Kershaw?retires 18 straight, Dodgers blank Brewers

By JOE RESNICK

Associated Press

Associated Press Sports

updated 7:31 p.m. ET April 28, 2013

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Clayton Kershaw made a nifty return to form.

Kershaw retired 18 consecutive batters and struck out 12 in eight dominant innings as the Los Angeles Dodgers, boosted by Carl Crawford's two home runs, beat the Milwaukee Brewers 2-0 Sunday.

The 2011 NL Cy Young winner began the season with a shutout over San Francisco, and soon extended his scoreless streak to 16 innings.

Kershaw (3-2) failed to get through the sixth inning in each of his last two starts.

"It was good to see Kershaw back to his old self," Crawford said. "He struggled his last two outings, so to get him back on track is a plus for us."

Kershaw left the clubhouse before reporters were allowed in after the game to tend to a personal matter.

"He's a great pitcher," said Ramon Hernandez, joined the Dodgers this season and hadn't caught the All-Star in a game. "Kershaw locates every pitch. He has an idea what he wants to do. He's very smart. He always has a plan what he wants to do with every hitter he's facing."

Kershaw scattered four hits and didn't walk a batter while lowering his ERA to 1.73. The left-hander, who led the NL in ERA in each of the previous two seasons, hasn't allowed more than three earned runs in any of his last 18 starts - the longest active streak in the majors. The last time he did was July 24, 2012, when he gave up eight at St. Louis.

"We ran into some good pitching," Brewers manager Ron Roenicke said, shaking his head. "This guy today, I wouldn't want any part of him. When he's on, you're going to struggle to score. When he's commanding the fastball inside, you're in big trouble because there's not much you can do with the pitch. And he knows when to throw the offspeed stuff away, so you can't cover all of the plate."

Kershaw stranded runners in scoring position in each of the first two innings, retiring Jonathan Lucroy on a double-play grounder in the first and striking out Martin Maldonado to end the second.

Kershaw gave up a leadoff double in the eighth to Carlos Gomez. The speedy runner tried to advance on Maldonado's broken-bat comebacker to Kershaw and was tagged out by third baseman Juan Uribe in a rundown.

"That was an unbelievable play he made," Uribe said. "This guy, he can pitch, he can hit and he can make a good play, too. He's a player. He's unbelievable. You want to make plays for pitchers like that. Guys like that hustle the game along and they want to win the game. I'm happy for him that he won today."

Brandon League pitched a perfect ninth inning for his eighth save in nine chances.

Crawford homered on the first pitch of the game from Kyle Lohse (1-2). It was the fourth time Lohse had given up a home run to his first batter in 336 career starts, and the first one that came on his very first pitch.

"The past week, guys have been getting ahead of me with the first pitch right down the middle. So I just picked today to be aggressive with the first pitch," Crawford said. "This is a tough ballpark to hit home runs in, but they say the ball flies better here in the daytime. So I caught a break today."

Crawford's second homer came on an 0-2 count in the fifth inning and landed in the right field pavilion. It was his sixth multihomer game in the majors and first since July 8, 2010, for Tampa Bay.

"They've pretty much given me the freedom to be myself and not try to be the traditional leadoff hitter who just takes a bunch of pitches and try to slap the ball," Crawford said. "I like to try to put a good swing on the ball and not just hit the ball to the shortstop and run. I mean, there's times for that, but for the most part, I'm trying to hit the ball in the gap somewhere."

NOTES: Lohse reached the 2,000-inning mark for his 13-year career when he retired Kershaw on a grounder to end the second. ... Dodgers LHP Ted Lilly makes his second start on Monday night in the opener of a three-game series with Colorado. He is 4-0 with a 2.15 ERA in four career starts against the Rockies at Dodger Stadium. ... Brewers RHP Yovani Gallardo will pitch the opener of a three-game set against Pittsburgh on Monday at Miller Park. He is 6-0 with a 2.18 ERA in his last seven starts overall against the Pirates.

? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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PHOENIX (AP) - Gerardo Parra tripled and scored twice, and Josh Wilson had a run-scoring double to help lead the Arizona Diamondbacks to a 4-2 win over the Colorado Rockies on Sunday.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/51695804/ns/sports-baseball/

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PFT: SEC accounts for 63 picks ? a quarter of the draft

AP

After analyzing the draft needs of all 32 teams, PFT will review how well each team addressed those needs. Up next: The Houston Texans.

What they needed: Wide receiver, outside linebacker, guard, nose tackle, tight end.

Who they got:
Round 1: DeAndre Hopkins, WR, Clemson

Round 2: D.J. Swearinger, SS, South Carolina

Round 3: Brennan Williams, OT, North Carolina

Round 3: Sam Montgomery, DE, Louisiana State

Round 4: Trevardo Williams, DE, Connecticut

Round 6: David Quessenberry, OT, San Jose State

Round 6: Alan Bonner, WR, Jacksonville State

Round 6: Chris Jones, DT, Bowling Green

Round 6: Ryan Griffin, TE, Connecticut

Where they hit: Hopkins overcame the pre-draft smear campaign, and might be the kind of big-play threat they?ve lacked at receiver (other than that Andre Johnson guy, of course). They also added some good offensive line depth in Williams and Quessenberry, guys who should be in the mix this year and could start down the line.

Where they missed: Some more pass rush help would have been nice, and while Williams has promise, there are a lot of folks in the scouting community who think Montgomery?s a waste of time. The talent is there, but that?s not the problem for him. Landing on a good team might create the atmosphere he needs, but the Texans can?t count on him in the short term. The good news is they don?t have to.

Impact rookies: Swearinger will make an impact on opponents, mostly. One of the true hitters in this class, he?s an enforcer in the back of the defense, the kind of guy Ed Reed would have loved lining up next to in Baltimore. He should be a huge benefit on special teams, as he has explosive ability and doesn?t mind dropping a shoulder into someone.

Long-term prospects: Even if Hopkins is the only rookie that contributes, that?s OK for the Texans, who didn?t enter the offseason with many holes to fill. But they need Hopkins to contribute quickly. Reed?s signing was symbolic as much as tangible, as they?re hoping some of his Ravens mojo rubs off on a team with talent, which has disappointed in the postseason. They drafted a few guys who could become the next wave of replacements for departed veterans, but this is clearly a team that sees the window closing, if not this year then soon.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/04/28/with-63-draft-picks-sec-produces-a-quarter-of-the-nfls-talent/related/

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What Japanese wish Japanese overseas shouldn?t do

By Ken Y-N ( April 28, 2013 at 22:39) ? Filed under Polls, Rankings

goo Ranking published a survey on what behaviour by Japanese people abroad that they have seen and thought ?I really shouldn?t do that sort of thing myself??.

Demographics

Over the 6th and 7th of March 2013 1,083 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.7% of the sample were female, 11.6% in their teens, 15.0% in their twenties, 24.9% in their thirties, 24.7% in their forties, 12.7% in their fifties, and 11.1% aged sixty or older. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.

As pictured above, as a foreigner who has participated in Japanese tours abroad, that sort of group photo behaviour is quite embarrassing from my point of view. Another behaviour that I witnessed that I would certainly never think of trying myself was when our tour was waiting by our bus, which happened to be a brightly-painted old-fashioned bus, when a young couple came along and asked one of our party if they could take their photo. After this was done, four of the middle-aged ladies in the group one after another asked if they could get their photo taken with the boyfriend, handing their camera to the girlfriend to make sure she was out of the picture.

Ranking results

Q1: What actions by Japanese overseas have you seen and thought you should ensure not to emulate? (Sample size=1,083)

Rank	?	Score
1	Letting children be noisy in public places and not checking them	100
2	Buying up lots and lots of brand items	96.4
3	Leaving bags on seats to book them	80.6
4	Slurping food, drink in restaurants	78.9
5	Not experiencing the sights directly, but instead seeing through a camera, video lens	73.1
6	Letting it all hang out too much and going out in underwear-like clothes	71.3
7	Getting ripped-off by high-pressure sales	69.9
8	Never tipping	66.3
9	Wandering around the hotel in slippers	65.2
10	Opening luggage in the hotel lobby, airport, etc	60.6
11	Fixing make-up in a public place	53.4
12	Gathering in the hotel lobby as a group and chatting	53.0
13	Seeing parents in a fix with their children but not helping	52.0
14	Taking kids to a posh restaurant	45.2
15	Using a parasol in busy locations	43.0
16	Taking shoes off in a public place	39.4
17	Staring at a guide book when walking around and bumping into people	38.7
18	Going round all the stores where celebrities shop	38.4
19	At the cash register, converting prices to yen on a calculator to decide whether to buy or not	36.2
20	Replying with ?No English!? when someone tries to talk to them in English	35.8

Read more on: goo ranking,travel

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WhatJapanThinks/~3/qg820b4Q9C8/

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Six Americans Killed in Afghanistan Attacks (ABC News)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories News, News Feeds and News via Feedzilla.

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Matisse in Norwegian museum was once Nazi loot

OSLO, Norway (AP) ? The family of a prominent Parisian art dealer is demanding that a Norwegian museum return an Henri Matisse painting seized by Nazis under the direction of Hermann Goering, in the latest dispute over art stolen from Jews during World War II.

The painting at the center of the dispute, Matisse's 1937 "Blue Dress in a Yellow Armchair," depicts a woman sitting in a living room. It has been among the highlights of the Henie Onstad Art Center near Oslo since the museum was established in 1968 through a donation by wealthy art collector Niels Onstad and his wife, Olympic figure-skating champion Sonja Henie.

Museum Director Tone Hansen said it had been unaware the painting was stolen by the Nazis until it was notified in 2012 by the London-based Art Loss Register, which tracks lost and stolen paintings.

She said Onstad bought the painting in "good faith" from the Galerie Henri Benezit in Paris in 1950. The Benezit gallery "has no record of collaborating with the Nazis, as many galleries did," she said in an interview.

Although the war ended almost 70 years ago, disputes over looted art have become increasingly common in recent years, in part because many records were lost, and in part because an international accord on returning such art was only struck in 1998.

But the case of the Matisse is somewhat different in that its former owner, Paul Rosenberg, was one of the most prominent art dealers in Paris before the war, which he survived by fleeing to New York. Art Loss Register Director Chris Marinello said the records in this case are unusually clear.

According to a biography published by New York's Museum of Modern Art, Rosenberg was one of the preeminent modern art dealers of his day, and personal friends with Picasso and Matisse, among others.

Art Registry documents show he purchased "Blue Dress" directly from the painter, having noted the purchase in 1937 and put it on display in the same year, Marinello said. After the war, Rosenberg re-established his business and sought to recover more than 400 works that had been taken by the Nazis.

Marinello showed The Associated Press documents that name the piece now on display in Norway as among those missing after the war.

He slammed the Henie Onstad art museum for "stonewalling."

"The evidence is overwhelming. They just don't want to resolve this," he said.

Paul Rosenberg died in 1959. His family has remained prominent, as his son Alexandre was a war hero and later began his own art dealership.

Among surviving family descendants are Anne Sinclair, the French journalist and ex-wife of former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss Kahn.

Another granddaughter, American lawyer Marianne Rosenberg, said Friday she didn't wish to antagonize the museum, but hoped that it would come to realize that it is wrong in every sense of the term.

The paintings seized from Paul Rosenberg and other Jewish victims of Nazi aggression were taken "under difficult conditions, in a cruel and unfair situation," she said in a telephone interview from her office in New York. "We honor my grandfather Paul's memory ... by doing what he would have done: we wish to recover that which we consider ours."

The lawyer representing the museum, Kyre Eggen, said it was significant that Onstad didn't know where the painting came from.

Under Norwegian law, if a person has had an item in good faith for more than 10 years, that person becomes the rightful owner, he said.

That argument runs against the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, to which Norway is a party. The principles say that owners of looted art should take into account the difficulty that Jewish war survivors faced in reclaiming lost property after the Holocaust, and that owners of looted art should in all cases seek a fast and fair solution.

The Seattle Art Museum returned a Matisse to the Rosenberg family in 1999, after initially making similar arguments.

Eggen also argued that it is possible Rosenberg sold the painting himself between 1946 and 1950.

But Marianne Rosenberg rejected that possibility. Art Loss Register documents show Paul Rosenberg notifying French authorities the piece was missing in 1946, and his family again listing it as among missing pieces it was seeking in 1958.

"The Rosenberg family has since the end of the war assiduously and continuously sought the recovery of the paintings it lost," she said. "We have never sought to recover paintings not lost."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/matisse-norwegian-museum-once-nazi-loot-191439837.html

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Weekend Cooking: Slow Cooker + Ready Made Curry Sauce | Fuss ...

Slow cooker (aka crock-pot) was an amazing find for me last year. ?Truth to be told, I had my reservation at the thought of getting one. For one, I?m trying not to become a hoarder for kitchen appliances. It can be hard at times especially when you can snap one up at a really good price during the sale season. ?I invested a really good ice crushing friendly glass blender years ago and I?ve only used it twice. The ice cream machine which I bought at a bargain two years ago is still sitting nicely in the box, unopened. You?ll get the idea.

What?s changed?

Four words ? packed lunches at work. Not mine but my co-workers?.

I often get recipes and cooking inspirations by peering through what they bring for lunch. I?m fortunate in the sense that they enjoy cooking and food and boy, their packed lunches often smell amazing. We often talked about what we make at home and share cooking tips. And that?s where I was motivated to get myself a slow cooker.

There are many websites such as Crock-Pot Ladies and 365 Days of Slow Cooking?which dedicated to cooking with a slow cooker.? And you know what, slow cooking is not limited to stew only.

?

Having said that, I have been making one particular curry with my slow cooker. Like a lot.

The Sri Lankan Chicken Curry Simmer Sauce by Passage to Sri Lanka brand has been my life saver whenever I wanted an easy meal preparation for the week.? Basically what you?ll need are a slow cooker, chicken thigh fillets, light coconut milk, and the simmer sauce. That?s it. No chopping board necessary.

I can only wish life is as simple as this.

What?ll you need for 4 servings (pretty generously):-

• 375g (13 ounces) simmer curry sauce of your choice*
• 1kg (35 ounces) chicken thigh fillets
• 135ml (4.5) light coconut milk (I used half of the 270ml Ayam brand light coconut milk)
• A slow cooker (mine is the Sunbeam brand from Big W)

and cooking time: 4 hours

*I?d recommend you try this Sri Lankan Chicken Curry by Passage to Sri Lanka if you can find this at your supermarket. It tastes like homemade curry and I got many compliments when I made this for my friends. And yes, I entertained with pre-made curry sauce, whichever way to make cooking simpler ha! You can buy this simmer sauce in Woolworths.

Method:-

Basically you just mix the simmer sauce, chicken and coconut milk** together in the slow cooker (crockpot). Read the manual of your slow cooker for the recommended cooking time for chicken and the heat seating. For this particular Sunbeam one, I cooked the curry on heat seating number 2 (there are only 2 heat settings) for four hours. Stir the mixture around in the last hour of cooking to ensure the ingredients do not stick to the pot. Please note that according to my manual, it says that each time you remove the lid during the cooking time, it?ll take an extra 20 minutes of cooking due to the loss of heat when the lid removed. However, all in all 4 hours is more than enough for this curry. Get ready for melt-in-your mouth chicken thigh fillets!

Note ? For this amount of curry, the suggested amount uncooked rice is two cups.

** in case you?re wondering about the white cubes in the photo, they were my frozen leftover coconut milk.

Source: http://www.fussfreecooking.com/meat-recipes/weekend-cooking-slow-cooker-ready-made-curry-sauce/

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On-and-off approach to prostate cancer treatment may compromise survival

Apr. 3, 2013 ? Taking a break from hormone-blocking prostate cancer treatments once the cancer seems to be stabilized is not equivalent to continuing therapy, a new large-scale international study finds.

Based on previous smaller studies, it looked like an approach called intermittent androgen deprivation therapy might be just as good as continuous androgen deprivation in terms of survival while meanwhile giving patients a breather from the side effects of therapy. In fact, researchers believed intermittent therapy might help overcome treatment resistance that occurs in most patients with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer.

But this new study, which treated 1,535 patients with metastatic prostate cancer and followed them for a median of 10 years, finds that's not the case. Results appear in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"We tried to see whether intermittent androgen deprivation is as good as continuous androgen deprivation, but we did not prove that. We found that intermittent therapy is certainly not better and moreover we cannot even call it comparable," says lead study author Maha Hussain, M.D., FACP, a prostate cancer expert oncologist at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The study was sponsored by SWOG, a National Cancer Institute-supported cancer clinical trials cooperative group.

In the study, men with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer were given an initial course of androgen deprivation therapy (hormone therapy), which is standard therapy for this disease. Patients with a stable or declining PSA level equal to or below a cut-off of 4 ng/ml were then randomly assigned either to continue or to discontinue the hormone therapy. Patients were carefully monitored with monthly PSAs and a doctor's evaluation every three months and therapy was resumed in the intermittent arm when PSA climbed to 20 ng/ml. The intermittent cycle continued on-and-off based on the PSA levels.

Survival among the two groups showed a 10 percent relative increase in the risk of death with intermittent therapy, with average survival of 5.8 years for the continuous group and 5.1 years for the intermittent group from the time of randomization.

Further, the researchers looked at quality of life between the two groups of patients. Initially the intermittent therapy group showed significant improvement in impotence and emotional function in the first three months and had improved trends in other aspects of quality of life compared to the continuous group. But these differences leveled off over time.

"The improvements in some aspects of quality of life that were observed early were not sustained after a few months as patients had to resume therapy," says Hussain professor of internal medicine and urology at the U-M Medical School.

"If a patient is coming in with newly metastatic prostate cancer, hormone treatment continuously is the standard. If they wish to do intermittent treatment, they should be counseled that based on this data, their outcome might be compromised," she adds.

Follow-up studies are investigating a new generation of anti-hormone treatments combined with current therapies in the hopes of increasing the treatment's effectiveness. For information about currently available clinical trials at U-M, call the Cancer AnswerLine at 800-865-1125.

Prostate cancer statistics: 238,590 Americans will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year and 29,720 will die from the disease, according to the American Cancer Society

Additional authors: Catherine M. Tangen, Dr.P.H., SWOG Statistical Center; Donna L. Berry, Ph.D., R.N., Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; Celestia S. Higano, M.D., University of Washington; E. David Crawford, M.D., University of Colorado Health Science Center; Glenn Liu, M.D., and George Wilding, M.D., University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center; Stephen Prescott, M.D., St. James's University Hospital (UK); Subramanian Kanaga Sundaram, M.D., The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals-Pinderfields Hospital (UK); Eric Jay Small, M.D., University of California, San Francisco; Nancy Ann Dawson, M.D., Georgetown University Hospital Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center; Bryan J. Donnelly, M.D., Prostate Cancer Centre (Canada); Peter M. Venner, M.D., Cross Cancer Institute (Canada); Ulka N. Vaishampayan, M.D., Karmanos Cancer Institute; Paul F. Schellhammer, M.D., Urology of Virginia; David I. Quinn, M.D., Ph.D., University of Southern California Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center; Derek Raghavan, M.D., Ph.D., Levine Cancer Institutes; Benjamin Ely, M.S., SWOG Statistical Center; Carol M. Moinpour, Ph.D., Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; Nicholas J. Vogelzang, M.D., US Oncology Research, LLC, McKesson Specialty Health, Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada; Ian M. Thompson Jr., M.D., University of Texas Health Science Center

Funding: National Cancer Institute grants CA32102, CA38926, CA14028, CA55582, CA42777, CA35192, CA46441, CA46282, CA27057, CA128567, CA45807, CA20319, CA58416, CA46113, CA04919, CA76132, CA58861, CA58686, CA68183, CA12644, CA35261, CA35431, CA46368, CA22433, CA63848, CA67575, CA76447, CA67663, CA46136, CA86780, CA35281, CA63844, CA45560, CA37981, CA11083, CA35178, CA95860, CA35176, CA21115, CA31949, CA77202, CCSRI 015469; Astra Zeneca; Fonds Cancer (FOCA) from Belgium

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Michigan Health System.

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

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Journal Reference:

1. M. Hussain et al. Intermittent versus Continuous Androgen Deprivation in Prostate Cancer. New England Journal of Medicine, 2013; DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1212299

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/top_news/top_health/~3/U6YPO7okdRw/130403200011.htm

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US is halfway to Obama 5-year export-doubling goal

FILE - In this Nov. 30, 2012 file photo, President Barack Obama waves as he arrives before speaking at the Rodon Group, which manufactures over 95% of the parts for K?NEX Brands toys, in Hatfield, Pa. Suddenly outsourcing is on the way out and insourcing on the way in as the U.S. trudges unevenly toward the president's goal of doubling American exports around the world by the start of 2015. So far, export levels are about halfway to his mark. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

FILE - In this Nov. 30, 2012 file photo, President Barack Obama waves as he arrives before speaking at the Rodon Group, which manufactures over 95% of the parts for K?NEX Brands toys, in Hatfield, Pa. Suddenly outsourcing is on the way out and insourcing on the way in as the U.S. trudges unevenly toward the president's goal of doubling American exports around the world by the start of 2015. So far, export levels are about halfway to his mark. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Suddenly outsourcing is on the way out and insourcing on the way in as the U.S. trudges unevenly toward President Barack Obama's goal of doubling American exports around the world by the start of 2015.

So far, export levels are about halfway to his mark.

Obama set the five-year target in his January 2010 State of the Union address and recently has hastened his drumbeat, telling his export advisory council last month the nation was "well on our way" to his goal. "The question now becomes: How do we sustain this momentum?"

While economists and industry leaders generally expect the ambitious target to be missed, impressive gains already booked in American manufacturing and exporting suggest such a miss may not be by that much.

Why the optimism toward a manufacturing comeback? Here are five reasons:

? Cheap U.S. natural gas and other increased energy production are helping to power U.S. factories more efficiently, with gas especially providing inexpensive raw materials for U.S. manufacturers of plastics, tires, certain pharmaceuticals and other petrochemical products.

? Higher wages in China and other foreign export markets are making outsourcing less profitable to U.S. firms.

? Congressional approval in 2011 of trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama and other agreements being negotiated now with Asia and Europe are promising to open more foreign markets to U.S. products.

? High U.S. unemployment is relieving pressure on factory owners to increase wages, helping to make U.S. labor costs more globally competitive.

? Major technology advances have steadily boosted factory efficiency and worker productivity.

Yet while many industries are doing more with fewer workers, more than half a million new manufacturing jobs have been added in just the past few years.

Of course, some big bumps lie in the road. Europe is mired in recession, the American economy continues to expand at a snail's pace and the jobless rate sits at a stubbornly high 7.7 percent almost four years after the 2007-09 recession ended.

Obama's starting point was 2009 exports of $1.57 trillion. Since then, they've climbed to a record $2.19 trillion in 2012 ? about 48 percent toward his goal of some $3.14 trillion a year by the start of 2015.

But 2012 exports, while a record, grew just 5.5 percent from those in 2011, down from a 15.9 percent surge from 2010 to 2011. The rate would have to pick up sharply again this year and next to meet Obama's target.

"Some of the headwinds we faced last year have started to improve," said Chad Moutay, chief economist for the National Association of Manufacturers. "And I think energy is a game-changer. We definitely have increased the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing."

U.S. manufacturers posted a fourth consecutive month of expansion in March. While the rate was a bit below February's gain, the overall trend is still up.

Some critics argue that Obama set the bar artificially low by using recessionary 2009 numbers as his starting point.

Alan Tonelson, an official with the U.S. Business and Industry Council, said Obama also "has the wrong goal" by focusing on exports and not the other part of the trade equation: still-huge import levels and resulting trade deficits.

The U.S. imported $540.4 billion more in goods and services last year than it exported, down only slightly from the $559.9 billion trade deficit in 2011.

"We racked up a pretty impressive export performance over the last few years. But the main reason that we may not reach the Obama doubling-export goal is the world economy is slowing down," said Tonelson, whose organization represents nearly 2,000 mainly family-owned U.S. manufacturing companies.

Obama shrugs off such skepticism, suggesting the recent manufacturing gains speak for themselves.

"What's happening here is happening all around the country," the president said during a recent visit to a flourishing engine-part factory in Ashville, N.C. "Just as it's becoming more and more expensive to do business in places like China, America is getting more competitive."

Federal legislative "Buy America" restrictions on certain recent government contracts? considered protectionist by many economists ? are also being credited with helping to spur some recent U.S. manufacturing gains.

The U.S. now makes about 18 percent of the world's goods, down from nearly 40 percent right after World War II. Clearly, many manufacturing jobs will never come back.

"The U.S. had manufacturing trade surpluses until around 1980 (but) has run big deficits since then," said Martin Baily, a Brookings Institution senior fellow and co-author of a new Brookings study of U.S. manufacturing.

The study showed that high trade deficits, especially with China, and high U.S. business tax rates are combining to keep U.S. manufacturing from rebounding more strongly.

Manufacturing "still remains a very important sector and one that I think we need to foster and that needs to flourish," Baily said. "So we need to expand manufacturing in order to reduce that trade deficit. We can't just do it on services alone."

Republicans have long clamored for lower corporate tax rates to stimulate business growth. At a nominal top rate of 35 percent, the U.S. has the highest corporate tax of the world's industrialized nations.

While few U.S. companies actually pay the full rate due to various deductions and credits, U.S. tax bites dissuade foreign companies from setting up shop here while providing incentives to U.S. multinational companies to keep large sums overseas, Republicans argue.

Obama largely agrees and has proposed lowering the top rate to 25 percent for manufacturers, even lower rates on income from still-undefined "advanced manufacturing" and 28 percent for all other corporations.

Laura D. Tyson, who was President Bill Clinton's chief national economic adviser and served on Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, said there are big barriers to getting a significant reduction in corporate rates. Among them: "The country desperately needs more tax revenues" and "there are huge vested interests" to protect existing loopholes, she said.

"At the end, I would like to get rid of the corporate tax," Tyson said. "That's probably not going to happen."

___

Follow Tom Raum on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tomraum

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-04-04-Manufacturing%20Comeback/id-ea6dacb4f86541d48fff23c81f0c286f

Oscar Winners 2013

Exhaled breath carries a molecular 'breathprint' unique to each individual

Apr. 3, 2013 ? Stable, specific 'breathprints' unique to an individual exist and may have applications as diagnostic tools in personalized medicine. Bodily fluids contain lots of information about the health status of a person. Medical doctors routinely have blood and urine analysed in order to obtain hints for infectious and metabolic diseases, to diagnose cancer and organ failure, and to check the dose of medication, based on compounds present in these body fluids.

Researchers at ETH Zurich and at the University Hospital Zurich now propose to extend such analyses to breath, and in particular to take advantage of modern high-resolution analytical methods that can provide real-time information on the chemical composition of exhaled breath.

Unbiased Chemical Analysis of Breath

The scientists developed an instrument-based version of a principle that has been known for a long time in traditional Chinese medicine: TCM doctors draw conclusions about the health state of a patient based on the smell of the exhaled breath. It is also known that trained dogs and rats can distinguish the smell of the breath of people suffering from certain variants of cancer. In these cases the entire smell of the patient's exhaled breath is gauged, which can give rise to bias. The scientists, led by Renato Zenobi, professor at the Laboratory for Organic Chemistry, aim at eliminating this bias and identifying the chemical compounds in breath. Like this, doctors should be able to use specific compounds, which are present in breath at minute concentrations, for medical diagnosis.

Using mass spectrometry, these goals can be reached, as shown in a recent study where the ETH researchers analysed the exhaled breath of eleven volunteers. They found that the chemical "fingerprint" of exhaled breath, largely based on volatile and semi-volatile metabolites, shows an individual core pattern. Each volunteer was found to have his/her own characteristic "breathprint."

Stable Pattern

Using regular measurements extending over 11 days, the researchers could furthermore show that this metabolic "breathprint" stays constant. "We did find some small variations during the day, but overall the individual pattern stays sufficiently constant to be useful for medical purposes," says Pablo Martinez-Lozano Sinues, senior scientist in Zenobi's research group. If the measurements would show too large variations, they would not be useful for medical diagnosis.

To carry out these measurements, Zenobi and his colleagues modified commercial mass spectrometers, for example by adding a breath sampling inlet line that delivers exhaled breath from a mouth piece directly into the ion source of the instrument. Mass spectra showing peaks of roughly 100 compounds in breath can be easily and rapidly obtained in this fashion. The researchers were able to identify acetone, a product of the sugar metabolism. Most of the other signals present in the "breathprints" have not been assigned yet, which is something the scientists have on their to-do-list.

Chemical fingerprints of diseases

The next step the ETH chemists plan to take is not only to elucidate the personal breathprints of individuals, but to recognize characteristic patterns of diseases with the same technology. For this endeavour, they are collaborating with medical doctors at the Division of Pulmonology of the University Hospital Zurich. "If we find a consistent pattern in patients with a given lung disease, we can develop a diagnostic tool," explains Sinues. They believe that their chances are highest to find characteristic biomarkers in the exhaled breath of patients with lung diseases, which is why they focus on these disorders. In the future, they hope to extend their methodology to other groups of diseases.

Although the potential usefulness of analysing breath for medical diagnosis has been known, it is rarely done in academic medicine. "This might be due to the fact that existing methods for breath analysis are either rather slow, or are limited to a small number of compounds that they can detect," says Sinues.

Compared to analysis of blood or urine, a significant advantage of the approach the ETH researchers have taken is that the breath fingerprint is available within seconds after delivering the breath sample. Analysing urine or blood in a specialized laboratory usually takes a lot longer. Another advantage is that exhaling into the ion source of a mass spectrometer is completely non-invasive, i.e., there is no need to poke the patient with a needle (when a blood sample is taken). "Our goal is to develop breath analysis to the point where it becomes competitive with the established analysis of blood and urine," says Malcolm Kohler, professor at the University Hospital Zurich, and one of the co-authors of the study. Regular survey of breath could, for example, be used to obtain an early warning for healthy persons with a known risk for a certain disease. It is also imaginable to monitor the progress or the side effects of an on-going medical therapy.

For this method to be accepted in the clinic, the instrumentation has to be improved. The highly sensitive and accurate mass spectrometers that are currently used for these analyses are large and expensive. Zenobi: "Small, portable mass spectrometers already exist; if their performance can be improved, they will eventually find their way into clinics and doctor's offices."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by ETH Zurich, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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

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Journal Reference:

1. Martinez-Lozano Sinues P, Kohler M, Zenobi R. Human Breath Analysis May Support the Existence of Individual Metabolic Phenotypes. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8(4): e59909 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0059909

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/most_popular/~3/5MoT-aJz4wQ/130403200254.htm

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Weak economic reports send stock market lower

NEW YORK (AP) ? Weak reports on hiring and service industries sent the stock market sharply lower Wednesday, giving the Dow Jones industrial average its worst day in more than a month.

The Dow fell 111.66 points, or 0.8 percent, to 14,550.35, its worst decline since Feb. 25. The Standard & Poor's 500 index dropped 16.56 points, or 1.1 percent, to 1,553.69. Both indexes closed at record highs the day before.

The stock market started 2013 with a rally as investors became more optimistic about the U.S. economy, especially housing and jobs. The reports Wednesday disappointed the market and came two days after news that U.S. manufacturing growth slowed unexpectedly last month.

The losses were widespread. All 10 industry groups in the S&P 500 index fell. Banks and energy stocks had the worst losses, 1.7 percent and 1.6 percent. Utilities, which investors hold when they want to play it safe, fell the least, 0.3 percent.

"The market is overdue for a correction," said Joe Saluzzi at Themis Trading. "I don't think that the economy supports this type of a rally."

Signs of investor skittishness appeared across a number of different markets.

Commodities slumped. Crude oil dropped $2.74, or 2.8 percent, to close at $94.45 a barrel and industrial metals like copper fell.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 1.81 percent from 1.86 percent, the lowest level for the benchmark rate since January. The decline means investors are moving money into low-risk U.S. government debt.

The Russell 2000 index, which tracks small company stocks, fell for a third straight day, dropping 1.7 percent. It's now down 3.5 percent so far this week, far worse than the declines in the Dow, 0.2 percent, and the S&P, 1 percent. That's another signal that investors may be becoming more bearish about the U.S. economy.

Small company stocks, which did better than the Dow and the S&P 500 in the first three months of the year, are more sensitive to the outlook for the U.S. economy than the larger companies in the Dow and S&P. That's because they rely far more on domestic sales than global giants like IBM and Caterpillar, which sells heavy machinery and construction equipment around the globe.

The Dow Jones Transportation Average, an index of 20 stocks including airlines like Delta and freight companies FedEx and UPS, fell more than 1 percent for a third straight day. The index, which is regarded as a leading indicator for broader market indexes as well as the economy, has fallen 3.9 percent this week, after surging 17.9 percent in the first quarter.

U.S. service companies kept growing at a solid pace in March, but the expansion was less than economists were expecting. The Institute for Supply Management's index of service companies fell to 54.4 from 56 a month earlier. The report was the weakest in seven months.

Separately, payrolls processor ADP reported that U.S. employers added 158,000 jobs last month, down from February's gain of 237,000. The ADP report is often seen as a preview for the government's broader survey on employment, which is due out Friday.

The slowdown in hiring was due in part to construction firms holding back on adding new employees. That sent the stocks of homebuilders lower. PulteGroup fell 85 cent, or 4.3 percent, to $19.01 and D.R. Horton dropped 57 cents to $22.84.

In other trading, the Nasdaq composite fell 36.26 points, or 1.1 percent, to 3,218.60.

Even though stocks started the second quarter lower, markets typically add to their gains after ending the first quarter up, said Sam Stovall, an equity strategist at S&P Capital IQ. Using data going back over more than 60 years, Stovall says that the S&P 500 has gained an average of 9 percent from April to December after rising in the first quarter.

"Investors believe that the economic trajectory is improving," said Stovall. Stocks "do not reflect the true valuations based on where the economy will be at the end of the year."

Among stocks making big moves:

? Zynga rose 46 cents, or 15 percent, to $3.53 after the online game maker said two casino games would debut in the United Kingdom Wednesday.

? Abercrombie & Fitch rose $1.74, or 3.8 percent, to $47.20, making it the biggest percentage gainer in the S&P 500. The company said late Tuesday that it planned to expand internationally and place greater emphasis on cost control.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-04-03-Wall%20Street/id-6c21d71c6d3a4c9faecf733bcedaa045

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