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Opposing groups debate medical school proposition

Posted: September 23, 2012 at 5:14 am

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On Friday the Austin-Travis County EMS union held a press conference to endorse the health district's Proposition 1State Senator Kirk Watsons plan to bring a medical to Austin and expanding care to more residents.

"A lot of people in our community that don't currently have a medical home will have a medical home in community clinics, will have better wellness programs, Sen. Watson said.

Meanwhile, members of the Travis County Taxpayers Union are protesting the property tax hike that the proposition requires. For a $200,000 home, the tax would come out to an additional $100 per year.

"That number was not chosen on what Austinites can afford, Laura Pressley, Proposition 1 opponent, said.

For every dollar local taxpayers spend on the project, the federal government will put in $1.50. Supporters call that a boon, but opponents call it an empty promise.

"The problem is that is coming from a bankrupt government. I promise you, cuts are coming, opponent Roger Fall said. Where are we going to fill that dollar-fifty gap? Where's that money coming from?"

Those opposed to the tax hike say it's simply too much for Austin families to shoulder. Energy and water rates are already going up, and other bond item will be on the November ballot.

Meanwhile, supporters say bringing a medical school to Austin will generate $2 billion dollars for the economy each year.

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Opposing groups debate medical school proposition

Recommendation and review posted by G. Smith

Special Ceremony Held For Inaugural Class Of Cooper Medical School

Posted: September 22, 2012 at 2:18 pm

By Hadas Kuznits

CAMDEN, N. J. (CBS) Medical students in Camden underwent a special ceremony on Friday.

Dr. Paul Katz, dean of the Cooper Medical School of Rowan University, says its a very special moment when a medical student puts on their white coat for the first time. Thats why a special ceremony was held for the incoming class.

The white coat is very symbolic of being a physician and this is the day where we give them the white coat but more than that, really welcome them to the profession, Dr. Katz explains.

It was also a special moment for the school, with this being the inaugural class.

Weve told this class that there will only be one charter class in the history of this medical school and it is them, Dr. Katz says.

He says many people have been waiting a long time for this moment, not just the students.

The idea around a medical school in Camden goes back 40 years; so this idea has been out and about for a while and were really very pleased for all the people that kept this dream alive that we now have the opportunity to get this school started, says Dr. Katz.

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Special Ceremony Held For Inaugural Class Of Cooper Medical School

Recommendation and review posted by G. Smith

New Studies On Genetic Variations Offer Insights Into Origins Of Man

Posted: September 22, 2012 at 12:14 am

April Flowers for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

Thousands of years ago, a genetic mutation occurred which might be the answer to how early humans were able to move from central Africa and across the continent. This movement has been called the great expansion.

Three teams of researchers, from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and University of Washington School of Medicine, have analyzed genetic sequence variation patterns in different populations around the world. Their research, published this week in the online journal PLoS One, demonstrates that about 85,000 years ago, a critical genetic variant arose in a key gene cluster on chromosome 11, known as the fatty acid desaturase cluster (FADS).

This genetic variant would have allowed humans to convert plant-based polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) to brain PUFAs. The long-chain of PUFAs found in the brain are necessary for increased brain size, complexity and function, and the FADS cluster plays a critical role in determining how effectively medium-chain PUFAs in plants are converted.

According to archeological and genetic studies, Homo sapiens appeared approximately 180,000 years ago. For almost 100,000 years, our early ancestors tended to stay in one location close to bodies of water in central Africa. Scientists have hypothesized that this location was critical because early humans needed large amounts of the long-chain PUFA docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) commonly found in fish and shellfish in order to support complex brain function.

This may have kept early humans tethered to the water in central Africa where there was a constant food source of DHA, explained Dr. Floyd Chilton, director of the Center for Botanical Lipids and Inflammatory Disease Prevention at Wake Forest Baptist.

There has been considerable debate on how early humans were able to obtain sufficient DHA necessary to maintain brain size and complexity. Its amazing to think we may have uncovered the region of genetic variation that arose about the time that early humans moved out of this central region in what has been called the great expansion.

Under the intense pressure of natural section, this new trait was able to spread rapidly throughout the entire Homo sapiens population on the African continent.

The power of genetics continually impresses me, and I find it remarkable that we can make inferences about things that happened tens of thousands of years ago by studying patterns of genetic variation that exist in contemporary populations, said Dr. Joshua M. Akey from the University of Washington.

The most important result of this conversion was that humans no longer had to rely on just one food source, fish, for brain growth and development. This was particularly important because the genetic variant arose before organized hunting and fishing could have provided more reliable sources of long-chain PUFAs.

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New Studies On Genetic Variations Offer Insights Into Origins Of Man

Recommendation and review posted by G. Smith

‘Shock of the News’ at National Gallery of Art a fascinating cross section of art, news

Posted: September 22, 2012 at 12:14 am

Curator Judith Brodie focuses on two seminal works in her excellent National Gallery of Art show, Shock of the News, which documents the stormy, obsessive, often dysfunctional and prodigiously productive relationship between art and newspapers over the past century. First is a classic screed by the Italian poet and provocateur Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, a manifesto of Futurism published in 1909 in the respectable Parisian newspaper Le Figaro. Second is Picassos 1912 collage Guitar, Sheet Music, and Glass, which incorporated a fragment of another French newspaper, Le Journal, into an image that also uses a scrap of sheet music and a charcoal sketch to create a flat, schematic map of sensual diversions and cafe life.

Although newspapers had appeared in art before (Cezanne painted his father reading what looks like the Jackson Pollock Daily Herald in 1866), and art had appeared in newspapers with increasingly satisfying results since advances in printing late in the 19th century, the Picasso and Marinetti works announced a new relation between the two media. Picassos pasted-paper construction brought the newspaper as a material thing to the foreground of his picture, while Marinetti suggested new ways for artists to use the larger apparatus of the newspaper phenomenon, its mass appeal and its power to mold public opinion.

Thereafter, what might seem to be two very different wellsprings of inspiration pretty much merged. Focusing on the materiality of newspaper inevitably raised questions about what those little pieces of paper said, which dragged in the jangling, newsy world of politics and war and celebrity and everything else the newspaper promised its readers on a daily basis. And as artists developed a more conceptual approach to using newspapers publishing their own absurdist or self-aggrandizing broadsheets, analyzing and dissecting the hidden mythologies of the news business they often, and perhaps accidentally, made work that is alluring on a purely aesthetic and tactile level.

Shock of the News presents a fascinating cross section of the results, from an original copy of Marinettis testosterone-soaked manifesto (like something Walt Whitmans evil twin might have written had he grown up in a Prussian boarding school) to works done in the past five years, as the newspaper business hemorrhaged jobs, profits and confidence. Paul Sietsemas 2008 Modernist Struggle ink and enamel work, a meticulous trompe loeil rendering of two pieces of newspaper, the New York Times and Los Angeles Times (which includes the headline Modernists Struggle with Traditionalists Over Guns), feels autumnal and reflective, an honorific painting that gives the newspaper the same treatment as a Dutch still life or an old family portrait hanging above the mantel. The precision of his image, including the painstakingly realistic rendering of slight creases and curled corners, is wistful, perhaps loving, and the results are such an accurate rendering of banal objects that attention focuses on the small dissonance between use of the singular in Sietsemas title (Modernist Struggle) and the plural in the headline the artist paints (Modernists Struggle ...).

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‘Shock of the News’ at National Gallery of Art a fascinating cross section of art, news

Recommendation and review posted by G. Smith

'End Of Watch': The Reviews Are In!

Posted: September 22, 2012 at 12:14 am

"Training Day" writer David Ayer patrols familiar territory once again in the new cop drama "End of Watch," buckling audiences in for a gritty, blood-stained ride-along with L.A.'s finest. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pea, the film follows a pair of officers who become targets of a powerful cartel's deadly vendetta.

Written and directed by Ayer, "End of Watch" is earning mostly positive reviews from critics, who praise the film's strong narrative and the winning chemistry between its male leads. Where opinions seem to differ, however, is over the film's "found footage" format, which some feel adds a sense of realism but others find distracting.

With "End of Watch" hitting theaters Friday (September 21), here's what the critics have to say.

The Story "David Ayer's South Central-set cop film 'End of Watch' feels like the work of a man who, after relishing venal and brutal police work in his scripts for 'Training Day' and 'Dark Blue,' has come to identify with, and maybe love, the L.A.P.D. Here, L.A.'s finest may work in a world of cut corners and bad attitudes, but they're the good guys, and damned if you're not going to accept it. Vigorously capturing the tension of walking into situations that could be deadly, horrifying, or both, it has a strong commercial appeal despite some shortcomings." John DeFore, The Hollywood Reporter

Gyllenhaal and Pea's Chemistry "But the only relationship that really matters is the one between Brian and Mike. There is a lot of love in that car, and Pea and Gyllenhaal make you feel it. The easy back and forth between them topics ranging from raunchy nonsense to philosophical musings have an organic feel that is hard to come by and usually worth the wait. These moments, seeded through the film, nearly always bring tension-releasing laughter, which we need as much as they do." Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times

The Found Footage Format "On the down side, it's also yet another movie utilizing the 'found footage' gimmick that's all the current rage. Much of the film consists of shaky, hand-held images purportedly shot by Brian for a filmmaking class he's taking. Even the villains are of the YouTube generation, bringing a video camera along for a drive-by. It's an unnecessary distraction from the story, which is a good one." Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post

The Final Word "Nerve-rattling in the best way, the sharp, visceral urban police procedural 'End of Watch' is one of the best American cop movies I've seen in a long time. Directed from his own script by 'Training Day' writer David Ayer, it's also one of the few I've seen that pay serious attention to what cop life feels like, both on and off duty, for those who protect and serve the streets of L.A.'s danger zone Southland." Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly

Check out everything we've got on "End of Watch," opening September 21.

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'End Of Watch': The Reviews Are In!

Recommendation and review posted by G. Smith

Mount Sinai School of Medicine Bringing Free Courses Online

Posted: September 21, 2012 at 1:15 am

Newswise Mount Sinai School of Medicine has signed an agreement with Coursera.org that will make Mount Sinai graduate and medical school courses freely available online.

Mount Sinai will begin by offering three courses that focus on training students to use computation to convert the information in large and small data-sets in biomedical sciences to understand disease progression, adverse events in individual patients, and to predict efficacy of drug therapy. The three courses Introduction to Systems Biology, Networks Analyses in Systems Biology, and Mathematical Models in Systems Biology will be offered in 2013. The courses provide a solid basis for understanding the new era of personalized and precision medicine that is being made possible by advanced gene sequencing technologies.

John Morrison, PhD, Dean of the Mount Sinai Graduate School of Biological Sciences, said, The rigorous courses that we are putting up on Coursera, the planned interactions and the testing formats have the ability to completely change graduate education. Today, like most schools, our programs have one to two years of classes followed by several years of research or clinical training. If the online formats take hold then didactic learning can be interspersed through the research or clinical training years. We can also offer our courses world-wide for free, thus greatly enhancing the reach of our educational mission.

Leading Mount Sinais effort to put courses online is Ravi Iyengar, PhD, The Rosenstiel Professor and Chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics and Director of Systems Biology Center New York.

My sense is we are at a transformative time in higher education and Coursera is one driver of this change both for off- and on-campus education, said Dr. Iyengar. The ability to provide free high quality courses in an emerging area of biomedical sciences provides us with exciting opportunities to engage current and future scholars world-wide. For graduate students, such online courses will allow them to get formal training in new areas as their research interests start to gel. For medical students it will allow them to learn details and mechanisms as they see patients. In pharmacology, it would be great to teach in an integrated manner drug action mechanisms and drug usage as students go through their clerkships, rather than in a classroom a year or two earlier. Online courses may well allow to accomplish this goal.

The development of these courses has been supported in part by a Systems Biology Center grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health.

About The Mount Sinai Medical Center

The Mount Sinai Medical Center encompasses both The Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Established in 1968, Mount Sinai School of Medicine is one of the leading medical schools in the United States. The Medical School is noted for innovation in education, biomedical research, clinical care delivery, and local and global community service. It has more than 3,400 faculty in 32 departments and 14 research institutes, and ranks among the top 20 medical schools both in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding and by U.S. News & World Report.

The Mount Sinai Hospital, founded in 1852, is a 1,171-bed tertiary- and quaternary-care teaching facility and one of the nations oldest, largest and most-respected voluntary hospitals. In 2011, U.S. News & World Report ranked The Mount Sinai Hospital 14th on its elite Honor Roll of the nations top hospitals based on reputation, safety, and other patient-care factors. Mount Sinai is one of 12 integrated academic medical centers whose medical school ranks among the top 20 in NIH funding and U.S. News & World Report and whose hospital is on the U.S. News & World Report Honor Roll. Nearly 60,000 people were treated at Mount Sinai as inpatients last year, and approximately 560,000 outpatient visits took place.

For more information, visit http://www.mountsinai.org. Find Mount Sinai on: Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mountsinainyc Twitter @mountsinainyc YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/mountsinainy

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Mount Sinai School of Medicine Bringing Free Courses Online

Recommendation and review posted by G. Smith


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