Many Head and Neck Cancer Survivors Face Eating Problems (HealthDay)

MONDAY, Jan. 16 (HealthDay News) -- Persistent pain, eating problems and depression are the most common problems experienced by long-term survivors of head and neck cancer, a new study finds.

In the study, published in the Jan. 16 online issue of the journal Archives of Otolaryngology -- Head & Neck Surgery, researchers looked at 337 people who were diagnosed with head and neck cancer from 1995 to 2004 and survived at least five years.

More than 50 percent of the survivors had problems eating because of poor throat functioning, 28.5 percent had symptoms of depression and more than 17 percent had substantial pain, the researchers found.

However, when the long-term survivors were compared to age-matched people in the general population, their average general health was similar, Dr. Gerry Funk, of the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City, and colleagues explained in a journal news release.

The investigators also found that pain and diet in the first year after cancer treatment were the strongest independent predictors of five-year, health-related quality-of-life outcomes.

Problems with mouth and throat function in head and neck cancer survivors can be due to factors such as neuromuscular changes, anatomic deficits after surgery, pain and dental problems, the researchers noted.

"Early interventions addressing eating issues, swallowing problems and pain management will be a crucial component in improving this patient population's long-term quality of life, especially in those who are functioning poorly one year after diagnosis," the study authors concluded.

More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more about head and neck cancer.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/diseases/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20120116/hl_hsn/manyheadandneckcancersurvivorsfaceeatingproblems

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'The Artist, 'Tinker Tailor' up for UK film awards (AP)

LONDON ? Buoyant silent film "The Artist" and moody spy saga "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" are among the leading contenders for the British Academy Film Awards, Britain's equivalent of the Oscars.

"The Artist" has 12 nominations and "Tinker, Tailor" 11, both including best picture and director nods.

In a diverse field not dominated by any single film, there are also multiple nominations for "My Week With Marilyn," "The Iron Lady," "The Help" and "We Need to Talk About Kevin."

Nominations were announced Tuesday and the prizes will be awarded at a ceremony at London's Royal Opera House on Feb. 12. They are considered an important indicator of prospects at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles two weeks later.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/britain/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120117/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_film_awards

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Stricken Italian liner shifts, rescuers despair (Reuters)

GIGLIO, Italy (Reuters) ? A stricken Italian cruise liner shifted on its rocky resting place on Monday as worsening weather disrupted an increasingly despairing hunt for any survivors among some 16 people still missing.

As the Costa Concordia's owners blamed their captain for veering shorewards on Friday in a bravura "salute" to residents of a Tuscan island, the giant ship slid a little, threatening to plunge all its gigantic carcass and 2,300 tonnes of fuel below the Mediterranean waters of the surrounding nature reserve.

The slippage caused a few hours suspension in efforts to find anyone still alive after three days in the capsized hull, resting on jagged slope outside a picturesque harbor on the island of Giglio. Six bodies have already been found. Most of the 4,200 passengers and crew survived, despite hours of chaos.

The 114,500-tonne ship, one of the biggest passenger vessels ever to be wrecked, foundered after striking a rock, just as dinner was being served on Friday night. It quickly rolled on its side, revealing a long gouge below the waterline.

Firefighters' spokesman Luca Cari said there were still small movements of the vessel but they were not considered dangerous. However, night-time searches would be suspended.

Another senior firefighter, Luciano Roncalli, told Reuters that all the unsubmerged areas of the liner had been searched, indicating faint hopes of finding more survivors in the flooded and upturned maze of luxurious state rooms and tennis courts, bars and spas that are now lolling beneath the sea.

Environment Minister Corrado Clini said he would declare a state of emergency because of the risk that the ship's fuel would leak into the pristine Tuscan Archipelago National Park. No major spillage has so far been detected.

Should rougher seas dislodge the wreck and cause it to sink or break up, that could scupper any hopes for the owners, a unit of Florida's Carnival Corp., of salvaging a liner which cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build just six years ago.

"SALUTE" TO SHORE

Investigators say the ship was far too close to the shore and its owners, Costa Cruises, said the captain, who has been arrested, had carried out the rash maneuver to "make a bow" to people on the island, who included a retired Italian admiral.

The skipper denies charges of manslaughter and his lawyer has said his actions had saved many lives.

The father of the ship's head waiter told Reuters that his son had telephoned him before the accident to say the crew would salute him by blowing the ship's whistle as they passed close by Giglio, where both the waiter, Antonello Tievoli, and his 82-year-old father Giuseppe live.

"The ship obviously came too close," the elder Tievoli said.

"I don't know if Antonello asked the captain to come near, but the responsibility is always the captain's."

The captain, Francesco Schettino, was arrested on Saturday. He is accused of manslaughter and abandoning his ship before all those on board were evacuated. Prosecutors say he also refused to go back on board when requested by the coastguard.

Costa Cruises chief executive Pier Luigi Foschi on Monday blamed errors by Schettino for the disaster. He told a news conference the company would provide its captain with any assistance he required. "But we need to acknowledge the facts and we cannot deny human error," he added.

"These ships are ultra-safe. It is an exceptional event, which was unforeseeable," he said, fighting back tears.

He said the ship deviated from its correct route and Schettino had contravened safety procedures. "The company disavows such behavior, which caused the accident," he said.

Foschi said company vessels were forbidden to come closer than 500 meters to the Giglio coast. Investigators say the liner, designed as a floating pleasure palace for over 3,000 paying customers, was about 150 meters (yards) offshore when it hit the rocks that tore a long gash in its thousand-foot hull.

Schettino denies being too close to the coast and says the rock he hit was not marked on charts.

His lawyer, Bruno Leporatti, issued a statement saying Schettino was "broken-up, troubled and saddened by the loss of life." But he believed he had saved many lives by carrying out a difficult emergency maneuver with anchors after the accident, which turned the ship closer to the shore.

CHAOS AND PANIC

Foschi denied allegations passengers had not been trained how to evacuate the ship, where there were scenes of chaos and panic after the collision. There were around 1,020 crew from 38 nations on board but many were entertainers or catering staff rather than seasoned mariners.

Foschi called the crew "heroes" and said they had responded properly.

"We had to evacuate over 4,200 people in difficult circumstances so the entire operation took more than two hours. The reason for this is the listing of the ship which did not enable us to use both sides to evacuate people."

The calm weather which since Friday has aided the search of the wreck, by some estimates the biggest passenger vessel ever to founder, took a turn for the worse with rougher seas and a light drizzle falling. Forecasters said it would get worse.

A salvage expert on Giglio, who asked not to be named, told Reuters the ship was clearly moving after being held in place by sharp points of rock that had pierced the hull. Rougher seas could break it free, which would be a "big problem," he said.

The ship is resting in about 20 meters (60 feet) of water but could go down by up to 130 meters if it becomes detached from the rocks.

Cari of the fire brigade said the rescuers could hear no noises from possible survivors inside the half-submerged ship.

"Obviously the more time passes, the less possibility there is of finding anyone alive," he said.

MEMORIES OF TITANIC

The United Nations' shipping agency, the International Maritime Organization, said it was important not to pre-judge the outcome of an inquiry but said it would examine changes to regulations if these were shown to be necessary.

Recalling the sinking of the 46,000-tonne Titanic in April 1912, IMO Secretary-General Koji Sekimizu said: "In the centenary year of the Titanic, we have once again been reminded of the risks involved in maritime activities."

The disaster occurred as passengers were sitting down to dinner on Friday night, triggering panic with thousands jostling to get on lifeboats and some leaping into the icy sea.

Passengers say there were long delays in sending an SOS and organizing the evacuation of those on board and this had resulted in chaos. More than 60 people were hurt.

Italian passengers told newspapers they used their mobile phones to call the Carabinieri police in the city of Grosseto on the mainland to raise the alarm, while the crew were still insisting to them that there was only an electrical fault.

Three people, a South Korean honeymoon couple and a crewman, were rescued on Sunday and police divers also found the bodies of two elderly men, still wearing life vests. The bodies of two French tourists and a Peruvian crewman were found on Saturday.

Carnival Corp, the ship's Miami-based parent company, said it estimated the impact on its 2012 earnings for loss of use alone to be around $90 million. Its share price was down around 16 percent on the London market.

Industry experts said the disaster could seriously hit cruise bookings in at a key time of the year but the sector would eventually recover.

There was deep anger in Italy about the accident.

In a frontpage editorial for the respected daily Corriere della Sera, Pierluigi Battista wrote: "Italy owes the world, international public opinion, the families of those who lost their lives, those who were injured and those who fortunately remained unhurt, a convincing explanation and the toughest possible sanctions against those responsible for this tragedy."

(Additional reporting by Silvia Ognibene, Silvia Aloisi and Kate Hudson; Writing by Barry Moody, Philip Pullella and James Mackenzie; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120116/wl_nm/us_italy_ship

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Sex, Gender and Controversy: Scicurious and Kate Clancy s Science Online 2012 Session

Scicurious and I are leading the ?Sex, gender and controversy: writing to educate, writing to titillate? session on Thursday (at 2:45pm, room 1cd) at Science Online 2012. Despite the fact that the discussion at #scio12 will only be an hour long, we managed to fill a two hour Skype conversation with our thoughts and ideas about the panel earlier this month. I want to share some of our thoughts on the broader perspective we are taking on our session. Sci has shared her origin story over at her digs, which will give you a sense of our introductory remarks and why we care about this topic.

Agency and Institution in Three Acts. Act I: Within yourself

This is not a session on the science of sex, on being sexy while doing science, or on being sciency while having sex. Sci and I aren?t particularly excited by the idea of talking about any of those things, at least in a #scio12 session. What we want to talk about is the tension writing about this topic creates between the two major systems of our lives: our agency as individuals, and the institutions we operate around and within. Writing within this tension is where real risk-taking, exciting writing happens, and we want to help our fellow discussants figure out what this means for their own blogging.

For me, it?s the juxtaposition of my inherent agency as a tenure-track professor with academic freedom who can do whatever she wants for a research program* with institutional pressures of the various contexts in which I work: American culture, Polish culture (since I do my fieldwork in Poland), my university, my discipline. I have one of the most amazing, agency-filled jobs, where I get to decide where and when I work more than many other people I know. Yet I continually bump up against institutional oppressions, and observe the same in many of my peers.

As someone who is gendered female, people have long assumed that my academic interests must naturally tend toward ladybusiness: is that lifelong pressure why I study women?s reproductive ecology, or is it that I just don?t find the dudes that interesting since they aren?t the ones who make the babies? I imagine it?s a hefty portion of both. As a woman, I choose to study women and I understand the drives and assumptions that underlie this, that I didn?t make this choice in a vacuum but in the context of my personal agency and the world I?ve grown up in. I know I may be taken less seriously to do research on something gendered female, and that I may be taken more seriously as a female academic if I did research on something more obviously gendered male. But I also know the safety of women, and the risks where they are fewer of them.

This is a conversation I?ve had among other academics countless times: that this push by others towards particular topics, their own natural tendencies which may agree or disagree with that push, and their desires to subvert assumptions all influenced their topic of study. I know women who don?t study anything to do with women to be taken more seriously, and I know women who study women because it?s the only thing anyone would believe they wanted to study so, of their several projects, it?s all they could get funding for. Queer folk are often assumed to have interests only in queer topics. Several grad student friends of mine over the years have been directly told by their advisors that they should study their own ethnicity. Our agency as scientists is continually subverted by broader assumptions that who we are as people dictate our scientific interests.

Act II: Within your science

This, I think, is why I find the idea of bias in women?s health so interesting. Agency and institutional pressures are constantly at war within me, and so I seek out this tension in my own discipline. On the one hand, you have the scientific method, a nearly perfect form of agency that allows one to ask and test questions about the world in which we live. On the other hand, you have the oppressions and biases that permeate those who conduct science. Sometimes the outcome is pretty bad.

Writing about this tension is risky, but it also has the potential for an enormous payoff in terms of the quality of the final product. What were some of the most popular blog posts after #scio11? The ones that came out of the women in scienceblogging panel. These posts exposed many to the roiling mix of fear and courage many women and people from other underrepresented groups feel in the pit of our bellies every single day. Other posts that I?ve seen really hit a nerve involve tensions between different hypotheses, different interpretations of evidence, or the testing of a long-held assumption.

We are drawn to tension, to controversy, to provocation. Some want to engage, some to pitch a fit, and some to eat popcorn and watch. And a lot more people come when the science we write about is about the intersection or opposition of agency and institution because of that natural tension. The more people who come, the more people with a little more science in their day.

Act III: Within your writing

Here is a final way to think about these two concepts. As science bloggers, we have ultimate agency: even when we write for a network we usually have full editorial control. We can be whoever we want online, write about whatever we want.

But here is a place where institution ? as culture, biology, our training or our relationships ? can bring a healthy kind of unease to our writing. The kinds of people we choose to be are, as a whole, decent people. And decent people can be provocative, but they don?t lie on purpose. Decent people may spin wild theories, but not without qualifiers and evidence. Decent people find the controversy, but the controversy doesn?t define them.

And that is the core of the conversation Sci and I had the other day: with great power comes great responsibility. I credit Sci the most for first pointing out, understanding and personifying this last point. If we are the ones who have decided to communicate science, to break it down for our audience, to share it, or to push its boundaries, we need to be responsible. Our posts may be passed around on Facebook or Twitter, show up on Boing Boing or Reddit, and as a result be the only post someone reads on a given topic. Do we fan the flames of someone?s prejudice? Indulge our worst ideas? Write purely for pageviews?

So on Thursday, this is what we will talk about in our session: finding the tension in ourselves, our science and our writing. Delighting in the controversy, thrilling from the risk, but never forgetting our responsibility to the readers on the other side of our screen.

?

*This is of course within the confines of what it takes to get tenure and given the horrible funding situation which makes it hard to get any science done in the first place. Of course my job isn?t perfect. But that?s a topic for another post.

Note: I want to thank Alice Pawley and Scicurious for the ways in which conversations with them helped coalesce a lot of things I was thinking about around this topic.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=2001ab1e88ec0284a99a056add4b20e7

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CES 2012: interview roundup (video)

The Engadget stage was home to many an interview at this year's CES. Many, many interviews. Given the deluge of guests we hosted in Las Vegas this year, you could be forgiven for not keeping up -- for throwing up your hands in exasperation and making a sandwich to heal the hurt. You could, but you won't. That's because this year, we thought it'd be a good idea to corral all of our CES 2012 interviews into one big metallic box, and hand-pick only the plumpest, juiciest and most eyebrow-arching ones for your enjoyment. We then took those select few and put them in a smaller, spotlit box, which was affixed atop the aforementioned metallic box with a butterfly shaped bow and maybe some duck fat. Add some mood lighting, a splash of bourbon, and voilà. It's the CES 2012 interview roundup, and it's after the break.

Continue reading CES 2012: interview roundup (video)

CES 2012: interview roundup (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Jan 2012 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Russian space probe to crash to Earth within hours (AP)

MOSCOW ? A failed Russian probe designed to travel to a moon of Mars but stuck in Earth orbit will come crashing down within hours, likely in a shower of fragments that survive the fiery re-entry.

The unmanned Phobos Ground is one of the heaviest and most toxic space derelicts ever to crash to Earth, but space officials and experts say the risks are minimal as its orbit is mostly over water and most of the probe's structure will burn up in the atmosphere anyway.

Russia's space agency Roscosmos said the Phobos-Ground will crash between 1730 and 1912 GMT (13:30 a.m. and 3:12 p.m. EST). It said the probe could come down anywhere along its orbit that would place it over South America, Australia, southeast Asia, China, Central Asia and southern Europe. The rest of the world, including the U.S. and Canada, are outside the risk zone.

"The resulting risk isn't significant," said Prof. Heiner Klinkrad, Head of The European Space Agency's Space Debris Office that is monitoring the probe's descent.

He wouldn't say where exactly the probe may enter the atmosphere, but said that "most of Europe is excluded from an impact risk."

Roscosmos predicts that only between 20 and 30 fragments of the Phobos probe with a total weight of up to 200 kilograms (440 pounds) will survive the re-entry and plummet to Earth.

Klinkrad agreed with that assessment, adding that about 100 metric tons of space junk fall on Earth every year. "This is 200 kilograms out of these 100 tons," he said.

Thousands of pieces of derelict space vehicles orbit Earth, occasionally posing danger to astronauts and satellites in orbit, but as far as is known, no one has ever been hurt by falling space debris.

The Phobos-Ground weighs 13.5 metric tons (14.9 tons), and that includes a load of 11 metric tons (12 tons) of highly toxic rocket fuel intended for the long journey to the Martian moon of Phobos. It has been left unused as the probe got stuck in orbit around Earth shortly after its Nov. 9 launch.

Roscosmos says all of the fuel will burn up on re-entry, a forecast Klinkrad said was supported by calculations done by NASA and the ESA. He said the craft's tanks are made of aluminum alloy that has a very low melting temperature, and they will burst at an altitude of more than 100 kilometers.

"These tanks are expected to release the fuel above 100 kilometers, and then the fuel is going to burn in the atmosphere and later the tanks are going to burn themselves as well," Klinkrad said in a telephone interview from his office in Berlin.

The space era has seen far larger spacecraft to crash. NASA's Skylab space station that went down in 1979 weighed 77 metric tons (85 tons) and Russia's Mir space station that de-orbited in 2001 weighed about 130 metric tons (143 tons). Their descent fueled fears around the world, but the wreckage of both fell far away from populated areas.

The $170-million Phobos-Ground was Russia's most expensive and the most ambitious space mission since Soviet times. The spacecraft was intended to land on the crater-dented, potato-shaped Martian moon, collect soil samples and fly them back to Earth, giving scientists precious materials that could shed more light on the genesis of the solar system.

Russia's space chief has acknowledged the Phobos-Ground mission was ill-prepared, but said that Roscosmos had to give it the go-ahead so as not to miss the limited Earth-to-Mars launch window.

Its predecessor, Mars-96, which was built by the same Moscow-based NPO Lavochkin company, also suffered an engine failure and crashed shortly after its launch in 1996. Its crash drew strong international fears because of some 200 grams of plutonium onboard. The craft eventually showered its fragments over the Chile-Bolivia border in the Andes Mountains, and the pieces were never recovered.

The worst ever radiation spill from a derelict space vehicle came in January 1978 when the nuclear-powered Cosmos 954 satellite crashed over northwestern Canada. The Soviets claimed the craft completely burned up on re-entry, but a massive recovery effort by Canadian authorities recovered a dozen fragments, most of which were radioactive.

The Phobos-Ground also contains a tiny quantity of the radioactive metal Cobalt-57 in one of its instruments, but Roscosmos said it poses no threat of radioactive contamination.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120115/ap_on_sc/eu_russia_falling_spacecraft

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Mexico hit by rumors of Indian famine, suicides (AP)

MEXICO CITY ? Mexicans are rushing aid to Tarahumara communities in the remote northern mountains after a local official said dozens of the Indians had killed themselves because they couldn't feed their children due to severe cold weather.

The Tarahumara have long been a symbol of fierce pride, strength and self-reliance in Mexico. They are known for running multiday marathon races across the mountains as part of traditional celebrations.

The idea that such a proud people might be losing their spirit stung Mexicans into a flurry of drives to collect food and clothing to the Indians.

Health care and emergency workers in the region said Monday that the mass-suicide rumors are untrue, but that reports of famine are real.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120116/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_mexico_indian_famine

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