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."
___
Follow Stephen Wilson on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/stevewilsonap
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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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 journalNature 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.
###
Drexel University: http://www.Drexel.edu/
Thanks to Drexel University for this article.
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The other day I had a discussion with a quality assurance (QA) lead that made me think about a time a few years ago that I consider my ?best days as a technical writer,? if such a thing exists. It was a time when I was in a much better writing flow.
In our discussion, the QA lead explained that he recently attended scrum master training (part of agile methodology). The scrum trainer emphasized the importance of having these three roles on any project team:
Business analyst: Relays requirements and goals for the business department. These requirements are what the company wants users to do through the application.
Functional analyst: Relays desired functionality from the customer. These requirements are what the customer wants the application to do, independent of the company?s goals.
Technical analyst: Finds compromises between requirements from the business department and customer, letting both know what is technically possible given the constraints of the project.
I don?t know how accurate I am in characterizing these roles, but I?m moving towards a larger point.
What We Lack
In our organization, we don?t use these same terms. We have a ?product owner,? ?solutions manager,? and ?project manager.? Their roles don?t exactly align with the three analyst roles described above, but in some ways they do. The product owner relays the company?s goals and needs with the product. The solutions manager interfaces with the product owner and oversees the strategic direction of the project. The project manager works as the tactician, working to complete requirements, plan sprints, and coordinate team assignments and overcome challenges.
What we lack, the QA lead explained, is the functional analyst ? the person who can represent the end-user?s perspective, someone who interacts enough with end users that he or she knows all their pain points, frustrations, successes, and experiences with the application, and who can then inform the team about these user experiences.
Living in the End-User Space
The time when I lived more in the end-user space is when I found my best rhythm and flow as a technical writer. I wrote about this in a series of posts titled?From Overlooked to Center Stage. ?Basically, several years ago, when I was a new technical writer in our organization, I was dedicated to one product. I played many roles with that product: I wrote documentation, I provided support, I trained users on the product, did testing, created marketing materials, and even did some ad-hoc usability.
Playing many roles as a technical writer
When I did all of this for the product, I became a subject matter expert, and I often knew more about how the product worked and what users wanted than almost anyone else on the team. I logged a ton of bugs and enhancement requests, I participated in design reviews, iteration planning, and presentations to senior leaders. I was a main go-to person for the application, and it felt great to possess so much knowledge and be an integral player on the team.
Lately ?I?ve been reading?The Insider?s Guide to Technical Writing, by Krista Van Laan. So far it?s lively and right on target. What I find especially relevant is Krista?s emphasis on user interaction. Krista writes,
It?s not uncommon for product designers and developers to get so caught up in how to make a product do something, that they forget why that functionality is needed. They can lose sight of the needs of the real person who may be depending on that product to perform a task fundamental to her job?s success, safety, or convenience. (p. 14)
In other words, the people in companies that are supposed to be building tools and services for end users often forget those end users. They get lost in creating requirements documents, interfacing with project stakeholders, planning iterations, fixing bugs, and such. Very little time is spent, if any at all, interacting with actual end users.
Krista goes on to note what happens when you, as a technical writer, start speaking up and connecting various groups together:
An unexpected aspect of being a technical writer is that it puts you in a position (sometimes against your will) of ?stirring the post? and initiating changes in product appearance, product function, and sometimes even how and to whom a product is marketed. How does this happen?
Well, it?s a funny thing, but when a technical writer starts asking questions about a product, people start looking at it and thinking about it in ways they didn?t before. And when a technical writer brings people together from different departments who might not normally talk with each other, there can be constructive dialog that otherwise would not have occurred. It can be very exciting to sit back at a lively meeting and realize you provided the spark that ignited all this exchange of ideas. One of a technical writer?s most important functions is to spark discovery ? sometimes in the most unlikely places. (p.14)
In other words, when the technical writer contributes perspectives and research from various groups, these perspectives spark important and often unanticipated discussions among the project team. Whether you?re bringing together users from different departments, or bringing together project leaders with end users, the resulting interactions can spark quite an innovative fire.
User knowledge empowers the team
Changing Tides
Eventually, the situation at my work changed. Given the growing number of users, after a while someone decided we needed a dedicated support person for the application. I already created a lot of video tutorials, so I didn?t need to deliver regular training. The product hit a dark phase with the budget, where it stopped changing regularly and soon had just one developer. Development efforts focused on fixing bugs rather than moving forward with major functionality and interface changes. Our department underwent a major reorganization, and our group of tech writers switched from a project-embedded model to a centralized model. Suddenly we all started working next to each other rather than our project teams.
It was great being next to other writers, and the point of the reorganization was to share our services to the whole organization rather with to a specific group. But serving the whole organization meant that we never became so integrated with any one product that we played more roles than technical writer. No more support, no more QA, no more key player in design meetings. We pretty much became a specialist for help materials only.
I was a lot happier when I was more integrated with end users. I could really go in depth with the product. Their questions forced me to find answers. The more questions, the more answers I rounded up. I became more than a peripheral player. I felt like my presence mattered on the team, and I loved the knowledge and experience I received from interacting with users. I was the connection point between the users and the team, and I could speak on behalf of the users. I almost always participated in project meetings because I could represent the user perspective, which most everyone agreed was critical.
Returning to That Role
Today, my isolation from project teams makes me much less available for training, support, and other ad-hoc opportunities to relay the end-user?s perspective. I have pondered about potentially returning to a model where I?m more embedded with project teams (see my post?The Proximity Problem for Technical Writers). However,?embedding with the project team isn?t the right direction either. I want to become more integrated and embedded with end users. Being a user champion doesn?t require me to sit next to developers and other project managers. In fact, attending fewer project meetings might be a good idea, because I wouldn?t be so impatient with users when they ?don?t get it.?
Here are several techniques one might adopt to become more integrated and connected with user feedback and user perspectives:
You could review user feedback daily.?In our organization, user feedback comes in via e-mail, forums, social media, and blog comments. It can be easy to ignore this feedback, but in reality, this feedback should drive documentation topics. These are the ?red lines? that Philip Hodgson mentions in his insightful article, Help! What The Beatles can teach us about writing support material. Your could set aside an hour or so each day to review this user feedback.
You could relay user feedback in daily scrums.?You may not get invited to project design meetings or prototype reviews (because most project leaders don?t really understand the tech writer?s role). But nearly everyone of us is expected to attend a scrum meeting. Rather than report that you?re ?writing documentation,? instead relay trends in feedback from users. You can use this opportunity to communicate that you?re the voice of the user.
You could connect ?known limitations? in the application to JIRA items.?In my help topics, I always include a topic called Known Limitations. In my Known Limitations page, I explain all the things that we know the product can?t do (or which users frequently ask or complain about). It?s my way of being transparent and explicit about all the application?s shortcomings. Rather than just leaving this a topic in the help, you could connect each of the known limitations to items in JIRA (or whatever project/issue tracking system you use).
You could add an ?Ask a Question? button in the documentation. Many of our users ask questions in our forums, but I can also solicit feedback by adding an ?Ask a Question? or ?Submit Feedback? button in the ?documentation pages (here?s a sample). Since most people turn to help for questions, this may be an easy way to probe what those questions are. The more questions you get from users, the more answers you dig up. The more answers, the more knowledge you accrue. The more knowledge, the better your ability to represent the user and the product.
For more tips, see my post, 10 Ways to Gather Feedback from End Users.
The Main Point
All of these techniques are good ideas, but they are subordinate to a larger direction: writing from an end-user perspective rather than a product perspective. Today, as I was sorting through user feedback in the forums, trying to understand it and organize it and make sense of it all, I started making notes and thinking about where and how I would integrate all of this feedback into the documentation. That?s when I realized something. I had made a shift from writing product-centered documentation to user-centered documentation.
With product-centered documentation, you make your way through the application, screen by screen sometimes as you describe all the main workflows, tasks, features, and functions. The product is the starting point.
In contrast, with user-centered documentation, the user is your starting point. You write the documentation by making your way through user feedback, thread by thread, e-mail by e-mail, addressing all the main concerns, questions, and pain points that users are having.
This shift is critical to writing help. I admit that in the early stages of a product, when you don?t have access to user feedback, writing user-centered documentation is more challenging. But why couldn?t immerse yourself ?ethnographically in the environment of your users, getting to know their business needs and goals, their frustrations and successes. Once you understand the user, you will be much more inclined to anticipate their experiences with the application.
It?s not that hard to interact with end users. Phone calls, in-person interviews, e-mail questions and answers ? one could find a way. The problem is that it puts us a bit out of our comfort zones. It?s so much easier to sit in little cubes and work quietly at our computers.
This leads me to another memory during my best day as a technical writer. When I worked in that department I described earlier, where I was dedicated to one product only, a project leader I worked with had a saying that would run across his computer while it was in screen-saver mode: ?NIHITO.? It stood for Nothing important happens in the office. It?s true for documentation just as much as for project management.
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Tags: interacting with users, multiple roles, usability, user-centered documentation
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Confronted with a stumbling U.S. recovery and a financial crisis in Europe, the Federal Reserve decided Wednesday that it would extend a program known as "Operation Twist" aimed at pushing down long-term interest rates and boosting the economy.
The Fed said in a statement that while the economy has been expanding modestly throughout the year, growth in employment has slowed recently and unemployment remains elevated.
It said it expects economic growth to continue to grow moderately over coming quarters and then to pick up gradually. "Consequently, the Committee anticipates that the unemployment rate will decline only slowly toward levels that it judges to be consistent with its dual mandate," the statement said. It shaved its forecast for economic growth in 2012, projecting that GDP would grow at a 2.4 percent rate max rather than the 2.9 percent pace it predicted in April.
As for unemployment, it now expects the jobless rate to stick around the 8.0 to 8.2?percent range, from 8.2 percent now and its April projection of around 7.8 to 8.0 percent.
The Fed also voted to keep interest rates unchanged at historic lows at least until the end of 2014.
Its assessment of the economy appeared slightly more negative than its previous outlook in April. For example, it pointed out that the pace of?household spending seems to have?slowed and that the housing sector remains depressed, despite some recent signs of improvement.
It also took pains to?mention the situation in Europe, where eurozone officials are struggling to contain a debt crisis that threatens to engulf the continent and?slow economies throughout the world, including the U.S. "Furthermore, strains in global financial markets continue to pose significant downside risks to the economic outlook," the Fed said in its statement.
Given all that, the?Fed said it would continue?through the end of year to sell short-term securities and buy longer-term bonds to push down long-term interest rates. That?strategy, known popularly as Operation Twist,?originally was meant to end soon.
The Fed did not decide to provide the economy with what some felt would be?stronger medicine by performing another massive round of bond buying, known as quantitative easing, and expanding its portfolio of assets. But Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in a news conference that the Fed was ready to do more to help the economy, if needed.
Story: Federal Reserve takes path of least resistance
"The Fed move to extend the Operation Twist program is conservative and wary. The central bank is signaling its concern for the economic future, both American and European, without unduly damaging the present by weakening the dollar," Worldwide Markets Chief?Market Strategist Joseph Trevisani told Reuters.
The Fed has left rates unchanged, adding that the economy has expanded moderately, but growth in employment has slowed, with CNBC's Hampton Pearson, Rick Santelli, Steve Liesman & Bob Pisani; Bill Gross, Pimco; Charles Reinhard, Morgan Stanley; and Ken...
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I?m home from an eleven day road trip vacation with my family ? we drove through 14 states, plus some of Canada ? about 3100 miles in all! Here?s my first scrapbook page about our travels !
Credits: Loveliness Papers and Duality Font.
Digital Scrapbook Technique for Blending a Photo with Background Paper:
Try blending a photo with digital scrapbook paper to create a unique background. First add a simple digital scrapbook paper for the background (TIP: it will look best if there is some texture, but not TOO much). Next, add the photo, stretching it to completely cover the background. Then, change the ?blend mode? of the photo, by selecting an option in the pull-down menu above your layers pallet. For the above layout, I chose a waterfall photo set to the ?overlay mode?. I also reduced the layer opacity to 60%. If your background photo isn?t large enough, try dividing it up like I did with mine ? you only need enough to cover the visible parts of the background .
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