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Thursday, June 20, 2013

Chrissy Teigen Is Nude For GQ Magazine (PHOTO)

Chrissy Teigen is a free spirit who rarely seems to hold anything back.

That's why it comes as no surprise that the 27-year-old model didn't let a little thing like clothing come between her and the camera for her GQ photo shoot.

Teigen posed completely nude for the magazine (save for a pair of Marc Jacobs heels), and was totally game to offer readers some dating advice -- she's engaged to John Legend, so we'd say she knows what she's talking about.

Though it's Teigen's Sports Illustrated bikini photos that made her famous, it's her Twitter account that keeps people talking about her -- and she admits she sometimes wishes she thought before she typed:

"All the time! But not really a regret that I thought it, just that I said it," she told GQ, explaining that the nude photo she shared on Instagram in March is a prime example. "My naked-spray-tan thing comes to mind. What no one knows is that my mom took it! My mom frickin' threw me under the bus!"

For more with Chrissy Teigen, click over to GQ.

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Also on HuffPost:

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/20/chrissy-teigen-nude_n_3473681.html

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Chemical that makes naked mole rats cancer-proof discovered

June 19, 2013 ? Two researchers at the University of Rochester have discovered the chemical that makes naked mole rats cancer-proof.

The findings could eventually lead to new cancer treatments in people, said study authors Andrei Seluanov and Vera Gorbunova. Their research paper will be published this week in the journal Nature.

Naked mole rats are small, hairless, subterranean rodents that have never been known to get cancer, despite having a 30-year lifespan. The research group led by Seluanov and Gorbunova discovered that these rodents are protected from cancer because their tissues are very rich with high molecular weight hyaluronan (HMW-HA).

The biologists' focus on HMW-HA began after they noticed that a gooey substance in the naked mole rat culture was clogging the vacuum pumps and tubing. They also observed that, unlike the naked mole rat culture, other media containing cells from humans, mice, and guinea pigs were not viscous.

"We needed to understand what the goo was," said Seluanov.

Gorbunova and Seluanov identified the substance as HMW-HA, which caused them to test its possible role in naked mole rat's cancer resistance.

Seluanov and Gorbunova then showed that when HMW-HA was removed, the cells became susceptible to tumors, confirming that the chemical did play a role in making naked mole rats cancer-proof. The Rochester team also identified the gene, named HAS2, responsible for making HMW-HA in the naked mole rat. Surprisingly, the naked mole rat gene was different from HAS2 in all other animals. In addition the naked mole rats were very slow at recycling HMW-HA, which contributed to the accumulation of the chemical in the animals' tissues.

The next step will be to test the effectiveness of HMW-HA in mice. If that test goes well, Seluanov and Gorbunova hope to try the chemical on human cells. "There's indirect evidence that HMW-HA would work in people," said Seluanov. "It's used in anti-wrinkle injections and to relieve pain from arthritis in knee joints, without any adverse effects. Our hope is that it can also induce an anti-cancer response."

"A lot of cancer research focuses on animals that are prone to cancer," said Gorbunova. "We think it's possible to learn strategies for preventing tumors by studying animals that are cancer-proof."

Previous research by Seluanov and Gorbunova showed that the p16 gene in naked mole rats stopped the proliferation of cells when too many of them crowd together. In their latest work, the two biologists identified HMW-HA as the chemical that activates the anti-cancer response of the p16 gene.

The research was supported by grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Ellison Medical Foundation.

Hyaluronan (HA), which makes tissues supple and aids in the healing process, is found in high concentrations in the skin of naked mole rats. The biologists speculate that the rodents developed higher levels of HA in their skin to accommodate life in underground tunnels.

Future research from the Gorbunova and Seluanov labs will focus on determining whether the HMW-HA from naked mole rats may have clinical value for either treating or preventing cancer in humans.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/FIw5xovQ4GI/130619132444.htm

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Civil rights groups sue NYPD over Muslim spying

Supporters of a lawsuit challenging the NYPD's Muslim surveillance program, hold signs during a gathering on a plaza in front of New York City Police Department headquarters, Tuesday, June 18, 2013. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, civil rights lawyers urged a U.S. judge to declare the NYPD's widespread spying programs directed at Muslims to be unconstitutional, order police to stop their surveillance and destroy any records in police files.(AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Hina Shamsi, left, director of the ACLU's National Security Project, addresses the media on a plaza in front of New York City Police Department headquarters, Tuesday, June 18, 2013. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, civil rights lawyers urged a U.S. judge to declare the NYPD's widespread spying programs directed at Muslims to be unconstitutional, order police to stop their surveillance and destroy any records in police files.(AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Three Muslim women get together on a plaza at a gathering in front of New York City Police Department headquarters, Tuesday, June 18, 2013. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, civil rights lawyers urged a U.S. judge to declare the NYPD's widespread spying programs directed at Muslims to be unconstitutional, order police to stop their surveillance and destroy any records in police files.(AP Photo/Richard Drew)

NEW YORK (AP) ? The New York Police Department's widespread spying programs directed at Muslims have undermined free worship by innocent people and should be declared unconstitutional, religious leaders and civil rights advocates said Tuesday after the filing of a federal lawsuit.

"Our mosque should be an open, religious and spiritual sanctuary, but NYPD spying has turned it into a place of suspicion and censorship," Hamid Hassan Raza, an imam named as a plaintiff, told a rally outside police headquarters shortly after the suit was filed in federal court in Brooklyn.

The city's legal department responded with a statement calling the intelligence-gathering an appropriate and legal tactic that helps keep the city safe from terrorism.

The suit asks a judge to order the nation's largest police department to stop their surveillance and destroy any related records. It's the third significant legal action filed against the NYPD Muslim surveillance program since details of the spy program were revealed in a series of Associated Press reports starting in 2011.

The lawsuit alleged that Muslim religious leaders in New York have modified their sermons and other behavior so as not to draw additional police attention. The suit was filed against Mayor Michael Bloomberg, police commissioner Raymond Kelly and the deputy commissioner of intelligence, David Cohen.

"Through the Muslim surveillance program, the NYPD has imposed an unwarranted badge of suspicion and stigma on law-abiding Muslim New Yorkers, including plaintiffs in this action," according to the complaint, which was filed on behalf of religious and community leaders, mosques, and a charitable organization. The plaintiffs are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility project at CUNY School of Law and the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Bloomberg and Kelly have defended the department's actions as necessary to identify and thwart terrorist plots, though a senior NYPD official testified last year that the unit at the heart of the program never generated any leads or triggered a terrorism investigation.

"The NYPD's strategic approach to combating terrorism is legal, appropriate and designed to keep our city safe," a top city lawyer, Celeste Koeleveld, said in a statement Tuesday. "The NYPD recognizes the critical importance of 'on-the-ground' research, as police need to be informed about where a terrorist may go while planning or what they may do after an attack, as the Boston Marathon bombing proved."

The lawyer apparently was referencing reports that the Boston attackers had contemplated blowing up their remaining explosives in New York before one of the brother was killed and the other captured.

"Cities cannot play catch-up in gathering intelligence about a terrorist threat," Koeleveld added. "Our results speak for themselves, with New York being the safest big city in America and the police having helped thwart several terrorist plots in recent years."

The lawsuit, which accuses the city of violating the First and Fourteenth amendments, is the latest legal challenge to the activities of the NYPD Intelligence Division. A year ago, the California-based civil rights organization Muslim Advocates sued the NYPD over its counterterrorism programs. This year, civil rights lawyers urged a judge to stop the NYPD from routinely observing Muslims in restaurants, bookstores and mosques, saying the practice violates a landmark 1985 court settlement that restricted the kind of surveillance used against war protesters in the 1960s and '70s.

The lawsuit describes a pattern of NYPD spying directed at Muslims in New York since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Raza said he began taping his sermons at a Brooklyn mosque because of concerns that the NYPD was monitoring what he said and would take his words out of context. In addition, Raza and other religious leaders became highly suspicious of new members eager to join their communities because of the department's rampant use of secret informants, the complaint said.

Since news spread that an informant had infiltrated Raza's mosque, "attendance has declined, and everyone in the congregation has become afraid to talk to the newcomers," Raza told dozens of supporters of the lawsuit at Tuesday's rally. "A once-vibrant community has become even more scared and suspicious. I cannot believe this has happened in a country that I know and love."

The lawsuit also details how the NYPD used an informant to spy on 20-year-old Asad Dandia, a college student who ran a charitable organization called Muslims Giving Back. Dandia's group gave food to the needy. An NYPD informant, Shamiur Rahman, acknowledged last year in an interview with the AP that he had spied on Dandia on others.

The informant had approached Dandia, claiming he "had a very dark past and he wanted to be a better practicing Muslim," Dandia said at the rally. He invited the informant to volunteer and they "bonded," he added.

Once the he learned of Rahman's true identify, he said, "I felt betrayed and hurt because someone I had taken as a friend and brother was lying to me and used me."

Dandia told the crowd that the charity's ability to raise money and help the community has declined because it's been targeted by NYPD counterterrorism programs.

The plaintiffs asked a judge to appoint a monitor to ensure the police department follows the law. This is second time this month that the prospect of a court-appointed monitor has been raised for the NYPD. The department's stop-and-frisk tactic that overwhelming targets minorities has come under fire, with a trial recently ending in federal court that could decide whether the policing practice is unconstitutional. If the judge rules against the NYPD in the stop-and-frisk case, the Justice Department said it would support appointing a federal monitor. Kelly and Bloomberg defend that program as well and have said federal oversight would put the city in danger.

Asked about the recent uproar once-secret surveillance by the National Security Agency, Kelly told reporters that he believes most Americans are accepting of the fact that the government collects data on phone calls and Internet usage but deserved to know it was happening.

"I don't think it ever should have been made secret," he said.

___

Contact the Washington investigative team at DCinvestigations@ap.org. Follow Goldman and Sullivan at http://twitter.com/adamgoldmandap and http://twitter.com/esullivanap

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-06-18-NYPD-Intelligence-Lawsuit/id-ee770f0ccdb048fd9dcf2664eade3bdf

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Willis Lease Finance Further Expands Revolving Credit Facility to ...

Willis Lease Finance Corporation (Nasdaq: WLFC), the premier independent jet engine lessor, today announced that it increased its revolving credit facility to $450 million from $430 million. The credit facility is available to Willis Lease on a revolving basis through November 2016. This and other credit facilities support the company and its subsidiaries in financing its lease portfolio, which stood at over $1 billion as of March31, 2013.

"This expanded credit facility provides us with increased flexibility to take advantage of opportunities as they present themselves," said Charles F. Willis, Chairman and CEO. "The larger revolving credit facility, coupled with the $390 million ABS transaction completed in September of last year, provides us with attractive financing at favorable rates and with less restrictive covenants."

The syndicate of nine banks involved in the credit facility is led by Union Bank, as Administrative Agent, Joint Lead Arranger and Sole Bookrunner, Wells Fargo Bank, as Syndication Agent, and U.S. Bank, as Documentation Agent and Joint Lead Arranger.

Source: http://www.benzinga.com/news/13/06/3690853/willis-lease-finance-further-expands-revolving-credit-facility-to-450-million

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Wednesday, June 19, 2013

O'Keefe sting nails 'Obamaphone' abuse - WND

(LONDON DAILY MAIL) Undercover video shot in May by conservative activist James O?Keefe shows two corporate distributors of free cell phones handing out the mobile devices to people who have promised to sell them for drug money, to buy shoes and handbags, to pay off their bills, or just for extra spending cash.

Get James O?Keefe?s new book, ?Breakthrough: Our Guerrilla War to Expose Fraud and Save Democracy,? exposing the duplicity of Planned Parenthood, ACORN, Medicaid, NPR, teachers unions, labor unions and politicians.

The ?Obama phone,? which made its ignominious YouTube debut outside a Cleveland, Ohio presidential campaign event last September, is a project of the Federal Communications Commission?s ?Lifeline? program, which makes land line and mobile phones available to Americans who meet low-income requirements.

Surprise! Tables turned in vote-fraud case when O?Keefe confronts prosecutor who tried to indict him

Lifeline was a $2.19 billion program in 2012.

Recipients most commonly demonstrate their need by flashing an Electronic Benefits Transfer card to verify their eligibility for welfare payments, or by bringing tax statements to a phone provider.

Source: http://mobile.wnd.com/2013/06/okeefe-sting-nails-obamaphone-abuse/

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Testosterone improves verbal learning and memory in postmenopausal women

June 17, 2013 ? Postmenopausal women had better improvement in verbal learning and memory after receiving treatment with testosterone gel, compared with women who received sham treatment with a placebo, a new study found.

Results were presented Monday at The Endocrine Society's 95th Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

"This is the first large, placebo-controlled study of the effects of testosterone on mental skills in postmenopausal women who are not on estrogen therapy," said principal investigator Susan Davis, MBBS (MD), PhD, of Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. "Our study has confirmed our similar findings from two smaller studies in postmenopausal women and suggests that testosterone therapy may protect women against cognitive decline after menopause."

Menopause has been linked with memory decline because of a decrease in levels of the protective hormone estrogen. Yet testosterone also is an important hormone in women because it has a role in sexual desire, bone density and energy while improving mood. In men, studies have shown that testosterone replacement has favorable effects on brain function.

In this new, investigator-initiated study, the Australian researchers randomly assigned 92 healthy postmenopausal women, ages 55 to 65, who were not receiving estrogen therapy, to receive one of two treatments for 26 weeks. The treatments were a testosterone gel (LibiGel, BioSante Pharmaceuticals) applied daily to the upper arm, or a placebo, an identical-appearing gel containing none of the medication. Neither the study participants nor the investigators were aware of which gel the women received.

Before treatment and at 12 and 26 weeks of treatment, subjects underwent comprehensive testing of their cognitive function (mental skills) using a computer-based battery of tests designed for people with normal brain function (CogState). Ninety women completed the study. The investigators found no cognitive differences between groups before the start of treatment.

After 26 weeks, the women who received testosterone therapy had a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in verbal learning and memory -- how well they recalled words from a list, Davis reported. The average test score for the testosterone-treated group was 1.6 points greater than that of the placebo group. No differences between the groups were evident for any other cognitive test.

Women receiving testosterone therapy reported no major side effects related to the gel. Their testosterone levels increased with treatment but remained in the normal female range.

Although further study is needed in more women, Davis said the results are important. "There is no effective treatment to date to prevent memory decline in women, who are higher risk of dementia than men," she said.

No testosterone-only product has yet received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for use in women. BioSante provided the study drug and partial funding for this study but had no control over study design or data analysis. CogState Australia provided computation of the cognitive testing, which the researchers then analyzed. Davis reported receiving funding from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council as a principal research fellow.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/living_well/~3/IG0C0YWkojA/130617142043.htm

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Report: Too many teachers, too little quality

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The nation's teacher-training programs do not adequately prepare would-be educators for the classroom, even as they produce almost triple the number of graduates needed, according to a survey of more than 1,000 programs released Tuesday.

The National Council on Teacher Quality review is a scathing assessment of colleges' education programs and their admission standards, training and value. The report, which drew immediate criticism, was designed to be provocative and urges leaders at teacher-training programs to rethink what skills would-be educators need to be taught to thrive in the classrooms of today and tomorrow.

"Through an exhaustive and unprecedented examination of how these schools operate, the review finds they have become an industry of mediocrity, churning out first-year teachers with classroom management skills and content knowledge inadequate to thrive in classrooms" with an ever-increasing diversity of ethnic and socioeconomic students, the report's authors wrote.

"A vast majority of teacher preparation programs do not give aspiring teachers adequate return on their investment of time and tuition dollars," the report said.

The report was likely to drive debate about which students are prepared to be teachers in the coming decades and how they are prepared. Once a teacher settles into a classroom, it's tough to remove him or her involuntarily and opportunities for wholesale retraining are difficult ? if nearly impossible ? to find.

The answer, the council and its allies argue, is to make it more difficult for students to get into teacher preparation programs in the first place. And once there, they should be taught the most effective methods to help students.

"There's plenty of research out there that shows that teacher quality is the single most important factor," said Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, a supporter of the organization's work.

Democrat Markell said: "We have to attract the best candidates" possible.

To accomplish that goal, Markell earlier this year signed into law a measure making admission to education programs more difficult in his state. Potential teachers must either post a 3.0 grade point average or demonstrate "mastery" results on a standardized test such as the ACT or SAT before they're even admitted to a program.

It's an idea the council has applauded and suggests other states should consider to limit the number of candidates entering teacher training programs.

"You just have to have a pulse and you can get into some of these education schools," said Michael Petrilli, a vice president at the conservative-leaning Fordham Institute and a former official in the Department of Education's Office of Innovation and Improvement. "If policymakers took this report seriously, they'd be shutting down hundreds of programs."

Some 239,000 teachers are trained each year and 98,000 are hired ? meaning too many students are admitted and only a fraction find work.

Among the council's other findings:

? Only a quarter of education programs limit admission to students in the top half of their high school class. The remaining three quarters of programs allow students who fared poorly in high school to train as teachers.

? 3-out-of-4 teacher training programs do not train potential educators how to teach reading based on the latest research. Instead, future teachers are left to develop their own methods.

? Fewer than 1-in-9 programs for elementary educators are preparing students to teach Common Core State Standards, the achievement benchmarks for math and reading that have been adopted in 45 states and the District of Columbia. For programs preparing high school teachers, that rate is roughly a third of programs.

? Only 7 percent of programs ensure student teachers are partnered with effective classroom teachers. Most often, a student teacher is placed into a classroom where a teacher is willing to have them, regardless of experience.

? When asked how much experience they have, the most common answer from teachers is one year. First-year teachers reach around 1.5 million students.

The National Council on Teacher Quality, an advocacy group founded in 2000 to push an education overhaul that challenges the current system, has on its board veterans of the administrations of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

For its review, the council identified 18 standards for teacher preparation programs, such as instructing would-be educators how to implement Common Core State Standards, teach non-native English speakers and manage classrooms. The group spent eight years narrowing the standards and did 10 pilot studies to make certain their criteria were fair but tough. One pilot program in Illinois included 39 standards.

In all, the report looked at 1,130 teacher preparation programs. The students in those programs represent 99 percent of traditionally trained teachers.

"By providing critical information both to aspiring teachers so they can make different choices at the front end, and then to school districts at the back end looking to hire the best-trained new teachers, reform need not rest on either good will or political will," the report's authors wrote.

To reach their conclusions, the investigators requested tomes of information from education programs, such as admission requirements, course syllabi, textbooks and graduate surveys.

Only 114 institutions chose to cooperate with the review. About 700 institutions objected in letters to council's partner, U.S. News & World Report, to the council's methodology. Some told students not to cooperate with requests.

"I think NCTQ points out is that we are probably underequipping teachers going into classrooms," said David Chard, dean of the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development at Southern Methodist University.

His program cooperated with the council's review and won only two out of four possible stars.

"We did not fare as well on this review," he said. "We need to do a better job of communicating both with our students and NCTQ where our content can be found. In some cases, we have some work to do."

At schools that did not cooperate, investigators asked students, book stores and professors to share their course documents, reading lists and policies. In some cases, the council filed lawsuits to collect those documents.

The researchers spent an average of 40 hours in grading each education program.

As soon as plans for the review were announced, the council faced persistent skepticism and strong opposition.

American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten called the review a "gimmick" in a statement released Tuesday.

She said she agrees on the need to improve teacher preparation, but "it would be more productive to focus on developing a consistent, systemic approach to lifting the teaching profession instead of resorting to attention-grabbing consumer alerts based on incomplete standards."

The profession's accreditation panel was more muted.

"The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation is still examining the report," president James G. Cibulka said.

___

On the Web: http://www.nctq.org/dmsStage/Teacher_Prep_Review_2013 ?Report

___

Follow Philip Elliott on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/philip_elliott

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/report-too-many-teachers-too-little-quality-040423815.html

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