Belfort will face Dan Henderson on Saturday in a five-round light heavyweight bout in Goiania, Brazil, that will serve as the main event of UFC Fight Night 32 and will be broadcast in the U.S. on Fox Sports 1.
Belfort is headlining the show in Goiania at the request of Globo, the UFC's broadcast partner in Brazil and the South American nation's largest television network.
UFC president Dana White said viewership and ratings expectations for Saturday's card in Brazil are astronomical. He said Globo expects a 70-75 share and an average viewership of between 12 and 14 million people. That's staggeringly high for an MMA card, and is roughly comparable to the average viewership of an NFL regular season game in the U.S. in 2011 and 2012, particularly when accounting for the disparity in market size.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Heart-clogging trans fats were once a staple of the American diet, plentiful in baked goods, microwave popcorn and fried foods. Now, mindful of the health risks, the Food and Drug Administration is getting rid of what's left of them for good.
Condemning artificial trans fats as a threat to public health, the FDA announced Thursday it will require the food industry to phase them out.
Manufacturers already have eliminated many trans fats, responding to criticism from the medical community and to local laws, Even so, the FDA said getting rid of the rest — the average American still eats around a gram of trans fat a day — could prevent 20,000 heart attacks and 7,000 deaths each year.
It won't happen right away. The agency will collect comments for two months before determining a phase-out timetable. Different foods may have different schedules, depending how easy it is to find substitutes.
"We want to do it in a way that doesn't unduly disrupt markets," said Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner for foods. Still, he says, the food "industry has demonstrated that it is, by and large, feasible to do."
Indeed, so much already has changed that most people won't notice much difference, if any, in food they get at groceries or restaurants.
Scientists say there are no health benefits to trans fats. And they can raise levels of "bad" cholesterol, increasing the risk of heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States. Trans fats are widely considered the worst kind for your heart, even worse than saturated fats, which also can contribute to heart disease.
Trans fats are used both in processed food and in restaurants, often to improve the texture, shelf life or flavor of foods. Though they have been removed from many items, the fats are still found in some baked goods such as pie crusts and biscuits and in ready-to-eat frostings that use the more-solid fats to keep consistency.
They also are sometimes used by restaurants for frying. Many larger chains have phased them out, but smaller restaurants may still get food containing trans fats from suppliers.
How can the government get rid of them? The FDA said it has made a preliminary determination that trans fats no longer fall in the agency's "generally recognized as safe" category, which covers thousands of additives that manufacturers can add to foods without FDA review. Once trans fats are off the list, anyone who wants to use them would have to petition the agency for a regulation allowing it, and that would likely not be approved.
The fats are created when hydrogen is added to vegetable oil to make it more solid, which is why they are often called partially hydrogenated oils. The FDA is not targeting small amounts of trans fats that occur naturally in some meat and dairy products, because they would be too difficult to remove and aren't considered a major public health threat on their own.
Many companies have already phased out trans fats, prompted by new nutrition labels introduced by FDA in 2006 that list trans fats and by an increasing number of local laws, like one in New York City, that have banned them. In 2011, Wal-Mart pledged to remove all artificial trans fats from the foods the company sells by 2016. Recent school lunch guidelines prevent them from being served in cafeterias.
In a statement, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was his city's 2008 ban that led to much of the change. "Our prohibition on trans fats was one of many bold public health measures that faced fierce initial criticism, only to gain widespread acceptance and support," he said.
But support is far from universal. A nationwide poll conducted by the Pew Research Center between Oct. 30 and Nov. 6 said that of the 996 adults surveyed, 44 percent were in favor of prohibiting restaurants from using trans fats while 52 percent opposed the idea.
Still, Americans are eating much less of the fat. According to the FDA, trans fat intake among Americans declined from 4.6 grams per day in 2003 to around one gram in 2012.
A handful of other countries have banned them, including Switzerland and Denmark. Other countries have enacted strict labeling laws.
Dr. Leon Bruner, chief scientist at the Grocery Manufacturers Association, said in a statement that his group estimates that food manufacturers have voluntarily lowered the amount of trans fats in food products by 73 percent.
The group, which represents the country's largest food companies, did not speculate on a reasonable timeline or speak to how difficult a ban might be for some manufacturers. Bruner said in a statement that "consumers can be confident that their food is safe, and we look forward to working with the FDA to better understand their concerns and how our industry can better serve consumers."
Said FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg: "While consumption of potentially harmful artificial trans fat has declined over the last two decades in the United States, current intake remains a significant public health concern."
Agency officials say they have been working on trans fat issues for around 15 years and have been collecting data to justify a possible phase-out since just after President Barack Obama came into office in 2009.
The advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest first petitioned FDA to ban trans fats nine years ago. The group's director, Michael Jacobson, says the prohibition is "one of the most important lifesaving actions the FDA could take."
"Six months or a year should be more than enough time, especially considering that companies have had a decade to figure out what to do," Jacobson said.
___
Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mcjalonick
Feeling perky post-split? Liberty Ross proudly flaunted her body on the red carpet of the MOCA Awards in Beverly Hills on Wednesday, Nov. 6. The 35-year-old estranged wife of Rupert Sanders went braless in a see-through black dress that exposed her nipples.
Ross appeared to be in great spirits at the event, flashing a big smile to photographers while posing on the carpet. The model styled a short, sleeveless dress with a sheer black bodice and white-and-black printed skirt and black high-heels. The British mom of two also playfully posed in a pair of dark shades, which she later placed on the top of her head.
Ross recently opened up to Vanity Fair about life after her husband's public affair. The Snow White and the Huntsman director was caught cheating with the star of his movie, Kristen Stewart, on July 17, 2012.
"It was horrible," Ross told the December issue of the magazine. "It was really the worst, really the worst."
After filing for divorce from Sanders in January 2013, Ross, who is now dating music honcho Jimmy Iovine, said she's finally moving on. "I have no words to describe what we went through," she told Vanity Fair. "But I think, for me, something always has to completely die for there to be a rebirth. And, for me, I feel like I'm going through a rebirth."
Researchers advocate for climate adaptation science
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
7-Nov-2013
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Contact: Phil Mote pmote@coas.oregonstate.edu 541-737-5694 Oregon State University
CORVALLIS, Ore. An international team of researchers says in a new paper that climate science needs to advance to a new realm more practical applications for dealing with the myriad impacts of climate variability.
The scientific capability already exists as does much of the organizational structure, they say, to begin responding to emerging climate-related issues ranging from declining snowpack, to severe storms, to sea level rise. What is missing is better engagement between the scientific community and the stakeholders they are seeking to inform.
Their paper is being published on Friday in the Policy Forum section of the journal Science.
"Adaptation is required in virtually all sectors of the economy and regions of the globe," they wrote. "However, without the appropriate science delivered in a decision-relevant context, it will become increasingly difficult if not impossible to prepare adequately."
Philip Mote, an Oregon State University climate scientist and co-author on the paper, said climate adaptation science involves trans-disciplinary research to understand the challenges and opportunities of climate change and how best to respond to them.
"What we need is more visibility to gain more inclusiveness to bring into play the private sector, resource managers, universities and a host of decision-makers and other stakeholders," said Mote, who directs the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State. "The stakeholders need to know our scientific capabilities, and we need to better understand their priorities and decision-making processes."
Oregon State is among the national leaders in climate adaptation science. In addition to the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute, the university has two regional climate centers one established by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to work with municipalities, utilities, emergency management organizations and state and federal agencies; the other by the Department of the Interior to work primarily with federal and state agencies, and non-governmental organizations.
Mote, who is involved with all three centers, said work with stakeholders is gaining traction, but the gap that exists between scientists and decision-makers is still too large.
"The centers here and elsewhere around the country are driven by stakeholder demands, but that needs to reach deeper into the research enterprise," Mote said. "We're working with some water districts, forest managers and community leaders on a variety of issues, but that's just the tip of the iceberg."
Richard Moss, a senior scientist with the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, said the Science article grew out of a NASA-funded workshop held in 2012 at the Aspen Global Change Institute in Colorado, which focused on how to improve support for decision-making in the face of a changing climate.
"Traditionally, we think that what society needs is better predictions," said Moss, who was lead author on the Science article. "But at this workshop, all of us climate and social scientists alike recognized the need to consider how decisions get implemented and that climate is only one of many factors that will determine how people will adapt."
OSU's Mote said examples abound of issues that need the marriage of stakeholders and climate scientists. Changing snowmelt runoff is creating concerns for late-season urban water supplies, irrigation for agriculture, and migration of fish. An increasing number of plant and animal species are becoming stressed by climate change, including the white bark pine and the sage grouse. Rising sea levels and more intense storms threaten the infrastructure of coastal communities, which need to examine water and sewer systems, as well as placement of hospitals, schools and nursing homes.
Mote, Moss and their colleagues outline a comprehensive approach to research in the social, physical, environmental, engineering and other sciences. Among their recommendations for improvement:
Understand decision processes and knowledge requirements;
Identify vulnerabilities to climate change;
Improve foresight about exposure to climate hazards and other stressors;
Broaden the range of adaptation options and promote learning;
Provide examples of adaptation science in application;
Develop measures to establish adaptation science.
One such measure could be the development of a national institution of climate preparedness in the United States comprised of centers for adaptation science aimed at priority sectors.
"More broadly," the authors wrote in Science, "support for sustained, use-inspired, fundamental research on adaptation needs to be increased at research agencies. A particular challenge is to develop effective approaches to learn from adaptation practice as well as published research. Universities could provide support for sustained, trans-disciplinary interactions. Progress will require making a virtue of demonstrating tangible benefits for society by connecting research and applications."
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Researchers advocate for climate adaptation science
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
7-Nov-2013
[
| E-mail
]
Share
Contact: Phil Mote pmote@coas.oregonstate.edu 541-737-5694 Oregon State University
CORVALLIS, Ore. An international team of researchers says in a new paper that climate science needs to advance to a new realm more practical applications for dealing with the myriad impacts of climate variability.
The scientific capability already exists as does much of the organizational structure, they say, to begin responding to emerging climate-related issues ranging from declining snowpack, to severe storms, to sea level rise. What is missing is better engagement between the scientific community and the stakeholders they are seeking to inform.
Their paper is being published on Friday in the Policy Forum section of the journal Science.
"Adaptation is required in virtually all sectors of the economy and regions of the globe," they wrote. "However, without the appropriate science delivered in a decision-relevant context, it will become increasingly difficult if not impossible to prepare adequately."
Philip Mote, an Oregon State University climate scientist and co-author on the paper, said climate adaptation science involves trans-disciplinary research to understand the challenges and opportunities of climate change and how best to respond to them.
"What we need is more visibility to gain more inclusiveness to bring into play the private sector, resource managers, universities and a host of decision-makers and other stakeholders," said Mote, who directs the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State. "The stakeholders need to know our scientific capabilities, and we need to better understand their priorities and decision-making processes."
Oregon State is among the national leaders in climate adaptation science. In addition to the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute, the university has two regional climate centers one established by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to work with municipalities, utilities, emergency management organizations and state and federal agencies; the other by the Department of the Interior to work primarily with federal and state agencies, and non-governmental organizations.
Mote, who is involved with all three centers, said work with stakeholders is gaining traction, but the gap that exists between scientists and decision-makers is still too large.
"The centers here and elsewhere around the country are driven by stakeholder demands, but that needs to reach deeper into the research enterprise," Mote said. "We're working with some water districts, forest managers and community leaders on a variety of issues, but that's just the tip of the iceberg."
Richard Moss, a senior scientist with the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, said the Science article grew out of a NASA-funded workshop held in 2012 at the Aspen Global Change Institute in Colorado, which focused on how to improve support for decision-making in the face of a changing climate.
"Traditionally, we think that what society needs is better predictions," said Moss, who was lead author on the Science article. "But at this workshop, all of us climate and social scientists alike recognized the need to consider how decisions get implemented and that climate is only one of many factors that will determine how people will adapt."
OSU's Mote said examples abound of issues that need the marriage of stakeholders and climate scientists. Changing snowmelt runoff is creating concerns for late-season urban water supplies, irrigation for agriculture, and migration of fish. An increasing number of plant and animal species are becoming stressed by climate change, including the white bark pine and the sage grouse. Rising sea levels and more intense storms threaten the infrastructure of coastal communities, which need to examine water and sewer systems, as well as placement of hospitals, schools and nursing homes.
Mote, Moss and their colleagues outline a comprehensive approach to research in the social, physical, environmental, engineering and other sciences. Among their recommendations for improvement:
Understand decision processes and knowledge requirements;
Identify vulnerabilities to climate change;
Improve foresight about exposure to climate hazards and other stressors;
Broaden the range of adaptation options and promote learning;
Provide examples of adaptation science in application;
Develop measures to establish adaptation science.
One such measure could be the development of a national institution of climate preparedness in the United States comprised of centers for adaptation science aimed at priority sectors.
"More broadly," the authors wrote in Science, "support for sustained, use-inspired, fundamental research on adaptation needs to be increased at research agencies. A particular challenge is to develop effective approaches to learn from adaptation practice as well as published research. Universities could provide support for sustained, trans-disciplinary interactions. Progress will require making a virtue of demonstrating tangible benefits for society by connecting research and applications."
###
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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.
What are the most striking features of the new version of Office Web Apps? The ones that aren't there.
It isn't the fact that the Save button has been nixed (shades of Google Docs!) or that multiple users can edit the same document in real time and not stomp all over each other's work. It's how little -- as opposed to how much -- variation there is between OWA and its desktop counterparts.
That small margin makes a big difference.
Better collaborative editing than the desktop Tony Bradley at PCWorld covers in detail all the new goodies in OWA, which still consists only of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The biggest is simultaneous co-authoring: Many users can log into OWA, open the same document, and work on it simultaneously. Flags within the document tell you where each user is.
One particularly smart touch here is how Microsoft has set different levels of editing granularity for each document type. For Word, it's a paragraph; for Excel, it's a cell; for PowerPoint, it's a slide. They're good commonsense defaults, and in my conversation with Microsoft's people, they hinted at the possibility that it could be made even more fine-grained.
From a practical standpoint, it's unlikely two people will attempt to edit the same sentence at once. But if Microsoft can nudge the line of thinking a smidge further in that direction, it's a sign of how completely Web apps could be able to eclipse their desktop cousins. For one, the desktop versions of these apps don't have anything like the simultaneous-editing features found in OWA -- a case where the Web app actually sports a feature superior to the desktop app.
This brings up the first of two big questions about OWA. Do Web apps need to displace their desktop counterparts?
The answer may be different depending on whether you're asking Microsoft or end-users. End-users may enjoy the convenience of OWA, but there comes a point where OWA simply can't deliver. The longer and more complex the document, the greater the odds OWA -- or your browser -- will simply gag.
There's little question that Microsoft needs to create a product portfolio off the desktop that's as valuable and rich as the one the company has created on it. But I doubt it can move people off desktop editions of Office and into OWA anytime soon, and not just because OWA's feature set is lacking.
Graphic designer Paula Rupolo came up with the clever idea to see just how far famous brands and logos have penetrated our brains: she swapped the colors of brands with their closest competitor. The results are so weird: coke is blue, Pepsi is red, Google is purple and Yahoo is colorful. It's like living in some alternate reality.
FILE - In this Oct. 30, 2013, file photo, President Barack Obama speaks at Boston's historic Faneuil Hall about the federal health care law. Obama says he's sorry Americans are losing health insurance plans he repeatedly said they could keep under his signature health care law. But the president stopped short of apologizing for making those promises in the first place. "I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me," he said in an interview Thursday, Nov. 7 with NBC News. (AP Photo/Stephan Savoia, File)
FILE - In this Oct. 30, 2013, file photo, President Barack Obama speaks at Boston's historic Faneuil Hall about the federal health care law. Obama says he's sorry Americans are losing health insurance plans he repeatedly said they could keep under his signature health care law. But the president stopped short of apologizing for making those promises in the first place. "I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me," he said in an interview Thursday, Nov. 7 with NBC News. (AP Photo/Stephan Savoia, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama says he's sorry Americans are losing health insurance plans he repeatedly said they could keep under his signature health care law. But the president stopped short of apologizing for making those promises in the first place.
"I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me," he said in an interview Thursday with NBC News.
He added: "We've got to work hard to make sure that they know we hear them, and we are going to do everything we can to deal with folks who find themselves in a tough position as a consequence of this."
The president's apology comes as the White House tries to combat a cascade of troubles surrounding the rollout of the health care law often referred to as "Obamacare." The healthcare.gov website that was supposed to be an easy portal for Americans to purchase insurance has been riddled by technical issues. And with at least 3.5 million Americans receiving cancellation notices from their insurance companies, there's new scrutiny aimed at the way the president tried to sell the law to the public in the first place.
Much of the focus is on the president's promise that Americans who liked their insurance coverage would be able to keep it. He repeated the line often, both as the bill was debated in Congress and after it was signed into law.
But the measure itself made that promise almost impossible to keep. It mandated that insurance coverage must meet certain standards and that policies that fell short could no longer be sold except through a grandfathering process, meaning some policies were always expected to disappear.
The White House says under those guidelines, fewer than 5 percent of Americans will have to change their coverage. But in a nation of more than 300 million people, 5 percent is about 15 million people.
Officials argue that those people being forced to change plans will end up with better coverage and that subsidies offered by the government will help offset any increased costs.
"We weren't as clear as we needed to be in terms of the changes that were taking place," Obama told NBC. "And I want to do everything we can to make sure that people are finding themselves in a good position, a better position than they were before this law happened."
The president's critics have accused him of misleading the public about changes that were coming under the law, which remains unpopular with many Americans and a target for congressional Republicans.
Obama dismissed that criticism, saying "I meant what I said" and insisting that his administration was operating in "good faith." He acknowledged that the administration "didn't do a good enough job in terms of how we crafted the law" but did not specify what changes might be made.
Sign-ups for the new health care marketplaces opened Oct. 1. People have six months to enroll before facing a penalty.
Some lawmakers — including Democrats — have called on the White House to delay the penalty or extend the enrollment period because of the website woes that have prevented many used from signing up. Obama said he remains confident that anyone who wants to buy insurance will be able to do so.
"Keep in mind that the open enrollment period, the period during which you can buy health insurance is available all the way until March 31," he said. "And we're only five weeks into it."
Do you want to know why Vitor Belfort is fighting in Brazil on Saturday and not, say, in Las Vegas?
Belfort is headlining the show in Goiania at the request of Globo, the UFC's broadcast partner in Brazil and the South American nation's largest television network.
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