South Africa: Mandela nears a month in hospital

JOHANNESBURG (AP) ? Former South African leader Nelson Mandela has been in a hospital for nearly a month.

There was no official update Saturday morning on the condition of the 94-year-old former president, who is in critical but stable condition after being diagnosed with a recurring lung infection. He was taken to a hospital in Pretoria, the capital, on June 8.

The government has said Mandela is not in a vegetative state, contrary to recent court documents. A close friend told Sky News that the anti-apartheid leader was conscious and responsive earlier this week.

There has been an outpouring of concern in South Africa and around the world for Mandela, a transformative figure who led the tense shift from white rule to democracy two decades ago in a spirit of reconciliation.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/south-africa-mandela-nears-month-hospital-081109994.html

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From termite mounds to the shape of a tornado, designers are turning to Mother N...

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Source: http://www.facebook.com/natgeo/posts/10151520692403951

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Texas students struggle with STAAR again and again

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) ? Standardized test results show Texas high school students are struggling to pass, and those who fail don't fare much better when they're retested.

Thousands of students starting Monday will retake the five State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness exams they must pass to graduate: Algebra I, biology, English I and II and U.S. history. Those who haven't passed can retake the tests as many times as needed.

More than 152,000 students recently failed the English I writing test. Data from the last round of retakes show less than 14 percent of those students passed ? and some of those students were taking it for the fourth time.

By comparison, more than 40 percent of the retesting students passed the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, STAAR's predecessor, said Texas Education Agency spokeswoman Debbie Ratcliffe.

"Students are not having that much luck," Ratcliffe told the Austin American-Statesman (http://bit.ly/18Dw96D). "That's why they ought to take any chance they can. Don't sit out the summer test, that only hurts themselves."

This year, about 10,000 Central Texas high school students are eligible for retakes ? a number likely to grow over the next few years as juniors and seniors begin to take the STAAR end-of-course exams that will eventually be administered to all high school students. Those entering their sophomore year will be the first to take all five required tests.

When students fail, school districts must offer them some remedial help. However, the amount of remediation available to students varies district to district, with some offering simple test preparation classes that can be completed in a day and others offering several weeks of summer courses.

"The stakes are higher when the students know they didn't pass it the first time," said Tim Savoy, spokesman for the Hays district, which is spending $105,575 for a full-day summer school program for STAAR retesters, rather than shorter tutoring sessions. In addition, the district estimates it's spending $12,300 to administer the exams and pay proctors.

Gov. Rick Perry recently signed House Bill 5 into law, which reduced the number of STAAR end-of-course exams from 15 to five. Parents across the state had pushed back against the number of tests needed to graduate.

While districts welcome the changes, administrators said the high rate of failure for the writing exams that are components of the English tests means nearly half of high school students in the state will need to retake them. Statewide, 54 percent of students passed Writing I and 53 percent passed Writing II.

"In the long run, there will be a small amount of savings" realized by cutting the number of tests from 15 to five, said Bill Caritj, chief performance officer for the Austin school district. "However, statewide, the biggest challenge seems to be in writing, and English I and English II are still graduation requirements."

___

Information from: Austin American-Statesman, http://www.statesman.com

Source: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/texas/article/Texas-students-struggle-with-STAAR-again-and-again-4650280.php

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Crozet Independence Day Parade ? 2013

by Jim Duncan on July 6, 2013

A few photos from today?s Independence Day Parade in Crozet. This parade is one of the things that makes Crozet a truly special place to live.

Photos taken from the judges? table.

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And ? Shriners.

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Tagged as: 22932, Crozet

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cvilleblogs/~3/HmwOO3TjijA/

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New Genetic Insights Show How Tuberculosis May Be Evolving to Become More Dangerous (preview)

See Inside

Tuberculosis seems to be evolving in unexpected ways that outsmart humans

By Sally Lehrman

Image: Daniel Chang

In Brief

• More than one million men, women and children around the globe die of tuberculosis every year, and about a third of the world's population harbors a latent infection.
• A growing number of studies suggest that TB may be evolving into a new bug that is far more deadly, spreads more quickly and is more likely to become resistant to treatment with antibiotics.
• Designers of new treatments should take these latest findings into account if they do not want to make matters worse. Changing the host environment with improved housing, for example, may also prove key.

Today most people in the richer parts of the world think of tuberculosis, if they think of it at all, as a ghost of history. Throughout ancient times the tenacious bacterial infection consumed the bodies of untold millions, rich and poor, filling their lungs with bloody sputum. As TB spread in the centuries that followed, it continued to attack across economic and class lines, affecting both the famous and the obscure. Among its better-known victims: poet Manuel Bandeira, writers Emily and Anne Bront?, and sculptor Fr?d?ric-Auguste Bartholdi, who designed the Statue of Liberty. By the early 20th century humanity had begun fighting back with public health campaigns, improved living standards, and eventually antibiotics and a modestly effective vaccine. Although in 2011 TB sickened nearly nine million people, killing 1.4 million of them, mostly in the poorer regions of the globe, the mortality rate has nonetheless fallen by more than a third since 1990. Things are looking up?or so it may seem.

New genetic research, however, suggests that the bacterium responsible for TB could be poised to emerge stronger and more deadly than ever before?and not just because some strains have become resistant to treatment with the standard set of antibiotics. A small but increasingly influential group of investigators believes that the microbe, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, may have evolved along an unexpected and particularly dangerous path. The scientists have discovered that TB can be divided into seven families of genetically related strains, at least one of which is surprisingly virulent, prone to drug resistance and especially well suited to spreading disease in our increasingly interconnected, densely populated world.

This article was originally published with the title The Diabolical Genius of an Ancient Scourge.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/~r/sciam/basic-science/~3/NWdAXdPsys4/article.cfm

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1 dead after drug overdoses at Wash. concert venue

SEATTLE (AP) ? One man died and dozens of people were treated after overdosing on a mixture of drugs at a weekend music festival at the Gorge Amphitheatre in central Washington, authorities said.

More than 25,000 people attended the sold-out, two-day Paradiso Festival, which featured dozens of electronic music performances Friday and Saturday.

Patrick D. Witkowski, 21, of the Seattle suburb of Des Moines, died Sunday at Central Washington Hospital in Wenatchee. He was identified late Monday by Chelan County Coroner Wayne Harris.

An autopsy found no physical injuries or pre-existing medical conditions that would have caused the death, Harris said.

Toxicology tests of blood and urine, with results expected in about eight weeks, should pinpoint a cause of death, he said.

Witkowski was one of seven people from the music festival who were taken to the hospital. Three remained in serious condition, said Kathy Hamilton, director of community relations.

Quincy Valley Medical Center, the closest hospital to the amphitheater, treated about 70 other concert-goers in its emergency room from Thursday through Sunday, spokeswoman Michele Wurl said, with at least 40 of the cases related to drugs and alcohol.

The small, rural hospital has no intensive care unit and serious cases were transferred.

"We deal with the Gorge all summer long," Wurl said. "What we're seeing this year is much higher acuity ? more severe ? in the drug use.

"They don't even know what they're taking," Wurl said. "They take a hit and 30 to 45 minutes later they take a second. So they get them maxing out one after another. ... We're not talking about too much drinking or smoking a little marijuana."

Some concertgoers were referring to a substance they called Molly.

Deputies handled 62 calls for service at the Paradiso Festival and arrested 23 people for various charges, including possession or delivery of controlled substances, trespassing, obstructing a public servant, assault and disorderly conduct, the Grant County sheriff's office said in a statement. The concert promoter contracts with the sheriff's office to supplement security.

The number of arrests is not unusual for a concert at the Gorge, said Undersheriff Dave Ponozzo. Some people seen by medical personnel were using Molly or MDMA, he said. MDMA is also known as ecstasy.

The sheriff's office said a 20-year-old Seattle man had been found disoriented but OK on Monday after wandering lost for hours. Sgt. Mike Crowder said the young man said he took Molly on Sunday and had a bad reaction.

"Most in attendance were very respectful people to us and to one another," Ponozzo said in an email. "I found them to be very social people, many of who went out of their way to thank us for being there."

Most of the audience stays at a campground on the site overlooking the Columbia River about 120 miles east of Seattle.

Concerts at the Gorge put pressure on the Quincy Valley Medical Center emergency room, which typically sees about nine people a day. The Paradiso Festival was the third concert this year at the Gorge.

In a statement emailed Monday, festival co-producers Live Nation and USC Events said they were "committed to bringing people together to experience music in a safe environment."

"We wish to express our deep concern about reports regarding a 21-year-old man who died at Central Washington Hospital over the weekend," the statement added. "We extend our sympathy to his family."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/1-dead-drug-overdoses-wash-concert-venue-185312323.html

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Age affects how married couples handle conflict

July 1, 2013 ? Arguing with your spouse about where to go on vacation or how to handle the kids? As you age, you may find yourself handling these disagreements more often by changing the subject, according to a new SF State study.

The study by Sarah Holley, SF State assistant professor of psychology who directs the University's Relationships, Emotion and Health Lab, followed 127 middle-aged and older long-term married couples across 13 years, checking in to see how they communicated about conflicts from housework to finances. The researchers videotaped the couples' 15-minute discussions, noting the types of communication they used when talking about contentious topics.

Holley and her colleagues wanted to see how the couples might change in their use of a common and destructive type of communication, the demand-withdraw pattern, as they aged. In the demand-withdraw pattern, one person in a relationship blames or pressures their partner for a change, while the partner tries to avoid discussion of the problem or passively withdraws from the interaction.

The researchers found that while most aspects of demand-withdraw communication remained steady over time, both husbands and wives "increased their tendency to demonstrate avoidance during conflict," Holley said. That is, when faced with an area of disagreement, both spouses were more likely to do things such as change the subject or divert attention from the conflict.

Avoidance is generally thought to be damaging to relationships as it gets in the way of conflict resolution. For younger couples, who may be grappling with newer issues, this may be particularly true. But for older couples, who have had decades to voice their disagreements, avoidance may be a way to move the conversation away from "toxic" areas and toward more neutral or pleasant topics, the researchers suggest.

"This is in line with age-related shifts in socioemotional goals," Holley said, "wherein individuals tend toward less conflict and greater goal disengagement in later life stages." Several studies have shown, Holley explained, that as people age they place less importance on arguments and seek more positive experiences, perhaps out of a sense of making the most out of their remaining years.

The age of the partners appears to be driving this important communication shift, the researchers suggest, but the change could also be influenced by the length of the couples' relationship. "It may not be an either-or question," Holley said. "It may be that both age and marital duration play a role in increased avoidance." To explore this idea further, she hopes to compare older couples in long-term marriages with older newlywed couples.

The study focused on this specific set of communication behaviors, Holley said, because psychologists think the demand-withdraw pattern, with its "self-perpetuating and polarizing nature," can be especially destructive for couples. If a husband withdraws in response to his wife's demands to do the dishes, for example, that withdrawal can lead to an escalation in the wife's demands, which in turn may fuel the husband's tendency to withdraw from the argument, and so on.

"This can lead to a polarization between the two partners which can be very difficult to resolve and can take a major toll on relationship satisfaction," Holley said.

Holley has studied demand-withdraw communication in all kinds of couples, and she said that the pattern goes beyond the stereotype of a nagging wife and a silent husband. When she compared gay, lesbian and heterosexual couples in a 2010 study, she found "strong support for the idea that the partner who desires more change ... will be much more likely to occupy the demanding role, whereas the partner who desires less change -- and therefore may benefit from maintaining the status quo -- will be more likely to occupy the withdrawing role."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/living_well/~3/euQp76c8GW0/130701172106.htm

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