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Monday, July 23, 2012
Latest Anti Aging Auctions | Tips and advice for women, men and ...
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HTC sells back half of stake in audio firm Beats
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[ [ [['did not go as far his colleague', 8]], '29438204', '0' ], [ [[' the 28-year-old neighborhood watchman who shot and killed', 4]], '28924649', '0' ], [ [['because I know God protects me', 14], ['Brian Snow was at a nearby credit union', 5]], '28811216', '0' ], [ [['The state news agency RIA-Novosti quoted Rosaviatsiya', 6]], '28805461', '0' ], [ [['measure all but certain to fail in the face of bipartisan', 4]], '28771014', '0' ], [ [['matter what you do in this case', 5]], '28759848', '0' ], [ [['presume laws are constitutional', 7]], '28747556', '0' ], [ [['has destroyed 15 to 25 houses', 7]], '28744868', '0' ], [ [['short answer is yes', 7]], '28746030', '0' ], [ [['opportunity to tell the real story', 7]], '28731764', '0' ], [ [['entirely respectable way to put off the searing constitutional controversy', 7]], '28723797', '0' ], [ [['point of my campaign is that big ideas matter', 9]], '28712293', '0' ], [ [['As the standoff dragged into a second day', 7]], '28687424', '0' ], [ [['French police stepped up the search', 17]], '28667224', '0' ], [ [['Seeking to elevate his candidacy back to a general', 8]], '28660934', '0' ], [ [['The tragic story of Trayvon Martin', 4]], '28647343', '0' ], [ [['Karzai will get a chance soon to express', 8]], '28630306', '0' ], [ [['powerful storms stretching', 8]], '28493546', '0' ], [ [['basic norm that death is private', 6]], '28413590', '0' ], [ [['songwriter also saw a surge in sales for her debut album', 6]], '28413590', '1', 'Watch music videos from Whitney Houston ', 'on Yahoo! Music', 'http://music.yahoo.com' ], [ [['keyword', 99999999999999999999999]], 'videoID', '1', 'overwrite-pre-description', 'overwrite-link-string', 'overwrite-link-url' ] ]
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/htc-sells-back-part-stake-audio-firm-beats-004751988--finance.html
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Health Nike Pas Cher Applications | Arty Apt
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Saturday, July 21, 2012
Marking Videos - FINANCE/Lease and INsurance
FINANCE/Lease and INsurance
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Romney plans foreign trip, audition as US leader
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Mitt Romney auditions on the international stage next week as he travels to England, Israel and Poland looking to establish credibility as a potential commander in chief in his challenge to President Barack Obama.
For the Republican presidential hopeful ? a former private equity executive and Massachusetts governor with little formal experience overseas ? it's a chance to demonstrate competence in settings often occupied by presidents. He'll hold formal meetings with foreign leaders, give public speeches and visit historic sites.
Aides say it's a chance for the candidate to forge links with strong U.S. allies and show that he'll stand up for shared values.
"This trip is an opportunity for us to demonstrate a clear and resolute stand with nations that share our values and possess the fortitude to defend those values in the name of a more peaceful world," said Lanhee Chen, Romney's policy director.
There's also risk: Romney, sometimes prone to misstatements, faces higher stakes wading into delicate diplomatic disputes than he does on the more familiar campaign trail at home. And executing a complicated trip through three countries over a weeklong span presents the most difficult logistical challenge Romney's campaign has yet faced.
The centerpiece of the trip is a politically delicate visit to Israel, where he meets with top leaders who are closing in on a critical decision about whether to launch a military strike on Iran that is opposed by the Obama administration. The relationship with Israel and the question of what to do about Iran's suspected nuclear weapons ambitions represent one of the starkest contrasts between Obama and Romney, who mostly has defined his foreign policy largely in terms of his opponent.
"If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. And if you elect Mitt Romney, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon," Romney said last year at a GOP primary debate focused on foreign policy.
The Israel visit comes on July 28, when Romney will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. Ambassador Daniel Shapiro and President Shimon Peres. Romney advisers won't say if he will visit the West Bank, but he does plan a meeting with Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority prime minister.
The trip will be Romney's fourth visit to Israel. He visited in 2011 and gave a speech at the Herzliya Conference in 2007, an address his advisers say will guide his visit next week.
"I believe that Iran's leaders and ambitions represent the greatest threat to the world since the fall of the Soviet Union, and before that, Nazi Germany," Romney said during his 2007 speech.
The trip also will allow him to reach out to Jewish voters in the U.S., and also to evangelical Christians ? a critical portion of the Republican base traditionally zealous about protecting the Jewish state.
"I think, by and large, you can just look at the things the president has done and do the opposite," Romney told an evangelical Christian group in June when asked how he would approach the American relationship with Israel.
Israel is just one of the areas where Romney has drawn sharp contrasts with Obama without always outlining a clear alternative. He's done that with a series of international events, including a crisis over Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng and a hot-mic comment Obama made to then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
But Romney's advisers said he plans to be careful not to be seen obviously attacking the president while overseas, following longstanding tradition that U.S. politicians don't criticize their country's leader while abroad.
"The contrasts will be kept here in the States," said Andrea Saul, a Romney spokeswoman.
For Romney, the trip will highlight an area where polls show he lags behind his Democratic opponent. A CBS/New York Times poll this week gave Obama a 47 percent to 40 percent lead over Romney on which candidate Americans think would better handle foreign policy.
Romney plans to outline his foreign policy vision in a speech Tuesday to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Reno, Nev., before flying to London and the Olympic Games. He goes to Israel from there and finishes in Poland. While abroad, he plans major speeches in Jerusalem and Warsaw, though advisers say he'll steer clear of outlining specific policy proposals in those addresses.
Romney does not plan to stop in Afghanistan, where the U.S. is still fighting a decade-long war, or Iraq, where Obama ended U.S. military involvement as promised. Visiting Afghanistan could have drawn a war-weary public's focus to the ongoing conflict and forced Romney to outline more specifics on how he would handle the war as president. So far, Romney has sought to keep his options open on questions like when to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.
Obama visited Afghanistan during the 2008 campaign, but the then-Illinois senator was part of a larger congressional delegation.
Romney visited Afghanistan in 2011. Aides said he's skipping it this time because of a tight schedule.
Throughout the trip, Romney will face inevitable comparisons with Obama, whose overseas trip to seven countries during the 2008 campaign culminated with a speech to an audience of 200,000 at the Victory Column in Berlin.
At his first stop, in London, Romney plans meetings with British Prime Minister David Cameron, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, Foreign Secretary William Hague, and Ed Miliband, who leads the opposition Labour Party. He plans fundraisers, where attendees will likely include bankers and others from London's financial sector.
Great Britain is America's most important global ally, and the special relationship between the two countries is a primary focus for any new president or secretary of state. Typically, meetings with British leaders are among the first any new American leader holds after taking office.
The Olympics, kicking off July 27 in London, could also offer Romney opportunities for additional meetings with foreign leaders, many of whom will be there for the beginning of the games. Romney advisers said efforts continue to set up additional meetings.
Romney plans to attend the Olympic opening ceremonies and some of the early competitions. The events offer Romney an opportunity to highlight his record at the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, where he was brought in to run the organizing committee following a bribery scandal. So far, he hasn't talked much on the campaign trail about his role at the Olympics, and it's been mostly absent from his TV commercials. That's likely to change in London, where Romney plans a major interview with NBC News' Brian Williams.
Romney isn't part of the official U.S. presence at the international competition. First lady Michelle Obama will lead the U.S. delegation.
In Poland, Romney will visit a deeply Roman Catholic country that for years has favored Republicans over Democrats. The visit, campaign officials said, comes at the invitation of Lech Walesa, the Polish labor leader who co-founded the Solidarity movement and served as Poland's president during the country's transition out of communism. Romney will meet with Walesa in the Solidarity birthplace, Gdansk, and also hold meetings in Warsaw.
In Poland, Romney will have an opportunity to criticize Obama's so-called political "reset" with Russia after U.S.-Russian ties deteriorated badly under President George W. Bush, as well as the Obama administration's decision not to build a missile defense base in Poland.
Romney has referred to Russia as America's "No. 1 geopolitical foe."
He'll likely receive a warm welcome. Poles have never showed the enthusiasm for Obama that Germans and other Western Europeans did, and his popularity there has declined further during his years in office. But for Romney, the critical audience for his Poland trip is likely the many U.S. citizens with Polish ancestry who live in critical swing states across the American Midwest.
___
Associated Press Deputy Polling Director Jennifer Agiesta in Washington and writer Vanessa Gera in Poland contributed to this report.
___
Follow Kasie Hunt on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/kasie
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/romney-plans-foreign-trip-audition-us-leader-184015320.html
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Hair samples from infants show exposure to anti-HIV drugs in the womb and during breast-feeding
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uqyK_yCFffQf-t97GPK647hdWNpTax8pjJnMMCj_yiX_znEl43xOlrs8quDsgoMcaR5MTc-U6TBmyyAGxJixNi2hQF-94lckk1mqh5kLg=s0-d){kind=small}
Public release date: 21-Jul-2012[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Jeff Sheehy
jsheehy@ari.ucsf.edu
415-597-8165
University of California - San Francisco
Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Makerere University in Uganda have used hair and blood samples from three-month old infants born to HIV-positive mothers to measure the uninfected babies' exposureboth in the womb and from breast-feedingto antiretroviral medications their mothers were taking. The results, they said, are surprising.
"We found high levels of exposure to three antiretroviral medications in the hair samples of HIV uninfected infants at twelve weeks of life," said study senior author, Monica Gandhi, MD, MPH, associate professor of medicine at the UCSF Division of HIV/AIDS at San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH).
"From looking at plasma level data at the same time point, we believe that transfer of two of the medicines from mother to baby occurs exclusively in the womb and transfer of the third medication occurs both in the womb and through breastfeeding."
The findings could lead to new ways to protect infants from HIV transmission and to better understand the development of toxicities and resistance to the drugs, the researchers said.
A single plasma level of a medication reflects drug exposure over approximately 24 hours. Measuring the concentrations of antiretrovirals in a small hair sample reveals exposure over the past month. The team therefore measured both plasma and hair levels of medications in babies whose mothers were taking HIV medications to get a better idea of when drugs are being passed from mother to baby. "Since fetuses start growing hair in the womb, hair sampling gives us an opportunity to examine exposures to drug before birth," said Gandhi.
UCSF researchers have pioneered the use of hair sampling for measuring antiretroviral levels. The procedure is now a standard measure in many research studies, equivalent in HIV clinical care to measuring hemoglobin A1C to monitor average blood glucose levels in patients with diabetes.
In the study, the team took hair and blood samples from two groups of HIV-positive mothers, all of whom breast-fed their infants. For 45 mother/infant pairs, the mothers' antiretroviral regimens included a protease inhibitor, lopinavir, boosted by ritonavir, another antiretroviral medication. The other 64 mothers were on an efavirenz-based regimen.
Infants in the lopinavir group had levels of the drug in their hair that measured 87 percent of the levels found in their mothers' hair. The levels of ritonavir were about 45 percent of the levels found in their mothers' hair. When the researchers looked at the drug levels in the blood drawn from the mothers and infants at 12 weeks, they found the expected levels of lopinavir and ritonavir in the mothers, but none of either in the blood of the infants.
"The inability to find drug in the infants' blood at 12 weeks tells us that the lopinavir and ritonavir in their hair is not due to recent exposure, so breast-feeding did not transfer these drugs to the infants. Our conclusion is that the lopinavir and ritonavir were transferred to the babies in the womb, and lopinavir at quite a high level," said Gandhi.
In the efavirenz group, researchers found infant drug levels in hair samples that were about 40 percent of the levels found in their mothers. Additionally, they found that infants had levels in their blood that were about 15 percent of what was found in their mothers.
These findings indicate a moderate transfer of efavirenz both in the womb and during breastfeeding said Gandhi.
"Our findings, as we verify them, will have important implications. One, being able to measure drug exposures of fetuses in the womb and during breast-feeding can help us understand how to better protect infants from HIV transmission from HIV-positive mothers during pregnancy, birth and after birth. Antiretroviral medications are delivered prophylactically to HIV-positive mothers and newborns to prevent transmission, and fetuses derive protection from transmission if their HIV-positive mothers are on an antiretroviral regimen," she said.
"Second, the development of resistance to antiretroviral medications in infants is an important issue. HIV develops resistant mutations after fairly low levels of exposure to the class of medications to which efavirenz belongs, non-nucleoside transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs). Additionally, hair sampling for antiretroviral exposure levels will ultimately help us monitor toxicities associated with these medications in infants."
Using hair to measure exposure to antiretrovirals has advantages in that it is a painless, bloodless, biohazard-free method of collecting a stable specimen from HIV patients. It measures drug exposure over time and has been shown to be more predictive of treatment response than the "snapshot" of exposure provided by a single plasma level of medication.
Gandhi said that researchers are finding hair sampling to be a very useful tool in several settings. One use is in resource-limited settings where collecting, storing and handling blood draws is difficult and expensive. Hair is snipped, wrapped in foil and needs no refrigeration.
Another setting is in monitoring drug exposures in uninfected people. Researchers have been using the technique to measure adherence/drug levels in some of the pre-exposure prophylaxis trials, where high-risk uninfected patients take antiretrovirals to prevent getting infected with HIV. Non HIV-infected individuals cannot be monitored for adherence to antiretrovirals like HIV-infected individuals (where levels of HIV in the blood are measured routinely to indicate how well they are taking their pills) so hair levels provide a novel and reliable indicator of adherence.
A third setting is for monitoring prenatal exposures. Hair sampling is the only way currently to measure how much antiretroviral exposure fetuses are getting in the womb long-term. Cord blood measurements of antiretrovirals at birth, which are expensive and cumbersome to collect, still only reflect exposure to the babies over the short-term. And collecting hair levels is a much easier technique for monitoring drug exposure levels in infants, especially when compared to blood draws.
This work will be presented at 11:15 a.m. ET on Saturday July 21, 2012 during the 4th International Workshop on HIV Pediatrics, which takes in Washington, D.C. preceding the XIX International AIDS Conference. A poster presentation of the same data, titled, "Lopinavir and efavirenz concentrations in paired hair samples as a marker of cumulative exposure among postpartum women and breastfeeding infants in Tororo, Uganda" will be unveiled at the XIX International AIDS Conference at 3:00 p.m. ET on Sunday, July 22, 2012.
###
Study co-authors include Jane Achan, Deborah Cohan, Frances Aweeka, Julie Mwesigwa, Yong Huang, Albert Plenty, Edwin Charlebois, Theodore Ruel, Veronica Ades, Tamara D. Clark, Paul Natureeba, Moses R. Kamya, and Diane V. Havlir (principal investigator of the study), from the Infectious Diseases Research Collaboration, UCSF-Makerere University, Tororo, Uganda.
The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Office of AIDS Research, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief provided funding for this research.
The UCSF Division of HIV/AIDS at San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center is affiliated with the AIDS Research Institute (ARI) at UCSF. UCSF ARI houses hundreds of scientists and dozens of programs throughout UCSF and affiliated labs and institutions, making ARI one of the largest AIDS research entities in the world.
UCSF is a leading university dedicated to advancing health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care.
[ | 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.
Public release date: 21-Jul-2012[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Jeff Sheehy
jsheehy@ari.ucsf.edu
415-597-8165
University of California - San Francisco
Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Makerere University in Uganda have used hair and blood samples from three-month old infants born to HIV-positive mothers to measure the uninfected babies' exposureboth in the womb and from breast-feedingto antiretroviral medications their mothers were taking. The results, they said, are surprising.
"We found high levels of exposure to three antiretroviral medications in the hair samples of HIV uninfected infants at twelve weeks of life," said study senior author, Monica Gandhi, MD, MPH, associate professor of medicine at the UCSF Division of HIV/AIDS at San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH).
"From looking at plasma level data at the same time point, we believe that transfer of two of the medicines from mother to baby occurs exclusively in the womb and transfer of the third medication occurs both in the womb and through breastfeeding."
The findings could lead to new ways to protect infants from HIV transmission and to better understand the development of toxicities and resistance to the drugs, the researchers said.
A single plasma level of a medication reflects drug exposure over approximately 24 hours. Measuring the concentrations of antiretrovirals in a small hair sample reveals exposure over the past month. The team therefore measured both plasma and hair levels of medications in babies whose mothers were taking HIV medications to get a better idea of when drugs are being passed from mother to baby. "Since fetuses start growing hair in the womb, hair sampling gives us an opportunity to examine exposures to drug before birth," said Gandhi.
UCSF researchers have pioneered the use of hair sampling for measuring antiretroviral levels. The procedure is now a standard measure in many research studies, equivalent in HIV clinical care to measuring hemoglobin A1C to monitor average blood glucose levels in patients with diabetes.
In the study, the team took hair and blood samples from two groups of HIV-positive mothers, all of whom breast-fed their infants. For 45 mother/infant pairs, the mothers' antiretroviral regimens included a protease inhibitor, lopinavir, boosted by ritonavir, another antiretroviral medication. The other 64 mothers were on an efavirenz-based regimen.
Infants in the lopinavir group had levels of the drug in their hair that measured 87 percent of the levels found in their mothers' hair. The levels of ritonavir were about 45 percent of the levels found in their mothers' hair. When the researchers looked at the drug levels in the blood drawn from the mothers and infants at 12 weeks, they found the expected levels of lopinavir and ritonavir in the mothers, but none of either in the blood of the infants.
"The inability to find drug in the infants' blood at 12 weeks tells us that the lopinavir and ritonavir in their hair is not due to recent exposure, so breast-feeding did not transfer these drugs to the infants. Our conclusion is that the lopinavir and ritonavir were transferred to the babies in the womb, and lopinavir at quite a high level," said Gandhi.
In the efavirenz group, researchers found infant drug levels in hair samples that were about 40 percent of the levels found in their mothers. Additionally, they found that infants had levels in their blood that were about 15 percent of what was found in their mothers.
These findings indicate a moderate transfer of efavirenz both in the womb and during breastfeeding said Gandhi.
"Our findings, as we verify them, will have important implications. One, being able to measure drug exposures of fetuses in the womb and during breast-feeding can help us understand how to better protect infants from HIV transmission from HIV-positive mothers during pregnancy, birth and after birth. Antiretroviral medications are delivered prophylactically to HIV-positive mothers and newborns to prevent transmission, and fetuses derive protection from transmission if their HIV-positive mothers are on an antiretroviral regimen," she said.
"Second, the development of resistance to antiretroviral medications in infants is an important issue. HIV develops resistant mutations after fairly low levels of exposure to the class of medications to which efavirenz belongs, non-nucleoside transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs). Additionally, hair sampling for antiretroviral exposure levels will ultimately help us monitor toxicities associated with these medications in infants."
Using hair to measure exposure to antiretrovirals has advantages in that it is a painless, bloodless, biohazard-free method of collecting a stable specimen from HIV patients. It measures drug exposure over time and has been shown to be more predictive of treatment response than the "snapshot" of exposure provided by a single plasma level of medication.
Gandhi said that researchers are finding hair sampling to be a very useful tool in several settings. One use is in resource-limited settings where collecting, storing and handling blood draws is difficult and expensive. Hair is snipped, wrapped in foil and needs no refrigeration.
Another setting is in monitoring drug exposures in uninfected people. Researchers have been using the technique to measure adherence/drug levels in some of the pre-exposure prophylaxis trials, where high-risk uninfected patients take antiretrovirals to prevent getting infected with HIV. Non HIV-infected individuals cannot be monitored for adherence to antiretrovirals like HIV-infected individuals (where levels of HIV in the blood are measured routinely to indicate how well they are taking their pills) so hair levels provide a novel and reliable indicator of adherence.
A third setting is for monitoring prenatal exposures. Hair sampling is the only way currently to measure how much antiretroviral exposure fetuses are getting in the womb long-term. Cord blood measurements of antiretrovirals at birth, which are expensive and cumbersome to collect, still only reflect exposure to the babies over the short-term. And collecting hair levels is a much easier technique for monitoring drug exposure levels in infants, especially when compared to blood draws.
This work will be presented at 11:15 a.m. ET on Saturday July 21, 2012 during the 4th International Workshop on HIV Pediatrics, which takes in Washington, D.C. preceding the XIX International AIDS Conference. A poster presentation of the same data, titled, "Lopinavir and efavirenz concentrations in paired hair samples as a marker of cumulative exposure among postpartum women and breastfeeding infants in Tororo, Uganda" will be unveiled at the XIX International AIDS Conference at 3:00 p.m. ET on Sunday, July 22, 2012.
###
Study co-authors include Jane Achan, Deborah Cohan, Frances Aweeka, Julie Mwesigwa, Yong Huang, Albert Plenty, Edwin Charlebois, Theodore Ruel, Veronica Ades, Tamara D. Clark, Paul Natureeba, Moses R. Kamya, and Diane V. Havlir (principal investigator of the study), from the Infectious Diseases Research Collaboration, UCSF-Makerere University, Tororo, Uganda.
The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Office of AIDS Research, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief provided funding for this research.
The UCSF Division of HIV/AIDS at San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center is affiliated with the AIDS Research Institute (ARI) at UCSF. UCSF ARI houses hundreds of scientists and dozens of programs throughout UCSF and affiliated labs and institutions, making ARI one of the largest AIDS research entities in the world.
UCSF is a leading university dedicated to advancing health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care.
[ | 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.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-07/uoc--hsf071212.php
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