Stress prompts some to retain as much salt as eating fries, study finds

ScienceDaily (Sep. 7, 2012) ? When stressed, about 30 percent of blacks hold onto too much sodium, the equivalent of eating a small order of fast food French fries or a small bag of potato chips, researchers say.

"This response pattern puts you under a greater blood pressure load over the course of the day and probably throughout the night as well, increasing your risk of cardiovascular disease," said Dr. Gregory Harshfield, hypertension researcher at the Institute of Public and Preventive Health at Georgia Health Sciences University.

In response to stress, they hold onto about 160 milligrams of salt, and the top number of their blood pressure -- indicating the pressure inside blood vessels each time the heart beats -- goes up about seven points more than normal and stays elevated about an hour longer, said Harshfield, who is presenting his findings Sept. 7 during the Behavioural Economics, Hypertension Session of the Psychogenic Cardiovascular Disease Conference in Prato, Italy.

Over the course of the day, this response adds a daily sodium load of about 500 milligrams on top of typically salt-heavy diets. The Institute of Medicine recommends a daily sodium intake of less than 2,300 milligrams -- preferably under 1,500 milligrams -- while average consumption is about 3,700.

"Everybody knows stress is bad for you and everybody has the perception that a high-salt diet is bad for you, and both are particularly bad for these individuals," said Harshfield who is trying to find an easy way to identify them. "Every time they are stressed, they hold onto as much salt as you get eating a small order of French fries and this can occur many times over the course of even a good day."

The worse news is this increased retention likely causes blood pressures to stay elevated even during sleep, which should be a recuperative time for the body, Harshfield said. Nighttime blood pressures often are considered the truest reading since they should not be impacted by stress.

In a handful of young blacks identified as sodium retainers through a complex research protocol, Harshfield has shown that the dangerous sodium load can be lifted with angiotensin receptor blockers, a common blood pressure treatment. Ironically these drugs are rarely used in blacks who tend not to have high levels of the powerful blood vessel constrictor angiotensin. However, Harshfield's group has evidence that sodium retainers would definitely benefit because they have a version of the angiotensin receptor gene that exacerbates problems with sodium handling. A truly low-salt diet likely would be beneficial as well.

Angiotensin increases blood pressure by directing the kidneys to hold onto more salt and by increasing levels of the hormone aldosterone, which also directs the kidneys to retain salt. The normal response to stress is to temporarily increase blood vessel constriction, which actually increases sodium excretion, Harshfield said.

His studies have long focused on the kidney and years ago found that about 30 percent of blacks and about 10 percent of whites tend to hold onto more sodium for longer periods in response to stress. Stress activates the sympathetic nervous system, which drives the -- hopefully temporary -- increase in blood pressure.

The latest findings come from a $10.6 million Program Project grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute focused on how the body regulates blood pressure in response to stress. Part of that grant includes a study in which half of 140 young adult sodium retainers take an angiotensin receptor blocker for about a week while the remainder take a placebo. Harshfield "un-blinded" a small number of study participants to collect data for a grant renewal proposal.

In the ongoing search for an easy way to identify sodium retainers, Evan Mulloy, a first-year student at the Medical College of Georgia, is working with Harshfield to collect urine samples from 7- to 21-year-old GHS Children's Medical Center patients being seen for hypertension. Using the doctor's visit as the stressor, they are looking at sodium levels in the urine before and after a visit. Harshfield also is working with MCG Molecular Geneticist Haidong Zhu to develop a genetic profile that could be used for screening.

One in three Americans is hypertensive, according to the NHLBI. The majority of sodium consumed is from processed and restaurant foods.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Georgia Health Sciences University. The original article was written by Toni Baker.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


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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/health_medicine/heart_disease/~3/LtvsBncLG8w/120907125021.htm

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Interview with Sofia Mirjamsdotter about social media, #prataomdet ...

Every day millions of tweets discuss all kind of topics. But some aspects of people?s personal lives are still less visible in the public online debate. Sofia Mirjamsdotter is a well known Swedish journalist and blogger who helped to make people on Twitter talk about what they didn?t dare to talk about before: negative sexual experiences when boundaries were violated. We had a chat with Sofia.

Please tell our readers a bit about yourself, what your background is and what you do for a living?
I am a journalist, 40 years old and a mother of three. I?m also a web nerd who discovered the Internet in the mid 90s, when I started to hang out on forums and discussion boards. I began to blog in 2005. Three years later I launched a blog with the main focus on media, and that one later got an award. Right after that I quit my job and decided to make a living from public speaking and educating journalists, but also administrative authorities on Internet and social media. Today my income comes from both speaking and writing.

Photo by Pelle Sten (CC BY 2.0)

On your blog you mention that people sometimes get very angry at you. Why is that? Are you actively looking for trouble?
I try to create change and I use the tools that I have. I like to write, so I choose to publish my thoughts and opinions if I find them important and if I believe that I can make a difference. My goal is not to provoke, but to engage others on issues and to make them think about them.

What are the most discussed topics in the Swedish blogosphere and Twitter sphere?
Difficult question. I guess people discuss what?s on the news agenda, mostly. Politics, culture, sports, media and things like that. And there is also a huge group of teenagers who discuss fashion and stuff that doesn?t really interest me.

Would you say that bloggers in Sweden get well along and that they know how to debate controversial topics without starting to fight or to get offensive?
Yes! In general, absolutely! There is a feeling of unity and being one community, even across groups with different views on politics and society. Naturally you have permanent conflicts, and especially among the younger ones those can get very intense and hard to look at sometimes. But in the political blogosphere it is not uncommon that bloggers from different parties or from different sides of the political spectrum together stand up for important causes, like the freedom of the Internet or the fight against xenophobia and racism.

Last year you were chosen as the winner of a big Swedish journalism award together with Johanna Koljonen for the campaign #prataomdet. Can you tell us more about the background?
It started with a regular Twitter conversation. Johanna sparked a debate on Twitter about bad sexual experiences from when one was younger and which in retrospect might be considered an assault. During the conversation it became clear that many people find it hard to speak about that in public. But me and some others started to publish our experiences and all of a sudden the Swedish Twitter sphere exploded with personal accounts on negative sexual experiences and situations when boundaries were violated. All tweets included the hashtag #prataomdet (talk about it). The result was a website, a book, several appearances on tv and radio, lectures and even a stage play as well as public hearings where sex was discussed in public. Recently I met a guy who didn?t participate in #prataomdet but who had heard about it and who suddenly remembered an incident when he had sex with a girl who didn?t want to but didn?t protest enough. He called her several years later to apologize. That was great to hear!

Do you think it was pure luck that this topic became big after the initial Twitter conversation, or is it something that you think one could repeat with any other engaging topic if one pulls the right triggers?
I think it was luck. There was no plan to make this become a huge hype. Even though there might be some learnings here how to start a viral campaign on Twitter I think in the end it depends on people?s individual engagement, and that?s hard to predict. In this special case people simply had a big need to talk about that topic. The media attention we got afterwards was probably in part due to the fact that #prataomdet was the first ?initiative? of its kind.

Do you think #prataomdet will have a permanent impact on how sensitive or tabooed topics are being discussed online?
Maybe. There were follow-ups like for example #homoriot where homesexual users talked about their experiences and the attacks they are confronted with. So maybe the answer is ?yes?.

You said in the beginning that you are a web nerd. What will happen next in the digital world?
I can?t really answer that because I?m bad at predicting and I prefer to live in the here and now. The evolution of the digital world is progressing at such a fast pace ? one year before Twitter nobody could imagine Twitter. So I guess what happens in the future is something we hardly are able to predict today.

Source: http://blog.twingly.com/2012/09/06/interview-with-sofia-mirjamsdotter-about-social-media-prataomdet-and-more/

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A mixed open on Wall Street after weak jobs report

NEW YORK (AP) ? Stocks are edging between small gains and losses in early trading on Wall Street Friday following news the U.S. economy added fewer jobs than expected in August.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down one point at 13,291 after the first hour of trading. The Standard & Poor's 500 was up three at 1,436 and the Nasdaq was up less than a point at 3,136.

The government reported that 96,000 jobs were created in the U.S. last month, fewer than economists were expecting. The unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent from 8.3 percent, but only because more people gave up looking for work.

Tech bellwether Intel dealt the market a blow by cutting its revenue outlook because of weak demand for its semiconductors. Intel fell 79 cents, or 3 percent, to $24.30.

The small stock gains follow big ones Thursday. U.S. stocks hit four-year highs after the European Central Bank announced plans to buy an unlimited amount of short-term government bonds from struggling countries in the region such as Italy and Spain. The hope is that the borrowing costs of those countries will ease, making a breakup of the 17-nation euro zone less likely.

The weak jobs report in the U.S. increased expectations that the Federal Reserve could announce more steps at its meeting next week to encourage lending and keep interest rates low by buying Treasury bonds.

Analysts from RBS wrote in a note to investors that they now see the likelihood of the Fed announcing new asset purchases next week at 90 percent. "We expect the Fed to act in September," they wrote.

Bond prices rose as a result, sending their yields lower. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell to 1.60 percent from 1.67 percent late Thursday.

Overseas, the new bond-buying plan by the European Central Bank sent stocks up sharply. The Hang Seng index in China rose 4 percent, and Japan's Nikkei rose 2 percent.

Most major markets in Europe are rising, too. Benchmark indexes rose 0.7 percent in Germany and 0.6 percent in France. Italy's main index rose 2 percent.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mixed-open-wall-street-weak-jobs-report-143729741--business.html

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201,000 jobs added in August, ADP says

Payroll firm ADP provided a better-than-expected report on August employment across the U.S.

Private sector employment jumped in August by 201,000 jobs, according to an estimate released Thursday by payroll firm ADP.

ADP's forecast was ahead of consensus estimates of between 140,000 and 145,000. The Department of Labor will release its August report Friday morning.

But the ADP National Employment Report said hiring was up 99,000 in small businesses and 86,000 in medium-sized businesses, though only 16,000 among businesses with 500 or more employees. Much of the increase was in the service sector, with 185,000 new jobs in August compared to 16,000 in the goods-producing sector ? 3,000 of them in manufacturing.

READ the entire ADP report.

The improved August data paints a brighter picture for the economy than it has been trending in recent months. The U.S. unemployment rate was 8.3 percent in July with evidence of a slower pace of hiring since the spring. Pittsburgh region and Pennsylvania data will be released several weeks from now but the unemployment rate locally has ticked up in recent months. It was 7.4 percent in July.

"The gain in private employment in August is strong enough to suggest that the national unemployment rate may have declined," said Macroeconomic Advisers LLC Chairman Joel Prakken in a prepared statement. "Today's estimate, if matched by a similar reading on employment from the BLS on Friday, will alleviate concerns that the economy has slipped into a downturn."

"The improvement in job creation this month is encouraging, and we hope it continues across all sectors of the U.S. economy," ADP President and CEO Carlos A. Rodriguez said in a prepared statement.

There was other good news on the employment front from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: First-time jobless claims dropped 12,000 to 365,000, the largest decline in a month. That also beat estimates.

Paul J. Gough is the web producer at the Pittsburgh Business Times, and he covers media. Contact him at pgough@bizjournals.com or (412) 208-3827. You can also follow him on Twitter.

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Source: http://feeds.bizjournals.com/~r/bizj_national/~3/c0CZPOATeGg/201000-jobs-added-in-august-adp.html

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Our community college is

Published: Thursday, September 6, 2012 at 4:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, September 5, 2012 at 2:16 p.m.

I made a pact with myself to go back to college before I turned 40, so on the eve of my 40th birthday I ran over to Blue Ridge Community College to sign up. The results of my placement tests showed that I could probably balance my checkbook, but my algebra needed a refresher! It only took a few math and language courses to complete my requirements before I transferred to UNC-Asheville to finish my degree in environmental science.

To this day, I?m extremely thankful for our community college. The fine campus and top-notch teachers made my experience there very fulfilling. However, had BRCC offered its environmental science technology degree back then, I may have chosen differently. Its associate?s degree in applied science has been led for a number of years, until recently, by my friend James Hutcherson. The degree is described in the catalog as ?designed to prepare individuals for employment in environmental testing and/or consulting and related industries; with major emphasis placed on biological and chemical evaluation of man?s impact on his environment.?

I had the pleasure of interviewing James this summer, over lunch, before he left for a new job at Southeastern Community College. We had started the conversation back in the spring, during the Environmental & Conservation Organization?s Earth Stewardship Day, about how the college was ?greening up.?

One of the first things he told me was how pleased he was to have 20 new students enrolled for fall in the Environmental Science Department at BRCC. And how excited he was to be offering a new certificate in sustainable technology, which includes courses in photovoltaic installation and bio-fuel generation, energy use analysis, low-impact development and green building.

He described how the ?green? snowball effect started with President Molly Parkhill?s commitment to invest in a cleaner and greener future for the college. The Strategic Plan for 2008-2013 included this strategic direction: ?Promote environmental awareness and infuse green technologies into all aspects of the college?s educational programs, physical plant operations, and planning activities.?

A policy was then written and adopted by the board to make the college more efficient and less wasteful, thereby saving money.

James was selected to chair the committee that was charged with transforming the commitment into action. Changes started happening on campus right away. Specific procedures were set up for purchasing landscaping and cleaning products that wouldn?t harm the environment. An energy conservation plan and a recycling plan were created.

On BRCC?s website, the sustainability page starts with a definition: ?Sustainability ? meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. (Brundtland-1987.)? BRCC?s sustainability policy statement reads: ?Blue Ridge Community College is committed to providing a sustainable workplace by reducing, reusing, and recycling resources, and adopting sound institutional energy conservation practices to enhance the long-term well-being of the college.?

One of my favorite stories that James told was about the college getting new, more efficient copy machines. With the default settings on ?print double-sided,? they began to see paper usage go down. Enough money was saved on paper to start buying 100 percent recycled paper, which costs a little more than virgin paper. Now, BRCC purchases exclusively 100 percent recycled paper, which is helping to drive the demand for the entire cycle of waste-paper resources. (You, too, can purchase100 percent recycled paper locally at Staples.)

Renovations have been completed on many of the older buildings on campus, which include window replacements and heating and cooling upgrades. Modern controllers were installed to run the systems, which saved energy and translated into dollar savings. During a period of extremely high gasoline prices, the college went to a four-day school week, saving an estimated $30,000 in its buildings? energy use as well as reducing everyone?s carbon footprint.

In the Applied Technology Department, students are learning to service alternative vehicles, so our community?s workforce will be ready to keep new, more efficient cars on the road. And most of the campus? lawn mowers have been switched over to propane, a more economical and less polluting fuel. The campus will also have an electric charging station, making it ready for the next wave of totally electric vehicles.

James led an environmental club at BRCC, which helped reinforce the values of the students he taught. Club members worked with ECO on projects and real-life opportunities within the community. The college has hosted many events for ECO over the years, both educational and celebratory, where James Hutcherson acted as intermediary. For this we are grateful. ECO extends a heartfelt thank you to James for his years of service. I am sure his students will carry on the environmental passions and principles he taught them, making everyone?s future greener.

In July 2009, James was named the college?s first John Brooks Williams Endowed Faculty Chair. He and his wife will be moving to the southeastern part of the state to be closer to his family.

Source: http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20120906/articles/209061000

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Laurene Powell Jobs helps change lives, too

If the late Steve Jobs was determined to change the way people use technology, with visionary ideas and revolutionary products, Laurene Powell Jobs seems just as determined to change people's lives in more basic ways.

The widow of the Apple (AAPL) co-founder is even more intensely private than her husband, rarely giving interviews and only occasionally appearing in public at his side. But the former investment banker has long supported a range of progressive causes -- by working to help disadvantaged students and women, and donating money to environmental campaigns and Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential run.

And though she has generally kept a low profile, 47-year-old Laurene Jobs could one day emerge as a powerful supporter of the social and progressive causes she has long favored. Forbes recently ranked Steve Jobs as the 39th richest man in America, with estimated wealth of $7 billion.

Laurene Jobs has shown a particular interest in education, applying herself directly to giving disadvantaged students a hand. After volunteering as a mentor several years ago at Belmont's Carlmont High School, Jobs co-founded and led a successful nonprofit, College Track, which helps minority and low-income kids prepare for college and

overcome the many challenges they encounter there.

"I didn't know where it was going to lead, but I was outraged," she told an interviewer in 2008, explaining her reaction to learning firsthand that minority students from East Palo Alto and other low-income communities were not getting the help they needed to enter and succeed in college.

Jobs, who met her husband while earning an MBA at Stanford University, now leads a nonprofit organization, the Emerson Collective, which describes its mission as working with "a range of entrepreneurs to advance domestic and international social reform efforts" and making "strategic investments" in "results-driven education reform ventures."

A spokeswoman for the Emerson Collective provided a brief biography of Jobs on Thursday, but did not respond to an interview request. College Track officials referred a reporter to the spokeswoman.

Both Steve Jobs and Apple have been criticized for not making a more public commitment to philanthropy. But after a New York Times columnist took that stance in the summer, the U2 singer and global activist Bono offered a spirited defense.

"Just because he's been extremely busy, that doesn't mean that he and his wife, Laurene, have not been thinking about these things," Bono wrote, citing their support for an anti-AIDS campaign in Africa.

New Jersey-born Laurene Powell earned a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School before working for Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch Asset Management in the 1980s. She then went back to school for a master's degree at Stanford, where she met Steve Jobs in 1990 after he gave a talk on campus.

Jobs, who was on the outs from Apple at the time, later told an interviewer that he had a business dinner scheduled that evening. "I was in the parking lot, with the key in the car, and I thought to myself, 'If this is my last night on Earth, would I rather spend it at a business meeting or with this woman?' "

As he told it: "I ran across the parking lot, asked her if she'd have dinner with me," and the pair walked to a restaurant in Palo Alto.

A year later, they were married at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park, in a ceremony led by a Zen Buddhist monk. The couple raised three children, along with Steve Jobs' daughter from a previous relationship. And as Steve Jobs' health worsened in recent months, more than one neighbor has reported seeing the pair walking and holding hands near their 1930s home in an affluent section of Palo Alto.

Laurene Jobs co-founded a natural foods company after completing business school. But she told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2008 that, in the late 1990s, she was planning to pull back from business obligations and devote more time to her family. Then, her experience as a Carlmont High volunteer led Jobs to launch the College Track program with Carlos Watson, a friend and fellow volunteer at Carlmont.

College Track today has branches in East Palo Alto, Oakland, San Francisco, New Orleans and Aurora, Colo. The organization provides coaching, tutoring and help in obtaining financial assistance for kids who are often the first in their families to consider going to college. While Laurene Jobs no longer runs the program, she is the head of its board.

Jobs also invested and served on the board of Achieva, a startup that Watson cofounded, which made online educational tools. In 2005, she co-led a $20 million fundraising campaign by the nonprofit Global Fund for Women, which invests in local initiatives to improve women's health and education around the world.

The 2005 campaign was prompted by concern the war in Iraq would make life more difficult for women and families in that part of the world, Jobs told this newspaper then. "We want to be able to spend the money quickly, not have it sit in an endowment."

Jobs also serves on other nonprofit boards, including the national board of Teach For America, which recruits recent college graduates to spend two years teaching in low-income schools. She was named by President Barack Obama last year to a panel that advises the White House on community-based social programs.

Contact Brandon Bailey at 408-920-5022. Follow him at Twitter.com/brandonbailey.

Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_19057541?source=rss_emailed

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Russian nuclear support for Iran limited by distrust

Russia built Iran's first nuclear power plant, once sold Tehran sophisticated weaponry, and refuses to back further international sanctions over Iran's controversial nuclear program, but this apparent coziness belies years of suspicion and growing distance between the two nuclear powers.

Despite the fact that Russia is training hundreds of nuclear scientists to operate the Bushehr plant, Russian analysts say that Moscow has contributed little to Iran's recent strides in uranium enrichment and nuclear technology.

Iran has been locked for months in negotiations with world powers over limiting its nuclear program, as Israeli leaders have threatened to conduct military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities. Russia straddles both camps, but has its own turbulent history with Iran that complicates its role.

Gone are the dangerous, free-wheeling 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union left legions of nuclear and missile engineers without work and willing to sell their services to the highest bidder ? with Iran reported to be a frequent destination.

RELATED ? Imminent Iranian nuclear threat? A timeline of warnings since 1979

And the ranks of Iranian students studying nuclear and other physical sciences in Russia was thinned out years ago due to official concerns about spying and the ultimate purpose of the Islamic Republic's expertise, Russian experts say.

Even at the height of their cooperation, Russia imposed limits on the collaboration.

"The Kremlin did not want Iran student specialists to come here, because they had the impression they were not just students, but fundamentalist Islamists," says Rajab Safarov, director of the Center for Studying Modern Iran in Moscow.

A senior Kremlin official once told him: "God save us! Why do we have these agents of Islamic radicalism here?" recalls Safarov. "Because once you have them, you don't know whom you are preparing, who is by your side."

One result has been that warm rhetoric about Iran-Russian ties ? such as when President Vladimir Putin says Russia ?has always defended the rights of the Iranian nation? ? is more talk than reality.

"It is difficult to find another country whose relations with Moscow have experienced so many drastic twists in a such a relatively short time," writes Nikolay Kozhanov in a June analysis for The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

TAKING OVER FOR THE US

Iran's nuclear ambitions predate the 1979 Islamic revolution. Back then, American companies were among those bidding to build 20 power reactors for the pro-West Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

"The media picture is not quite balanced," says Anton Khlopkov, director of the Center for Energy and Security Studies in Moscow, which is compiling a history of enrichment in Iran.

"I can tell you it was not Russia that launched this [Iran nuclear] project," says Khlopkov, editor of the Nuclear Club journal. "What is the driving force behind [Iran's] program today are the specialists trained in the US; hundreds went to MIT, Harvard, Berkeley.... If we want to understand the advance of Iran's programs, we must start in the 1950s and 1960s."

But the US ceased its support after the Islamic revolution, and the Soviet Union, too, was considered an enemy until its collapse.

Today, Russia has so far completed training for 524 Iranians to operate Bushehr, Iran's $1 billion, 1000-megawatt reactor on the Persian Gulf coast, as part of a contract signed in 1995. Its completion was delayed for more than a decade, and the reactor finally reached full capacity for the first time last week.

RELATED ? Iran nuclear program: 5 key sites

Another 160 Iranians have started training, while 14 are undergoing "in-depth" work, according to Eduard Saakov, general director of Atomtekhenergo, the branch of Russia's state nuclear energy corporation Rosatom.

Iranians trained here will be "directly responsible for safety of the nuclear power station," says Mr. Saakov. The Russian nuclear fuel Iran uses is under safeguard of the UN nuclear watchdog agency.

"Instructors who train Iranian experts are guided by requirements of the approved programs and procedures," says Saakov. "Training of Iranian personnel for any other programs but Bushehr is absolutely excluded."

DISTRUST ERODES COOPERATION

Such limits today are in stark contrast to the 1990s, when Russia appeared to have a much more flexible policy toward Iran.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 2001 quoted a mid-2000 CIA report: "Despite some examples of restraint, Russian businesses continue to be major suppliers of WMD equipment, materials, and technology to Iran," the CIA report read. "Specifically, Russia continues to provide Iran with nuclear technology that could be applied to Iran's weapons program."

Acting under US pressure, Moscow suspended several sensitive deals in the late 1990s. Israeli intelligence identified the then-head of the Russian atomic energy ministry (Minatom), Yevgeny Adamov, as the "mastermind behind the technology transfer to Iran," according to the Bulletin. He was described as an "oldstyle ideologue" resentful of his country's decline, who "needs to find work for his under-employed scientists and engineers as well as hard currency."

A Washington Post investigation in early 2002 confirmed what it called "the existence of an underground railroad of Russian scientists traveling to Iran to work on missile and nuclear weapons programs" in the 1990s. It quoted Vadim Vorobei, a Russian who first went to Iran in 1996 and was amazed by how many fellow former Soviet missile scientists he bumped into at hotels and restaurants.

"There was something artificial about it," recalled Mr. Vorobei, who was among the first experts to lecture in Tehran. "They were trying to show that a lot of Russians were working for them and everybody else should be scared by it."

But the Russian contribution was "limited by Iranian paranoia and secretiveness," the Post reported.

"They wanted to receive information from us, but at the same time they were not willing to tell us everything they were doing," said Vorobei. After lectures, students would pepper him with questions, and sometimes show him blueprints of a missile part, and ask if the designs were "in a good way or a bad way."

IN PICTURES: Nuclear Iran

Iran began to be "disillusioned" with the Russians in 1998, about the time that Russian authorities ? despite reports that Russian security officials took commissions from Iranian procurement agents ? started to clamp down, noted the Post. The US cancelled $1 million in research contracts to Vorobei's Moscow Aviation Institute over the Iran ties.

LEGACY LIVES ON AT PARCHIN MILITARY BASE

The legacy of the 1990s still reverberates today. A former Soviet nuclear scientist from Ukraine, Vyacheslav Danilenko, has been a key source for the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) investigation into the sprawling Parchin military base southeast of Tehran.

Mr. Danilenko claims he was unaware of any nuclear weapons applications of his work in Iran from 1996 to 2002, when he was working as a specialist in creating nanodiamonds for industrial use.

But IAEA inspectors believe a large explosives containment vessel, built at Parchin in 2000 using Danilenko's expertise, may contain clues which the IAEA reported in November 2011 would be "strong indicators of possible [nuclear] weapon development."

Fresh access to the site ? it was inspected twice before, in 2005, but not the buildings under new scrutiny ? has yet to be granted by Iran.

Instead, the IAEA last week stated that satellite images of Parchin showed the site being sanitized by the Iranians, with "significant ground scraping and landscaping" that had "significantly hampered" the IAEA's ability to detect any past work with radioactive material.

HALTING IRAN'S EMPIRE AMBITIONS

Analysts agree that Russia has its own reasons to prevent Iran from ever going for a nuclear weapon ? a step that Iran's supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has rejected as un-Islamic and a "sin."

"Russia does not want Iran to have nukes, not because Iran is dangerous ? they don't invade countries ? but because of its own self-interest. They think that if Iran has nuclear weapons, it will change everything," says Lana Ravandi-Fedai, an Iranian researcher with the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, referring to the region's balance of power.

"Everyone forgets about the national psychology of Iranians, it's a cocktail of empire feelings, of the Persian Empire," says Vladimir Sazhin, an Iran expert with the Institute of Oriental Studies. "The Islamic Republic of Iran must be the empire in the Middle East."

Mr. Sazhin says Iranians were excluded from studying natural sciences after some were "found to be spies" in the late 1990s.

"There were several cases when Iranian post-graduates tried to buy technologies here and tried to contact Russian experts working in national defense," says Yevgeny Novikov from the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies. "All Iranians who were excessively interested in Russian technologies and specialists were expelled."

That has been just one damaging episode in Russia's recent turbulent history with Iran.

"Moscow uses Iran as leverage in its political dialogue with Washington," which is of much greater importance to Russia, notes Mr. Kozhanov of the Washington Institute.

Russian distrust of Iran's nuclear intentions dates to the 2002 revelations about undeclared Iranian nuclear facilities, which "drastically affected Russian cooperation," says Kozhanov. Iran later also turned down a string of Russian enrichment proposals, "seriously irritating Russian authorities and provoking them to support" UN sanctions.

Weapons deals were cut back, and in 2010 one sale of great interest to Iran ? of the S-300 air defense system, which Iran wanted to deploy around its nuclear facilities ? was suspended.

None of that changes the advanced knowledge Iran already has, analysts say.

"They have a lot of experts, who are devoutly doing this work in the Islamic Republic," says Vladimir Sotnikov, a senior researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies. "Iranians have enough expertise to continue for years with a nuclear weapons effort, if they want.... This remains in Iran."

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/russian-nuclear-support-iran-limited-distrust-201028799.html

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Kindle Fire HD 7-inch hands-on (Update: video)

Kindle Fire HD 7inch handson

As expected, the big news at today's gadget-filled Amazon event is the successor to the Kindle Fire, which was launched in New York, roughly this time last year. It's not the Fire 2, however -- this is the Kindle Fire HD. It's clear the minute you grab hold of it that Amazon wanted to start over with this device in a number of ways. There's none of that OEM build quality from the first go-round. This is a nice, slim device that really feels as though it can stand up to some of the nicer Android tablets out there -- we'd certainly put our initial impressions of build up there with the Nexus 7, which just happens to share the same screen size and 1280 x 800 resolution.

The corners of the tablet are more rounded than its predecessor, with a glossy bezel going around the display -- a little bit of the rubberized backing creeps out on top of this. There are no buttons here, however. If you want to effect the screen, give it a tap and you get a small virtual menu on the side. As advertised, the display is quite vivid. Amazon talked up the decrease of glare, though it was a bit hard to tell just how successful the company was, given the fact that we're indoors. The device has a matte rear, with that stereo speaker going down a line in a middle, vents on either side.

Performance-wise, this seemed pretty snappy running off a heavily-skinned version of Android 4.0, and we got the pre-loaded (at least on Amazon's own tablet) Hunger Games movie to load quite quickly, thanks no doubt to all of the investment the company put into the WiFi side of this device. Interestingly, there was a little lag as we were flipping through the pages of a book, with the Fire doing a little loading every few pages or so.

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Kindle Fire HD 7-inch hands-on (Update: video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Sep 2012 15:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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