Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/267369895?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Friday, November 30, 2012
Best gifts for children don't require dazzling technology
ScienceDaily (Nov. 29, 2012) ? Even before the holiday tree is taken down, the child in your life begins to lose interest in the expensive electronic toys that set you back a big chunk of money and hours in long lines. Maybe you made a vow not to repeat this same gift-giving mistake again this year. So, how do you choose toys that have staying power?
Shop with Purpose -- the BEST way In a tight economy, gift giving doesn't have to be about high-tech shopping. Before heading out, consider the age, interests and aptitude of the child and reflect on what brings out a smile and encourages sustained play.
Try applying the BEST approach to gifting and look for toys that:
? Build physical or intellectual skills
? Entertain
? Stimulate the imagination
? Teach team-centered play and socialization
According to Dale Grubb, creator of the BEST approach and Baldwin Wallace University professor of psychology, "Most people have experienced the heartbreak of gift failure. Often, it is because the item is too highly structured. When a toy is overly limited in its function, it fails to sustain a child's interest. To help prevent this scenario, ask yourself, 'what could the child do with this?'
Variety, Creativity and Strategy = Fun "Variety is also an important consideration," Grubb continues. "While purchasing a gift that lies outside a child's established interests poses some risk of 'gift failure,' so does buying yet another set of colored pencils for the budding artist, or yet another baseball for the aspiring shortstop. "
Baldwin Wallace University Physics Professor Dr. Edwin Meyer, who teaches a popular problem-solving class, also encourages gifts that employ creativity and strategy. "Any game or toy where you see a child sitting there trying to figure out the best move is a good one." Meyer also endorses art supplies, "Crayons, paints, modeling clay, among other materials, offer wonderful learning opportunities and foster dexterity."
Participate Don't Isolate According to Grubb, gift-givers shouldn't assume their role is complete once the colorful wrap is discarded. "It's important for a child to be in an environment where creativity and learning are valued. Parents, family members, friends and caregivers need to be participants, too." He says engaging with a child in play tells the child that creativity and learning are important, encourages socialization skills and strengthens bonding.
Grubb cautions adults not to become over-zealous in coordinating activities. "Make sure the child is directing the play," he recommends. "When you 'play house' with a child, the child should be allowed to steer the creative play in any direction. Simply go along for the ride, even if that means spending time squeezed into a box from a long-forgotten toy," he says with a smile.
Or, in the case of an age-old favorite like Play Dough, be sure to buy plenty? enough for you and your budding artist to create masterpieces over and over again.
BEST Gift List
? Build physical and/or intellectual skills: sporting goods, games of skill, puzzles and trivia games
? Entertain: MP3 music players, puzzles, interactive video games
?Stimulate imagination: Art supplies, dolls, action figures, kitchen/workbenches and musical instruments
? Teach socialization and teamwork: Board games, playhouses and recreational games
Ed Meyer -- "the Problem Solving Prof" -- Favorite Games
? Rush Hour -- This single-player game involves freeing a red car from a traffic jam by moving other cars and trucks back and forth. It develops mental stamina and is a great introduction to the field of operations research.
? Guess Who -- An old game with many spin-offs. It develops creativity and problem solving ability. By asking creative yes/no questions yourself, you can spark the child's thinking skills. For example, "Does your person's name have an odd number of letters?"
? Set -- This card game is easy to learn and the whole family can play. It develops pattern recognition.
? SOMA Blocks or SOMA Cubes -- Introduced in 1936, SOMA blocks are seven blocks that can be arranged into a cube or an unending number of other shapes. Your child can spend hours completing a checklist of shapes.
All of these games can be found on the Internet. Several of them have online versions that allow a gift giver to test the game before purchasing.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Baldwin Wallace University, via Newswise.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/ltYnT68FR5k/121129173752.htm
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Joseph E. Murray, Transplant Surgeon and Nobel Winner, Dies at 93
Brigham and Women's Hospital, via Associated Press
Dr. Joseph E. Murray, center, and his team perform the first successful kidney transplant operation in 1954.
Dr. Joseph E. Murray, who opened a new era of medicine with the first successful human organ transplant, died on Monday in Boston. He was 93.
He died at Brigham and Women?s Hospital, where he performed his first transplant, said Tom Langford, a hospital spokesman. The cause was complications of a stroke he suffered on Thursday, Mr. Langford said.
Dr. Murray?s groundbreaking surgical feat came in 1954, when he removed a healthy kidney from a 23-year-old man and implanted it in the man?s ailing identical twin. Dr. Murray went on to pioneer techniques that over the years changed the lives of tens of thousands of patients who received new kidneys, hearts, lungs, livers or other organs after their own had failed.
In 1990, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
As director of the Surgical Research Laboratory at Harvard Medical School and at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, which became Brigham and Women?s, Dr. Murray was a leader in the study of transplant techniques, the mechanisms of organ rejection and the use of drugs to thwart it.
Among other procedures, he performed kidney transplants involving more than two dozen pairs of identical twins. He performed the first successful transplant to a nonidentical recipient, in 1959, and the first using a cadaver kidney, in 1962. And he trained doctors who became leaders in transplantation around the world.
Though Dr. Murray devoted most of his career to reconstructive plastic surgery, he was most famous as a transplant surgeon, especially after receiving the Nobel. He shared the $703,000 prize with Dr. E. Donnall Thomas, a pioneer in bone marrow transplantation, who died in October.
Joseph Edward Murray was born on April 1, 1919, in Milford, Mass., the son of William Murray, a judge, and Mary DePasquale Murray, a schoolteacher. He attended the College of the Holy Cross and Harvard Medical School, from which he graduated in 1943. After an abbreviated internship at Brigham, he entered the Army Medical Corps in 1944.
It was his experience as an Army doctor, especially using cadaver skin to treat burned soldiers, that led him to both transplantation and facial reconstruction, Dr. Murray said in an interview in 2001. Though the transplanted skin would survive for only 8 or 10 days before it would ?begin to melt around the edges,? he recalled, the experience taught him that tissue from one person might survive for a time in another and that it might be possible to use ?tissue from a dead person to save a human life.?
So when he returned to civilian life and began practicing as a plastic and general surgeon at Brigham, he joined colleagues in investigating the possibilities of organ transplants. At the time, he recalled, organ transplantation was considered such a wild dream that a medical school mentor advised him to abandon the idea as a clinical dead end.
At Brigham, the work ?was considered a fringe project,? he wrote in his autobiography, ?Surgery of the Soul,? published in 2001 by Science History Publications/USA.
But he and his colleagues began testing surgical techniques with dogs, removing and reimplanting kidneys. Then, in October 1954, Richard Herrick, a Massachusetts man dying of chronic nephritis, a kidney disease, was admitted to the hospital, and his doctors referred him to Dr. Murray as a possible transplant recipient. The man?s identical twin, Ronald, was willing to give him a kidney. Would Dr. Murray perform the surgery?
It was a daunting prospect. Dr. Murray worried about ?taking a normal person and doing a major operation not for his benefit but for another person?s,? he said in the 2001 interview.
?We were criticized for playing God,? he said.
After consulting with clergy members from a range of denominations, and comparing the Herricks? fingerprints to be sure they were identical and not merely fraternal twins, Dr. Murray and his colleagues decided to go ahead. They first practiced their surgical techniques on a cadaver. The donor kidney ?was the only kidney in the universe that was compatible,? Dr. Murray said, ?and I did not want to goof it up for technical reasons.?
The surgery took place on Dec. 23, 1954. As Dr. Murray wrote later, ?There was a collective hush in the operating room? as blood began to flow into the implanted kidney and urine began to flow out of it.
Richard Herrick, who later married one of his nurses, survived until 1962, when he died of a recurrence of his original disease. Ronald Herrick died in 2010 at 79.
Two other patients were important to Dr. Murray?s medical career, both professionally and personally.
The first was Charles Woods, a 22-year-old Army flier who had been badly burned in December 1944 when his plane crashed in Burma (now Myanmar). He was flown to Valley Forge General Hospital in Pennsylvania, where Dr. Murray was a junior member of the medical team that treated Mr. Woods with scores of skin grafts and operations to reconstruct his destroyed face and hands.
Michael Schwirtz contributed reporting.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: November 27, 2012
An earlier version of this obituary incorrectly identified the publisher of Dr. Murray?s autobiography. It is Science History Publications/USA, not History Publications/USA.
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Metabolic protein launches sugar feast that nurtures brain tumors
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have tracked down a cancer-promoting protein's pathway into the cell nucleus and discovered how, once there, it fires up a glucose metabolism pathway on which brain tumors thrive.
They also found a vital spot along the protein's journey that can be attacked with a type of drug not yet deployed against glioblastoma multiforme, the most common and lethal form of brain cancer. Published online by Nature Cell Biology, the paper further illuminates the importance of pyruvate kinase M2 (PKM2) in cancer development and progression.
"PKM2 is very active during infancy, when you want rapid cell growth, and eventually it turns off. Tumor cells turn PKM2 back on - it's overexpressed in many types of cancer," said Zhimin Lu, M.D., Ph.D., the paper's senior author and an associate professor in MD Anderson's Department of Neuro-Oncology.
Lu and colleagues showed earlier this year that PKM2 in the nucleus also activates a variety of genes involved in cell division. The latest paper shows how it triggers aerobic glycolysis, processing glucose into energy, also known as the Warburg effect, upon which many types of solid tumors rely to survive and grow.
"PKM2 must get to the nucleus to activate genes involved in cell proliferation and the Warburg effect," Lu said. "If we can keep it out of the nucleus, we can block both of those cancer-promoting pathways. PKM2 could be an Achilles' heel for cancer."
By pinpointing the complicated steps necessary for PKM2 to penetrate the nucleus, Lu and colleagues found a potentially druggable target that could keep the protein locked in the cell's cytoplasm.
MEK, ERK emerge as targets
The process begins when the epidermal growth factor connects to its receptor on the cell surface. This leads to:
- Activation of the MEK protein, which in turn activates ERK.
- ERK sticking a phosphate group to a specific spot on PKM2.
- Phosphorylation priming PKM2 for a series of steps that culminate in its binding to the protein importin, which lives up to its name by taking PKM2 through the nuclear membrane.
Once in the nucleus, the team showed that PKM2 activates two genes crucial to aerobic glycolysis and another that splices PKM RNA to make even more PKM2.
An experiment applying several kinase-inhibiting drugs to human glioblastoma cell lines showed that only a MEK/ERK inhibitor prevented EGF-induced smuggling of PKM2 into the nucleus. ERK activation then is mandatory for PKM2 to get into the nucleus.
"MEK/ERK inhibitors have not been tried yet in glioblastoma multiforme," Lu said. Phosporylated PKM2 is a potential biomarker to identify patients who are candidates for MEK/ERK inhibitors once those drugs are developed.
MEK inhibitor blocks tumor growth
The researchers also found that the two glycolysis genes activated by PKM2, called GLUT1 and LDHA, are required for glucose consumption and conversion of pyruvate to lactate, crucial factors in the Warburg Effect. Depleting PKM2 in tumor cell lines reduced glucose consumption and lactate production.
In mice, depleting PKM2 blocked the growth of brain tumors. Re-expressing the wild type protein caused tumors to grow. However, re-expression of a PKM2 mutant protein that lost its ability to get into the nucleus failed to promote tumor formation. Experiments in human glioblastoma cell lines showed the same effect.
Injecting the MEK inhibitor selumetinib into tumors inhibited tumor growth, reduced ERK phosphorylation, PKM2 expression and lactate production in mice. In 48 human tumor samples, the team found that activity of EGFR, ERK1/2 and PKM2 were strongly correlated.
Cause of PKM2 overexpression
Lu and colleagues also published a paper in Molecular Cell that revealed a mechanism for overexpression of PKM2 in glioblastoma. They found that EGF receptor activation turns on NF-?B, which leads to a series of events culminating in PKM2 gene activation.
PKM2 levels were measured in tumor samples from 55 glioblastoma patients treated with standard of care surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. The 20 with low PKM2 expression had a median survival of 34.5 months, compared to 13.6 months for the 35 patients with high levels of PKM2.
Level of PKM2 expression in 27 low-grade astrocytomas was about half of the expression found in higher grade glioblastomas.
"In these two papers, we show how PKM2 is overexpressed in tumors, how it gets into the nucleus, that nuclear entry is essential to tumor development, and identified potential drugs and a biomarker that could usefully treat people," Lu said.
###
University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center: http://www.mdanderson.org
Thanks to University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center for this article.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/125507/Metabolic_protein_launches_sugar_feast_that_nurtures_brain_tumors
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Samsung Galaxy Ace ou Galaxy S ?
Bonsoir,
Pour r?pondre directement ? la question, et sans h?siter, le Galaxy S reste le meilleur, malgr? sa plus grande anciennet? par rapport au SG Ace.
Sans rentrer dans les d?tails mais ? titre comparatif, il a un meilleur processeur, un plus bel ?cran (qui est aussi plus grand, sans ?tre monstrueux ; pour ma part je le trouve quasi-id?al), plus de stockage interne...
Bref, le Galaxy S est meilleur de partout. Il ne poss?de par contre pas de Flash LED pour ?pauler l'appareil photo, ce que le Ace a. Cela reste un d?tail !
En esp?rant avoir r?pondu ? la question,
Bonne soir?e !
DJules
Galaxy S : CyanogenMod 12/10 ; Jelly Bean 4.1.2
Capacit? : 8 Go + Micro SDHC 32 Go Class 10
Kernel : Stock (pour le moment...)
Op?rateur : SFR
Source: http://forum.frandroid.com/topic/128520-samsung-galaxy-ace-ou-galaxy-s/
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GlobalSign Adds StopTheHacker Services - Web Hosting Reviews
(The Hosting News) ? GlobalSign (www.globalsign.com), one of the longest-established Certification Authorities (CA) and providers of Digital Certificates worldwide, today announced its partnership with StopTheHacker (www.stopthehacker.com), a leading web malware, security and reputation protection solution provider.? The partnership with StopTheHacker will provide advanced malware detection for GlobalSign?s SSL Certificate customers, allowing for the identification and timely removal of malicious code before websites become blacklisted by search engines such as Google, damaging company reputation and diminishing levels of customer trust.
Malware, including viruses, Trojans and spyware, is now being more effectively distributed by the use of ?drive-by downloads,? a hacker technique resulting in the unauthorized download and installation of unwanted malicious software (malware) onto the client PC of anyone visiting an infected website.? GlobalSign provides varying levels of malware detection features to detect known and unknown forms of malware free of charge with all retail SSL Certificates (including AlphaSSL, DomainSSL, OrganizationSSL and ExtendedSSL), and standalone bespoke solutions are available for larger enterprises and hosting companies for wide scale non-SSL site monitoring.
By joining forces with StopTheHacker, GlobalSign can provide a malware monitoring service whereby all pages of a customer?s website are non-intrusively monitored on a daily basis (hourly with ExtendedSSL) and site owners are immediately alerted via email if malware is found.? With GlobalSign SSL Certificates providing a more comprehensive level of service and all-around experience for end users, customers will now have access to StopTheHacker?s simple-to-use, cloud-based, web-portal dashboard to individually view and manage their website domains. In addition, displaying GlobalSign?s new malware monitoring Trust Seal will reassure visitors the site is malware free and safe to browse. GlobalSign is taking online security to the next level in helping to raise awareness of malware threats hidden in websites.
StopTheHacker?s website healthcare services do not just stop at web malware detection but include blacklist and reputation monitoring, uptime monitoring, vulnerability assessments, Facebook protection and automatic malware cleanup, all of which are available to GlobalSign customers, should they wish to upgrade to these more advanced cyber service levels and technologies.
?StopTheHacker is delighted to be able to work with a leading CA like GlobalSign to offer its suite of security technologies to keep a company?s website safe in conjunction with GlobalSign?s SSL and Digital Certificate security,? said Peter Jensen, CEO, StopTheHacker.? ?With our industry experts and state-of-the-art techniques to protect websites and online reputations, we catch more malware than anyone else, also facilitating a rapid response for website owners, including a new auto-clean-up feature.?
?We believe our relationship with our customers begins when we issue a Certificate, and we work hard to add continuous value through on-going security services to our SSL customers,? said Steve Waite, CEO, GMO GlobalSign Inc.? ?With StopTheHacker?s advanced intelligence technology to detect unknown malware across all pages on their websites, our customers can benefit from robust malware monitoring and optional cyber-security services to complement their highly trusted SSL Certificates, protecting their business and end customers from the ever-increasing rise and development of today?s online threats.?
For more information about GlobalSign?s range of SSL Certificates including malware monitoring services visit https://www.globalsign.com/ssl/.
For more information about StopTheHacker visit https://www.stopthehacker.com.
About StopTheHacker
Based in San Francisco, California, StopTheHacker is one of the tech industry?s most respected leaders; a provider of SaaS services focused on cyber warfare in the arenas of web malware, security and reputation protection. StopTheHacker?s Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning based technology is supported by the National Science Foundation and has won multiple awards since 2009. StopTheHacker has become widely recognized globally, protecting website owners ranging from large multi-nationals to web hosting companies and small business owners, all who are vulnerable to malicious hacker attacks.? Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/stopthehacker and Facebook at facebook.com/stopthehacker for up to the minute updates.
About GMO GlobalSign
GlobalSign has been a trust service provider since 1996. Its focus has been, and always will be, on providing convenient and highly productive PKI solutions for organizations of all sizes. Its core Digital Certificate solutions allow its thousands of authenticated customers to conduct SSL secured transactions, data transfer, distribution of tamper-proof code, and protection of online identities for secure email and access control. Vision and commitment to innovation led to GlobalSign being recognized by Frost & Sullivan for the 2011 Product Line Strategy Award. The company has local offices in the US, Europe and throughout Asia. For the latest news on GlobalSign visit www.globalsign.co.uk or follow GlobalSign on Twitter (@globalsign).
About GMO Internet Group
GMO Internet Group is a comprehensive provider of industry-leading Internet solutions including domain name registration, cloud-based and traditional hosting, ecommerce, security, and payment processing services that each hold the top share of their respective markets in Japan. Other key business areas for the Group include online securities/FX trading, Internet advertising, search engine marketing and online research, and smartphone game development and publishing. GMO Internet, Inc. (TSE: 9449) is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. For more information please visit http://www.gmo.jp/en.
GlobalSign Adds StopTheHacker Services
Source: http://www.hostingblender.com/web-hosting-news/globalsign-adds-stopthehacker-services.html
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Thursday, November 29, 2012
Suit targets 'locator' chips in Texas student IDs
Austin, Texas ? To 15-year-old Andrea Hernandez, the tracking microchip embedded in her student ID card is a "mark of the beast," sacrilege to her Christian faith ? not to mention how it pinpoints her location, even in the school bathroom.
But to her budget-reeling San Antonio school district, those chips carry a potential $1.7 million in classroom funds.
Starting this fall, the fourth-largest school district in Texas is experimenting with "locator" chips in student ID badges on two of its campuses, allowing administrators to track the whereabouts of 4,200 students with GPS-like precision. Hernandez's refusal to participate isn't a twist on teenage rebellion, but has launched a debate over privacy and religion that has forged rare like-mindedness between typically opposing groups.
When Hernandez and her parents balked at the so-called SmartID, the school agreed to remove the chip but still required her to wear the badge. The family refused on religious grounds, stating in a lawsuit that even wearing the badge was tantamount to "submission of a false god" because the card still indicated her participation.
On Wednesday, a state district judge is expected to decide whether Northside Independent School District can transfer Hernandez to a different campus.
"How often do you see an issue where the ACLU and Christian fundamentalists come together? It's unusual," said Chris Steinbach, the chief of staff for a Republican state lawmaker who has filed a bill to outlaw the technology in Texas schools.
The concept isn't new, but hasn't exactly caught on nationwide. In 2005, the American Civil Liberties Union raised concerns about a similar initiative at a California school. That same year, a suburban Houston school district began putting the chips in its student IDs, and served as the blueprint for Northside's pilot program that began this fall.
Ronald Stephens, executive director of the nonprofit National School Safety Center, said he didn't believe the technology to be widespread but predicted "it'll be the next wave" in schools. The chips use radio-frequency identification (RFID) transmitters and only work on campus.
The Northside school district spent roughly $261,000 to equip students at one high school and one middle school with SmartIDs, a decision made with safety and efficiency in mind, said district spokesman Pascual Gonzalez. Imagine quickly accounting for students in the event of a lockdown, he said, or cafeteria lines moving faster as scanners instantly identify who's picking up that lunch tray.
Yet the biggest motivation was financial. In Texas, school funding is based on daily attendance. The more students seated in homeroom when the first bell rings, the more state dollars the school receives. If a student is lingering in the hallway or the library when roll is called, the marked absence hurts the school's bottom line.
But with the locator chips ? the district doesn't like to call them "tracking" ? a clerk in the main office can find out if a student is elsewhere on campus, and if so, include them in the attendance count. Every student found amounts to another $30 in funding, based on the school's calculations. In that way, those moving red dots that represent students on the clerk's computer screen are like finding change in the couch cushions.
Gonzalez said the district has estimated another $1.7 million in funding if the program delivers on expectations, somewhat lessening the sting of losing $61.5 million after state lawmakers cut public school funding in Texas by nearly $5 billion last year.
"Nobody is sitting at a bank of monitors looking for the whereabouts of 3,000 students," Gonzalez said. "We don't have the personnel for it, nor do we have the need to do that. But when I need to find (a student), I can enter his random number and I can find him somewhere as a red dot on that computer screen. 'Oh, there he is, in Science Room 22' or whatever. So we can locate students, but it's not about tracking them."
Hernandez's family isn't convinced. Nor is a Virginia-based civil rights group, The Rutherford Institute, which took up Hernandez's cause and filed the lawsuit against the district.
The organization declined to make the Hernandez family available for an interview prior to Wednesday's court hearing.
John Whitehead, the organization's founder, believes the religious component of the lawsuit makes it stronger than if it only objected on grounds of privacy. The lawsuit cites scriptures in the book of Revelation, stating that "acceptance of a certain code ... from a secular ruling authority" is a form of idolatry.
Wearing the badge, the family argues, takes it a step further.
"It starts with that religious concern," Whitehead said. "There is a large mark of Evangelicals that believe in the 'mark of the beast.' "
Republican state Rep. Lois Kolkhorst has filed bills since 2005 to ban the chips in Texas public schools. Steinbach, her chief of staff, is hopeful the bill will now get more traction with the attention surrounding Hernandez's case.
Yet despite the lawsuit, proposed legislation and concern from outside groups, there are no signs of a groundswell of opposition in San Antonio from parents whose children have the chips in their campus IDs.
Gonzalez said that of the 4,200 students, the Hernandez family is the only one who has asked out of the program.
Follow Paul J. Weber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pauljweber
Source: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20121127/SCHOOLS/211270427/1026/rss06
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The hungry caterpillar: Beware your enemy's enemy's enemy
ScienceDaily (Nov. 27, 2012) ? When herbivores such as caterpillars feed, plants may "call for help" by emitting volatiles, which can indirectly help defend the plants. The volatiles recruit parasitoids that infect, consume and kill the herbivores, to the benefit of the plant. However, such induced plant odours can also be detected by other organisms. A new study published Nov. 27 in the open access journal PLOS Biology shows how secondary parasitoids ('hyperparasitoids') can take advantage of these plant signals to identify parasitoid-infected caterpillars, and duly infect the primary parasitoid, to the detriment of the original plant.
Plant volatiles have long been considered to mediate this mutualistic relationship between plants and herbivores' natural enemies such as parasitoids. When a caterpillar feeds, the parasitoids are able to use the emitted volatiles to locate the otherwise inconspicuous caterpillar, releasing the plant from its attacker. This principle has made its way into sustainable agriculture by using natural enemies such as parasitoids to control herbivorous pests on agricultural crops. However, the largest group of enemies of parasitoids, hyperparasitoids, have so far been left out of studies in this area. This is because very little is known about the cues that hyperparasitoids use to locate their parasitoid hosts.
The new study, by a team of Dutch researchers led by Erik Poelman, shows that hyperparasitoids exploit the different plant odours that are released when a plant is fed upon by a parasitoid-infected caterpillar.
"In controlled laboratory assays as well as under field conditions, hyperparasitoids were offered plant odours coming from two types of plant: ones damaged by healthy caterpillars, and ones damaged by parasitoid-infected caterpillars. We found that they preferentially detected odours of plants damaged by infected caterpillars," explained Dr Poelman. "We were excited by these results as they indicate that hyperparasitoids rely on a network of interactions among plant, herbivore and parasitoids to locate their host."
To show how this complex network of interactions can reliably provide hyperparasitoids with information on the presence of their parasitoid host, the researchers collected saliva of the caterpillars, as they noticed the colour of saliva in healthy, non-host caterpillars was different to that of caterpillars hosting a parasitoid. Factors in caterpillar saliva play an important role in provoking the release of odours from plants, and a change in saliva composition may then alter the cocktail of odours emitted by the plant.
Indeed, Dr Poelman's team found that plant odours induced by the saliva of parasitized caterpillars was more attractive to hyperparasitoids than plant odours induced by the saliva of healthy caterpillars. Consequently, plant odours may actually reduce the benefit of attracting parasitoids to a plant.
"Our results demonstrate that the effects of herbivore-induced plant volatiles should be placed in a community-wide perspective that includes species at the fourth trophic level, to improve our understanding of the ecological functions of volatile release by plants," said Dr Poelman. In addition to the ecological aspects of their work, the authors also stress that their findings are important for developing Integrated Pest Management strategies, in which crops are manipulated to control insect pests by using parasitoids.
Although parasitoids are effective biological control agents, this study suggests that using plant odours to optimize biological control of pests may have side effects that could actually reduce the benefit of pest control, said Dr Poelman.
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Journal Reference:
- Erik H. Poelman, Maaike Bruinsma, Feng Zhu, Berhane T. Weldegergis, Aline E. Boursault, Yde Jongema, Joop J. A. van Loon, Louise E. M. Vet, Jeffrey A. Harvey, Marcel Dicke. Hyperparasitoids Use Herbivore-Induced Plant Volatiles to Locate Their Parasitoid Host. PLoS Biology, 2012; 10 (11): e1001435 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001435
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/Y9gVia9UFXk/121127190318.htm
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Anglo American Completes Sale of Scaw South Africa to IDC Led Consortium
WEBWIRE ? Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Anglo American plc (?Anglo American?) announces the completion on 23 November of the sale of Scaw South Africa (Pty) Ltd. (?Scaw South Africa?) and related companies for a total consideration of R3.4 billion on a cash and debt free basis.
Anglo American announced on 24 April 2012 the sale of Scaw South Africa, a leading South African based integrated steel maker, to an investment consortium led by the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa (?IDC?) and Anglo American?s partners in Scaw South Africa, being Izingwe Holdings (Pty) Limited, Shanduka Resources (Pty) Limited and the Southern Palace Group of Companies (Pty) Limited.
Scaw Metals Group
Scaw is a leading South Africa based integrated steel maker producing highly specialized and critical consumable components for the mining, rail, power, offshore oil and gas, construction, commercial and other industrial sectors. The business operates through four product focused business units with facilities in South Africa. Grinding Media produces high chrome and forged grinding media. Wire Rod Products produces steel wire rope, chain, wire and strand and other related products for mining, industrial, construction and offshore oil drilling applications. Cast Products designs and produces a variety of cast steel products for the mining, metal processing, power generation and railway industries. Rolled Products is a manufacturer of low and high carbon long steel products.
In addition to Scaw South Africa, the Business includes a 50% interest in CWI, a joint venture with ArcelorMittal South Africa; a 31% interest in GSIL, a joint venture with Lucchini SpA, and 100% equity interest in each of Haggie North America Inc, Haggie Reid (Pty) Ltd., African Wire Ropes (Pty) Ltd., Haggie Rand Zimbabwe (Pty) Ltd., Scaw Metals (Pty) Ltd. (previously known as PWB Anchor (Pty) Ltd.) and Afrope Zambia Ltd.
Anglo American
Anglo American is one of the world?s largest mining companies, is headquartered in the UK and listed on the London and Johannesburg stock exchanges. Anglo American?s portfolio of mining businesses spans bulk commodities ? iron ore and manganese, metallurgical coal and thermal coal; base metals ? copper and nickel; and precious metals and minerals ? in which it is a global leader in both platinum and diamonds. Anglo American is committed to the highest standards of safety and responsibility across all its businesses and geographies and to making a sustainable difference in the development of the communities around its operations. The company?s mining operations, extensive pipeline of growth projects and exploration activities span southern Africa, South America, Australia, North America, Asia and Europe.
www.angloamerican.com
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Dems slam GOP immigration bill as two-faced ? MSNBC
File Photo: Undocumented UCLA students stand in line at a graduation ceremony for UCLA ?Dreamers?, or Dream Act students, at a church near the campus in Los Angeles, California June 15, 2012. (Photo by Jonathan Alcorn/Reuters)
Updated 3:01 p.m.
After being walloped by Latino voters in the election, the Republican Party?s first?conciliatory?immigration bill?may result in the same?Congressional gridlock that has stalled?previous attempts at reform. Moreover, it is directed at a small sliver U.S. immigrants, calling into question the seriousness of the GOP.
The House will vote on the Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (STEM)?Jobs Act later this week, a?bill that?would give visas to foreigners with high-tech degrees from American universities, while eliminating a program that offers visas to poorer immigrants through a lottery to underrepresented countries.
An earlier version of bill was defeated in the House in September after 80% of Democrats voted against it. At the time,?the House?s Hispanic Caucus, Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus all came out against it.
However, this version of the bill is expected to include?a family-friendly provision that would allow the families of legal immigrants, those with green cards, to wait for their own visas within the United States, thus reuniting spouses and children. The AP put the impact at 322,000 husbands, wives, and children who are currently waiting to join a family member in the United States.
Yet, House Democrats say the bill is an effort to appear more pro-immigration, particularly as few expect it to pass in the Senate. ?It is not very much to sweeten the pot for Democrats,? one Democratic House staffer told MSNBC.com.
The bill ?is more about politics and optics for the Republicans than about anything substantive,? Rep. Luis Gutierrez, the chair of the Immigration Task Force of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus told MSNBC.com. ?Republicans are more interested in killing the Diversity Visa program, which goes mostly to immigrants from Africa, than in creating a program for science and tech graduates.?
The STEM bill offers 55,000 visas to high-tech graduates of American universities and their families. It would function by eliminating the Diversity Visa program, an initiative that gives visas to immigrants from countries?typically in Africa and Latin America?with low rates of U.S. immigration and reallocating those visas into the STEM program.
?We don?t really fix the problem by having a zero-sum approach.? Bob Sakaniwa, the associate director of advocacy at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, explained. ?They don?t have enough green cards for legitimate demand.?
Rep. Lamar Smith, the Republican from Texas who sponsored the bill, said that the Diversity Visa program ?invites fraud and is a threat to our national security.? By attracting science and math doctoral graduates, Smith?argued the STEM bill would further economic progress.
?We cannot afford to educate these foreign graduates in the U.S. and then send them back home to work for our competitors,? he said in a statement to MSNBC.com.
Sakaniwa said that while there have been issues and reported security loopholes with the Diversity Visa Program, it doesn?t mean the entire program should be scrapped: ?It?s one thing to try and fix flaws in the system, it?s another thing to throw out the baby with the bath water,? he said.
House Democrats?claimed the re-introduction of the bill with the new family-friendly concession?is a last-ditch effort to appear more pro-immigration, but worry that it signals continued anti-immigration views that could obstruct comprehensive reform in the New Year.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, the top Democrat on the House Immigration Subcommittee, introduced a competing bill, which she called the ?Attracting the Best and the Brightest? act, that would maintain the Diversity Visa program as well as add STEM visas.
?Republicans know they have an anti-immigrant image problem, yet, unfortunately, they are proceeding with the Smith bill to pretend they?re pro-immigrant, even though it is a divisive bill that actually reduces legal immigration,? Lofgren said.
Democratic staffers say the bill may reduce immigration numbers?because the number of STEM graduates seeking visas could fluctuate over time. The bill allows unused visas to roll over for the first four years, but after that, unused visas would disappear. Other portions of immigration law allow unused visas in programs to roll over into other programs, helping to meet demand.
Rep. Gutierrez also sees a party-wide opposition to immigration.
?The Republicans are still looking at immigration through the old lens that legal immigration is a problem that must be eliminated or never increased,? he said. ?We don?t need to eliminate immigration for one group to allow immigration for another, we can and will reform immigration so that we have a controlled and legal flow that benefits the economy and keeps families together. But that is not what the Republicans are doing this week.?
Senate Republicans also tried on immigration reform proposals for?size,?introducing a limited version of the DREAM Act Tuesday. That competing bill, introduced by outgoing Sens. John Kyl and Kay Bailey Hutchison,?would not put undocumented students on a path to citizenship as the Democratic version would do, instead allowing students to apply for extended visas at three different junctures,??enabling them to stay in the country while they navigate existing channels to citizenship.
Correction: An earlier version of this story implied the family-friendly provision applied only to immigrants with?high-tech degrees, those who fall under the STEM model. In fact, the new provision is broader than that and applies to families of green card holders who are currently waiting outside the U.S. to be rejoined with their family member.
Source: http://tv.msnbc.com/2012/11/28/dems-slam-gops-house-immigration-bill-as-two-faced/
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Wednesday, November 28, 2012
'DWTS' Finals: Who Deserves the All-Stars Mirrorball?
After an entire season of fabulous dances, it all came down to the final competition of Dancing with the Stars: All-Stars, where three beautiful women: Shawn Johnson, Kelly Monaco and Melissa Rycroft danced their hearts out for a chance to claim the All-Stars mirrorball!
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Tracking down smallest biomarkers
ScienceDaily (Nov. 27, 2012) ? PTB and Dectris have developed a vacuum-compatible X-ray detector that allows the size of low-contrast nano-objects to be determined.
Microvesicles are smallest cell elements which are present in all body fluids and are different, depending on whether a person is healthy or sick. This could contribute to detecting numerous diseases, such as, e.g., carcinomas, at an early stage, and to treating them more efficiently. The problem is that the diameter of the relevant microvesicles generally lies below 100 nm, which makes them technically detectable, but their exact size and concentration hardly possible to determine. A new device is now to provide the metrological basis for these promising biomarkers. The vacuum-compatible version of the Pilatus hybrid pixel detector for X-rays, which was developed by Dectris in cooperation with the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), now allows also the size of nano-particles -- which, to date, have been difficult to characterize -- to be determined using small-angle X-ray scattering at low photon energies. The detector can also be used for other X-ray-based techniques.
What makes this detector unique is the size of its total surface (17 cm ? 18 cm) as well as the fact that it can be operated in vacuum. Operating the detector in vacuum drastically increases the sensitivity of the measuring facility, since the soft X-rays, which are scattered on the sample, are not absorbed by air molecules on their way towards the detector. This device now allows, for example, experiments for size determination of nanoparticles to be carried out with small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) also at the absorption edges of the light elements calcium, sulphur, phosphor or silicon at photon energies below 5 keV with high dynamics and good spatial resolution.
For a few months, the new Pilatus X-ray detector has been used for some of PTB's own research projects. At the synchrotron radiation source BESSY II in Berlin-Adlershof, where PTB has been operating its own laboratory for 15 years, scientists are now using the new detector, for example, to establish the -- urgently needed -- metrological basis for the size determination of microvesicles. A project carried out within the scope of the European Metrology Research Programme (EMRP) and with the significant participation of the Amsterdam Medical Center in the Netherlands is to contribute decisively to fully exploiting the potential of microvesicles for the early diagnosis of diseases.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB).
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ScienceDaily: Gene News
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/rss/health_medicine/genes.xml
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