শনিবার, ৪ মে, ২০১৩

Inking Idaho: Natalie's Baby Shower

This past weekend I had the pleasure of hosting a baby shower for our niece Natalie.? It's the first baby in the family since I had mine AND it's a girl so it was super fun to do something pink!!?

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It was a Big Fat Greek Baby Shower.? Natalie is a teacher, so I went with a little chalkboard and little pink & purple and lots of adorable baby shoes.?

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I made the Invitation, Thank You Notes, Dear Baby card and the food signs in My Digital Studio.

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The thank you note was 3 1/2 x 5 fold over card size.

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The shower was held at her mom's home (my sister in law)...we used the pool table for the food?and?sorry the lights were a little glaring for photographing.

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Center of the food table.


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Lots of yummy foods!. The best part of course! *?*

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Each centerpiece was a baby onsie with a tutu and matching shoes.? I put them on a jewelry stand and stuffed them with tissue to make a little tummy.?

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One of the activities was to make a baby headband.? I put them together in kits and everyone made a headband for the baby.? She ended up with about 25 darling headbands...that baby better LOVE headbands!? I made the elastics in different sizes so hopefully she will have plenty for a couple of years.

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One of her gifts was a nice chair from YiaYia...she will definitely need that!?

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Everyone filled this out for her and boy, was that fun to see the variety of names and well wishes for her baby.? This was a 5x7 single sided card.

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Not a great photo of the favors, but these are?miniature containers of baby wipes.

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Just 3" tall and about 2" wide with a keychain on them!? Adorable!!?

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Pop Up Posies FREE Tutorial

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Please order your Stampin' Up! supplies HERE.

Source: http://inkingidaho.blogspot.com/2013/05/natalies-baby-shower.html

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Drugs May Have Killed Kris Kross Rapper Chris Kelly

Sad details are emerging about the death of Kris Kross rapper Chris Kelly, 34. The '90s hip-hop icon had reportedly taken a combination of cocaine and heroin the night before he died. According to the police report, Chris' mother Donna had taken him home after the apparent overdose. She's the one who called 911 when he collapsed the next day. And she was presumably by his side when her son was pronounced dead at the hospital. How awful.

Source: http://www.ivillage.com/heroin-cocaine-may-have-killed-kris-kross-rapper-chris-kelly/1-a-535216?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Aheroin-cocaine-may-have-killed-kris-kross-rapper-chris-kelly-535216

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Increases in heart disease risk factors may decrease brain function

May 2, 2013 ? Brain function in adults as young as 35 may decline as their heart disease risk factors increase, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Stroke.

"Young adults may think the consequences of smoking or being overweight are years down the road, but they aren't," said Hanneke Joosten, M.D., lead author and nephrology fellow at the University Medical Center in Groningen, The Netherlands.

"Most people know the negative effects of heart risk factors such as heart attack, stroke and renal impairment, but they do not realize it affects cognitive health. What's bad for the heart is also bad for the brain."

The Dutch study included 3,778 participants 35- to 82-years-old who underwent cognitive function tests that measure the ability to plan and reason and to initiate and switch tasks. A separate test gauged memory function. The Framingham Risk Score determined their risk for cardiovascular events in the next 10 years.

Researchers found:

  • Participants with the most heart disease risks performed 50 percent worse on cognitive tests as compared to participants with the lowest risk profile.
  • The overall Framingham Risk Score, age, diabetes, bad cholesterol and smoking were negatively linked to poor cognitive scores.
  • Compared to non-smoking participants, those who smoked one to 15 cigarettes daily had a decrease in cognitive score of 2.41 points and those smoking more than 16 cigarettes daily had a decrease of 3.43 points. The memory scores had a similar association.
  • Two risk factors -- smoking and diabetes -- were strong determinants of cognitive function.

"There clearly is a dose response among smokers, with heavy smokers having a lower cognitive function than light or non-smokers," Joosten said. "It is likely that smoking cessation has a beneficial effect on cognitive function."

Health professionals need to be aware of cognitive function in patients with risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Cardiovascular risk factors, especially those that are modifiable like smoking and obesity, need ongoing attention from the medical profession, government and food industry, she said. "Smoking cessation programs might not only prevent cancer, stroke and cardiovascular events, but also cognitive damage."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Heart Association.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. Hanneke Joosten, Marlise E.A. van Eersel, Ron T. Gansevoort, Henk J.G. Bilo, Joris P.J. Slaets, and Gerbrand J. Izaks. Cardiovascular Risk Profile and Cognitive Function in Young, Middle-Aged, and Elderly Subjects. Stroke, May 2 2013 DOI: 10.1161/STROKEAHA.111.000496

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/MliXYGXEeaE/130502185421.htm

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শুক্রবার, ৩ মে, ২০১৩

Bangladesh official: Disaster not 'really serious'

A woman covers her nose to block out the smell of decomposing bodies as people in the background identify bodies at a makeshift morgue where victims of the collapse of a garment factory buildings are brought Friday, May 3, 2013 in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh. Authorities suspended the mayor of the suburb of Savar, where the building was located, and arrested an engineer who called for the building?s evacuation last week but was also accused of helping the owner add three illegal floors to the eight-story structure. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

A woman covers her nose to block out the smell of decomposing bodies as people in the background identify bodies at a makeshift morgue where victims of the collapse of a garment factory buildings are brought Friday, May 3, 2013 in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh. Authorities suspended the mayor of the suburb of Savar, where the building was located, and arrested an engineer who called for the building?s evacuation last week but was also accused of helping the owner add three illegal floors to the eight-story structure. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

Women cover their noses as they look through body bags in hopes of identifying a family member, a victim of the garment factory building collapse, in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, May 3, 2013. More than 500 victims bodies have been recovered from the Bangladesh garment-factory building that collapsed last week, authorities said Friday. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

A Bangladeshi woman, holding a photo of her missing son, cries at a graveyard after a garments factory building collapse in Savar near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday May 3, 2013. Authorities suspended the mayor of the suburb of Savar, where the building was located, and arrested an engineer who called for the building?s evacuation last week but was also accused of helping the owner add three illegal floors to the eight-story structure. (AP Photo/Palash Khan)

A woman holds a photo of her missing sister after a garment factory building collapsed last week in Savar near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday May 3, 2013. Authorities suspended the mayor of the suburb of Savar, where the building was located, and arrested an engineer who called for the building?s evacuation last week but was also accused of helping the owner add three illegal floors to the eight-story structure. (AP Photo/Ismail Ferdous)

A woman is comforted by family members and others after she identified the body of her relative recovered from the rubble of the garment factory building which collapsed last week, in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, May 3, 2013. Authorities suspended the mayor of the suburb of Savar, where the building was located, and arrested an engineer who called for the building?s evacuation last week but was also accused of helping the owner add three illegal floors to the eight-story structure. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

(AP) ? Bangladesh's finance minister downplayed the impact of last week's factory-building collapse on his country's garment industry, saying Friday he didn't think it was "really serious" hours after the 500th body was pulled from the debris.

Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith spoke as the government cracked down on those it blamed for the disaster in the Dhaka suburb of Savar. It suspended Savar's mayor and arrested an engineer who had called for the building's evacuation last week, but was also accused of helping the owner add three illegal floors to the eight-story structure. The building owner was arrested earlier.

The government appears to be attempting to fend off accusations that it is in part to blame for the tragedy because of weak oversight of the building's construction.

During a visit to the Indian capital, New Delhi, Muhith said the disaster would not harm Bangladesh's garment industry, which is by far the country's biggest source of export income.

"The present difficulties ... well, I don't think it is really serious ? it's an accident," he said. "And the steps that we have taken in order to make sure that it doesn't happen, they are quite elaborate and I believe that it will be appreciated by all."

The government made similar promises after a garment factory fire five months ago that killed 112, saying it would inspect factories for safety and pull the licenses of those that failed. However, that plan has yet to be implemented.

Asked if he was worried that foreign retailers might pull orders from his country, Muhith said he wasn't: "These are individual cases of ... accidents. It happens everywhere."

Muhith, a long-time government official from a prominent family, has been criticized for insensitive comments in the past ? even by his own party. Last year when thousands of small investors lost their savings and poured into the streets seeking government intervention, Muhith said it wasn't responsible and the investors were at fault.

The official death toll from the April 24 collapse reached 519 Friday and was expected to climb, making it likely the deadliest garment-factory accident in world history. It surpassed long-ago disasters such as New York's Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, which killed 146 workers in 1911, and more recent tragedies such as a 2012 fire that killed about 260 people in Pakistan and one in Bangladesh that same year that killed 112.

At the site of the collapse, workers carefully used cranes to remove the concrete rubble and continue the slow task of recovering bodies. The official number of missing has been 149 since Wednesday, though unofficial estimates are higher.

"We are still proceeding cautiously so that we get the bodies intact," said Maj. Gen. Chowdhury Hassan Suhwardy, the commander of the area's army garrison supervising the rescue operation.

A government investigator said Friday that substandard building materials, combined with the vibration of the heavy machines used by the five garment factories inside the Rana Plaza building, led to the horrific collapse.

Mainuddin Khandkar, the head of a government committee investigating the disaster, said substandard rods, cement, bricks and other weak materials were used in the building's construction.

About 15 minutes before the collapse, the building was hit by a power blackout, so its heavy generators were turned on, shaking the weakened structure, Khandkar said.

"The vibration created by machines and generators operating in the five garment factories contributed first to the cracks and then the collapse," he said, adding that a final report would be soon submitted to the government.

Police official Ohiduzzaman said Friday that engineer Abdur Razzak Khan was arrested a day earlier on a charge of negligence. He said Khan worked as a consultant to Rana Plaza owner Mohammed Sohel Rana when the illegal three-floor addition was made to the building.

Rana called Khan to inspect the building after it developed cracks on April 23, local media reported. That night Khan appeared on a private television station saying that after his inspection he told Rana to evacuate the building because it was not safe.

Khan, a former engineer at Jahangirnagar University near Savar, said he told government engineers the building needed to be examined further.

Police ordered the building evacuated, but witnesses say Rana told people gathered outside the next morning that the building was safe and that garment factory managers told their workers to go inside. It collapsed hours later.

Authorities also suspended the mayor of Savar, Mohammad Refatullah, for alleged negligence, said Abu Alam, a top official of the local government ministry.

Alam said an official investigation had found that the mayor ignored rules in approving the design and layout of the doomed building. The mayor is from the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which has criticized his suspension as politically motivated.

The government also effectively suspended Kabir Hossain Sardar, the top government administrator at Savar, following reports that he declared the building safe after inspecting the cracks a day before the collapse. Sardar had close links with Rana. Alam said the government was taking action against everyone involved with Rana and his building.

Rana was arrested earlier and is expected to be charged with negligence, illegal construction and forcing workers to join work, crimes punishable by a maximum of seven years in jail. Authorities have not said if more serious crimes will be added.

The Bangladesh High Court has ordered the government to confiscate Rana's property and freeze the assets of the owners of the factories in Rana Plaza so the money can be used to pay the salaries of their workers.

The minimum wage for a garment worker is $38 a month, after being nearly doubled this year following violent protests by workers. According to the World Bank, the per capita income in Bangladesh was about $64 a month in 2011.

Among the garment makers in the building were Phantom Apparels, Phantom Tac, Ether Tex, New Wave Style and New Wave Bottoms.

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AP Videojournalist Archana Thiyagarajan in New Delhi contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-05-03-Bangladesh-Building%20Collapse/id-7b128bb934a74f32baea35847e42f9e8

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Michael Kimmel: Jason Collins Comes Out: More 'Yeah, So What' Than 'OMG'

The big story in sports this week is not that Jason Collins became the first currently-active professional male athlete in a major team sport to come out as gay. The big story is actually that it's not really such a big story.

First, look at all the qualifiers in that description. "Currently-active" and "professional" -- there are many athletes, professional and otherwise, who have come out after their playing days were over. "Male" -- there have been several women who came out during their playing days, including Martina Navratilova, Amelie Mauresmo, and Megan Rapinoe. And what about Britney Griner, about to start her career in the WNBA and likely to be among the best female centers ever?

And the reaction has been a single-note chorus of support. Current and former players have been lining up to offer their support (and express their slightly self-protective surprise -- "Wow, I had no idea, and my locker was next to his, and we showered together, never had a clue...). He's going to be the hottest photo op in the red carpet of sportsdom. Even the president applauded Collins's courage. And Doc Rivers, the Celtics coach for whom Collins played, hyperbolically compared him to Jackie Robinson. (Sorry, Doc. I don't foresee his teammates signing a petition refusing to play alongside him.)

On the other side -- pretty much nothing. A resounding silence. No Chicken Littles running around fretting that heterosexual marriage will instantly collapse, that the integrity of sports is forever breached, or that straight men will henceforth be unable to watch an NBA game ever again without "wondering." Even Rush Limbaugh, rarely at a loss for words, glossed over the story and refused to publicly condemn Collins for his gayness, opting instead for a smirking swipe at diversity in general:

I love how we're getting farther and farther away from looking at people on all this silly surface stuff. I like the fact that we're just looking at people for who they are. I love the fact that an NBA player is known for how well he plays the game and his sexual orientation doesn't matter. I love it. Oh, well. It sounded good.

What if they gave a coming out party and everyone showed up?

The truth is that homophobia, as an attitude about gay people, has pretty much fallen off a cliff -- especially among young people. More than three-fifths of Americans -- male and female -- agree that homosexuality is "morally acceptable" -- a massive spike since just 2006. Well over half of all American support same-sex marriage.

But wait. Let's not rush too quickly into an orgy of premature self-congratulation. Yes, it's okay to come out -- if you're a celebrity. Did anyone even blink when Anderson Cooper came out? And, no, it's not okay to condemn homosexuality in public, even on Fox News. But in the hearts of Americans, homophobia remains quite alive. It just may be about more than just gay people.

Homophobia remains a foundational principle of heterosexual masculinity. "That's so gay," is still the epithet of choice in every middle school, high school and college campus in the country. It's the basic mechanism of "gender policing" among straight boys and young men, the subjects of my book, Guyland, which looked into the inner lives of young men, ages 16 to 26.

Over and over I heard the same sentiment. The fear of being misperceived as gay still inspires young straight guys to take all sorts of risks, do all sorts of dumb stuff, hurt themselves and bully others. Young guys still tie themselves up in knots in order to prove to their peers that they're real men, and not gay.

That we associate homosexuality with not being a real man -- being effeminate -- means that homophobia is still "useful" to coaches who want to motivate their players the way that Mike Rice, the disgraced former Rutgers basketball coach, slug around anti-gay epithets, or the way Bobby Knight famously put sanitary napkins in his players' lockers to "motivate" them.

The story, then, is a story about gender, about masculinity, as much as it is about sexuality. It's about the association of male homosexuality with effeminacy, with not being a real man.

We live in a moment of great transition. The fear of being misperceived as gay remains fully in force among straight guys -- even while being correctly perceived as gay seems to have begun its decline into the dustbin of archaic forms of discrimination. Being gay is losing its magical power to define a person, while being perceived as gay still terrifies young guys into gender conformity.

To be sure, young gay boys are hounded, bullied, and tormented by other guys -- as are boys who may not be gay, but who are perceived as gender non-conforming. Homophobia is not dead. It's dying a slow death -- and among the first funerals is for the condemnation of celebrities -- athletes, TV and movie stars, rock and rap singers. It's unarguable that Jason Collins's courage will make it easier, if only slightly, for other to come out, even if they aren't 7 feet tall.

We've made significant progress on the acceptance of homosexuality in America, though we still have a ways to go. Jason Collins's act took courage, and it will still raise eyebrows privately, if not publicly. But we've barely begun to disentangle homophobia from our understanding of masculinity -- a task that is more about "us" than it is acceptance of "them."

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-kimmel/jason-collins-comes-out-m_b_3210318.html

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Juror: Landmark EEOC verdict in Iowa sends message

A Feb. 11, 2009 photo shows the former school and Quonset hut near atalissa, Iowa, that housed mentally disabled men while they worked at West Liberty Foods until the state of Iowa closed down the facility. A jury on Wednesday awarded $240 million to 32 mentally disabled men for what government lawyers say was years of abuse by a Texas company that arranged for them to work at an Iowa turkey processing plant and oversaw their care, work and lodging. (AP Photo/The Quad City Times, John Schultz) Mandatory Credit

A Feb. 11, 2009 photo shows the former school and Quonset hut near atalissa, Iowa, that housed mentally disabled men while they worked at West Liberty Foods until the state of Iowa closed down the facility. A jury on Wednesday awarded $240 million to 32 mentally disabled men for what government lawyers say was years of abuse by a Texas company that arranged for them to work at an Iowa turkey processing plant and oversaw their care, work and lodging. (AP Photo/The Quad City Times, John Schultz) Mandatory Credit

This Feb. 11, 2009 photo shows the recreation room of the former school and Quonset hut near Atalissa, Iowa that housed mentally disabled men while they worked at West Liberty Foods until the state of Iowa closed down the facility in 2009. A jury on Wednesday, May 1, 2013 awarded $240 million to 32 mentally disabled men for what government lawyers say was years of abuse by a now-defunct Texas company that arranged for them to work at an Iowa turkey processing plant and oversaw their care, work and lodging. (AP Photo/The Quad City Times, John Schultz) MANDATORY CREDIT: THE QUAD CITY TIMES, JOHN SCHULTZ

In this April 29, 2013, photo Henry's Turkey Service president Kenneth Henry leaves federal court in Davenport, Iowa, under the watchful eye of Sherri Brown, right, sister of one of the men who worked at the turkey processing plant and lived in what one juror described as deplorable conditions in a rural Iowa bunkhouse. Juror Robin Griebel told the Associated Press after the verdict Wednesday, May 1, 2013, that she wanted to send the message that this cannot happen again by supporting the $240 million verdict in favor of 32 mentally disabled men who were abused by the Texas company. (AP Photo/The Quad City Times, Jeff Cook) MANDATORY CREDIT: THE QUAD CITY TIMES, JEFF COOK

(AP) ? A juror says she wanted to send a message by supporting a historic $240 million verdict for 32 mentally disabled men who faced decades of abuse by a Texas company: Never again.

Juror Robin Griebel outlined her rationale for awarding $7.5 million to each former employee of Henry's Turkey Service, while the men, their attorney and relatives celebrated Wednesday's verdict.

One man planned to dress up for a steak dinner with Robert Canino, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawyer who represented them. Another hoped to use any damages recovered to fulfill his dream of buying a camper.

Griebel, of Davenport, was part of the eight-member jury for the trial, which exposed the deplorable conditions the men faced living in a rural eastern Iowa bunkhouse while working at a turkey processing plant. They were forced to work grueling jobs through injuries, were verbally and physically abused by supervisors and lived in a filthy, century-old building.

Jurors wanted to try to compensate the men for their suffering while holding the company accountable for mistreatment, Griebel said. It's the largest verdict obtained by EEOC.

"We wanted to let the men know there are people out there that do care, and we wanted to let people out there know that, in the future, this cannot happen," she told The Associated Press.

She said the jurors agreed quickly during deliberations that the company had violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. The hard part was figuring out how to calculate damages because "life does not have a dollar amount."

"They were in there for 30 years. They had their lives taken away from them," said Griebel, 48, who is unemployed. "Nothing can compensate these men for what they went through or for what they have missed out on."

Sherri Brown, sister of former worker Keith Brown, who now lives in Fayetteville, Ark., spurred state officials in 2009 to investigate the bunkhouse, which they closed and then took the men into custody.

Her brother lived there 30 years while working at West Liberty Foods, which paid Henry's $500,000 annually for the men's work. Sue Gant, an expert witness for EEOC, prepared a report showing Brown was routinely forced to carry heavy weights as punishment, locked in his room and called derogatory names ? like the other workers.

When the bunkhouse was shuttered, Brown was underweight and in need of mental health treatment, the report said. He's since had surgery for a hernia and takes sleep medicine because he suffers from nightmares about the abuse, Gant found.

Despite medical problems, he's happier than ever: living in an apartment, working at a center for the disabled, cooking his own meals, his sister said.

"What is amazing is how resilient the guys have been," she said. "They are so happy to be out of that. They have a new life."

Canino said the verdict will likely be reduced because of damage limits in the ADA, but it's not clear by how much. Lawyers will file briefs before U.S. Senior Judge Charles Wolle enters a judgment in coming weeks.

Wolle has already ordered Henry's to pay $1.3 million in back wages because the company paid workers $65 monthly ? 41 cents per hour ? after excessively docking their paychecks and Social Security benefits for the cost of their care.

Henry's, now defunct, isn't expected to have the resources to pay. Canino said he will seek to collect as much as possible by going after assets, including 1,000 acres of Texas ranchland.

Canino was traveling to Waterloo, Iowa, to celebrate the verdict with former workers. One of them, Gene Berg, was disappointed that he wasn't called to testify because he'd picked out the outfit he was going to wear and was "so proud," Canino said.

"I promised I would drive up there and have dinner with him, wearing the outfit he was going to wear in court," he said.

Keith Brown reacted to the verdict by expressing his desire to buy a camper so that he can retire on a relative's farm, Sherri Brown said.

"He kept saying, what about the money, can I get my camper? I keep trying to explain the process: That's going to be a difficult thing," she said. "But it's so good that he has a dream."

Sherri Brown said her father had good intentions when he placed Keith with Henry's in the 1970s, noting Texas officials promoted the company for training the mentally disabled. Henry's sent hundreds of men to labor camps in Iowa and elsewhere.

Henry's founder T.H. Johnson lived at the bunkhouse in Atalissa, Iowa, about 35 miles from the Illinois border, until his 2008 death. Sherri Brown said conditions started to really deteriorate then. Her brother was begging her to allow him to move to Arkansas, but wouldn't explain what was wrong.

"I knew something wasn't right," she said. She called state officials in 2009 asking them to investigate.

Within days, they shut down the former schoolhouse after the fire marshal declared it uninhabitable. It was infested with mice and cockroaches and had a leaky roof, boarded-up windows that failed to keep out cold and fire hazards that included space heaters as the only source of heat.

"I think greed got in the way. They saw the dollar signs," Sherri Brown said. "They saw how easy it was to make money and keep these guys hidden away."

___

Follow Ryan J. Foley on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/rjfoley

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-05-02-Mentally%20Disabled%20Workers/id-a03637d642944448addf88aaea9fd877

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Gene variant appears to predict weight loss after gastric bypass

May 2, 2013 ? Massachusetts General Hospital researchers have identified a gene variant that helps predict how much weight an individual will lose after gastric bypass surgery, a finding with the potential both to guide treatment planning and to facilitate the development of new therapeutic approaches to treating obesity and related conditions like diabetes. The report, published online in The American Journal of Human Genetics, is the first to identify genetic predictors of weight loss after bariatric surgery.

"We know now that bypass surgery works not by physically restricting food intake but primarily through physiological effects -- altering the regulation of appetite to decrease hunger and enhance satiety and increasing daily energy expenditure," said Lee Kaplan, HMS associate professor of medicine at Mass General and director of the hospital's Obesity, Metabolism and Nutrition Institute. He is a senior author of the report. "Genetic factors appear to determine a patient's response to gastric bypass, and the identification of markers that predict postoperative weight loss could provide important insight into those physiological mechanisms."

The research team conducted genome-wide association studies of more than 1,000 patients who had bypass surgery at Mass General from 2000 to 2011, analyzing almost 2 million gene sites for associations between specific variants and the percentage of weight lost after surgery. One specific variant at a site on chromosome 15 was most closely associated with weight loss. Individuals with two copies of the beneficial version of the gene lost an average of almost 40 percent of their presurgical weight, while those with only one copy lost around 33 percent. The single individual in the study group who had no copies of the beneficial variant lost less than 30 percent of presurgical weight.

Expression of one of the genes closest to the site of this variant was also able to predict the percentage of weight lost. In addition, experiments in a mouse model of gastric bypass indicated that expression of the corresponding version of that human gene, as well as another gene adjacent to the variant site, was altered by bypass surgery. Additional gene variants not as strongly associated with the response to bypass surgery are candidates for further study in larger groups of patients.

Two predictive models developed by Kaplan and his team have had promising initial results. One of these combines the chromosome 15 genetic variant with clinical factors such as age, gender, the presence of diabetes and exercise behaviors to predict surgical outcomes; the other includes 12 additional gene variants the investigators are studying to determine their usefulness in treatment planning.

Notably, none of the predictive gene sites identified in this study is involved in pathways previously known to influence the development of obesity, suggesting that different genes contribute to the benefits of bypass. Development of drugs that target the activity of those genes might produce some of the same benefits without the need for surgery, Kaplan said.

"The fact that genetics appears to play such an important role in how well bypass surgery works in an individual patient gives us even more evidence that obesity results from dysfunction of the biological mechanisms that regulate fat mass and body weight and not solely from aberrant behavior or limited willpower," he adds. "Identifying the involved genes opens up the potential for new classes of antiobesity therapies that mimic or exploit the molecular mechanisms so effectively used by gastric bypass."

The study was supported by National Institutes of Health grants DK093257, DK088661 and DK090956, along with grants from Merck Research Laboratories and Ethicon Endo-Surgery.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Massachusetts General Hospital. The original article was written by Sue McGreevey.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. Ida?J. Hatoum, Danielle?M. Greenawalt, Chris Cotsapas, Mark?J. Daly, Marc?L. Reitman, Lee?M. Kaplan. Weight Loss after Gastric Bypass Is Associated with a Variant at 15q26.1. The American Journal of Human Genetics, 2013; 92 (5): 827 DOI: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2013.04.009

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/health_medicine/genes/~3/Zl6l2jfGJGU/130502131901.htm

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