Washington, Oct 2 (ANI): Sarah Palin has struggled after her successful entry onto the national stage. Though she continues to attract large crowds on the campaign trail and delight social conservatives, her performance in the past few weeks has raised questions, even among conservatives, about whether McCain made a wise choice.

As a result, Thursday's vice presidential debate is shaping up as a career-defining moment for Palin, one that could dictate whether she is ultimately remembered as the GOP's election-year savior or as an overwhelmed neophyte who never belonged on the national stage, CBS News reported.

Conscious of the importance of Thursday's face-off with Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden, Palin is in the midst of three days of intense debate preparation with McCain aides at the Arizona senator's Sedona ranch.

Though some believe that expectations have grown so low that Palin is virtually guaranteed to exceed them on Thursday, there is a growing sense that the Alaska Governor must do something positive to counteract the increasingly negative perception of her amongst opinion leaders.

"A week ago, for her to just not drool on herself and be commanding would have been enough," said CBS News consultant and former White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers. "I don't think that's really true anymore."

Palin has been widely criticized for her performance in interviews with CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric and ABC World News anchor Charlie Gibson, which yielded moments such as Palin's tortured defense of her claim that Alaska's proximity to Russia stands as a foreign-policy credential in an interview with Couric.

Criticism has also been leveled at Palin's handlers, who have limited the media's access to the Alaska Governor to such a degree that the press briefly rebelled against the campaign's tight limits on access.

In the CBS News poll taken just after the GOP convention, Palin's favorable rating stood at 44 percent, while her unfavorable rating was just 22 percent; by last week, her favorable rating had fallen to 37 percent while her unfavorable rating had risen to 29 percent.

Dan Bartlett, a CBS News consultant and former counselor for President Bush, said that Palin will likely benefit from lowered expectations Thursday. (ANI)

Be first to comment this article | Add as favourites (2)

Washington, Sept 4 (ANI): A new study in mice has shown that quercetin, a naturally occurring substance found in fruits and vegetables, reduces susceptibility to influenza infection after stressful exercise.

The study was conducted by J. Mark Davis, E.A. Murphy, J.L. McClellan, and M.D. Carmichael, of the University of South Carolina and J.D. Gangemi of Clemson University.

Quercetin, a close chemical relative of resveratrol, is present in a variety of fruits and vegetables, including red onions, grapes, blueberries, tea, broccoli and red wine.

It has been shown to have anti-viral properties in cell culture experiments and some animal studies, but none of these studies has looked specifically at the flu.

The study was conducted using mice, but Davis believes that if quercetin provides a similar benefit for humans, it could help endurance athletes, soldiers and others undergoing difficult training regimens, as well as people under psychological stress.

For the study, Davis and his colleagues examined four groups of mice. Two groups performed three consecutive days of running to fatigue on a treadmill to mimic a short period of stressful exercise. One group of runners received quercetin, the other did not.

The remaining two groups did not exercise. One non-exercise group received quercetin while the other did not. All four groups were then exposed to a common flu virus, H1N1.

The researchers found that stressful exercise increased susceptibility to the flu. The mice that exercised to fatigue for three days were more likely to develop the flu than the mice that did not exercise. The mice that exercised developed the flu much sooner than those that did not.

Mice that exercised and took quercetin had nearly the same rate of illness as those that did not exercise. In other words, quercetin cancelled out the negative effect of stressful exercise.

The severity of the symptoms among those mice that either did not exercise or those that exercised but took the quercetin was about the same. Quercetin had protective effects for the mice that did not exercise.

"This is the first controlled experimental study to show a benefit of short-term quercetin feedings on susceptibility to respiratory infection following exercise stress. Quercetin feeding was an effective preventive strategy to offset the increase in susceptibility to infection that was associated with stressful exercise," said Davis.

The study appears in the current issue of the American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology. (ANI)

Be first to comment this article | Add as favourites (11)

Washington, September 22 (ANI): A new study of the last 2,000 years of charcoal evidence has suggested that human impacts have curtailed fires in most areas in the 20th century.

Though climate has been implicated by the study as a major driver of wildfires in the last 2,000 years, human activities, such as land clearance and fire suppression during the industrial era (since 1750) have created large swings in burning, first increasing fires until the late 1800s, and then dramatically reducing burning in the 20th century.

The study, by a nine-member team from seven institutions, led by Jennifer R. Marlon, a doctoral student in geography at the University of Oregon, analyzed 406 sedimentary charcoal records from lake beds on six continents.

The researchers found that a 100-year decline in wildfires worldwide - from 1870 to 1970 - was recorded despite increasing temperatures and population growth.

According to Marlon, "Based on the charcoal record, we believe the reduction in the amount of biomass burned during those 100 years can be attributed to a global expansion of agriculture and intensive grazing of livestock that reduced fuels plus general landscape fragmentation and fire-management efforts."

Charcoal levels have drawn attention during the past 25 years because these data can track wildfire activity - both incidence and severity - over long time periods, providing information when similar data from satellites or fire-scarred trees do not exist.

During the last 2,000 years, fire activity was highest between 1750 and 1870.

"This was a period when several factors combined to generate conditions favorable to wildfires," Marlon said.

"Population growth and European colonization caused massive changes in land cover, and human-induced increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations may have started to increase biomass levels and fuels," she added.

From A.D. 1 to about 1750, wildfires worldwide declined from earlier years, probably resulting from a long-term global cooling trend that offset any possible influence of population growth and related land-use changes.

Researchers pointed to charcoal evidence in western North America as an example of this trend. Similar records also were found in Central America and tropical areas of South America.

In the western U.S. and in Asia, researchers noted, "initial colonization may have been marked by an increased use of fire for land clearance."

Subsequently, expansion of intensive agriculture and grazing, as well as forest management activities, likely reduced wildfire activity.

"Our results strongly suggest that climate change has been the main driver of global biomass burning for the past two millennia," the researchers concluded.

"The decline in biomass burning after A.D. 1870 is opposite to the expected effect of rising carbon dioxide and rapid warming, but contemporaneous with an unprecedentedly high rate of population increase," they said. (ANI)

Be first to comment this article | Add as favourites (3)

London, Sept.27 (ANI): Hate preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed is reported paid 4,000 pounds in cash for his 27-year-old daughter's bust-boosting surgery. Little did he know that she would use her newly acquired assets to launch her pole-dancing career.

Bakri, 50, who rants about Western "depravity" and blasts women who flaunt their sexuality, secretly paid for Yasmin to increase her A cup size to a DD, while stilling living on government benefits.

"Her dad's ashamed of her behaviour but she'd have never have become a pole dancer if he hadn't paid for her bigger boobs," The Sun quoted a friend of Bakri's daughter, Yasmin Foostok, as saying. "She was always self-conscious about her size and managed to convince him she should have it done. She played the daddy's girl and said it would make her feel more of a mother when she was breast-feeding her children. He went along with it and even went to the top London clinic with her where he paid for the surgery in cash," she added. "The rest of the family were set against it, but he insisted she should have her way if it would make her a better mother. But it backfired disastrously because her new figure encouraged her to go out and flaunt her new body, " the unnamed friend said.

The new revelation will spark further public outrage against the fanatical Muslim cleric, who was kicked out of Britain, and now resides in Beirut in Lebanon.

Bakri paid for the surgery five years ago. Yasmin is also understood to have had nose enhancement work. Twice-wed Yasmin, who has changed her name from Youssra, is dating a 26-year-old satellite TV installer. She lives on income support, pays 900-pounds-a-month as rent and 240-punds-a-month as council tax, which she receives from the state. (ANI)

Be first to comment this article | Add as favourites (4)