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NASA probe came up dry from Mars dark streak study

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In the continued search for water on Mars, a recent NASA spacecraft sent to investigate the seasonal dark streaks phenomenon came up dry. NASA’s Mars Odyssey studied ground temperature using infrared imaging via its Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS). Last year, researchers identified hydrated salt within the flows, which signals the conceivable presence of water after the initial discovery of them in 2011.

But recorded surface temperatures indicate the improbability of holding much water—in fact, the streaks are as barren as the Earth’s driest deserts. “We used a very sensitive technique to quantify the amount of water associated with these features,” said Christopher Edwards of Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff. “The results are consistent with no moisture at all and set an at three percent water.”

The “features” referred to are recurring slope lineae (RSL) and have been found at many spots on Mars. The streaks darken as they finger downhill during spring or summer and then fade away through fall and winter, a process repeated annually. But the cause for their appearance is still a mystery.

“Some type of water-related activity at the uphill end still might be a factor in triggering RSL, but the darkness of the ground is not associated with large amounts of water, either liquid or frozen,” Edwards observed. “Totally dry mechanisms for explaining RSL should not be ruled out.”

Edwards and Sylvain Piqueux of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, studied several years worth of THEMIS infrared data captured within a crater-wall region in the titanic Valles Marineris canyon system. They found many RSL features fitted close together and compared nighttime temperatures of ground patches to nearby slopes; the cross-section of patches revealed about 44 percent of RSL features juxtaposed to nearby slopes with no RSL readings. In other words, there was no detectable difference even throughout seasons of RSL activity.

The hydrated salts discovered last year have higher concentrations in RSL sites and even more during streaks active seasons. Water molecules, buried deep in the hydrated salts, affect the crystalline composition of the salt.

“Our findings are consistent with the presence of hydrated salts, because you can have hydrated salt without having enough for the water to start filling pore spaces between particles,” and, “Salts can become hydrated by pulling water vapor from the atmosphere, with no need for an underground source of the water,” Edwards said.

“Through additional data and studies, we are learning more about these puzzling seasonal features—narrowing the range of possible explanations,” added Michael Meyer. “It just shows us that we still have much to learn about Mars and its potential as a habitat for life.”

Source: Phys.org 

Bagpipes kill 61-year-old piper

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A 61-year-old man in Manchester, England, died in October, 2014, after suffering increasing difficulty breathing for more than 7 years. A report published in the medical journal Thorax has now revealed the mystery of what killed the avid bagpiper – his hobby. The man contracted hypersensitivity pneumonitis, or HP, from his bagpipes, leading a team of five researchers from University Hospital of South Manchester to coin the term “Bagpipe Lung.”

HP is also known as farmer’s lung, humidifier lung, hot tub lung and pigeon fancier’s lung. This man had no relationship with any of these activities, however, so the researchers were stumped, completely overlooking his hobby as a bagpipe player. Finally they looked at his musical instrument and found massive amounts of yeast and fungi living inside. Pink yeast covered all the parts of the instrument, inside and out, and had even infected the case that it was carried in. Every time the man played his pipes he inhaled a mixture of these molds, which eventually killed him.

When inhaled, the molds and funguses trigger inflammation in the lungs which can lead to irreversible scarring. People who work around farms have also contracted HP from breathing dust from moldy hay, but bagpipes are particularly susceptible to harboring the organisms. Andrew Bova, a bagpiper who works at the National Piping Centre in Glasgow, says woodwind instruments should be swabbed down after every playing to get at the moisture that can sit in the nooks and crannies and become moldy. As well as preventing health problems, it can keep the instrument’s wood from becoming damaged.

HP is a fairly new phenomenon among bagpipers. Only recently has the instrument been made with synthetic fabric. When bagpipes were made from leather they needed to be “seasoned” regularly in order to continue working properly. The seasoning contained an antiseptic effect that protected the piper. The new bagpipe material does not need treating, leaving a perfect environment for dangerous spores to thrive in.

The study notes that similar illnesses have affected other wind instrument players, including saxophone and trombonists. Regular cleaning of the instruments is needed to prevent disease. Any musician who gets breathless and develops coughing should have their instrument checked.

HPV vaccine nearly 100 percent effective in preventing cancer, but parents continue to resist

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It is the only vaccine created specifically to prevent cancer, and it is nearly 100 percent effective, yet parent continue to resist adding the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine to the requirements for school. Only one in five parents supports mandatory HPV vaccines even though the vaccine is nearly 100 percent effective in preventing cervical cancer, 95 percent effective against anal cancer and 70 percent effective against throat and neck cancer.

Interestingly enough, a recent study of parents’ attitudes toward the HPV vaccine found that support tripled if parents are given the opportunity to opt out for their child. Postdoctoral research associate at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and study lead author William Calo says that, even though support for the HPV vaccine increases with opt-out provisions, previous research has found that those provisions make the law less effective.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that about one in four people in the U.S. are currently infected with cancers caused by HPV infections, and approximately 14 million more, including teens, become infected every year. The infections cause vaginal, cervical and vulvar cancers in women, penile cancers in men, and throat cancer, anal cancer, and genital warts in both men and women.

According to Calo, the vaccine can save an estimated 30,000 lives every year, yet parents continue to resist, even though half believed it was at least as important as meningococcal and Tdap vaccines, which are the other two recommended for adolescents. Only 40 percent of parents believed the vaccine could prevent cervical cancer and almost one-fourth believed (inaccurately) that the vaccine might cause long-term health issues. Only 21 percent of parents thought that requiring the vaccine was a good idea. However, that figure jumped to 57 percent if the parents were allowed to opt out.

The CDC recommends that preteen girls and boys aged 11 or 12 receive the vaccine, which is given in three shots over a 6-month period. Teenagers can be vaccinated if they did not receive the shot at a younger age, men can be vaccinated up to age 21 and women up to age 26.

Ice in Canada’s Northwest Passage has vanished

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The picture above tells the whole story. On Aug. 9 NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite captured an image of Canada’s Northwest Passage in a state that NASA says is the “new normal” – the ice that is typically present in the famed waterway nearly year round has vanished. As climate change continues to transform the region, the ice-choked path between Amundsen Gulf to Baffin Bay is now open water.

NASA sea ice scientist Walt Meier says that even if this year does not break the ice extent loss record that was set in 2012, the situation is becoming typical. “A decade ago, this year’s sea ice extent would have set a new record low and by a fair amount,” said Meier. “Now, we’re kind of used to these low levels of sea ice – it’s the new normal.”

Meier says that the sea ice of the region reached a record low maximum extent in March, and continued with fairly rapid ice loss through May. According to Meier, melting slowed in June, which makes it unlikely that the ice loss this year will set a new record, but it is showing no signs of any kind of recovery. “It’s still in a continued decline over the long term,” he said. “It’s just not going to be as extreme as other years because the weather conditions in the Arctic were not as extreme as in other years.”

The sea ice cover of the Kara and Barents seas north of Russia opened in April this year, exposing the surface of the ocean to the warmth of the sun weeks ahead of schedule. By May 31 the extent of sea ice cover loss in the area was a month ahead of normal.

A weather change in June slowed the loss of the sea ice, but Meier says a really strong low pressure system moving across the Arctic could start the accelerated ice melt again.

Photo Credit: NASA Earth Observatory

Poverty can now be tracked from space

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Researchers at Stanford University have designed a probe using predictive analytics to observe poverty from space. Published in the journal Science, it uses an algorithmic model contrary to present methods that source data from old and out-of-date surveys. From space, a particular region’s or country’s brightness determines how developed it is; the twinkling lights, however, don’t inform which neighborhoods within them are destitute.

Other methods such as dispersing study groups throughout targeted areas would be overly time-consuming and expensive, so scientists are using computers to interact with satellites. They need to use, nonetheless, a particular approach. Fundamentally, researchers need a set of data that tracks where people live, and data from the public domain is the most convenient data trove.

A smaller more specific cross-section of data is then used before dropping all the information into a computer that can sift out reliable references. Stanford analysts applied their model to five African countries including Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, and Rwanda. They first used nighttime images caught by the U.S. Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. Areas that were recorded as economically developed were compared to darker counterparts that were not.

The nighttime images were juxtaposed to higher-resolution daytime images available through Google Static Maps. The program was able to identify certain shapes within the wealthier regions that signified economic development.

“Without being told what to look for, our machine learning algorithm learned to pick out of the imagery many things that are easily recognizable to humans — things like roads, urban areas and farmland,” said study lead author Neal Jean, a computer science graduate student at Stanford’s School of Engineering.

Statistical methods were then applied to particular items cited in the daytime and their correlation to income data culled in the surveys. Type of roofing material, for instance, was directly linked to income and a location’s distance from an urban center. The predictive analytics component of the program measured two crucial determinants of poverty: average spending by households and average household income.

Rwanda, for example, was referenced for the study’s success. The model predicted average household income more accurately than data collected from cellphones, according to the study. The model was effective in analyzing data and making predictions from other countries as well. Analysts noted that it was a resourceful tool writing that the program “is straightforward and nearly costless to scale across countries.”

In an essay that supports the observation, Joshua Blumenstock of UC Berkeley’s Data Science and Analytics Lab believes the surveyed data can “make it possible to differentiate between poor and ultra-poor regions,” which, in turn, “can help to ensure that resources get to those with the greatest need.”

Source: LA Times

Texas is the most dangerous state to be pregnant in

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Although it does not definitively tie the reason for an alarming increase in pregnancy-related deaths in Texas to budget cuts, a new study has found that the rise in mortality rates coincided with the slashing of family planning funds in the state budget in 2011. The cuts reduced funds to family planning clinics by 66 percent, and forced 82 of the facilities to close. One-third of them were Planned Parenthood clinics. Women’s health services in Texas were left able to serve only half as many women as they had previously, with low-income women particularly experiencing less access to care.

The study, published in the September 2016 journal of The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, details the dramatic increase in the deaths of pregnant women in the state since 2011. Texas saw a modest increase in maternal mortality between 2000 and 2010, but the rates then nearly doubled in 2011 and 2012, a trend not matched by any of the other 49 states.

While 72 women died in Texas from pregnancy and childbirth complications in 2010, 148 died from the same reasons in 2012, a rate of 33 deaths per 100,000 live births.

The study notes that the rates of increase in deaths are too high to be explained by budget cuts alone. “In the absence of war, natural disaster, or severe economic upheaval, the doubling of a mortality rate within a two year period in a state with almost 400,000 annual births seems unlikely,” the researchers wrote.

The Texas Department of Health has a task force investigating the issue, but as yet has no explanation.

16 rotting bodies discovered in Florida funeral home

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Two employees at Brock’s Home Town Funeral Home in Callaway Florida have been arrested after an anonymous tip led officials to discover multiple rotting bodies inside the facility on Sunday night. Funeral director Gregory Dunphy, 64, and Felicia Boesch, 39, who is the manager of the funeral home and the daughter of the owner, are charged with a total of 16 misdemeanor counts for unlawful storage of human remains. Each count can be punished by up to a year in prison or a $1,000 fine.

According to the Washington Post, Dunphy claims to have made the call alerting the authorities to the situation in the funeral home. When they arrived, they were met with the stench of death and flies throughout the building. Ten bodies were inside a refrigerator that was supposed to be kept at 40 degrees but was instead set at 62. Six more bodies were being kept in the main part of the funeral home without any refrigeration. None had been embalmed, and cremations had also not been done.

Family members of the deceased are outraged at the lack of care the bodies of their loved ones had received. In a Facebook post, Shannon Doughterty Bailey wrote that her family had been told that their grandmother had been cremated, and that Brock’s was just waiting on a specially-ordered urn before giving them the remains. “Instead her body was rotting away in a freezer,” she wrote.

Dunphy blames the situation on Boesch, who he said was in charge of cremations. Dunphy claimed he did not have access to either the crematorium or the refrigerated room where state law requires bodies that have not been embalmed to be stored. He had only been working at the home for three weeks, after Boesch asked him to come and help out. He said that he told her the situation at the facilities “needs to be rectified.”

Dunphy said that Boesch told him she would be picking up gas so that the cremations could be performed, and that the remains that were not refrigerated would be going into the cooler as soon as the cremations took place. “Turns out, she did not get gas … for the [furnace] to operate and because of that her refrigeration area became full,” he said. The funeral director said that, according to Florida law, none of the bodies needed to be embalmed because all were scheduled to be cremated.

As bodies began to bloat in the hallway, Dunphy said he tried to borrow body bags or cooler storage place from rival funeral homes, but eventually couldn’t stand the conditions any longer and called the sheriff’s office. Dunphy is now wondering why he is in jail.

Despite the out-of-control conditions inside Brock’s, the funeral home continued to operate, accepting more bodies. The funeral home is now permanently closed, as Brock’s has surrendered its funeral home and crematorium licenses and its owners are dismantling the business. The bodies are being held by the medical examiners office.

Family members of the deceased may be faced with paying a second time for the cremations, which will need to be handled by a second funeral home.

Science of how fins morphed to fingers found in new evolution study

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Despite Charles Darwin’s revolutionary, “On the Origin of Species,” evolutionary biologists still don’t have a rationale for how the physical transformations occurred. But in a new study published yesterday, researchers sourcing technology that didn’t exist in the mid-nineteenth century have potentially discovered a mysterious link, a “cellular and genetic connection between the fin rays of fish and the digits of tetrapods,” the classification of all four-limbed vertebrates.

The elusive explanation follows Darwins observations in which he said: “The bones of a limb might be shortened and flattened to any extent, becoming at the same time enveloped in thick membrane, so as to serve as a fin; or a webbed hand might have all its bones or certain bones, lengthened to any extent, with the membrane connecting them increased, so as to serve as a wing; yet all these would not tend to alter the framework of the bones or the relative connection of the parts.”

In the study, featured in the journal Nature, scientists from the University of Chicago described through three years of experiments how they used “novel gene-editing techniques and sensitive fate mapping to label and track developing cells in fish.” The research paper’s contents detail  “. . . how the small flexible bones found at the ends of fins are related to fingers and toes, which are more suitable for life on land.”

Co-author, Neil Shubin, in a released statement said, “For years, scientists have thought that fin rays were completely unrelated to fingers and toes, utterly dissimilar because one kind of bone is initially formed out of cartilage and the other is formed in simple connective tissue. Our results change that whole idea. We now have a lot of things to rethink.”

Tetsuya Nakamura, fellow co-author of the study, used the novel CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology “to delete important genes linked to limb-building” in the zebrafish used for the study “and then selectively bred zebrafish with multiple targeted deletions.” High energy scans revealed “that fish lacking certain genes lost fin rays,” which are the bones in a fish fin that are dermal contrary to human fingers, which are made of cartilaginous bones. Nakamura also found, nonetheless, that “the small bones made of cartilage fin increased in number” in the fish.

Another contributing member of the study, Andrew Gherke, observed particular embryonic cells migrate as the animals developed. He said, “It was one of those eureka moments. … We found that the cells that mark the wrists and fingers of mice and people were exclusively in the fin rays of fish.”

Source: International Business Times

Image credit: Wikipedia public domain

New study shows surprising revelation on what motivates dogs

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Most people consider dogs to be most motivated by food, but a new study known as the “Dog Project” has revealed some surprising contradictions to that belief. The study, published Aug. 12 in the journal Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, showed that dogs have a strong preference to praise and pets over food.

Study author Gregor Berns, who is a neuroscientist from Emory University, has worked on the Dog Project for the past five years, using MRI scans to study brain activity in dogs while they are awake and unrestrained. Dozens of Atlanta dog owners participated in his study, with the goal of determining whether dogs would rather have belly rubs than treats. “Is social reward on the same footing as food, or is it potentially more valuable?” was his question.

To find the answer he needed dogs that could keep still for 30 minutes while awake, which would allow the MRI scan to be done. Since calmer dogs were needed, “lots of retrievers” were used. Fifteen dogs at a time were used in three separate experiments in which they were made to lie down in the MRI machine while they were shown various toys. After one toy they were fed a hot dog, after another they were praised and after another they got nothing. Thirteen out of 15 dogs showed brain activity that indicated that the praise stimulated their brains just as much, or more, than the food.

A second experiment involved not praising the dogs, which led to nearly the same brain activity in the dogs who responded more strongly to non-food rewards. According to Berns, “the dogs who responded more strongly to praise in the first experiment were more disappointed for not getting praise.”

In the third experiment that dogs were placed in a maze, and had the choice to seek praise from their owner or food, and after the first two tests Berns was pretty sure what the researchers were find in the third. The dogs who had exhibited the strongest neural response to praise chose finding their way to their owners 80 to 90 percent of the time.

The results of the study could be valuable for training service dogs as well as pets. Dogs with high preferences for social rewards might be best suited for jobs as service or therapy dogs. Dogs with less neural preferences for praise might make better choices for independent jobs, such as search-and-rescue dogs.

Although the typical dog owner does not have access to an MRI machine to perform a neural scan on their own pet, they probably already have a sense of what most motivates their canine companion. The study likely reinforces what they already know, but perhaps could not believe.

10 recent movies with a 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes

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Last week, I had written an article about ten films that had an unfortunate 0% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. A few days ago, I then received an email from a publicist that the new film, Hell or High Water, was enjoying a healthy 100% fresh rating. Though Hell or High Water “only” has a 98% fresh rating now, it can take solace in the fact that it joins films like E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial that also “only” have a 98% fresh rating.

When I started looking at the list of films with a 100% fresh rating, I noticed that the list is populated with the classics that everyone knows: Wuthering Heights, Stagecoach, The Philadelphia Story, Citizen Kane, The Maltese Falcon, Suspicion, Meet Me in St. Louis, All About Eve, White Heat, Rashomon, The African Queen and Rear Window are just a few of the classics sitting at 100% after all these years.

Another thing I noticed was that many recent classics and/or Oscar winners weren’t on the list. Part of this is probably due to the fact that there are a lot more “critics” out there reviewing movies thanks to the birth of the Internet. No offense to those classic films of yesteryear, but, as with my 0% fresh article, I stuck with more recent films. Here we go.

Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (2011)/Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996)
The original documentary told the story of the three teenagers known as the West Memphis Three who were found guilty of the murders of three young boys. The filmmakers helped turn this case into a national phenomenon with many people protesting the West Memphis Three’s innocence. Many people were convinced they were convicted largely because the men wore black and liked heavy metal, including Metallica. In fact, Metallica allowed their music to be used in the original documentary – the first time the band allowed its music to be used in a film. The film soon garnered Hollywood’s attention. Celebrities like Johnny Depp, Peter Jackson, Margaret Cho, Eddie Vedder, Henry Rollins and Natalie Maines were publicly outspoken in their beliefs that the three men had been unjustly convicted. In 2011, the courts allowed the men to cop to an Alford plea, which let them be released with time served. Incidentally, Paradise Lost 3 ended up winning the Oscar for Best Documentary.

Man on Wire (2008)
154 reviews were counted on Rotten Tomatoes and 154 critics rated this documentary as fresh. That’s by far the highest number of reviews for a film deemed as 100% fresh in the last 17 years. To put this in perspective, in the last eight years, the film with a 100% fresh rating with the second highest number of reviews is 2013’s The Tale of Princess Kaguya with 83 reviews. The film tells the story of Philippe Petit’s 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Center. Like Paradise Lost 3, this film also won an Oscar for Best Documentary.

Taxi to the Dark Side (2007)
Are you sensing a theme to this list yet? Taxi is yet another documentary. 91 critics deemed it fresh. When was the last time 91 people could agree on anything? Anyways, in 2007, America was waging its war on terror and the use of torture was a hotly debated topic on the 24-hour news cycle. The film focuses on the December 2002 killing of an Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar, who was beaten to death by American soldiers. Originally produced by the BBC, the documentary was picked up by HBO after the Discovery Channel, who had bought the original broadcast rights, refused to air the controversial film. And like the previous films on the list, Taxi went on to win the Best Documentary Oscar. If you don’t watch documentaries, maybe you should. There seem to be some good ones out there.

Toy Story 2 (1999)/Toy Story (1995)
Okay, this is another twofer. In my previous list, you got 11 films for the price of 1. This list is an even better deal as you’ll be getting 12 films for the price of 1. These also happen to be the first non-documentaries on the list. Toy Story was an unqualified smash and turned Pixar into arguably THE Hollywood animation powerhouse. Though poor Toy Story 3 “only” sits at a 99% fresh rating, it can console itself with the fact that it’s the only film of the three that can boast an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. 2018’s Toy Story 4 has some pretty big shoes to fill.

Before Sunrise (1995)
Another 100% fresh rating, another film from 1995. Oddly, neither of the two “big name” films from that year with a perfect rating made the Oscar short list for Best Picture. FYI, the five films up for Best Picture that year were Braveheart, Apollo 13, Babe, Il Postino and Sense and Sensibility. You can discuss amongst yourselves whether or not Toy Story and Before Sunrise were more deserving of Oscar nods than some of those films. Anyways, director Richard Linklater was already a critical favorite due to his previous films, Slacker and, one of my personal favorites, Dazed and Confused. He did go on to win the Best Director Oscar for 2014’s Boyhood however.

Roger & Me (1989)
Prolific documentarian, Roger Moore, made his feature debut with this gritty take on the fallout that his hometown of Flint, Michigan suffered when General Motors closed several plants. Though it was obviously one of most critically loved films of the year and was the most successful documentary at the box office at the time, it didn’t receive an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary. Moore, however, would win the Oscar in 2003 for Bowling for Columbine.

A Room with a View (1985)
Though they had been making films for decades, this is the film that really put Merchant Ivory (director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant) on the map. The cast was led by two-time Oscar winner Maggie Smith and introduced most of the world to future Oscar winners Judi Dench and Daniel Day-Lewis and future Oscar nominee Helena Bonham Carter. A Room with a View kicked off a prolific period for Merchant Ivory. Their 1990 film, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, resulted in an Oscar nomination for Woodward. 1992’s Howard’s End was a huge critical hit, resulting in nine Oscar nominations and three wins, including a Best Actress statue for Emma Thompson. 1995’s The Remains of the Day garnered eight Oscar nominations including acting nods for Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.

The Terminator (1984)
Though The Terminator is a classic, and is responsible for one of the best sci-fi movies of all time, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, I was surprised to see this on the list. Sci-fi movies, no matter how well made, always have their detractors. Anyways, The Terminator launched the careers of Arnold Schwarzenegger, director James Cameron and producer Gale Anne Hurd (The Walking Dead). In a weird twist of fate, the studio wanted O.J. Simpson cast as the terminator, but Cameron didn’t think audiences would buy him as a killer. Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson turned down the role before it was offered to Schwarzenegger.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut (1982/2007)
Though director Ridley Scott had already directed the huge hit, Alien, the studio wasn’t confident in his vision for Blade Runner and made extensive changes. The film was originally released to incredibly mixed reviews, but it soon became a cult classic. In 1992, Warner Bros. released a Director’s Cut which was more in line with Scott’s original vision. In fact, Blade Runner: The Director’s Cut was one of the first movies to be released on DVD. To celebrate the film’s 25th anniversary, Warner Bros. released Blade Runner: The Final Cut in 2007. The Final Cut impressed critics and fans alike and is now THE definitive version of the film.

Atlantic City (1980)
Atlantic City’s claim to fame is that it’s one of 41 movies to earn the “Big Five” Oscar nominations (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Actor and Best Screenplay). It also has the notoriety of being one of the 8 of the 41 films that walked away from the Oscars empty handed. For the record, the other seven films are Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Hustler, Bonnie and Clyde, Love Story, Lenny, The Remains of the Day and American Hustle. After being best known until then for her role in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Susan Sarandon’s Best Actress nomination showed the world her acting chops. Though she lost to The Coal Miner’s Daughter’s Sissy Spacek that year (oddly enough, The Coal Miner’s Daughter also has a 100% fresh rating), Sarandon would earn four more Oscar nominations and get the win for Dead Man Walking.

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