How our bodies interact with our minds in response to fear and other emotions

Apr. 7, 2013 ? New research has shown that the way our minds react to and process emotions such as fear can vary according to what is happening in other parts of our bodies.

In two different presentations on April 8 at the British Neuroscience Association Festival of Neuroscience (BNA2013) in London, researchers have shown for the first time that the heart's cycle affects the way we process fear, and that a part of the brain that responds to stimuli, such as touch, felt by other parts of the body also plays a role.

Dr Sarah Garfinkel, a postdoctoral fellow at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School (Brighton, UK), told a news briefing: "Cognitive neuroscience strives to understand how biological processes interact to create and influence the conscious mind. While neural activity in the brain is typically the focus of research, there is a growing appreciation that other bodily organs interact with brain function to shape and influence our perceptions, cognitions and emotions.

"We demonstrate for the first time that the way in which we process fear is different dependent on when we see fearful images in relation to our heart."

Dr Garfinkel and her colleagues hooked up 20 healthy volunteers to heart monitors, which were linked to computers. Images of fearful faces were shown on the computers and the electrocardiography (ECG) monitors were able to communicate with the computers in order to time the presentation of the faces with specific points in the heart's cycle.

"Our results show that if we see a fearful face during systole (when the heart is pumping) then we judge this fearful face as more intense than if we see the very same fearful face during diastole (when the heart is relaxed). To look at neural activity underlying this effect, we performed this experiment in an MRI [magnetic resonance imaging] scanner and demonstrated that a part of the brain called the amygdala influences how our heart changes our perception of fear.

"From previous research, we know that if we present images very fast then we have trouble detecting them, but if an image is particularly emotional then it can 'pop' out and be seen. In a second experiment, we exploited our cardiac effect on emotion to show that our conscious experience is affected by our heart. We demonstrated that fearful faces are better detected at systole (when they are perceived as more fearful), relative to diastole. Thus our hearts can also affect what we see and what we don't see -- and can guide whether we see fear.

"Lastly, we have demonstrated that the degree to which our hearts can change the way we see and process fear is influenced by how anxious we are. The anxiety level of our individual subjects altered the extent their hearts could change the way they perceived emotional faces and also altered neural circuitry underlying heart modulation of emotion."

Dr Garfinkel says that her findings might have the potential to help people who suffer from anxiety or other conditions such as post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

"We have identified an important mechanism by which the heart and brain 'speak' to each other to change our emotions and reduce fear. We hope to explore the therapeutic implications in people with high anxiety. Anxiety disorders can be debilitating and are very prevalent in the UK and elsewhere. We hope that by increasing our understanding about how fear is processed and ways that it could be reduced, we may be able to develop more successful treatments for these people, and also for those, such as war veterans, who may be suffering from PTSD.

"In addition, there is a growing appreciation about how different forms of meditation can have therapeutic consequences. Work that integrates body, brain and mind to understand changes in emotion can help us understand how meditation and mindfulness practices can have calming effects."

In a second presentation, Dr Alejandra Sel, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology at City University (London, UK), investigated a part of the brain called the somatosensory cortex -- the area that perceives bodily sensations, such as touch, pain, body temperature and the perception of the body's place in space, and which is activated when we observe emotional expressions in the faces of other people.

"In order to understand other's people emotions we need to experience the same observed emotions in our body. Specifically, observing an emotional face, as opposed to a neutral face, is associated with an increased activity in the somatosensory cortex as if we were expressing and experiencing our own emotions. It is also known that people with damage to the somatosensory cortex find it difficult to recognise emotion in other people's faces," Dr Sel told the news briefing.

However, until now, it has not been clear whether activity in the somatosensory cortex was simply a by-product of the way we process visual information, or whether it reacts independently to emotions expressed in other people's faces, actively contributing to how we perceive emotions in others.

In order to discover whether the somatosensory cortex contributes to the processing of emotion independently of any visual processes, Dr Sel and her colleagues tested two situations on volunteers. Using electroencephalography (EEG) to measure the brain response to images, they showed participants either a face showing fear (emotional) or a neutral face. Secondly, they combined the showing of the face with a small tap to an index finger or the left cheek immediately afterwards.

Dr Sel said: "By tapping someone's cheek or finger you can modify the 'resting state' of the somatosensory cortex inducing changes in brain electrical activity in this area. These changes are measureable and observable with EEG and this enables us to pinpoint the brain activity that is specifically related to the somatosensory cortex and its reaction to external stimuli.

"If the 'resting state' of the somatosensory cortex when a fearful face is shown has greater electrical activity than when a neutral face is shown, the changes in the activity of the somatosensory cortex induced by the taps and measured by EEG also will be greater when observing fearful as opposed to neutral faces.

"We subtracted results of the first situation (face only) from the second situation (face and tap), and compared changes in the activity related with the tap in the somatosensory cortex when seeing emotional faces versus neutral faces. This way, we could observe responses of the somatosensory cortex to emotional faces independently of visual processes," she explained.

The researchers found that there was enhanced activity in the somatosensory cortex in response to fearful faces in comparison to neutral faces, independent of any visual processes. Importantly, this activity was focused in the primary and secondary somatosensory areas; the primary area receives sensory information directly from the body, while the secondary area combines sensory information from the body with information related to body movement and other information, such as memories of previous, sensitive experiences.

"Our experimental approach allows us to isolate and show for the first time (as far as we are aware) changes in somatosensory activity when seeing emotional faces after taking away all visual information in the brain. We have shown the crucial role of the somatosensory cortex in the way our minds and bodies perceive human emotions. These findings can serve as starting point for developing interventions tailored for people with problems in recognising other's emotions, such as autistic children," said Dr Sel.

The researchers now plan to investigate whether they get similar results when people are shown faces with other expressions such as happy or angry, and whether the timing of the physical stimulus, the tap to the finger or cheek, makes any difference. In this experiment, the tap occurred 105 milliseconds after a face was shown, and Dr Sel wonders about the effect of a longer time interval.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/living_well/~3/9QgQ9vrQ8g0/130407211558.htm

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Ocean explorers want to get to the bottom of Galicia

Public release date: 8-Apr-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: David Ruth
david@rice.edu
713-348-6327
Rice University

Rice researchers: 3-D seismic survey will give best-ever view of ancient North Atlantic rift

HOUSTON (April 8, 2013) An international team of scientists and technicians led by Rice University will spend 45 days in the North Atlantic this summer to gather the most detailed information ever about the geology of the ocean basin that formed at what was once the center of Pangaea.

Geologists Dale Sawyer and Julia Morgan of Rice and Donna Shillington of Columbia University are leading the $6 million international project to study the Galicia rift northwest of the Spanish coast where, unusually, sediment has not deeply buried formations that have existed at the bottom of the ocean for millions of years.

A National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to Rice of more than $1.2 million will put five faculty members and graduate students on the 50-plus crew aboard the Seismic Vessel Marcus G. Langseth, owned by the NSF and operated by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

The Langseth stopped in Galveston last month, where Sawyer took stock of its tools. He and Morgan have been waiting for their ship to come in since proposing the project eight years ago. "We had to wait for other seismic studies, creating a critical mass of work in the Atlantic in order to bring the ship from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic," Sawyer said.

For 45 days the ship will trace a spiraling path -- Sawyer compared it to mowing a lawn -- over the rectangular 64-by-22.4 kilometer target. Throughout the journey, the 15 scientists and their technicians and students will analyze data and make critical decisions on optimizing data quality.

Sawyer will represent Rice on the ship, joined by graduate students Sarah Dean, Brian Jordan and Mari Tesi Sanjurjo and adjunct faculty lecturer Steve Danbom. All will begin analyzing the massive amount of data the ship will collect while on board, but the results will take years for geologists to fully process and understand, Sawyer said.

"Between 225 and 110 million years ago, the Atlantic Ocean opened up between Africa and North America, and the breakup propagated northward, opening a new ocean and pulling Spain and Portugal apart from what is now Newfoundland," Sawyer said. "What makes this unusual is that it is a volcanic-starved rift."

Elsewhere on the planet, lava flowed upward into rifts and created oceanic crust. "We found in the last 20 years that most margins are volcanic-dominated," he said. "They actually pull apart, lots of magma comes up and the sea-floor spreading process begins immediately. Galicia is at the other end of the spectrum. Volcanic-dominated margins are thought to be caused by unusually high heat in the Earth's mantle, while magma-starved margins are caused by cooler mantle rocks.

But the volcanic crust hasn't reached the Galicia, where sections of the Earth's mantle in the form of peridotite lie just under a thin layer of sediment. At this rift, the crust is neither oceanic nor continental, but of a different type. These formations may tell geologists a great deal about the rifts that appeared when the great continent split and began evolving into the map we know today.

"The sediments are thin," Sawyer said, "so we can do seismic characterization and potentially drill into these rocks without having to go through 10 or 15 kilometers of sediment.

"One of our objectives with the 3-D survey is to find the best places to drill," he said. "Now we can see the fans of sediment deposited on the broken and tilted continental crust blocks, but we don't know when they broke and how quickly." The images should allow them to gather core samples at the right places. "Then we have paleontological evidence we can date, and then we can start to know."

To learn all this, the team will make 3-D images of the upper 20 kilometers of the rocks under the ocean. The RV Langseth will tow four cables, each 6 kilometers long, carrying nearly 2,000 hydrophones. The towed cables cover a width of 600 meters as they rake through the water. Constantly on the move, the ship fires an array of compressed air guns towed behind the ship. Airgun shots will be fired every 37 meters (once about every 16 seconds), and the seismometers will sense the reflections that come back from the seafloor and from rock layers. Using sound to see what eyes can't, the signals are translated into an accurate three-dimensional image of the geological terrain below.

Before the Langseth sails from Vigo, Spain, on June 1, the German Research Vessel Poseidon and scientists from Germany and the United Kingdom will drop about 80 ocean-bottom seismometers in a grid on the same patch of ocean floor that the Rice-led team will survey.

"The ocean-bottom seismometers give us much better information about the speed of sound through the rocks, and that tells us a lot about what kind of rock the seismic wave is traveling through," Sawyer said.

Several oil companies are interested in this work, Sawyer said. Although the sediments to be studied are thin and unlikely to yield oil or gas, other places in the world with similar magma-starved rifting and thick overlying sediments are virtually certain to contain hydrocarbons. Images taken through the thin Galicia sediments will provide information about what to expect in hydrocarbon-bearing areas elsewhere, he said.

###

Read the NSF abstract: http://tinyurl.com/dyljq34

This news release can be found online at http://news.rice.edu/2013/04/08/ocean-explorers-want-to-get-to-the-bottom-of-galicia-2/

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

Related Materials:

R/V Marcus G. Langseth: http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/research/office-of-marine-operations/langseth

GeoPRISMS: http://www.geoprisms.org

Julia Morgan: http://earthscience.rice.edu/faculty/morgan/

Dale Sawyer: http://earthscience.rice.edu/faculty/sawyer/

Rice University Department of Earth Science: http://earthscience.rice.edu/index.html

Images for download:

http://news.rice.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0408_GALICIA-1-web.jpg

Rice researchers who will study the Galicia rift off the coast of Spain this summer are (from left, front) Sarah Dean, Steve Danbom and Mari Tesi Sanjurjo and (from left, rear) Brian Jordan, Dale Sawyer and Julia Morgan. All but Morgan will make the 45-day cruise to map the terrain under the rift. (Credit: Colin Zelt/Rice University)

http://news.rice.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0408_GALICIA-2-web.jpg

The Galicia rift, west of Spain, is a unique magma-starved margin dominated by mantle rock. An international team led by Rice University will perform a seismic survey of the region this summer.

David Ruth
713-348-6327
david@rice.edu

Mike Williams
713-348-6728
mikewilliams@rice.edu

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 8-Apr-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: David Ruth
david@rice.edu
713-348-6327
Rice University

Rice researchers: 3-D seismic survey will give best-ever view of ancient North Atlantic rift

HOUSTON (April 8, 2013) An international team of scientists and technicians led by Rice University will spend 45 days in the North Atlantic this summer to gather the most detailed information ever about the geology of the ocean basin that formed at what was once the center of Pangaea.

Geologists Dale Sawyer and Julia Morgan of Rice and Donna Shillington of Columbia University are leading the $6 million international project to study the Galicia rift northwest of the Spanish coast where, unusually, sediment has not deeply buried formations that have existed at the bottom of the ocean for millions of years.

A National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to Rice of more than $1.2 million will put five faculty members and graduate students on the 50-plus crew aboard the Seismic Vessel Marcus G. Langseth, owned by the NSF and operated by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

The Langseth stopped in Galveston last month, where Sawyer took stock of its tools. He and Morgan have been waiting for their ship to come in since proposing the project eight years ago. "We had to wait for other seismic studies, creating a critical mass of work in the Atlantic in order to bring the ship from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic," Sawyer said.

For 45 days the ship will trace a spiraling path -- Sawyer compared it to mowing a lawn -- over the rectangular 64-by-22.4 kilometer target. Throughout the journey, the 15 scientists and their technicians and students will analyze data and make critical decisions on optimizing data quality.

Sawyer will represent Rice on the ship, joined by graduate students Sarah Dean, Brian Jordan and Mari Tesi Sanjurjo and adjunct faculty lecturer Steve Danbom. All will begin analyzing the massive amount of data the ship will collect while on board, but the results will take years for geologists to fully process and understand, Sawyer said.

"Between 225 and 110 million years ago, the Atlantic Ocean opened up between Africa and North America, and the breakup propagated northward, opening a new ocean and pulling Spain and Portugal apart from what is now Newfoundland," Sawyer said. "What makes this unusual is that it is a volcanic-starved rift."

Elsewhere on the planet, lava flowed upward into rifts and created oceanic crust. "We found in the last 20 years that most margins are volcanic-dominated," he said. "They actually pull apart, lots of magma comes up and the sea-floor spreading process begins immediately. Galicia is at the other end of the spectrum. Volcanic-dominated margins are thought to be caused by unusually high heat in the Earth's mantle, while magma-starved margins are caused by cooler mantle rocks.

But the volcanic crust hasn't reached the Galicia, where sections of the Earth's mantle in the form of peridotite lie just under a thin layer of sediment. At this rift, the crust is neither oceanic nor continental, but of a different type. These formations may tell geologists a great deal about the rifts that appeared when the great continent split and began evolving into the map we know today.

"The sediments are thin," Sawyer said, "so we can do seismic characterization and potentially drill into these rocks without having to go through 10 or 15 kilometers of sediment.

"One of our objectives with the 3-D survey is to find the best places to drill," he said. "Now we can see the fans of sediment deposited on the broken and tilted continental crust blocks, but we don't know when they broke and how quickly." The images should allow them to gather core samples at the right places. "Then we have paleontological evidence we can date, and then we can start to know."

To learn all this, the team will make 3-D images of the upper 20 kilometers of the rocks under the ocean. The RV Langseth will tow four cables, each 6 kilometers long, carrying nearly 2,000 hydrophones. The towed cables cover a width of 600 meters as they rake through the water. Constantly on the move, the ship fires an array of compressed air guns towed behind the ship. Airgun shots will be fired every 37 meters (once about every 16 seconds), and the seismometers will sense the reflections that come back from the seafloor and from rock layers. Using sound to see what eyes can't, the signals are translated into an accurate three-dimensional image of the geological terrain below.

Before the Langseth sails from Vigo, Spain, on June 1, the German Research Vessel Poseidon and scientists from Germany and the United Kingdom will drop about 80 ocean-bottom seismometers in a grid on the same patch of ocean floor that the Rice-led team will survey.

"The ocean-bottom seismometers give us much better information about the speed of sound through the rocks, and that tells us a lot about what kind of rock the seismic wave is traveling through," Sawyer said.

Several oil companies are interested in this work, Sawyer said. Although the sediments to be studied are thin and unlikely to yield oil or gas, other places in the world with similar magma-starved rifting and thick overlying sediments are virtually certain to contain hydrocarbons. Images taken through the thin Galicia sediments will provide information about what to expect in hydrocarbon-bearing areas elsewhere, he said.

###

Read the NSF abstract: http://tinyurl.com/dyljq34

This news release can be found online at http://news.rice.edu/2013/04/08/ocean-explorers-want-to-get-to-the-bottom-of-galicia-2/

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

Related Materials:

R/V Marcus G. Langseth: http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/research/office-of-marine-operations/langseth

GeoPRISMS: http://www.geoprisms.org

Julia Morgan: http://earthscience.rice.edu/faculty/morgan/

Dale Sawyer: http://earthscience.rice.edu/faculty/sawyer/

Rice University Department of Earth Science: http://earthscience.rice.edu/index.html

Images for download:

http://news.rice.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0408_GALICIA-1-web.jpg

Rice researchers who will study the Galicia rift off the coast of Spain this summer are (from left, front) Sarah Dean, Steve Danbom and Mari Tesi Sanjurjo and (from left, rear) Brian Jordan, Dale Sawyer and Julia Morgan. All but Morgan will make the 45-day cruise to map the terrain under the rift. (Credit: Colin Zelt/Rice University)

http://news.rice.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0408_GALICIA-2-web.jpg

The Galicia rift, west of Spain, is a unique magma-starved margin dominated by mantle rock. An international team led by Rice University will perform a seismic survey of the region this summer.

David Ruth
713-348-6327
david@rice.edu

Mike Williams
713-348-6728
mikewilliams@rice.edu

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-04/ru-oew040813.php

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Obama faces choice on morning-after pill limits

This undated image made available by Teva Women's Health shows the packaging for their Plan B One-Step (levonorgestrel) tablet, one of the brands known as the "morning-after pill." In a scathing rebuke of the Obama administration, a federal judge ruled Friday that age restrictions on over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill are "arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable" and must end within 30 days. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Edward Korman of New York means consumers of any age could buy emergency contraception without a prescription _ instead of women first having to prove they're 17 or older, as they do today. And it could allow Plan B One-Step to move out from behind pharmacy counters to the store counters. (AP Photo/Teva Women's Health)

This undated image made available by Teva Women's Health shows the packaging for their Plan B One-Step (levonorgestrel) tablet, one of the brands known as the "morning-after pill." In a scathing rebuke of the Obama administration, a federal judge ruled Friday that age restrictions on over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill are "arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable" and must end within 30 days. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Edward Korman of New York means consumers of any age could buy emergency contraception without a prescription _ instead of women first having to prove they're 17 or older, as they do today. And it could allow Plan B One-Step to move out from behind pharmacy counters to the store counters. (AP Photo/Teva Women's Health)

This undated handout photo provided by Judge Edward Korman shows U.S. District Judge Korman of New York. In a scathing rebuke of the Obama administration, a federal judge ruled Friday that age restrictions on over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill are "arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable" and must end within 30 days. The ruling by Korman means consumers of any age could buy emergency contraception without a prescription _ instead of women first having to prove they're 17 or older, as they do today. And it could allow Plan B One-Step to move out from behind pharmacy counters to the store counters. (AP Photo/Judge Korman's Office)

PREVIOUSLY OFFERED 021413; chart shows frequency of use of emergency contraception

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama supports requiring girls younger than 17 to see a doctor before buying the morning-after pill. But fighting that battle in court comes with its own set of risks.

A federal judge in New York on Friday ordered the Food and Drug Administration to lift age restrictions on the sale of emergency contraception ? ending today's requirement that buyers show proof they're 17 or older if they want to buy it without a prescription. The ruling accused the Obama administration in no uncertain terms of letting the president's pending re-election cloud its judgment when it set the age limits in 2011.

"The motivation for the secretary's action was obviously political," U.S. District Judge Edward Korman wrote in reference to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who made the 2011 decision. The FDA had been poised to allow over-the-counter sales with no age limits when Sebelius took the unprecedented step of overruling the agency.

If the Obama administration appeals Korman's ruling, it could re-ignite a simmering cultural battle over women's reproductive health ? never far from the surface in American politics ? sidetracking the president just as he's trying to keep Congress and the public focused on gun control, immigration and resolving the nation's budget woes.

"There's no political advantage whatsoever," said Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf. "It's a side issue he doesn't need to deal with right now. The best idea is to leave it alone."

Still, Obama has made clear in the past that he feels strongly about the limits. And as a politician whose name won't ever appear on a ballot again, it's hard to see the downside in sticking by his principles.

"As the father of two daughters, I think it is important for us to make sure that we apply some common sense to various rules when it comes to over-the-counter medicine," Obama said in 2011 when he endorsed Sebelius' decision.

The Justice Department said it is evaluating whether to appeal. Allison Price, a Justice spokeswoman, said there would be a prompt decision. And the White House said Obama's view on the issue hasn't changed since 2011.

"He supports that decision today. He believes it was the right common-sense approach to this issue," White House spokesman Jay Carney said Friday.

Appealing the decision could rile liberal groups and parts of Obama's political base that are already upset with his forthcoming budget, which includes cuts to programs like Medicare and Social Security. But currying favor with conservatives who want the ruling to stand also is unlikely to do much to help Obama make progress on his second-term priorities.

"It won't help him with Republicans in Congress to get policy matters attended to," Sheinkopf said.

Also weighing on Obama and his aides as he decides how to proceed is the unpleasant memory of previous dust-ups over contraception, including an election-year spat over an element of Obama's health care overhaul law that required most employers to cover birth control free of charge to female workers as a preventive service. That controversy led to a wave of lawsuits that threatened to embroil Obama's health care law, already under fire for a requirement that individuals buy insurance, in even more legal action.

When Obama offered to soften the rule last year, religious groups said it wasn't enough. Obama proposed another compromise on the rule in February to mixed response from faith-based groups.

If the court order issued Friday stands, Plan B One-Step and its generic versions could move from behind pharmacy counters out to drugstore shelves ? ending a decade-plus struggle by women's groups for easier access to these pills, which can prevent pregnancy if taken soon enough after unprotected sex.

Women's health specialists hailed the ruling Friday, arguing there's no reason a safe birth control option shouldn't be available over the counter and dismissing concerns that it could encourage underage people to have sex.

But social conservatives, in a rare show of support for Obama's approach to social policy, said the ruling removes common-sense protections and denies parents and medical professionals the opportunity to be a safeguard for vulnerable young girls.

"The court's action undermines parents' ability to protect their daughters from such exploitation and from the adverse effects of the drug itself," Deirdre McQuade, spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Half the nation's pregnancies every year are unintended. Doctors' groups say more access to morning-after pills ? by putting them near the condoms and spermicides so people can learn about them and buy them quickly ? could cut those numbers.

The morning-after pill contains a higher dose of the female progestin hormone than is in regular birth control pills. Taking it within 72 hours of rape, condom failure or just forgetting regular contraception can cut the chances of pregnancy by up to 89 percent. But it works best within the first 24 hours. If a woman already is pregnant, the pill has no effect.

Absent an appeal or a government request for more time to prepare one, the ruling will take effect in 30 days, meaning that over-the-counter sales could start then.

___

Associated Press writer Larry Neumeister in New York contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/bbd825583c8542898e6fa7d440b9febc/Article_2013-04-06-Morning-After%20Pill/id-362fef6586124f9eac87187270512c93

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British woman, 24, ?stabbed to death? on houseboat in Kashmir, India

Indian police move the body of a British woman murdered on Dal Lake in Kashmir (Picture: AFP / Getty)

A British woman has been found murdered on a houseboat in India, the British High Commission in Delhi has said.

The 24-year-old is believed to have been stabbed to death and was discovered lying in a pool of blood inside her accomodation on the Dal Lake early this morning, according to reports.

Dal Lake is a popular tourist destination (Picture: Google Maps)

A Dutch national who had been staying in a neighbouring boat has been held on suspicion of her murder.

Abdul Ghani Mir, the Inspector General of Kashmir, told NDTV in India he was arrested attempting to flee the area with only his passport.

A Dutch nation was arrested attempting to flee the Valley (Picture: Alamy / File)

?The Dutch national had fled from the houseboat in the night, leaving behind his belongings,? he said.

?He was trying to flee from the Valley, carrying only his passport. We flashed an alert for his arrest.?

A Kashmiri fisherman throws a net on Dal Lake (Picture: AFP / Getty)

The owner of the houseboat?said the woman had been staying their for the past two months and was like a ?daughter? to him.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said it is looking into the reports.

A spokesman said: ?We are aware of reports of an incident involving a British national in Srinagar, Kashmir.?

William Hague: The Foreign Office is looking into the reports (Picture: Reuters)

The Dal Lake is an integral part of tourism in Kashmir and is home to a large collection of houseboat.

?While preliminary investigation has confirmed that the 24-year-old woman was murdered, we are investigating other angles,? a police source told ITV News.

?Forensic evidence is being collected.?

Source: http://metro.co.uk/2013/04/06/british-woman-24-found-murdered-dal-lake-boathouse-in-kashmir-3585427/

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Gang member arrested in corrections killing probe

DENVER (AP) ? A white supremacist prison gang member was arrested and another was still being sought for questioning Friday in the death of Colorado's prisons chief as authorities investigated whether the gang had any ties to the killing.

James Lohr, who has the words "Hard" and "Luck" tattooed where his eyebrows would be, was taken into custody early Friday in Colorado Springs. He was wanted for questioning in the slaying of Department of Corrections Director Tom Clements.

Authorities believe Lohr was in contact with gang associate Evan Ebel days before the killings of Clements and pizza delivery man Nate Leon. Police said they believe Ebel killed Leon and Clements less than a week before he died in a Texas shootout, but the motive is unclear.

Clements was shot to death March 19 in Monument, just north of Colorado Springs. Leon was killed two days earlier. His body was found in the Denver suburb of Golden.

Colorado Springs police arrested Lohr after a short foot chase that started when officers tried to stop the car he was driving, according to a statement. Lohr was booked on felony evading charges and also was held on three outstanding arrest warrants unrelated to the Clements case. He is scheduled to appear in court Monday.

Investigators said surveillance video from a business showed a firearm being thrown from Lohr's vehicle before his arrest. Two men are then shown spotting the gun and later returning to take it. Investigators said the men aren't in trouble, but investigators want to find them so the gun can be taken into evidence.

Authorities issued an alert Wednesday asking other law enforcement agencies to be on the lookout for Lohr and Thomas Guolee, both of Colorado Springs, who were identified as 211 Crew members. Ebel was a member of the same gang.

Lohr, 47, and Guolee, 31, are not being called suspects in Clements' death, but their names surfaced during the investigation, El Paso County sheriff's spokesman Jeff Kramer said. Both were wanted on warrants unrelated to the Clements investigation.

Kramer has said it was possible that one or both of the men were headed to Nevada or Texas.

Guolee's mother, Deborah Eck, told The Denver Post that Guolee called her husband a week and a half ago to ask for a ride to the police station so he could turn himself in for what she believed was a parole violation. But she said they never heard back from him.

Police came to her house Wednesday looking for Guolee.

"One cop said if he would have turned himself in for violation of probation, he probably wouldn't be in the situation he was now," Eck told the newspaper.

Lohr has been wanted in Las Animas County in southeastern Colorado. He was arrested for violating a protection order in Trinidad on Dec. 1, 2012, after police found that he'd been drinking with friends at a tattoo shop. According to court documents, drinking was a violation of a protective order against him, and he was arrested. Lohr then failed to appear in court in that case Feb. 20, and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

Lohr has a shaved head in his booking photo. In addition to the words on his eyebrows, he has a shamrock ? a tattoo favored by some 211 Crew members ? near his right eye.

Lohr has a criminal record going back to 1992. In 1996, after he pleaded guilty to burglarizing a home, court records show he was ordered to have no contact with his estranged wife after she told police he repeatedly broke into her home and stole items to pawn.

In 2006, Lohr was charged with burglary with a weapon and assault causing serious bodily injury. Court records show those charged were dismissed because of a lack of evidence.

Court records show Guolee was arrested in 2001 after a member of the Crips gang told Colorado Springs police he was jumped by Guolee and another gang member because they believed he was a member of a rival gang. The witness told police Guolee and the other gang member punched and kicked him in the face and left him bleeding.

In 2007, Guolee was charged with assault and intimidating a witness while in the El Paso County jail after an inmate said he was assaulted by three men, including Guolee, because they thought he was going to testify against a suspect in another case. Authorities said the man was beaten so badly he could have been permanently disfigured.

The complete court records were not immediately available, so the outcome of some of those cases was unclear. Authorities also have not released the subject of Guolee's warrant.

On Thursday, Gov. John Hickenlooper announced a sweeping review of Colorado's prison and parole operations, as more evidence piled up showing how Ebel slipped through the cracks in the criminal justice system to become a suspect in Clements' death.

Ebel was released from prison four years early due to a clerical error and violated his parole terms five days before the prisons chief was killed.

Officials said the state will audit inmates' legal cases to ensure they are serving the correct amount of time. They'll ask the National Institute of Corrections to review the state's parole system, which is struggling under large caseloads.

Colorado lawmakers also are considering spending nearly $500,000 to hire more parole officers because of what happened with Ebel.

Ebel was killed in a shootout with Texas authorities March 21. Investigators have said the gun he used in the shootout also was used to kill Clements when the prisons chief answered the front door of his home.

Ebel has been the only suspect named in Clements' death. Investigators have said they're looking into the gang he joined in prison and whether it was connected to the attack, among other possible motives.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gang-member-arrested-corrections-killing-probe-022239478.html

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Michael Jackson civil jury pool grows to 60 people

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? A court has ended the first week of jury selection in a civil case over Michael Jackson's death with 60 potential jurors selected.

Jury selection will resume Monday and is expected to stretch into the following week in an effort to find enough people to hear a case filed by Jackson's mother against concert giant AEG Live.

Katherine Jackson claims the company failed to properly investigate and supervise the doctor convicted of involuntary manslaughter for Jackson's June 2009 death.

Potential jurors have filled out a 24-page questionnaire that assesses their knowledge of the case, Jackson's family and their views on celebrities and multimillion dollar verdicts.

In-person questioning of potential jurors will begin on Wednesday.

AEG has denied wrongdoing.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/michael-jackson-civil-jury-pool-grows-60-people-225552823.html

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New bird flu strain: Little evidence of global threat so far

AFP - Getty Images

Chinese health workers collect bags of dead chickens at Huhuai wholesale agricultural market in Shanghai on Friday. Authorities in Shanghai began the mass slaughter of poultry at a market after the H7N9 bird flu virus, which has killed five people in China, was detected there, state media said.

By Robert Bazell, Chief Science and Health Correspondent

Could the recent outbreak of illnesses or death from a new strain of bird flu be the beginning of the next pandemic? Were I a betting man, I'd say the odds are against it. The world is far better prepared and aware than it was even just a few years ago. But because of that greater vigilance, we know there is a potential threat from the H7N9 virus that has now killed?six people and infected 14, so far all in China. No responsible scientist would discount it.

As the World Health Organization?s FAQs on H7N9 phrases it, ?Any animal influenza virus that develops the ability to infect people is a theoretical risk to cause a pandemic. However, whether the influenza A(H7N9) virus could actually cause a pandemic is unknown.??

All flu viruses pass among many species, especially birds, pigs and humans. They come in many strains, and they mutate frequently. The big danger is a new one that would be both deadly to humans and to which humans have no immunity.?The Spanish flu of 1918, for example, which mutated as it jumped between pigs and people, killed an estimated 20 to 40 million people worldwide.

The new strain is different from H5N1 avian influenza, which has killed 371 people out of 622 infected in 15 countries since 2003.

One of the most frightening aspects of this latest outbreak is that it is occurring suddenly over thousands of square miles in China. A Chinese blogger put together this map of the cases up to Thursday morning. The University of Minnesota?s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy translated the map and checked out the information.

?It is very alarming to have so many cases appear so suddenly over such a wide area,? the center?s director, Dr. Michael Osterholm, told NBC News.?

Another cause for concern: No one knows where the deadly virus is coming from. The guess is chickens.?Similar H7N9 viruses occur in birds, including chickens in China, the United States and throughout the world. But with modern genetic technology scientists can identify strains precisely. On Thursday, Chinese officials said they had found the virus in a pigeon near a Shanghai market.?If the virus is being spread by chickens or pigeons, it is does not appear to make them sick, so culling sick animals might be a very difficult path to containment.

So far, it appears that the virus doesn't spread easily among people. The WHO has said that more than 400 close contacts of confirmed cases are being closely monitored, with no evidence of person-to-person spread. However, there were reports by the official Chinese news agency Xinhuan late Thursday that one person who'd had contact with a dead victim was showing flu symptoms including fever, running nose and itching throat.?If numbers continue to increase the new virus could remain a public health menace, but if people don?t catch it from one another it can never be a pandemic.

The controversial recent research on ?killer flu viruses? has now been vindicated, experts say, because it showed just what genes need to change to allow person to person transmission. ?So far, the new virus lacks the genes it needs to spread among people.? But experts warn the more viruses circulate, the greater chances for a mutation that will allow for spread among humans.

The global health community has begun discussions about making a vaccine, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Thursday plans to start preparing a vaccine, just in case. ?The CDC has also developed a diagnostic test for H7N9 and is submitting it to the Food and Drug Administration for approval, a spokeswoman said. The tests might be available shortly, but a vaccine would likely not be widely available for months.?Tests have found that the virus is sensitive to Tamiflu and other anti-influenza medications which many nations have stockpiled. Let?s hope they are not needed.

Related:

WHO: No sign of 'sustained' bird flu spread between humans

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653387/s/2a5be5e2/l/0Lvitals0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A40C0A40C1760A4110A0Enew0Ebird0Eflu0Estrain0Elittle0Eevidence0Eof0Eglobal0Ethreat0Eso0Efar0Dlite/story01.htm

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