FDA to ban artery-clogging trans fats

FILE - In this Jan. 18, 2012, file photo, Alexes Garcia makes cinnamon rolls for student's lunch in the kitchen at Kepner Middle School in Denver. The rolls are made using apple sauce instead of trans fats. Heart-clogging trans fats have been slowly disappearing from grocery aisles and restaurant menus in the last decade as nutritionists have criticized them and local governments have banned them. The Food and Drug Administration is now finishing the job as they announce Nov. 7, 2013, that it will require the food industry to gradually phase out trans fats, saying they are a threat to the health of Americans.(AP Photo/Ed Andrieski, File)

FILE - In this Jan. 18, 2012, file photo, Alexes Garcia makes cinnamon rolls for student's lunch in the kitchen at Kepner Middle School in Denver. The rolls are made using apple sauce instead of trans fats. Heart-clogging trans fats have been slowly disappearing from grocery aisles and restaurant menus in the last decade as nutritionists have criticized them and local governments have banned them. The Food and Drug Administration is now finishing the job as they announce Nov. 7, 2013, that it will require the food industry to gradually phase out trans fats, saying they are a threat to the health of Americans.(AP Photo/Ed Andrieski, File)

FILE - In this Feb. 12, 2008 file photo, a rack of donuts is displayed at a Dunkin' Donuts franchise in Boston. Consumers wondering what food without trans fat will taste like, probably already know as food manufacturers began eliminating it years ago. (AP Photo/Lisa Poole, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Heart-clogging trans fats were once a staple of the American diet, plentiful in baked goods, microwave popcorn and fried foods. Now, mindful of the health risks, the Food and Drug Administration is getting rid of what's left of them for good.

The FDA announced Thursday it will require the food industry to gradually phase out artificial trans fats, saying they are a threat to public health.

Thanks to criticism from the medical community and number of local laws, many trans fats have been taken out of the food supply already. But the FDA said Thursday that getting rid of the remainder — the average American still eats around a gram of trans fat a day — could prevent an additional 20,000 heart attacks and 7,000 deaths each year.

"While consumption of potentially harmful artificial trans fat has declined over the last two decades in the United States, current intake remains a significant public health concern," said FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg.

The agency isn't yet setting a timeline for the phase-out, but it will collect comments for two months before officials determine how long it will take. Different foods may have different timelines, depending how easy it is to find a substitute.

"We want to do it in a way that doesn't unduly disrupt markets," said Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner for foods. Still, he says, the food "industry has demonstrated that it is, by and large, feasible to do."

Scientists say there are no health benefits to trans fats and they can raise levels of so-called "bad" cholesterol and lower "good" cholesterol, increasing the risk of heart disease — the leading cause of death in the United States. Trans fats are widely considered the worst kind for your heart, even worse than saturated fats, which also can contribute to heart disease.

Trans fats are used both in processed food and in restaurants, often to improve the texture, shelf life or flavor of foods. Though they have been removed from many items, the fats are still found in some processed foods, including in many baked goods like pie crusts, biscuits and ready-to-eat frostings that use the more-solid fats to keep consistency.

They are also sometimes used by restaurants that use the fats for frying. Many larger chains have phased them out, but smaller restaurants may still get food containing trans fats from suppliers.

To phase them out, the FDA said it had made a preliminary determination that trans fats no longer fall in the agency's "generally recognized as safe" category, which is reserved for thousands of additives that manufacturers can add to foods without FDA review. Once trans fats are off the list, anyone who wants to use them would have to petition the agency for a regulation allowing it, and that would likely not be approved.

The fats are created when hydrogen is added to vegetable oil to make it more solid, which is why they are often called partially hydrogenated oils. The FDA is not targeting small amounts of trans fats that occur naturally in some meat and dairy products, because they would be too difficult to remove and aren't considered a major public health threat on their own.

Many companies have already phased out trans fats, prompted by new nutrition labels introduced by FDA in 2006 that list trans fats and an by an increasing number of local laws, like one in New York City, that have banned them. In 2011, Wal Mart pledged to remove all artificial trans fats from the foods the company sells by 2016.

In a statement, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was his city's 2007 ban that prompted much of the progress. "Our prohibition on trans fats was one of many bold public health measures that faced fierce initial criticism, only to gain widespread acceptance and support," he said.

Indeed, consumers have slowly eaten fewer of the fats. According to the FDA, trans fat intake among American consumers declined from 4.6 grams per day in 2003 to around one gram per day in 2012. And a handful of other countries have banned them as well, including Switzerland and Denmark. Other countries have enacted stricter labeling laws.

Dr. Leon Bruner, chief scientist at the Grocery Manufacturers Association, said in a statement his group estimates that food manufacturers have voluntarily lowered the amount of trans fats in food products by 73 percent.

The group, which represents the country's largest food companies, did not speculate on a reasonable timeline or speak to how difficult the move may be for some manufacturers. Bruner said in a statement that "consumers can be confident that their food is safe, and we look forward to working with the FDA to better understand their concerns and how our industry can better serve consumers."

FDA officials say they have been working on trans fat issues for around 15 years — the first goal was to label them — and have been collecting data to justify a possible phase-out since just after President Barack Obama came into office in 2009.

The advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest first petitioned FDA to ban trans fats nine years ago. The group's director, Michael Jacobson, says the move is "one of the most important lifesaving actions the FDA could take."

He says the agency should try to move quickly as it determines a timeline.

"Six months or a year should be more than enough time, especially considering that companies have had a decade to figure out what to do," Jacobson said.

___

Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mcjalonick

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-11-07-FDA-Trans%20Fats/id-5e8cb5e68c814ebcb10e3fbdf15e7d5f
Related Topics: penn state football   julio jones   veep   9/11   area 51  

FDA to ban artery-clogging trans fats

FILE - In this Jan. 18, 2012, file photo, Alexes Garcia makes cinnamon rolls for student's lunch in the kitchen at Kepner Middle School in Denver. The rolls are made using apple sauce instead of trans fats. Heart-clogging trans fats have been slowly disappearing from grocery aisles and restaurant menus in the last decade as nutritionists have criticized them and local governments have banned them. The Food and Drug Administration is now finishing the job as they announce Nov. 7, 2013, that it will require the food industry to gradually phase out trans fats, saying they are a threat to the health of Americans.(AP Photo/Ed Andrieski, File)

FILE - In this Jan. 18, 2012, file photo, Alexes Garcia makes cinnamon rolls for student's lunch in the kitchen at Kepner Middle School in Denver. The rolls are made using apple sauce instead of trans fats. Heart-clogging trans fats have been slowly disappearing from grocery aisles and restaurant menus in the last decade as nutritionists have criticized them and local governments have banned them. The Food and Drug Administration is now finishing the job as they announce Nov. 7, 2013, that it will require the food industry to gradually phase out trans fats, saying they are a threat to the health of Americans.(AP Photo/Ed Andrieski, File)

FILE - In this Feb. 12, 2008 file photo, a rack of donuts is displayed at a Dunkin' Donuts franchise in Boston. Consumers wondering what food without trans fat will taste like, probably already know as food manufacturers began eliminating it years ago. (AP Photo/Lisa Poole, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Heart-clogging trans fats were once a staple of the American diet, plentiful in baked goods, microwave popcorn and fried foods. Now, mindful of the health risks, the Food and Drug Administration is getting rid of what's left of them for good.

The FDA announced Thursday it will require the food industry to gradually phase out artificial trans fats, saying they are a threat to public health.

Thanks to criticism from the medical community and number of local laws, many trans fats have been taken out of the food supply already. But the FDA said Thursday that getting rid of the remainder — the average American still eats around a gram of trans fat a day — could prevent an additional 20,000 heart attacks and 7,000 deaths each year.

"While consumption of potentially harmful artificial trans fat has declined over the last two decades in the United States, current intake remains a significant public health concern," said FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg.

The agency isn't yet setting a timeline for the phase-out, but it will collect comments for two months before officials determine how long it will take. Different foods may have different timelines, depending how easy it is to find a substitute.

"We want to do it in a way that doesn't unduly disrupt markets," said Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner for foods. Still, he says, the food "industry has demonstrated that it is, by and large, feasible to do."

Scientists say there are no health benefits to trans fats and they can raise levels of so-called "bad" cholesterol and lower "good" cholesterol, increasing the risk of heart disease — the leading cause of death in the United States. Trans fats are widely considered the worst kind for your heart, even worse than saturated fats, which also can contribute to heart disease.

Trans fats are used both in processed food and in restaurants, often to improve the texture, shelf life or flavor of foods. Though they have been removed from many items, the fats are still found in some processed foods, including in many baked goods like pie crusts, biscuits and ready-to-eat frostings that use the more-solid fats to keep consistency.

They are also sometimes used by restaurants that use the fats for frying. Many larger chains have phased them out, but smaller restaurants may still get food containing trans fats from suppliers.

To phase them out, the FDA said it had made a preliminary determination that trans fats no longer fall in the agency's "generally recognized as safe" category, which is reserved for thousands of additives that manufacturers can add to foods without FDA review. Once trans fats are off the list, anyone who wants to use them would have to petition the agency for a regulation allowing it, and that would likely not be approved.

The fats are created when hydrogen is added to vegetable oil to make it more solid, which is why they are often called partially hydrogenated oils. The FDA is not targeting small amounts of trans fats that occur naturally in some meat and dairy products, because they would be too difficult to remove and aren't considered a major public health threat on their own.

Many companies have already phased out trans fats, prompted by new nutrition labels introduced by FDA in 2006 that list trans fats and an by an increasing number of local laws, like one in New York City, that have banned them. In 2011, Wal Mart pledged to remove all artificial trans fats from the foods the company sells by 2016.

In a statement, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was his city's 2007 ban that prompted much of the progress. "Our prohibition on trans fats was one of many bold public health measures that faced fierce initial criticism, only to gain widespread acceptance and support," he said.

Indeed, consumers have slowly eaten fewer of the fats. According to the FDA, trans fat intake among American consumers declined from 4.6 grams per day in 2003 to around one gram per day in 2012. And a handful of other countries have banned them as well, including Switzerland and Denmark. Other countries have enacted stricter labeling laws.

Dr. Leon Bruner, chief scientist at the Grocery Manufacturers Association, said in a statement his group estimates that food manufacturers have voluntarily lowered the amount of trans fats in food products by 73 percent.

The group, which represents the country's largest food companies, did not speculate on a reasonable timeline or speak to how difficult the move may be for some manufacturers. Bruner said in a statement that "consumers can be confident that their food is safe, and we look forward to working with the FDA to better understand their concerns and how our industry can better serve consumers."

FDA officials say they have been working on trans fat issues for around 15 years — the first goal was to label them — and have been collecting data to justify a possible phase-out since just after President Barack Obama came into office in 2009.

The advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest first petitioned FDA to ban trans fats nine years ago. The group's director, Michael Jacobson, says the move is "one of the most important lifesaving actions the FDA could take."

He says the agency should try to move quickly as it determines a timeline.

"Six months or a year should be more than enough time, especially considering that companies have had a decade to figure out what to do," Jacobson said.

___

Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mcjalonick

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-11-07-FDA-Trans%20Fats/id-5e8cb5e68c814ebcb10e3fbdf15e7d5f
Related Topics: penn state football   julio jones   veep   9/11   area 51  

AP Photos: Nashville turns up the glamour at CMAs

Country music stars were all dressed up with somewhere to go: the Country Music Awards.

The event in Nashville, Tenn., on Wednesday night was another chance for Taylor Swift to be belle of the ball and this time she did it in a bateau-neck red gown with embroidery and a thin leather belt by Elie Saab.

But there were other stars who took this moment in the spotlight to shine — in sequins and baubles — including Jennifer Nettles, who wore a crystal-and-mirror beaded gown by Naeem Khan on the red carpet and a Georges Chakra blush-colored beaded jumpsuit onstage.

Carrie Underwood did several outfit changes. Among them: She wore a midnight-blue gown with white porcelain cherry blossoms by Theia and a short, black tuxedo-style romper by Chagoury decorated with Swarovski crystals.

Kacey Musgraves went with a short-hemline head turner, choosing a yellow handkerchief dress by Sally LaPointe for her performance. Earlier she was in a Blumarine outfit with a short dress under a long, sheer floral overlay. Kimberly Perry of The Band Perry did the short-long switch, too, in a 14-karat gold and sterling mesh mini by Rubin Singer when she was singing and a more delicate ivory-colored embroidered gown for the arrivals line.

Connie Britton did her own two-in-one turn in a Georges Hobeika gown that had a demure black-beaded collar and a slim, sexy bodice.

___

Follow Samantha Critchell and AP Fashion coverage on Twitter at @AP_Fashion and @Sam_Critchell.

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ap-photos-nashville-turns-glamour-cmas-182445848.html
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Person of interest arrested in barbershop slayings

Police stand outside a building near the scene of a multiple shooting that took place at Al's Place Barber Shop in Detroit, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2013. Detroit police say gunfire broke out at the barbershop known for gambling activity. Police Chief James Craig told reporters that police were looking for two vehicles that the suspects may have been using, a 2004 white Chevrolet Impala that may have a broken window and bullet holes in the back, and a 2004 black Impala. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Police stand outside a building near the scene of a multiple shooting that took place at Al's Place Barber Shop in Detroit, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2013. Detroit police say gunfire broke out at the barbershop known for gambling activity. Police Chief James Craig told reporters that police were looking for two vehicles that the suspects may have been using, a 2004 white Chevrolet Impala that may have a broken window and bullet holes in the back, and a 2004 black Impala. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Detroit Police Chief James Craig addresses the media during a news conference in Detroit, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2013. Craig said a man has been apprehended and will be questioned about a barbershop shooting that killed three people and wounded several more on Wednesday night on the city's east side. Craig said that the man was wearing body armor when he was arrested on unrelated felony charges in suburban Rochester after the shootings. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Police stand outside the scene of a multiple shooting at Al's Place Barber Shop in Detroit, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2013. Detroit police say gunfire broke out at the barbershop known for gambling activity. Police Chief James Craig told reporters that police were looking for two vehicles that the suspects may have been using, a 2004 white Chevrolet Impala that may have a broken window and bullet holes in the back, and a 2004 black Impala. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Police gather at a scene of a multiple shooting at Al's Place Barber Shop, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2013, in Detroit. Detroit police say gunfire broke out at the barbershop known for gambling activity, leaving at least three people dead. (AP Photo/Detroit Free Press, Andre J. Jackson) DETROIT NEWS OUT; NO SALES; TV OUT; INTERNET OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

People stand outside a barber shop, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2013 in Detroit. Gunfire broke out Wednesday evening at a Detroit barbershop known for gambling activity, leaving at least two men dead, police say. (AP Photo/Detroit News, Elizabeth Conley) DETROIT FREE PRESS OUT; HUFFINGTON POST OUT

DETROIT (AP) — A convicted felon who was wearing body armor when police arrested him in a Detroit suburb will be questioned in an investigation into the fatal shooting of three men in a back gambling room of an east side barbershop.

Detroit Police Chief James Craig described the man as a person of interest in Wednesday evening's shooting at Al's Barber Shop that left six other people wounded. Speaking at a Thursday news conference at police headquarters, Craig said the bloodshed may have stemmed from an ongoing feud.

Craig did not name the person of interest and provided few details about the arrest. He said Rochester police picked up the man north of Detroit without incident on an unrelated felonious assault charge.

"Police wear body armor. Why would a community member be driving around in body armor?" said Craig, who described the latest mass shooting in Detroit as "urban terrorism."

Craig said 20 to 30 people were gambling in a tiny back room at the barbershop in a strip mall shortly before 6 p.m. when shots were fired from a high-powered rifle through an open back door.

When the gunfire began, the gamblers tried to escape the room through a door that led back into the barbershop, but that the jam of bodies prevented them from escaping.

"The shooter struck nine of the individuals inside the location," Craig said, adding that many people in the room were armed and at least one returned fire.

"Officers were able to develop information that there was an ongoing feud between a particular individual and several members of the gambling party," the chief said.

Craig declined to say whether police think the person of interest is the shooter. But he would say that the shooter is suspected in at least two other violent crimes.

Two of Wednesday's shooting victims died inside the gambling room. The third died later at a hospital. The conditions of the survivors were not available.

A witness told police that the shooter pulled into a rear alley and fired shots at someone in a pickup truck. He then got out of the car and began shooting into the open rear door of the barbershop.

Wednesday night police said they were seeking two vehicles believed to have been involved in the shooting.

Lorne Carter told the Detroit Free Press that he was smoking a cigarette against the wall of a nearby business when he heard what sounded like 30 to 40 rapid shots.

Detroit has one of the highest violent crime rates in the country. Including Wednesday night's barbershop slayings, 289 criminal homicides have been committed so far this year in Detroit.

Criminal homicides accounted for 386 of the 461 death investigations in 2012.

"Anytime you have ... shootings of nine, it certainly does rise up as one of Detroit's more violent incidents," Craig said.

Craig said one person was shot and three others wounded during a shooting in October 2012 on the city's west side. Seven teenagers — including five students at Cody Ninth Grade Academy — were shot and wounded while waiting at a bus stop near that school in June 2009.

___

Associated Press writers David N. Goodman and David Runk contributed to this report.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-11-07-Barbershop%20Shooting-Detroit/id-a11eaa1161684ce2938aedb2aa93c41e
Category: Tony Dorsett   Revolt TV   Kendrick Johnson   Capitol shooting   Placenta  

The Carolina hammerhead, a new species of shark, debuts

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

7-Nov-2013

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Contact: Steven Powell
spowell2@mailbox.sc.edu
803-777-1923
University of South Carolina

Discovering a new species is, among biologists, akin to hitting a grand slam, and University of South Carolina ichthyologist Joe Quattro led a team that recently cleared the bases. In the journal Zootaxa, they describe a rare shark, the Carolina hammerhead, that had long eluded discovery because it is outwardly indistinguishable from the common scalloped hammerhead. Through its rarity, the new species, Sphyrna gilberti, underscores the fragility of shark diversity in the face of relentless human predation.

Quattro, a biology professor in USC's College of Arts and Sciences, didn't set out to discover a new cryptic species, let alone one found exclusively in saltwater. When he started as an assistant professor at USC in 1995, he was largely focused on fish in the freshwater rivers that flow through the state before emptying into the western Atlantic Ocean.

He has wide interests that include conservation, genetic diversity and taxonomy. A driving force in his scientific curiosity is a desire to better understand evolution. As it turns out, South Carolina's four major river basins the Pee Dee, the Santee, the Edisto and the Savannah are a source of particularly rich ore for mining insight into evolutionary history.

Glacial influence had limits

Quattro grew up in Maryland, earned a doctorate at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and completed a post-doc at Stanford University. "New Jersey and Maryland, in particular, had huge glacial influences," said Quattro. "The areas where rivers now flow were covered with glaciers until 10,000 to 15,000 years ago, and as the glaciers receded the taxa followed them upstream."

In contrast, rivers south of Virginia were not covered with glaciers. "In other words, these rivers have been around for quite some time," Quattro said. "The Pee Dee and the Santee are two of the largest river systems on the East coast. And we just got curious how distinct are these rivers from one another?"

Beginning with the pygmy sunfish, Quattro and colleagues examined the genetic makeup of fish species within the ancient freshwater drainage systems. They found the banded pygmy sunfish in all the South Carolina rivers in fact, this widespread species is found in nearly all the river systems of the U.S. southeastern and Gulf coasts, starting from the plains of North Carolina, around Florida, and all the way to and up the Mississippi River.

But two species are much rarer. The bluebarred pygmy sunfish is found only in the Savannah and Edisto systems. The Carolina pygmy sunfish is found only in the Santee and Pee Dee systems. Both species coexist with the common banded pygmy sunfish in these river systems, but are found nowhere else in the world.

From an evolutionary standpoint, it's a noteworthy finding. These rare species are related to the widespread species, yet the details of the inter-relationships such as which predates the others and is thus an ancestral species still defy ready description. The fact that a rare and a common species are located together in an ancient river system is important information in the ongoing struggle to clearly define evolutionary history. In the past, scientists drew taxonomic charts almost solely on the basis of physical structure (morphology) and available fossils. The genetic data revolution of recent decades is helping redefine biology in a much more precise manner, but the process is still in the early going.

From the river to the sea

Quattro has been doing his part by slowly moving down the river systems to the ocean, collecting genetic data the whole way down. In the freshwater rivers, he has examined pygmy sunfishes, other sunfishes and basses. Closer to the sea, he has looked at short-nosed sturgeon, which spend most of their time in the estuary (where the river meets the ocean), but do venture up the river to spawn. And further downriver still, he has looked at shark pups.

South Carolina is a well-known pupping ground for several species of sharks, including the hammerhead. The female hammerhead will birth her young at the ocean-side fringes of the estuary; the pups remain there for a year or so, growing, before moving out to the ocean to complete their life cycle.

In the process of looking at hammerheads, Quattro, his student William Driggers III and their colleagues quickly uncovered an anomaly. The scalloped hammerheads (Sphyrna lewini) that they were collecting had two different genetic signatures, in both the mitochondrial and nuclear genomes. Searching the literature, they found that Carter Gilbert, the renowned curator of the Florida Museum of Natural History from 1961 to 1998, had described an anomalous scalloped hammerhead in 1967 that had 10 fewer vertebrae than S. lewini. It had been caught near Charleston and, because the sample was in the National Museum of Natural History, the team was able to examine it morphologically and suggest that it constituted a cryptic species that is, one that is physically nearly indistinguishable from the more common species.

After publishing the preliminary genetic evidence for the new, cryptic species in the journal Marine Biology in 2006, Quattro and colleagues followed up by making thorough measurements (of 54 cryptic individuals and 24 S. lewini) to fully describe in Zootaxa the new species, S. gilberti, named in Gilbert's honor. The difference in vertebrae, 10 fewer in the cryptic species, is the defining morphological difference.

Apart from the satisfaction of discovery, Quattro has established locations and genetic signatures for a number of closely related, yet distinct, species in South Carolina's rivers, estuaries and coastal waters. The results will go a long way in furthering efforts to accurately define taxonomy and evolutionary history for aquatic life.

His team's work also demonstrates the rarity of the new species. "Outside of South Carolina, we've only seen five tissue samples of the cryptic species," Quattro said. "And that's out of three or four hundred specimens."

Shark populations have greatly diminished over the past few decades. "The biomass of scalloped hammerheads off the coast of the eastern U.S. is less than 10 percent of what it was historically," Quattro said. "Here, we're showing that the scalloped hammerheads are actually two things. Since the cryptic species is much rarer than the lewini, God only knows what its population levels have dropped to."

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

7-Nov-2013

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Contact: Steven Powell
spowell2@mailbox.sc.edu
803-777-1923
University of South Carolina

Discovering a new species is, among biologists, akin to hitting a grand slam, and University of South Carolina ichthyologist Joe Quattro led a team that recently cleared the bases. In the journal Zootaxa, they describe a rare shark, the Carolina hammerhead, that had long eluded discovery because it is outwardly indistinguishable from the common scalloped hammerhead. Through its rarity, the new species, Sphyrna gilberti, underscores the fragility of shark diversity in the face of relentless human predation.

Quattro, a biology professor in USC's College of Arts and Sciences, didn't set out to discover a new cryptic species, let alone one found exclusively in saltwater. When he started as an assistant professor at USC in 1995, he was largely focused on fish in the freshwater rivers that flow through the state before emptying into the western Atlantic Ocean.

He has wide interests that include conservation, genetic diversity and taxonomy. A driving force in his scientific curiosity is a desire to better understand evolution. As it turns out, South Carolina's four major river basins the Pee Dee, the Santee, the Edisto and the Savannah are a source of particularly rich ore for mining insight into evolutionary history.

Glacial influence had limits

Quattro grew up in Maryland, earned a doctorate at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and completed a post-doc at Stanford University. "New Jersey and Maryland, in particular, had huge glacial influences," said Quattro. "The areas where rivers now flow were covered with glaciers until 10,000 to 15,000 years ago, and as the glaciers receded the taxa followed them upstream."

In contrast, rivers south of Virginia were not covered with glaciers. "In other words, these rivers have been around for quite some time," Quattro said. "The Pee Dee and the Santee are two of the largest river systems on the East coast. And we just got curious how distinct are these rivers from one another?"

Beginning with the pygmy sunfish, Quattro and colleagues examined the genetic makeup of fish species within the ancient freshwater drainage systems. They found the banded pygmy sunfish in all the South Carolina rivers in fact, this widespread species is found in nearly all the river systems of the U.S. southeastern and Gulf coasts, starting from the plains of North Carolina, around Florida, and all the way to and up the Mississippi River.

But two species are much rarer. The bluebarred pygmy sunfish is found only in the Savannah and Edisto systems. The Carolina pygmy sunfish is found only in the Santee and Pee Dee systems. Both species coexist with the common banded pygmy sunfish in these river systems, but are found nowhere else in the world.

From an evolutionary standpoint, it's a noteworthy finding. These rare species are related to the widespread species, yet the details of the inter-relationships such as which predates the others and is thus an ancestral species still defy ready description. The fact that a rare and a common species are located together in an ancient river system is important information in the ongoing struggle to clearly define evolutionary history. In the past, scientists drew taxonomic charts almost solely on the basis of physical structure (morphology) and available fossils. The genetic data revolution of recent decades is helping redefine biology in a much more precise manner, but the process is still in the early going.

From the river to the sea

Quattro has been doing his part by slowly moving down the river systems to the ocean, collecting genetic data the whole way down. In the freshwater rivers, he has examined pygmy sunfishes, other sunfishes and basses. Closer to the sea, he has looked at short-nosed sturgeon, which spend most of their time in the estuary (where the river meets the ocean), but do venture up the river to spawn. And further downriver still, he has looked at shark pups.

South Carolina is a well-known pupping ground for several species of sharks, including the hammerhead. The female hammerhead will birth her young at the ocean-side fringes of the estuary; the pups remain there for a year or so, growing, before moving out to the ocean to complete their life cycle.

In the process of looking at hammerheads, Quattro, his student William Driggers III and their colleagues quickly uncovered an anomaly. The scalloped hammerheads (Sphyrna lewini) that they were collecting had two different genetic signatures, in both the mitochondrial and nuclear genomes. Searching the literature, they found that Carter Gilbert, the renowned curator of the Florida Museum of Natural History from 1961 to 1998, had described an anomalous scalloped hammerhead in 1967 that had 10 fewer vertebrae than S. lewini. It had been caught near Charleston and, because the sample was in the National Museum of Natural History, the team was able to examine it morphologically and suggest that it constituted a cryptic species that is, one that is physically nearly indistinguishable from the more common species.

After publishing the preliminary genetic evidence for the new, cryptic species in the journal Marine Biology in 2006, Quattro and colleagues followed up by making thorough measurements (of 54 cryptic individuals and 24 S. lewini) to fully describe in Zootaxa the new species, S. gilberti, named in Gilbert's honor. The difference in vertebrae, 10 fewer in the cryptic species, is the defining morphological difference.

Apart from the satisfaction of discovery, Quattro has established locations and genetic signatures for a number of closely related, yet distinct, species in South Carolina's rivers, estuaries and coastal waters. The results will go a long way in furthering efforts to accurately define taxonomy and evolutionary history for aquatic life.

His team's work also demonstrates the rarity of the new species. "Outside of South Carolina, we've only seen five tissue samples of the cryptic species," Quattro said. "And that's out of three or four hundred specimens."

Shark populations have greatly diminished over the past few decades. "The biomass of scalloped hammerheads off the coast of the eastern U.S. is less than 10 percent of what it was historically," Quattro said. "Here, we're showing that the scalloped hammerheads are actually two things. Since the cryptic species is much rarer than the lewini, God only knows what its population levels have dropped to."

###

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Share

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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.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-11/uosc-tch110713.php
Category: kelly clarkson   act   denver post   nfl scores   bruno mars  

New SD card format is speedy enough for 4K video

Outside of a few smartphones, 4K video capture has largely been limited to pro-level hardware; the SD cards in regular cameras frequently can't handle so many pixels at once. That won't be a problem in the near future, as the SD Association has just unveiled an Ultra High Speed Class 3 (U3) card ...

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/FQ9qGceDTk4/
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UH among Texas institutions that will lead Ocean Energy Safety Institute

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

7-Nov-2013

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Contact: Jeannie Kever
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University of Houston

New Institute will focus on training, research and the latest safety information

The University of Houston will be part of a Texas-based operation established by the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement to manage the Ocean Energy Safety Institute, according to an announcement Thursday.

The five-year, $5 million agreement will be managed by the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station's Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center, working with UH, Texas A&M University and the University of Texas at Austin.

Ramanan Krishnamoorti, chief energy officer for the University of Houston, said the goal will be to provide both industry and regulators with reliable knowledge about critical safety issues.

"Safety is going to have to be integrated into rapidly evolving technology to support ultra-deep exploration and production," he said. "Regulators have to be kept in the loop. We can bring the best academic minds to work with industry and government regulators to implement the best available and safest technology in deep water and extreme environments."

The announcement was made today in College Station, where representatives of the bureau gathered with those from the three universities.

"I look forward to working closely with our partners at the Institute on finding ways to improve safety offshore," said Brian Salerno, director of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE). "The Institute will develop a program of research, technical assistance and education that serves as a center of expertise in offshore oil and gas exploration, development and production technology, including frontier areas, such as high temperature/high pressure reservoirs, deep water and Arctic exploration and development."

The Institute stems from a recommendation from the Ocean Energy Safety Advisory Committee, a federal advisory group comprised of representatives from industry, federal government agencies, non-governmental organizations and the academic community.

It won't have regulatory authority over the offshore industry but is intended to be a source of unbiased, independent information.
M. Sam Mannan, chemical engineering professor at Texas A&M and principal investigator for the project, said each of the three universities involved bring something to the institute.

"We applaud BSEE for supporting this major undertaking of national importance that will impact ocean energy safety for the nation and world for years to come," he said.

Krishnamoorti, who heads the UH energy initiative and is a co-principal investigator for the Institute, said the University of Houston's strengths include its proximity to, and relationship with, companies engaged in the offshore industry, many of whom are based in Houston, as well as several of its academic programs.

UH has the nation's only subsea engineering program, and Krishnamoorti said the University's geosciences and seismic programs also will be an advantage for the new Institute, as will its imaging center, the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping, which could provide continuous monitoring for leaks or spills.

The Institute, which was first proposed after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, will provide recommendations and technical assistance to BSEE related to emerging technologies and the best available and safest technologies. In addition, it will develop and maintain an equipment failure monitoring system and train federal employees to enable them to remain current on state-of-the-art technology.

The Institute will also promote collaboration among federal agencies, industry, standards organizations, academia and the National Academy of Sciences. Information on issues related to offshore research and best practices will be shared with industry, government and the public through Institute-held forums.

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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.

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

7-Nov-2013

[


| E-mail

]


Share

Contact: Jeannie Kever
jekever@uh.edu
713-743-0778
University of Houston

New Institute will focus on training, research and the latest safety information

The University of Houston will be part of a Texas-based operation established by the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement to manage the Ocean Energy Safety Institute, according to an announcement Thursday.

The five-year, $5 million agreement will be managed by the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station's Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center, working with UH, Texas A&M University and the University of Texas at Austin.

Ramanan Krishnamoorti, chief energy officer for the University of Houston, said the goal will be to provide both industry and regulators with reliable knowledge about critical safety issues.

"Safety is going to have to be integrated into rapidly evolving technology to support ultra-deep exploration and production," he said. "Regulators have to be kept in the loop. We can bring the best academic minds to work with industry and government regulators to implement the best available and safest technology in deep water and extreme environments."

The announcement was made today in College Station, where representatives of the bureau gathered with those from the three universities.

"I look forward to working closely with our partners at the Institute on finding ways to improve safety offshore," said Brian Salerno, director of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE). "The Institute will develop a program of research, technical assistance and education that serves as a center of expertise in offshore oil and gas exploration, development and production technology, including frontier areas, such as high temperature/high pressure reservoirs, deep water and Arctic exploration and development."

The Institute stems from a recommendation from the Ocean Energy Safety Advisory Committee, a federal advisory group comprised of representatives from industry, federal government agencies, non-governmental organizations and the academic community.

It won't have regulatory authority over the offshore industry but is intended to be a source of unbiased, independent information.
M. Sam Mannan, chemical engineering professor at Texas A&M and principal investigator for the project, said each of the three universities involved bring something to the institute.

"We applaud BSEE for supporting this major undertaking of national importance that will impact ocean energy safety for the nation and world for years to come," he said.

Krishnamoorti, who heads the UH energy initiative and is a co-principal investigator for the Institute, said the University of Houston's strengths include its proximity to, and relationship with, companies engaged in the offshore industry, many of whom are based in Houston, as well as several of its academic programs.

UH has the nation's only subsea engineering program, and Krishnamoorti said the University's geosciences and seismic programs also will be an advantage for the new Institute, as will its imaging center, the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping, which could provide continuous monitoring for leaks or spills.

The Institute, which was first proposed after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, will provide recommendations and technical assistance to BSEE related to emerging technologies and the best available and safest technologies. In addition, it will develop and maintain an equipment failure monitoring system and train federal employees to enable them to remain current on state-of-the-art technology.

The Institute will also promote collaboration among federal agencies, industry, standards organizations, academia and the National Academy of Sciences. Information on issues related to offshore research and best practices will be shared with industry, government and the public through Institute-held forums.

###

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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.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-11/uoh-uat110713.php
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5 ways BYOD is shaking up tech support

November 07, 2013

Amid the clamor of "bring your own device" (BYOD), a question lurks in the background: "What happens to technical service and support?" Concerns for the tech support function encompass the extremes, from agents being overwhelmed with calls, to their becoming inhabitants of a help desk ghost town.

On the one hand, it’s easy to imagine a flood of calls as employees attempt to access wireless networks or synch their e-mail, especially in companies that permit the use of any device type. At the same time, as more people own smartphones, they are increasingly accustomed to resolving issues independently, through online forums, communities and other means of self-support.

By 2016, says Gartner analyst Jarod Greene, help desks will see a 25% to 30% drop in user-initiated call volume, as BYOD drives a companion trend of BYOS, or “bring your own support.”

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Source: http://www.infoworld.com/d/consumerization-of-it/5-ways-byod-shaking-tech-support-230379?source=rss_mobile_technology
Tags: Monster Mash   Tara Lynn   49ers   james spader   Jameis Winston  

The Engadget Podcast is live at 3:30PM ET!

We're all busy gearing up for Expand NY this weekend (you're coming, right?), but Brian, Peter and Terrence are taking a few moments out of their day to talk the week in tech. You can join along in the chat, just after the break. ...

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/3fug6pekRr4/
Category: florida state football   ufc   silk road   Jonathan Ferrell   powerball numbers  

Obama's Healthcare Katrina

Under the Affordable Care Act, millions of Americans are receiving letters from insurers informing them that their health insurance policies have been canceled. They are worried and angry that they may be forced to accept new policies with dramatic premium increases that President Obama repeatedly promised them would not happen.

 

These Americans are the equivalent of New Orleans residents who were stranded on their roofs after floods engulfed their homes during Hurricane Katrina. They comprise President Obama’s Healthcare Katrina. Obama has a moral and political duty to set this right.

Source: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2013/11/07/obama039s_healthcare_katrina_319452.html
Category: Alicia Ann Lynch   Brian Cushing   futurama   Sarin gas   Jodi Arias  

Teen's rape galvanizes support in Kenya

TINGOLO, Kenya (AP) — A wave of outrage has grown in Kenya since word has spread that a 16-year-old girl was gang raped and thrown into a pit latrine in this western Kenyan town, with the alleged attackers told to cut grass at a police post, and then let go.

Nearly 1.4 million people have signed an online petition put up by the activist group Avaaz calling for prosecution of the young men and an investigation of the police who freed the suspects.

Kenya's political heavyweights are also speaking up. Supreme Court Chief Justice Willy Mutunga last weekend said he had forwarded the matter to the National Council for Administration of Justice for "immediate action." Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed said that "as a woman and a mother I am outraged and angered by this inhumane, traumatizing and inexcusable violation."

The teen is currently confined to a wheelchair because of the physical trauma from the attack. She has undergone two surgeries — one for a fistula and another for spinal surgery, said Lydia Muthiani, the deputy executive director of the Coalition on Violence Against Women, a group that has taken up the case.

"She is doing very well. They are hopeful she will walk again," said Muthiani, who noted that the victim is still dealing with the psychological trauma of the rape and from time to time will shut down emotionally.

The attack happened in June but didn't get wider attention until Nairobi's Daily Nation newspaper wrote about it in early October.

Her mother spoke through tears at her home in Busia County. She told The Associated Press that the police at first said only that her daughter should be taken to a pharmacy and be prescribed pain killers.

Even if her physical and psychological trauma continues to heal, her life will forever be upended. Cultural traditions in this area mandate that a rape victim leave her home and move to another town where, in theory, people will not know that she has been raped.

Muthiani labeled rape an "invisible crime" in Kenya because it is underreported and rarely acted on judicially.

"We wouldn't know how big a problem rape is in essence just because we do not have all the numbers of reported cases, but from the number of cases that we do receive, it is a very, very high number," said Muthiani, who said studies have shown that one in six Kenyan women will experience some sort of sexual assault in their lifetime.

Muthiani said that one aid group that studied sexual violence during Kenya's 2007-08 election violence found that at least 3,000 women were raped during the months of violence. Muthiani said there have been only 11 convictions related to those 3,000 cases.

"When you have a statistic that low, what are you inspiring the public to do? The institutions that are supposed to protect and serve us, for instance police and prosecutors, have to start doing a better job. We have to put it out there that there is going to be punishment for people who sexually violate other people," she said.

Kenya's inspector general of police, David Kimaiyo, has tweeted in support of the victim from his personal Twitter account. Kimaiyo said the investigation into the attack is complete and that the file has been forwarded to prosecutors to be acted on.

Alfred Ouma, the chairman of a local council of elders in Busia County, said he wants "severe action" taken against the officers who initially received the rape complaint and "mishandled it."

The victim's grandmother told AP from her small grass hut home that the attackers must be found.

"I want those policemen that released the boys that they had in custody to arrest the parents of the boys who raped my granddaughter so that they can say where the boys are hiding," the grandmother said.

___

Associated Press reporter Andrew Njuguna contributed to this report. Straziuso reported from Nairobi, Kenya.

• Society & Culture
• Crime & Justice
• Kenya

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/teens-rape-galvanizes-support-kenya-141055009.html
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Among gov't shutdown's less-known effects: Booze stranded in ports

How much did the 16-day government shutdown cost the country? The White House’s Office of Management and Budget is glad you asked.

In a new report released Thursday, OMB detailed the economic pain and loss resulting from the partial closure of federal facilities precipitated by House Republicans looking to roll back Obamacare.

The White House had already warned that 120,000 fewer private sector jobs were created in October and 0.2-0.6 percentage points were shaved from Gross Domestic Product growth in the fourth quarter of 2013.

Here are some of the shutdown’s less obvious effects, as researched and compiled by OMG:

- Drill, baby, drill? Not so much. About 200 permits to drill on federal lands languished unapproved.

- Booze, lose? The Treasury Department couldn’t issue export certificates for beer, wine and liquor, so two million liters due for export were stranded at ports. (Yep, they reckoned this one in liters. It’s about 528,344 gallons.)

- Get crabby? The shutdown delayed the start of the Alaska crabbing season three to four days at a cost to fisherman of thousands of dollars of lost revenue per day.

- Park it where? National parks were closed, resulting in the loss of about $500 million in lost visitor spending nationwide (affecting not just parks, but the communities near them that depend on tourism revenue).

- Government efficiency hawks will be thrilled to learn that federal employees were furloughed for a combined 6.6 million days. Not to worry: They received back pay for days they didn’t work, to the tune of about $2 billion.

- The shutdown delayed about $4 billion in tax refunds, and prevented hundreds of patients from taking part in clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health – frequently the last shot chronically or even terminally ill Americans have at treatment.

- Four out of the five Nobel Prize-winning researchers currently working for the federal government? Furloughed.

- Government scientists will have to push back by six months the testing of a new approach for curbing the spread of Asian carp into the Great Lakes.

- “Work was also delayed on other invasive species projects, including research on the spread of dangerous Africanized honeybees in the Southwest, invasive grass species involved in intensifying wildfires, and white-nose bat syndrome impacting bats in national parks.”

Kids in Head Start, veterans looking to get their benefits applications processed, rural families waiting for their home loan applications to get through … many others were affected, as detailed in the report.

• government shutdown
• The White House

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/govt-shutdown--killer-bees-win--beer-exporters-lose-203423447.html
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Cisco, EFF call on Congress to target patent-troll demand letters

The U.S. Congress should take action to slow a skyrocketing number of “deceptive” patent- infringement demand letters sent from patent-licensing firms to small businesses, witnesses told a Senate committee.

During the past 18 months, patent-assertion entities (PAEs), those firms with patent licensing as their primary business model, have been flooding U.S. businesses with letters alleging patent infringement, threatening lawsuits and demanding settlements in the tens of thousands of dollars, witnesses told the consumer protection subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Thursday.

In many cases, the patent-demand letters have accused recipients of infringing “every-day technology” such as online shopping carts and Wi-Fi routers, said Julie Samuels, a senior staff attorney at the Electric Frontier Foundation. “These letters really had nothing to do with patent law,” she said. “They merely used the guise of patent law to conduct, frankly, run-of-the-mill extortion.”

The PAE demand letters often don’t identity the owner of the patent or the patent the letter recipient is alleged to have infringed, said Mark Chandler, general counsel at Cisco Systems. Some PAEs are “charlatans, dressed up as innovators,” he said.

“This is all about fraud,” said Jon Bruning, attorney general in Nebraska. “This is about extortion. This is about fear. For little companies ... it’s their life or death. For some guy who invested his last $100,000, this letter will take him down.”

Call for action

Chandler called on Congress to take action to rein in PAEs, often called patent trolls. Congress should require PAEs that send more than 10 demand letters to submit those letters to a proposed online registry run by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, and lawmakers should require PAEs to identity the alleged infringing technology in the letters, he said.

PAEs should also be required to disclose the names of the patent owners and to disclose all previous licensing agreements covering the patents, including any commitments to license the patents on fair and reasonable terms, he said.

No PAEs appeared at the hearing, but some committee Republicans and witness Adam Mossoff, an intellectual property professor at the George Mason University School of Law, questioned the need for changes in patent law. Complaints about PAE demand letters are “anecdotal,” Mossoff said, and there’s little evidence of major harms to innovation or to consumers.

Not so fast

Patent licensing is a legitimate business that’s been around for over a century in a U.S. patent system that has helped create a huge innovation-based economy, Mossoff added. “Systemic changes to the patent system should not be based on rhetoric, anecdotes, invalid studies and incorrect claims about the historical and economic significance of patent licensing,” he said. “If there ever was a case where caution was called for, this is it.”

Senators aren’t looking to write a major overhaul of patent law, but instead, to find remedies targeting PAE demand letters, said subcommittee Chairwoman Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat. Without some ways to identify PAE practices, it will be difficult to measure the problem, she said.

Without new requirements to publish demand letters and identify patent holders, “how do we get beyond anecdotal?” she said. “How do we get at the problem?”

If Congress addresses the issue, it needs to protect small inventors who may have patent licensing as their primary business option, said Senator Kelly Ayotte, a New Hampshire Republican. “How do we make sure we aren’t harming, by trying to address the patent trolls, or decreasing the value of legitimate small innovators,” she said. “These people that start out of a garage and have such great ideas, that’s what America is all about.”

Grant Gross, IDG News Service Reporter, IDG News Service

Grant Gross covers technology and telecom policy in the U.S. government for The IDG News Service.
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Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2062000/cisco-eff-call-on-congress-to-target-patenttroll-demand-letters.html#tk.rss_all
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Not good enough: Math, reading scores up slightly

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sometimes the best isn't good enough: Most American fourth and eighth graders still lack basic skills in math and science despite record high scores on a national exam.

Yes, today's students are doing better than those who came before them. But the improvements have come at a snail's pace.

The 2013 Nation's Report Card released Thursday finds that the vast majority of the students still are not demonstrating solid academic performance in either math or reading. Stubborn gaps persist between the performances of white children and their Hispanic and African-American counterparts, who scored much lower.

Overall, just 42 percent of fourth graders and 35 percent of eighth graders scored at or above the proficient level in math. In reading, 35 percent of fourth graders and 36 percent of eighth graders hit that mark.

Still, as state and federal policies evolve in the post-No Child Left Behind era, the nation's school kids are doing better today on the test than they did in the early 1990s, when such tracking started, with more improvement in math than in reading. Students of all races have shown improvement over the years.

The results come from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, which is given every two years to a sample of fourth and eighth graders.

This year's results, compared to results in 2011, show average incremental gains of about one or two points on a 500-point scale in math and reading in both grades, although the one-point gain in fourth grade reading was not considered statistically significant.

"Every two years, the gains tend to be small, but over the long run, they stack up," said Jack Buckley, commissioner of the Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics.

Buckley said he was "heartened" by some of the results, "but there are also some areas where I'd hoped to see improvement where we didn't."

Today, President W. Bush's landmark education law No Child Left Behind, which sought to close achievement gaps among racial groups and have every student doing math and reading at grade level by 2014, has essentially been dismantled.

After Congress failed to update the law before it was due for renewal in 2007, President Barack Obama allowed states to get waivers from it if they showed they have their own plans to prepare students. Most states took him up on the offer.

Meanwhile, a majority of states are rolling out Common Core State Standards with the goal of better preparing the nation's students for college or a job. The states-led standards establish benchmarks for reading and math and replace goals that varied widely from state.

Academic scholars have long debated what effects the law and other state-led reforms have had on test scores.

This year, Tennessee and the District of Columbia, which have both launched high-profile efforts to strengthen education by improving teacher evaluations and by other measures, showed across-the-board growth on the test compared to 2011, likely stoking more debate. Only the Defense Department schools also saw gains in both grade levels and subjects.

In Hawaii, which has also seen a concentrated effort to improve teaching quality, scores also increased with the exception of fourth grade reading. In Iowa and Washington state, scores increased except in 8th grade math.

Specifically pointing to Tennessee, Hawaii and D.C., Education Secretary Arne Duncan said on a conference call with reporters that many of the changes seen in these states were "very, very difficult and courageous" and appear to have had an impact.

Chris Minnich, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, said the biggest problem revealed in the results is the large gap that exists between the performances of students of different races.

There was a 26-point gap, for example, between how white and African American 4th graders performed on the math section. In eighth grade reading, white students outperformed Hispanic students by 21 points.

"We still have a situation where you have kids that are left behind. They aren't given the same instruction. They aren't given the same expectations as other kids," Minnich said. He said it's time for "doubling down and making sure the gaps get smaller."

Duncan said too many African-American and Hispanic children start kindergarten a year or two behind and that early childhood programs are key to leveling the playing field. Duncan and Obama have lobbied for congressional passage of a preschool-for-all program.

This test specifically looked at the performance of American children, but the results from other recent assessments and studies have shown American children and adults scoring below peers in many other countries.

The exam was given this year to about 377,000 fourth graders and 342,000 eighth graders in public and private schools. However, state-specific numbers are only from public schools.

In math, students were asked to answer questions about topics such as geometry, algebra and measurement. In reading, students were told to read passages and recall details or interpret them.

Among the other results:

—More boys than girls scored at or above the proficient level for both grades in math. In reading, more girls than boys scored at or above that mark.

—Twenty-five out of the 52 states or jurisdictions measured had a higher average score in 2013 than in 2011 in at least one subject and grade.

—Five states had a lower score than two years ago in at least one subject and grade: Massachusetts, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Dakota.

—Hispanic students were the only racial or ethnic group that saw improvements in math scores in both fourth and eighth grades; Asian/Pacific Islanders students had the highest percentage of students performing at or above the proficient level in both math and reading.

_____

Online: http://nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2013

___

Kimberly Hefling can be followed at http://twitter.com/khefling

• Education
• Teaching & Learning

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/not-good-enough-math-reading-scores-slightly-185033704.html
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Millions seek shelter from 'super typhoon'

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Source: http://twitter.com/AP/status/398585755762962432
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