Chinese actress Xu Qing shoots a photo album in the streets of London and Paris. She has come into public attention recently for playing the role of Soong Ching Ling in hit tribute film "The Founding of a Republic".
An ampoule containing a medium for stem cell storage is displayed in front of a microscopic photograph showing a human embryonic stem cell at the UK Stem Cell Bank in north London, May 19, 2004.[Agencies]
WASHINGTON - Researchers trying to figure out a safe way to turn an ordinary skin cell into a powerful stem cell treatment said they took another big step on Thursday, using one chemical to partly transform the cells.
Dr. Kevin Eggan of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and colleagues said their experiment makes it easier to change plain cells into what they called induced pluripotent stem or iPS cells, which have the power to morph into any cell type in the body.
"This demonstrates that we're halfway home, and remarkably we got halfway home with just one chemical," Eggan said in a statement.
The goal is to take a small skin sample or blood from a patient, reprogram the cells into iPS cells, grow a large batch of these and then use them to make heart cells, blood cells, nerve cells or perhaps someday even entire organs to treat disease.
They would be tailor-made for the patient, who would not require immune-suppressing drugs. Such cells can also be used to study a patient's disease in the laboratory.
Stem cells are the body's master cells, giving rise to all the other cells in the body. Days after conception, an embryo is made of incredibly powerful stem cells that can develop into any cell type.
As an embryo grows and develops, these cells differentiate and lose their flexibility as they become muscle cells, bone cells or nerve cells.
Scientists seeking to recapture this power can use human embryos. An alternative route is to make iPS cells, but the most reliable method to do this requires using viruses to carry transformative genes into the cells.
The worry is the viruses might contaminate the resulting batches of cells.
Eggan's team found a chemical that replaces two of the four transformative genes known as cMyc, Sox2, Oct4, and Klf4.
"The one chemical replaces those two genes in different ways at different times in the experiment. The experiments we performed not only led to discovery of the chemical, but they also explained how it works," he said.
They have named the chemical RepSox -- in honor of Boston's Red Sox baseball team and a play on the name of one of the genes.
A model presents a creation by Portuguese designer Jose Antonio Tenente during the Lisbon fashion show in Cascais October 9, 2009.[Agencies]
A model presents a creation by Portuguese designer Jose Antonio Tenente during the Lisbon fashion show in Cascais October 9, 2009.[Agencies]
A model presents a creation by Portuguese fashion designer Jose Antonio Tenente during the Lisbon fashion show in Cascais October 9, 2009.[Agencies]
A model presents a creation by Portuguese designer Jose Antonio Tenente during the Lisbon fashion show in Cascais October 9, 2009.[Agencies]
A model presents a creation by Portuguese fashion house CIA Maritima during the Lisbon fashion show in Cascais October 9, 2009.[Agencies]
A model presents a creation by Portuguese fashion house CIA Maritima during the Lisbon fashion show in Cascais October 9, 2009.[Agencies]
Models present creations by Portuguese designer Alexandra Moura during the Lisbon fashion show in Cascais October 9, 2009.[Agencies]
Models present creations by Portuguese designer Alexandra Moura during the Lisbon fashion show in Cascais October 9, 2009.[Agencies]
A model presents a creation by Portuguese designer Alexandra Moura during the Lisbon fashion show in Cascais October 9, 2009.[Agencies]
A model presents a creation by Portuguese designer Miguel Vieira during Lisbon Fashion Week in Cascais October 11, 2009.[Agencies]
A model presents a creation by Portuguese designer Miguel Vieira during Lisbon Fashion Week in Cascais October 11, 2009.[Agencies]
A model presents a creation by Portuguese designer Dino Alves during Lisbon Fashion Week in Cascais October 11, 2009.[Agencies]
A model presents a creation by Portuguese designer Dino Alves during Lisbon Fashion Week in Cascais October 11, 2009.[Agencies]
A model presents a creation by Portuguese designer Dino Alves during Lisbon Fashion Week in Cascais October 11, 2009.[Agencies]
A model presents a creation by Portuguese designer Dino Alves during the Lisbon Fashion Week in Cascais October 11, 2009.[Agencies]
A model presents a creation by Portuguese designer Dino Alves during the Lisbon Fashion Week in Cascais October 11, 2009.[Agencies]
A model presents a creation by Serbian designer Aleksandar Protic during Lisbon Fashion Week in Cascais October 11, 2009.[Agencies]
Italian designer Giorgio Armani poses with his models at the end of his Spring/Summer 2010 women's collection in Milan September 24, 2009.[Agencies]
MILAN - Italian fashion house Giorgio Armani presented a new 700-euro ($1,032) mobile phone on Friday, a stylish device aimed at complementing the designer's suits.
Founding designer Giorgio Armani, widely regarded as the doyen of Italian fashion, made a brief public appearance at the launch of the Armani-Samsung smartphone, which also has the new Microsoft software for mobiles.
Microsoft Corp introduced Windows Mobile 6.5 this week, which allows phones to play music, open Word and Excel documents and be synchronized over the Internet.
The sleek phone has both a touch screen and a key pad. It also includes a video player and GPS navigation, as well as bronze detailing "which coordinates perfectly with Giorgio Armani suits," according to a statement.
Armani, 75, did not speak at the presentation, only posing for photographs, but said in the statement he sought to create a phone "perfect for today's managers."
Armany, who suffered a bout of hepatitis this year, announced three senior management changes in late September, signaling an easing of his workload.
Armani, known for his classically elegant lines and muted colors in clothes, said last month he was reshuffling his agenda to take better care of himself after the illness.
The smartphone is the third phone Armani has designed for South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.
Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, wearing a tie signed by Armani, said the phone was "a statement of style" and his company was not looking to work with other designers, adding this partnership with Samsung and Armani was "a unique thing."
Pop singer Lady Gaga, who's best known for her visually stunning outfits, sports a series of Hello Kitty-themed elements this time in her new photoshoots. [Photo: ent.sina.com.cn]
A George Washington coach wears stiletto heels in the huddle with players during their first round NCAA women's basketball game against Boise State in Los Angeles, March 17, 2007.[Agencies]
NEW YORK - Care about the future of your feet? You might want to consider your shoe choices carefully, new research shows.
Older women who said they usually wore athletic shoes or sneakers in the past were 67 percent less likely to have pain in the back of their feet than women who used other types of footwear, the researchers found.
"Obviously women aren't going to give up their favorite high heels, but I think it's important to pay attention to the shoes that you're buying and make sure they fit," Alyssa B. Dufour, a graduate student at the Institute for Aging Research Hebrew SeniorLife in Boston and one of the researchers on the study, told Reuters Health.
Foot pain is extremely common among older people, and can be disabling, Dufour and her colleagues note in Arthritis Care & Research. Women are more likely than men to have pain in their feet, they add, and their choice of footwear could be a factor.
Dufour and her team interviewed 3,378 men and women participating in the Framingham Study, a long-term investigation of heart health. Their average age was 66.
One in every four study participants-19 percent of men and 29 percent of the women--said they had foot pain on most days.
The researchers asked people what type of shoe they wore most commonly during five age categories, beginning in their 20s. They classified shoes into "good" (sneakers, athletic shoes), "average" (for example hard-soled leather shoes or rubber-soled shoes) and "poor" (heels or pumps, sandals, or slippers).
For men-only 2 percent of whom reported wearing "poor" shoes--there was no relationship between footwear and foot pain. But for women, wearing "good shoes" reduced the likelihood of having pain in the heel, ankle and lower Achilles tendon-known collectively as the "hindfoot"--by two-thirds.
For women, Dufour said, the findings show that footwear choices throughout life "have long-term effects you wouldn't even think about."
And for times when high heels are in order, she added, women can prevent some of the ill effect of wearing them by stretching the back of their heels and calves to "give your foot the motion that you're losing when you push your foot into the high heel position."
High heel wearers can also try gel inserts or insoles, Dufour added. While shoes costing $300 to $400 provide better support than less expensive versions, she said, they are obviously not an option for most women.
A model presents a creation by British designer John Galliano as part of his Spring/Summer 2010 women's collection during Paris Fashion Week October 7, 2009.[Agencies]
A model presents a creation by British designer John Galliano as part of his Spring/Summer 2010 women's collection during Paris Fashion Week October 7, 2009.[Agencies]
A model presents a creation by British designer John Galliano as part of his Spring/Summer 2010 women's collection during Paris Fashion Week October 7, 2009.[Agencies]
A model presents a creation by British designer John Galliano as part of his Spring/Summer 2010 women's collection during Paris Fashion Week October 7, 2009.
A model presents a creation by British designer John Galliano as part of his Spring/Summer 2010 women's collection during Paris Fashion Week October 7, 2009.[Agencies]
A model presents a creation by British designer John Galliano as part of his Spring/Summer 2010 women's collection during Paris Fashion Week October 7, 2009.[Agencies]
A model presents a creation by British designer John Galliano as part of his Spring/Summer 2010 women's collection during Paris Fashion Week October 7, 2009.[Agencies]
A model presents a creation by British designer John Galliano as part of his Spring/Summer 2010 women's collection during Paris Fashion Week October 7, 2009.[Agencies]
A model presents a creation by British designer John Galliano as part of his Spring/Summer 2010 women's collection during Paris Fashion Week October 7, 2009.[Agencies]
A model presents a creation by British designer John Galliano as part of his Spring/Summer 2010 women's collection during Paris Fashion Week October 7, 2009.[Agencies]
A man practises parcour near Sofia Cathedral in Veliky Novgorod some 520 km (323 miles) northwest of Moscow October 5, 2008.[Agencies]
NEW YORK - A Zen saying goes: the obstacle is the path.
That's true of parkour, the gritty urban sport that evolved from obstacle course training for the French military into a fitness option for urban youths.
In parkour, the city is the gym. The bridges, buildings and railings are the equipment. The goal is a direct route from one place to another. You see an obstacle, you overcome it.
Now the techniques of this adamantly outdoor sport are coming indoors to a gym near you.
"Parkour is a method to train the body and mind using obstacle coursing as the medium," said Mark Toorock, who teaches the techniques of parkour at his Primal Fitness gyms in Washington, D.C., Florida and Texas.
And while beginners might be inspired by YouTube videos of lithe young men gracefully vaulting over city structures, Toorock says they'll probably not be defying gravity anytime soon.
But the former martial arts specialist says that we'd all do well to learn, or re-learn, the basic skills involved.
"Parkour has this basic toolkit of movements like running, jumping, crawling," said Toorock, whose website is American Parkour. "All the things humans used to do."
The tenets that became parkour predate World War One.
Georges Hebert, a French naval officer, was so impressed by the effortless athleticism of African tribes that he devised a training method based on basic movements such as running, jumping, climbing, balancing, and throwing.
The word parkour derives from parcours du combatant, the French term for the obstacle course form of military training Hebert proposed.
Practitioners of the sport are called traceurs or traceuses, from the French word meaning to trace, draw, or go fast.
Dr. Kenneth Kao, a chiropractor, has been a traceur since college. "Traceurs are some of the most fit and neurologically coordinated people I have ever met," he said from his office in Lafayette, Colorado.
"Many basic parkour techniques like crawling, rolling, climbing and jumping should have been ingrained into our movements at an early age. There is nothing that parkour does movement-wise that is unnatural--quite the opposite, actually," Kao said.
"Parkour is not extreme," he added. "The environment is the extreme and dangerous aspect to parkour."
The environment is precisely what the luxury fitness chain Equinox aims to control in its Parkour Power Play class.
"It can seem intimidating to go outside and immediately start jumping off railings and flipping over park benches," fitness instructor Lisa Wheeler said. "We break down the moves to make them easier."
Wheeler said experienced traceurs co-conduct the class.
"We have thick mats for rolling, rubberized boxes to jump over, balance beams for railings," she said. "Then we do some outdoor events."
Toorock says it's just not parkour until you're outside.
"We teach people how to run, jump, squat. But that's not parkour because it's indoors and with a fixed obstacle. The goal is to go outside."
And what's the lure of those concrete canyons? For Toorock, it's the joy of not putting away childish things.
"People forget that movement is fun," he said. "Play is no longer acceptable. I'm 39 years old. People see me in a playground they think I'm insane."
"Meanwhile I enjoy my life," he said. "I have fun."
On September 29th, Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin posted the ad, which originally appeared on a blog dedicated to pointing out suspected retouched images called Photoshop Disasters, with the comment, "Dude, her head's bigger than her pelvis." Ralph Lauren responded by filing a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint against Boing Boing and Photoshop Disasters, claiming that their use of the image was a copyright infringement that fell outside of the Fair Use laws which allow the media to reproduce creative content for the purposes of commentary and criticism.
The Internet service provider hosting Photoshop Disasters (Google Blogspot) deleted the post containing the image, while Boing Boing's (Canada's Priority Colo.) did not. In response, Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow issued a stern warning to Ralph Lauren yesterday on the website, saying that the company's attempt to silence their criticism has only inspired them to step up their efforts in the future:
"Copyright law doesn't give you the right to threaten your critics for pointing out the problems with your offerings. You should know better. And every time you threaten to sue us over stuff like this, we will:a) Reproduce the original criticism, making damned sure that all our readers get a good, long look at it, and;
b) Publish your spurious legal threat along with copious mockery, so that it becomes highly ranked in search engines where other people you threaten can find it and take heart; and
c) Offer nourishing soup and sandwiches to your models."
The U.S. isn't the only place where advertisers are feeling the public backlash over retouching claims. Overseas, a recent Olay ad featuring a virtually wrinkle-free 59-year-old Twiggy caused such an uproar in the UK that the British Parliament recently proposed outlawing retouching in advertisements aimed at teenagers. The movement was initiated by the nation's Liberal Democrats, whose leader on the issue, Jo Swinson, said:
"Today's unrealistic idea of what is beautiful means that young girls are under more pressure now than they were even five years ago. Airbrushing means that adverts contain completely unattainable images that no one can live up to in real life. We need to help protect children from these pressures and we need to make a start by banning airbrushing in adverts aimed at them. The focus on women's appearance has got out of hand - no one really has perfect skin, perfect hair and a perfect figure, but women and young girls increasingly feel that nothing less than thin and perfect will do."
In the U.S., many retouched images featuring celebrities have been the subject of recent scorn, including a L'Oreal ad that lightened Beyonce's skin, an image of Jessica Alba airbrushed to feature a slimmer waist in a Campari ad, and an ad for London Fog featuring Gisele Bunchen in which her "baby bump" was removed.
In response to the growing concern over retouching, a website called About-Face, whose stated mission is to arm "women and girls with tools to understand and resist harmful media messages that affect their self-esteem and body image," has sprung up. The site features a "Gallery of Offenders" as well as a "Gallery of Winners" to highlight who the site's editors feel are the advertising industry's best and worst in regards to improving and harming the image of the modern woman. Site visitors can also contribute money to help offset its operating costs as well as expand programs designed to educate young women on beauty and self-image.
Another website to garner attention for its dedication to exposing photo retouching offenses is Jezebel.com. Speaking on the subject of retouching, Jezebel editor-in-chief Anna Holmes told Yahoo!, "I don't see any point in retouching anymore ... The cat's out of the bag." She added, "I think Americans in particular are sick of having the wool pulled over their eyes ... even if it's regarding fashion models and actresses. The more they do this sort of retouching -- and then try to justify it, as the editor of SELF magazine recently did -- the less anyone believes anything else they have to say, or show. They are, in a sense, digging their own (shallow) graves."
Whether or not Holmes is right about the digging of "shallow graves" remains to be seen, but companies like Ralph Lauren certainly don't appear to be helping their cause by attempting to silence their critics, as doing so has only increased the amount of negative attention to their already controversial ad.
British actress Rachel Weisz blows a kiss during a photocall to promote her latest film "Agora" in Madrid October 6, 2009. [Agencies]
British actress Rachel Weisz (R) and Spanish film director Alejandro Amenabar smile during a photoc all to promote their latest film "Agora" in Madrid October 6, 2009.[Agencies]
British actress Rachel Weisz (R) and Spanish film director Alejandro Amenabar smile during a photoc all to promote their latest film "Agora" in Madrid October 6, 2009.[Agencies]
British actress Rachel Weisz (R) and Spanish film director Alejandro Amenabar smile during a photoc all to promote their latest film "Agora" in Madrid October 6, 2009.[Agencies]
Actor Oscar Isaac (L) of Guatemala, Spanish film director Alejandro Amenabar (2nd L), British actress Rachel Weisz and British actor Max Minghella (R) pose during a photocall to promote their latest film "Agora" in Madrid October 6, 2009. [Agencies]
Spanish film director Alejandro Amenabar poses during a photocall to promote his latest film "Agora" in Madrid October 6, 2009. [Agencies]
Models display outfits by Di De Sant during the Pasarela Castilla y Leon Spring/Summer 2010 fashion show in Burgos, northern Spain October 6, 2009. [Agencies]
Models display outfits by Di De Sant during the Pasarela Castilla y Leon Spring/Summer 2010 fashion show in Burgos, northern Spain October 6, 2009. [Agencies]
Models display outfits by Di De Sant during the Pasarela Castilla y Leon Spring/Summer 2010 fashion show in Burgos, northern Spain October 6, 2009. [Agencies]
Increasing numbers of very old people could pose major challenges for health and social systems, but the research showed that may be mitigated by people not only living longer, but also staying healthier in their latter years.
"Very long lives are not the distant privilege of remote future generations -- very long lives are the probable destiny of most people alive now in developed countries," Kaare Christensen of the Danish Aging Research Center wrote on Friday in a study in the Lancet medical journal.
The study used Germany as a case study and showed that by 2050, its population will be substantially older and smaller than now -- a situation it said was now typical of rich nations.
This means smaller workforces in rich nations will have to shoulder an ever-greater burden of ballooning pension and healthcare requirements of the old.
Many governments in developed nations are already making moves toward raising the typical age of retirement to try to cope with aging populations.
The researchers said this was an important strategy, and added that if part-time work was considered for more of the workforce, that could have yet more benefits.
"If people in their 60s and early 70s worked much more than they do nowadays, then most people could work fewer hours per week," they wrote. "Preliminary evidence suggests that shortened working weeks over extended working lives might further contribute to increases in life expectancy and health."
LIVING BETTER?
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