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ARLINGTON, Va., Oct. 22, 2009 – A California Army National Guard supply noncommissioned officer diagnosed with breast cancer is cancer-free today, and she credits early detection with her new lease on life. California Army National Guard Staff Sgt. Elizabeth Cowie credits early detection with remaining cancer-free two years after being diagnosed with breast cancer. U.S. Army photo  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. With a yearlong deployment right around the corner when she got her diagnosis, Army Staff Sgt. Elizabeth Cowie opted for an aggressive treatment plan that would get her back to her unit quickly. “As soon as people...

In a reminder that the new strain of H1N1 influenza may not be as benign as originally thought, federal health officials reported Thursday that 100 pregnant women infected with the virus were hospitalized in intensive care units in the first four months of the outbreak, and 28 have died. "What we are seeing is quite striking," said Anne Schuchat, a physician at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta who is helping direct the government's response to the pandemic. "The obstetric caregivers here, and the ones that we're speaking with [around the country] have rarely seen this kind...

WASHINGTON – Big job losses and a spike in early retirement claims from laid-off seniors will force Social Security to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes the next two years, the first time that's happened since the 1980s. The deficits — $10 billion in 2010 and $9 billion in 2011 — won't affect payments to retirees because Social Security has accumulated surpluses from previous years totaling $2.5 trillion. But they will add to the overall federal deficit.

As flu season approaches, West Virginia's largest hospital has given its employees a choice: Get a flu shot, or get another job . . . A mandatory flu shot policy like CAMC's is rare for U.S. hospitals, but it may soon become more common. A New York State law that takes effect this month requires hospitals to provide records showing all their workers have seasonal flu vaccinations or face fines, and

WASHINGTON, March 3, 2009 – Troops serving overseas will get a little bit of “Christmas in May,” thanks to a troop-support group that is collecting gifts and snacks to be mailed to them on Armed Forces Day, May 16. “This is a way to thank the troops on their special day,” Julieann Najar, founder of “A Soldier’s Wish List,” said. “There are those who seem to ‘fall between the cracks’ and are in combat zones in between the holidays and do not receive our December Christmas packages. We want to let these men and women know they are also important...

WASHINGTON -- Despite campaign promises to take a machete to lawmakers' pet projects, President Barack Obama is quietly caving to funding nearly 8,000 of them this year, drawing a stern rebuke Monday from his Republican challenger in last fall's election. Arizona Sen. John McCain said it is "insulting to the American people" for Obama's budget director to indicate over the weekend that the president will sign a $410 billion spending bill with what Republicans critics say is nearly $5.5 billion in so-called "earmark" projects.

BAGHDAD, Jan. 30, 2009 – With coalition soldiers watching from a distance, Iraq’s provincial elections got off to a smooth start Jan. 28 as the country’s security forces, hospital patients and detainees had a chance to cast their ballots early. Army Col. Wilton Gorske, left, chief of communications with the 4th Infantry Division serving in Multinational Division Baghdad, gets a briefing from Army Maj. Peter Dargle, officer in charge of the division operations section’s Iraqi security forces cell, at the Combined Press Information Center in Baghdad’s International Zone during the first day of voting in the Iraqi provincial elections,...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 6, 2008 – About 3,000 soldiers assigned to the 101st Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team will leave Iraq nearly two months earlier than planned, military officials said. Improved security and decreased violence across the unit’s area of operations in northwestern Baghdad is enabling the early redeployment of the soldiers back to Fort Campbell, Ky., Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters today. The unit is commencing pack-up operations, Whitman said, and its return window is around the Thanksgiving-Christmas holiday season. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, U.S. Central Command chief, and Army Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, commander of Multinational...

I have a feeling Texas will deliver for Mac and Sarah in huge numbers. Williamson County is one of the Reddest Counties in an already Red State. We voted by 2-1 margin for Bush the last two elections. By the end of today 50% of the county's registered voters will have voted shattering the 2004 record of 35% IN 2004 only 64% of the registered voters in the county turned out and that was considered a blowout number, maybe well over 80%. We are poised to eclipse that number! Voter intensity here is through the roof and I am hearing...

Over 40% of the counties 213,000 Registered Voters in one of the a Reddest County in Texas have already voted and if trends continue we will exceed 50% blowing away all records! I sense a groundswell for McCain/Palin, but we must all vote and work to GOTV.

The Democrats' latest tally for ballots cast through Wednesday shows that Democrats have cast 205,205 more absentee or early votes than Republicans have. What's even more eye-popping is that so far, nearly 3-million people have voted (2,982,896). Of the 1,302,982 absentee ballots cast, Democrats cast 35.64 percent, Republicans cast 49.41 percent, and others cast 14.95 percent. Of the 1,679,914 early votes, Democrats cast 53.22 percent; Republicans, 30.32 percent; and other, 16.46 percent.

Nearly 20 percent of all Florida voters have cast ballots already. That includes 1,128,241 abentee ballots (35.4% by Democrats and 49.96% by Republicans; and 1,193,987 early votes (53.66% by Democrats and 30.25% by Republicans). All told, 115,418 more Democrats have voted than Republicans. Also 357,298 independent and minor party voters have cast ballots.

Ore. Discovery Challenges Beliefs About First Humans Until recently, most scientists believed that the first humans came to the Americas 13,000 years ago. But new archaeological findings from a cave in Oregon are challenging that assumption. Lee Hochberg of Oregon Public Television reports on the controversial discovery. LEE HOCHBERG, NewsHour correspondent: What archaeologist Dennis Jenkins found in the Paisley Caves in south central Oregon may turn on its head the theory of how and when the first people came to North America. Many scientists believe humans first came to this continent 13,000 years ago across a land bridge from Asia...

<p>June 25, 2008 -- The phrase "blame it on the weather" takes new meaning in light of research suggesting that regional climate may very well have been responsible for the evolution of lifestyle, culture and even religion in the Middle East.</p>

Early parents didn't stand for weighty kidsApril 23,2008 A volunteer carrying baby mannequin on the hip has her energy consumption measured. Credit: University of Manchester Scientists investigating the reasons why early humans – the so-called hominins – began walking upright say it’s unlikely that the need to carry children was a factor, as has previously been suggested. Carrying babies that could no longer use their feet to cling to their parents in the way that young apes can has long been thought to be at least one explanation as to why humans became bipedal. But University of Manchester researchers investigating...

How deep should we look for evidence of first Americans? By Bill Young Three sites in Texas have been discovered and at least partially excavated in the past 15 years yielding evidence of at least one culture older than Clovis. Most of the Clovis sites have been firmly dated to around 12,500 to 13,000 years ago. Not only did these Clovis sites yield projectile points of the very distinct Clovis type, the sites also yielded true blades and very large well- made thin preforms diagnostic of only the Clovis people. The archeologists who have worked at some of these Clovis...

Vitamin pills 'increase risk of early death' By Kate Devlin, Medical Correspondent Last Updated: 12:01am BST 16/04/2008 Popular vitamin supplements taken by millions of people in the hope of improving their health may do no good and could increase the risk of a premature death, researchers report today. They warn healthy people who take antioxidant supplements, including vitamins A and E, to try to keep diseases such as cancer at bay that they are interfering with their natural body defences and may be increasing their risk of an early death by up to 16 per cent. Antioxidants, including vitamins A,...

Skin test shows if you're late or early riser By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 10:01pm GMT 28/01/2008 A simple skin test could reveal if someone who hates getting up is lazy, or whether their body clock is badly out of step with that of other people. In recent years, scientists have found that genes can influence a person's preference for rising extremely early, when they are known as "a lark", or late in the day, "an owl". Now a simple skin test to diagnose people with these genes has been devised which, in the longer term, could help...

Early settlers drained marshy US landscape 19:00 17 January 2008 NewScientist.com news service Catherine Brahic A milldam on Pickering Creek in Chester County, Pennsylvania. The dam spans the entire valley, and is filled to the brim with sediment (Image: Robert Walter and Dorothy Merritts) Standard notions of the 'natural' eastern US landscape with its meandering ribbon-like streams may be misguided, suggests historical research. In the US, a multibillion-dollar landscape restoration industry is guided by the almost intuitive notion that natural, gravel-bedded streams wander in single channels across the land. This springs from the assumption that, when European settlers arrived in...

What if we look back on the 2008 presidential nomination contests and conclude one or both were effectively decided by a single vote--and among a group of judges at that? Democratic partisans still argue that the 2000 presidential contest was decided by a single vote in the U.S. Supreme Court, even though media recounts of Florida ballots showed that the outcome would not have been changed if Bush v. Gore had gone the other way. But there's no doubt that a 4-3 ruling by the Michigan Supreme Court last Wednesday saved that state's Jan. 15 presidential primary, which was in danger...

Diamonds tell story of Earth's beginning By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 12:01am BST 22/08/2007 Diamonds really are forever, according to a study that has found tiny examples of the gems that date from near the birth of the Earth. Tiny diamonds discovered inside crystals of zircon Over four billion years old, the diamonds are the oldest identified fragments of the Earth’s crust and were discovered in the Jack Hills region of Western Australia, suggesting they were created only 300 million years after the planet itself was born from the dust and debris encircling our Sun some 4.5 billion...

Source: Cornell University Date: August 21, 2007 Today's White Rice Is Mutation Spread By Early Farmers Science Daily — Some 10,000 years ago white rice evolved from wild red rice and began spreading around the globe. But how did this happen? White and red grains of rice. (Credit: Courtesy of Susan McCouch) Researchers at Cornell and elsewhere have determined that 97.9 percent of all white rice is derived from a mutation (a deletion of DNA) in a single gene originating in the Japonica subspecies of rice. Their report, published online in the journal PloS (Public Library of Science) Genetics, suggests...

Is it possible that one or both of the major party presidential nominations could be, for all practical purposes, decided after just two states, Iowa and New Hampshire, have voted? This may sound crazy to the casual observer of American politics, but the answer is yes. But how can that be, with Iowa and New Hampshire being such small states and accounting for only a miniscule portion of the national delegate count in either party? The catalyst is here not the size of the states or their raw numbers of delegates, of course, but the momentum those states can provide....

Source: Northwestern University Date: July 26, 2007 Low Literacy Equals Early Death Sentence Science Daily — Not being able to read doesn't just make it harder to navigate each day. Low literacy impairs people's ability to obtain critical information about their health and can dramatically shorten their lives. A new study from Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine shows that older people with inadequate health literacy had a 50 percent higher mortality rate over five years than people with adequate reading skills. Inadequate or low health literacy is defined as the inability to read and comprehend basic health-related materials such...

WASHINGTON, July 6, 2007 – A premature withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq would leave the country at the mercy of its enemies, a senior U.S. military officer said today. Thanks to surge-provided reinforcements, U.S. and Iraqi security forces participating in Operation Marne Torch are now making “significant progress” in knocking out insurgent sanctuaries located within his battle space, Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of Multinational Division Center and the 3rd Infantry Division, said today during a satellite-carried teleconference with Pentagon reporters. However, “it would be a mess,” Lynch emphasized, if the surge forces were withdrawn as part of...

Early Humans Dug for Food, Study Suggests Ker Than Staff Writer LiveScience.com Tue May 1, 9:25 PM ET Early humans might have turned to plant roots and underground storage organs when fruit was scarce, a new study suggests. A 1999 analysis of teeth belonging to two species of hominids, Australopithecus aferensis and Paranthropus robustus, living 2 million years ago found chemical evidence that one-third of their diet consisted of grasses and sedges, or the meat of animals that ate such plants. The finding puzzled some scientists because the hominids had flat, thickly enameled molars best suited for chewing hard, brittle...

04/13/2007 BY NOBUYUKI WATANABE, THE ASAHI SHIMBUN Humans may have trekked up a mountain 35,000 years ago in what is now Tochigi Prefecture to dig up raw obsidian ore to process into stone tools, archaeologists say. Trapezoid stone tools unearthed on Mount Takaharayama in the prefecture will shed light on early human history in Japan, they added. The tools indicate human beings at the start of the Upper Paleolithic Era (roughly 35,000 years ago) were already "mining" raw stones to produce tools, not just picking them up off the ground, the researchers said. Previous finds had led experts to believe...

The earliest life on Earth might have been just as purple as it is green today, a scientist claims. Ancient microbes might have used a molecule other than chlorophyll to harness the Sun’s rays, one that gave the organisms a violet hue. Chlorophyll, the main photosynthetic pigment of plants, absorbs mainly blue and red wavelengths from the Sun and reflects green ones, and it is this reflected light that gives plants their leafy color. This fact puzzles some biologists because the sun transmits most of its energy in the green part of the visible spectrum. “Why would chlorophyll have this...

WASHINGTON, April 4, 2007 – Murders and kidnappings, the hallmarks of sectarian violence, have decreased in Baghdad since reinforcements of U.S. and Iraqi security forces began to flow into the city in mid-February as part of Operation Fahrd al-Qanoon, a senior U.S. military official said in Baghdad today. “A clear reduction in the number of kidnappings and execution-style murders” has taken place across Baghdad since Fahrd al-Qanoon, or “Enforce the Law,” was launched to secure and tamp down violence in Baghdad and western Iraq, Navy Rear Adm. Mark I. Fox, spokesman for Multinational Force Iraq, said to representatives of...

WASHINGTON, March 25, 2007 ? An early withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq would be a catastrophic mistake, Iraq?s Ambassador to the United States said here today. ?If we set out a date now for a complete withdrawal [of U.S. forces from Iraq}, you can bet your bottom dollar that the terrorists will be waiting for that date and attacking and launching their biggest attacks? on Iraqi civilians and government institutions, Samir Sumaidaie told CNN Late Edition television news show host Wolf Blitzer today. The Defense Department?s emergency fiscal 2007 supplemental requests includes $93.4 billion to help fund U.S....

Pubic lice leapt from gorillas to early humans 18:26 07 March 2007 NewScientist.com news service Roxanne Khamsi A genetic analysis of pubic lice suggests the parasites were transferred between early humans and gorillas about 3.3 million years ago. Researchers say the findings suggest close contact between our ancestors and gorillas. But they claim it is far more likely that early humans caught the lice from sleeping in abandoned gorilla nests than from having sex with gorillas. Pubic lice – also known as crabs – can leave irritating spots on the skin when they feed on the blood of their hosts....

NEW YORK - Two months before the 1992 presidential election, an NBC reporter cornered a man to ask whether he preferred Bill Clinton or President Bush. The man said he didn't care. He just wanted them off his TV screen. Imagine how he'd feel today? The 2008 campaign is already playing out so intensely that it dominates airtime at a point where only political junkies usually pay attention. Remember: it's 20 months before voters will make the ultimate decision. This is uncharted territory for people in both politics and television, who wonder when campaign fatigue will set in. Many Americans...

Early Europeans unable to stomach milk 22:00 26 February 2007 NewScientist.com news service Roxanne Khamsi Researchers analysing the DNA in Neolithic human remains claim to have uncovered the first direct evidence that modern humans have evolved changes in response to natural selection. Just 7000 years ago, Europeans were unable to digest milk, according to a new analysis of fossilised bone samples – nowadays more than 90% of this population can. Europeans must have incurred a rapid change in their genetic make-up because it held an evolutionary advantage for them to be able to digest milk, says Mark Thomas at University...

NEW YORK - A Hollywood-style brawl with the campaign of rival Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) is the latest in a series of speed bumps tripping up Hillary Rodham Clinton's early presidential moves. From the Clinton team's decision to criticize — and therefore publicize — producer David Geffen's complaints about both Clintons to increasingly skeptical questions about Sen. Clinton's nuanced explanation of her 2002 vote authorizing the Iraq war, it became apparent even a battle-tested front-runner can fall prey to missteps. On top of that, voters were reminded of the downside of the first Clinton presidency. "Her explanation for...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Animals at a Russian zoo have started mating early this year because of steamy temperatures in the warmest Russian winter for a generation, zoo officials said on Wednesday. Temperatures have recently fallen to more arctic norms, but the unusual heat allowed pumas and camels to shrug off the winter blues and start frolicking early. "Some animals have started their mating season early this year because of the warm winter," Maxim Kozlov, the curator at Ivanovo Zoo, north-east of Moscow, told Reuters by telephone. Russia's spectacular winters came to an end this year in European Russia with little...

12/13/2006 - SAN ANTONIO (AFPN) -- The holiday season can be a time of cheer, but often is tough for many military families. Operation Homefront, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing emergency assistance to military members and their families, along with Wal-Mart, Sam's Club and America Supports You, joined forces to make the season special for some servicemembers and their loved ones. The result was Operation Christmas. Members of the Operation Homefront program visited the Texas National Guard Armory Dec. 13. This was one of several stops for them. "It's a time when we can come together to celebrate the...

FORT HUACHUCA — The Thunderbirds were treated to more than a turkey dinner Wednesday as part of a Thanksgiving event. The Thunderbird Dining Facility was deck out with the sounds, smells and sights of the holiday. Solider cooks of the 11th Signal Brigade, the unit usually referred to as the Thunderbirds, went all out in preparing food for the feast. The rations noncommissioned-officer-in-charge of the military eatery listed the amount of meat, fowl and seafood the cooks prepared for the meal. The list from Sgt. Brisher McGrath included 330 pounds of prime rib, 150 pounds of turkey, 108 pounds of...

WASHINGTON Democrats pursued their best chance in a dozen years to take control of the House from scandal-scarred Republicans on Tuesday in a midterm election marked by voter frustration with the Iraq war and President Bush. As the first polls closed, Rep. Harold Rogers, a 13-term Republican, and Rep. Ben Chandler, two-term Democrat, easily won re-election in Kentucky, as expected. Neither race was competitive. With a message of change, Democrats sought to pick up the 15 seats they needed to reclaim power after 12 years in the minority and clear the way for Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California to become...

GAZA (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas may appoint an emergency government or call early elections after the latest efforts to form a unity coalition with Hamas failed, his aides said on Tuesday. A stalemate between Abbas and the Hamas-led government over agreeing a unity cabinet has triggered the worst internal fighting in a decade and stirred fears of civil war. The Hamas Islamist movement denied talks were at a dead end, but said the latest initiative, presented in Gaza by Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani, was unacceptable because it included recognition of Israel. Abbas...

Early humans followed the coast By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News Coastlines were rich in resources for early humans Learning how to live off the sea may have played a key role in the expansion of early humans around the globe. After leaving Africa, human groups probably followed coastal routes to the Americas and South-East Asia. Professor Jon Erlandson says the maritime capabilities of ancient humans have been greatly underestimated. He has found evidence that early peoples in California pursued a sophisticated seafaring lifestyle 10,000 years ago. Anthropologists have long regarded the exploitation of marine resources as a recent...

BOSTON - In a change certain to shake up college admissions, Harvard University will ditch its "early action" round of applications on the grounds that it favors wealthier students over minorities and the poor. It called on other universities to follow suit. Starting next year, Harvard will eliminate its early round of admissions that allows high school students to apply by Nov. 1 of their senior year and receive a decision _ accept, reject or defer _ by Dec. 15. Applicants hoping to enter in the fall of 2008 will face a common application due date of Jan. 1. "The...

Dawn Sneaks: Old birds sing early, cuckold sleepyheads Susan Milius Among European birds called blue tits, the early bird gets more than a worm. Older males start singing some 5 or 6 minutes earlier in the dawn chorus and attract more of the promiscuous females than younger males do, researchers report in an upcoming issue of Animal Behaviour. SLY SONGS. Among blue tits, males' dawn chorus may be a networking system for encounters with wandering females. K. Delhey In Europe, the springtime dawn chorus includes the voices of male blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus), colorful little cousins of chickadees. Those males...

Early signs of elephant butchers Excavations took place in 2004 Bones and tusks dating back 400,000 years are the earliest signs in Britain of ancient humans butchering elephants for meat, say archaeologists. Remains of a single adult elephant surrounded by stone tools were found in northwest Kent during work on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. Scientists believe hunters used the tools to cut off the meat, after killing the animal with wooden spears. The find is described in the Journal of Quaternary Science. The first signs of the Stone Age site were uncovered by constructors at Southfleet Road in Ebbsfleet,...

Week of April 15, 2006; Vol. 169, No. 15 , p. 237 Early farmers took time to tame wheat Bruce Bower Domesticated varieties of wheat emerged gradually in the prehistoric Near East over a roughly 3,000-year span, a new investigation suggests. CULTIVATED FINDS. Microscopic analysis of wheat grains such as these from a 6,500-year-old Syrian site revealed clues to plant domestication in prehistoric times. Willcox/CNRS Ken-ichi Tanno of the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature in Kyoto, Japan, and George Willcox of the National Center for Scientific Research in Berrias, France, examined 804 wheat-ear remnants recovered at four ancient villages...

WASHINGTON, April 14, 2006 – Democracy in Iraq could secure the beginnings of a new Middle East, the nation's top diplomat said yesterday in a radio interview. On "The Sean Hannity Show," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned that leaving Iraq would be to leave the country to fugitive Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his ilk. "I would just ask the American people to think about the alternative," Rice said. "The alternative is to leave prematurely from Iraq and leave that country to the likes of Zarqawi and al Qaeda and to miss the chance, to miss the opportunity...

WASHINGTON, April 13, 2006 – Three years after Saddam Hussein's statue, along with his regime, was toppled in Baghdad, an Army planner who served there at the time said he's optimistic about Iraq's progress in forming its government, repairing its infrastructure and establishing its security forces. Army Lt. Col. E.J. Degen works with 6th Iraqi Army Division before their validation exercise during his recent deployment to Iraq. About a month later, the Iraqi division assumed battlespace inside Baghdad. Courtesy photo    Army Lt. Col. E.J. Degen brings unique insights into Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was chief of plans for...

Science Journal: Caveman crooners may have aided early human life Friday, March 31, 2006 By Sharon Begley, The Wall Street Journal In Steven Mithen's imagination, the small band of Neanderthals gathered 50,000 years ago around the caves of Le Moustier, in what is now the Dordogne region of France, were butchering carcasses, scraping skins, shaping ax heads -- and singing. One of the fur-clad men started it, a rhythmic sound with rising and falling pitch, and others picked it up, indicating their willingness to cooperate both in the moment and in the future, when the group would have to hunt...

Only once before in Israeli history has a smaller party formed a government - in 1999 - and it lasted only 18 months. Exit polls showed Kadima winning between 29 and 32 seats, but results based on a count of nearly three-quarters of the polling stations show Kadima winning only 28 seats. Labor, too, has dropped to 20 seats, while the National Union/NRP have 8 and Shas has 13. The original post-election forecasts gave the Likud between 10-12 seats, and Labor 19-22. Yisrael Beiteinu was to receive 12-15 seats, followed by Shas with 10-11. The National Union/NRP was estimated to...

Anthropologists: Early Humans Probably Pretty Peaceful Friday, March 17, 2006 By Heather Whipps Depending on which journals you've picked up in recent months, early humans were either peace-loving softies or war-mongering buffoons. Which theory is to be believed? A little bit of both, says one archaeologist, who warns against making generalizations when it comes to our long and varied prehistory. The newest claim concerns Australopithecus afarensis, who lived approximately five million years ago and is one of the first hominids that can be linked directly to our lineage with some certainty. Scientists say the small and furry creature was hardly...

Early Humans Walked Peculiarly? By Jennifer Viegas Discovery NewsEvidence In The Bones Feb. 27, 2006 — At least two species of early humans were knock-kneed and walked rather uniquely, according to a new study on seven anklebones that belonged to various early human ancestors from eastern and southern Africa. The study, which will be published in the April issue of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, suggests that although the early humans walked on two feet, they did not always do so with our relatively smooth stride. "This is hard to explain, but easy to demonstrate," said Dan Gebo, who...