The people spoke and Lindsay Lohan listened! Lohan took her yellowed teeth to celeb-friendly cosmetic dentist Dr. Bill Dorfman, who whitened her smile.
"Thanks Dr. Dorfman for the zoom," Lohan tweeted, and posted a picture of her new look to her WhoSay page. "My gums are so sore though!"
Most recently, Lohan's dental upkeep hasn't ranked among her biggest problems; Lohan's probation was revoked during an Oct. 20 court appearance, and she's due back to stand before Judge Stephanie Sautner on Tuesday.
Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain campaigns outside of Kinnick stadium in Iowa City, Iowa, on Oct. 22.
By NBC's Alex Moe
DES MOINES, Iowa?The two candidates who least frequently visit Iowa are currently leading in the race to win the state's January caucuses, the new Des Moines Register poll showed Saturday evening.
Former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain leads the Republican presidential field in the Hawkeye State, narrowly surpassing former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for the top spot, according to the poll conducted this past week.
The highly regarded Iowa Poll shows Cain with 23 percent and Romney at 22 percent among likely caucus-goers ahead of Jan. 3's caucuses, the first nominating contest of the 2012 cycle. Cain has seen his stock rise by 13 percentage points since the last edition of the poll; Romney only dropped one percent despite the fact that neither candidate has visited Iowa more than once since the weekend of August 12th.
The advantage for Cain and Romney seems unusual in a state that typically prides itself on retail politics.
"Iowans seem to be saying 'we've tried politicians, it's time to shift gears and try a CEO to run our country.'? The more desperate our country's financial situation, the more voters are looking for someone from the business world who can turn this ship around," said Steve Grubbs, Cain's Iowa state chairman.
As a matter of comparison, Romney led the field ? at 29 percent - to former Arkansas governor and eventual caucus-winner Mike Huckabee's 12 percent in the October 2007 edition of the same poll.
Texas Rep. Ron Paul places third in the Register?s poll, with 12 percent, followed by Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann at 8 percent, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Gov. Rick Perry tied at 7 percent, former Sen. Rick Santorum at 5 percent, and finally former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman at 1 percent.
The Iowa Poll suggests a slight shift within the margin-of-error in the race for Iowa's caucuses since the NBC News/Marist poll was conducted at the beginning of the month. Romney led at 23 percent to Cain's 20 percent in that poll, conducted Oct. 3-5.
Bachmann, who is staking her campaign on Iowa, has dropped 14 percentage points since June and into fourth place. This news comes after winning the Ames Straw Poll and spending a lot of time in the state, including recently expanding her staff here.
"Poll numbers have bounced up and down on weekly, sometimes daily basis. We?ll see much more of that before caucus night but one thing I?m convinced of is that Michele Bachmann will come out on top in on Jan. 3," said Bachmann's Iowa campaign manager Eric Woolson.
It has been four months since the Register released its last poll. The June poll had Romney leading in the state with 23 percent?just in front of Bachmann, who jumped in the race two days after the poll came out, at 22 percent. Perry had yet to throw his hat in the ring.
Though Perry joined the race just over two months ago, both he and his wife, Anita, have made quite a few trips here, yet Perry is tied for fifth place with Gingrich.
Perhaps the most disappointing showing, at least in terms of time spent in Iowa, has to be for the former Pennsylvania senator, Santorum. He will be the only candidate to visit all of Iowa?s 99 counties as of Wednesday, but still remains at the bottom of the poll.
The Register?s poll was based on telephone interviews Oct. 23-26 with 400 likely Republican caucus-goers, and has a margin of error plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.
Lucas County Sheriff deputies escort Robert Bowman out of the courtroom after his sentencing, Friday, Oct. 28, 2011 in Toledo, Ohio. Bowman accused of snatching an Ohio teenager on her way home from school in 1967 and holding her captive for days in his basement before killing her was convicted Friday of murder and sentenced to life in prison. (AP Photo/The Blade, Jetta Fraser) MANDATORY CREDIT; MAGS OUT; NO SALES; TV OUT; SENTINEL-TRIBUNE OUT; MONROE EVENING NEWS OUT; TOLEDO FREE PRESS OUT
Lucas County Sheriff deputies escort Robert Bowman out of the courtroom after his sentencing, Friday, Oct. 28, 2011 in Toledo, Ohio. Bowman accused of snatching an Ohio teenager on her way home from school in 1967 and holding her captive for days in his basement before killing her was convicted Friday of murder and sentenced to life in prison. (AP Photo/The Blade, Jetta Fraser) MANDATORY CREDIT; MAGS OUT; NO SALES; TV OUT; SENTINEL-TRIBUNE OUT; MONROE EVENING NEWS OUT; TOLEDO FREE PRESS OUT
Robert Bowman, left, defense attorney Jane Roman, and defense attorney Pete Rost, right, listen to the a statement read by Maggie Kirschman, sister of murder victim Eileen Adams, Friday, Oct. 28, 2011 in Toledo, Ohio. Bowman accused of snatching an Ohio teenager on her way home from school in 1967 and holding her captive for days in his basement before killing her was convicted Friday of murder and sentenced to life in prison. (AP Photo/The Blade, Jetta Fraser) MANDATORY CREDIT; MAGS OUT; NO SALES; TV OUT; SENTINEL-TRIBUNE OUT; MONROE EVENING NEWS OUT; TOLEDO FREE PRESS OUT
FILE - In this Aug. 11, 2011 file photo, Robert Bowman appears at his trial for the 1967 killing of Eileen Adams in Lucas County Common Pleas Court in Toledo, Ohio. Bowman, accused of snatching an Ohio teenager on her way home from school in 1967 and holding her captive for days in his basement before killing her was convicted Friday, Oct. 28, 2011, of murder and sentenced to life in prison. (AP Photo/The Blade, Dave Zapotosky) MANDATORY CREDIT; MAGS OUT; NO SALES; TV OUT; SENTINEL-TRIBUNE OUT; MONROE EVENING NEWS OUT; TOLEDO FREE PRESS OUT
TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) ? A man accused of snatching a teenager on her way home from school in 1967 and holding her captive for days in his basement before killing her was convicted Friday of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Robert Bowman, once a successful businessman, was found guilty of the death of 14-year-old Eileen Adams in his second trial in a case that had stumped investigators for more than four decades even after his ex-wife told police she saw the girl alive and "hanging like Jesus" in their basement.
Bowman, 75, addressed Lucas County Common Pleas Judge Gene Zmuda moments before the judge sentenced him and after hearing the victim's sister describe how Adams' death emotionally tore the family apart.
"I recognize the pain and suffering I've just heard," Bowman said. But "I'm not responsible for that. I feel no remorse."
The teenager was sexually assaulted, tied up and a nail was driven into the back of her head before her body was dumped in southern Michigan, prosecutors said. The high school freshman was either strangled or died from a blow to the head that cracked her skull.
Adams' sister Maggie Kirschman was 8 when Adams went missing about a week before Christmas.
"We all waited for a Christmas miracle waiting for Eileen to come home," she told the judge.
She said there was "no forgetting" for her and her six other siblings, two of whom have died. Her parents also died in recent years.
Her sister's death led her father to drink and her mother to pray, she said.
"Mom and Dad became strangers to the rest of us," Kirschman said.
She said the family knew Bowman was responsible in the early 1980s after his ex-wife came forward.
"It was as if there was nothing we could do. It made us all sick," she added.
Bowman disappeared in the 1980s into a life on the streets in Florida and California.
Detectives first tried to link him to the slaying in the early '80s, but they didn't have enough evidence to bring charges until a cold case squad reopened the investigation five years ago. New DNA evidence connected Bowman with the killing, and police arrested him near Palm Springs, Calif., in 2008.
Another jury in August failed to reach a verdict in the case, which forced the retrial.
Bowman's former wife was a key witness in both trials, testifying that she found Adams naked in their fruit cellar after the girl disappeared just before Christmas in 1967.
Margaret Bowman said she was hanging laundry when she thought she heard rats in the cellar. She said she opened a wooden door and saw a girl with her arms outstretched and bound, "hanging like Jesus."
She said she ran upstairs and that her husband confronted her, saying he now had to kill the girl. He also threatened to kill his wife and their newborn daughter if she told anyone, she said.
That same night, she testified, Bowman made her go with him as he dumped the body just north of Toledo, across the state line in Michigan.
Robert Bowman, who took the witness stand after not testifying at his first trial, accused his ex-wife of lying and said investigators manufactured evidence against him.
He denied any involvement in the killing.
"That isn't something I would do," he said.
Outside the courtroom, assistant county prosecutor Chris Anderson suggested that Bowman's testimony hurt his defense.
Anderson said the differences in the second trial was that jurors heard more details about Bowman's life as a hustler who moved around the country and saw how he toyed with detectives when he took the stand.
"You could see what type of person he was," Anderson said.
During the trial, defense attorney Peter Rost tried to cast doubt on Margaret Bowman's account. He said that she waited 14 years to tell her story to police and that she stayed with Bowman for over a decade, moving with him to three different states before leaving when his business failed.
Even after she went to detectives in 1981, they still didn't charge Bowman. Rost also said that the DNA evidence did not conclusively point to Bowman.
Bowman had owned a construction company in Ohio and later a business that made high-end purses in Florida and sold its handbags in Nieman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue stores.
But when police detectives tracked him down in Florida in 1982, he was living in an abandoned restaurant, wearing a tattered shirt and jeans and a scruffy beard.
Hanging from the restaurant ceiling were three dolls, some with their feet bound with string. A nail had been driven into the head of two dolls ? eerily similar to how a hunter had found the body of Adams.
Bowman talked with police, but he then dropped out of sight.
Nearly three more decades passed when Eileen Adams' ailing father had a chance meeting with an off-duty police officer and asked him to take another look at the killing. Her father died two years later, three weeks after Bowman was arrested.
Cold case investigators in 2006 discovered that DNA evidence from semen on the victim's thermal underwear linked Bowman to the crime, they said. Police soon after charged Bowman even though they had no idea where he was living or even if he was still alive.
He was profiled on the "America's Most Wanted" and police in southern California arrested him when he was spotted riding a bicycle. His attorney said he had been living under a tarp in the desert.
Hybrid Air Vehicles Make Gains On Traditional Airplanes Seventy-four years after the zeppelin, another gas giant arises.Hybrid Air Vehicles' new aircraft is not technically a blimp. Nor is it a zeppelin, a craft that saw its end with the Hindenburg explosion in 1937 (and a rebirth, of sorts, in the proto-heavy-metal band's name).
Source: FastCompany Posted on:
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Global warming is playing a significant role in diverting much-needed wet winter weather away from the increasingly dry Mediterranean, a new study led by a NOAA scientist suggests.
Winter droughts have become increasingly common in the Mediterranean region, particularly over the past 20 years, and a new study finds that global warming has driven at least half of the change.
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Drought conditions in this politically explosive region are expected to grow more severe over the course of the century unless countries begin to significantly reduce their emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, many researchers say.
Those emissions come from burning fossil fuels, as well as from land-use changes.
Winter storms historically have delivered most of the annual rain and snowfall to the already arid Mediterranean region. Yet precipitation measurements from the region and modeling studies point to a relatively rapid shift in the winter rain and snowfall trends that began in the 1970s, according to the study.
That change could signal that the region "has moved into a new climate regime," says Martin Hoerling, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth Systems Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., and the study's lead author.
The shift is not the result of temperature trends in the region itself, Dr. Hoerling notes. Instead, he and his colleagues trace drier Mediterranean winters to changes in long-range atmospheric circulation patterns. These changes, the study suggests, are triggered by rising ocean temperatures in the tropical Indian Ocean, a trend scientists have previously attributed to climate change.
When this area of the world's oceans is warmer than other tropical seas, the temperature difference appears to set up conditions over the North Atlantic that steer a higher proportion of Atlantic winter storms across northern Europe.
The results have been accepted for publication in the Journal of Climate.
The study reaches "a very important conclusion, for a number of reasons," says Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, a environmental-policy research group in Oakland, Calif., that focuses much of its effort on water-resource issues.
From 60 to 80 percent of the region's water irrigates crops, researchers say. And existing sources of fresh water already are oversubscribed.
"Water is critical for this region and has been for a long time," Dr. Gleick says. "The fact that climate change now appears to be making things worse or more severe is just more bad news for people who care about water conflicts and water scarcity in the Middle East."
In addition, he says, the study adds to a growing body of work that is finding global warming responsible ? at least in part ? for long-term changes in precipitation and temperature patterns at continental and even regional scales.
"We know that climate is changing. We know that humans are an important factor," he says. "But unless you can say, 'this or that event is due to climate change or partly due to climate change,' there's a lack of a sense of urgency."
This has to be some of the most ambitious hacking we've seen
It's one thing for hackers to target a video game network or newspaper website, but setting sights on United States government satellites is an entirely different situation. A new report released by Congress shows that's exactly what has been happening, as two separate orbiters have seen a total of 4 attacks since 2007. Some breaches managed to interfere with the NASA's hardware for up to 12 minutes.
Officials believe that the attacks originated from a satellite station located in Norway. Hackers near the facility are thought to have tapped into the building's internet connection from the outside, using it to gain access to the highly sensitive hardware orbiting earth. The report stated that the attackers never took full control of the satellites, and most of the key details of how the hack was achieved are being kept secret.
The satellites that were targeted are part of a joint effort between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey to monitor weather and terrain changes. It's unclear what the hackers sought to gain by poking around inside the orbiters, but the fact that they were able to successfully breach such a high-profile piece of technology should serve as a reminder that digital security needs to be taken very seriously.
A few weeks with the new phone under their belt, some new iPhone 4S users have figured out why the phone's battery?might?be draining too fast and found some fixes that?mostly?work.?The new phone is mostly?rad, but?all of those fancy phone features are an energy suck. While the iPhone 4S's battery life has some improvement for talk time, data and WiFi usage are less efficient, reports Geeky Gadgets. But it turns out, the phone is having bigger battery issues than that, with over a thousand upset iPhone owners taking to the Apple Forums, complaining of battery-drainage. They're not perfect, but they have some ideas to fix the problem that are the best iPhoners have for now.
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iCloud Syncing
The problem: One of the cooler iOS 5 features was the iCloud integration. The 4S, and really any device with the updated iOS, syncs iTunes, iWork and Photos up to the cloud. It's pretty cool, but apparently drains batter life, reports MacWorld's Christopher Breen. He noted that his phone dropped a battery percentage point every couple of minutes. That's very fast for a phone that's supposed to have up to 200 hours of standby time. After doing a little investigation, Breen deduced the problem had something to do with the iCloud sync up, which was stuck in a perpetual sync. "The iPhone appeared to be in a crashing loop ... And this was killing the battery," he explains.?
Related: A More Personalized Streamer with Google TV 2.0
The fix: Wipe the phone and resync it to iCloud. At least that's how Breen fixed things up. "On restart I chose to set it up as a new phone rather than pulling a backup from my Mac or iCloud," he writes. "When the time came, I switched on contact syncing within the iCloud screen and fired up System Activity Monitor."?
Related: What Killed the Google TV?
Setting Time Zone
The Problem: Another possible issues that iDownload Bug's Oliver Haslam diagnosed comes from a bug that causes the Setting Time Zone function to constantly track the user's location.?
Related: Apple TV Could Be Tim Cook's Downfall
The fix: Turn that setting off. To do this, go to System Services, which is under Location Services, under Settings and toggle "Setting Time Zone" off. It's not exactly a perfect fix, because it disables that feature, meaning the iPhone will no longer automatically reset the time zone as it travels. And if one forgets to do that it could lead to an alarm clock disaster. But, it's a price to pay for longer battery life. Haslam's fixed increased usage life by 3 hours and standby time by 15 hours.?
Reminders
The Problem: Another nifty add on that comes with the new phone is Reminders, which true to its name, works with Siri to set-up reminders for things we'd otherwise forget. A really tight part of Reminders is that a location can trigger a reminder. "Stop at the liquor store on the way home from the reunion," for example. To know when to send out the reminder, this the phone constantly checks GPS, thus sucking the living daylights out of your phone.
The Fix:?Chill out on the location-based reminders. It's not an ideal fix, but priorities, right??
A selection of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's gaffes:
? "I should tell my story. I'm also unemployed." June 16, Tampa, Fla.
? "Corporations are people, my friend." Aug. 11, Des Moines, Iowa.
? "I consider the CEOs of organized labor not to be my big buddies. I consider the rank and file of organized labor to be my buddies." ? Oct. 10, Milford, N.H.
? "Don't try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom, allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let it turn around and come back up." Oct. 17, Las Vegas.
? "We went to the company, and we said, `Look, you can't have any illegals working on our property. I'm running for office, for Pete's sake! I can't have illegals!'" Oct. 18, Las Vegas.
BRUSSELS ? Poland's finance minister says big European banks will be required to raise their capital cushions to 9 percent of their risky investments by June.
That's in line with international banking guidelines that come into effect in 2019.
Polish Finance Minister Jan Vincent-Rostowski announced the new rules after a meeting Wednesday of the leaders of the 27 countries that make up the European Union.
European banks need to shore up their finances because they have significant exposure to debt by governments with shaky finances.
On Greece's debt, for instance, they could soon be asked to take substantial losses, as leaders try to find a way to dig Europe out of its debt crisis by lightening Greece's debt load.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
BRUSSELS (AP) ? European leaders rushed to Brussels Wednesday facing colossal pressure to do what they have failed to in numerous previous meetings: produce a comprehensive solution to the continent's increasingly unmanageable debt crisis.
As the summit began, the heads of state and government remained deeply divided on some of the key issues they need to solve or risk renewed turbulence on financial markets across the globe.
The fear is that more delays and half-baked solutions could push not only Europe, but much of the rest of the developed world back into recession, eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs and even spell the failure of the euro, the common currency that is at the heart of Europe's postwar unity.
"Our challenge today is not simply to save the euro. It's to safeguard the ideals we cherish so much in Europe: peaceful cooperation amongst our nations, social cohesion and solidarity without prejudice amongst our people," said George Papandreou, the prime minister of Greece, whose country kicked off the continent's debt drama almost two years ago.
Whether Wednesday's summit ? which was expected to last deep into the night ? would indeed turn out to be the grand solution the markets are expecting and the eurozone has been promising was unclear Wednesday evening.
In particular, there was still no agreement on how to cut Greece's debt, which is set to top 180 percent of economic output next year. On this issue the 17-country eurozone remained locked in discussions with banks and other private holders of Greek bonds, who have been resisting a demand from the eurozone to take significant losses.
At the same time, the eurozone itself was divided over how far a restructuring of Greece's debt should go.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel told lawmakers in Berlin that the goal was to bring Greece's debt down to 120 percent of economic output by 2020. That would imply a cut of more than 50 percent to the face value of Greek bonds and may be more than private investors would be willing to accept voluntarily.
Merkel's Austrian counterpart Werner Faymann told reporters that a cut of "40 to 50 percent is part of the debate."
Germany has threatened to force losses on Greek debt holders if they don't accept sufficient losses voluntarily, while France, the European Commission and the European Central Banks insist that any debt relief had to remain voluntary.
Doubts remained also over the second key issue on the table: How to give the eurozone's bailout fund, the euro440 billion ($612 billion) European Financial Stability Facility, the firepower it needs to stop the crisis from engulfing large economies like Italy and Spain and help prevent big banks from collapsing amid the worsening market turmoil.
"I think that effectively, it has to be able to intervene a good deal beyond euro1 trillion ($1.4 trillion)," Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme said of the bailout fund, also known as the EFSF.
Since states have ruled out boosting their financial commitments to the fund, the eurozone was working on two complex schemes that would allow the EFSF to act as an insurer for new bonds from wobbly countries like Italy and Spain.
If the fund promised to compensate investors against the first 20 percent or 30 percent of losses in the case of a default, that would make those bonds a much safer investments. Spending some euro250 billion on guarantees, could under that scheme attract new lending of up to euro1 trillion.
However, before rich countries like Germany, France or the Netherlands are willing to sign up for such a scheme, they want assurances that countries that benefit from the fund's protection will get their economies back on track.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in particular was facing pressure to convince his eurozone colleagues of his reliability at Wednesday's summit.
"Our Italian friends know exactly that we have to insist that tonight they tell us that we get important structural consolidation measures in Italy," said Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker. "That is a must."
More progress was in sight for a plan to force banks across Europe to significantly increase their capital buffers to ensure they can withstand growing market pressures and large losses on Greek debt. But the new bank rules affect the 27-counrty European Union, not just the 17-state eurozone, and the non-euro countries do not want to reveal details of the plan before the other main issues have been resolved.
___
Juergen Baetz and Geir Moulson in Berlin; Raf Casert, Don Melvin and Robert Wielaard in Brussels; Karel Janicek in Prague, and Cecile Brisson in Paris contributed to this report.
TUESDAY, Oct. 25 (HealthDay News) -- When used alone, the asthma medications known as long-acting beta-agonists are associated with an increased risk of serious complications, new research indicates.
What's more, the increased risk of complications, including hospitalization, intubation and death (called the asthma composite outcome), associated with the use of these medications was even higher in children than in adults.
However, when long-acting beta-agonists (LABAs) are used in combination with inhaled corticosteroids, the increased risk appears to dissipate.
Products that only contain a LABA are marketed under the brand names Foradil and Serevent in the United States, while they are sold under the brand names Symbicort and Advair when combined with inhaled corticosteroids.
"What we found overall was that there was a greater risk of the asthma composite outcome in the group that took LABAs as opposed to the group that didn't. And, the risk was higher in the younger asthmatic population," said study author Dr. Ann McMahon, associate director of science and director of KidNet in the Office of Pediatric Therapeutics at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
"The other important thing is that in a smaller subgroup that took LABAs and inhaled corticosteroids [ICS], and took those consistently, we did not find that the risk was elevated. But, this subgroup was rather small, so the results regarding ICS are somewhat inconclusive. The agency is now pursuing doing a large randomized clinical trial in the context of LABAs and consistent ICS use," McMahon said.
Results from the current study are published in the November issue of Pediatrics.
The FDA first began looking into the safety of LABAs in 2005 when concerns about a possible increase in serious complications were first raised. In 2008, the first meta-analysis examining the safety of LABAs was conducted. As a result of that analysis, an FDA advisory committee voted to restrict the use of LABAs to be used in combination with inhaled corticosteroids. The current meta-analysis was undertaken to expand the knowledge gained from that initial analysis.
The current meta-analysis included 110 clinical trials with a nearly 61,00 people with asthma. The trials included people aged 4 and up. Some used LABA medications; some did not.
Overall, the researchers found that 6.3 more events per 1,000 patient-years occurred in people taking LABAs compared to those not taking the medication. Events included asthma-related hospitalizations, intubations and deaths.
In children between the ages of 4 and 11, the difference between the two groups was 30.4 events per 1,000 patient years. In children between the ages of 12 and 17, the difference was 11.6 per 1,000 patient years.
McMahon noted that most of the complications in children were hospitalizations related to asthma flares. Asthma-related deaths and intubations were rare complications, according to the study.
She said the study was designed to identify trends, not look at individual cases, so "we don't have a lot of answers about why the asthma composite outcomes were higher in the younger age groups."
"Sometimes we find that products that work well in adults don't work well in kids," said senior study author Dr. Dianne Murphy, director of the Office of Pediatric Therapeutics at the FDA. And in the case of LABAs, there could be numerous explanations. It may be that asthma is a different disease in children than in adults, or it may have to do with children's smaller airways. Or, she said, it could be that children might not always let their parents know when their asthma symptoms are getting worse.
Whatever the reason for the higher risk of complications in children, Murphy said, what's important to take away from this study is that "if your child requires a LABA, they ought to be on a steroid with it." And, she added, if your child's symptoms aren't improving on the combination medication, let your child's doctor know.
"This meta-analysis suggests that we have more to learn. It looks like LABA alone may not be the right treatment for the pediatric population, and we don't use it alone. But, combining the two potentially may not increase the bad outcomes," said Dr. Allyson Larkin, an assistant professor of pediatrics in the division of pulmonary medicine, allergy and immunology at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh.
More information
Learn more about long-acting beta-agonists from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Google has already confessed that the Nexus S would get the Ice Cream Sandwich update, but if you're not the type to wait -- and really, who is these days? -- you can load up a mostly complete version of Android 4.0 right now. Yep, thanks to some intrepid folks on the xda-developer forums, you too can enjoy Ice Cream Sandwich on the Nexus S before its official release. Before you dive into the deep end though, be aware that your device has to be rooted before you can take part.
NEW YORK ? An agreement to contain the European debt crisis electrified the stock market Thursday, driving the Dow Jones Industrial average up nearly 340 points and putting the Standard & Poor's 500 index on track for its best month since 1974.
Investors were relieved after European leaders crafted a deal to slash Greece's debt load and prevent the crisis there from engulfing larger countries like Italy. The package is aimed at preventing another financial disaster like the one that happened in September 2008 after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
But some analysts cautioned that Europe's problems remained unsolved.
"The market keeps on thinking that it's put Europe's problems to bed, but it's like putting a three-year old to bed: You might put it there but it won't stay there," said David Kelly, chief market strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds.
Kelly said Europe's debt problems will remain an issue until the economies of struggling nations like Greece and Portugal grow again.
Commodities and Treasury yields soared as investors took on more risk. The euro rose sharply against the dollar.
Stronger U.S. economic growth and corporate earnings also contributed to the surge. The government reported that the American economy grew at a 2.5 percent annual rate from July through September on stronger consumer spending and business investment. That was nearly double the 1.3 percent growth in the previous quarter.
Banks agreed to take 50 percent losses on the Greek bonds they hold. Europe will also strengthen a financial rescue fund to protect the region's banks and other struggling European countries such as Italy and Portugal.
"This seems to set aside the worries that there would be a massive contagion over there that would have brought everything down with it," said Mark Lamkin, head of Lamkin Wealth Management.
The Dow Jones industrial average soared 339.51 points, or 2.9 percent, to 12,208.55. That was its largest jump since Aug. 11, when it rose 423.
All 30 stocks in the Dow rose, led by Bank of America Corp. with a 9.6 percent gain. It was the first time the Dow closed above 12,000 since Aug. 1.
Even with Thursday's gains, the Dow remains 4.7 percent below the high for the year it reached April 29. The Dow has fallen every month since then due to a combination of a slowdown in the U.S. economy, a worldwide parts shortage after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and concerns about the European debt crisis. The Dow is now at approximately the same level it traded at on July 28.
Stocks fell for much of August in the wake of a last-minute deal to prevent the U.S. government from defaulting on its debt.
But anticipations of a solution to Europe's debt problems and signs that the U.S. economy is not in another recession have lifted stocks higher throughout October.
The Dow is up 11.9 percent for the month so far. With only two full days of trading left in the month, the Dow could have its biggest monthly gain since January 1987.
The S&P 500 rose 42.59, or 3.7 percent, to 1,284.59. Those gains turned the S&P positive for the year for the first time since Aug. 3, just before the U.S. government's debt was downgraded. The index is up 13.5 percent for the month, its best performance since a 16.3 percent gain in October 1974.
The Nasdaq composite leaped up 87.96, or 3.3 percent, to 2,738.63.
Small-company stocks rose more than the broader market. That's a sign investors were more comfortable holding assets perceived as being risky but also more likely to appreciate in a strong economy. The Russell 2000 index jumped 5.3 percent.
Raw materials producers, banks and stocks in other industries that depend on a strong economy for profit growth led the way. Copper jumped 5.8 percent to $3.69 a pound and crude oil jumped 4.2 percent to $93.96 a barrel.
The euro rose sharply, to $1.42, as confidence in Europe's financial system grew. The euro was worth $1.39 late Wednesday and had been as low as $1.32 on Oct. 3. European stock indexes also soared. France's CAC-40 rose 6.3 percent and Germany's DAX jumped 6.1 percent.
Investors sold U.S. Treasury notes and bonds, an indication they were moving away from safer investments. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which moves in the opposite direction of its price, rose to 2.39 percent from 2.21 percent late Wednesday.
European leaders still have to finalize the details of their latest plan. French President Nicolas Sarkozy spoke with Chinese President Hu Jintao amid hopes that countries with lots of cash like China can contribute to the European rescue.
Past attempts to contain Europe's two-year debt crisis have proved insufficient. Greece has been surviving on rescue loans since May 2010. In July, creditors agreed to take some losses on their Greek bonds, but that wasn't enough to fix the problem.
Worries about Europe's debt crisis and a weak U.S. economy dragged the S&P 500 down 19.4 percent between April 29 and Oct. 3. That put it on the cusp of what's called a bear market, which is a 20 percent decline.
Since then, there have been a number of more encouraging signs on the U.S. economy. Despite the jitters over Europe, many large American companies have been reporting strong profit growth in the third quarter.
Dow Chemical rose 8.2 percent after its profit last quarter rose 59 percent on strong sales growth from Latin America. Occidental Petroleum Corp. jumped 9.7 percent after reporting a 50 percent surge in income.
Citrix Systems Inc. rose 17.3 percent. The technology company's revenue rose 20 percent last quarter, and it forecast growth of up to 13 percent for 2012. Akamai Technologies Inc., whose products help speed the delivery of online content, jumped 15.4 percent after the company reported earnings that beat analysts' expectations.
Avon Products Inc. fell 18 percent, the most in the S&P 500, after the company said the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating its contacts with financial analysts and Avon's own probe into bribery in China and other countries.
Nine stocks rose for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was heavy at 6.5 billion shares.
Gene variation predicts rate of age-related decline in mental performance, Stanford study Public release date: 25-Oct-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Bruce Goldman goldmanb@stanford.edu 650-725-2106 Stanford University Medical Center
STANFORD, Calif. - A tiny difference in the coding pattern of a single gene significantly affects the rate at which men's intellectual function drops with advancing age, investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System have learned.
In a study to be published online Oct. 25 in Translational Psychiatry, the researchers tested the skills of experienced airplane pilots and found that having one version of the gene versus the other version doubled the rate at which the participants' performance declined over time.
The particular genetic variation, or polymorphism, implicated in the study has been linked in previous studies to several psychiatric disorders. But this is the first demonstration of its impact on skilled task performance in the healthy, aging brain, said the study's senior author, Ahmad Salehi, MD, PhD, clinical associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford.
The study also showed a significant age-related decline in the size of a key brain region called the hippocampus, which is crucial to memory and spatial reasoning, in pilots carrying this polymorphism.
"This gene-associated difference may apply not only to pilots but also to the general public, for example in the ability to operate complex machinery," said Salehi, who is also a health-science specialist at the VA-Palo Alto.
The gene in question codes for a well-studied protein called brain-derived neurotropic factor, or BDNF, which is critical to the development and maintenance of the central nervous system. BDNF levels decline gradually with age even in healthy individuals; researchers such as Salehi have suspected that this decline may be linked with age-related losses of mental function.
Genes, which are blueprints for proteins, are linear sequences of DNA composed of four different chemical units all connected like beads on a string. The most common version of the BDNF gene dictates that a particular building block for proteins, called valine, be present at a particular place on the protein. A less common - though far from rare - variation of the BDNF gene results in the substitution of another building block, methionine, in that same spot on the protein. That so-called "val/met" substitution occurs in about one in three Asians, roughly one in four Europeans and Americans, and about one in 200 sub-Saharan Africans. Such a change can affect a protein's shape, activity, level of production, or distribution within or secretion by cells in which it is made.
It appears that the alternative "met" version of BDNF doesn't work as well as the "val" version. This variant has been linked to higher likelihood of depression, stroke, anorexia nervosa, anxiety-related disorders, suicidal behavior and schizophrenia.
So Salehi and his colleagues decided to look at whether this polymorphism actually affected human cognitive function. To do this, they turned to an ongoing Stanford study of airplane pilots being conducted by two of the paper's co-authors - Joy Taylor, PhD, clinical associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and Jerome Yesavage, MD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences -examining a wide array of neurological and psychiatric questions.
For this new research, Salehi and his colleagues followed 144 pilots, all healthy Caucasian males over the age of 40, who showed up for three visits, spaced a year apart, spanning a two-year period. During each visit, participants - recreational pilots, certified flight instructors or civilian air-transport pilots - underwent an exam called the Standard Flight Simulator Score, a Federal Aviation Administration-approved flight simulator for pilots.
This test session employs a setup that simulates flying a small, single-engine aircraft. Each participant went through a half-dozen practice sessions and a three-week break before his first visit. Each annual visit consisted of morning and afternoon 75-minute "flights," during which pilots confronted flight scenarios with emergency situations, such as engine malfunctions and/or incoming air traffic. Resulting test scores pooled several variables, such as pilots' reaction times and their virtual planes' deviations from ideal altitudes, directions and speed. A pilot's score represented the overall skill with which he executed air-traffic control commands, avoided airborne traffic, detected engine emergencies and approached landing strips.
Blood and saliva samples collected on the pilots' first visits allowed the Stanford investigators to genotype all 144 pilots, of whom 55 (38.2 percent) turned out to have at least one copy of a BDNF gene that contained the "met" variant. In their analysis, the researchers also corrected for pilots' degree of experience and the presence of certain other confounding genetic influences.
Inevitably, performance dropped in both groups. But the rate of decline in the "met" group was much steeper.
"We saw a doubling of the rate of decline in performance on the exam among met carriers during the first two years of follow-up," said Salehi.
About one-third of the pilots also underwent at least one round of magnetic resonance imaging over the course of a few years, allowing the scientists to measure the size of their hippocampi. "Although we found no significant correlation between age and hippocampal size in the non-met carriers, we did detect a significant inverse relationship between age and hippocampal size in the met carriers," Salehi said.
Salehi cautioned that the research covered only two years and that the findings need to be confirmed by following participants over a multiyear period. This is now being done, he added.
No known drugs exist that mimic BDNF's action in the brain, but there is one well-established way to get around that: Stay active. "The one clearly established way to ensure increased BDNF levels in your brain is physical activity," Salehi said.
###
The National Institute of Aging and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs funded the study. First authorship was shared by Martha Millan Sanchez, MD, postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and Devsmita Das, MD, a VA-Palo Alto visiting scholar. VA-Palo Alto health-science specialist Arthur Noda also was a co-author.
Information about Stanford's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, which also supported this work, is available at http://psychiatry.stanford.edu.
The Stanford University School of Medicine consistently ranks among the nation's top medical schools, integrating research, medical education, patient care and community service. For more news about the school, please visit http://mednews.stanford.edu. The medical school is part of Stanford Medicine, which includes Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. For information about all three, please visit http://stanfordmedicine.org/about/news.html.
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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.
Gene variation predicts rate of age-related decline in mental performance, Stanford study Public release date: 25-Oct-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Bruce Goldman goldmanb@stanford.edu 650-725-2106 Stanford University Medical Center
STANFORD, Calif. - A tiny difference in the coding pattern of a single gene significantly affects the rate at which men's intellectual function drops with advancing age, investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System have learned.
In a study to be published online Oct. 25 in Translational Psychiatry, the researchers tested the skills of experienced airplane pilots and found that having one version of the gene versus the other version doubled the rate at which the participants' performance declined over time.
The particular genetic variation, or polymorphism, implicated in the study has been linked in previous studies to several psychiatric disorders. But this is the first demonstration of its impact on skilled task performance in the healthy, aging brain, said the study's senior author, Ahmad Salehi, MD, PhD, clinical associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford.
The study also showed a significant age-related decline in the size of a key brain region called the hippocampus, which is crucial to memory and spatial reasoning, in pilots carrying this polymorphism.
"This gene-associated difference may apply not only to pilots but also to the general public, for example in the ability to operate complex machinery," said Salehi, who is also a health-science specialist at the VA-Palo Alto.
The gene in question codes for a well-studied protein called brain-derived neurotropic factor, or BDNF, which is critical to the development and maintenance of the central nervous system. BDNF levels decline gradually with age even in healthy individuals; researchers such as Salehi have suspected that this decline may be linked with age-related losses of mental function.
Genes, which are blueprints for proteins, are linear sequences of DNA composed of four different chemical units all connected like beads on a string. The most common version of the BDNF gene dictates that a particular building block for proteins, called valine, be present at a particular place on the protein. A less common - though far from rare - variation of the BDNF gene results in the substitution of another building block, methionine, in that same spot on the protein. That so-called "val/met" substitution occurs in about one in three Asians, roughly one in four Europeans and Americans, and about one in 200 sub-Saharan Africans. Such a change can affect a protein's shape, activity, level of production, or distribution within or secretion by cells in which it is made.
It appears that the alternative "met" version of BDNF doesn't work as well as the "val" version. This variant has been linked to higher likelihood of depression, stroke, anorexia nervosa, anxiety-related disorders, suicidal behavior and schizophrenia.
So Salehi and his colleagues decided to look at whether this polymorphism actually affected human cognitive function. To do this, they turned to an ongoing Stanford study of airplane pilots being conducted by two of the paper's co-authors - Joy Taylor, PhD, clinical associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and Jerome Yesavage, MD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences -examining a wide array of neurological and psychiatric questions.
For this new research, Salehi and his colleagues followed 144 pilots, all healthy Caucasian males over the age of 40, who showed up for three visits, spaced a year apart, spanning a two-year period. During each visit, participants - recreational pilots, certified flight instructors or civilian air-transport pilots - underwent an exam called the Standard Flight Simulator Score, a Federal Aviation Administration-approved flight simulator for pilots.
This test session employs a setup that simulates flying a small, single-engine aircraft. Each participant went through a half-dozen practice sessions and a three-week break before his first visit. Each annual visit consisted of morning and afternoon 75-minute "flights," during which pilots confronted flight scenarios with emergency situations, such as engine malfunctions and/or incoming air traffic. Resulting test scores pooled several variables, such as pilots' reaction times and their virtual planes' deviations from ideal altitudes, directions and speed. A pilot's score represented the overall skill with which he executed air-traffic control commands, avoided airborne traffic, detected engine emergencies and approached landing strips.
Blood and saliva samples collected on the pilots' first visits allowed the Stanford investigators to genotype all 144 pilots, of whom 55 (38.2 percent) turned out to have at least one copy of a BDNF gene that contained the "met" variant. In their analysis, the researchers also corrected for pilots' degree of experience and the presence of certain other confounding genetic influences.
Inevitably, performance dropped in both groups. But the rate of decline in the "met" group was much steeper.
"We saw a doubling of the rate of decline in performance on the exam among met carriers during the first two years of follow-up," said Salehi.
About one-third of the pilots also underwent at least one round of magnetic resonance imaging over the course of a few years, allowing the scientists to measure the size of their hippocampi. "Although we found no significant correlation between age and hippocampal size in the non-met carriers, we did detect a significant inverse relationship between age and hippocampal size in the met carriers," Salehi said.
Salehi cautioned that the research covered only two years and that the findings need to be confirmed by following participants over a multiyear period. This is now being done, he added.
No known drugs exist that mimic BDNF's action in the brain, but there is one well-established way to get around that: Stay active. "The one clearly established way to ensure increased BDNF levels in your brain is physical activity," Salehi said.
###
The National Institute of Aging and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs funded the study. First authorship was shared by Martha Millan Sanchez, MD, postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and Devsmita Das, MD, a VA-Palo Alto visiting scholar. VA-Palo Alto health-science specialist Arthur Noda also was a co-author.
Information about Stanford's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, which also supported this work, is available at http://psychiatry.stanford.edu.
The Stanford University School of Medicine consistently ranks among the nation's top medical schools, integrating research, medical education, patient care and community service. For more news about the school, please visit http://mednews.stanford.edu. The medical school is part of Stanford Medicine, which includes Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. For information about all three, please visit http://stanfordmedicine.org/about/news.html.
[ | 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.
New York ? Investors abandon Netflix after its series of ill-advised moves. Still, some analysts say now is the perfect time to get on the Netflix bandwagon
Investors eyeing Netflix these days might want to remember the old stock market adage "Buy low, sell high." The floundering company certainly seems to be at a low point; after Monday's revelation that Netflix had lost more than 800,000 subscribers in the third quarter, its stock having plunged nearly 35 percent on Tuesday. Other recent issues: A fiercely contested price hike and Netflix's failed attempt to split its streaming and DVD-by-mail services into separate companies. But Netflix's troubles have some analysts and commentators seeing opportunity. Is Netflix's stock actually undervalued now?
You should buy. This is just a rough patch:?"Netflix is a screaming buy today,"?says Anders Bylund at?The Motley Fool. Sure, the third quarter report was gloomy, but CEO Reed Hastings seems to have learned from his mistakes and knows how to get things back on track. Netflix is expanding into Europe and Asia, moves that may put the company in the red for a few quarters but will ultimately pay off. It's wise to forgive and forget the subscriber loss; better to "ignore the potential earnings stumbles and look ahead to astonishing results in the future." "Guess what just joined my 'Screaming Buy' list"
No. The company is a mess:?Netflix's may look like a "screaming bargain,"?says Peter Cohan at?Forbes. But don't be so sure. By the Price-Earnings-to-Growth measure ? which judges whether a stock is undervalued by comparing its market value to its earnings per share and annual growth ? Netflix looks good?at a PEG of .43. (Many investors think anything below 1.0 is a bargain.) But there's "one little problem with this PEG theory ? it depends on whether the earnings forecast is right." I'm not sure it is. The streaming service might not be profitable in the long run, given how expensive licensing content is and how many subscribers Netflix has already lost. In short, "this company is in a heap of trouble. "Is Netflix a screaming buy?"
And share prices are unlikely to rebound: "Don't do it," says Brenda Coffey at CNN. "Technical indicators are pointing to the conclusion that Netflix stock isn't coming back anytime soon," even if business improves. Expect the stock to remain stagnant and trading volume to be low. Those that wanted to get out already sold, while other investors are holding and hoping that they'll at least be able to recoup their original investment. "Even if the naysayers are wrong about Netflix's business, those who watch stock charts know the smart money is already out of Netflix and isn't returning." "Resist temptation: Why Netflix still isn't a buy"
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No one wants to have to experience a crisis and communicate about it on the Web. But these days it?s essential that you have a plan to do when a tragedy does strike.
That?s the message Nyleva Corley and Chris Latham from the University of Texas shared during a session at HighEdWeb 11 in Austin.
On Sept. 28, 2010 ?UT experienced such a tragedy when a 19 year-old sophomore brought an AK-47 on to campus. The student,?Colton Tooley, exited a bus and started firing shots into the ground and made his way to the largest library on campus. Eventually he took his own life by turning the gun on himself. Fortunately, no one else was injured.
There was about a 10 minute window of real danger on campus, Latham said, but police were unsure if there was a second shooter and that added to the chaos on campus.
Given that confusion, there was a critical need for UT get information out on the web, so those both on campus and off campus could know what was going on, Corley said.
?Parents were going to want to know whether their students were safe. We had to act and we had to act fast,? she said.
Texas benefited because they had planned for a crisis. Corley and Latham said schools need to imagine what can go wrong on campus, from a shooter, to a hurricane or a bad snow storm. Schools also need to think about how they will communicate with their audiences. At UT communications ranged from alerts on the Web and social media to siren and loudspeakers to phone messages to messages displayed on flat panel TVs in campus buildings.
What?s your plan?
Corley and Latham encouraged attendees to think about their plans. Have defined roles, from the public information officer handling media in the field to people back in the office updating the web or Facebook.
?We had roles in place and we were empowered by supervisors to act,? Corley said.
Central to that idea is that you build in redundancies into your plan, Latham said. Share your credentials so that multiple people can update your social media and web sites.
?On a day filled with challenges that?s going to be hard to manage,? by yourself Corley said.
Don?t Stop
Another key was not slowing down. Corley and Latham said they worked hard to seek out new information on the shootings, even going out to listen to loudspeakers to see if the campus police were broadcasting news on the incident. That?s because any gap in communication with the outside world can cause your audience to worry about what is actually going on.
?Keep communicating so people understand,? Latham said, ?If 30 minutes pass and there?s no message, people might think its safe and start going outside.?
Another lesson was keeping your communication simple. Sometimes terms such as ?lockdown? and ?shelter in place? don?t resonate with broader audiences. After their crisis, UT worked to educate the community about such terms to help reduce confusion.
While your crisis might last hours or days, there?s also ongoing communications that need to be carried out. Think about items like how you might communicate news about a vigil or how you will let students and staff know what to do about missed classes or work time.
And while you may not want to think about such a crisis, you need to practice so you can be prepared, Corley and Latham said. Because when a crisis does strike, you can?t let your audiences down.
You can view more about UT?s response at www.utexas.edu/safety/webcrisis.
Tags: SOC: Social Media
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LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) ? Magnolia Pictures has acquired U.S. rights to "360," a drama starring Rachel Weisz, Anthony Hopkins and Jude Law, the company announced Monday.
Ben Foster, Jamel Debbouze and Moritz Bleibtreu also star.
Law plays a businessman who is thinking about a liaison with a prostitute. Weisz plays a married woman who is ending her relationship with a younger man. Hopkins plays a man who is searching for his missing daughter, and Foster plays a sex offender recently out of prison.
The movie is based on "Reigen," a play by the late Arthur Schnitzler. The play is made up of short scenes between lovers -- either just before or after sex.
Meirelles, who directed Weisz in "City of God," shot the movie in Vienna, Paris, London, Bratislava and Rio de Janeiro. Peter Morgan ("The Queen," "Frost/Nixon") wrote the script.
Andrew Eaton and David Linde produced with Chris Hanley, Danny Krausz and Emanuel Michael.
Magnolia plans a theatrical release in 2012. The movie also will be distributed through Magnolia's Ultra VOD program.
LSU head coach Les Miles, center, sings the LSU fight song with safety Eric Reid (1), wide receiver Armand Williams (81) and others after their NCAA college football game against Auburn in Baton Rouge, La. Saturday, Oct. 22, 2011. LSU won 45-10 to remain undefeated. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
LSU head coach Les Miles, center, sings the LSU fight song with safety Eric Reid (1), wide receiver Armand Williams (81) and others after their NCAA college football game against Auburn in Baton Rouge, La. Saturday, Oct. 22, 2011. LSU won 45-10 to remain undefeated. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Alabama running back Trent Richardson (3) leaps across the goal line past Tennessee defensive back Brent Brewer (17) and linebacker Austin Johnson (40) to score a touchdown in the third quarter of an NCAA college football game, Saturday, Oct, 22, 2011, in Tuscaloosa Ala. (AP Photo/Butch Dill)
NEW YORK (AP) ? No. 1 LSU and No. 2 Alabama have locked in their spots for the biggest regular-season game in Southeastern Conference history.
The Tigers and Crimson Tide held the first two spots in The Associated Press Top 25 released Sunday after huge victories a day earlier. With both heading into an off week, LSU and Alabama are virtually assured of meeting on Nov. 5 in Tuscaloosa as the top two teams in the country.
It'll be the second 1 vs. 2 matchup involving SEC teams, but the first time came in the conference championship game.
Oklahoma, the preseason No. 1, dropped eight spots to No. 11 after its first loss of the season. The Sooners fell 41-38 to Texas Tech on Saturday night, snapping a 39-game home winning streak. The Red Raiders moved into the ranking for the first time this season at No. 19.
Wisconsin also dropped eight spots after its first loss of the season, falling to No. 12 following a 37-31 loss to Michigan State on the final play of the game. The Spartans moved up six spots to No. 9.
LSU received 49 first-place votes from the media panel. Alabama got nine and No. 5 Boise State had one.
Oklahoma State is No. 3, followed by fellow unbeatens Stanford, Boise State and Clemson. The Cowboys have their best ranking since Nov. 19, 1984, when they were also No. 3.
No. 6 Clemson has its highest ranking since 2000, when the Tigers spent four weeks at No. 5.
No. 7 Oregon, Michigan State, Arkansas and undefeated Kansas State round out the top 10.
Moving into the rankings this week along with Texas Tech were No. 20 Southern California, No. 21 Penn State and No. 24 Cincinnati, which is ranked for the first time this season.
Falling out after losses were Washington, Georgia Tech, Illinois and defending national champion Auburn.
Nos. 13-18 were Nebraska, South Carolina, Virginia Tech, Michigan and Houston, which has its best ranking since 2009.
Joining the four teams moving into the rankings at the bottom were No. 22 Georgia, No. 23 Arizona State and No. 25 West Virginia.
For Alabama and LSU, the No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup likely will decide which of the SEC West rivals plays in the conference championship and could ultimately determine which teams plays for the national title in New Orleans on Jan. 9.
LSU's only appearance in a 1-2 game was in the BCS title game in 2008. This will be Alabama's sixth No. 1 vs. No. 2 game, but first in the regular season.
The last time there was a No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup in college football not played in a bowl or conference title game was 2006, when No. 1 Ohio State beat No. 2 Michigan on the final weekend of the Big Ten's regular season and went on to lose the BCS championship game to Florida. Earlier that season, top-ranked Ohio State also played No. 2 Texas.
DeAnna Pappas can finally shake off her ?Bachelorette? status!
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After a slew of whirlwind romances ? including rejecting Brad Womack and ending her engagement to Jesse Csincsak in 2008 ? the 29-year-old walked down the aisle with Stephen Stagliano over the weekend.
VIEW THE PHOTOS: Reality Stars In Their Swimsuits
According to People, DeAnna?s wedding style was country meets fairytale ? the bride wore cowboy boots under a strapless wedding gown from the Disney Bridal collection and a birdcage veil.
?They were giddy with excitement,? an observer told the mag. ?She looked incredibly happy.?
VIEW THE PHOTOS: Access Top 10: Most Shocking ?Bachelor? & ?Bachelorette? Moments!
The couple was originally set up by Stephen?s twin brother, Michael, who appeared on Jillian Harris? season of ?The Bachelorette,? and his then-girlfriend, Holly Durst, who fans will remember from Matt Grant?s season of ?The Bachelor.?
The former couple, who since split, went on to win last season?s ?Bachelor Pad.?
Stephen, a high school teacher, proposed to DeAnna in August 2010.
VIEW THE PHOTOS: I Do! Celebrities Who Got Married On TV
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Google has already confessed that the Nexus S would get the Ice Cream Sandwich update, but if you're not the type to wait -- and really, who is these days? -- you can load up a ![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
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