The Massachusetts Lottery confirmed two Costco co-workers are the winners of a $50 million Powerball prize. According to lottery officials, 52-year-old Rosa DeLeon and 54-year-old Reginald LeBlanc, who work at the Costco in Waltham, Mass., bought the winning ticket to Wednesday?s jackpot. The Boston Globe...
CORVALLIS, Ore., Dec. 12, 2012 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- EPIC Pharmacies, Inc. and Professional and Noncredit Education at Oregon State University reached an agreement last week to allow EPIC's member pharmacies to purchase OSU's Management & HR Skills for Pharmacists online course at a discounted rate.
OSU's College of Pharmacy and College of Business developed the course specifically for pharmacists to provide a valuable continuing education opportunity. Participants can earn 1.8 Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education continuing education units after completing the 18-hour course.
"Today's pharmacists work in fast-paced and outcomes-oriented health care environments," says Paige Clark, director of alumni relations and professional development for the OSU College of Pharmacy.? "They need business and leadership skills to navigate the challenges of their increasingly complex workplace. Pharmacies that employ graduates of this course will profit from improved critical management skills, optimized teamwork, and decreased risk and cost of turnover."
Pharmacists and pharmacy managers who take the course will learn how to:
Employ leadership, staffing and decision-making skills to generate a high-performance working environment.
Apply skills learned to enhance the development and productivity of pharmacy team members through coaching, motivation and feedback.
Manage the pharmacy and pharmacy team in accordance with the highest standards and in compliance with employment law.
"EPIC is pleased to offer this valuable online CE program to our members to enhance their management skills," says Tom Scono, vice president of contracts for EPIC Pharmacies, Inc. "We believe the practical tools learned in this program will be invaluable to owners and staff alike."
The interactive learning environment features multimedia storytelling to help prepare participants for future managerial and human resources tasks. Course content is updated regularly to reflect the most recent research and regulations, and registered participants can access the online course 24/7.
The program has been planned and implemented in accordance with the policies of the Accreditation Council on Pharmaceutical Education through the sponsorship of the OSU College of Pharmacy.? The OSU College of Pharmacy is approved by the Accreditation Council on Pharmaceutical Education as a provider of continuing pharmaceutical education.
Learn more at https://pne.oregonstate.edu/catalog/management-hr-skills-pharmacists
About EPIC Pharmacies, Inc.: Formed in 1982 and headquartered in Maryland, EPIC Pharmacies is a not-for-profit buying group of hundreds of independently owned pharmacies across the country. EPIC offers a full range of programs and services while returning its net revenues to its members throughout the year, including a year-end distribution.
About the OSU College of Pharmacy: The College of Pharmacy prepares students of today to be the pharmacy practitioners and pharmaceutical sciences researchers of tomorrow by contributing to improved health, advancing patient care and the discovery and understanding of medicines.
About the OSU College of Business: The College of Business educates students for success in managing and developing sustainable, innovative enterprises in a dynamic economy. With strong graduate and undergraduate programs, internationally recognized scholarly research, and an emphasis on experiential learning, the college helps students and businesses succeed.
About OSU Professional and Noncredit Education:?OSU Professional and Noncredit Education provides education and training for businesses, organizations, associations and professionals anywhere throughout the state and beyond. The majority of professional and noncredit students are focused on continuing education: licensure recertification, professional development and personal enrichment.
Media Contact:Paige Clark, R.Ph. Oregon State University, 541-736-6607, Paige.Clark@oregonstate.edu
News distributed by PR Newswire iReach: https://ireach.prnewswire.com
LONDON (Reuters) - "The Hobbit" actor Ian McKellen said in an interview published on Tuesday that he had had prostate cancer for the last six or seven years, but added that the disease was not life-threatening.
McKellen, 73, played Gandalf in the hit "Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy, and reprises the role in three prequels based on J.R.R. Tolkien's novel "The Hobbit".
The first of those, "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey", recently had its world premiere in New Zealand, where it was shot under the directorship of Peter Jackson.
"I've had prostate cancer for six or seven years," McKellen told the Daily Mirror tabloid. "When you have got it you monitor it and you have to be careful it doesn't spread. But if it is contained in the prostate it's no big deal."
His representatives in London were not immediately available to comment on the interview.
"Many, many men die from it but it's one of the cancers that is totally treatable," added McKellen, one of Britain's most respected actors who is also well known in Hollywood for appearances in the X-Men franchise.
"I am examined regularly and it's just contained, it's not spreading. I've not had any treatment."
He admitted he feared the worst when he heard he had the disease.
"You do gulp when you hear the news. It's like when you go for an HIV test, you go 'arghhh is this the end of the road?'
"I have heard of people dying from prostate cancer, and they are the unlucky ones, the people who didn't know they had got it and it went on the rampage. But at my age if it is diagnosed it's not life threatening."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has designated the radical Islamist Syrian rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra, which is suspected of ties to al Qaeda, as a foreign terrorist organization.
In an order released on Tuesday, the U.S. State Department essentially classified the group, which has advocated for an Islamic state in Syria, as an affiliate of al Qaeda in Iraq.
By blacklisting al-Nusra, authorities now can freeze any assets the group or its members have in U.S. jurisdictions. The designation also prohibits Americans from giving it any material support.
The group has been accused by other rebel factions of indiscriminate tactics in the bloody civil war aimed at ousting President Bashar al-Assad.
"The secretary of state concludes that there is a sufficient factual basis to find that al-Qaeda in Iraq ... uses or has used additional aliases," including Jabhat al-Nusra, the State Department statement said.
Tuesday's action comes as U.S. officials attend the Friends of Syria meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco, to discuss the 20-month-old crisis in Syria as rebels push forward on the battlefield and move to unify the political opposition.
U.S. officials have stressed their concern about the rising influence of extremist elements in the Syrian war.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been expected to attend before falling ill with a stomach virus. Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns is attending in her place.
(Reporting By Susan Heavey, Mark Hosenball, Andrew Quinn and Mohammad Arshad; Editing by Bill Trott)
Another addition to HTC's familia One, a new 4.3-inch Android phone will pay a visit to the UK (with LTE) in the next few weeks. The One SV, which is already set to arrive in Asia and Australia, has a decent list of specifications, with Beats Audio, burst photography and dual-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon S4 processor in attendance. It'll be running Android 4.0, with a 5-megapixel camera with f/2.0 lens able to record up to 1080p video -- it's certainly no Droid DNA for the old continent. A pleasant surprise, however, is the addition of a microSD card slot, which can expand internal storage up to 32GB, while NFC is built into this particular S, something that wasn't in the original One S. It's a completely different looking slab compared to the MAO-treated original, while a Super LCD 2 screen (WVGA, 480 x 800) now supplanting what was once AMOLED. The One SV will be landing in blue and white editions in the coming weeks and although no carriers have been specified yet, the mention of LTE suggests that EE is likely to offer the device.
Update:BestBoyz in Germany has already got to grips with HTC's newest, noting a replaceable 1,800mAh battery. There's a collection of hands-on photos over at the more coverage link.
Dec. 10, 2012 ? Vertebrates' transition to living on land, instead of only in water, represented a major event in the history of life. Now, researchers reporting in the December issue of the Cell Press journal Developmental Cell provide new evidence that the development of hands and feet occurred through the gain of new DNA elements that activate particular genes.
"First, and foremost, this finding helps us to understand the power that the modification of gene expression has on shaping our bodies," says Dr. Jos? Luis G?mez-Skarmeta of the CSIC-Universidad Pablo de Olavide-Junta de Andaluc?a, in Seville, Spain. "Second, many genetic diseases are associated with a 'misshaping' of our organs during development. In the case of genes involved in limb formation, their abnormal function is associated with diseases such as synpolydactyly and hand-foot-genital syndrome."
In order to understand how fins may have evolved into limbs, researchers led by Dr. G?mez-Skarmeta and his colleague Dr. Fernando Casares at the same institute introduced extra Hoxd13, a gene known to play a role in distinguishing body parts, at the tip of a zebrafish embryo's fin. Surprisingly, this led to the generation of new cartilage tissue and the reduction of fin tissue -- changes that strikingly recapitulate key aspects of land-animal limb development. The researchers wondered whether novel Hoxd13 control elements may have increased Hoxd13 gene expression in the past to cause similar effects during limb evolution. They turned to a DNA control element that is known to regulate the activation of Hoxd13 in mouse embryonic limbs and that is absent in fish.
"We found that in the zebrafish, the mouse Hoxd13 control element was capable of driving gene expression in the distal fin rudiment. This result indicates that molecular machinery capable of activating this control element was also present in the last common ancestor of finned and legged animals and is proven by its remnants in zebrafish," says Dr. Casares.
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Journal Reference:
Renata Freitas, Carlos G?mez-Mar?n, Jonathan?Mark Wilson, Fernando Casares, Jos??Luis G?mez-Skarmeta. Hoxd13 Contribution to the Evolution of Vertebrate Appendages. Developmental Cell, 2012; 23 (6): 1219 DOI: 10.1016/j.devcel.2012.10.015
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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Monkey business: What howler monkeys can tell us about the role of interbreeding in human evolution
Monday, December 10, 2012
Did different species of early humans interbreed and produce offspring of mixed ancestry?
Recent genetic studies suggest that Neanderthals may have bred with anatomically modern humans tens of thousands of years ago in the Middle East, contributing to the modern human gene pool. But the findings are not universally accepted, and the fossil record has not helped to clarify the role of interbreeding, which is also known as hybridization.
Now a University of Michigan-led study of interbreeding between two species of modern-day howler monkeys in Mexico is shedding light on why it's so difficult to confirm instances of hybridization among primates?including early humans?by relying on fossil remains.
The study, published online Dec. 7 in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, is based on analyses of genetic and morphological data collected from live-captured monkeys over the past decade. Morphology is the branch of biology that deals with the form and structure of animals and plants.
The two primate species in the study, mantled howler monkeys and black howler monkeys, diverged about 3 million years ago and differ in many respects, including behavior, appearance and the number of chromosomes they possess. Each occupies a unique geographical distribution except for the state of Tabasco in southeastern Mexico, where they coexist and interbreed in what's known as a hybrid zone.
The researchers found that individuals of mixed ancestry who share most of their genome with one of the two species are physically indistinguishable from the pure individuals of that species.
"The implications of these results are that physical features are not always reliable for identifying individuals of hybrid ancestry. Therefore, it is possible that hybridization has been underestimated in the human fossil record," said Liliana Cort?s-Ortiz, an evolutionary biologist and primatologist and an assistant research scientist at the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Museum of Zoology.
First author of the paper is Mary Kelaita, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at San Antonio's Department of Anthropology. The howler monkey study was part of Kelaita's doctoral dissertation work at U-M's Department of Anthropology.
For years, anthropologists have attempted to infer hybridization among human ancestral species based on the fossil record, which represents only a snapshot in prehistory, and have concluded that hybridization is extremely rare, according to Kelaita and Cort?s-Ortiz. Given the utility of living primate models for understanding human evolution, the howler monkey study "suggests that the lack of strong evidence for hybridization in the fossil record does not negate the role it could have played in shaping early human lineage diversity," Kelaita said.
The authors conclude that the process of hybridization (defined as the production of offspring through the interbreeding between individuals of genetically distinct populations), the factors governing the expression of morphology in hybrid individuals, and the extent of reproductive isolation between species should be given further consideration in future research projects.
In their study, Kelaita and Cort?s-Ortiz analyzed different types of genetic markers, from both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA, to trace the ancestry of each howler monkey they studied. The use of molecular markers made it possible to approximate the relative genetic contributions of the parental species to each hybrid.
A total of 128 hybrid individuals were detected. Kelaita and Cort?s-Ortiz found that most were likely the product of several generations of hybridization or of mating between hybrids and pure individuals.
Subsequently, they performed statistical analyses on body measurements and found a large amount of morphological variation in individuals of mixed ancestry. However, when individuals were classified according to the amount of their genome they shared with each parental species, it became clear that individuals of mixed ancestry that shared most of their genome with one of the species were physically indistinguishable from the pure individuals of that species. Even individuals that were more "intermediate" in their genetic composition were not completely intermediate in their appearance.
The study is the first to assess genetic ancestry of primate hybrids inhabiting a natural hybrid zone using molecular data to explain morphological variation.
Between 1998 and 2008, the researchers sampled 135 adult howler monkeys from Tabasco, Mexico, along with 76 others from Veracruz, Campeche, Chiapas and Quintana Roo states in Mexico and Peten in Guatemala. The field team collected blood, hair and morphometric measurements from the anesthetized animals before releasing them in the same locations. Sample collection from wild monkeys was carried out in accordance with U-M's University Committee on Use and Care of Animals protocol #09319, and in collaboration with researchers at the Universidad Veracruzana in Mexico.
The animals were weighed, and 16 body-part measurements were made: trunk, tail, leg, foot, arm and hand length; chest and abdominal girth; head circumference and breadth; head, mandible and ear length; interorbital breadth; internasal distance; and testicular volume.
Howler monkeys are among the largest of New World monkeys, with male mantled howlers weighing up to 22 pounds. Fourteen species of howler monkeys are currently recognized. They are native to Central and South American forests, in addition to southeastern Mexico.
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University of Michigan: http://www.umich.edu/
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Snow-covered trees are seen outside the Mall of America Field at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome before an NFL football game between the Minnesota Vikings and the Chicago Bears on Sunday.
By NBC News staff
Updated at 2:51 p.m. ET: A potent winter storm pounded the Upper Midwest and Northern Plains on Sunday with heavy snow and strong winds, making traveling treacherous and prompting airlines to cancel scores of flights.
The heaviest snowfall was expected from eastern South Dakota through southern Minnesota. Forecasters said up to 16 inches was possible in the hardest-hit areas, including up to a foot in and around Minneapolis.
The snow, coupled with winds gusting as high as 40 mph, could produce whiteout conditions ?making travel nearly impossible,? the National Weather Service said in a statement.
Minnesota State Police said more than 300 car crashes were reported from 9:30 p.m. Saturday to noon Sunday, none of them fatal.
NBC's meteorologist Dylan Dreyer reports.
And it wasn?t just the snow that was a threat. The weather service said temperatures were expected to plummet behind the system to well below zero over western Minnesota, with wind chill readings as low as 20 to 30 below.
?Travel will be very difficult and stranded motorists risk getting frostbite or hypothermia due to the frigid wind chill late this evening and tonight,? the weather service said.
Watch the most-viewed videos on NBCNews.com
More than 150 flights at?Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport?were canceled due to the storm, airport spokesman?Pat Hogan?told The Associated Press.
?Delta Air Lines said snow and icing conditions prompted it to cancel about 90 flights on Sunday.
The southern branch of the storm was expected to dump heavy snow in the Central to Southern Rockies, according to The Weather Channel?s Tom Niziol. ?As the system continues south, snow will also spread southward across the mountains of New Mexico from Taos through Sante Fe where over a foot of snow is likely for this area,? he said.
Snow, strong winds and cold air were also expected to hit the Great Lakes region late Sunday night into Monday.
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A U.S. Navy SEAL was killed early Sunday in the rescue of an American doctor who was kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan, defense officials tell NBC News.
The Navy SEAL?was wounded in the rescue operation and later died, according to a senior defense official.
The rescue operation was launched when coalition forces reported that Dr. Dilip Joseph was in imminent danger. Joseph, who worked with the non-profit Morning Star Development of Colorado Springs, was kidnapped Wednesday along with two Afghan staff members -- one is part of the medical team, the other part of the support team. Joseph has been the non-profit?s medical adviser for three years.
Morning Star said the team of three had been returning from a visit to one of its rural medical clinics when the kidnappers stopped their vehicle. The three were then taken to a mountainous area about 50 miles from the Pakistan border, Morning Star said.?
Related: Kidnapped American rescued from Taliban, coalition says
Contact between the hostages, their captors and the non-profit's crisis management team started immediately, according to a statement on Morning Star's website. On Saturday evening, two of the hostages were released. The two men then made their way out of the area and were taken to a police station.
At least six people were reported killed in the operation to rescue Joseph, the third hostage. It is unclear whether that number includes the American soldier. Morning Star said the two staff members were released earlier.
In a statement Sunday evening, President Barack Obama said: ?Yesterday, our special operators in Afghanistan rescued an American citizen in a mission that was characteristic of the extraordinary courage, skill and patriotism that our troops show every day.?
Two Taliban leaders were reportedly taken into custody.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta issued a statement Sunday evening commending the U.S. Special Operations that carried out the raid. He said he was deeply saddened by the soldier?s death.
?I also want to extend my condolences to his family, teammates and friends,? Panetta said.
Defense officials have not released the deceased soldier?s name pending notification of his family.
Jim Miklaszewski is the chief Pentagon correspondent for NBC News.
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More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.
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Apple and Google have partnered together in hopes of scoring some 1,100 imaging patents being auctioned off by Eastman Kodak, reports Bloomberg. Kodak has been trying to sell the patents since the summer months as part of its bankruptcy restructuring plan. It was unsuccessful at scoring competitive bids at first. This new partnership between Apple and Google comes at a time when they are at odds with one another over smartphone patents. Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources, says the Apple and Google partnership is offering $500 million for the patents. None of the companies involved has confirmed Bloomberg's report.
Will Chicago become home to a mashup of Google and Groupon after all?
Groupon?s stock skyrocketed 23 percent Friday, up 88 cents to $4.69 a share, after an analyst speculated that Internet search giant Google could once again try to take over the beleaguered Chicago-based daily deals site.
Neither Groupon nor Google would comment.
It was Groupon?s highest closing stock price since Oct. 19. The stock is 76.5 percent below its initial public offering price and Groupon?s market value about half of Google?s initial $6 billion takeover offer. Groupon rejected the offer in December 2010.
A Telsey Advisory Group spokesman confirmed Friday a Bloomberg News report that Telsey analyst Tom Forte speculated that Google might be interested in acquiring Groupon now that Groupon is worth roughly half Google?s first offer.
?Where the stock is currently trading, it?s a takeout candidate,? Forte said in the report.
Another analyst disagreed.
Edward Woo, senior research analyst at Ascendiant Capital Markets, said he believes Groupon ?has too many issues going on for somebody to want to acquire right now (at what would still be a large amount of money at $3 billion).?
Woo said the stock is probably just recovering from declines that followed Groupon?s board?s decision to keep Andrew Mason as CEO ? at least for now.
Groupon?s stock price jumped on Nov. 28 as investors looked to the daily deal site?s board of directors to either replace Mason as chief executive officer or give him at least six months to turn around the company?s reputation and disappointing financial results. The stock dropped after the board said on Nov. 29 that Mason remained CEO.
Experts say Groupon can no longer rely on daily deals as a growth engine, with so many deals available and consumers? weariness of them. Aside from making its accounting process more open, Groupon needs to find profitability in a fast-growing product such as a mobile offering that doesn?t require loads of inventory and convince people to do more business with local merchants, the experts say.
On a separate issue, Google is reported to be accepting bids for the TV set-top-box business it acquired when it bought Libertyville-based Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in May.
The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that bidders for the set-top box business could make offers ranging from $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion. Likely bidders include private-equity companies and other hardware manufacturers, the report said.
Mobility split from the old Motorola in January 2011 and took $100 million in a 10-year state tax incentive deal to keep its headquarters in Libertyville. The plans changed after Google?s acquisition. On July 26, Motorola Mobility announced it would move its Libertyville headquarters ? and 3,000 workers ? to downtown Chicago, taking the top four floors and rooftop of the Merchandise Mart and becoming the landmark building?s largest tenant with 600,000 square feet. The space is being prepared now for a spring 2013 move-in of well-paid engineers and professionals in finance, marketing and design.
The rest of Motorola, called Motorola Solutions, is based in Schaumburg and makes bar-code scanners, public safety radios and radio-frequency identification readers.
California Attorney General Kamala Harris filed suit Thursday against Delta Air Lines in her first enforcement action since she promised to crack down on companies that don't inform consumers about their policies for handling personal data collected by smartphone apps and other online services.
The action is part of a high-profile campaign that Harris has waged to make businesses adopt privacy policies and post them on their mobile apps. As the state's top law enforcement officer, she sent warning letters in October to Delta and about 100 other companies that operate in California, informing the businesses that they were violating the state's Internet privacy law.
Delta has a smartphone app that customers can
use to check into flights, download boarding passes and obtain other information. The app collects a variety of personal information from customers, including their frequent-flier account numbers, birthdates, credit card numbers and geographic locations, according to the lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court, which said the app does not tell consumers how Delta uses the information.
"California law is clear that mobile apps collecting personal information need privacy policies, and that the users of those apps deserve to know what is being done with their personal information," Harris said in a statement distributed by her office Thursday evening. A Delta representative couldn't be reached for comment.
Delta does have a
privacy policy on its website, but the lawsuit says it is not "reasonably accessible" to users of the Fly Delta app, and it does not list all the information collected by the app.
In the lawsuit, Harris's office is asking for a court order that would force Delta to post a policy on the app, and pay $2,500 for each violation demonstrated at trial.
Contact Brandon Bailey at 408-920-5022; follow him at Twitter.com/BrandonBailey.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? It takes more than a superstorm to derail the U.S. job market.
Employers added 146,000 jobs in November and the unemployment rate dipped to 7.7 percent, a four-year low, the government said Friday.
Though modest, the job growth was encouraging because it defied disruptions from Superstorm Sandy and employers' concerns about impending tax increases from the year-end "fiscal cliff."
Analysts said the job market's underlying strength suggests that if the White House and Congress can reach a budget deal to avoid the cliff, hiring and economic growth could accelerate next year.
A budget agreement would coincide with gains in key sectors of the economy.
Builders are breaking ground on more homes, which should increase construction hiring. U.S. automakers just enjoyed their best sales month in nearly five years. And a resolution of the fiscal cliff could lead businesses to buy more industrial machinery and other heavy equipment. That would generate more manufacturing jobs.
"The ground is being prepared for faster growth," said Nigel Gault, an economist at IHS Global Insight.
House GOP leader John Boehner said Friday that the two sides had made little progress in talks seeking a deal to steer clear of the cliff.
The White House used Friday's mixed jobs report as an argument to push President Barack Obama's proposed tax-rate increases for top earners, public works spending and refinancing help for struggling homeowners.
Superstorm Sandy, contrary to expectations, dampened job growth only minimally in November, the government said. Job gains were roughly the same as this year's 150,000 monthly average, and the unemployment rate fell two-tenths of a percentage point to its lowest level since December 2008.
That suggests that fears about the cliff haven't led employers to cut staff, though they aren't hiring aggressively, either. The economy must produce roughly twice November's job gain to quickly lower the unemployment rate.
Friday's report included some discouraging signs. Employers added 49,000 fewer jobs in October and September combined than the government had initially estimated. Monthly job totals come from a survey of 140,000 companies and government agencies, which together employ about 1 in 3 nonfarm workers in the United States.
The unemployment rate, derived from a separate survey of households, fell because 229,000 people without jobs stopped looking for work and so were no longer counted as unemployed.
The household survey asks about 60,000 households whether the adults have jobs and whether those who don't are looking for one. Those without a job who are seeking one are counted as unemployed. Those who aren't looking aren't counted as unemployed.
All told, 12 million people were unemployed in November, about 230,000 fewer than the previous month. That's still many more than the 7.6 million who were out of work when the recession officially began in December 2007.
A broader gauge counts the unemployed, plus part-time workers who want full-time work and people who have given up looking for a job. That total added up to 22.7 million people in November, down from 23 million in October.
Investors appeared pleased with the report. The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 81 points.
For now, worries about the cliff have led some companies to cut back on purchases of heavy equipment. Consumers are also signaling concern. A survey of consumer sentiment fell sharply in December, economists noted, partly over worries that taxes could rise next year.
But a resolution of the cliff could accelerate job growth in the construction and manufacturing industries. Those sectors, on average, pay more than the retail and restaurant jobs that have helped drive hiring in recent months and tend to contribute more to economic growth.
Construction workers earned an average of $26 an hour in November. Factory workers averaged $24 an hour. Both far exceed the hourly average of $16.40 for retail employees and about $13.40 for hotel, restaurant and other hospitality workers.
"The good news is not that the labor market is improving rapidly ? it isn't ? but that employment growth is holding up despite all the fears over the fiscal cliff," Gault said.
He estimates that a budget deal would boost the economy's average monthly job gains to about 200,000 next year.
One company that could step up hiring in 2013 is Ahaus Tool & Engineering in Richmond, Ind., which makes assembly machines for the automotive and power-generation industries.
Kevin Ahaus, president of the 90-person company and the fourth generation of his family to run it, says the company had its best year ever in the 12 months that ended in September. But since October, sales have leveled off. Many customers are asking for bids but not closing deals, Ahaus said, because of the uncertain economic outlook.
That, in turn, is causing him to delay hiring.
"I probably won't hire anybody until the first of the year because of all the unknowns out there," he said.
Many analysts thought Sandy would hold back job growth significantly in November because the storm forced restaurants, retailers and other businesses to close in late October and early November.
It didn't. In part, that's because the storm struck Oct. 29, but as long as employees had returned to work by Thanksgiving week, the survey counted them as employed.
Yet there were signs that the storm disrupted some areas of the economy in November. Construction employment dropped 20,000, for example.
Retailers added 53,000 positions last month, a sharp gain that likely reflected holiday hiring. Auto manufacturers added nearly 10,000 jobs. But overall manufacturing jobs fell by 7,000, partly a result of 12,000 jobs lost in food manufacturing that likely reflected layoffs at Hostess Brands Inc.
The rebound in housing is leading Georgia Pacific, a paper and wood products company, to hire. It is opening a new plant in South Carolina next year and is filling 140 jobs. So far, it's received 2,400 applications.
"It's a little overwhelming from an HR perspective," said Julie Brehm, vice president of human resources.
Researchers investigate impacts of climate change on rare tropical plantsPublic release date: 6-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Caron Lett caron.lett@york.ac.uk 44-019-043-22029 University of York
Research led by the University of York has found that the impacts of climate change on rare plants in tropical mountains will vary considerably from site to site and from species to species.
While some species will react to climate change by moving upslope, others will move downslope, driven by changes in seasonality and water availability. The researchers believe that this predicted variation, together with the long-term isolation and relative climatic stability of the mountains, may shed light on historical processes behind current patterns of biodiversity.
The study, published in the journal Ecography, focussed on the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania and Kenya, home to some of the oldest and most biodiverse habitats on Earth. Thousands of plant and animal species live in this chain of increasingly fragmented patches of forest, woodland and grassland, many hundreds of which are found nowhere else.
The mountains are home to two of the species in the BBC's top ten new species of the decade: the grey-faced sengi (or elephant shrew) and the Kipunji monkey the first new genus of monkey to be discovered since the 1920s.
In addition to being crucial for biodiversity conservation, the value of the mountains is increasingly being realised as important to the national development of Tanzania, providing food and fibres, clean water and climate stability.
The researchers used regionally downscaled climate models based on forecasts from the Max Planck Institute (Hamburg, Germany), combined with plant specimen data from Missouri Botanical Garden (St. Louis, USA), to show how predicted climate change could impact rare plant distributions differentially across the Eastern Arc Mountains.
Lead author Dr Phil Platts, from the University of York's Environment Department, said: "We explored the hypothesis that mountain plants will move upslope in response to climate change and found that, conversely, some species are predicted to tend downslope, despite warmer annual conditions, driven by changes in seasonality and water availability."
Although patterns of change are predicted to be complex, the authors note that their findings link with theories of past ecosystem stability.
Dr Platts said: "We considered the possibility that plants might migrate rapidly to keep pace with 21st century climate change, and found that sites with many rare species are characterised by climates significantly more likely to remain accessible to those plants in the future. This fits with the idea that similar processes in the past underlie the patterns of biodiversity and endemism (organisms unique to a certain region) that we observe today: during glacial-interglacial cycles, old evolutionary lines were able to maintain populations in sites such as the Eastern Arc, while facing extinction elsewhere."
Professor Neil Burgess, co-author and Chief Scientist at the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre, added a cautionary note: "For many organisms, effective dispersal has been massively curtailed by human activity, and so their future persistence is far from certain. Especially on lower slopes, climate-induced migrations will be hampered by fragmentation and degradation of the habitat mosaic."
The researchers warn of the problems of using larger-scale, global climate models to assess localised impacts of climate change. They say that two thirds of the modelled plant species are predicted to respond in different directions in different parts of their ranges, exemplifying the need for a regional focus in climate change impact assessment.
"Conservation planners, and those charged more broadly with developing climate adaption policy, are advised to take caution in inferring local patterns of change from zoomed perspectives of broad-scale models," said Dr Platts.
The study emphasises the importance of seasonality and moisture, rather than altitude and mean temperature, for determining the impacts of climate change on mountain habitats in tropical regions.
Co-author Roy Gereau, from the Missouri Botanical Garden's Africa and Madagascar Department, said: "This study demonstrates the enormous potential of carefully curated herbarium data, combined with climatological information, to elucidate fine-scale patterns of species distribution and their differential changes over time."
Future work will investigate a wide range of climate models and emissions scenarios, as well as DNA sequencing of selected plant species.
Co-author Dr Rob Marchant, from York's Environment Department, said: "What is clear from the current study is that effective conservation must operate at a landscape level, taking into account the spatial variation in how ecosystems and people have responded to previous episodes of rapid change."
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Researchers investigate impacts of climate change on rare tropical plantsPublic release date: 6-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Caron Lett caron.lett@york.ac.uk 44-019-043-22029 University of York
Research led by the University of York has found that the impacts of climate change on rare plants in tropical mountains will vary considerably from site to site and from species to species.
While some species will react to climate change by moving upslope, others will move downslope, driven by changes in seasonality and water availability. The researchers believe that this predicted variation, together with the long-term isolation and relative climatic stability of the mountains, may shed light on historical processes behind current patterns of biodiversity.
The study, published in the journal Ecography, focussed on the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania and Kenya, home to some of the oldest and most biodiverse habitats on Earth. Thousands of plant and animal species live in this chain of increasingly fragmented patches of forest, woodland and grassland, many hundreds of which are found nowhere else.
The mountains are home to two of the species in the BBC's top ten new species of the decade: the grey-faced sengi (or elephant shrew) and the Kipunji monkey the first new genus of monkey to be discovered since the 1920s.
In addition to being crucial for biodiversity conservation, the value of the mountains is increasingly being realised as important to the national development of Tanzania, providing food and fibres, clean water and climate stability.
The researchers used regionally downscaled climate models based on forecasts from the Max Planck Institute (Hamburg, Germany), combined with plant specimen data from Missouri Botanical Garden (St. Louis, USA), to show how predicted climate change could impact rare plant distributions differentially across the Eastern Arc Mountains.
Lead author Dr Phil Platts, from the University of York's Environment Department, said: "We explored the hypothesis that mountain plants will move upslope in response to climate change and found that, conversely, some species are predicted to tend downslope, despite warmer annual conditions, driven by changes in seasonality and water availability."
Although patterns of change are predicted to be complex, the authors note that their findings link with theories of past ecosystem stability.
Dr Platts said: "We considered the possibility that plants might migrate rapidly to keep pace with 21st century climate change, and found that sites with many rare species are characterised by climates significantly more likely to remain accessible to those plants in the future. This fits with the idea that similar processes in the past underlie the patterns of biodiversity and endemism (organisms unique to a certain region) that we observe today: during glacial-interglacial cycles, old evolutionary lines were able to maintain populations in sites such as the Eastern Arc, while facing extinction elsewhere."
Professor Neil Burgess, co-author and Chief Scientist at the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre, added a cautionary note: "For many organisms, effective dispersal has been massively curtailed by human activity, and so their future persistence is far from certain. Especially on lower slopes, climate-induced migrations will be hampered by fragmentation and degradation of the habitat mosaic."
The researchers warn of the problems of using larger-scale, global climate models to assess localised impacts of climate change. They say that two thirds of the modelled plant species are predicted to respond in different directions in different parts of their ranges, exemplifying the need for a regional focus in climate change impact assessment.
"Conservation planners, and those charged more broadly with developing climate adaption policy, are advised to take caution in inferring local patterns of change from zoomed perspectives of broad-scale models," said Dr Platts.
The study emphasises the importance of seasonality and moisture, rather than altitude and mean temperature, for determining the impacts of climate change on mountain habitats in tropical regions.
Co-author Roy Gereau, from the Missouri Botanical Garden's Africa and Madagascar Department, said: "This study demonstrates the enormous potential of carefully curated herbarium data, combined with climatological information, to elucidate fine-scale patterns of species distribution and their differential changes over time."
Future work will investigate a wide range of climate models and emissions scenarios, as well as DNA sequencing of selected plant species.
Co-author Dr Rob Marchant, from York's Environment Department, said: "What is clear from the current study is that effective conservation must operate at a landscape level, taking into account the spatial variation in how ecosystems and people have responded to previous episodes of rapid change."
###
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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.
More than 50 organizations plan to march in Oslo on Sunday to protest of the Nobel Committee's award of the 2012 Peace Prize to the EU at a time of debt crisis.
By Valeria Criscione,?Correspondent / December 7, 2012
Norwegian Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland announces the European Union as the recipients of the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo two months ago. Many Norwegians are critical of the EU receiving the award, and a protest march is planned for the day before the award ceremony.
Heiko Junge/NTB Scanpix Norway/AP/File
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Since the decision this October to give the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union, many have questioned its worthiness, given the current social and economic turmoil there. Among the critics who will be booing loudest at the award this coming week will be the Norwegians themselves ? including some in government.
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The Norwegian Peace Council, which oversees several Norwegian peace organizations, plans a protest march against the prize on Dec. 9, the day before European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, European Commission President Jos? Manuel Barroso, and President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz, accept the medal and diploma in Oslo City Hall.
The protest ?Nobel Peace Prize Initiative for 2012? will include not only the Norwegian organization "No to EU," but also members of Norway?s ruling Center and Socialist Left parties, the national trade union LO Oslo, and Save the Children Youth. More than 50 organizations plan to march from the central Oslo square at Youngstorget that evening, bearing torches and the banner ?Not a Peace Prize For Our Time.? Among the international participants, three former Peace Prize laureates plan to attend along with Dimitris Kostelas of the Greek opposition party Syriza, who will give the closing speech in front of Parliament.
?We expect more than 1,000 people to march,? says?Hedda Langemyr, the Norwegian Peace Council director. ?[The EU] is not a worthy prize winner.?
Heming Olaussen, leader of No to EU, stresses the protest is not a protest against EU membership, even though 3 out of 4 Norwegians currently oppose joining. Rather, it marks the organization?s objection to the worthiness of the EU as a prize winner, citing the EU?s current armament profile, the social and economic unrest amidst the growing youth unemployment in Greece and Spain, its aggressive trade policy toward poor developing countries in Latin America, and efforts to prevent African refuges from coming into ?rich Europe.?
?This is a provocation to the vast number of Norwegians,? Mr. Olaussen told a meeting of international journalists. ?We got 500 new members in two days after the [Peace Prize] announcement.?
?I agree it would have been more logical at another point in time, but that does not preclude it from having it now,? replies Jan?s Herman, EU ambassador to Norway. He cited the EU?s record in gradually enlarging the ?zone of peace,? the large amount of resources it has provided in humanitarian aid around the world, its fight against climate change, and peace-keeping operations among the reasons why the EU deserves the prize.
?We don?t think the economic crisis is the product of the EU,? he adds. ?We don?t accept the copyright for that.?
>>>back now at 8:11 with a special rossen report. the smack heard around the studio. the off-air moment involving two of our own,
matt lauer
and
willie geist
and has everyone around her talk and accusing. the whole thing was captured on
surveillance cameras
so we sent "today" national investigative correspondent
jeff rossen
just outside
studio 1a
to give us more. jeff, good morning.
>> reporter: hey, guys, good morning. it all happened right here. this is the door to the studio, and right over here is the staircase upstairs to matt's dressing room. matt sis around this time yesterday morning he came down the stairs, was standing about over here getting ready for an upcoming segment when
willie
walked in and said hey, man, and matt says he smacked him right on the tush this. kind of behavior all the times between guys, on football fields and huddles, but is it really appropriate for the workplace? judge for yourself. caught on tape,
surveillance cameras
are rolling as
willie
's hand goes in for the swat, did you see it? here it is again from another angle. the owner of that derriere breaking his silence.
>>i was standing by the doorway in the vestibule, and
willie
came out, and i said hi,
willie
, how are you? and i thought that would be the end of it, and then he just -- he reached out and, you know.
>> reporter: yes, we do. watch what happens next. matt slaps back. is there more to this story? some would look at this and say you did something to provoke this?
>>it's impossible. i didn't do anything differently, not wearing a different cologne. this was uninitiated.
>> reporter: willie
,
jeff rossen
from nbc news.
>>i didn't do it.
>> reporter: i think you know what this is about. had some questions for
willie
. have it all on tape, your hand touching matt's tush, how do you explain that?
>>it was a touch of the lower back, if you review the security footage, readily available. i had papers in my hand and the tape will show this clearly and it was a strike to the lower back, good tidings, good day to see you, sir.
>> reporter: you've never done this to anyone else in the office, never touched my butt, al's butt. almost seems like a targeted attack.
>>i have touched al's butt, just not with the cameras rolling.
>> reporter: do you feel victimized by this?
>>i'm upset for a couple of reasons, one that he denied it. why deny it? if you do it, own up to it, and secondly, since it happened, he hasn't called. he hasn't written, nothing.
>> reporter: that may be the worst part of all.
>>abandonment.
>> reporter: we've shown this tape to several experts who all agree this kind of play is only appropriate when you have the prior permission of both people which our investigation has uncovered
willie
did not have. guys?
>>jeff rossen
, thank you so much.
>>wow.
>>cue the music.
>>check in with scarborough if it has
happened before
. first of all, i've retained
legal counsel
so there's only so much i can say.
>>you should probably stop talking.
>>if you look at the videotape it's more damning for this video.
>>rolled up paper.
>>to your lower back, and watch the
return fire
, if we get to this part of the tape, you're the one that has something to answer for, i would suggest.
>>oh, okay.
>>that's my lower back.
>>full-on hand.
>>we should go to
dustin hoffman
and ask his opinion of this. i think he can --
>>appropriate, inappropriate?
>>should i answer?
>>i'm a little confused. did he -- did
willie
swat him with his
willie
or --
>>okay. i made a mistake. we should not go to
dustin hoffman
>>i think we've said all there is to say about this incident.
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Public release date: 6-Dec-2012
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