|
Classifieds |
? |
Join Date: Mar 2010 Posts: 146,959 |
?79.99More...
__________________sanctum the notebook duke basketball miranda july joe paterno near death joepa sc primary
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two U.S. senators on Tuesday questioned whether the Justice Department has been aggressive enough in prosecuting misconduct at the largest banks and asked the department to turn over information on how it determines punishments.
Sherrod Brown, a Democrat who chairs a Senate Banking subcommittee, and Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said they are worried that certain Wall Street banks enjoy "too big to fail" status in enforcement policy, resulting in disproportionately low penalties.
The requests come amid renewed interest in whether U.S. authorities have held accountable the institutions and individuals who contributed to the 2007-2009 financial crisis.
In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, the senators asked whether the Justice Department ever failed to prosecute any institutions due to concern about the stability of the financial markets or imposed a penalty that reflected such concerns.
They asked Holder to name outside experts that prosecutors consulted in making decisions about charging financial institutions with more than $1 billion (?634.6 million) in assets. Brown and Grassley also asked for copies of any contracts with such experts.
Justice Department officials have said they are required to consider collateral consequences when deciding whether to charge a company.
"Our markets will only function efficiently if participants believe that all laws will be enforced consistently, and that violators will be punished to the fullest extent of the law," the two senators wrote. "There should not be one set of rules that apply to Wall Street and another set for the rest of us."
The Justice Department has entered into several major settlements related to financial misconduct in recent months.
London-based bank HSBC
Last month, Swiss bank UBS
"We have received the letter and are reviewing it," Justice Department spokeswoman Rebekah Carmichael said.
(Reporting by Aruna Viswanatha; Editing by Kenneth Barry)
Jindal
The poor in Louisiana pay twice as much of their income in state and local taxes as do the rich, a new study shows.
The report, released Wednesday by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a liberal, Washington, D.C.-based group, will likely raise more questions about Gov. Bobby Jindal?s plan to eliminate income and corporate taxes and replace them with additional sales taxes. That plan is already facing criticism that it would hit the poor hardest.
Though virtually all states tax the poor at higher rates than the wealthy, the disparity in Louisiana makes for one of the most regressive tax systems in the country, the report found. A regressive tax structure results in the poor paying a higher percentage of their income than do middle-class residents and the rich. The Jindal plan seems likely to make Louisiana even more regressive because of its mounting reliance on sales taxes, an impost that falls most heavily on the poor.
?It is a standard finding in the public finance literature that the sales tax is the most regressive, the income tax the most progressive and the property tax falls in between,? said Steven Sheffrin, a Tulane economics professor who is director of the university?s Murphy Institute.
The 20 percent poorest of non-elderly families in Louisiana paid 10.6 percent of their family?s income in state and local taxes while the richest 1 percent paid 4.6 percent, the ITEP study found.
?The study says we already have a regressive system in Louisiana,? said Jan Moller, director of the Louisiana Budget Project, a liberal Baton Rouge-based research and advocacy group. Under the Jindal plan, ?it would get worse. The only question is how much worse. You can make a bad plan somewhat better, but that doesn?t solve the problem.?
Tim Barfield, executive counsel to Jindal?s Revenue Department, has said the governor plans to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit for the poor to offset the higher sales taxes. The credit amounts to a negative tax rate for low-income residents.
About 70 days before the Legislature convenes on April 8, Jindal, ?has yet to reveal details of his plan to Louisiana taxpayers. He has been busy speaking to Republican groups around the country.
Eliminating income and corporate taxes would cost the state about $3 billion a year, state figures show. To offset the lost revenue?which Jindal says he intends to do?he is expected to favor raising ?the state sales tax and imposing taxes on some activities and purchases that are currently exempt. His aides have said, however, that Jindal won?t touch the exemptions on groceries, prescription drugs and home utility bills.
Jindal and Barfield have indicated that they want to focus not on whose taxes will be lowered or raised but on how the plan will spur investment and job creation in Louisiana.
Greg Albrecht, the chief economist for the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Office, published a commentary Wednesday that questions how much extra tax revenue the Jindal plan might produce.
The ?macroeconomic effects of such a tax swap are likely to be small, if they exist at all,? Albrecht wrote. ?States in general do not really have macroeconomic policy
capability. States cannot manipulate the money supply or interests rates, and have to balance their budgets annually. Elimination of income taxes will increase disposable income, but the spending of total disposable income will be subject to higher taxation.?
The Jindal administration did not respond to a request for a comment on the ITEP study.
The ITEP study overall found that virtually every state taxes the poor at higher rates than the wealthy. The states with the 10 most regressive tax systems include Texas and Florida, which don?t have income taxes and rely on sales taxes for their revenue. Jindal has said he wants to model Louisiana?s tax system on those two states.
Source: http://thelensnola.org/2013/01/30/report-louisianas-poor-pay-higher-tax-rate-than-the-rich/
Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/RGP29MqS4SM/ticketmaster-is-dumping-awful-captchas
machine gun kelly saul alinsky annapolis wwe royal rumble trisomy leon panetta luck
HUNTSVILLE, Texas ? The first woman scheduled to be executed in the U.S. since 2010 won a reprieve Tuesday, mere hours before she was scheduled to be taken to the Texas death chamber.
State District Judge Larry Mitchell, in Dallas, rescheduled Kimberly McCarthy's punishment for April 3 so lawyers for the former nursing home therapist could have more time to pursue an appeal focused on whether her predominantly white jury was improperly selected on the basis of race. McCarthy is black.
Dallas County prosecutors, who initially contested the motion to reschedule, chose to not appeal the ruling.
District Attorney Craig Watkins said the 60-day delay was "appropriate." If no irregularities are discovered, he said he'd move forward with the execution.
"We want to make sure everything is done correctly," he said.
The 51-year-old McCarthy was convicted and sent to death row for the 1997 stabbing, beating and robbery of a 71-year-old neighbor. She learned of the reprieve less than five hours before she was scheduled for lethal injection, already in a small holding cell a few feet from the death chamber at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Huntsville Unit.
"I'm happy right now over that," she told prison agency spokesman John Hurt. "There's still work to be done on my case."
Hurt said McCarthy was in good spirits and "didn't seem tense or nervous" even before she learned she would live.
A Dallas County jury convicted her of killing neighbor Dorothy Booth at the retired college psychology professor's home in Lancaster, about 15 miles south of Dallas.
"We are very pleased that we will now have an opportunity to present evidence of discrimination in the selection of the jury that sentenced Kimberly McCarthy to death," said Maurie Levin, a University of Texas law professor and McCarthy's lawyer.
"Of the twelve jurors seated at trial, all were white, except one, and eligible non-white jurors were excluded from serving by the state. ... These facts must be understood in the context of the troubling and long-standing history of racial discrimination in jury selection in Dallas County, including at the time of Ms. McCarthy's trial," Levin said.
Investigators said Booth had agreed to give McCarthy a cup of sugar before she was attacked with a butcher knife and candelabra. Booth's finger also was severed so McCarthy could take her wedding ring. It was among three slayings linked to McCarthy, who'd been addicted to crack cocaine.
McCarthy would have been the 13th woman executed in the U.S. and the fourth in Texas, the nation's busiest death penalty state, since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976. In that same time period, more than 1,300 male inmates have been executed nationwide.
Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics compiled from 1980 through 2008 show women make up about 10 percent of homicide offenders nationwide. According to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, 3,146 people were on the nation's death rows as of Oct. 1, and only 63 ? 2 percent ? were women.
Also on HuffPost:
"; var coords = [-5, -72]; // display fb-bubble FloatingPrompt.embed(this, html, undefined, 'top', {fp_intersects:1, timeout_remove:2000,ignore_arrow: true, width:236, add_xy:coords, class_name: 'clear-overlay'}); });
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/29/kimberly-mccarthy-execution-postponed_n_2575709.html
From a sixth century coin, to pieces from the Middle Ages and? Renaissance, to modern American works, the Cross/ Purpose art exhibit displays how artists throughout history have depicted the crucifix and cross in various expressive ways.
The traveling show from Christians in the Visual Arts includes 49 artworks and is on view until Feb. 1 in the Baugh Center for the Visual Arts. An opening reception was held Jan. 10.
Professor and Chair for the art department Hershall Seals said the exhibit complements the university?s values.
?Since this is a Christian institution, we felt it was a really good fit to bring quality works of art that deal with our primary theological source, which is Christ,? he said.
Though it deals with a religious theme, Seals believes it can be of interest to a wide audience.
?The show is not only interesting to Christians who are more theologically? interested, but it?s also a show that appeals to fine artists who may or may not be that enthused about the subject,? he said.
?What?s so interesting is the variety of art in it and the quality of the prints and drawings and paintings.?
With pieces spanning so many time periods, the exhibit is also a lesson in art history and has received positive reactions so far.
?People who have seen the show love it,? Seals said. ?I think they can get a miniature art history overview?. You can see by looking from picture to picture to picture where that thing came from,historically speaking, by the way that image is drawn, the technique. To me, the takeaway is the beauty of the differences in the art historical time frame.?
Sophomore graphic design major Brittany Davis found the etchings particularly? interesting.
?They had so much detail on such a small amount of space,? she said.
Sophomore fine arts major Sarah Wright was also impressed with the quality of the show?s pieces.
?I really enjoyed looking at the old lithograph pieces that incorporated a lot of figures, symbols and beautiful details of the moment Jesus was on the cross. I also enjoyed looking at the abstract versions of Jesus?s crucifixion as well. The impact of the harsh lines and the use of colors emphasized the pain and suffering He had endured,? she said.
Overall, Davis enjoyed the exhibit?s theme and the quality of the show and believes other students should take advantage of the opportunities to see such works.
?UMHB chooses art exhibits that have a lot of meaning,? she said. ?All art is meant to communicate to the viewer. That?s the point of art, to evoke feeling and emotion, so the art chosen at UMHB really represents our school as a whole?.?
Seals said the Cross/ Purpose exhibit, as well as other shows are part of the department?s efforts to create a well-rounded individual with a broad sense of the world in which they live.
He said, ?It?s not that we?re trying to force culture down people?s throats, but we?re making more aggressively available to students objects of beauty here in the art department, and objects that make people think.?
Source: http://thebells.umhb.edu/2013/01/29/art-exhibit-highlights-christian-symbol/
spike lee carson daly heejun han donovan mcnabb donovan mcnabb lottery ticket megga millions
Before I married Simon, I thought I was being savvy by identifying which land mines would most likely contribute to our potential divorce.
Money was a big one. He came from a family that could buy a Lexus with straight cash and I came from a family that went into credit card debt so I could go to UC Berkeley. Religion was another. When Simon told his father he intended to propose, he got a big talk about the importance of raising our non-existent children to be secular Jews (I'm Christian). When we got engaged, my parents asked their pastor whether Jews go to heaven (they do, because they have their own deal with God, so phew...). There was also the race factor -- which is actually not a big deal in minority-majority California and has so far produced only playful mock-fights over whether I can name any of my future sons Jose, Andres or Emilio after the fathers of the Filipino revolution.
But after almost three years of marriage, coming from different economic backgrounds and being a mixed-race, mixed-faith couple isn't what is producing the majority of our fights.
Instead, it's a subject that no one prepared us for: my weight.
It's a relief to know that other mixed-weight couples are going through the same things we are. Last week, Al Roker wrote about his own mixed-weight marriage and included just one direction for the skinny person in the relationship: "Shut up."
I read his post and identified immediately with his frustration, but I did think his advice was a little extreme. Shut up? The key to marriage is communication -- even about tough subjects. But before I could get all the way up on my high horse, Simon reminded me that I had laid down the exact same rules just a few months ago when it came to his comments about my weight, diet or exercise. Whoops.
Like many people who struggle with their weight, I've been dieting, losing weight and gaining weight since my early teens. I was 14 when I spotted my first stretch marks -- angry red lines where my arms met my back -- and throughout high school and college my weight would swing up and down depending on what was happening that semester. Before our wedding I managed to get down to 144 pounds, which was still overweight for my frame, but I had a waist and I was glowing, so I was happy that day.
Now, at five-foot-one and 175 pounds, I am obese, according to the BMI chart. I'm short and stocky and apple-bodied and endomorphic and always will be. Simon, at 6 feet, struggles to maintain 165 pounds. He has the body of a runway model: jutting hip bones, long, elegant legs and the slenderest ankles and wrists. Absolutely anything can make him accidentally lose 10 pounds: a long cold, the month he started using a standing desk, the time he tried to take up jogging.
Simon bit his lip for a long time when my weight started exploding in 2011. We were both working long hours and getting takeout for dinner a lot. On the weekends, we met up with friends at restaurants and enjoyed big Buca di Beppo dinners with his family. Of course, nothing about our lifestyle was showing on Simon's body, but it was wreaking havoc on mine. I got stretch marks on my stomach and I'd never even been pregnant. The clothes I had bought during a triumphant shopping spree before the wedding no longer fit. The honeymoon was definitely over and so was my strict diet and exercise regimen. Two and a half years post-wedding, I was the largest I'd ever been -- and it was starting to get to Simon.
For a while, our fights went something like this: we'd go out to a nice dinner, enjoy food and wine, and then we would read the dessert menu.
Simon: Do you feel like dessert?
Me: Sure!
Simon: You know, not every meal has to be a special meal.
Me: What the f***?!
I'm probably being unfair here. In fact, I know I'm being unfair. Because for every time Simon has accidentally made me feel like shit about what I eat in public, there is another time I've convinced him that spending money on Weight Watchers or a gym membership or NutriSystem or a personal trainer or an Atkins book or a spinning class package would put an end to my complaints about my weight. For every time Simon has nagged about carb counts, I've seized draconian control over our grocery list and what we put in our mouths. Farmer's market vegetables every week! Every meal must be 40 percent protein! No more supermarket sushi!
Sometimes he teased me about the "enormous sacrifice" he was making because we didn't have any junk food or chocolate in the house because of whatever diet I was on at the time. I'd roll my eyes at his theatrics.
But little did he know that for a while last year, I would go to Target on the days I knew he wouldn't be home until late. I'd buy a pint of Ben & Jerry's Phish Food, finish it before he came home and then throw the trash in the dumpster. It felt like cheating -- especially when I would act astonished, just astonished! -- when another week of dieting would result in a net gain. He was carrying my pain with me when I hit roadblock after roadblock, but I was never completely truthful with him about the steps I was (and wasn't) taking to reach my goal.
Eventually the half-truths and disappointment were too much to bear, and in late 2012 I decided that enough was enough. Now, I didn't have the kind of breakthrough Al Roker had (he described his point of no return as "it clicked for me"). Instead, I decided I was over all the dieting and bingeing drama, that I loved our life together, I loved my job and myself and I was happy. If I lost weight, great. If I stayed heavy, so be it. That led to our worst fight ever over my weight.
"That's not acceptable," he said. "You have to try."
"Why?" I asked. "Why do I have to try?" Because. Because my doctor wants me to lose weight. Because obesity is linked to a lot of diseases. Because my Dad is pre-diabetic. Because being fat makes future conception and pregnancy difficult. Because he loves me and he doesn't want to see me unhappy anymore.
I knew all these things, but I still flew into a sobbing rage and walked out of the apartment -- an alarming escalation of our usually quiet and weepy fights.
"If you can't accept me for who I am, then you'd better get yourself a mistress," I spat at him before I left. I drove to the nearby Pavilions and cried in the parking lot. I called my mom and she prayed with me over the phone, asking God to strengthen my marriage. Looking back, I was a real drama queen!
We ended the fight by "compromising," (ha) which for now means I forbid him to ever mention my weight, dieting or exercise again.
It seems extreme, but just like in Al Roker's relationship, Simon's silence is helping to heal this sore spot in our marriage. I no longer turn to him for understanding on this subject. Why should I? He has no idea what it's like to feel like a failure on the scale or to feel hungry at night because all your calories are used up for the day.
For empathy, I turn to the Reddit.com LoseIt community, which is a forum for people of all sizes who are in the process of shedding pounds (and posting very motivating before-and-after pictures, to boot).
For his part, Simon's learned that even his sweetest, gentlest words about my health are infuriating to me, and that his actions are what counts. I feel really happy when he goes on hikes with me on the weekends, or when he makes a healthy dinner once a week. He knows to no longer comment on what I'm eating in public or when we're with friends, and I've stopped acting like less of a drug addict when it comes to food. That means no more secret eating. I write everything down, even when I have a bad day, and I try to view my healthy eating as the new normal, not a temporary phase that I can just burn through and put behind me once I reach my goal weight.
I'm not sure how long I'll last on my latest health run. I've had, after all, about a dozen. I feel pretty strong right now, but then again it's only one month into the new year. The only thing I know for sure in my race to lose weight is that I need to start seeing Simon for who he really is: someone on the sidelines, holding a big handmade sign above his head and screaming my name at the top of his lungs.
Below, tips from people who know how to lose weight.
?
"; var coords = [-5, -72]; // display fb-bubble FloatingPrompt.embed(this, html, undefined, 'top', {fp_intersects:1, timeout_remove:2000,ignore_arrow: true, width:236, add_xy:coords, class_name: 'clear-overlay'}); });
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anna-almendrala/mixed-weight-relationship_b_2567988.html
wwe royal rumble trisomy leon panetta luck sag awards 2012 nominees pro bowl 2012 roster yamaguchi
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 29-Jan-2013
Share ] Contact: Bonnie Prescott
bprescot@bidmc.harvard.edu
617-667-7306
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
BOSTON A patient's relationship with his or her doctor has long been considered an important component of healing. Now, in a novel investigation in which physicians underwent brain scans while they believed they were actually treating patients, researchers have provided the first scientific evidence indicating that doctors truly can feel their patients' pain and can also experience their relief following treatment.
Led by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Program in Placebo Studies and Therapeutic Encounter (PiPS) at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School, the new findings, which appear on-line today in Molecular Psychiatry, help to illuminate one of the more intangible aspects of health care the doctor/patient relationship.
"Our findings showed that the same brain regions that have previously been shown to be activated when patients receive placebo therapies are similarly activated in the brains of doctors when they administer what they think are effective treatments," explains first author Karin Jensen, PhD, an investigator in the Department of Psychiatry and Martinos Center for Biological Imaging at MGH and member of the PiPS. Notably, she adds, the findings also showed that the physicians who reported greater ability to take things from the patients' perspective, that is, to empathize with patients' feelings, experienced higher satisfaction during patients' treatments, as reflected in the brain scans.
"By demonstrating that caring for patients involves a complex set of brain events, including deep understanding of the patient's facial and body expressions, possibly in combination with the physician's own expectations of relief and feelings of reward, we have been able to elucidate the neurobiology underlying caregiving," adds senior author Ted Kaptchuk, director of the PiPS and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. "Our findings provide early evidence of the importance of interacting brain networks between patients and caregivers and acknowledge the doctor/patient relationship as a valued component of health care, alongside medications and procedures."
Previous investigations have demonstrated that a brain region associated with pain relief (right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, VLPFC) and a region associated with reward (rostral anterior cingulate cortex, rACC) are activated when patients experience the placebo effect, which occurs when patients show improvement from treatments that contain no active ingredients. The placebo effect accounts for significant portions of clinical outcomes in many illnesses -- including pain, depression and anxiety.
Although behavioral research has suggested that physicians' expectations influence patients' clinical outcomes and help determine patients' placebo responses, until now little effort has been directed to understanding the biology underlying the physician component of the clinical relationship. Jensen and her colleagues hypothesized that the same brain regions that are activated during patients' placebo responses the VLPFC and rACC -- would similarly be activated in the brains of physicians as they treated patients. They also hypothesized that a physician's perspective-taking skills would influence the outcomes.
To test these hypotheses, the scientists developed a unique equipment arrangement that would enable them to conduct functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the physicians' brains while the doctors had face-to-face interactions with patients, including observing patients as they underwent pain treatments.
The experiment included 18 physicians (all of whom had received their medical degree within the last 10 years and represented nine separate medical specialties). Two 25-year-old females played the role of "patients" and followed a rehearsed script. The experiment called for the participating physicians to administer pain relief with what they thought was a pain-relieving electronic device, but which was actually a non-active "sham" device.
To ensure that the physicians believed that the sham device really worked, the investigators first administered a dose of "heat pain" to the physicians' forearms to gauge pain threshold and then "treated" them with the fake machine. During the treatments, the investigators reduced the heat stimulation, to demonstrate to the participants that the therapy worked. The physicians underwent fMRI scans while they experienced the painful heat stimulation so that investigators could see exactly which brain regions were activated during first-person perception of pain.
In the second portion of the experiment,each physician was introduced to a patient and asked to perform a standardized clinical examination, which was conducted in a typical exam room for approximately 20 minutes. (The clinical exam was performed in order to establish a realistic rapport between the physician and patient before fMRI scanning took place, and was comparable to a standard U.S. doctor's appointment.) At this point the physician also answered a questionnaire, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, used to measure the participant's self-reported perspective-taking skills.
During the third step, says Jensen, the physician and patient were led into the scanner room. "The physician went inside the scanner and was equipped with a remote control that could activate the 'analgesic device' when prompted," she explains. Mirrors inside the scanner enabled physicians to maintain eye contact with the patient, who was seated on a chair next to the scanner's bed and hooked up to both the thermal pain stimulator and the pain-relieving device.
Then, in a randomized order, physicians were instructed to either treat a patient's pain or to press a control button that provided no relief. When physicians were told not to activate pain relief, the "patient" exhibited a painful facial expression while the physicians watched. When the physicians were instructed to treat the patients' pain, they could see that the subjects' faces were neutral and relaxed, the result of pain relief. During these doctor-patient interactions, fMRI scans measured the doctors' brain activations.
Following the scanning session, the physicians were removed from the scanner and told exactly how the experiment had been performed, says Jensen. "If the physician did not agree with the deceptive component of the study, they were given the opportunity to withdraw their data. No one did this."
As predicted, the authors found that while treating patients, the physicians activated the right VLPFC region of the brain, a region previously implicated in the placebo response. Furthermore, Jensen adds, the physicians' ability to take the patients' viewpoints correlated to brain activations and subjective ratings; physicians who reported high perspective-taking skills were more likely to show activation in the rACC brain region, which is associated with reward.
"We already know that the physician-patient relationship provides solace and can even relieve many symptoms," adds Kaptchuk. "Now, for the first time, we've shown that caring for patients encompasses a unique neurobiology in physicians. Our ultimate goal is to transform the 'art of medicine' into the 'science of care,' and this research is an important first step in this process as we continue investigations to find out how patient-clinician interactions can lead to measurable clinical outcomes in patients."
###
In addition to Jensen and Kaptchuk, study coauthors include MGH and PiPS investigators Jacqueline Raicek, Alexandra Cheetham, Rosa Spaeth, Amanda Cook, Randy L. Gollub, and Jian Kong; Predrag Petrovic of the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden; and Irving Kirsch of the PiPS.
This study was funded, in part, by the Swedish Society for Medical Research and the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research, Osher Center for Integrative Medicine (Karolinska Institute) and by NIH grants from the National Center on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (K24AT004095; P01 AT003883; R21AT004497; R01AT006364; R01AT005280), the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R03AT218317); and the National Center for Research Resources (M01-RR-01066 and UL1 RR025758-01; and P41RR14075).
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a patient care, teaching and research affiliate of Harvard Medical School and currently ranks third in National Institutes of Health funding among independent hospitals nationwide. BIDMC is clinically affiliated with the Joslin Diabetes Center and is a research partner of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. BIDMC is the official hospital of the Boston Red Sox. For more information, visit www.bidmc.org.
Massachusetts General Hospital, founded in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The MGH conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the United States, with an annual research budget of more than $750 million and major research centers in AIDS, cardiovascular research, cancer, computational and integrative biology, cutaneous biology, human genetics, medical imaging, neurodegenerative disorders, regenerative medicine, reproductive biology, systems biology, transplantation biology and photomedicine. In July 2012, MGH moved into the number one spot on the 2012-13 U.S. News & World Report list of "America's Best Hospitals."
[ | 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: 29-Jan-2013 Share ] Contact: Bonnie Prescott
bprescot@bidmc.harvard.edu
617-667-7306
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
BOSTON A patient's relationship with his or her doctor has long been considered an important component of healing. Now, in a novel investigation in which physicians underwent brain scans while they believed they were actually treating patients, researchers have provided the first scientific evidence indicating that doctors truly can feel their patients' pain and can also experience their relief following treatment.
Led by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Program in Placebo Studies and Therapeutic Encounter (PiPS) at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School, the new findings, which appear on-line today in Molecular Psychiatry, help to illuminate one of the more intangible aspects of health care the doctor/patient relationship.
"Our findings showed that the same brain regions that have previously been shown to be activated when patients receive placebo therapies are similarly activated in the brains of doctors when they administer what they think are effective treatments," explains first author Karin Jensen, PhD, an investigator in the Department of Psychiatry and Martinos Center for Biological Imaging at MGH and member of the PiPS. Notably, she adds, the findings also showed that the physicians who reported greater ability to take things from the patients' perspective, that is, to empathize with patients' feelings, experienced higher satisfaction during patients' treatments, as reflected in the brain scans.
"By demonstrating that caring for patients involves a complex set of brain events, including deep understanding of the patient's facial and body expressions, possibly in combination with the physician's own expectations of relief and feelings of reward, we have been able to elucidate the neurobiology underlying caregiving," adds senior author Ted Kaptchuk, director of the PiPS and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. "Our findings provide early evidence of the importance of interacting brain networks between patients and caregivers and acknowledge the doctor/patient relationship as a valued component of health care, alongside medications and procedures."
Previous investigations have demonstrated that a brain region associated with pain relief (right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, VLPFC) and a region associated with reward (rostral anterior cingulate cortex, rACC) are activated when patients experience the placebo effect, which occurs when patients show improvement from treatments that contain no active ingredients. The placebo effect accounts for significant portions of clinical outcomes in many illnesses -- including pain, depression and anxiety.
Although behavioral research has suggested that physicians' expectations influence patients' clinical outcomes and help determine patients' placebo responses, until now little effort has been directed to understanding the biology underlying the physician component of the clinical relationship. Jensen and her colleagues hypothesized that the same brain regions that are activated during patients' placebo responses the VLPFC and rACC -- would similarly be activated in the brains of physicians as they treated patients. They also hypothesized that a physician's perspective-taking skills would influence the outcomes.
To test these hypotheses, the scientists developed a unique equipment arrangement that would enable them to conduct functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the physicians' brains while the doctors had face-to-face interactions with patients, including observing patients as they underwent pain treatments.
The experiment included 18 physicians (all of whom had received their medical degree within the last 10 years and represented nine separate medical specialties). Two 25-year-old females played the role of "patients" and followed a rehearsed script. The experiment called for the participating physicians to administer pain relief with what they thought was a pain-relieving electronic device, but which was actually a non-active "sham" device.
To ensure that the physicians believed that the sham device really worked, the investigators first administered a dose of "heat pain" to the physicians' forearms to gauge pain threshold and then "treated" them with the fake machine. During the treatments, the investigators reduced the heat stimulation, to demonstrate to the participants that the therapy worked. The physicians underwent fMRI scans while they experienced the painful heat stimulation so that investigators could see exactly which brain regions were activated during first-person perception of pain.
In the second portion of the experiment,each physician was introduced to a patient and asked to perform a standardized clinical examination, which was conducted in a typical exam room for approximately 20 minutes. (The clinical exam was performed in order to establish a realistic rapport between the physician and patient before fMRI scanning took place, and was comparable to a standard U.S. doctor's appointment.) At this point the physician also answered a questionnaire, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, used to measure the participant's self-reported perspective-taking skills.
During the third step, says Jensen, the physician and patient were led into the scanner room. "The physician went inside the scanner and was equipped with a remote control that could activate the 'analgesic device' when prompted," she explains. Mirrors inside the scanner enabled physicians to maintain eye contact with the patient, who was seated on a chair next to the scanner's bed and hooked up to both the thermal pain stimulator and the pain-relieving device.
Then, in a randomized order, physicians were instructed to either treat a patient's pain or to press a control button that provided no relief. When physicians were told not to activate pain relief, the "patient" exhibited a painful facial expression while the physicians watched. When the physicians were instructed to treat the patients' pain, they could see that the subjects' faces were neutral and relaxed, the result of pain relief. During these doctor-patient interactions, fMRI scans measured the doctors' brain activations.
Following the scanning session, the physicians were removed from the scanner and told exactly how the experiment had been performed, says Jensen. "If the physician did not agree with the deceptive component of the study, they were given the opportunity to withdraw their data. No one did this."
As predicted, the authors found that while treating patients, the physicians activated the right VLPFC region of the brain, a region previously implicated in the placebo response. Furthermore, Jensen adds, the physicians' ability to take the patients' viewpoints correlated to brain activations and subjective ratings; physicians who reported high perspective-taking skills were more likely to show activation in the rACC brain region, which is associated with reward.
"We already know that the physician-patient relationship provides solace and can even relieve many symptoms," adds Kaptchuk. "Now, for the first time, we've shown that caring for patients encompasses a unique neurobiology in physicians. Our ultimate goal is to transform the 'art of medicine' into the 'science of care,' and this research is an important first step in this process as we continue investigations to find out how patient-clinician interactions can lead to measurable clinical outcomes in patients."
###
In addition to Jensen and Kaptchuk, study coauthors include MGH and PiPS investigators Jacqueline Raicek, Alexandra Cheetham, Rosa Spaeth, Amanda Cook, Randy L. Gollub, and Jian Kong; Predrag Petrovic of the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden; and Irving Kirsch of the PiPS.
This study was funded, in part, by the Swedish Society for Medical Research and the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research, Osher Center for Integrative Medicine (Karolinska Institute) and by NIH grants from the National Center on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (K24AT004095; P01 AT003883; R21AT004497; R01AT006364; R01AT005280), the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R03AT218317); and the National Center for Research Resources (M01-RR-01066 and UL1 RR025758-01; and P41RR14075).
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a patient care, teaching and research affiliate of Harvard Medical School and currently ranks third in National Institutes of Health funding among independent hospitals nationwide. BIDMC is clinically affiliated with the Joslin Diabetes Center and is a research partner of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. BIDMC is the official hospital of the Boston Red Sox. For more information, visit www.bidmc.org.
Massachusetts General Hospital, founded in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The MGH conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the United States, with an annual research budget of more than $750 million and major research centers in AIDS, cardiovascular research, cancer, computational and integrative biology, cutaneous biology, human genetics, medical imaging, neurodegenerative disorders, regenerative medicine, reproductive biology, systems biology, transplantation biology and photomedicine. In July 2012, MGH moved into the number one spot on the 2012-13 U.S. News & World Report list of "America's Best Hospitals."
[ | 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/2013-01/bidm-pbs012513.php
rodney king Webb Simpson Fathers Day Quotes Stevie J mothers day 2012 cinco de mayo osama bin laden death
AMMAN, Jordan (AP) ? A Jordanian official says polling stations will be kept open for an extra hour to allow more people to vote in the nation's parliamentary election.
Independent Electoral Commission spokesman Hussein Bani Hani says polls will now close at 8 p.m. local time (1700 GMT).
He says turnout in Wednesday's vote so far has reached nearly 53 percent of the 2.3 million Jordanians who are registered to vote.
The government has touted the election as a step toward greater democracy that will see Jordan's absolute monarch cede more power to parliament, the only elected body in Jordan's government.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/jordan-extends-election-voting-hour-160641842.html
florida debate rand paul mark kirk florida gop debate freddie mac kristin cavallari
After beating Michael Bisping in a middleweight bout at UFC on FX 7, Vitor Belfort said he wanted a shot at the UFC light heavyweight belt. He called Chael Sonnen a clown, and asked for a "champion vs. champion" shot at Jon Jones.
He continued during the UFC postfight show on Fuel.
?[Sonnen] is a clown. Get out. Get out of the way. He just got knocked out pretty bad by Anderson Silva then he fights Jon Jones. He doesn?t deserve the reality show. Let me fight - real champion versus real champion. I know he?s a good athlete, but he needs to go to the back of the line. Let me fight the rematch.?
Belfort fought Jones in September and lost by submission. Sonnen will fight Jones in April after the conclusion of "The Ultimate Fighter." They will coach against each other on the show. Sonnen, a commentator on the postfight show, immediately responded.
?Let me be really clear and speak directly to you Vitor. You have been telling the world that you want to meet Jesus and I will gladly arrange that travel, but first I am going to get rid of Jon Jones, then you are next. Vitor, I accept. Don?t make any mistake about that. You have called me out twice now,? Sonnen said.
Their war of words continued on Twitter.
@sonnench You don't have the power to send me to Jesus, buy I can provide you with an early encounter with Satan!
? Vitor Belfort (@vitorbelfort) January 20, 2013
Vitor:I Played golf w/Jesus today after I did @jimrome show.He said you're gonna lose.Also, the tattoo makes you look like a "Brown-Noser"
? chael sonnen (@sonnench) January 21, 2013
Belfort's vitriol at Sonnen seemed so out of place. Belfort is a middleweight, and if he's looking for another shot at the light heavyweight title, perhaps he should look for a middleweight fight first?
But what Belfort did do was set himself up perfectly for an injury replacement if Sonnen or Jones were to suffer one. This has happened in three of the last four seasons of TUF, so it's not a bad idea on Belfort's part. Considering Sonnen got their light heavyweight title shot after fighting at middleweight for years, and Nick Diaz got one after a suspension and a loss, there's not much rhyme or reason to the UFC's title match making these days. Belfort is making a smart play based on recent history.
will ferrell double fine adventure turbo tax katharine mcphee cold mountain valentines day ideas the villages florida
Last August, when Ouya raised $8.6 million via crowdfunding on Kickstarter to create an open video game console that plays Android-based games, seems like eons ago. Since that time, chief executive Julie Uhrman has been running like crazy to keep up the pace to launch the ?people?s box? as scheduled in March. In an update interview with GamesBeat, Uhrman says that the momentum keeps growing and that she isn?t concerned about the rise of so many alternative systems in such a short time.
Ouya?s growing scale might raise some concern among ?the big three?: Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. Ouya is just the first of many console alternatives that are hoping to disrupt the last bastion of the business as we knew it: the $60 disc-based game. Startups like Ouya are the foot soldiers who will carry the spears of free-to-play games, Android mobile games, and app stores into the living room.
?March is still a distant deadline,? said Uhrman in an interview with GamesBeat. ?But we are excited by the interest. I?m impressed with how my team keeps delivering on the impossible.?
On Dec. 28, Ouya started shipping the first of its 1,200 developer prototype consoles for those who had pledged anywhere from $699 to $1,337 in the Kickstarter campaign. And since that day, more than 894,000 people have viewed an ?unboxing? video showing what is contained in the developer console. Ouya?s software development kit has been downloaded more than 20,000 times. And Ouya?s forums ? with 400,000 views ? are blowing up with questions and comments about how to make games for the console, Uhrman said.
Fans have created 10 web sites about Ouya, and a German company has even created a magazine dedicated to the box.
Uhrman said that the hardware specifications are mostly set, but its final color and look have not been revealed yet. The console is basically shaped like a cube, and it is no larger than a typical coffee mug.
The company is still redesigning its game controller based on fan feedback. The device has a ?D-pad? control mechanism, but fans pointed out that it too closely resembled Microsoft?s Xbox 360 game controller, which is circular in shape and prone to accidental diagonal button pushes.
Uhrman said the designers are shifting to a square D-pad, which is more Sony-like and less prone to unintentional button pushes.
?We are still fine-tuning the controller,? she said. ?It removes the mistaken button press and makes it more precise. That?s a big change.?
It?s these little details that could trip Ouya. Other rivals have emerged who have slightly different takes on the same idea around an Android console. Nvidia is launching Project Shield, which uses a high-end Tegra 4 chip and comes with a 5-inch diagonal high-resolution screen.
But Uhrman said her team believes that the ?TV is the best screen for playing video games. That?s what Ouya is about. We have seen all of the creativity of the industry shift to mobile games. We want to bring that back to the TV through our box.?
Ouya uses a Tegra 3 chip from Nvidia, and Uhrman said the pricing on that chip is consistent with Ouya?s plan to launch a $99 console. The chip has four cores running at 1.6 gigahertz, and Ouya believes that is plenty of horsepower for an affordable game machine. At the same time, Uhrman said that the company will have regular hardware refreshes and could create a better experience while still delivering on its $99 price.
Another rival, Green Throttle Games, is creating an Android-based gaming system, but it has no console. It will allow users to hook their smartphones directly to their TVs and play games with a traditional console-style controller. But Uhrman believes that both developers and consumers want to wrap their hands around a concrete piece of hardware that plays their games.
?We are carving out our own niche,? she said.
Ouya is using the Jellybean version of the Android operating system, but it is developing its own user interface, software development kit, and app store.
Under Ouya?s model, developers will share 30 percent of their revenue with Ouya; that?s a high percentage. Developers have more than 100 games in the works, which eliminates the worry of a shortage of titles for the console when it debuts, Uhrman said.
?We will make more announcements later about launch titles,? she said. ?We have a great business model, and we are really comfortable with it.?
Panagiotis Peikidis, a developer at Large Animal Games, took the Ouya development kit home to see if he could build a game in a weekend.
?I was quite impressed with how easy it was to get a Unity game up and running on the Ouya,? he said. ?The Unity package for Ouya is quite good and the set-up videos on the Ouya website made things much easier than I expected. The only trouble I ran into was with the controller data.?
He got some unreliable data back, but he said he expects those kinks will be worked out soon as Ouya gets closer to shipping. He said it was a fun, productive weekend of hacking with minimal headaches.
?I?m excited to see what we can do with more time,? he said.
Beyond games, Uhrman said that Ouya is in talks with a large number of entertainment companies that want to bring their non-game apps to the console. Some, such as Twitch, have been announced while others have not.
Uhrman also said that a ?game jam? contest launched by Killscreen will end this morning. Unity Technologies distributed more than 200 software development kits for its Unity 3D game engine for developers associated with the contest. The winner of the game jam will get $45,000.
Ouya?s team is growing every day, but Uhrman declined to say how many people work for the company. The majority of the team is engineering, but the company is adding a content development team as well.
Uhrman said she is traveling around the country visiting groups of game developers who are supporting the console.
As for getting the game console out by March, Uhrman said, ?We are on track. We want to get Ouya out to gamers as soon as we can.?
Filed under: Gadgets, Games, VentureBeat 
Categorised as:Chief Digital Officer | Digital Media | Feedster
Comments are disabled on this post
dallas fort worth airport texas tornados seattle seahawks new uniforms wisconsin recall wisconsin recall doris day buffalo sabres
"Moreover, these changes were accompanied by depletion of ceramides."
What happens if you put them back?
That is, two things seem to happen. An increase in ganglioside GM2 and depletion of ceramides.
In very rough terms overproduction of something tends to work itself out if the stimulus is mitigated. That is, if a bomb was going off every day and GM2 was constantly being produced, I'd worry, but a one time increase? Let's assume that goes away over time.
The depletion of of something is more interesting I thi
Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/R9ZFsBRgz8k/story01.htm
SYDNEY (Reuters) - A prank note in an Australian library declaring that disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong's books would be moved to the fiction section has gone viral on the Internet, with one commentator declaring: "Hell hath no fury like a librarian".
"All Non-Fiction Lance Armstrong Books, including 'Lance Armstrong - Images of a Champion', 'The Lance Armstrong Performance Program and 'Lance Armstrong: World's Greatest Champion,' will soon be moved to the fiction section," read the sign posted at Sydney's Manly Library on Saturday.
A photograph of the sign posted on the Internet quickly sparked heated debate over whether Armstrong's fight against cancer and motivation of people outweighed his drug cheating in a sport rife with doping.
"As a cyclist the guy's work was inspiring, his foundation do amazing work and his story was great. ... You feel embarrassed for recommending his book to people, you stare at the books on the shelf questioning if the lessons and the inspiration is honest and real," said one commentator.
Manly Library said the printed notice, which was placed in a plastic stand on a bookshelf in the library, was a prank and that an internal review was underway.
"Libraries can't arbitrarily reclassify categories of books, because that depends on the ISBN number that is issued by the National Library," a spokesman at Manly Council, which runs the library, said on Monday.
(Reporting by Pauline Askin; Editing by Elaine Lies and Michael Perry)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/library-prank-sends-armstrong-books-fiction-section-031658399--spt.html
winter solstice Jabari Parker 2012 australia Brothers Grimm Tate Stevens Miss Universe 2012
If you have dreams of being an Internet entrepreneur, then you should be pleased to know that there are countless opportunities out there, if only you?re willing and able to grab them and persevere. The foundation to any successful business is a business plan, and a business plan for any ecommerce endeavor must be specific to what you want to accomplish through your ecommerce site. Here are some tips for how to create a business plan specific to your ecommerce goals:
What are you selling, and who are you selling it to? These are the first two questions that you must answer before you can begin fleshing out your business plan. Of course, you have many options here. You may choose to sell a physical product, service, or digital product, and you may target any segment of the population. Choose a niche that speaks to you, and that you genuinely believe fills a need. Another thing to consider is whether you provide ecommerce services via a traditional website or via an alternative source ? such as a Facebook store.
Your ecommerce site is your business location, and your web design is therefore central to your ecommerce business plan. Your website should cater specifically to the market segment you are targeting, and it should complement the type of product you are selling. For example, if you choose to sell diabetic testing supplies to the elderly, then your website should be easy to read and navigate through, even for those with poor eyesight and less than optimal computer skills, and it should also have a serious, clinical appearance. In this example, large fonts and health industry certification symbols would be elements you?d want to incorporate into your web design.
You must also think about how many sales you will be making, transactions that will be completed on your site, payment methods you will accept, and the type of customer you are catering to. Your ecommerce business plan should outline the functionality solutions you will incorporate into your website. These include web hosting that can handle your projected site traffic, as well as computer programming that can handle sales transactions, shopping carts, inventory, shipping, product uploads/downloads (if working with digital products), online ordering, customer care, and more. As you can see, before you can choose functionality solutions, you must put some serious thought into what, exactly, you need your ecommerce site to do.
You can build a successful ecommerce site from scratch, but it will take the right amount and type of planning. Build a strategy that will work toward your ecommerce goals by incorporating these factors into your ecommerce business plan.
About the Author:?Hue Apt is an ecommerce entrepreneur. He?s currently exploring new shopping cart solutions and is going to build his 2nd website this year.
Sunday, 20 January 2013 14:22
A lot of small businesses nowadays are utilising the world wide web for marketing and Advertising their products and also expertise. There are some that still coach themselves in employing several techniques and strategies to acheive the most out of their companies ? both offline and online. Search engine optimization with respect to small enterprises does not have to become too technical and too costly in the first place. Without aid of a competent SEO service provider, you may first make your web-site seen on the search engines like google while using the most obvious techniques.
You won?t use up all your details in terms of Search engine optimisation. Just by exploring the net, you?ll discover numerous online websites which tackle the various issues which center around search engine ranking. Take away the techie stuff in the moment and focus your self on the real-time necessities of the small business since these truly matter particularly when applying Web optimization solutions.
In regards for you to ultimately comprehend the idea of Search engine marketing and your business, you ought to take a careful look at some of these features:
Acquire clients without having to spend a dollar on advertisements
You can actually obtain potential customers even without having to pay a marketer. Your website and internet pages will get found without paying the search engines. The secrets will be to boost your website employing relevant key terms and by supplying high quality information that the prospects will adore. The search engines will spot how your site is complying with their unique criteria when the bots analyze every single page within your site.
Secure laser targeted customers
In connection to topical keywords and high quality articles, you should concentrate on your small business or market so as to build customer-friendly content. As soon as you present more appropriate posts and keywords, a lot of people will find their way to your internet site since the search engines like google will discover what you are actually delivering for a specified selection of visitors.
Merchandise and Service visibility
Nearly all websites tend to be fighting for those high webpages of the search engine listings, however the vast majority fall short because of the tight levels of competition. you could maximize your company?s rankings with the aid of SEM methods and find out if you?re able to step ahead of your competitors.
Produce buyer morale in addition to gratification
When you?ve got a website that is certainly inside the leading search engine pages of the search engines like bing, individuals will have a notion that you?re an expert in your targeted market. Individuals will find your website and will often return every once in awhile. Because they notice that you?ve a great deal to give them, it is possible that you will convert and produce sales as the trust builds. It?s also likely that your potential customers generate additional buyers right after they discover that you got some thing really desirable to provide.
Better choice and value for your users
Because you don?t really need to pay for space, staff members as well as advertising, you?ll be able to increase your products/services that could surpass buyer anticipations. Your visitors will surely gain benefit from the affordable prices as well as the product solutions that you can offer.
More effective customer support
Your web visitors get the power to get around your website via one web page to the next. And this also lets them access the options which you have offered on the website. Support and help categories are just within reach, which makes shopping online on your site more enjoyable and cozy for the shoppers.
An online business could possibly be demanding at first. But if you know how Web optimization can help you improve all your concerns and get these benefits totally, you will enjoy seo for small enterprise companies such as your own.
Are you searching for an expert web optimization service to take care of your internet requirements, then stop by Atlanta Marketing Minds, the local marketing expert, to find the solution to your most important headache.
kola boof burmese python national signing day ferris bueller god bless america earned income credit super bowl commercials
LONDON (Reuters) - The prospect of stronger European manufacturing surveys and decisive monetary easing in Japan this week ought to bolster confidence that the global economy can look forward to better days.
It is definitely not yet time to break open the champagne.
The index derived from polls of purchasing managers across the euro zone, though recovering, is likely to remain well below the 50 threshold that signals expansion.
If the Bank of Japan bows to political pressure and relaxes policy more boldly, it is because the country's noxious cocktail of a huge debt burden, deflation and dwindling external surpluses threatens an eventual fiscal crunch.
And an expected contraction in Britain's economy when fourth-quarter figures are released on Friday will be a reminder, as was Germany's grim end to 2013, that Europe has to dig itself out of a deep hole.
"The real hard economic data are still very negative," said Bert Colijn, an economist in Brussels with the Conference Board, a business research group. "There are improvements, but it still doesn't look that bright."
However, he said the economic news from the euro zone rim was not quite as troubling, and the mood was brightening among the core countries of the single currency area.
Lena Komileva, managing director of G+ Economics, a London consultancy, said it was hard to argue against investors' new-found appetite for riskier assets given that the volatility of equity prices was approaching historical lows and yields on corporate bonds had fallen sharply.
"Financial stress indicators signal a significant improvement in the health of the global economy," she said.
Friday's solid fourth-quarter economic data from China reinforced that view.
PURCHASERS' PROGRESS
Economists polled by Reuters expect an uptick in Thursday's advance purchasing managers' indexes for France and Germany as well as for the euro zone as a whole.
Germany's IFO business confidence survey on Friday is also projected to have risen for the third month in a row.
"The fact that business confidence measures are coming in more positive is a good sign," Colijn commented.
Commerzbank said its leading indicator for the German economy reached an all-time high in December after the European Central Bank's pledge to buy the bonds of troubled economies eased fears of a break-up of the euro.
"We assume that increasingly more companies are gaining confidence and viewing business prospects more positively," said Commerzbank economist Ralph Solveen.
BNP Paribas is also bullish on Germany and is looking for a marked pick-up in growth.
In addition to the ECB's safety net, the global manufacturing cycle is pointing up, while a strong labor market and easy financial conditions are supporting consumption, economists Evelyn Herrmann and Ken Wattret said in a report.
"Moreover, should the global economy surpass expectations and euro zone market stress ease further, upside surprises would be likely to follow. A key issue in this respect would be higher export growth and confidence triggering a stronger rebound in investment," they said.
That is exactly what Japan would like to see, too.
To that end, the government of new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the Bank of Japan have agreed to set 2 percent inflation as a new target, supplanting a softer 1 percent ?goal', according to sources familiar with the central bank's thinking.
They said the BOJ, which meets on Monday and Tuesday, will also consider making an open-ended commitment to buy assets until the target is in sight.
FOR AND AGAINST EASING
Credit Suisse's global equity strategists said an easier monetary policy is justified to cushion the significant fiscal tightening on which Japan will have to embark before long to whittle down a government debt that has reached some 220 percent of national income.
This task is all the more pressing because Japan is moving towards a current account deficit, which will make it more reliant on foreign investors to finance its budget shortfall, Credit Suisse argued.
Trade figures on Thursday will underline the deterioration in Japan's external accounts, with economists polled by Reuters forecasting the sixth consecutive monthly deficit.
Nomura reckons the deficit for all of 2012 widened to 6.6 trillion yen ($73.4 billion) from 2.7 trillion in 2011.
Japanese equities have surged in anticipation of a more aggressive monetary policy stance, but not everyone is happy.
The accompanying slump in the yen has prompted Russia's deputy central bank governor to warn of a new round of ?currency wars' and the medium-term risk of running ultra-loose monetary policies is likely to be a theme of the World Economic Forum in Davos, which opens on Wednesday.
"I'm pretty worried about the new policies of Japan's newly elected government," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said last week. "When you think of the surplus of liquidity on global financial markets, it is fuelled further by a wrong understanding of central bank policy.
(Editing by Susan Fenton)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/euro-zone-surveys-offer-hope-japan-eases-191817289--business.html
Obama Acceptance Speech 2012 dow jones Selena Gomez ariel winter Paige Butcher David Petraeus Petraeus
