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LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Could Disney have done a little plundering of its own when coming up with the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie franchise?
The company has been hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit by a man who claims that he came up with numerous elements of the hugely successful "Pirates" film series, including characters, supernatural elements, storylines, plots, themes, sequence structures and screenplay elements, according to court documents obtained by TheWrap.
In the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Florida on Tuesday, Florida resident Royce Mathew claims that Disney infringed on a story that Mathew had written, and fraudulently procured a settlement from him when a previous lawsuit was filed.
In addition to the Walt Disney Co. and Walt Disney Pictures, the suit lists numerous other defendants, including "Pirates of the Caribbean" producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
Mathew alleges that he created numerous supernatural stories in the late '80s and early '90s, including a "Supernatural Pirate Story," along with a related Supernatural Pirate Movie.
Mathew claims that he provided Disney with copies of his creations over a period from 1991 to 1995, both through direct meetings and the Creative Artists Agency and William Morris Agency, but Disney subsequently credited "Pirates of the Caribbean" writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio with the creation of those works.
Though Mathew doesn't list specific damages in the suit, the complaint claims that Mathew "is entitled, inter alia, to the billions of dollars that Disney has generated, or allowed others to generate, from the defendants' unauthorized use and exploitation" of Mathew's works.
Disney has not yet responded to TheWrap's request for comment.
Mathew claims that he initiated a copyright infringement action against Disney in 2006, but that the defendants "fraudulently procured" a settlement, prompting him to execute a release agreement in mid-2007.
Mathew is seeking a rescission of the earlier release agreement. However, his suit argues, even if a rescission isn't granted, he's still entitled to enforce his copyright claims after mid-2007. (The "Pirates" movie franchise is still very much a going concern; as reported by TheWrap on Wednesday, Disney has tapped "Kon-Tiki" directors Joachim R?nning and Espen Sandberg to helm the fifth installment of the series.)
If the US wishes to stop Chinese economic cyber-espionage, it will need to increase the costs and reduce the benefits to China of such activities. US government actions are important, but the key players in this game sit in the private sector. A true public-private partnership is needed.
By Irving Lachow,?Op-ed contributor / May 29, 2013
US Ambassador to China Gary Locke speaks at the 6th US-China Internet Industry Forum in Beijing April 9. Op-ed contributor Irving Lachow writes: 'All nations spy on each other, but right now, the United States and China are playing the spy-vs.-spy game using different sets of rules. If the US wants China to change its behavior, it will need to change the payoff that China gets from playing the game its way.'
Jason Lee/Reuters
Enlarge
The United States has made it clear to China that its cyber-espionage activities are a serious concern.
Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition
The Washington Post reported this week that several US military weapons systems and technologies have been compromised by Chinese hackers, according to the Defense Science Board. As alarming as that news is, China?s cyber-spying attacks are also bombarding US businesses.
If the US wishes to stop this Chinese economic cyber-espionage, it will need to increase the costs and reduce the benefits of such activities. That will cause China and other competitors to rethink whether such activities are worth it. Government actions are important, but the key players in this game sit in the private sector. A true public-private partnership is needed.
The threat of Chinese cyberspying to US businesses is clear. A report released last week by the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property states that: ?China is two-thirds of the intellectual property theft problem, and we are at a point where it is robbing us of innovation to bolster their own industry, at a cost of millions of jobs.?
What makes the US-China dispute unique is that the two countries are playing a game ? spy vs. spy ? that is accepted in international relations, but they are playing it by different rules.
The US government views espionage as a national security activity, not as a tool for furthering the economic well-being of US companies. In contrast, China views the well-being of its companies as being directly tied to the security interests of the nation. In their minds, drawing a line between espionage focused on stealing state secrets and espionage focused on stealing corporate secrets is arbitrary.
China is not the only country that has such views. However, the scale and scope of Chinese activity is unparalleled, and the potential threat it poses to US competitiveness is certainly raising the eyebrows, if the not hackles, of the nation?s highest leaders.
Because of this fundamental difference in the acceptability of state-sponsored cyber-economic espionage, the United States will be hard pressed to stop such activities with words alone. The US will need to raise the costs and lower the benefits of such activities. There are several policy levers that the US government can use to achieve those goals, though changing China?s fundamental views through government actions alone will be difficult.
For example, the US government can threaten retaliatory actions, be they economic, diplomatic, legal, or technical in nature. For example, the US could impose economic sanctions or deny visas to suspected cyberspies and/or their enablers.
There are certainly benefits to pursuing these ideas, but US options will be limited because of the trade-offs involved in increasing tensions with its largest trading partner. If China truly views economic espionage as a national security matter, if will strongly resist efforts to curtail such activity, especially if it views the US position as being hypocritical. The US may thus risk retaliatory actions on American companies or citizens if it pushes too hard on this issue.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The average U.S. household has a long way to go to recover the wealth it lost to the Great Recession, a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis concluded Thursday.
The typical household has regained less than half its wealth, the analysis found. A separate Federal Reserve report in March calculated that Americans as a whole had regained 91 percent of their losses.
Household wealth plunged $16 trillion from the third quarter of 2007 through the first quarter of 2009. By the final three months of 2012, American households as a group had regained $14.7 trillion.
Yet once those figures are adjusted for inflation and averaged across the U.S. population, the picture doesn't look so bright: The average household has recovered only 45 percent of its wealth, the St. Louis Fed concluded.
That suggests that consumer spending could remain modest as many Americans try to rebuild their wealth by saving more and paying off debts.
The number of U.S. households grew 3.8 million to 115 million from the third quarter of 2007 through the final three months of last year, the report said. As a result, the rebound in wealth has been spread across more people and reduced the average wealth for each household.
In addition, though inflation has averaged just 2 percent over the past five years, it's eroded some of the purchasing power of Americans' regained wealth.
The St. Louis Fed's analysis noted that the rebound in wealth hasn't been equally distributed. As a result, many households are even further behind than the average.
Nearly two-thirds of the increase in household wealth since 2009 is due to rising stock prices, the authors note. Stock indexes reached record highs this month. Those gains disproportionately benefit affluent households: About 80 percent of stocks are held by the wealthiest 10 percent of the population.
For middle- and lower-income households, home values represent the biggest chunk of total wealth. And home prices remain about 30 percent below their peak, even after jumping nearly 11 percent in the past year.
The analysis was written by William Emmons, an economist at the St. Louis Fed, and Ray Boshara, who directs its new Center for Household Financial Stability.
"It's like the economy is this airplane and not all the engines are firing," Emmons said.
Still, wealthier households account for a disproportionate share of consumer spending: About 20 percent of Americans account for about 40 percent of spending.
Consequently, the rise in stock prices should provide some lift to spending, Emmons said.
The average household had a net worth of $539,500 at the end of last year, according to a separate paper the St. Louis Fed released Thursday. That was up from $469,900 in the first quarter of 2009. But it was sharply below the peak of $641,000 in the first quarter of 2007.
(Reuters) - Fragrance maker Coty Inc said it expected its initial public offering of up to 65.7 million Class A shares to be priced at between $16.50 and $18.50 each, raising as much as $1.2 billion.
Coty, which sells perfumes under brands such as Calvin Klein, Davidoff and Chloe, said all the shares in the IPO would be offered by its three biggest stockholders -- JAB Holdings BV and private equity firms Berkshire Partners LLC and Rhone Capital LLC.
Vienna-based JAB Holdings, owned by four siblings from the billionaire Reimann family, holds nearly 82 percent of Coty. It plans to sell 43.6 million shares, or 14 percent of its holdings, in the IPO.
Berkshire Partners and Rhone each own about 27.2 million shares, or 7.1 percent of the company, and they plan to sell 6.8 million shares each, trimming their respective stakes in the company to 6.6 percent.
Following the offering, all the three stockholders will have a combined 97.7 percent of voting power in the company as their stakes will be converted into class B shares, giving them 10 votes per share, compared with one vote per class A common share.
The company, founded in Paris in 1904 by Francois Coty, said it would not receive any proceeds from the share sale.
It reported a net profit of $230.3 million on revenue of $3.6 billion in the nine months to March 31.
The company, which failed in an attempt to buy Avon Products Inc for $10.7 billion last year, filed to go public in June.
Coty's products run from luxury perfumes for fashion house Bottega Veneta to skin care products sold at Wal-Mart Stores Inc .
The company said it intends to list its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "COTY." (http://link.reuters.com/xup48t)
Coty competes with companies such as Estee Lauder Cos Inc , L'Oreal SA and Elizabeth Arden Inc .
Estee Lauder shares are near their life-high, while Elizabeth Arden shares have soared about 32 percent in the last year.
Joint book-running managers for the offering are BofA Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Deutsche Bank Securities and Wells Fargo Securities.
Lead managers are Lazard Capital Markets, Piper Jaffray and RBC Capital Markets.
(Reporting by Avik Das and Anil D'Silva in Bangalore; Editing by Joyjeet Das, Maju Samuel)
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) ? Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota congresswoman whose sharply conservative views on social and fiscal issues elevated her to a leader of the tea party movement, announced Wednesday she will not seek a fifth term but insisted the decision was unrelated to ethics inquiries or her near-loss last fall.
It was a sudden turn for the foster-mom-turned-politician. She left the door open to other, unspecified political options.
Bachmann was traveling in Russia as part of a congressional delegation and was not available for interviews. In a lengthy video message to supporters, she said her decision "was not influenced by any concerns about my being re-elected."
Ron Carey, a former chief of staff to Bachmann, said he suspects she was anticipating a tough battle ahead and seemed to be stuck in place in Congress.
"This is a great chance to exit stage right rather than have a knockdown, drag-out re-election fight," said Carey, also a former state GOP chairman. "The reality also set in that she is not a favorite of Republican leadership, so she is not going to be rising up to a committee chair or rising up in leadership."
Her departure next year is part of a larger shift involving the leading personalities of the tea party. Stalwarts like former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, former Rep. Allen West of Florida and former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint have left elected office to move into conservative organizations and commentary roles.
They've been replaced by a new round of tea party-backed lawmakers such as Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah and Rep. Raul Labrador of Idaho.
"The movement had moved past her to a new round of leaders in Congress and the states around the country," said Dick Wadhams, a Colorado-based Republican strategist. "In a short period of time, a new generation has stepped forward since the last election."
Bachmann also said her decision "was not impacted in any way by the recent inquiries into the activities of my former presidential campaign" last year. In January, a former Bachmann aide filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, claiming the candidate made improper payments to an Iowa state senator who was the state chairman of her 2012 presidential run. The aide, Peter Waldron, also accused Bachmann of other FEC violations.
Bachmann had given few clues she was considering leaving Congress. Her fundraising operation was churning out regular pitches for the small-dollar donations that she collected so well over the years. She also had an ad running on Twin Cities television promoting her role in opposing President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. The early timing of the ad suggested she was preparing for a tough fight against Democrat Jim Graves, a hotel chain owner who narrowly lost to Bachmann in November.
Without the polarizing Bachmann on the ticket, Republicans could have an easier time holding a district that leans more heavily in the GOP direction than any other in Minnesota. A parade of hopefuls was expected.
By Wednesday morning, state Rep. Matt Dean, a former House majority leader, said he was inclined to run.
"It is something I have thought about in the past if Michele were to not run again," Dean said. "It's not something that I just started thinking about this morning."
Graves said he thought Bachmann had "read the tea leaves."
"The district is changing," the Democrat said in an interview Wednesday with Minneapolis television station KARE. "They want somebody who really does have some business background and understands the economy and can get things done in Washington and back in the district."
Andy Aplikowski, who has long been active in the district's Republican Party chapter, said he expected Bachmann to run again but can understand why she didn't.
"It's a grueling thing to be in Congress. It's a grueling thing to be Michele Bachmann in Congress," he said. "Every move you make is criticized and put under a microscope."
Bachmann's strongly conservative views propelled her into politics, and once there, she never backed down.
She was a suburban mother of five in 1999 when she ran for a Minnesota school board seat because she thought state standards were designed to teach students values and beliefs.
She lost that race, but won a state Senate seat a year later. Once in St. Paul, she seized on gay marriage as an issue and led a charge to legally define marriage in Minnesota as between one man and one woman. That failed, but Bachmann had laid the foundation with social conservatives to help propel her into Congress in 2006.
In Washington, she turned to fiscal issues, attacking Democrats and President Barack Obama for government bailouts and the health care overhaul. Even in her early years in Congress, Bachmann frequently took those views to right-leaning cable talk programs, cultivating her national image as she built a formidable fundraising base with like-minded viewers outside Minnesota.
But her penchant for provocative rhetoric sometimes backfired. She was hammered in 2008 for saying Obama might have "anti-American views," a statement that prompted a rare retreat by Bachmann and made her race that year closer than it would have been. She was also criticized by her fellow Republicans last July for making unsubstantiated allegations that an aide to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had family ties to Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.
Her White House bid got off to a promising start, with a win in an Iowa GOP test vote. But Bachmann quickly faded and finished last when the real voting started in Iowa's leadoff caucuses, a result that caused her to drop out. Saddled with debt, she opted to campaign again for her Minnesota seat and squeaked through.
But the failed presidential campaign continued to dog her. Allegations of improper payments prompted ethics inquiries. Bachmann also faced a lawsuit from a former aide that alleged someone on the congresswoman's team stole a private email list of home-school supporters for use in the campaign. That case is pending.
On Wednesday, Bachmann promised supporters she would "continue to work overtime for the next 18 months in Congress defending the same Constitutional Conservative values we have worked so hard on together."
As for her plans beyond Congress, she said, "There is no future option or opportunity, be it directly in the political arena or otherwise, that I won't be giving serious consideration if it can help save and protect our great nation."
Bachmann's success in the talk media world led industry analysts to say she could easily move into a gig as a host. She has been mentioned as a potential challenger to first-term Democratic Sen. Al Franken but has given little indication that she would take that step.
___
Thomas reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Lou Kesten contributed.
A Michigan family's trip to a salon on Saturday has caused an Internet firestorm after another salon patron posted about a conversation she witnessed on Facebook.
Vanessa Hunt wrote that she was getting a manicure when a mom (later identified as Ashley Bays) and her 2-and-a-half-year-old son, Grayson, came in for the boy's haircut. He was crying and Hunt recalled that her son reacted the same when he had his first haircut. Hunt wrote, in part:
All of a sudden a lady stormed into the portion of the spa we were sitting in and proceeded to give the mom a severe tongue lashing and explained how inappropriate her son's behavior was. It got silent in the room besides the woman ranting to the mother. It was seriously painful to watch seeing as I have been there more than once myself and it's very hard when your child is having a tantrum in public. The last thing you need is a woman yelling at you for it. At the conclusion of this woman's tantrum to the mother the mother said through tears, "I'm so sorry, he's autistic".
Bays left the salon, crying, and the hairstylist finished Grayson's haircut outside. Hunt went outside to comfort the mom and son.
MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette reports that the woman who allegedly yelled at Bays was the salon's owner, Michelle Mott. Bays told the paper that she had been a customer of that salon for years and had never experienced such poor treatment. "I understand if she doesn?t want children in the salon, but she could have handled it a lot differently. She could have pulled us to the side. She was very insensitive that he does have special needs,? she said.
Hunts Facebook post ended:
Please share this post if you find it as horrific and distasteful as I do. To the mom of the little boy out there, you are an amazing mother and your son is as cute as a button. I know you'll never forget this experience nor will I. I hope for his sake he does not remember it down the road. God bless you!
Since the status went up on Sunday night, it has been shared almost 30,000 times and has prompted a huge response. More than one salon has publicly offered free haircuts for Bays and her son and a page to boycott the M Spa Salon has been created. Hunt and Bays say that they had nothing to do with the creation of that page. Since Monday, the owner of the page has posted several messages -- some shaming the salon but some about autism in general.
Over on the salon's Yelp page, commenters are unanimously "disgusted". One reviewer identified as "N.N", however, faults both Bays and the salon for their actions -- N.N. claims that a high-end salon is no place for a child.
Both women told MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette that they did not expect this incident or one Facebook post to cause such backlash but they are glad that the message has struck a chord. "I think people need to be aware that things like this happen all the time,? Hunt said.
According to the news source, Mott is expected to make a statement but has not done so yet.
Read Vanessa Hunt's complete Facebook post here and click through the slideshow below to see inspiring photos from parents of kids with autism via Autism Shines.
Changing gut bacteria through diet affects brain function, UCLA study showsPublic release date: 28-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Kim Irwin kirwin@mednet.ucla.edu 310-794-2262 University of California - Los Angeles Health Sciences
UCLA researchers now have the first evidence that bacteria ingested in food can affect brain function in humans. In an early proof-of-concept study of healthy women, they found that women who regularly consumed beneficial bacteria known as probiotics through yogurt showed altered brain function, both while in a resting state and in response to an emotion-recognition task.
The study, conducted by scientists with UCLA's Gail and Gerald Oppenheimer Family Center for Neurobiology of Stress and the AhmansonLovelace Brain Mapping Center at UCLA, appears in the June edition of the peer-reviewed journal Gastroenterology.
The discovery that changing the bacterial environment, or microbiota, in the gut can affect the brain carries significant implications for future research that could point the way toward dietary or drug interventions to improve brain function, the researchers said.
"Many of us have a container of yogurt in our refrigerator that we may eat for enjoyment, for calcium or because we think it might help our health in other ways," said Dr. Kirsten Tillisch, an associate professor of medicine at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine and lead author of the study. "Our findings indicate that some of the contents of yogurt may actually change the way our brain responds to the environment. When we consider the implications of this work, the old sayings 'you are what you eat' and 'gut feelings' take on new meaning."
Researchers have known that the brain sends signals to the gut, which is why stress and other emotions can contribute to gastrointestinal symptoms. This study shows what has been suspected but until now had been proved only in animal studies: that signals travel the opposite way as well.
"Time and time again, we hear from patients that they never felt depressed or anxious until they started experiencing problems with their gut," Tillisch said. "Our study shows that the gutbrain connection is a two-way street."
The small study involved 36 women between the ages of 18 and 55. Researchers divided the women into three groups: one group ate a specific yogurt containing a mix of several probiotics bacteria thought to have a positive effect on the intestines twice a day for four weeks; another group consumed a dairy product that looked and tasted like the yogurt but contained no probiotics; and a third group ate no product at all.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans conducted both before and after the four-week study period looked at the women's brains in a state of rest and in response to an emotion-recognition task in which they viewed a series of pictures of people with angry or frightened faces and matched them to other faces showing the same emotions. This task, designed to measure the engagement of affective and cognitive brain regions in response to a visual stimulus, was chosen because previous research in animals had linked changes in gut flora to changes in affective behaviors.
The researchers found that, compared with the women who didn't consume the probiotic yogurt, those who did showed a decrease in activity in both the insula which processes and integrates internal body sensations, like those form the gut and the somatosensory cortex during the emotional reactivity task.
Further, in response to the task, these women had a decrease in the engagement of a widespread network in the brain that includes emotion-, cognition- and sensory-related areas. The women in the other two groups showed a stable or increased activity in this network.
During the resting brain scan, the women consuming probiotics showed greater connectivity between a key brainstem region known as the periaqueductal grey and cognition-associated areas of the prefrontal cortex. The women who ate no product at all, on the other hand, showed greater connectivity of the periaqueductal grey to emotion- and sensation-related regions, while the group consuming the non-probiotic dairy product showed results in between.
The researchers were surprised to find that the brain effects could be seen in many areas, including those involved in sensory processing and not merely those associated with emotion, Tillisch said.
The knowledge that signals are sent from the intestine to the brain and that they can be modulated by a dietary change is likely to lead to an expansion of research aimed at finding new strategies to prevent or treat digestive, mental and neurological disorders, said Dr. Emeran Mayer, a professor of medicine, physiology and psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the study's senior author.
"There are studies showing that what we eat can alter the composition and products of the gut flora in particular, that people with high-vegetable, fiber-based diets have a different composition of their microbiota, or gut environment, than people who eat the more typical
Western diet that is high in fat and carbohydrates," Mayer said. "Now we know that this has an effect not only on the metabolism but also affects brain function."
The UCLA researchers are seeking to pinpoint particular chemicals produced by gut bacteria that may be triggering the signals to the brain. They also plan to study whether people with gastrointestinal symptoms such as bloating, abdominal pain and altered bowel movements have improvements in their digestive symptoms which correlate with changes in brain response.
Meanwhile, Mayer notes that other researchers are studying the potential benefits of certain probiotics in yogurts on mood symptoms such as anxiety. He said that other nutritional strategies may also be found to be beneficial.
By demonstrating the brain effects of probiotics, the study also raises the question of whether repeated courses of antibiotics can affect the brain, as some have speculated. Antibiotics are used extensively in neonatal intensive care units and in childhood respiratory tract infections, and such suppression of the normal microbiota may have longterm consequences on brain development.
Finally, as the complexity of the gut flora and its effect on the brain is better understood, researchers may find ways to manipulate the intestinal contents to treat chronic pain conditions or other brain related diseases, including, potentially, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and autism.
Answers will be easier to come by in the near future as the declining cost of profiling a person's microbiota renders such tests more routine, Mayer said.
###
The study was funded by Danone Research. Mayer has served on the company's scientific advisory board. Three of the study authors (Denis Guyonnet, Sophie Legrain-Raspaud and Beatrice Trotin) are employed by Danone Research and were involved in the planning and execution of the study (providing the products) but had no role in the analysis or interpretation of the results.
UCLA's Oppenheimer Family Center for Neurobiology of Stress is an NIH-funded multidisciplinary, translational research program partially supported by philanthropy. Its mission is to identify the role of the brain in health and medical disease. The Center is comprised of several research programs which focus on the interactions of the brain with the digestive, cardiovascular and urological systems, chronic pain and mind brain body interactions.
For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.
[ | 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.
Changing gut bacteria through diet affects brain function, UCLA study showsPublic release date: 28-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Kim Irwin kirwin@mednet.ucla.edu 310-794-2262 University of California - Los Angeles Health Sciences
UCLA researchers now have the first evidence that bacteria ingested in food can affect brain function in humans. In an early proof-of-concept study of healthy women, they found that women who regularly consumed beneficial bacteria known as probiotics through yogurt showed altered brain function, both while in a resting state and in response to an emotion-recognition task.
The study, conducted by scientists with UCLA's Gail and Gerald Oppenheimer Family Center for Neurobiology of Stress and the AhmansonLovelace Brain Mapping Center at UCLA, appears in the June edition of the peer-reviewed journal Gastroenterology.
The discovery that changing the bacterial environment, or microbiota, in the gut can affect the brain carries significant implications for future research that could point the way toward dietary or drug interventions to improve brain function, the researchers said.
"Many of us have a container of yogurt in our refrigerator that we may eat for enjoyment, for calcium or because we think it might help our health in other ways," said Dr. Kirsten Tillisch, an associate professor of medicine at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine and lead author of the study. "Our findings indicate that some of the contents of yogurt may actually change the way our brain responds to the environment. When we consider the implications of this work, the old sayings 'you are what you eat' and 'gut feelings' take on new meaning."
Researchers have known that the brain sends signals to the gut, which is why stress and other emotions can contribute to gastrointestinal symptoms. This study shows what has been suspected but until now had been proved only in animal studies: that signals travel the opposite way as well.
"Time and time again, we hear from patients that they never felt depressed or anxious until they started experiencing problems with their gut," Tillisch said. "Our study shows that the gutbrain connection is a two-way street."
The small study involved 36 women between the ages of 18 and 55. Researchers divided the women into three groups: one group ate a specific yogurt containing a mix of several probiotics bacteria thought to have a positive effect on the intestines twice a day for four weeks; another group consumed a dairy product that looked and tasted like the yogurt but contained no probiotics; and a third group ate no product at all.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans conducted both before and after the four-week study period looked at the women's brains in a state of rest and in response to an emotion-recognition task in which they viewed a series of pictures of people with angry or frightened faces and matched them to other faces showing the same emotions. This task, designed to measure the engagement of affective and cognitive brain regions in response to a visual stimulus, was chosen because previous research in animals had linked changes in gut flora to changes in affective behaviors.
The researchers found that, compared with the women who didn't consume the probiotic yogurt, those who did showed a decrease in activity in both the insula which processes and integrates internal body sensations, like those form the gut and the somatosensory cortex during the emotional reactivity task.
Further, in response to the task, these women had a decrease in the engagement of a widespread network in the brain that includes emotion-, cognition- and sensory-related areas. The women in the other two groups showed a stable or increased activity in this network.
During the resting brain scan, the women consuming probiotics showed greater connectivity between a key brainstem region known as the periaqueductal grey and cognition-associated areas of the prefrontal cortex. The women who ate no product at all, on the other hand, showed greater connectivity of the periaqueductal grey to emotion- and sensation-related regions, while the group consuming the non-probiotic dairy product showed results in between.
The researchers were surprised to find that the brain effects could be seen in many areas, including those involved in sensory processing and not merely those associated with emotion, Tillisch said.
The knowledge that signals are sent from the intestine to the brain and that they can be modulated by a dietary change is likely to lead to an expansion of research aimed at finding new strategies to prevent or treat digestive, mental and neurological disorders, said Dr. Emeran Mayer, a professor of medicine, physiology and psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the study's senior author.
"There are studies showing that what we eat can alter the composition and products of the gut flora in particular, that people with high-vegetable, fiber-based diets have a different composition of their microbiota, or gut environment, than people who eat the more typical
Western diet that is high in fat and carbohydrates," Mayer said. "Now we know that this has an effect not only on the metabolism but also affects brain function."
The UCLA researchers are seeking to pinpoint particular chemicals produced by gut bacteria that may be triggering the signals to the brain. They also plan to study whether people with gastrointestinal symptoms such as bloating, abdominal pain and altered bowel movements have improvements in their digestive symptoms which correlate with changes in brain response.
Meanwhile, Mayer notes that other researchers are studying the potential benefits of certain probiotics in yogurts on mood symptoms such as anxiety. He said that other nutritional strategies may also be found to be beneficial.
By demonstrating the brain effects of probiotics, the study also raises the question of whether repeated courses of antibiotics can affect the brain, as some have speculated. Antibiotics are used extensively in neonatal intensive care units and in childhood respiratory tract infections, and such suppression of the normal microbiota may have longterm consequences on brain development.
Finally, as the complexity of the gut flora and its effect on the brain is better understood, researchers may find ways to manipulate the intestinal contents to treat chronic pain conditions or other brain related diseases, including, potentially, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and autism.
Answers will be easier to come by in the near future as the declining cost of profiling a person's microbiota renders such tests more routine, Mayer said.
###
The study was funded by Danone Research. Mayer has served on the company's scientific advisory board. Three of the study authors (Denis Guyonnet, Sophie Legrain-Raspaud and Beatrice Trotin) are employed by Danone Research and were involved in the planning and execution of the study (providing the products) but had no role in the analysis or interpretation of the results.
UCLA's Oppenheimer Family Center for Neurobiology of Stress is an NIH-funded multidisciplinary, translational research program partially supported by philanthropy. Its mission is to identify the role of the brain in health and medical disease. The Center is comprised of several research programs which focus on the interactions of the brain with the digestive, cardiovascular and urological systems, chronic pain and mind brain body interactions.
For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.
[ | 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.
TOKYO A U.S. Air Force F-15 fighter crashed off the southern Japan island of Okinawa early Tuesday after the aircraft developed problems in flight. The pilot ejected and was recovered safely.
The F-15, flying out of Kadena Air Base, went down in the Pacific about 70 miles east of Okinawa, the military said in a statement.
Lt. Col. David Honchul, the chief spokesman for the U.S. Forces, Japan, said the pilot was recovered safely after a search by U.S. and Japanese rescue crews. After he ejected from the plane, the pilot remained in contact with the rescuers. He was rescued by a Japanese air force helicopter.
The cause was under investigation. The pilot's name has not been released. The U.S. military said he was in stable condition and being evaluated at a military hospital on Okinawa.
The U.S. military has about 50,000 troops based in Japan, about half of them on Okinawa. Kadena Air Base is one of the largest U.S. airbases in the Asia-Pacific region. The F-15 was attached to Kadena's 18th Wing.
The crash was the first for an F-15 based at Kadena since January 2006.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, center, Israeli President Shimon Peres, right, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas all shake hands during the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa at the King Hussein Convention Centre at the Dead Sea in Jordan Sunday May 26, 2013. (AP Photo/Pool, Jim Young)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, center, Israeli President Shimon Peres, right, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas all shake hands during the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa at the King Hussein Convention Centre at the Dead Sea in Jordan Sunday May 26, 2013. (AP Photo/Pool, Jim Young)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Israeli President Shimon Peres, left, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, right, participate in the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa at the King Hussein Convention Center at the Dead Sea in Jordan Sunday May 26, 2013. (AP Photo/Pool, Jim Young)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, center, Israeli President Shimon Peres, right, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas share words the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa at the King Hussein Convention Centre at the Dead Sea in Jordan Sunday May 26, 2013. (AP Photo/Pool, Jim Young)
SOUTHERN SHUNEH, Jordan (AP) ? Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday he believes a plan potentially worth $4 billion is emerging that could expand the Palestinian economy by up to 50 percent in the next three years.
It could also cut unemployment by almost two-thirds and average wages could jump 40 percent, he said. But Kerry said it all depends on parallel progress on peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Kerry has been working with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and global business leaders to devise economic plans to revitalize the Palestinian economy. There were few specific details offered.
Kerry spoke at a business conference in Jordan alongside Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Kerry called the plan "transformative" and "different than anything we've done before."
He was to meet later Sunday in Amman with Blair, American hedge fund investor Tim Collins and the foreign ministers of Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.
The plan is expected to address tourism, construction, light manufacturing, agriculture and communications opportunities.
Kerry said Palestinian agriculture production could double or triple. Tourism could triple, and 100,000 new homes, many of them energy efficient, could be built in the next three years.
Kerry acknowledged the plan offers a very optimistic vision for a region that has suffered through decades of conflict, and where peace prospects remain dim.
But he insisted: "We know it can be done."
He said Netanyahu and Abbas support the plan. He said economic plans won't take hold unless Israel and the Palestinians make headway on restarting peace talks, however.
Kerry has been trying over the last two months to rejuvenate the peace process. He hasn't made any tangible success so far, but insists he is engaged in productive talks with both sides.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) ? Florida has its second Powerball winner in a week, but this one will split a much smaller jackpot with winners in Louisiana and Delaware.
Each will get a third of the jackpot, estimated at $50 million over 20 years, or a $31.1 million lump sum. A week ago, a ticket bought in Zephyrhills, Fla., won a $590 million annuity or an estimated $376.9 million cash.
Lottery officials in Louisiana and Florida said Saturday's winning tickets were bought in New Orleans and Tampa. Delaware's lottery website did not say where that winner was bought.
Wednesday's jackpot drops to an estimated $40 million, or $24.9 million cash.
The number of winning tickets isn't a record. Louisiana Lottery spokeswoman Kimberly Chopin said a $295 million jackpot in 2001 was split four ways.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Obese mothers tend to have kids who become obese. Now provocative research suggests weight-loss surgery may help break that unhealthy cycle in an unexpected way ? by affecting how their children's genes behave.
In a first-of-a-kind study, Canadian researchers tested children born to obese women, plus their brothers and sisters who were conceived after the mother had obesity surgery. Youngsters born after mom lost lots of weight were slimmer than their siblings. They also had fewer risk factors for diabetes or heart disease later in life.
More intriguing, the researchers discovered that numerous genes linked to obesity-related health problems worked differently in the younger siblings than in their older brothers and sisters.
Clearly diet and exercise play a huge role in how fit the younger siblings will continue to be, and it's a small study. But the findings suggest the children born after mom's surgery might have an advantage.
"The impact on the genes, you will see the impact for the rest of your life," predicted Dr. Marie-Claude Vohl of Laval University in Quebec City. She helped lead the work reported Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Why would there be a difference? It's not that mom passed on different genes, but how those genes operate in her child's body. The idea: Factors inside the womb seem to affect the dimmer switches that develop on a fetus' genes ? chemical changes that make genes speed up or slow down or switch on and off. That in turn can greatly influence health.
The sibling study is "a very clever way of looking at this," said Dr. Susan Murphy of Duke University. She wasn't involved in the Canadian research but studies uterine effects on later health. She says it makes biological sense that the earliest nutritional environment could affect a developing metabolism, although she cautions that healthier family habits after mom's surgery may play a role, too.
It's the latest evidence that the environment ? in this case the womb ? can alter how our genes work.
And the research has implications far beyond the relatively few women who take the drastic step of gastric bypass surgery before having a baby. Increasingly, scientists are hunting other ways to tackle obesity before or during pregnancy in hopes of a lasting benefit for both mother and baby.
What's clear is that obesity is "not just impacting your life, it's impacting your child," Duke's Murphy said.
More than half of pregnant women are overweight or obese, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. But it's not just a matter of how much moms weigh when they conceive ? doctors also are trying to stamp out the idea of eating for two. Gaining too much weight during pregnancy increases the child's risk of eventually developing obesity and diabetes, too.
What's too much? Women who are normal weight at the start of pregnancy are supposed to gain 25 to 35 pounds. Those who already are obese should gain no more than 11 to 20 pounds. Overweight mothers-to-be fall in the middle.
Sticking to those guidelines can be tough. The National Institutes of Health just began a five-year, $30 million project to help overweight or obese pregnant women do so, and track how their babies fare in the first year of life.
Called the LIFE-Moms Consortium, researchers are recruiting about 2,000 expectant mothers for seven studies around the country that are testing different approaches to a healthy weight gain and better nutritional quality. They range from putting pregnant women on meal plans and exercise programs, to weekly monitoring, to peer pressure from fellow parents trained to bring nutrition advice into the homes of low-income mothers-to-be.
It's best to get to a healthy weight before conceiving, noted Dr. Mary Evans of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, who oversees the project.
Just how much mom has to lose for a healthier baby is "obviously a research gap," she said.
Monday's research findings from Canada may shed some new light. Consider: Overweight mothers have higher levels of sugar and fat in the bloodstream, which in turn makes it to the womb.
Fetuses are "marinated, and they're differently marinated" depending on mom's weight and health, said Dr. John Kral of New York's SUNY Downstate Medical Center, who co-authored the Canadian study.
That may do more than overstimulate fetal growth. Scientists know that certain molecules regulate gene activity, attaching like chemical tags. That's what Laval University lead researcher Dr. Frederic Guenard was looking for in blood tests. He took samples from children born to 20 women before and after complex surgery that shrank their stomachs and rerouted digestion so they absorb less fat and calories. On average, they lost about 100 pounds.
Guenard compared differences in those chemical tags in more than 5,600 genes between the younger and older siblings. He found significant differences in the activity of certain genes clustered in pathways known to affect blood sugar metabolism and heart disease risk.
Only time will tell if these youngsters born after mom's surgery really get lasting benefits, whatever the reason. Meanwhile, specialists urge women planning a pregnancy to talk with their doctors about their weight ahead of time. Besides having potential long-term consequences, extra pounds can lead to a variety of immediate complications such as an increased risk of premature birth and cesarean sections.
Maoist insurgents killed 29 people in an ambush of a political party's convoy in eastern India. The massacre had the government vowing a stepped up counterinsurgency and analysts worried about more violence.
By Shivam Vij,?Correspondent / May 26, 2013
Mourners gather around the offices of the Congress party in Raipur, India, as the victims of Saturday's attack are taken to be cremated.
AP
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A massacre by Maoist guerrillas in eastern India that killed 29 people Saturday placed a spotlight on the group's insurgency and ignited fears of more violence heading into an election.?
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Among the victims of the attack were senior leaders of India's Congress party in the eastern state of Chattisgarh and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh indicated the government will step up its offensive against the Maoists. "We have to be more determined in fighting Naxal (Maoist) extremism. These lives should not go in vain. This incident should be treated as an inspiration in our fight against forces of extremism and violence," he said. The attack occurred in the Darbha Valley in the Bastar plateau of Chattisgarh. The Communist Party of India (Maoist), whose members are also known as Naxalites, controls large parts of territory in the tribal-dominated Bastar region. On Saturday, a group of 250 guerrillas ambushed a convoy of 25 cars carrying leaders and workers of the Congress party. The convoy was part of voter mobilization for the state elections due in October.
The chief target in Saturday's attack was a tribal leader, Mahendra Karma, who in 2005 had founded a state-supported anti-Maoist militia known as the "Salwa Judum" meaning "Peace March" which has been criticized for human rights violations and hiring child soldiers. The Supreme Court of India disbanded the Salwa Judum in 2011, calling it unconstitutional.
"Since the disbanding of the Salwa Judum, Karma had become a symbolic target whom they had tried to kill before as well," says documentary filmmaker Sanjay Kak, whose recently released film, Red Ant Dream, shows damning footage of Karma organizing the Salwa Judum militia, contrary to his claims that it was a spontaneous Gandhian rebellion against the Maoists.
An eyewitness claimed that the guerrillas danced over Karma's body after spraying him with bullets. The attack also killed the state chief of the Congress party and his son, and critically wounded a senior central-level Congress leader, VC Shukla. The Congress party's national president, Sonia Gandhi, called it "a cowardly act" and "an attack on democratic values".
Sociologist Nandini Sundar, one of the petitioners against the Salwa Judum, says this was a massive security failure on the part of the government. "The government should have expected a response like this to their increased offensive against the Maoists in recent weeks," she says. On Mahendra Karma, she says, "If India had democratic values he would have been behind bars."
Anticipating an escalation of violence from both sides in the months ahead, Sundar said it would be "disastrous for villagers and the government should exercise caution."
Security analysts, however, are calling for an expanded military offensive against the Maoists, who are present to varying degrees in the forests of eastern India through what is called the "red corridor," spanning a third of India's 600 districts.
"The government's own data shows the Maoists have been busy consolidating their hold with arms and tribal mobilization," says Ajai Sahni, director of the Institute for Conflict Management in Delhi. "Casualties have reduced because the government hasn't been going on an offensive and the absence of violence made the government under-estimate the threat," he says.
EPHRATAH, N.Y. (AP) ? A brain cancer patient and his wife were on board the volunteer medical flight piloted by a Connecticut man that crashed in a wooded area of central New York, authorities said Sunday.
Frank and Evelyn Amerosa of Utica were aboard an Angel Flight on Friday night when the twin-engine aircraft went down in Ephratah, a sleepy town about an hour west of Albany, according to police and family members.
Officials and family said John Campbell, 70, of Stamford, Conn., was flying the couple back from the Boston area, where Frank Amerosa was being treated for brain cancer.
The bodies of Campbell and Evelyn Amerosa have been recovered from the rural crash site. Dozens of searchers, including a helicopter crew, continued searching the woods and water Sunday for Frank Amerosa, 64, who was presumed dead, said Sgt. Brian Van Nostrand of the Fulton County Sheriff's Department.
Frank Amerosa, a retired trucker, had been diagnosed with brain cancer more than a year ago. Evelyn Amerosa, 58, worked at an area nursing home directing residents in activities like bingo and trips ? a job she loved, said her daughter Heather Theobald. She said her mother had been with her step-father for at least 16 years. The couple loved to travel and had recently returned from the Bahamas.
"Very happy, very much love, very optimistic, they did everything for anybody," Theobald told The Associated Press. "There were just very good people. They were loved by a lot of people."
Campbell was volunteer pilot for Angel Flight, a nonprofit group that arranges free air transportation for the sick. Angel Flight Northeast said it has set up free air transportation and medical care for more than 65,000 children and adults on about 60,000 flights covering more than 12 million miles. It was founded in 1996.
"John loved to fly and truly believed in the mission of Angel Flight. He loved volunteering his time and we take some solace in the fact he died doing something he loved while trying to help others," according to a family statement read to The Associated Press by his daughter Kimberly Conti, of Rutherford, N.J.
Rescue workers on Sunday scoured the woods and searched a big, murky pond where the bulk of the aircraft was submerged. Wreckage from the crash was dispersed over a large area, with pieces of the plane found as far as 5 miles away.
Town Supervisor Todd Bradt said more than 100 rescuers searched for Frank Amerosa into Sunday night but did not find him. The search will continue Monday.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators who returned to the crash site Sunday aim to retrieve the bulk of the wreckage from the water over the next few days, said agency spokesman Eric Weiss. They are looking for smartphones, GPS devices, computer tablets or other items that could "give the investigators some electronic evidence of what happened in the last minutes of flight," he said.
The Piper PA 34 had departed from Hanscom Field in Bedford, Mass., and was headed to Rome, N.Y., before it crashed just after 5 p.m. Friday, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said. The plane did not issue a distress call before losing radar and radio contact, the NTSB said.
Terence Kindlon, an Albany attorney who is a volunteer pilot for Angel Flight, said he and another lawyer, Dale Thuillez, had flown the couple to Boston on Friday morning in Thuillez's plane. He quickly found out he had something in common with Frank Amerosa.
"We were both former Marines and had been in Vietnam pretty close together in time," Kindlon said. "We hit it right off. He was a nice guy."
The two lawyers flew back to Albany in Thuillez's plane after dropping off the couple in Boston.
While the cause of the crash remains under investigation, Kindlon stressed that "the standards for being an Angel Flight pilot are rigorous."
Authorities had initially said the bodies of two passengers were found after the aircraft went down Friday night. But Van Nostrand corrected that report Sunday, saying the bodies of the Evelyn Amerosa and Campbell had been found.
Witnesses described the destruction that started in the air above Ephratah.
Joan Dudley, owner of Granny's Ice Cream Shanty, which is less than a mile from the crash site, said she and her employees saw the plane flip, then fall apart Friday night.
"Parts and pieces of it were flying through the sky, and a body fell out," Dudley said.
They called 911 as they parked their car and ran to the crash site in the rain to see if they could rescue anyone.
"Airplane parts were all over the place," she said. "They were picking them up all over."
Ephratah resident Roger Berry, 75, said he was outside chopping wood when the plane crashed.
"When I heard it, I knew something was wrong," Berry said.
Berry said he heard a bang, then saw pieces of the plane fall from the sky. The motor fell 50 feet from his neighbor's bedroom, where she was sleeping, Berry said.
Very often you might find yourself struggling to accomplish something, let go of something or someone or make some kind of change. You may want to be happier, wealthier, or more successful. You may want to have closer, more loving relationships. Or you may want to travel, take a wonderful vacation, or change your career, or have a more successful business. You work hard, you do all the things you think you should do or that people tell you to do and yet it doesn?t seem to happen for you. The answer may be very simple.
Most of the time, the only thing that?s stopping you is you. You may simply need to give yourself permission to do, be or have what you want. That sounds so simple doesn?t it? It is, and yet it?s not always so easy.
It seems silly to think that if you want something you may not have given yourself permission to have it. Yet it?s true. Very often that can be the thing that holds you back. Think of something you want, and ask yourself if you?ve given yourself permission to have it. If you ask and answer honestly ? and journaling can help you discover your answer ? you might find that there?s a part of you that does not what you to have it and doesn?t give permission.
So the question is are you willing to give yourself permission to have what you want? If the answer is yes, then you simply acknowledge that to yourself.
What do you want to give yourself permission for? Create an affirmation for yourself:
I give myself permission to:
Release all excess weight
Have a close and loving relationship
Love myself
Have a successful business
Be myself
Take a fabulous trip
Make new friends
Make the money I know I deserve
Be a successful business owner
Have a new career
Open myself up to new possibilities for my life
Let go of fear
etc?
Create your affirmation and repeat it to yourself daily. Write it down. Notice how your body feels when you say it and write it. How do you feel? What thoughts come up for you? Do you feel resistance as you say or write it?
If you feel any discomfort, if you feel excuses or arguments coming into your thoughts, or if you feel any resistance at all, you will know that there?s a part of you that is withholding permission. You?ll want to find out what part of you that is. Perhaps it?s the voice of a parent or someone else. Perhaps it?s a part of your personality that?s afraid of what will happen if/when you have what you want.
Sometimes this is the only thing that?s holding you back. You just don?t have your permission to go for what you want. So what are you going to give yourself permission to do, be or have?
Linda Binns is an energy expert. She specializes in helping sensitive and highly sensitive people understand and manage themselves and their energy so they can be more successful and fulfilled both personally and professionally.
Linda Binns is the author of 7 books on energy, including her popular Energy Tips Series which demonstrates how to easily improve your health, increase your income, sell your house and create a supportive home environment by changing your energy.
Go to http://www.TheHighlySensitiveProfessional.com for a free survey to find out whether you are sensitive or highly sensitive and how you can manage and make the most of your sensitivity.