BANGKOK (AP) ? Oil prices rose above $93 per barrel Monday amid hopes that the European Central Bank, meeting later this week, would act to shore up economic growth.
Benchmark crude for June delivery was up 38 cents to $93.38 a barrel at midafternoon Bangkok time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 64 cents to close at $93 in New York on Friday after the U.S. government released economic growth figures that disappointed markets.
Growth accelerated to an annual rate of 2.5 percent from January through March from an anemic pace in the previous quarter. Markets were expecting growth of 3 percent or better.
The disappointing growth figure for the economy has reinforced expectations that Federal Reserve policymakers will stick with their easy money policies when they meet Wednesday in Washington. Analysts believe the European Central Bank will head in the same direction when it meets Thursday.
Michael Hewson of CMC Markets said in an email that "there is increasing speculation that the ECB could well cut interest rates this week."
Brent crude, which is used to price oil from the North Sea used by many U.S. refiners, dropped 7 cents to $103.09 on the ICE futures exchange in London.
In other energy futures trading on Nymex:
? Wholesale gasoline was down 1.7 cents at $2.811 a gallon.
School of Management 2013 seniors surveyed by Bloomberg Businessweek ranked SMG?s finance degree seventh nationwide, beating out New York University and Boston College. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky
Michael Tobitsch took his first finance class junior year at BU and never looked back. He landed a job after graduation in investment banking at Wachovia Securities, now merged with Wells Fargo, where he honed his skills before securing a position on the mergers and acquisitions team of insurance broker Marsh & McLennan Companies in New York City.
A rising star in his field, Tobitsch (SMG?07) says BU gave him a strong foundation in finance, so he was hardly surprised to hear that 2013 seniors of the School of Management surveyed by Bloomberg Businessweek recently ranked the school?s finance program the seventh best nationwide, beating out competitors like New York University and Boston College.
Tobitsch credits Kenneth Freeman, Allen Questrom Professor and Dean of SMG, for changing the curriculum so students can select finance courses as early as freshman year (an option unavailable to him) and predicts other top-notch rankings will follow. ?I really think it?s an indication of what?s to come.?
In compiling its results, Bloomberg Businessweek surveyed Class of 2013 seniors about the courses they took and their overall satisfaction with their individual programs. The student satisfaction score rose to 18th overall, an increase from last year?s rank of 26th. And the publication ranked SMG?s overall undergraduate program as 23rd nationwide. Freeman expects more favorable survey results assessing other departments in the coming weeks.
Bloomberg Businessweek ranked SMG's undergraduate program 23rd nationwide. Photo by Vernon Doucette
?Being able to rise to the top 10 for finance is a validation of the really strong commitment of our faculty to our students,? says Freeman. ?It?s heartening to see that our efforts are being recognized by our students to really differentiate the schools of management.?
Marcel Rindisbacher, an SMG associate professor and chair of finance, thinks the survey reflects the school?s decision to redefine the undergraduate curriculum and ?shows the kind of efforts we put in to address students? needs are paying off.?
?Employers know the quality of our curriculum as well as the quality of our students,? says James French, an SMG lecturer in organizational behavior and acting assistant dean. ?Nearly one third of the 2012 graduating class took a position in financial services with a starting salary of over $54,000.?
According to SMG?s Feld Career Center, 92 percent of Class of 2012 graduates concentrating in finance landed a job within six months of graduation, many with Fortune 500 companies, among them Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Fidelity, and J.P. Morgan. Across all SMG departments, 93 percent of Class of 2012 graduates are employed in their respective fields.
Tobitsch wants that trend to continue. That?s why he?s planning his fourth Your Future in Finance conference at BU in September, where young alumni professionals join professors to mentor students for the career of their dreams.
?This ranking was really fully driven by the SMG student experience,? he says, and ?demonstrates that the University and alumni care about them.?
Twitter is great if you're famous. But Jawbone's founding CEO Alexander Asseily thinks everyone deserves a powerful voice online, so today he's launching State, a structured opinion-sharing network where people don't need to follow you see your posts. You can get an early State invite now and start contributing to an opinion graph where what matters is what you believe, not who follows you.
FILE - In this Monday, Aug. 15, 2011 file photo, children from southern Somalia hold their pots as they line up to receive cooked food in Mogadishu, Somalia. Officials in East Africa say a report to be released this week by two U.S. government-funded famine and food agencies gives the highest death toll yet from Somalia's 2011 famine, estimating that 260,000 people died - more than double previous estimates. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh, File)
FILE - In this Monday, Aug. 15, 2011 file photo, children from southern Somalia hold their pots as they line up to receive cooked food in Mogadishu, Somalia. Officials in East Africa say a report to be released this week by two U.S. government-funded famine and food agencies gives the highest death toll yet from Somalia's 2011 famine, estimating that 260,000 people died - more than double previous estimates. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh, File)
FILE - In this Monday, July 25, 2011 file photo, an unidentified child reacts as he is weighed at a field hospital of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) in the town of Dadaab, Kenya. Officials in East Africa say a report to be released this week by two U.S. government-funded famine and food agencies gives the highest death toll yet from Somalia's 2011 famine, estimating that 260,000 people died - more than double previous estimates. (AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam, File)
FILE - In this Saturday Aug. 6, 2011 file photo, the shrouded body of 12-month-old Liin Muhumed Surow, who died of malnutrition 25 days after reaching the camp according to her father Mumumed, lies before burial at UNHCR's Ifo Extension camp, near Dadaab in Kenya close to the Somali border. Officials in East Africa say a report to be released this week by two U.S. government-funded famine and food agencies gives the highest death toll yet from Somalia's 2011 famine, estimating that 260,000 people died - more than double previous estimates. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)
FILE - In this Saturday, Aug. 6, 2011 file photo, Somali men finish the grave of 12-month-old Liin Muhumed Surow who died of malnutrition 25 days after reaching the camp according to her father Mumumed, following her burial at UNHCR's Ifo Extension camp, near Dadaab in Kenya close to the Somali border. Officials in East Africa say a report to be released this week by two U.S. government-funded famine and food agencies gives the highest death toll yet from Somalia's 2011 famine, estimating that 260,000 people died - more than double previous estimates. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)
FILE - In this Thursday, Aug. 4, 2011 file photo, the carcass of a cow lays in the sand near the eastern Kenyan town of Dadaab, Kenya, 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the Somali border. Officials in East Africa say a report to be released this week by two U.S. government-funded famine and food agencies gives the highest death toll yet from Somalia's 2011 famine, estimating that 260,000 people died - more than double previous estimates. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) ? The 2011 Somali famine killed an estimated 260,000 people, half of them age 5 and under, according to a new report to be published this week that more than doubles previous death toll estimates, officials told The Associated Press.
The aid community believes that tens of thousands of people died needlessly because the international community was slow to respond to early signs of approaching hunger in East Africa in late 2010 and early 2011.
The toll was also exacerbated by extremist militants from al-Shabab who banned food aid deliveries to the areas of south-central Somalia that they controlled. Those same militants have also made the task of figuring out an accurate death toll extremely difficult.
A Western official briefed on the new report ? the most authoritative to date ? told AP that it says 260,000 people died, and that half the victims were 5 and under. Two other international officials briefed on the report confirmed that the toll was in the quarter-million range. All three insisted they not be identified because they were not authorized to share the report's contents before it is officially released.
The report is being made public Thursday by FEWSNET, a famine early warning system funded by the U.S. government's aid arm USAID, and by the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit - Somalia, which is funded by the U.S. and Britain.
A previous estimate by the U.K. government said between 50,000 and 100,000 people died in the famine. The new report used research conducted by specialists experienced in estimating death tolls in emergencies and disasters. Those researchers relied on food and mortality data compiled by the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit.
Because of the imprecise nature of the data available, the toll remains only an estimate.
When asked about the report, Somalia Health Minister Maryan Qasim Ahmed said she didn't want to comment until she read it because of questions she had about the accuracy of the figures.
Sikander Khan, the head of UNICEF in Somalia, also said he needed to look at the report's methodology before commenting specifically. But he said generally that the response to the famine was problematic because it depended on political dynamics. He said the international community needs to change the way it classifies famines.
"You lose children by the time people realize it's met the established definition of famine," he said.
Marthe Everard, the World Health Organization's country director for Somalia, said she has not yet seen the report but would not be surprised by such a high death toll.
"The Somalis themselves were shocked about the number of women and children dying," she said, adding later: "It should give us lessons learned, but what do we do with it? How do we correct it for next time?"
Much of the aid response came after pictures of weak and dying children were publicized by international media outlets around the time the U.N. declared a famine in July 2011.
"By then you are too late," Everard said.
A report last year by the aid groups Oxfam and Save the Children found that rich donor nations waited until the crisis was in full swing before donating a substantial amount of money. The report also said aid agencies were slow to respond.
Quicker action wouldn't have prevented the deaths in areas controlled by al-Shabab. The militant group prevented many men from leaving the famine-hit region and allowed no emergency food aid in.
Thousands of Somalis walked dozens or hundreds of miles to reach camps in Kenya and Ethiopia. Countless numbers of families lost children or elderly members along routes that became known as roads of death.
BAGHDAD (AP) ? Five car bombs exploded Monday in public areas in predominantly Shiite cities and districts in central and southern Iraq, killing 26 civilians and wounding dozens, officials said.
The blasts come amid a week-long spike in sectarian violence following clashes at a Sunni protest camp in the north of the country. No one has claimed responsibility, but coordinated bombings in civilian areas are a favorite strategy used by al-Qaida in Iraq.
Two parked car bombs went off simultaneously Monday morning in the city of Amarah near a gathering of construction workers and a market, killing 13 civilians and wounding 42, according to police.
Another police officer said a parked car bomb exploded near a restaurant in the city of Diwaniyah, killing eight civilians and wounding 25 others.
Amarah, some 320 kilometers (200 miles) southeast of Baghdad and Diwaniyah, 30 kilometers (80 miles) south of the capital, are heavily Shiite and normally comparatively peaceful.
Hours later, another parked car bomb went off in the revered Shiite city of Karbala, killing two civilians and wounding 12 others, police said. Two early Islamic figures revered by Shiites are buried in the city, about 90 kilometers (55 miles) south of Baghdad.
A parked car bomb ripped through a Shiite neighborhood in the otherwise predominantly Sunni town of Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) south of Baghdad, killing three and wounding 16, another police said.
Four medical officials confirmed the casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information.
Sectarian violence has spiked since Tuesday, when security forces tried to make arrests at a Sunni Muslim protest camp in the northern city of Hawija. The move set off a clash that killed 23 people, including three soldiers.
The Hawija incident and a spate of follow-up battles between gunmen and security forces as well as other attacks, including Monday's, have left around 200 dead in the last week.
(Reuters) - Investigators have removed from its Watertown, Massachusetts, backyard the now-famous boat used as a hiding spot by one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, and have taken it to an evidence storage facility, the FBI said on Saturday.
The boat was the scene of high drama when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a 19-year-old ethnic Chechen charged with the April 15 bombing that killed three people and wounded 264, was captured by authorities on April 19 after a tense day of searching in the Boston area.
The owner of the boat called police after he lifted the tarp of the boat stored in his backyard and saw blood. Police found a wounded Tsarnaev inside the boat.
The boat was processed for evidence at the scene and then moved on Friday to an undisclosed FBI facility for storage, said FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller.
Tsarnaev's older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, is also a suspect but was killed by police on April 18.
Also on Friday, the FBI concluded their search at a landfill in New Bedford for evidence connected to the bombings, she said. Eimiller declined to say what evidence investigators hoped to find and whether they found anything.
"We were seeking evidence but we are not commenting on the nature of what was being sought or what was found," she said. "We can confirm that we were there Thursday, Friday and left yesterday."
The landfill is near the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, attended by the younger Tsarnaev.
Local media reported the FBI were trying to find the younger Tsarnaev's laptop.
(Reporting By Karen Brooks; Editing by Sandra Maler)
MANTOLOKING, N.J. (AP) ? The 9-year-old girl who got New Jersey's tough-guy governor to shed a tear as he comforted her after her home was destroyed is bummed because she now lives far from her best friend and has nowhere to hang her One Direction posters.
A New Jersey woman whose home was overtaken by mold still cries when she drives through the area. A New York City man whose home burned can't wait to build a new one.
Six months after Superstorm Sandy devastated the Jersey shore and New York City and pounded coastal areas of New England, the region is dealing with a slow and frustrating, yet often hopeful, recovery. Tens of thousands of people remain homeless. Housing, business, tourism and coastal protection all remain major issues with the summer vacation ? and hurricane ? seasons almost here again.
"Some families and some lives have come back together quickly and well, and some people are up and running almost as if nothing ever happened, and for them it's been fine," New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said at a news conference Thursday. "Some people are still very much in the midst of recovery. You still have people in hotel rooms, you still have people doubled up, you still have people fighting with insurance companies, and for them it's been terrible and horrendous."
Lynda Fricchione's flood-damaged home in the Ortley Beach section of Toms River, N.J., is gutted; the roof was fixed just last week. The family is still largely living out of cardboard boxes in an apartment. But waiting for a final decision from federal and state authorities over new flood maps that govern the price of flood insurance is tormenting her and many others.
"The largest problem is, nobody really knows how high we're going to have to elevate the house," she said. "At town hall they told us 5 feet, but then they said it might go down to 3 feet in the summer. Most of us are waiting until the final maps come out. It's wait-and-see."
But more than anything, Fricchione is optimistic, buoyed by a recent trip to New Orleans with her daughter during which they met a resident of the Lower Ninth Ward who was one of the first to move back in after Hurricane Katrina inundated the neighborhood that has become a symbol of flood damage ? and resilience.
"Talking to that man was wonderful!" Fricchione said. "He said it takes time and you just have to have hope and know it will all work out eventually."
By many measures, the recovery from Superstorm Sandy, which struck Oct. 29, has been slow. From Maryland to New Hampshire, the National Hurricane Center attributes 72 deaths directly to Sandy and 87 others indirectly from causes such as hypothermia due to power outages, carbon monoxide poisoning and accidents during cleanup efforts, for a total of 159.
The roller coaster that plunged off a pier in Seaside Heights, N.J., is still in the ocean, although demolition plans are finally moving forward. Scores of homes that were destroyed in nearby Mantoloking still look as they did the day after the storm ? piles of rubble and kindling, with the occasional bathroom fixture or personal possession visible among the detritus.
Throughout the region, many businesses are still shuttered, and an already-tight rental market has become even more so because of the destruction of thousands of units and the crush of displaced storm victims looking to rent the ones that survived.
Homeowners are tortured by uncertainty over ever-changing rules on how high they'll need to rebuild their homes to protect against the next storm; insurance companies have not paid out all that many homeowners expected; and municipalities are borrowing tens of millions of dollars to keep the lights on, the fire trucks running and the police stations staffed, waiting for reimbursement from the federal government for storm expenditures they had to fund out of pocket.
And yet, by other measures, remarkable progress has been made. Boardwalks, the tourism lifeblood of the region, are springing back to life. A handful of homes are going up, and the whine of power saws and the thwack of hammers is everywhere in hard-hit beach towns as contractors fix what can be saved and bulldozers knock down what can't.
Volunteers in Highlands, N.J., are rebuilding the home of Bromlyn Link, the single mother of a 17-year-old boy, both of whom are members of the town's first aid squad and who spent 12 to 14 hours a day helping friends and neighbors forced to live in shelters for weeks after the storm.
Mantoloking, which was cut in half by the storm and saw all 521 of its homes damaged or destroyed, is creeping back to life. The post office recently, reopened, and the first of 50 demolitions will start next week, which is also when Mayor George Nebel will join the 40 other residents who have been able to move back home.
Beaches that were washed away are coming back, due both to nature and bulldozers, and real estate agents say demand for this strangest of upcoming summers appears good, particularly in the large portions of the Jersey shore that were relatively unscathed by Sandy. Beach badges, required for access to most of New Jersey's shoreline, are selling at a near-record pace in Belmar, N.J.
And while towns fortify beaches and dunes and put up sea walls, rock barriers or even sand-filled fabric tubes to guard against future storms, state governments are readying hundreds of millions of dollars to buy out homeowners in flood-prone areas who want to leave.
"We've made a lot of progress in six months; I know we still have a long way to go," New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said at a recent town hall meeting. "By Memorial Day, every boardwalk that was destroyed at the Jersey shore will be rebuilt. Businesses are reopening. Rentals are picking up again, roads are back open."
Christie estimated 39,000 New Jersey families remain displaced, down from 161,000 the day after the storm. In New York, more than 250 families are still living in hotel rooms across New York paid for by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, while others are still shacking up with relatives or living in temporary rentals.
Everyone simply wants to make their homes livable again, said Ray Marten, whose home in the Belle Harbor section of New York City's Queens borough burned down when a fire swept along his street during the storm, and whose family of six is renting a nearby house.
"If you go up my block now, all the houses have been demolished and removed," Marten said. "They're pretty much just holes in the ground. Sand pits."
Separation is the new reality for the Gatti family, a clan of several generations that shared the same three-story home near the ocean on Staten Island until Sandy destroyed it. The flood-soaked place was demolished months ago, and they're waiting for a government buyout. Now the family is scattered across New Jersey, New York and Texas.
"The whole family's separated," said Marge Gatti, the matriarch. "And it's terrible, you know?"
Her son, Anthony, recently drove a U-Haul packed with his meager belongings to Killeen, Texas, where he will start a new life as a car mechanic.
"Mentally, I'm not all that well in the head," said Anthony Gatti, who slept in a tent in front of the ruined home for weeks after the storm. "I know I've got to get some kind of help. I can't seem to shake it out of my life."
Ginjer Doherty was 9 years old when Sandy bubbled up through the floor of her Middletown, N.J., home and ripped the front wall off it. She and her parents went to a firehouse a few days later to see Christie talk about what was being done to recover.
The governor comforted Ginjer, telling her she would be all right, that the grown-ups were on top of things and would take care of her. Ginjer recently had an essay published in Time magazine recalling the encounter and describing her life after Sandy.
"My house was all messed up, and people told us we couldn't stay there anymore," she wrote. "The governor told me not to worry ? that my parents would take care of everything ? and he looked very serious and sad, and he cried.
"Things are going O.K. for my family," she wrote. "We want to go back home, but rebuilding is going to take a long time. But we have a place to live for now. I even rescued a cat that was homeless after Sandy; I wanted him to be safe and loved like I feel."
In an interview with The Associated Press, Ginjer, now 10, said she is sad that her home won't be ready until October; her mom says it has been gutted and needs to be elevated.
Of the delay, Ginjer said simply, "It stinks."
Sandy also damaged interior areas, particularly those along rivers in northern New Jersey. Cities including Hoboken and Jersey City were inundated, and officials continue try seek exemptions for skyscrapers and large apartments from federal rules requiring flood-prone buildings to be elevated. George Stauble, whose Little Ferry house took in four feet of water, said FEMA payouts caused some rifts between neighbors.
"Everybody's house had pretty much the same amount of damage, but people are getting different amounts of money, and that's caused some problems," he said, adding some homeowners received as little as $8,000, while others received as much as $29,000.
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Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Meghan Barr and Deepti Hajela in New York and David Porter in Little Ferry, N.J.
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Wayne Parry can be reached at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC.
Thanks to rare alpine bacteria, researchers identify one of alcohol's key gateways to the brain
Friday, April 26, 2013
Thanks to a rare bacteria that grows only on rocks in the Swiss Alps, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and the Pasteur Institute in France have been the first to identify how alcohol might affect key brain proteins.
It's a major step on the road to eventually developing drugs that could disrupt the interaction between alcohol and the brain.
"Now that we've identified this key brain protein and understand its structure, it's possible to imagine developing a drug that could block the binding site," said Adron Harris, professor of biology and director of the Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction at The University of Texas at Austin.
Harris and his former postdoctoral fellow Rebecca Howard, now an assistant professor at Skidmore College, are co-authors on the paper that was recently published in Nature Communications. It describes the structure of the brain protein, called a ligand-gated ion channel, that is a key enabler of many of the primary physiological and behavioral effects of alcohol.
Harris said that for some time there has been suggestive evidence that these ion channels are important binding sites for alcohol. Researchers couldn't prove it, however, because they couldn't crystallize the brain protein well enough, and therefore couldn't use X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of the protein with and without alcohol present.
The advance came when Marc Delarue and his colleagues at the Pasteur Institute sequenced the genome of cyanobacteria Gloeobacter violaceus. They noted a protein sequence on the bacteria that is remarkably similar to the sequence of a group of ligand-gated ion channels in the human brain. They were able to crystallize this protein. Harris saw the results and immediately got in touch.
"This is something you never would have found with any sort of logical approach," he said. "You never would have guessed that this obscure bacterium would have something that looks like a brain protein in it. But the institute, because of Pasteur's fascination with bacteria, has this huge collection of obscure bacteria, and over the last few years they've been sequencing the genomes, keeping an eye out for interesting properties."
Harris and Howard asked their French colleagues to collaborate, got the cyanobacteria, changed one amino acid to make it sensitive to alcohol, and then crystallized both the original bacteria and the mutated one. They compared the two to see whether they could identify where the alcohol bound to the mutant. With further tests they confirmed that it was a meaningful site.
"Everything validated that the cavity in which the alcohol bound is important," said Harris. "It doesn't account for all the things that alcohol does, but it appears to be important for a lot of them, including some of the 'rewarding' effects and some of the negative, aversive effects."
Going forward, Harris and his lab plan to use mice to observe how changes to the key protein affect behavior when the mice consume alcohol.
They're also hoping to identify other important proteins from this family of ligand-gated ion channels. In the long term, he hopes to be involved in developing drugs that act on these proteins in ways that help people diminish or cease their drinking.
"So why do some people drink moderately and some excessively?" he said. "One reason lies in that the balance between the rewarding and the aversive effects, and that balance is different for different people, and it can change within an individual depending on their drinking patterns. Some of those effects are determined by the interactions of alcohol and these channels, so the hope is that we can alter the balance. Maybe we can diminish the reward or increase the aversive effects."
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University of Texas at Austin: http://www.utexas.edu
Thanks to University of Texas at Austin for this article.
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A fifth-grader in Cupertino, California was suspended and threatened with expulsion for bringing a small Swiss Army knife on a school-sponsored, science-oriented camping trip.
In early April, Braden Bandermann?s class set off on Garden Gate Elementary School?s annual, week-long pilgrimage for fifth-graders to Marin Headlands, just north of San Francisco.
Before leaving, Braden did what any Silicon Valley 10-year-old faced with the perils of nature might do: He packed his trusty Swiss Army knife. As any camper knows, the multi-tool device is nothing if not versatile. Braden?s particular model contains a can opener, tweezers, a toothpick, a nail file, a tiny pair of scissors and a small blade.
The little blade landed the boy in big trouble.
?They called me,? explained Tony Bandermann, Braden?s father. ?They said, ?You have to come and get him. He has a weapon. He needs to be suspended or possibly expelled.??
At the time, the elder Bandermann was on a business trip in Sacramento, roughly 100 miles away. His wife, Braden?s stepmother, was at the camp with Braden, but they had arrived by bus and had no private transportation. (Braden?s mother was also unable to go to the camp so that he could serve a suspension.)
The school principal, Brandi Hucko, allegedly wanted Bandermann to rush to the site of the science camp, pick Braden up for a one-day suspension and then deliver him back to camp.
Bandermann told The Daily Caller that he was frustrated over Hucko?s insistence ?that I risk my job and go get him out of the program for a one-day suspension all over a Swiss Army knife.?
The multi-tool instrument did not present a threat, Bandermann believes.
?I went to the very same trip when I was a child at the same school, and I had a very similar Swiss Army knife,? he said. ?In fact, most of the kids did.?
Principal Hucko disagreed. According to Bandermann, she was adamant that punishment must be swift and severe.
Consequently, Bandermann told TheDC, school officials forced Braden to serve a one-day suspension at camp. He was allegedly isolated in a teacher?s lounge area from all the other children. He was forced to eat meals by himself. He was forced to sleep in an area separate from all the other children. He missed an entire day of activities.
Bandermann believes school officials overreacted.
?This is not Sandy Hook,? he said. ?Get real. He brought a stupid Swiss Army knife to camp.?
Bandermann said that he suggested to Hucko that perhaps someone could take away the knife and discipline his son once he was returned to the urban comfort of Silicon Valley. However, Hucko would not negotiate.
The Cupertino Union School District would not respond to questions from The Daily Caller. School district representative Jeremy Nishihara said answering questions would violate Braden?s privacy.
Garden Gate Elementary?s parent handbook, available on the school?s website, stipulates a stern ?zero-tolerance? policy for ?violence, weapons, and drugs on school campuses or at school activities off campus.?
?State Law, district policy, and regulations of [sic] California Education Code support Zero Tolerance by requiring the immediate suspension and recommendation for expulsion of any student who possesses or furnishes a firearm, knife, explosive, or similarly dangerous object on school grounds or at a school event off school grounds,? the policy reads.
?Our schools also have prevention and intervention programs to help students make decisions, solve problems, and deal with conflict,? the policy also adds.
This incident is the latest in a long line of extraordinarily strong reactions by school officials to things students have brought to school ? or talked about bringing to school, or eaten at school, or taken to a nature camp ? that vaguely resemble weapons but aren?t, actually, anything like real weapons.
In rural West Virginia, an eighth-grader was suspended and, astonishingly, arrested after he refused to remove a t-shirt supporting the National Rifle Association. When he returned to school, he wore the same shirt, as did several other students in a show of support. (RELATED: Eighth-grader arrested over NRA shirt returns to school in same shirt)
Officials at an elementary school in small-town Michigan?impounded a third-grader boy?s batch of 30 homemade birthday cupcakes?because they were adorned with green plastic figurines representing World War Two soldiers. The school principal branded the military-themed cupcakes ?insensitive? in light of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.?(RELATED: School confiscates third-grader?s cupcakes topped with toy soldiers)
At Genoa-Kingston Middle School in northeast Illinois, a teacher threatened an eighth-grader with suspension if he did not remove his?t-shirt emblazoned with the interlocking rifles, a?symbol of the United States Marines.?(RELATED: Junior high teacher tells kid to remove Marines t-shirt or get suspended)
At Park?Elementary School in Baltimore, Maryland, a student was suspended for two days because his teacher thought he shaped a?strawberry, pre-baked toaster pastry?into something resembling a gun.?(RELATED: Second-grader suspended for having breakfast pastry shaped like a gun)
At Poston Butte?High School?in Arizona, a high school freshman?was suspended?for setting a picture of a gun as the desktop background on his school-issued computer.?(RELATED: Freshman suspended for picture of gun)
At D. Newlin Fell School in Philadelphia, school officials reportedly yelled at a student and then searched her in front of her class after she was?found with a paper gun?her grandfather had made for her.?(RELATED: Paper gun causes panic)
In rural Pennsylvania, a kindergarten girl was?suspended for making a ?terroristic threat??after she told another girl that she planned to shoot her with a pink Hello Kitty toy gun that bombards targets with soapy bubbles. (RELATED: Kindergartener suspended for making ?terroristic threat? with Hello Kitty bubble gun)
At Roscoe R. Nix Elementary School in Maryland, a six-year-old boy was suspended for?making the universal kid sign for a gun, pointing at another student and saying ?pow.? That boy?s suspension was later lifted and his name cleared.?(RELATED: Pow! You?re suspended, kid)
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Apr. 25, 2013 ? A protein known to be a key player in the development of Parkinson's disease is able to enter and harm cells in the same way that viruses do, according to a Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine study.
The protein is called alpha-synuclein. The study shows how, once inside a neuron, alpha synuclein breaks out of lysosomes, the digestive compartments of the cell. This is similar to how a cold virus enters a cell during infection. The finding eventually could lead to the development of new therapies to delay the onset of Parkinson's disease or halt or slow its progression, researchers said.
The study by virologist Edward Campbell, PhD, and colleagues, was published April 25, 2013 in the journal PLOS ONE.
Alpha-synuclein plays a role in the normal functioning of healthy neurons. But in Parkinson's disease patients, the protein turns bad, aggregating into clumps that lead to the death of neurons in the area of the brain responsible for motor control. Previous studies have shown that these protein aggregates can enter and harm cells. Campbell and colleagues showed how alpha synuclein can bust out of lysosomes, small structures that collectively serve as the cell's digestive system. The rupture of these bubble-like structures, known as vesicles, releases enzymes that are toxic to the rest of the cell.
"The release of lysosomal enzymes is sensed as a 'danger signal' by cells, since similar ruptures are often induced by invading bacteria or viruses," said Chris Wiethoff, a collaborator on the study. "Lysosomes are often described as 'suicide bags' because when they are ruptured by viruses or bacteria, they induce oxidative stress that often leads to the death of the affected cell."
In a viral or bacterial infection, the deaths of such infected cells may overall be a good thing for the infected individual. But in Parkinson's disease, this same protective mechanism may lead to the death of neurons and enhance the spread of alpha-synuclein between cells in the brain, Campbell said. "This might explain the progressive nature of Parkinson's disease. More affected cells leads to the spread of more toxic alpha-synuclein aggregates in the brain," Campbell said. "This is very similar to what happens in a spreading viral infection."
Campbell stressed that these studies need to be followed up and confirmed in other models of Parkinson's disease. "Using cultured cells, we have made some exciting observations. However, we need to understand how lysosomal rupture is affecting disease progression in animal models of Parkinson's disease and, ultimately, the brains of people affected by Parkinson's disease. Can we interfere with the ability of alpha-synuclein to rupture lysosomes in these settings? And will that have a positive effect on disease progression? These are the questions we are excited to be asking next."
Jeffrey H. Kordower, PhD, professor of neurological sciences, professor of neurosurgery and director of the Research Center for Brain Repair at Rush University Medical Center, said the study "is an important finding by a group of investigators who are beginning to make their impact in the field of Parkinson's disease. This paper adds to the growing concept that alpha-synuclein, a main culprit in the cause of Parkinson's disease, can transfer from cell to cell. This paper elegantly puts a mechanism behind such a transfer. The findings will help shape the direction of Parkinson's disease research for years to come."
Campbell and Wiethoff are assistant professors in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. Other co-authors are David Freeman (first author), Rudy Cedillos, Samantha Choyke, Zana Lukic, Kathleen McGuire, Shauna Marvin, Andrew M. Burrage and Ajay Rana of Loyola's Stritch School of Medicine; Stacey Sudholt of Missouri School of Medicine; and Christopher O'Connor of North Central College in Naperville, Il.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Loyola University Health System, via Newswise.
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Journal Reference:
David Freeman, Rudy Cedillos, Samantha Choyke, Zana Lukic, Kathleen McGuire, Shauna Marvin, Andrew M. Burrage, Stacey Sudholt, Ajay Rana, Christopher O'Connor, Christopher M. Wiethoff, Edward M. Campbell. Alpha-Synuclein Induces Lysosomal Rupture and Cathepsin Dependent Reactive Oxygen Species Following Endocytosis. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (4): e62143 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0062143
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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
A Bangladeshi woman weeps as she holds a picture of her and her missing husband as she waits at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, April 26, 2013. The death toll reached hundreds of people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete.(AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)
A Bangladeshi woman weeps as she holds a picture of her and her missing husband as she waits at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, April 26, 2013. The death toll reached hundreds of people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete.(AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)
A Bangladeshi woman weeps as she holds a picture of her and her missing husband as she waits at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, April 26, 2013. The death toll reached hundreds of people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete.(AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)
A Bangladeshi woman weeps as she waits at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, April 26, 2013. The death toll reached hundreds of people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete.(AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) ? As Bangladesh reels from the deaths of hundreds of garment workers in a building collapse, the refusal of global retailers to pay for strict nationwide factory inspections is bringing renewed scrutiny to an industry that has profited from a country notorious for its hazardous workplaces and subsistence-level wages.
After a factory fire killed 112 garment workers in November, clothing brands and retailers continued to reject a union-sponsored proposal to improve safety throughout Bangladesh's $20 billion garment industry. Instead, companies expanded a patchwork system of private audits and training that labor groups say improves very little in a country where official inspections are lax and factory owners have close relations with the government.
In the meantime, threats to workers persist. In the five months since last year's deadly blaze at Tazreen Fashions Ltd., there were 41 other "fire incidents" in Bangladesh factories ? ranging from a deadly blaze to smaller fires or sparks that caused employees to panic, according to a labor organization affiliated with the AFL-CIO umbrella group of American unions. Combined, the recent incidents killed nine workers and injured more than 660, some with burns and smoke inhalation and others with injuries from stampedes while fleeing.
Wednesday's collapse of the Rana Plaza building that killed more than 300 people is the worst disaster to hit Bangladesh's fast-growing and politically powerful garment industry. For those attempting to overhaul conditions for workers who are paid as little as $38 a month, it is a grim reminder that corporate social responsibility programs are failing to deliver on lofty promises.
More than 48 hours after the eight-story building collapsed, some garment workers were still trapped alive Friday, pinned beneath tons of mangled metal and concrete. Rescue crews struggled to save them, knowing they probably had just a few hours left to live, as desperate relatives clashed with police.
"Improvement is not happening," said Amirul Haque Amin, president of the National Garment Workers Federation in Bangladesh, who said a total of 600 workers have died in factory accidents in the last decade. "The multinational companies claim a lot of things. They claim they have very good policies, they have their own code of conduct, they have their auditing and monitoring system," Amin said. "But yet these things keep happening."
What role retailers should play in making working conditions safer at the factories that manufacture their apparel has become a central issue for the $1 trillion global clothing industry.
The clothing brands say they are working to improve safety, but the size of the garment industry ? some 4,000 factories in Bangladesh alone ?means such efforts skim the surface. That opaqueness is further muddied by subcontracting. Retailers can be unwittingly involved with problematic factories when their main suppliers farm out work to others to ensure orders are filled on time.
"We remain committed to promoting stronger safety measures in factories and that work continues," Wal-Mart said in a statement after the Rana Plaza collapse. The world's largest retailer says there was no authorized Wal-Mart production in the building. One of the Rana Plaza factories, Ether Tex, listed Wal-Mart as a customer on its website.
Labor groups argue the best way to clean up Bangladesh's garment factories already is outlined in a nine-page safety proposal drawn up by Bangladeshi and international unions.
The plan would ditch government inspections, which are infrequent and easily subverted by corruption, and establish an independent inspectorate to oversee all factories in Bangladesh, with powers to shut down unsafe facilities as part of a legally binding contract signed by suppliers, customers and unions. The inspections would be funded by contributions from the companies of up to $500,000 per year.
The proposal was presented at a 2011 meeting in Dhaka attended by more than a dozen of the world's largest clothing brands and retailers ? including Wal-Mart, Gap and Swedish clothing giant H&M ? but was rejected by the companies because it would be legally binding and costly.
At the time, Wal-Mart's representative told the meeting it was "not financially feasible ... to make such investments," according to minutes of the meeting obtained by The Associated Press.
After last year's Tazreen blaze, Bangladeshi union president Amin said he and international labor activists renewed a push for the independent inspectorate plan, but none of the factories or big brands would agree.
Siddiqur Rahman, former vice president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, denied the factories are responsible for killing the plan, saying the problem was that buyers did not want to pay for it.
"We welcome anything that is good for the garment industry and its workers here," Rahman said. He also disputed several union groups' figures of dozens of factory fires since November, saying there had been only one.
The Solidarity Center, the non-profit group affiliated with the AFL-CIO, said its staff in Bangladesh compiled the list of 41 "fire incidents" from local media and counted any incident that caused injury or evacuation as an indication of compromised safety.
This week, none of the large clothing brands or retailers would comment about the proposal.
Wal-Mart spokesman Kevin Gardner did not directly answer questions about the unions' safety plans in replies to questions emailed by The Associated Press. H&M responded to questions with emailed links to corporate social responsibility websites.
In December, however, a spokesperson for the Gap ? which owns the Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic chains ? said the company turned down the proposal because it did not want to be vulnerable to lawsuits and did not want to pay factories more money to help with safety upgrades.
H&M also did not sign on to the proposal because it believes factories and local government in Bangladesh should be taking on the responsibility, Pierre B?rjesson, manager of sustainability and social issues, told AP in December.
H&M, which places the most apparel orders in Bangladesh and works with more than 200 factories there, is one of about 20 retailers and brands that have banded together to develop training films for garment manufacturers.
Wal-Mart last year began requiring regular audits of factories, fire drills and mandated fire safety training for all levels of factory management. It also announced in January it would immediately cut ties with any factory that failed an inspection, instead of giving warnings first as before.
And the Gap has hired its own chief fire inspector to oversee factories that produce its clothing in Bangladesh.
But many insist such measures are not enough to overhaul an industry that employs 3 million workers.
"No matter how much training you have, you can't walk through flames or escape a collapsed building," said Ineke Zeldenrust of the Amsterdam-based Clean Clothes Campaign, which lobbies for garment workers' rights.
Private audits also have their failings, she said. Because audits are confidential, even if one company pulls its business from a supplier over safety issues, it won't tell its competitors, who will continue to place orders ? allowing the unsafe factory to stay open.
The Tazreen factory that burned last year had passed inspections, and two of the factories in the Rana Plaza building had passed the standards of a major European group that does factory inspections in developing countries. The Business Social Compliance Initiative, which represents hundreds of companies, said the factories of Phantom Apparels and New Wave Style had been audited against its code of conduct which it said focuses on labor issues, not building standards.
"The audits and inspections are too much focused on checklists," said Saif Khan, who worked for Phillips Van Heusen, the owner of brands Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein, in Bangladesh until 2011 as a factory compliance supervisor.
"They touch on broader areas but do not consider the realities on the ground," he said.
___
Johnson reported from Mumbai, India. AP reporter Farid Hossain contributed from Bangladesh. AP Retail Writer Anne D'Innocenzio in New York and AP Business Writer Kelvin Chan in Hong Kong also contributed to this report.
Base Price: $32,500 (eligible for $7500 Federal Tax Credit and $2500 California Clean Vehicle Rebate Project); 36-month lease terms of $199/month and $999 due at signing
Competitors: Nissan Leaf, Ford Focus EV, Honda Fit EV, Toyota RAV4 EV
Powertrains: AC electric motor, 117 hp, 147 lb-ft; 24-kwh lithium-ion battery pack, direct drive, FWD
EPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy): 122/108 mpge
What's New: Fiat has electrified the 500, ditching internal combustion in favor of a 117-hp electric motor powered by a 24-kwh lithium-ion battery pack. The 500e looks pretty much like any other Fiat 500, but the addition of some aero tweaks adds about 5 extra miles of range. It sits slightly higher than the gas car, too, to accommodate the 600-pound battery underneath the floor. That battery also improves the car's previously nose-heavy 63/37 front-to-rear weight distribution, to a more balanced 53/47. Inside, the 500e cops all the fancy pieces from the Lounge trim, such as automatic climate control and premium seats, but without the sunroof-?which is to say, it's well equipped for a car in this category.
Tech Tidbit: The 500e has an EPA estimated range of 87 miles, thanks largely to liquid cooling and heating in the 24-kwh battery. Ethylene glycol and corrosion inhibitors cycle through the 97 cells to ensure consistent temperature across the battery during recharging and driving, which helps maintain range.
Driving Character: The electrified Fiat exhibits all the personality traits we've come to expect of small electric cars. The standard benefits of a pint-sized EV, including near-silent driving and instantaneous shift-free acceleration, are all here. But rather than feeling like a half-hearted effort at satisfying federal and California government mandates, the 500e is a pretty good ride. It has the most natural brake pedal we've felt in any electric car to date, and a unique ?creep? feature that makes the gas pedal feel more familiar, too.
Power delivery is excellent, with the exception of some torque steer. One negative: We expected the car to feel more balanced than its gas-powered cousin because of the more even weight distribution, but the low-rolling resistance tires (the same 185/55R15 size as the nonturbo gas-powered 500) are so prone to understeer that the handling difference is undetectable.
Favorite Detail: The Fiat 500e Pass Program. Every 500e sold will come with a solution to your need for a road trip: twelve free days per year of Chrysler rental car use at Enterprise, Alamo, or National, for three years. You might think of this as a cheesy attempt to quell range anxiety, but it's a creative way to make the 500e more practical for single-car households who occasionally need to drive farther than the EV's range will allow.
Driver's Grievance: While we like that Fiat is using an add-on TomTom navigation unit in lieu of a costly comprehensive system, we would love if the display weren't mounted smack-dab in the driver's field of view. Also, the steering wheel is too far away from many drivers. But these complaints are true of any 500, and they are minor ones at that.
Bottom Line: If you're looking to reduce your carbon footprint and cheapen the ride to work (plus get access to the commuter lane), the Fiat 500e is as good a way to go as any. Not only does it retain the 500's cheeky styling, but it also retains much of the gas-powered car's cute, plucky nature in every other area. And as electric cars go, this thing really does drive well, with plenty of torque on demand, a great brake pedal, and effortless steering. The included smartphone app and 500e Pass rental car plan are added purchase incentives.
University of Alberta researchers were certainly surprised when they discovered the unusual response of pikas to patches of vegetation that had previously been grazed on by caterpillars from a species normally found in the high Arctic.
U of A biology researcher Isabel C. Barrio analyzed how two herbivores, caterpillars and pikas, competed for scarce vegetation in alpine areas of the southwest Yukon. The caterpillars come out of their winter cocoons and start consuming vegetation soon after the snow melts in June. Weeks later, the pika starts gathering and storing food in its winter den. For the experiment, Barrio altered the numbers of caterpillars grazing on small plots of land surrounding pika dens.
"What we found was that the pikas preferred the patches first grazed on by caterpillars," said Barrio. "We think the caterpillar's waste acted as a natural fertilizer, making the vegetation richer and more attractive to the pika."
U of A biology professor David Hik, who supervised the research, says the results are the opposite of what the team expected to find.
"Normally you'd expect that increased grazing by the caterpillars would have a negative effect on the pika," said Hik. "But the very territorial little pika actually preferred the vegetation first consumed by the caterpillars."
The researchers say it's highly unusual that two distant herbivore species?an insect in its larval stage and a mammal?react positively to one another when it comes to the all-consuming survival issue of finding food.
These caterpillars stay in their crawling larval stage for up to 14 years, sheltering in a cocoon during the long winters before finally becoming Arctic woolly bear moths for the final 24 hours of their lives.
The pika does not hibernate and gathers a food supply in its den. Its food-gathering territory surrounds the den and covers an area of around 700 square metres.
The researchers say they'll continue their work on the caterpillar?pika relationship to explore the long-term implications for increased insect populations and competition for scarce food resources in northern mountain environments.
Barrio was the lead author on the collaborative research project, which was published April 24 in the journalBiology Letters.
###
University of Alberta: http://www.ualberta.ca
Thanks to University of Alberta for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
To attract, develop and retain a skilled and motivated employee base that will drive the business to achieve its strategic objectives, while enhancing employee development through performance management and training.
Key Responsibilities and Tasks:
Develop and implement the annual HR business plan derived from the Corporate Strategic Plan;
Cascade the HR business plan through performance contracts to all staff in the department;
Proactive manpower planning and recruiting staff;
Develop and implement staff training and development programs;
Coordinate, monitor and evaluate performance management and appraisal processes;
Develop and implement staff motivation and retention initiatives to ensure staff are highly engaged;
Develop, review and maintain appropriate HR practices, policies and procedures;
Assist in corporate strategy development and implementation.
Manage employee relations and grievance process;
Manage the administration and periodical review of compensation and benefits for all staff;
Oversee the activities directed at employee welfare, safety and health;
Ensure an efficient and conducive work environment, housekeeping and general cleanliness;
Ensure all administrative matters related to staff are dealt with in accordance with laid down policies; and
Coach, mentor and develop the HR and Administration team to ensure excellent performance and effective succession planning in the Department.
Skills and Attributes
Academic Qualifications
Must possess a Bachelors Degree in Business Administration, Strategic Management or Human Resources Management
Experience
At least 3 years? experience in HR management,
Skills and competencies
Proven intellectual leadership in managing people and operations;
Proven ability to think strategically and design long term plans;
Strong organisation and coordination skills;
Superior Communication skills both written and oral;
Superior analytical skills;
Superior interpersonal skills;
Good negotiation skills;
Conflict resolution skills
Counseling skills
If you meet the above qualification send your cv to otungakaranja@gmail.com indicating expected salary and availability by 28th April 2013.
Business Development Manager
Reporting to the General Manager? ? Strategy, he successful candidate will be responsible for developing and maintaining Marketing strategies; overseeing all marketing, and promotional activities, proposal writing with key concentration on the public sector. Key Responsibilities;
Overall accountability for the organization?s Marketing Strategies and performance of the marketing function;
Overseeing and growing client portfolio,
Minimum Requirements
Bachelors degree Marketing and at least 3 years experience in a senior management position in Marketing, Marketing firm or agency.
Good proposal writing skills
Key skills include;?
Effective team management,?
Interpersonal skills and ability to work across functions,?
Excellent strategic marketing.
Interested and qualified individuals should forward their applications enclosing detailed curriculum vitae, current salary, expected remuneration,? availability? and three references with a day time telephone contact and send to the following email address: otungakaranja@gmail.com to reach the undersigned not later than April 28, 2013.
Oh, Flash. Remember when there was still a little reason to believe that it wasn't a dying medium? When the angry Android masses swore up and down that the absence of Flash would be the death of iOS? only for Adobe to kill their Android effort after just a year? The shambling corpse of Flash takes another punch to the face today, with game engine Unity announcing plans to drop support.
How to Build and Repair Concrete, Brickwork, and Stone book download
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PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - A Pennsylvania judge dismissed three murder charges on Tuesday against a Philadelphia abortion doctor accused in a high-profile case of killing babies in what was described as a squalid clinic serving low-income women.
Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 72, still faces charges of killing four infants and a woman who underwent an abortion and died at his Women's Medical Society clinic in urban West Philadelphia. He could face the death penalty if convicted.
Common Pleas Court Judge Jeffrey Minehart dismissed three of the murder charges after Gosnell's attorney argued that the prosecution failed to present evidence that the infants had been born alive.
"That is one of the elements (of murder) that the baby is born alive," defense attorney Jack McMahon said.
Prosecutors say Gosnell severed infants' spinal cords after they lived through abortion procedures. They also contend that one patient, Karnamaya Monger, 41, died of an overdose of anesthetics prescribed by Gosnell.
McMahon had argued that all eight murder charges against Gosnell should be dismissed. He also said the law required prosecutors to prove that Gosnell showed a callous disregard for Monger's life to be convicted of murder in that case, and maintained she had received the same medications as other patients.
"How can that be malice? How can that be callous disregard?" he asked.
Gosnell has been in jail since he was charged in January 2011 after a grand jury probe, and faces 23 charges including murder in a case that has rekindled debate in the United States about late-term abortions. Under Pennsylvania law, abortions can be performed up to 24 weeks.
(Editing by Barbara Goldberg, Cynthia Johnston and Maureen Bavdek)
Leap Of Faith all set to thrive in Sheffield?s Coors Light 3 Steps To Victory Heat 1
Leap Of Faith did a little wrong on his previous two ventures, but Lady Luck nevertheless smiled on him as he took the first prize by a short head?s distance on both occasions. The first heat of the Coors Light 3 Steps To Victory at Sheffield is way tougher
competition than what he faced at Kinsly last twice. Therefore, the brindle dog needs to track cleverly in the beginning to make an impression on Tuesday, April 23, 2013.
The draw is not favourable for him. And it means that he has to run very carefully. Even a little nudge from the neighbours could spoil the entire party. The son of Crash has been running well on constant basis for last many weeks. In his previous appearance
here in February, the M. Daniels-trained was second on the chart, missing the gold medal only by three quarters of a length.
Other runners in the pack are: Welton Arthur, Kilmeen Bill, Mill Whiskers, Hometown Honey, and Hollyoak Laelaps. The 480 metres clash is due to begin at 19:58 GMT. Just like other heats, the winner of this race will get a prize of 200 pounds as well as a
place in the next round.
Welton Arthur is a classy sort, who made an early exit last year. The black dog has entered this year?s event with great determination. The draw is a massive plus, therefore one can expect him to play a big role. Kilmeen Bill shaped with plenty of promise
on debut, but even more is required to be a winner in this meeting.
Hollyoak Laelaps is a lightly raced type. The blue dog made a good solo trip lately. Mill Whiskers would be a handful on the pick of his form. The black dog needs to bounce back in style after making a couple of rough rides. Hometown Honey was awesome prior
to her recent loss. After winning a couple, the fawn bitch suddenly lost rhythm, and ended up fifth last time. An awful loss would have dented her confident, and this is the only big concern. Good luck to all the contestants.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the writer's own and do not reflect Bettor.com's editorial policy.
Team deploys hundreds of tiny untethered surgical tools in first animal biopsiesPublic release date: 23-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Phil Sneiderman prs@jhu.edu 443-287-9960 Johns Hopkins University
By using swarms of untethered grippers, each as small as a speck of dust, Johns Hopkins engineers and physicians say they have devised a new way to perform biopsies that could provide a more effective way to access narrow conduits in the body as well as find early signs of cancer or other diseases.
In two recent peer-reviewed journal articles, the team reported successful animal testing of the tiny tools, which require no batteries, wires or tethers as they seize internal tissue samples. The devices are called "mu-grippers," incorporating the Greek letter that represents the term for "micro." Instead of relying on electric or pneumatic power, these star-shaped tools are autonomously activated by the body's heat, which causes their tiny "fingers" to close on clusters of cells. Because the tools also contain a magnetic material, they can be retrieved through an existing body opening via a magnetic catheter.
In the April print edition of Gastroenterology, the researchers described their use of the mu-grippers to collect cells from the colon and esophagus of a pig, which was selected because its intestinal tract is similar to that of humans. Earlier this year, the team members reported in the journal Advanced Materials that they had successfully inserted the mu-grippers through the mouth and stomach of a live animal and released them in a hard-to-access place, the bile duct, from which they obtained tissue samples.
"This is the first time that anyone has used a sub-millimeter-sized device -- the size of a dust particle -- to conduct a biopsy in a live animal," said David Gracias, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering whose lab team developed the microgrippers. "That's a significant accomplishment. And because we can send the grippers in through natural orifices, it is an important advance in minimally invasive treatment and a step toward the ultimate goal of making surgical procedures noninvasive."
Another member of the research team, physician Florin M. Selaru of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said the mu-grippers could lead to an entirely new approach to conducting biopsies, which are considered the "gold standard" test for diagnosing cancer and other diseases.
The advantage of the mu-grippers, he said, is that they could collect far more samples from many more locations. He pointed out that the much larger forceps used during a typical colonoscopy may remove 30 to 40 pieces of tissue to be studied for signs of cancer. But despite a doctor's best intentions, the small number of specimens makes it easy to miss diseased lesions.
"What's the likelihood of finding the needle in the haystack?" said Selaru, an assistant professor in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology. "Based on a small sample, you can't always draw accurate inferences. We need to be able to do a larger statistical sampling of the tissue. That's what would give us enough statistical power to draw a conclusion, which, in essence, is what we're trying to do with the microgrippers. We could deploy hundreds or even thousands of these grippers to get more samples and a better idea of what kind of or whether a disease is present."
Although each mu-gripper can grab a much smaller tissue sample than larger biopsy tools, the researchers said each gripper can retrieve enough cells for effective microscopic inspection and genetic analysis. Armed with this information, they said, the patient's physician could be better prepared to diagnose and treat the patient.
This approach would be possible through the latest application of the Gracias lab's self-assembling tiny surgical tools, which can be activated by heat or chemicals, without relying on electrical wires, tubes, batteries or tethers. The low-cost devices are fabricated through photolithography, the same process used to make computer chips. Their fingerlike projections are made of materials that would normally curl inward, but the team adds a polymer resin to give the joints rigidity and to keep the digits from closing.
Prior to a biopsy, the grippers are kept on ice, so that the fingers remain in this extended position. An endoscopy tool then is used to insert hundreds of grippers into the area targeted for a biopsy. Within about five minutes, the warmth of the body causes the polymer coating to soften, and the fingers curl inward to grasp some tissue. A magnetic tool is then inserted to retrieve them.
Although the animal testing results are promising, the researchers said the process will require further refinement before human testing can begin. "The next step is improving how we deploy the grippers," Selaru said. "The concept is sound, but we still need to address some of the details. The other thing we need to do is thorough safety studies."
Further development can be costly, however. The team has applied for grants to fund advances in the project, which is protected by provisional patents obtained through the Johns Hopkins Technology Transfer Office. Biotechnology investors might also help move the project forward.
"It is more a question of money than time as to how long it will take before we could use this in human patients," Selaru said
###
Along with Gracias and Selaru, the Johns Hopkins researchers who contributed significantly to the two journal articles were Evin Gultepe, Sumitaka Yamanaka, Eun Shin and Anthony Kalloo. Additional contributors were Kate E. Laflin, Sachin Kadam, Yoosun Shim, Alexandru V. Olaru, Berkeley Limketkai, Mouen A. Khashab and Jatinder S. Randhawa. The researchers are affiliated with School of Medicine, the Whiting School of Engineering and the Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology.
Funding for this research has come from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Flight Attendants Medical Research Institute and the Broad Medical Research Institute.
Related links:
Gracias Lab: http://www.jhu.edu/chembe/gracias/
Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology:
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/gastroenterology_hepatology
Whiting School of Engineering: http://engineering.jhu.edu
School of Medicine: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/som/
Institute for NanoBioTechnology: http://inbt.jhu.edu/
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
OFFICE OF NEWS AND INFORMATION
Suite 540, 901 S. Bond St.
Baltimore, Maryland 21231
Media Contact:
Phil Sneiderman
Cell: 410-299-7462
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Team deploys hundreds of tiny untethered surgical tools in first animal biopsiesPublic release date: 23-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Phil Sneiderman prs@jhu.edu 443-287-9960 Johns Hopkins University
By using swarms of untethered grippers, each as small as a speck of dust, Johns Hopkins engineers and physicians say they have devised a new way to perform biopsies that could provide a more effective way to access narrow conduits in the body as well as find early signs of cancer or other diseases.
In two recent peer-reviewed journal articles, the team reported successful animal testing of the tiny tools, which require no batteries, wires or tethers as they seize internal tissue samples. The devices are called "mu-grippers," incorporating the Greek letter that represents the term for "micro." Instead of relying on electric or pneumatic power, these star-shaped tools are autonomously activated by the body's heat, which causes their tiny "fingers" to close on clusters of cells. Because the tools also contain a magnetic material, they can be retrieved through an existing body opening via a magnetic catheter.
In the April print edition of Gastroenterology, the researchers described their use of the mu-grippers to collect cells from the colon and esophagus of a pig, which was selected because its intestinal tract is similar to that of humans. Earlier this year, the team members reported in the journal Advanced Materials that they had successfully inserted the mu-grippers through the mouth and stomach of a live animal and released them in a hard-to-access place, the bile duct, from which they obtained tissue samples.
"This is the first time that anyone has used a sub-millimeter-sized device -- the size of a dust particle -- to conduct a biopsy in a live animal," said David Gracias, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering whose lab team developed the microgrippers. "That's a significant accomplishment. And because we can send the grippers in through natural orifices, it is an important advance in minimally invasive treatment and a step toward the ultimate goal of making surgical procedures noninvasive."
Another member of the research team, physician Florin M. Selaru of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said the mu-grippers could lead to an entirely new approach to conducting biopsies, which are considered the "gold standard" test for diagnosing cancer and other diseases.
The advantage of the mu-grippers, he said, is that they could collect far more samples from many more locations. He pointed out that the much larger forceps used during a typical colonoscopy may remove 30 to 40 pieces of tissue to be studied for signs of cancer. But despite a doctor's best intentions, the small number of specimens makes it easy to miss diseased lesions.
"What's the likelihood of finding the needle in the haystack?" said Selaru, an assistant professor in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology. "Based on a small sample, you can't always draw accurate inferences. We need to be able to do a larger statistical sampling of the tissue. That's what would give us enough statistical power to draw a conclusion, which, in essence, is what we're trying to do with the microgrippers. We could deploy hundreds or even thousands of these grippers to get more samples and a better idea of what kind of or whether a disease is present."
Although each mu-gripper can grab a much smaller tissue sample than larger biopsy tools, the researchers said each gripper can retrieve enough cells for effective microscopic inspection and genetic analysis. Armed with this information, they said, the patient's physician could be better prepared to diagnose and treat the patient.
This approach would be possible through the latest application of the Gracias lab's self-assembling tiny surgical tools, which can be activated by heat or chemicals, without relying on electrical wires, tubes, batteries or tethers. The low-cost devices are fabricated through photolithography, the same process used to make computer chips. Their fingerlike projections are made of materials that would normally curl inward, but the team adds a polymer resin to give the joints rigidity and to keep the digits from closing.
Prior to a biopsy, the grippers are kept on ice, so that the fingers remain in this extended position. An endoscopy tool then is used to insert hundreds of grippers into the area targeted for a biopsy. Within about five minutes, the warmth of the body causes the polymer coating to soften, and the fingers curl inward to grasp some tissue. A magnetic tool is then inserted to retrieve them.
Although the animal testing results are promising, the researchers said the process will require further refinement before human testing can begin. "The next step is improving how we deploy the grippers," Selaru said. "The concept is sound, but we still need to address some of the details. The other thing we need to do is thorough safety studies."
Further development can be costly, however. The team has applied for grants to fund advances in the project, which is protected by provisional patents obtained through the Johns Hopkins Technology Transfer Office. Biotechnology investors might also help move the project forward.
"It is more a question of money than time as to how long it will take before we could use this in human patients," Selaru said
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Along with Gracias and Selaru, the Johns Hopkins researchers who contributed significantly to the two journal articles were Evin Gultepe, Sumitaka Yamanaka, Eun Shin and Anthony Kalloo. Additional contributors were Kate E. Laflin, Sachin Kadam, Yoosun Shim, Alexandru V. Olaru, Berkeley Limketkai, Mouen A. Khashab and Jatinder S. Randhawa. The researchers are affiliated with School of Medicine, the Whiting School of Engineering and the Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology.
Funding for this research has come from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Flight Attendants Medical Research Institute and the Broad Medical Research Institute.
Related links:
Gracias Lab: http://www.jhu.edu/chembe/gracias/
Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology:
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/gastroenterology_hepatology
Whiting School of Engineering: http://engineering.jhu.edu
School of Medicine: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/som/
Institute for NanoBioTechnology: http://inbt.jhu.edu/
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
OFFICE OF NEWS AND INFORMATION
Suite 540, 901 S. Bond St.
Baltimore, Maryland 21231
Media Contact:
Phil Sneiderman
Cell: 410-299-7462
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Twitter is great if you're famous. But Jawbone's founding CEO Alexander Asseily thinks everyone deserves a powerful voice online, so today he's launching State, a structured opinion-sharing network where people don't need to follow you see your posts. You can get an early State invite now and start contributing to an opinion graph where what matters is what you believe, not who follows you.
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Public release date: 23-Apr-2013
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