Romney talks on his iPhone on his campaign bus in Florida (Charles Dharapak/AP)
DUNEDIN, Fla.?If Mitt Romney wins the Florida primary, as polls here suggest he will, much of the credit will go to his decision over the past 10 days to relentlessly hammer Newt Gingrich for his ties to Freddie Mac, his ethics drama as Speaker of the House, and his subsequent resignation after the 1998 midterm elections.
"Speaker Gingrich, he's not feeling very excited these days," Romney told a crowd of several hundred people gathered at an outdoor pavilion here Monday, some of whom let out a mock "awwww" in response. "I know. It's sad isn't it ... He's been flailing around a bit, trying to go after me for one thing or the other. You just watch and shake your head. It's been kind of painfully revealing to watch."
But Romney's prospects in Florida have also been helped by?his ability to neutralize?at least for now?what is probably his biggest liability heading into Nevada and other key voting states: His wealth.
No other subject seems more personally awkward for Romney, who has struggled to talk about the fact that he's one of the richest men in America. For months, Romney has sought to downplay his wealth and cast himself as more of an everyman who flies Southwest Airlines and stops along the campaign trail at fast food joints like McDonalds and Carl's Jr.
One top supporter who has known Romney for years but declined to allow his name to be used, says Romney has long been "uncomfortable" when speaking about money.
"He's rich. Everybody knows he's rich. It's not a secret," the supporter told Yahoo News. "But what I think what doesn't come across is that he's also modest. He doesn't like talking about his money, which is why this is has been such a difficult issue for him."
In Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, Romney's stump speech was filled with lines aiming to connect with average people?lines that did not always serve their intended purpose. In New Hampshire, Romney got into trouble when he spoke about knowing what it's like to worry about being fired.
His opponents?both Democratic and Republican?have seized on Romney's throwaway comments on the trail to paint him as out of touch with average voters. That includes his offer at a debate to bet Rick Perry $10,000, his argument?that "corporations are people," and his suggestion, made as he was exiting a press availability in South Carolina, that the more than $374,000 in speaking fees he received in 2010 was "not very much."
In an interview with Univision last week, host Jorge Ramos's first question was about Romney's wealth.
"Governor, how much money do you have?" Ramos asked.
Romney, who wore an awkward smile, replied, "Well, you tell me, and I'll tell you."
When Ramos pointed out he wasn't running for president, Romney tried to dodge the question by pointing to forms he filed when declaring his candidacy.
"I actually disclosed in a financial disclosure statement all of the assets which I own, and I think the estimate in there is a pretty wide range, it's been widely reported, and my net worth is within that number and, frankly, it's not something?" Romney said.
"Within $250 million?" Ramos interrupted.
"Well, it's between a $150 and about $200 and some odd million.?I think that's what the estimates are," Romney replied, suggesting he wasn't quite sure how much money he has.
He quickly added, trying to get on message, "By the way, I didn't inherit that ? My parents gave me a lot of great things. They gave me the privilege of being born in this country, the privilege of having a mom and a dad that cared for me and taught me values. I'm a man of faith, as well, but when they passed away, what they sent to me I gave to charity and to my children."
"You inherited no money?" Ramos interrupted.
"Well, I inherited no money," Romney replied. "What my wife and I have, we earned, and we earned it by helping start businesses, by being successful in the businesses that I ran, and I'm proud of the fact that we were able to contribute in some small way to creating tens of thousands of jobs, actually over 100,000 jobs for middle income Americans."
Romney offered a more forceful defense of his wealth at a debate Thursday?after being questioned about attacks by Gingrich on his overseas investments, including holdings in the Cayman Islands and a bank account, since closed, in Switzerland.
Noting that his investments are in a blind trust to avoid conflicts of interest, Romney admitted he held overseas accounts but had paid full U.S. taxes.
"There's nothing wrong with that," he said. "And I know that there may be some who's try to make a big deal of that ? But l think it's important for people to make sure we don't castigate individuals who've been successful, and ? by innuendo suggest there's something wrong with being successful and having investments."
"Let's put behind this idea of attacking me because of my investments or my money," Romney went on to say. "And let's get Republicans to say, you know what, what you've accomplished in your life shouldn't be seen as a detriment. It should be seen as an asset to help America."
Romney's more forceful message came, perhaps not coincidentally, after he hired a new debate coach: Republican strategist Brett O'Donnell, a former adviser to John McCain and Sarah Palin, who had been working for Michele Bachmann's campaign until she quit the race.
Speaking in the spin room after the debate, O'Donnell was cagey about how the campaign was coaching Romney to speak about his personal wealth. But he called Romney's response one of the "strongest moments" of his campaign.
"No apologies? that's what America is about," O'Donnell said, paraphrasing Romney's answer. "Some of that is in the weeds for most people ? and sure, there might be some people who don't relate, but making no apologies for success ? For Republicans that ought to be aspirational."
Yet perhaps the most telling sign of how big a vulnerability Romney's wealth remains for him is that he has not repeated that defense on the campaign trail in recent days.
Romney has also dropped his awkward attempts to connect with voters?instead focusing much of his stump speech on attacking Gingrich and President Barack Obama.
The scrutiny of Romney's wealth is likely to increase in Nevada, a state where unemployment is at 13 percent?one of the highest rates in the country.
On Monday, the Gingrich campaign emailed reporters links to excerpts of stories about Romney's wealth, noting his worth while also linking to awkward gaffes on the campaign trail?including a stop in Florida last year where the candidate joked with a group of unemployed workers that he is "also unemployed." The email's subject line: "More troubling questions about Romney's finances."
But on the trail, Romney continues to try and be the average guy. On Saturday, while campaigning along Florida's Gulf coast, the candidate dropped by a McDonalds, accompanied by a New York Times photographer and a trailed by an ABC News crew.
He ordered a value meal with two burgers, no cheese, small fries and a Coke.
Read more coverage of the?2012 Florida primary at Yahoo News.
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Many bodies make 1 coherent burst of lightPublic release date: 30-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: David Ruth david@rice.edu 713-348-6327 Rice University
Rice University researchers first to see superfluorescence from solid-state material
In a flash, the world changed for Tim Noe and for physicists who study what they call many-body problems.
The Rice University graduate student was the first to see, in the summer of 2010, proof of a theory that solid-state materials are capable of producing an effect known as superfluorescence.
That can only happen when "many bodies" in this case, electron-hole pairs created in a semiconductor decide to cooperate.
Noe, a student of Rice physicist Junichiro Kono, and their research team used high-intensity laser pulses, a strong magnetic field and very cold temperatures to create the conditions for superfluorescence in a stack of 15 undoped quantum wells. The wells were made of indium, gallium and arsenic and separated by barriers of gallium-arsenide (GaAs). The researchers' results were reported this week in the journal Nature Physics.
Noe spent weeks at the only facility with the right combination of gear to carry out such an experiment, the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University. There, he placed the device in an ultracold (as low as 5 kelvins) chamber, pumped up the magnetic field (which effectively makes the "many body" particles the electron-hole pairs more sensitive and controllable) and fired a strong laser pulse at the array.
"When you shine light on a semiconductor with a photon energy larger than the band gap, you can create electrons in the conduction band and holes in the valence band. They become conducting," said Kono, a Rice professor of electrical and computer engineering and in physics and astronomy. "The electrons and holes recombine which means they disappear and emit light. One electron-hole pair disappears and one photon comes out. This process is called photoluminescence."
The Rice experiment acted just that way, but pumping strong laser light into the layers created a cascade among the quantum wells. "What Tim discovered is that in these extreme conditions, with an intense pulse of light on the order of 100 femtoseconds (quadrillionths of a second), you create many, many electron-hole pairs. Then you wait for hundreds of picoseconds (mere trillionths of a second) and a very strong pulse comes out," Kono said.
In the quantum world, that's a long gap. Noe attributes that "interminable" wait of trillionths of a second to the process going on inside the quantum wells. There, the 8-nanometer-thick layers soaked up energy from the laser as it bored in and created what the researchers called a magneto-plasma, a state consisting of a large number of electron-hole pairs. These initially incoherent pairs suddenly line up with each other.
"We're pumping (light) to where absorption's only occurring in the GaAs layers," Noe said. "Then these electrons and holes fall into the well, and the light hits another GaAs layer and another well, and so on. The stack just increases the amount of light that's absorbed." The electrons and holes undergo many scattering processes that leave them in the wells with no coherence, he said. But as a result of the exchange of photons from spontaneous emission, a large, macroscopic coherence develops.
Like a capacitor in an electrical circuit, the wells become saturated and, as the researchers wrote, "decay abruptly" and release the stored charge as a giant pulse of coherent radiation.
"What's unique about this is the delay time between when we create the population of electron-hole pairs and when the burst happens. Macroscopic coherence builds up spontaneously during this delay," Noe said.
Kono said the basic phenomenon of superfluorescence has been seen for years in molecular and atomic gases but wasn't sought in a solid-state material until recently. The researchers now feel such superfluorescence can be fine-tuned. "Eventually we want to observe the same phenomenon at room temperature, and at much lower magnetic fields, maybe even without a magnetic field," he said.
Even better, Kono said, it may be possible to create superfluorescent pulses with any desired wavelength in solid-state materials, powered by electrical rather than light energy.
The researchers said they expect the paper to draw serious interest from their peers in a variety of disciplines, including condensed matter physics; quantum optics; atomic, molecular and optical physics; semiconductor optoelectronics; quantum information science; and materials science and engineering.
There's much work to be done, Kono said. "There are several puzzles that we don't understand," he said. "One thing is a spectral shift over time: The wavelength of the burst is actually changing as a function of time when it comes out. It's very weird, and that has never been seen."
Noe also observed superfluorescent emission with several distinct peaks in the time domain, another mystery to be investigated.
###
The paper's co-authors include Rice postdoctoral researcher Ji-Hee Kim; former graduate student Jinho Lee and Professor David Reitze of the University of Florida, Gainesville; researchers Yongrui Wang and Aleksander Wojcik and Professor Alexey Belyanin of Texas A&M University; and Stephen McGill, an assistant scholar and scientist at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University, Tallahassee.
Support for the research came from the National Science Foundation, with support for work at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory from the state of Florida.
Read the abstract at http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nphys2207.html
Rice University researchers have confirmed a long-held theory that solid-state materials are capable of producing an effect known as superfluorescence. From left: Rice physicist Junichiro Kono, postdoctoral researcher Ji-Hee Kim and graduate student Tim Noe. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)
Pumping laser pulses into a stack of quantum wells created an effect physicists had long sought but not seen until now: superfluorescence in a solid-state material. The Rice University lab of physicist Junichiro Kono reported the results in Nature Physics. (Credit: Tim Noe/Rice University)
Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is known for its "unconventional wisdom." With 3,708 undergraduates and 2,374 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is less than 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life multiple times by the Princeton Review and No. 4 for "best value" among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://www.rice.edu/nationalmedia/Rice.pdf .
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Many bodies make 1 coherent burst of lightPublic release date: 30-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: David Ruth david@rice.edu 713-348-6327 Rice University
Rice University researchers first to see superfluorescence from solid-state material
In a flash, the world changed for Tim Noe and for physicists who study what they call many-body problems.
The Rice University graduate student was the first to see, in the summer of 2010, proof of a theory that solid-state materials are capable of producing an effect known as superfluorescence.
That can only happen when "many bodies" in this case, electron-hole pairs created in a semiconductor decide to cooperate.
Noe, a student of Rice physicist Junichiro Kono, and their research team used high-intensity laser pulses, a strong magnetic field and very cold temperatures to create the conditions for superfluorescence in a stack of 15 undoped quantum wells. The wells were made of indium, gallium and arsenic and separated by barriers of gallium-arsenide (GaAs). The researchers' results were reported this week in the journal Nature Physics.
Noe spent weeks at the only facility with the right combination of gear to carry out such an experiment, the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University. There, he placed the device in an ultracold (as low as 5 kelvins) chamber, pumped up the magnetic field (which effectively makes the "many body" particles the electron-hole pairs more sensitive and controllable) and fired a strong laser pulse at the array.
"When you shine light on a semiconductor with a photon energy larger than the band gap, you can create electrons in the conduction band and holes in the valence band. They become conducting," said Kono, a Rice professor of electrical and computer engineering and in physics and astronomy. "The electrons and holes recombine which means they disappear and emit light. One electron-hole pair disappears and one photon comes out. This process is called photoluminescence."
The Rice experiment acted just that way, but pumping strong laser light into the layers created a cascade among the quantum wells. "What Tim discovered is that in these extreme conditions, with an intense pulse of light on the order of 100 femtoseconds (quadrillionths of a second), you create many, many electron-hole pairs. Then you wait for hundreds of picoseconds (mere trillionths of a second) and a very strong pulse comes out," Kono said.
In the quantum world, that's a long gap. Noe attributes that "interminable" wait of trillionths of a second to the process going on inside the quantum wells. There, the 8-nanometer-thick layers soaked up energy from the laser as it bored in and created what the researchers called a magneto-plasma, a state consisting of a large number of electron-hole pairs. These initially incoherent pairs suddenly line up with each other.
"We're pumping (light) to where absorption's only occurring in the GaAs layers," Noe said. "Then these electrons and holes fall into the well, and the light hits another GaAs layer and another well, and so on. The stack just increases the amount of light that's absorbed." The electrons and holes undergo many scattering processes that leave them in the wells with no coherence, he said. But as a result of the exchange of photons from spontaneous emission, a large, macroscopic coherence develops.
Like a capacitor in an electrical circuit, the wells become saturated and, as the researchers wrote, "decay abruptly" and release the stored charge as a giant pulse of coherent radiation.
"What's unique about this is the delay time between when we create the population of electron-hole pairs and when the burst happens. Macroscopic coherence builds up spontaneously during this delay," Noe said.
Kono said the basic phenomenon of superfluorescence has been seen for years in molecular and atomic gases but wasn't sought in a solid-state material until recently. The researchers now feel such superfluorescence can be fine-tuned. "Eventually we want to observe the same phenomenon at room temperature, and at much lower magnetic fields, maybe even without a magnetic field," he said.
Even better, Kono said, it may be possible to create superfluorescent pulses with any desired wavelength in solid-state materials, powered by electrical rather than light energy.
The researchers said they expect the paper to draw serious interest from their peers in a variety of disciplines, including condensed matter physics; quantum optics; atomic, molecular and optical physics; semiconductor optoelectronics; quantum information science; and materials science and engineering.
There's much work to be done, Kono said. "There are several puzzles that we don't understand," he said. "One thing is a spectral shift over time: The wavelength of the burst is actually changing as a function of time when it comes out. It's very weird, and that has never been seen."
Noe also observed superfluorescent emission with several distinct peaks in the time domain, another mystery to be investigated.
###
The paper's co-authors include Rice postdoctoral researcher Ji-Hee Kim; former graduate student Jinho Lee and Professor David Reitze of the University of Florida, Gainesville; researchers Yongrui Wang and Aleksander Wojcik and Professor Alexey Belyanin of Texas A&M University; and Stephen McGill, an assistant scholar and scientist at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University, Tallahassee.
Support for the research came from the National Science Foundation, with support for work at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory from the state of Florida.
Read the abstract at http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nphys2207.html
Rice University researchers have confirmed a long-held theory that solid-state materials are capable of producing an effect known as superfluorescence. From left: Rice physicist Junichiro Kono, postdoctoral researcher Ji-Hee Kim and graduate student Tim Noe. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)
Pumping laser pulses into a stack of quantum wells created an effect physicists had long sought but not seen until now: superfluorescence in a solid-state material. The Rice University lab of physicist Junichiro Kono reported the results in Nature Physics. (Credit: Tim Noe/Rice University)
Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is known for its "unconventional wisdom." With 3,708 undergraduates and 2,374 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is less than 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life multiple times by the Princeton Review and No. 4 for "best value" among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://www.rice.edu/nationalmedia/Rice.pdf .
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
BEIJING ? Chinese state media say that none of the 29 Chinese workers abducted after an attack in a volatile region of Sudan have been freed despite reports saying some of the workers have been released.
The official Xinhua News Agency said Tuesday that the 29 road workers are still being held. It says 18 others fled, and 17 of those were rescued. One is still missing.
The workers were abducted Saturday by militants in a remote region in Sudan's south. Sudanese state media said Monday that 14 of them had been freed.
The Chinese ambassador to Sudan, Luo Xiaoguang, said on Chinese state television that anti-government rebels attacked the road project the Chinese were working on.
Flavor Flav’s daughter Dazayna was arrested in Las Vegas on Sunday following an alleged domestic dispute. Officials were called to the rapper’s home after an argument between the 19 year old and her stepbrother allegedly turned violent. The Flavor of Love star tried to intervene and break up the fight but to no avail, prompting [...]
WASHINGTON ? The lineup of weapons the Pentagon has picked to fit President Barack Obama's new forward-looking defense strategy, called "Priorities for 21st Century Defense," features relics of the past.
They include the Air Force's venerable B-52 bomber, whose current model entered service shortly before Obama was born. There is the even older U-2 spy plane, which began flying in 1955 and burst into the spotlight in May 1960 when Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union.
When Obama went to the Pentagon on Jan. 5 to announce his new defense strategy he said that as the U.S. shifts from a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan it will "get rid of outdated Cold War-era systems." He was not specific. But when the first details of the Pentagon's 2013 budget plan were announced Thursday, it was clear that some prominent remaining Cold War-era "systems" will live on.
That includes not just the B-52 bomber and the U-2 spy plane, but also the foundation of U.S. nuclear deterrence strategy: a "triad" of nuclear weapons that can be launched from land, sea, and air. That concept, credited by many for preventing nuclear conflict throughout the Cold War, is now seen by some arms control experts as the kind of outdated structure that the United States can afford to get rid of.
Some think the U.S. should do away with at least one leg of that "triad," perhaps the bomber role. That would not just save money and clear the way for larger reductions in the number of U.S. nuclear weapons ? an Obama goal in line with his April 2009 pledge to seek the elimination of nuclear weapons.
Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said recently that maintaining the current structure of American nuclear forces was "not in keeping with the modern world." He and like-minded lawmakers argue that nuclear weapons play no role in deterring threats such as global terrorists.
The U.S. now has about 5,000 operational nuclear weapons, about half as many as a decade ago. They can be launched from ballistic missile submarines, from underground silos housing intercontinental ballistic missiles, and from B-52 and B-2 bombers at air bases in Louisiana, North Dakota and Missouri.
The Air Force, which provides the land and air legs of the triad, argues for preserving that Cold War-era configuration.
"It remains our conviction that as you go down (in numbers of nuclear weapons), the triad actually becomes more important," Gen. Norton Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff, told reporters Friday. "The diversity, the variety, the attributes associated with each leg of the triad reinforce each other to a greater degree."
Both the B-52 and the B-2 are capable of doing more than carrying nuclear weapons. The B-52 has been modernized many times and is now used in a variety of roles, including close-air support of troops in conflict and can carry missiles, bombs and mines. The first of the current H models entered service in May 1961.
The land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force dates to 1959. Ballistic missile subs, known as "boomers," were first launched in 1960; the current Ohio-class fleet dates to 1981.
The administration is nearing completion of an internal review of how many nuclear weapons are required to meet today's security needs; that process will lead to decisions on whether to reshape the nuclear arsenal. That effort is linked to consultations with NATO allies on whether to withdraw the remaining U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe, an arrangement that also is rooted in the Cold War. Also at play is how to set the stage for a new round of nuclear reduction talks with Russia.
The only move the Pentagon is making on the nuclear weapons front in the 2013 budget is a proposed two-year delay in development of a new generation of submarines to replace those how equipped with Trident nuclear missiles.
The Arms Control Association, which favors cutting nuclear weapons, estimates that the new fleet of ballistic missile submarines would cost $350 billion to build and would last for 50 years. It advocates shrinking the number of subs to eight, which is says would save $27 billion over 10 years.
Laicie Olson, senior policy analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, said in an interview Friday that she was surprised, given Obama's commitment to reducing the number of nuclear weapons, that the administration is not using its 2013 defense budget to take substantial steps in that direction.
"All of these things are sticking around," she said, referring also to the U-2 spy plane, which was to have been retired in 2015 and replaced by a high-tech successor, the Global Hawk, which is flown without a pilot aboard.
Preserving such Cold War-era weapons "actually seems like the opposite of what the president set out to do," she said.
The Pentagon announced Thursday that the Global Hawk turned out to be a disappointment and no cheaper to use, so it is being canceled. As a result, the Air Force is extending the lifespan of the U-2, nicknamed "Angel" by Kelly Johnson, the Lockheed engineer who helped design the high-altitude spy plane.
Since 1994 the Air Force has spent $1.7 billion to modernize the U-2, whose claims to fame include the October 1962 flights over Cuba that confirmed the presence of Soviet nuclear missiles, touching off the Cuban missile crisis.
___
Online:
Pentagon: http://tinyurl.com/84ouz2u
Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation: http://armscontrolcenter.org/
Arms Control Association: http://www.armscontrol.org
___
Robert Burns can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/robertburnsAP
Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks in Delray Beach, Fla., Friday, Jan. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks in Delray Beach, Fla., Friday, Jan. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, campaigns at Lanco Paint Company in Orlando, Fla., Friday, Jan. 27, 2012. Romney and Gingrich square off over immigration and other issues as they look to woo Hispanics a day after a feisty, final debate before Tuesday?s Florida primary. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
SARASOTA, Fla. (AP) ? Newt Gingrich has staked his presidential bid on one idea: that he is best positioned to defeat President Barack Obama. Even some of his supporters seem to be struggling to buy the former House speaker's claim, an indication that chief rival Mitt Romney's efforts to undercut him may be working.
"Beating Obama is more important than everything else," Patrick Roehl, a 51-year-old computer software engineer, said in the midst of a packed Gingrich rally inside a Sarasota airport hangar this week. "Can Newt win? I'm not sure. He's got a lot of high negatives. The elections are won and lost in the middle. I'm not sure he appeals to the middle."
John Grainger, a 44-year-old assistant golf pro, doesn't like Romney. But he's having trouble shaking skepticism about Gingrich.
"I want to be a Newt supporter," he said. "This guy's going to have the guts to stand up and speak his piece ? no holds barred." But Grainger said he wasn't quite ready to back the former House speaker.
Interviews with more than a dozen Republican voters at Gingrich's overflowing rallies this week suggest that while many Florida voters love his brash style as they look for someone to take it to Obama, they also have lingering doubts about whether the Republican's intellectual bomb-throwing alone will make him the strongest Obama opponent.
Romney and his allies have spent a week working to stoke those doubts with Florida Republicans ahead of Tuesday's primary. And the GOP's establishment wing has started to help the former Massachusetts governor make that case by castigating Gingrich at every turn.
On television and on the campaign trail, Romney and his allies have steadily highlighted Gingrich's liabilities ? consulting contracts and ethics investigations among them. And they've suggested that more baggage could emerge in the fall, when the Republican nominee would be at the height of a general election battle against Obama.
"In the case of the speaker, he's got some records which could represent an October surprise," Romney said this week, referring to Gingrich's consulting work and ethics allegations when he was in the House. "We could see an October surprise a day from Newt Gingrich."
An outside group dedicated to helping Romney has spent almost $9 million on Florida television advertising, including a massive $4 million investment this week alone, to make the case even more explicitly.
"Newt Gingrich's tough talk sounds good, but Newt has tons of baggage. How will he ever beat Obama?" says the new ad from the so-called super PAC, Restore Our Future.
Gingrich, to be sure, is not letting such criticism go unanswered. He's telling everyone ? on the trail, in television interviews, on conference calls and in fundraising messages ? that he alone can defeat Obama. He points to his 12 percentage point victory in the South Carolina primary as proof.
Exit polling there showed that the majority of Republican voters, 51 percent, said that Gingrich was better suited to defeat the Democratic president.
"Their highest value was beating Obama," Gingrich told evangelical voters this week. "And if they thought Romney was the only person who could beat Obama, then they would swallow a lie. But the minute they thought there were two people who could beat Obama, they suddenly turned and said, Well, you know, maybe we should be for Newt."
Polls suggest that Gingrich could defeat Romney in Florida, a surge fueled partly by growing support from the tea party movement and continued anti-Romney sentiment. Gingrich drew massive crowds at venues across Florida this week.
But in those swelling crowds were conservatives who said they were drawn less by Gingrich's electability than his fiery rhetoric.
"He's a fighter. Mitt, I think, is too wishy-washy," said Dominique Boscia, a 43-year-old unemployed woman from Lakewood Ranch. "I like feisty people. I like people who have spunk."
That's certainly Gingrich. For months, he has used aggressive debate performances to fuel his underdog candidacy. He has consistently thrilled conservatives by promising to take the fight directly to Obama in a series of free-form debates modeled after the 1860 meetings between Illinois Senate candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas.
Should Obama refuse, Gingrich says he'll follow the president on the campaign trail until he agrees.
That gets good applause lines at rallies. But a closer look at polling suggests that a debate beat down doesn't necessarily mean Gingrich can beat the president in an election that will include independents and Democrats.
Gingrich struggled among independents in a recent Washington Post-ABC News national poll, in which 53 percent gave him unfavorable marks and just 22 percent had a favorable opinion of the former House speaker. While Romney has typically polled better among independents, the poll ? conducted between Jan. 18 and 22 ? found virtually no difference: 51 percent of independents viewed him unfavorably, compared with 23 with favorable views.
But when all Florida voters, including independents and Democrats, are asked to weigh in, Romney appears to have a strong advantage over Gingrich, according to a poll conducted by Suffolk University-WSVN-TV Miami. Romney would defeat Obama here 47 percent to 42 percent; Gingrich would lose, earning just 40 percent to Obama's 49 percent of likely Florida general election voters.
THURSDAY, Jan. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers who identified a new genetic signature associated with bile duct cancer say their discovery could lead to targeted treatment for the deadly cancer.
The team at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center screened samples from 287 patients with gastrointestinal tumors and found that growth-enhancing mutations in two genes (IDH1 and IDH2) may account for nearly one-fourth of bile duct tumors that develop in the liver.
Mutations in IDH1 were found in 13 percent of all bile duct tumors and in 23 percent of those within the liver itself. Mutations in IDH2 were less common.
It may be possible to develop drugs that target this mutation in order to control tumor growth, they said.
The findings were published online in The Oncologist.
Bile duct cancer occurs in a duct that carries bile from the liver to the small intestine.
"Patients with bile duct cancer have a generally poor prognosis. Most of them are diagnosed with advanced or metastatic disease, so surgical resection [removal] is not feasible," study co-senior author Dr. Andrew Zhu, director of Liver Cancer Research at the MGH Cancer Center, said in a hospital news release.
"Identifying this new and relatively common mutation in intrahepatic [within the liver] bile duct cancer may have significant implications for the diagnosis, prognosis and therapy of patients whose tumors harbor this mutation," Zhu added.
Currently, there are no drugs that target IDH mutations, but extensive efforts are underway to develop such drugs, the researchers say.
Each year in the United States, 12,000 people are diagnosed with cancers of the gallbladder and bile duct, but only 10 percent of those cancers are discovered early enough for successful surgical treatment. Average survival, even with chemotherapy, is less than a year.
More information
The American Cancer Society has more about bile duct cancer.
Oklahoma State guard Le'Bryan Nash celebrates with fans following a 27-point performance in Oklahoma State's 79-72 win over Missouri in an NCAA college basketball game in Stillwater, Okla., Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012. (AP Photo/Brody Schmidt)
Oklahoma State guard Le'Bryan Nash celebrates with fans following a 27-point performance in Oklahoma State's 79-72 win over Missouri in an NCAA college basketball game in Stillwater, Okla., Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012. (AP Photo/Brody Schmidt)
Oklahoma State state fans celebrate on Eddie Sutton Court after defeating Missouri 79-72 following an NCAA college basketball game in Stillwater, Okla., Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012. (AP Photo/Brody Schmidt)
Oklahoma State center Philip Jurick, right, shoots over Missouri forward Ricardo Ratliffe (10) during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game in Stillwater, Okla., Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012. (AP Photo/Brody Schmidt)
Oklahoma State guard Keiton Page, bottom, and Missouri guard Phil Pressey, top, struggle for a loose ball during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game in Stillwater, Okla., Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012. (AP Photo/Brody Schmidt)
Missouri forward Ricardo Ratliffe, left, blocks a shot from Oklahoma State guard Brian Williams, center, while Missouri guard Marcus Denmon (12) defends during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game in Stillwater, Okla., Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012. (AP Photo/Brody Schmidt)
STILLWATER, Okla. (AP) ? Keiton Page tried to explain to his Oklahoma State teammates the sensation of fans rushing the Gallagher-Iba Arena court to celebrate a big upset.
With freshman swingman Le'Bryan Nash flashing the brilliance that made him a McDonald's All-American, they got to experience it for themselves.
Nash scored a career-high 27 points, Brian Williams added a career-best 22 and Oklahoma State knocked off No. 2 Missouri 79-72 on Wednesday night, handing the Tigers their second loss of the season.
"Le'Bryan played at a very high speed tonight, a very high gear. All of his moves were a little bit more explosive," Cowboys coach Travis Ford said.
Nash scored 13 points during a 17-4 burst that sent the Cowboys (10-10, 3-4 Big 12) into the lead in the final 4 minutes and the Tigers didn't have a response.
Nash hit a jumper and a 3-pointer to get it going, then nailed another 3 from the left side to give the Cowboys a 65-64 lead with 3:23 to play. He connected on another 29 seconds later and ran to the opposite end of the court when Missouri (18-2, 5-2) called timeout to encourage a student section that was already hopping up and down to bring it on.
When the clock hit zero, the students rushed the court and huddled around Oklahoma State's players at midcourt.
Earlier in the week, Page fielded questions from his younger teammates about his experiences from an upset of top-ranked Kansas two seasons ago, hoping for a similar result.
"A lot of them just wanted to know what it was like for the students to run on the floor," Page said. "My answer's a lot different for them. I'm 5-9. They can see, they can breathe when it happens."
Ricardo Ratliffe had 25 points and 12 rebounds to lead Missouri, which allowed the Cowboys to shoot a season-best 59 percent. They hadn't surpassed 49 percent against an NCAA opponent all season.
"I thought that our focus was not where it needed to be in order to win a game like this on the road," Tigers coach Frank Haith said.
Missouri got steals on three straight possessions to fuel a 10-2 run in the first 5 minutes of the second half, taking a 48-41 lead when Ratliffe waited out two defenders leaping prematurely to block his shot at the left block before scoring the basket.
Ratliffe's three-point play off a spinning bucket at the right block gave the Tigers their largest lead at 53-45 with 14:22 to play, but it didn't last.
"I expected it to be a hard-fought game," Haith said. "This is Big 12 basketball. There's good players.
"We didn't do what we needed to do to finish the game out once we got control of the game."
Nash had a bucket off a baseline inbounds pass and another off a post-up move against Kim English to get Oklahoma State within striking distance.
Markel Brown added another energizing play with a right-handed dunk off an alley-oop but got called for his second technical foul for getting in Matt Pressey's face and was ejected. Marcus Denmon hit the two free throws from the technical and Ratliffe added two more off a third-chance opportunity to push the lead back to 60-53, but the Cowboys didn't miss a beat.
After Nash's big spurt, Williams had a two-handed dunk in transition and a three-point play to help preserve the lead down the stretch.
Nash had scored 21 points four times this season but was coming off a rough performance when he had only four points and got himself into foul trouble.
"I was trying to get aggressive in the second half," Nash said. "I talked to my coaches and they were like, 'Don't try to let the ball come to you. Go get the ball.'
"Basically, that's what my teammates did. My teammates got me the ball in good situations and once it started rolling, the shots started falling."
Ford credited a renewed commitment from Nash, who stuck around for extra shots following shootaround instead of joining his teammates to eat.
"When he's shooting like that, give him the ball every single time. He was making big plays on the offensive end and the defensive end," Page said. "If (Nash) keeps playing like that and we keep playing as a team, we could be a dangerous team in the Big 12."
Denmon finished with 17 points but on 4-for-16 shooting. Phil Pressey, the Big 12's assists leader, matched his season low with two.
It continued a rough stretch for Top 25 Missouri teams in Gallagher-Iba Arena. The Tigers have lost six straight games while ranked in Stillwater, dating back to 1992, and may not be visiting again anytime soon with next season's move to the Southeastern Conference.
Four of those six losses have come at the hands of unranked Oklahoma State teams.
Brown provided a boost right from the start with a thunderous right-handed jam on Oklahoma State's first possession after winning the tip. He picked up a technical foul 90 seconds into the game that seemed inconsequential at the time but eventually led to his dismissal.
OSU made an uncharacteristic 57 percent of its shots while leading most of the first half. Page's step-back jumper from the left elbow provided the Cowboys a 37-36 lead at the break.
The first half marked the third-best shooting performance in a half this season for Oklahoma State, the Big 12's worst shooting team at 41 percent, only to be outdone by a 62 percent mark after halftime.
"It's a huge win for us. It's a big win," Page said. "It just shows us what we're capable of. It shows us we can play with anybody. We still have a long ways to go. ... This team's hungry. This team's hungry for wins."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? New orders for manufactured goods rose in December and a gauge of future business investment rebounded, while new claims for jobless benefits rose only moderately last week, suggesting the labor market was still healing.
Durable goods orders climbed 3.0 percent, the Commerce Department said on Thursday. Economists had forecast orders rising 2.0 percent.
Durable goods range from toasters to big-ticket items like aircraft which are meant to last three years and more.
Orders last month were buoyed by 5.5 percent increase in bookings for transportation equipment as orders for civilian aircraft surged 18.9 percent. Boeing received 287 orders for aircraft during the month, according to the plane maker's website, up from 96 in November.
Non-defense capital goods orders excluding aircraft, a closely watched proxy for business spending plans, advanced 2.9 percent.
Business spending, which has helped the economy to recover from the 2007-09 recession, had been showing signs of cooling but December's rebound in new orders suggested corporations might be growing more willing to invest.
"What it does tell you about going into the new year is that there's some momentum here," said Jacob Oubina, an economist at RBC Capital Markets in New York.
Also, shipments of non-defense capital goods orders excluding aircraft, which go into the calculation of gross domestic product, rose 2.9 percent after declining 1.0 percent in November.
Investors in U.S. stock futures appeared to take little notice of the data, with prices slightly higher. U.S. Treasury debt prices pared gains modestly.
Increased consumer spending and efforts by companies to restock their shelves likely led the U.S. economy to accelerate at the end of 2011 although many economists expect some of that strength to wane early this year.
A report due Friday is expected to show the economy grew at a 3.0 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter, up from 1.8 percent in the previous period.
The proxy for business spending plans had dropped 1.2 percent in November and 0.9 percent in October. Economists' had expected a 1.0 percent gain last month.
Orders for motor vehicles edged up 0.6 percent. Excluding transportation, orders rose 2.1 percent.
In a separate report, Labor Department data showed new U.S. claims for unemployment benefits rising last week but the underlying trend continued to point to improving labor market conditions.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 21,000 to a seasonally adjusted 377,000, the Labor Department said. The prior week's figure was revised up to 356,000 from the previously reported 352,000.
On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the U.S. central bank could do more to help growth if the economy falters, after policymakers said interest rates would remain near zero until late 2014.
Among the darker clouds looming over the U.S. economy, Europe is still racing to contain a sovereign debt crisis that is widely seen triggering a recession in the euro zone.
Greece resumes tortuous negotiations on a debt swap with private creditors in Athens on Thursday, with the European Central Bank thrown into the mix after IMF chief Christine Lagarde said public sector holders of Greek debt may need to take losses too.
(Reporting by Jason Lange; Additional reporting by Lucia Mutikani in Washington and Emily Flitter in New York; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
Saying St. John the Baptist Parish needs effective communications with the public, the Parish Council approved the creation of a department for that purpose. Some council members were concerned about creating a new department, but eventually relented, voting unanimously to create the department and to confirm Parish President Natalie Robottom's nomination of current public information officer, Paige Braud, to lead the agency.
Councilwoman Cheryl Millet said she had reservations. "It takes six members to remove a director," said Millet, who is concerned that the administration will become "top heavy."
"Creating a department is what I'm against, not the position," she said.
But Robottom said Braud is working as a special assistant to the president, a job classification that is intended to be temporary.
Robottom and some council members cited increasing expectations that the parish alert residents through multiple channels whenever there is an emergency, and that Braud has done a good job of informing them and the public.
"When the charter was created in 1985, there wasn't email and texting and Twitter and robo-calls. There are now," Robottom said.
She said Braud won't get a raise from her current $60,000 per year salary, which Robottom said involves working nights, weekends and holidays, and includes coordinating special events, as well as communications.
Robottom said a parish secretary who now reports to the parish finance director will report to Braud.
Robottom also wants to create a system to track calls to the parish and ensure that residents get a response to their questions.
Robottom said she hopes to create an additional civil service position to track that.
"We do think it's important to close the loop when we receive calls," she said. "There's not a specialized tracking mechanism and there's not always a response."
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Matt Scallan can be reached at mscallan@timespicayune.com or 985.652.0953.
This probably shouldn't shock too many people but, Tim Cook believes the future isn't with the PC, but with the tablet. After shipping 15.4 million iPads in Q1 Cupertino is clearly comfortable with the idea that tablets are taking off and, as we begin to demand our devices become more mobile, it only makes sense that these finger-friendly slates will one day outsell less portable options like laptops and desktops. When might that day come? Well, Mr. Cook refused to speculate, but he was confident that the tablet market will be bigger, at least in terms of units sold, than traditional computers. Cook is already seeing a shift, with the iPad cannibalizing some Mac sales, but he does believe "there's more cannibalization of Windows PCs by the iPad," a trend he clearly loves. We hope, for their own sake, Dell and HP are ready for the coming revolution.
Sundance represents an opportunity to '[push] forward with Common as an actor and as a producer,' the rapper tells MTV News. By Josh Wigler, with reporting by Josh Horowitz
Common at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival Photo: Jemal Countess/Getty Images
PARK CITY, Utah — When you're making your debut as a producer and lead actor in a feature film, it doesn't hurt to surround yourself with stellar actors like Danny Glover, Charles S. Dutton, Dennis Haysbert and Michael K. Williams. With talent like that on your side, it's nearly impossible not to produce good work.
That's Common's hope, at least. The rapper/actor makes his first turn as a leading man in a feature film in "LUV," the Sundance Film Festival drama about an ex-con who leaves prison and strives to mentor his troubled nephew upon release. The film represents a lot of firsts for Common: It's his first starring role and it's the first movie he's ever acted in and produced to appear at Sundance.
"This is something that is me," Common told MTV News at the fest. "And it's a part of what I want to do pushing forward with Common as an actor and as a producer."
The Chicago MC is no stranger to appearing onscreen, of course. He's had memorable roles in movies like "Wanted" and "Terminator Salvation," and he stars on the AMC western "Hell on Wheels." But this is Common's first time in an independent movie, and the differences between the indie world and the studio system became abundantly clear to him very early on.
"Things are just different. But what's still cool about it is you're really using your artistic creativity to come together and make the best thing, because you don't have that many resources," he said. "You don't have the bigger budgets, you don't have the things that [studio films have]. You need to use total creativity to make things rise.
"So this is a first for me — and it's a great first," he added.
The 2012 Sundance Film Festival is officially under way, and the MTV Movies team is on the ground reporting on the hottest stars and the movies everyone will be talking about in the year to come. Keep it locked with MTV Movies for everything there is to know about Sundance.
Folding: it's detestable and boring, as any Gap employee can tell you. But it's also a totally fun thing you can do in a video game! And today it's particularly exciting because players of the online game Foldit have redesigned a protein, and their work is published in the science journal Nature Biotechnology. More »
Cancer is the most dreaded of all diseases, and ever since a "war on cancer" was declared 40 years ago, massive research has made progress, although the battle is far from won. Very little of this research has been directed at prevention. Advanced medicine, like the person on the street, has tended to think of cancer as something we have no control over: It happens to us or it doesn't.
Visualization is courtesy of TheVisualMD.com
The reason for thinking this way can be seen under a microscope, which reveals that malignant cells are misshapen compared to normal cells. Disastrous mutations at the genetic level lead to abnormal cell division, causing cancer cells to become rogues in the body, multiplying without check, crowding out normal cells, and in general wreaking havoc by losing communication with the body's fine-tuned intelligence.
Yet we may be seeing a revolution in our whole approach to cancer. Some highly-placed researchers now believe that 90-95 percent of cancers are preventable with drastic lifestyle changes. This represents a total reversal from what used to be taught in medical school, which held that only 5 percent of cancers could be traced to environmental factors like diet or chemical toxins. If the new view is correct, then for the first time we may have found an open road to ridding society of its most dreaded scourge.
To begin with, the genetic trail hasn't led to a cure, only to greater and greater complications. A disease like breast cancer, when examined at the genetic level, isn't one disease but hundreds. Yet at the opposite extreme, genetic mutations may be playing a much smaller part than anyone ever thought. Craig Venter, who led a private effort to successfully map the human genome, neatly summarizes the situation:
"Human biology is actually far more complicated than we imagine. Everybody talks about the genes that they received from their mother and father, for this trait or the other. But in reality, those genes have very little impact on life outcomes. Our biology is far too complicated for that and deals with hundreds of thousands of independent factors. Genes are absolutely not our fate."
In some cancers, inheritance certainly plays a major factor. For example, childhood cancer, of which the most common is a form of leukemia, has a simpler genetic profile than adult cancers. By targeting specific mutations, doctors who treat childhood cancer have raised their success rate from 20 percent to 80 percent in the past 40 years. Children with cancer must undergo severe regimens of chemotherapy and radiation, but it's no longer a case, as it once was, of killing the tumor before the treatment killed the patient.
For a vast majority of oncologists, targeting a malignant cell with chemo and radiation, along with surgery to remove the tumor, remains the mainstream approach. The track of prevention is all but unknown to them. There is no doubt that a cell has to mutate in order to become cancerous. Yet an inherited mutation isn't the same as an acquired mutation, one that develops during the lifetime of the patient. Let's simplify the case and divide acquired mutations into two types: those that result from accident and errors on the part of a person's DNA, and those that are linked to lifestyle. The revolution that is looming in cancer is based on believing that the lifestyle link is so strong that it accounts for 90 percent or more of cancer occurrences.
Let's pursue this line of reasoning with the expectation that doing everything you can to prevent cancer is clearly the best choice.
What medicine refers to as environmental and lifestyle factors include some familiar culprits: overweight, lack of exercise, poor diet, smoking, overuse of alcohol and overexposure to UV and other forms of radiation. Of all cancer-related deaths, it's thought that 25-30 percent are due to tobacco; 30-35 percent are linked to diet; and about 15-20 percent are due to infections, many of them preventable.
What is cancer?
Cells in adults normally have tightly-controlled patterns of growth. They divide in a regulated manner and have definite lifespans. Because of this, the number of cells in a healthy body remains roughly the same over time.
Cancer cells, however, display uncontrolled growth. The rate of division is faster in some cancers than in others, but in all cancers, the cells never stop dividing. In effect, they have infinite lifespans. Malignant tumors invade neighboring tissues and may metastasize, spreading to distant parts of the body. Cancerous tumors have the ability to produce activator molecules, such as vascular endothelial growth factor. Activator molecules induce the formation of new blood vessels to supply the tumor, allowing for cell reproduction and tumor growth.
Cancer is not one but hundreds of different diseases. Breast cancers, for instance, have individual characteristics and display different patterns of growth than lung cancers. That's why a cancer that originates in the breast and metastasizes to the lungs is referred to as metastatic breast cancer, not lung cancer.
How does cancer begin?
Cancer begins when a cell undergoes a mutation: one or more of its genes are damaged or lost. A number of different mutations have to happen before the cell becomes a cancer cell. If a cell carries a mutation, it usually either destroys itself or is recognized as being abnormal by the immune system and killed. This is why cancer usually occurs in older people: There has been more time for mutations to occur and for exposure to cancer-causing agents.
Genes may be damaged by:
Free radicals produced in the normal process of metabolism
Carcinogens, such as radiation, chemicals, tobacco, and infectious agents
Random errors in DNA replication
Inherited mutated genes
Almost from the time they first arise, cancerous tumors shed cells into the bloodstream. In fact, it's estimated that a 1-cm tumor sheds more than a million cells into the circulatory system in just 24 hours. Most of these cells are killed by cells of the immune system or die due to injury, but some may survive. Traveling cancer cells may become stuck in a capillary and adhere to its lining. From there they penetrate into surrounding tissues or organs, where they may generate secondary tumors. Cancer cells may also penetrate into the lymphatic vessel and travel in the circulating lymph fluid until it becomes lodged in the small channels inside a lymph node.
Cancer prevention
That the vast majority of cancers are not caused by genetic defects means that in most cases we have the power to modify or eliminate most of the factors that lead to it.
Most of the known risk factors for cancer have one thing in common: they create chronic (long-term) inflammation in the body. Inflammation is a normal part of your body's immune system response to injury. Problems arise when that inflammation becomes chronic. When that happens, levels of many potent inflammatory chemicals go up. These substances include cytokines (including TNF, IL-1, and IL-6), enzymes (such as COX-2 and 5-LOX), and adhesion molecules. All of these various chemicals have been linked to the development of cancerous tumors, and chronic inflammation precedes tumor growth in most types of cancer.
Solutions
Obesity, smoking, alcohol, infectious agents and carcinogens in food and in the environment have been shown to cause chronic inflammation in the body. The longer the inflammation continues, the greater the risk of cancer.
Maintain a healthy weight
There's a clear link between obesity and cancer. It's thought that, in the U.S., excess weight or obesity cause 14 percent of cancer deaths in men and 20 percent of cancer deaths in women. Obesity is linked to many cancers, including cancers of the colon, breast, endometrium (uterine lining), esophagus, and kidneys.
Clearly, it's important to keep your weight at a healthy level to help prevent cancer. It's important for other reasons as well. You can also prevent the many co-morbidities of obesity, including diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, fatty liver disease and osteoarthritis.
Exercise to protect yourself against cancer
Numerous studies have shown that being physically active exerts a protective effect against cancer. Regular exercise lowers levels of IGF-1, a cytokine implicated in tumor growth, and other cytokines in the bloodstream. Interestingly, it does this even if the person who exercises is overweight and remains overweight. The lower levels of these cancer promoters are one possible explanation for the protective effect of regular exercise.
Exercising regularly reduces a woman's chances of getting breast cancer, possibly because doing so lowers blood levels of insulin and estrogen. Risk of colon cancer, too, is greatly reduced when you exercise, probably because being active decreases the amount of time it takes food to pass through the intestines. That means the colon is in contact with potential carcinogens for a shorter period of time.
Eat anti-cancer foods
It's estimated that diet causes about one-third of all cancer cases, almost as many as tobacco. Because cancer is so strongly associated with chronic inflammation, eating foods that fight inflammation can have a chemoprotective effect. Chief among cancer-protective foods are fruits and vegetables. They contain numerous cancer-preventing, anti-inflammatory chemicals, including:
Carotenoids, especially lycopene, found in watermelon, guava, grapefruit, and tomatoes
Resveratrol, found in grapes, peanuts, and berries
Quercitin, found in red grapes, citrus fruits, tomatoes, broccoli, and leafy green vegetables as well as tea and wine
Sulforane, found in cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli
Cancer-fighting chemicals are found in teas and many spices, including:
Green tea
Turmeric
Garlic
Chilies
Ginger
Fenugreek
Fennel
Clove
Cinnamon
Rosemary
Whole grains contain potent antioxidants and are rich in fiber, which speeds the transit of food through the colon. Eating whole grains has been found to reduce the risk of colorectal cancer.
Don't smoke or use tobacco in any form.
In the U.S., 30 percent of cancer deaths are due to tobacco. That smoking causes lung cancer is well known; it's less known that tobacco use increases the risk for at least 14 different types of cancer. Smoking combined with drinking increases the risk of cancer synergistically. Smokeless tobacco, touted as a "safer" alternative, is responsible for 400,000 cases of oral cancer worldwide -- 4 percent of all cancers.
Drink alcohol only in moderation
If you drink alcohol, do so in moderation, if at all (two drinks a day for men, one a day for women). Chronic alcohol consumption is a risk factor for cancers of the upper respiratory and digestive tracts, including cancers of the mouth, throat, and esophagus, as well as for cancers of the liver, lung, and breast. Risk goes up with increasing consumption.
Avoid UV radiation
Skin cancer is extremely common and frequently fatal, if it isn't caught in time. Both sunlight and artificial sources of UV radiation (like tanning beds) are dangerous. Avoid peak radiation hours during the day (10 a.m.-4 p.m.) if possible. If you can't avoid being out in the sun, wear a hat and cover exposed areas. Use a broad-spectrum sunscreen with a sun protection factor (SPF) of at least 15. And don't use indoor tanning beds or sunlamps.
Get immunized
I realize that vaccination, once the pride of preventive medicine, has become a hot-button issue. There are popular movements that attribute many kinds of risks to being vaccinated. Let me simply give the accepted protocol here. Vaccination won't be a priority in cancer prevention, but a thorough approach, as dictated by some oncologists, would target specific cancers through being immunized against them. Human papillomavirus (HPV) is a sexually transmitted virus that can lead to cervical cancer. A protective vaccine is recommended for girls ages 11-12 and for girls and women ages 13-26 who haven't completed the full vaccine series. Hepatitis B can increase the risk of developing liver cancer. All babies and some high-risk adults should be vaccinated.
For many people, these lifestyle changes are so drastic that adopting them will take time, patience, and knowledge. The threat of heart attack, stroke, and diabetes hasn't been potent enough to cause wide swaths of the public from giving up bad lifestyle choices. Now we find that cancer can be added to the list, so far as some researchers are convinced of the link between cancer and environment.
You aren't called on to become a cancer expert. But weighing all the evidence, it's clear which way the wind is blowing. The likelihood that cancer is not enmeshed with lifestyle is diminishing year by year. Yes, cancer is immensely complicated, but everything you can do to support your body's innate intelligence is a positive step in allowing that intelligence to block the cellular changes that create malignancy. A decade from now, I expect that we will tune in and find that this ray of hope has become even brighter.
For more health information from Deepak go to www.deepakchopra.com.
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Romney talks on his iPhone on his campaign bus in Florida (Charles Dharapak/AP)
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Public release date: 30-Jan-2012
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