… Justice Thomas wrote, that makers of generic drugs are caught in an impossible bind: they can comply with a state law requiring them to change their labels or the federal law prohibiting changes, but not both.
Given that impossibility, federal law pre-empts state law under the Constitution’s supremacy clause, he wrote.
In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the majority opinion invented “new principles of pre-emption law out of the air” and will lead to “absurd consequences.”
“As the majority itself admits,” Justice Sotomayor wrote, “a drug consumer’s right to compensation for inadequate warnings now turns on the happenstance of whether her pharmacist filled her prescription with a brand-name drug or a generic.”
The decision considered three consolidated cases brought by women who took generic metoclopramide, which is sold under the brand name Reglan. They took the drug for stomach ailments and developed a serious neurological disorder. Appeals courts ruled against the drug makers, saying that the federal regulatory regime did not block claims under state law.
The Supreme Court reversed those decisions on Thursday, rejecting what Justice Thomas called the “fair argument,” that the defendants should have at least tried to persuade the federal drug agency to let them use a safer label. …
Do not take the drug metoclopramide for stomach acid (GERD) no matter what name it goes by.
Taking metoclopramide may cause you to develop a muscle problem called tardive dyskinesia. If you develop tardive dyskinesia, you will move your muscles, especially the muscles in your face in unusual ways. You will not be able to control or stop these movements. Tardive dyskinesia may not go away even after you stop taking metoclopramide. The longer you take metoclopramide, the greater the risk that you will develop tardive dyskinesia. Therefore, your doctor will probably tell you not to take metoclopramide for longer than 12 weeks. The risk that you will develop tardive dyskinesia is also greater if you are taking medications for mental illness, if you have diabetes, or if you are elderly, especially if you are a woman. Call your doctor immediately if you develop any uncontrollable body movements, especially lip smacking, mouth puckering, chewing, frowning, scowling, sticking out your tongue, blinking, eye movements, or shaking arms or legs.
NASA, which is not as busy scheduling space launches
anymore, is focusing a great deal of energy on an asteroid about the size of a tour bus that is expected to make an extremely close pass by the Earth on Monday.
On June 27 the asteroid should fly 7,500 miles above the Earth’s surface. The asteroid, named 2011 MD, was discovered last Wednesday by a pair of roboti telescopes in New Mexico that constantly scan the skies. NASA estimates that an object this size comes this close to Earth on an average of every six years.
NASA said for several hours prior to its closest approach, 2011 MD will be visible in moderately large amateur telescopes.
Of the thousands of objects discovered by NASA, approximately 827 are asteroids with a diameter of approximately a half-mile or larger. They’re classified as Potential Hazardous Asteroid. NASA is planning to launch a probe to visit one of the dangerous objects before the asteroid makes its way near the Earth. …
Lulz Security’s hacking continues to get political: on Friday the group attacked the Arizona Department of Public Safety in retaliation for immigration laws.
“We are releasing hundreds of private intelligence bulletins, training manuals, personal email correspondence, names, phone numbers, addresses and passwords belonging to Arizona law enforcement,” LulzSec said in a statement. “We are targeting AZDPS specifically because we are against SB1070 and the racial profiling anti-immigrant police state that is Arizona.”
Senate Bill 1070 is the law that requires aliens to carry registration documents with them at all times.
Arizona officials have confirmed that the documents leaked by LulzSec are authentic. The attack appears to be part of Operation Anti-Security, a push by LulzSec and Anonymous, another hacking group, to attack government agencies and post confidential or embarrassing information. Previous efforts have been limited to denial of service attacks on Websites, including those of the Brazilian and Chinese governments. Unlike those attacks, this hack has resulted in the sharing of confidential information.
This isn’t the first time LulzSec has hacked a government agency. The group’s previous exploits include an attack on the U.S. Senate, a denial of service attack on the CIA’s Website, and a hack on an FBI-affialiated organization, Infragard. Earlier attacks focused on game companies and news organizations.
But this seems to be the first case in which LulzSec has pointed out a specific political policy as the motivation for hacking a government agency. The attack will surely increase the pressure on law enforcement to find and arrest LulzSec members. So far, U.K. police have arrested one teen, who the group says was only loosely-affiliated. …
A collision Friday between an Amtrak train from Chicago and a semi-truck at a railroad crossing in Nevada killed the truck driver and an Amtrak worker and an undisclosed number of train passengers, authorities said.A Fox News report indicates five people were killed in the crash, citing information from the Nevada Highway Patrol.
Officials said that at 11:20 a.m., the truck drove into the side of the train at a crossing on U.S. 95 about 70 miles east of Reno. “Preliminary reports are that there have been fatalities to passengers, an Amtrak train crew member and the operator of the truck,’’ Amtrak said in a statement.Twenty passengers were hospitalized after a fire broke out on the train, said Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Dan Lopez. Lopez said the crossing gates were working. Bronzeville resident Marianne Tidwell said her daughter — who works for Amtrak and was on the train — had been talking to a co-worker just moments before that worker was killed. “She was telling me how nice the lady was,” Tidwell said. “She said she was a good person. I told her bad things happen to good people, too.”
Tidwell, who spoke to her daughter Friday via cell phone, said her daughter lives in the South Loop and has worked for Amtrak for about two years. Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari late Friday refused to identify the crew member or reveal an age, hometown or gender. He also declined to say how many passengers were killed.He said most of the other injuries were not life-threatening. He said 204 passengers and 14 crew members were aboard the California Zephyr en route from Chicago to Emeryville, Calif., about 300 miles west of the crash site. Amtrak passenger Jim Bickley said two train cars caught fire after the semi hit the fourth car.
The California Zephyr travels between Chicago and Emeryville, Calif. 7NEWS checked the train’s schedule. It was supposed to leave Denver at 8:05 a.m. Thursday but instead left at 12:11 p.m., meaning it made it to the crossing about 70 miles east of Reno four hours later than normal.
The vehicle that hit the train was a bottom-dumping gravel transport, according to Bob Knoll of the Reno Fire Department….Members of a Girl Scout troop from Lafayette were on the train. Five girls and their mothers are on their way to San Francisco for a bridging ceremony.
According to the Girl Scouts website, a bridging ceremony is “a defining moment when a girl becomes aware of her achievements and is ready for new adventures and responsibilities.”The troop wanted to symbolize the moment at the Golden Gate Bridge. 7NEWS spoke with one of the girls and her mother while they were on a bus from the crash site to Sacramento.
“The smoke was really intense, and it smelled rather toxic,” said Sarah Sorensen, one of the Girl Scouts.
“We weren’t entirely frightened until we saw the gravity of the situation and how people were being taken to ambulances.
“The girls were two cars behind the one that got hit by the semi. They were on the first level, while their mothers were on the upper level. “We heard a loud noise, and we saw smoke come over the train to the left of us and the fireball to the right,” said Sorensen’s mother, Allie Powers.
“At the moment, we were pretty much yelling, “Oh my god.”No one in the Girl Scout group was injured according to Sorensen and her mother. “It was odd seeing people going down the tracks, but a lot of people banded together and helped the elderly and people with babies,” said Sorensen.
“It was definitely frightening, but I feel like everybody sort of stepped up a bit.”
“There were emergency helicopters, at least two or three Medivacs, I think, and then a couple of Navy helicopters, because there’s a nearby naval base,” said Powers.
“It was like a bomb exploded. Like a war zone, it was crazy. Bloody people everywhere, just not good,” says Justin Rhine.
He still can’t get those images out of his mind as he waits at E.C. Best Elementary School with more than 150 other people who were in that Amtrak train.
“Well, I was just sitting there in that train looking out the window and the next thing I know, we get hit by something. A big ball of fire comes in. I jumped out the window. And then I tried to unlock the doors but it was really high up so I went over and unlocked the doors and started helping people out of the train,” says Rhine.
But there were some people he couldn’t help.
“Oh I saw the people injured,” says Rhine. “Terrible. Saw the truck driver. Terrible.”
The world’s most-ambitious nuclear experiments have escalated at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Federal researchers there are seeking to fuse some of the lightest atoms in the universe to study — and hopefully harness — the type of energy produced by hydrogen bombs and the sun.
The tests were delayed six months while safety devices were installed to protect workers from radiation at the National Ignition Facility, a stadium-sized laboratory that contains 192 lasers trained on a target the size of a BB. The goal is to generate temperatures of more than 100 million degrees to fuse hydrogen atoms and release nuclear energy.
Scientists describe this process, which they hope to achieve next year, as the creation of a miniature star on earth.
But the $3.5 billion ignition facility, derided by some critics as taxpayer-financed science fiction, is running into new challenges that may further delay and perhaps scuttle its goal.
Among those challenges is the unanticipated presence of particles that clog filters designed to prevent the escape of radioactive material. Officials have proposed bypassing the filters for some experiments and venting radioactive particles directly into the air.
Officials say the radiation risks to people living in the surrounding area and to Lawrence Livermore researchers not involved with the experiments will be negligible. But according to a worst-case scenario outlined in a draft environmental report, an average of one worker involved in the experiments could die every 18 years from cancer caused by radiation exposure.
Tri-Valley CAREs, a watchdog group that monitors Lawrence Livermore, argues that the National Nuclear Security Agency, which financed construction of the facility, should not allow an increase in the amount of radiation produced by the fusion project. …
Space is festooned with vast “hyperclusters” of galaxies, a new cosmic map suggests. It could mean that gravity or dark energy – or perhaps something completely unknown – is behaving very strangely indeed.
We know that the universe was smooth just after its birth. Measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), the light emitted 370,000 years after the big bang, reveal only very slight variations in density from place to place. Gravity then took hold and amplified these variations into today’s galaxies and galaxy clusters, which in turn are arranged into big strings and knots called superclusters, with relatively empty voids in between.
On even larger scales, though, cosmological models say that the expansion of the universe should trump the clumping effect of gravity. That means there should be very little structure on scales larger than a few hundred million light years across.
But the universe, it seems, did not get the memo. Shaun Thomas of University College London (UCL), and colleagues have found aggregations of galaxies stretching for more than 3 billion light years. The hyperclusters are not very sharply defined, with only a couple of per cent variation in density from place to place, but even that density contrast is twice what theory predicts.
If you’ve ever tried to learn the guitar or violin, moving your fingers just right can sometimes prove difficult.
Now an invention by a group of Japanese scientists could teach you how to mimic your favourite tunes – even if you have no talent.
The PosessedHand is an electronic device that stimulates the muscles on your forearm that move your fingers.
This means it could be programed to move your fingers in time with your favourite guitar solo – without your brain needing to think about it.
Using a belt worn around the forearm, the machine contains 28 electrodes which flex each of the joints in your fingers and thumb as well as producing two wrist movements.
While the device could be used for wannabe musicians, it is also hoped that the technology may be able to help rehabilitate people who have suffered strokes. …
some of those involved in the tests said that the sensation of the hand moving by itself was unsettling.
One user described it as feeling like her body ‘was being hacked’.
Ms Tamaki said that when people got used to it they would see how useful the device could be.
‘We believe convenient technology will overcome a feeling of fear,’ she added. …
Much like counting rings in trees or layers in glaciers to determine age, scientists can now tell how old people are by looking at DNA changes in their saliva.
The discovery by UCLA researchers could give crime-scene investigators a new forensic tool to help them determine a suspect’s age.
Principal investigator Dr. Eric Vilain envisions forensic lab experts using the process, for example, to analyze traces of saliva on a cigarette left behind a crime scene.
“It would tell you quite easily whether the person who held the cigarette was a 20-year-old person or a 60-year-old person,” he told the Star.
The findings appear Wednesday in PLoS One, an online journal of the Public Library of Science.
Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles examined saliva samples from 34 pairs of identical male twins between the ages of 21 and 55. They looked at a process known as methylation, a chemical modification of one of the four building blocks that make up our DNA. Scouring the men’s genomes, they found 88 sites on the DNA that strongly correlated methylation to age.
The findings were then replicated in a general population of 31 men and 29 women between the ages of 18 and 70.
Researchers then built a predictive model using two of the three genes with the strongest age-related linkage to methylation. When they plugged in the data for the twins’ and the other group’s saliva samples, they were able to correctly predict a person’s age within five years.
Some say cleanliness is next to godliness, but not Guru Kailash Singh who quit bathing 37 years ago, because he believe he’d be rewarded for his sacrifice.
Kailash, 65, a farmer from India, stopped using soap and water in 1974, after his wedding. He also hasn’t cut his dreadlocks, according to the news agency Barcroft.
It wasn’t because he no longer needed to attract the ladies that he let himself go. Kailash reportedly abandoned washing because a priest told him it would help him produce a son.
With seven daughters born since then, he’s still waiting for a male heir.
Each evening, Kailash winds down the day with a “fire bath” ritual of smoking marijuana, praying to the Hindu god Shiva and dancing around a campfire.
There was one failed attempt by his family to force him into a stream.
‘He fought us off and ran away,’ his wife Kalavati Devi, 60, told Barcroft. ‘We’ve tried several times since to force him to have a shower but he puts up such a fuss.
‘He says he’d rather die than take a bath and only a son could change his mind. It has been so many years now I’ve got used to it.’
The taunts neighbors in his village about his smell don’t faze Kailash.
‘Children tease and shout that I don’t wash when I ride my bicycle through the village,’ he told Barcroft.
‘There are many people who have a poor character that mock me for not washing. They do not understand my decision but I will not change my mind as it is God’s choice, not mine.
Which god put you up to this, Kailash? Could it have been … the god of dirt roads perhaps? I’m just asking because Gravellesh — aka the god of bumpy travel– is fond of telling everyone, “Do not pave.”
I’m guessing you misheard him 37 years ago, thinking he said, “Do not bathe”. This is an understandable mistake, especially with the pot every night. So, hose off, man. Your family will thank you and you may discover body parts you’d forgotten you had.
Last week, the state of Nevada passed a bill that will require its state Department of Motor Vehicles to draw up rules for self-driving cars, essentially paving the way for autonomous vehicles to be used on state roadways.
Section 8 of the law, which governs autonomous vehicles, will take effect on March 1, 2012. It was approved by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer on June 16.
Self-driving cars have been tested by Google since 2010, and most recently by Volkswagen, whose Temporary Auto Pilot (TAP) car is part of a research project in the EU, but with what the company describes as “production-ready” components.
Nevada defines “autonomous vehicle” as a motor vehicle that uses artificial intelligence, sensors and global positioning system coordinates to drive itself without the active intervention of a human operator.
The law does not mean that self-driving cars will instantly be “street legal” next year. Instead, it tasks the Nevada DMV to come up with a series of regulations surrounding all aspects of ownership and operation of autonomous vehicles, some or all of which will undoubtedly be used as models for the rest of the country.
For example, the law requires the Nevada DMV to adopt regulations authorizing the operation of autonomous vehicles, and the requirements that such a vehicle must have before it can be operated on a state highway. It also requires the DMV to develop insurance standards to test and operate the self-driving cars, as well.
Finally, the law requires the DMV to set forth such requirements as the DMV deems to be necessary.
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… Justice Thomas wrote, that makers of generic drugs are caught in an impossible bind: they can comply with a state law requiring them to change their labels or the federal law prohibiting changes, but not both.
Taking metoclopramide may cause you to develop a muscle problem called tardive dyskinesia. If you develop tardive dyskinesia, you will move your muscles, especially the muscles in your face in unusual ways. You will not be able to control or stop these movements. Tardive dyskinesia may not go away even after you stop taking metoclopramide. The longer you take metoclopramide, the greater the risk that you will develop tardive dyskinesia. Therefore, your doctor will probably tell you not to take metoclopramide for longer than 12 weeks. The risk that you will develop tardive dyskinesia is also greater if you are taking medications for mental illness, if you have diabetes, or if you are elderly, especially if you are a woman. Call your doctor immediately if you develop any uncontrollable body movements, especially lip smacking, mouth puckering, chewing, frowning, scowling, sticking out your tongue, blinking, eye movements, or shaking arms or legs.
The world’s most-ambitious nuclear experiments have escalated at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Space is festooned with vast “hyperclusters” of galaxies, a new cosmic map suggests. It could mean that gravity or dark energy – or perhaps something completely unknown – is behaving very strangely indeed.
If you’ve ever tried to learn the guitar or violin, moving your fingers just right can sometimes prove difficult.
Much like counting rings in trees or layers in glaciers to determine age, scientists can now tell how old people are by looking at DNA changes in their saliva.
Some say cleanliness is next to godliness, but not Guru Kailash Singh who quit bathing 37 years ago, because he believe he’d be rewarded for his sacrifice.
