Rio Ferdinand suspended for three games and fined £25,000 by the FA following misconduct charge for 'sket' tweet

Queens Park Rangers defender Rio Ferdinand charged with misconduct

The former Manchester United man has been banned for three games

The suspension comes into effect immediately but can be appealed

Ferdinand has been fined £25,000 and severely warned about his conduct

He must attend an FA education programme within four months 

The Football Association announced the charge on its official website

He is alleged to have breached FA Rule E3(2) on 'reference to gender' 

In the tweet, Ferdinand used slang term 'sket' to refer to someone's mother

Rio Ferdinand was banned for three matches and fined £25,000 on Wednesday night after failing to respond to an FA charge of misconduct regarding an abusive tweet.

The Queens Park Rangers defender had reacted to online provocation by using the word ‘sket’ in a post about the person’s mother. Sket is a Caribbean word meaning a whore or a promiscuous girl or woman.

Failure to admit the charge may have counted against the 35-year-old, who recently served on FA chairman Greg Dyke’s England commission. The tweet may also have been considered a second offence, given it is only two years since Ferdinand was fined £45,000 for referring to Ashley Cole as a ‘choc ice’.

According to various dictionaries, 'sket' is a Caribbean term for a whore, and the FA received a number of complaints from members of the public.

Ferdinand failed to respond to the initial charge on October 14, something which is believed to have contributed to the length of the ban imposed by the FA.

He is understood to be unhappy about the severity of the punishment given that his legal representatives did communicate with the FA over the issue.

Ferdinand posted the offending tweet on September 1 and Sportsmail understands the FA received a letter from London law firm Mishcon de Reya on September 10. 

The letter stated that they did not believe their client had committed an offence but did stress he would be more careful with his comments on social media.

+4

Why Ferdinand did not then respond to the FA’s charge is for him to explain.

But it may have been fuelled by a sense that there is a lack of consistency with these cases.

Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore faced no action from the FA earlier this year over a series of emails that contained sexist comments, and the FA have yet to charge Malky Mackay and Iain Moody over an exchange of emails and tweets that contained sexist as well as racist and homophobic remarks.

The FA would no doubt point to the difference between private correspondence and comments made on social media.

But the law would not see a distinction, particularly once private communications are made public.

Ferdinand was considering an appeal on Wednesday night. But if he accepts the punishment he will miss three matches with immediate effect and have to attend an education programme.

An FA statement said they considered Ferdinand’s to be an aggravated offence because his tweet included a reference to gender.

A statement on the FA website said: 'Queens Park Rangers defender Rio Ferdinand has been suspended for three matches commencing with immediate effect, subject to any appeal, after an FA misconduct charge against him was found proven.

+4

'It was alleged a comment Ferdinand posted on his twitter account was abusive and/or indecent and/or insulting and/or improper.

'It was further alleged that this breach was aggravated pursuant to FA Rule E3(2) as the comment included a reference to gender.

'Following an Independent Regulatory Commission hearing on Wednesday 29 October, Ferdinand was also fined £25,000, severely warned as to his future conduct and ordered to attend an education programme, arranged by The FA within four months.' 

But this is becoming a complex area for the FA when Ferdinand will be only too aware that in recent months the governing body took no action against either Premier League chief executive Scudamore or FA referees chief David Elleray over discrimination issues. 

+4

Ferdinand (right) is alleged to have 'included a reference to gender' and has been charged with misconduct

The FA have charged Ferdinand, despite the fact that he has been a member of FA chairman Greg Dyke's England commission. He was even linked recently with the post of FIFA vice-president.  

Ferdinand's profile is huge. He has 5.9million Twitter followers and embraces social media to such an extent that he launched a chapter of his new book on Facebook. 

He is also an ambassador for BT Sport — indeed he was involved in a BT Sport event with presenter Jake Humphrey in London on Tuesday night — and has worked as a pundit for the BBC.

Both BT Sport and the BBC declined to comment, but a tweet from Gary Lineker was fairly representative of the wider response.

The Match of the Day presenter said: 'Thanks to @rioferdy5 I've just learnt a new word. The most surprising aspect of his charge is that the FA knew what a 'sket' was.'

The Dirty Little Secret of Cancer Research

For 50 years, scientists have ignored widespread cell contamination, compromising medical research. Why are they so slow to fix it?

Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on emailShare on printMore Sharing Services73

In the field of thyroid cancer, 58-year-old Kenneth Ain is a star. As director of the thyroid oncology program at the University of Kentucky at Lexington, Ain has one of the largest single-physician thyroid cancer practices in the country and more than 70 peer-reviewed publications to his name. Until recently, Ain was renowned for a highly prized repository of 18 immortal cancer cell lines, which he developed by harvesting tissue from his patients’ tumors after removal, carefully culturing...

Flashback Friday: The science behind why we put milk on cereal (and not water).

Have you ever wondered why we put milk on cereal? Why not juice, water, or any of the other assorted liquids we consume daily? Well, these food scientists finally did the experiments to find out. Turns out that milk, due to its fat content, coats the cereal and keeps it from getting soggy as quickly as it does in pure water. Be sure to read on to the abstract below for some of our favorite 

“The importance of breakfast cereal flakes (BCF) in Western diets deserves an understanding of changes in their mechanical properties and microstructure that occur during soaking in a liquid (that is, milk or water) prior to consumption. The maximum rupture force (RF) of 2 types of breakfast flaked products (BFP)–corn flakes (CF) and quinoa flakes (QF)–were measured directly while immersed in milk with 2% of fat content (milk 2%) or distilled water for different periods of time between 5 and 300 s.Under similar soaking conditions, QF presented higher RF values than CF. Soaked flakes were freeze-dried and their cross section and surface examined by scanning electron microscopy. Three consecutive periods (fast, gradual, and slow reduction of RF) were associated with changes in the microstructure of flakes. These changes were more pronounced in distilled water than in milk 2%, probably because the fat and other solids in milk become deposited on the flakes’ surface hindering liquid infiltration. Structural and textural modifications were primarily ascribable to the plasticizing effect of water that softened the carbohydrate/protein matrix, inducing partial collapse of the porous structure and eventually disintegration of the whole piece through deep cracks.”

Flowers, Fungi & Felines: An Unusual Epidemic in Brazil

Rose-thorn disease sounds like a malady of lovesick teenagers, an illness of romance reserved for budding Romeos and Juliets swooning from their first forays into passion and lovesickness, an affliction arising from the shocking stick and sting of heartbreak. The sweet name of this malady, however, in no way belies the actual crustiness of its symptoms.

Rose-thorn disease, caused by the fungal organism Sporothrix schenckii, is a classic disease of gardeners around the world. The fungus lurks in dirt, moss, and flowers, and is transmitted by a stabbing inoculation, usually on the extremities and often by the prick of a rose thorn. It most commonly arises in little old ladies tending their roses, men taming wild expanses of flora into orderly lawns and disciplined flower beds, and florists manipulating their wares. Hence: rose-thorn disease.

The infection, known as sporotrichosis, has an alarming presentation. Sores creep along the arms, tracking along the lymphatic vessels that drain your fingers and hands into the lymph nodes in your armpits. Craterous subcutaneous ulcers bloom as they crawl up the arm, with the oldest sores at the puncture site and the fresher, uglier sores further along the meandering lymphatic route. Mercifully, most infections burn out and resolve on their own in a matter of weeks to months. The disease is also rare: around 250 cases are seen annually in the United States and the incidence is believed to be higher in endemic regions throughout South America, Africa and China (1).

For for the past fifteen years, however, cases of sporotrichosis in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, have been throwing this reliable and historical relationship between fungus and flower-lover askew. Sporotrichosis has blossomed from an uncommon fungal disease into a serious public health problem in Rio, with cases escalating beyond the sporadic few into what is now considered an unprecedented “urban endemic/epidemic phenomenon”(2). But it’s not prickly flowers or mucking about in the garden that is to blame for this fungal epidemic: it’s felines.

Today, Brazilian researchers point to a “sporotrichosis belt” in Rio de Janeiro, in which ninety percent of cases can be traced directly to cats, not gardening activities (2). This belt envelops the impoverished neighborhoods and slums on the metropolitan fringes of the city, areas of “poor sanitation, substandard housing and little or no access to health services,” factors which greatly accelerate the likelihood of severe cases of sporotrichosis (3).

This patient’s arm shows the effects of sporotrichosis, caused by the fungus Sporothrix schenckii. The first symptom is usually a small reddish painless bump. This is followed by additional bumps or nodules which open and may resemble ulcerating sores; these bumps correlate with the distribution of the lymphatics that drain the fingers and skin. Image: CDC/Dr. Lucille K. Georg.

Since 1998, cases of this once rare fungus have been steadily rising. As one infectious disease clinic in Rio de Janeiro reported, only 13 cases of sporotrichosis had been reported between 1986 and 1997 (4). But over a period of just five years, from 1998 to 2008, over 15,000 cases had been referred to the same clinic (5). Of those cases, 83 percent reported having close contact with cats while 56 percent reported suffering from scratches and bites. For those that owned these cantankerous felines, sporotrichosis infection in their pets always preceded that of its owners. As of 2010, over two thousand cases of feline-associated sporotrichosis have been treated and that number is believed to be grossly under-reported (7).

Though many animals can suffer from sporothrix infection – including, apparently, such exotic creatures as armadillos, camels, and dolphins – cats are the species most commonly afflicted (3). Their habits for lurking and keeping close contact with soil and decaying debris puts them at direct risk for infection. The fungus has been isolated from cats’ claws, their oral and nasal cavities, and from skin lesions on their furry hides.

These cats may carry an asymptomatic infection or present with ulcerating sores similar to those seen in their human counterparts. How the fungus moved beyond gardens and into the grotto isn’t clear but it’s suspected that the broad roaming movements of cats may be to blame. Male cats that have not been spayed may particularly be at risk of spreading the infection, as they more prone to engaging in fights and suffering wounds from other cats, such  behaviors creating an opportunity for Sporothrix to infect and then hitchhike onwards to new locations. The fungus still relies on the same mechanism of infection in humans, a stabbing inoculation to skin - it’s just relying on a different prickly organism to do its work.

A cat with ulcerating sores caused by sporotrichosis. Image: Caroldermoid. Click for source.

Feline-transmitted sporotrichosis poses a more difficult problem for physicians treating human cases of the disease. A typical human infection with the fungus arises from transmission of the mold, those delicate filaments that spread and radiate through soil and moss. But cats spread the far more virulent form of the disease, the single-celled yeast, allowing for the spark of an infection to be take hold far more readily. In this regard, cats are, again, contributing to greater success of human infection by Sporothrix (3).

Most individuals in Rio infected with sporotrichosis suffered from other infections, including human immunodeficiency virus infection (HIV), tuberculosis, leprosy, and human T-lymphotropic virus infection (7). In these highly immunocompromised individuals, the fungus flourishes, moving beyond the lymphatics of the extremities and disseminating systemically to the lungs, bone, and brain. Some individuals who are infected may have allergic or hypersensitivity reactions to the fungi, predisposing them to hospitalization and more serious medical outcomes. A few have died from overwhelming fungal infection. Bacteria, too, can capitalize on the exposed ulcers, adding a further cause for concern and resulting in causing serious and disfiguring co-infections.

Sporotrichosis has evolved from an environmental and occupational disease to a zoonotic one, maturing beyond the flora to the fauna. Why this rose fungus has transformed into a zoonotic infection in Rio de Janeiro and reached the status of a sustained multi-decade epidemic is unknown. However, it is clearly fueled by three critical variables: the free range of both domestic and stray cats; high levels of poverty; and an overall increase in immunodeficient individuals. What is clear, though, is that this unusual fungus is no longer 

Why you should always make important decisions on an empty stomach.

If you’re anything like me, you get pretty grumpy when you’re hungry (a condition also known as “hangry“). However, according to this study, being hungry also helps you make better decisions. To test this, the researchers forced subjects to fast for a night. When the subjects arrived at the laboratory the next day, the scientists served some of them breakfast, but made the others wait. All of them then took the “Iowa Gambling Task”, a psychological test based on gambling that is supposed to simulate real-life decision making (you can try it yourself via an iTunes app). The researchers found that the subjects who were hungry actually made more advantageous choices and performed better than those who were sated. Being hungry also helped people resist choices that were disadvantageous in the long run, even if they brought immediate big rewards. There you have it: people make better choices when hungry. So the next time you go to a casino, consider skipping the buffet.

Always Gamble on an Empty Stomach: Hunger Is Associated with Advantageous Decision Making

“Three experimental studies examined the counterintuitive hypothesis that hunger improves strategic decision making, arguing that people in a hot state are better able to make favorable decisions involving uncertain outcomes. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that participants with more hunger or greater appetite made more advantageous choices in the Iowa Gambling Task compared to sated participants or participants with a smaller appetite. Study 3 revealed that hungry participants were better able to appreciate future big rewards in a delay discounting task; and that, in spite of their perception of increased rewarding value of both food and monetary objects, hungry participants were not more inclined to take risks to get the object of their desire. Together, these studies for the first time provide evidence that hot states improve decision making under uncertain conditions, challenging the conventional conception of the detrimental role of impulsivity in decision making.”

Receipts May Expose Us to High Levels of BPA

You probably know bisphenol A (BPA) as the controversial chemical in hard plastic food and drink containers, such as baby bottles and Nalgene water bottles. In recent years many companies have voluntarily eliminated BPA from their plastics due to research that shows that it can damage women’s fertility and possibly pose a threat to young children. But another source of BPA is less well known: cash register receipts. And a new study reports that when people handle BPA-coated receipts after sanitizing their hands, they get a rapid spike of BPA in their bloodstream.

While BPA is commonly found at low levels in peoples’ blood, researchers are concerned that elevated levels may lead to dangerous hormonal and neurological disruptions.


Hand Hazards

Thermal receipt paper, the kind that turns dark when scratched, is often coated with BPA as a developer. A team led by Annette Hormann from University of Missouri set out to measure how much BPA moves from this receipt paper to a person’s hand. Previous studies have looked just at dry hands handling receipts, but Hormann knew that certain hand sanitizers and other skin-care products include so-called “dermal penetration enhancers” – chemicals that help the liquids get into your skin.

With this in mind, the researchers had ten volunteers each coat his or her hands with hand sanitizer, then handle unused receipt paper for 4 minutes. Then the subjects ate a basket of French fries – a scenario that could play out, for instance, after someone grabs their food at a fast food counter.

An hour and a half later, researchers took a blood and urine sample to compare to subjects’ baseline BPA levels. They found that blood levels in some people had elevated more than ten times what they originally were. And they found total BPA in urine clocked in at 20 µg BPA/g creatinine – a level that has been associated with a significant increase in the likelihood of developing cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes in previous studies.

The researchers also found that a full 4 minutes of contact with the receipt paper wasn’t needed. Just 45 seconds of contact, after using hand sanitizer, resulted in the same amount of BPA being transferred to people’s skin.

A final experiment analyzed the levels of BPA in the blood of people who touched receipt paper with dry (i.e., un-sanitized) hands. Dry-handed volunteers got only about one percent as much BPA on their hands as the wet-handed volunteers did – meaning that recent use of hand sanitizer definitely increases the levels of BPA that can enter a person’s body from receipt paper. The results appeared last week in PLOS ONE.

Contamination Concerns

The findings are concerning, says Laura Vandenberg, assistant professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who was not involved with the study. “In a fast food setting, I’ve seen sandwiches being placed directly on top of receipts, people putting the receipts in their mouths when they have a lot of items to carry, and people using receipts as napkins to wipe their mouths,” she says. “This should remind us that actual users don’t always handle materials the way we think they do.”

The team behind the current study say that it provides support for the EPA’s 2014 recommendation that thermal paper should be replaced with safer technologies. In the meantime, the nonprofit Environmental Working Group offers tips to minimize your exposure to BPA via receipts, including washing your hands after handling a receipt and before touching food.

The Plot Thickens ‘Up In The Air’

Based on the novel by Walter Kirn, George Clooney stars as corporate downsizing expert Ryan Bingham, who is hired to help ease the transition of long-term employees to the unemployment line across the country.

He takes his job very seriously and loves the 290 days away from home. The only problem is the 70 days at home which he has to spend in his empty apartment. One fine day his world turns upside-down when a young upstart in the company threatens to ground the company by firing people via the internet.

Not standing for a change in his life, nor the chance for his life goal of total airline miles to end, he goes on a mission to prove how personal his job is. He realizes how key a face to face meeting can be to talk down an emotionally unstable person and really do the victim a service in an otherwise horrible moment in his life.

Clooney’s Bingham is the loner businessman whose only relationships exist from random meetings with attractive females at the multiple airports he frequents. His wallet of plastic has become his life.

Credit cards from airlines that accumulate his mileage, hotel status perk cards that let him cut the disgruntled travelers and go straight to the front, and numerous room keys that never seem to be thrown out, causing him to always use more than one before finally opening his hotel suite’s door.

Detached from his family for years as the brother that exists but cannot be counted on for anything, he contemplates whether he should, or really wants to, attend his sister’s wedding-the little girl of the family and someone he should have been involved with after the passing of their father.

A series of style cramping incidents for him begins with a phone call from his other sister and the request to take a cardboard cutout of the happy couple. Then comes the threat of being taken out of the air, his home for decades, in order to impersonally let go more people more efficiently; the challenge of taking Natalie on his next schedule of jobs to prove to her why the new system won’t work; and the addition of a love interest in Vera Farmiga’s Alex.

The real success story of the film is a performance from Clooney who really knocks this on out of the park. He always showed the charisma and chops to play confident and successful, but here is allowed to also branch out and express the pent-up frustration that comes with isolated loneliness.