Jun
18
Top 10 New Species Named
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Thousands of new plant and animal species were discovered in 2007, though only 10 were bizarre enough, lethal enough or just plain cool enough to garner spots on a new Top-10 list.
Each year, the International Institute for Species Exploration (IISE) at Arizona State University issues the Top 10 New Species list, which spotlights flora and fauna described during the previous year, so in this case 2007.
The new list includes lethal animals like a box jellyfish (Malo kingi) - named after Robert King, who apparently died after he was stung by this species - and the Central Ranges Taipan (Oxyuranus temporalis), now thought to be one of the most venomous snakes in the world.
And a dragon millipede, whose shocking-pink exterior would put a 1980s fashionista to shame, gets a spot on the list. Rather than setting trends, the arthropod uses its gaudy coloration to alert predators of its toxicity.
Some species made it onto the list due to their modern monikers, including the Michelin Man, a succulent plant from Western Australia that resembles the rotund tire guy. Also on the list: an ornate sleeper ray from the east coast of South Africa that was named after the Electrolux vacuum cleaner brand due to the animal’s ability to suck up prey in the water.
While scientists discover thousands of species each year, with an estimated 16,969 species considered new to science in 2006, plenty of plants and animals are waiting to be found. Scientists estimate 10 million or so species exist on Earth, with 1.8 million species described since Carl Linnaeus developed the modern system for naming plants and animals in the 18th century.
“Most people do not realize just how incomplete our knowledge of Earth’s species is or the steady rate at which taxonomists are exploring that diversity,” said Quentin Wheeler, an entomologist and director of IISE.
The international committee was chaired by Janine Caira of the University of Connecticut, and included scientists from across the globe, including the United States, United Kingdom, South Africa, Spain and New Zealand.
Top 10 New Species
Greatest Mysteries: How Many Species Exist on Earth?
Images: Endangered and Threatened Wildlife
Original Story: Top 10 New Species Named
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May
31
CINCINNATI - Ken Griffey Jr. hit his 599th career homer Saturday, leaving him one shy of a seldom-reached mark, and Jay Bruce extended his amazing weeklong debut with a 10th-inning homer that lifted the Cincinnati Reds to an 8-7 victory over the Atlanta Braves.
Bruce’s first big league homer off Manny Acosta (3-2) dealt another crushing road defeat to the Braves, who couldn’t hold a one-run lead heading into the ninth.
Griffey was on deck when Bruce connected for the game-winning solo shot. The 21-year-old rookie rounded the bases, flipped his helmet into the air halfway to home, then got pummeled by teammates when he hopped on the plate.
The Reds’ top prospect is 11-for-19 in his first five games in the majors, providing one big hit after another. He has a pair of three-hit games and a four-hit game.
The only thing he hadn’t done in his amazing week was connect for a homer. He pulled it off on a 2-1 pitch from Acosta, sending it deep into the seats in right field.
While the Reds flooded onto the field and 38,585 fans chanted “BRUUUUCE!” in unison, the Braves dropped their heads and trudged away in disbelief. They can’t seem to do anything right on the road.
Francisco Cordero (2-0) pitched the 10th, sending the Braves to an excruciatingly familiar finish. Atlanta has lost its last 20 one-run games on the road since August, matching the second-longest such streak in major league history.
The Braves have one of the NL’s best home records at 22-7, offset by their worst road mark at 7-20. That only begins to measure their near-miss misery. They are 0-5 in extra innings this season and 2-16 in one-run games overall.
They built a 7-6 lead on homers by Greg Norton, Mark Teixeira and Jeff Francoeur, only to let it slip away on a dispute play in the ninth. Rafael Soriano gave up a walk and a single, then failed to look Ryan Freel all the way back to third base on David Ross’ comeback grounder.
Soriano threw to first, and Freel dashed for home and slid in headfirst, beating the relay. Manager Bobby Cox threw his cap and was ejected while arguing the call at the plate, a sign of Atlanta’s mounting frustration.
Griffey got the Reds rolling with a two-run drive in the first off Jair Jurrjens, leaving him one away from becoming the sixth player to reach 600 career homers. He also had a sacrifice fly and a double.
With his next homer, Griffey will join Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays and Sammy Sosa at 600. He’ll have one more chance in his hometown - the series concludes on Sunday - before an eight-game road trip.
Chipper Jones, who went 0-for-5 and had a game-ending error in Cincinnati’s 3-2, 11-inning win on Friday night, had a pair of singles that matched an Atlanta record. Jones’ 81 hits through the end of May equaled Ralph Garr’s mark from 1974.
Notes:@ Jurrjens was the 383rd pitcher to give up a homer by Griffey. … Jones batted .417 in May with four homers. … Soriano’s first pitch in the ninth sailed untouched to the backstop screen. He wound up with his first blown save in two chances. … Reds starter Josh Fogg gave up six runs in 3 1-3 innings, likely costing him a spot in the rotation again.
May
15
California’s top court legalizes gay marriage
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SAN FRANCISCO - California’s Supreme Court declared gay couples in the nation’s biggest state can marry - a monumental but perhaps short-lived victory for the gay rights movement Thursday that was greeted with tears, hugs, kisses and at least one instant proposal of matrimony.
Same-sex couples could tie the knot in as little as a month. But the window could close soon after - religious and social conservatives are pressing to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November that would undo the Supreme Court ruling and ban gay marriage.
“Essentially, this boils down to love. We love each other. We now have equal rights under the law,” declared a jubilant Robin Tyler, a plaintiff in the case along with her partner. She added: “We’re going to get married. No Tupperware, please.”
A crowd of people raised their fists in triumph inside City Hall, and people wrapped themselves in the rainbow-colored gay-pride flag outside the courthouse. In the Castro, the historic center of the gay community in San Francisco, Tim Oviatt wept as he watched the news on TV.
“I’ve been waiting for this all my life. This is a life-affirming moment,” he said.
By the afternoon, gay and lesbian couples had already started lining up at San Francisco City Hall to make appointments to get marriage licenses. In West Hollywood, supporters were planning to serve “wedding cake” at an evening celebration.
James Dobson, chairman of the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family, called the ruling an “outrage.”
“It will be up to the people of California to preserve traditional marriage by passing a constitutional amendment. … Only then can they protect themselves from this latest example of judicial tyranny,” he said in an e-mail statement.
In its 4-3 ruling, the Republican-dominated high court struck down state laws against same-sex marriage and said domestic partnerships that provide many of the rights and benefits of matrimony are not enough.
“In contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation,” Chief Justice Ronald George wrote for the majority in ringing language that delighted gay rights activists.
Massachusetts is the only other state to legalize gay marriage, something it did in 2004. The California ruling is considered monumental by virtue of the state’s size - 38 million out of a U.S. population of 302 million - and its historic role in the vanguard of the many social and cultural changes that have swept the country since World War II.
California has an estimated 92,000 same-sex couples.
“It’s about human dignity. It’s about human rights. It’s about time in California,” San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, pumping his fist in the air, told a roaring crowd at City Hall. “As California goes, so goes the rest of the nation. It’s inevitable. This door’s wide open now. It’s going to happen, whether you like it or not.”
Unlike Massachusetts, California has no residency requirement for obtaining a marriage license, meaning gays from around the country are likely to flock to the state to be wed, said Jennifer Pizer, a gay-rights attorney who worked on the case.
The ultimate reach of the ruling could be limited, however, since most states do not recognize gay marriages performed elsewhere. Nor does the federal government.
The conservative Alliance Defense Fund said it would ask the justices for a stay of the decision until after the fall election in hopes of adding California to the list of 26 states that have approved constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage.
“We’re obviously very disappointed in the decision. The remedy is a constitutional amendment. The constitution defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman,” said Glen Lavy, senior counsel for the organization.
Randy Thomasson of VoteYesMarriage.com, a campaign to amend the California Constitution to ban gay marriage, said the decision was in effect telling children that they have a “new role model - homosexual marriage, aspire to it.
“This is a disaster,” he said.
Opponents of gay marriage could also ask the high court to reconsider. If the court rejects such a request, same-sex couples could start getting married in 30 days, the time it typically takes for the justices’ opinions to become final.
The justices said they would direct state officials “to take all actions necessary to effectuate our ruling,” including requiring county marriage clerks to carry out their duties “in a manner consistent with” the court’s decision.
James Vaughn, director of the California Log Cabin Republicans, called the ruling a “conservative one.”
“The justices have ensured that the law treats all Californians fairly and equally. This decision is a good one for all families, gay and non-gay,” Vaughn said.
The case was set in motion in 2004 when the mayor of San Francisco - the unofficial capital of gay America - threw City Hall open to gay couples to get married in a calculated challenge to California law. Four-thousand gay couples wed before the Supreme Court put a halt to the practice after a month.
Two dozen gay couples then sued, along with the city and gay rights organizations.
Thursday’s ruling could alter the dynamics of the presidential race and state and congressional contests in California and beyond by causing a backlash among conservatives and drawing them to the polls in large numbers.
A spokesman for Republican John McCain, who opposes gay marriage, said the Arizona senator “doesn’t believe judges should be making these decisions.” The campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton said they believe that the issue of marriage should be left to the states.
Ten states now offer some form of legal recognition to same-sex couples - in most cases, domestic partnerships or civil unions. In the past few years, the courts in New York, New Jersey and Washington state have refused to allow gay marriage.
Outside the San Francisco courthouse, gay marriage supporters cried and cheered as news spread of the decision. Jeanie Rizzo, one of the plaintiffs, called Pali Cooper, her partner of 19 years, via cell phone and asked, “Pali, will you marry me?”
Shannon Minter of the National Center for Lesbian Rights said same-sex marriage advocates could not have hoped for a more favorable ruling by the Republican-dominated court. “It’s a total victory,” Minter said.
California already offers same-sex couples who register as domestic partners many of the legal rights and responsibilities afforded to married couples, including the right to divorce and to sue for child support.
Citing a 1948 California Supreme Court decision that overturned a ban on interracial marriages, the justices struck down the state’s 1977 one-man, one-woman marriage law, as well as a similar, voter-approved law that passed with 61 percent in 2000.
The chief justice was joined by Justices Joyce Kennard and Kathryn Werdegar, all three of whom were appointed by Republican governors, and Justice Carlos Moreno, the only member of the court appointed by a Democrat.
In a dissent, Justice Marvin Baxter agreed with many arguments of the majority but said that the court overstepped its authority and that changes to marriage laws should be decided by the voters. Justices Ming Chin and Carol Corrigan also dissented.
California’s secretary of state is expected to rule by the end of June whether the sponsors gathered enough signatures to put the gay-marriage amendment on the ballot.
Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has twice vetoed legislation that would have granted marriage to same-sex couples, said in a statement that he respected the court’s decision and “will not support an amendment to the constitution that would overturn this state Supreme Court ruling.”
Apr
29
Concentration camp doctor heads list of top 10 wanted Nazis
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BADEN-BADEN, Germany - Karl Lotter, a prisoner who worked in the hospital at Mauthausen concentration camp, had no trouble remembering the first time he watched SS doctor Aribert Heim kill a man.
It was 1941, and an 18-year-old Jew had been sent to the clinic with a foot inflammation. Heim asked him about himself and why he was he so fit. The young man said he had been a soccer player and swimmer.
Then, instead of treating the prisoner’s foot, Heim anesthetized him, cut him open, castrated him, took apart one kidney and removed the second, Lotter said. The victim’s head was removed and the flesh boiled off so that Heim could keep it on display.
“He needed the head because of its perfect teeth,” Lotter, a non-Jewish political prisoner, recalled in testimony eight years later that was included in an Austrian warrant for Heim’s arrest uncovered by The Associated Press. “Of all the camp doctors in Mauthausen, Dr. Heim was the most horrible.”
But Heim managed to avoid prosecution, his American-held file in Germany mysteriously omitting his time at Mauthausen, and today he is the most-wanted suspected Nazi war criminal on a list of hundreds who the Simon Wiesenthal Center estimates are still free.
Heim would be 93 today and “we have good reason to believe he is still alive,” said Efraim Zuroff, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s top Nazi hunter. He spoke in a telephone interview from Jerusalem ahead of the center’s plans to release a most-wanted list Wednesday, and to open a media campaign in South America this summer highlighting the $485,000 reward for Heim’s arrest posted by the center along with Germany and Austria.
According to an advance copy of the list obtained by the AP, the most wanted, after Heim, are: John Demjanjuk, fighting deportation from the U.S., which says he was a guard at several death and forced labor camps; Sandor Kepiro, a Hungarian accused of involvement in the wartime killings of than 1,000 civilians in Serbia; Milivoj Asner, a wartime Croatian police chief now living in Austria and suspected of an active role in deporting hundreds of Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies to their death; and Soeren Kam, a former member of the SS wanted by Denmark for the assassination of a journalist in 1943. His extradition from Germany was blocked in 2007 by a Bavarian court that found insufficient evidence for murder charges.
The hunt for Heim has taken investigators from the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg all around the world. Besides his home country of Austria and neighboring Germany where he settled after the war, tips have come from Uruguay in 1998, Spain, Switzerland and Chile in 2005, and Brazil in 2006, said Heinz Heister, presiding judge of the Baden-Baden state court, where Heim was indicted in absentia on hundreds of counts of murder in 1979.
Thousands of German war criminals were prosecuted in West Germany after World War II. In the 1970s Western democracies began a hunt in earnest for Eastern European collaborators who had fled West claiming to be refugees from communism, and the end of the Cold War gave access to a trove of communist files in the 1990s.
“All of a sudden there was pressure on countries like Latvia and Estonia to put these people on trial,” Zuroff said. “So two times in the past 30 years we’ve been given a tremendous infusion of new energy and new possibilities.”
The Wiesenthal Center’s previous annual survey counted 1,019 investigations under way worldwide. The number is lower this year and inexact because not all countries responded, but new investigations were up from 63 to 202, Zuroff said.
Still, a lack of political will in many countries, and what Zuroff called the “misplaced-sympathy syndrome” - reluctance to pursue aging suspects - has meant that few people have been brought to trial and convicted.
Lotter, the witness to Heim’s atrocity, was in Mauthausen because he fought with the communists in the Spanish Civil War. His statement from the 1950 arrest warrant was viewed by the AP at the National Archives in College Park, Md.
Now that the necessary evidence is in place, numerous witness statements have been taken and Heim has been indicted, all that’s left is to find him.
Born June 28, 1914 in Radkersburg, Austria, Heim joined the local Nazi party in 1935, three years before Austria was bloodlessly annexed by Germany.
He later joined the Waffen SS and was assigned to Mauthausen, a concentration camp near Linz, Austria, as a camp doctor in October and November 1941.
While there, witnesses told investigators, he worked closely with SS pharmacist Erich Wasicky on such gruesome experiments as injecting various solutions into Jewish prisoners’ hearts to see which killed them the fastest.
But while Wasicky was brought to trial by an American Military Tribunal in 1946 and sentenced to death, along with other camp medical personnel and commanders, Heim, who was a POW in American custody, was not among them.
Heim’s file in the Berlin Document Center, the then-U.S.-run depot for Nazi-era papers, was apparently altered to obliterate any mention of Mauthausen, according to his 1979 German indictment, obtained by the AP. Instead, for the period he was known to be at the concentration camp, he was listed as having a different SS assignment.
This “cannot be correct,” the indictment says. “It is possible that through data manipulation the short assignment at the same time to the (concentration camp) was concealed.”
There is no indication who might have been responsible.
The U.S. Army Intelligence file on Heim could shed light on his wartime and postwar activities, and is among hundreds of thousands transferred to the U.S. National Archives. But the Army’s electronic format is such that staff have so far only been able to access about half of them, and these don’t include the file requested by the AP.
Heim was relatively well-known, however, having been a national hockey player in Austria before the war, and there were plenty of witnesses from his time at Mauthausen.
Austrian authorities sent the 1950 arrest warrant to American authorities in Germany who initially agreed to turn him over, then told the Austrians, in a Dec. 21, 1950 letter obtained by the AP, that they couldn’t trace him.
What happened next is unclear, but in 1958 Heim apparently felt comfortable enough to buy a 42-unit apartment block in Berlin, listing it in his own name with a home address in Mannheim, according to purchase documents obtained by the AP. He then moved to the nearby resort town of Baden-Baden and opened a gynecological clinic - also under his own name, Heister said.
In 1961 German authorities were alerted and began an investigation, but when they finally went to arrest him in September 1962, they just missed him - he apparently had been tipped off.
Heim continued to live off the rents collected from the Berlin apartments until 1979 when the building was confiscated by German authorities.
Proof that he is alive may lie in the fact that no one has claimed his estate. Heim has two sons in Germany and a daughter who lived in Chile but whose current whereabouts are unknown.
In Frankfurt, Heim’s lawyer said he still officially represents the fugitive, but has not heard from him for 20 years and has “no clue” to his whereabouts.
Asked in a telephone interview if Heim was dead, Fritz Steinacker said only: “I don’t know.”
Ruediger Heim, one of the sons, would not comment when telephoned at his Baden-Baden villa.
“All I can say is that it has been implied that I am in contact with my father, and that is absolutely false,” he said. “The rest is speculation, and I can’t enter into that.”
___
Associated Press investigative researcher Randy Herschaft contributed to this report from New York and Washington, D.C.
Apr
8
Making your digital photos portable and easy to store are made convenient with these digital photo storage devices, wherein you would be able to download your photos into the device directly from the camera’s memory card so that you can reuse the card as many times as possible. These devices are wonderful, especially if you travel a lot.
However, not all portable digital photo storage devices work the same way. Some store you images on little hard drives and some burn them to disc. If you already have a gadget that can store digital files-like an MP3 player, a thumb drive or a portable hard drive-but don’t have a way to connect it to your camera, you need an inexpensive USB bridge to turn it into a photo storage device.
To give you an idea what is the best digital photo storage device to purchase, here is a Top 5 list of the best in the market (in random order).
Apple iPod Video 5th Generation 60GB Media Player - The fifth-generation iPod has more video capability, and several cool TV programs you can download at iTunes. Its 60GB storage capacity is a godsent for photographers as it can hole thousands of pictures. It is very portable, slender, and weighs only 5.5 ounces. However, if you want to transfer photos directly to your iPod, you will need an iPod camera link connector.
Epson P-3000 40 GB Multimedia Storage Viewer - This device has an option of inserting a Compact Flash or Secure Digital memory car to transfer photos without the need of a bridge. It has a four-inch screen, and plays videos and MP3s to boot. It supports JPEG and select RAW files.
SmartDisk FlashTrax 80GB Portable Media Device - This portable media device can transfer photos from a variety of memory cards with an optional adapator. You can also listen to MP3s or watch videos, and it has a nice flip-up 3.5-inch display. The files stored here can also be seen on a TV, which is a great way of showing your images when visiting relatives.
Sandisk Sansa Pocket Media Player - It has a slim design, a large four-inch viewing screen, and less expensive than other portable media players. It has an 8GB storage capacity, which you can expand with the help of SD cards. Picutres can be viewed in a slideshow with background music. You can also use the device to listen to MP3s or watch videos, and can also be linked on a TV.
Delkin eFilm PicturePad - This compact, lightweight, device lets you view, store, and organize all your digital photos. It also lets you view the images through its 1.8-inch color screen and can even support some RAW files. It also has a video jack so you could show the pics on a TV or monitor Source:
Mar
24
Top Five Video Games for Windows
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The Games for Windows logo is the initiative of Microsoft to standardize the gaming platform with the aim of making video gaming on Windows operating systems easier and more accessible to users than before, similar to what popular game consoles have done. There are now several game titles released under the Games for Windows logo which have become popular among many PC users. Here are five of the most popular titles to date:
Bioshock
This game is a first person shooter game that allows the gamer to turn everything into a weapon. In the game, players may be able to modify their body with plasmids, upgrade weapons and make new variants of different ammunition.
Players can also hack into systems and control or even reprogram enemy robots to become allies or render enemy weapons useless. The game play makes use of a fresh idea that is unlike any other found in current genres. The story outline itself is interesting and captivating enough to lure players to explore and discover the game levels all the more.
Crysis
Crysis is a game set on Earth in the year 2019. It is a “humans vs. aliens” game that has players fight through different earth landscapes as well as enemies along the way in order to get to the heart of the alien ship for the ultimate battle. This game contains an interesting storyline that has the player working to repel an alien invasion and save humankind.
Shadowrun
Shadowrun is a multi-player FPS (First Person Shooter) game where a team is propelled into a new dimension and goes into combat using a revolutionary blend of modern weaponry coupled with some ancient magic. What makes this title unique is that it allows for a cross-platform multiplayer game allowing Xbox 360 and Window gamers to play together as teammates or as foes.
With a variety of interesting weapons and magic to use against foes, Shadowrun allows a different twist to a FPS game that would lead to many exciting bouts against fellow gamers all over the world, thanks to its Xbox 360 to Windows Vista Live online compatibility.
Company of Heroes
This game title has been a winner of several Game of the Year awards. It is a 3D real time strategy game that is set in World War II. It also comes with a single player game that starts with the invasion of Normandy to the eventual conquest of Germany. The multi-player mode allows the player to play against other gamers.
Hellgate: London
This first person shooter (FPS), role playing game (RPG) is set in a post apocalyptic London that is under siege from hordes of demons. Players are made to go through different action packed battles in massive and detailed environments and gain experience and level up through each one.
Mar
20
Top 5 Digital Picture Frames
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The electronic photo frame is a great device to store your digital images and display them as a slideshow at the same time. These new breed of electronic gadgets make a great gift to your parents, grandparents, and friends. There are hundreds of digital photo frames available in the market and it tends to be confusing, especially if you have no idea what to look for in such a device.
Here is a list of top digital photo frames, in random order.
Digital Spectrum MF-8000 Wireless Frame with Wi-Fi - This can be considered as the best choice in the market today, with a 256MB internal memory and even a wi-fi feature that lets you display images through popular photo sharing sites like Flickr. It can display photos of various files like JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF, as well as audio files like MP3s, WMA, and WMV. You can even play audio while displaying the slideshow.
eMotion 3-in-1 Desktop Media Player and Digital Frame - It is more than just a digital picture frame, it also serves as a portable DVD and CD player. It can accept various memory cards, and can run on battery for up to 2.5 hours.
Ality Pixxa Digital Picture Frame with Calendar and Alarm - The main selling point of this device is that you can program to display photos according to date, and can also be used as an alarm clock. It also has a built-in 512MB internal memory, memory card reader, and can even read movies or music.
Alorek ADMPF311 11″ Digital Picture Frame with 1GB Internal Memory - This digital photo fram has a large 11-inch display and an immense internal memory. You can either load your digital images through a direct USB connection from the camera or camcorder, by jump drive, or by its memory card reader. It can also play MP3s, and would even let you zoom and rotate photos.
Coby DP-882 8″ Digital Picture Fram with mp3 Player - This is one of the best inexpensive choices, costing below $100. It doesn’t have an internal memory, but you can download images to the frame via USB or several memory card formats. It can also play MP3 or WMA audio files, as well as movies under AVI and MP4. This device even comes with a intercahangeable frame with different color.
Mar
18
Tar Heels No. 1 in final AP Top 25 poll
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North Carolina, the overall No. 1 seed for the NCAA tournament, finished No. 1 Monday in The Associated Press’ final poll of the season.
It was the sixth time, and first since 1998, the Tar Heels (32-2) led the final rankings. UCLA and Kentucky have finished No. 1 in the final poll eight times and Duke has done it seven. Ohio State was No. 1 in the final poll last season and the Buckeyes went on to lose to Florida in the championship game.
North Carolina, the Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season and tournament champions, was No. 1 for the last three weeks of the season and for a total of 14 weeks, including the preseason poll.
The only others to reach No. 1 this season were Memphis for five weeks (three unanimous) and Tennessee for one week.
A record 49 schools were ranked this season, one more than in 1992-93. The poll started in the 1948-49 season and expanded to its current 25-team format in 1989-90.
North Carolina received 53 first-place votes and 1,779 points from the 72-member national media panel.
Memphis, UCLA and Kansas, the other No. 1 seeds in the NCAA tournament, were second through fourth and were the only other schools to receive first-place votes.
Memphis (33-1), the Conference USA regular-season and tournament champions, was No. 1 on 13 ballots and had 1,710 points. UCLA (31-3), which swept the Pac-10 titles, had five first-place votes and Kansas (31-3), which shared the Big 12 regular-season title with Texas and then beat the Longhorns in the tournament championship game, was No. 1 on one ballot.
Tennessee was fifth after changing places with Kansas from last week and the top 10 was completed by Wisconsin, Texas, Georgetown Duke and Stanford. Butler was 11th, followed by Xavier, Louisville, Drake, Notre Dame, Connecticut, Pittsburgh, Michigan State, Vanderbilt and Purdue.
The last five ranked teams were Washington State, Clemson, Davidson, Gonzaga and Marquette.
Clemson (24-9) moved back into the poll after being out for one week following its win over Duke in the ACC semifinals and a loss to North Carolina in the title game.
Indiana (25-7) fell out of the poll for the first time this season. The Hoosiers, who were 22nd last week, lost to Minnesota in the quarterfinals of the Big Ten tournament, their third loss in the last four games.
Ten schools were ranked in every poll this season, with North Carolina, UCLA, Memphis and Kansas spending the entire season ranked eighth or higher. The others ranked all season were Georgetown, Tennessee, Michigan State, Washington State, Duke and Texas.
Indiana, Butler and Marquette were ranked for all but one week. Kentucky, Syracuse, Virginia and Kent State were this season’s one-week wonders making just a lone appearance in the Top 25.
Nine schools from the 16-team Big East were ranked this season. The Pac-10 had seven and the ACC and Southeastern Conference had six each.
Source: Yahoo News
Mar
18
Study: Top NCAA seeds lag academically
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North Carolina was the only school among the four No. 1 seeds in the NCAA men’s tournament to graduate at least 50 percent of its players. A report released Monday found 86 percent of Tar Heels men’s players earned diplomas during a six-year period. The other top seeds were far worse: 45 percent at Kansas and 40 percent at UCLA and Memphis.
The study was conducted by Richard Lapchick, head of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport. It evaluated four different freshman classes for a period beginning in 1997-98 and ending with 2000-01. Though the players evaluated are no longer on campus, the report intends to provide a snapshot of academic trends.
Lapchick’s primary concern was the disparity between black and white players. Thirty-three schools graduated at least 70 percent of their white men’s basketball players; only 19 graduated that many black players. At least 50 percent of white players earned degrees at 45 schools, but black athletes had that much success at only 36 schools.
But the study found that the achievement gap was shrinking. At 34 percent of tournament-bound teams there was a 30-point or greater difference in graduation success between black and white players, down from 49 percent last year. Black players continued to succeed in higher rates than black nonathletes.
“Higher education’s greatest failure is the persistent gap between African-American and white basketball student-athletes in particular, and students in general,” Lapchick wrote. “The good news there is that the gaps are narrowing slightly.”
According to NCAA data, graduation rates for black men’s basketball players have improved 14 percent overall since 1984.
“We’ve seen some real improvement over time,” NCAA spokesman Erik Christianson said. “There’s always room for more improvement, but we’re pleased with the progress.”
The NCAA tournament field is 65 teams, but not all could be included in the analysis. Cornell, like other Ivy League schools, doesn’t report graduation rates. Gonzaga had no black players and 10 schools had no white athletes.
Two of the No. 2 seeds, Tennessee and Texas, graduated only 33 percent of their players for the period studied. The other second seeds, Georgetown and Duke, had success rates of 82 percent and 67 percent, respectively.
Academically, this year the Final Four would include five teams: Western Kentucky (100 percent graduation success), Butler (92 percent), Notre Dame (91 percent), Purdue (91 percent), and Davidson (91 percent). Xavier, a No. 3 seed, was close behind with a 90 percent success rate.
UCLA said the report failed to show its recent academic success, and a better indicator was the NCAA’s new Academic Progress Rate. Lapchick has been waiting to use that data, collected since 2004 under the NCAA’s academic reforms, until four years are available. The fourth year won’t be released until April.
Source: Yahoo News
Mar
16
Monitors don’t stop patients from waking
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Patients say it feels like being trapped in a corpse: They wake up during surgery, unable to move or scream. Some remember hearing their surgeons talk, and a few recall feeling intense pain.
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Some experts have said special brain-wave monitors were the best way to prevent anesthesia awareness. Now, in a big setback for efforts to prevent it, the first large, independent test of the monitors shows they are no better than older technology.
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis compared two groups of about 1,000 patients each, all deemed at high risk of waking up during surgery because of health conditions, medication or other factors.
One group used the leading brain-monitoring system, which uses electrodes on the forehead to measure brain waves and software to calculate likelihood of consciousness. The other used an older device that analyzes exhaled anesthetic gas.
Anesthesiologists watched for movement and changes in vital signs and followed protocols to maintain patients’ depth of sleep, adjusting anesthesia levels as needed. Patients were interviewed after their surgeries about what they remembered.
Two people in each group had experienced awareness - and the two monitored with the newer system reported having felt pain as well.
Lead researcher Dr. Michael Avidan said that in two of those cases - one with each system - the monitors indicated no problems with the anesthesia. In the other two cases, the monitors signaled problems.
The study analyzed groups of people who had surgery at the university’s partner hospital, Barnes-Jewish in St. Louis, in 2005 and 2006. It was published in Thursday’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Anesthesia awareness occurs in 1 or 2 of every 1,000 surgical patients - possibly more often in children - and is thought to happen to roughly 30,000 Americans each year.
Some just have fleeting memories of things they heard, but others describe “white-hot pain” and terror, triggering long-term emotional problems.
Carol Weihrer of Reston, Va., said that 11 years after awakening during surgery to remove a diseased eye that caused severe pain, she still has post-traumatic stress disorder, can sleep for just short periods and suffers mood swings and panic attacks.
Weihrer, who founded the group Anesthesia Awareness Campaign Inc., said she heard the doctor give instructions: “Cut deeper, pull harder.” “I actually saw them cut the optic nerve when everything went black,” she said.
“While you’re laying there on the table,” she recalled, “you are thinking, praying, cursing, plotting, pleading, trying to crawl off the gurney, trying to kick, scream, move any part of your body to let them know you’re awake. In effect, you are entombed in a corpse.”
Kathy LaBrie of Nashua, N.H., also suffered awareness during surgery for a deviated septum. She said she heard “the sound of pushing and grinding and the surgeon talking to the nurses about the kind of car he had. … I tried moving my arms and legs - I couldn’t do anything. I thought I was dying.”
Dr. Jeffrey Apfelbaum, president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, who was not involved in the study, said there is “tremendous pressure” from industry and patient advocates to use the brain-wave technology, despite the lack of solid evidence that it works better.
The position of the anesthesiologists group has been that brain-wave monitoring should not be done routinely, but may be helpful for certain patients at high risk of awareness. But widespread use would be very costly.
The dominant maker of brain-wave systems, Aspect Medical Systems, says its monitor, called a bispectral index or BIS, is used in about 17 percent of the roughly 20 million U.S. surgeries each year in which anesthesia gas is used.
The device can cost as little as $5,000. But the researchers estimated that if it were used on all U.S. patients getting general anesthesia, the disposable electrodes alone would cost more than $360 million a year.
The device, on sale since 1998, “can prevent both too little anesthesia, which could cause awareness, and too much anesthesia, which could cause prolonged recovery and anesthetic side effects” such as grogginess and nausea, said Aspect’s medical director, Boston anesthesiologist Dr. Scott Kelley.
He said the new results show the system can help anesthesiologists “achieve a very low incidence of awareness in high-risk patients.”
But Avidan’s fellow researcher, anesthesiology professor Dr. Alex Evers, said he thinks having doctors closely follow a protocol to maintain the patients’ depth of sleep was the key to reducing anesthesia awareness in both groups.
The Food and Drug Administration has stated only that the BIS device “may be associated” with reducing awareness during surgery.
About 10 percent of U.S. surgical patients receive intravenous anesthesia, without any gas. The study findings do not apply to them.
Dr. Douglas Jackson, assistant anesthesiology professor at University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark, said the study shows the BIS system “is not a magic bullet.”
“We still don’t have a monitor that can tell us about depth of anesthesia (and) awareness,” he said, adding that controlling that is still an art.
Source: Yahoo News