WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) ? Rising home prices are often welcomed as a sign of a country's economic health and vigor. But in New Zealand, there is growing concern that prices have risen so high they are acting instead as an economic anchor, sucking resources from those who can afford a home and prompting those who can't to consider moving overseas.
While much of the world remains mired in a housing slump, median home prices in the South Pacific nation in June rose to an all-time high: 6 percent above the peak reached before the global financial crisis and more than double the level of a decade ago.
Median home prices have now risen to more than five times the average income, well above the historic multiple of three.
Demonstrators at an anti-gay rally on May 18, 2004 in Los Angeles, Calif.
Photograph by David McNew/Getty Images.
There were thousands of comments in response to my last piece at Slate, in which I lashed out against Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy?s policy of funding anti-gay causes. I tried to dip in and out of the comment thread as often as I could while they were piling up, scanning them for interesting points (of which there were many). But I quickly lost track and had to get back to work on other projects.
Then a reader sent me a link to a discussion of my article at the popular conservative website Free Republic. It?s pure masochism for someone like me to wander such halls; I don?t need to read their posts to know just what ultraconservatives think of my ?homosexualism? and me. But curiosity got the better of me. And my, my, my, they really do hate us queers over there. It?s not just Free Republic, of course. Similar anti-gay sentiments are a staple of many gathering places online, not to mention those in the real world.
People are free in this country to say what they will, nasty though it is, about gays and lesbians. What to do about it, then? I believe that treating bigots as scientific specimens is the best way to disarm their hate. I can?t tackle all such propaganda in a single article (I won?t be able to cover the all-gay-men-are-pedophiles argument, the-all-lesbians-just-hate-men argument, or the next-thing-you-know-we?ll-all-be-marrying dogs-and-horses argument), but for now I?ll dissect some of the other common rhetorical devices deployed by those with an anti-gay mindset.
So without further ado, let?s put these mean bastards under the psychological knife.
The homosexuality-as-choice argument: Those who repeatedly make this claim are actually revealing something about their own sexuality: they are bisexual. Since human beings use a form of mental analogy whenever trying to understand another person?s behavior, the ?choice? argument reflects the reasoning process of an individual who has experienced notable arousal to the same sex in addition to the opposite sex, but has chosen to act only on that inspired by the latter. A true heterosexual, by contrast, has never experienced meaningful same-sex desires and understands that one cannot choose to act on what is simply not there.
The secret bisexuality of those who just cannot seem to grasp that being gay is not, in fact, a choice also helps us to understand the intense hostility that some males feel for openly gay men. Research has shown a positive correlation between a man?s loathing of gay men and his own repressed same-sex desires. ?Since homosexual behavior violates both their moral code and their sense of identity,? explained the psychologists Donald Mosher and Kevin O?Grady long ago, ?homosexual threat is experienced as men become aware at some level of their ? arousal to homosexual stimuli. This awareness can be avoided by anger, disgust, and contempt directed against homosexuals, as a means of bolstering hypersexual identity.? The psychologist Henry Adams has used a device called a plethysmograph that measures penile arousal to show that the more aversion a man says he feels toward gay men?and even more disturbingly, the more willing he is to inflict pain upon them?the more intense is his erection to gay porn.
The homosexuality-is-disgusting argument: One of the most potent propaganda devices is the age-old ploy of dehumanizing the oppressed party by stirring up feelings of disgust for them. The Nazi author of an animated children?s book from 1938 Germany, for example, wrote this for his young readers: ?Just look at these guys! The louse-infested beards! The filthy, protruding ears, those stained, fatty clothes ? Jews oftentimes have an unpleasant sweetish odor. If you have a good nose, you can smell the Jews.? (The author was later executed as a war criminal.)
In our own country?s lamentable past, disgust rhetoric slowed down the hard-won civil rights achievements of women and blacks. In the present case, scatological language litters antigay conversations, along with the portrayal of gay men as being unique carriers of ?horrific diseases? such as AIDS. Over at Free Republic, for example, you?ll read comment after comment such as these:
* If your personal identity revolves around your lust for other men?s stinking anuses, a particularly disgusting form of depravity that spreads horrific diseases, the chest swells with self-satisfaction. What a sick world we live in.
* homosexuals should never have got their special rights like civil unions let alone marriage or don?t ask in the first place. The ignorant and stupid on our side wanted to appease them because as they usually say ?I know a couple and they are nice? friggin idiots, so when did we base special rights based on fecal diseased sex in the constitution?
Lured to the shore by a bumper harvest of krill, blue whales are turning out in large numbers along California's shoreline, much to the delight of those wishing to catch a glimpse of the largest known animal.?
By Terence Chea,?Associated Press / August 21, 2012
In an undated photo provided Monday by Captain David Anderson's Dolphin and Whale Safari in Dana Point, Calif., spectators watch whales off the coast of southern California. Endangered blue whales, the world's largest animals, are being seen in droves off the northern California coast, lured by an abundance of their favorite food - shrimp-like creatures known as krill.
Captain David Anderson's Dolphin and Whale Safari/AP
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Endangered whales are being seen in droves off the California coast, lured by a bumper harvest of krill. The growing number of whales along the Pacific Coast is drawing tourists, but it's also led to an increase in collisions with ships.
Tourists from around the world have been flocking to Monterey Bay to catch a glimpse of the massive marine mammals, including impressive numbers of blue whales, the largest animals on earth.
Longtime observers say they've seen a sharp increase in endangered blue and humpback whales feeding near?California shores, where they spend the spring and summer before heading to their winter breeding grounds?off?Mexico and Central America.
"It's phenomenal that these humongous creatures are out?there?and we just get to go out on a boat and go out and watch them," said Santa Cruz resident Susan Stuart after a recent?whale-watching?cruise.
What's bringing the whales so close to shore? A bumper harvest of their favorite food: tiny, shrimplike critters known as krill.
Strong northwest winds have been pushing up cold, nutrient-rich waters from the ocean bottom ? a phenomenon known as upwelling. That has fueled blooms of phytoplankton that have led to an explosion of krill, the main food source of blue and humpback whales.
"The season overall has been pretty exceptional and we're not done," said Nancy Black, a marine biologist with Monterey Bay Whale Watch, which offers bay cruises twice daily.
The abundance of whales has been a boon to boat tour operators in Monterey Bay, whose deep underwater canyon makes it one of the best places to see whales, dolphins and other marine life.
"The word is out right now. If you want to see a whale or blue whale or several species of whale, now's the?time?to go for sure," said Ken Stagnaro, co-owner, Santa Cruz Whale Watching, who estimates business has doubled this year over last year.
But the rebound in whale populations has led to a new problem: more collisions with the giant cargo ships heading in and out of San Francisco Bay, one of the world's busiest ports, experts say.
"When a ship strikes a whale, it's usually not a good outcome. Often?times?the vertebrae are broken and the whale dies," said Maria Brown, superintendent of the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary.
Federal officials are working with conservation groups and the shipping industry on a plan to help protect the whales around San Francisco Bay. They want to reroute ship traffic and improve tracking of whales to reduce collisions.
Conservationists want to ensure that future generations get a chance to see the world's largest animals.
"When you see a whale in the wild, it's a life changing experience," said Maureen Gilbert, an on-board naturalist for Santa Cruz Whale Watching. "You're never the same person after you've had that kind of encounter with a wild animal."
Particle physicists at the University of Oslo in Norway have created a new method of scanning for cancer that will provide a better image for doctors to examine and reduced radiation risk for the patient. Three different types of imaging technology exist: PET (Positron Emission Tomography), CT (Computerized Tomography), and MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). Currently, the most common form of cancer examination involves comparing PET and CT scans.
But scientists working on the project have combined PET with MRI, which does not emit radiation and provides a better image than CT. They did so by creating a PET scanner that was small enough to fit inside an MRI machine so that both types of scans can be captured at once. The new PET scanner developed also allows them to achieve better image quality, by placing it closer to the subject. Though the scanner was initially built for animals, researchers indicate that it could be used in hospitals in the future. According to researcher Erlen Bolle, ?The high resolution in our PET scanner provides better images, and the high sensitivity makes it possible to use only half as much radioactivity in the examinations without it affecting the image quality.?
Contact: Vanessa Wasta wasta@jhmi.edu 410-614-2916 Johns Hopkins Medicine
Johns Hopkins scientists have developed a reliable method to turn the clock back on blood cells, restoring them to a primitive stem cell state from which they can then develop into any other type of cell in the body.
The work, described in the Aug. 8 issue of the journal Public Library of Science (PLoS), is "Chapter Two" in an ongoing effort to efficiently and consistently convert adult blood cells into stem cells that are highly qualified for clinical and research use in place of human embryonic stem cells, says Elias Zambidis, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of oncology and pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering and the Kimmel Cancer Center.
"Taking a cell from an adult and converting it all the way back to the way it was when that person was a 6-day-old embryo creates a completely new biology toward our understanding of how cells age and what happens when things go wrong, as in cancer development," Zambidis says.
"Chapter One," Zambidis says, was work described last spring in PLoS One in which Zambidis and colleagues recounted the use of this successful method of safely transforming adult blood cells into heart cells. In the latest experiments, he and his colleagues now describe methods for coaxing adult blood cells to become so-called induced-pluripotent stem cells (iPS) --- adult cells reprogrammed to an embryonic like state, and with unprecedented efficiencies.
Zambidis says his team has managed to develop a "super efficient, virus-free" way to make iPS cells, overcoming a persistent difficulty for scientists working with these cells in the laboratory. Generally, out of hundreds of blood cells, only one or two might turn into iPS cells. Using Zambidis' method, 50 to 60 percent of blood cells were engineered into iPS cells.
Zambidis' team also found a way around the use of viruses to convert the cells to a stem cell state. Traditionally, scientists use viruses to deliver a package of genes to cells to turn on processes that convert the cells from one type (such as skin or blood) back to stem cell states. However, viruses used in this way can mutate genes and initiate cancers in newly transformed cells. To insert the genes without using a virus, Zambidis' team uses plasmids, rings of DNA that replicate briefly inside cells and then degrade. The blood cells were also given an additional new step in which they were stimulated with their natural bone-marrow environment.
For the new study, the Johns Hopkins team took cord blood cells, treated them with growth factors, and used plasmids to transfer four genes into them. They then delivered an electrical pulse to the cells, making tiny holes in the surface through which the plasmids could slip inside. Once inside, the plasmids triggered the cells to revert to a more primitive cell state. The scientific team next grew some of the treated cells in a dish alone, and some together with irradiated bone-marrow cells.
When scientists compared the cells grown using the blood cell method with iPS cells grown from hair cells and from skin cells, they found that the most superior iPS cells came from blood stem cells treated with just four genes and cultured with the bone marrow cells. These cells converted to a primitive stem cell state within seven to 14 days. Their techniques also were successful in experiments with blood cells from adult bone marrow and from circulating blood.
In ongoing studies, Zambidis and colleagues are testing the quality of the newly formed iPS cells and their ability to convert to other cell types, as compared with iPS cells made by other methods.
Efficient methods to produce virus-free iPS cells may speed research to develop stem cell therapies, using nearly all cell types, and may provide a more accurate picture of cell development and biology.
###
The study's co-authors were Tea Soon Park, Jeffrey S. Huo, Ann Peters, C. Conover Talbot Jr., Karan Verma, Ludovic Zimmerlin, and Ian M. Kaplan. The work was supported by grants from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, (1U01HL099775 and U01HL100397), the National Cancer Institute (CA60441), both part of the National Institutes of Health, and the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund (2011-MSCRF II-0008-00 and 2007-MSCRF II-0379-00).
Links:
The Zambidis Laboratory at Johns Hopkins
http://www.hematopoiesis.org/Zambidis/Home.html
Public Library of Science
http://www.plos.org/
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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.
Contact: Vanessa Wasta wasta@jhmi.edu 410-614-2916 Johns Hopkins Medicine
Johns Hopkins scientists have developed a reliable method to turn the clock back on blood cells, restoring them to a primitive stem cell state from which they can then develop into any other type of cell in the body.
The work, described in the Aug. 8 issue of the journal Public Library of Science (PLoS), is "Chapter Two" in an ongoing effort to efficiently and consistently convert adult blood cells into stem cells that are highly qualified for clinical and research use in place of human embryonic stem cells, says Elias Zambidis, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of oncology and pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering and the Kimmel Cancer Center.
"Taking a cell from an adult and converting it all the way back to the way it was when that person was a 6-day-old embryo creates a completely new biology toward our understanding of how cells age and what happens when things go wrong, as in cancer development," Zambidis says.
"Chapter One," Zambidis says, was work described last spring in PLoS One in which Zambidis and colleagues recounted the use of this successful method of safely transforming adult blood cells into heart cells. In the latest experiments, he and his colleagues now describe methods for coaxing adult blood cells to become so-called induced-pluripotent stem cells (iPS) --- adult cells reprogrammed to an embryonic like state, and with unprecedented efficiencies.
Zambidis says his team has managed to develop a "super efficient, virus-free" way to make iPS cells, overcoming a persistent difficulty for scientists working with these cells in the laboratory. Generally, out of hundreds of blood cells, only one or two might turn into iPS cells. Using Zambidis' method, 50 to 60 percent of blood cells were engineered into iPS cells.
Zambidis' team also found a way around the use of viruses to convert the cells to a stem cell state. Traditionally, scientists use viruses to deliver a package of genes to cells to turn on processes that convert the cells from one type (such as skin or blood) back to stem cell states. However, viruses used in this way can mutate genes and initiate cancers in newly transformed cells. To insert the genes without using a virus, Zambidis' team uses plasmids, rings of DNA that replicate briefly inside cells and then degrade. The blood cells were also given an additional new step in which they were stimulated with their natural bone-marrow environment.
For the new study, the Johns Hopkins team took cord blood cells, treated them with growth factors, and used plasmids to transfer four genes into them. They then delivered an electrical pulse to the cells, making tiny holes in the surface through which the plasmids could slip inside. Once inside, the plasmids triggered the cells to revert to a more primitive cell state. The scientific team next grew some of the treated cells in a dish alone, and some together with irradiated bone-marrow cells.
When scientists compared the cells grown using the blood cell method with iPS cells grown from hair cells and from skin cells, they found that the most superior iPS cells came from blood stem cells treated with just four genes and cultured with the bone marrow cells. These cells converted to a primitive stem cell state within seven to 14 days. Their techniques also were successful in experiments with blood cells from adult bone marrow and from circulating blood.
In ongoing studies, Zambidis and colleagues are testing the quality of the newly formed iPS cells and their ability to convert to other cell types, as compared with iPS cells made by other methods.
Efficient methods to produce virus-free iPS cells may speed research to develop stem cell therapies, using nearly all cell types, and may provide a more accurate picture of cell development and biology.
###
The study's co-authors were Tea Soon Park, Jeffrey S. Huo, Ann Peters, C. Conover Talbot Jr., Karan Verma, Ludovic Zimmerlin, and Ian M. Kaplan. The work was supported by grants from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, (1U01HL099775 and U01HL100397), the National Cancer Institute (CA60441), both part of the National Institutes of Health, and the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund (2011-MSCRF II-0008-00 and 2007-MSCRF II-0379-00).
Links:
The Zambidis Laboratory at Johns Hopkins
http://www.hematopoiesis.org/Zambidis/Home.html
Public Library of Science
http://www.plos.org/
[ | 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.
Join us for the 6th Annual Herndon UMC VIM Golf Tournament. The event will be held at the Herndon Centennial Golf Course (909 Ferndale Ave) in a Captain's Choice Scramble format. All proceeds will benefit Volunteers in Mission (VIM), the mission teams on Herndon UMC that have provided aid to Alaska, Alabama, Florida, Costa Rica, Brazil, Haiti, and Guatemala. Price of $100 (before Sept 14) includes 18 holes of golf, continental breakfast, bbq lunch, practice time with unlimited range balls, and goodie bag!
Register online: Visit www.herndonumc.org and mouse over the "Calendar and Events" tab to locate the VIM Golf Tournament.
Canon's brutally designed PowerShot G1 X eschews flowing lines for angular, boxy lines that may only appeal to fans of Le Corbusier and The Smithsons. However, that harsh body covers a camera aiming to bring DSLR performance in the body of a compact. There are sacrifices, however -- the optical viewfinder is useless, low-light performance isn't good enough and it's got a high price tag. Despite its failings, it managed to win over the heart of our reviewer when shooting pictures in good light. If you own one of these, how do you find it? Could you use it instead of a DSLR, or was the project misguided from the start? Let us know, in the comments below.
Demonstrators at an anti-gay rally on May 18, 2004 in Los Angeles, Calif.
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Public release date: 22-Aug-2012
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