(May 19) Today's Top Headlines - Cop honored by president now charged with rape

Sunday, May 19, 2013 9:04 am

According to news reports, A retired Philadelphia cop whose heroism earned him a salute from President Obama and a seat next to the First Lady was arrested Saturday on rape charges, authorities said.

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Authors from across the U.S. coming to Pima Writers' Workshop

Friday, May 17, 2013 3:30 pm

Award-winning authors from across the country converge on Pima Community College later this month to inspire and encourage local writers at the 25^thannual Pima Writers’ Workshop.

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Baby in stroller Falls Into Train Tracks Mom Jumps In Before Train Barrels In Caught On Camera

Thursday, May 16, 2013 10:02 am

Baby in stroller Falls Into Train Tracks Mom Jumps In Before Train Barrels In Caught On Camera. A stroller carrying a 14-month-old girl rolled off a slanted train station platform and fell onto the tracks Wednesday, but the girl's mother leaped onto the tracks to rescue her with the help other passengers, transit officials said."What it looks like to us is that the mother became distracted by something, didn't apply the brake on the stroller and the stroller was able to move off the platform and onto the tracks," said Scott Sauer, director of system safety for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority. The accident happened Wednesday afternoon at the 56th Street station of the Market-Frankford Line in west Philadelphia. The platform at the station is slanted slightly for drainage purposes, Sauer said.Surveillance video shows a woman on the eastbound platform with the girl in a jogging stroller, which slowly rolls forward and topples over onto the tracks about 5 feet below. What initially appears to be the girl flying out of the stroller apparently was just a towel or a bag. The stroller comes to rest on the outer rail, which carries no charge. The woman is seen jumping down and lifting the girl to a man waiting on the platform. Other passengers ran to help, and one used an emergency call box to alert SEPTA police, who held an incoming train at the preceding stop.The infant was taken to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia for treatment of a cut on her forehead. Sauer said during a news conference that watching the video was "gut-wrenching.""With the stroller moving at such a slow rate of speed, you know, you want to call out to someone, `Hey, the stroller's moving! Somebody grab the stroller,'" Sauer said. He said the line is one of SEPTA's busiest, with trains running every six to 10 minutes. SEPTA police said no charges will be filed but the accident serves as a reminder for other riders to lock stroller brakes when waiting on platforms.

ObamaCare: What You Need to Know

Wednesday, May 15, 2013 10:54 am

(NewsUSA) - Many of the key provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act -- better known as ObamaCare -- are already coming into effect this year.

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The Guide -- Week of May 15

Wednesday, May 15, 2013 4:00 am

Century Theatres

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(May 14) Today's Top Headlines - Press Gaggle by White House Press Secretary Jay Carney

Tuesday, May 14, 2013 9:46 am

MR. CARNEY: Thanks for joining us on this quick trip to New York City. You heard, obviously, the President today in his press conference with the Prime Minister. So I hope that you found that helpful and useful, but I am here also to take your questions. Anybody have anything?

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How Women Help Each Other Succeed

Sunday, May 12, 2013 10:00 pm

(StatePoint) Forget the old stereotypes that women need to be cutthroat and competitive to succeed. A new networking trend shows that cooperation is a great way to combat the challenges women face in business.

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The key to being in-demand your entire career: Be a 'producer'

Sunday, May 12, 2013 10:00 pm

(BPT) - From January 2010 to February 2013, the average unemployment rate was 8.8 percent, a stark contrast to the average of 5.3 percent from January 2003 to December 2006. Though the unemployment rate - currently at its lowest point since 2009 - has begun to improve, it is a slow recovery; the percentage of unemployed Americans out of work for more than one year has skyrocketed from 10 percent in 2007 to more than 30 percent today, according to The Pew Charitable Trusts.

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Oro Valley earns third “Playful City USA” designation

Friday, May 10, 2013 4:00 am

For the third consecutive year, the Town of Oro Valley has earned the “Playful City USA” designation from national non-profit KaBOOM! Presented by The Humana Foundation, Playful City USA is a national program advocating for local policies that increase play opportunities for children and is a key platform in combating the play deficit.

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Mother's Day: A Day for Reflection

Thursday, May 9, 2013 9:36 am

Most people spend Mother’s Day bestowing flowers, gifts and heartfelt sentiments upon their moms. But for some, knowing how to honor their mother is not so easy. After all, mothers are only human, and not all of them are perfect.

A Selection Of Books For Every Dad

Thursday, May 9, 2013 4:44 am

(NAPSI)—There’s good news for those who are tired of giving dad a new version of the same old tie for Father’s Day.

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Why--And How--To Boost Your Money IQ

Thursday, May 9, 2013 4:44 am

(NAPSI)--Many people might get and keep their hands on more money if they had a better grasp of finances. Consider these statistics from Indiana State University:

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What's Up UA? - UA Geneticists Find Causes for Severe Childhood Epilepsies

Wednesday, May 8, 2013 5:09 pm

Researchers at the University of Arizona have successfully determined the genetic mutations causing severe epilepsies in seven out of 10 children for whom the cause of the disorder could not be determined clinically or by conventional genetic testing.

Instead of sequencing each gene one at a time, the team used a technique called whole-exome sequencing: Rather than combing through all of the roughly 3 billion base pairs of an individual's entire genome, whole-exome-sequencing deciphers only actual genes, and nearly all of them simultaneously.

"My initial hope was that we would find something in one out of the 10 children in our study. But a 70 percent success rate is beyond anyone's imagination," said study leader Michael Hammer, who is a research scientist in the UA's Arizona Research Labs Division of Biotechnology and a member of the UA BIO5 Institute.

For Hammer, the research hit very close to home. Just last year, his lab tracked down the mutation that had caused the severe – and ultimately fatal – epilepsy in his teenage daughter.

"I figured, if we could do this for one child, we could do it for others." Hammer explained. "These are children who have had every test imaginable and tried every possible drug combination, and nobody has figured out where their seizures come from and how to stop them."

The children who participated in the study, published online in the journal Epilepsia, all suffered from severe seizure disorders, and most of them started having seizures within the first year or two after birth.

Unlike individuals afflicted with epilepsy later in life, many of whom can live normal lives with the right medical oversight and medications, early-onset epilepsy can be devastating. Children often develop other severe complications such as intellectual disability, autism and loss of muscle tone or coordination. Early death is not uncommon.

"Because their seizures are not well controlled, and that firestorm of electrical activity in the brain is bad for brain development, the damage can be extensive," added Linda Restifo, a professor in the UAdepartment of neurology and a BIO5 member who co-authored the study. "The earlier the seizures start and the more severe and frequent they are, the more likely they are to leave the child with permanent developmental disability."

"The sooner we can catch problems in children and understand what is causing them, the better the chance we have to try and correct them," Hammer added.

To identify changes in the DNA that are the most likely cause of the disorders, the team focused on a class of mutations called de novo mutations: "typos" in the DNA sequence that are present only in the child. In order to find such mutations, the study included both parents and their child.

Overall, the team found 15 mutations in nine children, seven of which are known or likely to cause epilepsy. No mutations could be found in one of the children.

"In four of the patients. we found mutations that were already known to be associated with epilepsy," said Krishna Veeramah, a postdoctoral fellow in Hammer's group and the study's first author. "However, three patients had mutations in genes that were not previously associated with epilepsy in humans but presented plausible explanations for the disorder."

"The fact that we found three genes – in a study involving only 10 subjects – that had never been implicated in epilepsy before suggests that many more genetic defects related to developmental brain disorders remain to be discovered," Veeramah said.

One of the participants in the study was Ashley Wilhelm, a 14-year-old girl from Phoenix, Ariz., whose seizures started when she was only 5 months old. Her first seizures appeared to be triggered by fever, leading doctors to believe they were just that – a side effect of the fever.

"But she soon began to have more and more seizures, and they would last half an hour or longer," said her mother, Ann. "We had all sorts of tests done, but the doctors kept saying her brain was normal, and that they didn't see any reason she'd have those seizures."

Ashley, whose development has severely suffered as a consequence of the repeated seizures, was enrolled in the study through her neurologist, Dinesh Talwar, who co-authored the paper.

Even though her treatment is unlikely to change with the new information, the family said the results brought "more relief than we can explain."

"Since insurance wouldn't pay for the testing, and we couldn't afford it on our own, we were very grateful we were able to participate in the study," said Jeff Wilhelm, Ashley's father. "If such a test could be done much earlier, it would ease the pain for everyone involved. What if our son had decided not to consider having children of his own out of concern they might have the disorder?"

"The results from this study have at last given us a breakthrough," said the mother of another participating teenager. "We had pursued every possible avenue to understand what might be responsible for his epilepsy – magnetic resonance imaging, CT scans, searches for gross chromosome abnormalities or markers associated with epilepsy – with no success."

"Although the discovery doesn't yet give us a treatment, it gives us hope for finding one," she said. "As more research is done on this mutation, drugs to control our son's seizures will be identified. If more children with epilepsy can be studied and families with children with similar mutations can organize and share resources, there will be more progress."

Hammer said the approach is applicable to other conditions in which conventional genetic testing has failed to reveal the cause.

"Our work bridges research and clinical practice," he added. "We can sequence all the genes in your genome in a matter of days and report it to the patient's family and the physician. That may make a difference in the treatment and management of the disorder in question."

Centers with the capabilities to do this kind of analysis are few and far between.

"Other centers that do this kind of work will sequence your genome and tell you where and what the mutation is in the DNA sequence, but it's not that simple," Hammer said. "In most cases, we find a mutation in a gene not previously known to cause disease, so we need to perform a follow-up study to find out what that mutation actually does."

To perform these follow-up studies, the UA team has established collaborations with leading scientists at the UA and at other institutions.

"Right now, the benefit to families is primarily to get answers," said Restifo. "The long-term goal is to collect this kind of information from more children, which will hopefully lead to new research into medications that improve brain development and function."

Hammer added: "In the meantime, a molecular diagnosis provides immediate relief to the unnecessary guilt parents might feel for their role in causing their child's suffering. They want answers, not endless doctors visits and tests with negative results, or to have their hopes raised and dashed over and over."

Encouraged by the success of their approach so far, Hammer and his colleagues already have bigger plans.

"We hope to involve other clinical areas such as cardiology, immunology, gastroenterology – anything that we can apply molecular diagnostics or clinical genomics to at the UA, we want to explore. We want to make the University the core for clinical diagnostics using new sequencing technologies for at least the entire Southwest."

UA pediatric geneticist Robert Erickson, another co-author and member of the UA Steele Children's Research Center added, "these efforts will be very important in the diagnosis of newborns with unusual birth defects."

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(May 8) Today's top headlines - One man charged, as Cleveland kidnap victims return home

Wednesday, May 8, 2013 3:05 pm

It's been more than 24 hours since three grown women and a 6-year-old child were rescued from a home in Cleveland where they were being held hostage.

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The Guide -- Week of May 8

Wednesday, May 8, 2013 4:00 am

Century Theatres

The ‘write’ way to cope with keeping a journal

Wednesday, May 8, 2013 12:00 am

Nineteenth century author Henry David Thoreau kept a journal of his reflections for the last 25 years of his life.

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Simple ways to reduce excess sugar in your diet this summer

Tuesday, May 7, 2013 10:00 pm

(BPT) - Warm weather offers many sweet delights, from trips to the beach and more free time, to seasonal foods and soirees with family and friends. Unfortunately, many of the foods we commonly associate with spring and summer are high in added sugars. Hidden sugar in summer foods can make it a challenge to regulate calories and stay on track with your health goals.

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Digital apps make learning fun for young children

Tuesday, May 7, 2013 10:00 pm

Today’s children grow up in a vastly different technological world than that of their parents or grandparents. While you may fondly recall a favorite storybook stored on your nightstand, many kids today are reading using their parent’s smartphone or tablet. Digital devices are becoming a regular part of a child’s life, and parents should understand what this means for how kids learn and grow.

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Address your skin's needs through a holistic approach to facial skincare

Sunday, May 5, 2013 10:00 pm

(BPT) - Many women cite a number of external factors that can trigger sensitive skin flare-ups, including harsh ingredients, weather and makeup. What they may not know is that lifestyle choices can also influence the health and appearance of their skin.

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How to Prepare Fast, Inexpensive Family Meals

Sunday, May 5, 2013 10:00 pm

(StatePoint) There are unlimited excuses you can make to skip cooking. But if lack of time or money is the reason you’re getting take-out yet again, consider this -- plenty of fresh, inventive meals can be prepared quickly and on a budget.

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What's Up UA? - UA Research Suggests Link Between Elevated Blood Sugar, Alzheimer's Risk

Sunday, May 5, 2013 8:39 pm

A new University of Arizona study, published in the journal Neurology, suggests a possible link between elevated blood sugar levels and risk for developing Alzheimer's disease.

About 5 percent of men and women, ages 65 to 74, have Alzheimer's disease, and it is estimated that nearly half of those age 85 and older may have the disease, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among the known factors that contribute to the disease are age and genetics. Scientists also think that high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes may increase risk.

Although the link between diabetes and Alzheimer's has been studied, UA researchers wondered if elevated blood sugar levels in non-diabetic individuals also might indicate a higher risk for developing Alzheimer's disease.

"There have been studies that have linked diabetes to Alzheimer's disease as a risk factor," said Alfred Kaszniak, UA professor of psychology and a co-author on the study. "What was not known when we began this work is whether that risk was only at levels of blood sugar that qualify for diagnoses of diabetes, or in the borderline or pre-diabetic range, or would we also see a relationship across the so-called normal range of blood glucose?"

The researchers used fluorodeoxyglucose (18F) positron electron tomography, or FDG PET, a medical imaging technique that produces three-dimensional images of metabolic activity in the brain. Fasting serum glucose levels – blood sugar levels following several hours of not eating – are routinely acquired as part of the FDG PET protocol.

"When compared to those without the disease, Alzheimer's disease patients demonstrate a pattern of reduced brain metabolism in particular brain regions," explained Christine Burns, lead author on the study and a UA pre-doctoral student in psychology. "What we show is an association between elevated fasting serum glucose levels and a similar pattern of reduced metabolism in these same AD-related brain regions in cognitively healthy adults."

The researchers studied data on 124 cognitively normal, non-diabetic adults with a family history of Alzheimer's disease. The individuals, who ranged in age from 47 to 68, were among participants in a larger study, led by Dr. Eric Reiman, executive director of the Banner Alzheimer's Institute in Phoenix, looking at a variety of Alzheimer's risk factors, including genetic risk.

The link between high blood sugar and reduced brain metabolism existed regardless of whether individuals carried the Apolipoprotein E4 gene variant, an established risk factor for the development of Alzheimer's disease.

In addition to suggesting a link between elevated blood sugar levels and Alzheimer's risk in non-diabetic individuals, the study also shows promise for the use of brain imaging techniques like PET in identifying Alzheimer's risk and developing early preventative interventions, researchers say.

"Right now, if you want to develop a drug or evaluate some other kind of a preventive measure for Alzheimer's disease, the labor and expense is prohibitive," Kaszniak said. "If you recruit people who may be at some risk, but are 20 years away from developing signs of the illness, what drug company or governmental agency is going to fund research that follows people for 20 years to see whether something is effective in prevention?

"However, if you have a biologic marker, it suggests what areas you should really focus on in those very expensive longitudinal studies," he said.

Burns said she hopes the findings will inform ongoing work designed to help develop early Alzheimer's interventions.

"A lot of valuable research is focused on treatment and slowing decline in Alzheimer's patients," she said. "I'm interested in complementing this work with interventions that can be implemented earlier on, perhaps at middle age."

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How to Live Life on Your Own Terms

Friday, May 3, 2013 2:05 pm

If your daily routine has you wanting more out of life, you’re not alone. Work, chores and other day-to-day responsibilities may make the concept of “living life on one’s own terms” sound unattainable.

Your Love Can Help You Win $11,000 Diamond Earrings

Thursday, May 2, 2013 4:44 am

(NAPSI)--Wedding bands and engagement rings are more than gifts to mark an occasion; they symbolize a couples eternal love and commitment. Now, that everlasting love can also lead to more lovely jewelry. Thats because through May 21, 2013, people can share their stories of Everlasting Love online for a chance to win $11,000 Erica Courtney diamond earrings.

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Warm-weather entertaining made easy with expert tips and recipes

Wednesday, May 1, 2013 10:00 pm

(BPT) - Warmer temperatures often mean a busier social calendar. So whether you’re planning a meal to enjoy al fresco, or whipping up a sweet treat for a neighborhood block party, it’s a great time of year to experiment in the kitchen.

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Are Women Better Leaders than Men?

Wednesday, May 1, 2013 10:00 pm

(StatePoint) With more women rising to top positions in business and government, the topic of women and their capacity for leadership has been all the buzz in the media lately.

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