China's March imports rise in sign of recovery

BEIJING (AP) ? China reported higher import growth in March in a possible positive sign for its economic recovery but analysts said doubts about the accuracy of Beijing's data made it hard to draw conclusions.

Imports rose 14.1 percent from the 5 percent for the combined January-February period, customs data showed Wednesday, suggesting Chinese manufacturers and consumers might be buying more.

Export growth slowed to 10 percent from the previous two-month period's 23.6 percent. That could add to challenges for newly installed Communist Party leaders as they try to sustain the rebound from China's deepest downturn since the 2008 global crisis and avoid job losses.

"Exports growth was expected to decelerate," said Alaistair Chan of Moody's Analytics in a report. "On the imports side, it is too soon to tell if the bounce reflects higher domestic demand or simply a rebound" from February's sharp reported decline.

Economic growth rose to 7.9 percent in the three months ending in December, up from the previous quarter's 7.4 percent. Analysts say the recovery is being propped up by government spending and could be vulnerable if trade or state-driven investment weakens.

Analysts said possible problems with the accuracy of official data made it hard to use them to get a clear picture of China's economic health.

Commentators raised questions after China reported much stronger trade with other countries in recent months than was shown by data from the governments of those economies.

Some suggested Chinese companies might be reporting phony sales abroad as a way to evade currency controls and move money into China. Others say Beijing might have exaggerated trade volume to make the economy look healthier during the transition to a new generation of Communist Party leaders in recent months.

"Today's trade data release has not instilled any more confidence in either the quality of data or the strength of the recovery," said IHS Global Insight analyst Alistair Thornton in a report.

Referring to February's explosive reported export growth, Chan of Moody's Analytics said, "It now seems that it was probably due to some issue with the reporting of exports, or possibly over-invoicing as firms evaded capital controls to bring in more foreign capital."

Beijing's strict controls on capital flows into its economy and tax breaks and other privileges for foreign investors give Chinese companies an incentive to covertly bring in money from abroad. Economists believe a portion of China's reported foreign investment is money sent abroad by Chinese companies and "round-tripped" back into the country.

Francis Lun, managing director of Lyncean Holdings in Hong Kong, said the accuracy of the export number was in doubt, based on what is known about the value of Chinese goods passing through Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese territory.

"Chinese exporters may have over reported their value to get export credit rebates because the figures in Hong Kong to and from China do not add up," he said. "Instead of 10 percent growth, you have 2 or 3 percent."

China's trade data are volatile in the early months of each year as companies shut down for several weeks during the Lunar New Year and then buy raw materials to resume production.

March exports rose to $182.2 billion while imports were $183.1 billion, leaving a rare monthly deficit of $900 million, according to the General Administration of Customs.

The trade surplus with the United States narrowed by 34 percent from a year earlier to $11 billion. The surplus with the 27-nation European Union shrank 35 percent to $5.3 billion.

Exports to Germany, China's biggest European trading partner, fell 7 percent while shipments to France declined 6.7 percent.

___

General Administration of Customs of China: www.customs.gov.cn

__

AP Business Writer Pamela Sampson in Bangkok contributed.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-04-10-AS-China-Trade/id-98842c987916490f8e1362da83f4aab2

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Discovery of a blue supergiant star born in the wild

Apr. 10, 2013 ? A duo of astronomers, Dr. Youichi Ohyama (Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica or ASIAA, Taiwan) and Dr. Ananda Hota (UM-DAE Centre for Excellence in the Basic Sciences or CBS, India), has discovered a blue supergiant star located far beyond our Milky Way Galaxy in the constellation Virgo.

Over 55 million years ago, the star emerged in an extremely wild environment, surrounded by intensely hot plasma (a million degrees centigrade) and amidst raging cyclone winds blowing at four million kilometers per hour. Research using the Subaru Telescope, the Canada-France-Hawaii-Telescope (CFHT) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) revealed unprecedented views of the star formation process in this intergalactic context and showed the promise of future investigations of a possibly new mode of star formation, unlike that within our Milky Way.

About one thousand galaxies reside in a cluster filled with million-degree hot plasma and dark matter. The Virgo cluster, the nearest cluster of galaxies located about 55 million light years from Earth in the constellation Virgo, is an ideal laboratory to study the fate of gas stripped from the main body of galaxies falling into the intra-cluster medium. Does star formation take place in the clouds of stripped gas? If so, how? Dr. Ohyama and Dr. Hota focused on the trail of IC 3418 to explore a potentially new mode of star formation. Dr. Hota has been collecting data from multiple telescopes since 2006 to understand this galaxy, which he first spotted in the GALEX data during his Ph.D. research.

IC 3418 is a small galaxy falling into the Virgo cluster of galaxies at such a high speed (a thousand kilometers per second) that its blanket of cool gas strips off. As it passed through the cluster, its stripped-off cool gas formed a 55,500 light-years-long trail that looks very much like the water vapour condensation trail from a supersonic jet's path. Hot plasma surrounds the trail of IC 3418, and it has not been clear whether the clouds of cool gas would vaporize like water sprinkled on a hot frying pan or condense further to form new young massive stars. The GALEX ultraviolet image shows that new massive stars do form in the trail. How did the stripped gas condense to form new stars without getting vaporized by the hot plasma? This process does not conform to star formation in our Milky Way Galaxy where massive stars develop in groups inside of stellar nurseries sheltered within giant cold molecular gas clouds.

Dr. Ohyama suspected that a tiny dot of light emission in the trail of IC 3418 might be different from other blobs of ultraviolet light emissions in the trail. Spectroscopy of the little dot from Subaru Telescope's Faint Object Camera and Spectrograph (FOCAS) revealed something stunning. Dr. Ohyama recalls, "When I first saw the spectrum, I was so puzzled, since it did not look like anything I had known of in extra-galactic astronomy." Unlike typical star-forming regions, the telltale signs of stellar nurseries were missing.

Intense UV-radiation usually ionizes/heats-up the surrounding gas when a star is born. Instead of any sign of heated gas, the observation showed fast winds blowing out of the stellar atmosphere at a speed of about 160 kilometers per second. Comparison with emissions from nearby stars made it clear that this massive, hot (O-type) star had passed its youth and was now aging; it was at a stage known as Blue Supergiant star and would soon face its explosive death as a supernova.

Dr. Ohyama commented on the significance of the research: "If our interpretations are correct, this is probably the farthest star ever discovered with spectroscopic observation. Since we only observed for a fraction of the night with the 8.2 m Subaru Telescope, there is huge potential for stellar spectroscopy with extremely large telescopes, e.g., the Thirty Meter Telescope, being planned for the future. We look forward to that exciting time."

Dr. Hota emphasized how important it is for astronomers to pay attention to this exotic system: "Precisely because the thermal and dynamic contrast of star formation that our research shows cannot be observed within our Milky Way, the details revealed by the Subaru Telescope's spectroscopy and the deep, sharp imaging of CFHT are opening up a new avenue for investigating the baffling fundamentals of star formation." Future in-depth investigations of this cocktail of hot plasma and turbulent, cold gas may reveal very different characteristics of stars, which may remain wild, exotic objects, challenging current theories of star formation.

This research was partially supported by the following:

• National Science Council of Taiwan (grant to Dr. Ohyama)
• National Centre for Radio Astrophysics of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (NCRA-TIFR) and Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), both in India (for Visiting Astronomer position to Dr. Hota).

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Subaru Telescope, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Youichi Ohyama, Ananda Hota. Discovery of a Possibly Single Blue Supergiant Star in the Intra-cluster Region of Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. The Astrophysical Journal, 2013; 767 (2): L29 DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/767/2/L29

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

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/3UKjZOosQyI/130410194227.htm

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Consumption Junction: Childhood Obesity Determined Largely by Environmental Factors, Not Genes or Sloth

In looking for ways to fight childhood obesity, an emerging consensus of literature points to the need to reengineer kids? environments to change what and how they eat

By Tara Haelle

Although kids can typically adjust their energy intake by regulating their food, Temple University public health professor Jennifer Fisher says, their surroundings and options may change that equation for kids in the same way that it does in adults. Image: Flickr/The Familylee

New evidence is confirming that the environment kids live in has a greater impact than factors such as genetics, insufficient physical activity or other elements in efforts to control child obesity. Three new studies, published in the April 8 Pediatrics, land on the import of the 'nurture' side of the equation and focus on specific circumstances in children's or teen's lives that potentially contribute to unhealthy bulk.

In three decades child and adolescent obesity has tripled in the U.S., and estimates from 2010 classify more than a third of children and teens as overweight or obese. Obesity puts these kids at higher risk for type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, sleep apnea, and bone or joint problems. The variables responsible are thought to range from too little exercise to too many soft drinks. Now it seems that blaming Pepsi or too little PE might neglect the bigger picture.

"We are raising our children in a world that is vastly different than it was 40 or 50 years ago," says Yoni Freedhoff, an obesity doctor and assistant professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa. "Childhood obesity is a disease of the environment. It's a natural consequence of normal kids with normal genes being raised in unhealthy, abnormal environments." The environmental factors in these studies range from the seemingly minor, such as kids' plate sizes, to bigger challenges, such as school schedules that may keep teens from getting sufficient sleep. But they are part of an even longer list: the ubiquity of fast food, changes in technology, fewer home-cooked meals, more food advertising, an explosion of low-cost processed foods and increasing sugary drink serving sizes (pdf) as well as easy access to unhealthy snacks in vending machines, at sports games and in nearly every setting children inhabit?these are just a handful of environmental factors research has linked to increasing obesity, and researchers are starting to pick apart which among them play bigger or lesser roles in making kids supersized.

Size matters in "obesogenic environments"
In one of the three new studies dishware size made a big difference. Researchers studied 42 second-graders in which the children alternately used child-size 18.4-centimeter (7.25-inch) diameter plates with 237-milliliter (8-ounce) bowls or adult-size 26-centimeter (10.25-inch) diameter plates with 473-milliliter (16-ounce) bowls. Doubling the size of the dishware, the researchers found, increased the amount of food kids served themselves in a buffet-style lunch line by an average of 90 calories. They ate about 43 percent of those extra calories, on average.

Although kids can typically adjust their energy intake by regulating their food, Temple University public health professor Jennifer Fisher says, their surroundings and options may change that equation for kids in the same way that it does in adults. "This notion that children are immune to the environment is somewhat misguided," says Fisher, who headed up the study. "To promote self-regulation, you have to constrain the environment in a way that makes the healthy choice the easy choice."

Fisher says much recent research in nutrition has focused on the "obesogenic" environments of today's society: a dietary environment offering widespread access to highly palatable foods in large portion sizes. "If we look at adult studies on dieting and weight loss, we know that the prospect of maintaining self-control in this environment is fairly grim," Fisher says. "I think most scientists believe our bodies have evolved to pretty staunchly defend hunger and prevent weight loss, and maybe are not so sensitive in preventing overconsumption."

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=6da3eb788ba00335cfff73af2c218e19

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Police raid Samsung offices over LG allegations

"I like small penises," said no women interviewed for an actually scientific study released Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS. Yes, PNAS is a funny sounding acronym, and, yes, PNAS has found that size does matter ? and that women prefer "showers" to "growers."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/police-raid-samsung-offices-over-lg-allegations-152046240.html

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Protected wildlife areas are 'welcome mats' for UK's bird newcomers

Public release date: 10-Apr-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: David Garner
david.garner@york.ac.uk
44-019-043-22153
University of York

A new study by scientists at the University of York and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) shows that bird species which have colonised the UK in recent decades breed initially almost exclusively in nature reserves and other areas specially protected for wildlife.

First author, Jonathan Hiley, a PhD student in the Department of Biology at York, said: "Nature reserves provide ecological welcome mats for new arrivals."

Published online in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B., the study shows that, of the 20 wetland bird species that bred for the first time in the UK since 1960, 18 bred first in these protected areas. Protected areas were crucial as the population established and grew. Once established in reserves, the birds began to spread out into other locations as they expanded their ranges across the country.

For some warmth-loving southern species, such as Little Egrets and Cetti's Warblers, these arrivals appear to be in response to a changing climate. For others, such as Common Cranes, they are a response to other factors, such as recovery from historical loss of habitat or persecution.

The mainstay of traditional conservation has been to establish protected areas to provide refuges against the loss of habitats and other threats in the surrounding countryside. Ironically, this study comes at a time when the value of protected areas is being questioned in some quarters because climate change and other factors cause animals to move away from their traditional haunts and into new regions.

However, species which are shifting their ranges also need high quality places to move into. For birds, at least, it appears that the current network of protected areas in the UK is providing such places.

"This study shows that the hugely important role that nature reserves and protected areas play will continue undiminished in the future," according to Jonathan Hiley.

Co-author Professor Chris Thomas, of the Department of Biology at York, added: "This gives some cause for optimism in the midst of concern that climate change and other factors will imperil many species. Protected areas are helping to give birds and other species a fighting chance of moving into new regions where they can breed successfully."

Co-author Dr Richard Bradbury, of the RSPB, said: "Many species have only been able to colonise, or re-colonise, the UK as a result of a tremendous recent effort by conservationists to recreate and manage large wetland areas. This action has been absolutely vital in creating starter homes that enable these species to settle and flourish.

"But while it is great news that the hard work of conservationists is benefitting these new arrivals, we must not forget that the changes in our climate which brought many of them may prove catastrophic for wildlife in the long term if it continues unabated."

Co-author Mark Holling, Secretary of the Rare Breeding Birds Panel, added: "Data on the rarest breeding birds in the UK, collected over the last 40 years, supported the findings of the research. As birds colonise the UK, or move to new parts of the country, the majority of them move initially to areas protected for nature, underlining their importance for conservation of rare species."

###

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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: 10-Apr-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: David Garner
david.garner@york.ac.uk
44-019-043-22153
University of York

A new study by scientists at the University of York and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) shows that bird species which have colonised the UK in recent decades breed initially almost exclusively in nature reserves and other areas specially protected for wildlife.

First author, Jonathan Hiley, a PhD student in the Department of Biology at York, said: "Nature reserves provide ecological welcome mats for new arrivals."

Published online in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B., the study shows that, of the 20 wetland bird species that bred for the first time in the UK since 1960, 18 bred first in these protected areas. Protected areas were crucial as the population established and grew. Once established in reserves, the birds began to spread out into other locations as they expanded their ranges across the country.

For some warmth-loving southern species, such as Little Egrets and Cetti's Warblers, these arrivals appear to be in response to a changing climate. For others, such as Common Cranes, they are a response to other factors, such as recovery from historical loss of habitat or persecution.

The mainstay of traditional conservation has been to establish protected areas to provide refuges against the loss of habitats and other threats in the surrounding countryside. Ironically, this study comes at a time when the value of protected areas is being questioned in some quarters because climate change and other factors cause animals to move away from their traditional haunts and into new regions.

However, species which are shifting their ranges also need high quality places to move into. For birds, at least, it appears that the current network of protected areas in the UK is providing such places.

"This study shows that the hugely important role that nature reserves and protected areas play will continue undiminished in the future," according to Jonathan Hiley.

Co-author Professor Chris Thomas, of the Department of Biology at York, added: "This gives some cause for optimism in the midst of concern that climate change and other factors will imperil many species. Protected areas are helping to give birds and other species a fighting chance of moving into new regions where they can breed successfully."

Co-author Dr Richard Bradbury, of the RSPB, said: "Many species have only been able to colonise, or re-colonise, the UK as a result of a tremendous recent effort by conservationists to recreate and manage large wetland areas. This action has been absolutely vital in creating starter homes that enable these species to settle and flourish.

"But while it is great news that the hard work of conservationists is benefitting these new arrivals, we must not forget that the changes in our climate which brought many of them may prove catastrophic for wildlife in the long term if it continues unabated."

Co-author Mark Holling, Secretary of the Rare Breeding Birds Panel, added: "Data on the rarest breeding birds in the UK, collected over the last 40 years, supported the findings of the research. As birds colonise the UK, or move to new parts of the country, the majority of them move initially to areas protected for nature, underlining their importance for conservation of rare species."

###

---

[ | 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/2013-04/uoy-pwa041013.php

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Study finds gene that may raise Alzheimer's risk in blacks

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The largest study to date looking for genetic causes of Alzheimer's in African Americans may offer new clues about why blacks in the United States are twice as likely as whites to develop the deadly, brain-wasting disease.

The findings, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Tuesday, show that mutations in two genes that play a role in whites also contribute to Alzheimer's risk in blacks. One of those, known as ABCA7, may double the risk in blacks who have the mutation versus those who don't.

Although many genes have been found to raise the risk of Alzheimer's, most studies have been conducted in largely white populations, and few studies have looked specifically at genes that drive Alzheimer's in blacks. Part of that is because very few African Americans take part in gene studies looking at Alzheimer's risk.

The latest findings will need to be confirmed by other research teams, and critics say the study is incomplete until that work is done.

To get enough participants for the newly published study, researchers combined genetic information from 18 different Alzheimer's Disease Centers funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. They gathered information on 6,000 African Americans, 2,000 of whom had late-onset Alzheimer's disease, the most common form that occurs in older people.

The team then looked for genes that were most strongly associated with Alzheimer's. The strongest link was with a variant of a gene called apolipoprotein E or APOE, a gene that contains instructions for making a protein that carries cholesterol and is well-known risk factor for Alzheimer's.

The team found that a variant of this gene called APOE-e4 doubled the risk of Alzheimer's in blacks, in much the same way it does in whites.

But the study also turned up another gene that has only been weakly associated with Alzheimer's in whites. This gene, called ABCA7, which also plays a role in the production of cholesterol and fats, appears to have a much stronger effect in blacks.

"In whites, it increases risk by 10 to 20 percent, but in African Americans, it increases risk by about 70 to 80 percent. It has a way larger effect size in African Americans," said Dr. Christiane Reitz of Columbia University Medical Center, who conducted the genetic analyses on the study.

ABCA7 is also involved in cholesterol metabolism, as are several of the genes which have been found in the past five years or so to be linked with Alzheimer's in whites.

"That seems to be a pathway that is involved in Alzheimer's disease," Reitz said.

Reitz said a variant form of APOE called APOE-e4 has the biggest effect, increasing the risk of Alzheimer's by about 200 percent. ABCA7 raised the risk by about 80 percent, and most other genes discovered so far increase risk by 10 to 20 percent.

Like other risk genes for the age-related form of Alzheimer's, the gene explains only part of the risk and likely will not lead to any new treatments soon. Reitz said it is clear that hundreds of genes are at work in Alzheimer's disease.

"ABCA7 and APOE are not the only genes involved in Alzheimer's disease in African Americans," Reitz said, adding that it would take tens of thousands of participants to detect some of the other risk genes. "What the study did show us is at least one gene which seems to have a major effect, and that's important to know."

REPRESENTATIVE ENOUGH?

The next step is to study how the ABCA7 gene works in the brain, and the team still needs to validate the results of this study in another independent population of blacks, something that may be challenging.

According to Neil Buckholtz, director of the division of neuroscience at the National Institute on Aging, the study represented all of the well characterized genetic samples of blacks in the United States.

Dr. Allan Levey, director of Emory University's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, said the study was significant for being the first large-scale genetic study done in African Americans. But he said a major limitation is that the study was not replicated in another population of blacks to confirm the findings, which is considered necessary to ensure its validity.

"Had this same study been done in whites, it would never have been published here," said Levey, referring to JAMA, a highly-regarded medical journal.

Troy Duster, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley and author of "Backdoor to Eugenics" and contributor to "Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society," says the findings are too preliminary and the effect sizes too small to draw any definitive conclusions about differences in the risk of Alzheimer's between blacks and whites.

Without a replicating study in other groups who identify as African-American and as white, "it is impossible to interpret whether this small difference has significant meaning, or points to different etiologies (or the need for different treatments) in different groups," he said.

Heather Snyder, director of medical and scientific operations at the Alzheimer's Association, which funded two of the study authors, said the findings should spur new research into the potential reasons for this link between ABCA7 and Alzheimer's in African Americans.

"Really, that all requires more funding for Alzheimer's disease research," Snyder said.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Michele Gershberg)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/study-finds-gene-may-raise-alzheimers-risk-blacks-202839389.html

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The Political Collapse of Bobby Jindal (Little green footballs)

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Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/297581462?client_source=feed&format=rss

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