MOORE, Oklahoma (Reuters) - Tornado survivors thanked God, sturdy closets and luck in explaining how they lived through the colossal twister that devastated an Oklahoma town and killed 24 people, an astonishingly low toll given the extent of destruction.
At least one family took refuge in a bathtub and some people shut themselves in underground shelters built into their houses when the powerful storm tore through the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore on Monday afternoon.
While rescue workers and body-sniffing dogs sifted through the ruins on Wednesday, those who escaped told their stories of survival while trying to salvage what was left of their belongings.
"Yesterday I was numb. Today I cried a lot. Now I'm on the victory side of it," said Beth Vrooman, who hid in a shelter in her garage in Moore during the storm.
The tornado's winds exceeded 200 miles per hour, flattened entire blocks and demolished two schools and a hospital on its 17-mile (27-km), 50-minute rampage through central Oklahoma.
Listed as the highest category of storm - an EF5 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale - the twister damaged or obliterated 2,400 homes and affected an estimated 10,000 people, said Jerry Lojka, spokesman for Oklahoma Emergency Management.
President Barack Obama was due to survey the damage himself on Sunday, a White House spokesman said.
After rescue workers pulled more than 100 survivors from the debris, authorities said six people remained unaccounted for in a town of 55,000 people.
"They're not sure if they've walked off or if they are in the rubble," Albert Ashwood, director of Oklahoma's Department of Emergency Management, told a news conference.
Experts explaining the low death toll cited a relatively long advance warning of 16 minutes for the tornado and high awareness of the dangers in a region known as Tornado Alley.
Even so, some survivors were astounded they made it.
Tonya Williams, 38, said she still felt in shock after surviving the tornado, as so many did, by taking shelter in a closet. She put bicycle helmets on her 8-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son, collected her three dogs and pushed them all into a hall closet.
"We prayed. I could feel pressure, and being sucked. I put my body over them to try to protect them," Williams said.
When neighbors dug them out, the roof and upper story of the house had collapsed into and around the closet. Williams and her children suffered only minor injuries.
A large wooden cross that had been hanging on an upstairs wall was found on top of them, she said.
"If you weren't a religious person before, you are now," Williams said. "No word can describe it but a miracle."
Of the 24 who died, 10 were children and about 240 others were injured.
Most of the victims died of blunt force injuries and five of the children died from suffocation, the state medical examiner said on Wednesday. The youngest victim was four months old. The oldest was 63.
Jessica Parmenter, 26, and her three small dogs were at home and directly in the tornado's path. Neighbors rushed to a nearby storm shelter but she did not make it in time and took shelter in a closet. Afterward, a neighbor found Parmenter inside with her dogs. The rest of her home was gone.
"The only thing standing was the closet," said Parmenter's mother-in-law, Lori Blake. "There is a hole in the closet. It kept trying to suck her out and she kept holding on."
TORNADO ALLEY
Some ascribed the relatively few deaths to "storm safe" shelters, but only 2.5 percent of homes in Oklahoma County were so equipped, officials said.
Moore experienced the fury of the strongest category of tornado before when an EF5 twister devastated the region on May 3, 1999, killing more than 40 people, and it has had four tornadoes since 1998. The National Weather Service had been issuing alerts for days ahead of the latest storm.
"As much as any place on earth, folks who live in Moore know what severe weather alerts mean," said Bill Bunting, chief of operations for the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.
Still, the largely conservative state so far has resisted government imposing requirements that new homes or schools come equipped with storm shelters.
"We're going to have that discussion as a state as well as a community," U.S. Representative Tom Cole, a Republican whose district includes the area hit by the tornado, told MSNBC on Wednesday.
Kraig Boozier, 47, took to his own small shelter in Oklahoma City and watched in shock as a fan in the wall was ripped out.
"I looked up and saw the tornado above me," he said.
In Oklahoma City, Jackie Raper, 73, and her daughter, sought shelter in the bathtub.
"The house fell on top of her," said Caylin Burgett, 16, who says Raper is like a grandmother to her. Raper broke her arm and femur, and bruised her lungs, Burgett said.
(Additional reporting by Alice Mannette, Lindsay Morris, Nick Carey, Brendan O'Brien, Greg McCune, Jane Sutton and Susan Heavey; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Grant McCool)
VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran is pressing ahead with the construction of a research reactor that Western experts say could offer it a second way of producing material for a nuclear bomb if it decides to make one, a U.N. report showed on Wednesday.
Iran has transported the reactor vessel to the heavy water plant near the central town of Arak but has not yet installed it, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a confidential report issued to member states.
Western concerns about Iran are focused largely on uranium enrichment plants at Natanz and Fordow, as such material refined to a high level can provide the fissile core of an atomic bomb.
But experts say Arak may also be a proliferation issue as it could yield plutonium for nuclear arms if the spent fuel were reprocessed. Iran has said it has no fuel reprocessing plans.
"Once the reactor operates, it could spawn more than enough weapons-grade plutonium for a bomb per year, should Iran ever decide to do that," said nuclear expert Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment think-tank.
The Islamic Republic, which denies it has any intention of acquiring nuclear arms, plans to commission the plant in the first quarter of 2014, the IAEA said.
In its previous report on Iran, in February, the U.N. agency said Iran had almost completed installation of cooling and moderator circuit piping in the facility.
Tehran last year postponed the planned start-up from the third quarter of 2013, a target that Western experts said always had seemed unrealistic.
As reported by Reuters on Tuesday, the IAEA report showed Iran increasing its capacity to refine uranium by installing hundreds more centrifuges at Natanz, underlining Tehran's defiance of Western demands to curb the activity.
But, in a development that could help buy time for diplomacy between Iran and world powers, the report showed limited growth of Iran's most sensitive nuclear stockpile and it remained below an Israeli "red line" for possible action.
Tehran's holding of medium-enriched uranium gas is closely watched as Israel says it must not amass enough for one bomb if further processed and has threatened air strikes if diplomacy and sanctions do not stop Iran's atomic drive.
Critics say Iran is trying to achieve the capability to make atomic arms. Iran denies this, saying it needs nuclear technology for energy generation and medical purposes and that it is Israel's reputed nuclear arsenal that threatens peace in the Middle East.
Negative emotions are emotional states that tend to limit your personal perspective, decrease your ability to think rationally and increase your overall level of mental unease or distress. Current evidence indicates that negative emotional responses to stressful situations can significantly increase your risks for eventually developing a diagnosable case of the serious mental health disorder called major depression. According to the results of a study published in 2012 in the journal Psychological Science, people already affected by major depression can lose their ability to tell the difference between various types of negative emotion. In turn, this inability can prolong or reinforce a depressed state of mind.
Negative Emotion Basics
Emotional states commonly viewed as ?negative? include anger, frustration, sadness, anxiousness, guilt, disgust and shame. All of these emotions fall within the normal realm of human experience, and their presence doesn?t indicate a problem in and of itself. However, people who tend to call forth these emotions frequently while under stress can increase their long-term chances for developing a diagnosable mental health problem, according to the results of a study released in 2012 by a multi-university research team. Mental health professionals sometimes refer to this repeated involvement in negative states of mind as a personality trait called neuroticism/negative emotionality.
Importance of Identifying Negative Emotions
The ability to properly distinguish between different types of negative emotion can help depressed people limit those emotions? effects and improve their overall state of mind, the authors of the study published in Psychological Science report. Conversely, people with major depression who can?t correctly identify their negative emotions may unintentionally extend or solidify depressed states of mind. During their research, the authors examined the ability of 53 people affected by depression to tell the difference between their negative emotions, then compared that ability to the ability of 53 people unaffected by depression. All study participants were adults with a minimum age of 18 and a maximum age of 40.
The researchers concluded that, compared to people who don?t have major depression, people affected by the disorder have a much greater tendency to report the simultaneous presence of two different negative emotional states. Depressed people also have a much harder time distinguishing between the negative emotions they report feeling. The study?s authors believe that this inability to tell the difference between negative emotions decreases depressed individuals? knowledge about their own states of mind, and therefore limits the self-awareness necessary to effectively participate in depression recovery.
Self-Distancing Skills in Depressed People
One of the critical skills for maintaining emotional stability is the ability to step back from oneself and objectively examine stressful or ?negative? experiences. People who have this self-distancing ability tend to diminish the long-term impact of negative experiences; conversely, people who lack this self-distancing skill tend to ruminate on unpleasant experiences and increase those experiences? long-term influence on mental health. In a study published in 2012 in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, a team of researchers from the University of Michigan compared the self-distancing abilities of 51 people diagnosed with major depression to the abilities of 45 people unaffected by depression. All of the study participants were asked to analyze their responses to a negative situation.
After reviewing their findings, the authors of the study concluded that depressed people have just as much inherent ability to self-distance themselves from negative experiences as people without depression. However, while people unaffected by depression tend to access their self-distancing skills when analyzing their situations, people with depression tend not to do so. When depressed people in the study did access their self-distancing skills, they typically lowered their participation in negative thinking and other aspects of neuroticism/negative emotionality. In addition, they increased their sense of self-awareness and gained a perspective that allowed them to minimalize the effects of stressful or negative situations.
Considerations
The authors of the study published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology found that people unaffected by depression tend to improve their emotional states whenever they start questioning themselves in the aftermath of stressful or negative events. However, depressed people may improve or diminish their mental states when they start self-questioning. If this questioning process remains immersed in a depressed person?s everyday perspective, it will likely contribute to a continuing depressed state of mind. However, if this questioning is done from a distanced perspective, it can help reduce the effects of depression and contribute to a more balanced state of mind.
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It is the first time scientists have decoded the genome of a plant pathogen and its plant host from dried herbarium samples. This opens up a new area of research to understand how pathogens evolve and how human activity impacts the spread of plant disease.
Phytophthora infestans changed the course of history. Even today, the Irish population has still not recovered to pre-famine levels. "We have finally discovered the identity of the exact strain that caused all this havoc", says Hern?n Burbano from the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology.
For research to be published in eLife, a team of molecular biologists from Europe and the US reconstructed the spread of the potato blight pathogen from dried plants. Although these were 170 to 120 years old, they were found to have many intact pieces of DNA.
"Herbaria represent a rich and untapped source from which we can learn a tremendous amount about the historical distribution of plants and their pests - and also about the history of the people who grew these plants," according to Kentaro Yoshida from The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich.
The researchers examined the historical spread of the fungus-like oomycete Phytophthora infestans, known as the Irish potato famine pathogen. A strain called US-1 was long thought to have been the cause of the fatal outbreak. The current study concludes that a strain new to science was responsible. While more closely related to the US-1 strain than to other modern strains, it is unique. "Both strains seem to have separated from each other only years before the first major outbreak in Europe," says Burbano.
The researchers compared the historic samples with modern strains from Europe, Africa and the Americas as well as two closely related Phytophthora species. The scientists were able to estimate with confidence when the various Phytophthora strains diverged from each other during evolutionary time. The HERB-1 strain of Phytophthora infestans likely emerged in the early 1800s and continued its global conquest throughout the 19th century. Only in the twentieth century, after new potato varieties were introduced, was HERB-1 replaced by another Phytophthora infestans strain, US-1.
The scientists found several connections with historic events. The first contact between Europeans and Americans in Mexico in the sixteenth century coincides with a remarkable increase in the genetic diversity of Phytophthora. The social upheaval during that time may have led to a spread of the pathogen from its center of origin in Toluca Valley, Mexico. This in turn would have accelerated its evolution.
The international team came to these conclusions after deciphering the entire genomes of 11 historical samples of Phytophthora infestans from potato leaves collected over more than 50 years. These came from Ireland, the UK, Europe and North America and had been preserved in the herbaria of the Botanical State Collection Munich and the Kew Gardens in London.
"Both herbaria placed a great deal of confidence in our abilities and were very generous in providing the dried plants," said Marco Thines from the Senckenberg Museum and Goethe University in Frankfurt, one of the co-authors of this study. "The degree of DNA preservation in the herbarium samples really surprised us," adds Johannes Krause from the University of T?bingen, another co-author. Because of the remarkable DNA quality and quantity in the herbarium samples, the research team could evaluate the entire genome of Phytophthora infestans and its host, the potato, within just a few weeks.
Crop breeding methods may impact on the evolution of pathogens. This study directly documents the effect of plant breeding on the genetic makeup of a pathogen.
"Perhaps this strain became extinct when the first resistant potato varieties were bred at the beginning of the twentieth century," speculates Yoshida. "What is for certain is that these findings will greatly help us to understand the dynamics of emerging pathogens. This type of work paves the way for the discovery of many more treasures of knowledge hidden in herbaria."
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Max-Planck-Gesellschaft: http://www.mpg.de
Thanks to Max-Planck-Gesellschaft for this article.
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May 20, 2013 ? What lures a lady frog to her lover? Good looks, the sound of his voice, the size of his pad or none of the above? After weighing up their options, female strawberry poison frogs (Oophaga pumilio) bag the closest crooner they can, finds research in BioMed Central's open access journal Frontiers of Zoology. This seemingly short-sighted strategy turns out to be the optimal mate choice strategy for these colourful frogs.
Males of the species congregate in the Costa Rican rain forest 'lek-style' to display and call together, giving females the chance to weigh up multiple males at once. But despite their best efforts, build and territory size, females tend to mate with the closest calling male, Ivonne Meuche from the University of Veterinary Medicine, Hannover, Germany, and colleagues report.
The find was confirmed by playback experiments where females, played recordings of various male calls, failed to discriminate between different call rates or frequencies, preferring instead, the nearest speaker.
Female mate choice is a tricky business. Some species chose the first mate that is 'good enough' whilst others seek out and compare many mates before returning to choose the fittest. But the simplest, least costly option is to mate with the first or nearest male encountered, regardless of quality. The strategy doesn't seem an evolutionary winner as it means that nearby, unfit frogs sometimes get to pass on their genes at the expense of more distant, genetically-superior specimens. But it does make sense in certain situations.
Non-choosy behaviour like this has been noted in fishes, and some frog species with a lek-like mating system. It's thought the strategy works for them because it reduces 'costs' in terms of search time and competition for mates. Female strawberry poison frogs may also benefit little from 'shopping around' because strong inter-male competition means the available mates are all much of a muchness.
The team also noted that females unable to find a mate within a certain time period ended up laying unfertilised eggs that never hatch. So in species, like the strawberry poison dart frog, where the choosing sex outnumbers the chosen sex, it makes sense to 'grab the nearest guy' rather than run the risk of not mating at all.
In what?s being billed by the White House as a major national security speech, President Obama this week will explain his policies dealing with counterterrorism, the use of drone aircraft, Al Qaeda, and the military prison at Guant?namo Bay, Cuba.
?He will review the state of the threats we face, particularly as the Al Qaeda core has weakened but new dangers have emerged,? a White House official told reporters, according to the Washington Post. ?He will discuss the policy and legal framework under which we take action against terrorist threats, including the use of drones. And he will review our detention policy and efforts to close the detention facility at Guant?namo Bay.?
Obama?s speech is scheduled to be delivered at the National Defense University on Thursday. It comes as the administration is under fire for its handling of the terrorist attack on the US diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, last November, which killed US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, and just a month after the Boston Marathon bombing said by its surviving suspect to have been retribution for US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
When he first ran for the presidency in 2008, Obama pledged to close the detention facility at Guant?namo Bay, but congressional opponents have been able to block that ever since.
"It is expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us in terms of our international standing. It lessens co-operation with our allies on counter-terrorism efforts. It is a recruitment for extremists. It needs to be closed," the president said recently.
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Guant?namo Bay ? ?Gitmo,? as it?s called ? in recent months has become even more problematic for Obama and the US image.
?The renewed focus on Guant?namo Bay comes amid a widespread hunger strike among inmates there that has now gone on for more than 100 days,? the Guardian newspaper reported Sunday. ?The protest, and disturbing reports on conditions at the camp and how inmates are being painfully force-fed, has led to calls to close the camp for good.?
As of Sunday, notes the British publication, 103 of the 166 inmates still at Guant?namo Bay were refusing food. Of those, 30 were being force-fed.
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International protests over Guant?namo Bay are a regular occurrence now, and the cost of what seems to be endless incarceration for a relative handful of those with suspected ties to terrorism has become an issue as well.
CNN reported this past week that it costs about $900,000 a year per inmate at the military facility there.
?By comparison, costs for a typical federal prison inmate run about $25,000 a year,? according to CNN. ?At the ?supermax? prison in Colorado that holds domestic terrorists Eric Rudolph and Ted Kaczynski, it's about $60,000.?
About 1,900 US troops are assigned to guard the 166 inmates. Facilities are in need of repair and renovation estimated to cost upwards of $200 million.
Guant?namo inmates include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, and Ramzi Bin al-Shahb ? accused co-conspirators in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 ? as well as Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, accused of leading the plot to bomb the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000, which killed 17 American sailors.
Those four face trial on war crimes charges before the military courts set up to try Al Qaeda and Taliban figures. Most of the rest of the prisoners face no charges at all, reports CNN.
The other controversial issue Obama plans to address in his speech this week is the use of pilotless armed drones to attack terrorist threats, mainly in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen.
The drone program under Obama has vastly increased since it began in the Bush administration, and it?s come under fire across the political spectrum for its secretiveness as well as for what critics say is a large number of civilian casualties, including children.
The administration was forced to respond last month when US Sen. Rand Paul (R) of Kentucky filibustered for 13 hours in protest of a policy which allows for the drone targeting of US citizens affiliated with terrorist groups.
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Lockheed Martin just completed the latest high angle of attack test series. It was a complete success, as this video shots. The video footage is spectacular, especially that unreal first shot:
EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif., May 16, 2013 ? The latest in a series of Lockheed Martin [LMT] F-35A high angle of attack (AOA) testing was recently completed. The testing accomplished high AOA beyond both the positive and negative maximum command limits, including intentionally putting the aircraft out of control in several configurations. This included initially flying in the stealth clean wing configuration. It was followed by testing with external air-to-air pylons and missiles and then with open weapon bay doors. The F-35A began edge-of-the-envelope high AOA testing in the Fall 2012. For all testing, recovery from out of control flight has been 100 percent successful without the use of the spin recovery chute, which is carried to maximize safety.
A derailed Metro-North rail car is hoisted back on to the tracks in Bridgeport. Conn. on Sunday, May 19, 2013. Crews will spend days rebuilding 2,000 feet of track, overhead wires and signals following the collision between two trains Friday evening that injured 72 people, Metro-North President Howard Permut said Sunday. (AP Photo/The Connecticut Post,Brian A. Pounds ) MANDATORY CREDIT
A derailed Metro-North rail car is hoisted back on to the tracks in Bridgeport. Conn. on Sunday, May 19, 2013. Crews will spend days rebuilding 2,000 feet of track, overhead wires and signals following the collision between two trains Friday evening that injured 72 people, Metro-North President Howard Permut said Sunday. (AP Photo/The Connecticut Post,Brian A. Pounds ) MANDATORY CREDIT
Metro-North employees work at the site of Friday's train derailment in Bridgeport. Conn. on Sunday, May 19, 2013. Crews will spend days rebuilding 2,000 feet of track, overhead wires and signals following the collision between two trains Friday evening that injured 72 people, Metro-North President Howard Permut said Sunday. (AP Photo/The Connecticut Post,Brian A. Pounds ) MANDATORY CREDIT
Map locates Bridgeport, Conn
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) ? Traffic in southwest Connecticut could be a mess for as much as a week until service is restored to the commuter rail line affected by a derailment that injured scores of passengers, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy warned Sunday.
Malloy used dire language to describe traffic troubles for the work week ahead in an area that even in normal times is a pain for motorists. And the governor warned that the weather will not cooperate as rainy weather forecast will make driving a bit more treacherous.
Malloy even urged commuters to stay out of the state if possible.
"Tomorrow's commute will be extremely challenging," he said at a brief news conference in Hartford. "Residents should plan for a week's worth of disruptions."
If all 30,000 affected commuters took to the highways to get to work, "we would literally have a parking lot," the governor said. If a substantial number of affected consumers hit the roads, traffic will be "greatly slowed," he said.
The state will dispatch more state troopers and tow trucks to respond to car accidents that could come with crowded roads and slipper conditions, he said.
"If you are going to New York and you get to New York or you're transporting yourself to New York you may decide that perhaps you should stay there for the duration of this disturbance," Malloy said.
Crews will spend days rebuilding 2,000 feet of track, overhead wires and signals following the collision between two trains Friday evening that injured 72 people. Nine remained hospitalized, with one critically.
"This amounts to the wholesale reconstruction of a two-track electrified railroad," he said.
Several days of around-the-clock work will be required, including inspections and testing of the newly rebuilt system, Metro-North President Howard Permut said. The damaged rail cars were removed from the tracks on Sunday, the first step toward making the repairs.
Starting with the Monday morning rush-hour, a shuttle train will operate about every 20 minutes between New Haven and Bridgeport and two shuttle buses will run between Bridgeport and Stamford stations, state transportation officials said.
For morning and evening peak commutes, limited train service will operate between Grand Central Terminal and Westport.
State officials said travel times will be significantly longer than normal and trains will be crowded. Commuters are advised to use the Harlem line in New York.
Amtrak service between New York and New Haven was also suspended and there was no estimate on service restoration. Limited service was available between New Haven and Boston.
Jim Cameron, chairman of the Connecticut Rail Commuter Council, said he's asked officials in numerous towns to suspend parking rules to accommodate what could be tens of thousands of motorists driving to unaffected train stations. Twelve stations are affected by the shutdown.
But Cameron said he doubts many commuters will use three modes of transportation to get to work: driving their cars to catch a bus to get to a train station for the final leg.
He suggested that local and regional officials post highway signs directing motorists to available parking so motorists "don't get off the highway and drive in circles looking for where to dump their cars."
About 700 people were on board the trains Friday evening when one heading east from New York City's Grand Central Terminal to New Haven derailed just outside Bridgeport. It was hit by a train heading west from New Haven.
Dan Solomon, a trauma surgeon who lives in Westport and was headed to work at Yale-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, was on the train that derailed. He said he treated several injured passengers, including a woman with severely broken ankles.
He said he was in a front car that was not as badly affected as cars in the rear of the train.
"I hardly lost my iced tea," Solomon said in an interview.
Solomon said walls were torn off both trains and he quickly checked injured passengers to separate the most badly injured from others.
"When the EMS arrived, I was covered in everyone's blood," he said.
Investigators are looking at a broken section of rail to see if it is connected to the derailment and collision. Officials said it wasn't clear if the rail was broken in the crash or earlier.
NTSB investigators arrived Saturday and are expected to be on site for seven to 10 days. They will look at the brakes and performance of the trains, the condition of the tracks, crew performance and train signal information, among other things.
The MTA operates the Metro-North Railroad, the second-largest commuter railroad in the nation. The Metro-North main lines - the Hudson, Harlem, and New Haven - run northward from New York City's Grand Central Terminal into suburban New York and Connecticut.
The last significant train collision involving Metro-North occurred in 1988 when a train engineer was killed in Mount Vernon, N.Y., when one train empty of passengers rear-ended another, railroad officials said.
An upcoming update will bring a web browser, email and update store app to Barnes & Noble's super affordable Nook Simple Touch line of eReaders, which will begin rolling out June 1 according to a source close to the matter who wishes to remain anonymous. The 1.5.0 update was created in response to the positive critical and customer response to the recent Nook tablet update that brought Google Play to B&N's Android-powered devices.
FAIRFIELD, Conn. (AP) ? Officials are describing a devastating scene of shattered cars and other damage where two trains packed with rush-hour commuters collided in Connecticut. They say it's fortunate no one was killed.
Seventy people were sent to the hospital Friday evening after the crash, which damaged the tracks and threatened to snarl travel in the Northeast Corridor.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy couldn't say when Metro-North Railroad service would be restored. The crash also caused Amtrak to suspend service between New York and Boston.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators arrived Saturday and are expected to be on site for seven to 10 days.
They will look at the brakes and performance of the trains, the condition of the tracks, crew performance and train signal information, among other things.
NTSB board member Earl Weener says it's too early to speculate on a cause for the collision.
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, unveiling the latest tranche of his growth strategy on Friday, set targets to triple infrastructure exports, double sales of agriculture products overseas and boost private-sector investment to the level seen before the 2008 financial crisis.
Measures to promote growth constitute what Abe calls the "third arrow" in his quiver as the government battles to end 15 years of deflation and jolt the long-sluggish economy back to robust growth. The first two arrows of "Abenomics" are massive monetary easing and a burst of stimulative government spending.
Abe has promised to make structural reform and deregulation a key part of his growth strategy. But the package of steps, to be unveiled in June, also includes a significant role for government in generating investment and innovation in key sectors, a stance some critics see as outdated and ill-advised.
The monetary and fiscal stimulus has already sparked Japan's fastest economic growth in a year in the first quarter, but corporate investment has yet to follow suit.
(Reporting by Kaori Kaneko; Writing by Linda Sieg; Editing by William Mallard)
May 16, 2013 ? Physicists may have created the smallest drops of liquid ever made in the lab.
That possibility has been raised by the results of a recent experiment conducted by Vanderbilt physicist Julia Velkovska and her colleagues at the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and most powerful particle collider located at the European Laboratory for Nuclear and Particle Physics (CERN) in Switzerland. Evidence of the minuscule droplets was extracted from the results of colliding protons with lead ions at velocities approaching the speed of light.
According to the scientists' calculations, these short-lived droplets are the size of three to five protons. To provide a sense of scale, that is about one-100,000th the size of a hydrogen atom or one-100,000,000th the size of a virus.
"With this discovery, we seem to be seeing the very origin of collective behavior," said Velkovska, professor of physics at Vanderbilt who serves as a co-convener of the heavy ion program of the CMS detector, the LHC instrument that made the unexpected discovery. "Regardless of the material that we are using, collisions have to be violent enough to produce about 50 sub-atomic particles before we begin to see collective, flow-like behavior."
These tiny droplets "flow" in a manner similar to the behavior of the quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter that is a mixture of the sub-atomic particles that makes up protons and neutrons and only exists at extreme temperatures and densities. Cosmologists propose that the entire universe once consisted of this strongly interacting elixir for fractions of a second after the Big Bang when conditions were dramatically hotter and denser than they are today. Now that the universe has spent billions of years expanding and cooling, the only way scientists can reproduce this primordial plasma is to bang atomic nuclei together with tremendous energy.
The new observations are contained in a paper submitted by the CMS collaboration to the journal Physical Review D and posted on the arXiv preprint server. In addition, Vanderbilt doctoral student Shengquan Tuo recently presented the new results at a workshop held in the European Centre for Theoretical Studies in Nuclear Physics and Related Areas in Trento, Italy.
Scientists have been trying to recreate the quark-gluon plasma since the early 2000s by colliding gold nuclei using the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. This exotic state of matter is created when nuclei collide and dump a fraction of their energy into the space between them. When enough energy is released, it causes some of the quarks and gluons in the colliding particles to melt together to form the plasma. The RHIC scientists had expected the plasma to behave like a gas, but were surprised to discover that it acts like a liquid instead.
When the LHC started up, the scientists moved to the more powerful machine where they basically duplicated the results they got at RHIC by colliding lead nuclei.
In what was supposed to be a control run to check the validity of their lead-lead results, the scientists scheduled the collider to smash protons and lead nuclei together. They didn't expect to see any evidence of the plasma. Because the protons are so much lighter than lead nuclei (they have only one-208th the mass), it was generally agreed that proton-lead collisions couldn't release enough energy to produce the rare state of matter.
"The proton-lead collisions are something like shooting a bullet through an apple while lead-lead collisions are more like smashing two apples together: A lot more energy is released in the latter," said Velkovska.
Last September, the LHC did a brief test run to make sure it was adjusted properly to handle proton-lead collisions. When the results of the run were analyzed, team members were surprised to see evidence of collective behavior in five percent of the collisions -- those that were the most violent. In these cases, it appeared that when the "bullet" passed through "apple" it released enough energy to melt some of the particles surrounding the bullet hole. They appeared to be forming liquid droplets about one tenth the size of those produced by the lead-lead or gold-gold collisions.
However, the initial analysis was limited to tracking the motion of pairs of particles. The researchers knew that this analysis could be influenced by another well-known phenomenon, the production of particle jets. So, when the scheduled proton-lead run took place in January and February, they searched the data for evidence of groups of four particles that exhibit collective motion. After analyzing several billion events, they found hundreds of cases where the collisions produced more than 300 particles flowing together.
According to Tuo, only two models were advanced to explain their observations at the workshop. Of the two, the plasma droplet model seems to fit the observations best. In fact, he reported that the new data is forcing the authors of the competing model -- color glass condensate, which attributes the particle correlations to the internal gluon structure of the protons themselves -- to incorporate hydrodynamic effects, meaning that it is also describing the phenomenon as liquid droplets.
U.S. members of the CMS collaboration are supported primarily by the U.S. Department of Energy and National Science Foundation.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Prospects for passage of a major immigration bill improved on Thursday when a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives declared they had reached a tentative deal, resolving disputes that had threatened to torpedo negotiations.
The breakthrough came at the end of a two-hour private meeting of seven Republican and Democratic negotiators. The eighth negotiator in this so-called House Gang of Eight was unavailable after undergoing surgery on Wednesday.
The final sticking point, according to congressional sources, was over whether illegal immigrants now in the United States who gain legal status under the bill could participate in the new healthcare law known as "Obamacare," which Republicans want to repeal.
None of the negotiators would comment on how the matter was resolved. Nor would they provide other details of the deal.
Even with Thursday's breakthrough, the drive to enact a comprehensive immigration bill, which is President Barack Obama's top legislative priority, faces a long, difficult road in Congress.
The agreement still must be drafted into legislation for review by the 435 members of the House. Then it faces a potentially tough battle in the House Judiciary Committee, where several conservative Republicans have been dead-set against a comprehensive bill. Instead, they mostly want to pass tougher border security measures and allow U.S. companies to get better access to foreign high-tech workers.
Any proposal to provide a path to citizenship for 11 million people now in the United States illegally, which is part of a Senate bill, is certain to draw fierce opposition from some Republican quarters.
Furthermore, the House bill will not fully conform to the measure winding its way through the Democratic-controlled Senate.
JUST A 'FIRST STEP'
"There are going to be a lot of differences in a lot of areas" between the House and Senate bills, said Republican Representative Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, one of the House negotiators.
The tentative deal, he added, is "the first step of a difficult process. But it's a very important step."
Diaz-Balart would not say whether the deal includes an agreement to leave some difficult issues unresolved for now.
Besides healthcare questions, the bipartisan group had been squabbling over the future flow of foreigners streaming into the United States for temporary workers.
"We have essentially come to an agreement on all the major points," Democratic Representative John Yarmuth of Kentucky told reporters after closed-door meeting broke up. He added that some "loose ends" still had to be worked out.
The bipartisan group has been attempting to introduce an immigration bill for years. But disputes over border security, work visa numbers and healthcare provisions had grown to the point that there were fears some lawmakers might be on the verge of dropping out of the long negotiations.
The group had also been arguing over the "triggers" that would define when additional border security steps under the legislation would be sufficient to start legalizing some of the 11 million unauthorized foreigners, sources said.
There was also disagreement over several other policy issues central to an immigration bill, including the number of foreign high-tech workers who would be allowed in, as well as low-skilled construction and service industry laborers.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is in the midst of debating that chamber's bipartisan bill, with the goal of bringing a bill before the full Senate next month.
That panel is struggling with the work visa program in the bill and is under intense pressure from technology companies to make it easier to hire foreign workers.
One of the members of the House group, Republican John Carter, told reporters on Thursday that there was no way the Senate bill would pass the Republican-controlled House.
Immediately following the November 6 elections, in which Hispanic voters roundly rejected Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, House Speaker John Boehner called on his party to pivot on immigration.
After years of blocking moves to put the 11 million on a pathway to citizenship that many conservatives call "amnesty," Boehner, the top elected U.S. Republican, urged his party to work for a major revamp of immigration laws.
Boehner's call for action angered many of his most conservative rank-and-file Republican House members, as well as some conservative interest groups. As a result, it is unclear how Boehner will navigate between his desire to accomplish an immigration bill and resistance from many fellow Republicans.
Earlier on Thursday, before the bipartisan deal, Boehner expressed concerns about the lack of progress in the House so far. He added, "I continue to believe that the House ... needs to work its will. How we get there, we're still dealing with it."
(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan; Editing by Fred Barbash, Cynthia Osterman and Eric Walsh)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The White House says President Barack Obama will meet with Treasury officials Wednesday to discuss the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups for special review. White House press secretary Jay Carney says Obama expects people to be held accountable.
The meeting comes in the aftermath of an internal Treasury investigation that found the IRS improperly selected conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status for further appraisal.
Carney sidestepped a question about whether Obama still had confidence in acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller, saying he wouldn't discuss personnel matters. He said Obama has expressed his overall view that IRS personnel had acted inappropriately.
Carney says Obama wants the public to "understand and believe that the IRS applies our tax laws in a neutral and fair way to everyone."
Human disease leptospirosis identified in new species, the banded mongoose, in Africa
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
The newest public health threat in Africa, scientists have found, is coming from a previously unknown source: the banded mongoose.
Leptospirosis, the disease is called. And the banded mongoose carries it.
Leptospirosis is the world's most common illness transmitted to humans by animals. It's a two-phase disease that begins with flu-like symptoms. If untreated, it can cause meningitis, liver damage, pulmonary hemorrhage, renal failure and death.
"The problem in Botswana and much of Africa is that leptospirosis may remain unidentified in animal populations but contribute to human disease, possibly misdiagnosed as other diseases such as malaria," said disease ecologist Kathleen Alexander of Virginia Tech.
With a grant from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Coupled Natural and Human Systems Program, Alexander and colleagues found that the banded mongoose in Botswana is infected with Leptospira interrogans, the pathogen that causes leptospirosis.
Coupled Natural and Human Systems is part of NSF's Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability investment and is supported by NSF's Directorates for Biological Sciences; Geosciences; and Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences.
"The transmission of infectious diseases from wildlife to humans represents a serious and growing public health risk due to increasing contact between humans and animals," said Alan Tessier, program director in NSF's Division of Environmental Biology. "This study identified an important new avenue for the spread of leptospirosis."
The results are published today in a paper in the journalZoonoses and Public Health. The paper was co-authored by Alexander, Sarah Jobbins and Claire Sanderson of Virginia Tech.
The banded mongoose, although wild, lives in close proximity to humans, sharing scarce water resources and scavenging in human waste.
The disease-causing pathogen it carries can pass to humans through soil or water contaminated with infected urine.
Mongoose and other species are consumed as bushmeat, which may also contribute to leptospirosis exposure and infection in humans.
"I was convinced that we were going to find Leptospira interrogans in some species in the ecosystem," said Alexander.
"The pathogen had not been reported previously in Botswana, with the exception of one cow more than a quarter of a century ago.
"We looked at public health records dating back to 1974 and there were no records of any human cases of leptospirosis. Doctors said they were not expecting to see the disease in patients. They were not aware that the pathogen occurred in the country."
Alexander conducted a long-term study of human, wildlife and environmental health in the Chobe District of Northern Botswana, an area that includes the Chobe National Park, forest reserves and surrounding villages.
"This pathogen can infect many animals, both wild and domestic, including dogs," said Jobbins. "Banded mongoose is likely not the only species infected."
The researchers worked to understand how people, animals and the environment are connected, including the potential for diseases to move between humans and wildlife.
"Diseases such as leptospirosis that have been around for a very long time are often overlooked amid the hunt for the next newly emerging disease," Alexander said.
Leptospirosis was first described in 1886, said Jobbins, "but we still know little about its occurrence in Africa."
With the new identification of leptospirosis in Botswana, Alexander is concerned about the public health threat it may pose to the immunocompromised population there. Some 25 percent of 15- to 49-year-olds are HIV positive.
"In much of Africa, people die without a cause being determined," she said.
"Leptospirosis is likely affecting human populations in this region. But without knowledge that the organism is present in the environment, overburdened public health officials are unlikely to identify clinical cases in humans, particularly if the supporting diagnostics are not easily accessible."
The researchers looked for Leptospira interrogans in archived kidneys collected from banded mongoose that had been found dead from a variety of causes. Of the sampled mongoose, 43 percent tested positive for the pathogen.
"Given this high prevalence in the mongoose, we believe that Botswana possesses an as-yet-unidentified burden of human leptospirosis," said Jobbins.
"There is an urgent need to look for this disease in people who have clinical signs consistent with infection."
Because banded mongoose have an extended range across sub-Saharan Africa, the results have important implications for public health beyond Botswana.
"Investigating exposure in other wildlife, and assessing what species act as carriers, is essential for improving our understanding of human, wildlife, and domestic animal risk of leptospirosis in this ecosystem," the scientists write in their paper.
The paper also cites predictions that the region will become more arid, concentrating humans and animals around limited water supplies and increasing the potential for disease transmission.
"Infectious diseases, particularly those that can be transmitted from animals, often occur where people are more vulnerable to environmental change and have less access to public health services," said Alexander.
"That's particularly true in Africa. While we're concerned about emerging diseases that might threaten public health--the next new pandemic--we need to be careful that we don't drop the ball and stop pursuing important diseases like leptospirosis."
Alexander is working to identify immediate research and management actions--in particular, alerting frontline medical practitioners and public health officials to the potential for leptospirosis in humans.
###
National Science Foundation: http://www.nsf.gov
Thanks to National Science Foundation for this article.
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Women with chronic physical disabilities are no less likely to bear childrenPublic release date: 16-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Connie Hughes connie.hughes@wolterskluwer.com 646-674-6348 Wolters Kluwer Health
Health care professionals should prepare for increased numbers of pregnant women with disabilities, suggests study in Medical Care
Philadelphia, Pa. (May 16, 2013) Like the general public, health care professionals may hold certain stereotypes regarding sexual activity and childbearing among women with disabilities. But a new study finds that women with chronic physical disabilities are about as likely as nondisabled women to say they are currently pregnant, after age and other sociodemographic factors are taken into account. The findings are reported in the June issue of Medical Care, published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.
Health care professionals can expectand should prepare foran increase in the number of physically disabled women requiring care during pregnancy, according to the study by Dr Lisa I. Iezzoni of Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, and colleagues. They believe their findings "refute long-held stereotypes about the reproductive choices and activities of women with chronic physical disabilities."
'Women with Chronic Physical Disabilities Do Become Pregnant'
The researchers analyzed nationally representative survey data on 48,000 U.S. women of childbearing age (18 to 49 years). Women were asked about various forms of chronic physical disability and whether they were currently pregnant. The study focused on physical health conditions causing difficulties doing certain activities; it did not address disability caused by mental or emotional problems, vision or hearing loss, or pregnancy.
Overall, 12.7 percent of women surveyed had some type of chronic physical disability. Compared to nondisabled women, those with physical disabilities were older, more likely to be black, more likely to divorced or separated, and less likely to have a high-school education. Women with disabilities were also less likely to be employed and had lower incomes.
Current pregnancy was reported by 3.5 percent of the women surveyed. The pregnancy rate for women with chronic physical disabilities was 2.0 percent, compared to 3.8 percent for nondisabled women. After adjustment for demographic and social factors, the pregnancy rate among physically disabled women was only 17 percent lower than that in nondisabled womenthe difference was not statistically significant.
Women with more severe physical disabilities did have lower reported pregnancy rates. However, even in the most severe disability category, 1.5 percent of women said they were currently pregnant.
'And Their Numbers Will Likely Grow"
The study is one of the first to use population-based data to examine the reproductive choices and experiences of women with chronic physical disabilities. Dr Iezzoni and coauthors write, "Historically women with physical disabilities have confronted stigmatization concerning their reproductive and sexual health."
Extrapolated to the entire country, the results suggest that nearly 164,000 U.S. women with chronic physical disabilities are pregnant at any given timeincluding 44,000 women with severe disabilities. The researchers write. "These figures are sufficiently large to merit serious attention, especially since the number of women of reproductive age with chronic physical disabilities will rise in coming decades," as part of a general trend toward increased numbers of people living with disabilities.
"Women with chronic physical disabilities do become pregnant, and their numbers will likely grow." Dr Iezzoni and coauthors conclude. "Whether obstetricians, nurse midwives, and other clinicians who care for pregnant womenand clinicians who provide preconception services and postpartum carehave sufficient training to serve women with chronic physical disabilities is unknown and requires additional research to explore."
###
About Medical Care
Rated as one of the top ten journals in health care administration, Medical Care is devoted to all aspects of the administration and delivery of health care. This scholarly journal publishes original, peer-reviewed papers documenting the most current developments in the rapidly changing field of health care. Medical Care provides timely reports on the findings of original investigations into issues related to the research, planning, organization, financing, provision, and evaluation of health services. In addition, numerous special supplementary issues that focus on specialized topics are produced with each volume. Medical Care is the official journal of the Medical Care Section of the American Public Health Association
About Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW) is a leading international publisher of trusted content delivered in innovative ways to practitioners, professionals and students to learn new skills, stay current on their practice, and make important decisions to improve patient care and clinical outcomes.
LWW is part of Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading global provider of information, business intelligence and point-of-care solutions for the healthcare industry.
Wolters Kluwer Health is part of Wolters Kluwer, a market-leading global information services company with 2012 annual revenues of 3.6 billion ($4.6 billion).
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Women with chronic physical disabilities are no less likely to bear childrenPublic release date: 16-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Connie Hughes connie.hughes@wolterskluwer.com 646-674-6348 Wolters Kluwer Health
Health care professionals should prepare for increased numbers of pregnant women with disabilities, suggests study in Medical Care
Philadelphia, Pa. (May 16, 2013) Like the general public, health care professionals may hold certain stereotypes regarding sexual activity and childbearing among women with disabilities. But a new study finds that women with chronic physical disabilities are about as likely as nondisabled women to say they are currently pregnant, after age and other sociodemographic factors are taken into account. The findings are reported in the June issue of Medical Care, published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.
Health care professionals can expectand should prepare foran increase in the number of physically disabled women requiring care during pregnancy, according to the study by Dr Lisa I. Iezzoni of Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, and colleagues. They believe their findings "refute long-held stereotypes about the reproductive choices and activities of women with chronic physical disabilities."
'Women with Chronic Physical Disabilities Do Become Pregnant'
The researchers analyzed nationally representative survey data on 48,000 U.S. women of childbearing age (18 to 49 years). Women were asked about various forms of chronic physical disability and whether they were currently pregnant. The study focused on physical health conditions causing difficulties doing certain activities; it did not address disability caused by mental or emotional problems, vision or hearing loss, or pregnancy.
Overall, 12.7 percent of women surveyed had some type of chronic physical disability. Compared to nondisabled women, those with physical disabilities were older, more likely to be black, more likely to divorced or separated, and less likely to have a high-school education. Women with disabilities were also less likely to be employed and had lower incomes.
Current pregnancy was reported by 3.5 percent of the women surveyed. The pregnancy rate for women with chronic physical disabilities was 2.0 percent, compared to 3.8 percent for nondisabled women. After adjustment for demographic and social factors, the pregnancy rate among physically disabled women was only 17 percent lower than that in nondisabled womenthe difference was not statistically significant.
Women with more severe physical disabilities did have lower reported pregnancy rates. However, even in the most severe disability category, 1.5 percent of women said they were currently pregnant.
'And Their Numbers Will Likely Grow"
The study is one of the first to use population-based data to examine the reproductive choices and experiences of women with chronic physical disabilities. Dr Iezzoni and coauthors write, "Historically women with physical disabilities have confronted stigmatization concerning their reproductive and sexual health."
Extrapolated to the entire country, the results suggest that nearly 164,000 U.S. women with chronic physical disabilities are pregnant at any given timeincluding 44,000 women with severe disabilities. The researchers write. "These figures are sufficiently large to merit serious attention, especially since the number of women of reproductive age with chronic physical disabilities will rise in coming decades," as part of a general trend toward increased numbers of people living with disabilities.
"Women with chronic physical disabilities do become pregnant, and their numbers will likely grow." Dr Iezzoni and coauthors conclude. "Whether obstetricians, nurse midwives, and other clinicians who care for pregnant womenand clinicians who provide preconception services and postpartum carehave sufficient training to serve women with chronic physical disabilities is unknown and requires additional research to explore."
###
About Medical Care
Rated as one of the top ten journals in health care administration, Medical Care is devoted to all aspects of the administration and delivery of health care. This scholarly journal publishes original, peer-reviewed papers documenting the most current developments in the rapidly changing field of health care. Medical Care provides timely reports on the findings of original investigations into issues related to the research, planning, organization, financing, provision, and evaluation of health services. In addition, numerous special supplementary issues that focus on specialized topics are produced with each volume. Medical Care is the official journal of the Medical Care Section of the American Public Health Association
About Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW) is a leading international publisher of trusted content delivered in innovative ways to practitioners, professionals and students to learn new skills, stay current on their practice, and make important decisions to improve patient care and clinical outcomes.
LWW is part of Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading global provider of information, business intelligence and point-of-care solutions for the healthcare industry.
Wolters Kluwer Health is part of Wolters Kluwer, a market-leading global information services company with 2012 annual revenues of 3.6 billion ($4.6 billion).
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron faced questions about his leadership on Tuesday after he bowed to pressure from inside the ruling Conservative Party to bring forward draft legislation enforcing a referendum on Britain's European Union membership.
Just hours after U.S. President Barack Obama cautioned against rushing towards the EU exit, Cameron was forced by a rebellion in his party into promising a bill that would pave the way for an in-out vote on Europe.
Cameron denied the move was a desperate measure to placate his increasingly restive and eurosceptic party, where many see the EU as an oppressive and wasteful "superstate" that threatens Britain's sovereignty.
"I think when all the dust has settled people will be able to see the substance of the issue," he said.
"That is that one party, the Conservatives, has a clear agenda: renegotiate, change Europe, have a referendum on it - the others parties don't take that approach," he told Sky news.
On the contrary, he said, he had shown leadership on the issue.
"The whole reason that we are now having this debate is because of the act of leadership I gave," he told ITV News, referring to an earlier promise to hold a referendum.
Yet the more ground Cameron concedes to his eurosceptic lawmakers, the more they want, deepening the 25-year battle in his party over Europe and undermining his own chances of leading it to victory in a general election set for 2015.
Divisions over Europe helped bring down the last two Conservative prime ministers, Margaret Thatcher and John Major, and many politicians compared Cameron's position to that of Major whose premiership was driven by rows over Europe.
"There is no way that he (Cameron) can give in any further because he's undermining his own position," said Sheila Gunn, who served as spokeswoman to Major.
RISKY PATH
Conservative lawmakers who back the new bill deny the move undermines Cameron. For them, it is a way of showing a skeptical public that the Conservatives really do want a referendum on Britain's EU membership, but are being held back.
The party's Liberal Democrat partners in coalition government are pro-Europe and oppose a referendum, while the opposition Labor party says it does not support a vote on the EU in 2017, the date proposed by Cameron earlier this year.
"We've set out our position and published this bill to give the British people an in-out referendum on Europe ... Now it's vital to hear whether Labor and the other parties are actually prepared to trust the British public," Conservative Party chairman Grant Shapps said in a statement.
Cameron's advisers hope the draft bill on an EU vote will end internal bickering. A Downing Street spokesman insisted Cameron was still in charge.
History shows Cameron is treading a risky path.
The three eurosceptic Conservative Party leaders who followed Major failed to get into power, and Cameron's capitulation over the new EU referendum bill has created the impression he is not in control of his own party.
"David Cameron's weakness has turned a European issue into a leadership issue," Labor foreign affairs spokesman Douglas Alexander said.
In January, Cameron promised to renegotiate the terms of Britain's EU membership and then hold a referendum by the end of 2017 in a speech meant to draw a line under the issue.
But some lawmakers had called for further concessions and media reports said Cameron's leadership could be challenged.
Cameron's potential rivals include London Mayor Boris Johnson and Education Secretary Michael Gove.
"RED LINE"
Cameron believes his decision to publish the draft bill will silence his eurosceptic lawmakers until the next election.
"This is our red line," one senior Conservative source said of the bill. "We're not going to give them any more ground."
Despite his latest concession, up to 100 eurosceptic Conservative members of parliament are still expected to criticize the government's legislative plans on Wednesday because they didn't include a bill promising a vote on EU membership.
Since coming to power in a coalition government three years ago, the Conservatives have been rattled by the popularity of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which campaigns for Britain's withdrawal from the EU and tighter immigration laws.
A Guardian/ICM poll showed that UKIP's support had surged to a record high of 18 percent, while support for Britain's traditional parties had fallen by 4 percentage points each.
UKIP took a quarter of the vote in local elections this month. Unless Cameron can convince his party he can win the next election he is likely to face more challenges to his leadership.
"With the story changing every day, it's very reminiscent of the old John Major days where, really, the government appears to be being blown around by events," said UKIP leader Nigel Farage.
The Guardian poll put Labor on 34 percent, the Conservatives on 28 percent and the Liberal Democrats on 11 percent.
UKIP's poll rating has climbed steadily since Cameron set out his EU strategy in January.
Cameron's bid to renegotiate the terms of Britain's membership has worried the United States, which has warned London that it would lose influence in the world if it did leave the world's biggest economic bloc.
(Additional reporting by Mohammed Abbas, William James, Costas Pitas and William Schomberg; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge and Andrew Osborn; Editing by Giles Elgood)
An upcoming update will bring a web browser, email and update store app to Barnes & Noble's super affordable Nook Simple Touch line of eReaders, which will begin rolling out June 1 according to a source close to the matter who wishes to remain anonymous. The 1.5.0 update was created in response to the positive critical and customer response to the recent Nook tablet update that brought Google Play to B&N's Android-powered devices.![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 16-May-2013
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