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

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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."