BANGKOK (AP) ? Asian stock markets climbed Monday after U.S. unemployment fell to its lowest in three years, suggesting a stronger recovery in the world's No. 1 economy that could benefit the region's exporters.
Japan's Nikkei 225 index rose 1.1 percent to 8,924.98. South Korea's Kospi gained 0.2 percent to 1,976.93 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng was 0.5 percent higher at 20,867.92.
Australia's S&P ASX/200 added 1.1 percent to 4,296.80, while benchmarks in Singapore and the Philippines also rose. Mainland Chinese shares and Taiwan's main index fell.
On Friday, the Dow Jones industrial average was propelled to its highest close since May 2008 after the U.S. Labor Department said the economy added 243,000 new jobs in January, the strongest job growth in nine months.
That helped to push the unemployment rate down to 8.3 percent and the number of unemployed down to 12.8 million.
Noting that a similar gain occurred in April 2010, only to be followed by a negative trend, analysts at DBS in Singapore said, "Stay optimistic but keep a few grains of salt close at hand."
Falling unemployment in the U.S. is likely to be good news for Asia, as it suggests stronger consumer demand for the region's exports of clothing, cars, consumer electronics and other goods.
The Dow rose 1.2 percent to close at 12,862.23, its highest mark since May 19, 2008, about four months before Lehman Brothers investment bank collapsed.
The Standard & Poor's 500 added 1.3 percent to 1,344.90, its highest close since last July. The Nasdaq Composite added 1.6 percent, to 2,905.66, its highest since December 2000.
Benchmark oil for March delivery was down 30 cents to $97.52 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose $1.48 to finish at $97.84 per barrel on the Nymex on Friday.
In currencies, the euro fell to $1.3093 from $1.3153 late Friday in New York. The dollar rose to 76.53 yen from 76.55 yen.
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Julia Mancuso, of the United States, waves after winning an alpine ski, women's World Cup super-G, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, Sunday, Feb. 5, 2012. (AP Photo/Giovanni Auletta)
Julia Mancuso, of the United States, waves after winning an alpine ski, women's World Cup super-G, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, Sunday, Feb. 5, 2012. (AP Photo/Giovanni Auletta)
Julia Mancuso, of the United States, face to camera, celebrates with her teammate Lindsey Vonn after winning an alpine ski, women's World Cup super-G, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, Sunday, Feb. 5, 2012. (AP Photo/Giovanni Auletta)
Julia Mancuso, of the United States, celebrates after winning an alpine ski, women's World Cup super-G, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, Sunday, Feb. 5, 2012. (AP Photo/Giovanni Auletta)
GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN, Germany (AP) ? Julia Mancuso's wait for her first win of the season is over. Lindsey Vonn will have to wait a little longer to break another record.
Mancuso won a super-G on Sunday for her first World Cup victory of the season, while Vonn skied off the course and did not finish.
It was the first time two different American women have won World Cup races on consecutive days since December 2006, when it was also Vonn and Mancuso.
Vonn captured her milestone 50th World Cup win in a downhill on the same slope a day earlier. But she was forced to wait for her start for about three minutes while officials fixed a gate and Vonn could not hold her line Sunday after hitting a bump midway down the icy piste. She was looking for a record 18th super-G career win.
Mancuso produced a clean run in freezing conditions, with bright sunlight and deep shadows alternating on the Kandahar course and making for poor visibility. She won on the same slope where she clinched the super-G silver medal at last year's World Championship.
"I thought when I crossed the finish line, 'If that wasn't good enough, then I don't know what is,'" Mancuso said. "I didn't feel like I had the best run, but I kept my skies stable the whole way.
"The course was set really fast, besides a couple of turns, and I knew I had to push myself to the limit and make those technical sectors clean, then it was just a case of trying to go as fast as possible. You couldn't see, I just had to try to stay on it."
It was Mancuso's first super-G win since 2007 in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. She now has six career World Cup wins, to go with two Olympic silver medals and a giant slalom gold at the 2006 games.
"You have to go fast and not care where you are. I like to see ? it's better when it's sunny ? but it gives me an advantage, because I know I can perform in difficult conditions," Mancuso said.
Vonn was not the only one to ski off the course. Four of the first six starters also failed to finish and several others joined the group, including Tina Maze of Slovenia, Vonn's closet challenger for the overall title. Vonn still has a massive lead of 482 points.
Vonn quickly left the finish area and could not be reached for comment.
Mancuso finished in 1 minute, 20.50 seconds. Anna Fenninger of Austria, super-combined world champion here last year, was second, 0.13 seconds behind, and Tina Weirather of Liechtenstein was third, 0.45 back.
Weirather was also third in Saturday's downhill, while Maria Hoefl-Riesch of Germany, last season's overall World Cup champion, finished fourth for the second straight day.
This Sunday evening, virtually all eyes in the United States will be on the Giants and the Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI. They will also be on Indianapolis, the city charged with hosting this year?s big game.
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For a small city, it seems like a golden opportunity: A Super Bowl means a huge spike in tourist dollars, a week of national exposure, and a featured spot in what is far and away the most-watched television event year after year. In 2008, the NFL estimated that host city Phoenix could expect to see a $500million windfall during the four-day Super Bowl weekend. For Miami?s 2010 turn as host, the estimate was $400 million. But is playing host to the Super Bowl really as sweet a deal as it sounds?
Yes, it?s good, but maybe not that good. The windfall for Indianapolis will be closer to $150 million, according to Jack Ablin, an economist and the chief investment officer at BMO-Harris Private Bank, based in Chicago. ?That?s based on 150,000 people spending a thousand dollars each,? he says. ?And hopefully those numbers are a little conservative for Indianapolis.?
He points to Dallas, which enjoyed a $200 million boost from hosting the Super Bowl last year just as the city was recovering from a damaging ice storm.
?[$150 million] is a pretty nice number,? says Victor Matheson, a professor of economics at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. ?Over the past decade we?ve had an escalation of these economic impact figures. Consultants dueling with one another to get a higher number, $400 or $500 million.? That number is much more honest.?
According to Dr. Matheson, Indianapolis has a few things going for it that mean the Super Bowl will be a welcome boost. For one, it isn?t normally a winter destination, so the influx of tourism is actually a bonus. In warm weather destinations, like Miami, the tourism that comes from the Super Bowl would generally be replacing tourism that was already there.
"No one is in Indy in the middle of February,? he says. ?In Miami and New Orleans, you?re displacing other tourists.?
ScienceDaily (Feb. 3, 2012) ? The anti-blood clot regimen that adds the drug clopidogrel (Plavix) to aspirin treatment is unlikely to prevent recurrent strokes and may increase the risk of bleeding and death in patients with subcortical stroke according to late-breaking research presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2012.
Because of these preliminary results, researchers ended the anti-clotting part of the Secondary Prevention of Small Subcortical Strokes Trial (SPS3) in August 2011. The part of the study that examines the effect of high blood pressure treatments will continue. The SPS3 trial is the first large-scale study of patients with subcortical strokes, which occur when small blood vessels deep in the middle of the brain are blocked, damaging small areas of brain tissue. This type of stroke affects about 150,000 Americans each year, and is the most common cause of vascular dementia according to Oscar Benavente, M.D., lead author of the study and a professor of neurology at Canada's University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia.
American Heart Association/American Stroke Association guidelines for preventing recurrent strokes recommend anti-clotting medications like aspirin, the customary treatment, or other clot preventives like clopidogrel, but not the combination of aspirin plus clopidogrel.
Treatments have not been compared in patients with subcortical strokes specifically.
In the United States, stroke is the No. 4 killer and a leading cause of disability among adults.
Beginning in March 2003, the SPS3 study included 3,020 patients at 81 sites in the United States, Canada, Spain, Mexico and South America. Stroke patients were randomly assigned within 180 days of symptom onset to receive aspirin and clopidogrel or aspirin plus placebo daily. Neither researchers nor patients knew who received placebo or the study drug.
Preliminary findings showed that the risk of bleeding nearly doubled among patients on the clopidogrel/aspirin combination, compared to those on aspirin and placebo: Aspirin plus placebo had a 1.1 percent of bleeding risk per year and aspirin plus clopidogrel a 2.1 percent bleeding risk per year -- largely from major bleeds somewhere other than in the brain.
Similarly, the annual risk of death was greater with the combined therapy: Aspirin plus placebo had a 1.4 percent risk of death and aspirin plus clopidogrel had a 2.1 percent risk of death.
There was no difference in stroke recurrence in both treatment arms.
"These interim results do not support the use of combination clopidogrel plus aspirin for secondary stroke prevention in patients with small subcortical strokes," the researchers said.
Co-investigator is Robert G. Hart, M.D.
The National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, funded the study.
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Dr. Larry DeGaris, director of UIndy?s Sports Marketing program, says the current football-related attention on Indianapolis is providing a welcome boost to another sport: open-wheel auto racing, which traditionally has been one of the city?s biggest sports draws.
DeGaris told the Indianapolis Business Journal this week that the IndyCars on display downtown and the availability of Speedway tours?are making an impression on visiting journalists and fans.
?All this comes at a very good time for the Speedway, and these are the types of things ? the first-hand experience with the cars and the photo opportunities ? that create deep, lasting impressions,? said DeGaris,?a widely known consultant?on sports sponsorship and related issues. ?I think the interest built this week could really spur momentum for the (IndyCar) series.?
CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio (AP) ? A woman who called the wrong number when she suffered a stroke still found help a couple of time zones away.
Loretta Smith, of Cuyahoga Falls near Akron, felt her right side go numb and fell to the floor at her home last weekend.
The 70-year-old Smith said she was able to grab the phone with her left hand and thought she was calling her son. Instead, she was one digit off and reached a man in the Denver area who was originally from northeast Ohio and had kept the same number after he moved.
"It was a woman, and she said 'I may be having a stroke,'" said Kenny Crater, 28, a sculpture major at Metropolitan State University in Denver.
Crater asked for her name and address and offered to get help. His 911 call was answered by Broomfield, Colo., police, who transferred his call to Cuyahoga Falls.
Smith was taken to Summa Western Reserve Hospital in Cuyahoga Falls, where it was determined that she had suffered a mini-stroke, said Dr. Joseph Nienaltowski.
Smith said Crater saved her life. "I want this kid to be praised to high heaven," she said.
Crater said Smith had done her part, too. "I do not feel like I have done anything special," he said.
BOSTON (CBS) ? Ariel is a sweet and engaging 11-year-old boy of Hispanic descent with a love for science, remote control toys and playing sports with his friends.
Building with K?Nex, arts and crafts and playing all kinds of games are also counted as favorite activities.
Though Ariel is currently not taking any formal music lessons, he shows artistic abilities. He likes tinkering on the piano and other instruments at his after-school program, and he particularly enjoys rock music. Ariel also loves to draw and is quite the artist.
WBZ-TV?s Jack Williams reports
Ariel does well in his current foster home where he is a good listener and follows the rules. He has a great sense of humor and can be quite talkative. Ariel is meeting with success in school, where he has made improvements with the help of his Individualized Educational Plan. He works hard at paying attention, attending to tasks and completing his homework. Ariel is always reading and reads above his grade level. He continues to utilize supports to help him deal with feelings of loss.
Legally free for adoption, Ariel would do well in a family of any constellation, with or without other children. A family where he will be loved and supported and one that is open to maintaining contact with his birth mother, sister and his visiting resource is ideal. With many varied interests and a gift for gab, Ariel has much to bring to a nurturing and open family with lots of love to share.
To learn more about Ariel, and about adoption from foster care, call the Massachusetts Adoption Resource Exchange (MARE) at 617-54-ADOPT (617-542-3678) or visit www.MAREinc.org. The sooner you call, the sooner a waiting child will have ?a permanent place to call HOME.?
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Scripps Research team proves plausibility of new pathway to life's chemical building blocksPublic release date: 31-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Mika Ono mikaono@scripps.edu 858-784-2052 Scripps Research Institute
LA JOLLA, CA January 31, 2012 For decades, chemists considered a chemical pathway known as the formose reaction the only route for producing sugars essential for life to begin, but more recent research has called into question the plausibility of such thinking. Now a group from The Scripps Research Institute has proven an alternative pathway to those sugars called the glyoxylate scenario, which may push the field of pre-life chemistry past the formose reaction hurdle.
The team is reporting the results of their highly successful experiments online ahead of print in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
"We were working in uncharted territory," says Ramanarayanan ("Ram") Krishnamurthy, a Scripps Research chemist who led the research, "We didn't know what to expect but the glyoxylate scenario with respect to formation of carbohydrates is not a hypothesis anymore, it's an experimental fact."
The quest to recreate the chemistry that might have allowed life to emerge on a prehistoric Earth began in earnest in the 1950s. Since that time researchers have focused on a chemical path known as the formose reaction as a potential route from the simple, small molecules that might have been present on the Earth before life began to the complex sugars essential to life, at least life as we know it now.
The formose reaction begins with formaldehyde, thought to be a plausible constituent of a prebiotic world, going through a series of chemical transformation leading to simple and then more complex sugars, including ribose, which is a key building block in DNA and RNA.
But as chemists continued to study the formose reaction they realized that the chemistry involved is quite messy, producing lots of sugars with no apparent biological use and only the tiniest bit of ribose. As such experimental results mounted, the plausibility of the formose reaction as the prebiotic sugar builder came into question. But the problem was that no one had established a reasonable alternative.
A New Pathway
Then in 2007, Albert Eschenmoser, an organic chemist who recently retired from Scripps Research, proposed a new pathway he dubbed the glyoxylate scenario. This involved glyoxylate as an alternative starting point to formaldehyde, and reactions with dihydroxyfumarate (DHF) that Eschenmoser hypothesized could launch a cascade of reactions that would lead to sugars. Glyoxylate was a good starting point because of the possibility that it could be produced by oligomerization of carbon monoxide under potentially prebiotic conditions.
Eschenmoser and Krishnamurthy began developing the experiments to test the hypothesis. At the time, very little was known about relevant reactions involving DHF, and nothing beyond theory about how it reacted with glyoxylate.
The idea that DHF might be involved in a plausible biosynthetic pathway to sugars (via a decarboxylative conversion to glycolaldehyde which aldolizes to sugars) dates back about as far as work on the formose reaction, but the experiments proved otherwise, causing DHF to fall from focus.
Success
"We were thrown a lot of curve balls we had to really think through," said Krisnamurthy of the years he spent working with postdoctoral fellow Vasu Sagi, who is lead author of the new paper. The team's experiments revealed that under the right conditions, DHF and glyoxylate, when in the presence of a few other plausible prebiotic chemicals including formaldehyde, would produce sugars known as ketoses. Ketoses in turn can be converted to critical sugars, including some essential to forming certain amino acids, the DNA and RNA building blocks such as ribose.
In remarkable contrast to the formose reaction, which might only convert a fraction of a percent of its starting materials into ribose, the experiments Sagi slaved over, sometimes monitoring them 24 hours a day, gave clean conversion of DHF to ketoses.
Such efficiency is so rare in prebiotic chemistry, and was so unexpected in the glyoxylate dihydroxyfumarate experiments, that the scientists were leery at first of their results. "We had to prove it by repeating the experiments many times," said Sagi, but the results held.
"Prebiotic reactions are usually pretty messy, so when we saw how clean this was we were really pleasantly surprised," said Krishnamurthy.
Interestingly, during the course of the work, Sagi and Krishnamurthy discovered DHF can react with itself to produce a new compounds never before documented, which the group reported separately late last year.
The Rest of the Story
Though the new research soundly proves the plausibility of one of the facets of the glyoxylate scenario, the chemistry involved is only one of three key series of reactions researchers will have to identify in order to complete a viable path from a primordial soup to life's building blocks.
While glyoxylate is a plausible prebiotic component, there's not yet a known prebiotic pathway to DHF, so the Krishnamurthy team is already working to identify possibilities.
A third critical conversion would have to occur after production of ketoses. Right now, the only known paths for the conversion of ketoses to ribose and other critical sugars are transformations by living organisms. Whether and how such conversion might have proceeded before life arose remains an open research question.
###
This research was funded by the Skaggs Research Foundation, NASA Astrobiology: Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology Program (NNX09AM96G) and jointly supported by the National Science Foundation and the NASA Astrobiology Program under the NSF Center for Chemical Evolution (CHE-1004570).
In addition to Sagi and Krishnamurthy, authors on the paper, titled, "Exploratory Experiments on the Chemistry of the Glyoxylate Scenario: Formation of Ketosugars from Dihydroxyfumarate," were Venkateshwarlu Punna, Fang Huf, and Geeta Meher," all from Scripps Research. For more information, see the study at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja211383c.
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Scripps Research team proves plausibility of new pathway to life's chemical building blocksPublic release date: 31-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Mika Ono mikaono@scripps.edu 858-784-2052 Scripps Research Institute
LA JOLLA, CA January 31, 2012 For decades, chemists considered a chemical pathway known as the formose reaction the only route for producing sugars essential for life to begin, but more recent research has called into question the plausibility of such thinking. Now a group from The Scripps Research Institute has proven an alternative pathway to those sugars called the glyoxylate scenario, which may push the field of pre-life chemistry past the formose reaction hurdle.
The team is reporting the results of their highly successful experiments online ahead of print in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
"We were working in uncharted territory," says Ramanarayanan ("Ram") Krishnamurthy, a Scripps Research chemist who led the research, "We didn't know what to expect but the glyoxylate scenario with respect to formation of carbohydrates is not a hypothesis anymore, it's an experimental fact."
The quest to recreate the chemistry that might have allowed life to emerge on a prehistoric Earth began in earnest in the 1950s. Since that time researchers have focused on a chemical path known as the formose reaction as a potential route from the simple, small molecules that might have been present on the Earth before life began to the complex sugars essential to life, at least life as we know it now.
The formose reaction begins with formaldehyde, thought to be a plausible constituent of a prebiotic world, going through a series of chemical transformation leading to simple and then more complex sugars, including ribose, which is a key building block in DNA and RNA.
But as chemists continued to study the formose reaction they realized that the chemistry involved is quite messy, producing lots of sugars with no apparent biological use and only the tiniest bit of ribose. As such experimental results mounted, the plausibility of the formose reaction as the prebiotic sugar builder came into question. But the problem was that no one had established a reasonable alternative.
A New Pathway
Then in 2007, Albert Eschenmoser, an organic chemist who recently retired from Scripps Research, proposed a new pathway he dubbed the glyoxylate scenario. This involved glyoxylate as an alternative starting point to formaldehyde, and reactions with dihydroxyfumarate (DHF) that Eschenmoser hypothesized could launch a cascade of reactions that would lead to sugars. Glyoxylate was a good starting point because of the possibility that it could be produced by oligomerization of carbon monoxide under potentially prebiotic conditions.
Eschenmoser and Krishnamurthy began developing the experiments to test the hypothesis. At the time, very little was known about relevant reactions involving DHF, and nothing beyond theory about how it reacted with glyoxylate.
The idea that DHF might be involved in a plausible biosynthetic pathway to sugars (via a decarboxylative conversion to glycolaldehyde which aldolizes to sugars) dates back about as far as work on the formose reaction, but the experiments proved otherwise, causing DHF to fall from focus.
Success
"We were thrown a lot of curve balls we had to really think through," said Krisnamurthy of the years he spent working with postdoctoral fellow Vasu Sagi, who is lead author of the new paper. The team's experiments revealed that under the right conditions, DHF and glyoxylate, when in the presence of a few other plausible prebiotic chemicals including formaldehyde, would produce sugars known as ketoses. Ketoses in turn can be converted to critical sugars, including some essential to forming certain amino acids, the DNA and RNA building blocks such as ribose.
In remarkable contrast to the formose reaction, which might only convert a fraction of a percent of its starting materials into ribose, the experiments Sagi slaved over, sometimes monitoring them 24 hours a day, gave clean conversion of DHF to ketoses.
Such efficiency is so rare in prebiotic chemistry, and was so unexpected in the glyoxylate dihydroxyfumarate experiments, that the scientists were leery at first of their results. "We had to prove it by repeating the experiments many times," said Sagi, but the results held.
"Prebiotic reactions are usually pretty messy, so when we saw how clean this was we were really pleasantly surprised," said Krishnamurthy.
Interestingly, during the course of the work, Sagi and Krishnamurthy discovered DHF can react with itself to produce a new compounds never before documented, which the group reported separately late last year.
The Rest of the Story
Though the new research soundly proves the plausibility of one of the facets of the glyoxylate scenario, the chemistry involved is only one of three key series of reactions researchers will have to identify in order to complete a viable path from a primordial soup to life's building blocks.
While glyoxylate is a plausible prebiotic component, there's not yet a known prebiotic pathway to DHF, so the Krishnamurthy team is already working to identify possibilities.
A third critical conversion would have to occur after production of ketoses. Right now, the only known paths for the conversion of ketoses to ribose and other critical sugars are transformations by living organisms. Whether and how such conversion might have proceeded before life arose remains an open research question.
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This research was funded by the Skaggs Research Foundation, NASA Astrobiology: Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology Program (NNX09AM96G) and jointly supported by the National Science Foundation and the NASA Astrobiology Program under the NSF Center for Chemical Evolution (CHE-1004570).
In addition to Sagi and Krishnamurthy, authors on the paper, titled, "Exploratory Experiments on the Chemistry of the Glyoxylate Scenario: Formation of Ketosugars from Dihydroxyfumarate," were Venkateshwarlu Punna, Fang Huf, and Geeta Meher," all from Scripps Research. For more information, see the study at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja211383c.
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WASHINGTON?? U.S. consumer confidence unexpectedly fell in January as more Americans worried about the country's weak job market, according to a private sector report released on Tuesday.
The Conference Board, an industry group, said its index of consumer attitudes dropped to 61.1 from an upwardly revised 64.8 the month before.
Economists had expected a reading of 68.0, according to a Reuters poll. December was originally reported as 64.5.
Consumers' labor market assessment worsened. The "jobs hard to get" index increased to 43.5 percent from 41.6 percent the month before. The "jobs plentiful" index also darkened, dropping to 6.1 percent from 6.6 percent.
The expectations index fell to 76.2 from 77.0, while the present situation index decreased to 38.4 from 46.5.
Consumers also felt worse about price increases with expectations for inflation in the coming 12 months up to 5.5 percent from 5.3 percent.
Copyright 2012 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
NEW YORK ? Adele is nominated for six Grammys, and she'll be on deck to collect anything she wins: The 23-year-old singer is set to perform at the awards show.
Adele had surgery on her vocal cords last year, and the Grammys will be the first time she has performed live in five months, The Recording Academy announced Tuesday.
Her sophomore album, "21," has sold more than 6 million copies in the U.S. It is nominated for album of the year and best pop vocal album. The CD has three singles that have hit the No. 1 spot on the Billboard chart, including "Rolling in the Deep," which is up for record and song of the year.
The Grammys will air live Feb. 12 on CBS from the Staples Center in Los Angeles.
Adele will also perform at the BRIT Awards on Feb. 21.
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Public release date: 31-Jan-2012
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