Photographers who've spent years looking through the window of a high-end optical viewfinder may never find an electronic version that fully satisfies them. But this new MicroOLED EVF may get us closer than ever to an acceptable digital replacement for the TTL OVF, which will never find a home in modern-day compacts and mirrorless ILCs. Developed with military and medical-industry heads-up displays and digital camera viewfinders in mind, the new microdispay is able to deliver a 5.4 megapixel (2560 x 2048) monochrome image, or 1.3 megapixels in full 16-million color -- all in a 0.61-inch diagonal panel. The display boasts a top contrast ratio of 100,000:1, 96-percent uniformity and 0.2 watts of power consumption. There's no word yet on when the new tech will start popping up in enterprise devices and digital cameras, or how much of a premium it'll carry for electronics manufacturers, but it looks like we're closer than ever to having an excellent electronic alternative to the optical viewfinder. Jump past the break for the full PR from MicroOLED.
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) ? Kids born by Cesarean section are no more likely to become obese than if they are born vaginally, a new study concludes.
Past research from Brazil had found a link between excessive poundage and C-sections, leading some scientists to suggest that not being exposed to bacteria from the birth canal could make babies fatter. (See Reuters Health story of May 12, 2011.)
But according to the latest findings, that doesn't appear to be the case.
"We thought from the beginning that probably what happened with the previous study is that they didn't adjust for all of the confounders," said Fernando Barros of the Catholic University of Pelotas. "If a mother gives birth by C-section, she's different than a mother who has a vaginal birth."
For the new research, Barros and his colleagues used data on three groups of several thousand people born in Southern Brazil in 1982, 1993 or 2004.
Researchers contacted the kids at different ages until the oldest had turned 23. Those born by C-section were more likely to be heavy, with obesity rates between nine and 16 percent, compared to rates of seven to 10 percent among kids born vaginally.
However, that difference vanished once the researchers accounted for factors that could have influenced the results such as family income, birth weight, schooling and the mother's weight, height, age and smoking habits.
"When you factor in all of these other factors, the relationship between obesity and Cesarean sections disappears," said Barros, whose findings are published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
The earlier Brazilian study left out many of those factors, including maternal height and weight, Barros' team writes in its report.
"The most simple explanation would be that more obese women require more Cesarean sections than lean women and it's really not the C-section itself," said Dr. David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life Clinic at Children's Hospital Boston, who wasn't involved in the study.
The new research is of particular interest in Brazil, because in 2009 more than half of the babies there were born by C-section. In the U.S., the number has been on the rise for years and is now over 30 percent.
Some believe that C-section babies are different because they are not exposed to bacteria in the birth canal like babies born vaginally. The theory is part of the hygiene hypothesis, which suggests a person's immune system develops differently when they're not exposed to beneficial bacteria early in life.
"We're not saying this hypothesis is not interesting. It is. We're just saying, right now, without data, we cannot confirm the finding," said Barros.
He cautioned that people in his study had only been followed until early adulthood, so he cannot say if there is a potential association later in life.
Ludwig told Reuters Health that things like a pregnant woman's diet and smoking habits and whether or not she has diabetes might influence a developing fetus.
Both Ludwig and Barros said women should avoid medically unnecessary C-sections, even if they don't raise the chances of having obese kids, because they carry other risks.
SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, online January 11, 2012.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) ? Libyan Prime Minister Abdurrahim al-Keib called on Sunday for a regional security conference to tackle a proliferation of weapons by exiled supporters of former leader Muammar Gaddafi.
The Libyan civil war may have given militant groups in Africa's Sahel region like Boko Haram and al Qaeda access to large weapons caches, said a U.N. report released on Thursday.
"(There is) still a real threat from some of the armed remnants of the former regime who escaped outside the country and still roam freely. This is a threat for us, for neighboring countries and our shared relations," Keib told African Union leaders in Addis Ababa.
"My country calls for a regional security conference in Libya of interior and defense ministers of neighboring countries," he told the summit, the first since Gaddafi's death last year.
A U.N. report said the Libyan civil war may have created a proliferation of small arms, giving militant groups like Boko Haram and al Qaeda access to large weapons caches in Africa's Sahel region that straddle the Sahara, including Nigeria, Niger and Chad.
The report said some countries believe weapons have been smuggled into the Sahel by former fighters in Libya - Libyan army regulars and mercenaries who fought on behalf of Gaddafi, who was ousted and killed by rebels.
Links between al Qaeda and Boko Haram have become a growing source of concern for the countries of the region, the U.N. report said.
The Islamist sect Boko Haram has killed at least 935 people since it launched an uprising in Nigeria in 2009, including 250 in the first weeks of this year, Human Rights Watch said last week.
(Reporting by Yara Bayoumy; Editing by James Macharia)
In this Oct. 19, 2011 photo, a proposed plate of slow-roasted salmon, roasted root vegetables, and lamb is seen during the SAG Awards tasting and table decor preview at Lucques restaurant in Los Angeles. The SAG Awards will be held Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)
In this Oct. 19, 2011 photo, a proposed plate of slow-roasted salmon, roasted root vegetables, and lamb is seen during the SAG Awards tasting and table decor preview at Lucques restaurant in Los Angeles. The SAG Awards will be held Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)
In this Oct. 19, 2011 photo, SAG Awards producer Kathy Connell, left, and SAG Awards supervising producer Mick McCullough participate in the SAG Awards tasting and table decor preview at Lucques restaurant in Los Angeles. The SAG Awards will be held Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)
In this Oct. 19, 2011 photo, a plate of chopped chicken salad with apples, radicchio, walnuts and whole grain mustard sits on display during the SAG Awards tasting and table decor preview at Lucques restaurant in Los Angeles. The SAG Awards will be held Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)
In this Oct. 19, 2011 photo, from left, SAG Awards Committee Chair JoBeth Williams, SAG Awards Committee member Paul Napier, chef Suzanne Goin, of Lucques Catering, and SAG Awards event designer Keith Greco take part during the SAG Awards tasting and table decor preview at Lucques restaurant in Los Angeles. The SAG Awards will be held Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)
In this Oct. 19, 2011 photo, a plate with grilled chicken breast with black rice, pea shoots and tangerine vinaigrette displays during the SAG Awards tasting and table decor preview at Lucques restaurant in Los Angeles. The SAG Awards will be held Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? When your dinner party guests include Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Kate Winslet and Glenn Close, and the whole affair is televised live, it can take months to plan the menu. That's why the team behind the Screen Actors Guild Awards began putting together the plate for Sunday's ceremony months ago.
It was still summer when show producer Kathy Connell and executive producer and director Jeff Margolis first sat down with chef Suzanne Goin of Los Angeles eatery Lucques with a tall order: Create a meal that is delicious at room temperature, looks beautiful on TV, is easy to eat and appeals to Hollywood tastes. Oh, and no poppy seeds, soups, spicy dishes, or piles of onions or garlic.
"It can't drip, stick in their teeth or be too heavy," Connell said. "We have to appease all palates."
The chef put together a plate of possibilities: slow-roasted salmon with yellow beets, lamb with couscous and spiced cauliflower and roasted root vegetables with quinoa. There was also a chopped chicken salad and another chicken dish with black beans.
To ensure the dishes are both tasty and TV-ready, Connell and Margolis, along with the SAG Awards Committee and the show's florist and art director, dined together at this summertime lunch on tables set to replicate those that will be in the Shrine Exposition Center during the ceremony. The pewter, crushed-silk tablecloths and white lilies you'll see on TV Sunday were also chosen months ago.
The diners discussed the look of the plate, the size of the portions and the vegetarian possibilities.
"We'd like the portions a little larger," Connell told the chef.
"And a little more sauce on the salmon," Margolis added.
Come Sunday, it's up to Goin to prepare 1,200 of the long-planned meals for the A-list audience.
With their new UltraFit line of sports headphones for iPhone, iPad, iPod and other devices, Polk Audio is really putting their money where their mouth is when it comes to their SecureFit, "stays in place" promise. Rather, they're putting Olympic-calibur athletes on a trampoline smack-dab in the middle of Macworld 2012.
To figure out how far away our dinner plate is our brain melds the slightly different images coming from our two eyes. Other creatures, including many insects, move their heads to glean how far a piece of food might be. But jumping spiders (Hasarius adansoni) don?t seem to possess either of these abilities. So how do they manage such quick and exacting lunges to capture their lunches?
Researchers have suspected the answer might have something to do with their four-layered eyes. Previous molecular and physiological work had shown that the third and fourth layers of the spiders? two principal eyes are most receptive to ultraviolet light; and the first and second are tuned more toward what we consider to be the visible spectrum, in particular, to green light. But not all of the layers see things equally. In fact, only in the first layer is the green light focused clearly, meaning that ?the second-deepest layer always receives defocused images,? according to Takashi Nagata, of the biology and geosciences department at the Osaka City University in Japan, and his colleagues. He and his team set out to figure out whether the spiders rely on that lack of focus to tackle a meal.
The investigators assumed that if the differences in the green layers were important for depth perception, spiders would not be able to determine how far to jump in the absence of green light. Sure enough, as they reported online Thursday in the journal Science, when they shone green light on the spiders and tempted them with tasty flies, the spiders made spot-on jumps?just as they did in natural light. When bathed in red light that did not contain green wavelengths, however, the spiders consistently missed their prey, often coming up short.
So instead of using a stereo focus like we do or a motion-based tactics like some other bugs, for these spiders, ?depth perception might be achieved by comparison of defocused images received by [the second layer] with focused images received by [the first layer],? Nagata and his colleagues wrote. Investigators will need to do further studies to uncover how the spiders are processing this information.
In a commentary in the same issue of Science, Marie Herberstein and David Kemp, both of the biological sciences department at Macquire University in Australianote that the new finding does more than add new insight into the major challenge of understanding how animals perceive the world. It also serves as a reminder that advanced molecular research, as helpful as it is, is not always enough on its own. In this case, the ?ultimate test still required behavioral experimentation with whole, live animals.?
The new study also could add to research beyond the animal world. ?Jumping spiders may be a real-life example of ?depth from defocus,? a notable depth measurement technique that is being developed for computer vision,? Nagata and his co-authors noted.
BERLIN ? Herbert Greszuk was at the bar on the fifth deck of the Costa Concordia when the ill-fated luxury liner hit a reef.
Unable to get back to his second-deck cabin after the emergency signal came, he made it to a lifeboat with only the clothes on his back ? leaving behind everything he had with him for the cruise, including his tuxedo, camera, jewelry, euro400 ($520) in cash, credit cards, identity papers and even his dentures.
The 62-year-old, who runs a small flower shop and cafe in the western German town of Recklinghausen, counts himself lucky to have escaped the ship after it capsized Jan. 13, leaving at least 16 dead and 16 still missing.
But, he estimates that he lost at least euro10,000 ($13,000) in goods alone. He's only one of the 4,200 passengers and crew who were on board and will likely want compensation, and material loss just scratches the surface. There's the ruined holiday, physical and mental trauma, and payments to families of the dead, among other things, in an incident many believe was preventable.
"It's about accountability, " Greszuk told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from his cafe. "Something like this must not be allowed to happen again. So many people died; it's simply inexcusable."
In Rome on Thursday, representatives of ship operator Costa Crociere SpA met with consumer activists to discuss a blanket compensation deal for some 3,206 people from 61 countries who suffered no physical harm when the ship hit the reef.
The offer would consider the price of the ticket, costs incurred in getting home after the disaster, the cost of items lost aboard the ship as well as damages for the ruined vacation and trauma resulting from the accident, said Furio Truzzi of the consumer group Assoutenti.
It would not apply to the hundreds of crew on the ship, the roughly 100 cases of people injured or the families who lost loved ones.
"We are working for a collective transaction to come up with a value for damages," Truzzi said. "Each passenger can decide if this proposal is satisfactory. If it is not, they are free to react through a lawyer."
Truzzi said it was premature to discuss exact amounts of compensation. He said it would be an average and that any passenger who deemed his or her losses greater than the offer was free to counter the proposal.
He said Assoutenti would work separately on a proposal for those who lost loved ones in the disaster and was open to working with crew members.
The ship ran aground off the Tuscan island of Giglio after the captain, Francesco Schettino, veered from his approved course. Costa Crociere's chief executive, Pier Luigi Foschi, has said Schettino didn't have approval to change the course and was going too fast ? 16 knots ? to be so close to shore.
Schettino is under house arrest, facing accusations of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning a ship before all passengers were evacuated.
Although it is still early and talk of compensation is ongoing, lawsuits are expected to be filed in Germany, Italy, the United States and elsewhere. In France, the Justice Ministry said that complaints filed by French people have been brought together by the Paris prosecutors' office. It said 462 French passengers were aboard ? four were killed and two remain missing.
Attorney Hans Reinhardt, who represents Greszuk and a dozen other German survivors, said passengers did sign liability wavers ? a common requirement for cruises ? but that he considers them void under the circumstances.
"You do not sign off on a disaster situation, what you sign there is for normal daily situations like if there is a little storm or high water or something like that," he said. "This was such a large failure by the captain and by Costa that you can sign whatever you want but you will still get your money."
Depending upon their individual situations, he said he is seeking between euro10,000 ($13,000) and euro50,000 ($65,700) for his clients and would wait for three months to see if Costa would settle before taking the matter to court.
Though the cruise company is Italian, Costa's parent company is Miami-based Carnival Corp. and Reinhardt said he was trying to determine which could be held responsible for the incident. If it's Carnival, he said he would pursue his case in the U.S., where damages awarded tend to be higher than in Germany.
The company also faces the question of compensation for crew members who have lost their jobs because of the accident, not to mention the costs of salvaging the ship and of a possible environmental disaster if the unused fuel cannot be safely removed.
Salvage experts worked Thursday so they could begin pumping tons of fuel off the ship starting Saturday to avert an environmental catastrophe. The stricken ship lies in pristine waters that are prime fishing grounds and part of a protected area for dolphins and whales.
German reinsurers Hannover Re AG and Munich Re AG, two of the world's largest, both said this week that liability claims from the fatal capsizing could run in the triple-digit millions of euros. Swiss Re, the other reinsurance powerhouse, said Thursday it was still too early to even guess what it might cost.
Reinsurers offer backup policies to companies writing primary insurance policies, which helps spread the risk around so the system can handle large losses from disasters.
Carnival has said it has liability insurance, though with a $10 million deductible. Of the so-called "hull insurance," which covers damage to the ship, Carnival is responsible for the first $30 million in damage, while the rest is covered by a network of insurers led by XL Group.
Carnival also said it expects to lose $85 million to $95 million in bookings on the ship that have had to be canceled.
Meantime, Greszuk said he has been trying to piece together his life ? getting a new driver's license, credit cards, passport and other identity documents ? but is feeling abandoned by those responsible for his plight.
"I feel so lost and alone," he said. "Nobody is helping us out. Neither Costa nor the travel agency have contacted me ? do you know how that feels? I called the travel agency and they said it's not our problem any more, call Costa. I called Costa and they said they'd get back to me, but as of today, I haven't heard a word."
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Colleen Barry reported from Milan, Italy. Associated Press writer Jamey Keaten in Paris contributed to this report.
PARIS ? Police in southeast France on Thursday arrested the former head of a French company at the center of a breast implant scandal affecting tens of thousands of women worldwide, a police official said.
Jean-Claude Mas, who ran the now-defunct French company Poly Implant Prothese, was detained at his residence in the Mediterranean coastal town of Six Fours Les Plages shortly before dawn, the official said.
A police search of the residence was under way, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case is officially in the hands of judicial investigators.
The implants were pulled from the market in several countries in and beyond Europe amid fears they could rupture and leak silicone into the body.
Authorities worldwide have been scrambling to strike a proper public response to the scandal ? notably about who will pay to remove the implants made with cheap, industrial-grade silicone instead of medical-grade gel, or if the implants need to invariably come out.
European governments have taken different positions: German, Czech and French authorities say the implants should be removed, while Britain says there is not enough evidence of health risks to suggest they should be taken out in all cases.
On Wednesday, health authorities in Brazil said the government will fine private health plans that refuse to pay for the removal and replacement of faulty breast implants sold by PIP and a Dutch company.
A lawyer for Mas said in a statement earlier this month that his client, who ran PIP until it was closed in March 2010, would not speak publicly on the case.
The scandal has put pressure on French health authorities for allegedly not doing enough to vet the quality of a product used by untold thousands of women both in France and abroad.
France's Health Safety Agency has said the suspect implants ? just one type of implants made by PIP ? appear to be more rupture-prone than other types. Investigators say PIP sought to save money by using industrial silicone, whose potential health risks are not yet clear.
PIP's website said the company had exported to more than 60 countries and was one of the world's leading implant makers. The silicone-gel implants in question are not sold in the United States.
According to estimates by national authorities, over 42,000 women in Britain received the implants, more than 30,000 in France, 9,000 in Australia and 4,000 in Italy. Nearly 25,000 of the implants were sold in Brazil.
KANO, Nigeria ? Jubilant youths overran a blood-splattered police station on Wednesday after it was attacked by a radical Islamist sect, revealing a streak of popular discontent with a government that many say has failed them in Africa's most populous nation.
Suspected members of Boko Haram surrounded the police station Tuesday night in Kano, ordered civilians to get off the street, began chanting "God is great" and threw homemade bombs into the station while spraying it with assault rifles, witnesses said. The attack followed coordinated assaults on Friday that killed at least 185 people in Kano, Nigeria's second-largest city.
Associated Press journalists on Wednesday saw that youths had overrun the bombed-out station in the Sheka neighborhood of this sprawling city in northern Nigeria.
Doors to jail cells stood open. Blood coated the floor of the local commander's private bathroom. Investigative files that had apparently been rifled through were spilled on the floors. Cheering youths outside waved an officer's uniform and jumped up and down on top of a burned-out police truck, with one wearing a police ballistic helmet, smiling.
Others in the crowd said in the local Hausa language they would kill any police officer who returned. Some ominously asked journalists visiting the site if they were Christians.
"We are not satisfied with what is happening now," said 26-year-old Abubakar Muawuya. Our leaders "have to call this Boko Haram and sit down with them."
Kano state police spokesman Magaji Musa Majiya did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday morning. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, though it followed the pattern of others carried out by Boko Haram, including the use of improvised explosives.
The sect, whose name means "Western education is sacrilege" in Hausa, has claimed responsibility for Friday coordinated attacks in Kano.
Boko Haram wants to implement strict Shariah law and avenge the deaths of Muslims in communal violence across Nigeria, a multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people split largely into a Christian south and Muslim north.
On Wednesday, Niger's foreign minister said the sect received training and weapons from al-Qaida's North African wing.
Mohamed Bazoum said in Mauritania's capital that members of Boko Haram have had training and received explosives from al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.
"There is no doubt the two organizations are connected and that they have the same objective of destabilizing our region," he said.
Ministers from the West African region met Wednesday in Mauritania, and vowed to intensify their efforts against the groups.
While Boko Haram has begun targeting Christians in the north, most of those killed Friday appeared to be Muslim, officials said.
Nigeria's weak and corruption-riddled central government has been unable to stop Boko Haram's increasingly bloody attacks.
Nigeria is an oil-rich nation but most Nigerians don't see the benefits and earn less than $2 a day. They have to contend with a rotting infrastructure like bad roads and a lack of electrical power, and seeming government indifference to the problems. The level of anger is high as democracy in a nation with a history of military rule has failed to markedly improve people's lives.
When President Goodluck Jonathan on Jan. 1 ended a fuel subsidy that kept prices at the pump low, unions launched a nationwide strike and streets of cities filled with protesters, forcing the president to partially reinstate the subsidy.
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Associated Press writer Ahmed Mohamed in Nouakchott, Mauritania, contributed to this report.
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Jon Gambrell can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
WASHINGTON ? Negotiations to renew a payroll tax cut for 160 million workers and jobless benefits for millions more kicked off on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, with both sides optimistic of an agreement despite last year's bitter battles over President Barack Obama's jobs proposals.
The House-Senate talks will focus chiefly on finding ways to finance the $10 billion a month cost of a 2 percentage point cut in Social Security payroll taxes that awards a worker making a typical $50,000 salary a tax cut of about $20 a week. Lawmakers also need to pay for the $45 billion or so cost of renewing jobless benefits for people out of work for more than half a year and the $20 billion a year cost of making sure doctors aren't hit with massive cuts to their Medicare payments.
Negotiators face a Feb. 29 deadline under a temporary measure enacted amid great acrimony just before Christmas.
The daunting challenge facing the negotiators is a cost of roughly $160 billion to extend the tax cut, jobless benefits and Medicare payments through the end of the year.
"We should be able to get it done," said top Senate GOP negotiator Jon Kyl of Arizona, who says last year's failed effort by a congressional deficit panel produced lots of proposals that can be used "offset" the cost of the payroll tax measure. "The Joint Select Committee identified a lot of good offsets and so the opportunity for us to get it done is there."
"It's our job to work together here to make sure this tax cut doesn't expire," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the lead Senate negotiator. "We need to show we can rise above politics for the good of the country."
But given the remarkable dysfunction and acrimony surrounding virtually anything Congress does, there's no reason to assume the talks will go smoothly.
"It's not going to be easy finding these offsets," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., a veteran of the deficit supercommittee.
Senate defenders of federal workers ? whose pension benefits and pay increases have been targeted by House Republicans for more than $60 billion in savings over the coming decade ? are signaling they won't go along.
"I don't think it's the forum to take up these on federal workers," said Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., whose state is home to many federal workers.
As the same time, Hispanic groups, a key Democratic-leaning voting bloc are battling against a House proposal to raise $9 billion by blocking illegal immigrants from claiming the refundable child tax credit. Key Democrats like Baucus have signaled they could accept the idea, however.
Another question is whether to shorten the eligibility period for extended unemployment benefits down from the current 99 weeks or allow states to test unemployment benefit applicants for drugs, as House Republicans would like. The House measure would shorten the jobless benefits eligibility period to 79 weeks, though the improving job market in most states means that the actual duration of benefits would be 13 or 20 weeks less than that under current law.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the negotiators should also take on dozens of tax breaks for businesses and individuals that expired last year, including a tax credit for business research and development, a deduction for state and local sales taxes and several breaks important to the energy industry. This $30 billion-plus package is a top priority of the capital's powerful lobbying community.
WASHINGTON ? Addressing a divided nation amid a determined GOP campaign to take his job, President Barack Obama is preparing to issue a populist cry for economic fairness as he aims to corral the sympathies of middle-class voters 10 months before Election Day.
Obama delivers his third State of the Union address Tuesday in a capital and country shot through with politics, with his re-election campaign well under way and his potential GOP opponents lobbing attacks against him daily as they scrap for the right to take him on.
Obama's 9 p.m. EST address to a joint session of Congress and millions of television viewers will be as much as anything an argument for his re-election, the president's biggest, best chance so far to offer a vision for a second term.
Senior political adviser David Plouffe said Tuesday morning the president is "happy to have a debate" about his performance.
Bill Galston, a former Clinton administration domestic policy adviser now at the Brookings Institution, said, "Almost by definition it's going to be at least as much a political speech as a governing speech."
"The president must run on his record," Galston said, "and that means talking candidly and persuasively with the country about the very distinctive nature of the challenges the American economy faced when he took office and what has gone right for the past three years, and what needs to be done in addition."
With economic anxiety showing through everywhere, the speech will focus on a vision for restoring the middle class, with Obama facing the tricky task of persuading voters to stick with him even as joblessness remains high at 8.5 percent. Obama can point to positive signs, including continued if sluggish growth; his argument will be that he is the one to restore economic equality for middle-class voters.
Implicit in the argument, even if he never names frontrunners Gingrich and Mitt Romney, is that they are on the other side.
Obama's speech will come as Gingrich and Romney have transformed the Republican campaign into a real contest ahead of Florida's crucial primary next week. And he'll be speaking on the same day that Romney, a multimillionaire, released his tax returns, offering a vivid illustration of wealth that could play into Obama's argument about the growing divide between rich and poor.
Asked in an interview Tuesday about Romney's relatively modest tax rate in the range of 15 percent, given that he's a multi-millionaire, Plouffe said, "We need to change our tax system. We need to change our tax code so that everybody is doing their fair share."
Obama will frame the campaign to come as a fight for fairness for those who are struggling to keep a job, a home or college savings and losing faith in how the country works.
The speech will feature the themes of manufacturing, clean energy, education and American values. The president is expected to urge higher taxes on the wealthy, propose ways to make college more affordable, offer new steps to tackle a debilitating housing crisis and push to help U.S. manufacturers expand hiring.
Aides said the president would also outline more specifics about the so-called "Buffett Rule", which Obama has previously said would establish a minimum tax on people making $1 million or more in income. The rule was named after billionaire Warren Buffett, who has said it is unfair that his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does.
White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said on Twitter Tuesday that Buffett's secretary, Debbie Bosanek, would attend the State of the Union in the first lady's box.
Even before Obama delivered his speech, Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, said he already felt "a sense of disappointment."
"While we don't yet know all of the specifics, we do know the goal," he said. "Based on what the president's aides have been telling reporters, the goal isn't to conquer the nation's problems. It's to conquer Republicans. The goal isn't to prevent gridlock, but to guarantee it."
For three days following his speech, Obama will promote his ideas in five states key to his re-election bid. On Wednesday he'll visit Iowa and Arizona to promote ideas to boost American manufacturing; on Thursday in Nevada and Colorado he'll discuss energy; and in Michigan Friday he'll talk about college affordability, education and training. Polling shows Americans are divided about Obama's overall job performance but unsatisfied with his handling of the economy.
The lines of argument between Obama and his rivals are already stark, with America's economic insecurity and the role of government at the center.
The president has offered signals about his speech, telling campaign supporters he wants an economy "that works for everyone, not just a wealthy few." Gingrich, on the other hand, calls Obama "the most effective food stamp president in history." Romney says Obama "wants to turn America into a European-style entitlement society."
Obama will make bipartisan overtures to lawmakers but will leave little doubt he will act without their help when it's necessary and possible, an approach his aides say has let him stay on offense.
The public is more concerned about domestic troubles over foreign policy than at any other time in the past 15 years, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center. Some 81 percent want Obama to focus his speech on domestic affairs, not foreign ones; just five years ago, the view was evenly split.
On the day before Obama's speech, his campaign released a short Web ad showing monthly job losses during the end of the Bush administration and the beginning of the Obama administration, with positive job growth for nearly two Obama years. Republicans assail him for failing to achieve a lot more.
House Speaker John Boehner, responding to reports of Obama's speech themes, said it was a rehash of unhelpful policies. "It's pathetic," he said.
Presidential spokesman Jay Carney said Monday that Obama is not conceding the next 10 months to "campaigning alone" when people need economic help. On the goals of helping people get a fair shot, Carney said, "There's ample room within those boundaries for bipartisan cooperation and for getting this done."
Plouffe appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" and was interviewed on NBC's "Today" show and "CBS This Morning."
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Associated Press writers Ben Feller and Julie Pace contributed to this report.
It's rarely talked about on television anymore, and the images are few and far between. When there are images, they're always the same -- soldiers trekking through sand-colored highland villages under the suspicious gaze of stoic men. Commentators have left the scene, leaving the usual suspects to repeat the same sound bites over and over again. And yet, the war that shook Afghanistan -- and in which France has actively participated for a decade -- is not over. On Friday morning, four unarmed French soldiers were killed on a base near Kapisa by a man wearing an Afghani uniform. Their death, reported by a nearly indifferent media, was a cruel reminder that the war continues.
Given the scale of losses, and his incomprehensible stance on the war, President Sarkozy was unable to avoid his recent shocking declaration, in which he implied an early return for the French army. This was a complete reversal of all his previous statements, in which he stressed his plans to remain in Afghanistan.
For ten years, over 50,000 of our soldiers have gone through the "Afghan theater," as it is nicely referred to in military jargon. 82 have not come home. Very shabby theater indeed. Even though the pride of our military has been felt -- the pride of having participated in a large scale OPEX (External Operation), of having fought "at an American level" for a decade, of feeling like a great nation capable of so much -- all that's left today is weariness and doubt.
But this weariness and doubt, whether felt by officers or enlisted men, is kept quiet. Each soldier knows that nobody is interested -- not even his friends, let alone the public. Only his immediate family knows what's really on his mind. Imagine when, at a bar, your friends ask you to explain what really happened in Afghanistan, how many people you took out, and you have to explain that you, in fact, did not kill anyone. No, you did not shoot one single bullet, did not even see anything close to the Taliban. Because that is the other side of war: waiting, watching, knowing that you are being watched, not understanding, doubting, and being killed.
But who sent the military to Afghanistan? Who made the decision at the highest level that France would join in this war, would participate gallantly in an international coalition dominated by U.S. forces, both in terms of finances and resources? Politicians. Our politicians, those that we have had the opportunity to elect in our good old democratic society, where elections are not distorted like they are in distant lands, where we are quick to give lessons in democracy. The politicians that we are about to elect again in less than three months.
So why are they silent? Why, during the Socialist primary, which were covered to death by the media, no one even dared to utter the word "Afghanistan?" Except Martine Aubry, who only mentioned it during the last ten seconds of the third debate to point out that no one had talked about it.
Why, on the side of the majority, do we continue to hear the same awkward silence, the same ignorance of the realities on the ground? Why is it, that for every French soldier that dies in Afghanistan, the same official, impersonal statement is copied, pasted, and used again, with only the name, age, and rank changed? In Canada, a high-ranking soldier always gives a short speech on the life of the individual who has sacrificed his life in the name of who-really-knows-what. The official may not have known the fallen soldier, but this ritual at least honors the dead. And the media are there, with the consent of the families, to film the departure of the coffin from Afghanistan, its arrival in Canada, and the journey to its final resting place. People gather on bridges and roads, some waving flags, to pay tribute. "These are images of what would never happen here in France," have confessed so many saddened French soldiers to me.
Why? Are we ashamed of what we have done -- or not done -- in Afghanistan? Has this topic become taboo? What prevents us from talking about it, from dumping it into the public sphere for discussion, alongside the loss of France's triple-A rating, PIP implants, and Jean-Luc M?lenchon's calling Marine Le Pen "semi-insane," etc..
I prefer to think that our politicians are silent out of complete ignorance, merely following the American example, and daring not to raise an issue that is seen with such ambiguity by the French population (the real question is: have we won or lost the war?). I dare not think that they are silent because they know. They know that this war is no longer "fashionable" and that with the current planned troop withdrawal for 2014, the pack of journalists have abandoned the field. They know that the strategies against Afghan insurgencies have not worked (On Friday, this hostile act against our soldiers was perpetrated; on December 29, 2011, two legionnaires were also shot and killed on a secure base by Afghan police officers that were trained and armed by us, Westerners). They know that we have not won the confidence of the indigenous people, or that we have not won enough. They know that "Afghanization," a pure marketing ploy to help sell a departure "with our heads held high," is second-rate. They know all of this, but they say nothing.
So, ladies and gentlemen, esteemed candidates: what do you have to offer on the subject of Afghanistan, beyond the mandatory question of withdrawal? You, politicians who have been unable to organize even a parliamentary debate, answer. Enter the discussion, and draw conclusions about this military engagement -- it has cost us many lives, and yet it is still neither approved of or understood by the public. After ten years, we still lack clear and convincing answers.
Anne Nivat is a freelance reporter and author of The Fog of War, Fayard, 2011.
Michelle Williams in "My Week With Marilyn" Photo: The Weinstein Company
Michelle Williams is getting Oscar love yet again. Williams is nominated for Best Actress at the Academy Awards for "My Week With Marilyn," facing off against screen legends and some fresh blood.
"I am so grateful to be acknowledged by the Academy for my work, which was made possible by the support of our director Simon Curtis and the camaraderie of a terrific ensemble of actors — a special congratulations to [co-star] Kenneth Branagh — and the fearless Harvey Weinstein," she said in a statement. "This role has been the challenge and privilege of a lifetime. I would like to think that the recognition our film has received by the Academy is a testament to Marilyn's legacy."
The other nominees in her category are Glenn Close ("Albert Nobbs"), Viola Davis ("The Help"), Rooney Mara ("The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo") and Meryl Streep ("The Iron Lady").
Branagh, who earned a Best Supporting Actor nod for his work in "Marilyn," was equally amped about the recognition. "It was a rare honour to play Sir Laurence Olivier," he said in a statement. "To be recognised by the Academy for doing so is overwhelming. I'm absolutely thrilled."
Williams already won the Golden Globe for her role in the film earlier this month. This marks her third Oscar nod after previous nominations for "Blue Valentine" and "Brokeback Mountain," though she has yet to take one home.
"It's surreal, in that it would be surreal to see any of your friends [up for an Oscar]. It's amazing. She's an excellent actress," he told MTV News at the Sundance Film Festival. "Of all of us, when we finished that show, she was the one who had the clearest idea about what it was that she wanted to do. To be able to go out and achieve that is no small feat. I just think it's wonderful."
PHILADELPHIA ? A few inches of snow coated the Northeast on Saturday in a storm so rare this season in the East that some welcomed it.
"We've been very lucky, so we can't complain," said Gloria Fernandez of New York City, as she shoveled the sidewalk outside her workplace. "It's nice, it's fluffy and it's on the weekend," she said of the snow, which hadn't fallen in the city since a rare October storm that that dumped more than 2 feet of snow in parts and knocked out power to nearly 3 million homes and businesses in the region.
By midafternoon, 4.3 inches of snow had fallen in Central Park and 3.4 inches at LaGuardia Airport in New York. Most of eastern Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia, and central New Jersey saw about 4 inches of snow, with a few places reporting up to 8 inches. Flurries and freezing rain fell around Washington, D.C.
In Massachusetts, the National Weather Service says 11 inches fell in the Bristol County town of Acushnet. Cape Cod also saw high totals, including nearly 10 inches in Bourne, noteworthy in a season marked by a lack of snow throughout the Northeast.
The fast-moving storm left several inches of snow in Rhode Island, where the coastal areas took the hardest hit. More than nine inches fell in North Kingstown. Little Compton in Newport County was also hard hit, as eight inches fell there. The storm was expected to move out to sea overnight.
Road conditions were fair Saturday, officials said. Crews in Pennsylvania and New Jersey began salting roads around midnight and plowing soon after. By midmorning, the snow had turned to sleet in Philadelphia north through central New Jersey and had stopped falling altogether by early afternoon.
"It's a fairly moderate snowstorm, at best," said weather service forecaster Bruce Sullivan.
Few accidents were reported on the roads, helped by the weekend's lack of rush hour traffic, but New Jersey transportation spokesman Joe Dee cautioned drivers to build in more time for trips. Though temperatures will warm up this afternoon he said, forecasters expect the wet ground to freeze again overnight.
Flights arriving at Philadelphia Airport were delayed up to two hours because of snow and ice accumulation and about 35 flights had been canceled, but most departing flights were leaving on time, airport spokeswoman Victoria Lupica said.
New York City had 1,500 snow plows at the ready, each equipped with global positioning systems that will allow supervisors to see their approximate location on command maps updated every 30 seconds, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a morning news conference.
The equipment was installed last year following a post-Christmas storm in 2010 that left plows stuck and stranded in drifts and left swaths of the city unplowed for days. Bloomberg said the GPS system has already led to "vastly improved communication" between supervisors and plow operators.
In Connecticut, where the October storm did the most damage and some lost power for more than a week, the fast-moving storm left a foot of snow in North Haven, while Haddam in Middlesex County got 11 inches. The totals dropped significantly to the north, where Hartford got around two inches.
As always, some benefited from the snow. Enough accumulated through the week for snowmobiling and ice fishing in New Hampshire, where cross-country ski trails and snowshoeing were open at Bretton Woods and other places.
RENO, Nev. ? As rain helped crews surround a brush fire that destroyed 29 homes and forced thousands to flee, the family of the blaze's only known fatality said Saturday that prosecuting the man who admitted to starting it wouldn't "do any good."
June Hargis, 93, was found dead in a studio apartment next to her daughter's home in Washoe Valley, where the fire started Thursday. Sheriff Mike Haley said her cause of death has not been established, so it's not known if it was fire related. No other fatalities or major injuries were reported.
Fire officials say an "extremely remorseful" elderly man admitted Friday to accidentally starting the fire when he improperly discarded fireplace ashes outside his home in the valley's north end.
Hargis's son, Jim Blueberg, 68, told The Associated Press that he didn't think filing criminal charges against the elderly man "would do any good."
"The man had the courage to come up and say he did this. He's remorseful. I think he's punished himself enough. It was a silly, stupid mistake to make, there's no doubt about that. But I just want him to know I forgive him, and my heart goes out to him," he said.
His sister, Jeannie Watts, 70, had returned home from an errand to find the apartment next door and a barn with three horses inside engulfed in flames. She agreed that there was probably no need to file charges against the man.
"What good is that going to do? Everything is already gone," Watts said.
"He'll pay the rest of his life for that," she added.
The fire, which grew to more than 6 square miles, burned through sagebrush, pastures and pines in a rural area with scattered small neighborhoods south of Reno.
Gov. Brian Sandoval, who toured the area Friday, said "there is nothing left in some of those places except for the chimneys and fireplaces."
Fire officials declared the blaze contained Saturday after a storm brought precipitation that the region hasn't seen in months. All evacuations were lifted and U.S. 395 reopened through the 3,200-acre fire zone.
But in addition to two inches of rain, the storm also brought another challenge for emergency workers. Officials fear its potential for causing flooding in burned areas, after one of the driest winters in Reno history.
"I'm confident we'll be able to respond successfully if necessary," Washoe County Manager Katy Simon said, adding that hydrologists and officials were monitoring the situation.
Fire officials have said the blaze was "almost a carbon copy" of a blaze that destroyed 30 homes in Reno during similar summer-like conditions in mid-November. It moved quickly, fueled by strong wind gusts that sent flames as high as 40 feet.
Watts said it took only about 15 minutes for her three-bedroom farmhouse to burn down, though the fire reached her mother's apartment and the barn first. She said her mother appeared to be mentally alert when she last saw her.
"Before I got home, my son told her, `Get your stuff and get out of here,'" Watts told the AP. "She said to him, `Well, I can smell smoke but I can't see any fire,' and she went back inside. She probably suffocated from the smoke because it was so thick."
She said that when she got home, she shouted: "Where's my mom? Where's my mom?"
"The firefighters didn't know," she said. "Later, an official came to me and said, `Yes, she was in (the burned studio).' Then they called the coroner. I was just crying and screaming. I still can't believe it."
Blueberg said the death of their mother comes after his sister had been through "one hard knock after another" in recent years.
The fire left her financially strapped, with virtually no earthly possessions, he said. "She told me the other day, `All I have is my purse, that's all I have,'" he said.
She and her husband, Pat, met with an insurance agent on the property. In addition to the destroyed buildings, three horses in her barn died, though firefighters rescued all five dogs from her home.
"My stomach is up in the air," Watts said. "I want to cry and I can't. I want to say, `Why us? Why anybody? Why does anything like this have to happen to anybody?"
___
Associated Press writers Scott Sonner in Reno, Michelle Rindels in Las Vegas and Sandra Chereb in Carson City contributed to this report.
Penn researchers help solve questions about Ethiopians' high-altitude adaptationsPublic release date: 20-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Evan Lerner elerner@upenn.edu 215-573-6604 University of Pennsylvania
PHILADELPHIA -- Over many generations, people living in the high-altitude regions of the Andes or on the Tibetan Plateau have adapted to life in low-oxygen conditions. Living with such a distinct and powerful selective pressure has made these populations a textbook example of evolution in action, but exactly how their genes convey a survival advantage remains an open question. Now, a University of Pennsylvania team has made new inroads to answering this question with the first genome-wide study of high-altitude adaptations within the third major population to possess them: the Amhara people of the Ethiopian Highlands.
Surprisingly, all three groups' adaptations appear to involve different genetic mutations, an example of convergent evolution.
"These three groups took different genetic approaches to solving the same problem," said senior author Sarah Tishkoff, a Penn Integrates Knowledge professor with appointments in the genetics department in Penn's Perelman School of Medicine and the biology department in the School of Arts and Sciences.
In addition to Tishkoff, the research was led by Laura B. Scheinfeldt, a research scientist in the genetics department at the Perelman medical school. Other members of the genetics department who contributed to the research are Sameer Soi, Simon Thompson, Alessia Ranciaro, William Beggs, Charla Lambert and Joseph P. Jarvis.
The Penn team collaborated with Dawit Wolde Meskel, Dawit Abate and Gurja Belay of the Department of Biology of Addis Ababa University.
Their research was published today in the journal Genome Biology.
One of the guiding principles behind evolution is natural selection; the more an organism is suited to its environment, the more likely it is to survive and pass on its genes. In high-altitude environments, oxygen concentration is low, a condition that can rapidly sicken even kill individuals who are not acclimated.
"As genetic anthropologists," Scheinfeldt said, "we know what patterns of genetic variation we expect to see after positive, or Darwinian, selection has occurred. Then we look for those patterns in the genome and try to make biological sense of what we find.
"The easiest way for us to do this is to look at situations where there's been very strong selective pressure: a disease with a really high mortality rate, or here at high-altitude where there are hypoxic conditions. This kind of situation makes a dramatic difference in terms of who passes on their genes, so it gives us more power to find the genetic signatures left behind."
Pregnant women are especially susceptible to the physiological pressure represented by hypoxia, which influences the birth weight and health of their children. Yet people have been living in the high-altitude regions of the Andes and the Tibetan Plateau for generations, with little apparent ill effect.
Anthropologists, notably, Cynthia Beall, of Case Western University, and Lorna Moore, of Wake Forest University, have therefore extensively documented their physiological traits, trying to understand how these groups offset the problems pregnant women would normally have in hypoxic environments. More recently, geneticists have attempted to correlate these physical traits, or phenotypes, with the genes that are responsible for them, or genotypes.
Researchers have long wanted to add additional populations for comparison, and while the people of the Ethiopian Highlands met the criteria, living at over 3,000 meters above sea level, economic, linguistic and geographic hurdles stood in the way of collecting the data.
"This was an extremely challenging study. The logistics alone, getting permits and permission to do this trip, took us many years," Tishkoff said.
"Sampling from these remote populations was also very difficult," said Simon Thompson, who was part of the group's field team. "Roads were impassable and we spent a lot of time just trying to find the groups that were living at the highest altitude possible."
The researchers compared the genotypes and phenotypes of Amhara participants with those of two other Ethiopian groups that live at lower altitudes. They also compared the Amhara group with Nigerian and European groups that live at or around sea level.
"We make these comparisons," Scheinfeldt said, "to figure out where in the genome the high-altitude group looks distinct from the other groups. Those distinct areas are candidate regions for genetic variants contributing to high altitude adaptation. Two of the top candidates are involved in the HIF-1 pathway, a pathway that is initiated in hypoxic conditions."
Both the Andean and Tibetan populations had mutations related to the HIF-1 pathway as well, but all three groups differed in both genotype and phenotype. One difference in phenotype had to do with hemoglobin, the part of the blood that transports oxygen. Ethiopians and Andeans had hemoglobin levels that were higher than low-altitude populations, but the Tibetans had average levels.
The researchers also discovered a variant in the Ethiopian groups in a gene involved in mitochondrial function. Mitochondria regulate the production of ATP, the chemical cells use for energy, making this gene another interesting candidate for playing a role in adaptation to high altitude.
These differences all seem to play a role in how well a body can maintain homeostasis in low-oxygen conditions, but even seemingly clear advantages, such as higher levels of hemoglobin, are only proxies for more complex phenotypic changes. Putting them together into the big picture of how certain genes translate into a survival advantage will require more focused research based on the Tishkoff lab's findings.
We're chipping away at this question," Scheinfeldt said. "Every little bit helps."
Such research holds promise beyond understanding the history of these populations.
"There's a lot of interest in this kind of research from the biomedical community, in terms of lung physiology and oxygen transport," Tishkoff said. "If one can understand how it is that people who have these genetic adaptations can do fine at these high altitudes while the rest of us suffer, it could help us better understand one of the body's vital systems."
###
This research was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
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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.
Penn researchers help solve questions about Ethiopians' high-altitude adaptationsPublic release date: 20-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Evan Lerner elerner@upenn.edu 215-573-6604 University of Pennsylvania
PHILADELPHIA -- Over many generations, people living in the high-altitude regions of the Andes or on the Tibetan Plateau have adapted to life in low-oxygen conditions. Living with such a distinct and powerful selective pressure has made these populations a textbook example of evolution in action, but exactly how their genes convey a survival advantage remains an open question. Now, a University of Pennsylvania team has made new inroads to answering this question with the first genome-wide study of high-altitude adaptations within the third major population to possess them: the Amhara people of the Ethiopian Highlands.
Surprisingly, all three groups' adaptations appear to involve different genetic mutations, an example of convergent evolution.
"These three groups took different genetic approaches to solving the same problem," said senior author Sarah Tishkoff, a Penn Integrates Knowledge professor with appointments in the genetics department in Penn's Perelman School of Medicine and the biology department in the School of Arts and Sciences.
In addition to Tishkoff, the research was led by Laura B. Scheinfeldt, a research scientist in the genetics department at the Perelman medical school. Other members of the genetics department who contributed to the research are Sameer Soi, Simon Thompson, Alessia Ranciaro, William Beggs, Charla Lambert and Joseph P. Jarvis.
The Penn team collaborated with Dawit Wolde Meskel, Dawit Abate and Gurja Belay of the Department of Biology of Addis Ababa University.
Their research was published today in the journal Genome Biology.
One of the guiding principles behind evolution is natural selection; the more an organism is suited to its environment, the more likely it is to survive and pass on its genes. In high-altitude environments, oxygen concentration is low, a condition that can rapidly sicken even kill individuals who are not acclimated.
"As genetic anthropologists," Scheinfeldt said, "we know what patterns of genetic variation we expect to see after positive, or Darwinian, selection has occurred. Then we look for those patterns in the genome and try to make biological sense of what we find.
"The easiest way for us to do this is to look at situations where there's been very strong selective pressure: a disease with a really high mortality rate, or here at high-altitude where there are hypoxic conditions. This kind of situation makes a dramatic difference in terms of who passes on their genes, so it gives us more power to find the genetic signatures left behind."
Pregnant women are especially susceptible to the physiological pressure represented by hypoxia, which influences the birth weight and health of their children. Yet people have been living in the high-altitude regions of the Andes and the Tibetan Plateau for generations, with little apparent ill effect.
Anthropologists, notably, Cynthia Beall, of Case Western University, and Lorna Moore, of Wake Forest University, have therefore extensively documented their physiological traits, trying to understand how these groups offset the problems pregnant women would normally have in hypoxic environments. More recently, geneticists have attempted to correlate these physical traits, or phenotypes, with the genes that are responsible for them, or genotypes.
Researchers have long wanted to add additional populations for comparison, and while the people of the Ethiopian Highlands met the criteria, living at over 3,000 meters above sea level, economic, linguistic and geographic hurdles stood in the way of collecting the data.
"This was an extremely challenging study. The logistics alone, getting permits and permission to do this trip, took us many years," Tishkoff said.
"Sampling from these remote populations was also very difficult," said Simon Thompson, who was part of the group's field team. "Roads were impassable and we spent a lot of time just trying to find the groups that were living at the highest altitude possible."
The researchers compared the genotypes and phenotypes of Amhara participants with those of two other Ethiopian groups that live at lower altitudes. They also compared the Amhara group with Nigerian and European groups that live at or around sea level.
"We make these comparisons," Scheinfeldt said, "to figure out where in the genome the high-altitude group looks distinct from the other groups. Those distinct areas are candidate regions for genetic variants contributing to high altitude adaptation. Two of the top candidates are involved in the HIF-1 pathway, a pathway that is initiated in hypoxic conditions."
Both the Andean and Tibetan populations had mutations related to the HIF-1 pathway as well, but all three groups differed in both genotype and phenotype. One difference in phenotype had to do with hemoglobin, the part of the blood that transports oxygen. Ethiopians and Andeans had hemoglobin levels that were higher than low-altitude populations, but the Tibetans had average levels.
The researchers also discovered a variant in the Ethiopian groups in a gene involved in mitochondrial function. Mitochondria regulate the production of ATP, the chemical cells use for energy, making this gene another interesting candidate for playing a role in adaptation to high altitude.
These differences all seem to play a role in how well a body can maintain homeostasis in low-oxygen conditions, but even seemingly clear advantages, such as higher levels of hemoglobin, are only proxies for more complex phenotypic changes. Putting them together into the big picture of how certain genes translate into a survival advantage will require more focused research based on the Tishkoff lab's findings.
We're chipping away at this question," Scheinfeldt said. "Every little bit helps."
Such research holds promise beyond understanding the history of these populations.
"There's a lot of interest in this kind of research from the biomedical community, in terms of lung physiology and oxygen transport," Tishkoff said. "If one can understand how it is that people who have these genetic adaptations can do fine at these high altitudes while the rest of us suffer, it could help us better understand one of the body's vital systems."
###
This research was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
[ | 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.
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