Last week we declared that the European recession had come to an end, or at least was on the verge of ending.
That wasn't to say that things weren't a gigantic mess. Unemployment is still enormous, and the political situation is tenuous in many countries.The Euro is still deeply flawed.
But the data is turning the corner left and right, and banks are beginning to expand available credit again.
And now (via Josh Brown) comes more evidence in the form of car sales.
Nina Bains at WSJ rounds up what the automakers are saying about the European market:
Daimler AG said it expects its passenger car sales to rise further in the second half of the year alongside ?significantly better? earnings as Europe?s battered car market starts to turn a corner.
Meanwhile, French rival Renault SA's global vehicle registrations perked up in the second quarter of this year, partially offsetting a 4.7% drop in the first quarter.
Shares in Renault rallied over 5% Friday following first-half results, with analysts cheered by a strong performance in the auto division.
Auto makers across the pond are also steadily becoming more optimistic about Europe?s prospects.
Ford Motor Co. F?+0.65% brightened its outlook for the rest of the year after second-quarter profit raced ahead, helped by an improvement in its European division.
Are things still horrible? Absolutely. Does the data show they're on the mend. Clearly.
PITTSFIELD -- An Otis man and his three dogs are together again, separated following a two car crash in Pittsfield over the weekend.
Around 1 p.m. Saturday, Andrew Johnston, 37, was driving south on Hubbard Avenue when his Jeep was struck by another vehicle driven by Sarah Fellman, exiting BJ's Wholesale Club on Hubbard Avenue, according to Pittsfield police. The impact of the crash caused Johnston to crash into an utility pole, and his three dogs traveling with him to flee the accident scene.
While firefighters extricated Johnston from the Jeep, he managed to avoid serious injury as he was treated and released from Berkshire Medical Center later in the afternoon.
A passenger in the Fellman car, 80-year-old Emma Claramunt of Hinsdale, was also treated and release from BMC, hospital officials said. Fellman, 30, and an infant in her car were treated at the scene.
After leaving BMC, Johnston posted a heartfelt request to his Facebook friends to find the animals. Two of them, a black lab named Red, and Lola, a bull mastiff/lab mix, were found and turned into the Eleanor Sonsini Animal Shelter in Pittsfield. Shelter officials posted on their Facebook they had the two dogs and they were eventually returned to Johnston a few hours after the accident.
However, Jackson, another black lab mix, was still missing.
Johnston said he spent an anxious evening fretting about his dog, driving back to the accident scene to look for Jackson, with no luck.
Johnston reported that Jackson has a tracking chip that links to his cell phone, but it was apparently lost in the accident.
However, early Sunday, Johnston reported on Facebook that Jackson had been returned to him. He did not elaborate, but said he was happy to have all three of his "children" back home.
It is cool, I been saying this since they unveiled it months ago. I just don't see myself using it though. Even when they adjust the lighting to compensate, it still doesn't give a useful view of the action. It's a cool add-on though. Doesn't add TOO much to the game, but kids might enjoy it.
I had so much on my wall and around my entertainment center though, I just don't feel it would work for me personally. Maybe some people will really enjoy it though.
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) ? Pope Francis took on the defense of the Amazon and the environment near the end of his weeklong trip to Brazil, as he donned a colorful Indian headdress Saturday and urged that the rainforest be treated as a garden.
The pontiff met with a few thousand of Brazil's political, business and cultural elite in Rio de Janeiro's Municipal Theater, where he also shook hands with Indians who said they were from a tribe that has been battling ranchers and farmers trying to invade their land in northeastern Bahia state.
In a separate speech to bishops, the pope called for "respect and protection of the entire creation which God has entrusted to man, not so that it be indiscriminately exploited but rather made into a garden."
He also urged attention to a 2007 document by Latin American and Caribbean bishops that he was in charge of drafting, which underscored dangers facing the Amazon environment and the native people living there. The document also called for new evangelization efforts to halt a steep decline in Catholics leaving for other faiths or secularism.
"The traditional communities have been practically excluded from decisions on the wealth of biodiversity and nature. Nature has been, and continues to be, assaulted," the document reads.
Several of the indigenous people in the audience hailed from the Amazon and said they hoped the pope would help them protect land designated by the government as indigenous reserves but that farmers and ranchers illegally invade for timber and to graze cattle. In fact, grazing has been the top recent cause of deforestation in Brazil.
"We got credentials for his speech and attended so we could tell the pope what's happening to our people," said Levi Xerente, a 22-year-old member of the Xerente tribe in Tocantins state in the Amazon, after he attended the pope's speech. "We hope that he will help intervene with the government and stop all the big public works projects that are happening in the region."
Xerente, speaking in broken Portuguese, said the biggest threats to Indians in the region were big agribusiness invading land and the government's own massive infrastructure projects, including the damming of rivers for hydroelectric power generation and roads being carved out of the forest, often to reach giant mines.
Francis thanked Brazilian bishops for maintaining a church presence in the rugged and vast Amazon, which is about the size of the United States west of the Mississippi River. But he pushed church leaders to refocus energies on the region.
"The church's work needs to be further encouraged and launched afresh" in the Amazon, the pope said in prepared remarks, urging an "Amazonian face" for the church.
He cited the church's long history of working in the region.
"The church's presence in the Amazon basin is not that of someone with bags packed and ready to leave after having exploited everything possible," he said. "The church has been present in the Amazon basin from the beginning ... and is still present and critical to the area's future."
Catholic priests and nuns have taken up the causes of Indians and of poor subsistence farmers in the Amazon, often putting themselves in danger. Violent conflicts over land rights are common in the region, where wealthy farmers and ranchers are known to hire gunmen to intimidate people into leaving land the government has often set aside as reserves for their use.
In 2005, U.S. nun and Amazon land-rights defender Dorothy Stang was murdered by one such gunman in the state of Para. Two ranchers were later convicted of ordering her murder so they could control a parcel of land the government had ceded to a subsistence farming group Stang worked with.
___
Associated Press writer Jenny Barchfield contributed to this report.
___
Follow Bradley Brooks on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bradleybrooks
ATLANTA (AP) -- LeBron James is taking some of his talents during the offseason to a best-selling basketball video game franchise as a music curator.
2K Sports announced Friday that the two-time NBA champion of the Miami Heat selected 20 songs for the soundtrack of the upcoming "NBA 2K14." The league's four-time MVP is also the cover athlete of the popular video game.
James said in a statement that he is honored to be the first cover athlete to choose songs for the soundtrack. He follows his friend and Grammy-winning rapper Jay-Z, who was the executive producer of the last year's installment that sold more than 4.5 million copies.
"2K is letting me take control of some important elements in NBA 2K14, including this year's soundtrack," James said. "I love that I'm the first NBA 2K cover athlete to choose the soundtrack."
Some of the songs featured on the game's soundtrack are Drake's "Started From The Bottom," Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight," Daft Punk's "Get Lucky," featuring Pharrell Williams and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis' "Can't Hold Us," with Ray Dalton. Other music acts featured are Jay-Z, Coldplay, Robin Thicke, The Black Keys, Eminem, Fly Union, Gorillaz, Imagine Dragons, Jada Kiss, John Legend, Kanye West, Rick Ross, Kendrick Lamar, Nas and Puff Daddy.
James is the first solo cover athlete to cover the game in two years since Michael Jordan. The game is expected to go on sale Oct. 1.
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Online:
http://2ksports.com/
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Follow Jonathan Landrum Jr. on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/mrlandrum31
Contact: Dr. Dirk F?rger presse@dzne.de 49-228-433-02260 Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres
Substance makes mice live longer, but hardly slows down the aging process
This news release is available in German.
The findings are reported in the current issue of the "Journal of Clinical Investigation" (published online on July 25, 2013).
The body's repair mechanisms begin to fail with increasing age. As a result, signs of wear and tear appear and the risk for many diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, cardiovascular disorders and cancer, increases. "Current efforts to develop therapies against age-related diseases target these disorders one by one," says Dr. Dan Ehninger, research group leader at the DZNE site in Bonn. "Influencing the aging process itself may be an alternative approach with the potential to yield broadly effective therapeutics against age-related diseases."
In this context, the substance rapamycin is noteworthy. Rapamycin is used in recipients of organ transplants, as it keeps the immune system in check and can consequently prevent rejection of the foreign tissue. In 2009, US scientists discovered another effect: Mice treated with rapamycin lived longer than their untreated counterparts. "Rapamycin was the first drug shown to extend maximal lifespan in a mammalian species. This study has created quite a stir," says Ehninger.
For Ehninger and his team, this finding motivated further studies: "We wanted to address if rapamycin slows down aging in mice or, alternatively, if it has an isolated effect on lifespan - without broadly modulating aging."
Not a youth elixir
Together with scientists from the Helmholtz Zentrum Mnchen and other colleagues, Ehninger's group investigated if rapamycin influences aging in mice. The results are sobering: "Our results indicate that rapamycin extends lifespan, but it has only limited effects on the aging process itself," is Ehninger's summary of the findings. "Most aging traits were not affected by rapamycin treatment. Although we did observe positive effects on some aging traits, such as memory impairments and reduced red blood cell counts, our studies showed that similar drug effects are also seen in young mice, indicating that rapamycin did not influence these measures by slowing aging, but rather via other, aging-independent, mechanisms."
The researchers believe that such aging-independent drug effects also underlie rapamycin's effect on lifespan. "We assume that the lifespan of mice is extended because rapamycin inhibits tumor formation. This is a well-known rapamycin effect, which we were able to confirm. Cancer is the leading cause of death in the relevant mouse strains" says the specialist in molecular medicine. "Rapamycin, therefore, seems to have isolated effects on specific life-limiting pathology, but lacks broad effects on aging in mice."
A comprehensive assessment of aging
The research team assessed more than 150 traits, which typically change during the course of aging. These analyses included an assessment of vision, reflexes, cardiovascular function, learning and behavior, immune functions and the integrity of the arterial wall, to just name a few. "Aging is a complex process, which cannot be captured by assessing a single parameter. This is why we analysed a large number of structural and functional signs of aging," explains Ehninger. "The present study is one of the most comprehensive assessments of a putative anti-aging intervention."
The analysis comprised three different age cohorts, in which rapamycin treatment was either initiated in young adulthood, in midlife or late in life. "At the time, the US study showed that rapamycin extends lifespan irrespective of whether the treatment is given to young or aged animals," says the Bonn-based researcher. "We, therefore, chose a study design, in the context of which we also investigated rapamycin's effects on different age groups. This enabled us to examine whether the possible effects of rapamycin depend on the age at which treatment started."
The animals were genetically identical twin mice. All of the animals received rapamycin regularly over a period of approximately one year. For each age cohort there was also a control group, which did not take the substance.
Need for comprehensive analyses
"Generally speaking, our studies show that a number of different parameters have to be considered when assessing the efficacy of possible anti-aging interventions. The interpretation of the data depends heavily on the overall picture of findings. Lifespan measures alone are not a reliable indicator of anti-aging effects," emphasises Ehninger. "This makes the search for anti-aging medicines tedious, but it is also very promising, because such substances could open up new possibilities for medicine. However, this is still some way off."
###
Original publication
"Rapamycin extends murine lifespan but has limited effects on aging ", Frauke Neff, Diana Flores-Dominguez etc., Journal of Clinical Investigation (published online on July 25, 2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1172/JCI67674
The German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) investigates the causes of diseases of the nervous system and develops strategies for prevention, treatment and care. It is an institution of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres with sites in Berlin, Bonn, Dresden, Gttingen, Magdeburg, Munich, Rostock/Greifswald, Tbingen and Witten. The DZNE cooperates closely with universities, their clinics and other research facilities. Website: http://www.dzne.de/en / Twitter: twitter.com/DZNE_en
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: Dr. Dirk F?rger presse@dzne.de 49-228-433-02260 Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres
Substance makes mice live longer, but hardly slows down the aging process
This news release is available in German.
The findings are reported in the current issue of the "Journal of Clinical Investigation" (published online on July 25, 2013).
The body's repair mechanisms begin to fail with increasing age. As a result, signs of wear and tear appear and the risk for many diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, cardiovascular disorders and cancer, increases. "Current efforts to develop therapies against age-related diseases target these disorders one by one," says Dr. Dan Ehninger, research group leader at the DZNE site in Bonn. "Influencing the aging process itself may be an alternative approach with the potential to yield broadly effective therapeutics against age-related diseases."
In this context, the substance rapamycin is noteworthy. Rapamycin is used in recipients of organ transplants, as it keeps the immune system in check and can consequently prevent rejection of the foreign tissue. In 2009, US scientists discovered another effect: Mice treated with rapamycin lived longer than their untreated counterparts. "Rapamycin was the first drug shown to extend maximal lifespan in a mammalian species. This study has created quite a stir," says Ehninger.
For Ehninger and his team, this finding motivated further studies: "We wanted to address if rapamycin slows down aging in mice or, alternatively, if it has an isolated effect on lifespan - without broadly modulating aging."
Not a youth elixir
Together with scientists from the Helmholtz Zentrum Mnchen and other colleagues, Ehninger's group investigated if rapamycin influences aging in mice. The results are sobering: "Our results indicate that rapamycin extends lifespan, but it has only limited effects on the aging process itself," is Ehninger's summary of the findings. "Most aging traits were not affected by rapamycin treatment. Although we did observe positive effects on some aging traits, such as memory impairments and reduced red blood cell counts, our studies showed that similar drug effects are also seen in young mice, indicating that rapamycin did not influence these measures by slowing aging, but rather via other, aging-independent, mechanisms."
The researchers believe that such aging-independent drug effects also underlie rapamycin's effect on lifespan. "We assume that the lifespan of mice is extended because rapamycin inhibits tumor formation. This is a well-known rapamycin effect, which we were able to confirm. Cancer is the leading cause of death in the relevant mouse strains" says the specialist in molecular medicine. "Rapamycin, therefore, seems to have isolated effects on specific life-limiting pathology, but lacks broad effects on aging in mice."
A comprehensive assessment of aging
The research team assessed more than 150 traits, which typically change during the course of aging. These analyses included an assessment of vision, reflexes, cardiovascular function, learning and behavior, immune functions and the integrity of the arterial wall, to just name a few. "Aging is a complex process, which cannot be captured by assessing a single parameter. This is why we analysed a large number of structural and functional signs of aging," explains Ehninger. "The present study is one of the most comprehensive assessments of a putative anti-aging intervention."
The analysis comprised three different age cohorts, in which rapamycin treatment was either initiated in young adulthood, in midlife or late in life. "At the time, the US study showed that rapamycin extends lifespan irrespective of whether the treatment is given to young or aged animals," says the Bonn-based researcher. "We, therefore, chose a study design, in the context of which we also investigated rapamycin's effects on different age groups. This enabled us to examine whether the possible effects of rapamycin depend on the age at which treatment started."
The animals were genetically identical twin mice. All of the animals received rapamycin regularly over a period of approximately one year. For each age cohort there was also a control group, which did not take the substance.
Need for comprehensive analyses
"Generally speaking, our studies show that a number of different parameters have to be considered when assessing the efficacy of possible anti-aging interventions. The interpretation of the data depends heavily on the overall picture of findings. Lifespan measures alone are not a reliable indicator of anti-aging effects," emphasises Ehninger. "This makes the search for anti-aging medicines tedious, but it is also very promising, because such substances could open up new possibilities for medicine. However, this is still some way off."
###
Original publication
"Rapamycin extends murine lifespan but has limited effects on aging ", Frauke Neff, Diana Flores-Dominguez etc., Journal of Clinical Investigation (published online on July 25, 2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1172/JCI67674
The German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) investigates the causes of diseases of the nervous system and develops strategies for prevention, treatment and care. It is an institution of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres with sites in Berlin, Bonn, Dresden, Gttingen, Magdeburg, Munich, Rostock/Greifswald, Tbingen and Witten. The DZNE cooperates closely with universities, their clinics and other research facilities. Website: http://www.dzne.de/en / Twitter: twitter.com/DZNE_en
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Former “Facts of Life” star Kim Fields has revealed she is expecting a baby boy. The 44-year-old actress and husband Christopher Morgan, 37, have another son on the way, revealing the big news on an episode of “The Real”. Kim Fields said, “This is Quincy Xavier,” she said pointing to her baby bump on an ...
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Public release date: 25-Jul-2013
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Former “Facts of Life” star Kim Fields has revealed she is expecting a baby boy. The 44-year-old actress and husband Christopher Morgan, 37, have another son on the way, revealing the big news on an episode of “The Real”. Kim Fields said, “This is Quincy Xavier,” she said pointing to her baby bump on an ...