রবিবার, ২১ জুলাই, ২০১৩

Two 2000 NBA title rings Kobe Bryant gave to his mom dad sold at auction on Saturday Joe Bryants ring fetched 174184 whil...

SbB LIVE FROM LA (Jul 21, 2013 @ 5:13am ET)

8:00 PM: Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin tweeted on Saturday: "44 years ago today Neil (Armstrong) took this photo of me at Tranquility Base on the moon. We all miss you Neil."

7:45 PM: A New York Mets fan at Citi Field just missed getting smacked in the face by a flying bat that flew out of the hands of Anthony Recker during Saturday's game against the Phillies.

7:30 PM: Minnesota Twins owner Jim Pohlad said on Friday that he doesn't plan on firing manager Ron Gardenhire during the season: "I'm not going to put Gardy out of his misery. I don't think he's miserable. He's got a great job and we love him."

7:15 PM: About 900 people attended Friday's funeral of Jon Richardson, son of Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson & former president of Bank of America Stadium. Among those attending were Roger Goodell, Jerry Jones & Robert Kraft.

7:00 PM: Ben Volin of the Boston Globe notes that New York Giants safety Will Hill became the fourth member of the 2008 Florida Gators BCS title team to be suspended for violating NFL drug policies.

6:45 PM: Siohvaughn Funches-Wade, ex-wife of Miami Heat player Dwyane Wade, sat outside Chicago's Daley Center on Friday holding a sign that read: "NBA Miami Heat star, mother of his children on the streets".

6:30 PM: Arizona State University president Michael Crow disagrees with allowing for-profit Grand Canyon University to move up to NCAA Division I this season: "We are against using athletics as a mechanism to make profits. It's contrary to what we're trying to do."

6:15 PM: Charles Barkley said on Friday about the Philadelphia 76ers' prolonged search for a coach: "I think that's one of the silliest things that I've seen in sports in a long time .... To not have a coach under contract by now, I think that's a joke. I don't know what they're waiting on."

6:00 PM: Hay Beautiful, a horse scheduled to compete in a race at Meadowlands Racetrack Friday night, had to be euthanized after suffering serious injuries in a trailer accident on Interstate 80 near Parsippany, New Jersey.

5:45 PM: Pittsburgh Pirates manager Clint Hurdle said in a radio interview Friday about the team's first-half season success: "Don't bark if you're not going to bite. And we're in a position now where we can bite .... We've been able to show other people we're a team of action."

5:30 PM: St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Matt Holliday has been placed on the 15-day disabled list with a right hamstring strain.

5:15 PM: NASCAR announced Friday it is suspending the use of aerial cameras after 10 people were injured when a Fox Sports cable snapped during a race in Charlotte two months ago.

5:00 PM: Baltimore Orioles pitcher Kevin Gausman tweeted on Saturday about last year's movie theater shootings in Aurora, Colorado: "One year ago my hometown Aurora was victim of a terrible tragedy. My prayers are with the victims families. #5280Strong #NeverForget"

4:45 PM: MLB.com notes that as of Saturday morning, the Seattle Mariners have homered in 23 straight games. The MLB record streak is 27 games set by the 2002 Texas Rangers.

4:30 PM: Fans at Wrigley Field for Friday's Pearl Jam concert had to deal with a 2 1/2 hour rain delay, which led to the show not ending until 2 a.m. Saturday morning.

Source: http://www.sportsbybrooks.com/sbblive?eid=54207

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Hormone Replacement Therapy: Could Estrogen Have Saved 50,000 Lives?

For more than a decade, doctors have cautioned women about the risks associated with hormone replacement therapy. But those warnings may have put one group of women at increased risk of dying early, according to the latest study.

Researchers at Yale University say that nearly 50,000 women may have died prematurely after they stopped taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to treat menopause symptoms, following a much-publicized 2002 study that revealed the treatment increased risk of heart disease and breast cancer.

The 2002 Women?s Health Initiative?(WHI) study, a 15 year investigation into the factors that contribute to the health of post menopausal women, was stopped three years early when a preliminary review of the data showed that women taking the combination of estrogen and progestin had a higher rate of breast cancer, heart disease and stroke than women taking a placebo. The results stunned both the public and the medical community, since doctors had been prescribing the hormones not just to treat menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes, but for extended periods of time to protect women against heart disease.

Almost immediately, doctors and public health officials began shifting women away from such long term use of hormones, recommending that post-menopausal women restrict hormone use to the few months surrounding menopause to address the most intense symptoms. In 2012, the United States Preventive Services Task Force confirmed the WHI trial?s findings, concluding after a review of 51 studies published since 2002 that the risks of HRT outweighed the benefits, which were limited to a reduced risk of fractures.

But the WHI scientists had always cautioned that their findings might not be broadly applicable to all women past menopause. They noted that the trial included women who were at least a decade beyond menopause, and that the participants used one specific formulation of ?HRT called?Prempro, which is a combination of conjugated estrogens and a synthetic form of progesterone known as medroxy-progesterone acetate.

MORE: The Truth About Hormones

The WHI also continued to evaluate women who had had a hysterectomy, and therefore could take estrogen alone; women with an intact uterus are not advised to take estrogen without the protective effect of progesterone since estrogen is linked to a higher risk of uterine cancer. In 2007, the WHI reported that women with a hysterectomy who took estrogen alone had fewer calcium-based plaques in their arteries, and therefore may have enjoyed some protection against heart disease. This finding was supported by a 2011 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that found a slightly lower risk of breast cancer and no significantly increased risk of heart disease, blood clots, stroke or early death among women taking estrogen only compared to women with hysterectomies who took a placebo.

Based on those results, the Yale scientists decided to study this group of women further, to determine whether widespread coverage about the risks of HRT ? the combination of estrogen and progestin ? had convinced these women to stop taking their estrogen-only therapy, and whether that decision impacted their mortality. Could women without a uterus benefit in some way from estrogen-only therapy, and were they putting their health at risk if they avoided the hormone therapy?

Their analysis, published in the American Journal of Public Health, confirmed their suspicions. Before the WHI study, about 90% of women who had a hysterectomy would have relied on estrogen therapy to replace what their reproductive system no longer produced. Following WHI, however, 10% of these women used the hormone, and based on a formula the researchers created to estimate their survival rates, they determined that 50,000 women died during the study period, between 2002 and 2011, prematurely. Dr. Philip Sarrel, emeritus professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at Yale University School of Medicine and lead author of the study, said in a video discussing the study that none of these women, who were aged 50 to 59 at the start of the study, lived to reach their 70s. Most died of heart disease, bolstering the connection that earlier studies had found between estrogen-only therapy and a lower risk of heart problems among women who had a hysterectomy.

MORE: Heart Benefits from Hormone Replacement Therapy?

The analysis highlights the challenges in crafting, and distributing public health messages so that they are interpreted correctly, and applied to the right people. Following the surprisingly negative effects of HRT that WHI revealed, most in the medical community focused on warning women away from hormone therapy en masse, and the more nuanced message that some women might be able to continue taking estrogen alone became lost in that effort. ?All we really knew [in 2002] was that this one kind of HRT used late in menopause resulted in a modest degree of harm,? says Dr. David Katz, the director of the?Yale University Prevention Research Center and one of the authors of the new paper. ?We developed a cultural aversion to HRT and unfortunately it was shared by doctors and patients alike and it extended to all women and all forms [of the hormones].?

Katz says it?s not just the media that is responsible for such over-generalizing ?research journals do it too. And he suspects that many patients probably never discussed the results of the 2002 study in depth with their doctors, to determine if the findings applied to them, heightening the perception that hormone therapy of any kind was not a good idea for any post menopausal woman.

?We would like to think that?physicians?are a case apart, that we are always guided by high professional standards and meticulously reading the literature,? says Katz. ?If that were the case, every doctor would?ve read the WHI study, every doctor would?ve read the 2011 study and we wouldn?t have this problem. But actually the practice of medicine is consumed in the prevailing current in our culture.?

MORE: U.S. Panel Warns Hormone Replacement Therapy Is Too Risky

And as is the case with any scientific finding, not everyone in the medical community is convinced that the 50,000 women would have lived had they taken estrogen therapy. But most experts agree that the results should start a serious discussion about how to communicate public health messages so they are applied to the right populations in the correct way.

?What makes it a challenge is that there is not a simple set of evidence. There is not one truth about estrogen,? says Andrea LaCroix, the Co-Project Director of the Clinical Coordinating Center for the Women?s Health Initiative and author of the 2011 study. ?Any time something is less straightforward and more complicated it?s difficult in a quick media sound bite to get the message across. We tried very hard when we published that data to show that the findings were different for different age groups of women. In terms of the challenge, I actually agree with these authors that there was a lot of media attention when the 2011 paper came out, but there was not a lot of discussion about translation for women afterwards.?

In that spirit, LaCroix says that the Yale results should not necessarily drive all women who have had a hysterectomy to take estrogen pills. More research will need to tease apart how estrogen may or may not be contributing to premature death in these women. ?I find it incredibly brash in a way and almost arrogant to recommend the use of a pill to prevent death in women when it is totally unproven to do that in women of any age group. If the results of this paper were true and has public health significance, we would?ve seen deaths in U.S. women age 50-59 increase concomitant with the decline in estrogen use,? she says. ?The death data exists and it would be important to do a study relating the decline in estrogen use to changes in?mortality?directly in our country.?

MORE: Hormone Replacement Therapy After Menopause: What Women Need to Know

In the meantime, women should be asking their doctors about hormone therapy, and whether any version of the treatment is right for them. These discussions that could clear up confusion over what the latest data show about the risks and benefits of hormones. ?The primary messenger for all messages ought to be the doctors to the patients,? says Dr.?Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. ?The public hears a lot from trusted?messengers?that may not be knowledgeable.?

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hormone-replacement-therapy-could-estrogen-saved-50-000-120014182.html

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Comic Con: RoboCop, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, and The Mortal Instruments at the Sony Panel

It's pretty impressive that aside from a few leaked set photos, not much was known about Jos? Padilha's ROBOCOP reboot before the Sony panel. But they got things started immediately with some footage:

Sam Jackson (wearing a funny wig) plays Pat Novak, the host of a Glenn Beck-style sensationalist political show. He tells the camera that every country in the world is completely safe except for the United States thanks to a new line of robot and drone technology. We see news footage of a variety of different robots?some humanoid, some AT-AT style, some planes?patrolling the streets of Tehran and doing routine scans on the citizens there to determine whether or not they're a threat. Jackson says that these American-made machines are promoting peace and freedom abroad, so "Why can't we have this here?" He then accuses Americans of being "robophobic."

Cut to Michael Keaton, the head of Omnicorp talking to Congress and trying to convince them to implement similar machines. He's asked, "What would a machine feel?" and he responds that they "feel no anger and no fatigue, making them ideal for law enforcement." "What would it feel if it killed a child?" "Nothing." We're then showed the same news footage back in Iran, but this time one of the robots scans a child and murders it for unknown reasons as panic erupts.

That set the tone for the rest of the panel as director Jose Padilha and stars Abby Cornish, Michael Keaton, Sam Jackson and Joel Kinneman came out. Padilha, director of the ELITE SQUAD series, said he wanted to remake the original ROBOCOP because it was such a beloved film and he wanted to take the concept and bright ideas and bring it to present day. You can't deny that with the influx of drones and other military technology the film feels very relevant, and the director says that it'll happen in real life just like it does in their movie, using robots abroad before bringing them home.

They then showed another sizzle reel for the movie:

Keaton says Americans need a figure they can rally behind to implement his line of defense robots. He says they want a product with a conscience, something that knows what it feels like to be human. We see Kinnaman's Alex Murphy at home with his wife and kid, moments before he gets blown up in a car bomb. Keaton: "We're gonna put a man inside a machine."

We then get our first glimpse at Gary Oldman's Dr. Norton, who's working on saving Murphy. His body is completely burned and destroyed and Oldman tells his wife he can save him.

We're then shown something that looks very similar to the old ROBOCOP suit, but Keaton inspects it and says, "Make him more tactical. Let's go with black." The new ROBOCOP is revealed and he looks exactly like the leaked set pics, sleek and black. One of the doctors says he looks like a billion dollars before another corrects her: "2.6 billion dollars."

There's a montage of fairly straightforward action scenes with RoboCop shooting bad guys and also riding a motorcycle and shooting bad guys. We get some glimpses at his POV inside the suit with night vision and heat vision. Character voiceover says "When the software takes over, the machine does everything and Alex is just along for the ride." There's a scene where his crying wife confronts Murphy and pleads with him to stop, but he sees a crime happening and ignores her.

The footage ends with RoboCop pointing a gun at someone and saying, "Dead or alive, you're coming with me."

The footage and the concept behind the remake looked better than I expected and the cast seems to be firing on all cylinders. There weren't really any big action moments that wowed the audience, but it is still early.

- Kinnaman said that in this version Murphy doesn?t die. The doctors save him but essentially have to amputate him from the throat down, so his challenge is a battle with the artificial intelligence and his own soul and humanity. In all scenes where he h to interact with people his visor comes up so Kinnaman can act with his full face. The visor only comes down for the action sequences or when RoboCop is pissed while talking to someone.

- Keaton said he saw his character as an antagonist and a pragmatist, not a villain. He's a big thinker trying to improve the world regardless of consequence and Keaton was drawn to him not being a clich?d bad guy.

- Sam Jackson said he played Pat Novak as "Rush Sharpton" as he claimed the character would use every means to get people to agree with him.

- Cornish said her character grounds the film in humanity and you see how RoboCop affects his child and wife.

- Padilha really believes that what happens in this movie will come true soon. He said he wanted to make a film "about something"?a socio-political commentary like original. When a cop kills a kid, you can put him on trial. When a robot kills a child, you can't."

- RoboCop will still have his human hand, but only for political reasons?so he can shake hands with people as a human gesture.

- A guy came to the mic wearing Google Glass to show that he too was a cyborg. He asked if people should fear technology and Padilha said "technology is made and used by people. You shouldn?t fear a gun, you should fear the man behind it." And that's a theme in the movie.

The first CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS was a fun animated diversion and the sequel looks to be enjoyable in the same way. The panel featured voice actors Bill Hader, Terry Crews, Anna Farris and directors Cody Cameron and Kris Pearn. Before they came out, a video was shown featuring the cast (including Andy Samberg, Will Forte and Kristen Schaal) trying to wear real life version of their character's costumes with funny results. Everyone's chemistry was very apparent on stage and it was clear they had fun letting loose and making a product so wacky. (Even though Hader said doing the voice work took forever on the first film.)

The first clip shown was a "getting the gang back together" montage with the various characters. Flint arrives at Live Corps and learns that "foodimals" have overtaken his hometown. He sets out to track down everyone from the first film, who all have various crazy jobs, and they pile in to a car and head to Swallow Falls. The footage had the same silly tone and manic energy as the first one and Terry Crews (taking over for Mr. T as Earl) is definitely the highlight.

The second clip played like an extended trailer and gave us a better look at the foodimals. The gang arrives at the falls and encounters a variety of creatures from shrimpanzees to watermelephants. There's also a killer cheeseburger and something called a tacodile. Crews was again the highlight here, using his eye muscles to man up and suck up an escaped tear, as well as cutting the cheese literally/

- Terry Crews said all the crazy foodimals reminded him of a David Cronenberg movie. Bill Hader interjected, "It's like DEAD RINGERS, kids!"

- The directors made foodimals in their backyard using real food to brainstorm some ideas and showed footage of their handiwork.

- The rule they followed was that, like the first movie, all the food had to look delicious?even though it was alive this time.

Overall, lots of puns and silliness for kids. If you liked the first movie, I have no reason to doubt you'd like this.

There have already been a plethora of movies trying to capitalize on the fantasy-young adult craze started by Harry Potter and the Twilight franchises. I haven't read the books on which MORTAL INSTRUMENTS is based, so I can't comment on whether or not the source material is more J.K. Rowling than Stephanie Meyer, but I can say the filmed adaptation definitely seems more like the latter.

The panel featured director Harold Zwartz, author Cassandra Clare and actors Godfrey Gao, Jamie Bower, Robert Sheehan, Kevin Zegers, and Lily Collins (daughter of Phil).

The first question the moderator asked was "Any Shadow Hunters in the audience?" and I (and the majority of the Hall H audience) immediately knew we were not the target demo for this film. In the film, a young girl learns that she's special and can see a world amongst our own that features demons, vampires and werewolves which is invisible to everyone else.

The clip showed Lily Collins' character running outside and trying to get some answers out of Jace, who's from the secret hidden world. Inside her mother (played by DREDD and "Game of Thrones" star Lena Headey) gets attacked by some giant demon creatures. Mom calls her daughter to say goodbye, than takes a potion and dies. Collins comes back in, but before she can see her mom she gets attacked by a nasty demon that's seemingly half dog-half octopus. The creature design was actually kind of fun here and this sequence was the best part of the footage. Collins pulls a "nuke the fridge" moment by blowing up her kitchen while hiding in the closet, but ends up getting saved by Jace. He tells her demons can take possession of any living creature so you can't trust anyone.

- Collins was a fan of the books before being cast

- The author was heavily involved in all aspects of the production and has a catty cameo in the film.

- Jamie Bower said Jace is a "sassy bitch" and an arrogant character with lots of 'tude. (Kill me, please.)

- One of the many fangirls asked what the toughest part of the shoot was. For Collins it was doing stunts in five-inch heel boots, for Bower it was giving up chocolate eating chocolate and for Godfrey Gao it was "taking my pants off in front of the director." I don't get it either.

JoBlo.com covers San Diego Comic Con 2013

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Source: http://www.joblo.com/movie-news/comic-con-robocop-cloudy-with-a-chance-of-meatballs-2-mortal-instruments-at-the-sony-panel

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শুক্রবার, ১৯ জুলাই, ২০১৩

DOJ seeks $10M in damages from Austin debt-relief company

by KGW reporter Chris Willis

kvue.com

Posted on July 18, 2013 at 7:42 PM

Updated yesterday at 7:50 PM

SALEM -- More than 400 Oregonians have fallen victim to an Austin debt-relief company. Now the Oregon Attorney General is seeking damages against World Law Debt, and hoping to ban the company from ever doing business in Oregon again.

?These were just fraudulent business practices,? said Jeff Manning of the Oregon Department of Justice. ?We can?t stand for this.?

World Law Debt is an Austin, Texas based company that uses many different business names including: Swift Rock Financial, Inc., Orion Processing, LLC, and World Law Debt Settlement. It promises cash-strapped consumers, including many seniors, help pay their credit card debt, mortgage debt and other debt by negotiating directly with creditors.

But fist, consumers must set up an escrow account with their own money. It?s money that some consumers said goes to World Law Debt, instead of their creditors as promised.

?They never talked to any of my creditors? said Hope Jentis, a hazelnut farmer who fell behind on a couple of her credit cards. ?Normally, I pay off my credit cards every month, but I was late on two payments. I panicked. I?ve got to do something, you know??

Jentis fell on hard financial times because a plant disease wiped out nearly half of her hazelnut trees and subsequently, half of her income. So Jentis called World Law Debt, which promised to be with her ?every step of the way? during her debt relief.

?They said they would negotiate with creditors, and I would end up paying a third of what I actually, of what they said I owed them,? she said.?

The Department of Justice is seeking $10 million in damages and restitution for every Oregon victim. In addition, they also want to keep World Law Debt from ever doing business in the state again.

?They entered into these agreements to settle consumer debt,? said the DOJ?s Jeff Manning. ?And basically pocketed a lot of their customers money.?

Manning said the money is staggering. Four-hundred-twenty-five people gave money to World Law Debt, totaling more than $1.5 million. Only about $275,000 went to settlements, and more than $960,000 was company profit.

KGW?s Unit 8 tracked down a former World Law Debt employee in Austin Texas.

The employee, who asked to not be named, said dishonesty was a part of his job.

?(It) definitely felt unethical. Obviously I was kind of part of it,? the employee said. ?I?m lying. I'm basically lying to the person on the phone, telling them we can still make a plan. We can figure something out knowing in my head that ultimately they're probably going to get sued by one of their creditors.?

Late Thursday, Unit 8 was contacted by a representative or World Law Debt in Austin. He threatened an injunction filed in Federal Court to prevent KGW from airing this story.

So, KGW checked the background of the man who called, who identified himself as Randy Lepley. It turns out he is not an attorney.

If you need debt relief, there are many non-profit groups who can help you negotiate with creditors, often times free of charge.

You can get started at consumercredit.com or debtconsolidationcare.com.?

And if you have a story you?d like us to investigate, you can contact us at Unit8@kgw.com or call us at (503) 226-5041.

Source: http://www.kvue.com/news/consumer/216090531.html

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Measuring The Ridiculous Physics Of Disney's Hercules

Measuring The Ridiculous Physics Of Disney's Hercules Two years ago, our friends at the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective applied their usual rigorous statistical scrutiny to a series of basketball movies. We pick up the idea again with this analysis of Hercules, by Anthony Zonfrelli and Dmitri Ilushin.

Read more...

    

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/RaKjqbXMQqQ/measuring-the-ridiculous-physics-of-disneys-hercules-839193632

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বৃহস্পতিবার, ১৮ জুলাই, ২০১৩

Meet creators of real-life superpowers Friday in White House video chat

superheroes

1 hour ago

Obama spiderman

Whitehouse.gov

Obama demonstrates his geek cred with a young Spider-Man last Halloween.

The White House will be celebrating San Diego's Comic-Con this week with its own nod to real-life superpowers, such as invisibility and super-strength with a Google+ hangout Friday featuring several leading scientists and engineers.

At noon ET, a panel of scientists will discuss their creations and some large-scale efforts the administration is working on, according to Tom Kalil and Meredith Drosback of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy.

One scientist is working on an "invisibility cloak," another on self-healing artificial skin, another on liquid armor, and yet another on a Batman-esque ascension cable. Then there's professor James Kakalios, the author of "The Physics of Superheroes," who may chime in on how the fictional Batman's gadgets differ from the ones that actually exist.

Keep an eye on Whitehouse.gov or their Google+ page for a link to the video chat when they kick it off Friday.

Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. His personal website is coldewey.cc.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/663301/s/2edc3457/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Ctechnology0Cmeet0Ecreators0Ereal0Elife0Esuperpowers0Efriday0Ewhite0Ehouse0Evideo0Echat0E6C10A680A259/story01.htm

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