The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is warning people to stay away from online dog breeders, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The results of a three-month investigation revealed many pure bred dogs for sale on the Internet are raised in puppy mills. The largest offender is a seller called Purebred Breeders which operates 800 websites, according to the Plain Dealer.
The HSUS is suing Purebred Breeders on behalf of all customers who purchased an ill or dying dog. The U.S. Congress is currently considering legislation which would regulate large breeders who sell dogs directly to consumers, according to the Plain Dealer. The USDA only regulates breeders who sell to pet stores.
Ohioans shared their thoughts on the HSUS investigation and pending puppy mill legislation via email, instant messaging, in-person interviews and Twitter.
* "The fact that Puebred Breeders have 800 websites is suspicious. Why would you ever need more than one website? The results stacking tactics do indicate a deceptive nature. The photos in the Plain Dealer story were disgusting. Animals should not be stacked in wire cages and closed away from human contact like that. I hope the HSUS wins its lawsuit and gets the company closed down." -- Rhonda Grosworth, website designer, Cincinnati.
* "The federal puppy mill legislation is long past due. Any person or business which sells living creatures should have some type of oversight. I had no idea the USDA only checked on breeders who sell to pet stores. The Internet and a lack of supervisor allows puppy mill operators to have free reign. Only sick people can enjoy making money off the misery of animals." -- Rashawna Eastman, Ohio State University graduate student, Columbus.
* "I am glad that both our state government and federal elected officials are finally getting serious about putting an end to puppy mills. It took far too many years fro animal rights organizations and concerned Americans putting the issue in front of the public for changes to occur. Pet Land in Chillicothe only buys from local breeders and keeps a book with images of the dogs with breeders and contract information to prove their pets do not come from puppy mills." -- Sean Harris, auto plant worker, Kingston.
* "There are so many dogs at local shelters and rescue centers, there is no need to go spend hundreds or a few thousands dollars on a puppy. If you absolutely must have a specific breed of dog, then search online for local breeders and go visit their kennel before making a purchase. Making a promise to care for another living creature is a serious commitment and should not be taken lightly." -- Torie Roosevelt, non-profit agency representative, Athens.
* "I don't typically agree with handing the federal government more power or infringing upon the ability of someone to operate a business, but the puppy mill case is different. The only way a law can curtail the animal cruelty is by making mandates at the federal level. Children will play with these dogs that have not been socialized well or even kept in clean conditions. The whole scenario is horrible." -- Brook Matthews, retired pediatric nurse, Belpre.
Madonna will release a brand new record in late March, it was announced on Thursday.
The first single, "Gimme All Your Luvin," will drop the last week in January, just a short while before Madonna takes the stage at the Bridgestone Halftime Super Bowl show on February 5.
PLAY IT NOW: Madonna: ?W.E.? Is A ?Provocative? Story
Madonna's new, as yet untitled album - her first in five years -- will be released on Interscope Records, the first of three albums with the label.
The news of Madonna's album comes just after it was revealed that her feature film directorial debut, "W.E.," about Wallis Simpson, who famously married King Edward VIII, a move that resulted in him giving up the British throne, received two Golden Globe nominations.
VIEW THE PHOTOS: Madonna - Music?s Royal Madgesty!
"W.E." was nominated for Best Original Song and Best Original Score.
The 69th Annual Golden Globes will air live on Sunday, January 15, 2012 at 5 PM PST/8 PM EST on NBC.
Copyright 2011 by NBC Universal, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
VIEW THE PHOTOS: Golden Globes 2012: And The Movie Nominees Are?
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Gregg Barson is a documentarian, not a comedian. But when Jerry Lewis let him know that more than a dozen people were waiting in line to tell his story, Barson offered a persuasive punch line.
"Yeah, but they're not me," was Barson's comeback, followed by a momentary quiver of fear that he'd gone too far with the veteran star.
"He said, 'I like that. You know why? Because you remind me of me,'" Barson recalled. That chutzpah-fueled exchange led to "Method to the Madness of Jerry Lewis," debuting 8 p.m. EST Saturday on Encore.
The film focuses on what makes the 85-year-old ? and still working ? Lewis tick as a performer and filmmaker. Those looking for dish on his family life or breakup with stage and screen partner Dean Martin or abrupt departure from the Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon he'd nurtured for six decades won't find it here.
Barson, who describes himself as "in heaven" when he caught a Lewis film on TV as a youngster, said his intent was to focus on Lewis' career from vaudeville on and his contributions to comedy and movies.
Younger people without exposure to Lewis' work likely consider him as "that telethon guy. Hopefully, the film will open their eyes as opposed to thinking he did one thing one day a year," Barson said.
During more than three years of filming, Barson had near-complete access as he followed Lewis from his yacht in San Diego to his home in Las Vegas to concert dates and to the Cannes Film Festival in France, the country that idolizes Lewis as a cinematic genius.
He was good company, Barson said. "He's always up, funny and playful. ... The sparkle, he didn't put in on for the camera. He's being real."
"Method to the Madness," which opens with Jerry Seinfeld, Eddie Murphy and other comedians anointing Lewis as comedy royalty, is an unabashed valentine. It is also a reminder that Lewis inspired rock-star levels of fan devotion, and of how impressively "The Bellboy" (1960) and many other films starring and written and directed by Lewis ruled the box office.
Barson, who made the well-received Phyllis Diller documentary "Goodnight, We Love You," sees parallels between Diller and Lewis, including their work ethic.
"She was 84 when she retired, and he's 85 and still working. They never rest on their laurels," Barson said. "They still care. They're not phoning it in."
And that, he said, is part of Lewis' method: Every aspect of his performance is planned.
"As Eddie Murphy says (in the film), slapstick looks simple but the reason it's been around so long is how well thought out it is," Barson said.
Lewis is pleased with the film. And his health is good, according to the filmmaker, who spills one appropriately quirky personal secret on his subject: "He drinks a lot of orange soda. Maybe that's the fountain of youth."
I need more male roleplayers for the above roleplay. A few female characters wouldn't hurt either. Please read the introduction of the roleplay (link provided above) and see if you could fit the part. Here's a basic overview of the RP, however:
It's mid-December. Christmas break is just around the corner, and you can't wait to get out. Before you set off for school, your parent is watching the news. You look over and see that the weatherman is predicting a blizzard, one your small town had never seen. Pushing this aside, you walk out the door, and are blasted with a rush of below-freezing air. But you head to school anyways. Your day presses on as normal. Same drama as the day before, same people, same boring classes, same everything.
It's not until your last class that the weather outside seems to take a turn for the worse, and you're told over the intercom that all sports have been cancelled for the evening, and everyone, staff included is to go home immediately after school.
So how exactly did you end up huddling in the cafeteria with the most random group of people you've ever seen. You've got them all, nerds, misfits, stoners, jocks...everyone. And apparently, according to your frantic parent's on the phone, you're stuck there for at least 12 hours!
So, are you going survive that long with the temperatures slowly dropping and your company becoming more and more unbearable as time presses on? Or will you go crazy before you're rescued?
BEIJING (Reuters) ? China's exporters will face "very severe" conditions in the first quarter of 2012, the Commerce Ministry said on Thursday, with Europe's debt crisis dragging on and dampening demand.
"The overall trade environment next year for China will be complicated, partly due to the economic uncertainties in the European countries, and I should say that the export situation in the first quarter of next year will be very severe," Commerce Ministry spokesman Shen Danyang told a news conference.
Growth in Chinese exports and imports slowed in November, fresh evidence of faltering demand abroad and at home that is pushing Beijing towards a more explicit pro-growth policy stance, according to data published on December 10.
Customs data showed exports at their most sluggish in two years -- stripping out the volatile month of February.
(Reporting by Aileen Wang and Nick Edwards; Editing by Ken Wills)
[unable to retrieve full-text content]An interactive, crowd-sourced timeline looks into the future and envisions a wealth of life-altering technological innovation.
Pharmacogenomics study finds rare gene variants critical for personalized drug treatmentPublic release date: 5-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Peggy Calicchia calicchi@cshl.edu 516-422-4012 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
December 6, 2011 The use of genetic tests to predict a patient's response to drugs is increasingly important in the development of personalized medicine. But genetic tests often only look for the most common gene variants. In a pharmacogenomics study published online today in Genome Research (www.genome.org), researchers have characterized rare genetic variants in a specific gene that can have a significant influence in disposition of a drug used to treat cancer and autoimmune disease, a finding that will help improve the effectiveness of personalized care.
The drug methotrexate is used to treat cancers such as acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and autoimmune diseases including rheumatoid arthritis. Common genetic variants in the SLCO1B1 gene, which encodes a transporter in the liver important for clearance of medication from the body, are present in 10-15% of the population and affect the efficiency of methotrexate clearance from the body.
Low clearance of methotrexate results in high levels in the blood and increased side effects. Rare variants could also significantly affect drug clearance, but the influence of rare versus common SLCO1B1 variants in methotrexate clearance had not yet been explored.
In this report, an international team of researchers sequenced the exons of SLCO1B1, the gene regions that code for protein, in a cohort of pediatric patients receiving methotrexate, finding rare genetic variants that have an effect on the efficiency of clearance of the drug from the body. "We showed that rare inherited genomic variants, present in as few as 1 in 699 people, account for a significant percentage of variability in blood levels of methotrexate," said Dr. Mary Relling of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, senior author of the study. "This means that the high blood levels present in 2% of people are due to very rare genetic variants."
The research group then utilized computational algorithms to predict the potential negative impact of genomic variants identified in this study on function of the SLCO1B1 protein in the transport of methotrexate. They then tested these predictions in laboratory cell lines, confirming that these genetic variants conferred lower transport of the drug.
"Our discovery of important but rare coding variants in SLCO1B1 not only has implications for methotrexate, but also possibly for other drugs," explained Dr. Laura Ramsey of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, primary author of the study. Ramsey noted that SLCO1B1 variants are tested to inform choice of the appropriate dosage of statins, commonly used to treat or prevent high cholesterol.
Ramsey added that clinical genetic tests are currently limited, generally only testing for the most common SLCO1B1 variants. "Our findings that there are additional rare functional coding variants in this gene suggest that genotyping tests would need to expand to include rare variants in order to avoid false negative test results."
Scientists from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital (Memphis, TN), Aarhus University (Aarhus, Denmark), MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston, TX), the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (Memphis, TN), the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center (Baltimore, MD), and the University of California, San Francisco (San Francisco, CA) contributed to this study.
###
This work was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences' Pharmacogenomics Research Network, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities (ALSAC).
Media contacts:
The authors are available for more information by contacting Summer Freeman, St. Jude Communications (summer.freeman@stjude.org; +1-901-595-3061).
Interested reporters may obtain copies of the manuscript from Peggy Calicchia, Administrative Assistant, Genome Research (calicchi@cshl.edu; +1-516-422-4012).
About the article:
The manuscript will be published online ahead of print on December 6, 2011. Its full citation is as follows:
Ramsey LB, Bruun GH, Yang W, Trevino LR, Vattathil S, Scheet P, Cheng C, Rosner GL, Giacomini KM, Fan Y, Sparreboom A, Mikkelsen TS, Corydon TJ, Pui C, Evans WE, Relling MV. Rare versus common variants in pharmacogenetics: SLCO1B1 variation and methotrexate disposition. Genome Res doi: 10.1101/gr.129668.111.
About Genome Research:
Launched in 1995, Genome Research (www.genome.org) is an international, continuously published, peer-reviewed journal that focuses on research that provides novel insights into the genome biology of all organisms, including advances in genomic medicine. Among the topics considered by the journal are genome structure and function, comparative genomics, molecular evolution, genome-scale quantitative and population genetics, proteomics, epigenomics, and systems biology. The journal also features exciting gene discoveries and reports of cutting-edge computational biology and high-throughput methodologies.
About Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press:
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is a private, nonprofit institution in New York that conducts research in cancer and other life sciences and has a variety of educational programs. Its Press, originating in 1933, is the largest of the Laboratory's five education divisions and is a publisher of books, journals, and electronic media for scientists, students, and the general public.
Genome Research issues press releases to highlight significant research studies that are published in the journal.
[ | 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.
Pharmacogenomics study finds rare gene variants critical for personalized drug treatmentPublic release date: 5-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Peggy Calicchia calicchi@cshl.edu 516-422-4012 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
December 6, 2011 The use of genetic tests to predict a patient's response to drugs is increasingly important in the development of personalized medicine. But genetic tests often only look for the most common gene variants. In a pharmacogenomics study published online today in Genome Research (www.genome.org), researchers have characterized rare genetic variants in a specific gene that can have a significant influence in disposition of a drug used to treat cancer and autoimmune disease, a finding that will help improve the effectiveness of personalized care.
The drug methotrexate is used to treat cancers such as acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and autoimmune diseases including rheumatoid arthritis. Common genetic variants in the SLCO1B1 gene, which encodes a transporter in the liver important for clearance of medication from the body, are present in 10-15% of the population and affect the efficiency of methotrexate clearance from the body.
Low clearance of methotrexate results in high levels in the blood and increased side effects. Rare variants could also significantly affect drug clearance, but the influence of rare versus common SLCO1B1 variants in methotrexate clearance had not yet been explored.
In this report, an international team of researchers sequenced the exons of SLCO1B1, the gene regions that code for protein, in a cohort of pediatric patients receiving methotrexate, finding rare genetic variants that have an effect on the efficiency of clearance of the drug from the body. "We showed that rare inherited genomic variants, present in as few as 1 in 699 people, account for a significant percentage of variability in blood levels of methotrexate," said Dr. Mary Relling of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, senior author of the study. "This means that the high blood levels present in 2% of people are due to very rare genetic variants."
The research group then utilized computational algorithms to predict the potential negative impact of genomic variants identified in this study on function of the SLCO1B1 protein in the transport of methotrexate. They then tested these predictions in laboratory cell lines, confirming that these genetic variants conferred lower transport of the drug.
"Our discovery of important but rare coding variants in SLCO1B1 not only has implications for methotrexate, but also possibly for other drugs," explained Dr. Laura Ramsey of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, primary author of the study. Ramsey noted that SLCO1B1 variants are tested to inform choice of the appropriate dosage of statins, commonly used to treat or prevent high cholesterol.
Ramsey added that clinical genetic tests are currently limited, generally only testing for the most common SLCO1B1 variants. "Our findings that there are additional rare functional coding variants in this gene suggest that genotyping tests would need to expand to include rare variants in order to avoid false negative test results."
Scientists from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital (Memphis, TN), Aarhus University (Aarhus, Denmark), MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston, TX), the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (Memphis, TN), the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center (Baltimore, MD), and the University of California, San Francisco (San Francisco, CA) contributed to this study.
###
This work was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences' Pharmacogenomics Research Network, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities (ALSAC).
Media contacts:
The authors are available for more information by contacting Summer Freeman, St. Jude Communications (summer.freeman@stjude.org; +1-901-595-3061).
Interested reporters may obtain copies of the manuscript from Peggy Calicchia, Administrative Assistant, Genome Research (calicchi@cshl.edu; +1-516-422-4012).
About the article:
The manuscript will be published online ahead of print on December 6, 2011. Its full citation is as follows:
Ramsey LB, Bruun GH, Yang W, Trevino LR, Vattathil S, Scheet P, Cheng C, Rosner GL, Giacomini KM, Fan Y, Sparreboom A, Mikkelsen TS, Corydon TJ, Pui C, Evans WE, Relling MV. Rare versus common variants in pharmacogenetics: SLCO1B1 variation and methotrexate disposition. Genome Res doi: 10.1101/gr.129668.111.
About Genome Research:
Launched in 1995, Genome Research (www.genome.org) is an international, continuously published, peer-reviewed journal that focuses on research that provides novel insights into the genome biology of all organisms, including advances in genomic medicine. Among the topics considered by the journal are genome structure and function, comparative genomics, molecular evolution, genome-scale quantitative and population genetics, proteomics, epigenomics, and systems biology. The journal also features exciting gene discoveries and reports of cutting-edge computational biology and high-throughput methodologies.
About Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press:
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is a private, nonprofit institution in New York that conducts research in cancer and other life sciences and has a variety of educational programs. Its Press, originating in 1933, is the largest of the Laboratory's five education divisions and is a publisher of books, journals, and electronic media for scientists, students, and the general public.
Genome Research issues press releases to highlight significant research studies that are published in the journal.
[ | 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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Public release date: 5-Dec-2011
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