Senate Democrats huddle on gun measures

WASHINGTON – Vice President Joe Biden met Thursday with Senate Democrats to brief the caucus about the rationale behind the administration’s recommendations on guns, arguing that, in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shooting, the nation “will not understand if we don’t act.”

Biden seemed intent to emphasize that the most politically challenging of the initiatives he has  recommended – an assault weapons ban – was still a priority for the administration, mentioning it first in remarks to reporters afterward.

“My message was to lay out for my colleagues what our game plan was, what we thought needed to be done,” Biden said after the more than hourlong meeting. “I made the case for not only assault weapons but for the entire set of recommendations the president laid out.”

Biden said he also asked to sit down with the key parties on Capitol Hill to plot strategy going forward.

All 23 of President Obama's gun policy proposals

A day after the Senate Judiciary Committee held its first hearing on guns, the vice president said there has been a “sea change” in public opinion since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, calling it the “straw that broke the camel’s back” to get the public behind gun measures for the first time in decades.

“I’m not saying there’s an absolute consensus on all these things,” he said. “But there is a sea change in attitudes of the American people. And I believe that the American people will not understand – and I know everyone in that caucus agrees with me – will not understand if we don’t act.”

Participants in the meeting said the vice president indicated he will continue to travel to make the administration’s case, as will the president. A week ago Biden traveled to Richmond, Va., to focus on the call for universal background checks, which is seen as the most likely of the slate of proposals to pass.

PHOTOS: President Obama’s past

At that time, Biden did not mention the assault weapons ban in remarks to reporters afterward, though aides said it did come up in the private discussion with officials present.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Biden told the caucus Thursday that the administration is still behind the ban, a priority of her California colleague, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

“He said this is something that they support. And that the reports that he’s seen have shown that it did make a difference,” Boxer said.

That remains a challenge though, even in the Democratic-controlled Senate because the Democrats must defend 21 seats in 2014.

“Until I see the bills and the language, the only thing I’m going to say is I’m a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment. We’ve got to find a balanced approach, and I will take each amendment and bill as it comes,” said Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), who will be seeking reelection next year in a deeply Republican state.

Biden maintained that while there is no way to eliminate the possibility of another mass shooting, “there are things that we can do … that have virtually zero impact on your 2nd Amendment right to own a weapon for both self-defense and recreation that can save some lives.”

“I’ve always been confident we can reach a consensus on a broad cross-section of issues that can reduce some of this violence, even knowing it will be imperfect,” said Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.).

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OpenStack at Linux.conf.au 2013

I’m writing this blog post from Canberra Australia, while attending the Linux.conf.au (LCA) open source conference. Among the people who do these sorts of things, LCA has a well deserved reputation as one of the very best open source conferences in the world.

Geeks from across Australia and New Zealand, and from across the rest of the world, come together for a week in January (summer in this part of the world) to talk about everything from the intricate technical details of Linux kernel design to pushing the state of the art in file systems and issues deploying practical wireless cryptography. Softer but equally important topics such as Open Government, gender balance in technology, and international legal issues are also discussed. Read more about OpenStack at Linux.conf.au 2013 »

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NJ Gov. Christie appearing Monday with Letterman

NEW YORK (AP) — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will soon be crossing the Hudson River to appear on "Late Show with David Letterman."

CBS says the colorful, outspoken Christie will make his first appearance with Letterman on Monday.

The guest shot follows numerous jokes by Letterman at the expense of Christie and his ample girth.

Christie termed his plumpness "fair game" for comedians at a 2011 news conference. But maybe he'll arrive for "Late Show" with some droll observations of his own to target Letterman.

"Late Show" airs on CBS at 11:35 p.m. EST.

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Well: Waiting for Alzheimer's to Begin

My gray matter might be waning. Then again, it might not be. But I swear that I can feel memories — as I’m making them — slide off a neuron and into a tangle of plaque. I steel myself for those moments to come when I won’t remember what just went into my head.

I’m not losing track of my car keys, which is pretty standard in aging minds. Nor have I ever forgotten to turn off the oven after use, common in menopausal women. I can always find my car in the parking lot, although lots of “normal” folk can’t.

Rather, I suddenly can’t remember the name of someone with whom I’ve worked for years. I cover by saying “sir” or “madam” like the Southerner I am, even though I live in Vermont and grown people here don’t use such terms. Better to think I’m quirky than losing my faculties. Sometimes I’ll send myself an e-mail to-do reminder and then, seconds later, find myself thrilled to see a new entry pop into my inbox. Oops, it’s from me. Worse yet, a massage therapist kicked me out of her practice for missing three appointments. I didn’t recall making any of them. There must another Nancy.

Am I losing track of me?

Equally worrisome are the memories increasingly coming to the fore. Magically, these random recollections manage to circumnavigate my imagined build-up of beta-amyloid en route to delivering vivid images of my father’s first steps down his path of forgetting. He was the same age I am now, which is 46.

“How old are you?” I recall him asking me back then. Some years later, he began calling me every Dec. 28 to say, “Happy birthday,” instead of on the correct date, Dec. 27. The 28th had been his grandmother’s birthday.

The chasms were small at first. Explainable. Dismissible. When he crossed the street without looking both ways, we chalked it up to his well-cultivated, absent-minded professor persona. But the chasms grew into sinkholes, and eventually quicksand. When we took him to get new pants one day, he kept trying on the same ones he wore to the store.

“I like these slacks,” he’d say, over and over again, as he repeatedly pulled his pair up and down.

My dad died of Alzheimer’s last April at age 73 — the same age at which his father succumbed to the same disease. My dad ended up choosing neurology as his profession after witnessing the very beginning of his own dad’s forgetting.

Decades later, grandfather’s atrophied brain found its way into a jar on my father’s office desk. Was it meant to be an ever-present reminder of Alzheimer’s effect? Or was it a crystal ball sent to warn of genetic fate? My father the doctor never said, nor did he ever mention, that it was his father’s gray matter floating in that pool of formaldehyde.

Using the jarred brain as a teaching tool, my dad showed my 8-year-old self the difference between frontal and temporal lobes. He also pointed out how brains with Alzheimer’s disease become smaller, and how wide grooves develop in the cerebral cortex. But only after his death — and my mother’s confession about whose brain occupied that jar — did I figure out that my father was quite literally demonstrating how this disease runs through our heads.

Has my forgetting begun?

I called my dad’s neurologist. To find out if I was in the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s, he would have to look for proteins in my blood or spinal fluid and employ expensive neuroimaging tests. If he found any indication of onset, the only option would be experimental trials.

But documented confirmation of a diseased brain would break my still hopeful heart. I’d walk around with the scarlet letter “A” etched on the inside of my forehead — obstructing how I view every situation instead of the intermittent clouding I currently experience.

“You’re still grieving your father,” the doctor said at the end of our call. “Sadness and depression affect the memory, too. Let’s wait and see.”

It certainly didn’t help matters that two people at my father’s funeral made some insensitive remarks.

“Nancy, you must be scared to death.”

“Is it hard knowing the same thing probably will happen to you?”

Maybe the real question is what to do when the forgetting begins. My dad started taking 70 supplements a day in hopes of saving his mind. He begged me to kill him if he wound up like his father. He retired from his practice and spent all day in a chair doing puzzles. He stopped making new memories in an all-out effort to preserve the ones he already had.

Maybe his approach wasn’t the answer.

Just before his death — his brain a fraction of its former self — my father managed to offer up a final lesson. I was visiting him in the memory-care center when he got a strange look on his face. I figured it was gas. But then his eyes lit up and a big grin overtook him, and he looked right at me and said, “Funny how things turn out.”

An unforgettable moment?

I can only hope.

---

Nancy Stearns Bercaw is a writer in Vermont. Her book, “Brain in a Jar: A Daughter’s Journey Through Her Father’s Memory,” will be published in April 2013 by Broadstone.

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Twitter says it's working to fix problem with accessing the site

If you're having trouble tweeting Thursday, you aren't alone.

Twitter has been either inaccessible, slow or not performing properly for some users Thursday morning.

The San Francisco-based social network acknowledged the problems around 7:30 a.m. PST, saying, "Some users may be experiencing issues accessing Twitter."

10 tech companies to watch in 2013

The company's Status website also said that the company's engineers were working to resolve the problem.

[Updated 10:45 a.m. PST Jan. 31: Twitter says it has resolved the issues that affected its Web and mobile users from 7 a.m. to 9:50 a.m. PST.

"We apologize to users who were affected by this, and we’re working to ensure that similar issues do not occur," the company said.]

Users of the popular network took to Facebook to ask others about Twitter's problems and mocked the site when it began to work properly for some of them.

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Syrian state media report airstrike by Israeli military

JERUSALEM – Amid rising fear that Syrian President Bashar Assad could lose control of his nation’s stockpiles of chemical and advanced weapons, Israel bombed and destroyed a military research center outside Damascus, the capital, Syrian state media reported Wednesday.

Israeli and U.S. military and government officials declined to comment on the report.

If it occurred, the attack would mark Israel’s most aggressive military strike against its neighbor during the Syrian uprising against Assad's rule that began nearly two years ago.

Earlier in the day, international news agencies and Arab news outlets reported that the Israeli strike had targeted a weapons convoy along the Syrian-Lebanese border as it attempted to deliver cargo to the militant group Hezbollah. Those reports could not be confirmed. Syrian officials denied the reports of a convoy as “baseless.”

Israeli officials have been voicing concern in recent days that Syria’s advanced weapons might fall into the hands of militant groups that could use them against Israel.

Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu raised the issue during a Cabinet meeting this week and officials have repeatedly said that any transfer of such weapons outside Syria might trigger a military response.

According to Syrian TV, the research facility and an adjacent building were destroyed in the dawn attack Wednesday. Two people were killed and five were injured, Syrian news reports said.

It was unclear what sort of military research was being carried out in the center, in Jamraya, northwest of the capital. There were no initial reports of chemical contamination in the area.

Syrian officials characterized the center as scientific and said Israel’s “blatant aggression” proved that it has been behind the effort to oust Assad, according to statement from the Syrian military, carried by the official Syrian Arab News Agency.

“It has become clear to everyone that Israel is the motivator, beneficiary and sometimes executor of the terrorist acts that target Syria and its resistant people,” the statement said.

To date Israel has tried to steer clear of the Syrian conflict, fearing that any actions it might take, such as supporting opposition forces or launching a military strike, might backfire or become a propaganda coup for Damascus.

That very issue might lead the Syrian government, which has long claimed that U.S. and “Zionist” forces are behind the rebellion against Assad, to accuse Israel of attacking its territory.

Each side in the Syrian conflict has portrayed itself as an implacable enemy of Israel.

There is also concern that an Israeli strike could drag others into the Syrian conflict. Iran, Syria’s close ally, said early this week that any foreign attack against Syria would be regarded as an attack on Iran.

In addition to chemical weapons, Israeli officials have been particularly worried about Syria’s stockpile of Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles. If such weapons were obtained by the militant Hezbollah movement, it would weaken Israel’s regional military power and hinder its ability to launch airstrikes in Lebanon.

“The initial speculation was about chemical weapons, but Israel is deeply concerned about Hezbollah acquiring this kind of advanced anti-aircraft missile,’’ said Jonathan Spyer, senior research fellow at the Center for Global Research in International Affairs in Herzliya, Israel. “It would transform Hezbollah’s game and potentially end Israel’s air superiority over Lebanon. This is entirely about Hezbollah, not about Syria.”

Officials in Lebanon denied knowledge of any Israeli attack, but complained that Israeli jets had violated their airspace for several hours, beginning Tuesday afternoon and continuing until Wednesday morning. Though Israel routinely flies over Lebanon for reconnaissance missions to keep a close eye on Hezbollah's arms stocks and movements of weapons, the activity overnight was reportedly heavier than usual.

It is often Israel’s policy to refuse to confirm or deny its activities in the region, partly out of a belief that silence might reduce the pressure on its enemies to react or retaliate.

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TSX closes lower as RIM, Fed decision weigh

TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada’s main stock index closed lower on Wednesday, hurt by a fall in Research In Motion Ltd after it released its long-awaited BlackBerry 10 devices, and broad market weakness after the U.S. Federal Reserve decided to leave its stimulus program intact.

The Toronto Stock Exchange‘s S&P/TSX composite index <.gsptse> closed 36.12 points, or 0.28 percent, lower at 12,794.44. Nine of the 10 main sectors on the index declined.</.gsptse>

(Reporting by John Tilak; Editing by Peter Galloway)

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Lindsay Lohan appears in court, trial delayed

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Lindsay Lohan briefly appeared in court Wednesday for the first time in nearly a year and left with a new attorney, new trial date and new judge.

Superior Court Judge Stephanie Sautner shook her head when she saw Lohan seated with her attorney, just months after the judge had warned the "Liz and Dick" star to grow up and stay out of trouble.

The actress was required to attend the pretrial hearing involving three misdemeanor counts filed after a car crash last summer. Lohan has pleaded not guilty to lying to police, reckless driving and obstructing officers from performing their duties.

Sautner previously sent her to jail, placed her under house arrest and forced her to perform morgue cleanup duty in another case.

Sautner warned Lohan on Wednesday that she could face jail time for a possible probation violation, even if she is acquitted of the counts filed after her sports car crashed into a dump truck.

Lohan was on probation at the time of the wreck and could be sentenced to 245 days in jail if a judge determines her actions in the crash were a violation of her sentence in a theft case.

Sautner, however, won't be handling Lohan's upcoming case. The judge said she is retiring before the next court hearing on March 1. Lohan will not be required to attend that hearing.

Lohan's new trial date is March 18.

Lohan was accompanied to court by her new attorney, Mark Heller, who said he wanted to get the case resolved as quickly as possible.

The judge quipped that it would only solve her legal trouble "on this coast" — a reference to her two arrests in New York since being released from supervised probation in Los Angeles in March. No charges have been filed in those cases.

Heller, a New York attorney, was granted permission to handle Lohan's California cases. He said he was meeting with prosecutors to determine how to proceed.

Sautner gave him more time by delaying the trial but said, "This is not the most complex case we've ever seen."

Lohan appeared in court in a black dress. She spoke only briefly to confirm that she was switching attorneys and no longer wanted her longtime lawyer, Shawn Holley, to represent her.

___

Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

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The Consumer: The Drug-Dose Gender Gap

Most sleeping pills are designed to knock you out for eight hours. When the Food and Drug Administration was evaluating a new short-acting pill for people to take when they wake up in the middle of the night, agency scientists wanted to know how much of the drug would still be in users’ systems come morning.

Blood tests uncovered a gender gap: Men metabolized the drug, Intermezzo, faster than women. Ultimately the F.D.A. approved a 3.5 milligram pill for men, and a 1.75 milligram pill for women.

The active ingredient in Intermezzo, zolpidem, is used in many other sleeping aids, including Ambien. But it wasn’t until earlier this month that the F.D.A. reduced doses of Ambien for women by half.

Sleeping pills are hardly the only medications that may have unexpected, even dangerous, effects in women. Studies have shown that women respond differently than men to many drugs, from aspirin to anesthesia. Researchers are only beginning to understand the scope of the issue, but many believe that as a result, women experience a disproportionate share of adverse, often more severe, side effects.

“This is not just about Ambien — that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” said Dr. Janine Clayton, director for the Office of Research on Women’s Health at the National Institutes of Health. “There are a lot of sex differences for a lot of drugs, some of which are well known and some that are not well recognized.”

Until 1993, women of childbearing age were routinely excluded from trials of new drugs. When the F.D.A. lifted the ban that year, agency researchers noted that because landmark studies on aspirin in heart disease and stroke had not included women, the scientific community was left “with doubts about whether aspirin was, in fact, effective in women for these indications.”

Because so many drugs were tested mostly or exclusively in men, scientists may know little of their effects on women until they reach the market. A Government Accountability Office study found that 8 of 10 drugs removed from the market from 1997 through 2000 posed greater health risks to women.

For example, Seldane, an antihistamine, and the gastrointestinal drug Propulsid both triggered a potentially fatal heart arrhythmia more often in women than in men. Many drugs still on the market cause this arrhythmia more often in women, including antibiotics, antipsychotics, anti-malarial drugs and cholesterol-lowering drugs, Dr. Clayton said. Women also tend to use more medications than men.

The sex differences cut both ways. Some drugs, like the high blood pressure drug Verapamil and the antibiotic erythromycin, appear to be more effective in women. On the other hand, women tend to wake up from anesthesia faster than men and are more likely to experience side effects from anesthetic drugs, according to the Society for Women’s Health Research.

Women also react differently to alcohol, tobacco and cocaine, studies have found.

It’s not just because women tend to be smaller than men. Women metabolize drugs differently because they have a higher percentage of body fat and experience hormonal fluctuations and the monthly menstrual cycle. “Some drugs are more water-based and like to hang out in the blood, and some like to hang out in the fat tissue,” said Wesley Lindsey, assistant professor of pharmacy practice at Auburn University, who is a co-author of a paper on sex-based differences in drug activity.

“If the drug is lipophilic” — attracted to fat cells — “it will move into those tissues and hang around for longer,” Dr. Lindsey added. “The body won’t clear it as quickly, and you’ll see effects longer.”

There are also sex differences in liver metabolism, kidney function and certain gastric enzymes. Oral contraceptives, menopause and post-menopausal hormone treatment further complicate the picture. Some studies suggest, for example, that when estrogen levels are low, women may need higher doses of drugs called angiotensin receptor blockers to lower blood pressure, because they have higher levels of proteins that cause the blood vessels to constrict, said Kathryn Sandberg, director of the Center for the Study of Sex Differences in Health, Aging and Disease at Georgetown.

Many researchers say data on these sex differences must be gathered at the very beginning of a drug’s development — even before trials on human subjects begin.

“The path to a new drug starts with the basic science — you study an animal model of the disease, and that’s where you discover a drug target,” Dr. Sandberg said. “But 90 percent of researchers are still studying male animal models of the disease.”

There have been improvements. In an interview, Dr. Robert Temple, with the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at the F.D.A., said the agency’s new guidelines in 1993 called for studies of sex differences at the earliest stages of drug development, as well as for analysis of clinical trial data by sex.

He said early research on an irritable bowel syndrome drug, alosetron (Lotronex), suggested it would not be effective in men. As a result, only women were included in clinical trials, and it was approved only for women. (Its use is restricted now because of serious side effects.)

But some scientists say drug metabolism studies with only 10 or 15 subjects are too small to pick up sex differences. Even though more women participate in clinical trials than in the past, they are still underrepresented in trials for heart and kidney disease, according to one recent analysis, and even in cancer trials.

“The big problem is we’re not quite sure how much difference this makes,” Dr. Lindsey said. “We just don’t have a good handle on it.”

---

Readers may submit comments or questions for The Consumer by e-mail to consumer@nytimes.com.

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Facebook beats Wall Street expectations but shares fall anyway

Facebook Inc. reported fourth-quarter financial results that beat Wall Street expectations, but it shares are falling anyway.

Revenue rose 40% to nearly $1.6 billion in the fourth quarter, above analyst estimates. That marked the first growth acceleration since Facebook started selling shares to the public in May.

Facebook said it earned $64 million, or 3 cents a share, compared with $302 million, or 14 cents a share, a year earlier.

"In 2012, we connected over a billion people and became a mobile company," Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a written statement that accompanied the fourth-quarter financial results. "We enter 2013 with good momentum and will continue to invest to achieve our mission and become a stronger, more valuable company."

Since Facebook's overhyped initial public offering landed on Wall Street with a big thud, the company has had a tough time winning friends there.

"I don't think any investors are going to unfriend Facebook for these numbers. I think the stock is trading down a bit because people were expecting a blowout quarter, and what they got was a good-but-not-great quarter," said Bill Burnham with hedge fund Inductive Capital.

Facebook shares fell 3% in after-hours trading after the fourth-quarter results were released.

Investors will be listening for clues this afternoon whether Facebook has made progress in reinventing itself as a mobile business. It's a challenge it must meet to retain users and regain its luster on Wall Street.

How successful the company has been in that quest became clearer in its fourth-quarter earnings report. Mobile advertising accounted for about 23% of ad revenue in the quarter, up from 14% in the third quarter, Facebook said. The figure was in the ballpark of what analysts had expected.

Mobile ads have become increasingly important for Facebook as more of its users check their News Feed on their smartphones and tablets rather than on personal computers.

Signs that mobile ads were starting to gain traction have pushed up Facebook shares, which reached rock bottom in early September.

Facebook has also rolled out new applications for the iPhone and mobile phones powered by Android software. But not everything has a mobile focus. There is no mobile version of Graph Search, which Facebook rolled out this month.

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