Earth's energy budget remained out of balance despite unusually low solar activity

Public release date: 30-Jan-2012
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Contact: Adam Voiland
adam.p.voiland@nasa.gov
301-614-6949
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

A new NASA study underscores the fact that greenhouse gases generated by human activity -- not changes in solar activity -- are the primary force driving global warming.

The study offers an updated calculation of the Earth's energy imbalance, the difference between the amount of solar energy absorbed by Earth's surface and the amount returned to space as heat. The researchers' calculations show that, despite unusually low solar activity between 2005 and 2010, the planet continued to absorb more energy than it returned to space.

James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, led the research. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics published the study last December.

Total solar irradiance, the amount of energy produced by the sun that reaches the top of each square meter of the Earth's atmosphere, typically declines by about a tenth of a percent during cyclical lulls in solar activity caused by shifts in the sun's magnetic field. Usually solar minimums occur about every eleven years and last a year or so, but the most recent minimum persisted more than two years longer than normal, making it the longest minimum recorded during the satellite era.

Pinpointing the magnitude of Earth's energy imbalance is fundamental to climate science because it offers a direct measure of the state of the climate. Energy imbalance calculations also serve as the foundation for projections of future climate change. If the imbalance is positive and more energy enters the system than exits, Earth grows warmer. If the imbalance is negative, the planet grows cooler.

Hansen's team concluded that Earth has absorbed more than half a watt more solar energy per square meter than it let off throughout the six year study period. The calculated value of the imbalance (0.58 watts of excess energy per square meter) is more than twice as much as the reduction in the amount of solar energy supplied to the planet between maximum and minimum solar activity (0.25 watts per square meter).

"The fact that we still see a positive imbalance despite the prolonged solar minimum isn't a surprise given what we've learned about the climate system, but it's worth noting because this provides unequivocal evidence that the sun is not the dominant driver of global warming," Hansen said.

According to calculations conducted by Hansen and his colleagues, the 0.58 watts per square meter imbalance implies that carbon dioxide levels need to be reduced to about 350 parts per million to restore the energy budget to equilibrium. The most recent measurements show that carbon dioxide levels are currently 392 parts per million and scientists expect that concentration to continue to rise in the future.

Climate scientists have been refining calculations of the Earth's energy imbalance for many years, but this newest estimate is an improvement over previous attempts because the scientists had access to better measurements of ocean temperature than researchers have had in the past.

The improved measurements came from free-floating instruments that directly monitor the temperature, pressure and salinity of the upper ocean to a depth of 2,000 meters (6,560 feet). The network of instruments, known collectively as Argo, has grown dramatically in recent years since researchers first began deploying the floats a decade ago. Today, more than 3,400 Argo floats actively take measurements and provide data to the public, mostly within 24 hours.

Hansen's analysis of the information collected by Argo, along with other ground-based and satellite data, show the upper ocean has absorbed 71 percent of the excess energy and the Southern Ocean, where there are few Argo floats, has absorbed 12 percent. The abyssal zone of the ocean, between about 3,000 and 6,000 meters (9,800 and 20,000 feet) below the surface, absorbed five percent, while ice absorbed eight percent and land four percent.

The updated energy imbalance calculation has important implications for climate modeling. Its value, which is slightly lower than previous estimates, suggests that most climate models overestimate how readily heat mixes deeply into the ocean and significantly underestimates the cooling effect of small airborne particles called aerosols, which along with greenhouse gases and solar irradiance are critical factors in energy imbalance calculations.

"Climate models simulate observed changes in global temperatures quite accurately, so if the models mix heat into the deep ocean too aggressively, it follows that they underestimate the magnitude of the aerosol cooling effect," Hansen said.

Aerosols, which can either warm or cool the atmosphere depending on their composition and how they interact with clouds, are thought to have a net cooling effect. But estimates of their overall impact on climate are quite uncertain given how difficult it is to measure the distribution of the particles on a broad scale. The new study suggests that the overall cooling effect from aerosols could be about twice as strong as current climate models suggest, largely because few models account for how the particles affect clouds.

"Unfortunately, aerosols remain poorly measured from space," said Michael Mishchenko, a scientist also based at GISS and the project scientist for Glory, a satellite mission designed to measure aerosols in unprecedented detail that was lost after a launch failure in early 2011. "We must have a much better understanding of the global distribution of detailed aerosol properties in order to perfect calculations of Earth's energy imbalance," said Mishchenko.

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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.

Public release date: 30-Jan-2012
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Adam Voiland
adam.p.voiland@nasa.gov
301-614-6949
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

A new NASA study underscores the fact that greenhouse gases generated by human activity -- not changes in solar activity -- are the primary force driving global warming.

The study offers an updated calculation of the Earth's energy imbalance, the difference between the amount of solar energy absorbed by Earth's surface and the amount returned to space as heat. The researchers' calculations show that, despite unusually low solar activity between 2005 and 2010, the planet continued to absorb more energy than it returned to space.

James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, led the research. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics published the study last December.

Total solar irradiance, the amount of energy produced by the sun that reaches the top of each square meter of the Earth's atmosphere, typically declines by about a tenth of a percent during cyclical lulls in solar activity caused by shifts in the sun's magnetic field. Usually solar minimums occur about every eleven years and last a year or so, but the most recent minimum persisted more than two years longer than normal, making it the longest minimum recorded during the satellite era.

Pinpointing the magnitude of Earth's energy imbalance is fundamental to climate science because it offers a direct measure of the state of the climate. Energy imbalance calculations also serve as the foundation for projections of future climate change. If the imbalance is positive and more energy enters the system than exits, Earth grows warmer. If the imbalance is negative, the planet grows cooler.

Hansen's team concluded that Earth has absorbed more than half a watt more solar energy per square meter than it let off throughout the six year study period. The calculated value of the imbalance (0.58 watts of excess energy per square meter) is more than twice as much as the reduction in the amount of solar energy supplied to the planet between maximum and minimum solar activity (0.25 watts per square meter).

"The fact that we still see a positive imbalance despite the prolonged solar minimum isn't a surprise given what we've learned about the climate system, but it's worth noting because this provides unequivocal evidence that the sun is not the dominant driver of global warming," Hansen said.

According to calculations conducted by Hansen and his colleagues, the 0.58 watts per square meter imbalance implies that carbon dioxide levels need to be reduced to about 350 parts per million to restore the energy budget to equilibrium. The most recent measurements show that carbon dioxide levels are currently 392 parts per million and scientists expect that concentration to continue to rise in the future.

Climate scientists have been refining calculations of the Earth's energy imbalance for many years, but this newest estimate is an improvement over previous attempts because the scientists had access to better measurements of ocean temperature than researchers have had in the past.

The improved measurements came from free-floating instruments that directly monitor the temperature, pressure and salinity of the upper ocean to a depth of 2,000 meters (6,560 feet). The network of instruments, known collectively as Argo, has grown dramatically in recent years since researchers first began deploying the floats a decade ago. Today, more than 3,400 Argo floats actively take measurements and provide data to the public, mostly within 24 hours.

Hansen's analysis of the information collected by Argo, along with other ground-based and satellite data, show the upper ocean has absorbed 71 percent of the excess energy and the Southern Ocean, where there are few Argo floats, has absorbed 12 percent. The abyssal zone of the ocean, between about 3,000 and 6,000 meters (9,800 and 20,000 feet) below the surface, absorbed five percent, while ice absorbed eight percent and land four percent.

The updated energy imbalance calculation has important implications for climate modeling. Its value, which is slightly lower than previous estimates, suggests that most climate models overestimate how readily heat mixes deeply into the ocean and significantly underestimates the cooling effect of small airborne particles called aerosols, which along with greenhouse gases and solar irradiance are critical factors in energy imbalance calculations.

"Climate models simulate observed changes in global temperatures quite accurately, so if the models mix heat into the deep ocean too aggressively, it follows that they underestimate the magnitude of the aerosol cooling effect," Hansen said.

Aerosols, which can either warm or cool the atmosphere depending on their composition and how they interact with clouds, are thought to have a net cooling effect. But estimates of their overall impact on climate are quite uncertain given how difficult it is to measure the distribution of the particles on a broad scale. The new study suggests that the overall cooling effect from aerosols could be about twice as strong as current climate models suggest, largely because few models account for how the particles affect clouds.

"Unfortunately, aerosols remain poorly measured from space," said Michael Mishchenko, a scientist also based at GISS and the project scientist for Glory, a satellite mission designed to measure aerosols in unprecedented detail that was lost after a launch failure in early 2011. "We must have a much better understanding of the global distribution of detailed aerosol properties in order to perfect calculations of Earth's energy imbalance," said Mishchenko.

###

---

[ | 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.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/nsfc-eeb013012.php

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Wanted Women

What the West can learn from two fiercely intelligent Muslim women who took opposing paths in life.

How do two women ? both in their 30s, highly intelligent, and raised as Muslims ? develop radically different ideas about militant Islam and its treatment of women?

Skip to next paragraph

This was the question journalist Deborah Scroggins set out to answer in Wanted Women, her six-year investigation into the lives of Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui and Dutch-Somali politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali. In ?Wanted Women,? Scroggins (who is also the author of the award-winning 2002 ?Emma?s War,? about a British relief worker who married a Sudanese warlord), covers events from before the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 up through the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and on to the present. She provides readers with a behind-the-scenes look at the war on terror as seen through the lives of two women who played prominent yet deeply contrasting roles in that war.

Scroggins?s exploration began after reading the headlines about the beheading of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh?s murder was directly linked to a controversial film, ?Submission,? which portrayed fictional Muslim women discussing the ?rapes, beatings, and incest they have suffered at the hands of Muslim men.? Van Gogh had directed the movie and Hirsi Ali had written it.

Scroggins was already on assignment to investigate the mysterious and brilliant Siddiqui for possible connections to Al Qaeda. Scroggins couldn?t help noticing a ?weird symmetry? to the lives of Siddiqui and Hirsi Ali. ?They were opposites, yet related,? Scroggins writes. ?Like the bikini and the burka....?

Written in alternating chapters (a device that disrupts the continuous flow of each woman?s personal story), Scroggins examines the public and private lives of Hirsi Ali and Siddiqui from birth to near present-day. Although both women grew up in Islamic households, their lives took vastly different routes. Siddiqui was raised ?to be a hero of Islam? and did not fail in her promises. Her parents sent her to the United States to receive a doctorate in neuroscience so she might become a ?true mujahida? ? an educated Muslim woman, following the ?model of the Prophet Mohammad?s wives.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/aSdx3sCHPlg/Wanted-Women

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Carter Center gets $40M to eradicate Guinea worm

ATLANTA (AP) ? The Carter Center on Monday announced it received $40 million in donations to help fuel its mission to eradicate Guinea worm disease, a debilitating parasite that once plagued millions of people across the developing world.

The U.S.-based center said the funding comes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Children's Investment Fund Foundation and President Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates. It said the grants, along with $31 million committed last year by the United Kingdom, will help eradicate the disease by 2015.

"Millions of people in Africa and Asia will no longer risk suffering one of the most horrific human diseases ever known thanks to the generosity and global health leadership" of the donors, said former President Jimmy Carter.

There were about 3.5 million reported cases of the disease in 20 nations when the Carter Center's eradication program began in 1986. On Monday, the center said an early count showed that only 1,060 cases of the disease occurred worldwide in 2011.

Most of the cases occurred in the African nations of South Sudan, Mali and Ethiopia. There was also an isolated outbreak in Chad.

Guinea worm disease occurs when people drink water contaminated with worm larvae. Over a year, the worm can grow to the size of a 3-foot long (1-meter) spaghetti noodle. Then they very slowly emerge through the skin, often causing searing, debilitating pain for months. The disease, however, is usually not fatal.

There is no vaccine or medicine for the parasite. Infection is prevented by filtering water and educating people how to avoid the disease.

The Carter Center has worked to stem the spread of Guinea worm in part by handing out millions of pipe filters and educating residents about the dangers of drinking tainted water. The former president has also encouraged local politicians to devote time and resources to fighting the disease.

The center said it would use the funding to pay for programs aimed at stamping out the disease and to fund surveillance by the World Health Organization to certify eradication over three years.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation contributed $23.3 million of Monday's pledge. Nahyan pledged $10 million and the Children's Investment Fund Foundation gave an additional $6.7 million.

"The last cases of any disease are the most challenging to wipe out," said Carter. "But we know that with the international community's support, Guinea worm disease soon will be relegated to the history books."

___

Follow Bluestein at http://www.twitter.com/bluestein .

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/bbd825583c8542898e6fa7d440b9febc/Article_2012-01-30-Guinea%20Worm/id-9b1112afb36245009c582307926a7e01

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IMF leads global push for euro zone to boost firewall (Reuters)

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) ? International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde led a global push on Saturday for the euro zone to boost its financial firewall, saying "if it is big enough it will not get used."

Lagarde, supported by the British finance minister, George Osborne, said the IMF could boost its support for the euro zone but pressed its leaders to act first. Some attendees at the Davos Forum still doubted the viability of the currency union.

Countries beyond the 17-country bloc want to see its members stump up more money before they commit additional resources to the IMF, which this month requested an additional 500 billion euros ($650 billion) in funding.

"Now is the time - there has been a lot of pressure building in order to see a solution come about," Lagarde told a Forum panel discussion on the economic outlook from which euro zone leaders - most notably Germany - were conspicuously absent.

"It is critical that the euro zone members develop a clear, simple firewall that can operate both to limit the contagion and to provide this sort of act of trust in the euro zone, so that the financing needs of that zone can actually be met," she said.

Lagarde's comments rounded out a crescendo of calls at the Davos Forum for the euro zone to boost its financial defenses. The annual five-day conference began with German Chancellor Angela Merkel deflecting pressure to do so.

In a carefully worded keynote address, Merkel suggested doubling or even tripling the size of the fund may convince markets for a time, but warned that if Germany made a promise that could not be kept, "then Europe is really vulnerable."

On Friday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner pressed Europe to make a "bigger commitment" to boosting its firewall.

Two bankers who attended meetings with Geithner at the Forum said on Friday the United States was looking for the euro zone to roughly double the size of its firewall to 1.5 trillion euros. There was no immediate comment from the U.S. Treasury.

Osborne said the currency bloc must beef up its firewall before other countries increase their funding to the IMF.

"I think the euro zone leaders understand that," said Osborne, the only European minister on Saturday's panel discussion on the global economic outlook in 2012.

"There are not going to be further contributions from G20 countries, Britain included, unless we see the color of their money," he added, calling for the euro zone "to provide a significant increase in available resources."

MORE OPTIMISM...FOR SOME

Japanese Economics Minister Motohisa Furukawa echoed Osborne's comments, saying: "Without the firm action of Europe, I don't think the developing countries like China or others are willing to pay more money for the IMF."

On condition that the euro zone boosts its own defenses, he said Japan and other countries were willing to additional support via the IMF.

Lagarde said, however, that if the international lender's resources were boosted sufficiently, this would raise confidence to such a degree that they would not be needed.

"If it is big enough, it will not get used. And the same applies to the euro firewall for that matter," she added.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, speaking to the Forum by video link from Tokyo, said Japan was working with South Korea and India to reduce the risk of the euro zone crisis spreading to Asia.

"Japan stands ready to support the euro zone as much as possible," he added.

Mexico's central bank chief, Agustin Carstens, said on Friday he believed a consensus was building on boosting the IMF's resources to help European countries and others that might need aid from the global lender.

There has been a palpable sense of hope at the Davos Forum that the euro zone is pulling back from the brink of catastrophe, though business leaders are equally worried that Europe's woes will hold back a global recovery.

Osborne saw some signs of optimism.

"People have commented on the mood of this conference being quite somber but having been here for a couple of days people have also pointed out that actually people are slightly more optimistic at the end of the week than the beginning," he said.

However, Davos 2011 also ended on upbeat note about the euro zone and a feeling that worst of the crisis was over - only for the situation to deteriorate and financial markets to turn their fire on Italy, the bloc's third biggest economy.

"The euro zone is a slow-motion train wreck," said economist Nouriel Roubini, made famous by predictions of the 2008-09 global banking crisis.

He expected Greece, and possibly Portugal, to exit the bloc within the next 12 months and believed there is a 50 percent chance of the bloc breaking up completely in the next 3-5 years.

Hong Kong's Chief Executive, Donald Tsang, said no matter how strong the euro zone's firewall is, the market will look at the nature of the economies it is protecting.

"If it is protecting insolvent economies...no matter how strong the firewall is, it won't survive," he said.

(Additional reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Jon Boyle)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/eurobiz/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120128/bs_nm/us_davos_economy_lagarde

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Despair, crackdowns breed more violence in Tibet

BEIJING (AP) ? A young man posts his photo with a leaflet demanding freedom for Tibet and telling Chinese police, come and get me. Protesters rise up to defend him, and demonstrations break out in two other Tibetan areas of western China to support the same cause.

Each time, police respond with bullets.

The three clashes, all in the past week, killed several Tibetans and injured dozens. They mark an escalation of a protest movement that for months expressed itself mainly through scattered individual self-immolations.

It's the result of growing desperation among Tibetans and a harsh crackdown by security forces that scholars and pro-Tibet activists contend only breeds more rage and despair.

That leaves authorities with the stark choice of either cracking down even harder or meeting Tibetan demands for greater freedom and a return of their Buddhist spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama ? something Beijing has shown zero willingness to do.

"By not responding constructively when it was faced with peaceful one-person protests, the (Communist) party has created the conditions for violent, large-scale protests," said Robbie Barnett, head of modern Tibetan studies at New York's Columbia University.

This is the region's most violent period since 2008, when deadly rioting in Tibet's capital Lhasa spread to Tibetan areas in adjoining provinces. China responded by flooding the area with troops and closing Tibetan regions entirely to foreigners for about a year. Special permission is still required for non-Chinese visitors to Tibet, and the Himalayan region remains closed off entirely for the weeks surrounding the March 14 anniversary of the riots that left 22 people dead.

Video smuggled out by activists shows paramilitary troops equipped with assault rifles and armored cars making pre-dawn arrests. Huge convoys of heavily armored troops are seen driving along mountain roads and monks accused of sedition being frog-marched to waiting trucks.

For the past year, self-immolations have become a striking form of protest in the region. At least 16 monks, nuns and former clergy set themselves on fire after chanting for Tibetan freedom and the return of the Dalai Lama, who fled to India amid an abortive uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.

China, fiercely critical of the Dalai Lama, says Tibet has been under its rule for centuries, but many Tibetans say the region was functionally independent for most of that time.

In a change from the individual protests, several thousand Tibetans marched to government offices Monday in Ganzi prefecture in Sichuan province. Police opened fire into the crowd, killing up to three people, witnesses and activist groups said.

On Tuesday, security forces opened fire on a crowd of protesters in another area of Ganzi, killing two Tibetans and wounding several more, according to the group Free Tibet.

On Thursday in southwestern Sichuan province's Aba prefecture, a youth named Tarpa posted a leaflet saying that self-immolations wouldn't stop until Tibet is free, the London-based International Campaign for Tibet said. He wrote his name on the leaflet and included a photo of himself, saying that Chinese authorities could come and arrest him if they wished, group spokeswoman Kate Saunders said in an email.

Security forces did so about two hours later. Area residents blocked their way, shouting slogans and warning of bigger protests if Tarpa wasn't released, Saunders said. Police then fired into the crowd, killing a a 20-year-old friend of Tarpa's, a student named Urgen, and wounding several others.

The incident, as with most reported clashes in Tibetan areas, could not be independently verified and exact numbers of casualties were unclear because of the heavy security presence and lack of access. The topic is so sensitive that even government-backed scholars claim ignorance of it and refuse to comment.

The government, however, acknowledged Tuesday's unrest, saying that a "mob" charged a police station and injured 14 officers, forcing police to open fire on them. The official Xinhua News Agency said police killed one rioter and injured another.

"The Chinese government will, as always, fight all crimes and be resolute in maintaining social order," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in comments on the incident.

The harsh response points to a deep anxiety about the self-immolations, said Youdon Aukatsang, a New Delhi-based member of the Tibetan parliament-in-exile.

"They're worried that there is an underground movement in Tibet that is coming to the surface," she said.

Tibetan desperation has been fed both by the harsh crackdown ? security agents reportedly outnumber monks in some monasteries ? along with a deep fear that the Dalai Lama, probably the most potent symbol of Tibet's separate identity, will never return.

The 76-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate handed his political powers to an elected assembly last year. That was intended to ensure the Tibetan cause would live on after him, but was met with considerable anxiety among many Tibetans who saw it as a sign he was giving up his role as leader of their struggle.

Dibyesh Anand, a Tibet expert at London's University of Westminster, said resistance to Chinese rule is likely to grow more fierce.

"Protests will get more radicalized since the Tibetans in the region see no concession, no offer of compromise, no flexibility coming from the government," he said.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-01-28-AS-China-Tibet-Spiral-of-Violence/id-eff7f9cfff0b4d36b9d3bc3d2732bb0d

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Gingrich says he's in 'til GOP convention

Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, poses for photographs with the Wanamaker Trophy after a campaign event at The PGA Center for Golf Learning and Performance, Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012, in Port St. Lucie, Fla. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, poses for photographs with the Wanamaker Trophy after a campaign event at The PGA Center for Golf Learning and Performance, Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012, in Port St. Lucie, Fla. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, pretends to walk away with a young girl he picked up from the audience as he campaigns at Eastern Ship Building in Pensacola, Fla., Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Republican presidential candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich gestures as he campaigns at The PGA Center for Golf Learning and Performance, Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012, in Port St. Lucie, Fla. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, campaigns at the Fish House in Pensacola, Fla., Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, arrives for an event at Centro de La Familia, Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012, in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. (AP) ? On the weekend before the pivotal Florida primary, Newt Gingrich vowed Saturday to stay in the race for the Republican presidential nomination until the national convention this summer even if he loses Tuesday's vote. Front-runner Mitt Romney poured on the criticism of his rival in television ads airing across the state.

Gingrich's pledge, followed several hours later by an endorsement from campaign dropout Herman Cain, raised the prospect of an extended struggle inside the party as Republicans work to defeat President Barack Obama in the fall. "You just had two national polls that show me ahead," he said. "Why don't you ask Gov. Romney what he will do if he loses" in Florida.

The former Massachusetts governor countered a few hours later while in Panama City. "I think we are going to win here, I sure hope so," he said.

As the two rivals made their appeals to Hispanic, Jewish and tea party voters, veterans of the armed forces and others, all known indicators pointed to a good day for Romney in the primary.

He and his allies held a 3-1 advantage in money spent on television advertising in the race's final days. Robust early vote and absentee ballot totals followed a pre-primary turnout operation by his campaign. Even the schedules the two men kept underscored the shape of the race ? moderate for Romney, heavy for Gingrich.

Campaigning like a front-runner, Romney made few references to Gingrich. Instead, he criticized Obama's plans to cut the size of the armed forces. "He's detached from reality," the former Massachusetts governor said.

"The foreign policy of 'pretty please' is not working terribly well," he added. Romney said he wants to add 100,000 troops, not cut them.

If his personal rhetoric was directed Obama's way, the television commercials were trained on Gingrich, whose victory in last Saturday's South Carolina primary upended the race for the nomination. A new ad released as the weekend began is devoted to the day in 1997 when Gingrich received an ethics reprimand from the House while serving as speaker and was ordered to pay a $300,000 fine.

Nearly the entire 30-second ad consists of NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw's nationally broadcast description of the events on the evening news. "By an overwhelming vote, they found him guilty of ethics violations; they charged him a very large financial penalty, and they raised ? several of them ? raised serious questions about his future effectiveness," Brokaw said that night, and now again on televisions across Florida.

Both NBC and the former newsman registered objections. The network called on the campaign to stop using the footage and Brokaw said in a statement, "I do not want my role as a journalist compromised for political gain by any campaign."

A Romney adviser, Eric Fehrnstrom, said the campaign wasn't likely to stop running the ad. "We believe it falls within fair use," he said. "We didn't take the entire broadcast; we just took the first 30 seconds."

Whatever its impact, the ad represented part of a barrage that Gingrich could not match.

A second Romney ad said Gingrich had "cashed in" as a Washington insider while the housing crisis was hitting Florida particularly hard.

Figures made available to The Associated Press showed Romney was spending $2.8 million to air television commercials in the final week of the Florida campaign. In addition, a group supporting him, Restore Our Future, was spending $4 million more, for a combined total of $6.8 million.

By contrast, Gingrich was spending about $700,000, and Winning Our Future, a group backing him, an additional $1.5 million. That was about one-third the amount for the pro-Romney tandem.

Officials said the total of absentee and early vote cast approached 500,000, about 200,000 of them before Gingrich won in South Carolina last weekend.

Cain's endorsement came at a GOP dinner in West Palm Beach. The business executive led briefly in the polls last fall, then cratered and dropped out of the race after he was accused of sexual harassment and marital infidelity.

In supporting the former speaker, he followed an example set by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who bestowed his endorsement a few days before the South Carolina primary.

Gingrich seemed in good humor during the day, despite the obstacles in his way. He joked with reporters that they had missed an example of his grandiosity ? a charge that one rival, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, had used in a recent debate ? when they didn't see him hold a golf trophy on display at the PGA Library.

Gingrich also turned aside one opportunity to criticize Romney, answering a question by saying, 'I want to talk about defeating Obama."

But his tone seemed to change after he said he wasn't happy with his performances in a pair of debates during the week, and was asked to explain.

"You cannot debate somebody who is dishonest. You just can't," he said, referring to Romney.

Referring to one answer the former Massachusetts governor had given, Gingrich said it was not true that Romney had always voted for a Republican when one was on the ballot.

"That in fact he could have voted for George H.W. Bush or Pat Buchanan the same day and he chose the Democratic primary, he voted Paul Tsongas, the most liberal candidate. The same year he gave money to three Democrats for Congress," he added, referring to the 1992 campaign.

"Now there's no practical way in a civil debate to deal with somebody who is that willing to say something that is just totally dishonest."

Romney poked fun at Gingrich's debate performances.

"This last one Speaker Gingrich said he didn't do so well because the audience was so loud. The one before he said he didn't do so well because the audience was too quiet. This is like Goldilocks, you know, you've got to have it just right.

"When I debate the president, I'm not going to worry about the audience, I'm going to make sure that we take down Barack Obama and take back the White House."

The two other contenders, Santorum and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, have conceded Florida and did not campaign in the state during the day.

___

Associated Press reporter Steve Peoples in Panama City contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-01-28-GOP%20Campaign/id-0eeed2026fa84e13b83324820c0d86bd

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Can Too Much Information Harm Patients? [Excerpt]

Features | Health

In his new book, cardiologist Eric Topol explores the ways in which the digital age is transforming medicine

By Eric Topol ?| January 27, 2012

CLICKS AND TRICKS: To what extent are consumers empowered? Eric Topol's new book The Creative Destruction of Medicine examines how the latest innovations in medicine and communication are changing the landscape of health care. Image: Basic Books

Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care (Basic Books, 2012), by Eric Topol, a professor of innovative medicine and the director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute.

Nearly 7 Billion people on the planet

Over 3 million doctors

Tens of thousands of hospitals

6000 prescription medicines, 4000 procedures and operations

Countless supplements, herbs, alternative treatments

Who gets what, when, where, why and how?

When a 58 year old, active, lean, intelligent financier from Florida came to see me for a second opinion, I should not have been surprised. For Valentine's Day the prior year, his wife's present was a computed tomography (CT) scan for his heart. She heard about it on the radio and also saw heart scan billboards on the highway. There was even a special deal of $100 off for Valentine's.

But her husband didn't have any symptoms of heart disease, didn't take any medications, and played at least two rounds of golf a week. On the other days, he worked out on an elliptical machine for 30 to 40 minutes. Until he got the heart scan.

My patient was told that he had a score of 710?a high calcium score?and his physician had told him that he would need to undergo a coronary angiogram, a roadmap movie of the coronary anatomy, as soon as possible. He did that and was found to have several blockages in two of the three arteries serving his heart. His cardiologists in Florida immediately put in five stents (even though no stress-test or other symptoms had suggested they were necessary), and put him on a regimen of Lipitor, a beta-blocker, aspirin and Plavix.

Now, in my office four months later, this patient is not doing well at all. He is worried that he might have a heart attack if one of the stents becomes clotted. He feels profoundly tired and has muscle aches that are so disturbing he can neither play golf nor do his usual exercise. He complains of marked depression and an inability to have or sustain an erection. A fit individual, who had taken good care of himself and was enjoying his life, was now debilitated and depressed. The cardiology trainee who saw this patient with me asked, "How could this have happened?"

Unfortunately, this individual's story is not so uncommon. Think predator and prey: the physicians and hospital advertise, leading to a high volume of heart scans, billed directly to the patients at some $500 each. Then, should an abnormal score come up, the patient may be quickly referred for first a diagnostic procedure, and then one to implant metal stents in the arteries on the surface of the heart. Naturally the cardiologist who put in multiple stents feels gratified to have saved the patient's life with unsuspected, advanced coronary disease. Overall, however these cases are like riding a train to the last stop, regardless of the most logical destination. All procedures are performed, as likely as not, the outcome is not a saved life but a "cardiac cripple."

I didn't enjoy telling the patient that he should probably not have ever had the stents. I could see the cholesterol buildup in the two arteries on an angiogram he brought with him, but the case was not severe. Of course, it was too late to do anything about the stents, which can't be removed, except to reassure him that he was not in any imminent or real danger, but I could get him off some of his medications, which would help his current symptoms and get him back to golf and exercise.

Mark Twain said, "To a man with a hammer, a lot of things looks like nails that need pounding." Surgeons are notorious for a similar bias: "When it doubt, cut it out." My patient was the victim of the same tendency. As badly as he got pounded, it could have been worse: in 2010 the "Olympic record" of stenting was published. One patient had sixty-seven stents placed throughout his coronary arteries and bypass grafts, in the course of twenty-eight coronary angiograms over a ten-year period.

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DIY smear test works for cervical cancer

A DO-IT-YOURSELF smear test could enable millions of women in poorer countries to head off cervical cancer.

Eighty-five per cent of cervical cancer cases occur in developing countries, where screening for pre-cancerous changes is rare due to difficulties in obtaining samples and a shortage of cytologists to interpret them. Testing for DNA from the human papillomavirus (HPV) that causes the disease is an alternative method. A kit created by Qiagen of Gaithersburg, Maryland, enables women to take their own cell sample, which is then posted to a lab.

Fang-Hui Zhao of Peking Union Medical College in Beijing, China, and colleagues have now reviewed data from 13,000 women in China screened using HPV-testing, traditional smear testing, or a method that uses acetic acid.

Self-HPV testing was the most effective at detecting early signs of cancer, although there were some false positives - some women had HPV but didn't have any signs of cervical cancer (JNCI: Journal of the National Institute of Cancer, DOI: 10.1093/jnci/djr532). "Self-HPV testing has potential as a primary screening method for women, regardless of their access to healthcare," says Zhao.

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Visual nudge improves accuracy of mammogram readings

Public release date: 26-Jan-2012
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Diana Lutz
dlutz@wustl.edu
314-935-5272
Washington University in St. Louis

Novices guided to follow expert's scanpath

In 2011 -- to the consternation of women everywhere a systematic review of randomized clinical trials showed that routine mammography was of little value to younger women at average or low risk of breast cancer.

The review showed, for example, that for every 50-year-old woman whose life is prolonged by mammography, dozens are treated unnecessarily some with harmful consequences or treated without benefit. Hundreds are told they have breast cancer when they do not.

Cindy M. Grimm, PhD, associate professor of computer science and engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, was not surprised by the review, a prestigious Cochrane review of the scientific evidence for a medical treatment.

"It's not just the mammogram that's the problem," she says, "it's accurately interpreting the mammogram.

"People aren't good at it. Even expert radiologists aren't good at it. Results vary widely from person to person, even when people have gone through the same training."

But Grimm thought a perceptual trick she and colleagues had invented, called subtle gaze direction, might be used to improve training.

An experiment showed that a novice could be subtly guided to follow an expert's scanpath across a mammogram and that this subtle nudging improved the novice's accuracy.

The experimental results will be presented at the Eye Tracking Research & Application Symposium this March.

Grimm and her colleagues say the technique, should it prove durable, is widely applicable to visual search tasks. Not only might it improve the reading of mammograms and other types of medical images, such as MRIs and PET scans, but it might also be used to improve the accuracy of airport screening and learning in virtual environments.

Directing the gaze

Grimm invented subtle gaze direction together with colleagues Reynold Bailey, PhD, then her graduate student, and Ann McNamara, PhD, then of Saint Louis University, a conference acquaintance.

"I had double-majored in art and computer science as an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley," Grimm says. "So I was aware that artists have all sorts of tricks for guiding viewers to look at particular areas in a painting, sometimes, in the case of narrative art, in a particular sequence.

"They might make an area brighter than the background, increase the contrast or have strong edges (borders) that attract the eye.

"Movie producers do the same thing in post processing," Grimm says. "For example, when one actor is talking and others are listening, the audience tends to watch the talker. But the producer can direct attention to a listener's reaction instead by changing the color or brightness of that part of the image."

Subtle gaze direction is a high-tech version of this time-honored craft. It works, says Grimm, by exploiting the difference between peripheral and central (foveal) vision.

"We use a small area in the central part of our retina called the fovea to see detail," she says. "But foveal vision doesn't actually cover much of our field of view.

"If you hold out your thumb, your foveal vision the part of your surroundings you're actually seeing in detail covers about the same area as your thumbnail.

"We use our foveal vision to read or drive or for other detail-oriented tasks. At the same time, we are monitoring the rest of our environment with our peripheral vision, which has lower resolution but responds faster than our foveal vision.

"When our peripheral vision picks up a stimulus, our eyes move to focus our foveal vision on it so that we can see it clearly.

"During those quick eye movements, called saccades, vision is suppressed, or masked, so that the motion of the eye, the motion blur of the image and the gap in visual perception are not noticeable to the viewer. We lose an astonishing 40 minutes of vision a day to saccadic masking."

To direct the gaze, Grimm and her colleagues changed the brightness or "warmth" of an area in the peripheral field of view to draw the novice's focus to this area.

The stimulus remained subtle, however, because the viewer's gaze is monitored in real-time by an eye-tracking device and the modulations to the peripheral vision are terminated before the eye fixates on them.

"The idea," says Grimm "is to get someone to look in a particular direction while altering their experience of viewing the image as little as possible."

"In the case of mammograms," for example, "you want to get a learner to look at the tumor region but you don't want to do anything that makes the tumor region look different than it does on the mammogram itself."

The mammography study

Reading mammograms is a good target for computer assistance because training is time-consuming and expensive, typically requiring a four-year residency and a two-year fellowship.

Despite advances in technology, novices are still trained by working as an apprentice to an expert.

The mammography study, led by Bailey, now an assistant professor of computer science at the Rochester Institute of Technology, brought together the same group of scientists as the subtle gaze direction experiment. McNamara is now assistant professor of visualization at Texas A&M University.

For the study, Grimm and her colleagues used a database of images provided by the Mammographic Image Analysis Society that includes both images and text files that contains coordinates of abnormalities and their size.

"Expert diagnostic radiologists have a particular search pattern that is not the same as that of a novice," Grimm says. "We don't know exactly what they're doing, but they tend to do a fairly broad scan and then fixate on parts of the image that have a tumor-like texture. A novice might instead attend to brighter spots in the image or fail to scan all of it."

Bailey hired an expert radiologist at the Rochester Institute of Technology to view and mark 65 images from the database. The expert's scanpath was recorded during this process by an eye-tracking system.

During the experiment, subtle gaze direction was used to guide a group of novices along the expert scanpath. A control group viewed the mammograms without gaze manipulation.

Novices who were guided were significantly more accurate than the control group or a third group guided along a random path. Moreover, even though the training session was brief, the effect lingered even after gaze manipulation was disabled.

Grimm says more work must be done to show that more extensive training will stick long-term. In the meantime, she can think of many ways gaze manipulation could be used to improve performance on visual search tasks.

"One simple use of the technology would be to make sure readers look at every part of the image. If you're using eye tracking," she says, "you know where people are looking, so you can make sure they don't skip part of the image."

Gaze manipulation might also be used to assist tumor-recognition software. "Suppose you had a software program that was reasonably good at spotting possible tumor areas but, erring on the side of caution, flagged too many areas as suspicious.

"Such software might be paired with gaze direction to ensure the radiologist looked at all of the flagged areas," she says. "That wouldn't necessarily be a training application; it could be a routine element of reading mammograms."

The mammogram study is widely applicable, Grimm says, because there are so many visual search tasks. She mentions airport scanners, but they are just at the top of a long list.

"I work with someone who identifies pollen species," she says. "Apparently, it takes a novice a year to learn, and they spend hours and hours looking through a microscope at these pollen grains. Again, some people are good at it and others struggle for competence.

"Perhaps in that case, as well, gaze direction could be used to train novice pollen identifiers."

###

---

[ | 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.

Public release date: 26-Jan-2012
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Diana Lutz
dlutz@wustl.edu
314-935-5272
Washington University in St. Louis

Novices guided to follow expert's scanpath

In 2011 -- to the consternation of women everywhere a systematic review of randomized clinical trials showed that routine mammography was of little value to younger women at average or low risk of breast cancer.

The review showed, for example, that for every 50-year-old woman whose life is prolonged by mammography, dozens are treated unnecessarily some with harmful consequences or treated without benefit. Hundreds are told they have breast cancer when they do not.

Cindy M. Grimm, PhD, associate professor of computer science and engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, was not surprised by the review, a prestigious Cochrane review of the scientific evidence for a medical treatment.

"It's not just the mammogram that's the problem," she says, "it's accurately interpreting the mammogram.

"People aren't good at it. Even expert radiologists aren't good at it. Results vary widely from person to person, even when people have gone through the same training."

But Grimm thought a perceptual trick she and colleagues had invented, called subtle gaze direction, might be used to improve training.

An experiment showed that a novice could be subtly guided to follow an expert's scanpath across a mammogram and that this subtle nudging improved the novice's accuracy.

The experimental results will be presented at the Eye Tracking Research & Application Symposium this March.

Grimm and her colleagues say the technique, should it prove durable, is widely applicable to visual search tasks. Not only might it improve the reading of mammograms and other types of medical images, such as MRIs and PET scans, but it might also be used to improve the accuracy of airport screening and learning in virtual environments.

Directing the gaze

Grimm invented subtle gaze direction together with colleagues Reynold Bailey, PhD, then her graduate student, and Ann McNamara, PhD, then of Saint Louis University, a conference acquaintance.

"I had double-majored in art and computer science as an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley," Grimm says. "So I was aware that artists have all sorts of tricks for guiding viewers to look at particular areas in a painting, sometimes, in the case of narrative art, in a particular sequence.

"They might make an area brighter than the background, increase the contrast or have strong edges (borders) that attract the eye.

"Movie producers do the same thing in post processing," Grimm says. "For example, when one actor is talking and others are listening, the audience tends to watch the talker. But the producer can direct attention to a listener's reaction instead by changing the color or brightness of that part of the image."

Subtle gaze direction is a high-tech version of this time-honored craft. It works, says Grimm, by exploiting the difference between peripheral and central (foveal) vision.

"We use a small area in the central part of our retina called the fovea to see detail," she says. "But foveal vision doesn't actually cover much of our field of view.

"If you hold out your thumb, your foveal vision the part of your surroundings you're actually seeing in detail covers about the same area as your thumbnail.

"We use our foveal vision to read or drive or for other detail-oriented tasks. At the same time, we are monitoring the rest of our environment with our peripheral vision, which has lower resolution but responds faster than our foveal vision.

"When our peripheral vision picks up a stimulus, our eyes move to focus our foveal vision on it so that we can see it clearly.

"During those quick eye movements, called saccades, vision is suppressed, or masked, so that the motion of the eye, the motion blur of the image and the gap in visual perception are not noticeable to the viewer. We lose an astonishing 40 minutes of vision a day to saccadic masking."

To direct the gaze, Grimm and her colleagues changed the brightness or "warmth" of an area in the peripheral field of view to draw the novice's focus to this area.

The stimulus remained subtle, however, because the viewer's gaze is monitored in real-time by an eye-tracking device and the modulations to the peripheral vision are terminated before the eye fixates on them.

"The idea," says Grimm "is to get someone to look in a particular direction while altering their experience of viewing the image as little as possible."

"In the case of mammograms," for example, "you want to get a learner to look at the tumor region but you don't want to do anything that makes the tumor region look different than it does on the mammogram itself."

The mammography study

Reading mammograms is a good target for computer assistance because training is time-consuming and expensive, typically requiring a four-year residency and a two-year fellowship.

Despite advances in technology, novices are still trained by working as an apprentice to an expert.

The mammography study, led by Bailey, now an assistant professor of computer science at the Rochester Institute of Technology, brought together the same group of scientists as the subtle gaze direction experiment. McNamara is now assistant professor of visualization at Texas A&M University.

For the study, Grimm and her colleagues used a database of images provided by the Mammographic Image Analysis Society that includes both images and text files that contains coordinates of abnormalities and their size.

"Expert diagnostic radiologists have a particular search pattern that is not the same as that of a novice," Grimm says. "We don't know exactly what they're doing, but they tend to do a fairly broad scan and then fixate on parts of the image that have a tumor-like texture. A novice might instead attend to brighter spots in the image or fail to scan all of it."

Bailey hired an expert radiologist at the Rochester Institute of Technology to view and mark 65 images from the database. The expert's scanpath was recorded during this process by an eye-tracking system.

During the experiment, subtle gaze direction was used to guide a group of novices along the expert scanpath. A control group viewed the mammograms without gaze manipulation.

Novices who were guided were significantly more accurate than the control group or a third group guided along a random path. Moreover, even though the training session was brief, the effect lingered even after gaze manipulation was disabled.

Grimm says more work must be done to show that more extensive training will stick long-term. In the meantime, she can think of many ways gaze manipulation could be used to improve performance on visual search tasks.

"One simple use of the technology would be to make sure readers look at every part of the image. If you're using eye tracking," she says, "you know where people are looking, so you can make sure they don't skip part of the image."

Gaze manipulation might also be used to assist tumor-recognition software. "Suppose you had a software program that was reasonably good at spotting possible tumor areas but, erring on the side of caution, flagged too many areas as suspicious.

"Such software might be paired with gaze direction to ensure the radiologist looked at all of the flagged areas," she says. "That wouldn't necessarily be a training application; it could be a routine element of reading mammograms."

The mammogram study is widely applicable, Grimm says, because there are so many visual search tasks. She mentions airport scanners, but they are just at the top of a long list.

"I work with someone who identifies pollen species," she says. "Apparently, it takes a novice a year to learn, and they spend hours and hours looking through a microscope at these pollen grains. Again, some people are good at it and others struggle for competence.

"Perhaps in that case, as well, gaze direction could be used to train novice pollen identifiers."

###

---

[ | 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.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/wuis-vni012612.php

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CEO says GM properly handled Volt fires probe (AP)

WASHINGTON ? The head of General Motors Co. says the company properly handled a problem with battery fires in Chevrolet Volt electric cars last year.

In written testimony for a congressional hearing Wednesday, GM chairman and CEO Daniel F. Akerson said testing by government regulators resulted in fires "after putting the battery through lab conditions that no driver would experience in the real world."

The Associated Press obtained a copy of the testimony Tuesday.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began studying the Volt last June after a fire broke out in one of the cars three weeks after it was crashed as part of safety testing. Two other fires related to separate safety tests occurred later, and NHTSA opened an official investigation into the vehicle on Nov. 25. The government ended its investigation last week, concluding that the Volt and other electric cars don't pose a greater fire risk than gasoline-powered cars. The agency and General Motors Co. know of no fires in real-world crashes.

But some critics have criticized the government's response, accusing NHTSA of a conflict of interest because the government still owns 26.5 percent of the company's shares. Wednesday's subcommittee hearing of the GOP-led House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is titled "Volt Vehicle Fire: What Did NHTSA Know and When Did They Know It?"

Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican who will chair Wednesday's hearing, said he found it troubling that NHTSA waited several months before notifying the public about the fire, which happened in June but was not made public until November.

"Given the direct government involvement in General Motors, it also prompts questions about whether or not this administration is promoting the rapid distribution of electric vehicles, like the Volt, before doing their homework and understanding how the risks associated with these vehicles should be addressed," Jordan said.

In an email Tuesday, NHTSA spokeswoman Lynda Tran said that following the June fire, the agency needed to determine through careful forensic analysis whether the Volt was the actual cause ? and if so, what the implications were for safety ? and that took time.

"If at any time during this process we had reason to believe that vehicle owners faced any imminent safety risk we would have made that point known to the public right away," she said.

For GM's part, Akerson said: "There would be no stalling or working the bureaucratic process. We'd place our customers' sense of safety and peace of mind first, and we would act quickly."

The company advised Volt owners to return their cars to dealers for repairs that will lower the risk of battery fires. GM hopes that by adding steel to the plates protecting the batteries, it will ease worries about the car's safety. The vehicles are covered by a "customer satisfaction program" run by GM, which is similar to a safety recall but allows the carmaker to avoid the bad publicity and federal monitoring that come with a recall.

"The Volt is safe," Akerson said.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/uscongress/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120125/ap_on_go_co/us_volt_fires

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Wills, Trusts & Estates Prof Blog: Investing for Trustees

? Mitt Romney's IRA | Main | 10 Things to Look Out For with Funeral Homes ?

January 25, 2012

Investing for Trustees

Christopher P. Cline authored a book entitled ?The Law of Trustee Investments.? The? book covers the restatement standard of Trustee?s duties, the Prudent Investor Act, and relevant case law. ?Cline also discusses topics including types of investment, diversification, breach and damages, and drafting investment plans. To purchase the book, please click here.?

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January 25, 2012 in Books - For Practitioners | Permalink

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Plant flavonoid luteolin blocks cell signaling pathways in colon cancer cells

ScienceDaily (Jan. 22, 2012) ? Luteolin is a flavonoid commonly found in fruit and vegetables. This compound has been shown in laboratory conditions to have anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant and anti-cancer properties but results from epidemiological studies have been less certain. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Gastroenterology shows that luteolin is able to inhibit the activity of cell signaling pathways (IGF and PI3K) important for the growth of cancer in colon cancer cells.

Colon cancer is the second most frequent cause of cancer-related death in the Western World. Colon cancer cells have elevated levels of IGF-II compared to normal colon tissues. It is thought that this is part of the mechanism driving uncontrolled cell division and cancer growth. Researchers from Korea showed that luteolin was able to block the secretion of IGF-II by colon cancer cells and within two hours decreased the amount of receptor (IGF-IR) precursor protein. Luteolin also reduced the amount of active receptor (measured by IGF-I dependent phosphorylation).

Luteolin inhibited the growth stimulatory effect of IGF-I and the team led by Prof Jung Han Yoon Park found that luteolin affected cell signaling pathways which are activated by IGF-I in cancer. Prof Jung Han Yoon Park explained, "Luteolin reduced IGF-I-dependent activation of the cell signaling pathways PI3K, Akt, and ERK1/2 and CDC25c. Blocking these pathways stops cancer cells from dividing and leads to cell death."

Prof Jung Park continued, "Our study, showing that luteolin interferes with cell signaling in colon cancer cells, is a step forward in understanding how this flavonoid works. A fuller understanding of the in vivo results is essential to determine how it might be developed into an effective chemopreventive agent."

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Journal Reference:

1. Do Young Lim, Han Jin Cho, Jongdai Kim, Chu Won Nho, Ki Won Lee and Jung Han Yoon Park. Luteolin decreases IGF-II production and downregulates insulin-like growth factor-I receptor signaling in HT-29 human colon cancer cells. BMC Gastroenterology, 2012 [link]

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/mcYjL7aou4o/120122201213.htm

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