Just a couple days after we got our hands on Tenya Wanya Teen's crazy 16-button arcade stick, we were treated to its polar opposite; Divekick's two-button controller. Created by Iron Galaxy Studios just to show off the game at PAX East, the controller consists of two buttons slightly larger than the palms of our hands; the yellow one denotes a jump or dive, while the blue corresponds to a kick. As a parody of the fighting genre, Divekick's gameplay avoids complicated combo moves, is incredibly simple and immensely enjoyable, if we do say so ourselves.
Unlike traditional fighting games, the health bars are essentially meaningless, as a single power hit can take down your rival. Therefore you're focused on just the most basic movements -- a common one involves jumping in the air, tapping the other button for the downward kick, and then tapping it again to fly backwards.As for moving your character about, a jump and kick combo will get you charging towards your foe. Some characters let you fly when jumping, while others reward pressing buttons simultaneously. From our few minutes mashing the controller, it seems that timing and position are more important than ever with such fundamental mechanics, and ones that we picked up pretty quickly. We especially enjoyed kicking our adversary in the head to make them dazed and vulnerable in the early seconds of the next round.
VIENNA (AP) ? Austrian police and firefighters have taken on the role of urban cowboys in a two-day round-up of a herd of cattle that broke out of a fenced-off pasture and decided to go into town.
A police statement says the 43 steers defied attempts by police and volunteer firefighters to recapture them after wandering off Thursday and heading toward the Upper Austrian town of Freistadt. After being chased away from the railway station, they endangered motorists by stampeding onto a two-lane highway before running into a town suburb.
Two firefighters who tried to stop them were injured and needed hospital treatment.
The statement says 18 of the animals remain on the loose Friday. The rest have been corralled or tranquilized.
Mar. 28, 2013 ? One of the leading causes of death in the United States is sudden cardiac arrest, which claims the lives of more than 325,000 people each year. In a study published in the April issue of the journal Resuscitation, Beaumont doctors found that cardiac arrests in K-12 schools are extremely rare, less than 0.2 percent, but out of 47 people who experienced cardiac arrest over a six-year period at K-12 schools, only 15 survived.
Survival rate was three times greater, however, when bystanders used a device called an automated external defibrillator, or AED, that helps the heart restore a normal rhythm.
The study "Cardiac Arrests in Schools: Assessing use of Automated External Defibrillators on School Campuses," was led by principal investigator Robert Swor, D.O., emergency medicine physician at Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, and a research team including Edward Walton, M.D., Beaumont's director of pediatric emergency medicine.
A more widespread and standardized approach that would incorporate school drills and training in CPR and AED is needed to improve emergency response, the researchers say.
"Our findings highlight that schools are community centers and that emergency response planning in schools must focus not only on children and must extend beyond the school day," says Dr. Swor. Within the study population, most (31) of the 47 affected people were over the age of 19 and a third of the events occurred in the evening at schools.
This study is unprecedented, as no other published research explores the reasons why bystanders don't use AEDs. Such information is key to enhancing sudden cardiac arrest responses on school campuses. In one of every three cardiac arrests, an available AED was not used. The bystanders were either unable to recognize that the patient was having a cardiac arrest, were unaware that the school had an AED, or thought that the person was having a seizure rather than a cardiac arrest. Teaching potential bystanders how to recognize cardiac arrest and having regular drills would be an important aspect of emergency response training, the researchers say.
More attention is being paid to the need for standardized emergency response plans in schools at the governmental level. Rep. Gail Haines introduced a bill in February 2013 to mandate a cardiac emergency response plan that would include using and regularly maintaining AEDs, training high school students to use AEDs and perform CPR, and having frequent cardiac emergency drills in Michigan schools.
The research team used data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-sponsored Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival and an Oakland County, Mich., registry of cardiac arrests. Telephone interviews were conducted to collect descriptive data about the nature of each incident.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Beaumont Health System.
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Journal Reference:
Robert Swor, Heather Grace, Heather McGovern, Michelle Weiner, Edward Walton. Cardiac arrests in schools: Assessing use of automated external defibrillators (AED) on school campuses. Resuscitation, 2013; 84 (4): 426 DOI: 10.1016/j.resuscitation.2012.09.014
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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.
The 1704 "Betts" Stradivari violin was crafted by Antonio Stradivari, an Italian manufacturer of string instruments. Of the estimated 1,000 violins originally crafted by Stradivari, about 650 still exist. New research suggests these instruments mimic the vowel sounds of the female soprano voice.
By Tia Ghose LiveScience
Virtuosos who describe the singing voice of a violin may be on to something. The great violin makers, such as Stradivari and Guarneri, may have designed violins to mimic the human voice, new research suggests.
The research, described in the current issue of Savart Journal, found the violin produced several vowel sounds, including the Italian "i" and "e" sounds and several vowel sounds from French and English.
Study author Joseph Nagyvary, an emeritus biochemistry professor at Texas A&M University,?previously proved that the violin masters?Stradivari and Guarneri del Ges? had soaked their wood in brine and borax to fight a worm infestation that swept through Italy in the 1700s. Those chemicals treatments led to the unique sounds that violin makers have struggled to reproduce.
But he had also long argued that the great violin masters were making violins with more humanlike voices than any others of the time. [25 Amazing Facts from Science]
"It has been widely held that violins 'sing' with a female soprano voice," Nagyvary said in a statement.
To test that claim, Nagyvary recorded Metropolitan opera singer Emily Pulley singing a series of vowel sounds. He then compared those sounds with a 1987 recording of virtuoso Itzhak Perlman playing a scale on a 1743 Guarneri violin.
"I analyzed her sound samples by computer for harmonic content and then using state-of-the art phonetic analysis to obtain a 2-D map of the female soprano vowels. Each note of a musical scale on the violin underwent the same analysis, and the results were plotted and mapped against the soprano vowels," Nagyvary said in a statement.
The two "voices" could be mapped on the same scale, with the violin creating several English and French vowel sounds, as well as two Italian vowel sounds.
The findings suggest that makers of Guarneri and Stradivarius violins?of the 1700s were striving to imitate the human voice in their instruments. Guarneri violins now routinely sell for between $10 million and $20 million.
The new analysis could also provide a more objective way to rate violin quality.
"For 400 years, violin prices have been based almost exclusively on the reputation of the maker ? the label inside of the violin determined the price tag," Nagyvary said in a statement. "The sound quality rarely entered into price consideration, because it was deemed inaccessible. These findings could change how violins may be valued."
Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter @tiaghose.?Follow?LiveScience @livescience, Facebook?andGoogle+. Original article on?LiveScience.com.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Mar. 27, 2013 ? The love affair between U.S. residents and salt is making us sick: high sodium intake increases blood pressure, and leads to higher rates of heart attack and strokes. Nonetheless, Americans continue to ingest far higher amounts of sodium than those recommended by physicians and national guidelines.
A balanced review of the relevant literature has been published in the March 27, 2013 edition of The New England Journal of Medicine. Theodore A. Kotchen, MD, professor of medicine (endocrinology), and associate dean for clinical research at the Medical College of Wisconsin, is the lead author of the article.
Dr. Kotchen cites correlations between blood pressure and salt intake in a number of different studies; typically, the causation between lowering salt intake and decreased levels of blood pressure occur in individuals who have been diagnosed with hypertension. Although not as pronounced, there is also a link between salt intake and blood pressure in non-hypertensive individuals. Additionally, recent studies have demonstrated that a reduced salt intake is associated with decreased cardiovascular disease and decreased mortality.
In national studies in Finland and Great Britain, instituting a national salt-reduction program led to decreased sodium intake. In Finland, the resulting decrease in systolic and diastolic blood pressures corresponded to a 75 -- 80 percent decrease in death due to stroke and coronary heart disease.
Nevertheless, not all investigators concur with population-based recommendations to lower salt intake, and the reasons for this position are reviewed.
"Salt is essential for life, but it has been difficult to distinguish salt need from salt preference," said Dr. Kotchen. "Given the medical evidence, it seems that recommendations for reducing levels of salt consumption in the general population would be justifiable at this time." However, in terms of safety, the lower limit of salt consumption has not been clearly identified. In certain patient groups, less rigorous targets for salt reduction may be appropriate.
Co-authors are Allen W. Cowley, Jr., PhD, James J. Smith and Catherine Welsh Smith Professor in Physiology, and Harry and Gertrude Hack Term Professor and chairman of Physiology, the Medical College of Wisconsin; Edward D. Frohlich, MD, Alton Ocshner Distinguished Scientist at the Ochsner Clinic Foundation in New Orleans, La.
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Theodore A. Kotchen, Allen W. Cowley, Edward D. Frohlich. Salt in Health and Disease ? A Delicate Balance. New England Journal of Medicine, 2013; 368 (13): 1229 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMra1212606
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Dr. Scott Harrington, an oral surgeon in Tulsa, Okla., is being charged for unsafe and unsanitary practices, possibly exposing as many as 7,000 patients to hepatitis and HIV after one patient tested positive for both after a visit to his office. NBC's Dr. Nancy Snyderman reports.
By Justin Juozapavicius, The Associated Press
The crisp, stucco exterior of an Oklahoma dental clinic concealed what health inspectors say they found inside: rusty instruments used on patients with infectious diseases and a pattern of unsanitary practices that put thousands of people at risk for hepatitis and the virus that causes AIDS.
State and local health officials planned to mail notices Friday urging 7,000 patients of Dr. W. Scott Harrington to seek medical screenings for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV. Inspectors allege workers at his two clinics used dirty equipment and risked cross-contamination to the point that the state Dentistry Board branded Harrington a "menace to the public health."
"The office looked clean," said Joyce Baylor, who had a tooth pulled at Harrington's Tulsa office 1? years ago. In an interview, Baylor, 69, said she'll be tested next week to determine whether she contracted any infection.
"I'm sure he's not suffering financially that he can't afford instruments," Baylor said of Harrington.
Health officials opened their investigation after a patient with no known risk factors tested positive for both hepatitis C and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. After determining the "index patient" had a dental procedure about the likely time of exposure, investigators visited Harrington's office and found a number of unsafe practices, state epidemiologist Kristy Bailey said.
"I want to stress that this is not an outbreak. The investigation is still very much in its early stages," Bailey said.
Harrington voluntarily gave up his license, closed his offices in Tulsa and suburban Owasso, and is cooperating with investigators, said Kaitlin Snider, a spokeswoman for the Tulsa Health Department. He faces a hearing April 19, when his license could be permanently revoked.
"It's uncertain how long those practices have been in place," Snider said. "He's been practicing for 36 years."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is consulting on the case, and agency spokeswoman Abbigail Tumpey said such situations involving dental clinics are rare. Last year a Colorado oral surgeon was accused of reusing needles and syringes, prompting letters to 8,000 patients, Tumpey said. It wasn't clear whether anyone was actually infected.
"We've only had a handful of dental facilities where we've had notifications in the last decade," Tumpey said.
The Oklahoma Dentistry Board lodged a 17-count complaint against Harrington, saying he was a "menace to the public health by reasons of practicing dentistry in an unsafe or unsanitary manner." Among the claims was one detailing the use of rusty instruments in patients known to have infectious diseases.
"The CDC has determined that rusted instruments are porous and cannot be properly sterilized," the board said.
Health officials are sending letters to 7,000 known patients but cautioned that they don't know who visited his clinics before 2007. The letters urge the patients to be tested for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV ? viruses typically spread through intravenous drug use or unprotected sex, not occupational settings.
Harrington could not be reached for comment Thursday. A message at his Tulsa office said it was closed, and the doctor's answering service referred callers to the Tulsa Health Department. Phone numbers listed for Harrington were disconnected. A message left with Harrington's malpractice attorney in Tulsa, Jim Secrest II, was not immediately returned.
Harrington's Tulsa practice is in a thriving part of town, on a row of some of medical practices. The white-and-green stucco, two-story dental clinic has the doctor's name in letters on the facade.
NBCLatino: You may have Hep C and not know it
According to the complaint, the clinic had varying cleaning procedures for its equipment, needles were re-inserted in drug vials after their initial use and the office had no written infection-protection procedure.
Harrington told officials he left questions about sterilization and drug procedures to his employees.
"They take care of that, I don't," the dentistry board quoted him as saying.
The doctor also is accused of letting his assistants perform tasks only a licensed dentist should have done, including administering IV sedation. Also, the complaint says the doctor's staff could not produce permits for the assistants when asked.
Susan Rogers, executive director of the state Dentistry Board, said that as an oral surgeon Harrington regularly did invasive procedures involving "pulling teeth, open wounds, open blood vessels." The board's complaint also noted Harrington and his staff told investigators a "high population of known infectious disease carrier patients" received dental care from him.
Despite the high-risk clientele, a device used to sterilize instruments wasn't being properly used and hadn't been tested in six years, the board complaint said. Tests are required monthly.
Also, a drug vial found at a clinic this year had an expiration date of 1993 and one assistant's drug log said morphine had been used in the clinic last year despite its not receiving any morphine shipments since 2009.
Officials said patients will be offered free medical testing at the Tulsa Health Department's North Regional Health and Wellness Center.
Related:
Dental chain accused of hurting kids, bilking taxpayers
This story was originally published on Thu Mar 28, 2013 4:06 PM EDT
In this Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2013, photo, job seekers meet with employers at a job fair in Sunrise, Fla. The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits jumped by 16,000 for the week of ending March 23, 2013, the second straight weekly increase. But the longer-term trend in layoffs remained consistent with an improved job market. Applications increased to a seasonally adjusted 357,000 for the week ending March 23, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's up from 341,000 the previous week, which was revised slightly higher. (AP Photo/J Pat Carter)
In this Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2013, photo, job seekers meet with employers at a job fair in Sunrise, Fla. The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits jumped by 16,000 for the week of ending March 23, 2013, the second straight weekly increase. But the longer-term trend in layoffs remained consistent with an improved job market. Applications increased to a seasonally adjusted 357,000 for the week ending March 23, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's up from 341,000 the previous week, which was revised slightly higher. (AP Photo/J Pat Carter)
In this Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2013, photo, an unidentified woman pauses to think about her answer on a job application at the job fair in Sunrise, Fla. The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits jumped by 16,000 for the week of ending March 23, 2013, the second straight weekly increase. But the longer-term trend in layoffs remained consistent with an improved job market. Applications increased to a seasonally adjusted 357,000 for the week ending March 23, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's up from 341,000 the previous week, which was revised slightly higher. (AP Photo/J Pat Carter)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits jumped by 16,000 last week, the second straight weekly increase. But the longer-term trend in layoffs remained consistent with an improved job market.
Applications increased to a seasonally adjusted 357,000 for the week ending March 23, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's up from 341,000 the previous week, which was revised slightly higher.
The four-week average, a less volatile measure, rose 2,250 to 343,000. Even with the gain, the average is only slightly higher than the previous week's five-year low of 340,750. Economists pay closer attention to the four-week average because it smooths out week-to-week fluctuations.
Despite the two weeks of higher initial unemployment claims, "the overall trend of stronger labor market growth continues," Jennifer Lee, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note to clients.
First-time applications are a proxy for layoffs. They have been declining steadily since November. At the same time, hiring has accelerated, lowering the unemployment rate in February to a four-year low of 7.7 percent.
Unemployment benefit applications surged during the recession as companies slashed millions of jobs. The number of people seeking aid averaged only 320,000 a week in 2007. That figure soared to 418,000 in 2008 and 574,000 in 2009.
But as layoffs and firings eased, applications for unemployment aid slowly but steadily came down. They fell to 459,000 in 2010, 409,000 in 2011, and 375,000 last year. Through the first 12 weeks of this year they are averaging roughly 353,000.
The total number of people receiving some kind of unemployment aid is also down sharply. Nearly 5.5 million people were receiving unemployment aid as of the week ended March 9, the latest data available. That's up roughly 87,000 from than the previous week but still well below the 7.2 million from a year earlier. The data on total unemployment benefit recipients are not seasonally adjusted and are volatile.
Hiring is up, too. Employers have added an average of 200,000 jobs per month since November. That's nearly double the average from last spring. And economists expect similar job gains in March, in part because of the steady decline in layoffs.
The economy has been showing other signs of strength. U.S. home prices rose 8.1 percent in January, the fastest annual rate since the peak of the housing boom in the summer of 2006. And demand for longer-lasting factory goods jumped 5.7 percent in February, most in five months.
Still, the job market and the economy have a long way to go back to full health. The United States has 3 million fewer jobs than it did when the Great Recession began in December 2007. And home prices are down 29 percent from their peak at the height of the housing bubble in August 2006.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Reducing sulfur in gasoline and tightening emissions standards on cars beginning in 2017, as the Obama administration is proposing, would come with costs as well as rewards. The cost at the pump for cleaner air across the country could be less than a penny or as high as 9 cents a gallon, depending on who is providing the estimate.
An oil industry study says the proposed rule being unveiled Friday by the administration could increase gasoline prices by 6 cents to 9 cents a gallon. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates an increase of less than a penny and an additional $130 to the cost of a vehicle in 2025.
The EPA is quick to add that the change aimed at cleaning up gasoline and automobile emissions would yield billions of dollars in health benefits by 2030 by slashing smog- and soot-forming pollution. Still, the oil industry, Republicans and some Democrats have pressed the EPA to delay the rule, citing higher costs.
Environmentalists hailed the proposal as potentially the most significant in President Barack Obama's second term.
The so-called Tier 3 standards would reduce sulfur in gasoline by more than 60 percent and reduce nitrogen oxides by 80 percent, by expanding across the country a standard already in place in California. For states, the regulation would make it easier to comply with health-based standards for the main ingredient in smog and soot. For automakers, the regulation allows them to sell the same autos in all 50 states.
The Obama administration already has moved to clean up motor vehicles by adopting rules that will double fuel efficiency and putting in place the first standards to reduce the pollution from cars and trucks blamed for global warming.
"We know of no other air pollution control strategy that can achieve such substantial, cost-effective and immediate emission reductions," said Bill Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies. Becker said the rule would reduce pollution equal to taking 33 million cars off the road.
But the head of American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, Charles Drevna, said in an interview Thursday that the refiners' group was still unclear on the motives behind the agency's regulation, since refining companies already have spent $10 billion to reduce sulfur by 90 percent. The additional cuts, while smaller, will cost just as much, Drevna said, and the energy needed for the additional refining actually could increase carbon pollution by 1 percent to 2 percent.
"I haven't seen an EPA rule on fuels that has come out since 1995 that hasn't said it would cost only a penny or two more," Drevna said.
A study commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute estimated that lowering the sulfur in gasoline would add 6 cents to 9 cents a gallon to refiners' manufacturing costs, an increase that likely would be passed on to consumers at the pump. The EPA estimate of less than 1 cent is also an additional manufacturing cost and likely to be passed on.
A senior administration official said Thursday that only 16 of 111 refineries would need to invest in major equipment to meet the new standards, which could be final by the end of this year. Of the remaining refineries, 29 already are meeting the standards because they are selling cleaner fuel in California or other countries, and 66 would have to make modifications.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the rule was still undergoing White House budget office review.
___
Follow Dina Cappiello on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dinacappiello
NEW YORK (AP) ? Fox News Channel says veteran conservative commentatorTucker Carlson will become co-host of the network's weekend morning show, "Fox & Friends."
Carlson will replace Dave Briggs, who left Fox at the end of last year. His co-hosts on the weekend chat fest are Alisyn Camerota and Clayton Morris. Carlson will continue to make other appearances on Fox News programming.
The commentator, known for his bow ties, is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Caller. He worked at both CNN and MSNBC before joining Fox News.
Mar. 28, 2013 ? A team led by scientists from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) has unveiled a new technique for vaccine design that could be particularly useful against HIV and other fast-changing viruses.
The report, which appears March 28, 2013, in Science Express, the early online edition of the journal Science, offers a step toward solving what has been one of the central problems of modern vaccine design: how to stimulate the immune system to produce the right kind of antibody response to protect against a wide range of viral strains. The researchers demonstrated their new technique by engineering an immunogen (substance that induces immunity) that has promise to reliably initiate an otherwise rare response effective against many types of HIV.
"We're hoping to test this immunogen soon in mice engineered to produce human antibodies, and eventually in humans," said team leader William R. Schief, who is an associate professor of immunology and member of the IAVI Neutralizing Antibody Center at TSRI.
Seeking a Better Way
For highly variable viruses such as HIV and influenza, vaccine researchers want to elicit antibodies that protect against most or all viral strains -- not just a few strains, as seasonal flu vaccines currently on the market. Vaccine researchers have identified several of these broadly neutralizing antibodies from long-term HIV-positive survivors, harvesting antibody-producing B cells from blood samples and then sifting through them to identify those that produce antibodies capable of neutralizing multiple strains of HIV. Such broadly neutralizing antibodies typically work by blocking crucial functional sites on a virus that are conserved among different strains despite high mutation elsewhere.
However, even with these powerful broadly neutralizing antibodies in hand, scientists need to find a way to elicit their production in the body through a vaccine. "For example, to elicit broadly neutralizing antibodies called VRC01-class antibodies that neutralize 90 percent of known HIV strains, you could try using the HIV envelope protein as your immunogen," said Schief, "but you run into the problem that the envelope protein doesn't bind with any detectable affinity to the B cells needed to launch a broadly neutralizing antibody response."
To reliably initiate that VRC01-class antibody response, Schief and his colleagues therefore sought to develop a new method for designing vaccine immunogens.
From Weak to Strong
Joseph Jardine, a TSRI graduate student in the Schief laboratory, evaluated the genes of VRC01-producing B cells in order to deduce the identities of the less mature B cells -- known as germline B cells -- from which they originate. Germline B cells are major targets of modern viral vaccines, because it is the initial stimulation of these B cells and their antibodies that leads to a long-term antibody response.
In response to vaccination, germline B cells could, in principle, mature into the desired VRC01-producing B cells -- but natural HIV proteins fail to bind or stimulate these germline B cells so they cannot get the process started. The team thus set out to design an artificial immunogen that would be successful at achieving this.
Jardine used a protein modeling software suite called Rosetta to improve the binding of VRC01 germline B cell antibodies to HIV's envelope protein. "We asked Rosetta to look for mutations on the side of the HIV envelope protein that would help it bind tightly to our germline antibodies," he said.
Rosetta identified dozens of mutations that could help improve binding to germline antibodies. Jardine then generated libraries that contained all possible combinations of beneficial mutations, resulting in millions of mutants, and screened them using techniques called yeast surface display and FACS. This combination of computational prediction and directed evolution successfully produced a few mutant envelope proteins with high affinity for germline VRC01-class antibodies.
Jardine then focused on making a minimal immunogen -- much smaller than HIV envelope -- and so continued development using the "engineered outer domain (eOD)" previously developed by Po-Ssu Huang in the Schief lab while Schief was at the University of Washington. Several iterative rounds of design and selection using a panel of germline antibodies produced a final, optimized immunogen -- a construct they called eOD-GT6.
A Closer Look
To get a better look at eOD-GT6 and its interaction with germline antibodies, the team turned to the laboratory of Ian A. Wilson, chair of the Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology and a member of the IAVI Neutralizing Antibody Center at TSRI.
Jean-Philippe Julien, a senior research associate in the Wilson laboratory, determined the 3D atomic structure of the designed immunogen using X-ray crystallography -- and, in an unusual feat, also determined the crystal structure of a germline VRC01 antibody, plus the structure of the immunogen and antibody bound together.
"We wanted to know whether eOD-GT6 looked the way we anticipated and whether it bound to the antibody in the way that we predicted -- and in both cases the answer was 'yes'," said Julien. "We also were able to identify the key mutations that conferred its reactivity with germline VRC01 antibodies."
Mimicking a Virus
Vaccine researchers know that such an immunogen typically does better at stimulating an antibody response when it is presented not as a single copy but in a closely spaced cluster of multiple copies, and with only its antibody-binding end exposed. "We wanted it to look like a virus," said Sergey Menis, a visiting graduate student in the Schief laboratory.
Menis therefore devised a tiny virus-mimicking particle made from 60 copies of an obscure bacterial enzyme and coated it with 60 copies of eOD-GT6. The particle worked well at activating VRC01 germline B cells and even mature B cells in the lab dish, whereas single-copy eOD-GT6 did not.
"Essentially it's a self-assembling nanoparticle that presents the immunogen in a properly oriented way," Menis said. "We're hoping that this approach can be used not just for an HIV vaccine but for many other vaccines, too."
The next step for the eOD-GT6 immunogen project, said Schief, is to test its ability to stimulate an antibody response in lab animals that are themselves engineered to produce human germline antibodies. The difficulty with testing immunogens that target human germline antibodies is that animals typically used for vaccine testing cannot make those same antibodies. So the team is collaborating with other researchers who are engineering mice to produce human germline antibodies. After that, he hopes to learn how to drive the response, from the activation of the germline B cells all the way to the production of mature, broadly neutralizing VRC01-class antibodies, using a series of designed immunogens.
Schief also hopes they will be able to test their germline-targeting approach in humans sooner rather than later, noting "it will be really important to find out if this works in a human being."
The first authors of the paper, "Rational HIV immunogen design to target specific germline B cell receptors," were Jardine, Julien and Menis. Co-authors were Takayuki Ota and Devin Sok of the Nemazee and Burton laboratories at TSRI, respectively; Travis Nieusma of the Ward laboratory at TSRI; John Mathison of the Ulevitch laboratory at TSRI; Oleksandr Kalyuzhniy and Skye MacPherson, researchers in the Schief laboratory from IAVI and TSRI, respectively; Po-Ssu Huang and David Baker of the University of Washington, Seattle; Andrew McGuire and Leonidas Stamatatos of the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute; and TSRI principal investigators Andrew B. Ward, David Nemazee, Ian A. Wilson, and Dennis R. Burton, who is also head of the IAVI Neutralizing Center at TSRI.
The project was funded in part by IAVI; the National Institutes of Health (AI84817, AI081625 and AI33292); and the Ragon Institute.
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Journal Reference:
Joseph Jardine, Jean-Philippe Julien, Sergey Menis, Takayuki Ota, Oleksandr Kalyuzhniy, Andrew McGuire, Devin Sok, Po-Ssu Huang, Skye MacPherson, Meaghan Jones, Travis Nieusma, John Mathison, David Baker, Andrew B. Ward, Dennis R. Burton, Leonidas Stamatatos, David Nemazee, Ian A. Wilson, and William R. Schief. Rational HIV Immunogen Design to Target Specific Germline B Cell Receptors. Science, 28 March 2013 DOI: 10.1126/science.1234150
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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.
While ZigBee hasn't become as ubiquitous in wireless as the likes of Bluetooth or WiFi, it has carved out niches in home automation and low-power gear. The format is about to expand its world a little further now that a more network-savvy spec, ZigBee IP, is officially available for everyone. The upgrade adds IPv6 and tougher security to the open mesh networking formula, letting it more easily join an internet of things where there's potentially billions of connected devices. The ZigBee Alliance isn't naming customers at this stage, although it's quick to note that ZigBee IP was built for smart grid use: don't be surprised if you first see it behind the scenes, keeping energy use in check.
Mar 26 (Reuters) - Leading money winners on the 2013 PGATour on Monday (U.S. unless stated): 1. Tiger Woods $3,787,600 2. Brandt Snedeker $2,859,920 3. Matt Kuchar $2,154,500 4. Steve Stricker $1,820,000 5. Phil Mickelson $1,650,260 6. Hunter Mahan $1,553,965 7. John Merrick $1,343,514 8. Dustin Johnson $1,330,507 9. Russell Henley $1,313,280 10. Kevin Streelman $1,310,343 11. Keegan Bradley $1,274,593 12. Charles Howell III $1,256,373 13. Michael Thompson $1,254,669 14. Brian Gay $1,171,721 15. Justin Rose $1,155,550 16. Jason Day $1,115,565 17. Chris Kirk $1,097,053 18. ...
UN is set to vote Thursday on a proposed Arms Trade Treaty to regulate global imports and exports of conventional weapons. Backers see a way to prevent human rights abuses. Critics see red flags, including curtailed access for Americans to imported guns.
By Howard LaFranchi,?Staff writer / March 26, 2013
An attendee holds a handgun at the 7th annual Border Security Expo in Phoenix, Arizona, March 12. The Arms Trade Treaty, which is set to come to a vote among UN member countries Thursday, would cover trade in conventional weapons ranging from handguns to weapons of war such as missiles and tanks.
Joshua Lott/Reuters/File
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Right as Washington is preoccupied with a series of gun-control measures, the United Nations is nearing approval of an Arms Trade Treaty that opponents in America's?gun-rights community say constitutes a back-door gun grab that will trample Second Amendment rights.
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Supporters of the treaty, which is set to come to a vote among UN member countries Thursday, decry such arguments as fear-mongering and nonsense. Rather, they say, the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) is a long-overdue regulation of the global arms import and export trade that will help curtail the flow of weapons into conflict zones and the hands of human rights violators.
The treaty would cover trade in conventional weapons ranging from handguns to weapons of war such as missiles and tanks. It would direct countries exporting or importing arms to assess the risk that such weapons would end up being used to commit terrorist attacks or to engage in human rights abuses including torture and genocide.?
?We have agreements on the standards for trade in everything else that crosses borders, from T-shirts and iron ore to cars and wheat,? says Daniel Prins, secretary general of the ATT conference now under way in New York and chief of the conventional arms branch of the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs. ?The arms trade has been an exception to that, but the ATT would provide a global set of standards for sending arms to another country.?
That ?set of standards? has nothing to do with setting firearms quality or regulating models and calibers. ?This is not a treaty about banning a particular category of weapons,? Mr. Prins notes. Instead, the ATT would establish a ?set of standards? for the import and export of arms, with an eye to reducing the flow of arms into conflict zones or into countries where the arms are likely to be used by organized crime or in a way that violates human rights.
For example, the ATT aims to curtail the ?shopping around? that often occurs when regimes in conflict with some of their own citizens or nonstate groups are denied coveted weapons by one arms-trading country.
In that sense the ATT is more of a human rights treaty than it is a trade agreement. And that aspect is what gives the ATT its most emphatic advocates ?and some of its toughest critics.
?For major exporters, every arms sale is already a balancing act, and what we?re trying to do [with the ATT] is raise the profile of human rights in that balancing act,? says Natalie Goldring, a senior fellow at Georgetown University?s Center for Security Studies who is working with the Control Arms coalition of more than 100 international groups to push for a strong ATT agreement.
Organizations from Oxfam to Amnesty International are pressing for a treaty they say would enhance human rights around the world by reducing arms trafficking and the diversion of legitimately acquired weaponry into illicit hands. ?Any step toward restraining the illicit sale and transfer of weapons used to commit crimes is a good move forward, and the world could use a lot more steps in the direction of ending human rights abuses,? said Amnesty USA?s chief of campaigns and programs, Michelle Ringuette, recently.
This week, advocates warned that negotiations have led to a watered-down treaty text, and they are demanding a return to stronger standards before the ATT is put to a consensus vote Thursday. Most observers expect a treaty will adopted.
But others say a treaty that aims to curtail the arms trade by using a set of UN-established standards should actually give advocates of universal rights pause.
?This [ATT] is a human rights instrument; it?s being promoted for human rights reasons,? says Theodor Bromund, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. ?But if you look at how human rights are already dealt with in the UN system, it?s not very encouraging.? Bodies such as the Human Rights Council tend to focus their attention on ?violators? like Israel or the US, he says, while members of what he calls the ?club of dictators? see their violations overlooked and are even sometimes rewarded with seats on human rights bodies.
They say Ann and Nancy Wilson, 40 years into the ongoing saga of Heart, are not drawing pop-diva sized crowds. For the last Canadian date of their current tour at the Bell Centre Monday night, the sisters attracted about a third of the audience Rihanna and P!nk recently brought into the venue. Lady Gaga's attendance figure was up there, too.
It makes you hold your head in your hands and sigh. These grandstanding, factory-produced singers, about half the age of Heart's frontwomen, or less, might have found their lives quite different if Heart hadn't smashed the glass ceiling that kept women out of rock - until the Wilson girls decided they'd prefer to be Led Zeppelin than Joan Baez. None of these unworthy descendants are fit to hold Ann Wilson's microphone.
But frankly, who is? And how many guitarists out there are cranking it up and swaggering on the stage with the kind of abandon we saw from Nancy Wilson Monday night?
If there was a sequence during the show that illustrated how effortlessly they can bury their contemporaries in a live setting - without any dancers, fireworks or special effects - it came during the two-song encore, when Ann daringly tackled two of the most demanding performances by two of rock's most iconic lead singers.
Black Dog sounded like Robert Plant in his prime and Love Reign O'er Me (with support act Simon Townshend, Pete's brother, on guitar) was as muscular as when Roger Daltrey sang it in 1973. Both British rock legends have reprised their respective songs in recent memory and worked much harder to arrive at the spot Wilson seemed to reach with such ease.
It was a fever-inducing climax to a show that had started quietly, with Townshend in that horrifically thankless role of opening the night with an acoustic guitar while people settled in. Although he channelled his famous brother's percussive guitar style and his voice (he has, in fact, recently toured with both Daltrey and the Who), the group sitting in back of me was typical in that they made a lot more noise than he did and didn't stop running their mouths once to listen. (Talking through concerts, sadly, has reached epidemic proportions.)
Fortunately, Heart brought the volume and shut everyone up with colossal chords and powerful pipes during a 90-minute, hits-centric set that was similar to the one they delivered last time they were here, at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier of Place des Arts in 2011.
This being the Bell Centre, the band - the Wilson sisters with guitarist Craig Bartock, keyboard player Debbie Shair, bassist Dan Rothchild and drummer Ben Smith - faced an uphill battle against the arena's sad acoustics. But opener Barracuda, by sheer dirty force, made the sound quality a bit irrelevant.
If some songs - namely, the 1980s hits like What About Love, These Dreams and Alone - are somewhat of their time, they delighted the fans who came of age with them. The power ballad Alone, in particular, was a tour de force for Ann.
But it was the early rockers - Magic Man, Crazy on You and Heartless - and softer hits like Dreamboat Annie and Dog and Butterfly that turned 6,000 people into time-travelling CHOM listeners from the 1970s and threatened to give classic rock a good name. Perhaps even more impressive was the revelation that Dear Old America and 59 Crunch, from last year's Fanatic, were at least as potent as the career-making radio staples.
And best of all? Ann and Nancy Wilson are still doing it their way.
There's been much ado about office suites over the past year or so, thanks in large part to the anticipation and then arrival of Microsoft's baffling Office 2013. We've seen the ascendance of LibreOffice, we've seen Redmond's wacky pricing plan, and we've even heard rumors -- as yet unsubstantiated -- of a launch that would blow more than a few minds. None of that could have prepared us for what came to light last week.
Wake Forest Baptist research provides clues to alcohol addiction vulnerabilityPublic release date: 26-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Bonnie Davis bdavis@wakehealth.edu 336-716-4977 Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. March 26, 2013 A Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center team studying alcohol addiction has new research that might shed light on why some drinkers are more susceptible to addiction than others.
Jeff Weiner, Ph.D., professor of physiology and pharmacology at Wake Forest Baptist, and colleagues used an animal model to look at the early stages of the addiction process and focused on how individual animals responded to alcohol. Their findings may lead not only to a better understanding of addiction, but to the development of better drugs to treat the disease as well, Weiner said.
"We know that some people are much more vulnerable to alcoholism than others, just like some people have a vulnerability to cancer or heart disease," Weiner said. "We don't have a good understanding of what causes this vulnerability, and that's a big question. But if we can figure it out, we may be able to better identify people at risk, as well as gain important clues to help develop better drugs to treat the disease."
The findings are published in the March 13 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. Weiner, who directs the Translational Studies on Early-Life Stress and Vulnerability to Alcohol Addiction project at Wake Forest Baptist, said the study protocol was developed by the first author of the paper, Karina Abrahao, a graduate student visiting from the collaborative lab of Sougza-Formigoni, Ph.D, of the Department of Psychobiology at the Federal University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Weiner said the study model focused on how individual animals responded to alcohol. Typically, when a drug like alcohol is given to a mouse every day, the way the animals respond increases they become more stimulated and run around more. "In high doses, alcohol is a depressant, but in low doses, it can have a mellowing effect that results in greater activity," he said. "Those low dose effects tend to increase over time and this increase in activity in response to repeated alcohol exposure is called locomotor sensitization."
Prior studies with other drugs, such as cocaine and amphetamine, have suggested that animals that show the greatest increases in locomotor sensitization are also the animals most likely to seek out or consume these drugs. However, the relationship between locomotor sensitization and vulnerability to high levels of alcohol drinking is not as well established, Weiner said.
Usually when researchers are studying a drug, they give it to one test group while the other group gets a control solution, and then they look for behavioral differences between the two, Weiner said. But in this study, the researchers focused on individual differences in how each animal responded to the alcohol. A control group received a saline injection while another was injected with the same amount of alcohol every day for three weeks. Weiner said they used mice bred to be genetically variable like humans to make the research more relevant.
"We found large variations in the development of locomotor sensitization to alcohol in these mice, with some showing robust sensitization and others showing no more of a change in locomotor activity than control mice given daily saline injections," Weiner said. "Surprisingly, when all of the alcohol-exposed mice were given an opportunity to voluntarily drink alcohol, those that had developed sensitization drank more than those that did not. In fact, the alcohol-treated mice that failed to develop sensitization drank no more alcohol than the saline-treated control group."
The authors also conducted a series of neurobiological studies and discovered that mice that showed robust locomotor sensitization had deficits in a form of brain neuroplasticity how experiences reorganize neural pathways in the brain that has been linked with cocaine addiction in other animal models.
"We found that this loss of the ability of brain cells to change the way that they communicate with each other only occurred in the animals that showed the behavioral response to alcohol," he said. "What this suggests for the first time in the alcohol addiction field is that this particular deficit may represent an important brain correlate of vulnerability to alcoholism. It's a testable hypothesis. That's why I think it's an important finding."
###
Funding support for the research came from the National Institutes of Health (AA 21099, AA 17531, AA 10422 and AA 14445), Coordenadoria de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nvel Superior (CAPES; Grant 0321-10-9), Fundacao de Amparo a` Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo (FAPESP; Grant 2008/01819-5), and Associacao Fundo de Incentivo a`Pesquisa (AFIP).
The Translational Studies on Early-Life Stress and Vulnerability to Alcohol Addiction project is an NIH-funded collaborative grant which supports rodent, non-human primate and human studies investigating neurobiological mechanisms associated with vulnerability and resilience to alcohol addiction.
Co-authors include: Olusegun Ariwodola, Tracy Butler, Andrew Rau, Mary Jane Skelly, Eugenia Carter, Nancy Alexander and Brian McCool, all of Wake Forest Baptist, and Maria Lucia Formigoni of the Universidade de Sao Paulo.
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Wake Forest Baptist research provides clues to alcohol addiction vulnerabilityPublic release date: 26-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Bonnie Davis bdavis@wakehealth.edu 336-716-4977 Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. March 26, 2013 A Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center team studying alcohol addiction has new research that might shed light on why some drinkers are more susceptible to addiction than others.
Jeff Weiner, Ph.D., professor of physiology and pharmacology at Wake Forest Baptist, and colleagues used an animal model to look at the early stages of the addiction process and focused on how individual animals responded to alcohol. Their findings may lead not only to a better understanding of addiction, but to the development of better drugs to treat the disease as well, Weiner said.
"We know that some people are much more vulnerable to alcoholism than others, just like some people have a vulnerability to cancer or heart disease," Weiner said. "We don't have a good understanding of what causes this vulnerability, and that's a big question. But if we can figure it out, we may be able to better identify people at risk, as well as gain important clues to help develop better drugs to treat the disease."
The findings are published in the March 13 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. Weiner, who directs the Translational Studies on Early-Life Stress and Vulnerability to Alcohol Addiction project at Wake Forest Baptist, said the study protocol was developed by the first author of the paper, Karina Abrahao, a graduate student visiting from the collaborative lab of Sougza-Formigoni, Ph.D, of the Department of Psychobiology at the Federal University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Weiner said the study model focused on how individual animals responded to alcohol. Typically, when a drug like alcohol is given to a mouse every day, the way the animals respond increases they become more stimulated and run around more. "In high doses, alcohol is a depressant, but in low doses, it can have a mellowing effect that results in greater activity," he said. "Those low dose effects tend to increase over time and this increase in activity in response to repeated alcohol exposure is called locomotor sensitization."
Prior studies with other drugs, such as cocaine and amphetamine, have suggested that animals that show the greatest increases in locomotor sensitization are also the animals most likely to seek out or consume these drugs. However, the relationship between locomotor sensitization and vulnerability to high levels of alcohol drinking is not as well established, Weiner said.
Usually when researchers are studying a drug, they give it to one test group while the other group gets a control solution, and then they look for behavioral differences between the two, Weiner said. But in this study, the researchers focused on individual differences in how each animal responded to the alcohol. A control group received a saline injection while another was injected with the same amount of alcohol every day for three weeks. Weiner said they used mice bred to be genetically variable like humans to make the research more relevant.
"We found large variations in the development of locomotor sensitization to alcohol in these mice, with some showing robust sensitization and others showing no more of a change in locomotor activity than control mice given daily saline injections," Weiner said. "Surprisingly, when all of the alcohol-exposed mice were given an opportunity to voluntarily drink alcohol, those that had developed sensitization drank more than those that did not. In fact, the alcohol-treated mice that failed to develop sensitization drank no more alcohol than the saline-treated control group."
The authors also conducted a series of neurobiological studies and discovered that mice that showed robust locomotor sensitization had deficits in a form of brain neuroplasticity how experiences reorganize neural pathways in the brain that has been linked with cocaine addiction in other animal models.
"We found that this loss of the ability of brain cells to change the way that they communicate with each other only occurred in the animals that showed the behavioral response to alcohol," he said. "What this suggests for the first time in the alcohol addiction field is that this particular deficit may represent an important brain correlate of vulnerability to alcoholism. It's a testable hypothesis. That's why I think it's an important finding."
###
Funding support for the research came from the National Institutes of Health (AA 21099, AA 17531, AA 10422 and AA 14445), Coordenadoria de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nvel Superior (CAPES; Grant 0321-10-9), Fundacao de Amparo a` Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo (FAPESP; Grant 2008/01819-5), and Associacao Fundo de Incentivo a`Pesquisa (AFIP).
The Translational Studies on Early-Life Stress and Vulnerability to Alcohol Addiction project is an NIH-funded collaborative grant which supports rodent, non-human primate and human studies investigating neurobiological mechanisms associated with vulnerability and resilience to alcohol addiction.
Co-authors include: Olusegun Ariwodola, Tracy Butler, Andrew Rau, Mary Jane Skelly, Eugenia Carter, Nancy Alexander and Brian McCool, all of Wake Forest Baptist, and Maria Lucia Formigoni of the Universidade de Sao Paulo.
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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.
Mar 26 (Reuters) - Leading money winners on the 2013 PGATour on Monday (U.S. unless stated): 1. Tiger Woods $3,787,600 2. Brandt Snedeker $2,859,920 3. Matt Kuchar $2,154,500 4. Steve Stricker $1,820,000 5. Phil Mickelson $1,650,260 6. Hunter Mahan $1,553,965 7. John Merrick $1,343,514 8. Dustin Johnson $1,330,507 9. Russell Henley $1,313,280 10. Kevin Streelman $1,310,343 11. Keegan Bradley $1,274,593 12. Charles Howell III $1,256,373 13. Michael Thompson $1,254,669 14. Brian Gay $1,171,721 15. Justin Rose $1,155,550 16. Jason Day $1,115,565 17. Chris Kirk $1,097,053 18. ...
At the World Series of Fighting's second show on Saturday, one-time UFC welterweight won over one-time UFC heavyweight champ Andrei Arlovski. As seen in the highlights above, Johnson had Arlovski hobbled at the end of the first round, but Arlovski was saved by the bell. Arlovski's jaw was reportedly broken in the bout that was Johnson's first fight at heavyweight.
As a welterweight who was bigger than other 170 lbers in the UFC, he struggled with his weight cut and missed weight three times. He moved to light heavyweight last August, and now won his heavyweight debut.
In other WSOF action, Marlon Moraes won his fourth straight by knocking out Tyson Nam with a headkick. Paulo Filho, the troubled one-time WEC champ, dropped a decision to Dave Branch.
Josh Burkman knocked out Aaron Simpson in the first round. After the fight, he said the win earned him a title shot, but questioned if one-time UFC title contender Jon Fitch had earned the WSOF title shot against him.
In a first for the food publishing world, but a ?Why the hell did no one ever think of that? moment for the rest of the world, Texas Monthly announced that it would be the first publication to ever have a full-time barbecue editor.
The New York Times reports that Daniel Vaughan, a former Dallas architect and popular barbecue blogger, quit his job at a major firm to become the Texas Monthly?s full-time barbecue editor, a task that he takes as seriously as, say, Pete Wells?takes his job. And with good reason, too: Vaughan not only has a Bourdain-imprint book coming out in the next month, but he?s also a progenitor of America?s barbecue mania, whose epicenter is in the heart of Texas:
?It speaks to the extraordinary explosion and interest in barbecue over the last five to eight years,? said Jim Shahin, a freelance journalist and associate professor of magazine journalism at Syracuse University who also writes about barbecue and grilling for The Washington Post. ?Even in Texas, where you already had a major barbecue culture, it has only grown. It?s surprising that Texas Monthly hadn?t done something like this years ago.?
We imagine Daniel will prepare for his life?s greatest journey by eating nothing but vegetarian Indian food when he?s not on the clock, as well as tricking out his cow-part boots.
File - An undated file image released by NASA shows a self-portrait of NASA?s Mars rover Curiosity. After back-to-back computer problems, the six-wheel rover has resumed its science experiments. (AP Photo/NASA)
File - An undated file image released by NASA shows a self-portrait of NASA?s Mars rover Curiosity. After back-to-back computer problems, the six-wheel rover has resumed its science experiments. (AP Photo/NASA)
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? The Mars rover Curiosity is humming again after being sidelined by back-to-back computer problems.
The six-wheel rover fired up its onboard laboratories and analyzed a pinch of rock dust over the weekend. It had been unable to perform science experiments since late last month after experiencing a computer memory problem.
Mission managers say Curiosity will work for a week before it takes another break. But this one is planned, because the sun will block communications between Earth and Mars.
Before the computer woes, Curiosity drilled into a rock, tested the powder and found it contained some of the chemical ingredients necessary for microbial life. There are plans to drill into another rock before setting off for a mountain later this year.
DEAR ABBY: My 25-year-old son, "Mark," lives at home, has a full-time job and dates a girl, "Julia," who is a minister's daughter. He keeps bringing her to our home on occasions when she's "sick" or needs to catch an early flight and he needs to drive her to the airport. They are seeing only each other.Julia is in pre-med and Mark thinks she's wonderful and smart. Abby, when she's here, she holes up in his room and never comes out. She's as quiet as a mouse. I am boisterous, and I get the feeling I turn her off. ...
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Public release date: 26-Mar-2013
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