Dead Pa. baby's dad believes in 'divine healing'

PHILADELPHIA (AP) ? After their 2-year-old son died of untreated pneumonia in 2009, faith-healing advocates Herbert and Catherine Schaible promised a judge they would not let another sick child go without medical care.

But now they've lost an 8-month-old to what a prosecutor called "eerily similar" circumstances. And instead of another involuntary manslaughter charge, they're now charged with third-degree murder.

"We believe in divine healing, that Jesus shed blood for our healing and that he died on the cross to break the devil's power," Herbert Schaible, 44, told Philadelphia homicide detectives after their ninth child, Brandon, died in April. Medicine, he said, "is against our religious beliefs."

The Schaibles were ordered held without bail Friday, two days after their arrest, although defense lawyers argued that they are neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community.

"He is incarcerated because of his faith," said lawyer Bobby Hoof, who described client Herbert Schaible's mindset as resolute.

"He's strong willed," Hoof said. "(Yet) he's mourning this son. He's hurting as any dad would."

The only people theoretically at risk are the couple's seven surviving children, who are now in foster care, the lawyers said.

A judge acknowledged that the couple had never missed a court date in the first case but said he worried that might change amid the more serious charges. And he feared they may have supporters who would harbor them.

"Throughout this country ... there are churches like the Schaibles' whose members and leaders probably don't think they did anything wrong and might be willing ? to paraphrase the Schaibles' pastor ? to put their interpretation of God's will above the law," Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner said.

About a dozen children die each year in the U.S. when parents turn to faith healing instead of medicine, typically from highly treatable problems, said Shawn Francis Peters, a University of Wisconsin lecturer who has studied faith-healing deaths.

In Oregon, four couples from a faith-healing church have been prosecuted, the most recent in 2011 when a couple was sentenced to more than six years in prison for manslaughter in the death of their newborn son.

The state legislature that year removed faith healing as a defense to murder charges. Members of the Followers of Christ have consistently refused to speak with journalists.

Defense lawyer Mark Cogan declined to comment Friday on whether the legal actions have changed the practice of any church members. Some testified at the 2011 trial that they do get medical care.

At the Schaibles' sentencing in February 2011 in their son Kent's death, they agreed to follow terms of the 10-year probation, which included an order to get their children regular checkups and sick visits as needed. Catherine Schaible, 43, let her husband speak for her and never addressed the judge.

"It's very clear that the law says that religious freedom is trumped by the safety of a child," Common Pleas Judge Carolyn Engel Temin explained.

But a transcript of a later probation hearing that year shows probation officers were confused by their mandate to oversee the required medical care and felt powerless to carry it out. The family was not being monitored by child-welfare workers, who are more accustomed to dealing with medical compliance.

"I think that we all on the jury thought that it would not happen again, that whatever social and legal institutions needed to be involved in their situation would just take over ... and that the mandated visits would be robust enough that they would not be able to do this again," Vincent Bertolini, a former college professor who served as jury foreman at the Schaibles' first trial, said Friday.

That jury convicted the couple of involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment.

Like other cases Peters has studied, the Schaibles belong to a small, insular circle of believers. Both are third-generation members and former teachers at their fundamentalist Christian church, the First Century Gospel Church in northeast Philadelphia.

Their pastor, Nelson Clark, has said the Schaibles lost their sons because of a "spiritual lack" in their lives and insisted they would not seek medical care even if another child appeared near death. He did not return phone messages this month, but he told The Associated Press in 2011 that his church is not a cult, and he faulted officials for trying to force his members into "the flawed medical system," which he blamed for 100,000 deaths a year.

"These are people who have been brought up in these communities; their beliefs are reinforced every day," Peters said. "They're not trained intellectually to question these doctrines, where the rest of us might engage in critical inquiry, weighing the benefits of medicine versus the benefits of prayer."

A handful of families, including one in western Pennsylvania, have lost two children after attempts at faith healing, according to Peters, who wrote "When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children and the Law."

Peters isn't sure that courts have the means to prevent the problem, since such people don't fear legal punishment, only Judgment Day. Some believe death "is a good outcome," given their belief in the afterlife, he said.

"They don't want to harm their children. They're just in this particularly narrow ? and very, very dangerous ? way misguided about the potential of medical science," he said.

He believes that "empathetic" intervention, through dialogue between church and public health educators, could help some "get to a point where they allow their beliefs and practices to evolve."

But there's a risk that could backfire, and drive these communities further underground, he said.

For the Schaibles, a third-degree murder conviction could bring seven to 14 years in prison or more.

Said Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore: "Somebody is dead now as a result of what they did ? or didn't do."

___

Associated Press writer Tim Fought in Portland, Ore., contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/dead-pa-babys-dad-believes-divine-healing-025704613.html

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Stacking 2-D materials produces surprising results

May 16, 2013 ? New experiments reveal previously unseen effects, could lead to new kinds of electronics and optical devices. Graphene has dazzled scientists, ever since its discovery more than a decade ago, with its unequalled electronic properties, its strength and its light weight. But one long-sought goal has proved elusive: how to engineer into graphene a property called a band gap, which would be necessary to use the material to make transistors and other electronic devices.

Now, new findings by researchers at MIT are a major step toward making graphene with this coveted property. The work could also lead to revisions in some theoretical predictions in graphene physics.

The new technique involves placing a sheet of graphene -- a carbon-based material whose structure is just one atom thick -- on top of hexagonal boron nitride, another one-atom-thick material with similar properties. The resulting material shares graphene's amazing ability to conduct electrons, while adding the band gap necessary to form transistors and other semiconductor devices.

The work is described in a paper in the journal Science co-authored by Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, the Mitsui Career Development Assistant Professor of Physics at MIT, Professor of Physics Ray Ashoori, and 10 others.

"By combining two materials," Jarillo-Herrero says, "we created a hybrid material that has different properties than either of the two."

Graphene is an extremely good conductor of electrons, while boron nitride is a good insulator, blocking the passage of electrons. "We made a high-quality semiconductor by putting them together," Jarillo-Herrero explains. Semiconductors, which can switch between conducting and insulating states, are the basis for all modern electronics.

To make the hybrid material work, the researchers had to align, with near perfection, the atomic lattices of the two materials, which both consist of a series of hexagons. The size of the hexagons (known as the lattice constant) in the two materials is almost the same, but not quite: Those in boron nitride are 1.8 percent larger. So while it is possible to line the hexagons up almost perfectly in one place, over a larger area the pattern goes in and out of register.

At this point, the researchers say they must rely on chance to get the angular alignment for the desired electronic properties in the resulting stack. However, the alignment turns out to be correct about one time out of 15, they say.

"The qualities of the boron nitride bleed over into the graphene," Ashoori says. But what's most "spectacular," he adds, is that the properties of the resulting semiconductor can be "tuned" by just slightly rotating one sheet relative to the other, allowing for a spectrum of materials with varied electronic characteristics.

Others have made graphene into a semiconductor by etching the sheets into narrow ribbons, Ashoori says, but such an approach substantially degrades graphene's electrical properties. By contrast, the new method appears to produce no such degradation.

The band gap created so far in the material is smaller than that needed for practical electronic devices; finding ways of increasing it will require further work, the researchers say.

"If ? a large band gap could be engineered, it could have applications in all of digital electronics," Jarillo-Herrero says. But even at its present level, he adds, this approach could be applied to some optoelectronic applications, such as photodetectors.

The results "surprised us pleasantly," Ashoori says, and will require some explanation by theorists. Because of the difference in lattice constants of the two materials, the researchers had predicted that the hybrid's properties would vary from place to place. Instead, they found a constant, and unexpectedly large, band gap across the whole surface.

In addition, Jarillo-Herrero says, the magnitude of the change in electrical properties produced by putting the two materials together "is much larger than theory predicts."

The MIT team also observed an interesting new physical phenomenon. When exposed to a magnetic field, the material exhibits fractal properties -- known as a Hofstadter butterfly energy spectrum -- that were described decades ago by theorists, but thought impossible in the real world. There is intense research in this area; two other research groups also report on these Hofstadter butterfly effects this week in the journal Nature.

The research included postdocs Ben Hunt and Andrea Young and graduate student Javier Sanchez-Yamagishi, as well as six other researchers from the University of Arizona, the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan, and Tohoku University in Japan. The work was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the National Science Foundation.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/matter_energy/technology/~3/HeXraUY5CA0/130516182025.htm

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Insight: Bank documents portray Cyprus as Russia's favorite haven

By Stephen Grey and Michele Kambas and Douglas Busvine

NICOSIA (Reuters) - When the Cyprus bank run began earlier this year, Russians set much of the pace. Documents seen by Reuters show that as the Mediterranean island headed towards financial meltdown in March, most notable among companies transferring money from the country's two main banks were Russians and East Europeans.

At least 3.6 billion euros ($4.67 billion) was removed in two weeks by big depositors, according to the documents. Though many companies listed initially appear obscure, a Reuters analysis shows a significant proportion are vehicles for foreign investors more at home in Moscow or Kiev than Nicosia.

The lists give an insight into the March crisis and how the tax haven, with a population of just 1.1 million, had amassed bank deposits that peaked at 72 billion euros - more than four times the island's GDP.

Prepared in April by private sector lenders Bank of Cyprus and Laiki Bank, and passed to lawmakers by the island's central bank, the documents list 5,323 transactions, most previously undisclosed. They detail transfers of 100,000 euros or more from Bank of Cyprus and Laiki Bank in the two weeks before Cyprus closed its banks on March 16 as it desperately negotiated an international rescue.

Reuters analyzed 129 companies that each transferred 5 million euros or more over the two-week period, collectively accounting for 1.9 billion euros. Of those companies, 95 could be traced.

Out of that group, 34 have links to Russia, five have links to Ukraine and two to Kazakhstan. The remainder comprise companies from Cyprus and other countries including tax havens such as the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands and the Dutch Antilles. By value, more than half the transactions were made in dollars.

"This list verifies as well-founded Cyprus' reputation as an offshore economy used as a conduit for people, particularly Russians, to hold large sums of money, often to avoid paying tax and without too much scrutiny," said Michael McIntyre, professor of law and a tax expert at Wayne State University in the United States.

While the transfers appear mostly related to moving money out of Cyprus, Reuters could not establish where the funds went. It is possible some transfers were between banks within Cyprus.

Deposits that did flow out of the country had to be funded by emergency liquidity assistance from the European Central Bank, according to analysts. In effect, the ECB was paying for depositors, many of them Russian, to remove money from Cyprus before those depositors could be compelled to contribute to the international rescue of the island.

BIGGEST TRANSFER

As debts threatened to overwhelm Cyprus early this year, money began to flow out of the country in fluctuating amounts. In January 1.7 billion euros left the island and a further 900 million in February, according to Central Bank of Cyprus figures.

The run accelerated in March as Cyprus found it had few friends among international institutions suffering bail-out fatigue. Many of the biggest transfers were by firms linked to Russia.

One of the largest was listed under the name of UCP Industrial Holdings, which is recorded as moving 80.2 million euros out of the Bank of Cyprus on March 7. UCP Industrial Holdings is part of United Capital Partners, a $3.5 billion Russian investment firm led by Ilya Sherbovich, a former head of investment at Deutsche Bank Russia and now a board director of the oil giant Rosneft.

Sherbovich, whose UCP fund recently acquired a stake in VKontakte, a fast-growing social network known as the "Russian Facebook", told Reuters: "Our group has several dozen legal entities, and some of them have accounts at Bank of Cyprus, but we don't use those as primary accounts.

"Anybody serious who works on financial markets wouldn't have left any significant amounts in the Cyprus banks. Very simple reason: Look at the share price chart of the Bank of Cyprus. It went to zero many months before the freeze happened."

He could not confirm the transaction listed in the Cypriot documents and said his companies did not keep big deposits in Cyprus. A spokeswoman for UCP said the transaction "must be a mistake or incorrect information".

On March 16, the Cyprus government shut banks amid discussions over imposing losses on depositors as the price for an international rescue. On the day before, a company called Trellas Enterprises moved 2 billion roubles ($63.85 million) out of Bank of Cyprus. Trellas Enterprises is majority-owned by Maxim Nogotkov, an entrepreneur who controls Svyaznoy, one of the biggest retailers of cell phones in Russia. Nogotkov, 36, is listed by Forbes as having a net worth of $1.3 billion.

Nogotkov confirmed that he controlled his mobile phone and banking interests in Russia through Trellas, but declined to comment on the transfer recorded in the bank list.

"We never comment on financial transfers or mergers and acquisitions activity," Nogotkov said by telephone.

Asked whether he was considering restructuring his business interests in light of Cyprus' financial meltdown, Nogotkov said: "Not actively. We don't have any urgent decisions to restructure (the business)."

Another company illustrating the Russia connection is O1 Properties Limited, which moved 10.1 million euros out of Bank of Cyprus. The company is controlled by Boris Mints, a Russian politician turned businessman, and this year bought the White Square business center in Moscow for $1 billion.

In the 1990s Mints was a state official handling issues relating to property and local authorities. From 2004 until 2012 he was chairman of the board of Otkritie Financial Corporation, which describes itself as Russia's largest independent financial group by assets. He is now president of the firm.

Mints was not available for comment. A spokesman for O1 Properties said: "O1 Properties keeps an account at the Bank of Cyprus to use it for regular business activities. We didn't know that Cyprus banks (would) shut. O1 Properties suffered losses. We do not comment (on the) total loss."

EXPENSIVE WORDS

The troika of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund insisted on tough terms for providing billions to stop Cyprus going bust. As talks progressed, speculation began to spread that any package for Cyprus would include levying money from bank depositors - an unprecedented move that came to be known as a bail in, rather than a bail out.

The impact of what politicians and officials said - and did not say - is reflected in the pattern of fund outflows.

On March 4, depositors withdrew 261 million euros from the two banks, according to the transfer lists. Late that day, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, president of the Eurogroup of finance ministers in the euro zone, was asked whether the rescue of Cyprus would affect bank depositors. He did not give a clear answer. The next day depositors yanked 315 million euros out of the banks.

Account holders were further unnerved on March 5 when Panicos Demetriades, the island's central bank governor, publicly acknowledged for the first time that depositors might lose some of their money. Over the next two days transfers leapt to 342 million euros and 491 million euros; the latter figure including the 80.2 million euros withdrawn by UCP Industrial Holdings.

NON-RUSSIANS

As fears of losses mounted, Russians were not the only depositors who transferred large sums of money from the tax haven's banks. There were also Cypriot companies, individuals both Cypriot and foreign, and the occasional well-known international firm.

These included Apax Partners, a private equity group based in London. A subsidiary, Apax Mauritius Holdco Ltd, moved 68.8 million euros from the Bank of Cyprus on March 8. A spokeswoman for Apax Partners confirmed that it controlled Apax Mauritius Holdco but declined to comment further.

Previous news reports have noted how the Electricity Authority of Cyprus transferred 19 million euros out of Laiki Bank just days before it was closed. The documents seen by Reuters show the authority also transferred 22 million euros out of Bank of Cyprus between March 1 and 15.

The Electricity Authority said there was nothing unusual in the transfers. "This represented payments for heavy fuel oil ... our annual fuel costs are 650 million," said Costas Gavrielides, a spokesman for the authority.

MYSTERY COMPANIES

While some readily identifiable companies appear on the lists of transfers, what is striking is the complex nature of many entries.

Glenidge Trading, which transferred 22.5 million euros out of the Bank of Cyprus, is registered in the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven often favored because of its British-based legal system and lack of transparency. Glenidge was the vehicle through which a Cypriot company called DCH Investment UA Limited acquired an interest this year in the Karavan group of shopping malls in Ukraine, according to local reports and Cypriot and Ukrainian corporate filings.

In turn DCH Investment UA Limited is controlled by one of Ukraine's richest men, Oleksander Yaroslavsky, according to corporate filings. A representative for Yaroslavsky did not respond to requests for comment about Glenidge and the Cypriot bank transfer.

Some companies that made several of the largest transfers could not be traced. They include Jarlath Limited, which moved 76 million euros, and Accent Delight International, which moved 27 million.

Also on the list is Rangeley Services Limited, which transferred 9.3 million euros from Bank of Cyprus on March 15. A company of that name is registered at an address near Leeds in Britain and owned by Jason Rangeley, who is described in company records as an agricultural contractor.

But when asked if the transfer of 9.3 million euros was anything to do with him, Jason Rangeley said: "No ... I wish it was."

Rangeley, a self-employed farmer, said he had set up his company because he had hoped to buy a few sheep. "It just never came off." He said his company is dormant. It remains unclear who owns the company involved in the Cypriot transfer. ($1 = 0.7705 euros) ($1 = 31.3252 Russian roubles)

(Stephen Grey and Michele Kambas reported from Nicosia; Douglas Busvine reported from Moscow. Additional reporting by Himanshu Ojha and Natalie Huet in London, Olga Sichkar in Moscow and Olzhas Auyezov in Kiev; Editing By Richard Woods and Simon Robinson)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/insight-bank-documents-portray-cyprus-russias-favorite-haven-080816350.html

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Nintendo reportedly offering Wii U game conversion software to smartphone app devs

While we knew Nintendo was happy to hook up its newest consoles with smartphones, we thought that would only extend to social networking and shopping. Nope, it looks like the company is planning to go a step further, with a report from Japan Times suggesting that the games maker is offering high-level conversion software to app developers "so they can produce smartphone games that can be played on Wii U." A weak existing games library has been blamed for Nintendo's recent financial woes and the company is hoping the addition of some popular titles will offer enough of a reason to invest in a dedicated device. We just hope it's able to glean some fresh gaming gems -- the first Angry Birds title launched in 2009.

Filed under: Gaming, Nintendo

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Via: ZDNet

Source: Japan Times

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/06/nintendo-rumor-wii-u-app-devs/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Magnesium may be as important to kids' bone health as calcium

May 5, 2013 ? Parents are advised to make sure their children drink milk and eat other calcium-rich foods to build strong bones. Soon, they also may be urged to make sure their kids eat salmon, almonds and other foods high in magnesium -- another nutrient that may play an important role in bone health, according to a study to be presented Sunday, May 5, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Washington, DC.

"Lots of nutrients are key for children to have healthy bones. One of these appears to be magnesium," said lead author Steven A. Abrams MD, FAAP, professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. "Calcium is important, but, except for those children and adolescents with very low intakes, may not be more important than magnesium."

While it is known that magnesium is important for bone health in adults, few studies have looked at whether magnesium intake and absorption are related to bone mineral content in young children. This study aimed to fill that gap.

Researchers recruited 63 healthy children ages 4 to 8 years old who were not taking any multivitamins or minerals to participate in the study. Children were hospitalized overnight twice so their calcium and magnesium levels could be measured.

Participants filled out food diaries prior to hospitalization. All foods and beverages served during their hospital stay contained the same amount of calcium and magnesium they consumed in a typical day based on the diaries. Foods and beverages were weighed before and after each meal to determine how much calcium and magnesium the subjects actually consumed. In addition, parents were given scales to weigh their child's food for three days at home after the first inpatient stay and for three days at home prior to the second inpatient stay so that dietary intake of calcium and magnesium could be calculated accurately.

While hospitalized, children's levels of calcium and magnesium were measured using a technique that involved giving them non-radioactive forms of magnesium and calcium, called stable isotopes, intravenously and orally. Urine was collected for 72 hours. By measuring the stable isotopes in the urine, the researchers could determine how much calcium and magnesium were absorbed into the body. Bone mineral content and density were measured using total body dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry.

Results showed that the amounts of magnesium consumed and absorbed were key predictors of how much bone children had. Dietary calcium intake, however, was not significantly associated with total bone mineral content or density.

"We believe it is important for children to have a balanced, healthy diet with good sources of minerals, including both calcium and magnesium," Dr. Abrams concluded.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/AjtN52L8NHI/130505073731.htm

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