Baseball, softball agree to merge in Olympic bid

LONDON (AP) ? Seven years after they were cut from the games, baseball and softball have agreed to merge into a single international federation in a joint bid to return to the Olympics.

The two sports, which were last played at the 2008 Beijing Games, each failed in separate attempts to win reinstatement for the 2012 and 2016 Olympics.

The heads of the two governing bodies said Saturday they plan to unite into the International Baseball and Softball Federation in hopes of increasing their chances of coming back for the 2020 Games.

A major obstacle still stands in the way ? getting major league baseball stars to play.

"Without that, we'll have an uphill battle," International Softball Federation President Don Porter told The Associated Press.

Porter and International Baseball Federation counterpart Riccardo Fraccari submitted their merger plans to the International Olympic Committee, which approved the idea in principle but will continue to review it.

The proposal calls for men's baseball and women's softball to be played at a single venue over seven to 10 days. Each tournament would feature eight teams. Baseball and softball would be two disciplines under a single sports banner.

The merger still requires formal approval from the congress of both federations.

Porter said the combined federation would operate only for the Olympics, a plan that was questioned by IOC executive board member Denis Oswald.

"That's not enough," Oswald, who heads the Association of Summer International Sports Federations, told the AP. "They should be one federation overall. We didn't say to merge just for the Olympics."

Baseball and softball were voted off the Olympic program by the IOC in 2005, making their last appearance in Beijing. Softball had been in the Olympics since 1996, and baseball since 1992.

Softball and baseball are competing with karate, roller sports, squash, sports climbing, wakeboard and wushu for inclusion in 2020. Only one spot on the Olympic program is open.

The IOC executive board will decide next May which sport to recommend for inclusion. The final decision will be made in a vote of the full IOC in Buenos Aires in September 2013.

The absence of major league players in the Olympics was a major factor in the IOC's decision to drop baseball, and the issue remains crucial to any chance of reinstatement. Major League Baseball has been unwilling to shut down the season during the Olympics.

"If they don't propose their best athletes it will be difficult," Oswald said. "If they do, then they have a chance just like the others."

Porter and Fraccari said they have scheduled a meeting with MLB officials in New York on Aug. 1 to seek a solution.

"Most people tell me that without commitment from MLB, it's not going to work," Porter said. "It would certainly strengthen our bid if the MLB says they will commit their players."

Pro baseball leagues in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Australia are committed to taking part.

"We have to be realistic about how MLB can release their players," Fraccari said.

The Italian proposes a shortened Olympic tournament that could be completed in five or six days, making it easier for major leaguers to play. He also raised the possibility they could be released to play just for the semifinals and final.

"I think we are moving in the right direction," Fraccari said.

Porter had previously rejected offers to join forces with baseball but now sees it as necessary.

"Our preference would have been to stay separate, but we want to be back on the program and we need to find the best way to do it," Porter said. "We've got a good opportunity here. The easy thing would be to give up. For this, we've got to keep trying."

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/baseball-softball-agree-merge-olympic-bid-142843517--oly.html

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Hormone discovered that preserves insulin production and beta cell function in diabetes

ScienceDaily (July 2, 2012) ? Researchers at Duke University Medical Center have found protective, anti-diabetic functions for a hormone that, like insulin, is produced by the islet cells of the pancreas. The new hormone was found to stimulate insulin secretion from rat and human islet cells and protect islet cells in the presence of toxic, cell-killing factors used in the study.

The study, which was supported by JDRF, a global leader in type 1 diabetes research, appears in the July 3 issue of the journal Cell Metabolism.

The findings provide insight into the health and survival of beta cells, a type of islet cell that produces insulin to regulate sugar levels. The discovery could open pathways for further research toward prevention and treatments for type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes.

The researchers gave the hormone, TLQP-21 to Zucker Diabetic Fatty rats, which have a genetic propensity to develop type 2 diabetes. They saw a significant improvement in insulin and glucose (sugar) levels and less beta cell death in the treated animals.

"We think this finding is important because it is the first demonstration that TLQP-21 prevents deterioration of the beta cells and stimulates insulin secretion in the presence of glucose," said senior author Christopher B. Newgard, Ph.D., director of the Sarah W. Stedman Nutrition and Metabolism Center, and the W. David and Sarah W. Stedman Distinguished Professor. "Because diabetes starts to take hold when the number of beta cells dwindles and insulin production drops, finding the best way to produce more of this protective hormone could be valuable."

Although the researchers have so far only tested TLQP-21 in models of type 2 diabetes, they plan to test the hormone in type 1 in future studies.

Both types of diabetes are characterized by a loss of functional beta cell mass. Type 1 is an autoimmune disease characterized by selective and progressive loss of functional insulin-producing beta cells and is more severe. Type 2 is a disease characterized by beta cell dysfunction as well as peripheral insulin resistance. Most people with type 2 eventually become insulin-dependent.

"These exciting findings provide novel insight into how beta cell health and survival may be regulated in the body," said Patricia Kilian, Ph.D., director of the beta cell regeneration program at JDRF. "We are looking forward to studies that will further test how this novel hormone affects beta cell function in T1D (type 1 diabetes) models."

TLQP-21 is similar in some of its functions to another naturally occurring hormone produced in the digestive tract, glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1). Through different mechanisms, both hormones protect and promote insulin secretion. GLP-1 or drugs that stabilize it are widely used to treat type 2 diabetes, but with some side effects, including increased heart rate and reduced stomach emptying, that have resulted in cessation of therapy in some people.

"What's exciting is that in the animal studies of TLQP-21, we didn't see these side effects," said lead author Samuel B. Stephens, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher in the Stedman Center. "The rats had typical appetites and ate normal amounts of food, and didn't show any changes in heart rate or digestion patterns when they were given large doses of the hormone."

The next step is to find a small molecule that could stimulate the islet cells to produce more of the TLQP-21 hormone, or to develop more potent or stable versions of injected hormone. Research toward a longer-acting drug will help accelerate its eventual testing in type 1 diabetes, said Newgard, who is also a professor of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology.

The work was a collaboration with Geoffrey Pitt, M.D., Ph.D., an associate professor of medicine in cardiology who heads the Duke Ion Channel Research Unit, and Albert Y. Sun, M.D., a cardiovascular disease fellow in the Pitt lab, who ran the tests to determine whether TLQP-21 raised heart rates. Other authors of the study include Jonathan C. Schisler, Ph.D., Hans E. Hohmeier, M.D., Ph.D., and Jie An, Ph.D.

The work was supported by grants from the JDRF, the National Institutes of Health (DK58398), and an American Heart Association post-doctoral fellowship, as well as a sponsored research agreement with Eli Lilly, with whom Dr. Newgard consults.

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Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120702162319.htm

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Rising heat at the beach threatens largest sea turtles, climate change models show

Rising heat at the beach threatens largest sea turtles, climate change models show

Monday, July 2, 2012

For eastern Pacific populations of leatherback turtles, the 21st century could be the last. New research suggests that climate change could exacerbate existing threats and nearly wipe out the population. Deaths of turtle eggs and hatchlings in nests buried at hotter, drier beaches are the leading projected cause of the potential climate-related decline, according to a new study in the journal Nature Climate Change by a research team from Drexel University, Princeton University, other institutions and government agencies.

Leatherbacks, the largest sea turtle species, are among the most critically endangered due to a combination of historical and ongoing threats including egg poaching at nesting beaches and juvenile and adult turtles being caught in fishing operations. The new research on climate dynamics suggests that climate change could impede this population's ability to recover. If actual climate patterns follow projections in the study, the eastern Pacific population of leatherback turtles will decline by 75 percent by the year 2100.

Modeling the Ebb and Flow of Turtle Hatching with Climate Variation

"We used three models of this leatherback population to construct a climate-forced population dynamics model. Two parts were based on the population's observed sensitivity to the nesting beach climate and one part was based on its sensitivity to the ocean climate," said the study's lead author Dr. Vincent Saba, a research fishery biologist with the NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service Northeast Fisheries Science Center, visiting research collaborator at Princeton University, and a Drexel University alumnus.

Leatherback turtle births naturally ebb and flow from year to year in response to climate variations, with more hatchlings, and rare pulses of male hatchlings, entering the eastern Pacific Ocean in cooler, rainier years. Female turtles are more likely to return to nesting beaches in Costa Rica to lay eggs in years when they have more jellyfish to eat, and jellyfish in the eastern Pacific are likely more abundant during cooler seasons. Turtle eggs and hatchlings are also more likely to survive in these cooler, rainier seasons associated with the La Ni?a climate phase, as this research team recently reported in the journal PLoS ONE. In addition, temperature inside the nest affects turtles' sex ratio, with most male hatchlings emerging during cooler, rainier seasons to join the predominantly-female turtle population.

The researchers applied Saba's combined model of these population dynamics to seven climate model projections assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The climate model projections were chosen based on their ability to model El Ni?o Southern Oscillation (ENSO) patterns on the temperature and precipitation in the region of Costa Rica where this team has conducted long-term leatherback studies.

Hot Beaches, More Warm Years Threaten Turtles' Recovery

The resulting projections indicate that warmer, drier years will become increasingly frequent in Central America throughout this century. High egg and hatchling mortality associated with warmer, drier beach conditions was the most significant cause of the projected climate-related population decline: This nesting population of leatherbacks could decline by 7 percent per decade, or 75 percent overall by the year 2100.

The population is already critically low.

"In 1990, there were 1,500 turtles nesting on the Playa Grande beach," said Dr. James Spotila, the Betz Chair Professor of Environmental Science in the College of Arts and Sciences at Drexel. "Now, there are 30 to 40 nesting females per season."

Spotila, a co-author of the study, has been studying leatherback turtles at Playa Grande in Costa Rica, the largest leatherback nesting beach in the eastern Pacific, with colleagues and Drexel students, for 22 years.

Poaching of turtle eggs was a major cause of the initial decline, and was once such a widespread problem that virtually no turtle hatchlings would survive at Playa Grande. Spotila and colleagues worked with the local authorities in Costa Rica to protect the leatherbacks' nesting beaches so that turtle nests can hatch in safety. Bycatch of juvenile and adult turtles in fishing operations in the eastern Pacific remains a threat.

For the population to recover successfully, Spotila said, "the challenge is to produce as many good hatchlings as possible. That requires us to be hands-on and manipulate the beach to make sure that happens."

Spotila's research team is already investigating methods such as watering and shading turtle nests that could mitigate the impact of hot, dry beach conditions on hatching success.

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Drexel University: http://www.Drexel.edu/

Thanks to Drexel University for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/121394/Rising_heat_at_the_beach_threatens_largest_sea_turtles__climate_change_models_show

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