Turks Pray for Victims of Plane Crash

Wreckage of the crashed passenger plane of the Atlasjet company is seen at the top of a mountain in southwestern Turkey, Friday, Nov. 30, 2007. The MD-83, carrying 50 passengers and seven crew members, took off from Istanbul around 1 a.m. local time and was headed to Isparta on a flight of about one hour. It went off the radar just before landing at the airport. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)

Thousands of people flocked to mosques in Isparta on Saturday to pray for the victims of a deadly plane crash that killed all 57 people on board.

Investigators, meanwhile, searched for the cause of the crash, while one technician was reported to suggest pilot error could have played a role.

The Atlasjet MD-83 was flying from Istanbul to Isparta in Turkey's southwest early Friday morning when it crashed, killing 50 passengers and seven crew members.

The weather and the visibility were good, officials said, but the aircraft suddenly disappeared from the radar a few minutes before it was supposed to land.

Military helicopters with thermal cameras spotted the wreckage on a hill about 7 miles away from the airport. Bodies strapped to seats, clothes and pieces of scrap metal were strewn across a large area.

Many shopowners in downtown Isparta closed their stores to attend prayers. Musa Akbay, a civil servant, came to a mosque in the city center, holding his 7-year-old daughter's hand.

"None of the dead are people that I knew. But I came here to pray for them," Akbay said.

Many attended funerals of some of the victims in Isparta, which lies north of a high mountain range along Turkey's Mediterannean coast. The population of the province of the same name is less than half a million.

Vahit Tuglaci, who lost a cousin in the disaster, said he still could not believe what happened. "We waited with some hope but believed he was dead when we saw him," Tuglaci said. He said he saw his cousin in a morgue.

Canser Unveren, who lost a friend, heard of the crash shortly after it happened.

"As soon as we heard of the crash, we started praying for salvation. But it did not happen," Unveren said.

Sefa Inan, honorary chair of the Association of Plane Technicians, said evidence suggests the crash was due to pilot error, daily Aksam newspaper reported.

"Probably it was flying too low. I think the head pilot realized the hill was there at the very last moment," he was quoted as saying by Aksam.

Inan was not involved in the investigation but he said he spoke with technicians who were involved in the plane's routine checks. He said he was told the plane had no technical problems.

A group of physicists who were working on a national nuclear project were among the victims.

But there was no reason to believe that terrorism or sabotage was the cause, said Ali Ariduru, head of Turkey's civil aviation authority. The crash site is far from where separatist Kurdish rebels, mostly known for hit-and-run attacks targeting soldiers, operate.

Investigators found the flight data and cockpit voice recorders, the civil aviation authority said Friday afternoon. The Sabah newspaper said the recorders were sent to United States for study.

Dogan news agency released a transcript of the conversation between the Atlasjet pilot and the Isparta control tower, but the exchange did not indicate any problem.

Atlasjet, a private airline established in 2001, operates regular flights inside Turkey and chartered flights to Europe and other foreign destinations.

In Renton, Wash., Boeing spokesman Jim Proulx said the company would provide technical assistance to help investigate the crash if invited by the Turkish authorities.

Technorati : North America, World, crash, plane

If the Shoe Fits, Wear It. If Not, Design One That Does

EVEN for the most dedicated shopper, finding just the right pair of shoes can be elusive. A store-to-store search - whether on the Web or at the mall - can take hours. Shoppers may think they've found the perfect pair, only to be stymied by a problem with fit, style or color.

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If you don't like the shoes you find in the stores, you can go to a Web site like Stevemadden.com and choose your own color, pattern, style and size.

It's not that retailers don't try, as the huge shoe sections in department stores like Saks and Nordstrom, and Web sites like Zappos and Shoes.com, attest. But for those with very individual or exacting tastes - and with money to spare - some Internet retailers offer design-it-yourself options in footwear. Customization is more common with athletic shoes, but fashion footwear is beginning to catch up.

Makers like Vans and Nike are among the companies that offer customized shoes, allowing both women and men to create their own look from existing styles, colors and materials.

Cale Valdez, a college student in Huntington, Calif., went to vans.com to find a memorable look for his wedding last month. He designed some red and black canvas slip-ons for the wedding party, including matching lace-ups for his father-in-law.

"My groomsmen had black tuxes and red vests, so we thought it would look great to have red shoes," he said of the slip-ons, which cost $40 a pair.

Nikeid.com, which attracts almost as many women as men, has customers who order hundreds of pairs. The hip-hop disc jockey known as Clark Kent, of Brooklyn, has designed 350 pairs of shoes on the site, including his favorite, a pair of purple, black and teal Air Force 1's, which cost him about $275.

"The biggest attraction is the ability to shock," he said. "You want a pair that people notice so they ask you: 'Where did you get those?'"

While customized sneakers are available on many athletic shoe Web sites, fashion shoes are harder, although not impossible, to find.

For women who are willing to spend a hefty sum, there is Tupli, started three years ago by two women who were leaving careers in banking.

"This is ideal for the woman who can imagine the perfect shoe but can't find it," said Kathy Myczowski, 34. She went into the individual shoe design business with Tamara Chubinidze, 26, who is from the Republic of Georgia, where such shoemaking is more prevalent and where Tupli's shoes are made.

Death in the Family

"This will be my last campaign," Booth Gardner said. "This will be the biggest fight of my career." He walked along the lane between the beach of driftwood and his compound of houses. The driftwood clotted the shore; it was the end of summer now, and the cove was still, but in winter massive branches and trunks churn up out of the water of Puget Sound. Bone-white roots clawed at the air on this late afternoon; Gardner's grandchildren climbed across them. His walk was a vigorous lurch. One foot twisted inward, one knee buckled. His torso keeled slightly with each step. He has Parkinson's. He was governor of Washington State for two terms in the 1980s and '90s. He is 71, and his last campaign is driven by his desire to kill himself. "I can't see where anybody benefits by my hanging around," he told me, while his blond grandchildren, sticks prodding, explored the water's edge.

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Katy Grannan for The New York Times

The Last Campaign When exhaustion overtakes him, Booth Gardner naps in the bed that he slept in as a child in one of his family's homes.

From the beach on Vashon Island, where Gardner spends much of his summers, not far from Seattle, he drove me to the island's town. His Lexus was cluttered with debris: a crushed soda can, a tattered magazine put out by a local pollster, an old plastic cup from McDonald's, a torn T-shirt, sunglasses missing a lens. Wearing a gray fleece, he led me into a simple restaurant with rustic décor. Full cheeks and green eyes impish, he chatted with the waitress and tried to start conversations with the people at tables around us. "You're not having dessert?" he asked a young couple immersed in each other. Almost everyone seemed to recognize him, and almost everyone was friendly - he'd been the state's most popular governor in recent decades. But it wasn't always clear how interested they were in talking. The young couple gazed back at him, perplexed. It was 14 years since he'd been in office.

"Why do this?" he asked, turning from the other tables toward me. "I want to be involved in public life. I was looking for an issue, and this one fell in my lap. One advantage I have in this thing is that people like me. The other" - his leprechaun eyes lost their glint; his fleshy cheeks seemed to harden, his lips to thin, his face to reshape itself almost into a square - "is that my logic is impeccable. My life, my death, my control."

Genes Responsible for Breast and Colorectal Cancers Discovered!

Breast and colorectal cancers are found to spread their tentacles enormously. In US, every year, near about 210,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed causing 40,000 deaths whereas 145,000 patients with colorectal cancer are diagnosed causing 56,000 deaths. Certainly, these figures are alarming.

Researchers after a finding got success when they discovered mutated genes responsible for these cancers. Accordingly, 189 genes discovered causing breast and colorectal cancers.

This finding can lead to develop further new improved treatments and far better methods to diagnose cancer. Moreover, provide a vision to find the cause of death from the cancers.

Tests were conducted on 11 breast and 11 colorectal tumors consisting of 13,000 genes, extracted from the patients during surgery.

Experts found, variation in breast tumors to be different from that of colorectal tumors. Even the tumor of the same organ has only five genes identical and the rest differs. Thereby, the treatment of a patient can be adjusted accordingly.

Processed meat: A cancer causing agent!

Processed meat is unsafe for human consumption as it might lead to cancer, according to a new study. The study published in the World Cancer Research Fund’s report titled “Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity and the Prevention of Cancer: a Global Perspective (2007)” has warned people all over the world with declaration that all people should immediately stop buying and eating processed meat products and all processed meat should be avoided for life.

In the project spanning for five years to study the link between diet and cancer, hundreds of cancer researchers participated in over 7,000 clinical studies. Chemical additives in processed meat are responsible for increasing the risk of various cancers, including colorectal cancer, breast cancer, prostrate cancer, leukemia, brain tumors, pancreatic cancer and many more.

Processed meat always contain sodium nitrite, the cancer causing chemical additive to elongate the shelf life of the products and to retain the bright red fresh looking colour of meat.

The report also recommends that consumers:

• avoid all sugary soft drinks for life
• exercise for at least 30 minutes a day
• get lean and fit without becoming underweight
• limit consumption of all meats (even fresh meat)
• Breastfeed all infants for their first six months, avoiding infant formula.

Defying the Signs of Old Age

Anti Aging

It is true; one of the most common fears in people is the fear of growing old. However, growing old or aging is a natural process. Dealing with the signs of aging, wrinkles, is nothing short of being a traumatic experience for many men and women. Often times in desperation, we resort to experimenting with various anti-aging methods as an antidote for slowing this aging process.

So is it possible to prevent the signs of time from leaving a permanent imprint on our skin and psyche? The answer is yes and no. Yes, we can delay the signs of aging by using effective anti-aging products available in the market. No, we can’t prevent time from leaving a sign of its passage.

How should you initiate this process of prevention? Easy. Start by finding out all the anti aging options (products, medicines, gadgets etc) available in the market. Compare their usefulness and find a treatment which has been referred to you by friends, relatives or colleagues or your doctor. These recommendations can help you to make an informed choice, and probably assist you to get the desired results from using these products.

To read more on how you can delay aging, watch this space.

Melatonin promises to keep you younger

Live longer and younger! Nothing surprising, if this years old blessing soon comes true with experts finding another clue to halt your aging process.


Interestingly, to access this aging-fighter you won’t have to go anywhere for body produces it itself. The chemical called, melatonin is a hormone naturally produced by the human body, particularly during darkness that helps slowing down aging process.

However, exposure to excessive artificial lighting may hamper its production. Proving its anti-aging properties this time experts stated that melatonin’s antioxidant effects neutralized inflammation and oxidation of cells, and increased the mice’s life spans.

Must be noted here that this is not for the first time that anti-aging properties of melatonin have been exposed, as prior to this also studies have come out showing that it works like an antioxidant, removing from the blood the free radicals that have been associated with aging.

Being eternally young; a near future possibility?

Science fictions have always imagined characters that wish to remain eternally young. These characters are often depicted as villains as the price of their wish often comes at cost of humanity, has been general theme of this sci-fi movies and stories.
However there is high probablity in near future that anti-aging drugs will become a reality. People will now be able to slow their biological clocks simply by taking a pill.
Mitochondria are present in every cell of our body, their primary function is to convert glucose into chemical energy — a process that releases DNA-damaging free radicals. As this damage accumulates, mitochondria start malfunctioning which is main reason for aging.
It’s a controversial proposal, but not at all crazy! David Sinclair and Lenny Guarente of Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, a fledgling biotechnology company say sirutin hold the key to the disease of aging.The company is currently testing a resveratrol derivative in people with diabetes; if it’s successful it could lead to a start of a new age in human health. Earlier resveratrol which is found in garpe leaves had helped extending lifespan of mice treating diabetes and obesity in them.