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Sunday, October 14, 2012

Actor and television host Gary Collins died yesterday at age 74. He died at Biloxi Regional Medical Center, in Biloxi, Mississippi, of natural causes according to Harrison County, Mississippi Deputy Coroner Gary Hargrove.

He starred on television series The Sixth Sense, Born Free, The Iron Horse, and The Wackiest Ship in the Army. He hosted Hour Magazine from 1980 to 1988. He appeared on television shows such as Charlie’s Angels, Fantasy Island, and The Love Boat. From 1985 to 1989 he hosted the Miss America Pageant. He was also a radio personality.

In 2011, Collins separated from his wife Miss America 1959 winner Mary Ann Mobley after 44 years. He had a previous marriage to Susan Peterson.

Gary Collins was born on April 30, 1938 in Venice, California. Collins attended Santa Monica City College prior to enlisting in the US Army. He was a disc jockey and announcer for Armed Forces Radio. After he left the army his civilian television career got underway with the television series The Wackiest Ship in the Army.

He is survived by three children, two of them by his first wife.

Friday, November 24, 2006

Anita O’Day, best known for her sassy rendition of “Sweet Georgia Brown” and “Honeysuckle Rose” died in her sleep early Thanksgiving Day, November 23, 2006. She was 87.

Known as the “Jezebel of Jazz,” she was one of America’s most respected jazz vocalists whose vocal contemporaries included Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan.

A Chicago native, she gained national recognition while touring with Jazz legends Gene Krupa and Stan Kenton. Her first national hit was on “Let Me Off Uptown” with Gene Krupa’s orchestra, which became a million dollar seller. Downbeat magazine named her “New Star of the Year” in 1942. After touring with Stan Kenton and his Orchestra, and recording “And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine,” her talent shown as a solo star. Her style became a foundational influence upon modern jazz recordings.

Her innovative scat style singing and lyrical ballads were recorded on Verve Records in the 1950s. Her colorfully innovative vocal style was evidenced in motion pictures “The Gene Krupa Story” and “Jazz On A Summer’s Day.”

Having a close brush with death from heroin addiction in 1967, she also survived alcohol addiction. She completed her autobiography “High Times, Hard Times” in 1981 and is the subject of a full-length documentary “Anita O’Day – the Life of A Jazz Singer,” which has yet to be released. Her last album, which she recorded at age 85, “Indestructable Anita O’Day,” on the Kayo Sterophonics/MRI label, was released last year.

Robbie Cavolina, her manager, said she was recovering from pneumonia at a Los Angeles convalescent hospital. And recollected that “On Tuesday night, she said to me, ‘get me out of here.’ But it didn’t happen.”

Referring to her renewed musical activity, he said that “She got to see how many people really loved her at the shows we did, in New York, in London. She had come back after all of this time. She really lived a very full and exciting life.”

Born Anita Belle Colton O’Day, October 18, 1919, she escaped from a broken home at age 14, and began contesting with touring walk-a-thons popular at the time, and was occasionally asked to sing. Upon her return to Chicago, she landed her first legitimate singing job at Planet Mars, a Chicago nightclub. Carl Cons, Down Beat magazine’s then-editor, was so impressed with her performance that he invited her to open his new jazz club.

As a showcase for promising jazz talent, The Off-Beat was frequented by such musicians as drummer Gene Krupa, and others. During one of her performances there in 1941, Krupa recruited her to join his orchestra.

In 1943, Anita left Krupa’s band and married professional golfer Carl Hoff. She later briefly joined clarinetist Woody Herman’s band, then reluctantly Stan Kenton’s. Thinking her style wasn’t compatible with hers, she was surprised when in 1944 the tune “And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine” became a national hit.

Anita’s fierce love of swing beats, conflicted however with Kenton’s infatuation with strident rhythms and novelty tunes, and a year later, left over artistic differences.

Her improvisational style, and love of bebop lured her toward those with whom she could hone her talent, and by the late 1940s began her career as a solo jazz vocal artist.

She invited John Poole, a drummer whom she met at the Club Starlite in Los Angeles, to join her. She once said of John, “If the drummer is no good, I can’t make it. That’s why I like John Poole. He’s my favorite drummer.” Their musical affiliation lasted 32 years.

In 1955, Norman Granz signed Anita to his company, Verve records, and her debut album “This is Anita” was the label’s first LP. Though she rarely sang ballads, her interpretation of “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” was considered so enthralling and fascinating that rocketed her career to new levels.

Her performances with jazz greats Louis Armstrong, Dinah Washington, Thelonious Monk, George Shearling and others were renown. She became an international star after her performance of “Jazz on a Summer’s Day” at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, which later became a documentary film.

Anita recorded 16 albums between 1957 and 1963 with a variety of groups, ranging from small ensembles, big bands to large orchestras. Her performances’ ranged from vibraphonist Cal Tjader to The 3 Sounds, a hard bop trio. Her first Japanese tour in 1964 was received with acclaim while stateside, the popularity of jazz was decreasing.

Her nonconventional, self-initiated cold-turkey recovery from heroin addiction at a Hawaiian retreat was successful, and she later returned to work. Her last public performance was at Hollywood, California‘s Cinegrill Cabaret Lounge at age 83.

Wednesday, September 7, 2005

On Monday, a helicopter accidentally dropped a concrete block weighing nearly 1,500 pounds when it was flying it up to an Austrian mountain for a “ski resort construction project”. The concrete block struck a cable holding a gondola, the one that suffered all of the casualties, although other gondolas reported people suffering injuries from the jolt. The car that was hit fell quite some distance to the ground, up to hundreds of meters. Two more cars started tilting as some people were flung out from these cars.

A least nine people are reported to be killed in the incidents. There are also many injured, some of them seriously. Up to a dozen rescue helicopters immediately rushed to the scene from all over the Swiss alps.

The work was made to make the infrastructure more secure after an incident that happened when a low-flying US marine plane cut through a cable killing 20 people in 1998. This incident will bring into question if those policies saved lives or need to be recast in light of this tragedy.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

George W. Bush, the president of the United States has suggested an economic growth package that could be worth almost 1% of the United States’ GDP (the US GDP is appoximately US$15 trillion). The package is expected to come in the form of tax cuts.

In a speech which took place yesterday Mr.Bush said that the economy is an area of “real concern,” to the US government. He added that the US “economy is still creating jobs, though at a reduced pace.”

Democrats want the tax refunds to cover payroll taxes paid by lower-income groups and be combined with more unemployment benefits, food stamps and federal aid to states. It warned against bundling proposals to make Bush’s first term tax cuts permanent with the stimulus package, and the Bush administration has separated the two in this proposal.

When announcing the proposal George Bush said that “as Congress considers such a plan, there are certain principles that must guide its deliberations: This growth package must be big enough to make a difference in an economy as large and dynamic as ours — which means it should be about 1 percent of GDP.” He added that “this growth package must be built on broad-based tax relief that will directly affect economic growth — and not the kind of spending projects that would have little immediate impact on our economy. This growth package must be temporary and take effect right away — so we can get help to our economy when it needs it most.” He also added that he believed the package “must not include any tax increases.”

In the speech George Bush also made it clear that he believes the package should be passed through congress quickly. He said that his belief was that by passing the package through congress quickly would “provide a shot in the arm to keep a fundamentally strong economy healthy. And it will help keep economic sectors that are going through adjustments, such as the housing market, from adversely affecting other parts of our economy.”

Friday, January 26, 2007

Ângelo A. Chora et. al. are reporting in the Journal of Clinical Investigation this week that carbon monoxide (CO) and the heme oxygenase-1 protein protect against the symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS) in the related mouse model of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE).

Multiple sclerosis is a chronic, inflammatory disease that affects the central nervous system (CNS). Although many patients are largely unaffected by their disease, MS can cause impaired mobility and disability in more severe cases.

The research group from the Gulbenkian Institute in Portugal used the EAE mouse model of MS to study the effects of the Heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) protein encoded by the HMOX1 gene.

HO-1 knockout mice, lacking both copies of the gene (not producing the protein), showed a more severe progression of the disease compared to wild-type mice, having normal levels of the protein. The symptoms of the disease were reversed when the HO-1 protein expression was induced using cobalt protoporphyrin IX.

During MS attacks the body’s own immune system destroys the myelin sheath surrounding nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. Pathogenic T helper cells are triggered by Antigen-presenting cell (APCs) within the brain stem. The disease can cycle between attacks (relapses) followed by remission, suggesting that there is an underlying regulatory system. The HO-1 protein had been identified previously as a possible candidate for a protective gene.

HO-1 degrades excess heme within the body acting as the rate controlling step when under inflammatory conditions. The HO-1 heme degradation pathway produces as products equal amounts of free heme, carbon monoxide and biliverdin.

Carbon monoxide was also shown to limit the effects of the disease. Mice were exposed to a high concentration of CO for 20 days within a chamber. Mice exposed to CO had limp tails, but were more mobile than the mice in the control experiment which displayed hind limb paralysis.

It is still unknown exactly how carbon monoxide slows down the symptoms of EAE, possibly through the mopping up of free radicals, or through promoting the binding of iron to heme (decreasing radical production).

The experiments found that HO-1 did not affect the development or function of regulatory T cells. For a beneficial effect HO-1 needed to be expressed in dendritic cells, causing inhibition of MHC-II proteins, involved in presenting antigens, and inflammatory cytokines (IFN-?).

These experiments open up new possibilities for MS therapies, involving the expression of HO-1 in suppressing the development of MS.

The article went online on the 25th January 2007 and will be printed in the Journal of Clinical Investigation in February.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

The Australian Tax Office (ATO) has warned against a fraudulent email claiming to be from the ATO. The email, which is similar to previous scams, uses the ATO logo and has the subject line of ‘Notification – Please read’, ‘Australian Taxation Office – Please read’ or other variations.

The email directs recipients to a bogus website that looks similar to the ATO website and requests credit card and personal details.

“People should be wary of unsolicited emails claiming to be from the Tax Office,” says Tax Commissioner Michael D’Ascenzo.

“As an extra precaution we recommend you type internet addresses directly into your internet browser rather than clicking on links embedded in emails,” added D’Ascenzo who also stated that anyone who receives the email should delete it immediately.

Anyone who believes they may have fallen victim to this scam are urged to contact their credit card provider.

The ATO Says that it does not send any unsolicited emails.