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DES MOINES, Iowa ? Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has little choice but to rely on momentum to carry him to victory in the Iowa caucuses.
He has a skeleton campaign organization in a state where successful caucus candidates typically have had well-built machines aimed at turning out supporters. To build a stronger operation with less than three weeks until the leadoff 2012 contest, he has to scramble.
The former House speaker is hoping the typical rules don't apply to him, in a campaign that already has been far from typical.
"You're not going to have a successful campaign in the caucuses on organization alone," said John Stineman, an uncommitted Iowa Republican who ran Steve Forbes' 2000 caucus campaign. "You have to have some heat. Newt's getting hot at the right time. It's a matter of whether he can sustain the heat."
Getting a winning share of support from caucusgoers in 1,774 precinct-level party meetings across the state on a cold, early January night requires some level of coordination, such as nailing down supporters in each of Iowa's 99 counties.
Gingrich, whose mass staff departures in June stunted his Iowa campaign, is trying to cobble together his Iowa team using emerging social media methods and time-tested grass-roots work.
He has only nine staffers in Iowa, fewer than most of his rivals. He opened his campaign office just two weeks ago, while others have had state headquarters for months. And while Gingrich's fundraising has picked up, he hasn't had the vast sums former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry have had at their disposal.
But just as his late rise in Iowa has had more to do with his performance in the national debates than campaigning in the state, his Iowa organization is benefiting from the notice he's sparked nationally.
Gingrich has argued that his message, timing and the Internet can help him close the organizational gap.
His full-frontal attack on President Barack Obama has been what some GOP activists in Iowa say is the confrontational approach they've been looking for in a potential challenger to the well-funded incumbent.
Gingrich, who has asked his supporters to remain positive as he faces attacks, is on the air in Iowa with a positive spot. Time is running out for effective advertising messages to stick, with candidates unlikely to air attack ads over the holidays.
Gingrich's message attacking Obama and pledging a positive campaign versus his GOP rivals has helped bring potential supporters to his website. It's netted supporters around the country who have made, on average, 1,200 telephone calls per night to Iowa Republicans in the past week, Gingrich deputy Iowa director Katie Koberg said.
Through the same site, a dozen supporters from out of state have traveled to Iowa to log days helping the campaign, Koberg said.
It's a far cry from Texas Rep. Ron Paul's campaign, with its statewide supporter network that includes niche groups such as students and doctors.
Although Romney has campaigned in Iowa less often than he did four years ago, his team has kept after supporters of his 2008 campaign, a massive $10 million effort that earned him second place.
That year, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee won the caucuses with a threadbare staff. He was the overwhelming favorite of evangelical conservatives, who functioned as an influential network but were not necessarily organized by the Huckabee campaign.
Gingrich is not the unanimous favorite of evangelicals, but he has the momentum Huckabee did.
"You can't confuse organization with paid staff," said Tim Albrecht, who was Romney's 2008 Iowa campaign spokesman but is uncommitted this year. "Gingrich has a Huckabee quality to him ? late getting in place but with a ready audience, those longtime caucus veterans who don't need any hand-holding to get them to caucus."
Given the fluidity demonstrated in Iowa polls, Gingrich could benefit from late-deciding caucusgoers. And he has picked up a number of key GOP activists. The campaign rolled out a list of them from across the state and different segments of the party late Wednesday, aimed at portraying Gingrich as a unifying candidate.
They include former Iowa Republican Party Chairman Ray Hoffmann and Dean Kleckner, former president of the American Farm Bureau Federation. Kleckner had been a top Iowa backer of Herman Cain before the Georgia businessman quit the race Dec. 3.
Another key pickup known for his organizational heft is Darryl Kearny, a former finance director of the Iowa Republican Party and now the key finance official for Polk County, Iowa's most populous.
"I realize they have a lot of catching up to do," said Kearny, who has amassed a massive Rolodex in his 30-plus years as an Iowa party activist and campaign operative. "But I'm networking with everyone I know, calling and emailing, trying to pass on the word about Newt."
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DJ Qualls is sporting a new growth of beard stubble, but this isn't a look he was intending on adopting. On 'The Late Late Show' (Weeknights, 12:37AM ET on CBS), he called it his "police brutality beard" because every time he tries to shave, he cuts a scar he received from a getting beaten by a Vancouver police officer in late September 2011.
Considering the pointless brutality of the alleged encounter, Qualls was very calm, and almost jovial about it. At first, Quall said the cop thought he looked like a threat to public safety. But then he said, "The bare bones of it. I was not doing anything. I'm small. The cop wanted to beat up somebody he could take."
Neither of these could be the real tale, but all that talk about beating up Qualls got Geoff fired up, and he started goading the actor. After saying Qualls looked like him with skin, Geoff threw down the gauntlet. "I'll take you out, Qualls," he said.
"Walk over here," Qualls said, effectively silencing the stationary skeleton robot.
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The UFC champions a message of anti-bullying, and Canada is one of the UFC's top regions. It makes sense that the UFC would want to bring that message to Canada, right?
Not to everyone. After a Toronto councillor put his support behind the UFC circulating a brochure created by the UFC, another politician ripped the idea in the Toronto Star.
"I think it's a terrible idea," said Pamela Gough, TDSB trustee for Etobicoke-Lakeshore. "Schools are all about peacemaking right now . . . we don't want to promote violence, we don't want to promote fighting."
Not everyone is against the UFC promoting anti-bullying. Doug Ford, the councillor who supported the idea in the first place, saw the positive in letting the UFC promote anti-bullying in schools.
"A lot of these kids, their idols are athletes, be it in football, or a hockey athlete, or a UFC athlete," Ford said in a telephone interview. "If we can get the message through some of their idols, I think it's a good message."
In April, the UFC made a $129,000 donation to a community center in Toronto. They often visit schools and martial arts centers in event cities to talk about the dangers of bullying. Georges St. Pierre, the welterweight champ and Canada's most successful fighter, often discusses how bullying affected him.
The fact is that with stretched budgets, schools are smart to partner with other groups, like the NFL has done with their Play 60 program. Football is a violent sport that produces injuries like concussions, broken bones, paralysis and even death. That doesn't make the NFL's message of 60 minutes of physical activity or support for physical education invalid.
Every school should have the right to vet its own partners, but that means taking a closer look at MMA and its athletes before dismissing a partnership. If the UFC can help students deal with bullying, then school officials and politicians should open their mind before turning down worthwhile help.
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By The Associated Press

Alexey Sazonov / AFP - Getty Images
Russian opposition supporters protest in central Moscow on Monday after legislative elections that handed victory to Vladimir Putin's ruling party. Thousands of angry citizens took to the streets in Russia's capital and in St. Petersburg.
MOSCOW -- Several thousand people protested Monday night against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his party, which won the largest share of a parliamentary election in voting that observers said was rigged.
It was perhaps the largest opposition rally in years and ended with police detaining some of the activists. A group of several hundred marched toward the Central Elections Commission near the Kremlin, but were stopped by riot police and taken away in buses.
The total number of those detained was not immediately available.
Estimates of the number of protesters at the rally ranged from 5,000 to 10,000. They chanted "Russia without Putin" and accused his United Russia party of stealing votes.
United Russia took about 50 percent of Sunday's vote, a result that opposition politicians and election monitors said was inflated because of ballot stuffing and other vote fraud. It was a significant drop from the last election, when the party took 64 percent.
In practice,?the loss of seats in parliament appears to mean little; two of the three other parties winning seats have been reliable supporters of government legislation. But, it is a substantial symbolic blow to a party that had become virtually indistinguishable from the state itself.
It has also energized the opposition and poses a humbling challenge to the country's dominant figure in his drive to return to the presidency. Putin, who became prime minister in 2008 because of presidential term limits, will run for a third term in March and some opposition leaders saw the parliamentary election as a game-changer for what had been presumed to be Putin's easy stroll back to the Kremlin.
Also Monday, more than 400 Communist supporters gathered to express their indignation over the election, which some called the dirtiest in modern Russian history. The Communist Party finished second with about 20 percent of the vote.
"Even compared to the 2007 elections, violations by the authorities and the government bodies that actually control the work of all election organizations at all levels, from local to central, were so obvious and so brazen," said Yevgeny Dorovin, a member of the party's central committee.
Related story: Voters punish Putin; observers cite irregularities
Putin appeared subdued and glum even as he insisted at a Cabinet meeting Monday that the result "gives United Russia the possibility to work calmly and smoothly."
Although the sharp decline for United Russia could lead Putin and the party to try to portray the election as genuinely democratic, the wide reports of violations have undermined that attempt at spin.
Boris Nemtsov, a prominent figure among Russia's beleaguered liberal opposition, declared that the vote spelled the end of Putin's "honeymoon" with the nation and predicted that his rule will soon "collapse like a house of cards."
"He needs to hold an honest presidential election and allow opposition candidates to register for the race, if he doesn't want to be booed from Kamchatka to Kaliningrad," Nemtsov said on Ekho Moskvy radio.
Many Russians came to despise United Russia, seeing it as the engine of endemic corruption. The election showed voters that they have power despite what election monitors called a dishonest count.
"Yesterday, it was proven by these voters that not everything was fixed, that the result really matters," said Tiny Kox of the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly, part of an international election observer mission.
Other analysts suggested the vote was a wake-up call to Putin that he had lost touch with the country. In the early period of his presidency, Putin's appeal came largely from his man-of-the-people image: candid, decisive and without ostentatious tastes.
But, he seemed to lose some of the common touch, appearing in well-staged but increasingly preposterous heroic photo opportunities -- hunting a whale with a crossbow, fishing while bare-chested, and purportedly discovering ancient Greek artifacts while scuba-diving. And Russians grew angry at his apparent disregard -- and even encouragement -- of the country's corruption and massive income gap.
"People want Putin to go back to what he was in his first term -- decisive, dynamic, tough on oligarchs and sensitive to the agenda formed by society," said Sergei Markov, a prominent United Russia Duma member.
The vote "was a normal reaction of the population to the worsening social situation," once Kremlin-connected political analyst Gleb Pavlovsky was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
Only seven parties were allowed to field candidates for parliament this year, while the most vocal opposition groups were barred from the race. International monitors said the election administration lacked independence, most media were biased and state authorities interfered unduly at different levels.
"To me, this election was like a game in which only some players are allowed to compete," Heidi Tagliavini, the head of the observer mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said.
Tagliavini said that of the 150 polling stations where the counting was observed, "34 were assessed to be very bad."
Other than the Communist Party, the socialist Just Russia and the Liberal Democratic Party led by mercurial nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky are also expected to increase their representation in the Duma; both have generally voted with United Russia, and the Communists pose only token opposition.
Two liberal parties were in the running, but neither got the 7 percent of the national vote needed to win seats. Nemtsov's People's Freedom Party, one of the most prominent liberal parties, was denied participation for alleged violations in the required 45,000 signatures the party had submitted with its registration application.
About 60 percent of Russia's 110 million registered voters cast ballots, down from 64 percent four years ago.
Social media were flooded with messages reporting violations.
Many people reported seeing buses deliver groups of people to polling stations, with some of the buses carrying young men who looked like football fans, who often are associated with violent nationalism.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the U.S. has "serious concerns" about the elections.
Russia's only independent election monitoring group, Golos, which is funded by U.S. and European grants, has come under heavy official pressure in the past week. Golos' website was incapacitated by hackers on Sunday, and its director Lilya Shibanova and her deputy had their cell phone numbers, email and social media accounts hacked.
Also Monday, more than 400 Communist supporters gathered to express their indignation over the election, which some called the dirtiest in modern Russian history. The Communist Party finished second with about 20 percent of the vote.
"Even compared to the 2007 elections, violations by the authorities and the government bodies that actually control the work of all election organizations at all levels, from local to central, were so obvious and so brazen," said Yevgeny Dorovin, a member of the party's central committee.
More news and features from msnbc.com:
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? 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/05/9227108-thousands-protest-against-putin-in-moscow
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Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, speaks to supporters and volunteers during a rally Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011, in Manchester, N.H. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, speaks to supporters and volunteers during a rally Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011, in Manchester, N.H. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)
Republican presidential candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks at a town hall style event in the Staten Island borough of New York Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011. Gingrich praised GOP presidential rival Herman Cain for bringing optimism and big ideas to the 2012 campaign on Saturday. Polls show that Gingrich's candidacy has surged in recent weeks, with many showing him topping the Republican field. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)
Gloria Cain, left, blows a kiss to the crowd as she arrives with her husband, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, right, at an event Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011, in Atlanta. Cain announced he is suspending his campaign for president. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) ? With the implosion of Herman Cain's campaign amid accusations of adultery and sexual harassment, the once-crowded 2012 Republican presidential field appears to be narrowing to a two-man race between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.
GOP voters have one month before the leadoff Iowa caucuses. Gingrich is showing strength in the latest Iowa poll, while Romney is strong in New Hampshire, site of the first primary.
Romney has maintained a political network since his failed 2008 presidential bid, especially in New Hampshire. Gingrich, whose campaign nearly collapsed several months ago, is relying on his debate performances and the good will he built up with some conservatives as a congressional leader in the 1980s and 1990s.
Gingrich's efforts appear to be paying off in Iowa. A Des Moines Register poll released late Saturday found the former House speaker leading the GOP field with 25 percent support, ahead of Ron Paul at 18 percent and Romney at 16.
Cain's suspension of his campaign Saturday, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry's continued struggles to make headway with voters, have focused the party's attention on Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, and Gingrich, a one-time congressman from Georgia. They offer striking contrasts in personality, government experience and campaign organization.
Their political philosophies and differences are a bit harder to discern. Both men have changed their positions on issues such as climate change. And Gingrich, in particular, is known to veer into unusual territories, such as child labor practices.
Romney has said he differs with Gingrich on child labor laws. Gingrich recently suggested that children as young as nine should work as assistant school janitors, to earn money and learn work ethics.
Cain's announcement in Atlanta offered a possible opening for Romney or Gingrich to make a dramatic move in hopes of seizing momentum for the sprint to the Jan. 3 Iowa caucus. Neither man did. They appear willing to play things carefully and low-key for now.
At a town hall meeting in New York sponsored by tea party supporters, Gingrich declined to characterize the race as a direct contest between himself and Romney. Any of the remaining GOP contenders could stage a comeback before the Iowa caucuses, he said. "I'm not going to say that any of my friends can't suddenly surprise us," Gingrich said.
But once high-flying contenders such as Perry and Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota have not managed to bounce back so far, despite weeks of trying.
Cain's once-prospering campaign was undone by numerous allegations of sexual wrongdoing.
Gingrich, twice divorced and now married to a woman with whom he had an extramarital affair, has been the most obvious beneficiary of Cain's precipitous slide.
But Perry, Bachmann and possibly others are likely to make a play for Cain's anti-establishment tea party backing. Time is running short for them to establish themselves as the top alternative to Romney, who has long been viewed with suspicion by many conservatives.
___
Fouhy reported from New York.
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Contact: Sonia Armengou
sonia.armengou@irbbarcelona.org
34-934-037-255
Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona)
Barcelona, 1st December, 2011.- A study by researchers Ral Mndez, ICREA Research Professor at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) and Pilar Navarro at the IMIM (Institut de Recerca Hospital del Mar, Barcelona) describes a new reprogramming mechanism for the expression of genes responsible for turning a healthy cell into a tumor cell. In the study, published in this week's edition of Nature Medicine, the scientists have identified the protein CPEB4 as a "cellular orchestra conductor" that "activates" hundreds of genes associated with tumor growth.
"The peculiarity is that it would not only be the mutation of a specific gene that promotes tumor growth but the expression of a protein in an incorrect site that "triggers" hundreds of messenger molecules (mRNAs), which transmit gene information for the synthesis of proteins, without these genes being mutated. This process leads to the expression of many "normal" genes but in unsuitable amounts and times that more greatly resemble early embryonic developmental stages rather than the stages of adult organ development", explains Ral Mndez, an expert in the CPEB protein family. "This would be the case of tPA (tissue plasminogen activator), a protein that is not normally found in the healthy pancreas but that shows high expression in pancreatic tumors", clarifies Elena Ortiz-Zapater, the first author of the article, and Pilar Navarro.
Tumors are 80% smaller when CEPB4 is absent
One of the conclusions highlighted in the study is that in the tissues examined, pancreas and brain, CPEB4 is not detected in healthy cells but only in tumor ones. Thus inhibition of this protein would provide a highly specific anti-tumor treatment and with few adverse effects, "one of the main drawbacks of many cancer therapies", says Pilar Navarro, a researcher specialized in pancreatic cancer.
Using experiments involving human cancer cells in mice, these researchers have demonstrated that the decrease in CPEB4 levels in cancer cells reduces the size of tumors by up to 80%. Although the study is limited to two kinds of tumor, according to the co-authors, "given the effects observed in the tumors examined and the type of genes regulated by this mechanism, it is expected to be involved in many other types of cancer".
This study opens up avenues for new treatments for cancer, for which the researchers are designing and analyzing CPEB4 inhibitors of potential therapeutic interest. "The clinical applications are very promising, although intensive research is needed to identify inhibitory molecules and to test them in various models before determining their clinical potential and, in this case, their use in patients", warn Navarro and Mndez.
###
The study involved Francisco X. Real, at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncolgicas (CNIO) and Eduardo Eyras, ICREA researcher, both from the Department of Experimental and Health Sciences at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), together with Mar Iglesias and Francesc Alameda from the Pathology Service at Hospital del Mar.
Reference article:
Key contribution of CPEB4-mediated translational control to cancer progression.
Elena Ortiz-Zapater, David Pineda, Neus Martnez-Bosch, Gonzalo Fernndez-Miranda, Mar Iglesias, Francesc Alameda, Mireia Moreno, Carolina Eliscovic, Eduardo Eyras, Francisco X. Real, Ral Mndez and Pilar Navarro.
Nature Medicine (2011) doi:10.1038/nm.2540
?
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.
Contact: Sonia Armengou
sonia.armengou@irbbarcelona.org
34-934-037-255
Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona)
Barcelona, 1st December, 2011.- A study by researchers Ral Mndez, ICREA Research Professor at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) and Pilar Navarro at the IMIM (Institut de Recerca Hospital del Mar, Barcelona) describes a new reprogramming mechanism for the expression of genes responsible for turning a healthy cell into a tumor cell. In the study, published in this week's edition of Nature Medicine, the scientists have identified the protein CPEB4 as a "cellular orchestra conductor" that "activates" hundreds of genes associated with tumor growth.
"The peculiarity is that it would not only be the mutation of a specific gene that promotes tumor growth but the expression of a protein in an incorrect site that "triggers" hundreds of messenger molecules (mRNAs), which transmit gene information for the synthesis of proteins, without these genes being mutated. This process leads to the expression of many "normal" genes but in unsuitable amounts and times that more greatly resemble early embryonic developmental stages rather than the stages of adult organ development", explains Ral Mndez, an expert in the CPEB protein family. "This would be the case of tPA (tissue plasminogen activator), a protein that is not normally found in the healthy pancreas but that shows high expression in pancreatic tumors", clarifies Elena Ortiz-Zapater, the first author of the article, and Pilar Navarro.
Tumors are 80% smaller when CEPB4 is absent
One of the conclusions highlighted in the study is that in the tissues examined, pancreas and brain, CPEB4 is not detected in healthy cells but only in tumor ones. Thus inhibition of this protein would provide a highly specific anti-tumor treatment and with few adverse effects, "one of the main drawbacks of many cancer therapies", says Pilar Navarro, a researcher specialized in pancreatic cancer.
Using experiments involving human cancer cells in mice, these researchers have demonstrated that the decrease in CPEB4 levels in cancer cells reduces the size of tumors by up to 80%. Although the study is limited to two kinds of tumor, according to the co-authors, "given the effects observed in the tumors examined and the type of genes regulated by this mechanism, it is expected to be involved in many other types of cancer".
This study opens up avenues for new treatments for cancer, for which the researchers are designing and analyzing CPEB4 inhibitors of potential therapeutic interest. "The clinical applications are very promising, although intensive research is needed to identify inhibitory molecules and to test them in various models before determining their clinical potential and, in this case, their use in patients", warn Navarro and Mndez.
###
The study involved Francisco X. Real, at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncolgicas (CNIO) and Eduardo Eyras, ICREA researcher, both from the Department of Experimental and Health Sciences at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), together with Mar Iglesias and Francesc Alameda from the Pathology Service at Hospital del Mar.
Reference article:
Key contribution of CPEB4-mediated translational control to cancer progression.
Elena Ortiz-Zapater, David Pineda, Neus Martnez-Bosch, Gonzalo Fernndez-Miranda, Mar Iglesias, Francesc Alameda, Mireia Moreno, Carolina Eliscovic, Eduardo Eyras, Francisco X. Real, Ral Mndez and Pilar Navarro.
Nature Medicine (2011) doi:10.1038/nm.2540
?
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/2011-12/ifri-doa120111.php
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