Tag Archives: disappointment

KFVS12 News & Weather Cape Girardeau, Carbondale, Poplar BluffStorms, stings push Nyad to end Cuba-to-Fla. swim

By MATT SEDENSKYAssociated Press

KEY WEST, Fla. (AP) – Diana Nyad ended her fourth attempt to swim across the Straits of Florida on Tuesday, her decades-old dream thwarted, more than anything else, by jellyfish.

Storms brewing around her and repeated jellyfish stings forced her out of the water at 12:55 a.m., her crew said. She traveled by boat close to a rocky shoreline in Key West on Tuesday afternoon, just over 72 hours after setting out from Cuba. She made a final short swim to a waiting crowd.

“I've been dreaming of this crossing for 35 years now and tried it four times. and should I say that there's no disappointment? no,” she said. “I'm not going to get that moment I dreamed of for so long.”

Nyad turns 63 on Wednesday and, all told, logged 41 hours and 45 minutes of swim time. Her team acknowledged at 8 a.m. that she had to be pulled from the water, but said it had been about 20 minutes earlier, not nearly seven hours earlier as was the case. She also spent time out of the water during a stormy Sunday night, though that was not acknowledged until Tuesday afternoon.

Under rules set by the World Open Waters Swimming Association, she could emerge from the water and preserve her chance at a record if her life was in danger. all of that was made moot by the fact that she didn't finish.

Her lips swollen from jellyfish stings, she appeared weary as she was helped up from the water at her arrival in Key West, though she insisted her muscles weren't even sore. She was given asthma inhalers, oxygen and an intravenous drip, mostly out of sight of the gathering crowd.

She all but ruled out a fifth try at attempting the crossing, though she also had ruled out a fourth one after failing last year.

“I'm not a quitter, but the sport and this particular ocean are different than they used to be,” she said. “These jellyfish are prolific. and, you know what? to me, there's no joy in that.”

She added: “This isn't swimming. It's like some Navy SEAL.”

Nyad plunged into the water Saturday afternoon in Havana and lasted longer and made it further than on her previous attempts, her team said. She first tried the swim in 1978, in a shark cage. She tried twice last year, without a shark cage, but again and again the record eluded her.

Australian Susie Maroney successfully swam the Straits in 1997, but she used a shark cage. In June, another Australian, Penny Palfrey, made it 79 miles (127 kilometers) toward Florida without a cage before strong currents forced her to abandon the attempt.

Monday night proved the most challenging of all for Nyad, with team members fending off sharks, waves crashing in stormy weather, jellyfish sting after sting, and Nyad fighting off a lowered body temperature and the threat of hypothermia.

“Instead of getting hit with one doozy they got hit with three,” said Vanessa Linsley, a member of Nyad's team. “They got hit with the weather, they got hit with the jellyfish and they got hit with the sharks all at the same time.”

Nyad had been training for three years for the attempt. She was accompanied by a support team in boats, and a kayak-borne apparatus shadowing her to keep sharks at bay by generating a faint electric field. A team of handlers was on alert to dive in and distract any sharks that made it through.

She took periodic short breaks to rest, hydrate and eat high-energy foods such as peanut butter. She said she had been reduced to tears several times – and expected more to flow – but turned reflective after arriving in Key West.

“I didn't get that final moment, but what a magnificent experience it all was,” she said.

Follow Matt Sedensky on Twitter at www.twitter.com/sedensky

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. all rights reserved. this material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

KFVS12 News & Weather Cape Girardeau, Carbondale, Poplar BluffStorms, stings push Nyad to end Cuba-to-Fla. swim

Facebook’s stock tumbles after 1st public quarter

NEW YORK — Facebook’s first earnings report as a public company had solid numbers, but in the end it landed with a thud – much like its rocky initial public offering two months ago.

Facebook reported stronger-than-expected revenue and a gain in user numbers Thursday. But investors weren’t impressed and after a brief spike, its stock fell more than 10 percent, or $2.74, to $24.10 in after-hours trading. The decline means Facebook’s stock will most likely open at its lowest level since going public.

It’s another big disappointment for the Harvard-born company that was supposed to usher in the next Internet boom.

“They didn’t break any banks,” said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at research firm eMarketer. “They did not come out any better than anybody had expected.”

What may have rattled investors is that Facebook’s revenue growth has slowed. Between 2009 and 2010, the company’s revenue nearly tripled. in the first quarter of this year, revenue climbed 44 percent. in the second quarter, Facebook Inc.’s revenue increased 32 percent to $1.18 billion from $895 million a year earlier. Analysts, on average had expected slightly lower revenue of $1.16 billion, according to FactSet.

For a freshly public company such as Facebook, the decelerating revenue growth is a concern. A bet on fast-growing revenue is the reason investors are willing to value new companies highly even if they are not making a profit. another reason jittery investors may be even more nervous: Facebook didn’t offer investors and financial analysts its outlook for the rest of the year.

Meanwhile, the number of people who access Facebook regularly inched closer to 1 billion. The company said it had 955 million active monthly users as of June 30, up 29 percent from a year earlier. at the end of the first quarter, it had 901 million users.

Overall the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company posted a loss of $157 million, or 8 cents per share in the April-June period, mainly due to compensation expenses it incurred when it paid $1.3 billion in restricted stock and related taxes for employees as part of the IPO. The loss compared with earnings of $240 million, or 11 cents per share, in the second quarter a year ago. The company’s adjusted earnings of $295 million, or 12 cents per share, matched Wall Street’s expectations.

The results come two months after Facebook’s stock flopped on its first trading day, on May 18. The day began with glitches with the Nasdaq stock market that delayed trading by half an hour. It didn’t get much better from there. Despite months of hoopla that had investors thinking it would soar, the stock closed just 23 cents above its $38 IPO price. It has not reached that level since.

Though Facebook had a lot riding on its first public report, Wall Street’s outlook was muted, which could be another reason for the stock’s decline.

“People are waiting for a really huge growth moment in revenue, advertising, dollars per user,” said Alex Ashby, research analyst at Global X Funds, a provider of a social media exchange-traded fund. “People had expected that Facebook is going to revolutionize advertising…we think it’s still a definite possibility, but maybe further down the road.”

Investors were holding out hope that Facebook would far exceed expectations _even though the company effectively warned investors before its IPO that Wall Street’s expectations were too high. in a filing issued a week before its IPO, for instance, Facebook said its mobile users are growing at a faster pace than the number of ads on its mobile platform.

Analysts took that as a sign that their estimates were out of whack and many of them reduced their estimates for Facebook’s projected revenue and earnings.

Even though the number of people who use mobile devices and tablet computers to access Facebook had been growing fast, Facebook didn’t start showing ads on its mobile app until this spring. Facebook had 543 million active monthly mobile users at the end of the quarter, a 67 percent increase from a year earlier.

In a conference call with analysts, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook’s mobile users are more active than those who use the personal computer version.

“On average mobile users are around 20 percent more likely to use Facebook on any given day,” he said. “So mobile not only gives us the potential to connect more people with our services and also gives us the ability to provide more value and more deeply engaging experience.”

Facebook said its revenue from advertising totaled $992 million, a 28 percent increase from the same quarter last year. That number accounted for 84 percent of total revenue. The company did not say what portion was from mobile advertising. The rest came from payments and other fees, money Facebook makes from Zynga games and other apps.

Facebook’s stock tumbles after 1st public quarter

Combination Therapy For Breast Cancer Shows Promise

Cell Lines vs Fresh Cells and Combination Therapyposted by Gregory D. Pawelski on 7 Jul 2012 at 10:34 am

Cell-lines have always played and continue to play an important role in drug screening and drug development. The problem is that cell-lines do not predict for disease or patient specific drug effects. if you can kill breast cancer cell-lines with a given drug (or combination), it doesn’t tell you anything about how the drug will work in real world, clinical breast cancer (real-world conditions). but you can learn certain things about general drug biology through the study of cell-lines.As a general rule, studies from established cell-lines (tumor cells that are cultured and manipulated so that they continue to divide) have proved worthless as models to predict the activity of drugs in cancer. they are more misleading than helpful. an established cell-line is not reflective of the behavior of the fresh tumor samples (live samples derived from tumors) in primary culture, much less in the patient.Established cell-lines have been a huge disappointment over the decades, with respect to their ability to correctly model the disease-specific activity of new drugs. what works in cell-lines do not often translate into human beings. you get different results when you test passaged cells compared to primary, fresh tumor.Research on cell-lines is cheap compared to clinical trials on humans. but one gets more accurate information when using intact RNA isolated from “fresh” tissue than from using degraded RNA, which is present in paraffin-fixed tissue.Among the most sought after attributes of chemotherapy drug combinations is drug synergy. Synergy, defined as supra-additivity wherein the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, reflects an elegant interaction between drugs predicated on their modes of action. while some synergistic interactions can be predicted based upon the pharmacology of the agents, others are more obscure.The application of synergy analyses may represent one of the most important applications of the functional profiling platform; enabling clinicians to explore both anticipated and unanticipated favorable interactions. Equally important may be the platform’s capacity to study drug antagonism wherein two effective drugs counteract each others’ benefits. this phenomenon, characterized by the whole being less than the sum of the parts, represents a major pitfall for clinical trialists who simply combine drugs because they can.

| post followup | alert a moderator |

Combination Therapy For Breast Cancer Shows Promise

Demi Lovato to be among The X Factor judging panel

Seems like, Simon Cowell is looking for creating the same old magic on his show ‘The X Factor’, with the help of Demi Lovato. Reports say that the Disney star is currently in talks with Cowell to fill the final spot at the judges panel on the show.

Lovato is expected to join singer Britney Spears as the two new judges on the show. Nicole Scherzinger and Paula Abdul have already been opted out of the show after the disappointment of the first season.

The 19 year old singer is being approached so as to attract the younger audience something which is highly coveted among the advertisers. Nothing has been finalized but is has been said that Demi’s camp is now in the final stages on the negotiation with the show makers.

If things work out then, she would be joining Simon and LA Reid, the Epic Records chairman to help select the one person among the thousands who embodies the show.

Demi Lovato to be among The X Factor judging panel

Appreciate The Risks Involved With Plastic Surgery

There are some people who, once they decide to have plastic surgery, seem to be a hurry to get the procedure done. they do not research the procedures they are interested in prior to contacting a potential surgeon so they don’t know what questions to ask, and they end up using the first one they talk to. unfortunately, they do not realize that, in most states, anyone with a medical degree can do plastic surgery, even if they do not have any training in the procedure

So not getting prepared before talking to a potential surgeon is quite foolhardy, since selecting the wrong surgeon could be asking for a disappointment that will last a lifetime. Studies done on people who have had plastic surgery show that those most likely to have a successful procedure are the ones who studied up beforehand on the procedures. taking the time to educate yourself about what you want done and the qualifications the surgeon must have will maximize the odds that you will be happy with the result.

After all, you want to find the absolute best surgeon for the job, since the most skilled plastic surgeons are really part doctor and part artist. Include in your research process learning exactly what the credentials are for a surgeon to be certified in the procedure you want to have done. be aware that board certification may only be for a certain procedure, so you must make sure that a prospective surgeon has a certification for the procedure you are interested in. Also, just because a surgeon has all the desired certifications does not mean they are the best person to do the job, since some surgeons do not do these procedures very often. You should select a surgeon that performs the procedure at least once a week.

During the research process, you must also remember to gather information on the facility where the surgery will take place. an accreditation of the surgical site is a good indication that your surgeon is concerned with safety and quality.

One more thing to consider is a detailed list of what followup care you will need and a schedule of after care visits you will need to make. I checked and found there are several plastic surgery clinics to choose from and I bet there are several in your area also. by making a few calls, I have found the names of several liposuction surgeons that specialize in the procedure I am looking for, so make sure you check for clinics that specialize in the procedure you want.

Appreciate The Risks Involved With Plastic Surgery

Carol Alt strikes a pose

the modeling business has changed a lot since Carol Alt came up the ranks. the 51-year-old New York native was one of the first “girls’’ to become a bona fide celebrity and gain household-name status.

Now Alt is part of local filmmaker Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ latest documentary, about Face, and will appear at the Miami International Film Festival to speak about her life on Wednesday evening. the film also costars Paulina Porizkova, Jerry Hall and Beverly Johnson.

When Alt started out in the 1970s, her mother, a former showroom model, was concerned about her daughter’s career choice.

“back in the 1940s, modeling was another name for prostitution; people looked down on it,’’ Alt says. “My mother was concerned, and I certainly didn’t want to be a disappointment to her.’’

But after Alt started getting big and made the much-coveted cover of Sports Illustrated in 1982, her mother started to realize that the industry had evolved.

“Ultimately, she calmed down enough and saw how hard I worked and my dedication.’’

But the supermodel’s time has come and gone, she believes.

“the big models are actors and celebrities now,’’ she says. “Victoria’s Secret is kinda sorta the only way to get famous. but I can’t name any of the girls working for [the lingerie retailer] because every year it changes.’’

If Alt had a daughter, she is not sure she would recommend the path she took.

“Women need role models. That’s the real issue for me,’’ she says. “I was a girl who starved myself. at one point, I was 165 at five foot eight and lost 50 pounds [for her SI shoot] in all the wrong ways and suffered for it. I wish there was someone who could speak to the younger generation.’’

Alt looks fantastic in her middle years and credits the strict raw diet she has been following for close to two decades.

“I understand the issue with upkeep. [Raw food] is how I’ve managed the aging issue and stay slim and healthy.’’

She has no problem with those who go under the knife like famed model Carmen, who also appears in the film, likening plastic surgery to getting a broken roof fixed.

“There’s a lot of truth in what she has to say; this is her commodity and her tool and what she has to sell to make a living,’’ says Alt of the still-elegant 80-year-old. “but you can stick a two-by-four in that roof and shore it up. You’re still going to need a good base.’’

So the Eating in the Raw author opts for good food over good doctors.

“I go back to the basics. what do you do every day? You eat. It’s the most powerful drug there is.’’

“about Face” will be screened at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Coral Gables Art Cinema, 260 Aragon Ave., and be followed by MIFF’s inaugural “Miami Mavericks” discussion of the film with Greenfield-Sanders and Alt. Tickets: $12. miamifilmfestvial.com or 305-405-MIFF.

Carol Alt strikes a pose

How to Avoid Bad Plastic Surgery and Malpractice

Despite the incredible progress in plastic surgery, there are still quite a few cases when an operation results to a disappointment instead of an improvement. Nevertheless, you can easily avoid a would-be horror story with a little homework on your part before diving into any cosmetic procedure. Below are some of the tips to avoid bad plastic surgery and malpractice.

Do some digging and research - Try your best to gather and understand as much information about the procedure you’re wanting, so that you’re well-informed when you discuss it during doctor consultations.

Ask for referrals - Referrals can come from friends and acquaintances who have first-hand experience with the same procedure, as well as from your family doctor. Talking to others who had the same cosmetic treatment will give you an overview of a surgeon’s track record. you may also want to ask your family doctor to check out some examples of the surgeon’s work.

Check credentials - Once you have a few cosmetic surgeons in mind, you need to verify their qualifications to ensure they are legitimate–and that you will be literally in good hands. Avoid bad cosmetic surgery experience by asking them about board certification, years of experience, and the number of plastic surgery treatments they’ve performed.

Have a medical pre-operation exam - Let your personal physician and chosen plastic surgeon check your general health condition to determine whether or not you’re fit and safe to undergo an operation. Certain health issues like diabetes, heart ailments, smoking are factors that may complicate the results of your surgery.

Don’t penny-pinch – Plastic surgery is something that you shouldn’t be too frugal about. after all, your health and beauty are at stake here. if the cost seems too good to be true, most likely it is. so make sure you don’t choose a doctor based solely on the cheapest quote.

With a little effort on your part, you can prevent bad plastic surgery and malpractice, including risks and complications. so before going for a body lift and other cosmetic procedures, be sure to follow the steps above to achieve satisfactory results.

How to Avoid Bad Plastic Surgery and Malpractice