BASF applies for EU approval for Fortuna GM potato

FRANKFURT | Mon Oct 31, 2011 10:50am EDT

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - BASF has applied for European Union approval for Fortuna, a potato genetically modified to resist a common plant disease, as the German chemicals company tries again to overcome resistance in the region to GM food.

The world's largest chemical maker by sales said on Monday it had asked for clearance for Fortuna, covering commercial cultivation and consumption by humans and animals.

In March 2010, BASF won European Commission approval for Amflora, another genetically modified potato, for commercial cultivation, marking the bloc's first GM cultivation approval in 12 years.

While Amflora was designed for industrial-starch production, Fortuna marks the first GM food plant BASF has sought to market in Europe, where consumers' opposition to such products remains widespread.

BASF said it expected market introduction in 2014 or 2015, even though it took BASF about 14 years to win clearance for Amflora. EU rules on the GM plant approval process have been streamlined since then, a company spokesman said.

The chemical maker is not publishing an annual peak sales assessment for the product for now, he added.

The company said its researchers made Fortuna resistant to late blight, the world's most damaging potato disease, which is caused by Phytophthora infestans, a fungi-like pathogen.

The plant disease, which was behind the mass starvation that ravaged Ireland in the 1840s, is cited by BASF as still causing the loss of up to 20 percent of the global potato harvest per year.

(Reporting by Ludwig Burger; Editing by Erica Billingham)

Source: http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/scienceNews/~3/YEcH5wGp1FM/us-basf-idUSTRE79U41Q20111031

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A child is born and world population hits 7 billion

Countries around the world marked the world's population reaching 7 billion Monday with lavish ceremonies for newborn infants symbolizing the milestone and warnings that there may be too many humans for the planet's resources.

While demographers are unsure exactly when the world's population will reach the 7 billion mark, the U.N. is using Monday to symbolically mark the day.

A string of festivities are being held worldwide, with a series of symbolic 7-billionth babies being born.

The celebrations began in the Philippines, where baby Danica May Camacho was greeted with cheers and an explosion of photographers' flashbulbs at Manila's Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital.

The Guardian newspaper reported that Danica, whose name means morning star, had been chosen by the U.N. to be one of a number of symbolic 7 billionth babies. It is not known who the actual baby is.

Danica arrived two minutes before midnight Sunday, but doctors decided that was close enough to count for a Monday birthday.

'She looks so lovely'
The baby received a shower of gifts, from a chocolate cake marked "7B Philippines" to a gift certificate for shoes.

"She looks so lovely," the mother, Camille Galura, whispered as she cradled the 5.5-pound baby, who was born about a month premature.

Story: Seven big problems for 7 billion people

The baby was the second for Galura and her partner, Florante Camacho, a struggling driver who supports the family on a tiny salary.

Dr. Eric Tayag, of the Philippines' Department of Health, said later that the birth came with a warning.

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PhotoBlog: World population set to exceed seven billion

"Seven billion is a number we should think about deeply," he said.

"We should really focus on the question of whether there will be food, clean water, shelter, education and a decent life for every child," he said. "If the answer is 'no,' it would be better for people to look at easing this population explosion."

Chart: 7 billion people (on this page)

The Guardian reported that children chosen to mark the world's population reaching six billion and five billion ? Adnan Nevic, 12, of Bosnia Herzogovina, and Matej Gaspar, from Croatia, respectively ? felt they had been forgotten.

"We saw Kofi Annan as almost like a godfather to him," Adnan's father, Jasminko, told the Guardian. Adnan said: "He held me up when I was two days old but since then we have heard nothing from them."

Population growth rate slows
According to the United Nations Population Fund, the seven-billionth child is most likely to be a boy born in India or China, but the trend of fertility in the longer term is in a different direction, Dudley Poston, a professor of sociology and demographics at Texas A&M University, told Reuters.

For the first time ever, the human reproduction rate is slowing, in many places slowing significantly, and the slowing growth is not only happening in Europe and Japan, he said.

"Once your fertility rates drops below two, it is very very hard to get it to go back up again," Poston told Reuters.

"We now have 75 countries in the world where the fertility rate is below two," meaning the average woman is having fewer than two children.

Video: India?s growing population (on this page)

That is far below the rate of 2.2 to 2.3 considered optimal to hold the population steady, factoring in the number of females who have no children or who don't live to reach childbearing age.

While he said Europe and the industrialized democracies of east Asia are the poster children for demographic shift, low birth rates are also being seen in Brazil, in China, and in the Islamic Middle East, where the fertility rate in the United Arab Emirates is 1.8.

"Japan is losing more people today than they're gaining," Poston said. "South Korea has an alarmingly low fertility rate, 1.1."

Not long ago, the opposite was true. In 1970, the average fertility rate worldwide was 4.5, leading to predictions of demographic doom in books like Robert Silverberg's "The World Inside" and Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich's "The Population Bomb."

Wars, unrest once feared
They saw a world where hoards of wildly reproducing humans desperate for dwindling food supplies would destroy social cohesion and spark wars and societal unrest.

But a funny thing happened on the way to population Armageddon.

Poston said the fastest growth period in the history of the world was in the mid to late 1960s, which prompted a gloomy outlook for the future.

"When Paul Ehrlich wrote that book the world was growing at about 2 percent per year," Poston said. "Now we're growing at about half that."

But Poston said a combination of factors led to what may be the most significant demographic shift ever.

In the industrialized West, improved methods of birth control and greater opportunities for women in the workplace and in society meant the end of 5,000 years of women generally being considered society's baby-makers.

In China, there has been aggressive enforcement of a "one-child" policy, drastically reducing population growth rates.

Worldwide, urbanization has reduced the need for large families beneficial in rural agricultural areas.

Reasons for significant growth rate declines in places like Iran, where the rate has fallen from 7.0 in 1974 to 1.9, remain more of a mystery, but Poston said they probably could be traced to cultural changes that can be very difficult to reverse.

"We have been growing very, very fast in the world and now we're starting to slow down," he said.

March of science
Poston said it took until about 1800 for the earth to see its one billionth resident, as high fertility rates were effectively countered by high infant mortality rates, diseases, and nearly continuous warfare that generally cut down men at the height of their most active reproductive years.

The march of science led to a decrease in infant mortality and deadly diseases, and combined with a continued high fertility rate led to a huge population bloom. The two billionth human was born in 1930, and the six billionth in 1999.

Moreover, the warfare and constant societal violence that helped keep the population in check has retreated, Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker said in his recent book "The Better Angels of our Nature."

"It is really only in the countries of sub Saharan Africa where fertility is still high...," Poston said, "but even in several of these countries there have been fertility declines in recent years."

So Poston said while it took 12 years to reach Monday's seven billion mark from six billion, it will take 14 years to reach eight billion ? the first time in history a billion milestone has taken longer to reach than the one before ? and then 18 years to reach nine billion.

Thus far the world has been able to produce enough food to feed its new mouths.

The U.N. says world food production per person today is 41 percent higher than in 1961, thanks largely to the "Green Revolution" in farming which brought higher yields not only to Western farmers, but brought traditional subsistence farming in Africa and Asia into the modern age.

Food production per capita in India today is 37 percent higher than fifty years ago, according to the World Bank.

Some still fear food shortages and price rises, and problems with supplies of other commodities like oil.

"(Whether) the rate of farm production slow down or level off is uncertain," Poston said. "But right now there is no difficulty."

And the trends may bring problems of a different sort, he said, predicting the world will begin seeing the impact of declining populations in as little as 40 years.

"That is going to be the issue in the future," Poston said. "We are going to have to start thinking for the first time in human history about fewer."

That will mean thinking in an entirely new way about everything from resource production to old age pensions, he said.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45100073/ns/world_news/

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Panasonic posts loss, forecasts full year red ink (AP)

TOKYO ? Panasonic Corp. stayed in the red in the latest quarter and projected a huge annual loss due to slumping TV sales and a strong yen.

The company, which makes Viera TVs and Lumix cameras, on Monday reported a loss of 105.8 billion yen ($1.34 billion) for the July-September quarter.

Panasonic now expects a loss of 420 billion yen ($5.3 billion) for the fiscal year through March 2012, down sharply from an earlier projection of a 30 billion yen ($380 million) profit.

Panasonic had slumped to a 30.4 billion yen loss in the April-June quarter, hit by damages and lost sales from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan's northern coast and killed nearly 20,000 people.

Despite signs of recovery from the disaster, the company faces new challenges, including the global economic slump, slowing demand in emerging markets and the strong yen. Sales were down in flat panel TVs, auto electronics and cellphones.

Earlier Monday, Japanese authorities intervened in the currency market to weaken the yen against the dollar and ease pressure on Japanese exporters. That caused the dollar to jump nearly 5 percent to above 79 yen after earlier touching a post World War II-low of 75.32 yen ? a level that is excruciating for exporters.

Panasonic said its sales dropped 6 percent to 2.08 trillion yen ($26.3 billion) during the July-September quarter from a year earlier.

Panasonic suffered a loss of 136.2 billion yen ($1.72 billion) during the first six months of the business year, compared to 74.7 billion yen profit a year earlier. Its sales fell by 8 percent to 4 trillion yen ($50.6 billion). Overseas sales fell more than those at home, the company said.

Panasonic stock closed down 2.1 percent at 809 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, which closed just before the earnings report was released.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/japan/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111031/ap_on_hi_te/as_japan_earns_panasonic

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Not All Women at Higher Risk in Families Carrying Breast Cancer Gene (HealthDay)

MONDAY, Oct. 31 (HealthDay News) -- Women who have a relative with breast cancer linked to the high-risk BRCA genetic mutation understandably worry about their own risk.

Now, a new study suggests that women who don't test positive for the mutations are not at an extremely high risk of getting breast cancer, even if they have a relative with BRCA-related breast cancer.

Their risk is similar to that of women with relatives with non-BRCA-related cancers, the new research indicates.

This refutes a finding from a 2007 study, which found a two- to five-times higher risk for these women, even if they tested negative for the mutations, said senior study author Dr. Alice S. Whittemore, a professor of health research and policy at Stanford University School of Medicine.

Based on the new research, she said, the bottom line is this: "If you are in a family where there is a BRCA mutation and you do not have that mutation, your risk of breast cancer is no greater than anyone with a family history of [other types of] breast cancer."

According to the American Cancer Society, having one first-degree relative, such as a mother, sister or daughter, with breast cancer doubles a woman's risk of getting it. Having two close relatives increases the risk about threefold.

Whittemore calls the new finding "very, very reassuring" because it suggests that having a family history of the BRCA mutation, by itself, is not a risk factor, she said.

The study is published online Oct. 31 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Women with a BRCA1 or BRCA 2 gene mutation have a 5- to 20-fold higher risk of getting breast or ovarian cancer, the Stanford researchers wrote. That means a lifetime probability of up to 65 percent for breast cancer, and up to 40 percent for ovarian cancer.

Women who have the BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations and are cancer-free are urged to step up their screening and to begin it early, by age 25, among other measures. They may also consider a preventive mastectomy or ovary removal after childbearing is done.

However, the 2007 study, Whittemore said, "sent an alarm signal to the medical community" as it suggested a high risk even in BRCA-negative relatives.

After the study was published, she and her colleagues took a closer look. "What we thought to be the flaw was that they were comparing these relatives of women with breast cancer to the general population. A better comparison group would have been women who have relatives with breast cancer but no mutation," Whittemore said. "That's what we did."

The new study looked at 3,047 families from the United States, Australia and Canada. It included 160 families with BRCA1 and 132 with BRCA 2. The researchers compared cancer risk in women who tested negative but had relatives with BRCA-related breast cancer with a group of cancer-free women who had relatives with cancer that wasn't BRCA-related.

They found no increased risk for the women who were BRCA-negative and had close relatives with BRCA-related cancer.

In other words, Whittemore said, their risk is "no greater than anybody with a family history."

Besides BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations, other risk factors, not totally understood, that can run in families also drive breast cancer risk, experts say. One example is drinking habits.

The findings suggest that BRCA-negative women can follow the same breast cancer screening routine as the general population, if they have no other strong risk factors, Whittemore said.

The findings should be reassuring to women without the mutation, agreed Dr. Patricia Ganz, director of cancer prevention and control research at the University of California's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The results do suggest that women in a family where BRCA-related breast cancer had occurred who themselves are negative for BRCA mutation may have a slightly increased risk "because there are other things that influence getting breast cancer besides having the gene mutation," she said.

"The main message," she said, "is that these women [without the mutation] don't need all that extra surveillance."

Testing for BRCA mutations requires a sample of blood or cells be taken from the mouth, said Rebecca Chambers, a spokeswoman for Myriad Genetics, which provides the test.

The samples can be collected at any lab and mailed in for analysis. The test costs $3,340, she said, but the average out-of -pocket cost is $100 after insurance coverage.

More information

For more on BRCA mutations, go to U.S. National Cancer Institute.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/health/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20111031/hl_hsn/notallwomenathigherriskinfamiliescarryingbreastcancergene

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Thais hope flooded factories back up in 3 months (Reuters)

BANGKOK (Reuters) ? Thailand hopes industrial estates swamped in its worst floods in half a century can be up and running within three months, the prime minister said on Monday, as the center of the capital finally appeared to have escaped a similar fate.

Nearly 400 people have been killed in months of floods, the lives of more than two million disrupted, economic growth has been set back and global supply chains for Thai-made computer and auto parts thrown into disarray.

But inner Bangkok, protected by a network of dikes and sandbag walls, appeared to have escaped the deluge with peak tides on the Chao Phraya river due to pass on Monday and clear weather setting in.

While the city center remained dry with business mostly as usual, neighborhoods on the wrong side of the protective ring, especially to the north and west, and provinces to the north, have been swamped by deep, fetid flows.

The government is planning to spend 900 billion baht ($30 billion) on reconstruction, flood prevention and helping industry, a government minister said.

But in the mean time, anger is rising in hard-hit communities just as water is in some places as it makes its way toward the sea.

Tension has boiled over into skirmishes with police in some areas as villagers try to pull down flood barriers keeping water high in their communities but protecting the capital.

Saving inner Bangkok from disaster would be a major victory for the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, a political novice who took over this year after an election that many Thais hoped would heal deep divisions.

Bangkok's 12 million people account for 41 percent of Thailand's gross domestic product.

Another economically vital region is just north of Bangkok, in particular Pathum Thani and Ayutthaya provinces, which have been largely inundated for weeks.

Seven industrial estates that have sprung up over the last decade or two on what used to be the central plain's rice fields have been overcome by the exceptionally large volumes of water flowing down the Chao Phraya basin.

Yingluck said it should take three months to rehabilitate the industrial estates where some foreign investors have built regional production hubs.

"We expect after the water recedes the industrial estates will recover within three months if we can release the water and recover the machinery quickly," Yingluck told reporters.

Thailand is the second-largest exporter of computer hard drives and global prices are rising because of a flood-related shortage of major components used in personal computers.

Yingluck said she had been in talks with Japanese investors and had assured them of steps to prevent a repeat of disaster from the annual rainy season.

"They are still confident to invest in Thailand but we have to invest in a long-term flood-protection plan," she said.

DANGER, DISEASE

Energy Minister Pichai Naripthaphan said the government expected a recovery plan would cost 900 billion baht ($30 billion), including 800 billion baht for an overhaul of the water-management system and 100 billion for the rehabilitation of industrial estates.

"Every crisis has an opportunity. We are studying how to rebuild the country's economy and competitiveness. We have studied models from several countries," Pichai told Reuters.

"Solving the flood crisis is the main issue."

The president of South Korea's Samsung Electronics said on the weekend he expected Thailand's floods to hit the computer memory chip market further by hurting PC production until the first quarter of next year.

Japan's Honda Motor Co may keep its Thai factory shut for about six months which would hit 3 percent of its annual global car output, the Nikkei business daily reported on Sunday.

The Bank of Thailand has nearly halved its projection of economic growth this year to 2.6 percent from July's 4.1 percent estimate, and said the economy -- Southeast Asia's second largest -- would shrink by 1.9 percent in the December quarter from the previous three months due to the floods.

The floods have destroyed 25 percent of the main rice crop in the world's largest rice exporter as they submerged four million acres (1.6 million hectares), an area roughly the size of Kuwait.

The floods were caused in part by unusually heavy monsoon rain falling on a low-lying region but the weather has been largely clear for a week as the cooler, dry season begins.

But the danger is far from over with the run-off still flowing south and swamping new neighborhoods as fears of disease grow.

People living in Thonburi, on the west bank of the Chao Phraya, have been struggling in waist-deep water for days, as have those in suburbs and provinces to the north of Bangkok.

About 30 riot police were deployed in an area of Pathum Thani to maintain order after residents destroyed a barrier.

Yingluck assured flood victims in a Facebook message that they would be taken care of.

As well as a big risk of diarrhea and mosquito-borne diseases, skin infections area a major problem and in some areas, hungry crocodiles have escaped from flooded farms and snakes searching for dry land have slithered into homes.

(Additional reporting by Khettiya Jittapong and Bazuki Muhammad; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111031/wl_nm/us_thailand_floods

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myPlex makes streaming your media simple, gives you one queue to rule them all

Plex is one of the more popular solutions to the problem of how to get all that (legally downloaded, of course) media sitting on your home PC to your various devices for consumption. But, like many of its competitors, getting the whole shebang set up isn't always the easiest task. The company's new myPlex platform aims to solve this conundrum, and adds a few welcome features along the way. Now, setting up a server or a client is as simple as logging in to your Plex account -- no matter how many of either part of the media-streaming equation you may have. As an added bonus, your account is also now home to a queue that is shared across all devices. Stopped watching a movie half way through on your commute home? You can pick up right where you left off on your Roku. You can even add web clips from sources like YouTube to the list. Check out the source link for a few more details.

myPlex makes streaming your media simple, gives you one queue to rule them all originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 29 Oct 2011 21:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/29/myplex-makes-streaming-your-media-simple-gives-you-one-queue-to/

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five Essential Ways to Receive Affordable Car Insurance Online ...

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It is really important that finding affordable auto insurance policies is no magic trick. The very best thing that you have to do is to store all around, study, and obtain and examine vehicle insurance policies estimates on the web. It is also essential to consult for referrals from friends and family members members who are insured in particular businesses for years and come across out if you can get affordable car insurance. The far more you shop around and weigh automobile insurance policy rates, the larger the likelihood is for you to get the best and most cost-effective vehicle insurance coverage.

Affordable Car Insurance

Source: http://estateof.com/2011/10/31/five-essential-ways-to-receive-affordable-car-insurance-online/

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