OPINION: Wouldn't it be great if the promise of a new year also meant a promise that some of pop culture's more odious trends could be left behind?? Here are 12 I could happily leave in 2012.
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Blow us a kiss goodbye? Lindsay Lohan, left, a galloping PSY, center, and Brad Pitt mumbling for Chanel.
Gangnam style More than 2 billion people have "liked" the video for "Gangnam Style" on YouTube since it debuted there on July 15, and I can firmly assert that I am not among them. I can appreciate a good earworm; I've been caught humming "Call Me Maybe." But I see no up side to the irritant that is PSY. The dance moves are unflattering, the melody nonexistent. And then it gets stuck in your head. Please: no more.
Lindsay Lohan I'll keep this brief. Lindsay, I want the best for you, I do. But in 2013 I'd like to not read a word about you. Please stay away from clubs. Call a cab. Pay for everything.
Bad celeb ads I get it -- endorsements are easy money. Signing on to be the face of a product is little work for a whole lot of dough and if Chanel came knocking on my door, I'd take the gig -- this is the one thing Brad Pitt and I have in common. But I'd want the ad to be spoof proof. Not just to save ego, but because it's not good for the career when you're starring in a film and all the viewer can think of is your silly perfume ad.
Rihanna?s Instagram The photo-sharing social network, Instagram, has been under scrutiny lately for its advertising policy, but the real scandal is the fact that it allows Rihanna to play along. Sadly, it's a job requirement to keep track of her feed -- how else would I know if she and Chris Brown were together again? How else would I know if she had a new tattoo, or if the skin on her upper thighs was blemish-free? Sharing is one thing, over-sharing another.
Deciphering greater meaning in celeb tattoos If a celebrity gets a tattoo and doesn't take an Instagram picture of it, does the tattoo exist? Does it have MEANING? Ink up your skin all you want, kids, but let's not spend another moment wondering what its place is in the universe.
The wardrobe malfunction down south If you're a celebrity and your stylist can't find an undergarment that works with your particular dress, you should probably get another stylist.?
Bump watching People are either pregnant or they are not. And until someone decides to make it known that their uterus is occupied, we, the public, just cannot know more. I'm fine leaving it at that. (And I never thought the day would come that I'd write this: Thank you, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. You did you part by sparing us from this ritual before the request even went out. Congrats on your baby-to-be.
Kimye, or any other lovers' contraction The ill-fated romance between Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez kicked off the trend, and since" Bennifer" made it into the lexicon there appears to be some strange, unwritten obligation to give all celeb couples the same treatment. Here's the thing: Bennifer worked. It rolled off the tongue, it saved headline space.? But Kimye, for the aforementioned Kim and Kanye? No.
Celebs 'quitting' twitter And by quitting, I mean making a grand "I am not doing this any more" gesture and then rejoining. Miley Cyrus, Chris Brown, Alec Baldwin are all offenders. You're either in or out, folks. Commit.
Teen Mom tweets Speaking of Twitter: Admittedly, I have a strange fascination with "Teen Mom" (especially "Teen Mom 2"). But their tweeting habits -- the fighting, the new baby news, the marriages, the obvious amount of time they're spending on the social network and not with their kids -- ?it's too much.
The television over-think You guys, don't ruin shows you love by thinking too hard about everything (Yes, I'm talking about "Homeland" here). Remember, this television-watching stuff is supposed to be fun.?
Madonna's concert stunts Hopefully, the finale of Madonna's MDNA tour will put an end to her well-publicized concert stunts, but in case that's not her plan ... Please stop waving guns and dedicating stripteases to children shot by the Taliban. The stunts are so commonplace, it's hard to actually get mad about them, instead they're just really?irritating?and tired.
But let's end on a positive note; there were some great pop culture standouts in 2012. ?
Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee was great comedy and a perfect use of the digital medium.
Alec Baldwin's "Here's the Thing" podcasts for WNYC are real gems -- if you've never listened to any, trust me when I encourage you to check out the subjects that have no initial appeal. You'll be pleasantly surprised.
Jimmy Fallon and the Roots can put their classroom-instrument spin on any song as far as I'm concerned, and Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield proved that celebs can be just plain nice.
However he said that the mis-use of the site by athletes can lead to distraction.
?I have walked past my parents [and] close friends an hour before a race and not even recognized them or registered them. I just find it bizarre that people can be sitting there figuring out in 140 characters what they would say to the world at that moment. Just go out and win the bloody race,? said Lord Coe.
Lord Coe did not name athletes, but members of the British athletics team have got into trouble in the past for Tweeting.
Phillips Idowu, the triple jumper who failed to win a medal in the London games, angered his management when he withdrew from last year?s European Team Championships on Twitter.
At the time Charles van Commenee, the then-head of UK Athletics, said that athletes need training when it comes to Twitter use.
?You can't forbid athletes to use Twitter, this is an issue we have to deal with in modern times,? he said.
Some athletes have admitted that social media sites cost them dear in last summer?s games.
Emily Seebohm, the Australian swimmer who was favourite for an Olympic gold in the 100m backstroke but narrowly missed out on the medal, admitted that she stayed up too long on Twitter and Facebook in the lead-up to the games.
Following her defeat in the race she said: ?I just felt like I didn't really get off [social media] and get into my own mind.?
Matt Brown, an Australian swimming coach, said during the games that he would like to ?throw away some of those phones?.
Dr Victor Thompson, a London-based sports psychologist, said that there is no direct relationship between the amount of time that sports stars spend on Twitter and their performance.
?It may indicate to some that you may be less dedicated or are not focused on the right things but spending an hour on the computer doesn?t necessarily have a bearing on how you spend the next 23 hours of the day,? he said.
However he said that people?s performance could be affected by negative comments that they read on the site.
?You are going to get the extremes of comments about you as an athlete ? the real positives and the real negatives. People will use these when they evaluate their own performance, rather than what they think or the coach thinks. And that really influences their mood and how they bounce back,? said Dr Thompson.
In the summer Andy Murray, the tennis player, said that athletes should not be on Twitter ?too much?.
?It?s a bit like sitting on a computer 20 minutes, 30 minutes before your match. You wouldn?t be advised to do that. The same applies with Tweeting or mobile phones,? said Mr Murray, who won Olympic gold last year.
However there are many athletes who would argue with Lord Coe?s theory. Prolific Tweeters who can not be said to have under-performed on the field of play include Sir Chris Hoy, Usain Bolt and Jessica Ennis.
While Windows 8 inspired plenty of crazy new form factors, it also gave laptop makers a good reason to circle back and tweak their tried-and-true products to bring them into the touch-optimized era. One example is ASUS' Zenbook Prime line of Ultrabooks. We've seen quite a few of them in the last year; the UX31A landed in our offices last summer, and we reviewed the 15-inch UX51Vz mere weeks ago.
But a dry spell is nowhere in sight: ASUS just released another 13-inch Zenbook, the $1,099-and-up UX31A Touch. The name says it all: it's the UX31A we've known and, er, liked, but with a capacitive display added in. Of course, this slightly different iteration still provides an opportunity to improve the laptop in other ways (for instance, we thought the UX31A featured a subpar touchpad). So, does this new touchscreen model improve upon an already finely crafted Ultrabook? Jump past the break to find out.
The 11th Conference of the European Sociological Association will be held 28-31 August, 2013 in Torino, Italy.
The Research Network Sociology of Religion (RN34) has issued its call for papers. The call includes joint sessions with Sociology of Culture, Society and Sports, Sociology of Emotions, Qualitative Methods, and Sociology of Migration. (Visit http://www.esareligion.org/)
Abstract submission opens on 12 December 2012 and closes 1 February 2013.
Call for Papers RN34 ? Sociology of Religion Coordinators: Anne-Sophie Lamine? anne-sophie.lamine@misha.fr University of Strasbourg, France Heidemarie Winkel? hwinkel@uni-potsdam.de University of Postdam, Germany
Religion has often been understood as a response to personal, social or cultural crisis. Classical scholars, such as Peter L. Berger and Max Weber, pointed out that it provides a theodicy of good and evil ? an account that gives ultimate meaning in a meaningless world. Religions, Stark and Bainbridge (1985) contend, are other-worldly compensators for individuals in crisis ? for those who are deprived from this-worldly rewards. Even advocates of the secularization thesis often acknowledge that crisis and rapid social change in society temporarily motivate the popularity of religion (Bruce 1997). But religion, once considered to be in crisis under the secularizing powers of modernity, is alive and well in Europe. More than that: religion seems to thrive on what can now be called the crisis of modernity. Modern science, the nation state, capitalism, unrestricted consumption and the globalizing economy, have lost much of their credibility and plausibility in many European countries. In this cultural climate, the voices of traditional religious groups grow louder whereas, some say, we are witnessing a massive turn to holistic forms of spirituality (e.g., Campbell 2007). The atheist-secular worldview is more than ever contested by a fraction of Muslims, Christian creationists, Buddhists and other religious groups while a mirror-like process of anti-identification gives rise to alarmist discourses about the return of religions and particularly on the danger of the ?islamization of Europe?. Religion has once again become salient in the re-formation of identity and the construction of imagined communities: uprooted from tradition, modern individuals in identity crisis search for new (religious) values and meanings whereas some European nation states align themselves with their Christian heritage, long-standing traditions and religious pasts. Religion, then, can not easily be understood as the ?irrational? Other of modernity ? it is instead a common and valid response to the growing crisis of modernity. Jurgen Habermas (2005), once a furious critic of religion, argued from this perspective that intellectuals should include religious partners in the ?rational? conversation about modernity since both share a growing critique on the maladies of modernity. Motivated by these observations, the Research Network Sociology of Religion calls for papers on crisis, critique and change in relation to religion.
Particularlypapers are welcomed that discuss the following topics: 01RN34. Studies dealing with religion in crisis, i.e. the way religious traditions such as Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and the like ? re-structure their organizations, beliefs, and practices and adopt, negotiate or resist processes of modernization, secularization and disenchantment.
02RN34. Studies dealing with the ways religion provides answers to existential crisis and, particularly, the crisis of modernity ? i.e. how and why Islam, Christianity and other religious-spiritual groups formulate a critique of and alternative to modern science, capitalism, mass-consumption and individualism.
03RN34. Studies dealing with the way crisis increases the salience of religious identities and cultural polarization, i.e., in what particular ways religion gives meaning in everyday life and if, how and why religious identity-formations induce processes of inclusion and exclusion; social cohesion and religious conflict.
04RN34. Studies focusing on the way religion changes the modern world in Europe and beyond, i.e., how rapid social changes motivate the appeal and popularity of religion and if, how and why such religions transform private and public domains in Europe.
05RN34. Sociology of religion (open)
07JS28JS34. RN34 Joint session with RN07 Sociology of Culture and RN28 Society and Sports Sport and religion/spirituality (Chairs: Davide Sterchele; Stef Aupers & Hubert Knoblauch)
Whereas the analogy between sport and religion has been criticized by many scholars mainly because of the lack (or low relevance) of the transcendent dimension in traditional sport practices, the recent sociological elaborations of the concept of spirituality seems to provide new interesting tools for interpreting the emerging forms of bodily movement. At the same time, the study of the analogies between traditional sports and institutionalized religions still generates relevant sociological insights.
In order to contribute to these streams of analysis and to open new horizons for further studies, the ESA research networks ?Sociology of Culture?, ?Society and Sports?, and ?Sociology of Religion?, invite potential contributors to submit abstracts to the joint session on ?Sport and religion/spirituality?. The session will thus provide a forum for exchange and sharing among sociologists of culture, sport and religion, who deal with these themes from different but overlapping perspectives.
RN34 web-page : http://www.esareligion.org/ 07JS34. RN34 Joint session with RN07 Sociology of Culture Cultures of Religion ? Religious Cultures (Chairs: Hubert Knoblauch & Regine Herbrik) ?Religious Culture is quite frequently used, particularly in the French context (?culture religieuse?) relating both, to the general as well as to the specific religious patterns of culture. It may serve well not only to address empirical questions concerning the increasing cultural significance of religion within Europe as well as globally; it may also connect recent theoretical approaches in the sociology of culture on the one hand with approaches in the sociology of religion. For the joint session we invite, therefore, contributions addressing both empirical as well as theoretical issues concerning ?religious cultures?.
11JS34. RN34 Joint session with RN11 Sociology of emotions Affects and Emotions in the Field of Religion (Chairs: Stef Aupers & C?cile Vermot) Generations of scholars of theology and religious studies have viewed affects, emotions, and religion as closely related issues. What can be said about the certain shapes, characteristics and forms of this relationship in present times? How far is the research on emotions especially crucial for the understanding of religious life in Europe and for the coexistence, or even living together, of different confessions? What role do ?emotional regimes? (Riis/Woodhead) or ?feeling rules? (Hochschild) play with regard to the formation of emotional cultures both in religious groups and communities and with regard to the quest for salvation or spirituality of individual persons?
20JS34. RN34 Joint session with RN20 Qualitative Methods Qualitative Research on Religion(Chairs: Regine Herbrik & Bernt Schnettler) We also encourage participants to present papers concerned with methodological questions related to the specific problems of empirical research in the Study of Religions. Can we transfer methods from other fields of research to the sociology of religion or do we need special, field-specific methods? What can we learn from methods used in neighbouring disciplines? Which sets of methods can be recommended for empirical analyses targeting micro-macro issues in understanding religion? What role does the gender issue play in this? We are especially interested in papers reporting empirical research finding in the sociology of religion using qualitative research methods in combination with methodological reflections.
34JS35. RN34 Joint session with RN35 Sociology of Migration Migrant religions as a challenge to European identities (Chairs: Berta Alvarez-Miranda & Heidemarie Winkel) Already in classical sociological theory, religion functioned as a looking glass of change in times of crisis. At present, migrant religions are challenging and contributing to a critique of European identities. How do various European contexts accommodate migrant religions? What are the experiences, attitu?des and demands of their followers? How does the treatment of matters related to Islam inform on European identities and their current transformations? What conceptual and empirical tools does socio?logical analysis offer for the understanding of the varieties of internal and external religious critique?
?Teleportation is the extraordinary ability to transfer objects from one location to another without travelling through the intervening space.
The idea is not that the physical object is teleported but the information that describes it. This can then be applied to a similar object in a new location which effectively takes on the new identity.?
And it is by no means science fiction. Physicists have been teleporting photons since 1997 and the technique is now standard in optics laboratories all over the world.?
The phenomenon that makes this possible is known as quantum entanglement, ?the deep and mysterious link that occurs when two quantum objects share the same existence and yet are separated in space.?
Teleportation turns out to be extremely useful. Because teleported information does not travel through the intervening space, it cannot be secretly accessed by an eavesdropper.?
For that reason, teleportation is the enabling technology behind quantum cryptography, a way of sending information with close-to-perfect secrecy.?
Unfortunately, entangled photons are fragile objects. They cannot travel further than a kilometre or so down optical fibres because the photons end up interacting with the glass breaking the entanglement. That severely limits quantum cryptography?s usefulness.?
However, physicists have had more success teleporting photons through the atmosphere. In 2010, a Chinese team announced that it had teleported single photons over a distance of 16 kilometres. Handy but not exactly Earth-shattering.
Now the same team says it has smashed this record.?Juan Yin at the?University of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai, and a bunch of mates say they have teleported entangled photons over a distance of 97 kilometres across a lake in China. ?
Do you rage whenever you're killed by a hacker? Well apparently so does the President of Sony Online Entertainment, John Smedley. Read on for the variety of insults he's thrown at hackers on his Twitter account.
John Smedley is the President of Sony Online Entertainment, the developers of PlanetSide 2, and he recently posted a number of Tweets aimed towards players he feels are ruining his game.
London, Dec 29 (ANI): As fears grow that the United States is preparing to plunge over the 'fiscal cliff', billionaire investor Warren Buffett has predicted that women will save the American economy, billionaire investor Warren Buffett has predicted.
Editor's Note: All reviews and information aggregated from?Moviefone.
Django Unchained
"A sharp shock of a film in an Awards season very full of movies so noble they become immobile. It's wildly unlikely to get much love from the Academy, and that's fine-bluntly, it's too good for them. With its bloody stew of history and hysteria, action taken from movies and atrocities taken from fact, Django isn't just a movie only America could make-it's also a movie only America needs to." Boxoffice Magazine.?Full Review.
"Exactly what you might expect from the fearless, controversial director of "Pulp Fiction" - it's overlong, raunchy, shocking, grim, exaggerated, self-indulgently over-the-top and so politically incorrect it demands a new definition of the term. It is also bold, original, mesmerizing, stylish and one hell of a piece of entertainment." Rex Reed of New York Observer.?Full Review.
"Django Unchained also has the pure, almost meaningless excitement which I found sorely lacking in Tarantino's previous film, Inglourious Basterds, with its misfiring spaghetti-Nazi trope and boring plot. I can only say Django delivers, wholesale, that particular narcotic and delirious pleasure that Tarantino still knows how to confect in the cinema, something to do with the manipulation of surfaces. It's as unwholesome, deplorable and delicious as a forbidden cigarette." Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian.?Full Review.
Do you plan on seeing this movie? Have you seen it already? Leave a review of the film with a comment below.
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Les Miserables
"Stirring and striking, Hooper's epic musical won't be wanting for awards and plaudits. Danny Cohen's cinematography is stunning and Hathaway's Oscar is guaranteed." Neil Smith of Total Film.?Full Review.
"Russell Crowe's pained vocal stylings (they sound more like barks) as relentless Inspector Javert can be forgiven after hearing Hugh Jackman's old-pro fluidity in the central role of Jean Valjean, hiding a criminal past." Joshua Rothkopf of Time Out New York.?Full Review.
"Fortunately, this sprawling epic is well-anchored. There cannot be a better big-screen showman than Jackman." Elizabeth Weitzman of New York Daily News.?Full Review.
Do you plan on seeing this movie? Have you seen it already? Leave a review of the film with a comment below.
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Jack Reacher
"In terms of pure pop entertainment value, you'll be hard-pressed to find a more smartly constructed, beautifully shot, pulse-pounding movie this holiday season." Drew Taylor of The Playlist.?Full Review.
"A superior thriller, with Cruise and McQuarrie slotting together like a bullet in a clip. Like Reacher on the firing range, the aim isn't always true ? but the misses are fractional." James Mottram of Total Film.?Full Review.
"Tom Cruise is in fine form as mysterious tough guy Jack Reacher finally reaches the big screen." Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter.?Full Review
Do you plan on seeing this movie? Have you seen it already? Leave a review of the film with a comment below.
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Promised Land
"Krasinki's soft-sell script, lets the movie's ideas get absorbed without grandstanding or pretension. Its issues go down with a smile and common sense, which turns out to be exactly the right formula." Joe Neumaier of New York Daily News.?Full Review.
"Though the film eventually caves to sentiment and stereotype, its alert performances and muted rhythms offer much to enjoy in the interim." Jeanette Catsoulis of NPR.?Full Review.
"Director Gus Van Sant finds the human side of a knotty issue. No polemics. Just the face of a new America in crisis." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone.?Full Review.
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Monsters, Inc. 3-D
"It's the Pixar animators who keep grown-ups as riveted as the kids with visual marvels that dazzle and delight." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone.?Full Review.
"There hasn't been a film in years to use creative energy as efficiently as Monsters, Inc." A.O. Scott of The New York Times.?Full Review.
"Who doesn't need what this movie has to give?" Joe Morgenstern of Wall Street Journal.?Full Review.
MOSCOW -- President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed a law banning Americans from adopting Russian children, abruptly terminating the prospects for more than 50 youngsters preparing to join new families and sparking critics to liken him to King Herod.
The move is part of a harsh response to a U.S. law targeting Russians deemed to be human rights violators. Although some top Russian officials including the foreign minister openly opposed the bill, Putin signed it less than 24 hours after receiving it from Parliament, where it passed both houses overwhelmingly.
The law also calls for the closure of non-governmental organizations receiving American funding if their activities are classified as political ? a broad definition many fear could be used to close any NGO that offends the Kremlin.
The law takes effect Jan. 1, the Kremlin said. Children's rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said 52 children who were in the pipeline for U.S. adoption would remain in Russia.
The ban is in response to a measure signed into law by President Barack Obama this month that calls for sanctions against Russians assessed to be human rights violators.
That stems from the case of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was arrested after accusing officials of a $230 million tax fraud. He was repeatedly denied medical treatment and died in jail in 2009. Russian rights groups claimed he was severely beaten.
A prison doctor who was the only official charged in the case was acquitted by a Moscow court on Friday. Although there was no demonstrable connection to Putin's signing the law a few hours later, the timing underlines what critics say is Russia's refusal to responsibly pursue the case.
The adoption ban has angered both Americans and Russians who argue it victimizes children to make a political point, cutting off a route out of frequently dismal orphanages for thousands.
"The king is Herod," popular writer Oleg Shargunov said on his Twitter account, referring to the Roman-appointed king of Judea at the time of Jesus Christ's birth, who the Bible says ordered the massacre of Jewish children to avoid being supplanted by a prophesied newborn king of the Jews.
A painting depicting the massacre and captioned "an appropriate response to the Magnitsky act" spread widely on the Internet. The phrase echoed Putin's characterization of the ban while it was under consideration.
U.S. State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell expressed regret over Putin's signing the law and urged Russia to "allow those children who have already met and bonded with their future parents to finish the necessary legal procedures so that they can join their families."
Vladimir Lukin, head of the Russian Human Rights Commission and a former ambassador to Washington, said he would challenge the law in the Constitutional Court.
The U.S. law galvanized Russian resentment of the United States, which Putin has claimed funded and encouraged the wave of massive anti-government protests that arose last winter.
The Parliament initially considered a relatively similar retaliatory measure, but amendments have expanded it far beyond a tit-for-tat response.
UNICEF estimates that there are about 740,000 children not in parental custody in Russia while about 18,000 Russians are on the waiting list to adopt a child. The U.S. is the biggest destination for adopted Russian children ? more than 60,000 of them have been taken in by Americans over the past two decades.
Russians historically have been less enthusiastic about adopting children than most Western cultures. Putin, along with signing the adoption ban, on Friday issued an order for the government to develop a program to provide more support for adopted children.
Lev Ponomarev, one of Russia's most prominent human rights activists, hinted at that reluctance when he said Parliament members who voted for the bill should take custody of the children who were about to be adopted.
"The moral responsibility lies on them," he told Interfax. "But I don't think that even one child will be taken to be brought up by deputies of the Duma."
Many Russians have been distressed for years by reports of Russian children dying or suffering abuse at the hands of their American adoptive parents. The new Russian law was dubbed the "Dima Yakovlev Bill" after a toddler who died in 2008 when his American adoptive father left him in a car in broiling heat for hours.
In that case, the father was found not guilty of involuntary manslaughter and Russia has complained of acquittals or light sentences in other such cases.
The Investigative Committee, Russia's top investigative body, on Friday complained that its attempts to have the acquittals overturned or reconsidered had been ignored by the United States. Under U.S. law, acquittals are final except in rare cases.
Russians also bristled at how the widespread adoptions appeared to show them as hardhearted or too poor to take care of orphans. Astakhov, the children's ombudsman, charged that well-heeled Americans often got priority over Russians who wanted to adopt.
A few lawmakers even claimed that some Russian children were adopted by Americans only to be used for organ transplants or become sex toys or cannon fodder for the U.S. Army. A spokesman for Russia's dominant Orthodox Church said that children adopted by foreigners and raised outside the church will not enter God's kingdom.
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Mansur Mirovalev and Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow contributed to this story.
Earlier on HuffPost:
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www.Rat-Race-Escape-Artists.com http Hey folks! This is Bolaji from Rat-Race-Escape-Artists.com. And you?re watching the video series ?The 10 Secrets Everyone Wants to Know About Escaping the Rat Race.? This video answers the question: What are the Best Internet Marketing Business Models for Making Money Online? The answers include: 1: Blogging with AdSense 2: The Product Launch Formula 3: The Underachiever Mastery Model 4: The Butterfly Marketing Model 5: The Membership Site (Continuity) Model 6: Affiliate Marketing 7: Cost Per Action / Lead Generation 8: Online Auctions 9: Private Label Rights 10: Flipping Web Sites Get the details on each of these nuggets of advice in this video. If you?d like the full 10-day Bootcamp on Escaping the Rat Race, visit www.Rat-Race-Escape-Artists.com, OR http Let me know what you thought about the video? and what questions you?d like me to answer next about your rat race escape! Let?s get you earning passive income in a systematic and leveraged fashion ? earning affiliate residual income, and avoiding business scams along the way. ============================================ The full video series answers the following questions: ============================================ Q1: What is the formula for making money online? Q2: How can I avoid being scammed by Internet Marketing Offers? Q3: How do I find time to build an online business? Q4: What is the cheapest way to make money online? Q5: What is the fastest way to make money online ? Video Rating: 5 / 5
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Consumer Reports finds the Toyota Prius to be the best overall value for the automotive dollar in its annual Best New-Car Value analysis.
The Prius has the right combination of performance, reliability and low estimated ownership costs of $ .49 cents per mile less than half that of the average car, to unseat the perennial pack leader Honda Fit. The Fit as has held the best new-car value title for the past four years.
Toyota and Lexus models placed at the top of six of the 10 categories that Consumer Reports analyzed. The automakers hybrid cars, in particular, represent excellent values overall, with great fuel economy and reliability along with low depreciation working in their favor. Toyota hybrid models topped three of the categories and placed second, behind the non-hybrid version of the same model, in an additional category.
In creating its annual Best and Worst New-Car-Value list, Consumer Reports mines its performance, reliability, and owner-cost data to calculate a value score for some 200 different vehicles ranging from small cars like the Prius to luxury sedans such as the BMW 750Li.
The Prius may not be the most exciting vehicle to drive, nor the cheapest to purchase, but its extremely reliable, roomy, rides well, gets great fuel economy, and is inexpensive to operate, says Rik Paul, automotive editor at Consumer Reports.
The scores were calculated based on the five-year owner cost for each vehicle, along with Consumer Reports road-test score and the organizations own predicted-reliability. In short, the better a car performs in Consumer Reports road tests and reliability ratings, and the less it costs to own over time, the better its value. The five-year owner cost estimates factor in depreciation, fuel, insurance premiums, interest on financing, maintenance and repairs, and sales tax. Depreciation is by far the largest owner-cost factor.
The 10 vehicle categories Consumer Reports included in this analysis: Small Hatchbacks, Small Sedans, Family Sedans, Upscale Sedans, Luxury Sedans, Sporty Cars/Convertibles, Wagons/Minivans, Small SUVs, Midsized SUVs, and Large/Luxury SUVs.
Some consumers seem to mistake size for value, buying their cars by the pound. But our data shows that rarely pays off. Price and fuel economy are the most important cost factors, and thats where small cars have a big advantage, Paul says.
Consumer Reports analysis shows small cars provide the highest value on average than any other car category, and large and luxury cars and SUVs deliver about 25-percent below-average value. Even the worst small cars tend to deliver about average value, and the best large SUVs and luxury cars rate about average. Usually family sedans deliver value that is 50 percent above the average vehicle. Notably, only one car in this category, the Chrysler 200, rates below average.
Best Value Small Hatchbacks: Toyota Prius Four
Worst Value Small Hatchbacks: Ford Focus SE
Best Value Family Sedan: Toyota Camry Hybrid XLE
Worst Value Family Sedan: Chrysler 200 Limited (V6)
Almost every category Consumer Reports evaluated contained good values, even if theyre not the cheapest vehicles to own. For example, the Lexus RX 350 is a luxury SUV that costs almost $ 50,000 to purchase and is relatively expensive to operate, at 93 cents a mile. But it has an excellent reliability history and offers a lot for the money in terms of features and performance, making it stand out against its competitors.
Best Value Large /Luxury SUV: Lexus RX 350
Worst Value Large /Luxury SUV: Nissan Armada Platinum
Consumer Reports analysis shows that forshoppers seeking space and good value, should consider a wagon, minivan, or small SUV. All three categories offer better-than-average value. The best is the fuel-efficient Toyota Prius V, which offers almost twice the value of an average car, with lots of room, above-average reliability, and very low owner cost, at just 51 cents per mile. And the small Mazda5 minivan isnt far behind.
Best Value Minivan/Wagon: Toyota Prius V Three
Worst Value Minivan/Wagon: Chrysler Town & Country Touring-L
Best Value Small SUV: Honda CR-V EX
Worst Value Small SUV: Mini Cooper Countryman S
No matter what type of car consumers are looking for, Consumer Reports value analysis will help shoppers get the most for their money. The complete rankings for the best and worst value vehicles for all 10 categories are available at http://www.ConsumerReports.org starting December 27 or in the February Issue of Consumer Reports Magazine. .
Consumer Reports is the worlds largest independent product-testing organization. Using its more than 50 labs, auto test center, and survey research center, the nonprofit rates thousands of products and services annually. Founded in 1936, Consumer Reports has over 8 million subscribers to its magazine, website and other publications. Its advocacy division, Consumers Union, works for health reform, food and product safety, financial reform, and other consumer issues in Washington, D.C., the states, and in the marketplace.
Chris Leben hasn't fought in more than a year. After losing to Mark Munoz in November of 2011, he tested positive for a banned painkiller and was suspended for a year. On Saturday, he'll try to get his career back on track against Derek Brunson, a Strikeforce fighter making his UFC debut.
For Leben's return, Affliction designed a shirt featuring graphics from his tattoos.
It has more meaning than your average Affliction design. Unfortunately, the design comes with a high price. Buy it here for $57.99.
Still from Nashville Season 1, Episode 2 with Connie Britton and Charles Esten.
NBC, Oct. 17, 10:50 p.m. ET
In the closing minutes of the second episode of Nashville, fortysomething country star Rayna James and her bandleader/ex-boyfriend Deacon Claybourne perform a quiet duet. ?No One Will Ever Love You? is a song they wrote together two decades back, young and in love. Romantic sparks still clearly crackle between them. But these days Rayna's married to another dude and raising two daughters. Meanwhile, Deacon (whose demons drove Rayna off all those years ago) works hard to stay sober?and even harder to keep his feelings for Rayna under wraps.
The song itself is downright mean. "Don't you try to tell me that you're wanted,"singsRayna,"that you're needed. 'Cause it's not true." She sits close to Deacon on the stage of the cozy Bluebird Cafe, staring into his eyes as he strums his guitar. When she reaches the chorus, it seems almost impossibly cruel?until a redeeming twist of a kicker. "I know why you're lonely. It's time you knew it, too. No one will ever love you. No one will ever love you. No one will ever love you ... like I do."
When it's over, an overcome Rayna tells Deacon she wishes they'd never played it. She runs home to assure her husband that she loves him. But she seems not quite able to convince herself.
I confess I swooned a little, watching from my couch. For one thing, this tune is gorgeous. Written by Steve McEwan and John Paul White, it's proof that TV musicals needn't fall back on stale covers and cheesy staging. (I'm reluctantly peeking at you through my fingers, Glee and Smash.) Here we have a boutique-quality original track, performed in a wholly believable context, that manages to advance the emotional arc of the show.
Most of all, though, I love that these are grown-ups dealing with grown-up shizz. Nashville's far from perfect?its politics plot is a dud and the travails of its younger characters are a mixed bag. But every time I get frustrated with it, Rayna and Deacon reappear with one of these soul-aching moments. Worn denim, weathered faces, paths not taken. Connie Britton with that faraway gaze and that wistful smile. Set it all to song and I'm done. I'm ready to book the next flight, buy a front-yoke shirt with snaps, and belly up to the bar at the Bluebird.
The Great Firewall of China might start requiring ID for admittance. On Monday, China's National People's Congress began discussing a draft decision that would force Internet users to use their real names in order to register for services. The draft decision is, depending on your perspective, a way to protect personal information online, or yet another move by China to restrict freedom of information.
Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth may be celebrating more than Christmas this December! The young couple, who have been engaged for six months, posted holiday photos of themselves sporting adorable Santa hats... and some new rings that look suspiciously like wedding bands. Have Liam and Miley secretly tied the knot?
They called him ?Diogenes the Cynic,? because ?cynic? meant ?dog-like,? and he had a habit of basking naked on the lawn while his fellow philosophers talked on the porch. While they debated the mysteries of the cosmos, Diogenes preferred to soak up some rays ? some have called him the Jimmy Buffett of ancient Greece.
Anyway, one morning, the great philosopher Plato had a stroke of insight. He caught everyone?s attention, gathered a crowd around him, and announced his deduction: ?Man is defined as a hairless, featherless, two-legged animal!? Whereupon Diogenes abruptly leaped up from the lawn, dashed off to the marketplace, and burst back onto the porch carrying a plucked chicken ? which he held aloft and shouted, ?Behold: I give you? Man!?
I?m sure Plato was less than thrilled at this stunt, but the story reminds us that these early philosophers were still hammering out the most basic tenets of the science we now know as taxonomy: The grouping of objects from the world into abstract categories. This technique of chopping up reality wasn?t invented in ancient Greece, though. In fact, as a recent study shows, it?s fundamental to the way our brains work.
Chunks of reality
At the most basic level, we don?t really perceive separate objects at all ? we perceive our nervous systems? responses to a boundless flow of electromagnetic waves and biochemical reactions. Our brains slot certain neural response patterns into sensory pathways we call ?sight,? ?smell? and so on ? but abilities like synesthesia and echolocation show that even the boundaries between our senses can be blurry.
Semantic Space. Image: Gallant lab, UC Berkeley
Still, our brains are talented at picking out certain chunks of sensory experience and associating those chunks with other stimuli. For instance, if you hear purring and feel fur rubbing against your leg, your brain knows to associate that sound and feeling with the fluffy four-legged object you see at your feet ? and to group that whole multisensory chunk under the heading of ?cat.?
What?s more, years of cat experience have taught you that it makes no sense to think of a cat as if it were a piece of furniture, or a truck, or a weather balloon. In other words, an encounter with a cat carries a particular set of meanings for you ? and those meanings determine which areas of your brain will perk up in the presence of a feline.
But where?s the category ?cat? in the brain? And where?s it situated in relation to, say, ?dog? or ?giraffe? ?or just ?mammal?? A team of neuroscientists led by Alexander Huth at UC Berkeley?s Gallant lab decided they?d answer these questions in the most thorough way possible: By capturing brain responses to every kind of object they could dig up.
Chunks in the brain
Those Gallant lab folks are no slouches ? you might remember them as the lab that constructed ?mind videos? of entire scenes?from neural activity in the visual cortex. This time, though, the lab?s ambitions were even broader.
Semantic Map. Image: Gallant lab, UC Berkeley
A research team led by Alex Huth showed volunteers hours of video footage of thousands of everyday objects and scenes ? from cats and birds to cars and thunderstorms ? as the subjects sat in an fMRI scanner. Then the researchers matched up the volunteers? brain activity not only to each object they saw, but also to a whole tree of nested object categories: A taxonomy of the brain?s taxonomy. A vision of a ?continuous semantic space,? where thousands of objects and actions are represented in terms of others.
Huth?s team collected volunteers? reactions to more than 1,300 objects and categories, and arranged these brain responses not only into a tree of object and action categories, but into a map of response gradients across the whole surface of the brain.
And as you can see from the color gradients in that tree diagram to the right (which is also available as an interactive online app), the relationships among our brains? categories are multidimensional. Objects may be more or less ?animal-like,? more or less ?man-made,? and so on ? and in fact, the researchers say they expect to find more subtle response dimensions that gauge an object?s size and speed.
Association and meaning
All this talk of ?dimensions of association? points back to a far more profound idea about how our brains work: We understand the meaning of an object in terms of the meanings of other objects ? other chunks of reality to which our brains have assigned certain characteristics. In the brain?s taxonomy, there are no discrete entries or ?files? ? just associations that are more strongly or more weakly correlated with other associations.
And that idea itself raises deeper quandaries: If associations define what an object or action ?is,? as some neuroscientists have argued, then why does the concept of meaning ? semantic representation ? need to enter the picture at all? Instead of being a special type of mental function, might ?meaning? itself simply be another word for ?association??
The answer to that question won?t be a simple one to find, at least for the foreseeable future. ?I don?t think it?s possible to make a conclusive claim about that from fMRI data,? says Jack Gallant, the lab?s director; ?and anyone who tells you otherwise is mistaken.?
A single three-dimensional pixel ? an fMRI voxel ? represents the activity of around one million neurons, Gallant explains; and at that resolution, it?s impossible to say what exactly the neural activity is encoding. Meaning could depend on association, association might depend on semantic coding, or the relationship between the two might be more nuanced than we can conceive right now.
Whatever that relationship turns out to be, the implication remains: In our brains, meaning and association go hand-in-hand. In the brain, even our most abstract concepts depend on our own ?real-world experiences. That?s an idea that?s infuriated Plato and his followers far more than Diogenes? plucked chicken ? but as Diogenes demonstrated on that long-ago morning, real-world evidence trumps speculation in the end.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) ? More than 200 Utah teachers are expected to pack a convention hall on Thursday for six hours of concealed-weapons training as organizers seek to arm more educators in the aftermath of the Connecticut school shooting.
The Utah Shooting Sports Council said it normally gathers a dozen teachers every year for instruction that's required to legally carry a concealed weapon in public places. The state's leading gun lobby decided to offer teachers the training at no charge to encourage turnout, and it worked.
Organizers who initially capped attendance at 200 were exceeding that number by Wednesday and scrambling to accommodate an overflow crowd.
"Schools are some of the safest places in the world, but I think teachers understand that something has changed ? the sanctity of schools has changed," Clark Aposhian, one of Utah's leading gun instructors, said Wednesday. "Mass shootings may still be rare, but that doesn't help you when the monster comes in."
Gun-rights advocates say teachers can act more quickly than law enforcement in the critical first few minutes to protect children from the kind of shooting that left 20 children and six adults dead Dec. 14 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. In Arizona, Attorney General Tom Horne has proposed amending state law to allow one educator in each school to carry a gun.
Educators say Utah legislators left them with no choice but to accept some guns in schools. State law forbids schools, districts or college campuses from trying to impose their own gun restrictions.
"We're not suggesting that teachers roam the halls for a monster," said Aposhian, chairman of the Utah Shooting Sports Council. "They should lock down the classroom. But a gun is one more option if the shooter comes in."
A major emphasis of the required safety training is that people facing deadly threats should announce they have a gun and retreat or take cover before trying to shoot, he said.
Utah is among few states that let people carry licensed concealed weapons into public schools without exception, the National Conference of State Legislatures says in a 2012 compendium of state gun laws.
Utah educators say they would ban guns if they could and have no way of knowing how many teachers are armed.
"It's a terrible idea," said Carol Lear, a chief lawyer for the Utah Office of Education, who argues teachers could be overpowered for their guns or misfire or cause an accidental shooting. "It's a horrible, terrible, no-good, rotten idea."
___
Information from: The Salt Lake Tribune, http://www.sltrib.com
Drug shortage linked to greater risk of relapse in young Hodgkin lymphoma patientsPublic release date: 26-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Robert Dicks rdicks@lpch.org 650-497-8364 Stanford University Medical Center
STANFORD, Calif. A national drug shortage has been linked to a higher rate of relapse among children, teenagers and young adults with Hodgkin lymphoma enrolled in a national clinical trial, according to research led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
Estimated two-year cancer-free survival for patients enrolled in the study fell from 88 to 75 percent after the drug cyclophosphamide was substituted for mechlorethamine for treatment of patients with intermediate- or high-risk Hodgkin lymphoma. The study was launched before the drug shortages began. The change occurred after a mechlorethamine shortage began in 2009. No study patients have died, but those who relapsed received additional intensive therapy that is associated with higher odds for infertility and other health problems later.
An analysis comparing how patients in each group were faring two years after their cancer diagnoses will appear in the Dec. 27 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. The report provides the first evidence of a drug shortage adversely impacting treatment outcomes in specific patients. St. Jude led the study for a national group that includes the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford; Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children's Hospital; Massachusetts General Hospital; and Maine Medical Center.
In recent years, many patients and caregivers have had their medical care complicated by drug shortages, primarily of generic injectable drugs like mechlorethamine. Mechlorethamine, which has been used in cancer treatment since the 1960s, has only recently become available again.
Cyclophosphamide has been widely used in treatment of both adults and children with Hodgkin lymphoma. Based on earlier studies, the drug was considered a safe and effective alternative to mechlorethamine.
"This is a devastating example of how drug shortages affect patients and why these shortages must be prevented," said Monika Metzger, MD, an associate member of the St. Jude Department of Oncology and the study's principal investigator. "Our results demonstrate that, for many chemotherapy drugs, there are no adequate substitute drugs available."
Past shortages have been resolved in a variety of ways and always before a drug substitution became necessary, said Michael Link, MD, the senior author of the new report. Link is a professor of pediatrics in hematology-oncology at Stanford and a member of the pediatric hematology-oncology service at Packard Children's Hospital. He is also immediate past president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
"This puts a face on the problem of drug shortages and shows that the problem is real, not theoretical. This is about a curative therapy that we were unable to administer because the drug we needed was not available," Link said. "Despite heroic efforts by the drug shortage office of the Food and Drug Administration to solve the shortages of a number of medically necessary drugs, it is clear that patients are still suffering from the unavailability of life-saving drugs. A more systematic solution to the problem is needed."
Amy Billett, MD, a pediatric oncologist at Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Cancer Center in Boston, is the paper's other author.
Hodgkin lymphoma is a cancer of the lymph system and accounts for about 6 percent of childhood cancers. In the United States, about 90 percent of patients will become long-term survivors. Working as the Pediatric Hodgkin Consortium, in 2002 the five institutions involved in this study adopted a seven-drug chemotherapy regimen that included mechlorethamine for the treatment of high-risk pediatric patients. The goal was to preserve high cure rates, but to reduce the risk of second cancers, infertility and other problems associated with the earlier treatments. In 2006, a parallel study was opened for patients with intermediate-risk disease. The risk categories reflect the extent to which cancer has spread, particularly the number and location of lymph nodes involved, plus the presence of unfavorable symptoms of fever, night sweats and unexplained weight loss.
The strategy involved 12 weeks of the seven-drug chemotherapy regimen. Patients also received radiotherapy with the dose based on their response to chemotherapy. When mechlorethamine became unavailable, the protocol was revised to allow the cyclophosphamide substitution.
Outcomes for cancer patients are often measured in terms of cancer-free survival, which is the number of years patients remain free of the disease. When researchers assessed the substitution's impact, they found that estimated disease-free survival was 88 percent for the 181 patients whose treatment included mechlorethamine. It was 75 percent for the 40 patients who received cyclophosphamide instead. The difference led researchers to stop enrolling new patients in the trials.
"We can think of no credible explanation for this dramatic difference in event-free survival other than the drug substitution," the researchers noted. The analysis found that, as a group, patients who received cyclophosphamide had fewer unfavorable symptoms and were more likely to have intermediate-risk, rather than high-risk Hodgkin lymphoma. The patients ranged in age from 3 to 21. Half were age 14 or younger.
Patients who relapsed received additional therapy. Researchers said it is too soon to know if these patients will have the same long-term survival rates as those whose did not relapse. The additional treatment included intensive chemotherapy followed by a stem cell transplant using the patient's own blood-producing stem cells.
###
The Stanford University School of Medicine consistently ranks among the nation's top medical schools, integrating research, medical education, patient care and community service. For more news about the school, please visit http://mednews.stanford.edu. The medical school is part of Stanford Medicine, which includes Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. For information about all three, please visit http://stanfordmedicine.org/about/news.html.
Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford is an internationally recognized 311-bed hospital, research center and leading regional medical network providing the full complement of services for the health of children and expectant mothers. In partnership with the Stanford University School of Medicine, our world-class doctors and nurses deliver innovative, family-centered care in every pediatric and obstetric specialty, tailored to every patient. Packard Children's is annually ranked as one of the nation's best pediatric hospitals by U.S. News & World Report and is the only Northern California children's hospital with specialty programs ranked in the U.S. News Top 10. Learn more about us at www.lpch.org and about our continuing growth at growing.lpch.org. Friend us on Facebook, watch us on YouTube and follow us on Twitter.
Since opening 50 years ago, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital has played a pivotal role in pushing overall U.S. pediatric cancer survival rates from 20 to 80 percent. Founded by the late entertainer Danny Thomas, St. Jude is the first and only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center devoted solely to children. St. Jude is also a leader in research and treatment of life-threatening blood disorders and infectious diseases in children. No family ever pays St. Jude for the care their child receives. To learn more, visit www.stjude.org. Follow us on Twitter @StJudeResearch
Since 1947, Boston Children's Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have provided comprehensive care for children and adolescents with cancer through Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Cancer Center. The two Harvard Medical School affiliates share a clinical staff that delivers inpatient care at Boston Children's and outpatient therapies at Dana-Farber's Jimmy Fund Clinic. The Boston Children's inpatient pediatric cancer service has 33 beds, including 13 designated for stem cell transplant patients.
STANFORD/PACKARD MEDIA CONTACTS: On-call media representative, (650) 723-8222 pager ID #25314; Robert Dicks, (650) 497-8364 or rdicks@lpch.org
ST. JUDE MEDIA CONTACTS: Summer Freeman (901) 595-3061 or summer.freeman@stjude.org; Carrie Strehlau, (901) 595-2295 or carrie.strehlau@st.judge.org
DANA FARBER CONTACT: Bill Schaller at (617) 632-5357 or william_schaller@dfci.harvard.edu
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Drug shortage linked to greater risk of relapse in young Hodgkin lymphoma patientsPublic release date: 26-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Robert Dicks rdicks@lpch.org 650-497-8364 Stanford University Medical Center
STANFORD, Calif. A national drug shortage has been linked to a higher rate of relapse among children, teenagers and young adults with Hodgkin lymphoma enrolled in a national clinical trial, according to research led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
Estimated two-year cancer-free survival for patients enrolled in the study fell from 88 to 75 percent after the drug cyclophosphamide was substituted for mechlorethamine for treatment of patients with intermediate- or high-risk Hodgkin lymphoma. The study was launched before the drug shortages began. The change occurred after a mechlorethamine shortage began in 2009. No study patients have died, but those who relapsed received additional intensive therapy that is associated with higher odds for infertility and other health problems later.
An analysis comparing how patients in each group were faring two years after their cancer diagnoses will appear in the Dec. 27 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. The report provides the first evidence of a drug shortage adversely impacting treatment outcomes in specific patients. St. Jude led the study for a national group that includes the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford; Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children's Hospital; Massachusetts General Hospital; and Maine Medical Center.
In recent years, many patients and caregivers have had their medical care complicated by drug shortages, primarily of generic injectable drugs like mechlorethamine. Mechlorethamine, which has been used in cancer treatment since the 1960s, has only recently become available again.
Cyclophosphamide has been widely used in treatment of both adults and children with Hodgkin lymphoma. Based on earlier studies, the drug was considered a safe and effective alternative to mechlorethamine.
"This is a devastating example of how drug shortages affect patients and why these shortages must be prevented," said Monika Metzger, MD, an associate member of the St. Jude Department of Oncology and the study's principal investigator. "Our results demonstrate that, for many chemotherapy drugs, there are no adequate substitute drugs available."
Past shortages have been resolved in a variety of ways and always before a drug substitution became necessary, said Michael Link, MD, the senior author of the new report. Link is a professor of pediatrics in hematology-oncology at Stanford and a member of the pediatric hematology-oncology service at Packard Children's Hospital. He is also immediate past president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
"This puts a face on the problem of drug shortages and shows that the problem is real, not theoretical. This is about a curative therapy that we were unable to administer because the drug we needed was not available," Link said. "Despite heroic efforts by the drug shortage office of the Food and Drug Administration to solve the shortages of a number of medically necessary drugs, it is clear that patients are still suffering from the unavailability of life-saving drugs. A more systematic solution to the problem is needed."
Amy Billett, MD, a pediatric oncologist at Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Cancer Center in Boston, is the paper's other author.
Hodgkin lymphoma is a cancer of the lymph system and accounts for about 6 percent of childhood cancers. In the United States, about 90 percent of patients will become long-term survivors. Working as the Pediatric Hodgkin Consortium, in 2002 the five institutions involved in this study adopted a seven-drug chemotherapy regimen that included mechlorethamine for the treatment of high-risk pediatric patients. The goal was to preserve high cure rates, but to reduce the risk of second cancers, infertility and other problems associated with the earlier treatments. In 2006, a parallel study was opened for patients with intermediate-risk disease. The risk categories reflect the extent to which cancer has spread, particularly the number and location of lymph nodes involved, plus the presence of unfavorable symptoms of fever, night sweats and unexplained weight loss.
The strategy involved 12 weeks of the seven-drug chemotherapy regimen. Patients also received radiotherapy with the dose based on their response to chemotherapy. When mechlorethamine became unavailable, the protocol was revised to allow the cyclophosphamide substitution.
Outcomes for cancer patients are often measured in terms of cancer-free survival, which is the number of years patients remain free of the disease. When researchers assessed the substitution's impact, they found that estimated disease-free survival was 88 percent for the 181 patients whose treatment included mechlorethamine. It was 75 percent for the 40 patients who received cyclophosphamide instead. The difference led researchers to stop enrolling new patients in the trials.
"We can think of no credible explanation for this dramatic difference in event-free survival other than the drug substitution," the researchers noted. The analysis found that, as a group, patients who received cyclophosphamide had fewer unfavorable symptoms and were more likely to have intermediate-risk, rather than high-risk Hodgkin lymphoma. The patients ranged in age from 3 to 21. Half were age 14 or younger.
Patients who relapsed received additional therapy. Researchers said it is too soon to know if these patients will have the same long-term survival rates as those whose did not relapse. The additional treatment included intensive chemotherapy followed by a stem cell transplant using the patient's own blood-producing stem cells.
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The Stanford University School of Medicine consistently ranks among the nation's top medical schools, integrating research, medical education, patient care and community service. For more news about the school, please visit http://mednews.stanford.edu. The medical school is part of Stanford Medicine, which includes Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. For information about all three, please visit http://stanfordmedicine.org/about/news.html.
Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford is an internationally recognized 311-bed hospital, research center and leading regional medical network providing the full complement of services for the health of children and expectant mothers. In partnership with the Stanford University School of Medicine, our world-class doctors and nurses deliver innovative, family-centered care in every pediatric and obstetric specialty, tailored to every patient. Packard Children's is annually ranked as one of the nation's best pediatric hospitals by U.S. News & World Report and is the only Northern California children's hospital with specialty programs ranked in the U.S. News Top 10. Learn more about us at www.lpch.org and about our continuing growth at growing.lpch.org. Friend us on Facebook, watch us on YouTube and follow us on Twitter.
Since opening 50 years ago, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital has played a pivotal role in pushing overall U.S. pediatric cancer survival rates from 20 to 80 percent. Founded by the late entertainer Danny Thomas, St. Jude is the first and only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center devoted solely to children. St. Jude is also a leader in research and treatment of life-threatening blood disorders and infectious diseases in children. No family ever pays St. Jude for the care their child receives. To learn more, visit www.stjude.org. Follow us on Twitter @StJudeResearch
Since 1947, Boston Children's Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have provided comprehensive care for children and adolescents with cancer through Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Cancer Center. The two Harvard Medical School affiliates share a clinical staff that delivers inpatient care at Boston Children's and outpatient therapies at Dana-Farber's Jimmy Fund Clinic. The Boston Children's inpatient pediatric cancer service has 33 beds, including 13 designated for stem cell transplant patients.
STANFORD/PACKARD MEDIA CONTACTS: On-call media representative, (650) 723-8222 pager ID #25314; Robert Dicks, (650) 497-8364 or rdicks@lpch.org
ST. JUDE MEDIA CONTACTS: Summer Freeman (901) 595-3061 or summer.freeman@stjude.org; Carrie Strehlau, (901) 595-2295 or carrie.strehlau@st.judge.org
DANA FARBER CONTACT: Bill Schaller at (617) 632-5357 or william_schaller@dfci.harvard.edu
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Public release date: 26-Dec-2012
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