NEW YORK (AP) ? Paul McCartney's new bride is stepping down from the board of the authority that runs New York City's public transit system.
Nancy Shevell married the Beatles great in October. She announced her resignation from the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority at its meeting Wednesday.
Shevell had been on the MTA's board since 2001 and was one of its longest-serving members. Her term expired last year, but she had stayed on pending a new appointment by New York's governor.
When she isn't dating music legends or running subway systems, Shevell is a philanthropist. She was an executive at New England Motor Freight, a New Jersey trucking firm owned by her family.
The donor heart dropped on the ground by medics in Mexico as they rushed to deliver it to the hospital has been successfully transplanted into the woman awaiting its arrival. The woman, 28-year-old Erika Hernandez, has no idea about her new heart?s bumpy background.
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) ? Johnson & Johnson said on Thursday it will pay $158 million to settle a Texas lawsuit accusing the drugmaker of improperly marketing its Risperdal anti-psychotic drug to state residents on the Medicaid health program for the poor.
The settlement fully resolves all Risperdal-related claims in Texas, the company said. The agreement is specific to the state of Texas and does not involve other ongoing state or federal Risperdal litigation.
The deal settles claims brought by Texas in 2004 and involves alleged Medicaid overpayments during the years 1994 to 2008 "and will circumvent potentially lengthy and costly appellate activities," according to a statement from J&J's Janssen Pharmaceuticals unit.
The settlement will be paid to the original plaintiff, his attorneys, the state of Texas and the federal government, which provides Medicaid reimbursements, the company said.
The complaint against J&J and several of its units filed in U.S. district court in Texas had alleged company representatives "targeted every level of the Texas Medicaid Program with misrepresentations about the safety, superiority, efficacy, appropriate uses and cost effectiveness of Risperdal."
"Janssen ran amok," Allen Jones, the Pennsylvania-based whistleblower on J&J's marketing practices who was a plaintiff along with state of Texas, told reporters in the Austin courthouse.
"They trashed the Johnson & Johnson credo and they misused Texas and, I believe, well-meaning officials, to further their marketing aims," Jones said. "They subverted science and they induced others to betray the people they were supposed to be taking care of. To me that is reprehensible."
The deal marks the first Risperdal settlement with any U.S. state, Janssen spokeswoman Teresa Mueller said.
J&J's once sterling reputation has been battered in the past two years over quality control problems at several of its plants and manufacturing errors that led to massive recalls of a wide variety of its products, including hip replacements, contact lenses, insulin cartridges and heart devices.
Its biggest black eye came from its McNeil consumer healthcare unit, which in a series recalls was forced to pull hundreds of millions of bottles and packages of popular medicines, such as Children's Tylenol, Motrin, Rolaids and Benadryl.
J&J shares were down 28 cents, or 0.4 percent, at $65 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
(Reporting by Corrie MacLaggan; additional reporting and writing by Bill Berkrot and Ransdell Pierson in New York; editing by Michele Gershberg, Lisa Von Ahn, Gunna Dickson and Andre Grenon)
WASHINGTON ? Kevin Martin scored 25 points, Samuel Dalembert added 20 and the Houston Rockets broke away in the third quarter Monday to beat John Wall and the Washington Wizards 114-106.
Wall scored a career-high 38 points on 13 of 22 shooting. He began the game making under 35 percent this season.
Luis Scola had 18 and Kyle Lowry had 16 for the Rockets in their highest-scoring game of the season.
Houston outscored the Wizards 25-6 during an eight-minute stretch in the third quarter. Dalembert hit all six of his shots in the period.
The Rockets made 25 of 26 foul shots in winning their third straight game.
Washington fell to 1-12 despite its highest point total of the season. Jordan Crawford had 17 points.
After the Rockets took a 19-point lead late in the third quarter, Washington closed to 101-96 on Wall's jumper with 4:47 to play. Wall scored 18 in the fourth quarter.
Crawford ended the first quarter with a 38-foot 3-point shot to give Washington a 28-27 lead. In the second quarter, Houston went on a 17-4 run to take a 52-44 lead with 3:32 remaining in the second quarter.
JaVale McGee scored the first two baskets of the second half to tie it at 58. That's when Houston pulled away, making it 83-64 with 3:56 left in the third quarter. One of the few Wizards' highlights came when McGee tossed the ball off the backboard during a breakaway and dunked.
After that dunk, which cut Houston's lead to 64-60, the Rockets outscored Washington 19-4.
NOTES: Washington F Andray Blatche, who missed three games with a sprained right shoulder, returned and had 11 points and 12 rebounds. Blatche and Wall were assessed with technical fouls within a minute in the third quarter. ... Wizards F Rashard Lewis was out with sore knees. ... Rockets swingman Courtney Lee missed his eighth straight game with a strained right calf. ... Houston coach Kevin McHale fired Washington's Flip Saunders when he was general manager of the Minnesota Timberwolves in February 2005. It was their first on-court meeting as NBA coaches. ... The Rockets have held double-digit leads in their last six games. Last year, they never had double-digit leads in more than five straight.
Solutions for a nitrogen-soaked worldPublic release date: 17-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Liza Lester llester@esa.org 202-833-8773 x211 Ecological Society of America
Interdisciplinary panel reviews US nitrogen pollution trends, risks, and mitigation strategies
Nitrogen is both an essential nutrient and a pollutant, a byproduct of fossil fuel combustion and a fertilizer that feeds billions, a benefit and a hazard, depending on form, location, and quantity. Agriculture, industry and transportation have spread nitrogen liberally around the planet, say sixteen scientists in the latest edition of ESA's Issues in Ecology series, "Excess Nitrogen in the U.S. Environment: Trends, Risks, and Solutions," with complex and interrelated consequences for ecological communities and our dependence upon the resources they provide, as well as human health.
Pulling from a broad pool of expertise in air quality, agronomy, ecology, epidemiology and groundwater geochemistry, the sixteen authors track nitrogen through its different chemical forms and biological incarnations as it progresses across economic, environmental and regulatory bounds. They argue for a systematic, rather than piecemeal, approach to managing the resource and its consequences. "We're really trying to identify solutions," said lead author Eric Davidson, a soil ecologist and executive director of the Woods Hole Research Center. "This is a paper about how much we do know, not about what we don't know. We know about nitrogen cycles, and sources, and we know problems can be addressed in economically viable ways."
Once a critical limiting element of agricultural production, excess nitrogen now overflows from fields and stockyards, typically in the forms of ammonia and nitrate, contaminating drinking water and air, and altering the chemistry and constituency of ecological communities. "Nitrogen is readily mobile, and very efficiently distributed through wind and water," said author James Galloway, a biogeochemist at the University of Virginia. Airborne nitrogen from agricultural fields, manure piles, automobile tailpipes, and smokestacks travels with the wind to settle over distant forests and coastal areas.
Though extra fertilizer sounds like a good thing, it does not benefit all species equally, leading, in more extreme cases, to sudden changes like algal blooms, which smother competing species and can create health hazards. Nitrogen also acidifies soil, leaching away other important nutrients. Interventions to control nitrogen oxide emissions from power plants and gasoline-fueled engines have made encouraging progress. Mitigating agricultural sources of excess nitrogen is more complicated.
"We know how to reduce nitrogen oxides from fossil fuel combustion to a very small amount. We know the science, we have the engineering, and we have the regulatory tools," said Galloway, setting emissions aside as a political, rather than a scientific, hurdle. "On the food side, that's where it gets interesting," he said. "How can you still produce the food the society demands, needs, yet use less nitrogen to produce it?"
The report tabulates strategies to help farmers maximize efficient use of fertilizer, rather than just maximize crop yield, including buffer strips and wetlands, manure management, and ideal patterns of fertilizer application. It also considers the cost of implementing them, and programs for buffering farmers against losses in bad years.
"There are a variety of impacts due to the human use of nitrogen," said Galloway. "The biggest is a positive one, in that it allows us to grow food for Americans and people in other countries, and we don't want to lose sight of that." Balancing inexpensive abundant food against the damage done by nitrogen escaping into the environment is a conversation the authors would like to hear more prominently in policy arenas.
"Yes, we have to feed people, but we also need clean drinking water, clean air, and fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico," said Davidson. "The science helps to show those tradeoffs, and where we most stand to gain from improved nutrient management in agriculture."
###
Issues in Ecology #15, "Excess Nitrogen in the U.S. Environment: Trends, Risks, and Solutions," is available as a pdf download. All reports in the Issues in Ecology series may be found at http://www.esa.org/issues.
The Ecological Society of America is the world's largest professional organization of ecologists, representing 10,000 scientists in the United States and around the globe. Since its founding in 1915, ESA has promoted the responsible application of ecological principles to the solution of environmental problems through ESA reports, journals, research, and expert testimony to Congress. ESA publishes five journals and convenes an annual scientific conference. Visit the ESA website at http://www.esa.org or find experts in ecological science at http://www.esa.org/pao/rrt/.
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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.
Solutions for a nitrogen-soaked worldPublic release date: 17-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Liza Lester llester@esa.org 202-833-8773 x211 Ecological Society of America
Interdisciplinary panel reviews US nitrogen pollution trends, risks, and mitigation strategies
Nitrogen is both an essential nutrient and a pollutant, a byproduct of fossil fuel combustion and a fertilizer that feeds billions, a benefit and a hazard, depending on form, location, and quantity. Agriculture, industry and transportation have spread nitrogen liberally around the planet, say sixteen scientists in the latest edition of ESA's Issues in Ecology series, "Excess Nitrogen in the U.S. Environment: Trends, Risks, and Solutions," with complex and interrelated consequences for ecological communities and our dependence upon the resources they provide, as well as human health.
Pulling from a broad pool of expertise in air quality, agronomy, ecology, epidemiology and groundwater geochemistry, the sixteen authors track nitrogen through its different chemical forms and biological incarnations as it progresses across economic, environmental and regulatory bounds. They argue for a systematic, rather than piecemeal, approach to managing the resource and its consequences. "We're really trying to identify solutions," said lead author Eric Davidson, a soil ecologist and executive director of the Woods Hole Research Center. "This is a paper about how much we do know, not about what we don't know. We know about nitrogen cycles, and sources, and we know problems can be addressed in economically viable ways."
Once a critical limiting element of agricultural production, excess nitrogen now overflows from fields and stockyards, typically in the forms of ammonia and nitrate, contaminating drinking water and air, and altering the chemistry and constituency of ecological communities. "Nitrogen is readily mobile, and very efficiently distributed through wind and water," said author James Galloway, a biogeochemist at the University of Virginia. Airborne nitrogen from agricultural fields, manure piles, automobile tailpipes, and smokestacks travels with the wind to settle over distant forests and coastal areas.
Though extra fertilizer sounds like a good thing, it does not benefit all species equally, leading, in more extreme cases, to sudden changes like algal blooms, which smother competing species and can create health hazards. Nitrogen also acidifies soil, leaching away other important nutrients. Interventions to control nitrogen oxide emissions from power plants and gasoline-fueled engines have made encouraging progress. Mitigating agricultural sources of excess nitrogen is more complicated.
"We know how to reduce nitrogen oxides from fossil fuel combustion to a very small amount. We know the science, we have the engineering, and we have the regulatory tools," said Galloway, setting emissions aside as a political, rather than a scientific, hurdle. "On the food side, that's where it gets interesting," he said. "How can you still produce the food the society demands, needs, yet use less nitrogen to produce it?"
The report tabulates strategies to help farmers maximize efficient use of fertilizer, rather than just maximize crop yield, including buffer strips and wetlands, manure management, and ideal patterns of fertilizer application. It also considers the cost of implementing them, and programs for buffering farmers against losses in bad years.
"There are a variety of impacts due to the human use of nitrogen," said Galloway. "The biggest is a positive one, in that it allows us to grow food for Americans and people in other countries, and we don't want to lose sight of that." Balancing inexpensive abundant food against the damage done by nitrogen escaping into the environment is a conversation the authors would like to hear more prominently in policy arenas.
"Yes, we have to feed people, but we also need clean drinking water, clean air, and fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico," said Davidson. "The science helps to show those tradeoffs, and where we most stand to gain from improved nutrient management in agriculture."
###
Issues in Ecology #15, "Excess Nitrogen in the U.S. Environment: Trends, Risks, and Solutions," is available as a pdf download. All reports in the Issues in Ecology series may be found at http://www.esa.org/issues.
The Ecological Society of America is the world's largest professional organization of ecologists, representing 10,000 scientists in the United States and around the globe. Since its founding in 1915, ESA has promoted the responsible application of ecological principles to the solution of environmental problems through ESA reports, journals, research, and expert testimony to Congress. ESA publishes five journals and convenes an annual scientific conference. Visit the ESA website at http://www.esa.org or find experts in ecological science at http://www.esa.org/pao/rrt/.
[ | 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.
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Public release date: 17-Jan-2012
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