Whitney Houston's voice will never be forgotten (AP)

NEW YORK ? Whitney Houston's downfall was so long and sad that, in an impatient public's mind, it overshadowed her many accomplishments.

Those achievements can be checked off easily in numbers ? Grammy Awards, records sold, the string of seven consecutive No. 1 singles. Yet if there's any solace to her passing, it is that people will revisit recordings, videos and films to rediscover the majesty of her work.

Look up the video for one of those hits, "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)." The arrangement and instrumentation ? cheesy synthesizers, booming drums ? date the recording immediately in the late 1980s.

It's a pop confection that could have been sung by any singer who might have been forgotten in a couple of years. Houston lifted it above the average with a voice that could just as easily be found on a gospel record or opera stage. She danced through it with a bearing that made you think of Michael Jordan stopping off at a schoolyard basketball game, knowing that she had far more talent than anyone around her.

The daughter of Cissy Houston and cousin of Dionne Warwick, Houston had talent that surpassed each of them. Her godmother was Aretha Franklin ? how's that for pressure? ? but in her prime, Houston's voice could match the Queen of Soul's.

"Didn't We Almost Have It All" and "How Will I Know" were other standouts, evidence that Houston could master balladry and up-tempo songs. She was one of longtime music executive Clive Davis' greatest signings, and although Davis may not have challenged Houston enough, he at least put her in position to shine.

Anyone who saw Houston perform "The Star Spangled Banner" before the 1991 Super Bowl will always remember it.

The 1992 film "The Bodyguard" and its soundtrack will remain her signature achievement. She portrayed a superstar singer, alternatively tough and vulnerable, guarded by a former Secret Service agent played by Kevin Costner. For the soundtrack, she took a little-known Dolly Parton song, "I Will Always Love You," and made it her own. And then some.

Again, there are the kudos ? it won the Grammy Award for record of the year. The performance itself was remarkable. Houston's voice soared with the power of a jet engine and kept perfect tone for the quieter, tender moments. Every artist has a defining song; if they're lucky, it also shows the peak of their powers.

The hits didn't dry up immediately, but they became less frequent. Her marriage to singer Bobby Brown was ill-fated and she descended into drug abuse.

In September 1997, I had an interview scheduled with Houston as she was promoting a concert being televised on HBO. It was by phone, but the appointed hour of her call came and went. No Houston.

The next day a huge floral arrangement was delivered to The Associated Press office addressed to me with a note of apology attributed to Houston. When the interview was rescheduled, I thanked her for the arrangement and said it wasn't necessary. She had no idea what I was talking about.

One suspects there were many years and many other examples of instances like that, of covering Houston's tracks as she became increasingly unreliable. The years of abuse took a terrible toll on her talent. She made a comeback in 2009 with a "Good Morning America" concert that was sad to watch. She went through the motions and played hard to the crowd, but her voice could no longer hit the notes that once seemed effortless.

During that 1997 interview, Houston deflected talk about a life and marriage that was already clearly troubled.

"I didn't get in the business to talk about my personal life," she said then. "I got in the business to sing, to try to make music and to try to make people happy ... if I can.

"My life doesn't go on record. My voice does."

It is the only thing to be thankful for with this sad story.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/celebrity/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120212/ap_on_en_mu/us_whitney_houston_appreciation

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Why carpooling is cool again

When you add up all of the little costs, every mile you drive costs you at least $0.50 in fuel, maintenance, wear and tear, and tolls. If you?re commuting 10 miles each way every day, that?s $10 a day saved by sharing the trip.?

Yesterday, I wrote about how taking public transportation can save you money even if you just let a car sit in the driveway while taking the bus.

Skip to next paragraph Trent Hamm

The Simple Dollar is a blog for those of us who need both cents and sense: people fighting debt and bad spending habits while building a financially secure future and still affording a latte or two. Our busy lives are crazy enough without having to compare five hundred mutual funds ? we just want simple ways to manage our finances and save a little money.

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For quite a lot of us, though, public transportation isn?t an option. Even those who have a public transportation line near their home often find themselves without a place to depart that?s anywhere close to their place of work.

That leaves the door wide open to another option: carpooling. It?s one Sarah used for several years with great success.

When we moved to our current home, both Sarah and I had about a thirty minute commute to our respective jobs. The house we selected was pretty close to a midway point between our places of employment.

Both of us looked for coworkers who lived near us that we could carpool with to save money. I didn?t find one. Sarah did.

Sarah started carpooling with a much older fellow who was very close to retirement, and they carpooled together almost every day for the last two years of his working career.

After the first year, Sarah sat down and calculated how much money she saved due to carpooling. According to her best estimates, she saved about $1,200 a year.

Not only that, carpooling saved her time, too. She would spend a significant portion of most of the rides doing additional work, which would free her to spend more time with the family at home. Every other day, she could get an hour of work done that she would otherwise be doing at home.

That time would often result in better meals prepared at home, preparation of leftovers for lunch the following day, more effective creation of grocery lists, and other such little things that would save us additional money beyond mere carpooling.

If you can find three or four people to carpool with, even better. That reduces your driving time (and wear on your vehicle) even more and adds more ?backup driver? redundancy to your carpool.

How much can this save you? It depends on how you calculate this, but when you add up all of the little costs, every mile you drive costs you at least $0.50 in fuel, maintenance, wear and tear, depreciation, tolls, and other such factors. If you?re commuting 10 miles each way every day, for example, that?s $10 a day, whether you directly see it or not.

Carpooling spreads out that cost. If you?re carpooling with two other people, that cuts your annual commuting days down from 240 to 80 (approximately). If you?re commuting that ten mile stretch mentioned above, you?re saving $1,600 a year just by carpooling.

That can be an enormous savings. That?s half a year?s worth of car payments on a reliable used car.

This post is part of a yearlong series called ?365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),? in which I?m revisiting the entries from my book ?365 Ways to Live Cheap,? which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere.?

The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on www.thesimpledollar.com.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/SmBijGfFp38/Why-carpooling-is-cool-again

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Substance P found to cause seizures in patients with pork tapeworm

Friday, February 10, 2012

A neuropeptide called Substance P is the cause of seizures in patients with brains infected by the pork tapeworm Taenia solium, according to Baylor College of Medicine researchers. Their results appear February 9th in the Open Access journal PLoS Pathogens.

Neurocysticercosis (NCC), a parasitic tapeworm infection of the brain, is the major cause of acquired seizures worldwide, but the mediators responsible for seizures in NCC were previously unknown. Prema Robinson and colleagues, realizing that Substance P is involved in inflammation, found Substance P in autopsies of the brains of patients who had the tapeworm infection. They did not find Substance P in uninfected brains.

Substance P is a neuropeptide (a small protein-like molecule involved in neuron-to-neuron communication.) It is produced by neurons, endothelial cells (the cells that line blood vessels) and cells involved in host defense. Discovered in the 1930s, it has long been recognized as a pain transmitter. However, in recent years, it has also been found to play a role in many other functions.

"As long as the parasite is alive, nothing happens," said Robinson. However, once the worm dies, the body responds with chemicals that recruit immune system cells to the site of infection, causing inflammation. Her studies show that the cells that produce Substance P are found mainly in areas of inflammation near the dead worms.

Animals injected with Substance P alone or with extracts from the areas of inflammation (granulomas) near the worms in infected mice suffered severe seizures, she said. However, when the rodents received the drug that blocks the Substance P receptor, they did not have seizures.

In addition, mice that lacked the Substance P receptor did not have seizures even when injected with the extracts of granulomas from infected mice. Granuloma extracts from mice that lacked the cells that make Substance P did not induce seizures either.

These findings have implications for people, who often suffer seizures during treatment for the tapeworm infection. As the worms die, inflammatory cells rush to the scene and the seizures begin. There are medications known to block the receptor for Substance P. These medications may prove to be the most effective means of treating and preventing seizures in these patients.

###

Public Library of Science: http://www.plos.org

Thanks to Public Library of Science for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/117533/Substance_P_found_to_cause_seizures_in_patients_with_pork_tapeworm

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Romney tries to woo skeptical conservatives (The Arizona Republic)

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Tips For Giving Home Massages | New Health and Fitness

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Tips For Giving Home Massages. New Health And Fitness.Org - Health Information You Can Use. For centuries people have been giving and receiving massages as a way to lessen stress and to help relive sore muscles.

Source: http://newhealthandfitness.org/2012/02/08/tips-for-giving-home-massages/

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Kodak to stop making cameras, digital frames

In this Jan. 5, 2012 photo, a Kodak Easyshare digital camera is displayed at B&H Photo & Video, in New York. Eastman Kodak Co. said Thursday, Feb. 9, 2012, it will stop making digital cameras, pocket video cameras and digital picture frames in order to focus on its more profitable businesses. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

In this Jan. 5, 2012 photo, a Kodak Easyshare digital camera is displayed at B&H Photo & Video, in New York. Eastman Kodak Co. said Thursday, Feb. 9, 2012, it will stop making digital cameras, pocket video cameras and digital picture frames in order to focus on its more profitable businesses. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

File - In this Aug. 17, 2005 file photo, Steven J. Sasson, then Eastman Kodak Co. project manager, shows his prototype digital camera he built in 1975 next to Kodak's latest digital camera the EasyShare One, at Kodak headquarters in Rochester, N.Y. Soon after joining Eastman Kodak Co. Eastman Kodak Co. said Thursday, Feb. 9, 2012, that it will stop making digital cameras, pocket video cameras and digital picture frames, marking the end of an era for the company that brought photography to the masses more than a century ago. (AP Photo/David Duprey, File)

ROCHESTER, New York (AP) ? Picture it: Except for a few disposable point-and-shoots, Kodak is exiting the camera business.

Eastman Kodak Co. said Thursday that it will stop making digital cameras, pocket video cameras and digital picture frames in a move that marks the end of an era for the beleaguered 132-year-old company.

Founded by George Eastman in 1880, Kodak was known all over the world for iconic cameras such as the Brownie and the Instamatic. For the last few decades, however, the Rochester, New York-based company has struggled. It was battered by Japanese competition in the 1980s, and failed to keep pace with the shift from film to digital technology.

The company sought bankruptcy protection from creditors last month in a case that covers $6.7 billion in debt. It has a year to devise a restructuring plan. Citigroup Inc. was approved to lend the company $650 million to continue operating.

Exiting the digital camera business is especially poignant for Kodak. In 1975, using an electronic sensor invented six years earlier at Bell Labs, a Kodak engineer named Steven Sasson created the world's first digital camera. It was an eight-pound (3.6 kilogram), toaster-size device that captured low-resolution black-and-white images.

Reached at home Thursday, Sasson told The Associated Press that seeing Kodak exit the business is "a bit sad" but part of a transition facing all companies that use evolving technology.

"The average person probably owns more digital cameras than they realize," he said. "It's just the reality that digital imaging is a part of our lives and you can capture images in a lot of different ways. There's a lot of choices people have, cellphones being one of them."

Through the 1990s, Kodak spent some $4 billion developing the photo technology inside most of today's cellphones and digital devices. But fearing that it might cannibalize its celluloid film business, Kodak waited until 2001 to bring its own digital cameras to the consumer market. By then, it faced strong competitors like Sony Corp. and Canon.

These days, digital camera sales are suffering as consumers increasingly take photos on smartphones such as the iPhone. Certain smartphone makers such as LG, Nokia, Motorola and Samsung have agreed to pay Kodak to license its digital camera technology, while companies like Apple are fighting its patent claims.

Before Thursday's announcement, Kodak had already been trying to shrink its product line and sell in fewer retail venues, but as sales declines worsened, the company saw no way to make the business profitable.

"We made the logical conclusion that there was no clear path to profitability and we have to focus on generating profits at this point," said Kodak spokesman Chris Veronda.

Kodak said getting out the digital camera business by June should help cut losses by about $100 million a year as it struggles to emerge from bankruptcy.

The company's digital camera line was part of a rapidly shrinking division that accounted for about a quarter of Kodak's revenue in the three-month period through September.

For the nine months through September, total company sales plunged 18 percent to $4.3 billion and it lost $647 million.

Kodak sees home photo printers, high-speed commercial inkjet presses, workflow software and packaging as the core of its future business. Since 2005, the company has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into new lines of inkjet printers. Once the digital camera business is phased out, Kodak said its consumer business will focus on printing. It will seek a company to license its EasyShare digital camera brand.

Kodak said it's working with retailers to ensure an orderly transition. The company will continue to honor product warranties and provide technical support for the discontinued products.

The company didn't say how many jobs would be eliminated as a result of the decision, but did say that it expects to take a charge of $30 million related to separation costs.

Kodak owns patents that cover a number of basic functions in many smartphone cameras, and the bankruptcy judge has given the company until June 30 to come up with a procedure to sell them.

The company picked up $27 million in patent-licensing fees in the first half of 2011. It made about $1.9 billion from those fees in the previous three years combined. But no buyers have emerged since Kodak started shopping them around in July.

___

AP Business Writer Ryan Nakashima in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2012-02-09-Kodak-Cameras/id-0f4455e7f33e41edbaf12a9d42eb1637

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California Judgment Collection: 4 Enforcement of ... - Land & Lease

Unfortunately, obtaining ?a judgment against someone is not always the end of the story for the life of a lawsuit. ?Setting aside appellate issues, once a plaintiff obtains a judgment they have to take steps to enforce it ? to collect. ? In today?s poor economic climate it is a necessary part of any Los Angeles Trial attorney?s practice to be able to actually take steps to collect on the judgment.

Here are 4 post-judgment collection steps to consider in California:

1. ?Record an Abstract of Judgment:? An abstract of judgment is a lien that is recorded with the county recorder?s office. ?A judgment creditor can record an abstract of judgment in any county in California where the judgment creditor thinks the judgment debtor may have real property. ?This is fairly inexpensive way to place a lien on the debtor?s real property without even having to identify the specific real property. ?The lien attaches to any real property the debtor may have in the county where the abstract of judgment is recorded.

2. ?Do a Post-Judgment Asset Search:?? These searches are done by third-party. ?They can be as cheap as $200 but can also be quite expensive. ?Generally, the more you are willing to pay the more detailed information you will obtain. ?Often times a debtor?s financial picture may change during the time after they have been sued and before judgment. ?You may even discover a fraudulent transfer that needs to be set aside.

3. ?Schedule a Judgment Debtor Exam:? These exams allow you to examine the debtor?s assets. ?This can be good, but often times the debtor is not truthful. ?These exams are useful for obtaining an overview of the debtor?s assets, like where the debtor banks.

4. ?Get a writ of execution:? A writ of execution allows a judgment debtor to enforce their judgment. ?For example, this is the first step to being able to levy on a bank account (access a debtor?s bank account).

Schorr Law, APC, has extensive experience in judgment collection. ? ?Our attorneys have taken enforcement steps in California and internationally. For more information, contact us ? www.schorr-law.com, 310-954-1877, info@schorr-law.com.

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Source: http://landandleaseca.com/2012/02/08/california-judgment-collection-4-enforcement-of-judgment-steps-in-california/

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