Gun deaths set to outstrip car fatalities for first time in 2015

Friday 28 December 2012

New York, Dec 28 : Twenty-seven wooden angels stand in a yard down the street from the Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Conn.

Deaths from firearms are set to outstrip car fatalities for the first time, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and reported by Bloomberg News.

The CDC estimates that auto-related deaths--long on the decline as more motorists wear seat-belts and face harsher penalties for drunk driving--will fall to 32,000 in 2015. Deaths from firearms, which include suicides and accidents, are estimated to rise to 33,000 over the same period.

Every day, 85 Americans are shot dead, about 53 of them in suicides. This figure is still lower than 1993's peak in gun deaths (37,666), but has risen significantly since firearm deaths reached a low  in 2000 (28,393). The data goes back to 1979.

Meanwhile, USA Today, which looked at FBI figures, reports that 774 people were killed between 2006 and 2010 by a mass killer, defined as a person who kills four or more people in one incident. The figures show that mass killers strike on average once every two weeks. A third of the 156 mass killings did not involve firearms, but rather fire, knife or other weapon. Almost all of the mass killers in those years were men, and their average age was 32. The dozens of deaths caused by mass killers represented about 1 percent of all homicides between 2006 and 2010.


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Sales soar for kid-themed body armor backpacks

New York, Dec 28  : The Newtown, Conn., mass shooting of 20 schoolchildren seems to have had an impact in one industry: body armor backpacks. Mother Jones reports that sales of the backpacks designed to protect kids during a school shooting, have “gone through the roof.”

Derek Williams, president of Amendment II, the Utah-based company that makes the packs along with lightweight body armor for military and police use, told the magazine, "I can't go into exact sales numbers, but basically we tripled our sales volume of backpacks that we typically do in a month—in one week."

Demand for the product has completely overwhelmed the company's website.

The carbon nanotube armor comes in kid-friendly themed Avengers or Disney princess versions, and at first, the company told Fox 13, just a handful were sold at gun shows. Then came the massacre.

The Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy has shone a light on the company. “Our armor was being bought to protect people, the ‘preppers,’ is the term,” Amendment II Chief Operating Officer Rich Brand told the Fox station. “At this point, it’s transcended to everyone. Anyone who’s sending out a child into the world, seeing what can happen now, they want to protect their children.”

Not everyone is on board with the idea of sending children to school armed for battle.

Maryann Martindale, executive director of Alliance for a Better Utah, told Fox 13, "Do we want to live in a society where we send our kids to school in Kevlar backpacks and arm our teachers? I think we create more chaos by responding that way.”

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Woman dies after receiving smoker's lungs in transplant

London, Dec 28: Jennifer Wederell, a 27-year-old British woman with cystic fibrosis, died of lung cancer after she received the lungs of a heavy smoker in an organ transplant.

According to BBC News, Wederell had been on the waiting list for a lung transplant for 18 months when in April 2011, she was told there was finally a match. She received the transplant, apparently not knowing the donor had been a smoker. In February 2012 a malignant mass was found in her lungs. She died less than 16 months after the transplant.

Her father, Colin Grannell, said he believed his daughter had died a death meant for someone else. "The shock immediately turned to anger insofar as all the risks were explained in the hour before her transplant," he told the BBC, "and not once was the fact smoker's lungs would be used mentioned."

Wederell's case raises difficult issues regarding organ transplants. She was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a progressive and debilitating lung disease that affects more than 70,000 people worldwide, at the age of two. By her mid-20s, she relied on an oxygen tank 24 hours a day to survive.

Would she have been better off refusing the transplant, and hoping another set of organs became available that matched her blood type and came from a non-smoker?

"Probably not," said Dr. G. Alexander Patterson, surgical director of lung transplants at the Washington University and Barnes-Jewish transplant center in St. Louis, one of the largest organ transplant programs in the nation. "If she was critically ill and had poor chance of short-term survival, she was better off accepting the transplant."

Patterson said most hospitals, including those in the U.S., also transplant the lungs of smokers if they are of otherwise good quality.

"This is a necessity because there are far fewer donors than there are recipients and most patients who are on a waiting list would gladly accept a set of smoker's lungs in exchange for the ones they have, which usually have little chance of carrying them through to long-term survival."

Patterson said that his program would be likely to turn down an organ from a donor if smoking history was too extreme -- say, three packs a day for twenty years -- or if the donor had been known to engage in other risky lifestyle behaviors such as unprotected sex with multiple partners or intravenous drug use. Even those organs might still be used as part of an "extended criteria" donation, which utilizes organs that don't meet the usual criteria for transplant, but are still healthy enough for a successful procedure if a patient needs it quickly.

About 17,000 Americans receive a transplant each year, and more than 4,600 die waiting for one, according to United Network for Organ Sharing, the organization charged with allocating the nation's organs. If surgeons do not accept less-than-perfect organs, Patterson said that the numbers might be much worse.

Harefield Hospital in London, where Wederell was treated, has since apologized to her family for not revealing all the information about her donor's medical history. But Patterson said most transplant surgeons don't share details about the smoking history of the donor with their patients unless they are asked directly.

Arthur Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City said he believed this was a mistake.

"They absolutely should have told her. When you have reasons to think a donor organ is suboptimal in some way, you must disclose it and allow a person to make their own decision. People have to know the risks they face," Caplan said.

Caplin said he thought surgeons might not review such risks in order to avoid having a difficult conversation -- and they may sometimes also feel they are the experts who know what is best for the patient.

"They should do it anyway. Reasonable people can deal with major sources of risk and are exceedingly unlikely to say no to a donation anyway because waiting lists are long and they know they might not get another donation in time," he said.

Patterson said that he understood why Wederell's family was upset, but that it's impossible to know why she developed cancer. Lung transplant recipients receive a great deal more immunosuppressant therapy than other organ recipients to stop the body from rejecting the organ. This may have encouraged the cancer to grow.

"It's plausible that she would have succumbed to some type of cancer no matter what, but there's no way to know for sure," Patterson said.

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Four banks found guilty of fraud

Milan, Dec 28 : An Italian judge found four international banks guilty of fraud in a case involving the sale of derivatives to the city of Milan and ordered the confiscation of 88 million euros, about $117 million.

Judge Oscar Magi convicted Deutsche Bank, UBS, JPMorgan and Depfa Bank, as well as nine current and former bankers. In Italy, institutions may be held responsible as well individuals. The individuals received suspended sentences of six months to eight months.

The banks have denied wrongdoing.

Prosecutors alleged that the city of Milan lost 105 million euros as part of the sale of bonds totaling 1.69 billion euros between 2005 and 2007.

Prosecutor Alfredo Robledo said the verdict recognized the importance of “the fundamental principal of transparency on the part of banks in contracts with public administrations.”

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Facebook’s instagram backtracks: “It is not our intention to sell your photos,” says co-founder

London, Dec 28 : Facebook's photosharing site Instagram backtracked on its new user privacy policy that would have allowed the site to sell users' photos to advertising agencies.

After a huge outcry from Instagram users on both Facebook and Twitter, co-founder Kevin Systrom wrote on the company's blog:

"I’m writing this today to let you know we’re listening and to commit to you that we will be doing more to answer your questions, fix any mistakes, and eliminate the confusion....

 “To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos. We are working on updated language in the terms to make sure this is clear.”

While this update may be comforting to Instagram's users (at least for now) the question remains: Why does Facebook continue to shoot itself in the foot, so to speak, when it comes to privacy issues?

The social networking site has long been criticized for infringing upon users' privacy rights. For example:

In 2006, the social networking site launched "news feed" angering many users who were left unable to control who could see their updates. Zuckerberg eventually apologized and conceded it was "a big mistake on our part."

In 2007, a Facebook ad system, named Beacon, was tracking what users bought on external websites and publishing these purchases across their friends' news feeds. Two years later the company eliminated the ad program.

And most recently this year, as The Daily Ticker reported in June, the company launched a test of its 'Find Friends Nearby' feature, which allows Facebook users to locate friends using the GPS on their mobile phones. Due to a backlash from users, Facebook quickly disabled the feature. Around that same time, Facebook changed every users' primary email to a Facebook.com address.

To answer the unresolved question above, the answer may lie in the idea that it is always easier to ask for forgiveness that to first ask for permission. Perhaps this is the company's strategy: to push the envelope as much as possible and then back track just a little each time.

Facebook bought Instagram earlier this year for $1 billion and said it would let the photo site do its own thing. As The Daily Ticker's Aaron Task points out in the accompany interview, it appears Facebook is trying to monetize Instagram.

"They are trying to figure out how they can monetize Instagram, which it is a business, that's what they should do," he says. "But there has got to be a more deft way they can do it without alienating its users."

Systrom said Instagram's new policy was never intended to take advantage of users:

"From the start, Instagram was created to become a business. Advertising is one of many ways that Instagram can become a self-sustaining business, but not the only one. Our intention in updating the terms was to communicate that we’d like to experiment with innovative advertising that feels appropriate on Instagram. Instead it was interpreted by many that we were going to sell your photos to others without any compensation. This is not true and it is our mistake that this language is confusing."

That said, Instagram's rivals like Flickr (which is owned by Yahoo!) and EyeEm are likely to see an increase in users because of the Instagram debacle.

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High frequency trading: Must separate fact from fiction says NYSE COO Leibowitz

Washington, Dec 28 : As 2012 peters out, trading activity is slow and market volatility low. Yet this state of relative calm hasn't quieted the anxious chatter about hyper-fast trading by automated systems aimed at capturing tiny price blips in stocks, over fractions of a second.

This is the industry landscape facing Larry Leibowitz, chief operating officer of NYSE Euronext Inc. (NYX), the parent of the New York Stock Exchange and other trading venues. Speaking with us at Minyanville.com's Festivus charity event on Dec. 7, Leibowitz blamed what he called the market's case of the volume "blahs" on general investor hesitancy in the face of open questions on taxes, government budgets and regulation. The bulge in volumes experience during and right after the 2008 financial crisis has been entirely unwound, with average daily trading volume in U.S. stocks now around 2007 levels.

Some unknowable portion of these volume declines is related to individual investors steadily pulling cash from actively managed equity funds --withdrawals only partially offset by inflows into exchange-traded index funds. The public remains wary of stocks after the indexes were twice cut in half between 2000 and 2009, and fears have grown among small investors about computer-propelled trading on privileged access to order flow.

Leibowitz suggested that clearer reporting on the activities of high-frequency traders is necessary to help counter some of the worry about the business and rebuild investor confidence in the public equity markets.

"The reality is, technology is here to stay, and has been a huge windfall for end investors, whether retail or institutional" through lower trading costs and faster systems, he said. "The real question is: How do we regulate and surveil it in a way that gives people confidence that they have a chance?"

Cheap trading technology and regulatory changes in the early-2000s spawned new electronic market systems, some of which catered to automated, high-volume, super-fast trading strategies seeking to profit from fleeting price inefficiencies and barely detectable waves of buy and sell orders.

As Leibowitz says, high-frequency trading — which represents an important source of business for NYSE Euronext and all exchange operators - is simply electronic trading by automated means, one where "a bit of a bubble" arose as the financial crisis created lots of the volatility and volume that such systems are built to feast on.

While in some respects these players were filling a void left by the exit of traditional market makers and floor specialists as those middlemen's profits were squeezed, HFT grew by some estimates to account for more than half of all turnover in U.S. stocks in recent years. The 2010 "flash crash," the botched debut of Facebook Inc. (FB) on the Nasdaq (^IXIC), and Knight Capital Inc.'s (KCG) rogue trading software this year raised further concern about the fairness and stability of our networked markets.

Leibowitz believes the broad public suspicion of the market mechanics - now vexingly complicated, with more than a dozen exchanges and perhaps 50 "dark pool" electronic markets - is based on "more fiction than fact." It's the job of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the industry to help "separate fact from fiction," he adds, pointing to the futures markets' move to tag and report HFT order flow as a good start in tracking potential abuses.

While the SEC has "a full plate" in working to implement the massive Dodd-Frank financial regulation law and undertaking several insider-trading cases, Leibowitz says the agency needs the industry's support in improving market transparency and efficiency.

"We have to take a step back and look at the good and bad in all that has occurred in the last 15 years and figure out how to markedly improve it, without giving up a lot of the good," he said. "We do have an obligation to make people feel it's fair."

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3 tips to build a strong dividend portfolio

London, Dec 28 : With dividend tax hikes looming, special dividends being announced, and government security yields at all time lows, it's easy to forget the basics. Specifically, how can you create a portfolio of dividend paying stocks that separates Blue Chip yield from the value traps.

In this edition of Investing 101, Barbara Marcin, portfolio manager of the four-star rated Gabelli Dividend Growth Fund (GABBX) walks us through the basics of building a portfolio of stocks that spins off some income to patient investors.

Tip #1: Be Patient and "Layer" into Positions

Dividend stocks aren't about catching every rally. The idea is to take the long-view and create a portfolio built to last. Marcin suggests investors with a 3-year horizon slowly build positions rather than dive in all at once. "Put in a third now, a third in three months, and a third after that," she suggests in the attached video.

In a volatile environment, having a set schedule like this keeps investors from getting unnerved and making impulsive decisions.

Tip #2: Look at the Company Then the Dividend

Marcin says investors should buy stocks of companies they believe in first and foremost, with the yield coming second. Paradoxically, stocks with high yields can be the least safe on the market. When you see a name kicking off 5 or 6% while the rest of the blue chips are yielding half that, it's a sign that institutional investors are skeptical of both the company and its ability to pay the listed dividend.

If 2 or 3% seems low to you, Marcin begs to differ. Dividends are "the highest current return available compared to anything 'safe'... Treasuires, CDs, anything."

Tip #3: Take a Balanced Approach

Marcin takes a straight forward approach to accumulating positions in dividend stocks. Stick with quality names and relative safety. "I would feel most comfortable with a whole portfolio of dividend paying stocks paying between 3 and 4%."

Not too hot or too cold, but just right for investors looking for relative safety with a little income thrown into the mix.

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Thriving gun industry hammered after sandy hook massacre

New York, Dec 28 : The horrific slaughter of 7 adults and 20 children with an assault weapon last week has once again focused attention on America's liberal gun laws.

The Sandy Hook massacre has also done something that other recent mass shootings have failed to do, which is to cause some investors and retailers to rethink their support of gun manufacturers.

The prevailing investment ethos in this country is that investors should be concerned with nothing but financial performance: As long as a company delivers compelling returns to its shareholders, those shareholders should not have to care about how the company does business or what sorts of products or services it sells.

Earlier this week, however, a private equity firm called Cerberus announced that it will sell its stake in "Freedom Group," a large gun manufacturer that makes the Bushmaster assault rifle used in the Connecticut killings.

Cerberus is run by an investor named Stephen Feinberg, whose father lives in Newtown, Connecticut, where the massacre took place. The firm's announcement made clear that Cerberus would leave the arguments about tighter gun control to politicians, but the firm's actions speak louder than its words. Cerberus no longer wants to support (or benefit from) a company that manufacturers these weapons.

Meanwhile, Dick's Sporting Goods announced that it has suspended the sales of semi-automatic rifles at its 480 stores, and Walmart removed one such gun from its web store. And the stocks of gun manufacturers like Smith & Wesson have dropped sharply.

In other words, the Sandy Hook killings have not just galvanized public-opposition to America's lax gun laws. They have prompted those who normally steer clear of any moral or legal questions about the businesses they invest in to vote with their feet.

For those who see an obvious connection between the ease of acquiring military-grade assault weapons and the prevalence of mass shootings and gun-related deaths in this country, this is good news.

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Gold Will Top $2,000 in 2013: Kilburg

New York, Dec 28 : At the beginning of 2012 gold bulls had a straight forward thesis: Central banks around the world will continue to debase their currencies.

The virtually unfettered money printing with no set ending would, the thinking went, result in rampant inflation and in so doing drive investors into gold.

Jeff Kilburg, founder and CEO of KKM Financial is among those with a bullish gold thesis. In November he came on Breakout suggesting investors get long the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) in anticipation of the FOMC's balance sheet expansion. He got the expansion, but the GLD yawned.

"It's a head scratcher," Kilburg says of gold's lack of reaction, in the attached video. He believes gold's lack of zest is yet another unintended consequence of the fiscal cliff. The focus on the nation's fiscal nightmares has traders fixated on the cliff rather than the currency debasement.

The Fed is fighting deflation. Inflation is something they can control, but no credible economist has yet to find a solution for no one buying goods no matter how low prices fall. That may or may not be the right play for now, but Kilburg says when inflation comes it's going to come in a fast and furious manner, driving gold well above $2,000.

If Kilburg can't hold the $1,670 area, where the price is sitting this morning, he'll start trimming positions. Commodity traders aren't dip buyers below support levels. For those with a more trading mindset he suggests hedging bets with some puts underneath, limiting losses while waiting for gold to regain its luster.

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Open manhole risks commuters

Srinagar, Dec 28 : A deep uncovered manhole is posing risk to commuters at main Dalgate market here.

A delegation from the area said the manhole was constructed by the UEED department nearly a month ago.

“Despite passing of over a month, the manhole has not been covered. This poses risk of injury to commuters particularly children and women. We urge the concerned department to look into the matter,” the delegation said.

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Girl fails in Matric, ends life

Islamabad, Dec 28 : In a tragic incident, a teenage girl committed suicide, in Kokernag area of this held Kashmir district, after she failed in the Matric exams the results of which were declared.

 The girl of Kunkangam, Sof Shali village of Kokernag area, consumed some poisonous substance soon after she came to know about the result of her secondary school exam.

 Police official said that the girl was apparently upset about she not getting through in the examination and took the extreme step in desperation.

 “The girl before ending her life called her father,” a police official said.

 “I have been working very hard  throughout the year  and was expecting good results but cannot believe that I have failed. So, I have consumed poison as I have no choice but to end my life,” the girl told her father over the phone, a police official said.

 As soon as the family members came to know about her consuming poison they immediately took her to the hospital, however she died on way.

 “The doctors have confirmed that the girl died of consuming poison,” said DSP Kokernag, Wajahat Ahmad.

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Hajin villages san basic amenities

Hajin, Dec 28 : Several villages on the banks of Wular lake and River Jehlum here in Hajin block of this occupied Kashmir district lack basic amenities.

 Various villages in Hajin block, including Madavan,Bakshibal, Paribal, Baskhibal, Banyari, Chrengpora,Jadalpora Prang and others, comprising of about 30,000 souls are living a miserable life. They accuse successive regimes of ignoring these villages. “No one has ever paid any attention towards the development of these hamlets. So many regimes came and went but nothing was done to upgrade the standard of living of the people,” locals said. 
 They said the area lacks water supply, electricity and medical facilities from decades. “We have no proper road connectivity water supply, no electricity and no health facility, our schools are in dilapidated conditions,” locals added.

 Alleging district administration of neglecting the area locals said: “Officers appear if some politician visits the area. They are never seen in normal days.”   

 Locals demanded that government should take immediate steps to mitigate their sufferings.  

Meanwhile, Additional District Development Commissioner Ghulam Muhammad said: “Every effort is being put to develop the far-flung villages in the district including the villages falling under the Hajin Block. If here is any grievance from any villager it would be looked into,” he added.

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Sickle cell disease may affect brain function in adults

Islamabad, Dec 28 : Sickle cell disease may affect brain function in adults who have few or mild complications of the inherited blood disease, according to results of the first study to examine cognitive functioning in adults with sickle cell disease.

The multicenter study, funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health, compared brain function scores and imaging tests in adult patients with few sickle cell complications with results in similar adults who did not have the blood disease.

Researchers report that the brain function scores in sickle cell patients were, on average, in the normal range. However, twice as many patients as healthy adults (33 percent versus 15 percent) scored below normal levels.

Those who were more likely to score lower were older and had the lowest levels of hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen in the blood, compared to sickle cell participants who scored higher. Findings from brain magnetic resonance imaging scans did not explain differences in scores.

Researchers at 12 sites within the NHLBI-supported Comprehensive Sickle Cell Centers conducted the study. Their results are published in the May 12 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. An editorial accompanies the article.

"This study suggests that some adult patients who have sickle cell disease may develop cognitive problems, such as having difficulty organizing their thoughts, making decisions, or learning, even if they do not have severe complications such as stroke related to sickle cell disease," said NHLBI Acting Director Susan B. Shurin, M.D.

"Such challenges can tremendously affect a patient's quality of life, and we need to address these concerns as part of an overall approach to effectively managing sickle cell disease."

Researchers tested cognitive functioning of 149 adult sickle cell disease patients (between the ages of 19 and 55) and compared them to 47 healthy study participants of similar age and education levels from the same communities. All of the participants were African-American.

More sickle cell disease patients scored lower on measures such as intellectual ability, short-term memory, processing speed, and attention, than participants in the healthy group.

The sickle cell disease participants did not have a history of end-organ failure, stroke, high blood pressure, or other conditions that might otherwise affect brain function.

"We need to study whether existing therapies, such as blood transfusions, can help maintain brain function, or perhaps even reverse any loss of function," noted Elliott P. Vichinsky, M.D., of the Children's Hospital & Research Center Oakland, principal investigator of the study and the lead author of the paper.

"These effects were found in patients who have clinically mild sickle cell disease, which raises the question of whether therapies should be given to all patients to help prevent these problems from developing."

Researchers involved in this study are recruiting patients with sickle cell disease into a clinical trial to determine whether blood transfusions may help preserve cognitive function.

Participants will receive transfusions every three or four weeks for six months as part of the clinical study. Information about this study can be found at www.clinicaltrials.gov, search for NCT00850018.

Sickle cell disease affects about 70,000 Americans. At one time, many children died from the disease, but new therapies have enabled sickle cell disease patients to live well into middle age or beyond. As more people with sickle cell disease are living into adulthood, health care providers are uncovering previously unrecognized complications.

Studies of brain function in children who have sickle cell disease have suggested that some children with the disease, even if they have not suffered a stroke, have experienced silent brain injury. Others without obvious changes on brain scans may have some level of cognitive dysfunction that seems to worsen with age.

Stroke is a common complication of sickle cell disease, and can lead to learning disabilities, lasting brain damage, long-term disability, paralysis, or death.

Sickle cell disease involves an altered gene that produces abnormal hemoglobin. Red blood cells with sickle hemoglobin that have too little oxygen become C-shaped in addition to becoming stiff and sticky. These crescent-shaped cells can clump to block blood flow, causing severe pain and potential organ damage.

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Smallpox vaccine produces reduction in HIV replication

Islamabad, Dec 28: Vaccinia immunization, as given to prevent the spread of smallpox, produces a five-fold reduction in HIV replication in the laboratory.

Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Immunology suggest that the end of smallpox vaccination in the mid-20th century may have caused a loss of protection that contributed to the rapid contemporary spread of HIV.

Raymond Weinstein, a family doctor turned laboratory scientist at George Mason University, Manassas, Virginia, worked with a team of researchers from George Washington University and UCLA.

The researchers looked at the ability of white blood cells taken from people recently immunized with vaccinia to support HIV replication compared to unvaccinated controls. They found significantly lower viral replication in blood cells from vaccinated individuals.

Weinstein said, "There have been several proposed explanations for the rapid spread of HIV in Africa, including wars, the reuse of unsterilized needles and the contamination of early batches of polio vaccine.

However, all of these have been either disproved or do not sufficiently explain the behaviour of the HIV pandemic. Our finding that prior immunization with vaccinia virus may provide an individual with some degree of protection to subsequent HIV infection suggests that the withdrawal of such vaccination may be a partial explanation."

Smallpox immunization was gradually withdrawn from the 1950s to the 1970s following the worldwide eradication of the disease, and HIV has been spreading exponentially since approximately the same time period.

Weinstein and his colleagues propose that vaccination may confer protection against HIV by producing long term alterations in the immune system, possibly including the expression of a certain receptor, CCR5, on the surface of a person's white blood cells which is exploited by both viruses.

Speaking about the results, Weinstein said, "While these results are very interesting and hopefully may lead to a new weapon against the HIV pandemic, they are very preliminary and it is far too soon to recommend the general use of vaccinia immunization for fighting HIV."

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Caffeine may slow Alzheimer's disease

Islamabad, Dec 28 : Although caffeine is the most widely consumed psychoactive drug worldwide, its potential beneficial effect for maintenance of proper brain functioning has only recently begun to be adequately appreciated.

Substantial evidence from epidemiological studies and fundamental research in animal models suggests that caffeine may be protective against the cognitive decline seen in dementia and Alzheimer's disease (AD).

A special supplement to the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, "Therapeutic Opportunities for Caffeine in Alzheimer's Disease and Other Neurodegenerative Diseases," sheds new light on this topic and presents key findings.

Guest editors Alexandre de Mendonça, Institute of Molecular Medicine and Faculty of Medicine, University of Lisbon, Portugal, and Rodrigo A. Cunha, Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology of Coimbra and Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, Portugal, have assembled a group of international experts to explore the effects of caffeine on the brain.

The resulting collection of original studies conveys multiple perspectives on topics ranging from molecular targets of caffeine, neurophysiological modifications and adaptations, to the potential mechanisms underlying the behavioural and neuroprotective actions of caffeine in distinct brain pathologies.

"Epidemiological studies first revealed an inverse association between the chronic consumption of caffeine and the incidence of Parkinson's disease," according to Mendonça and Cunha.

"This was paralleled by animal studies of Parkinson's disease showing that caffeine prevented motor deficits as well as neurodegeneration "Later a few epidemiological studies showed that the consumption of moderate amounts of caffeine was inversely associated with the cognitive decline associated with aging as well as the incidence of Alzheimer's disease.

Again, this was paralleled by animal studies showing that chronic caffeine administration prevented memory deterioration and neurodegeneration in animal models of aging and of Alzheimer's disease."

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