Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/307261323?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Russia says kills senior Islamist insurgent
By Alissa de Carbonnel
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The right-hand man of Russia's most wanted insurgent was killed by security forces on Tuesday, officials said, as Moscow tries to contain militancy in its Caucasus region before it hosts the Winter Olympics near there next February.
Dzhamaleil Mutaliyev, a senior figure in a group fighting to establish an Islamist state, was killed along with another militant in a shootout in the town of Nazran in Ingushetia, a spokesman for local investigators said.
Mutaliyev masterminded a bombing that killed 18 people at a market in the nearby city of Vladikavkaz in 2010 and was a close aide of Doku Umarov, leader of the outlawed Caucasus Emirate, Russia's Anti-Terrorism Committee (NAK) said.
"Doku Umarov's right-hand man was neutralized," Ingushetia's President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov told the state news agency RIA.
The Caucasus Emirate group claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport that killed 37 people in January 2011 and twin bombings that killed 40 people in the Moscow metro in 2010.
Mutaliyev and the other man, named by officials as Alikhan Ozdoyev, were killed in a gunbattle after refusing to surrender during a night-time sweep in a suburb of Nazran, the spokesman for local investigators said.
The wife and child of one of them left the house before the firefight, he said. NAK said the men were armed with hand grenades and Kalashnikov assault rifles.
NAK had once before pronounced Mutaliyev dead, in January 2012, but later said it had misidentified the body of a man killed in a shootout with security forces.
Russia is struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency in the mainly Muslim North Caucasus and President Vladimir Putin has ordered authorities to ensure militants do not attack the 2014 Winter Olympics in the nearby Black Sea resort of Sochi.
More than a decade after troops defeated a rebellion in Chechnya, insurgents stage frequent attacks in nearby regions.
In one of the bloodiest attacks this year, two car bombs killed at least four people and wounded dozens on Monday in the capital of Dagestan, a province bordering Chechnya to the east.
A police officer was killed and a soldier was wounded in a shooting by suspected militants in Dagestan on Tuesday, police said.
The Kremlin is worried about the spread of violence outside the North Caucasus. In a suburb of Moscow on Monday, security forces killed two suspected militants alleged to have been plotting an attack in the capital.
(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/russia-says-kills-senior-islamist-insurgent-200550296.html
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Five die in van crash along Illinois highway
VANDALIA, Ill. (AP) ? Illinois State Police say five people were killed and six others injured when a van in which they were riding left a southern Illinois freeway and overturned several times.
State police spokesman Mark Zimmerman says the five died at the scene of the accident shortly before 10 a.m. Monday on Interstate 70 near Vandalia, about 70 miles east of St. Louis. Zimmerman says many of the victims were ejected from the van.
The six others in the 15-passenger van have been hospitalized. Details of their conditions have not been released.
Details of what caused the crash or to whom the van belonged are not immediately available.
The Associated Press has left messages with Fayette County Coroner Bruce Bowen. Calls to the county's sheriff's department were directed to state police.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ill-state-police-5-killed-70-van-crash-180613268.html
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Genetic risk for obesity found in many Mexican young adults
May 21, 2013 ? As many as 35 percent of Mexican young adults may have a genetic predisposition for obesity, said a University of Illinois scientist who conducted a study at the Universidad Aut?noma de San Luis Potos?.
"The students who inherited genetic risk factors from both parents were already 15? pounds heavier and 2 inches bigger around the waist than those who hadn't. They also had slightly higher fasting glucose levels," said Margarita Teran-Garcia, a U of I professor of food science and human nutrition.
In the study, 251 18- to 25-year-olds were tested for risk alleles on the FTO gene as part of the Up Amigos project, a collaboration of scientists at the U of I and the Mexican university. The researchers are following the 10,000 yearly applicants to the Universidad Aut?noma de San Luis Potos? to learn how changes in students' weight, body mass index (BMI), and eating and exercise habits affect their health over time.
According to Teran-Garcia, the FTO gene is associated with a predisposition to obesity, increased BMI, and increased waist circumference. These traits can in turn contribute to many health-related problems, including cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
Of the young adults tested in the study, 15 percent had inherited the genetic risk from both parents -- in other words, they carried two copies of the risk allele. Another 20 percent had inherited risk from one parent, meaning they had one copy of the risk allele. Sixty-five percent of the students in the study did not carry the risk allele.
"If young people realize early that they have this predisposition, they can fight against it. If they are at risk for obesity, eating a healthy diet and getting regular exercise is even more important for them," Teran-Garcia said.
She noted that 85 percent of Hispanics in the United States are of Mexican origin.
Although FTO markers and analysis are available for large groups of Caucasians, Asians, and African-Americans, few studies have examined the effects of this gene in Mexican and Mexican- American populations.
"This is the first study to target young adults in Mexico, although one other study has followed older Mexican adults who had already been diagnosed with diabetes, obesity, and obesity-related diseases," she said.
Scientists hypothesize that "fat" genes may be influenced by epigenetic modifications, she said. "So even if you have this predisposition, you may be able to change the way those genes behave by eating the right foods and getting more exercise. These good habits are especially important for young people who have a genetic risk for obesity."
"FTO genotype is associated with body mass index and waist circumference in Mexican young adults" is available online in the Open Journal of Genetics (2013, 3, 44-48). Co-authors are Teran-Garcia, Itzel Vazquez-Vidal, and Michelle Mosley, of the U of I Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, Flavia C.D. Andrade of the U of I Department of Kinesiology and Community Health, and Eduardo Medina-Cerda and Celia Aradillas-Garcia of the Universidad Auton?ma de San Luis Potos? in Mexico.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/cb5444pE3So/130521152612.htm
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Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Ant study could help future robot teams work underground
May 20, 2013 ? Future teams of subterranean search and rescue robots may owe their success to the lowly fire ant, a much-despised insect whose painful bites and extensive networks of underground tunnels are all-too-familiar to people living in the southern United States.
By studying fire ants in the laboratory using video tracking equipment and X-ray computed tomography, researchers have uncovered fundamental principles of locomotion that robot teams could one day use to travel quickly and easily through underground tunnels. Among the principles is building tunnel environments that assist in moving around by limiting slips and falls, and by reducing the need for complex neural processing.
Among the study's surprises was the first observation that ants in confined spaces use their antennae for locomotion as well as for sensing the environment.
"Our hypothesis is that the ants are creating their environment in just the right way to allow them to move up and down rapidly with a minimal amount of neural control," said Dan Goldman, an associate professor in the School of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and one of the paper's co-authors. "The environment allows the ants to make missteps and not suffer for them. These ants can teach us some remarkably effective tricks for maneuvering in subterranean environments."
The research was scheduled to be reported May 20 in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The work was sponsored by the National Science Foundation's Physics of Living Systems program.
In a series of studies carried out by graduate research assistant Nick Gravish, groups of fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) were placed into tubes of soil and allowed to dig tunnels for 20 hours. To simulate a range of environmental conditions, Gravish and postdoctoral fellow Daria Monaenkova varied the size of the soil particles from 50 microns on up to 600 microns, and also altered the moisture content from 1 to 20 percent.
While the particle size and moisture content did produce changes in the volume of tunnels produced and the depth that the ants dug, the diameters of the tunnels remained constant -- and comparable to the length of the creatures' own bodies: about 3.5 millimeters.
"Independent of whether the soil particles were as large as the animals' heads or whether they were fine powder, or whether the soil was damp or contained very little moisture, the tunnel size was always the same within a tight range," said Goldman. "The size of the tunnels appears to be a design principle used by the ants, something that they were controlling for."
Gravish believes such a scaling effect allows the ants to make best use of their antennae, limbs and body to rapidly ascend and descend in the tunnels by interacting with the walls and limiting the range of possible missteps.
"In these subterranean environments where their leg motions are certainly hindered, we see that the speeds at which these ants can run are the same," he said. "The tunnel size seems to have little, if any, effect on locomotion as defined by speed."
The researchers used X-ray computed tomography to study tunnels the ants built in the test chambers, gathering 168 observations. They also used video tracking equipment to collect data on ants moving through tunnels made between two clear plates -- much like "ant farms" sold for children -- and through a maze of glass tubes of differing diameters.
The maze was mounted on an air piston which could periodically be fired, dropping the maze with a force of as much as 27 times that of gravity. The sudden movement caused about half of the ants in the tubes to lose their footing and begin to fall. That led to one of the study's most surprising findings: the creatures used their antennae to help grab onto the tube walls as they fell.
"A lot of us who have studied social insects for a long time have never seen antennae used in that way," said Michael Goodisman, a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Biology and one of the paper's other co-authors. "It's incredible that they catch themselves with their antennae. This is an adaptive behavior that we never would have expected."
By analyzing ants falling in the glass tubes, the researchers determined that the tube diameter played a key role in whether the animals could arrest their fall.
In future studies, the researchers plan to explore how the ants excavate their tunnel networks, which involves moving massive amounts of soil. That soil is the source of the large mounds for which fire ants are known.
While the research focused on understanding the principles behind how ants move in confined spaces, the results could have implications for future teams of small robots.
"The problems that the ants face are the same kinds of problems that a digging robot working in a confined space would potentially face -- the need for rapid movement, stability and safety -- all with limited sensing and brain power," said Goodisman. "If we want to build machines that dig, we can build in controls like these ants have."
Why use fire ants for studying underground locomotion?
"These animals dig virtually non-stop, and they are good, repeatable study subjects," Goodisman explained. "And they are very convenient for us to study. We can go outside the laboratory door and collect them virtually anywhere."
The research described here has been sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant POLS 095765, and by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. The findings and conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the NSF.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/BjNHwI4uVzg/130520163222.htm
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Extreme solar storm threatens Earth's electrical grids
WASHINGTON ? If an extreme solar storm aimed at the Earth hits in just the right way, it could put interconnected electrical grids around the world at serious risk, experts say.
In addition to creating beautiful auroras, extreme solar storms could knock out a wide range of electric utilities needed to keep life in the United States and around the world functioning normally, according to presenters here at the fourth annual Electrical Infrastructure Security Summit.
"What [a solar storm] can do ? even if it isn't causing a continental-scale outage ? it can really cause a regional blackout," said Daniel Baker, director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado. "Imagine something like, for example, Superstorm Sandy. Imagine that kind of severe storm ? but causing regional outages for weeks. Living without power really cascades and propagates in remarkable ways throughout our society." [The Worst Solar Storms in History]
As the sun reaches the peak in its 11-year cycle this year, scientists expect that active regions of the star ? known as sunspots ? will erupt, flinging streams of charged particles out into the solar system. Relatively minor storms can also create temporary radio blackouts and disrupt GPS navigation.
However, this doesn't necessarily mean that all solar eruptions will impact the Earth. Most coronal mass ejections are not aimed toward the planet, and instead shoot out harmlessly into other parts of the solar system. But once every century or so, an extreme solar storm is expected to impact the Earth, Baker told SPACE.com. ?
The last documented solar storm in this category is known as the Carrington event. Particles from a powerful coronal mass ejection overloaded telegraph wires, setting paper messages on fire in 1859.
These kinds of storms from the sun are notoriously difficult to predict. Experts understand the general conditions under which solar storms occur, but it's hard to forecast just how powerful the storm will be, said Karel Schrijver, a solar scientist and fellow at Lockheed Martin.
"A [coronal mass ejection] takes two to four days to get to the Earth, so if we had more observational resources, to map its motion ? and if we had some measurements of the structure of what's going to hit you ? there are ways by which we can certainly improve the forecast," Schrijver told SPACE.com.
Scientists can use sun-observing satellites like NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory to monitor, and possibly forecast, solar weather that could be heading toward the planet, Schrijver said.
"There's a lot of space to be explored in terms of computer models that are becoming ever more powerful," Schrijver added. "The heliophysics division at NASA has a wonderful fleet of observatories that looks at the space between the sun and the Earth and the Earth's environment."
Follow Miriam Kramer?@mirikramer?and?Google+. Follow us?@Spacedotcom,?Facebook?and?Google+. Original article on?SPACE.com.
Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Source: http://news.yahoo.com/extreme-solar-storm-could-cause-widespread-disruptions-earth-133434128.html
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Monday, May 20, 2013
Study identifies new approach to improving treatment for MS and other conditions
Monday, May 20, 2013
Working with lab mice models of multiple sclerosis (MS), UC Davis scientists have detected a novel molecular target for the design of drugs that could be safer and more effective than current FDA-approved medications against MS.
The findings of the research study, published online today in the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine could have therapeutic applications for MS as well as cerebral palsy and leukodystrophies, all disorders associated with loss of white matter, which is the brain tissue that carries information between nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord.
The target, a protein referred to as mitochondrial translocator protein (TSPO), had been previously identified but not linked to MS, an autoimmune disease that strips the protective fatty coating off nerve fibers of the brain and spinal cord. The mitrochronical TSPO is located on the outer surface of mitochondria, cellular structures that supply energy to the cells. Damage to the fatty coating, or myelin, slows the transmission of the nerve signals that enable body movement as well as sensory and cognitive functioning.
The scientists identified mitochondrial TSPO as a potential therapeutic target when mice that had symptoms of MS improved after being treated with the anti-anxiety drug etifoxine, which interacts with mitochondrial TSPO. When etifoxine, a drug clinically available in Europe, was administered to the MS mice before they had clinical signs of disease, the severity of the disease was reduced when compared to the untreated lab animals. When treated at the peak of disease severity, the animals' MS symptoms improved.
"Etifoxine has a novel protective effect against the loss of the sheath that insulates the nerve fibers that transmit the signals from brain cells," said Wenbin Deng, principal investigator of the study and associate professor of biochemistry and molecular medicine at UC Davis.
"Our discovery of etifoxine's effects on an MS animal model suggests that mitochondrial TSPO represents a potential therapeutic target for MS drug development," said Deng.
"Drugs designed to more precisely bind to mitochondrial TSPO may help repair the myelin sheath of MS patients and thereby even help restore the transmission of signals in the central nervous system that enable normal motor, sensory and cognitive functions," he said.
Deng added that better treatments for MS and other demyelinating diseases are needed, especially since current FDA-approved therapies do not repair the damage of immune attacks on the myelin sheath.
The UC Davis research team hopes to further investigate the therapeutic applications of mitochondrial TSPO in drug development for MS and other autoimmune diseases. To identify more efficacious and safer drug candidates, they plan to pursue research grants that will enable them to test a variety of pharmacological compounds that bind to mitochondrial TSPO and other molecular targets in experimental models of MS and other myelin diseases.
The journal paper is entitled, "A TSPO ligand is protective in a mouse model of multiple sclerosis."
###
University of California - Davis Health System: http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Thanks to University of California - Davis Health System for this article.
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Victims: Marines failed to safeguard water supply
CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (AP) ? A simple test could have alerted officials that the drinking water at Camp Lejeune was contaminated, long before authorities determined that as many as a million Marines and their families were exposed to a witch's brew of cancer-causing chemicals.
But no one responsible for the lab at the base can recall that the procedure ? mandated by the Navy ? was ever conducted.
The U.S. Marine Corps maintains that the carbon chloroform extract (CCE) test would not have uncovered the carcinogens that fouled the southeastern North Carolina base's water system from at least the mid-1950s until wells were capped in the mid-1980s. But experts say even this "relatively primitive" test ? required by Navy health directives as early as 1963 ? would have told officials that something was terribly wrong beneath Lejeune's sandy soil.
A just-released study from the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry cited a February 1985 level for trichloroethylene of 18,900 parts per billion in one Lejeune drinking water well ? nearly 4,000 times today's maximum allowed limit of 5 ppb. Given those kinds of numbers, environmental engineer Marco Kaltofen said even a testing method as inadequate as CCE should have raised some red flags with a "careful analyst."
"That's knock-your-socks-off level ? even back then," said Kaltofen, who worked on the infamous Love Canal case in upstate New York, where drums of buried chemical waste leaked toxins into a local water system. "You could have smelled it."
Biochemist Michael Hargett agrees that CCE, while imperfect, would have been enough to prompt more specific testing in what is now recognized as the worst documented case of drinking-water contamination in the nation's history.
"I consider it disingenuous of the Corps to say, 'Well, it wouldn't have meant anything,'" said Hargett, co-owner of the private lab that tried to sound the alarm about the contamination in 1982. "The levels of chlorinated solvent that we discovered ... they would have gotten something that said, 'Whoops. I've got a problem.' They didn't do that."
Trichloroethylene (TCE), tetrachloroethylene (PCE), benzene and other toxic chemicals leeched into ground water from a poorly maintained fuel depot and indiscriminate dumping on the base, as well as from an off-base dry cleaner.
Nearly three decades after the first drinking-water wells were closed, victims are still awaiting a final federal health assessment ? the original 1997 report having been withdrawn because faulty or incomplete data. Results of a long-delayed study on birth defects and childhood cancers were only submitted for publication in late April.
Many former Lejeune Marines and family members who lived there believe the Corps still has not come clean about the situation, and the question of whether these tests were conducted is emblematic of the depth of that mistrust.
Marine Corps officials have repeatedly said that federal environmental regulations for these cancer-causing chemicals were not finalized under the Safe Drinking Water Act until 1989 ? about four years after the contaminated wells had been identified and taken out of service. But victims who have scoured decades-old documents say the military's own health standards should have raised red flags long before.
In 1963, the Navy's Bureau of Medicine and Surgery issued "The Manual of Naval Preventive Medicine." Chapter 5 is titled "Water Supply Ashore."
"The water supply should be obtained from the most desirable sources which is feasible, and effort should be made to prevent or control pollution of the source," it reads.
At the time, the Defense Department adopted water quality standards set by the U.S. Public Health Service. To measure that quality, the Navy manual identified CCE "as a technically practical procedure which will afford a large measure of protection against the presence of undetected toxic materials in finished drinking water."
Also referred to as the "oil and grease test," CCE was intended to protect against an "unwarranted dosage of the water consumer with ill-defined chemicals," according to the Navy manual. The CCE standard set in 1963 was 200 ppb. In 1972, the Navy further tightened it to no more than 150 ppb.
In response to a request from The Associated Press, Capt. Kendra Motz said the Marines could produce no copies of CCE test results for Lejeune, despite searching for "many hours."
"Some documents that might be relevant to your question may no longer be maintained by the Marine Corps or the Department of the Navy in accordance with records management policies," she wrote in an email. "The absence of records 50 years later does not necessarily mean action was not taken."
But the two men who oversaw the base lab told the AP they were not even familiar with the procedure.
"A what?" asked Julian Wooten, who was head of the Lejeune environmental section during the 1970s, when asked if his staff had ever performed the CCE test. "I never saw anything, unless the (Navy's) preventive medicine people were doing some. I don't have any knowledge of that kind of operation or that kind of testing being done. Not back then."
"I have no knowledge of it," said Danny Sharpe, who succeeded Wooten as section chief and was in charge when the first drinking water wells were shut down in the mid-1980s. "I don't remember that at all."
Wooten was an ecologist, and Sharpe's background is in forestry and soil conservation. But Elizabeth Betz, the supervisory chemist at Lejeune from 1979 to 1995, was also at a loss when asked about the CCE testing.
"I do not remember any such test being requested nor do I remember seeing any such test results," Betz, who later worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's national exposure branch at Research Triangle Park outside Raleigh, wrote in a recent email.
Hargett, the former co-owner of Grainger Laboratories in Raleigh, said he never saw any evidence that the base was testing and treating for anything beyond e coli and other bacteria.
"That was a state regulation ... that they had to maintain a sanitary water supply," he said. "And they did a good job at that."
Motz, the Marine spokeswoman, told the AP that the method called for in the manual would not have detected the toxins at issue in the Camp Lejeune case.
"The CCE method includes a drying step and a distillation (evaporation) step where chloroform is completely evaporated," she wrote in an email. These volatile organic compounds, "by their chemical nature, would evaporate readily as well," she wrote.
ATSDR contacted the EPA about the "utility" of such testing and concluded it would be of no value in detecting TCE, PCE, or benzene, Deputy Director Tom Sinks wrote in an email to members of a community assistance panel on Lejeune.
"It is doubtful that the weight of their residue would be detectable when subjected to this method," Sinks wrote.
Kaltofen, a doctoral candidate at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, acknowledged that CCE is "a relatively primitive test." But in addition to the water's odor, Kaltofen said, "there are some things that a careful analyst would easily have noticed."
Hargett agreed.
"It would have prompted you to simply say, 'Wow. There is something here. Let's do some additional work,'" he told the AP. Any "reputable chemist ... would have raised their hands to the person responsible and said, 'Guys. You ought to look at this. There's more here.'"
The Marines have said such high readings were merely spikes. But Kaltofen countered that, "You can't get that level even once without having a very serious problem ... It's the worst case."
In a recent interview, Wooten told the AP that he knew something was wrong with the water as early as the 1960s, when he worked in the maintenance department.
"I was usually the first person in in the big building that we worked in," he said. "And I'd cut the water on and let it run, just go and flush the commodes and cut the water on and let it run for several minutes before I'd attempt to make coffee."
Wooten said he made repeated budget requests for additional equipment and lab workers. But as Betz told a federal fact-finding group, "the lab was very low on the priority list at the base."
She said her group ? the Natural Resources and Environmental Affairs Department ? was "like the 'red headed stepchild.'"
Even a series of increasingly urgent reports from an Army lab at Fort McPherson, Ga., beginning in late 1980, failed to prompt any real action.
"WATER HIGHLY CONTAMINATED WITH OTHER CHLORINATED HYDROCARBONS (SOLVENTS!)" cautioned one memo from the Army lab in early 1981.
Because the base water system drew on a rotating basis from a number of different wells, subsequent tests showed no problems, and officials chalked these "interferences" up to flukes. One base employee told the fact-finding group that in 1980, "they simply did not have the money nor capacity" to test every drinking-water well on the base.
"This type of money would have cost well over $100,000, and their entire operating budget was $100,000," the employee said, according to a heavily redacted summary obtained by the AP from the Department of Justice through the Freedom of Information Act. "However, they did not do the well testing because they did not think they needed to."
So, from late 1980 through the summer of 1982, the former employee told investigators, "this issue simply laid there. No attempts were made to identify ground contamination" at Hadnot Point or Tarawa Terrace, where most of the enlisted men and their families lived.
It wasn't until a letter from Grainger in August 1982 reported TCE levels of 1,400 ppb that any kind of widespread testing began. Though the EPA did not yet enforce a limit for TCE at the time, the chemical had long been known to cause serious health problems.
"That is when the light bulb went off," Sharpe told federal investigators in a 2004 interview, obtained by the AP. "That is when we connected the tests of the 1980, 1981, and 1982 time period where traces of solvents were detected to this finding."
Still, it was not until the final weeks of 1984 that the first wells were closed down. Between the receipt of that 1982 letter and the well closures, the employee told the fact-finding group, "they simply dropped the ball."
Each year of delay meant an additional 10,000 people may have been exposed, according to Marine estimates.
Municipal utilities around the country were using far more sophisticated tests to detect much lower contaminate levels, said Kaltofen, while the people at Camp Lejeune were doing "the bare minimum. And it wasn't enough."
Last year, President Obama signed the Camp Lejeune Veterans and Family Act to provide medical care and screening for Marines and their families, but not civilians, exposed between 1957 and 1987 ? although preliminary results from water modeling suggest that date be pushed back at least another four years. The law covers 15 diseases or conditions, including female infertility, miscarriage, leukemia, multiple myeloma, as well as bladder, breast, esophageal, kidney and lung cancer.
Jerry Ensminger, a former drill sergeant, blames the water for the leukemia that killed his 9-year-old daughter, Janey, in 1985. He and Michael Partain ? a Marine's son who is one of at least seven dozen men with Lejeune ties diagnosed with a rare form of breast cancer ? have scoured the records, and he thinks the Corps has yet to accept responsibility for its role in this tragedy.
"If I hadn't dug in my heels," Ensminger said, "this damned issue would have been dead and buried along with my child and everybody else's."
___
Online:
ATSDR's Camp Lejeune page http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/sites/lejeune/
___
Breed, a national writer, reported from Camp Lejeune. Biesecker and Waggoner reported from Raleigh, N.C.
Follow them on Twitter at twitter.com/AllenGBreed, twitter.com/mbieseck and twitter.com/mjwaggonernc
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/victims-marines-failed-safeguard-water-supply-135139535.html
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Fiery 'Star Trek Into Darkness' Scene Hurt The Most: Ouch!
One stunt nearly cost Zachary Quinto his skin, he told 'MTV First.'
By Kevin P. Sullivan, with reporting by Josh Horowitz
Zachary Quinto in "Star Trek Into Darkness"
Photo: Paramount Pictures
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1707603/star-trek-into-darkness-zachary-quinto.jhtml
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Powerball lures last-minute fortune seekers
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) ? It's all about the odds.
With the majority of possible combinations of Powerball numbers in play, someone is almost sure to win the game's highest jackpot during Saturday night's drawing, a windfall of hundreds of millions of dollars ? and that's after taxes.
The problem, of course, is those same odds just about guarantee the lucky person won't be you.
The chances of winning the estimated $600 million prize remain astronomically low: 1 in 175.2 million. That's how many different ways you can combine the numbers when you play. But lottery officials estimate about 80 percent of those possible combinations have been purchased, so now's the time to buy.
"This would be the roll to get in on," said Iowa Lottery CEO Terry Rich. "Of course there's no guarantee, and that's the randomness of it, and the fun of it."
That hasn't deterred people across Powerball-playing states ? 43 plus Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands ? from lining up at gas stations and convenience stores Saturday for their chance at striking it filthy rich.
At a mini market in the heart of Los Angeles' Chinatown, employees broke the steady stream of customers into two lines: One for Powerball ticket buyers and one for everybody else. Some people appeared to be looking for a little karma.
"We've had two winners over $10 million here over the years, so people in the neighborhood think this is the lucky store," employee Gordon Chan said as he replenished a stack of lottery tickets on a counter.
Workers at one suburban Columbia, S.C., convenience store were so busy with ticket buyers that they hadn't updated their sign with the current jackpot figure, which was released Friday. Customer Armous Peterson was reluctant to share his system for playing the Powerball. The 56-year-old was well aware of the long odds, but he also knows the mantra of just about every person buying tickets.
"Somebody is going to win," he said. "Lots of people are going to lose, too. But if you buy a ticket, that winner might be you."
The latest jackpot is the world's second largest overall, just behind a $656 million Mega Millions jackpot in March 2012. The $600 million jackpot, which could grow before the numbers are drawn at 10:59 EDT Saturday, currently includes a $376.9 million cash option.
Charles Hill of Dallas says he buys lottery tickets every day. And he knows exactly what he'd do if he wins.
"What would I do with my money? I'd run and hide," he said. "I wouldn't want none of my kinfolks to find me."
Clyde Barrow, a public policy professor at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, specializes in the gaming industry. He said one of the key factors behind the ticket-buying frenzy is the size of the jackpot ? people are interested in the easy investment.
"Even though the odds are very low, the investment is very small," he said. "Two dollars gets you a chance."
That may be why Ed McCuen has a Powerball habit that's as regular as clockwork. The 57-year-old electrical contractor from Savannah, Ga., buys one ticket a week, regardless of the possible loot. It's a habit he didn't alter Saturday.
"You've got one shot in a gazillion or whatever," McCuen said, tucking his ticket in his pocket as he left a local convenience store. "You can't win unless you buy a ticket. But whether you buy one or 10 or 20, it's insignificant."
Seema Sharma doesn't seem to think so. The newsstand employee in Manhattan's Penn Station has purchased $80 worth of tickets for herself. She also was selling tickets all morning at a steady pace, instructing buyers where to stand if they wanted machine-picked tickets or to choose their own numbers.
"I work very hard ? too hard ? and I want to get the money so I can finally relax," she said. "You never know."
Officials will conduct the drawing live Saturday night from Tallahassee, Fla.
___
Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, S.C., Betsy Blaney in Lubbock, Texas, Russ Bynum in Savannah, Ga., John Rogers in Los Angeles and Verena Dobnick in New York contributed to this report.
___
Follow Barbara Rodriguez at http://twitter.com/bcrodriguez .
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/last-minute-fortune-seekers-buy-powerball-tickets-185535895.html
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Sunday, May 19, 2013
Cannes helps actors Bejo and Rahim cross borders
CANNES, France (AP) ? The magic and glamour of Cannes can be hard to spot on a day when rain is lashing the palm trees, roiling the gray Mediterranean and pooling in puddles along the Croisette.
But the world's leading film festival can transform careers ? something no one knows that better than actors Berenice Bejo and Tahar Rahim, stars of director Asghar Farhadi's festival entry "The Past."
Bejo shimmered on-screen in Cannes two years ago in "The Artist," her director husband Michel Hazanavicius' vivacious silent homage to Hollywood's Golden Age. It went on to win five Academy Awards, including best picture.
Rahim was the breakout star of the 2009 festival in Jacques Audiard's poetic and brutal prison drama "A Prophet," as a youth growing to manhood behind bars.
Cannes exposure helped boost both performers onto the international stage. While once most European actors could choose between stay at home and playing Hollywood villains, their paths suggest a more globalized movie world.
"It was quite a miracle for me," Bejo said Saturday, as rain drummed remorselessly on a Cannes rooftop lounge. "Two years ago my life changed a little bit in Cannes.
"I don't think Asghar Farhadi would have cast me in this movie if I hadn't done 'The Artist.'"
It's hard to think of two movie styles further apart than the flamboyant artifice of "The Artist" and the anatomically detailed domestic drama of "The Past"
Bejo plays Marie, a harried Frenchwoman with two children, a new boyfriend with a young son, and an Iranian ex who has returned after four years to finalize their divorce. Rahim is her boyfriend Samir, a man with complex family ties of his own.
All the characters are trying to move on ? but the past keeps dragging them back.
Bejo said she did a screen test for Farhadi, then didn't hear from him for a month, so initially thought she hadn't got the part.
"He said to me, I was looking into your face if I could see the doubt," she said. "I guess because he saw me in movies where I was quite positive, quite sunny, quite glamorous. He needed to see if I could show another part of myself ? and I guess he found it."
For Bejo, as for Rahim, working with the Iran director was a dream come true. "The Past" is the first film Farhadi has shot outside his homeland, and the actors say they loved his working methods ? two months of rehearsal to delve into character, break down barriers and forge bonds, followed by a four-month shoot.
With its Iranian director and largely French cast, it's one of several border-hopping movies at Cannes this year. French director Arnaud Desplechin's made-in-America "Jimmy P.: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian" stars France's Mathieu Amalric and Puerto Rican actor Benicio Del Toro. Another French filmmaker, Guillaume Canet, has a multinational cast including Clive Owen, Billy Crudup and Marion Cotillard in his New York crime drama "Blood Ties."
It's a trend Bejo is happy to embrace.
"In America you have Christoph Waltz, you have Marion Cotillard," she said. "In France we have Italian and Spanish actors. ... I think it's great. We are used to strangers and foreign accents, and it's great that we can see that in our movies now."
Both she and Rahim have been busy since their Cannes breakthroughs. Bejo recently made French heist movie "The Last Diamond" and soon starts filming Hazanavicius' next project, a war movie set in Chechnya.
Rahim's projects include the English-language Roman-era adventure "The Eagle" and another movie appearing at Cannes this year, the nuclear power plant romance "Grand Central."
Coming up, he plays a cop in the French movie "The Informant," and is currently shooting a globe-spanning 1920s-set drama with Turkish-German director Fatih Akin, another pillar of culture-crossing cinema.
Despite the busy international career ? and post-"Prophet" expressions of interest from the United States ? Rahim says Hollywood remains a hard nut to crack for non-Anglophone actors.
"It's not what you expect at first," Rahim said. "You'd like to be with Michael Mann or (directors) like this, but you don't have those parts that easily. Because first you have to speak English, you have to erase your accent."
For now, he's just happy to be back in Cannes, an experience that is easier the second time around.
"The difference is that now I'm not afraid when I come here," he said. "I'm (saying) 'OK I'm going to take every good vibe and keep it.'"
___
Jill Lawless can be reached at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cannes-helps-actors-bejo-rahim-cross-borders-165726670.html
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4-month strike at PSA Peugeot Citroen plant ends
May 15 (Reuters) - Post positions for the 138th running of the Preakness Stakes, to be run at Pimlico on Saturday (Post Position, Horse, Jockey, Trainer, Odds) 1. Orb, Joel Rosario, Shug McGaughey, even 2. Goldencents, Kevin Krigger, Doug O'Neill, 8-1 3. Titletown Five, Julien Leparoux, D. Wayne Lukas, 30-1 4. Departing, Brian Hernandez, Al Stall, 6-1 5. Mylute, Rosie Napravnik, Tom Amoss, 5-1 6. Oxbow, Gary Stevens, D. Wayne Lukas, 15-1 7. Will Take Charge, Mike Smith, D. Wayne Lukas, 12-1 8. Govenor Charlie, Martin Garcia, Bob Baffert, 12-1 9. ...
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/4-month-strike-psa-peugeot-citroen-plant-ends-130701121.html
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1 of 2 fires north of LA contained
1 of 2 fires north of LA contained
AP
Mike Whitaker, left, and Andrew Fullingim watch smoke from a brush fire from Lake Hughes in Castaic, Calif., Friday, May 17, 2013. (AP Photo/Santa Clarita Valley Signal, Jonathan Pobre) MANDATORY CREDIT, LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS OUT
Mike Whitaker, left, and Andrew Fullingim watch smoke from a brush fire from Lake Hughes in Castaic, Calif., Friday, May 17, 2013. (AP Photo/Santa Clarita Valley Signal, Jonathan Pobre) MANDATORY CREDIT, LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS OUT
The Grand fire releases a large plume of smoke as it burns more than 3,000 acres of wildlands near Frazier Park on Wednesday, May 15, 2013.Cooler temperatures and lighter winds are helping hundreds of firefighters combat a 3,000-acre wildfire. (AP Photo/Los Angeles Times, Luis Sinco) OUTS; ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER, LA DAILY NEWS, VENTURA COUNTY STAR, INLAND VALLEY DAILY BULLETIN, LA OPINION), SOMETIMES: -CALON (LONG BEACH PRESS-TELEGRAM) NO FORNS, NO SALES, MAGS OUT, MANDATORY CREDIT
A firefightier watches a backfire set in Hungry Valley State Park to halt the prgress of the Grand fire, which charred more than 3,000 acres of wildlands near Frazier Park on Wednesday, May 15, 2013. Cooler temperatures and lighter winds are helping hundreds of firefighters combat a 3,000-acre wildfire. (AP Photo/Los Angeles Times, Luis Sinco) OUTS; ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER, LA DAILY NEWS, VENTURA COUNTY STAR, INLAND VALLEY DAILY BULLETIN, LA OPINION), SOMETIMES: -CALON (LONG BEACH PRESS-TELEGRAM) NO FORNS, NO SALES, MAGS OUT, MANDATORY CREDIT
The Grand fire burns into the Los Padres National Forest near Gorman, Calif., where the blaze charred more than 3,000 acres of wild lands on Wednesday, May 15, 2013. Wednesday, May 15, 2013. Cooler temperatures and lighter winds are helping hundreds of firefighters combat a 3,000-acre wildfire. (AP Photo/Los Angeles Times, Luis Sinco) OUTS; ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER, LA DAILY NEWS, VENTURA COUNTY STAR, INLAND VALLEY DAILY BULLETIN, LA OPINION), SOMETIMES: -CALON (LONG BEACH PRESS-TELEGRAM) NO FORNS, NO SALES, MAGS OUT, MANDATORY CREDIT
Smoke billows over a neighborhood in Castaic, Calif., as parents line up in their cars along to pick up students from a nearby elementary school, Friday, May 17, 2013. As firefighters took on a stubborn 3-day-old wildfire Friday in rough terrain north of Los Angeles, a second and more serious blaze broke out 30 miles away near Interstate 5, quickly surging to more than 500 acres, briefly threatening an elementary school and leading to the precautionary evacuation of nearly 20 homes. (AP Photo/Santa Clarita Valley Signal, Jonathan Pobre) MANDATORY CREDIT, LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS OUT
SANTA CLARITA, Calif. (AP) ? One of two wildfires burning in the hills and mountains around Interstate 5 north of Los Angeles was fully contained Saturday and authorities were getting an upper hand on the second one.
The 712-acre fire was contained late Saturday after breaking out Friday and briefly threatening an elementary school and about 20 homes, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said.
When a wildfire is contained, it means firefighters have corralled it to keep it from advancing, but flames can continue to burn inside the fire line. Some 350 firefighters battled the blaze Saturday amid unpredictable winds and rough terrain.
The earlier fire that broke out Wednesday near Frazier Park was 80 percent contained Saturday after consuming some 4,358 acres.
That blaze was not threatening any homes or buildings but fire officials said containing it would be a long, difficult task because it was burning in such rugged and hard-to-reach terrain.
The cause was still under investigation.
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Saturday, May 18, 2013
CA-NEWS Summary
U.S. chides Russia over missiles as peace plans suffer
BEIRUT (Reuters) - The United States chided Russia for sending missiles to the Syrian government as plans for a peace conference promoted by Washington and Moscow were hit by diplomatic rifts over its scope and purpose. Sectarian bloodshed in neighboring Iraq during Friday prayers, a hacking attack on a Western newspaper by sympathizers of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and defiant comments by a rebel commander filmed eating a slain soldier's flesh were all reminders of how the two-year-old civil war is metastising.
Nigeria bombs Islamists, U.S. sounds alarm
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigerian warplanes struck militant camps in the northeast on Friday in a major push against an Islamist insurgency, drawing a sharp warning from the United States to respect human rights and not harm civilians. Troops used jets and helicopters to bombard targets in their biggest offensive since the Boko Haram group launched a revolt almost four years ago to establish a breakaway Islamic state and one military source said at least 30 militants had been killed.
Police clash with youth in Cairo after anti-Mursi protest
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian security forces clashed with young men in central Cairo after a protest by several thousand opponents of President Mohamed Mursi, state news agency MENA reported. The forces fired tear gas at the youths throwing firebombs and stones at them. Police arrested a number of men, MENA reported.
Afghan parliament fails to pass divisive women's law
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan's parliament failed to pass a law on Saturday banning violence against women, a severe blow to progress made in women's rights in the conservative Muslim country since the Islamist Taliban was toppled over a decade ago. President Hamid Karzai approved the law by decree in 2009 and parliament's endorsement was required. But a rift between conservative and more secular members of the assembly resulted in debate being deferred to a later date.
Hopes fade for those still trapped in Freeport Indonesia mine
JAKARTA (Reuters) - Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc said on Saturday that rockfalls were hampering rescue efforts after a tunnel collapse four days ago at its giant Indonesian copper mine, with hopes fading of finding alive any of the 23 still missing. Freeport closed the world's second largest copper mine on Wednesday, a day after a tunnel fell in on 38 workers undergoing training. Five are known to have died. Several of the 10 rescued are still in hospital.
North Korea fires three short-range missiles
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea fired three short-range missiles from its east coast on Saturday, South Korea's Defense Ministry said, but the purpose of the launches was unknown. Launches by the North of short-term missiles are not uncommon, but the ministry would not speculate whether these latest launches were part of a test or training exercise.
Venezuela frees opposition activist jailed over post-vote violence
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela on Friday released an opposition activist who had been jailed on accusations of inciting violence in the wake of President Nicolas Maduro's narrow election victory in April. Retired General Antonio Rivero, who government critics described as the first political prisoner of Maduro's government, told a local television station he had been released after nearly three weeks in jail.
Two blasts at Iraqi Sunni mosque kill 43
BAQUBA, Iraq (Reuters) - Two bombs exploded outside a Sunni Muslim mosque in the Iraqi city of Baquba as worshippers left Friday prayers, killing at least 43 people in one of the deadliest attacks in a month-long surge in sectarian violence. Several other bombings claimed lives around the country - with 19 killed near a commercial complex in the west of Baghdad, as mounting violence intensified fears of a return to all-out civil conflict.
Sudans defuse row over rebel support, promise more talks
JUBA (Reuters) - Sudan's foreign minister said on Friday neighbor South Sudan had promised him it would not let rebels operate across their shared border, defusing a row that had threatened a key oil deal. The countries, which fought one of Africa's longest civil before a 2005 peace deal, agreed in March to resume cross-border crude exports and defuse tensions that have plagued them since South Sudan's secession in 2011.
One dead, dozens wounded in sectarian clashes in Egypt
ALEXANDRIA (Reuters) - One person died and dozens were wounded during clashes between Muslims and Christians late Friday night outside a Coptic church in Egypt's second city, state newspaper al-Ahram reported, in the latest violent sectarian row in the Muslim-majority country. A quarrel between two young men, one Christian and one Muslim, morphed into a family feud that sparked clashes in a western district of Alexandria.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ca-news-summary-003416837.html
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Senate Committee Approves Gina McCarthy Nomination to EPA Along Party Lines
Senate Republicans on Thursday eased their opposition to the nomination of Gina McCarthy, President Obama?s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency--although her confirmation by the full Senate is not yet assured.
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved McCarthy?s nomination on a party-line vote, after panel Republicans last week boycotted appearing at the same vote, protesting that McCarthy had not provided satisfactory answers to the more than 1,000 questions submitted to her--nor had she satisfactorily answered a series of ?transparency requests? about the workings of the environmental agency. Democrats have called the number of questions submitted to the nominee ?unprecedented.?
But on Thursday morning, Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana, the ranking Republican on the Environment Committee, sent a letter to McCarthy and EPA acting Administrator Bob Perciasepe, signaling that both sides may be backing down, as the president?s nominee continues to respond to questions and Republicans conclude their boycott.
?Thank you for the letter of yesterday committing to significant steps forward with regard to all five of the transparency requests of the Senate EPW Committee Republicans,? Vitter wrote to EPA.
?Because these steps forward are significant, we want to thank you and acknowledge progress, including by moving forward with the committee markup of Gina?s nomination,? Vitter wrote.
?Because these steps forward are limited and do not include everything required under the law, we want to request additional progress as outlined below. Should major additional progress be made in all of the five categories over the next two weeks, I will strongly support handling the McCarthy nomination on the Senate floor without a cloture vote or any 60-vote threshold. Should all of our requests in the five categories be granted, I will support the McCarthy nomination.?
But Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the committee?s chairwoman, slammed Vitter for the delay. ?I?ve never seen a nomination handled like this. I?m stunned at this. It?s holding a nominee hostage.? ?I just can?t celebrate a partisan vote.?
McCarthy, who is currently the top EPA official charged with writing clean-air and climate-change regulations, is the latest in a string of Obama Cabinet nominees to face Republican pushback to her appointment. EPA in particular has come under intense GOP attack--Obama has indicated that in his second term, the environmental agency will be at the forefront of his controversial climate change agenda, charged with rolling out major new regulations on the nation?s coal-fired power plants.
Even if McCarthy?s nomination makes it to the Senate floor, Missouri Republican Roy Blunt has placed a procedural hold on McCarthy?s nomination, saying he?ll block her confirmation until he receives an update on a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project to repair a levee on the Mississippi River system.
Despite opposition by Republicans--and some Democrats--to the prospect of EPA climate-change regulations, many Republicans, and even top officials in coal and polluting industries, say they like McCarthy personally and have praised her for a pragmatic approach to crafting environmental regulations.
McCarthy has a bipartisan background--she served as a top environmental aide to Mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts and played a key role in helping him develop a state climate-change plan. She also served as head of Connecticut?s environment department under Republican Gov. Jodi Rell.
Vitter and other Republicans signaled that their opposition has not been to McCarthy personally, or even about the expected climate-change regulations. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said, ?It seems that we ought to be all smiles on the committee today. A path forward has been agreed to to move the nomination to the next step, and we should be celebrating that.? He added, ?Our questions have focused on transparency only.?
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/senate-committee-approves-gina-mccarthy-nomination-epa-along-124849354.html
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Friday, May 17, 2013
Rumors mount for white Nexus 4, may launch with next version of Android
The white Nexus 4 is stuff that dreams are made of, and the lucky son of a gun at Android and Me, Taylor Wimberly, has one in hand. According to Wimberly's description, it'll be a "carbon copy" of the black Nexus 4, with the same specs and hardware wrapped into the sparkly, snow white casing. That's not the only juicy detail to emerge from Google I/O, however, as Wimberly reports that the smartphone will debut in the Google Play Store on June 10th with Android 4.3. We're currently unable to confirm the rumor, but a growing number of server logs add to the speculation that Android 4.3 could be around the bend. With less than a month to go, it won't be long to know whether this one pans out, but you can be sure that we'll be dreaming of unicorns in the meantime.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Google
Source: Android and Me
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/cQhkHlH12I8/
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Same musicians: Brand new tune
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
A small ensemble of musicians can produce an infinite number of melodies, harmonies and rhythms. So too, do a handful of workhorse signaling pathways that interact to construct multiple structures that comprise the vertebrate body. In fact, crosstalk between two of those pathways?those governed by proteins known as Notch and BMP (for Bone Morphogenetic Protein) receptors?occurs over and over in processes as diverse as forming a tooth, sculpting a heart valve and building a brain.
A new study by Stowers Institute for Medical Research Investigator Ting Xie, Ph.D., reveals yet another duet played by Notch and BMP signals, this time with Notch calling the tune. That work, published in this week's online issue of PNAS, uses mouse genetics to demonstrate how one Notch family protein, Notch2, shapes an eye structure known as the ciliary body (CB), most likely by ensuring that BMP signals remain loud and clear.
In vertebrates, the CB encircles the lens and performs two tasks essential for normal vision. First, it contains a tiny muscle that reshapes the lens when you change focus, or "accommodate". And it also secretes liquid aqueous humor into the front compartment of the eye where it likely maintains correct eye pressure. Understanding CB construction is critical, as excessive pressure is one risk factor for glaucoma.
Eye development is a relatively new field for Xie, a recognized leader in the study of adult stem cells in the fruit fly: only recently did he branch out into mouse studies. "A few years ago I was asked to participate in a think tank-type meeting to discuss the potential application of cell therapy to treat glaucoma," he says. "I became interested in using retinal progenitor cells to treat diseases like glaucoma or macular degeneration. But I realized that first we needed to understand eye disease at the molecular level." The new study is an important step in that direction.
Previously, investigators knew that once cells that form the CB are established in an embryo, the BMP pathway drives their "morphogenesis", the term used by developmental biologists to describe the process of expanding and then sculpting a committed population of cells into a unique structure. "The Notch2 receptor was previously shown to be expressed in the developing mouse eye," explains Chris Tanzie, M.D., Ph.D., a former graduate student in the Xie lab and the study's co-first author. "But its function was unknown, and no one connected how various signaling pathways direct CB morphogenesis."
To determine what Notch2 was doing in the developing eye, the Stowers team constructed a conditional knockout mouse, meaning that the Notch2 gene is deleted from the genome only in eye cells that give rise to the CB. In normal newborn mice a series of cellular "folds" that characterize the CB emerges over the first 7 days of life. But the mutant knockout mice showed a complete absence of folds, dramatic evidence that Notch2 is required to elaborate a CB.
Furthermore, in normal mice a protein called Jagged-1, which activates Notch2, was expressed in cells adjacent to Notch2-expressing CB cells during the same developmental period. Strikingly, the team's collaborators in Richard Libby's laboratory at the University of Rochester Medical Center, were able to demonstrate that just like the Notch2 mutants, Jagged-1 conditional knockout mice showed almost total loss of CB fold structures, a major hint that Notch2 was switched on by Jagged1 to drive CB formation.
Biochemical and microarray analysis provided further explanation for defects observed after Notch2 loss. Comparison of normal and Notch2-mutant eye cells revealed that not only did cells of mutant mice lose BMP signaling but that expression of two proteins known to interfere with BMP increased in those cells.
"Up-regulation of BMP antagonists following Notch2 loss is an important observation," says Xie. "In other systems people often observe that Notch and BMP cooperatively regulate common targets by transcription factor collaboration at the transcriptional level, but this is a unique mechanism. We find that Notch2 keeps BMP signaling active by inhibiting its inhibitors."
The study's second co-first author is Yi Zhou, a University of Kansas Medical Center graduate student earning his Ph.D. in Xie's lab. "Our work reveals a novel link between Notch and BMP pathways potentially involved in the pathogenesis of glaucoma," says Zhou, noting one more tantalizing implication of the paper. "In addition, mutations in Jagged-1 and Notch2 are thought to underlie the human genetic disease known as Alagille Syndrome. Our work may lead to a better understanding of both."
Alagille Syndrome is an inherited childhood disorder causing defects in organ systems including liver, heart and the skeleton. Xie is equally intrigued by potential connections between his group's observations in the mouse eye and Alagille outcomes in humans. Nonetheless, he remains focused on nailing down how perturbation of the Jagged1-Notch2-BMP axis might cause eye disease.
"We now know how to build better mouse mutants to study CB development. In this work we show that Notch regulates BMP signaling but have not yet determined whether alterations in CB structure actually change interocular pressure," he says. "Answering that question is our future goal."
###
Stowers Institute for Medical Research: http://www.stowers-institute.org
Thanks to Stowers Institute for Medical Research for this article.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128269/Same_musicians__Brand_new_tune
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Thursday, May 16, 2013
Finance: "Aprés Moi, Le Déluge ... - at The Real News
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Bio
Professor Dr. Heiner Flassbeck
Graduated in April 1976 in economics from Saarland University, Germany, concentrating on money and credit, business cycle theory and general philosophy of science; obtained a Ph.D. in Economics from the Free University, Berlin, Germany in July 1987. 2005 he was appointed honorary professor at the University of Hamburg.
Employment started at the German Council of Economic Experts, Wiesbaden between 1976 and 1980, followed by the Federal Ministry of Economics, Bonn until January 1986; chief macroeconomist in the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in Berlin between 1988 and 1998, and State Secretary (Vice Minister) from October 1998 to April 1999 at the Federal Ministry of Finance, Bonn, responsible for international affairs, the EU and IMF.
Worked at UNCTAD since 2000; from 2003 to December 2012 he was Director of the Division on Globalisation and Development Strategies. He was the principal author of the team preparing UNCTAD's Trade and Development Report, with specialization in macroeconomics, exchange rate policies, and international finance. Since January 2013 he is Director of Flassbeck-Economics, a consultancy for global macroeconomic questions (www.flassbeck-economics.de).
Transcript
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore.The conventional wisdom about the current state of the American and global economy is there'll be a slow recovery. Even the retraction in public spending that's taking place in most parts of the world is apparently supposed to only slow down the recovery. Well, I'm left with a question why. Why do they expect any recovery at all, given the current conditions?Now joining us to discuss all of this is Heiner Flassbeck. Heiner served as director of the Division on Globalization and Development Strategies of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, known as UNCTAD. He was also vice minister at the Federal Ministry of Finance in Bonn in Germany from October?'98 to April?'99. He's now professor of economics at Hamburg University. Thanks for joining us, Heiner.HEINER FLASSBECK, PROF. ECONOMICS, HAMBURG UNIVERSITY: Thanks for having me.JAY: So what do you make of this idea that, yes, there's a retraction in public-sector spending, yes, there's tens of thousands of layoffs of public-sector workers? In the U.S. you have these sequestration cuts moving its way through the economy. And we're told that at worst this is simply going to slow down an inevitable recovery. What do you make of that?FLASSBECK: Well, if you read a bit between the lines and you look at the figures, then you see the story is a bit more complicated. The story is that obviously, as I read the figures for the United States, it's like that, that the private households are driving down the savings rate again. This is always, so to say, the measure of last resort to save the economy. And that seems to be what is happening now, because there is not much of an income increase, there's no wage increase in the United States that is significant. And so people desperately trying to keep their consumption level are doing what they have done for a lot of years before. But it's making the whole system not more stable, but it's making it more fragile. And it is no relief for the government, because this cannot go on forever. As I see it, the private households savings rate in the United States is close to 2?percent, so you have another 2?percent to go, but then it's over.JAY: I see in my mail I'm getting more and more ads for credit cards again. I mean, is this because the banks are having a little more confidence in the economy? Or are they simply trying to start another credit bubble?FLASSBECK: Yeah, it seems to be--it's a credit bubble, but it's a smaller one that we have experienced in the past. But nevertheless, the fact is that with falling interest rates, as I said, savings are less attractive, so people use whatever they get for consumption. But it's not sustainable. It's not a thing that can go on forever. The first signal from central banks that interest rates would go up or the first signal that the economy is nevertheless stagnating, what I'm expecting would mean that people could go the other way around, namely, they could get anxious about the economic outlook and would increase the savings rate. So this can be a typical straw fire, the kind of straw fire that people are expecting from Keynesian demand programs. But this time the straw fire comes from private households because the governments are cutting.JAY: And in a recent book that you've released, called Act Now--I think you edited, is that correct?--you write that not only do you not foresee a recovery any time soon, but you think there's a danger of another deep recession or even depression.FLASSBECK: Yeah, I did the book together, I coauthored it with a number of people--James Galbraith is one of them, Richard Koo from Japan, and Paul Davidson from the United States, Jayati Ghosh from India. We wrote the book together in our--because we have the view that indeed there is a big danger for the world economy, because what we see is that the G-20 is stalled somehow. Nothing happens. They are blocked by a confrontation between, well, the United States that want more from the surplus countries, and the surplus countries that are refusing to do so, mainly Germany, mainly Germany, a little bit China. China has done quite a bit, but Germany's not doing anything. And in Europe they are cutting. In Japan they're trying to expand, but it's very difficult. So we're back in the old picture that in the three big blocs in the world, not much is happening. Japan, United States, and Europe is still in a very miserable state of affairs. The developing countries are doing the normal thing. In Asia they're growing a bit, and Latin America not very much. So for the whole world economy, it's still a very bleak outlook, and there is nothing on the horizon that would give you hope that it could change rather soon.JAY: And what about the whole issue of the financial crisis, as opposed to sort of the deeper structural crisis, in the sense of regulation? And nothing seems much to have changed on that.FLASSBECK: Yeah. And you look at the stock markets, you see what is happening. The stock markets take the opportunity of having very low interest rates from the central bank to create a new bubble, to blow up a new bubble. That is what we see at this moment of time. We never before had such a disconnection between the stock market and the real economy. And the real economy since 2008, 2009 is more or less flat. We're talking about double-dip recessions, triple-dip recessions in the United Kingdom, a deep depression in some parts of Europe. And nevertheless they are celebrating on the stock markets. I don't know what. Something that doesn't exist. So this is the bubble that has been inflated and will burst sooner or later. It has to burst. And I think it will not only happen when we are back into a recovery. It will be long before, because people have to realize that what they expect and what their expectations show on the stock market is not realistic. It's not there.JAY: When one looks at the policies of most of the governments in the industrialized world, and mostly austerity policies, it seems rather obvious that these austerity policies do not speed up recovery. At best, they slow down recovery. At worse, they actually lead to more recession. I mean, I don't know how it could be any more obvious than that. And you look what's happening in Europe. So doesn't that lead to the conclusion that they don't want a recovery? I mean, there's so much money being made out of this recession in many ways, I mean, low wages, privatization, cheap money, as you say, to drive up this bubble on the stock market. I mean, why would anyone want this to end if you're in a position to take advantage of it?FLASSBECK: Well, it's not quite clear whether they want to go on like that, but it's sure that they cannot go on like that, because, as I said, sooner or later the expectation in the stock market cannot be fed anymore by anything, because interest rates are zero. And what else should happen now? The last move was from the European Central Bank. If the austerity goes on and private households are getting frustrated at a certain point of time or are getting anxious, as I said, about their low savings and the bleak future, then the thing will collapse. It will collapse for sure. It's only the question when it collapses. This is--nobody can forecast when it will collapse, but it will collapse. And then we will see that we need total different policies. What we have is in some company, in the company sector--that is what you are referring to--in the company sector, they're still sitting on very high profits. But that is due to the last years, to the years in which the government was still doing some deficit spending, because companies can only accumulate--this is a simple truth in macroeconomics--companies can only accumulate profits if one of the sectors is going to spend and one of the sectors is running a deficit. So if private households are driving down their savings, that directly contributes to higher profits. If the government is cutting spending, it directly reduces profit. So what happened in the past, that they got high profits, but now I don't see the room of maneuver, I don't see the leeway for really new deficits somewhere in any sector of the economy. So this thing, what you see now, is an illusion, and it will not go on.JAY: But is it not an illusion that if you're in the driver's seat, in the sense if you're in one of these big companies sitting on piles of cash or any of the big banks, who are also--what--sitting on, what, a trillion and a half of cash, one, you make money now out of the stock market bubble, and then, once it crashes--and I assume everybody knows that bubble will burst--but you're sitting on so much cash, you can go on a buying spree, can you not? And then you can start going to this crazy--you know, not mergers, but takeovers and even more concentration of ownership. I mean, I don't suppose in the final analysis one would think it has to end badly, but don't these guys think of things in terms of apr?s moi le d?luge, you know, the floods, let them come later, right now I can make a lot of money?FLASSBECK: That's exactly the attitude, I'm sure, in the financial markets; that's the attitude, apr?s moi le d?luge. They think, I don't care if I made money in the next two years or the next year; what do I care about the future? That's exactly the attitude. This is the herding behavior that we have in the stock markets. That is one of the problems we're addressing in the book, again, namely, that nothing has been done against this herding behavior, nothing has been done against the exploitation, so to say, of the cheap money from central banks by the banking system. So all these things have not happened. And that is why we're in worse shape today, in much worse shape than we were in 2008 and 2009, because in 2008, 2009 you could hope, you had some hope that governments would address these problems and would do something about it. Now the hope is gone. So where are we? We are in a stagnation. We are, as I said, in the permanent danger of falling into a second dip or a triple dip or whatever it is. Unemployment is still very high. So there is no way out.JAY: Okay. In the next part of our interview with Heiner, we're going to dig into a little further about what's going on and what he thinks is the way out. Please join us for part two of our interview with Heiner Flassbeck on The Real News Network.End
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