Who's your daddy? DNA clinic gives answers, sparks concerns

* Mobile clinic offers paternity, other biological tests * U.S. demand for DNA testing steadily increasing * Experts concerned about accuracy, psychological impact By Lily Kuo NEW YORK, Aug 22 (Reuters) - A mobile DNA testing facility that looks more like a motor home than a medical clinic is raising questions about the ramifications of quick and easy tests to determine paternity and other biological connections. Once a time-consuming and complicated process, DNA testing has become so accessible that experts worry families and individuals may not be properly prepared for the results. A 28-foot (8.5-meter) recreational vehicle cruising around New York City emblazoned with the question "Who's Your Daddy?", and offering on-the-spot DNA testing services starting at $299, has renewed those concerns. The clinic, operated by a New York company called Health Street, started in 2010 but was revamped two months ago. Passersby can hail the conspicuous brown and blue Winnebago to have DNA samples taken by a technician, packaged and sent to a laboratory in Ohio. Results are returned within three to five business days. Mandatory prescriptions for the tests from a customer's physician can be faxed via the Internet to the RV. While it is common for DNA testing distributors, companies who take the samples and send them to labs for analysis, to offer mobile collection services, Health Street appears to be the first to splash exactly what it does on the vehicle. "DNA TESTING" in bold red lettering is painted on the side. Jared Rosenthal, who founded Health Street and drives the RV, recounts some of the people affected by his service: Two women who learned they were half-sisters, and a man whose suspicion that he might be the father of a friend's daughter was confirmed. "It's just such a serious, fundamental question ... who are your children? Who are your parents?" Rosenthal, 42 said. Experts say there has been a steady increase in demand for such tests in the United States, reaching close to 500,000 a year, according to Michael Baird, director of DNA Diagnostics, a DNA testing laboratory, in part because the rate of births to unmarried women has also been increasing. In 2010, at least 382,199 relationship tests were conducted in the United States, although the total is likely higher because some labs don't submit data, according to the AABB, formerly known as the American Association of Blood Banks, which accredits relationship testing facilities. State child-support agencies make up the bulk of this demand, but experts said the number of people simply seeking answers, and the accompanying number of venues and ways to test for family relationships, have increased. Susan Crockin, a lawyer who teaches at Georgetown Law Center and specializes in reproductive technology, said families should be careful of the reliability of the growing variety of relationship tests around the country, which range from at-home DNA kits that critics say can be subject to contamination, to on-site tests used to prove legal paternity. "The underlying issues are obviously the quality of testing," Crockin said. Health Street's DNA tests are analyzed in a lab certified by the AABB as well as the New York State Department of Health, Rosenthal said. Health experts advise customers to only use labs accredited by AABB or distributors who use those labs, but there are no regulations on the outfits themselves. It is also not illegal to run a DNA testing laboratory that is not AABB-certified, Baird said. Customers at Health Street must have a prescription from a doctor requesting the tests, Rosenthal said. Paternity testing is usually not covered by health insurance unless there is a medical need. HEARTBREAK CASES Aside from questions about reliability, experts said wider DNA testing raises concerns of whether families and individuals are psychologically prepared for the results. "The bigger question is what do we do with this information. Why are we looking for it and what do we think it means?" Crockin said. Crockin said individuals, especially children, should have the advice of trained genetic counselors before and at the time of receiving the results of the DNA match. Others say the promotion and presence of these DNA testing clinics and methods could devalue past family relationships when new biological connections are discovered. "As this (industry) evolves it will create... a social expectation that, despite a past relationship between a social father and a child, DNA is everything," said David Bishai, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Typical customers at Health Street include men who are engaged and want to confirm offspring from a past relationship, returning soldiers seeking reassurance that they fathered newly-born children, and women inquiring about paternity on behalf of their children, Rosenthal said. The door, however, is open to heartbreak, especially when men discover that somebody else fathered their children. "If you're really happy with the children in your life, don't go near these things," Bishai said. Others are happy to receive the results. Cornelia Heggs, 40, of Carrollton, Georgia, grew up knowing she had half-siblings from her absent father's other marriages but never met them. She was contacted in 2009 by a half-sister who promised their mutual grandmother that she would find Heggs. The two women confirmed their relationship in June through a test at Health Street. "We found each other and now we have the proof. There's no more guessing. I'm just happy to know," she said. For others the information opens an uncertain chapter. A 44-year-old married father of two in New York City confirmed in July through a DNA test at Health Street's mobile clinic that the adult daughter of a woman he dated some 20 years ago was his. The man, who declined to give his name for reasons of privacy, said he is slowly and cautiously building a relationship with his 20-year-old daughter, a student in Ohio. "This issue is still raw and very sensitive," he said. "I will get to know my daughter ... this is something I'm taking one day at a time."

Vogue profile of Syrian leader's wife disappears

NEW YORK, April 26, 2012 (AFP) -A flattering Vogue profile of Asma Al-Assad, wife of Syria's besieged president Bashar Al-Assad, has been removed from the magazine's website, as the government crackdown on dissent rumbles on.
The article, written in February 2011, described her as "glamorous, young, and very chic — the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies," but the assessment came to be seen differently in the wake of the unrest roiling Syria.
The profile said the Syrian first lady's central mission was to "change the mindset" of six million of the country's citizens aged under 18 and encourage them to engage in what she calls "active citizenship."
The remarks, however, provoked astonishment given the crackdown on a revolt against the leadership of President Assad, in which more than 9,000 people have died since March 2011, according to UN figures.
"It's about everyone taking shared responsibility in moving this country forward, about empowerment in a civil society.
"We all have a stake in this country; it will be what we make it," the Vogue profile quoted the Syrian leader's wife as saying.
"I like to get out and meet people and do things," it added.
A series of leaked emails in March this year appeared to show that Syria's first lady spent tens of thousands of dollars online on jewelry, chandeliers and other expensive goods to be shipped to her while the flashpoint city of Homs was being bombarded.
A petition was launched last week by the wives of the British and German ambassadors to the United Nations, urging the Syrian first lady to "speak out for peace, to ask for a stop to the bloodshed."
"Make your voice heard! Stop being a bystander. It is your duty to prevent the breakout of civil war as a woman, as a wife and as a mother of young children yourself," said the petition, which has more than 34,000 signatures.
A spokeswoman for Vogue magazine, contacted by AFP, was not available for comment Thursday on why the profile was no longer available online.

Jilted fruit flies turn to alcohol to forget: study

Jilted fruit fly drunk with alcohol.

WASHINGTON, March 15, 2012 (AFP) -Frustrated male fruit flies, whose sexual advances are rejected by females, turn to alcohol to drown their sorrows, a study published Thursday revealed.
Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco discovered that rejected male flies have a tiny neuropeptide F molecule in their brain that pushes them to drink far more than their sexually satisfied counterparts.
The levels of the molecule were higher in sexually satisfied males than in those who got no sex, leading scientists to speculate that their work could shed light on brain mechanisms behind human addiction.
A similar human molecule -- neuropeptide Y -- may also link social triggers to behaviors such as heavy drinking and drug abuse, according to the study published in Science journal.
"If neuropeptide Y turns out to be the transducer between the state of the psyche and the drive to abuse alcohol and drugs, one could develop therapies to inhibit neuropeptide Y receptors," said lead researcher Ulrike Heberlein, a professor of anatomy and neurology at UCSF.
She said clinical trials were underway to determine whether neuropeptide Y can alleviate anxiety and other mood disorders as well as obesity.
For the experiment, male fruit flies were placed in a container with females flies, including both virgins and some that had already mated.
Virgin females were receptive to courting males and readily mated, but females flies who had mated lost interest in sex for a time because of sex peptide, a substance that males inject with sperm during the encounter.
Rejected males then stopped trying to mate, even when placed in the same cage as virgin flies.
But when they were placed by themselves in another container that had two straws -- one containing plain food and the other containing food with 15 percent alcohol -- the rejected males binged on the alcohol.
The scientists said the behavior was predicted by the levels of neuropeptide F in their brains.
"It's a switch that represents the level of reward in the brain and translates it into reward-seeking behavior," said lead author Galit Shohat-Ophir of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Janelia Farm Research Center in Virginia.
Rejected flies had lower levels of neuropeptide F and sought an alternative reward through intoxication.
The scientists found that they could induce the same behaviors in the flies by genetically manipulating the levels of neuropeptide F in their brains.
Activating neuropeptide F production in the brains of virgin male flies caused them to behave as though they were sexually satisfied, and thus they were less keen to drink.
And lowering the levels of the molecule in sexually satisfied flies made them behave as though they were rejected, inciting them to drink more.

Woman in iconic tsunami photo looks to future

By Yuriko Nakao

ISHINOMAKI, Japan, Feb 28 (Reuters) - The young Japanese woman clutches a beige blanket tight around her shoulders as she stares into the distance. Behind her hulks twisted metal and splintered wood left by the tsunami that devastated Ishinomaki, her hometown.
The photograph, taken by Tadashi Okubo at the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, was picked up by Reuters and other agencies around the world, becoming an iconic image of the March 11 disaster that killed 20,000 people.
The woman's name is Yuko Sugimoto. She is now 29 years old.
When the photo was taken, around 7 a.m. on March 13, she was looking in the direction of her son Raito's kindergarten, which was partly submerged and surrounded by piles of debris. Nearly two days after the quake she had yet to find the four-year-old.
"At that point, I thought there was only about a 50 percent chance he was alive," she recalled recently.
"Some people told me the children at the kindergarten were rescued, but others told me that somebody had seen the children all swept away by the tsunami."Sugimoto was born and raised in Ishinomaki, a city of 150,000 known for its port and fishing industry before the wall of water unleashed by the 9.0 magnitude offshore quake roared in. Around 3,800 people perished, the highest toll for a single city.
Delivering beverages for her business when the quake struck, she desperately tried to reach the kindergarten, but was forced to flee the tsunami, spending the night in her car.
Reunited with her husband the next day, the two began making the rounds of evacuation centers -- first by car, then by bicycle as fuel ran out. Her husband found a boat and paddled his way towards the kindergarten, but found no one there.
It wasn't until the next day that the couple heard that their son and other children had been rescued by the military from the roof of the kindergarten the morning after the tsunami.
"When I saw Raito in the corner of a room, the next moment I was weeping so hard I couldn't see anything," Sugimoto said.
She hugged him and checked his hands, his feet, every bit of his body. She even checked his smell, to be certain it really was him. Holding him tight, she said "Thank goodness, thank goodness," over and over.
A YEAR LATER
Nearly a year later, Sugimoto stood in the same place, embracing her son and smiling. Behind her, the gently sloping road was clean, with cars and trucks stopped at a traffic light.
Her smile suggests that her life is back on track, but that is not true. Though the debris was cleared much more quickly than she expected, it will take some time for Sugimoto and her family to get on with their lives.
The house they built four years ago was submerged nearly to its second floor and they lost most of their belongings. What remains is a 31-year-mortgage of around 25 million yen ($310,000) they still have to pay.
They now live in a rented house, but the lease expires next year. Returning to the old house would mean razing it and rebuilding from scratch.
"I used to love the ocean, but ever since the disaster, I haven't been to the ocean even once. I want to stay on in Ishinomaki, but far away from the ocean," she said.
Despite the financial burdens, Sugimoto's priorities have changed. Though she once worked even through vacations, she has now quit her job to spend more time with her family.
"Now, every single day is precious to me. I realise that time with my family is what is most important," she said. "Our bond is even tighter now."

Mubarak's wife attempted suicide over corruption charges

CAIRO Feb. 8 (IANS/RIA NOVOSTI) - The wife of ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubaraj has confessed in her memoirs about an attempt to commit suicide when she knew she would be arrested for corruption.

"May 13, 2011, was the 'darkest' day of my life. When Assem al-Gohary, assistant justice minster for illicit gains affairs, brought an order to arrest me, I took an overdose of sleeping pills and wanted to commit suicide as I could not imagine what for and how to live," Suzanne Mubarak was quoted as saying by EGYnews.

She said that she was miraculously saved."And then, my husband got in touch with somebody who was in power in Egypt, I think somebody from world politicians and managed to keep me near him in hospital for the time of my detention," Suzanne said.Mubarak's lawyer Farid al-Dib managed to solve the issue of her arrest."It was exactly him who advised to write a waiver of all my property to Egyptian government. And then was May 17, and I was released without any charges," the wife of the former president said.Suzanne Mubarak also revealed many surprising facts about the last days of her husband's presidency.

"USA, Saudi Arabia, United Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait offered husband and all family members political asylum at the beginning of February 2011. But when he resigned on February 11, these offers were immediately called off," the former first lady said.

She said it was her elder son, Alaa and not the younger Gamal who assisted his father in making the last fateful decisions.

"On February 1, during a telephone conversation with Barack Obama, my husband agreed to resign but said he did not want to make personal announcement. He also asked for written guarantees that nothing happen with him and his family. These guarantees were given by a special envoy from the US (sic)," Suzanne said.

The memoirs of the former Egyptian first lady, which speak not only about politics but about her personal experiences, love of jewellery and art, will soon be published by Scottish publisher Canongate Books.

Mubarak stepped down Feb 11 after 18 days of mass public protest, which left more than 800 people dead and several thousands wounded. The deposed leader faces charges of corruption, abuse of power and authorising the shooting of protesters during the uprising.

--IANS/RIA Novosti

pm

In this undated photo, former Egyptian president Hosni Mubara
 poses with his wife Susanne, sons Gamal (right) and Alaa in the
Tahadeya Palace in Cairo.

Man survives without heart and pulse for a month

Two doctors have proved that you don't need a heart to survive. You don't even need a pulse.


Last March, Craig Lewis was dying from amyloidosis and had just 12 hours left to live. Texas Heart Institute's doctors Billy Cohn and Bud Frazier saved him with a successful "continuous flow" heart replacement device transplant with no actual heart included.
Their story was documented in the short film "Heart Stop Beating."


DesignTAXI describes the innovative device as "turbine-like" whirling rotors that provide "a 'continuous flow' like a garden hose" rather than beat like a heart. When doctors put a stethoscope to Lewis' chest, no heartbeat or pulse could be heard, just a humming sound. According to "all criteria that we conventionally use to analyze patients" Lewis could be considered dead, Cohn said.

Heart Stop Beating | Jeremiah Zagar from Focus Forward Films on Vimeo.

Yet, Lewis lived for a month without a heart.

While his heart didn't kill him, the amyloidosis unfortunately attacked the man's liver and kidneys. The pumps "worked flawlessly," but Lewis still succumbed to the disease in April.

"We knew if it wasn't a success for Craig, if they could get data that would help them, if it helps the next person, then you did good," Lewis's widow, Linda, told NPR.

Design, not just threads, toughens spider web

PARIS — Scientists said Wednesday they had unraveled the mystery of how spider webs can withstand multiple tears and even hurricane-force winds without collapsing.
The findings should be of keen interest to engineers searching for shock-resistant structural designs, they said.
The silk-like threads with which arachnids spin their traps are famously stronger than steel and tougher than Kevlar, but this alone does not explain how webs withstand, say, a gash from a fallen branch.
Once ripped, what keeps the whole web from falling apart?
Researchers led by Markus Buehler of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) probed the question using lab experiments, observation and computer modelling.
They began by delving deeper into the molecular structure of the silk threads.
A strand comprises a unique combination of shapeless protein and ordered, nanoscale crystals, they found.
When stress increases — the falling branch, for example — the filament elongates in four phases: a linear tugging, a drawn-out stretching as the protein unfolds, a stiffening phase that absorbs force, and finally the breaking point triggered by friction.
Spider threads fall into into two categories, and what makes webs so resilient is how they interact, the researchers said.
So-called viscid silk — stretchy, wet and sticky — winds out in ever-widening spirals from the centre of the web, and serves to capture unsuspecting prey.
But the straight threads that radiate outwards like spokes on a wheel, called dragline silk, are dry and stiff and provide structural support.
The radial and spiral filaments each play a different role in absorbing motion, and the way they are intertwined limits puncture damage to the spot where it occurs, the researchers found.
As a result, the web is organized to "sacrifice" local areas so that failure will not prevent the remainder from functioning, even if this is in a diminished capacity.
Dennis Carter, an expert on biomechanics at the US National Science Foundation, which partly funded the research, paid tribute to a "clever strategy" by spiders, which expend precious energy to build their webs.
"It is a distinct departure from the structural principles that seem to be in play for many biological materials," he said in a press release.
There are lessons to be learned from these insights, the researchers said.
"Engineering structures are typically designed to withstand large loads with limited damage, but extreme loads are more difficult to account for," said lead-author Steven Canford of MIT.
"The spider has uniquely solved this problem by allowing a sacrificial member to fail under a high load."

Three foods all men should eat

A varied, balanced diet is the cornerstone of healthy living for everyone, yet healthy eating can sometimes A varied, balanced diet is the cornerstone of healthy living for everyone, yet healthy eating can sometimes mean different things depending on your gender.
While there are some foods we should all be eating more of, men and women also have their own set of dietary requirements as well as their own unique health concerns. Here are three foods all men should eat.


Tomatoes
Tomatoes are possibly one of the best "superfoods" around, and the popular fruit has particular benefits for men. Studies have suggested that the lycopene found in tomatoes may reduce risk of colorectal cancer, lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease; the leading cause of death in men. Research has also shown that men who frequently eat foods rich in lycopene may drastically reduce their risk of developing prostate cancer.


Broccoli
Broccoli - along with other cruciferous vegetables like cabbage and sprouts - contains a strong cancer-fighting chemical, sulphoraphane, which research has suggested may reduce men's risk of developing bladder cancer (a cancer more commonly affecting women than men), prostate cancer and colorectal cancer.


Oysters
Oysters are the highest natural source of zinc; an essential requirement for men's fertility and sexual health. Zinc not only helps to maintain healthy testosterone levels in men, but it is essential for healthy sperm production.  On top of this, zinc deficiency may be responsible for hair loss in men, so an increased intake may benefit men's appearance as well as health. mean different things depending on your gender.

India teacher stunned by $10 billion in her bank account

KOLKATA, January 19, 2012 (AFP) - An Indian high school teacher, with a monthly salary of around $700, was astounded when a routine online check of his bank account showed a balance of almost $10 billion.
Parijat Saha, from the town of Balurghat in West Bengal state, said he had checked his State Bank of India account online last Sunday to confirm reception of a 10,000 rupee ($200) interest payment.
"Instead I saw this astronomical amount," he told AFP by telephone.
The account showed a balance of 496 billion rupees.
After recovering from the initial shock at becoming an overnight billionaire -- at least on paper --Saha, 42, said he immediately called a friend he knew at the bank to point out what was obviously a major accounting error.
The State Bank of India said it was not immediately clear how the amount came to be registered in Saha's account.
"We are trying to ascertain what went wrong," said local branch manager Subhashish Karmakar.
"We have informed our regional headquarters in Kolkata and national headquarters in Mumbai," he said.

Cut soot, methane to curb global warming: Scientists

Environmental activists in Praque.

WASHINGTON, January 12 (AP) — An international team of scientists says it has figured out how to slow global warming in the short run and prevent millions of deaths from dirty air: Stop focusing so much on carbon dioxide.
They say the key is to reduce emissions of two powerful and fast-acting causes of global warming — methane and soot.
Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and the one world leaders have spent the most time talking about controlling. Scientists say carbon dioxide from fossil fuels like coal and oil is a bigger overall cause of global warming, but reducing methane and soot offers quicker fixes.
Soot also is a big health problem, so dramatically cutting it with existing technology would save between 700,000 and 4.7 million lives each year, according to the team's research published online Thursday in the journal Science. Since soot causes rainfall patterns to shift, reducing it would cut down on droughts in southern Europe and parts of Africa and ease monsoon problems in Asia, the study says.
Two dozen scientists from around the world ran computer models of 400 different existing pollution control measures and came up with 14 methods that attack methane and soot. The idea has been around for more than a decade and the same authors worked on a United Nations report last year, but this new study is far more comprehensive.
All 14 methods — capturing methane from landfills and coal mines, cleaning up cook stoves and diesel engines, and changing agriculture techniques for rice paddies and manure collection — are being used efficiently in many places, but are not universally adopted, said the study's lead author, Drew Shindell of NASA.

Chinese women wear masks in Beijing.

If adopted more widely, the scientists calculate that would reduce projected global warming by 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit (0.5 degrees Celsius) by the year 2050. Without the measures, global average temperature is projected to rise nearly 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius) in the next four decades. But controlling methane and soot, the increase is projected to be only 1.3 degrees (0.7 degrees Celsius). It also would increase annual yield of key crops worldwide by almost 150 million tons (135 million metric tons).
Methane comes from landfills, farms, drilling for natural gas, and coal mining. Soot, called black carbon by scientists, is a byproduct of burning and is a big problem with cook stoves using wood, dung and coal in developing countries and in some diesel fuels worldwide.
Reducing methane and black carbon isn't the very best way to attack climate change, air pollution, or hunger, but reducing those chemicals are among the better ways and work simultaneously on all three problems, Shindell said.
And shifting the pollution focus does not mean ignoring carbon dioxide. Shindell said: "The science says you really have to start on carbon dioxide even now to get the benefit in the distant future."
It all comes down to basic chemistry. There is far more carbon dioxide pollution than methane and soot pollution, but the last two are much more potent. Carbon dioxide also lasts in the atmosphere longer.
A 2007 Stanford University study calculated that carbon dioxide was the No. 1 cause of man-made global warming, accounting for 48 percent of the problem. Soot was second with 16 percent of the warming and methane was right behind at 14 percent.
But over a 20-year period, a molecule of methane or soot causes substantially more warming then a carbon dioxide molecule.
The new research won wide praise from outside scientists, including a conservative researcher who held a top post in the George W. Bush administration.
"So rather than focusing only on carbon dioxide emissions, where we have to make a tradeoff with energy prices, this strategy focuses on 'win-win-win' pathways that have benefits to human health, agriculture and stabilizing the Earth's climate," said University of Minnesota ecology professor Jonathan Foley, who wasn't part of the study. "That's brilliant."
John D. Graham, who oversaw regulations at the Office of Management and Budget in the Bush administration and is now dean of public and environmental affairs at Indiana University, said: "This is an important study that deserves serious consideration by policy makers as well as scientists."
The study even does a cost-benefit analysis to see if these pollution control methods are too expensive to be anything but fantasy. They actually pay off with benefits that are as much as ten times the value of the costs, Shindell said. The paper calculates that as of 2030, the pollution reduction methods would bring about $6.5 trillion in annual benefits from fewer people dying from air pollution, less global warming and increased crop production.
In the United States, Shindell calculates the measures would prevent about 14,000 air pollution deaths in people older than 30 by the year 2030. About 0.8 degrees Fahrenheit of projected warming in the U.S. would be prevented by 2050.
But health benefits would be far bigger in China and India where soot is more of a problem.
The study comes a day after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released the most detailed data yet on American greenhouse gas emissions. Of the emissions reported to the government, nearly three-quarters came from power plants. But with methane, it's different. Nineteen of the top 20 methane emitters were landfills.
Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field, who is a leader in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change but wasn't part of this study, praised the study but said he worried that officials would delay cutting back on the more prevalent carbon dioxide. Focusing solely on methane and soot and ignoring carbon dioxide "tends to exacerbate climate change," he said.
Another outside climate expert Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in Canada said the study is good news amid a sea of gloomy reports about climate change.
"This is a no-brainer," he said. "We have solutions at hand."

Syria's First Lady falling from grace

At the Bristol hotel in Paris in 2010.

Asma Al-Assad

BEIRUT, Jan 14, 2012 (AFP) -Not so long ago, she was the darling of the international press, described as a "rose in the desert" and "a ray of light in a country full of shadow zones."
But today, Syria's First Lady is being likened to a modern-day Marie-Antoinette, drawing criticism for staying mum on a crisis that has left more than 5,000 people dead in her country.
The British-born Asma Al-Assad, who virtually disappeared from the public eye after the revolt broke out in Syria in mid-March, made a surprise appearance this week to support her husband Bashar as he spoke at a pro-regime rally.
Pictures of the 36-year-old, all smiles with two of her children, adorned the front pages of many Arab and Western newspapers.
"This shows that she is standing by her man, that she and him are on the same page," said Andrew Tabler, an expert on Syria and former press adviser to local charities run by the First Lady.
"She is clearly part of the regime."
Her appearance, however, has also drawn scathing criticism.
"Bashar's wife and kids cheer on daddy the dictator," one tweet scoffed.
"The British should withdraw Asma Assad's passport and those of her parents as accessories to a war criminal," fumed another.
But the former investment banker continues to attract admiration among supporters of the Assad regime.
"You deserve to be the First Lady of the whole world!" gushed a post on one of the many Facebook pages dedicated to the slim, brown-haired Asma.
Syria's First Lady has emerged as a style icon in the world of politics and has been compared to the likes of Queen Rania of Jordan or France's Carla Bruni, with a reported fondness for Chanel in particular.
Tall, stylish and charismatic, Asma Al-Assad is the picture of glamour: in designer outfits and her trademark Christian Louboutin heels, her impeccable British accent and credentials have helped promote the soft side of an iron-fisted regime.
"She was an important part of the public relations of the regime," Tabler said.
"She has an obsession with fashion," he added. "How do you reconcile this princess-like image with one of the poorest countries in the Middle East?"
The daughter of a prominent London-based cardiologist, Fawaz Al-Akhras, and a former diplomat, Sahar Otri, Asma is seen as the modern, progressive side of the Assad dynasty, with a degree from King's College in London where she was raised.
Ten years her husband's junior, Asma has welcomed the likes of the Spanish king and queen and Hollywood power couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to her country.
During a 2010 visit to France, Asma told French weekly Paris Match that she had married Bashar for the "values" he embodied.
Fashion magazine Vogue even ran a glowing interview with her before the outbreak of the revolt, describing Asma as the "most magnetic of first ladies," but later removed the article from its website.
Bashar's rise to power more than a decade ago symbolized the hope for change in a country long isolated internationally.
Once a banker with J.P. Morgan, Asma herself is credited with having played a significant role in liberalizing the Syrian economy.
But the Syrian revolt has dealt a serious blow to the image of a young, modern couple who captured the attention of press and public opinion around the world.
"This image has been destroyed," said Tabler. "She has a sort of quietly domineering personality and she is a very proper person, very British.
"She has a British passport. So she could go. She is not trapped."
Bashar and Asma for years have been viewed as a symbol of coexistence in multi-confessional Syria. While the president is a minority Alawite, Asma is a Sunni Muslim who originally hails from Homs -- bastion of the current anti-Assad revolt.
But as the death toll in Syria tops 5,000, many find the pair increasingly out of touch with reality.
In a 2009 interview with CNN, the honey-eyed Asma slammed Israel's offensive on the Gaza Strip as "barbaric" and, "as a mother and as a human being," called for an end to the violence.
"This is the 21st century. Where in the world could this happen? Unfortunately it is happening," she said in a calm, soft voice.
Now her own words have come back to haunt her.
"Stop being a hypocrite! You are slaughtering your own people!" one YouTube commenter recently wrote beneath the video.
Another summed it up in two words: "Lady Macbeth."

French chef takes cuisine to new heights — in the Alps

Jean Sulpice at the L'Oxalys.

VAL Thorens, France — It's tough at the top they say, and few chefs are better placed to tell you than Jean Sulpice, whose two-star restaurant L'Oxalys perches 2,300 meters (7,500 feet) up in the French Alps.
Though born and bred in the region, when Sulpice took over the mountaintop eatery in the trendy ski resort of Val Thorens in 2002, aged just 24, he knew he had his work cut out for him.
Val Thorens has only two seasons —buzzing from December to April, and dead the rest of the year — and there was no market for the kind of cuisine he wanted to offer.
"People in the mountains didn't do good food," the fresh-faced 33-year-old, who today runs Europe's highest Michelin-starred restaurant, told AFP. "You ate raclette and tartiflette."
These two dishes, which make a virtue out of easily available ingredients — melted cheese, potatoes and cured meats — were standard resort fare.
"There was no such thing as gastronomic food," Sulpice recalled.
The isolated site brought obvious logistical challenges, with deliveries of basic ingredients liable to be suddenly cancelled because of snow on the roads.
But the altitude also posed unique challenges, forcing the chef to relearn parts of his trade from scratch.
That high up, for example, water boils at 90 degrees C (194 degrees F) instead of 100 — which means cooking an egg takes twice the time.
"I also had to invent my own type of bread because the first few years it would turn dry as biscuits" because of the low humidity levels, he said.

Skiers perform at the Alpe d'Huez, Frence Alps. - AP

Likewise, he had to deal with exploding packaging, because of the atmospheric pressure, as well as wine ageing faster than it should.
And sometimes without serving a single customer for three days running.
Though a die-hard mountain-lover who goes climbing in between seatings, one thing Sulpice really struggled with was the thick blanket of snow masking all surrounding plant life for six months of the year.

Two prsons enjoy wonderful winter weather on Alp Sut, Switzerland.

"When you have a blank page in front of your nose every morning, your inspiration is blank too," he said. "There was no smell, no market, no produce. At Val Thorens, you don't see spring."
But that did not stop Sulpice landing his first Michelin star in 2006, and then a second in 2010.
And in increasing numbers, the tourists left their cheese and potatoes behind them.
"Today, there is a clientele who come specially to Val Thorens to eat here," he said.
Sulpice's success story is part of a wider trend, which has seen French ski resorts shift their restaurant offer upmarket over the past decade, to cater to increasingly monied tourists.
The nearby resort of Courchevel — popular with Russian billionaires — counts seven Michelin-starred restaurants, one of the highest concentrations of the coveted stars in the world.
But for all that L'Oxalys is now among the Michelin elect, the atmosphere remains relaxed at the restaurant.
Still in their ski kit and moon boots, holidaymakers tuck into a shoulder of lamb confit with coriander, in a mountain cabin setting with large bay windows opening onto snow-capped peaks.
At the entrance to the restaurant is an impressive collection of Michelin guides, the oldest dating back to 1908, bequeathed to Sulpice by his grandfather, who ran a hotel and restaurant in the Savoie region.
The young chef is perpetuating a family tradition, following in the footsteps of an uncle and a great uncle, the latter also a Michelin-star winner.
And L'Oxalys remains a family affair: his wife is the sommelier and he supplies meals to his son's local nursery school.
Sulpice says he discovered a passion for food at the age of 14, following a stint of work experience in a restaurant. He was not yet 19 when he joined the team of the star chef Marc Veyrat.
"He was a young man full of enthusiasm, of energy and generosity," recalls Stephane Froidevaux, who was Veyrat's sous-chef at the time. "He will end up with three stars for sure".
Sulpice, who is already on to his fourth cook book and gives cooking classes at the restaurant, will not speculate on his chances at a third star -- but admits it would be a crowning glory.
"When you have the bug, it's a natural ambition." — AFP

Warmer summers cause colder winters

Alaska Department of Transportation snow plows clear a highway

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A man shovels snow off his home in Alaska.(Both photos by AP)

By David Fogarty
Reuters

SINGAPORE — Warmer summers in the far Northern Hemisphere are disrupting weather patterns and triggering more severe winter weather in the United States and Europe, a team of scientists say, in a finding that could improve long-range weather forecasts.
Blizzards and extreme cold temperatures in the winters of 2009/10 and 2010/11 caused widespread travel chaos in parts of Europe and the United States, leading some to question whether global warming was real.
Judah Cohen, lead author of a study published on Friday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, and his team found there was a clear trend of strong warming in the Arctic from July to September.
Existing predictions would also expect a warming trend during winter as well. But Cohen and his team found this was not the case for some regions, in a counter-intuitive finding that reveals more about the complexity of the world's climate system than any flaws in the science of global warming.
"For the last two decades, large-scale cooling trends have existed instead across large stretches of eastern North America and northern Eurasia. We argue that this unforeseen trend is probably not due to internal variability alone," the scientists say in the study.
Using temperature, rainfall and snow and ice data, the team found that rising summer temperatures in the Arctic meant the atmosphere could hold more moisture, leading to an increase in autumn snowfall in high-latitude areas.
Analysis of data showed the average snow coverage in Eurasia had increased over the past two decades. This additional snow cover in turn has led to a change in the Arctic Oscillation, the main atmospheric pressure pattern that governs winter weather in the far Northern Hemisphere.
When the oscillation is in a negative phase, high pressure cells over the Arctic push colder air towards the mid-latitudes, triggering colder than usual temperatures and fierce snow storms.
A positive phase tends to bring milder winter weather, such as the case at present in the United States and Europe.
The team say the winter cooling trends cannot be entirely explained by natural variability of the climate system and need more study.
Cohen said the finding could improve long-range forecasting.
"Using the snow cover in a seasonal forecast can provide a more skilful or accurate forecast," Cohen, of Atmospheric and Environmental Research, a US firm that helps businesses and governments manage climate risks, said in a statement.
The team's research is one of recent studies to highlight the complexity of the climate system and that scientists are still learning how much mankind and natural factors can influence long-term patterns.
Last October, a study led by the UK Met Office, found that a cyclical drop in the sun's radiation can trigger unusually cold winters in parts of North America and Europe. — Reuters

Astronomers see more planets than stars in galaxy

WASHINGTON  (AP, Jan. 12) — The more astronomers look for other worlds, the more they find that it is a crowded and crazy cosmos. They think planets easily outnumber stars in our galaxy and they are even finding them in the strangest of places.
And they have only begun to count.
Three studies released Wednesday, in the journal Nature and at the American Astronomical Society's conference in Austin, Texas, demonstrate an extrasolar real estate boom. One study shows that in our Milky Way, most stars have planets. And since there are a lot of stars in our galaxy — about 100 billion — that means a lot of planets.
"We're finding an exciting potpourri of things we didn't even think could exist," said Harvard University astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger, including planets that mirror "Star Wars" Luke Skywalker's home planet with twin suns and a mini-star system with a dwarf sun and shrunken planets.
"We're awash in planets where 17 years ago we weren't even sure there were planets" outside our solar system, said Kaltenegger, who wasn't involved in the new research.
Astronomers are finding other worlds using three different techniques and peering through telescopes in space and on the ground.
Confirmed planets outside our solar system — called exoplanets — now number well over 700, still-to-be-confirmed ones are in the thousands.
NASA's new Kepler planet-hunting telescope in space is discovering exoplanets that are in a zone friendly to life and detecting planets as small as Earth or even tinier. That is moving the field of looking for some kind of life outside Earth from science fiction toward plain science.
One study in Nature this week figures that the Milky Way averages at least 1.6 large planets per star. And that is likely a dramatic underestimate.
That study is based on only one intricate and time-consuming method of planet hunting that uses several South American, African and Australian telescopes. Astronomers look for increases in brightness of distant stars that indicate planets between Earth and that pulsating star. That technique usually finds only bigger planets and is good at finding those further away from their stars, sort of like our Saturn or Uranus.
Kepler and a different ground-based telescope technique are finding planets closer to their stars. Putting those methods together, the number of worlds in our galaxy is probably much closer to two or more planets per star, said the Nature study author Arnaud Cassan of the Astrophysical Institute in Paris.
Dan Werthimer, chief scientist at the University of California Berkeley's search for extraterrestrial intelligence program and who wasn't part of the studies, was thrilled: "It's great to know that there are planets out there that we can point our telescopes at."
Kepler also found three rocky planets — tinier than Earth — that are circling a dwarf star that itself is only a bit bigger than Jupiter. They are so close to their small star that they are too hot for life.
"It's like you took your shrink ray gun and you set it to seven times smaller and zap the planetary system," said California Institute of Technology astronomer John Johnson, co-author of the study presented Wednesday at the astronomy conference.
Because it is so hard to see these size planets, they must be pretty plentiful, Johnson said. "It's kind of like cockroaches. If you see one, then there are dozens hiding."
It's not just the number or size of planets, but where they are found. Scientists once thought systems with two stars were just too chaotic to have planets nearby. But so far, astronomers have found three different systems where planets have two suns, something that a few years ago seemed like purely "Star Wars" movie magic.
"Nature must like to form planets because it's forming them in places that are kind of difficult to do," said San Diego State University astronomy professor William Welsh, who wrote a study about planets with two stars that's also published in the journal Nature.
The gravity of two stars makes the area near them unstable, Welsh said. So astronomers thought that if a planet formed in that area, it would be torn apart.
Late last year, Kepler telescope found one system with two stars. It was considered a freak. Then Welsh used Kepler to find two more. Now Welsh figures such planetary systems, while not common, are not rare either.
"It just feels like it's inevitable that Kepler is going to come up with a habitable Earth-sized planet in the next couple of years," Caltech's Johnson said. — AP

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Rare Moon mineral found in Australia

Sydney, Jan 5, 2012 (AFP) -A mineral brought back to Earth by the first men on the Moon and long thought to be unique to the lunar surface has been found in Australian rocks more than one billion years old, scientists said Thursday.
Named after Apollo 11's 1969 landing site at the Sea of Tranquility, tranquillityite was one of three minerals first discovered in rocks from the Moon and the only one not to be found, in subsequent years, on Earth.
Australian scientist Birger Rasmussen said tranquillityite had "long been considered as the Moon's own mineral" until geologists discovered it, by chance, in rock from resources-rich Western Australia.
"In over 40 years it hadn't been found in any terrestrial samples," Rasmussen, from Curtin University, told AFP.
When the Moon samples first came back Rasmussen said they were considered to be "extremely precious" and had been subjected to intense, detailed study when -- ironically -- their contents were "right here all the time."
"They were always part of Earth, they haven't come from the Moon," he said of his work on the discovery, published in the journal Geology.
"It tells you that broadly overall you have similar chemistries and similar processes operating on the Moon as on Earth."
As well as being "quirky and surprising" Rasmussen said the discovery also had important practical applications, with the mineral proving to be an excellent dating tool which had allowed scientists to pin down the rocks' age.
"We used this mineral ... to date the dolerite which has previously been undated, so that helped us understand the geological history," he said.
They were 1.07 billion years old, more ancient than rocks in the area had previously been thought to be, and Rasmussen said tranquillityite would be useful in dating similar rocks in the future.
"I think it will be a lot more widespread than just the six locations we've found it so far," he added of the rare mineral.