VLT finds fastest rotating star

Monday, December 5, 2011

An international team of astronomers has been using ESO's Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile, to make a survey of the heaviest and brightest stars in the Tarantula Nebula, in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Among the many brilliant stars in this stellar nursery the team has spotted one, called VFTS 102, that is rotating at more than two million kilometres per hour ? more than three hundred times faster than the Sun and very close to the point at which it would be torn apart due to centrifugal forces. VFTS 102 is the fastest rotating star known to date.

The astronomers also found that the star, which is around 25 times the mass of the Sun and about one hundred thousand times brighter, was moving through space at a significantly different speed from its neighbours.

"The remarkable rotation speed and the unusual motion compared to the surrounding stars led us to wonder if this star had had an unusual early life. We were suspicious." explains Philip Dufton (Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK), lead author of the paper presenting the results.

This difference in speed could imply that VFTS 102 is a runaway star -- a star that has been ejected from a double star system after its companion exploded as a supernova. This idea is supported by two further clues: a pulsar and an associated supernova remnant in its vicinity.

The team has developed a possible back story for this very unusual star. It could have started life as one component of a binary star system. If the two stars were close, gas from the companion could have streamed over and in the process the star would have spun faster and faster. This would explain one unusual fact ? why it is rotating so fast. After a short lifetime of about ten million years, the massive companion would have exploded as a supernova ? which could explain the characteristic gas cloud known as a supernova remnant found nearby. The explosion would also have led to the ejection of the star and could explain the third anomaly ? the difference between its speed and that of other stars in the region. As it collapsed, the massive companion would have turned into the pulsar that is observed today, and which completes the solution to the puzzle.

Although the astronomers cannot yet be sure that this is exactly what happened, Dufton concludes "This is a compelling story because it explains each of the unusual features that we've seen. This star is certainly showing us unexpected sides of the short, but dramatic lives of the heaviest stars."

###

ESO: http://www.eso.org

Thanks to ESO for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/115721/VLT_finds_fastest_rotating_star

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Romney, Gingrich proceed carefully in GOP showdown (The Arizona Republic)

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Expelled Iran diplomats leave Britain (Reuters)

TEHRAN/LONDON (Reuters) ? All Iranian diplomats left Britain on Friday, expelled in response to protesters storming the British embassy in Tehran, hardening a confrontation between Tehran and the West over its nuclear program.

In Iran, crowds chanted "Death to Britain" at Tehran University, and a militia linked to the storming of the embassy prepared to greet the returning diplomats as heroes. A hardline cleric denounced the U.N. Security Council and European Union for backing Britain following the embassy storming.

But President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei remained silent, perhaps reflecting unease within the faction-riven leadership about an incident likely to deepen Iran's international isolation.

Protesters stormed two British diplomatic compounds on Tuesday, smashing windows, torching a car and burning the British flag in protest against new sanctions imposed by London.

The incident followed accusations from Washington of an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador and a report from the U.N. nuclear watchdog suggesting Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons, all contributing to increased diplomatic isolation for Tehran in recent months.

"I can confirm that, earlier this afternoon, all diplomatic staff of the Iranian Embassy in London took off from Heathrow airport," a British Foreign Office spokesman said.

After the embassy storming, Foreign Secretary William Hague announced that Britain was closing its embassy in Tehran, ordered the closure of the Iranian embassy in London and gave all Iranian diplomats 48 hours to leave Britain.

Hague said the assault could not have happened without the consent of Iranian authorities.

The Iranian diplomats slipped away quietly. The green, white and red Iranian flag still flew over the Iranian embassy in west London that was the scene of a dramatic six-day siege in 1980 when gunmen seized 21 hostages, two of whom they killed.

Across the street, a dozen protesters opposed to Iran's government chanted "Free Iran" and urged "terrorists" to go home. A few police officers stood guard.

Western powers suspect Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons but Iran insists its program is peaceful.

Diplomacy has come to a boil after a report in November by the U.N. watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency suggested Iran has worked on a nuclear bomb program. The United States and Israel have not ruled out military strikes.

REMORSE

Britain's Ambassador to Iran, Dominick Chilcott, said hardliners in the Iranian establishment may have thought confrontation would rally Iranians, but miscalculated how strong the response to the embassy storming would be.

"They probably didn't expect us to send home the Iranian embassy in London and, reading between the lines, you can see in the way they have responded to that move, some remorse in having provoked it," Chilcott told the BBC.

The closure of the embassies, by cutting off a channel of communication between Britain and Iran, complicates the search for a diplomatic solution to the nuclear dispute.

"Having this tension between Iran and Europe will make those negotiations a lot harder," said Adam Hug, policy director of the Foreign Policy Centre, a London think-tank. "It does make the risk of conflict slightly more plausible."

France, Germany and the Netherlands recalled their ambassadors from Tehran for consultations as a protest against the storming of the British compounds.

The EU added 180 Iranian people and entities to its sanctions list on Thursday and laid out plans for a possible embargo on Iranian oil, the lifeblood of the Iranian economy.

The United Nations Security Council said it "condemned in the strongest terms" the attack, although veto-wielder Russia made clear it saw no need for more sanctions.

ROTTEN ROPE

In Tehran, cleric Ahmad Khatami denounced the EU and Security Council to worshippers who chanted "Death to Britain."

"If you have just a bit of wisdom, you won't tie your rope to the rotten rope of Britain," he said.

Increasing tensions with the world's fifth biggest oil exporter pushed up global oil prices despite concerns of an economic downturn in the West. Brent crude rose towards $110 a barrel on Friday from a Thursday close of $108.99.

Iran's culture ministry banned foreign media from covering anti-British pro-government protests in Tehran, especially rallies "in front of the British Embassy and the Qolhak compound unless authorized in advance," the ministry said in a statement.

Witnesses reported a heavy presence of police at Ferdowsi square, where the British embassy is located.

"Life is normal in the area but there are many police officers in the area," said a witness who asked not to be named.

The 135-year-old embassy residence was severely damaged in the onslaught. The ornate building at the centre of the complex has changed little since it hosted a dinner between Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Britain's Winston Churchill during the 1943 Tehran conference.

One Western diplomat who visited it on Thursday said priceless oil paintings had been slashed and protesters had cut out the face of a portrait of Queen Victoria. There were no reports of harm to staff.

The semi-official Fars news agency reported on Wednesday that 11 hardline protesters detained for storming the British compounds had been released.

Iranian diplomats expelled from London were due to arrive in Tehran in the early hours of Saturday and the hardline Basij militia said it would have a welcoming committee for them at the International Imam Khomeini Airport outside the capital.

Iran's Foreign Ministry expressed regret over the embassy invasion, which it said was a spontaneous overflowing of anger during a peaceful protest by students. Britain says there must have been at least tacit approval by the ruling establishment.

The Iranian reformist website Sahamnews issued a statement by a group of students at the Islamic Azad university condemning the attack and saying the conservative hardliners did not represent the view of most young Iranians.

"Misusing the name of student is something we cannot easily let pass. There is no connection between what these people did and the honorable and sensible Iranian students," it said.

Parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani, a long-time rival to Ahmadinejad, condemned the U.N. Security Council reaction to the embassy storming as "hasty" and "devious."

(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi; Writing by Parisa Hafezi and Robin Pomeroy; Editing by Peter Graff and Jon Hemming)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111202/wl_nm/us_iran_britain

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How Zynga Stacks Up To Japan's Social Gaming Giant, GREE (Hint ...

With Zynga launching its IPO?road show?today, all eyes are on the social gaming goliath Mark Pincus built on the Web. But the future of social gaming, as with so many things these days, is mobile, where Zynga admits (in its S-1) that it has ?limited experience.? All you have to do, however, is look to Japan?s social mobile gaming companies like GREE and DeNA to see how much more lucrative social gaming could be once it goes mobile. I was just in Japan this week for a TechCrunch Tokyo conference, where I interviewed GREE founder and CEO?Yoshikazu Tanaka?(see video clips below). GREE is publicly traded in Japan with a market cap of about $7.6 billion, so we can compare its financials to Zynga.

Zynga has many more users worldwide than Gree (227 million monthly actives for Zynga versus about 27 million for GREE), but GREE?s economics are much more favorable. ?GREE?s revenues are actually higher than Zynga?s (about $400 million in the September quarter versus $300 million for Zynga) and it is much more profitable. The slides in this post, which I obtained from Gumi, ?a hot Japanese mobile gaming startup, illustrate the stark difference. ?The slide below compares quarterly sales between Zynga, GREE, and DeNa (it is missing the last two quarters for Zynga, which would keep going up along the same trajectory at $279 million for June and $307 million for September). GREE expects annual sales to hit $1.7 billion this fiscal year.

The slide at the top of this post, though, is the real eye-opener. It shows how much more profitable mobile social gaming is in Japan than Zynga?s predominantly Web-based social gaming. ?Again, the slide misses the last two quarters for Zynga, when profits were $1.4 million and $12.5 million, respectively. ?Both GREE and DeNa are smoking Zynga on profits, with about $200 million each in the last quarter.

How can this be when Zynga has so many more users than either of the Japanese companies? Only 6.7 million of those 227 million monthly active ?users (54 million daily active) are paying customers. For mobile social games, at least in Japan, it is much easier to extract revenue from users (mostly through the sale of virtual goods, leveling up, etc). The monthly average revenue per user for both GREE and DeNa is between $4 and $5, which is more than three times as high as Zynga?s (see slide below). ?Those are averages across all users. ?The average among paying users is about $50 in Japan, with some addicted users paying twice that much.

GREE shifted from PC games to mobile four years ago. Zynga has a few popular mobile games already, and it is a major growth area for the company. ?But can they successfully make the shift? ?They have big success already,? notes Gumi CEO Hironao Kunimitsu, ?so they think their way is perfect.?As a social gaming company, Zynga is most successful. Most of their gaming is for the PC.? But mobile is the future of the Internet.?

The caveat to all of these numbers is that so far they are true only for the Japanese market, which may or may not foreshadow what will happen in the rest of the world.?If they are a precursor of things to come, then Zynga?s future profits could very well hinge on the extent to which it can bring its social games to mobile. Bulls might want to buy Zynga at the IPO. ?Bears might want to invest in GREE.

FACT CHECK: GOP field flubs, big and small

Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks at Tommy's Ham House, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2011, in Greenville , S.C. (AP Photo/ Richard Shiro)

Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks at Tommy's Ham House, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2011, in Greenville , S.C. (AP Photo/ Richard Shiro)

Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks at Tommy's Ham House, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2011, in Greenville , S.C. (AP Photo/ Richard Shiro)

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain speaks during his first stop of an Ohio bus tour at the Cincinnati Marriott North in West Chester, Ohio, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2011. Cain claimed Wednesday that he has experienced a "groundswell of positive support" from backers who are ignoring the most recent charge of a 13-year extramarital affair. (AP Photo/The Enquirer, Tony Jones) NO SALES, MANDATORY CREDIT

FILE - In this Oct. 4, 2011 file photo, Republican presidential candidate former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks at a town hall meeting in The Villages, Fla. While others focus on Iowa's caucuses or New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary, Mitt Romney is set to spend the day in Florida _ and it's the only early voting state he's visiting this week, just five weeks before voting begins. (AP Photo/Reinhold Matay, File)

GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) ? Newt Gingrich didn't know when he would take office if he wins the presidency. Rick Perry got the voting age and the date of Election Day wrong. Herman Cain didn't realize the president does not sign amendments to the Constitution.

In ways large and small, Republican presidential hopefuls are proving on multiple occasions to be "factually challenged," as Gingrich rather haughtily described a rival, despite getting some things wrong himself.

Campaigns are long and tough, candidates are often tired and flubs happen. But they are adding up and at some point could give Republican voters pause as they look for the candidate best able to take on the highly polished ? though hardly factually infallible ? President Barack Obama.

In submitting to what is, in effect, America's toughest job interview, there may be only so much leeway in getting matters of current affairs and history plain wrong.

Frequent flubber Michele Bachmann's suggestion many months ago that the Revolutionary battles of Lexington and Concord took place in New Hampshire was an opening shot, of sorts, in a volley of misfires by the candidates. Those battles were fought in Massachusetts in 1775.

On Wednesday, she offered another: She would support the United States shutting down its embassy in Tehran ? but there is no U.S. Embassy in Iran's capital.

Never mind the facts, her top spokeswoman said. "Congresswoman Bachmann is a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence and is fully aware that we do not have an embassy in Iran and have not had one since 1980," Alice Stewart said in a statement.

It's the latest but hardly the worst.

Cain promoted Chile's retirement system as one that gives workers the option of having private accounts, when in fact they have no choice. Mitt Romney accused Obama of "peacetime spending binges" as if there were no wars going on. Bachmann accused Obama of canceling a Canadian pipeline project that has only been delayed.

On Wednesday, Gingrich told voters packed into Tommy's Country Ham House in Greenville, S.C., that he would sign legislation repealing health care and Wall Street overhauls when he takes office on Jan. 21, 2013.

"My intent will be to ask the new Congress to stay in session when they are sworn in on Jan. 3 and to pass ? and hold at the desk until I'm sworn in on the 21st ? to pass the repeal of Obamacare and the repeal of Dodd-Frank and the repeal of Sarbanes-Oxley so that I can sign them on the 21st," Gingrich told the packed restaurant.

One problem: the Constitution that Gingrich constantly cites during his presidential campaign says the transition of power after an election takes place on Jan. 20.

Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond said Gingrich would assume powers at noon on Jan. 20, 2013, following the 20th Amendment of the Constitution. Because that day is a Sunday, the Inauguration's festivities would be scheduled on Jan. 21 of that year. Ronald Reagan followed a similar schedule for his second inaugural on Monday, Jan. 21, 1985.

Even so, Gingrich was wrong to say "I'm sworn in on the 21st."

A day earlier, Texas Gov. Rick Perry suggested the voting age is 21 and got the date wrong for Election Day.

"Those of you that will be 21 by November the 12th, I ask for your support and your vote," he told students at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire.

The voting age is 18. And New Hampshire is scheduled to be the first state in the nation to host a Republican presidential primary on Jan. 10; the general election is scheduled for Nov. 6, 2012.

Cain said he would back an amendment to the Constitution to ban abortion.

"If we can get the necessary support and it comes to my desk, I'll sign it," he told the Christian Broadcasting Network.

Except presidents don't sign amendments. Congress passes them and the states ratify them. The president could champion them, but the Constitution doesn't give him or her any formal role.

Since the campaign's start, each candidate has had a turn explaining errors as either the side effects of an exhausting schedule or simple foot-in-mouth syndrome. Under the intense media scrutiny, each misstep or error draws questions whether each candidate is up for the job.

Romney, too, stepped in it. The former Massachusetts governor said Obama engaged in "one of the biggest peacetime spending binges in American history." He overlooked the United States' role in conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

Yet not all errors are created equal, said Eric Dezenhall, an aide in the Reagan administration and now an image consultant who has worked with everyone from Hollywood stars to business moguls.

"The key factor in whether a gaffe catches on is whether or not it validates a pre-existing prejudice," he said.

"When Perry says that the voting age is 21, it validates the pre-existing suspicion that he's not in command of the basics," he said. "When Newt or Obama say something that is either misguided or incorrect, it doesn't resonate because everybody knows they are smart guys, so they get a break."

And it's not as if Obama hasn't had his doozies. For instance, Obama said during the 2008 campaign that he had visited 57 states. The United States only has 50.

"The flubs that stick are those that fit with a storyline about the candidate," said Doug Hattaway, a Democratic consultant who helped Hillary Rodham Clinton's 2008 presidential bid. "Gingrich isn't a flubber. He's known for being full of himself and making wacky statements, not flubbing the facts. So the misstatements are less likely to stick to him."

And voters might not care about factual details, Hattaway said.

"Best case of that is George W. Bush, who couldn't pass a civics quiz to save his life. Emotional intelligence is more important in politics than factual knowledge," Hattaway said.

Gingrich might be playing that to his own political advantage.

Before he seemed to reschedule the constitutional transition of power, he criticized Bachmann for stretching the facts about his record on abortion.

"Some people are just factually challenged and it's unfortunate," Gingrich told reporters. "In the eyes of a teacher, occasionally I'd have a student who couldn't figure out where things were, or what things were, or what the right date was. When that happens, you feel sorry that they're so factually challenged."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2011-12-01-Candidate%20Flubs/id-57bb6f92c55e4dbda968b05d3314e236

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Senate rejects, for now, extending payroll tax cut (AP)

WASHINGTON ? The Senate on Thursday sidetracked rival plans to extend a Social Security payroll tax cut, in dueling votes that pave the way for negotiations on a compromise on a core component of President Barack Obama's jobs program.

First, Republicans defeated Obama's plan to extend the payroll tax cut through the end of next year while also making it more generous for workers.

Minutes later, in a vote that exposed rare divisions among Senate Republicans, more than two dozen of the GOP's 47 lawmakers also voted to kill an alternative plan backed by their powerful leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, to renew an existing 2 percentage point payroll tax cut.

Many Republicans and even some Democrats say the payroll tax cut hasn't worked to boost jobs and is too costly with the federal deficit requiring the government to borrow 36 cents of every dollar it spends.

The defeat of the competing plans came as House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said for the first time that renewing the payroll tax cut would boost the lagging economy, a view many in his party don't share. Boehner also promised compromise on a renewal of long-term jobless benefits through the end of 2012.

The payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits are at the center of a costly, politically-charged year-end agenda in which Democrats seem poised to prevail in renewing a tax cut that many Republicans back only reluctantly. But Republicans are insisting ? in a switch from last year ? that the payroll tax cut and jobless benefits be paid for by cutting spending.

Both parties are seeking the political high ground as next year's elections loom, with Democrats accusing Republicans of siding with the rich, and Republicans countering that Democrats were taxing small business owners who create jobs.

The first payroll tax plan to fall was a Democratic measure that was the centerpiece of Obama's jobs package announced in September. It would cut the Social Security payroll tax from 6.2 percent to 3.1 percent next year and also extend the cut to employers, with its hefty $265 billion cost paid for by slapping a 3.25 percent surtax on income exceeding $1 million.

Republicans and a handful of Democrats combined to kill the measure on a 51-49 tally that fell well short of the 60 required under Senate rules. For the first time, a Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, voted to support the millionaires' surcharge.

The White House issued a statement by Obama that accused Republicans of voting to raise taxes on 160 million people because they "refused to ask a few hundred thousand millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share." The statement didn't mention the GOP alternative.

In a surprising result, Democrats and more than two dozen Republicans voted 78-20 to kill the $120 billion GOP alternative that would have simply extended the existing 2 percentage point payroll tax cut, financed by freezing federal workers' pay through 2015 and reducing the government bureaucracy.

"Wouldn't we be better off using the proceeds of these reductions in spending to reduce the debt and deficit," said Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Republican opponents "insist on helping the very wealthy while turning their back on the middle class," while another member of the leadership, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Republicans were in full-blown retreat just days after Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said on "Fox News Sunday" that "the payroll tax holiday has not stimulated job creation. We don't think that is a good way to do it."

On Thursday, however, Boehner disagreed.

"I don't think there's any question that the payroll tax relief, in fact, helps the economy," Boehner said. "You're allowing more Americans, frankly, every working American, to keep more of their money in their pocket. Frankly, that's a good thing."

Meanwhile, House Republicans readied legislation of their own that aides said likely would include the tax cut extension as well as renewed benefits for long-term victims of the worst recession in decades and a painfully slow recovery.

Boehner made clear that all costs must be paid for, and said higher taxes were a non-starter.

Thursday's votes indicated there was lots of reluctance among Republicans to renew the costly payroll tax cut, which even some Democrats said hasn't much helped the economy.

"I can't find many people who even know that they're getting it, okay?" said Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who opposed both plans. "So with that being said, we're going to double down on something that we thought should have worked that didn't work."

With unemployment hovering around 9 percent nationally, Obama urged Congress in September to renew and expand the Social Security payroll tax cut for workers that he signed a year ago, and called as well for an extension of benefits that can cover up to 99 weeks for the long-term jobless.

State unemployment insurance programs guarantees coverage for six months, but as in previous downturns, Congress approved additional benefits in 2008. Expiration of those payments would mean an average loss of $296 in weekly income for 1.8 million households in January, and a total of 6 million throughout 2012.

On the tax cut extension, Republicans prefer a simple one-year continuation of the existing law, jettisoning Obama's call to deepen the cut to 3.1 percentage points on workers' first $106,800 in earnings, while expanding it to cut in half employers' Social Security contributions for their $5 million in payroll.

To pay for the measure, Senate Republicans proposed freezing federal workers' pay through 2015 ? extending a two-year-freeze recommended by Obama ? and reducing the bureaucracy by 200,000 jobs through attrition.

The Democratic plan would give a worker earning $50,000 a more than $1,500 tax cut; the GOP plan would provide a $1,000 tax cut for such an earner. A two-income family making $200,000 would reap a $6,000 tax cut under the Democratic plan and a $4,000 tax cut under the GOP version.

___

Associated Press writer Donna Cassata contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111202/ap_on_go_co/us_congress_payroll_tax

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NYC recommends AIDS drugs for any person with HIV

NEW YORK (AP) ? New York City health officials said Thursday they are recommending that any person with HIV be offered AIDS drugs as soon as they are diagnosed with the virus, an aggressive move that has been shown to prolong life and stem the spread of the disease.

Standard practice has been to have patients put off the expensive pill regimen ? which can cost up to $15,000 a year in the United States ? until the immune system weakens.

But city Health Commissioner Thomas Farley said recent studies have shown that the benefits of early treatment, combined with education and testing, appears to be a promising strategy for countering the epidemic.

"I'm more optimistic now than I've ever been about this epidemic that we can drive our new rates down to zero or close to it ? eventually. I don't know how soon," Farley said in an interview Wednesday.

More than 110,000 people in New York City are infected with HIV, more than in any other U.S. city. San Francisco, which had more than 18,000 people living with HIV, made a similar recommendation in 2010.

New York City health officials said the new recommendation could initially help about 3,000 people get on medications. About 66,000 New Yorkers living with HIV that the Health Department tracks are being effectively treated with AIDS drugs, they said. But they said it was difficult to estimate how many people would eventually need the medications.

Some doctors agree with the Department of Health that it is time to update the guidelines for initiating AIDS drug treatment.

"The New York City health department is a little bit ahead of the curve. In my opinion, the rest of the country will follow and I think it will be pretty quick," said Dr. Michael Saag of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and past chairman of the HIV Medicine Association.

The standard measure of the CD4 count ? a way to measure the strength of the immune system ? is an outdated trigger for therapy, a relic from research on early antiretroviral drugs, Saag said.

"It's anachronism. It's old school. It's yesterday," Saag said. "I agree completely with the New York City health department."

Saag said the cost questions are very important because a brand-name drug can retail for $1,200 to $1,600 per month.

"For sure, they're very expensive drugs and we should be careful about that," he said, though he added that the medications are going generic so costs should come down.

City health officials said they anticipated that the cost for expanding the use of AIDS drugs would be covered by private insurance or by the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, a $270 million program for the uninsured or underinsured that is partially funded through federal dollars.

The health officials said they expect the benefits over the long term would far outweigh the initial costs because there would be fewer hospitalizations and new HIV cases.

"There will be some increasing costs over the short term," said Farley. "But over the long term, it's absolutely the right thing for the epidemic."

HIV experts are split about whether early therapy should be recommended or optional. Besides the high costs, the pills have side effects from nausea to liver damage. Patients unwilling to take them regularly for life could develop drug resistance.

A panel that recently updated U.S. guidelines was divided evenly, with half favoring starting therapy early for everyone and half regarding an early start as elective.

But there's growing evidence that untreated HIV can lead to cancers and heart disease. What's more, antiretroviral drugs are safer, have fewer side effects and work better than they did in the past. New research also indicates that people live better, healthier lives and their partners do as well when they get early treatment.

The new research cited by the city's Health Department in making its recommendations includes a nine-country study whose preliminary results were announced earlier this year and showed that earlier treatment meant patients were 96 percent less likely to spread the virus to their uninfected partners.

Dr. Moupali Das, the director of research at the San Francisco Department of Health HIV/AIDS Epidemiology Section, said its surveillance data indicated that physicians were treating their HIV patients early even before the city recommended doing so. She said the average amount of time from diagnosis to having no virus in the blood went from 32 months in 2004 to eight months in 2008.

"That reflects that the newer medications are more potent and efficacious, and the doctors were likely initiating them earlier," she said.

___

AP Medical Writer Carla K. Johnson contributed from Chicago.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-12-01-AIDS%20Prevention/id-686c831242734d63a48ef111f7e954ad

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