
Meanwhile, Markit's Flash Eurozone Composite PMI, which makes up around 85 percent of the final reading and is seen as a reliable economic growth indicator for the bloc, remained below the dividing line between growth and contraction.
It did, however, rise to 48.9 in June from May's 47.7, suggesting the decay has eased across the 17-nation bloc.
China's economy grew at its slowest pace for 13 years in 2012 and data so far this year has been weaker than forecast, bringing warnings the country could miss its 7.5 percent growth target, though possibly not by much.
It stands in contrast with U.S. data, which has been generally positive. Markit's flash U.S. Purchasing Managers' Index due later on Thursday expected to show a rise.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke sent financial markets reeling on Wednesday when he said the U.S. economy is expanding strongly enough for the central bank to begin slowing the pace of its bond-buying program later this year.
"There's a way to go - a slowdown in the Chinese economy doesn't help the outlook for the U.S. particularly, but American growth isn't entirely dependent on what happens in China," said Philip Shaw, chief economist at Investec.
"The euro zone flash PMIs are encouraging, they are consistent with the view that we will see a stabilization over the next few months."
The euro zone PMI was at its highest since March 2012, and beat forecasts in a Reuters poll of 23 economists for a more modest upturn to 48.1. But the index has been below the 50 mark dividing growth from contraction for all apart from one of the last 22 months.
A PMI covering services firms, which make up the bulk of the bloc's economy, jumped to 48.6 last month from 47.2, its highest since January but its 17th straight month below 50.
Still, that was above even the most optimistic of forecasts in a Reuters poll and smashed the median expectation for a rise to 47.5. The survey also showed firms were increasingly optimistic about the year ahead.
Markit, however, said the latest PMI data suggested the economy would contract 0.2 percent in the current quarter.
The European Central Bank has come under growing heat to take more action to help bring a quicker end to the bloc's longest recession, but economists polled by Reuters last month did not predict any easing of policy in coming months.
FRAGILE CHINA
Despite China's economy showing signs of faltering, adding to the pressure on the central bank to take steps to ease policy, the chances of a hard landing remain small.
"The chance of economic growth slipping below 7 percent is quite low, because existing measures are still effective in helping stabilize the economy," said Wang Jin, analyst at Guotai Junan Securities in Shanghai.
In a sign that there would be a wait before any sharp pick up both the Chinese and euro zone PMIs saw a continued fall in new orders. New orders in the bloc fell for the 23rd month, although at a shallower pace.
"It's suggesting that things are moving in the right direction but it's not going to happen fast. It's still a weak picture," Markit's chief economist Chris Williamson said.
(Additional reporting by Kevin Yao in Beijing Editing by Jeremy Gaunt.)
Contact: Jim Sliwa jsliwa@asmusa.org 202-942-9297 American Society for Microbiology
A team of researchers from Texas and Colorado has identified a variety of factors that influence the likelihood of E. coli contamination of spinach on farms prior to harvest. Their research is published in the July 2013 issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
"Microbial contamination of produce seems strongly influenced by the time since the last irrigation, the workers' personal hygiene and the field's use prior to planting of produce," says first author Sangshin Park of Texas A&M University, College Station. "These factors, together with the role of weather in produce contamination should be the targets of future research efforts to design cost-effective strategies for control of produce contamination."
E. coli contamination of spinach on farms in Colorado and Texas was 172 times more likely if the produce field was within 10 miles of a poultry farm, and 64 times more likely if irrigated by pond water, says Park.
As E. coli is commonly used as an indicator of fecal contamination with food-borne pathogens, the practice of hygieneavailability of portable toilets and hand-washing stations for workers in the fields and the absence of grazing or hay production on the fields prior to planting spinach, reduced the risk seven-fold.
Other potential risk factors tested in the study included numbers of workers, farm size, organic vs. conventional production, the use of chemical fertilizers, compost, and manure, says Park. The researchers assayed 955 spinach samples from 12 farms in the two states, finding that generic E. coli was present on 63 of them (6.6 percent).
Of particular note, the researchers tested their statistical model for spinach contamination to determine how accurately it was able to pinpoint the level of contamination. "The assessment of the predictive performance of a developed statistical model is largely omitted from food safety studies," says Park. Their methodology may serve as a useful template for future investigations of contamination on farms, he says.
"Because produce is commonly consumed raw, it would be best to prevent pre-harvest contamination by food-borne pathogens all together or at least to reduce it," says Park.
###
A copy of the article can be found online at http://bit.ly/asmtip0613b.
Applied and Environmental Microbiology is a publication of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM). The ASM is the largest single life science society, composed of over 39,000 scientists and health professionals. Its mission is to advance the microbiological sciences as a vehicle for understanding life processes and to apply and communicate this knowledge for the improvement of health and environmental and economic well-being worldwide.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: Jim Sliwa jsliwa@asmusa.org 202-942-9297 American Society for Microbiology
A team of researchers from Texas and Colorado has identified a variety of factors that influence the likelihood of E. coli contamination of spinach on farms prior to harvest. Their research is published in the July 2013 issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
"Microbial contamination of produce seems strongly influenced by the time since the last irrigation, the workers' personal hygiene and the field's use prior to planting of produce," says first author Sangshin Park of Texas A&M University, College Station. "These factors, together with the role of weather in produce contamination should be the targets of future research efforts to design cost-effective strategies for control of produce contamination."
E. coli contamination of spinach on farms in Colorado and Texas was 172 times more likely if the produce field was within 10 miles of a poultry farm, and 64 times more likely if irrigated by pond water, says Park.
As E. coli is commonly used as an indicator of fecal contamination with food-borne pathogens, the practice of hygieneavailability of portable toilets and hand-washing stations for workers in the fields and the absence of grazing or hay production on the fields prior to planting spinach, reduced the risk seven-fold.
Other potential risk factors tested in the study included numbers of workers, farm size, organic vs. conventional production, the use of chemical fertilizers, compost, and manure, says Park. The researchers assayed 955 spinach samples from 12 farms in the two states, finding that generic E. coli was present on 63 of them (6.6 percent).
Of particular note, the researchers tested their statistical model for spinach contamination to determine how accurately it was able to pinpoint the level of contamination. "The assessment of the predictive performance of a developed statistical model is largely omitted from food safety studies," says Park. Their methodology may serve as a useful template for future investigations of contamination on farms, he says.
"Because produce is commonly consumed raw, it would be best to prevent pre-harvest contamination by food-borne pathogens all together or at least to reduce it," says Park.
###
A copy of the article can be found online at http://bit.ly/asmtip0613b.
Applied and Environmental Microbiology is a publication of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM). The ASM is the largest single life science society, composed of over 39,000 scientists and health professionals. Its mission is to advance the microbiological sciences as a vehicle for understanding life processes and to apply and communicate this knowledge for the improvement of health and environmental and economic well-being worldwide.
[ | 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.
June 19, 2013 ? Long before Earth became lush, when life consisted of single-celled organisms afloat in a planet-wide sea, bacteria invaded the ancient ancestors of plants and animals and took up permanent residence. One bacterium eventually became the mitochondria that today power all plant and animal cells; another became the chloroplast that turns sunlight into energy in green plants.
A new analysis by two University of California, Berkeley, graduate students more precisely pinpoints when these life-changing invasions occurred, placing the origin of photosynthesis in plants hundreds of millions of years earlier than once thought.
"When you are talking about these really ancient events, scientists have estimated numbers that are all over the board," said coauthor Patrick Shih. Estimates of the age of eukaryotes -- cells with a nucleus that evolved into all of today's plants and animals -- range from 800 million years ago to 3 billion years ago.
"We came up with a novel way of decreasing the uncertainty and increasing our confidence in dating these events," he said. The two researchers believe that their approach can help answer similar questions about the origins of ancient microscopic fossils.
Shih and colleague Nicholas Matzke, who will earn their Ph.Ds this summer in plant and microbial biology and integrative biology, respectively, employed fossil and genetic evidence to estimate the dates when bacteria set up shop as symbiotic organisms in the earliest one-celled eukaryotes. They concluded that a proteobacterium invaded eurkaryotes about 1.2 billion years ago, in line withearlier estimates.
They found that a cyanobacterium -- which had already developed photosynthesis -- invaded eukaryotes 900 million years ago, much later than some estimates, which are as high as 2 billion years ago.
Previous estimates used hard-to-identify microbial fossilsor ambiguous chemical markers in fossils to estimate the time when bacteria entered ancestral eurkaryotic cells, probably first as parasites and then as symbionts. Shih and Matzke realized that they could get better precision by studying today's mitochondria and chloroplasts, which from their free-living days still retain genes that are evolutionarily related to genes currently present in plant and animal DNA.
"These genes, such as ATP synthase -- a gene critical to the synthesis of the energy molecule ATP -- were present in our single-celled ancestors and present now, and are really, really conserved," Matzke said. "These go back to the last common ancestor of all living things, so it helps us constrain the tree of life."
Since mitochrondrial, chloroplast and nuclear genes do not evolve at exactly the same rate, the researchers used Bayesian statistics to estimate the rate variation as well as how long ago the bacteria joined forces with eukaryotes. They improved their precision by focusing on plant and animal fossils that have more certain dates and identities than microbial fossils.
The paper appeared online on June 17 in advance of publication in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Matzke also is a member of UC Berkeley's Center for Theoretical Evolutionary Genomics.
The influence and importance of the annual sales of juveniles in training have become paramount in racing. Some of the best young athletes are reserved for these sales, and every season, a notable proportion of the most important performers come out of the in-training auctions.
Most recently, Belmont Stakes winner Palace Malice was bought out of the 2011 Keeneland September sale by veteran 2-year-old sales professionals Mike Ryan and Niall Brennan for $25,000, then resold by them as a progressive juvenile in training at the 2012 Keeneland April sale for $200,000.
Those are the sorts of returns that the pinhooking pros hunt for at the yearling sales, and they find more than enough of them every year to keep their operations profitable. They also have changed the way people approach sales and breed horses.
The resellers have done so well for so long that ?there are now Kentucky breeders that spot some of their yearlings every year for the 2-year-old sales,? said veteran Florida breeder Mike O?Farrell. He said, ?They find some of their nice young horses that aren?t quite ready to hit the right spot at the yearling market, send them into training, and cut out the middle man. Why wouldn?t they? It?s good business sense.?
O?Farrell has a long view on the juvenile sales market, having been in it all his life. His father was one of the pioneers in creating the sales of horses in training, and he continues the family tradition by breeding, training, and selling sizable drafts of homebreds, primarily at the annual sales of 2-year-olds in training at the Ocala Breeders? Sales Company?s auctions in March, April, and June. O?Farrell said that ?just like Keeneland?s September sale has become the place to buy a yearling because it offers horses for everyone, the April sale has become our go-to auction here in Florida. It wasn?t that long ago that people pointed for the February sales with their premium 2-year-olds, but now those are gone, and a good horse can bring a lot of money in April, at the same sale where other people will find very inexpensive bargains.?
As a venue for one-stop shopping, the OBS April sale is the in-training companion to the Keeneland September auction, where thousands of young horses trade annually.
On Tuesday, the OBS June sale, which last year sold 2013 Santa Anita Derby winner Goldencents, will ring down the sales season for the in-training auctions, and just on Saturday, one of the graduates from the 2013 OBS March auction of juveniles won the Willard Proctor Memorial Stakes at Hollywood Park.
In his official racing debut, Kobe?s Back broke slowly and raced last through the early furlongs of the Proctor, then smoothly raced through traffic and drew off to win the stakes by 3 1/4 lengths in 1:05 2/5 for 5 1/2? furlongs.
Bred in Kentucky by Joanne Mummert, the gray colt is by the A.P. Indy stallion Flatter out of the Well Decorated mare Well. He sold for $60,000 at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky October sale of yearlings, then was pinhooked for the juvenile sales, bringing $480,000 at OBS March three months ago out of the Niall Brennan consignment.
In Ocala yesterday, I spoke to Brennan about the colt, and he said Kobe?s Back ?was a man among boys at the October sale. Among the horses I looked at, I thought he was the best horse in the sale, and I couldn?t believe we got him. I thought surely one of the end users would snap him up for racing, but sometimes you?re there and you get lucky.?
The gray son of Flatter put himself on the short list of nearly every major buyer at the March sale with a work in :10 1/5 to speed through his work at about 44 miles per hour with a stride length of more than 24.5 feet. After an intense bidding battle, the colt was purchased by Lane?s End Bloodstock (David Ingordo) for CRK Racing, and the gray is expected to progress through the summer stakes in southern California as his immediate objectives.
With the immediate gratification of purchasing a colt like this and getting to see him in action not long thereafter, more buyers are taking a hard look at purchasing horses at all the sales of 2-year-olds in training.
Frank Mitchell is author of Racehorse Breeding Theories, as well as the book Great Breeders and Their Methods: The Hancocks. In addition to writing the column ?Sires and Dams? in Daily Racing Form for nearly 15 years, he has contributed articles to Thoroughbred Daily News, Thoroughbred Times, Thoroughbred Record, International Thoroughbred, and other major publications. In addition, Frank is a private consultant to breeders on pedigrees, matings, and conformation. He is a hands-on caretaker of his own broodmares and foals in central Kentucky. Check out Frank?s lively?Bloodstock in the Bluegrass blog.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? There's good news for most companies that provide health benefits for their employees: America's slowdown in medical costs may be turning into a trend, rather than a mere pause.
A report Tuesday from accounting and consulting giant PwC projects lower overall growth in medical costs for next year, even as the economy gains strength and millions of uninsured people receive coverage under President Barack Obama's health care law.
If the calculations are correct, cost spikes because of the new health care law should be contained within a relatively narrow market segment. That would come as a relief for Democrats in an election year during which Republicans plan to use criticism of "Obamacare" as one of their main political weapons.
"There are some underlying changes to the system that are having an impact, and we can expect lower increases as we come out of the recession," said Mike Thompson of PwC's Health Research Institute, which produced the study. Cost "is still going up, but not as much as it used to."
The report comes with a caveat that sounds counterintuitive at first: Self-employed people and others who buy coverage individually could well see an increase in premiums in 2014.
The reasons have to do with requirements in the health care law. For example, starting next year insurers must accept patients with pre-existing medical problems, who cost more to cover. Also, new policies have to provide a basic level of benefits more generous in some cases than what's currently offered to individual consumers.
About 160 million workers and family members now have job-based coverage and are less likely to be affected. The individual market is much smaller, fewer than 20 million people. Still, it's expected to grow significantly over the next few years as a result of the health care law, which will also provide tax credits to help many people afford their premiums.
The U.S. spends more than $2.7 trillion a year on health care, well above any other developed country. But quality is uneven, there's widespread waste and fraud, and the system still leaves about 45 million people uninsured.
For years U.S. health care spending has grown much faster than the overall economy and workers' wages, but since the recession those annual increases have slowed dramatically. The debate now is whether that's a continuing trend. The answer will be vitally important, not only for companies and their employees, but for taxpayers who foot the bill for government programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Obama's coverage expansion.
PwC's report forecasts that direct medical care costs will increase by 6.5 percent next year, one percentage point lower than its previous projection. The cost of care is the biggest component of premiums, followed by administrative expenses and overhead.
Cost-shifting to workers and efficiency measures from employers got most of the credit for slowing growth. PwC also said the health care law's push for hospitals and doctors to be more accountable may be starting to have an impact.
Four big factors were seen as pushing costs down next year:
?Patients seeking more affordable routine services in settings like clinics springing up in retail stores, as opposed to a doctor's office or the emergency room.
?Major employers contracting directly with hospital systems that have a proven record for complicated procedures such as heart surgery and certain back operations.
?The government ramping up penalties on hospitals that have too many patients coming back with problems soon after being discharged.
?Employers' ongoing effort to shift more costs to workers through higher annual deductibles, the amount people must pay each year before insurance picks up.
By using such shifting, PwC estimates that employers may be able to drive their share of next year's cost increase even lower than 6.5 percent.
On the other hand, two big factors will push costs upward:
?The high price of new "specialty" drugs to treat serious chronic illnesses such as autoimmune diseases and some types of cancer.
?Industry consolidation, with big hospitals buying up smaller ones, as well as medical practices and rehab centers. The downside of the demand for greater efficiency by employers and government is that it may be fostering new health care monopolies.
Elon Musk took to Twitter early this morning (via Verge) to promote an event coming this Thursday that promises to show off new tech that allows quick swapping of Tesla battery packs for extended trips, without requiring a Supercharger stop. The move would make a Tesla Model S roadster as easy to fuel up as a gas-powered car, if not easier, getting rid of the need for extended period charging stopovers. Live pack swap demo on Thurs night at 8pm California time at our design studio in Hawthorne. Seeing is believing.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 18, 2013 As GigaOM points out, Tesla previously?acknowledged?that it has built the Tesla S with a swappable battery, so the tech demoed on Thursday shouldn’t apply only to new models going forward or anything quite so cruel. Instead, existing Tesla drivers will likely learn exactly how the system works, which will probably involve adding battery swap stations to existing Tesla charger locations, allowing car owners to essentially trade their expended battery pack module for a fresh one on the spot. The demonstration of the swapping tech will be shown at the event and then made available via video posted to Tesla’s website later in the evening on Thursday. If it’s easy enough and smartly implemented, it should make it possible for Tesla owners to manage much longer distance trips without requiring a proper recharge, extending well beyond the?roughly?265 mile range of the Model S Performance model. So long as swapping units are available, there should be no reason why even a non-stop cross-country trip wouldn’t be possible.
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Elon Musk took to Twitter early this morning (via Verge) to promote an event coming this Thursday that promises to show off new tech that allows quick swapping of Tesla battery packs for extended trips, without requiring a Supercharger stop. The move would make a Tesla Model S roadster as easy to fuel up as a gas-powered car, if not easier, getting rid of the need for extended period charging stopovers. Live pack swap demo on Thurs night at 8pm California time at our design studio in Hawthorne. Seeing is believing.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 18, 2013 As GigaOM points out, Tesla previously?acknowledged?that it has built the Tesla S with a swappable battery, so the tech demoed on Thursday shouldn’t apply only to new models going forward or anything quite so cruel. Instead, existing Tesla drivers will likely learn exactly how the system works, which will probably involve adding battery swap stations to existing Tesla charger locations, allowing car owners to essentially trade their expended battery pack module for a fresh one on the spot. The demonstration of the swapping tech will be shown at the event and then made available via video posted to Tesla’s website later in the evening on Thursday. If it’s easy enough and smartly implemented, it should make it possible for Tesla owners to manage much longer distance trips without requiring a proper recharge, extending well beyond the?roughly?265 mile range of the Model S Performance model. So long as swapping units are available, there should be no reason why even a non-stop cross-country trip wouldn’t be possible.