Tony Award nominations set without clear favorite

FILE - In this March 15, 2012 file photo, actors Philip Seymour Hoffman, left, and Andrew Garfield appear at the curtain call for the opening night performance of the Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's "Death of A Salesman" in New York. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes, file)

FILE - In this March 15, 2012 file photo, actors Philip Seymour Hoffman, left, and Andrew Garfield appear at the curtain call for the opening night performance of the Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's "Death of A Salesman" in New York. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes, file)

NEW YORK (AP) ? God might not be eligible for a Tony Award nomination on Tuesday, but stories about him are jostling for attention on Broadway. And even Spider-Man might be redeemed.

Nominations would be heavenly for "Jesus Christ Superstar," ''Godspell" or "Leap of Faith," joining last year's "Sister Act" and "The Book of Mormon" to add to the unusual cluster of religious-themed shows around Times Square. (Nuns also appeared in one scene of "Ghost the Musical," for the record.)

Unlike last year when "The Book of Mormon" was a heavy favorite, this season has no obvious front-runner. And plays got a bit more attention than musicals, usually Broadway's bread-and-butter.

"Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark," the former punch-line and now top-earning hit, might contend, even though it's been around for a long time. The reason is simple: It began previews in November 2010 and endured six delays in opening night and a record-breaking preview period before finally officially opening June 14, 2011 ? missing the last Tony Awards eligibility cut off, meaning it can be nominated this year.

Julie Taymor, the co-book writer and director, is eligible for a directing nod, although she has sued her former employers over copyright issues. What happens if she and her one-time collaborators, U2's Bono and The Edge, all earn nods might make for an awkward award season.

The comic book show will have competition from other new musicals, including "Once," ''Newsies," ''Ghost the Musical" and "Leap of Faith" ? all based on movies. Among musical revivals, the strongest contenders are "Jesus Christ Superstar," ''Follies," ''The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess" and "Evita."

The new play category is stuffed, with contenders including Bruce Norris' "Clybourne Park," Nicky Silver's "The Lyons," David Henry Hwang's "Chinglish," Jon Robin Baitz's "Other Desert Cities," Theresa Rebeck's "Seminar," David Auburn's "The Columnist," Katori Hall's "The Mountaintop" and David Ives' "Venus in Fur."

The top possibilities for play revival include Terrence McNally's "Master Class," Terence Rattigan's "Man and Boy," Noel Coward's "Private Lives," Margaret Edson's "Wit," a revival of "Gore Vidal's The Best Man," Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire" and Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," the crowd and critical favorite.

The Tony Awards will be broadcast CBS in a live three-hour ceremony from the Beacon Theatre on June 10. Neil Patrick Harris, the star of "How I Met Your Mother," will be the host for the third time. Only Broadway shows that opened since last June are eligible.

Leading actress in a play nominees might include Stockard Channing ("Other Desert Cities"), Tyne Daly ("Master Class"), Tracie Bennett ("End of the Rainbow"), Angela Bassett ("The Mountaintop"), Nina Arianda ("Venus in Fur"), Rosemary Harris ("The Road to Mecca"), Linda Lavin ("The Lyons") and Cynthia Nixon ("Wit").

Top actresses in a musical may include Patti LuPone ("An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin"), Audra McDonald ("The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess"), Bernadette Peters ("Follies"), Jan Maxwell ("Follies"), Cristin Milioti ("Once") and Elena Roger ("Evita").

On the male side, best actor in a play contenders include Frank Langella ("Man and Boy"), John Lithgow ("The Columnist"), James Corden ("One Man, Two Guvnors"), Philip Seymour Hoffman ("Death of a Salesman"), Samuel L. Jackson ("The Mountaintop"), Alan Rickman ("Seminar"), Blair Underwood ("A Streetcar Named Desire"), Hunter Parrish ("Godspell") and Hugh Dancy ("Venus in Fur").

Top best actor in a musical nominees include Matthew Broderick ("Nice Work If You Can Get It"), Hugh Jackman ("Hugh Jackman Back on Broadway"), Mandy Patinkin ("An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin"), Raul Esparza ("Leap of Faith"), Steve Kazee ("Once"), Norm Lewis ("The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess") and Jeremy Jordan ("Newsies" and "Bonnie and Clyde")

The Tony Awards Administration Committee revealed Monday that actress Bernadette Peters would be the recipient of the Isabelle Stevenson Award, which honors someone from the theater community who has helped a charity. Peters founded Broadway Barks! along with Mary Tyler Moore to promote the adoption of shelter animals.

The committee will also present a Special Tony Award to Jackman, citing "his contributions to the Broadway community, both as a performer and humanitarian; his tireless dedication to charitable works of many types; and his personal generosity of spirit." Actors' Equity Association, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary in June, will get a Special Tony, too.

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Online: http://www.TonyAwards.com

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Follow Mark Kennedy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

Associated Press

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Occupy Wall Street's May Day in New York (Atlantic Politics Channel)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS and RSS Feed via Feedzilla.

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Street View Saga Faces New Scrutiny in UK

Today in international tech news: The Google data collection turmoil might be far from over, as the UK considers launching a Street View investigation of its own. Meanwhile, Instagram has 100,000 photos in its first month in China, BlackBerry maker RIM sponsors -- and takes heat for -- a gathering outside of an Apple store in Australia, and Barnes & Noble eyes international markets.

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UK police arrest 7 over suspected terrorism funding

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Dayana Mendoza Fired on Celebrity Apprentice

Dayana Mendoza's luck finally ran out this week on Celebrity Apprentice.

A current six-time boardroom veteran and one-time target of Lisa Lampanelli racial slurs, Dayana took charge as Team Forte's project manager this week.

Arsenio Hall stepped forward and led Team Unanimous to victory.

Dayana was in trouble from the start, as Clay Aiken took over the creative process and Lisa was just ... being Lisa. She threw a tantrum and stormed out.

On the plus side, Clay and Lisa bonded over their collective frustrations with Dayana.

Arsenio and Aubrey O'Day exchanged many evil looks, meanwhile, but Aubs' "Hollaback Girl" cheerleader theme for the song won out ... and won the task.

O'Day dominated the spotlight and discounted her teammates in the process, but when you win, the charity getting the prize money won't be complaining.

In the boardroom, Lisa and Clay threw Dayana under the bus, and after so many close shaves this spring, The Donald sort of reluctantly sent her packing.

Were you surprised to see Dayana go? Did she deserve it?

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Meon makes its way to Android!

Those of you old enough to remember Windows Mobile no doubt played Meon at some point. The idea's simple enough — you use light to free the cute little Meons from whatever it is that's keeping them trapped. The game starts out simple, but pretty soon you'll be bouncing light off mirrors and changing colors with prisms to the point that you're not sure what started where, or where it's going to end up. It's strangely addicting.

The Android version is faithful to the original. Our only real complaint is that it doesn't really take advantage of the larger screen sizes.

Meon Lite gives you access to the first 32 levels, though chances are if you're anything like us, you'll spring 99 cents to get all 120 levels in the full version. We've got download links after the break.

Download: Meon Lite (free), Meon full (99 cents)

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Huge study finds brain networks connected to teen drug abuse

ScienceDaily (Apr. 29, 2012) ? Why do some teenagers start smoking or experimenting with drugs -- while others don't? In the largest imaging study of the human brain ever conducted -- involving 1,896 14-year-olds -- scientists have discovered a number of previously unknown networks that go a long way toward an answer.

Robert Whelan and Hugh Garavan of the University of Vermont, along with a large group of international colleagues, report that differences in these networks provide strong evidence that some teenagers are at higher risk for drug and alcohol experimentation -- simply because their brains work differently, making them more impulsive.

Their findings are presented in the journal Nature Neuroscience, published online April 29, 2012.

This discovery helps answer a long-standing chicken-or-egg question about whether certain brain patterns come before drug use -- or are caused by it.

"The differences in these networks seem to precede drug use," says Garavan, Whelan's colleague in UVM's psychiatry department, who also served as the principal investigator of the Irish component of a large European research project, called IMAGEN, that gathered the data about the teens in the new study.

In a key finding, diminished activity in a network involving the "orbitofrontal cortex" is associated with experimentation with alcohol, cigarettes and illegal drugs in early adolescence.

"These networks are not working as well for some kids as for others," says Whelan, making them more impulsive.

Faced with a choice about smoking or drinking, the 14-year-old with a less functional impulse-regulating network will be more likely to say, "yeah, gimme, gimme, gimme!" says Garavan, "and this other kid is saying, 'no, I'm not going to do that.'"

Testing for lower function in this and other brain networks could, perhaps, be used by researchers someday as "a risk factor or biomarker for potential drug use," Garavan says.

The researchers were also able to show that other newly discovered networks are connected with the symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. These ADHD networks are distinct from those associated with early drug use.

In recent years, there has been controversy and extensive media attention about the possible connection between ADHD and drug abuse. Both ADHD and early drug use are associated with poor inhibitory control -- they're problems that plague impulsive people.

But the new research shows that these seemingly related problems are regulated by different networks in the brain -- even though both groups of teens can score poorly on tests of their "stop-signal reaction time," a standard measure of overall inhibitory control used in this study and other similar ones. This strengthens the idea that risk of ADHD is not necessarily a full-blown risk for drug use as some recent studies suggest.

The impulsivity networks -- connected areas of activity in the brain revealed by increased blood flow -- begin to paint a more nuanced portrait of the neurobiology underlying the patchwork of attributes and behaviors that psychologists call impulsivity -- as well as the capacity to put brakes on these impulses, a set of skills sometimes called inhibitory control.

Edythe London, Professor of Addiction Studies and Director of the UCLA Laboratory of Molecular Pharmacology, who was not part of the new study, described it as "outstanding," noting that the work by Whelan and others "substantially advances our understanding of the neural circuitry that governs inhibitory control in the adolescent brain."

Using a complex mathematical approach called factor analysis, Whelan and colleagues were able to fish out seven networks involved when impulses were successfully inhibited and six networks involved when inhibition failed -- from the vast and chaotic actions of a teenage brain at work. These networks "light up," Whelan says, in a functional MRI scanner during trials when the teenagers were asked to perform a repetitive task that involved pushing a button on a keyboard, but then were able to successfully stop -- or inhibit -- the act of pushing the button in mid-action. Those teens with better inhibitory control were able to succeed at this task faster.

But the underlying networks behind these tasks could not have been detectable in a "typical fMRI study of about 16 or 20 people," says Whelan. "This study was orders of magnitude bigger, which lets us overcome much of the randomness and noise -- and find the brain regions that actually vary together."

"The take-home message is that impulsivity can be decomposed, broken down into different brain regions," says Garavan, "and the functioning of one region is related to ADHD symptoms, while the functioning of other regions is related to drug use.

The new study draws on the multi-year work of the IMAGEN Consortium, funded by the European Union, and headed by Prof. Gunter Schumann at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London. IMAGEN, lead by a team of scientists across Europe, carried out neuroimaging, genetic and behavioral analyses in 2000 teenage volunteers in Ireland, England, France, and Germany and will be following them for several years, investigating the roots of risk-taking behavior and mental health in teenagers.

That teenagers push against boundaries -- and sometimes take risks -- is as predictable as the sunrise. It happens in all cultures and even across all mammal species: adolescence is a time to test limits and develop independence.

But death among teenagers in the industrialized world is largely caused by preventable or self-inflicted accidents that are often launched by impulsive risky behaviors, often associated with alcohol and drug use. Additionally, "addiction in the western world is our number one health problem," says Garavan. "Think about alcohol, cigarettes or harder drugs and all the consequences that has in society for people's health." Understanding brain networks that put some teenagers at higher risk for starting to use them could have large implications for public health.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Vermont, via Newswise.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Robert Whelan, Patricia J Conrod, Jean-Baptiste Poline, Anbarasu Lourdusamy, Tobias Banaschewski, Gareth J Barker, Mark A Bellgrove, Christian B?chel, Mark Byrne, Tarrant D R Cummins, Mira Fauth-B?hler, Herta Flor, J?rgen Gallinat, Andreas Heinz, Bernd Ittermann, Karl Mann, Jean-Luc Martinot, Edmund C Lalor, Mark Lathrop, Eva Loth, Frauke Nees, Tomas Paus, Marcella Rietschel, Michael N Smolka, Rainer Spanagel, David N Stephens, Maren Struve, Benjamin Thyreau, Sabine Vollstaedt-Klein, Trevor W Robbins, Gunter Schumann, Hugh Garavan. Adolescent impulsivity phenotypes characterized by distinct brain networks. Nature Neuroscience, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/nn.3092

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

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