Still hot! Western heat wave takes its toll (+video)

The heat wave hammering much of the US West is setting records and taking its toll as air conditioners work overtime. Brush fires are a concern with Fourth of July fireworks for sale.

By Brad Knickerbocker,?Staff writer / June 30, 2013

Subrina Madrid, Sarah Hudak, and Jennifer Shackelford sit in the shallow waters along Boulder Beach at Lake Mead trying to escape the heat in Las Vegas.

Julie Jacobson/AP

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As expected, the heat wave ranging from southern Arizona west and north to Sacramento, Boise, and Seattle has first responders working overtime, water slides and public swimming pools crowded, and zookeepers hosing down the elephants and feeding frozen trout to the tigers.

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The blistering heat appears to have caused at least one death so far: an elderly man living without air condition in Las Vegas, where temperatures were expected to reach 116.

At least seven people have been found dead in the last week in Arizona, likely tied to the brutal desert heat. Personnel were added to the Border Patrol search-and-rescue unit because of the danger to people trying to slip across the Mexican border, officials reported.

Temperatures hit 127 in Death Valley, Calif., Saturday and were expected to reach at least that high again Sunday. (The record there ? the highest ever recorded on Earth ? is 134 degrees, set in 1913.) At Furnace Creek, in Death Valley National Park, nighttime lows only dip down to the mid-90s.

Overnight temperatures remained high inland from the Pacific in California because cooling ocean breezes hadn?t wafted as far east as usual.

"We have more work than we can handle," Max Ghaly of Cathedral City Air Conditioning and Heating in Palm Springs, Calif., told CNN. "We're running all over the place trying to do what we can."

US Airways canceled 18 flights Saturday when the temperature in Phoenix inched past the 118-degree maximum for take-off.

In Northern California, record-breaking temperatures were recorded in Sacramento, where the high was 107 degrees; Marysville reached 109 degrees; and Stockton saw 106 degrees.

Cooling stations were set up to shelter the homeless and elderly people who can't afford to run their air conditioners. In Phoenix, Joe Arpaio, the famously hard-nosed sheriff who runs a tent jail, planned to distribute ice cream and cold towels to inmates this weekend.

Brush fires are a particular concern to firefighters ? more so now because Fourth of July fireworks have gone on sale in many places.

Officials said the extreme heat will continue until at least Tuesday.

"It's early in the heat season. Usually our hottest months are August and September. We're not even in July yet, but this is a massive high-pressure system and it's just smothering," Bill Patzert, a climatologist at the?NASA?Jet Propulsion Laboratory?in La Ca?ada Flintridge told the Los Angeles Times.

Some saw the heat wave as an opportunity to notch personal records.

Dan Kail was vacationing in Las Vegas from Pittsburgh when he heard that the temperature at Death Valley could approach 130 degrees this weekend. He didn?t hesitate to make a trip to the desert location that is typically the hottest place on the planet.

?Coming to Death Valley in the summertime has always been on the top of my bucket list,? he said. ?When I found out it might set a record I rented a car and drove straight over. If it goes above 130 I will have something to brag about.?

This report includes material from the Associated Press.
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Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/wVXl3LeN0GM/Still-hot!-Western-heat-wave-takes-its-toll-video

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It's about time: Disrupted internal clocks play role in disease

July 1, 2013 ? Thirty percent of severe alcoholics develop liver disease, but scientists have not been able to explain why only a subset is at risk. A research team from Northwestern University and Rush University Medical Center now has a possible explanation: disrupted sleep and circadian rhythms can push those vulnerable over the edge to disease.

The team studied mice that essentially were experiencing what shift workers or people with jet lag suffer: their internal clocks were out of sync with the natural light-dark cycle. Another group of mice had circadian disruption due to a faulty gene. Both groups were fed a diet without alcohol and next with alcohol, and the team then examined the physiological effects.

The researchers found the combination of circadian rhythm disruption and alcohol is a destructive double hit that can lead to alcoholic liver disease.

The study was published last month by the journal PLOS ONE.

"Circadian disruption appears to be a previously unrecognized risk factor underlying the susceptibility to or development of alcoholic liver disease," said Fred W. Turek, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Biology at Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and one of the senior authors of the paper.

"What we and many other investigators are doing is bringing time to medicine for the diagnosis and treatment of disease," Turek said. "We call it circadian medicine, and it will be transformative. Medicine will change a great deal, similar to the way physics changed when Einstein brought time to physics."

A number of years ago, Ali Keshavarzian, M.D., a gastroenterologist at Rush University Medical Center who has worked with and studied patients with gastrointestinal and liver diseases, had a hunch disrupted circadian rhythms could be a contributing factor to the disease.

Keshavarzian had noticed that some patients with inflammatory bowel disease (inflammation in the intestine and/or colon) had flare-ups of symptoms when working nights, but they could control the disease when working the day shift. He sought out Turek, director of Northwestern's Center for Sleep and Circadian Biology, to help investigate the relationship between circadian rhythms and the disease.

The two investigators and their groups first studied the effect of circadian rhythm disruption in an animal model of colitis and noted that disruption of sleep and circadian rhythms (caused by modeling shift work and chronic jet lag in the animals) caused more severe colitis in mice.

Keshavarzian has been studying the effect of "gut leakiness" (the intestinal lining becomes weak and causes dangerous endotoxins to get into the blood stream) to bacterial products in gastrointestinal diseases for two decades. Because the mouse model of colitis is associated with leaky gut, he proposed that disruption of circadian rhythms from shift work could make the intestine more susceptible to leakiness. He wanted to test its effect in an animal model of alcoholic liver disease -- where a subset of alcoholics develop gut leakiness and liver disease -- in order to find out whether shift work is the susceptibility factor that promotes liver injury.

"Non-pathogen-mediated chronic inflammation is a major cause of many chronic diseases common in Western societies and developing countries that have adopted a Western lifestyle," said Keshavarzian, one of the senior authors of the paper. He is director of the Division of Digestive Diseases and the Josephine M. Dyrenforth Chair of Gastroenterology.

Crohn's and ulcerative colitis, Parkinson's disease, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, autoimmune disease and cardiovascular disease are examples of these diseases, to name just a few.

"Recent studies have shown that intestinal bacteria are the primary trigger for this inflammation, and gut leakiness is one of the major causes," Keshavarzian said. "The factor leading to gut leakiness is not known, however. Our study suggests that disruption of circadian rhythms and sleep, which is part of life in industrial societies, can promote it and explain the susceptibility."

In the study, the Northwestern and Rush researchers used two independent approaches, studying both genetic and environmental animal models. The circadian rhythms of one group of mice were disrupted genetically: Each animal had a mutant CLOCK gene, which regulates circadian rhythms. The second group's circadian rhythms were disrupted environmentally: The animals' light-dark cycle was changed periodically, leading to a state similar to chronic jet lag.

Mice in both groups, prior to ingesting alcohol, showed an increase in gut leakiness.

Next, both groups of mice were fed alcohol. After only one week, animals in both groups showed a significant additional increase in gut leakiness, compared to control mice on an alcohol-free diet. At the end of the three-month study, mice in both groups were in the early stages of alcoholic liver disease.

"We have clearly shown that circadian rhythm disruption can trigger gut leakiness, which drives the more severe pathology in the liver," said Keith Summa, a co-first author of the study and an M.D./Ph.D. candidate working in Turek's lab.

"For humans, circadian rhythm disruption typically is environmental, not genetic, so individuals have some control over the behaviors that cause trouble, be it a poor sleep schedule, shift work or exposure to light at night," he said.

Sleep and circadian rhythms are an integral part of biology and should be part of the discussion between medical doctors and their patients, the researchers believe.

"We want to personalize medicine from a time perspective," Turek said. "Our bodies are organized temporally on a 24-hour basis, and this needs to be brought into the equation for understanding health and disease."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/RduZVm6IweM/130701163944.htm

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Three UK now selling Samsung Galaxy Mega on its site, retail stores to offer it July 2nd

Call the United Kingdom home? Have a thing for overly large, unorthodox smartphones? Well then, today's a good day to be a Three customer -- or plan on being one soon. The carrier has announced that the Samsung Galaxy Mega will be up for grabs on its website starting today, while brick-and-mortar stores are expected to have it on shelves as soon as tomorrow. The enormous 6.3-inch handset is being offered in conjunction with a variety of monthly tariffs, and there's also an option that takes advantage of Three's new pay-as-you-go scheme. Better yet, the company says the Galaxy Mega is future-proof, as it'll be able to support its upcoming LTE network once it goes live. Just remember, though... Three UK is in absolutely no rush to flip that switch.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung

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Source: Three UK

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/01/samsung-galaxy-mega-three-uk/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Iran confirms detention of Slovak nationals

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) ? An Iranian semi-official news agency is reporting the country has confirmed it is detaining an unspecified number of Slovak nationals, saying they have broken the law.

The Sunday report by ISNA quotes Abbas Araghchi, spokesman of Iran's foreign ministry, as saying the Slovaks entered Iran as tourists, "but they had unconventional behavior and instruments. They violated Iran's law."

Araghchi said the case is under judicial investigations and would later be sent to the courts. He said Slovak diplomats have access to the detainees.

Iran did not identify the detainees or give any detail on their numbers.

In February Iran released a Slovak national after weeks after accusing him of spying for the CIA.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/iran-confirms-detention-slovak-nationals-101327445.html

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China's troubled Xinjiang hit by more violence: state media

BEIJING (Reuters) - More than a hundred people, riding motorbikes and wielding knives, attacked a police station in China's ethnically divided western region of Xinjiang, state media said on Saturday, in the latest unrest to hit the region in the past week.

The attack in the remote desert city of Hotan, a heavily ethnic Uighur area, comes two days after the region's deadliest unrest in four years that resulted in the deaths of 35 people. China called the incident a "terrorist attack".

Xinjiang is home to the mainly Muslim Uighur people who speak a Turkic language. Many of them chafe at what they call Chinese government restrictions on their culture, language and religion. China says it grants Uighurs wide-ranging freedoms and accuses extremists of separatism.

The animosity between the majority Han Chinese and the Uighurs poses a major challenge for China's Communist Party leaders. President Xi Jinping, who took office in March, has called for the unity of all ethnic groups in China.

In the latest incident, the Global Times - owned by Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece, the People's Daily - said "troublemakers" gathered at religious venues before riding on motorcycles to attack a police station in the city's Moyu county.

Authorities are counting the number of casualties and searching for suspects, the Global Times said.

In a separate incident, some 200 people attempted to "incite trouble" at a major shopping area in Hotan, the newspaper said. It said police defused the situation.

Yu Zhengsheng, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the party's inner circle, pledged to step up "action to crack down upon terrorist groups and extremist organizations" at a meeting with government officials in the regional capital Urumqi, state news agency Xinhua said.

Chinese authorities have increased security in Urumqi, the Global Times said.

Photographs on Chinese microblogs showed dozens of military trucks with riot police patrolling the streets.

The increased security comes almost a week before the fourth anniversary of the July 2009 riots in Xinjiang that pitted Uighurs against ethnic Chinese, resulting in nearly 200 people being killed.

In a sign of the gravity of the situation, Xinjiang's top party chief Zhang Chunxian said: "We should be clearly aware of the complex and acute nature of the long-term struggle against separatism," according to the Xinjiang Daily, the official newspaper of the region.

"For those who dare to defy the law, the criminals who engage in violent terrorist activities have to be punished. We can't tolerate them, we have to hold no punches," the People's Daily said in a front-page editorial.

(Reporting by Sui-Lee Wee; Editing by Alison Williams)

(This story was corrected to fix the spelling of knives in the first paragraph)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/chinas-troubled-xinjiang-hit-more-violence-state-media-024237052.html

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Breakthrough in El Nino forecasting

July 1, 2013 ? In order to extend forecasting from six months to one year or even more, scientists have now proposed a novel approach based on advanced connectivity analysis applied to the climate system. The scheme builds on high-quality data of air temperatures and clearly outperforms existing methods. The study will be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Enhancing the preparedness of people in the affected regions by providing more early-warning time is key to avoiding some of the worst effects of El Ni?o," says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-author of the study by Josef Ludescher et al (Justus-Liebig Universit?t Giessen). The new approach employs network analysis which is a cutting-edge methodology at the crossroads of physics and mathematics. Data from more than 200 measurement points in the Pacific, available from the 1950s on, were crucial for studying the interactions between distant sites that cooperate in bringing about the warming.

Extending the forecasting time but also enhancing the reliability

According to Schellnhuber a new algorithm was developed and tested which does not only extend the forecasting time but also enhances the reliability. In fact, the novel method correctly predicted the absence of an El Ni?o-event in the last year. This forecast was made in 2011 already, whereas conventional approaches kept on predicting a significant warming far into 2012.

El Ni?o is part of a more general oscillation of the Pacific ocean-atmosphere system called ENSO, which also embraces anomalous cold episodes dubbed La Ni?a which can inflict severe damages as well. The present study focuses on the warming events only. However, an El Ni?o-year is followed by a La Ni?a-year, as a rough rule.

Climate change: a factor for ENSO changes?

"It is still unclear to which extent global warming caused by humankind's emissions of greenhouse gases will influence the ENSO pattern," says Schellnhuber. "Yet the latter is often counted among the so-called tipping elements in the Earth system, meaning that at some level of climate change it might experience a relatively abrupt transformation." Certain data from the Earth's past suggest that higher mean global temperatures could increase the amplitude of the oscillation, so correct forecasting would become even more important.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/Ec_koDwQJvU/130701151822.htm

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