There's a branch of robotics research that doesn't necessarily believe that future automatons have to be filled with pistons, gears, and motors. Working to closely emulate Mother Nature's more squishy creations, these robots would be made entirely from soft materials, like UC Berkeley's new hydrogel that reacts and moves when blasted with a laser.
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If you seem to have more than an inch to pinch on your waist no matter what you eat or whether you focus on intervals or weight training, the problem may not be your stomach but another organ.
You probably don?t give much thought to your liver (except maybe when you contemplate that third vodka soda), but its health is key to your overall health and weight. Your liver is the ultimate multitasker: It acts as a filter to remove toxins (like medications and alcohol) and nutrient byproducts such as ammonia from the blood; it aids in digestion by producing bile to help break down fat and absorb fat- and water-soluble vitamins and minerals; and it plays a part in regulating glucose, blood pressure, blood sugar, insulin, estrogen, testosterone, immunity, and blood cholesterol production and removal. And you thought you had a long to-do list!
Because of all of this activity, your liver may be in need of a little TLC. When it?s overworked, toxic residues can build up, causing inflammation that is associated with obesity. A stressed out liver can also cause fat to build up, especially around the belly. Added together, this can mean that no matter how much you restrict calories, weight loss is near impossible?unless you detox your liver.
RELATED: Learn the five things you don?t know about body fat so you can pick the smartest strategies for losing it.
Before you jump to start a crazy cleanse, check if you have other symptoms of liver problems, such as fatigue, insomnia, brain fog, rashes or acne, digestive troubles (constipation, acid reflux, indigestion, bloating), high cholesterol, and blood sugar and insulin imbalances, which can lead to low energy, cravings, and excessive thirst and urination.
If you think your liver may be amiss, ask your doctor for a liver function test, aspartate aminotransferase (AST) test, or alanine aminotransferase (ALT) test, or request CAT or MRI scan to get a picture of your liver.
Once you have the results, you can make the following lifestyle changes to help remedy and even reverse the problem.
1. If you smoke, stop.
2. Use medications only when necessary, as even taking a Tylenol can have severe consequences on the liver.
3. Do not drink alcohol.
4. Eat and drink clean. Skip foods and beverages that contain high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, additives, hormones, preservatives, or artificial colors, and eat free-range or organic whenever possible. Your liver has to work harder to filter all this gunk.
RELATED: Jump-start your healthy diet and healthier body with a seven-day clean eating plan.
5. Consume cruciferous vegetables such as Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, collards, and cabbage. These contain sulphur compounds called glucosinolates that bind and eliminate toxins.
6. Ditch the salt, which can contribute to fluid retention and further strain the liver, and flavor foods with garlic, rosemary, dandelion, or chicory, which appear to support liver function.
7. Exercise the same way you take your prescription medicine: consistently and every day. Aim for at least a half hour, though more can be better, and be sure you?re doing intervals, which will help melt fat. A review published in the Journal of Hepatology found that a combination of diet and exercise was best to reduce body weight and therefore improve liver health.
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Apple CEO Tim Cook was on stage at D11, AllThingsD's most recent marquee annual tech conference, and he had a lot to talk about, given recent activity with corporate tax issues, stock price, a long dearth of new products coming out of Cupertino and more. But a lot of what was most interesting about the appearance wasn't what Cook said about the company's well-documented challenges; rather, it was what he had to say about the future and changes to the company's operating strategy that provided the most insight into what Apple is now.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/hn8W2jJJjNs/
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LONDON (AP) ? Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's signal that monetary policy will remain loose gave stocks another lift Wednesday, paving the way for many indexes to advance to new record highs.
Following a run of upbeat U.S. economic news, largely related to housing and jobs, there had been talk in the markets that the Fed may soon put a brake on its super-easy monetary policy, which has boosted liquidity in financial markets over the past few years.
The Fed is currently making $85 billion in bond purchases every month to encourage lending and spur the U.S. economic recovery. Though a number of economic indicators have improved, the U.S. economy isn't posting historically high growth rates and unemployment is relatively high above 7 percent despite consistent falls in recent months.
Though Bernanke said that keeping interest rates low for a long time can unbalance the financial system, he warned that a change in policy now would "carry a substantial risk of slowing or ending the economic recovery and causing inflation to fall further."
Following his comments to lawmakers in Congress, European and U.S. stock markets pushed sharply higher while the dollar lost some of its shine.
"The upshot for equities intraday is the next green light," said Andrew Wilkinson, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak & Co. "Investors have driven the market much higher in 2013 and for want of a better catalyst will use the excuse of a persistent Fed stance to buy again."
In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares, which closed Tuesday at its highest level since late 1999, was up 0.8 percent at 6,856, while Germany's DAX rose 0.9 percent to 8,549. The CAC-40 in France was 0.4 percent higher at 4,053.
In the U.S., the Dow Jones industrial average was up 0.7 percent at 15,501 while the broader S&P 500 index rose 0.8 percent to 1,683.
One aspect of the monetary stimulus, which has been replicated by a number of other central banks around the world, including most recently the Bank of Japan, has been to send stock indexes flying despite a patchy recovery from recession in many parts of the world.
Over the past few weeks, a number of the world's main markets, such as the Dow Jones and Germany's DAX have recorded a series of all-time highs, while others such as Japan's Nikkei have hit multi-year highs.
In the currency markets, dollar kept rising after an initial drop. The euro was trading 0.2 percent lower at $1.2896. The dollar was 1.1 percent higher against the Japanese yen, at 103.50 yen, the highest since October 2008.
Earlier in Asia, stocks rebounded on the back of some similarly dovish comments from the Fed's James Bullard on Tuesday.
Japan's Nikkei 225 index rose 1.6 percent to 15,627.26, its highest close in more than five years. The Bank of Japan concluded a two-day policy meeting without any changes to its aggressive monetary easing stance, as expected, and said the world's third-largest economy is showing signs of picking up.
South Korea's Kospi rose 0.6 percent to 1,993.83 while mainland Chinese shares ended a five-day winning streak, with the Shanghai Composite Index falling 0.1 percent to 2,302.40. The smaller Shenzhen Composite Index lost 0.9 percent to 1,021.40. Hong Kong's Hang Seng, where trading was suspended in the morning due to bad weather, fell 0.5 percent to 23,261.08.
Oil prices remained subdued though, with the benchmark New York rate down $1.03 at $95.15 a barrel.
____
Pamela Sampson in Bangkok contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/stocks-surge-bernanke-retains-dovish-ton-145803899.html
Second preview for the 'X-Men' spin-off looks at a fan-favorite character.
By Kevin P. Sullivan
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1707713/the-wolverine-new-trailer.jhtml
A good acronym also hints at what it does, and Visteon's new intelligent in-car concept, HABIT, is a good example of that. The Human Bayesian Intelligence Technology system -- to give it its full name -- learns the behaviour of drivers so it can automatically change the temperature, heat the seats and drop that Biohazard album just when you need it most. Factors such as weather, time of day and real-time road conditions all play a part, plus, of course a log of all your typical in-car interactions. It promises to go above just warming your behind on a cold morning though, offering intelligence that would be able to divine local radio stations that play your kind of jam when you're out of town. It could also seamlessly mix these with your local / tablet / smartphone library and internet sources. Sound a little too creepy? Wait until you see the computer-generated demo video presenter past the break.
Filed under: Peripherals, Transportation
Via: Autoblog
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/0niB5lvhIFU/
WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland's opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party has overtaken the ruling Civic Platform in an opinion poll released on Saturday, showing the government may be increasingly vulnerable to the economic downturn.
The center-right Civic Platform, led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk won 40 percent of the vote at the 2011 election, but its support was down to 23 percent in the survey carried out by CBOS, one of Poland's biggest polling organizations.
Support for its main rival, the staunchly conservative and eurosceptic PiS, was at 26 percent, according to the poll, conducted between May 9 and 15 and published by daily Gazeta Wyborcza.
The gap between Civic Platform and PiS has been narrowing in recent months as the economy has slowed. PiS led a Homo Homini poll in April.
The statistics office said on May 14 that Poland's annual economic expansion slowed to a worse-than-expected 0.4 percent in the first three months of the year and hovered near zero in the two quarters from October.
A sluggish recovery would be tough for a country that has grown used, over two decades, to robust growth. Poland was the only European Union economy to fend off recession after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 triggered a global slump.
Poland's next parliamentary election is due in 2015.
(Reporting by Karolina Slowikowska; Editing by Alison Williams)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/polish-conservative-opposition-leads-opinion-poll-085909091.html
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The Savannah chapter of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society is holding a benefit concert Friday night to raise funds in honor of a couple of young people who have battled blood cancers.
The Country for a Cure concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. at Tubby's in Thunderbolt. There will be live performers on the porch and more inside. The bands say they are going to play until they shut them down.
Tickets are $15 at the door.
Copyright 2013?WTOC. All rights reserved.
Source: http://www.wtoc.com/story/22284170/leukemia-and-lymphoma-society-to-host-benefit-concert-at-tubbys
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Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/video/cnbc/51882679/
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May 13, 2013 ? A team of researchers from the University of Basel finds that multitasking does not always result in poor judgments. In fact, multitasking can improve performance -- provided that the task at hand can be best resolved by using a simpler, less demanding strategy.
Research has revealed that multitasking impedes performance across a variety of tasks. Emergency room nurses that are interrupted multiple times while treating a patient can be more likely to make medication errors. Driving while speaking on a mobile phone significantly increases the probability of an automobile accident. At the same time, however, experienced golfers putt better when distracted than experienced golfers who are focusing on performance. Distractions resulting from the presence of other people can increase an individual's performance, too. Why?
Addressing the Contradictions
In a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science, one of the world's top-ranked empirical journals in psychology, a team of researchers from the University of Basel helps to clarify these apparent contradictions. Lead author Janina Hoffmann, a Ph.D. student in Economic Psychology, and her co-authors Dr. Bettina von Helversen and Prof. Dr. J?rg Rieskamp, find that the type of judgment strategy that an individual employs strongly conditions how the "cognitive load" induced by multitasking affects performance. Higher cognitive load can actually improve performance when the task can be best completed using a less demanding, similarity-based strategy that informs judgments by retrieving past instances from memory.
The study is supported by the findings of two experiments conducted at the University of Basel. The first study exposed 90 participants to variable cognitive loads as they were asked to solve a judgment task whose solution was best achieved through the use of a similarity-based strategy (predicting how many cartoon characters another cartoon character could catch). Most participants switched to using a similarity-based strategy and produced more accurate judgments. The second study then exposed 60 participants to a linear task whose solution was not conducive to similarity-based strategies but rather rule- based strategies. Those participants who employed a similarity-based strategy made poorer judgments. The experiments were conducted with financial support from the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Moving Forward
Cognitive load does not per se lead to worse performance, but rather it can, dependent on strategy choice, lead to better performance. The researchers believe that it is important to decipher cognitive strategies that people choose under given levels of cognitive load. Hoffmann claims, "A better understanding of these cognitive strategies may permit future studies to predict the precise circumstances under which people can solve a problem particularly well."
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/living_well/~3/cLgj75KQtjc/130513083047.htm
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2013 FORD F-150 SUPERCREW FX4 LIFTED 6? LIFT 20? CUSTOM WHEELS AND TIRES 3.5L ECOBOOST PERFORMANCE EXHAUST 40+ MORE HORSEPOWER THIS TRUCK IS FOR SALE LOCALLY AND WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO END AUCTION AT ANYTIME THE FINAL PRICE MAY VARY DUE TO REGIONAL REBATE CHANGES AND MAY REQUIRE FORD CREDIT FINANCING. FOR DETAILS CONTACT TONY AT 972-891-1390.
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Highlights:
By Dan Polimino
Special to InsideRealEstateNews.com
A big part of buying a new construction home is the lot location.
After all, the first rule of real estate is ?location, location, location? and that applies to the location in the subdivision as well.
Dan Polimino
The first question you have to ask yourself is on what type of home you are looking to build. Do you like two stories? Or maybe you like a ranch. Since basements are a big deal in Colorado, would you like a walkout basement or garden level? Walkout basements cost more and require the right type of lot, but they also have a greater value.
Generally, the lot needs to be higher at the front of the lot and slope downwards or below grade as you get to the back of the home.
Next, what does the lot back to or front to? The direction the future home will face can be a big deal for some. In Colorado, people who have an east facing home will have the morning sun on their drive and have a better chance of the snow melting before they need to shovel.
What your lot backs to will determine a lot of the value.
I never let my clients buy a home that backs to a busy street, which will always be hard for resale.
Homes that back to other homes can be OK under certain conditions.
Homes that sit lower than the home in back of them sometimes have what we call a ?the fish bowl effect.? That?s where people feel like their neighbor is looking down on them (not good).
Homes that back to another home that is too close are also a situation you need to avoid.
I know some people don?t care if they have a big backyard. But if you are so close you can pass your neighbor a hotdog from the BBQ over the fence, you?ll have a problem selling that home. If at all possible, always try to buy a lot that backs to open space, backs to a greenbelt, or backs to nothing. These lots are harder to come by and cost more, but they are well worth it when it comes time to resale.
Lastly, size matters. We are always counseling our clients to buy the biggest lot for the least amount of money.
We realize that not everyone wants a big yard or wants to maintain a big yard, but it?s always a good investment. It may also be out of your control if you are buying in certain subdivisions. Some new developments are geared toward empty nesters and there will never be big lots in there to buy. In that case, buy the lot with the best views.
There a lot more factors to consider when picking the right lot for new construction.
Dan Polimino is a Broker/Owner with the Colorado Dream House Team, Keller Williams Realty DTC. Contact Polimino at dan@coloradodreamhouse.com, codreamhouse.com or coloradodreamhouse.com.
Have a story idea or real estate tip? Contact John Rebchook at? JRCHOOK@gmail.com. InsideRealEstateNews.com is sponsored by Universal Lending, Land Title Guarantee and 8z Real Estate. To read more articles by John Rebchook, subscribe to the Colorado Real Estate Journal.
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Related Posts:>Source: http://insiderealestatenews.com/2013/05/a-lot-to-think-about-when-buying-a-lot/
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>>> tonight in cleveland, ohio, a stunning break in some of the most famous missing person cases. three women that went missing a decade ago escaped their captor and were found alive and are now safe. amanda berry, gina dejesus and michele knight were found. amanda berry was seen leaving her job at burger team a decade ago. she's 27 years old. gina dejesus was 14 when she went missing after school in april, 2004 . she's now 23 years old. and michelle knight was 21 when she went missing in august of 2002 . today she's 32 years old. tonight, all three women are being checked by a local hospital and doctors say they are in fair condition. police will release more details at a press conference tomorrow morning. we're now going to listen to the 911 call amanda berry made when she escaped. she seemed very conscious in this call that her case was very well known. seems she probably had access to television or some media within that home where she was held. she tries to tell the 911 operator who she is, has been in the news ten years. it is an extraordinary call. listen to it now.
>> 911.
>> help me, i am amanda berry.
>> you need police, fire or ambulance.
>> i need police.
>> and what's going on there?
>> i have been kidnapped and i have been missing ten years and i'm here, i'm free now.
>> okay, what's your address?
>> [bleep].
>> i can't hear you.
>> looks like [bleep].
>> i am using the phone.
>> stay with the neighbors until they get there. call the police when they get there.
>> hello?
>> talk to the police when they get there.
>> we will send one as soon as they get a car open.
>> i need them now before he gets back.
>> we're sending them.
>> who's the guy who went out?
>> his name is [bleep].
>> how old is he?
>> he is like 52.
>> all right.
>> i am amanda berry, i have been on the news the last ten years.
>> i got that, dear. and you said what was his name again? [bleep].
>> and white, black, hispanic.
>> what's he wearing?
>> i don't know, he is not here now.
>> when you left, what was he wearing? the police are on the way. talk to them when they get there. i told you they're on the way. talk to them when they get there.
>> all right.
>> joining me by phone, a reporter following the story the last ten years. rachel , the suspect in custody tonight is ariel castro. what do we know about him?
>> reporter: i talked to a lot of neighbors, lived on the street a long time. actually his uncle owns a store at the corner across the street, and every single person i talked to said they had never seen him with any of these women, that if you would have met him and got to know him, people would have said he was a beautiful person. you know, very different than what we would think, usually when you go to a potential crime scene like this, a lot of people that walk up to you have something negative to say about the person that's been arrested. and that wasn't the case here, it was mostly just shock. people talked about him cooking out with everybody, driving four wheelers in the field with everybody, no sign at least according to neighbors that any of these women were in the house. the uncle that i talked to who owns the store at the corner said his family and gina dejesus' family have known each other for years, and this gentleman used to play bass in a band that played in her uncle's club he had just in the neighborhood, so everybody kind of knew each other. this guy also wrote an article, trying to draw attention to gina 's disappearance in a local neighborhood kind of newspaper that's distributed, you know, in different neighborhoods called the plain press, he wrote about it trying to draw attention to it years and years ago.
>> rachel , what about reports of babies coming out of that house, too. what do we know about that.
>> from what all of the neighbors told me, amanda came out through the bottom of the door first. this is a gentleman, charles ramsey , that let her use the phone to call 911. and it was not a baby according to him, a child nine or ten years old.
>> rachel dissell, thank you for joining us on this breaking news night.
>> reporter: thanks so much.
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May 7, 2013 ? New research from the University of Reading shows that Ice Age people living in Europe 15,000 years ago might have used forms of some common words including I, you, we, man and bark, that in some cases could still be recognized today.
Using statistical models, Professor of Evolutionary Biology Mark Pagel and his team predicted that certain words would have changed so slowly over long periods of time as to retain traces of their ancestry for up to ten thousand or more years. These words point to the existence of a linguistic super-family tree that unites seven major language families of Eurasia (seven language families:? Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic, Kartvelian, Dravidian, Chuckchee-Kamchatkan and Eskimo-Aleut).
Previously linguists have relied solely on studying shared sounds among words to identify those that are likely to be derived from common ancestral words, such as the Latin pater and the English father. A difficulty with this approach is that two words might have similar sounds just by accident, such as the words team and cream.
To combat this problem, Professor Pagel's team showed that a subset of words used frequently in everyday speech, are more likely to be retained over long periods of time. The team used this method to predict words likely to have shared sounds, giving greater confidence that when such sound similarities are discovered they do not merely reflect the workings of chance.
Professor Pagel, from the University of Reading's School of Biological Sciences, said: "The way in which we use a certain set of words in everyday speech is something common to all human languages. We discovered numerals, pronouns and special adverbs are replaced far more slowly, with linguistic half-lives of once every 10,000 or even more years. As a rule of thumb, words used more than about once per thousand in everyday speech were seven to ten times more likely to show deep ancestry in the Eurasian super-family."
Professor Pagel's previous research on the evolution of human languages has built up a picture of how our 7,000 living human languages have evolved. Professor Pagel and his research team have documented the shared patterns in the way we use language and researched why some words succeed and others have become obsolete over time. This is done by using statistical estimates of rates of lexical replacement for a range of vocabulary items in the Indo-European languages. The variation in replacement rates makes the most common vocabulary items in these languages promising candidates for estimating the divergence between pairs of languages.
"Ultra-conserved words point to deep language ancestry across Eurasia" is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/8sEsBkdPfmk/130507074657.htm
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But this year's May Day demonstrations come on the heels of the tragic Bangladesh factory collapse, a potent symbol for many of the importance of workers' rights.
Workers and protesters hold a huge banner march to the government office during a May Day rally in Hong Kong, Wednesday. Hundreds of workers, local labor right groups, and striking dockworkers join the annual rally to demand better wages and working conditions.
Vincent Yu/AP
EnlargeIn Dhaka, Bangladesh, a raucous crowd descended on the city center with signs and drums, chanting and waving banners demanding the death penalty for the owner of a factory where more than 400 people died in a building collapse last week.
Skip to next paragraph Ryan Lenora BrownCorrespondent
Ryan Brown edits the Africa Monitor blog and contributes to the national and international news desks of the Monitor. She is a former Fulbright fellow to South Africa and holds a degree in history from Duke University.?
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As marches take place around the world to mark Labour Day, in the Spanish capital hundreds gathered to protest against the economic crisis that has driven the country?s unemployment rate above 27 percent.In Jakarta, Indonesia, some of the tens of thousands of demonstrators marching through the city came dressed as ants ? complete with bright red outfits and antennae ? to depict the exploitation of workers.?
And in Greece, trains, buses, and ferries sat vacant and hospitals nearly empty as thousands of public sector employees walked off the job in a one-day strike.
Each year, May 1, better known as May Day, is marked with labor rallies and strikes around the world. And this year's holiday came at a particularly prescient moment in many parts of the world.?
From Europe, where the bite of austerity has left many facing down unemployment and reduced benefits, to South and Southeast Asia, a region cluttered with precariously-built factories similar to the one that collapsed last week in Bangladesh, demonstrators gathered to vent outrage and demand reform.
?My brother has died. My sister has died. Their blood will not be valueless,? yelled one Bangladeshi protestor through a crackling loudspeaker, according to the Associated Press.
As the march wove through downtown Dhaka, rescue workers in the industrial suburb of Savar continued their search for bodies and survivors in the rubble of Rana Plaza, which collapsed suddenly on April 24 with thousands of garment workers inside.
The disaster at the factory, which manufactured clothing for several low-end Western retailers, touched off global outrage about the working conditions of garment workers across the developing world. In Phnom Pehn, Cambodia, workers rallied for higher wages and safer working conditions. In Manila, Philipines, where labor unions are banned, workers marched to demand the right to organize. And in Hong Kong, thousands turned out in support of striking dock workers, calling for wages that would help close the income gap between the country?s rich and its poor.
And that was all before Europe woke up.
There has "never been a May 1 with more reason to take to the streets,? one Spanish union leader told Reuters during a march in Madrid this morning, where protestors carried signs reading "austerity ruins and kills" and "reforms are robbery.? (Read the Monitor's feature about how Spaniards are increasingly flocking to the countryside to cut costs and find new jobs.)
In Greece, where the government recently announced that it would lay off 180,000 civil servants over the next two years ? the first such cuts in 100 years ? a strike shut down public transit across Athens. ?
And in France, which saw unemployment rose again last month, marchers carried banners reading, ?It?s too much! Alternatives exist? and ?Where are the real socialists in our government??
An exception to the doom and gloom of this year?s May Day was Russia, where a festive celebration of the holiday harks back to Soviet times. Indeed, many of those who gathered in the streets of Moscow were buoyant, Euronews reported.
?The atmosphere is excellent. It?s a holiday for us, the beginning of something new, bright, and joyful,? one demonstrator told reporters.
May 1 is a national holiday in some 80 countries around the world, and its ties to labor advocacy date back to 1886, when American police killed 10 protestors at a rally for an eight-hour workday in Chicago?s Haymarket Square. International socialist organization and labor unions declared it a day of commemoration and action soon after.
Ironically, however, May Day is not celebrated in the United States. In the early 1890s, fearing the ?socialist? overtones of the holiday, President Grover Cleveland quickly declared an alternate holiday, beginning the American tradition of celebrating Labor Day on the first Monday of September.?
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May 6, 2013 ? Many high school football players say it's OK to play with a concussion even though they know they are at risk of serious injury, according to a study to be presented Monday, May 6, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Washington, DC.
The study of 120 high school football players in the Cincinnati area also found that one-quarter had suffered a concussion, and more than half acknowledged they would continue to play with symptoms of a concussion.
"These attitudes could leave young athletes vulnerable to injury from sports-related concussions," said study co-author Brit Anderson, MD, pediatric emergency medicine fellow at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.
Dr. Anderson and her colleagues administered two surveys to the athletes to measure their knowledge of concussions and symptoms as well as their attitudes about playing after a head injury.
Survey results showed that 70 percent of the players had been educated about concussions, and most could identify common signs and symptoms. Headache was identified as a symptom by 93 percent, dizziness by 89 percent, difficulty remembering and sensitivity to light/sound by 78 percent, difficulty concentrating by 76 percent and feeling in a fog by 53 percent.
While 91 percent recognized a risk of serious injury if they returned to play too quickly, only half would always or sometimes report their concussion symptoms to their coach.
"Despite their knowledge, many athletes in our sample reported that they would not tell their coach about symptoms and would continue to play," Dr. Anderson said. "A small percentage even responded that athletes have a responsibility to play in important games with a concussion."
The researchers found no association between a student's knowledge score and attitude score on the surveys. "In other words, athletes who had more knowledge about concussions were not more likely to report symptoms," Dr. Anderson said.
"Although further study needs to be done," she concluded, "it is possible that concussion education alone may not be enough to promote safe concussion behaviors in high school football players."
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/living_well/~3/9aqaaf-09r8/130506095407.htm
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By Tim Kenneally
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - The final season of "Dexter" hasn't premiered yet, but series star Michael C. Hall is already slicing into his next project for the cable network.
Hall is working with Showtime on an adaptation of the Matthew Specktor novel "American Dream Machine," about a talent agent and his sons.
The novel follows Beau Rosenwald, who arrived in Hollywood broke but by the late '70s has helped to build the most successful agency in Hollywood. The book chronicles Rosenwald as he rises, falls, and rises again - and goes to war with his partner.
The book, published in March, is billed as "a sweeping narrative about fathers and sons, the movie business, and the sundry sea changes that have shaped Hollywood and, by extension, American life."
Hall will executive produce the adaptation. Specktor is writing the script, with "Dexter" showrunner Scott Buck supervising the script.
Hollywood Reporter first reported news of the "American Dream Machine" adaptation.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/michael-c-hall-adapting-talent-agent-book-showtime-005826899.html
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Yes, scientists found five types of fungus in Capri Sun beverages after consumers reported finding mats of mold in the popular kids' drinks. But they're mostly harmless.
Five types of fungus have been identified in the popular kids' juice drink Capri Sun, researchers say.
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The study was spurred by reports of consumers finding mold ? mats of fungus consisting of millions of cells ? in the drink.
While the findings have an "ick" factor, the fungi probably aren't harmful to most people, said study researcher Kathleen Dannelly, associate professor microbiology at Indiana State University. Fungi are all around us ? in the soil, air, and even on our skin and inside our digestive tract ? but they are generally kept in check by our immune systems.
"Probably, those of us with healthy immune systems, we could even eat that, and that wouldn?t be a problem," Dannelly said, referring to the fungal mats in Capri Sun.
However, for people with compromised immune systems, such as those with AIDS, leukemia or cystic fibrosis, fungus exposure may be a health concern, Dannelly said.
For instance, the fungus Aspergillus is found in air, and most people breathe it in without problems.
Kraft, which manufactures Capri Sun, acknowledges that mold can grow in the drink, but says such reports are not common.
"Since there are no preservatives in our drinks, mold can grow, especially in a leaking pouch," Kraft says on its Capri Sun frequently asked questions website.
During the manufacturing process, the drinks are heated to temperatures that exceed those used for pasteurization. But punctures in the products' package ? even microscopic ones ? can allow air inside the package, and mold to grow, Kraft says. Fungi need oxygen to grow, Dannelly said.
Capri Sun packages have a shelf life of about a year. The company urges consumers to discard leaking or damaged packages.
In the new study, the researchers filtered Capri Sun through filter paper, and then checked whether any microorganisms were left behind on the paper. The juice contained just a few fungal cells, which grew in laboratory dishes.
Dannelly said if this experiment was done on any juice after it was opened and left in the refrigerator, she would expect both fungus and bacteria to grow.
In a second experiment, the researchers, including Leah Horn, an undergraduate biology major, punctured Capri Sun packages with a sterile needle to mimic damage to the product. When left in a sterile environment for three weeks, fungal mats grew in the juice.
A problem with Capri Sun is that the packages are not see-through, so unlike mold on bread or cheese, consumers can't tell when Capri Sun goes bad.
Kraft said it tried creating clear packages for Capri Sun, but stopped making the packages after it created manufacturing problems.
The company said it will not add preservatives to the product because their customers don't want this. Preservatives give food a longer shelf life, but some, such as the preservative nitrite, have been linked to an increased risk of certain cancers.
Dannelly said there are some natural preservatives, such as citric acid, which are not harmful and could be added to the product (although it would make the product more acidic).
"If you're going to have a package you can't see through, I think you need to do something," Dannelly said.
The study has not yet been published in a peer reviewed journal, but the researchers plan to submit the work for publication.
Pass it on: Five types of fungus have been found in Capri Sun, but they are likely not harmful.
Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily @MyHealth_MHND, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on MyHealthNewsDaily.
Copyright 2013 MyHealthNewsDaily, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Is America at war with Islam? The question began to be asked when the first evidence emerged of the transfer of hundreds of innocent Muslims to Guantanamo and the despotic new order that permitted indefinite detention of suspects. The investigations in Iraq led by David Kay and Charles Duelfer established that our war against weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had actually torn apart a country empty of such weapons; and this was a second large piece of evidence to suggest that America was waging a war against Islam founded on prejudice and hostility. The racist treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and elsewhere gave additional point to the suspicions. Nothing, in fact, that George W. Bush ever said could be construed to signal a religious war. But all wars are an infernal machine in which the persons most infected with hate inevitably flourish and are promoted.
President Obama, immediately on being elected, took the largest conceivable step to prove the U.S. was not at war with Islam. On January 22, 2009, he ordered the closure of Guantanamo. "Some individuals," ran the text of his official directive,
currently detained at Guant?namo have been there for more than 6 years, and most have been detained for at least 4 years. In view of the significant concerns raised by these detentions, both within the United States and internationally, prompt and appropriate disposition of the individuals currently detained at Guant?namo and closure of the facilities in which they are detained would further the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice.
So three paramount interests -- national security, foreign policy, and justice -- all would be served, according to the new president, by the closing of a prison whose name had become a by-word for torture and injustice and whose continued existence was a blot on the fame of the United States.
President Obama spoke in a similar key when he addressed the Arab world in Cairo, on June 4, 2009. He promised a new era of mutual understanding, a winding down of American wars in the region, and the application of all his political energy and influence toward the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
He reiterated his sense of fresh purpose on August 21, 2009 in a special Ramadan Message to a Muslim audience both in Arab lands and in America:
We are also committed to keeping our responsibility to build a world that is more peaceful and secure. That is why we are responsibly ending the war in Iraq. That is why we are isolating violent extremists while empowering the people in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. That is why we are unyielding in our support for a two-state solution that recognizes the rights of Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and security. And that is why America will always stand for the universal rights of all people to speak their mind, practice their religion, contribute fully to society and have confidence in the rule of law.
All of these efforts are a part of America's commitment to engage Muslims and Muslim-majority nations on the basis of mutual interest and mutual respect.
Obama added, in the understated manner of a leader who knows the value of humility: "We have listened. We have heard you."
His intention to employ the methods of mutual understanding to America's foreign policy in southwest Asia was modified in the speech he delivered at West Point, on December 1, 2009, ordering an escalation of the war in Afghanistan by the addition of 30,000 more U.S. soldiers:
Moving forward, we are committed to a partnership with Pakistan that is built on a foundation of mutual interest, mutual respect, and mutual trust. We will strengthen Pakistan's capacity to target those groups that threaten our countries, and have made it clear that we cannot tolerate a safe haven for terrorists whose location is known and whose intentions are clear. America is also providing substantial resources to support Pakistan's democracy and development. ... And going forward, the Pakistani people must know America will remain a strong supporter of Pakistan's security and prosperity long after the guns have fallen silent, so that the great potential of its people can be unleashed.
President Obama in December 2009 was at pains to assure two countries, in which above 100,000 American troops were already on the ground, that "unlike the great powers of old, we have not sought world domination. Our union was founded in resistance to oppression. We do not seek to occupy other nations. We will not claim another nation's resources or target other peoples because their faith or ethnicity is different from ours." We were, in short, at war in Islamic lands but it was not a war against Islam.
As is now well-recognized, President Obama's chief reform in the wars in Arab lands has turned out to consist of removing some of the troops and substituting for them drones armed with missiles that assassinate terrorist suspects from the air. All men of military age killed by the missiles fired by American drones are automatically counted as enemy combatants. This means that neighbors of the suspects, if they are men of military age, are by their proximity to the intended victims posthumously convicted of terrorism. Drones, in President Obama's enthusiastic opinion, were a tremendous advance on the clumsy and brutal methods of his predecessor. They reduced deaths on both sides. But the main difference between Bush's sparing use of drones and Obama's thoroughgoing dependence on them is brought out by comparing the statistics (admittedly vague and unsatisfactory) available from both periods. It shows up in the proportion of numbers of children and civilian dead to the total numbers of the unclassified "other." The third category, which covers presumed militants, possible militants, and military-age men, in the Obama years has taken up a larger and larger share of the reported dead. The category is, to repeat, deliberately obscure. Nothing is known about the "other" except that they are not children, not women, and not old men. All of the reports are approximate, owing to the terror induced by the attacks -- which includes a terror of being interviewed -- and the difficulty of counting and identifying the exploded remains.
Pakistan is the most dangerous of the countries in which American military force abroad operates. It is dangerous because Pakistan is in possession of nuclear weapons and because the strain of fanaticism in that country is virulent. Has the proliferation of drone strikes under President Obama reconciled the Pakistanis, as at West Point he hoped it would, to the peaceful intentions of America? A Pew Poll in June 2012 suggested the opposite. According to its findings, in the wake of three and a half years of drone warfare commandeered by President Obama, 74 percent of Pakistanis then considered the United States an enemy. The varieties of "surgical" warfare that are enforced by the president had intensified anti-American feeling above any previous level. The Pew result of 2012 was confirmed by a Gallup Poll in February 2013, in which Pakistani respondents indicated that they distrust Obama now as much as Bush. Asked whether they thought (in keeping with the vows of the president's Ramadan Message) that contact with the West was a threat or a benefit, 55 percent rated it mostly a threat to themselves and their way of life, while 31 percent rated it as a benefit.
Drones constitute a violent innovation in a violent foreign policy. They encroach on the sovereignty of foreign countries, some of them initially friendly or even allied, and they are used to assassinate citizens of those countries. The consequence, if other nations made use of these weapons as America now does, would be international anarchy. As President Obama put it in his Nobel Prize Lecture on December 10, 2009, "America -- in fact, no nation -- can insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. For when we don't, our actions appear arbitrary and undercut the legitimacy of future interventions." Seven days after Barack Obama spoke those words, his administration executed the first drone attack on Yemen of which we have a distinct record. The December 17 missile strike against the Yemeni village of al-Majalah killed 46 persons. At least 21 of them were children, and many of the others were women. Jeremy Scahill in a recent interview on Democracy Now went further into the facts of the destruction:
The weapons used? They used a Tomahawk cruise missile, and they used cluster bombs. And the cluster bombs are like flying land mines. And they drop in these parachutes, and they explode, and they can shred people.
As Scahill goes on to explain, the first Yemeni journalist to report on this attack, Abdulelah Haider Shaye, "was arrested after he exposed the Majalah bombing, and he remains in prison to this day." President Obama wanted him in prison. It is not a good thing to have the effects of American violence exposed in detail; and, if protection for American arms requires the jailing of a writer who is doing his job, that is a bump on the road to mutual forgiveness. Scahill is explicit here: "President Obama called Ali Abdullah Saleh and said, 'We don't want him released.'"
Five months later, at the 2010 White House Correspondents' Dinner, President Obama made his first joke about the lethal effectiveness of drone attacks:
Jonas Brothers are here tonight. Sasha and Malia are huge fans. But boys, don't get any ideas. Two words: predator drones. You will never see it coming.
This was an expressive moment, and it had been rehearsed with care. President Obama was showing that just as he inherited Bush's wars, he had also inherited Bush's sense of humor. The video clip of the joke, which the White House press corps seem to have enjoyed, had a more ambiguous reception among Muslims in Arab lands who encountered it on-line. Many of these viewers may have heard Obama's Ramadan Message at the end of the preceding summer. Was it wrong of them to interpret the sincerity of the message by the heartlessness of the joke?
The moral disaster of the Guantanamo hunger strike has now alarmed the president into second thougts. In his April 30 press conference, Obama seemed to wish that he could return to the mood of his Cairo address and the Ramadan Message of August 2009. The maintenance of an offshore prison that violates the onshore U.S. Constitution, he said, "is expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us in terms of our international standing. It lessens cooperation with our allies on counterterrorism efforts. It is a recruitment tool for extremists. It needs to be closed."
But Obama, as is his wont, declined to take much responsibility for the enormities that are still committed at Guantanamo four years after he ordered it closed. The hunger strike and force-feeding were the fault of the majority in Congress, who "determined that they would not let us close it and despite the fact that there are a number of the folks who are currently in Guantanamo who the courts have said could be returned to their country of origin or potentially a third country." Still, he said, he would try to do the little a president can do:
I'm going to go back at this. I've asked my team to review everything that's currently being done in Guantanamo, everything that we can do administratively.... I mean, the notion that we're going to continue to keep over a hundred individuals in a no man's land in perpetuity, even at a time when we've wound down the war in Iraq, we're winding down the war in Afghanistan, we're having success defeating al Qaida core, we've kept the pressure up on all these transnational terrorist networks, when we've transferred detention authority in Afghanistan -- the idea that we would still maintain forever a group of individuals who have not been tried -- that is contrary to who we are, it is contrary to our interests, and it needs to stop.
Obama did not mention that even as he wound down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he has heated up new wars in Yemen and Somalia and, by his intervention in Libya, has helped to precipitate the chaos in Mali. But he continued his answer in a tenor of impotent good will. Of the inhuman abuse of force-feeding, he said, with an emphasis hard to decipher: "I don't want these individuals to die." He added almost plaintively:
But I think all of us should reflect on why exactly are we doing this. Why are we doing this? I mean, we've got a whole bunch of individuals who have been tried who are currently in maximum security prisons around the country. Nothing's happened to them. Justice has been served. It's been done in a way that's consistent with our Constitution, consistent with due process, consistent with rule of law, consistent with our traditions.... And I understand that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, with the traumas that had taken place, why, for a lot of Americans, the notion was somehow that we had to create a special facility like Guantanamo, and we couldn't handle this in -- in a normal, conventional fashion. I understand that reaction. But we're now over a decade out. We should be wiser.... And this is a lingering, you know, problem that is not going to get better. It's going to get worse. It's going to fester. And so I'm going to -- as I've said before, we're -- examine every option that we have administratively to try to deal with this issue. But ultimately, we're also going to need some help from Congress. And I'm going to ask some -- some folks over there who, you know, care about fighting terrorism but also care about who we are as a people to -- to step up and -- and help me on it.
The extraordinarily vague reference asking "my team" to look into it, and asking "some folks over there" who know about terrorism to "help me on it," might suggest, to close observers of this president, an underlying weakness of specific resolve.
The grammar of complaint ("We should be wiser," "We should reflect") and the grammar of wish ("It needs to stop") in this revealing monologue never crosses paths with the grammar of responsibility. "Why are we doing this?" is the locution of someone who denies a particular and personal responsibility. A strangely impersonal stepping back has become a characteristic mark of this president's frequent invocations of high moral purpose. When one hears a phrase like "It needs to be closed," one cannot help recalling the imperative but evasive construction of sentences such as "Mubarak must go" and "Gaddafi must go" and "Assad must go." The president talks as if he were a being who has considerable powers of action which he has chosen not to use, but which he trusts others, on "reflection," to take up somehow in order to embody his intuitions in deeds.
Democracy Now, which has become the conscience of the country in these matters, on May 1 broadcast an interview with a human rights lawyer, Pardiss Kebriaei, who gave reasons for encouraging the president's renewal of humanitarian purpose, and reasons for doubting his profession of helplessness. Senator Feinstein, said Kebriaei:
made an important statement last week calling for review of the cases of the 86 people. Of the 166 who remain, 86 have been approved for transfer by the administration. She called for the review of those cases and efforts to move those people out of Guant?namo. So, there is support within Congress. There are representatives who have said they would not only stand with President Obama, they would be cheering him. But ultimately, the authority rests with the president. He doesn't need Congress. There is authority within the NDAA for his secretary of defense to certify transfers. What's needed is political courage and action at this point.
There is a courage of the deed and a prelude to courage by words. It has often been said that this president excels at the second; but there are also plain truths he has never dared to utter.
Violence abroad and violence at home are connected. Nobody ever proved that connection as vividly as Martin Luther King in his April 1967 Riverside Church speech against the Vietnam War. What, then, of the violence at home and abroad in 2013? The murders committed by fanatics in Boston and earlier at Fort Hood were incited in part, as we now know, by the horror of U.S. drone strikes in the Arab world. It is not unlikely that the injustice and violence of Guantanamo were an influence, too, on those heated and susceptible minds. And what such images and facts have done to some Muslims, they may do to more.
Eight days after the Boston explosions, President Obama exploded another missile on a Yemeni village. Farea Al-Muslimi, a former inhabitant of that village, has lately testified both in Congress and in news interviews about the difficulty of explaining America's intentions to people who have suffered what his village has suffered:
My mind was racing and my heart was torn. I was torn between the great country that I know and love and the drone above my head that could not differentiate between me and some AQAP militant. It was one of the most divisive and difficult feelings I have ever encountered. That feeling, multiplied by the highest number mathematicians have, gripped me when my village was droned just days ago. It is the worst feeling I have ever had. I was devastated for days because I knew that the bombing in my village by the United States would empower militants.
Those are the feelings of a Muslim who has experienced to the full, and by living in America, the kindness and generosity this country has to offer. Al-Muslimi finds it impossible to reconcile what the country at its best looks like from inside, to one of the lucky, and what it looks like from outside to one of the thousands of the innocent who have seen their families and neighbors killed or maimed by American weapons. All this is done in the cause of the War on Terror which President Obama, with his love of euphemism, prefers not even to mention by name. But you must name it if you want to get your countrymen to realize that this policy has subverted the Constitution and soiled the reputation of the United States.
We have now had two successive presidents who dealt in a most anomalous way with personal intentions and evil actions. Bush did intend the evil he performed (as when he asked of the supposed high-value detainee Abu Zubaydah, "Who authorized putting him on pain medication?"), but one had the impression that he also did not know the meaning of what he did. This came out in his choice to delegate the major powers of action during the first six years of his presidency to the office of the vice president. By contrast, Obama gives the impression that he does not intend the evil he performs, but powerful others want it so pressingly that he cannot bear to say no. He recognizes what this means, from the point of view of right and wrong, but he thinks that his having not intended it, a preference sometimes telegraphed by a public demur, absolves him of responsibility. It is a perversion and a defection of the will. And it fits with his being a winner -- someone who likes very much to win, far beyond knowing why he wants it so much -- and also being a quitter. In many ways, Obama is as odd and disturbing a personality as Richard Nixon: another clever, arrogant, and isolated man who came to place tremendous value on secrecy and for whom, as with Obama, secrecy had its natural climax in secret wars.
In Obama's case, too, as in Nixon's, the exorbitant love of secrecy springs from a desire not to be judged. It has its source in an almost antinomian assurance that there is no one in the world who knows enough to judge him. There is, however, a respect in which Obama has become a stranger president than Nixon. What after all are we to make of the bizarre alternation of the commands to kill and the journeys to comfort the killed? As this president has lengthened the shadow of American power in Arab lands and made it hard for someone like Farea Al-Muslimi to persuade his countrymen that the U.S. is not at war with Islam, he has made serial visits to comfort Americans mourning the dead after the mass murders in Tucson, in Aurora, in Newtown, and in Boston. None of these speeches has carried a hint of the perception that there could be a link between American violence at home and abroad. The role of this president -- a president of safety and protection rather than a president of liberty and the rule of law -- is dismaying in itself. But there is something actively morbid in the dramatic assumption of grief counseling as his major public function, even as he continues in secret his wars against people about whom he will not speak to Americans except in platitude.
The United States in the past decade has now killed, at a low estimate, 225,000 people in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. How, in the face of those figures, could one argue against a Muslim who once admired the United States but has been convinced, by the actions of the country under Bush and Obama, that we are bent on his destruction? One would be driven to request an act of faith: "We are good. Please believe that we are good." That is what Bush said, and it is what Obama says. But it will take more than occasional words to shift the direction of the policy of perpetual war; and words that are given the lie by actions are worse than no words. "You ought not, in reason," said Edmund Burke in 1775, "to trifle with so large a mass of the interests and feelings of the human race. You could at no time do it without guilt; and be assured that you will not be able to do it long with impunity." He was speaking of the attitude of Britain toward the American colonists. He thought the continued prosecution of a policy bent on war would alienate America from Britain and cause the closest of ties to be severed. He was not wrong, and the laws of human nature have not changed in the intervening years.
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This photo illustration made Thursday, Dec. 13, 2012, shows labels of garments made in Bangladesh, India, China, and Pakistan, that were bought at a Wal-Mart store in Atlanta. Global clothing brands involved in Bangladesh's troubled garment industry responded in starkly different ways to the building collapse that killed more than 600 people. Some quickly acknowledged their links to the tragedy and promised compensation. Others denied they authorized work at factories in the building even when their labels were found in the rubble. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
This photo illustration made Thursday, Dec. 13, 2012, shows labels of garments made in Bangladesh, India, China, and Pakistan, that were bought at a Wal-Mart store in Atlanta. Global clothing brands involved in Bangladesh's troubled garment industry responded in starkly different ways to the building collapse that killed more than 600 people. Some quickly acknowledged their links to the tragedy and promised compensation. Others denied they authorized work at factories in the building even when their labels were found in the rubble. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
In this Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2012, photo, Lana Nguyen, right, holds up a shirt while helping friend Chris Ghiathi, left, shop in an H&M store, in Atlanta. Global clothing brands involved in Bangladesh's troubled garment industry responded in starkly different ways to the building collapse that killed more than 600 people. Some quickly acknowledged their links to the tragedy and promised compensation. Others denied they authorized work at factories in the building even when their labels were found in the rubble. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
This photo illustration made Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2012, shows the label of a garment made in Bangladesh outside the Wal-Mart store where it's sold in Atlanta. Global clothing brands involved in Bangladesh's troubled garment industry responded in starkly different ways to the building collapse that killed more than 600 people. Some quickly acknowledged their links to the tragedy and promised compensation. Others denied they authorized work at factories in the building even when their labels were found in the rubble. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
In this Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2012, photoChris Ghiathi, right, shops with friend Shawn Patel, left, in an H&M store, in Atlanta. Global clothing brands involved in Bangladesh's troubled garment industry responded in starkly different ways to the building collapse that killed more than 600 people. Some quickly acknowledged their links to the tragedy and promised compensation. Others denied they authorized work at factories in the building even when their labels were found in the rubble. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
In this Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2012, photo, a tank-top made in Bangladesh is displayed in an H&M store in Atlanta. Global clothing brands involved in Bangladesh's troubled garment industry responded in starkly different ways to the building collapse that killed more than 600 people. Some quickly acknowledged their links to the tragedy and promised compensation. Others denied they authorized work at factories in the building even when their labels were found in the rubble. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
MUMBAI, India (AP) ? Global clothing brands involved in Bangladesh's troubled garment industry responded in starkly different ways to the building collapse that killed more than 600 people. Some quickly acknowledged their links to the tragedy and promised compensation. Others denied they authorized work at factories in the building even when their labels were found in the rubble.
The first approach seems to deserve plaudits for honesty and compassion. The second seems calculated to minimize damage to a brand by maximizing distance from the disaster. Communications professionals say both are public relations strategies and neither may be enough to protect companies from the stain of doing business in Bangladesh.
Such experts say that with several deadly disasters and fires in Bangladesh's $20 billion garment industry in the past six months, possibly the only way retailers and clothing brands can protect their reputations is to visibly and genuinely work to overhaul safety in Bangladesh's garment factories. A factory fire killed 112 workers in November and a January blaze killed seven.
"Just public relations is not going to do it," said Caroline Sapriel, managing director of CS&A, a firm that specializes in reputation management in crisis situations.
Over the past decade, major players in the fashion industry have flocked to Bangladesh, where a minimum wage of about $38 a month has helped boost profits in a global business worth $1 trillion a year. Clothing and textiles now make up 80 percent of Bangladesh's exports and employ several million people.
Yet the country's worker safety record has become so notorious that the reputational risks of doing business there may have become too great even for retailers and brands that didn't work with factories in the collapsed Rana Plaza building or the Tazreen Fashions factory that burned late last year.
"I don't think it's enough anymore to say 'We're not involved in these particular factories,'" Sapriel said.
Many clothing brands were quick to distance themselves from the five factories that were housed in Rana Plaza. The building, which was not designed for industrial use and had three illegally added levels, collapsed April 24.
Benetton said none of the factories were its authorized suppliers, although Benetton labels were found in the rubble. Spain's Mango said it hadn't bought clothing from Rana Plaza factories but acknowledged it had been in talks with one factory to produce a test batch of clothing.
German clothing company KiK said it was "surprised, shocked and appalled" to learn its T-shirts and tops were found in the rubble. The company said it stopped doing business with the Rana Plaza factories in 2008. It promised an investigation.
Wal-Mart said there was no authorized production of its clothing lines at Rana Plaza but it was investigating whether there was unapproved subcontracting. Swedish retailer H&M, the single largest customer of Bangladeshi garment factories, said none of its clothes were produced there.
The Walt Disney Co. in March responded to publicity from last year's fire at the Tazreen factory, where its branded clothing was found, by pulling out of Bangladesh production altogether.
Only a few companies, including Britain's Primark and Canada's Loblaw Inc., which owns the Joe Fresh clothing line, have acknowledged production at Rana Plaza and promised compensation. Loblaw's CEO said there were 28 other brands and retailers using the five factories and urged them to end their "deafening silence."
Companies that are downplaying involvement in Bangladesh's factory safety problems may be counting on the short memories of Western consumers, who tend to focus on price and may not even check where a piece of clothing has been made. But that's a risky strategy, said Rahul Sharma, public affairs executive with the India-based public relations firm Genesis Burston-Marsteller.
"Reputation is built over a long period of time. But to lose it, it can take seconds," Sharma said. Even companies that do make efforts to ensure they use only factories with good safety records are now at risk of being lumped in with the problems that are rife in Bangladesh's garment industry, he said.
Sharma said that if he were advising any retailer doing business in Bangladesh, he would recommend swift action in the form of a concrete plan to overhaul the entire industry, working with government, factory owners and labor unions.
"They need to send out the message that they are addressing this problem ? and then they need to actually do it," he said.
In the wake of the Rana Plaza collapse, there have been tentative moves to do that. Last week, the Bangladeshi garment association met with representatives of 40 garment buyers including H&M, JC Penney, Gap, Nike, Li & Fung and Tesco.
Others have called for retailers and brands to now embrace a union-proposed plan for all retailers to fund factory upgrades and independent inspections that would cover the entire industry in Bangladesh.
That plan has previously been rejected by all but two major brands as too expensive for the corporations and Bangladesh's responsibility to fix its own problems. PVH, the parent company of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger brands, and German retailer Tchibo were willing to sign up.
But with the latest disaster, a potential loss of reputation could be far more expensive in the long run.
"There is a perception when something terrible like this happens, that crisis communication is going to fix it," Sapriel said. "But no, no. You have to go and fix the problem. And then, only then, can you can communicate that you've done something to fix the problem."
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