Study questions kidney cancer treatment in elderly

In a stunning example of when treatment might be worse than the disease, a large review of Medicare records finds that older people with small kidney tumors were much less likely to die over the next five years if doctors monitored them instead of operating right away.

Even though nearly all of these tumors turned out to be cancer, they rarely proved fatal. And surgery roughly doubled patients' risk of developing heart problems or dying of other causes, doctors found.

After five years, 24 percent of those who had surgery had died, compared to only 13 percent of those who chose monitoring. Just 3 percent of people in each group died of kidney cancer.

The study only involved people 66 and older, but half of all kidney cancers occur in this age group. Younger people with longer life expectancies should still be offered surgery, doctors stressed.

The study also was observational — not an experiment where some people were given surgery and others were monitored, so it cannot prove which approach is best. Yet it offers a real-world look at how more than 7,000 Medicare patients with kidney tumors fared. Surgery is the standard treatment now.

"I think it should change care" and that older patients should be told "that they don't necessarily need to have the kidney tumor removed," said Dr. William Huang of New York University Langone Medical Center. "If the treatment doesn't improve cancer outcomes, then we should consider leaving them alone."

He led the study and will give results at a medical meeting in Orlando, Fla., later this week. The research was discussed Tuesday in a telephone news conference sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology and two other cancer groups.

In the United States, about 65,000 new cases of kidney cancer and 13,700 deaths from the disease are expected this year. Two-thirds of cases are diagnosed at the local stage, when five-year survival is more than 90 percent.

However, most kidney tumors these days are found not because they cause symptoms, but are spotted by accident when people are having an X-ray or other imaging test for something else, like back trouble or chest pain.

Cancer experts increasingly question the need to treat certain slow-growing cancers that are not causing symptoms — prostate cancer in particular. Researchers wanted to know how life-threatening small kidney tumors were, especially in older people most likely to suffer complications from surgery.

They used federal cancer registries and Medicare records from 2000 to 2007 to find 8,317 people 66 and older with kidney tumors less than 1.5 inches wide.

Cancer was confirmed in 7,148 of them. About three-quarters of them had surgery and the rest chose to be monitored with periodic imaging tests.

After five years, 1,536 had died, including 191 of kidney cancer. For every 100 patients who chose monitoring, 11 more were alive at the five-year mark compared to the surgery group. Only 6 percent of those who chose monitoring eventually had surgery.

Furthermore, 27 percent of the surgery group but only 13 percent of the monitoring group developed a cardiovascular problem such as a heart attack, heart disease or stroke. These problems were more likely if doctors removed the entire kidney instead of just a part of it.

The results may help doctors persuade more patients to give monitoring a chance, said a cancer specialist with no role in the research, Dr. Bruce Roth of Washington University in St. Louis.

Some patients with any abnormality "can't sleep at night until something's done about it," he said. Doctors need to say, "We're not sticking our head in the sand, we're going to follow this" and can operate if it gets worse.

One of Huang's patients — 81-year-old Rhona Landorf, who lives in New York City — needed little persuasion.

"I was very happy not to have to be operated on," she said. "He said it's very slow growing and that having an operation would be worse for me than the cancer."

Landorf said her father had been a doctor, and she trusts her doctors' advice. Does she think about her tumor? "Not at all," she said.

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Online:

Kidney cancer info: http://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/kidney-cancer

and http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/kidney

Study: http://gucasym.org

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Stock index futures point to slightly higher start

LONDON (Reuters) - Stock index futures pointed to a slightly higher open on Wall Street on Wednesday, with futures for the S&P 500, the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq 100 up 0.1-0.2 percent at 0958 GMT (4.58 a.m EST).

European shares were slightly lower, although they remained near the top of a six-day trading range. French bank Societe Generale sank 3.7 percent after it unveiled a bigger-than-expected quarterly loss.

U.S. President Barack Obama said in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday he backs higher taxes for the wealthy and a $50 billion spending plan to create jobs by rebuilding degraded roads and bridges.

The U.S. Commerce Dept. releases U.S. retail sales data at 1330 GMT. It was expected to show a 0.1 percent rise in January, slowing from a 0.5 percent increase in December as consumers eyed smaller paychecks on the back of a recent tax increase.

Business inventories data for December, due at 1500 GMT, are expected to show a rise of 0.3 percent, a repeat of the November increase.

Comcast Corp clinched full control of NBC Universal for $16.7 billion on Tuesday, the latest in a series of deals that have taken the cable operator from humble roots in Tupelo, Mississippi, to Manhattan's iconic Rockerfeller Center.

The group is due to unveil fourth-quarter results before the market open, with earnings per share seen at $0.53 from $0.47 one year earlier.

Networking equipment maker, Cisco Systems , is expected to report a $0.01 increase in its quarterly earnings per share, with corporate North America and parts of Europe showing signs of improvement. The results are due after the market close.

Chip-maker Nvidia is also among companies due to report quarterly results.

Clearwire Corp , the wireless service provider that both Sprint Nextel S.N and Dish Network DISH.O want to buy, said on Tuesday that it would need Sprint financing to keep afloat up to the end of the year.

Asset manager Legg Mason Inc is preparing to name its interim head, Joseph Sullivan, as its permanent chief executive, two people familiar with the matter said, as the company turns to a sales chief to stop an outflow of funds.

BlackRock Inc named Morgan Stanley MS.N banker and long-time financial advisor Gary Shedlin as its next chief financial officer, to succeed Ann Marie Petach.

Yahoo Inc Chief Executive Marissa Mayer said the company's search partnership with Microsoft Corp was not delivering the market share gains or the revenue boost that it should.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> closed 47.46 points higher, or 0.34 percent, at 14,018.70 on Tuesday. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 2.42 points, or 0.16 percent, at 1,519.43. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 5.51 points, or 0.17 percent, at 3,186.49.

(Reporting by Francesco Canepa; editing by Patrick Graham)

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India Ink: Lost and Found at the Kumbh Mela

ALLAHABAD, Uttar Pradesh— Most people know the heart-sinking feeling of losing someone in a crowded place. Imagine the feeling of being lost at the largest gathering of humanity in the world, the Kumbh Mela.

It’s a scene so dramatic, and so common, that it’s a theme in many Bollywood movies — families who attend the Kumbh are separated and then reunited decades later.

Pranmati Pandey, a middle-aged woman from Bihar, knows the experience well. The mother of four was separated from her family on Sunday morning in the tide of an estimated 30 million people who gathered for the auspicious bathing day. Late on Sunday night she sat huddled with hundreds of other people, mostly women, who had also been separated from their friends and family.

“I just looked away from my family to give rice to the poor people on the road,” Mrs. Panday said, too exhausted from the day to cry. “When I turned around they were gone.” She wandered around for a few hours before a benevolent stranger took her to the police.

Every 12  years, an enormous pop-up city is erected on a flood plain, where the Ganges, the Yamuna, and the mythical Saraswati rivers merge.  Organizers say up to 80 million people are likely to attend the six-week event.  Though there is not an official estimate of the crowds yet, the police and organizers say that on Feb. 10, the largest bathing day, the number of people separated from their family and friends at the mela rose above 20,000.

To reconnect the huge numbers of missing, scores of police officers, government officials, and nongovernmental workers, like Rajaram Tiwari, are collaborating to assure that the lost will be found. Mr. Tiwari started an organization, Bharat Seva Dal, to find missing people at the Kumbh Mela back in 1947.

Tin Cans to Smartphones

“I came to the Kumbh when I was a teenager,” Mr. Tiwari said. “I saw how many people suffered when they lost their loved ones. So, I decided to start this organization. ”

During the first few Kumbhs he attended, Mr. Tiwari said he walked around with megaphones crafted with tin cans, announcing the names of the missing. Mr. Tiwari, who is in his eighties, said that over the last few decades the government has understood the importance of his service, and eventually gave him more resources.

Now, there are tens of thousands of speakers throughout the gathering, blaring 24-hour announcements with the names and descriptions of the lost. The system is manned by Mr Tiwari’s organization, several other NGOs, and the police.

There is a chaotic order to Mr. Tiwari and his comrades’ lost-and-found command stations, the largest of which is easily identified by a golf cart-sized yellow balloon that floats several hundred feet above it. As people come in, their names and details are written on a slip of paper and broadcast across the Kumbh.

On non-bathing days when the crowds are more manageable, the system works relatively well. But as the masses gathered on Sunday, it teetered on total collapse.

Half naked and soaked pilgrims, who had been separated from their friends and family in the rush to take a dip at the Sangam, swarmed a platform set up by the police on the banks of the river in hopes of finding the missing. Terrified children stood on the platform and screamed for their parents. One little boy, who spotted his father  among the masses, jumped off the stage and crowd-surfed into his arms.

By Sunday night, mountains of paper scraps with names scrawled on them littered the tiny tin-paneled announcement room at Tiwari’s tent. With no system of tracking the missing, many of the names were read once and then discarded.

In hopes of improving the process, police this year tried to utilize mobile internet technology.

“At the last Maha Kumbh in 2001, we were using land line phones and only had one digital camera to take pictures of missing people,” said Alok Sharma, the inspector general of the police in Allahabad.

This Kumbh, Mr. Sharma, 42, said the police are using “WhatsApp,” a smart phone application that sends messages and photos in real time to share information. They’ve also created a digitized photo system of the lost and found people that is available online.

But for Mrs. Panday and the thousands of other frantic people clambering to get the attention of  the police and Mr. Tiwar’s tent for help on Sunday, cell phones mattered little.

No Phone, No Money, No Address

Mrs. Panday is illiterate,  has no money, cell phone or even a phone number to contact her loved ones. So she  relied on her name being called on the loudspeaker. She said she heard it three times but no one had turned up.

The new technologies are supposed to make policing easier and cut back on the time that people are lost from days to hours, Mr. Sharma said. But in many ways, the old-school system of public announcements remains the most effective.

“The crowds are such that they are still not that much into computers and things like that,” said Mr. Sharma, who expected 18,000 police to patrol this year’s festival. “They would just go back to the basics. That is the announcement system.”

 Hundreds of Languages

But, in a country with hundreds of different dialects, making announcements can be difficult.

During one of the bathing days in January, when Mr. Tiwari and his staff did not understand the language of a missing person named Manu, a middle-aged woman from West Bengal, he turned the mic over to her. Scared, Manu only managed to utter a few words in Bengali between sobs.

Luckily for her, a Bengali soldier heard the troubled call and came to the tent to make an announcement on her behalf. Within an hour, a member of her family showed up to claim her.

Overwhelmed with the droves of “lost people” on Sunday, the system of announcements was largely turned over to the missing.  The terrified voices of the old, young children and women reverberated around the Mela, a foreboding warning to stay close to your companions.

Bollywood Reunions

In the early hours of the morning on Monday, Mrs. Panday was still waiting for her family to claim her. A woman sitting nearby let out a shrill shout when she saw her husband. Both in their 70’s, the couple, who had been married for almost six decades, had been separated for hours.

The two made announcements for the other, but in the deafening madness of the Kumbh neither had heard them. As a last resort, the elderly man stopped by Mr. Tiwari’s tent where he reunited with his wife.

Despite the odds, the police and organizers said that in the next few days all of the missing will be reconnected. Well, almost all of them.

Some people who turn up at the tent in the Kumbh are still hoping for the Bollywood story.  A bespectacled man in his forties came to the tent to find his father, whom became a Sadhu 35 years ago.

“I’m not lost,” the man said.  “After attending a Kumbh when I was a child, my father decided to take up the life of a Sadhu and disconnected from the family. I was just hoping this could be the Kumbh I found him.”

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It's a Girl for John Cho

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

02/11/2013 at 06:30 PM ET

Paul Drinkwater/NBC

Surprise: Actor John Cho is a dad again!

The Go On star and his wife welcomed a daughter recently, Cho’s rep confirms to PEOPLE exclusively.

Baby girl is the second child for the couple, who are also parents to a son. No further details are available.

Cho currently stars alongside Jason Bateman in Identity Thief and will reprise his role as Hikaru Sulu in Star Trek Into Darkness in May.

He is also well known for his roles in American Pie and the Harold and Kumar films.

– Anya Leon with reporting by Julie Jordan

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Pope shows lifetime jobs aren't always for life

The world seems surprised that an 85-year-old globe-trotting pope who just started tweeting wants to resign, but should it be? Maybe what should be surprising is that more leaders his age do not, considering the toll aging takes on bodies and minds amid a culture of constant communication and change.

There may be more behind the story of why Pope Benedict XVI decided to leave a job normally held for life. But the pontiff made it about age. He said the job called for "both strength of mind and body" and said his was deteriorating. He spoke of "today's world, subject to so many rapid changes," implying a difficulty keeping up despite his recent debut on Twitter.

"This seemed to me a very brave, courageous decision," especially because older people often don't recognize their own decline, said Dr. Seth Landefeld, an expert on aging and chairman of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Age has driven many leaders from jobs that used to be for life — Supreme Court justices, monarchs and other heads of state. As lifetimes expand, the woes of old age are catching up with more in seats of power. Some are choosing to step down rather than suffer long declines and disabilities as the pope's last predecessor did.

Since 1955, only one U.S. Supreme Court justice — Chief Justice William Rehnquist — has died in office. Twenty-one others chose to retire, the most recent being John Paul Stevens, who stepped down in 2010 at age 90.

When Thurgood Marshall stepped down in 1991 at the age of 82, citing health reasons, the Supreme Court justice's answer was blunt: "What's wrong with me? I'm old. I'm getting old and falling apart."

One in 5 U.S. senators is 70 or older, and some have retired rather than seek new terms, such as Hawaii's Daniel Akaka, who left office in January at age 88.

The Netherlands' Queen Beatrix, who just turned 75, recently said she will pass the crown to a son and put the country "in the hands of a new generation."

In Germany, where the pope was born, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is 58, said the pope's decision that he was no longer fit for the job "earns my very highest respect."

"In our time of ever-lengthening life, many people will be able to understand how the pope as well has to deal with the burdens of aging," she told reporters in Berlin.

Experts on aging agreed.

"People's mental capacities in their 80s and 90s aren't what they were in their 40s and 50s. Their short-term memory is often not as good, their ability to think quickly on their feet, to execute decisions is often not as good," Landefeld said. Change is tougher to handle with age, and leaders like popes and presidents face "extraordinary demands that would tax anybody's physical and mental stamina."

Dr. Barbara Messinger-Rapport, geriatrics chief at the Cleveland Clinic, noted that half of people 85 and older in developed countries have some dementia, usually Alzheimer's. Even without such a disease, "it takes longer to make decisions, it takes longer to learn new things," she said.

But that's far from universal, said Dr. Thomas Perls, an expert on aging at Boston University and director of the New England Centenarians Study.

"Usually a man who is entirely healthy in his early 80s has demonstrated his survival prowess" and can live much longer, he said. People of privilege have better odds because they have access to good food and health care, and tend to lead clean lives.

"Even in the 1500s and 1600s there were popes in their 80s. It's remarkable. That would be today's centenarians," Perls said.

Arizona Sen. John McCain turned 71 while running for president in 2007. Had he won, he would have been the oldest person elected to a first term as president. Ronald Reagan was days away from turning 70 when he started his first term as president in 1981; he won re-election in 1984. Vice President Joe Biden just turned 70.

In the U.S. Senate, where seniority is rewarded and revered, South Carolina's Strom Thurmond didn't retire until age 100 in 2002. Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia was the longest-serving senator when he died in office at 92 in 2010.

Now the oldest U.S. senator is 89-year-old Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. The oldest congressman is Ralph Hall of Texas who turns 90 in May.

The legendary Alan Greenspan was about to turn 80 when he retired as chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2006; he still works as a consultant.

Elsewhere around the world, Cuba's Fidel Castro — one of the world's longest serving heads of state — stepped down in 2006 at age 79 due to an intestinal illness that nearly killed him, handing power to his younger brother Raul. But the island is an example of aged leaders pushing on well into their dotage. Raul Castro now is 81 and his two top lieutenants are also octogenarians. Later this month, he is expected to be named to a new, five-year term as president.

Other leaders who are still working:

—England's Queen Elizabeth, 86.

—Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz al-Saud, king of Saudi Arabia, 88.

—Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, emir of Kuwait, 83.

—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Supreme Court associate justice, 79.

__

Associated Press writers Paul Haven in Havana, Cuba; David Rising in Berlin; Seth Borenstein, Mark Sherman and Matt Yancey in Washington, and researcher Judy Ausuebel in New York contributed to this report.

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Yen near lows vs dollar, Asian shares ease in subdued trade

TOKYO (Reuters) - The yen hovered near its lows against the dollar and Tokyo stocks jumped closer to a 33-month high on Tuesday after markets took comments from a U.S. official as approval for Japan to pursue anti-deflation policies that weaken the yen.

U.S. Treasury Undersecretary Lael Brainard said on Monday the United States supports Japanese efforts to end deflation, but she noted that the G7 has long been committed to exchange rates determined by market forces, "except in rare circumstances where excess volatility or disorderly movements might warrant cooperation.

"Her (Brainard's) comments gave confidence to the market. It was surprising, and was taken as the Obama administration giving a green light to 'Abenomics'," said Takuya Takahashi, a market analyst at Daiwa Securities.

Japan has faced some overseas criticism that it is intentionally trying to weaken the yen with monetary easing, but talk of a so-called currency war was dialled back ahead of a Group of 20 meeting in Moscow on Friday and Saturday.

G20 officials said on Monday the Group of Seven nations are considering a statement this week reaffirming their commitment to "market-determined" exchange rates.

European Central Bank council member Jens Weidmann also said the euro was not overvalued at current levels.

The dollar slipped 0.3 percent to 94.185 yen after marking its highest level since May 2010 of 94.465 on Monday. The euro eased 0.3 percent to 126.12 yen after rising more than 2 percent on Monday. It hit its highest since April 2010 of 127.71 yen last week.

"I think the yen's weakening is a function of (playing)catch-up," and not Japan resorting to deliberate devaluation of its currency, said Andrew Wilkinson, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak & Co. in New York. "It's the market's way of saying: 'We're convinced there is a movement afoot to reinflate Japan.'"

The yen is pressured by anticipation that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will endorse a far more dovish Bank of Japan regime when the current leadership's term ends next month, although the BOJ is expected to refrain from taking fresh easing steps when it meets this week.

Share trading was subdued with many regional bourses shut for holidays. Encouraging trade data from China late last week was lending support to sentiment but non-Japan markets lacked momentum as investors awaited key events such as the U.S. president's State of the Union address for trading cues.

European markets are seen inching lower, with the Euro STOXX 50 index futures down 0.1 percent. A 0.2 percent drop in U.S. stock futures also suggested a soft Wall Street start. <.l><.eu><.n/>

The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> fell 0.1 percent, with Australian shares closing flat ahead of corporate earnings due this week.

The weaker yen in turn hoisted the Nikkei stock average <.n225> to close 1.9 percent higher on improving earnings prospects for exporters. <.t/>

Trading resumed in Japan and South Korea but markets in Singapore, Hong Kong, mainland China, Malaysia and Taiwan remained closed.

STATE OF UNION ADDRESS

Currency and equities markets were also looking ahead to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address later on Tuesday night, for any signs of a deal to avert automatic spending cuts due to take effect March 1.

"We believe that the G20's take on currency wars, Mr. Obama's upcoming state of the union address, and data on the current condition of the U.S. economy should help markets assess where the global recovery stands and where we are heading," Barclays Capital said in a research report.

U.S. and Chinese data last week lifted the tech-focused Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> to a 12-year closing high and the Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> to a five-year peak on Friday.

Financial markets showed a muted reaction to the news that North Korea has conducted a nuclear test.

"The test was not something that makes your heart pound as much as a pressing situation between Iran and Israel," said Kaname Gokon, research manager at brokerage Okato Shoji, referring to the threat of possible military action to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

U.S. crude futures edged down 0.1 percent to $96.90 a barrel while Brent steadied around $118.

Spot gold stayed near a one-month low.

(Additional reporting by Ayai Tomisawa, Lisa Twaronite and Osamu Tsukimori in Tokyo; Editing by Chris Gallagher)

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IHT Rendezvous: A Different Kind of Labyrinth in the London Underground

LONDON — The artist Mark Wallinger has a few strings to his bow: he spent 10 days in a bear suit in 2004 in the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin; he won the Turner Prize in 2007; he enjoyed a few days of media admiration/derision in 2009 when he proposed a 50-meter white horse as a public art project in Ebbsfleet in Kent.

On Thursday, Mr. Wallinger presented his newest work: a commission from the London Underground, for which he has created 270 individual panels — one for every Tube station — showing a labyrinth design in black on white square enamel panels. A small red cross marks a point of entry, and each panel is individually numbered, according to the order used by the winner of the Tube Challenge, an eccentric affair in which people compete to pass through every Tube stop on the network in the shortest possible time. (The current record is 16 hours, 29 minutes and 59 seconds.)

The Underground has long had a tradition of commissioning art. Its headquarters in St. James’s Park boasts reliefs by Henry Moore and Jacob Epstein among others, and its Art on the Underground program has shown admirable eclecticism in its choice of artists for commissioned posters, map brochures and in-station work. Mr. Wallinger’s Labyrinth project is part of Art on the Underground’s celebration, this year, of the Tube’s 150th anniversary.

“Something like 4 million people every day have an opportunity to encounter the art works,” said Tamsin Dillon, the head of Art on the Underground, in a statement marking the official opening of the project.

On the basis of visits, on Friday morning, to 4 of the 10 Tube stations at which the panels were displayed, and the remaining 260 stations will get theirs over the next few months, it seems clear that opportunity is one thing, actual encounters are another.

At Baker Street station (No. 58), my first stop, a friendly Tube employee went to find out where the panel was located and came to look at it with me. It was next to the Marylebone Road exit, near a few public phones. In and out streamed the passengers; no one except the two of us seemed to notice the new artwork. “Nice,” he said cautiously.

Similar indifference pertained at Oxford Circus (no. 60), Victoria (no. 103) and Green Park (no. 232), where a man stood consulting his cell phone right next to the panel without noticing it was there.

While this may be a bit discouraging for Mr. Wallinger and Ms. Dillon, there was something rather nice about seeking out the unobtrusively placed artworks, and a slightly Harry Potter-ish aspect to being the only person who could apparently see them as the rest of the world wandered by. Looking for the panels may not be the journey that Mr. Wallinger had in mind (unlike a maze, the labyrinth allows a straightforward passage between entrance and exit, and presumably symbolizes each passenger’s trajectory), but it’s a pleasant diversion in the hurly-burly of commuting. I see a Labyrinth Challenge coming up.

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How'd They Make Carrie Underwood's Glowing Gown?

Stylewatch
Style News Now

02/11/2013 at 12:25 AM ET

Kevork Djansezian/Getty; John Shearer/Invision/AP (2)

We can’t say we were surprised to see that Carrie Underwood had ditched her form-fitting Roberto Cavalli number for a princess-y silver gown to perform her song “Blown Away” at the Grammys Sunday night. When glowing paisley details began to unscroll across her full skirt, however? We definitely didn’t see that coming.

“We wanted it to be artful and dramatic,” Underwood told reporters backstage. “I just like to stand still and sing sometimes, so this seemed like the best way I could do that and still create something visually attention-capturing.” On the technology behind it, she was a little more tight-lipped, saying “I guess I probably shouldn’t tell my secret, should I?” — but luckily, we’ve already got the inside info.

To perform the song that won her best solo country performance, the superstar donned a custom Theia gown designed specifically for the vivid light show. The line’s creative director Don O’Neill sourced fabric for the 4 feet 5 inches-wide skirt that had to be approved by both Underwood’s stylist, Trish Townsend, as well as the video team creating the special effects.

With only three days to create the gown, O’Neill’s team worked around the clock, stitching together 10 yards of Duchesse satin, 100 yards of tulle and crinoline and thousands of Swarovski crystals onto the bodice. Meanwhile, the production team created the effects that were projected onto her gown, including sparkling stars, rose petals and butterflies.

And was all that work worth it? Judging by your overwhelmingly positive reactions on Twitter, absolutely. And O’Neill was thrilled with the result too, especially because he took the line’s name from the Greek goddess of light. “There couldn’t be a more perfect opportunity to fuse light in a literal sense with one of my gowns,” he says in a statement, “and have it showcased on a national stage by Carrie Underwood, the first celebrity to wear a Theia dress four years ago when we launched.”

Tell us: What did you think of Underwood’s high-tech couture?

–Alex Apatoff

PHOTOS: SEE MORE GRAMMY RISK-TAKERS!

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What heals traumatized kids? Answers are lacking

CHICAGO (AP) — Shootings and other traumatic events involving children are not rare events, but there's a startling lack of scientific evidence on the best ways to help young survivors and witnesses heal, a government-funded analysis found.

School-based counseling treatments showed the most promise, but there's no hard proof that anxiety drugs or other medication work and far more research is needed to provide solid answers, say the authors who reviewed 25 studies. Their report was sponsored by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

According to research cited in the report, about two-thirds of U.S. children and teens younger than 18 will experience at least one traumatic event, including shootings and other violence, car crashes and weather disasters. That includes survivors and witnesses of trauma. Most will not suffer any long-term psychological problems, but about 13 percent will develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress, including anxiety, behavior difficulties and other problems related to the event.

The report's conclusions don't mean that no treatment works. It's just that no one knows which treatments are best, or if certain ones work better for some children but not others.

"Our findings serve as a call to action," the researchers wrote in their analysis, published online Monday by the journal Pediatrics.

"This is a very important topic, just in light of recent events," said lead author Valerie Forman-Hoffman, a researcher at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

She has two young children and said the results suggest that it's likely one of them will experience some kind of trauma before reaching adulthood. "As a parent I want to know what works best," the researcher said.

Besides the December massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, other recent tragedies involving young survivors or witnesses include the fatal shooting last month of a 15-year-old Chicago girl gunned down in front of a group of friends; Superstorm Sandy in October; and the 2011 Joplin, Mo., tornado, whose survivors include students whose high school was destroyed.

Some may do fine with no treatment; others will need some sort of counseling to help them cope.

Studying which treatments are most effective is difficult because so many things affect how a child or teen will fare emotionally after a traumatic event, said Dr. Denise Dowd, an emergency physician and research director at Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics in Kansas City, Mo., who wrote a Pediatrics editorial.

One of the most important factors is how the child's parents handle the aftermath, Dowd said.

"If the parent is freaking out" and has difficulty controlling emotions, kids will have a tougher time dealing with trauma. Traumatized kids need to feel like they're in a safe and stable environment, and if their parents have trouble coping, "it's going to be very difficult for the kid," she said.

The researchers analyzed 25 studies of treatments that included anti-anxiety and depression drugs, school-based counseling, and various types of psychotherapy. The strongest evidence favored school-based treatments involving cognitive behavior therapy, which helps patients find ways to cope with disturbing thoughts and emotions, sometimes including talking repeatedly about their trauma.

This treatment worked better than nothing, but more research is needed comparing it with alternatives, the report says.

"We really don't have a gold standard treatment right now," said William Copeland, a psychologist and researcher at Duke University Medical Center who was not involved in the report. A lot of doctors and therapists may be "patching together a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and that might not add up to the most effective treatment for any given child," he said.

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Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

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Stock index futures signal higher open

PARIS (Reuters) - Stock index futures pointed to a higher open on Wall Street on Monday, with futures for the S&P 500 up 0.07 percent, Dow Jones futures up 0.08 percent and Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.03 percent at 03.44 a.m. EST.

European stocks fell, reversing Friday's rebound as simmering worries over Spain and Italy continued to spook investors. <.eu> Most Asian bourses, including those in Japan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea, were closed for the Lunar New Year holiday.

US Airways Group Inc and AMR Corp are nearing an $11 billion merger that would create the world's largest airline and could announce a deal within a week, after resolving key differences on valuation and management structure, people familiar with the matter said.

Google Inc Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt is selling roughly 42 percent of his stake in the Internet search company, a move that could potentially net the former chief executive a $2.51 billion windfall.

Three of Dell Inc's largest investors joined Southeastern Asset Management on Friday in objecting to a $24.4 billion buyout of the No. 3 PC maker led by Chief Executive Michael Dell, sources said, as opposition grows to the largest buyout since the start of the financial crisis.

Boeing Co completed what it called an uneventful flight on Saturday of a test 787 Dreamliner, its first since the airplanes were grounded more than three weeks ago after a series of battery-related problems.

Apple Inc. is experimenting with the design of a device similar to a wristwatch that would operate on the same platform as the iPhone and would be made with curved glass, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

The Nasdaq composite stock index closed at a 12-year high and the S&P 500 index at a five-year high, boosted by gains in technology shares and stronger overseas trade figures.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> ended up 48.92 points, or 0.35 percent, at 13,992.97. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 8.54 points, or 0.57 percent, at 1,517.93. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 28.74 points, or 0.91 percent, at 3,193.87, its highest closing level since November 2000.

(Reporting by Blaise Robinson; editing by Patrick Graham)

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