"The Artist" director Michel Hazanavicius wins DGA award (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) ? "The Artist" director Michel Hazanavicius was named the year's best feature film director by the Directors Guild of America on Saturday, further positioning the silent movie-era romance as a frontrunner for Oscars.

The movie about a fading star whose career is eclipsed by the woman he loves just as talkies are putting an end to silent pictures has been a critical darling throughout the Hollywood's current awards season.

"This is really touching and moving for me," said French director Hazanavicius upon accepting his award at the Grand Ballroom adjacent to the Kodak Theatre where the Oscars, the film industry's highest honors, will be given out on February 26.

"It's maybe the highest recognition I could hope for," he said.

The DGA Awards are a key indicator of who may win Academy Awards next month because only six times since the DGA began handing out annual honors in 1948 has the its winner failed to also be named best director by Oscar voters.

More important, there is a long history among members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which gives out the Oscars, to give their Academy Award for best film to the movie made by the winner of best director.

The next stop in the race for Oscars is Sunday's Screen Actors Guild awards in Los Angeles where "The Artist" will look to extend its streak of victories, including a Golden Globe for best film musical or comedy and honors from critics groups.

The DGA also gives out other awards, including one for best film documentary, which went to James Marsh for "Project Nim."

Among TV award winners, Patty Jenkins was given the DGA trophy for best drama series for the pilot episode of "The Killing" and Robert B. Weide took home the DGA award for best comedy series for an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

(Reporting By Bob Tourtellotte; Editing by Bill Trott)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/movies/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120129/en_nm/us_dgaawards

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Syria violence kills 37, U.N. Security Council to meet (Reuters)

AMMAN (Reuters) ? Security forces killed 37 people in Syria on Friday, activists and residents said, as people in Homs mourned 14 members of a family they said were slain by militiamen in one of the worst sectarian attacks in a revolt against President Bashar al-Assad.

The U.N. Security Council was to meet later in the day to discuss Syria before a possible vote next week on a new Western-Arab draft resolution aimed at halting 10 months of bloodshed.

Russia, which joined China in vetoing a previous Western draft resolution in October and which has since promoted its own draft, said the Western-Arab version was unacceptable and vowed to block any text calling for Assad's resignation.

There was no let-up in violence on Friday, when anti-Assad protests again erupted after weekly Muslim prayers.

Tank and mortar fire killed 15 people in Hama, a resident said, on the fourth day of an army assault on rebellious districts of the city, where Assad's father crushed an armed Islamist uprising in 1982, killing many thousands.

The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported 22 people killed elsewhere in Syria, including 12 when security forces fired on a funeral march in the southern town of Nowa, five in the normally peaceful city of Aleppo, and four in Homs.

Machinegun fire wounded five people in the Qusour district of Homs, one activist there said, adding that the city was calmer than it was at the height of Thursday's violence, when 16 people were also killed by mortar fire from security forces.

The state news agency SANA said "terrorists" killed a security man in Homs on Friday and a bomb killed a child and wounded several civilians and security personnel in the Damascus district of Midan.

SANA also said a bomb wounded three civilians and three security men in the northeastern town of Albukamal and that a suicide bomber had wounded two security men at a checkpoint in the northwestern province of Idlib.

Arab League observers headed for the Damascus suburb of Douma, where government troops battled rebel fighters the previous day as the struggle to topple Assad rumbled close to the Syrian capital.

TRANSITION PLAN

The Arab League has demanded that the Syrian leader step down as part of a transition to democracy, a call rejected by Damascus. The government says it is fighting foreign-backed armed "terrorists" who have killed 2,000 soldiers and police.

"Any decision about a future political settlement in Syria must be made during the political process without ... preliminary conditions," Interfax news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov as saying.

He stopped short of saying Moscow would veto a Western-Arab draft if the call for Assad to hand over power was not removed.

The text calls for a "political transition," but not for United Nations sanctions against Assad's government, which Moscow, an old ally and arms supplier of Syria, opposes.

Russia and Iran are among Syria's few remaining allies.

In another sign of Assad's isolation, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has effectively abandoned his headquarters in Damascus, diplomatic and intelligence sources said.

"He's not going back to Syria," a regional intelligence source said of Meshaal, who has long been based in the Syrian capital. He heads the Palestinian Islamist group which rules Gaza and is an armed offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Analysts say Meshaal was embarrassed by Assad's crackdown, in which more than 5,000 people have been killed, many of them Sunni Muslim sympathisers of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Homs, a mostly Sunni city with minority Alawite enclaves, has become a battleground since protests against Assad began in March, inspired by pro-democracy revolts elsewhere in the Arab world. Armed rebels have joined the fray in recent months.

GRISLY FOOTAGE

Residents and activists said militiamen from Assad's Alawite sect had shot or hacked to death 14 members of the Sunni Bahader family in Homs's Karm al-Zaitoun district on Thursday, including eight children, aged eight months to nine years old.

YouTube video footage taken by activists, which could not be verified, showed the bodies of five children with wounds to the head and neck, three women and a man in a house.

There was no comment from Syrian authorities, which enforce tight restrictions on independent media.

At least 384 children have been killed since the uprising began in March and a similar number have been jailed, the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Friday.

The British-based Observatory said 43 civilians were killed on Thursday, including 33 in Homs, of whom nine were children.

Hamza, an activist in Homs, said the militiamen who attacked the Sunni family were avenging deaths inflicted on their ranks by army defectors loosely grouped in the rebel Free Syrian Army.

Tit-for-tat sectarian killings began in Homs four months ago. Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, has dominated the political and security apparatus in Syria, a mostly Sunni nation of 23 million, for five decades.

"The Assads are the dirtiest of families," shouted crowds in Deir Balba, on the edge of Homs, according to a YouTube clip that showed people waving pre-Baath party Syrian flags.

In the city's Bab Amro district, demonstrators carried the body of a youth who had been shot in the head. "Bashar, your mother will bury you," they chanted, YouTube footage showed.

It was not possible to verify the footage, which anti-Assad campaigners had posted on the Internet.

The opposition Local Coordination Committees said security forces had fired on an anti-Assad protest by refugees from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights who live in Thiabieh near Damascus. It said several protesters were wounded.

Activists in the Damascus suburb of Irbin said 15,000 people had turned out to demonstrate against Assad.

Several thousand also gathered in the rain in the ancient, eastern desert town of Palmyra, clapping to anti-Assad anthems. "Bashar, God is greater (than you)!" they sang.

(Additional reporting by Erika Solomon and Dominic Evans in Beirut, Steve Gutterman in Moscow, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120127/wl_nm/us_syria

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Acupuncture May Boost Pregnancy Success Rates (HealthDay)

FRIDAY, Jan. 27 (HealthDay News) -- When a couple is trying to have a baby and can't, it can be emotionally and financially draining. But help may be available in an unexpected form: acupuncture.

Medical experts believe that this ancient therapy from China, which involves placing numerous thin needles at certain points in the body, can help improve fertility in both men and women.

"Acupuncture has been around for almost 3,000 years. It's safe and there are no bad side effects from it," explained Dr. Lisa Lilienfield, a family practice and pain management specialist at the Kaplan Center for Integrative Medicine in McLean, Va. "It may not be the only thing that is done in isolation to treat infertility, but it helps get the body primed and maximizes the potential effects of fertility treatments."

Dr. Jamie Grifo, director of the New York University Fertility Center and director of the division of reproductive endocrinology at the NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City, said that "it's not a panacea, but acupuncture does help some patients have better success."

"It's one non-traditional modality to help manage the stress of infertility, and it does improve pregnancy rates and quality of life in some people," he said.

In addition to relieving stress, Lilienfield said that acupuncture can help increase a woman's fertility by improving blood flow to the ovaries and uterus. This improved blood flow can help thicken the lining of the uterus, increasing the chances of conception.

It may also help correct problems with the body's neuroendocrine system. Acupuncture can help activate the brain to release hormones that will stimulate the ovaries, adrenal glands and other organs that are involved in reproduction, according to Lilienfield. Acupuncture's effect on the neuroendocrine system may also help infertile men by stimulating sperm production, she said.

Studies that have been done on acupuncture and fertility have had mixed results, with some showing benefits and others showing none. Grifo said the differing results may have something to do with the design of the studies. Two areas that appear to be more consistently helped by acupuncture treatments are in vitro fertilization and women who are infertile due to polycystic ovary syndrome.

Two studies -- one in Acupuncture in Medicine and the other in the Journal of Endocrinological Investigation -- found a benefit when acupuncture was used on the day an embryo was transferred into a woman's uterus.

The study from the Journal of Endocrinological Investigation also found that women with polycystic ovary syndrome and men who had infertility issues with no known cause also benefitted from acupuncture.

The actual treatment session involves placing very thin needles at specific points in the body. In Chinese medicine, these points are believed to be areas where a person's "qi" (pronounced chee), or life force, is blocked, according to the U.S. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. In Western medicine, it's believed that the needle placement may release the body's natural painkillers.

Acupuncture is commonly used to treat pain, such as back pain, headache and menstrual cramps, according to the center.

Lilienfield said that acupuncture treatment costs vary, depending on where someone lives and the training of the practitioner. In her center, a treatment costs about $135, and most people receive six to eight treatments for infertility, she said. Insurance reimbursement also varies, she noted, though many insurance companies will pay for acupuncture.

In general, someone younger than 35 is often advised to try to get pregnant for about a year before seeking treatment for infertility. "But, if you're anxious to get going, six months is a reasonable time to wait," Lilienfield said. And women older than 35 probably shouldn't wait more than six months, she added.

Grifo said he doesn't favor waiting that long to seek treatment. "If you are trying to get pregnant and struggling with it, you don't need to wait a year," he said. "And, if you're over 35, don't wait six months to get worked up if it's causing you distress."

More information

The U.S. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine has more on acupuncture.

Publication Date: Oct. 31, 2011

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/parenting/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20120128/hl_hsn/acupuncturemayboostpregnancysuccessrates

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How seawater could corrode nuclear fuel

ScienceDaily (Jan. 26, 2012) ? Japan used seawater to cool nuclear fuel at the stricken Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant after the tsunami in March 2011 -- and that was probably the best action to take at the time, says Professor Alexandra Navrotsky of the University of California, Davis.

But Navrotsky and others have since discovered a new way in which seawater can corrode nuclear fuel, forming uranium compounds that could potentially travel long distances, either in solution or as very small particles. The research team published its work Jan. 23 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This is a phenomenon that has not been considered before," said Alexandra Navrotsky, distinguished professor of ceramic, earth and environmental materials chemistry. "We don't know how much this will increase the rate of corrosion, but it is something that will have to be considered in future."

Japan used seawater to avoid a much more serious accident at the Fukushima-Daiichi plant, and Navrotsky said, to her knowledge, there is no evidence of long-distance uranium contamination from the plant.

Uranium in nuclear fuel rods is in a chemical form that is "pretty insoluble" in water, Navrotsky said, unless the uranium is oxidized to uranium-VI -- a process that can be facilitated when radiation converts water into peroxide, a powerful oxidizing agent.

Peter Burns, professor of civil engineering and geological sciences at the University of Notre Dame and a co-author of the new paper, had previously made spherical uranium peroxide clusters, rather like carbon "buckyballs," that can dissolve or exist as solids.

In the new paper, the researchers show that in the presence of alkali metal ions such as sodium -- for example, in seawater -- these clusters are stable enough to persist in solution or as small particles even when the oxidizing agent is removed.

In other words, these clusters could form on the surface of a fuel rod exposed to seawater and then be transported away, surviving in the environment for months or years before reverting to more common forms of uranium, without peroxide, and settling to the bottom of the ocean. There is no data yet on how fast these uranium peroxide clusters will break down in the environment, Navrotsky said.

Navrotsky and Burns worked with the following co-authors: postdoctoral researcher Christopher Armstrong and project scientist Tatiana Shvareva, UC Davis; May Nyman, Sandia National Laboratory, Albuquerque, N.M.; and Ginger Sigmon, University of Notre Dame. The U.S. Department of Energy supported the project.

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Journal Reference:

1. C. R. Armstrong, M. Nyman, T. Shvareva, G. E. Sigmon, P. C. Burns, A. Navrotsky. Uranyl peroxide enhanced nuclear fuel corrosion in seawater. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1119758109

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/~3/zIqj2KYijv8/120126152132.htm

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The Shortz Factor

i. He or she must have a name that's useful for crosswords. Puzzle writers prefer having rare letters in unusual combinations (for example, I once snuck JFK, JR into a New York Times crossword at 1-down), but short groupings of common letters are the lifeblood of crosswords, and you'll need a lot of them if you want to make things work. For that reason, crossword-famous names are likely to be three, four, or five letters long, with as many 1-point Scrabble letters as possible. Think of names with a lot of vowels, and any combination of N, R, T, L, or S.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=979943bb9dbf5c415501e3b76484f306

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ZTE Optik dual-core tablet eyed up by Sprint, $100 on contract

Underwhelmed by the ZTE tablet spotted yesterday? Perhaps the promise of a Honeycomb-decked seven-incher from Sprint will win your tablet hungry dollars. Advertising materials leaked over at Android Police, revealing that the previously unseen slab will arrive next month both on contract ($100) and off ($349). The 1.2GHz dual-core Optik wields a 5 megapixel camera on the back, paired with a front-facing 2 megapixel shooter, while there's a respectable chunk of storage (16GB), expandable by micro-SD. Although there may be more eye-opening propositions when it comes Android tabs, those on the hunt for one that won't claim a heavy chunk of your paycheck and still pack some respectable technical specs may have found an interesting new contender.

[Thanks David]

ZTE Optik dual-core tablet eyed up by Sprint, $100 on contract originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/26/zte-optik-dual-core-tablet-eyed-up-by-sprint-100-on-contract/

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Studies: Avastin may fight early breast cancers (AP)

Surprising results from two new studies may reopen debate about the value of Avastin for breast cancer. The drug helped make tumors disappear in certain women with early-stage disease, researchers found.

Avastin recently lost approval for treating advanced breast cancer, but the new studies suggest it might help women whose disease has not spread so widely. These were the first big tests of the drug for early breast cancer, and doctors were cautiously excited that it showed potential to help.

In one study, just over one third of women given Avastin plus chemotherapy for a few months before surgery had no sign of cancer in their breasts when doctors went to operate, versus 28 percent of women given chemo alone. In the other study, more than 18 percent on Avastin plus chemo had no cancer in their breasts or lymph nodes at surgery versus 15 percent of those on chemo alone.

A big caveat, though: The true test is whether Avastin improves survival, and it's too soon to know that ? both studies are still tracking the women's health. The drug also has serious side effects.

"I don't think it's clear yet whether this is going to be a winner," Dr. Harry Bear of Virginia Commonwealth University said of Avastin. But he added, "I don't think we're done with it."

Bear led one study, in the United States. Dr. Gunter von Minckwitz of the University of Frankfurt led the other in Germany. Results are in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

Avastin (uh-VAS'-tihn) is still on the market for some colon, lung, kidney and brain tumors. In 2008, it won conditional U.S. approval for advanced breast cancer because it seemed to slow the disease. Further research showed it didn't meaningfully extend life and could cause heart problems, bleeding and other problems. The government revoked its approval for breast cancer in November.

Now doctors can prescribe Avastin for breast cancer but insurers may not pay. Treatment can cost $10,000 a month. The drug is made by California-based Genentech, part of the Swiss company Roche. It is still approved for treating advanced breast cancer in Europe and Japan.

The new studies tested it in a relatively novel way ? before surgery. This is sometimes done to shrink tumors that seem inoperable, or to enable women to have just a lump removed instead of the whole breast.

The women in the studies had tumors that were large enough to warrant treatment besides surgery. Their cancers were not the type that can be treated by Herceptin, another widely used drug.

In the U.S. study, 1,200 women were given chemo or chemo plus infusions of Avastin. By the time of their surgery, no cancer could be found in the breasts of more than 34 percent of those given Avastin versus 28 percent of the others. (Surgeons still have to operate because they don't know the tumor is gone until they check tissue samples.)

The German study involved 1,900 women including some with larger tumors. It used a stricter definition of cancer-free at surgery: no sign of disease in the breast or lymph nodes rather than just the breast. No cancer was seen in 18 percent of women on Avastin versus 15 percent of those given only chemo. Different chemo drugs were used ? a factor that might change Avastin's effectiveness.

The U.S. study was paid for by the National Cancer Institute with some support from drug companies. The German study was sponsored by drug companies. Some researchers consult for Genentech or other makers of cancer drugs.

If even one of these studies shows a survival advantage for Avastin "that would be a game changer" although side effects remain a concern, said Dr. Gary Lyman. He is a Duke University researcher who was on the federal advisory panel that recommended revoking Avastin's approval.

However, von Minckwitz said side effects are more justifiable in early breast cancer patients because "the intention is cure" rather than in late-stage disease where cure isn't usually possible.

Of the more than 200,000 women in the U.S. diagnosed each year with breast cancer, about 30,000 are like those in the new studies, Lyman estimated.

But the studies' impact could be far greater: The participants' tissue samples are being analyzed for genes and biomarkers to predict which women are most likely to respond to Avastin. That could lead to a relook of using the drug for certain women with advanced disease, too.

Three other studies are under way testing Avastin in early breast cancer; one is expected to have results by the end of this year, said Dr. Sandra Horning, global development chief of cancer drugs for Roche and Genentech. The company does not plan to seek any change in Avastin's use until more results are available, she said.

___

Online:

Studies: http://www.nejm.org

Avastin: http://www.avastin.com

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/health/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120125/ap_on_he_me/us_med_breast_cancer_avastin

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