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Free-market reforms take hold in Cuban countryside (AP)

SANTA ISABEL DE LAS LAJAS, Cuba ? On sleepy streets plied by rickety horse-drawn carts and rusting 1950s automobiles, the sounds of commerce are once again being heard in Cuba's countryside.

A private sandwich shop has opened in a town previously served only by a grim state-run cafeteria. A woman sells trinkets from a small spot of shade. A weathered farmer in dusty jeans has rigged up an ancient ice cream machine and is selling cones for 8 cents a pop.

Out of sight of Cuba's dollar-spending tourists, in areas where money from overseas relatives trickles in only sporadically, dusty towns like this one slowly are being revitalized by a series of private enterprise initiatives ushered in by President Raul Castro.

Visits to more than a dozen towns in the central provinces of Cienfuegos and Sancti Spiritus found private businesses popping up on every main street, places hard hit by the decline of Cuba's sugar industry and the general economic malaise that has settled over the country after more than half a century of Socialist rule.

Even in one-street hamlets like Yaguaramas, small businesses are buzzing while many residents, and most canines and livestock, lounge sleepily in the broiling midday sun.

The government says about 338,000 Cubans across the island now have licenses to operate private businesses, including more than 4,500 in Cienfuegos and 14,000 in Sancti Spiritus. While the number has not changed significantly since April, it is still more than three times the government's goal for the year. The businesses are the result of Castro's plan to inject a measure of capitalism into Cuba's flatlining Marxist economy.

The new businesses are exceedingly modest. The income generated is nowhere near enough to transform Cuba's perennially weak economy. But on the level of individual lives, or the hopes of a small town, residents say the reforms have been a boon.

"It's a way of having something that is all yours," said Alain Suarez, who along with his family has opened a professional looking "guarapera," or sugarcane juice stand, in Santa Isabel de Las Lajas, about 25 kilometers (16 miles) from the central city of Cienfuegos up a bumpy byway lined by tall fields of sugar cane.

The bright-faced 23-year-old points to a small pizza stand across the street from his establishment, and another that sells sandwiches. "All these businesses that have opened up recently have given the town new life."

While he speaks to a reporter, a dozen schoolchildren come over to buy drinks, and a huge press that Suarez's father concocted with an old American electric motor whirrs from a back room, sending sugarcane juice running down a metal trough and through a little window into a bucket near the front counter. The children pay 4 cents each for a cup, and go off happy.

As Suarez's little juice stand shows, free enterprise starts off small in a place where most residents make salaries of about $20 a month and where all private businesses, from humble grocery stores to electronics shops to giant factories, were taken over by the socialist state in the late 1960s.

The town was the birthplace of legendary singer Benny More (pronounced mor-AY), who immortalized it in the 1955 song "Lajas, Mi Rincon Querido" ("Lajas, My Beloved Place"). But it has experienced trying days since then, including the dismantling of one of its giant sugar refineries in 2002 and the temporary closure of another since then. Cuba, once famed for its lucrative sugar trade, has seen production plummet, with 2010's harvest the worst in 105 years.

Other than a brief festival each year to honor More, Lajas rarely gets any tourists, and residents say few receive remittances from relatives in South Florida or elsewhere. And while Castro's plan to lay off half a million state workers has stalled, Cuba has shed 127,000 government jobs, further thinning the ranks of people with money to spend.

But Cuba's countryside benefits from a quirk of the country's economic system. Because big, inefficient state-controlled farms have trouble meeting the country's demand for food, it may be the only place in the hemisphere where small-scale private farmers are near the top of the income pile.

"Here, everything is reversed," Omar Everleny Perez, the lead economist at Havana University's Center for Cuban Economic Studies, told The Associated Press in the first interview that any Cuban government or university economist has given a foreign news organization since the reforms were announced in October 2009.

Perez said Cuban farmers survived the lean years of the 1990s that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union better than city dwellers because they were able to sell the food they grew at relatively high prices to those desperate for nourishment.

"There are bank accounts worth 4 or 5 million Cuban pesos ($160,000 to $200,000) in the hands of farmers," he said. Perez said 13 percent of Cubans hold 90 percent of the money in all of the island's private bank accounts. "It is very concentrated, and much of it belongs to the farmers," he said.

Perez has been unusually outspoken in his criticism of the reforms so far, arguing in opinion pieces published by the Roman Catholic Church and elsewhere that much more needs to be done to pull educated Cuban professionals into the private sector, allow bank credits to would-be entrepreneurs and establish a wholesale market to supply the new businesses.

But he said the changes are actually going better in the countryside.

He pointed to a program started in 2008 that has turned over more than 1.3 million hectares (3.2 million acres) of fallow government land to small-time farmers. While it has been beset by complaints of inefficiency, the program has put cash in the pockets of many rural families and some of it has gone into patronizing or funding new private businesses.

Salvador Parra Maya, a 46-year-old musician in Rodas, a town of about 12,000 in Cienfuegos province, said his family had invested $1,000 in a waist-high refrigerator, countertop and oven for a take-out sandwich shop set up in the front room of its small apartment. Up the block on the main street, a woman sold sticky peanut treats, and a barber had expanded his kiosk with a license to sell bootleg DVDs. It may not be Fifth Avenue, but for Rodas it's the closest thing.

"The town has improved," Maya said. "There's more to buy, the quality of life is better. People are satisfied."

In Cienfuegos itself, a relative metropolis of about 170,000 along the southern Majagua peninsula, the economic reforms have created a boom in private restaurants, or "paladares," said Santiago Gonzalez, an engineer who opened a rock'n' roll-themed eatery called "El Lobo" (The Wolf) in the center of the city.

The restaurant features posters of once-banned 1970s rock groups and a painting of KISS frontman Paul Stanley, with whom Gonzalez shares an eerie resemblance. Despite the somewhat shabby interior, he says his place is always full, with a mix of tourists and Cubans, and that he can clear up to 3,000 pesos ($140) a month after taxes, about seven times what he earned as an engineer.

Gonzalez said the number of paladares in the city had soared from just two before the reforms to between 40 and 50 today.

"From last year to this, you can just see the city changing," Gonzalez said. "It is a city that is prospering."

Perez said most of the reforms until now have been designed to alleviate the economic hardship of citizens, and they have been adopted first because they don't cost the state anything. But he cautioned that the pace of change must pick up significantly to pull Cuba out of its economic malaise.

In addition to bank credits and a wholesale market, Perez has been advocating the creation of mid-sized cooperative companies that can do business directly with the state ? making boots for workers, or preparing lunches, or selling transportation services ? something that Cuban leaders have promised but not yet implemented.

On Thursday, Cuba announced the legalization of a real estate market, something the government had been promising for more than a year.

"We are only at the beginning of the process," he said. "The law allowing private enterprise ... is not sufficient to boost the economy. Selling sandwiches isn't going to make the economy grow."

But in Lajas and other towns, the reforms have been enough to change people's attitudes, and keep many young people from going away.

"Fewer people are leaving town because they are finding something to do here," said Arelis Contreras, the mother of two young adults who says she used to worry that her children would leave rather than make a go of it in a town that offered them little work.

"Now, they won't have to go to Havana or Santiago in search of something better," she smiled. "Because they will have it right here."

___

Paul Haven can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/paulhaven

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111106/ap_on_bi_ge/cb_cuba_countryside_awakes

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Protein causes varicose veins

Friday, November 4, 2011

Varicose veins, sometimes referred to as "varices" in medical jargon, are usually just a cosmetic problem if they occur as spider veins. In their advanced stage, however, they pose a real health threat. In people with this widespread disorder, the blood is no longer transported to the heart unhindered but instead pools in the veins of the leg. This is because the vessel walls or venous valves no longer function adequately. Dr. Thomas Korff and his group at the Division of Cardiovascular Physiology (Director: Prof. Markus Hecker) of Heidelberg University's Institute of Physiology and Pathophysiology have now shown that the pathological remodeling processes causing varicose veins are mediated by a single protein.

As a response to increased stretching of the vessel wall, this protein triggers the production of several molecules promoting changes in wall architecture. The paper published in the current issue of FASEB Journal may offer a possibility for using drugs to decelerate the formation of or even prevent new varicose veins.

Previously, no suitable experimental systems existed for studying the way in which these changes in the cells of the blood vessels are controlled. For their studies, Korff and his team took advantage of the fact that blood vessels in the mouse ear are clearly visible and are also easily accessible for minor surgical procedures. In order to artificially set off processes that are similar to the formation of varicose veins, they tied off a vein with a thin thread. The elevated pressure in the vessels caused by the pooled blood led to the recognizable remodeling characteristic of varicose veins. In addition, in the affected veins, the cell proliferation rate and the production of MMP-2 increased. MMP-2 is an enzyme that breaks down the non-cellular components of the connective tissue of the blood vessels. On the other hand, there were no signs of an inflammatory response, which can be observed during other vessel remodeling processes.

Model allows agents to be tested

"Nevertheless, the cellular mechanisms that control the formation of varicose veins appear to be similar to mechanisms that orchestrate the remodeling of arteries in patients with high blood pressure," Korff explains. The transcription factor AP-1 which regulates the activity of certain genes and thus the corresponding protein production is regulated by the filling pressure in the blood vessels and in turn controls the formation of varicose veins, Korff adds. If AP-1 is inhibited, thus prohibiting it from activating genes, the characteristic corkscrew-like varicose veins do not form and cell proliferation and the production of enzymes that break down connective tissue remain at normal levels.

In a further experiment, the group showed that the results obtained in the mouse are also valid for humans. Varicose veins that have been surgically removed from patients exhibited the same cellular and molecular changes as the varicose veins created artificially in the mouse ear. Based on these results, Korff plans more studies. "Using our model, we can now more precisely analyze the early stages of the disorder and test possible drugs for their ability to prevent varicose vein formation, which, as a result, may improve the quality of life of afflicted patients."

According to the German Vascular League, 30 million people suffer from minor vein-related symptoms, whereby women are affected around twice as often as men. According to a health report published by the German government, 15 to 20 percent of the population has varicose veins.

###

University Hospital Heidelberg: http://www.klinikum.uni-heidelberg.de/

Thanks to University Hospital Heidelberg for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/114966/Protein_causes_varicose_veins

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Bieber spokeswoman denies he fathered a child (AP)

LOS ANGELES ? An allegation that Justin Bieber fathered a baby by a woman who has filed a paternity suit is "demonstrably false," a spokeswoman for the singer said Wednesday.

Melissa Victor said in a statement that Bieber's camp will "vigorously pursue all available legal remedies" in response to the allegation.

"While we haven't yet seen the lawsuit, it's sad that someone would fabricate malicious, defamatory and demonstrably false claims," Victor said.

Online court records show Mariah Yeater filed a paternity lawsuit against Bieber, 17, on Monday in San Diego Superior Court. California law keeps paternity matters confidential but Radar Online posted a copy of the lawsuit on its site.

Yeater, 20, said she had sex with Bieber after one of his concerts at the Staples Center in October 2010, according to the posted suit. She said she gave birth to a boy in July and believes the teen heartthrob is the father because there were no other possible men she had sex with at that time.

She is asking a judge for child support and a paternity test.

Yeater's attorneys said in a statement provided to The Associated Press that their client isn't seeking a large amount of money from Bieber.

Yeater "is pursuing a modest and rightful claim," lawyers Lance Rogers and Matthew Pare said. "There is credible evidence that Justin Bieber is in fact the father of her baby."

The attorneys also note that Bieber hasn't denied he had unprotected sex with Yeater following the concert.

"We call upon Justin Bieber and his attorneys to reach out to resolve this issue in a reasonable manner," they said.

Bieber, who was 16 at the time of the alleged incident, tweeted Wednesday that he was going to ignore the rumors and he should be judged on his music.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/music/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111102/ap_en_mu/us_people_bieber

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Minor Quakes In the UK Likely Caused By Fracking

The study you linked refers to drilling, not fracking specifically. It only covers 180 houses in a very narrow area, and does nothing to explain known incidents, nor does it even acknowledge them. Here's a "short"

There are, however, documented incidents of contamination. In 2006 drilling fluids and methane were detected leaking from the ground near a gas well in Clark, Wyoming; 8 million cubic feet of methane were eventually released, and shallow groundwater was found to be contaminated.[22] In the town of Dimock, Pennsylvania, 13 water wells were contaminated with methane (one of them blew up), and the gas company, Cabot Oil & Gas, had to financially compensate residents and construct a pipeline to bring in clean water; the company continued to deny, however, that any "of the issues in Dimock have anything to do with hydraulic fracturing".[25][21] A Duke University study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2011 examined methane in groundwater in Pennsylvania and New York states overlying the Marcellus Shale and the Utica Shale. It determined that groundwater tended to contain much higher concentrations of methane near fracking wells, with potential explosion hazard; the methane's isotopic signatures and other geochemical indicators were consistent with it originating in the fracked deep shale formations, rather than any other source.[26] Complaints from a few residents on water quality in a developed natural gas field prompted an EPA groundwater investigation in Wyoming. The EPA reported detections of methane and other chemicals such as phthalates in private water wells.[27] In Pavillion, Wyoming, the EPA discovered traces of methane and foaming agents in several water wells near a gas rig, though it suggested these chemicals might have come from cleaning products.[25] In DISH, Texas, elevated levels of disulphides, benzene, xylenes and naphthalene have been detected in the air, alongside numerous local complaints of headaches, diarrhoea, nosebleeds, dizziness, muscle spasms and other problems. Epidemiological studies that might confirm or rule out any connection between these complaints and fracking are virtually non-existent. Individuals "smell things that don't make them feel well, but we know nothing about cause-and-effect relationships in these cases."[28] In Garfield County, Colorado, another area with a high concentration of drilling rigs, volatile organic compound emissions increased 30% between 2004 and 2006; during the same period there was a rash of health complaints from local residents. The health effects of VOCs are largely unquantified, so any causal relationship is difficult to ascertain; however, some of these chemicals are suspected carcinogens and neurotoxins.[22] Investigators from the Colorado School of Public Health performed a study in Garfield regarding potential adverse health effects, and concluded that residents near gas wells might suffer chemical exposures, accidents from industry operations, and psychological impacts such as depression, anxiety and stress. This study (the only one of its kind to date) was never published, owing to disagreements between community members and the drilling company over the study's methods.[28] In 2010 the film Gasland premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The filmmaker claims that chemicals including toxins, known carcinogens, and heavy metals polluted the ground water near well sites in Pennsylvania, Wyoming, and Colorado.[29]

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/lKu5ZFG6bow/minor-quakes-in-the-uk-likely-caused-by-fracking

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Republican sexual harassment furor boosts Obama (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? The longer the Republican presidential hopefuls battle over sexual harassment claims against Herman Cain, the better things look for President Barack Obama as he mounts his campaign for re-election.

Cain has been accused by at least three women of sexual harassment when he was head of the National Restaurant Association in the mid-1990s, claims that have been front and center in the Republican nomination race since the news web site Politico reported them on Sunday.

The rare instance of infighting in a party known for its unity comes just as Obama, a Democrat, is gaining some traction in opinion polls and the U.S. economy is showing signs of improvement.

"Obviously Team Obama wants the Republican field as large as possible for as long as possible," Republican strategist Ford O'Connell said. "The more they duke it out, the more ammo Team Obama has going into the general election."

Cain said he is innocent of the claims and accused rival Rick Perry's camp of being behind the story, which Perry has denied.

The disputes between the Republicans come as opinion polls show voters are responding well to Obama's push for his jobs bill. A poll from Quinnipiac University this week showed that 47 percent of Americans approve of Obama's job performance, up six percentage points from early October.

There have also been signs that the U.S. economic recovery, expected to be the most important issue in the 2012 election, is on track. On Wednesday, data showed U.S. private employers added more jobs than expected last month, raising hopes that Friday's October unemployment report might show improvement from the September's 9.1 percent rate.

All of this is good for the Democrats, who have wisely stayed out of the controversy, keeping their campaign attacks on Romney, whom Cain replaced at the top of most polls.

"It's clouding the Republican message right now, so that's got to be good news for Democrats and they are quite wisely being very quiet about it," said David Yepsen, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University.

"Napoleon I think said you never interfere with an enemy in the act of destroying himself."

WEAKENING CAIN

The furor has weakened the 65-year-old businessman Cain, who leads in polls of Republicans nationally and in Iowa, which holds the first nominating contest of 2012 on January 3. Cain has given conflicting accounts of whether the women received settlements, and shouted at reporters who demanded answers.

"It's devastating," said Democratic strategist Greg Haas, although he cautioned that Obama's team would not want the Republican field to narrow too quickly. "Our side has to watch and see that they don't create a situation where they end it fast."

The controversy is already an unwelcome distraction from efforts to find one strong contender to oppose Obama, two months before voting starts in the nomination process.

And longer term, it makes the Republicans look bad, while they should be preserving resources to battle Obama.

"The Republicans are trying to avoid a personal, protracted, difficult fight for the nomination. And this seems to be something that's pouring fuel on a smoldering fire inside the party," said Christopher Arterton, a professor at George Washington University who has been a Democratic consultant.

Cain's campaign said his supporters have rallied to his cause, giving him $1 million in donations as the controversy has raged. If his supporters remain convinced that Cain was treated poorly, and stay home during the general election, it could benefit Obama.

Cain is a favorite of the party's conservative Tea Party wing, which has not embraced Mitt Romney, the former governor of liberal Massachusetts whose conservative credentials are questioned by fiscal and social conservatives.

Arterton said Cain's supporters could decide not to vote or even back him in a third-party campaign if things stay ugly. "If Cain's polls go down and his people get very bitter about this, I think you could see the possibility of their deciding that they would mount a campaign in the fall," he said.

(Editing by Alistair Bell and Vicki Allen)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111104/pl_nm/us_usa_campaign_cain_obama

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Google eBookstore goes live in Canada

Google eBookstore

In a rather quite, unceremonious manner -- Google's eBookstore has gone live in Canada. Canadians looking to purchase digital copies of their favorite books for their Android smartphones or tablets using Google Books, desktop computers and e-readers can do so now with ease.

With Canadian resellers already being added and quite a few Canadian publishers bringing their content the mix such as Penguin Canada, Random House, and HarperCollins and more Google is looking to make as many books accessible as possible. Some on device shots of the store can be found past the break.

Source: The Digital Reader

read more


Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/-2ZwiqjbUxM/google-ebookstore-goes-live-canada

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Karolyn Pho: Dating Shia LaBeouf For Some Reason!


He may be in Vancouver filming his new movie, The Company You Keep, and getting his ass kicked on occasion, but Shia LaBeouf isn't an unwelcome sight for everyone.

Girlfriend Karolyn Pho likes being around the guy.

She was casually dressed, chatting with crew members as she watched her beau film a scene in the Robert Redford film. Shia also managed to escape the set for a bit, grabbing a beverage with his girlfriend at a coffee shop nearby.

They later strolled back to the set, arm in arm.

Shia LaBeouf and Karolyn Pho

Who dates Shia LaBeouf? Apparently Karolyn Pho does.

[Photo: Fame Pictures]

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2011/11/karolyn-pho-dating-shia-labeouf-for-some-reason/

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Eva Amurri, Susan Sarandon's daughter, marries beau (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) ? Actress Eva Amurri, the oldest child of Susan Sarandon, married former soccer pro Kyle Martino on Saturday, People magazine reported.

The couple, engaged since December, tied the knot in Charleston, South Carolina. Sarandon and her former partner Tim Robbins, who helped raise Amurri, hosted the weekend's festivities.

Officiating at the ceremony was Sister Helen Prejean, the nun portrayed by Sarandon in Robbins' 1995 film "Dead Man Walking." Amurri, 26, had a small role in the film, playing her mother's character as a child.

Amurri's film work has included roles in "The Banger Sister," "Saved!" and "The Life Before Her Eyes." Her father is Italian director Franco Amurri. She has two half-brothers, Sarandon's sons with Robbins.

Martino, 30, retired from Major League Soccer in 2008 and is now a soccer commentator. He and Amurri chose historic Charleston for their wedding because his parents live there.

(Reporting by Sheri Linden; Editing by Jerry Norton)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/celebrity/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111030/people_nm/us_evaamurri

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