Judge allows casino caucuses to proceed

The Democratic Party can go ahead with a plan to set up “at-large” precincts for this weekend’s Nevada caucuses in nine casinos on the Las Vegas strip, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

The state teachers union went to court to challenge the plan, arguing that the casino caucus sites Saturday night will give the roughly 200,000 workers on the Las Vegas strip an unfair advantage over other voters who have to work that night.

But U.S. District Judge James Mahan rejected that argument after a Thursday morning hearing.

The lawsuit sparked a battle between the 28,000-member Nevada State Education Association and the state’s biggest labor organization, the 60,000-member Nevada Culinary Workers Union, which supports the casino caucuses. The culinary workers endorsed Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois in Saturday’s contest and accused the teachers union of trying to tilt the race in favor of his leading rival, senator and former first lady Hillary Clinton of New York.

Recent published polls show Clinton and Obama in a statistical dead heat going into the Nevada contest. Saturday’s results could give the winner the upper hand going into the first contest in the South, the January 26 primary in South Carolina.

“When you’re trying to change the rules a week before that were approved 10 months before, that’s just not right, and I think people see through it as just crass politics,” D. Taylor, secretary-treasurer of the Nevada Culinary Workers Union, said Wednesday.

The teachers’ union has not endorsed Clinton, though some of its members and leaders are backing the former first lady.

“There are many conspiracy theories, I’ll grant you that,” said Terry Hickman, the union’s executive director. “But our effort and our belief is that there’s a fundamental right of fairness that’s being ignored.”

The lawsuit claimed the at-large caucus sites would unfairly have more weight in terms of delegate allotment than caucuses throughout the rest of the state.

It also took issue with caucuses being held midday at those sites — which they say made it easier for casino workers to caucus than it will be for other Nevadans.

Regular hours for the Democratic caucuses begin at 11 a.m. PT and run with counts to begin at noon, while Republicans begin their caucuses at 9 a.m. and run until 1 p.m.

Obama’s campaign noted the suit was brought after Nevada’s culinary workers’ union, which represents more than 200,000 casino and hotel workers, endorsed Obama on Friday.

Critics of the lawsuit, including Obama himself, say it was a clear attempt to suppress his support.

“Are we going to let a bunch of lawyers try to prevent us from bringing about change in America? Are we going to let folks change the rules when they don’t work for them?” Obama said in a rally in Nevada.

Former President Bill Clinton disagreed with the casino caucuses and became testy with a TV reporter on Wednesday while being asked about the lawsuit.

“Get on your television station and say, ‘I don’t care about the home mortgage crisis, all I care about is making sure that some voters have it easier than others, and that when they do vote, when it’s already easier for them, their vote should count five times as much as others,’ ” Clinton said.

“If you want to take that position, get on the television and take it,” he added. “Don’t be accusatory with me, I had nothing to do with this lawsuit.”

Today’s ruling allows nine casinos along the Vegas strip to become “at-large” caucus sites. Conference rooms at places like the Bellagio, The Paris and Wynn Las Vegas will be open for any employee to join during lunch breaks.

“These at-large caucuses facilitate a group of people that are critical to our community. They are everyday working people, they should be allowed to participate,” said Peter Early, a senior vice president of human resources at Wynn.

“How else are we going to get a real sense of what the public is thinking about such an important issue, which is who is going to be our next president, than to have it at a place where everyone can participate?” said executive chef Paul Bartolotta.

Republicans have made no provisions for “at-large” caucuses, so workers who want to participate in the GOP contest must find time to return to their neighborhood precincts

-from CNN.com

FDA: No Cough, Cold Drugs for Tots

The FDA today urged parents and caregivers not to give over-the-counter (OTC) cough and cold medicines to children younger than 2 because of dangerous side effects. “We strongly recommend that over-the-counter cough and cold products should not be used in infants and young children under 2 years of age because serious and potentially life-threatening side effects can occur from use of these products,” Charles Ganley, MD, director of the FDA’s Office of Nonprescription Products, said at a news conference.

OTC cough and cold products include decongestants, expectorants, antihistamines, and antitussives (cough suppressants) for the treatment of colds.

An FDA news release states that rare, serious adverse events — including convulsions, rapid heart rates, decreased levels of consciousness, and death – have been reported with use of cough and cold products.

The FDA is still reviewing the use of cough and cold medicines in children aged 2-11.

-WebMD.com

Surgeons Get Better Playing Nintendo Wii

According to the experiments by the Banner Good Samaritan Medical Centre team, playing some Wii games improve surgeons’ performance. The study pitted a group of eight trainee surgeons, who spent one hour on the Wii, against normal trainees in a surgery virtual reality simulator. However, only a few games help this:According to researcher Kanav Kohel, only games that require delicate, small and precise movements work for surgery training. They used Marble Mania, which gets the player to control a ball over a 3D maze.

The Banner Good Samaritan Medical Centre study concluded that a cheap Wii could be an excellent substitute to enhance surgery skills in poor countries with no access to virtual simulators. The results of their research supports this conclusion: the Wii-enhanced group scored 50% better than the others.

-Gizmodo.com

Researchers put circuits on contact lenses, freak out rabbits

We’ve seen plenty of newfangled contact lenses in the past, but it looks like a team of researchers at the University of Washington may have outdone them all, with their latest creation promising not only heads-up displays, but “superhuman vision.” That’s apparently possible thanks to a combination of lights and circuits, which they’ve managed to cram onto lens no larger than your average contact — though it doesn’t even do so much as light up in its current state (that’s promises “soon”). Naturally, the researchers have tested the lenses on rabbits instead of themselves, which they say have shown “no adverse effects” after wearing the lenses for upwards of 20 minutes, although we’ll just have to wait and see if they feel the same way after the researchers flip the switch on ‘em.

-Engadget.com

Scientists Claim to Have Produced Embryo Clones of Two Men

Scientists say they have produced embryos that are clones of two men, a potential step toward developing scientifically valuable stem cells.

It’s the first documented demonstration that ordinary cells from an adult human can be used to make cloned embryos mature enough to produce stem cells, the researchers said. But because they haven’t produced those stem cells yet, experts reacted coolly.

Since other scientists had previously made a cloned human embryo, “I found it difficult to determine what was substantially new,” said Doug Melton of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.

He said the “next big advance will be to create a human embryonic stem cell line” from cloned embryos. “This has yet to be achieved,” Melton said.

Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk claimed a few years ago that he’d created such cell lines, but that turned out to be a fraud.

Dr. Samuel Wood, a co-author of the new paper and chief executive of Stemagen Corp. of La Jolla, California, said he and his colleagues are now attempting to produce stem cell lines from the embryos.

The work was published online Thursday by the journal Stem Cells.

Scientists say stem cells from cloned embryos could provide a valuable tool for studying diseases, screening drugs and, perhaps someday, creating transplant material to treat conditions like diabetes and Parkinson’s disease.

But critics raise objections. Some say the procedure amounts to creating a human life in a lab and then destroying it to harvest the stem cells. Others raise concerns about health risks and exploitation if large numbers of women are asked to provide eggs for widespread cloning.

Those objections are one reason that an alternative route to stem cells made headlines last November. Scientists reported a relatively simple way to turn skin cells directly into stem cells. This direct reprogramming carries a theoretical risk of cancer for the recipients of tissue from these cells, however, and many scientists have urged that work continue on the cloning technique as well.

The cloning approach involves inserting DNA from a person into an egg, and then growing the egg into an embryo about five days old before extracting the stem cells. At that stage, the embryo is a sphere of about 150 cells.

In the new work, researchers took skin cells from Wood and another volunteer and produced three embryos with DNA matching the men’s. Further DNA testing on one of these embryos strengthened the case that it was a clone, researchers said.

-from foxnews.com