Thursday, April 25, 2013

It is what it is: College Football Playoff

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) ? The name says it all: College Football Playoff.

The major college football conference commissioners named the new postseason system that starts in 2014 on Tuesday, the first of three days of meetings at a resort hotel in the Rose Bowl's backyard.

Out with the Bowl Championship Series and in with the College Football Playoff.

"I don't think you can ever go too wrong calling something what it is," Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott said. "Things that make sense tend to stand the test of time."

Next on the agenda is to pick three more bowls for the six-bowl semifinal rotation ? the Rose, Orange and Sugar are already in ? and where the first championship game will be held on Jan. 12, 2015. That comes Wednesday.

Four bowls have bid to be part of the rotation. The clear front-runners are the Cotton, Chick-fil-A and Fiesta. The Holiday Bowl in San Diego also put in a bid, but even its organizers acknowledged they are a long shot at best.

The finalists to host the first championship game are Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, the billion dollar home of the NFL team and the Cotton Bowl, and Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla., home of the NFL's Buccaneers and the Outback Bowl.

Arlington is the favorite, but the competition has been serious.

"I'm glad it has," Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby said Tuesday. "I think it will give us a better outcome."

Even before an official announcement about the name was made on Tuesday, the website www.collegefootballplayoff.com was up and running and allowing fans to vote on a new logo. And there also was a Twitter handle: (at)cfbplayoff.

"It's really simple. It gets right to the point," BCS executive director Bill Hancock, who will hold the same position in the playoff system, said at a short news conference.

"Nothing cute. Nothing fancy. We decided it would be best to call it what it is."

Premiere Sports Management in Overland Park, Kan., was hired to help come up with a name and brand the new system. A committee of commissioners handled the naming of the new system, and Hancock said they ran through "in the neighborhood of three dozen" names.

Scott said: "We're clearly trying to make a clear break from the BCS."

The new postseason format will create two national semifinals to be played New Year's Eve or New Year's Day, with the winners advancing. The six bowls in the playoff rotation will host marquee, BCS-type games on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day during the seasons they do not host a semifinal.

The first semifinals will be played at the Rose and Sugar bowls on Jan. 1, 2014.

Also on the agenda this week for the commissioners will be the composition of the selection committee that will set the field for the playoff. They have said they would like the committee to be similar to the one that picks the teams for the NCAA basketball tournament, made up of conference commissioners and athletic directors.

Bowlsby said he expected both current and former administrators to have a spot on the committee.

"The hardest thing is making sure we're arming whoever is on the committee with the tools that it takes to differentiate among closely proximal teams," Bowlsby said. "You have to have some metrics available to differentiate between three, four, five, six and seven.

"You can't just say we like blue uniforms and not gold uniforms. You've got to arm the committee with the tools that it takes to do their job."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/college-football-playoff-071605389--spt.html

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Research spinoff ReXceptor gets license for Alzheimer's treatment

Research spinoff ReXceptor gets license for Alzheimer's treatment [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 25-Apr-2013
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Marv Kropko
mrk107@case.edu
216-368-6890
Case Western Reserve University

CLEVELAND Case Western Reserve's Technology Transfer Office has granted an exclusive license of a novel Alzheimer's Disease (AD) treatment strategy to spinoff company ReXceptor Inc., which plans to initiate early-stage human clinical trials of the medication within the next few months.

Gary Landreth, PhD, the Riuko and Archie G. Co Professor of Neurosciences, and his then-graduate student, Paige Cramer, PhD, co-founded ReXceptor after discovering that bexarotene (a medication trademarked as Targretin) reversed AD symptoms in mice within 72 hours of a single dose of treatment. Published last year in the journal Science, their results drew international interest, including stories in the Wall Street Journal and on CNN.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration originally approved bexarotene for the treatment of cutaneous T-cell lymphomasa form of skin cancerin 1999. But Landreth, director of the medical school's Alzheimer's Research Laboratory, Cramer and their colleagues found that the medication significantly clears amyloid beta, a protein implicated in the development of Alzheimer's disease when it accumulates in the brain.

The researchers demonstrated that a dose of bexarotene (a retinoid X receptor (RXR) agonist) clears amyloid beta build-up by 25 percent within six hours, an effect that lasted for up to three days. Cognitively impaired mice resumed normal behaviors (demonstrating a restored sense of smell and instinctive interest in nest-building) within 72 hours of receiving the drug.

More than 5.4 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's disease today, and that figure is expected to more than triple by the year 2050. Translating Case Western Reserve's groundbreaking research into a treatment available for patients is a complex process, but the researchers have great hope for the promise of their approach.

The first stage of testing will involve healthy volunteers, explained Michael Haag, the university's interim director of technology management and the chief executive officer for ReXceptor. Essentially, the researchers hope to prove that the medication acts on amyloid beta in the human brain in a manner similar to the one observed in animal studies. In lay terms, bexarotene functions as a kind of chaperone that escorts the problematic protein out of the cerebral area.

"This is an important proof-of-mechanism study that is a prerequisite for subsequent clinical evaluation of this drug in Alzheimer's patients," Landreth explained.

To date ReXceptor has secured $1.4 million to advance its work. This support includes a landmark collaboration between the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation and the BrightFocus Foundation to fund early-stage research. The arrangement includes The Charles Evans Foundation/Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Award to ReXceptor of $500,000 and a $250,000 contribution from BrightFocus to the collaboration with ADDF. The company also received two anonymous investments totaling $450,000, and $200,000 from Case Western Reserve.

This new funding has allowed ReXceptor to enter into a formal partnership with C2N Diagnostics, which will assist the company with the initiation and coordination of the clinical trial. C2N Diagnostics will provide its proprietary stable isotope labeling (SILK) platform to measure the metabolism of both brain-derived amyloid beta and apolipoprotein E in the human clinical study.

Haag credited the university's Office of Research and Technology Management, along with the medical school's chief translational officers and Council to Advance Human Health, with providing critical guidance and support in bringing the company to this stage.

###

Those interested in learning more about Alzheimer's disease clinical trials can link to the Alzheimer's Association website, or to BrightFocus Foundation for additional resources.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Research spinoff ReXceptor gets license for Alzheimer's treatment [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 25-Apr-2013
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Marv Kropko
mrk107@case.edu
216-368-6890
Case Western Reserve University

CLEVELAND Case Western Reserve's Technology Transfer Office has granted an exclusive license of a novel Alzheimer's Disease (AD) treatment strategy to spinoff company ReXceptor Inc., which plans to initiate early-stage human clinical trials of the medication within the next few months.

Gary Landreth, PhD, the Riuko and Archie G. Co Professor of Neurosciences, and his then-graduate student, Paige Cramer, PhD, co-founded ReXceptor after discovering that bexarotene (a medication trademarked as Targretin) reversed AD symptoms in mice within 72 hours of a single dose of treatment. Published last year in the journal Science, their results drew international interest, including stories in the Wall Street Journal and on CNN.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration originally approved bexarotene for the treatment of cutaneous T-cell lymphomasa form of skin cancerin 1999. But Landreth, director of the medical school's Alzheimer's Research Laboratory, Cramer and their colleagues found that the medication significantly clears amyloid beta, a protein implicated in the development of Alzheimer's disease when it accumulates in the brain.

The researchers demonstrated that a dose of bexarotene (a retinoid X receptor (RXR) agonist) clears amyloid beta build-up by 25 percent within six hours, an effect that lasted for up to three days. Cognitively impaired mice resumed normal behaviors (demonstrating a restored sense of smell and instinctive interest in nest-building) within 72 hours of receiving the drug.

More than 5.4 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's disease today, and that figure is expected to more than triple by the year 2050. Translating Case Western Reserve's groundbreaking research into a treatment available for patients is a complex process, but the researchers have great hope for the promise of their approach.

The first stage of testing will involve healthy volunteers, explained Michael Haag, the university's interim director of technology management and the chief executive officer for ReXceptor. Essentially, the researchers hope to prove that the medication acts on amyloid beta in the human brain in a manner similar to the one observed in animal studies. In lay terms, bexarotene functions as a kind of chaperone that escorts the problematic protein out of the cerebral area.

"This is an important proof-of-mechanism study that is a prerequisite for subsequent clinical evaluation of this drug in Alzheimer's patients," Landreth explained.

To date ReXceptor has secured $1.4 million to advance its work. This support includes a landmark collaboration between the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation and the BrightFocus Foundation to fund early-stage research. The arrangement includes The Charles Evans Foundation/Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Award to ReXceptor of $500,000 and a $250,000 contribution from BrightFocus to the collaboration with ADDF. The company also received two anonymous investments totaling $450,000, and $200,000 from Case Western Reserve.

This new funding has allowed ReXceptor to enter into a formal partnership with C2N Diagnostics, which will assist the company with the initiation and coordination of the clinical trial. C2N Diagnostics will provide its proprietary stable isotope labeling (SILK) platform to measure the metabolism of both brain-derived amyloid beta and apolipoprotein E in the human clinical study.

Haag credited the university's Office of Research and Technology Management, along with the medical school's chief translational officers and Council to Advance Human Health, with providing critical guidance and support in bringing the company to this stage.

###

Those interested in learning more about Alzheimer's disease clinical trials can link to the Alzheimer's Association website, or to BrightFocus Foundation for additional resources.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-04/cwru-rsr042513.php

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Carville and Matalin working on joint memoir

(AP) ? James Carville and Mary Matalin, political rivals and personal bedfellows, are collaborating on a book in which they will again agree to disagree.

The longtime strategists have a deal with Blue Rider Press for a memoir with the working title "You Can Go Home Again." Officials with Blue Rider, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), told The Associated Press on Thursday that the book is scheduled for 2014.

Carville, a Democrat, and Matalin, a Republican, previously worked together on the 1993 release "All's Fair."

According to Blue Rider, Matalin and Carville will share political war stories, their takes on current and past events and how they managed to stay married for 20 years and raise two children.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-04-25-US-Books-Carville-and-Matalin/id-3a0ed75dfaa44f5e8fb28bf29a32e849

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Wednesday, April 24, 2013

'Dancing' knocks off another contestant

By Drusilla Moorhouse, TODAY contributor

The fight is finally over for Victor Ortiz on "Dancing With the Stars." After floundering for weeks at the bottom of the scoreboard, the welterweight champion and his partner, Lindsay Arnold, were KO'd Tuesday night.

ABC

The bad news did nothing to tarnish the boxer's gleaming grin.

"I'm happy to get this far," he told hosts Tom Bergeron and Brooke Burke-Charvet, admitting with a rueful laugh: "I definitely need some dance moves!"

So do Andy Dick and Sean Lowe, both of whom were in jeopardy of going home. But once again, the comeback comedian was declared safe, leaving "The Bachelor" star to await his fate in the bottom two.

Spared for another week, will Sean follow judge Len Goodman's advice and "set (his) sights higher" than just trying to beat Andy?

And do any of the guys stand a chance of beating Zendaya, Kellie Pickler or Aly Raisman? The trio of dancing queens were of course declared safe again, followed by Ingo Rademacher and Jacoby Jones.

Both men reteamed with Zendaya and Victor for another performance of their group paso doble routine to Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground." (The fans, who voted for the encore, obviously appreciated the guys' toned torsos more than the judges, who gave the win Monday night to Team Samba.)

Also appearing on the results show were Olly Murs, who sang "Troublemaker," and Will.i.am, performing his new single "#thatPower."

Leading man honors, however, go to Ingo's adorable son Peanut. The 4-year-old was caught on camera after Monday night's show yelling, "See you at the after-party" like a seasoned Hollywood star.

Do any of the dudes stand a chance at winning the mirror-ball trophy? Tell us at the after-party on our Facebook page!

Source: http://theclicker.today.com/_news/2013/04/23/17885270-victor-ortiz-knocked-out-of-dancing-with-the-stars?lite

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Recipe for low-cost, biomass-derived catalyst for hydrogen production

Apr. 24, 2013 ? In a paper to be published in an upcoming issue of Energy & Environmental Science, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory describe details of a low-cost, stable, effective catalyst that could replace costly platinum in the production of hydrogen. The catalyst, made from renewable soybeans and abundant molybdenum metal, produces hydrogen in an environmentally friendly, cost-effective manner, potentially increasing the use of this clean energy source.

The research has already garnered widespread recognition for Shilpa and Shweta Iyer, twin-sister high school students who contributed to the research as part of an internship under the guidance of Brookhaven chemist Wei-Fu Chen, supported by projects led by James Muckerman, Etsuko Fujita, and Kotaro Sasaki.

"This paper reports the 'hard science' from what started as the Iyer twins' research project and has resulted in the best-performing, non-noble-metal-containing hydrogen evolution catalyst yet known -- even better than bulk platinum metal," Muckerman said.

The project branches off from the Brookhaven group's research into using sunlight to develop alternative fuels. Their ultimate goal is to find ways to use solar energy -- either directly or via electricity generated by solar cells -- to convert the end products of hydrocarbon combustion, water and carbon dioxide, back into a carbon-based fuel. Dubbed "artificial photosynthesis," this process mimics how plants convert those same ingredients to energy in the form of sugars. One key step is splitting water, or water electrolysis.

"By splitting liquid water (H2O) into hydrogen and oxygen, the hydrogen can be regenerated as a gas (H2) and used directly as fuel," Sasaki explained. "We sought to fabricate a commercially viable catalyst from earth-abundant materials for application in water electrolysis, and the outcome is indeed superb."

." ..the best-performing, non-noble-metal-containing hydrogen evolution catalyst yet known..."

This form of hydrogen production could help the scientists achieve their ultimate goal.

"A very promising route to making a carbon-containing fuel is to hydrogenate carbon dioxide (or carbon monoxide) using solar-produced hydrogen," said Fujita, who leads the artificial photosynthesis group in the Brookhaven Chemistry Department.

But with platinum as the main ingredient in the most effective water-splitting catalysts, the process is currently too costly to be economically viable.

Comsewogue High School students Shweta and Shilpa Iyer entered the lab as the search for a cost-effective replacement was on.

The Brookhaven team had already identified some promising leads with experiments demonstrating the potential effectiveness of low-cost molybdenum paired with carbon, as well as the use of nitrogen to confer some resistance to the corrosive, acidic environment required in proton exchange membrane water electrolysis cells. But these two approaches had not yet been tried together.

The students set out to identify plentiful and inexpensive sources of carbon and nitrogen, and test ways to combine them with a molybdenum salt.

"The students became excited about using familiar materials from their everyday lives to meet a real-world energy challenge," Chen recounted. The team tested a wide variety of sources of biomass -- leaves, stems, flowers, seeds, and legumes -- with particular interest in those with high protein content because the amino acids that make up proteins are a rich source of nitrogen. High-protein soybeans turned out to be the best.

To make the catalyst the team ground the soybeans into a powder, mixed the powder with ammonium molybdate in water, then dried and heated the samples in the presence of inert argon gas. "A subsequent high temperature treatment (carburization) induced a reaction between molybdenum and the carbon and nitrogen components of the soybeans to produce molybdenum carbides and molybdenum nitrides," Chen explained. "The process is simple, economical, and environmentally friendly."

Electrochemical tests of the separate ingredients showed that molybdenum carbide is effective for converting H2O to H2, but not stable in acidic solution, while molybdenum nitride is corrosion-resistant but not efficient for hydrogen production. A nanostructured hybrid of these two materials, however, remained active and stable even after 500 hours of testing in a highly acidic environment.

"We attribute the high activity of the molybdenum-soy catalyst (MoSoy) to the synergistic effect between the molybdenum-carbide phase and the molybdenum-nitride phase in the composite material," Chen said.

Structural and chemical studies of the new catalyst conducted at Brookhaven's National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) and the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) are also reported in the paper, and provide further details underlying the high performance of this new catalyst.

"The presence of nitrogen and carbon atoms in the vicinity of the catalytic molybdenum center facilitates the production of hydrogen from water," Muckerman said.

The scientists also tested the MoSoy catalyst anchored on sheets of graphene -- an approach that has proven effective for enhancing catalyst performance in electrochemical devices such as batteries, supercapacitors, fuel cells, and water electrolyzers. Using a high-resolution transmission microscope in Brookhven's Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science Department, the scientists were able to observe the anchored MoSoy nanocrystals on 2D graphene sheets.

The graphene-anchored MoSoy catalyst surpassed the performance of pure platinum metal. Though not quite as active as commercially available platinum catalysts, the high performance of graphene-anchored MoSoy was extremely encouraging to the scientific team.

"The direct growth of anchored MoSoy nanocrystals on graphene sheets may enhance the formation of strongly coupled hybrid materials with intimate, seamless electron transfer pathways, thus accelerating the electron transfer rate for the chemical desorption of hydrogen from the catalyst, further reducing the energy required for the reaction to take place," Sasaki said.

The scientists are conducting additional studies to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of the interaction at the catalyst-graphene interface, and exploring ways to further improve its performance.

In the paper, the authors -- including the two high-school students -- conclude: "This study unambiguously provides evidence that a cheap and earth-abundant transition metal such as molybdenum can be turned into an active catalyst by the controlled solid-state reaction with soybeans?The preparation of the MoSoy catalyst is simple and can be easily scaled up. Its long-term durability and ultra-low capital cost satisfy the prerequisites for its application in the construction of large-scale devices. These findings thus open up new prospects for combining inexpensive biomass and transition metals?to produce catalysts for electro-catalytic reactions."

Additional collaborators in this research were Chiu-Hui Wang and Yimei Zhu of Brookhaven Lab.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by DOE/Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. Wei-Fu Chen, Shilpa Iyer, Shweta Iyer, Kotaro Sasaki, Chiu-Hui Wang, Yimei Zhu, James T. Muckerman, Etsuko Fujita. Biomass-Derived Electrocatalytic Composites for Hydrogen Evolution. Energy & Environmental Science, 2013; DOI: 10.1039/C3EE40596F

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/~3/z7rfSFKmS_U/130424103132.htm

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How Much Food Can You Buy for 5 Bucks Around the World?

Five dollars does not always equal five dollars. Well, I mean, it does but you could definitely stretch your dollar better in another country. Take bananas, for example, $5 gets you 8.5 pounds of it in America but $5 in Ethiopia gets you a whopping 25 pounds of bananas! And more importantly: beer. In China you can get a 12-pack for $5 bucks. Try getting that in America (you only get 4 beers for the same Lincoln). At least we're not as expensive as Australia, right? [BuzzFeed via FoodBeast] More »
    


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/GkYDOJskeOc/how-much-food-can-you-buy-for-5-bucks-around-the-world

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Moneysaver PSA: Limited Time Gaming Deals For Tuesday - Kotaku

Set your iPhone's alarm, Amazon's got Gold Box deals on video games, and we've got all the details right here.

Starting at 3am EST, Amazon will be running limited time sales on several games and accessories. The deal ends either when time expires or when stock is sold through. We're going to list the offers below, times are all Eastern Standard. Thanks goes to Cheap Ass Gamer for the info. [Amazon Gold Box]

All Day
? PS3 God of War: Ascension ($40) | $55+ elsewhere
? PS3 God of War Legacy PS3 Bundle ($280) | $327+ elsewhere

3-8am
? 360 Gears of War: Judgment ($45) |

8-10am
? 360 Halo 4 ($30) | $38+ elsewhere

10am-12pm
? PS3/360 Hitman: Absolution ($19) | $31+ elsewhere

12-2pm
? PC/Mac Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty ($18) | $40+ elsewhere

2-3pm
? PS3/360 Dead Space 3 ($40) | This is currently $33 on Groupon, we'd advise you get it there.

3-5pm
? Tritton 720+ 7.1 Surround Headset for PS3 and 360 ($100) | $150+ elsewhere

5-7pm
? Turtle Beach Ear Force PX51 Premium Wireless Dolby Digital Gaming Headset ($200) | $222+ elsewhere

7-9pm
? 3DS/Vita Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward ($30) | $40+ elsewhere

9-11pm
? 360 Forza Horizon/Forza Horizon Limited Edition ($20) | $40 elsewhere | Why both versions are listed is not currently clear.

11pm-Midnight
? 360 Kinect Sports Ultimate Collection ($15) | $43+ elsewhere

Midnight-2am
? Lego Lord of the Rings ($20) | Which platforms is not currently clear, probably all of them.

Dig in, I'll update this throughout the day. Come back at 2:15pm for an all-new Moneysaver, and check out all the other deals in Monday's full Moneysaver roundup. Follow me on Kinja for deals as I post them, and check out Deals.Kinja.com for even more discounts.

Welcome to the new Moneysaver, now brought to you by the Commerce Team. Our aim is to bring Kotaku readers the best gaming deals available. And to be very clear, we also make money if you buy. We're making new improvements every day, and we want your feedback.

Basically every major release of the past several months is on sale today, and for every platform.? Read?

Source: http://kotaku.com/moneysaver-psa-limited-time-gaming-deals-for-tuesday-477584825

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Libya says wants higher oil quota in OPEC

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya will seek to increase its oil output quota in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Oil Minister Abdelbari al-Arusi said on Monday.

OPEC dropped individual allocations in 2011 when it adopted a 30-million-bpd output target. But with production rising in Libya and Iraq the issue of quotas may need to be addressed at some stage.

Libya's last output target, under a 2008 deal where quotas were not issued publicly, was 1.47 million bpd. Al-Arusi said that current Libyan oil production stood at around 1.5 million barrels per day.

"We will ask to increase our production quota," Arusi said at the Oil and Gas Summit 2013 in Tripoli, without giving further details.

Deputy Oil Minister Omar Shakmak said last week that Libya aimed for an average 1.5 million bpd output this year and 1.7 million bpd from the third quarter.

Arusi also said Libya, with Africa's largest reserves, would offer new exploration concessions but did not give a time frame.

"We are determined to have new concessions after the necessary studies are done," he added.

The minister previously said the country would review its Exploration and Production Sharing Agreements (EPSA). The terms of its last licensing round, under the so-called EPSA IV contracts, were deemed very stringent and many foreign oil companies complained.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/libya-seeks-higher-opec-quota-output-1-5-090309413--finance.html

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9 Materials That Will Change the Future of Manufacturing [Slide Show]

Researchers are developing cutting-edge foams, coatings, metals and other substances to make our homes, vehicles and gadgets more energy efficient and environmentally friendly


manufacturing,materialCHITIN + SILK: Materials have a tremendous influence on the properties of manufactured goods, including weight, strength and energy consumption. The "Shrilk" pictured here was inspired insect exoskeleton material and could someday be used to make biomedical products. Image: Courtesy of Wyss Institute, Harvard University

The future of manufacturing depends on a number of technological breakthroughs in robotics, sensors and high-performance computing, to name a few. But nothing will impact how things are made, and what they are capable of, more than the materials manufacturers use to make those things. New materials change both the manufacturing process and the end result.

Scientific American?s May special report ?How to Make the Next Big Thing? presents several new materials under development to help inventors and engineers deliver next-generation technologies. These ingredients include superinsulating aerogels for spacesuits, flexible concrete cloth for construction projects and complex natural polymers that could replace toxic plastics.

Yet this lineup of advanced materials merely scratches the surface. Carmakers, for example, are developing porous polymers and new steel alloys that are stronger and lighter than steel, ostensibly making vehicles both safer and more fuel efficient. And environmentally savvy entrepreneurs are growing fungi-based packing materials to provide a biodegradable alternative to Styrofoam.

The following slide show presents these and several other substances that manufacturers could someday us to make many of the things we use.

View a slide show of these cutting-edge materials.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=37b570497cf419fb6c73f51255472b46

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Monday, April 22, 2013

Israel and Turkey discuss compensation for ship raid victims

ANKARA (Reuters) - An Israeli delegation arrived in Turkey on Monday for the first time since 2010 to discuss compensation for the killing of nine Turks by Israeli commandos on a Gaza-bound aid ship, a sign of improving relations between the two U.S. allies.

The visit, led by an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, follows an apology from Israel last month, brokered by U.S. President Barack Obama, for the killings on board the Mavi Marmara aid ship in May 2010.

Turkey cut its once extensive ties with the Jewish state after the Israelis killed nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists on the vessel which was trying to breach Israel's blockade of Gaza, a Palestinian enclave run by the Hamas Islamist group.

Ankara expelled Israel's ambassador and froze military cooperation after a U.N. report into the incident, released in September 2011, largely exonerated the Jewish state.

It set precise conditions for normalizing ties - an apology, compensation and Israel lifting its embargo on Gaza.

A rapprochement between two of Washington's main Middle Eastern allies could bolster U.S. influence in the region, help coordination to contain spillover from the Syrian civil war, and ease Israel's diplomatic isolation among its neighbors.

But for all the diplomatic flurry, a full restoration of ties still appears some way off.

Israel has made clear it did not commit to ending its Gaza blockade as part of the reconciliation, an oft-repeated Turkish demand, saying days after the apology that it could clamp down even harder on the enclave if security is threatened.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry asked Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday to delay a visit planned for late May to Gaza.

Kerry, who has visited the region several times in recent weeks, said Erdogan's trip could endanger U.S. efforts to revive Ankara's ties with Israel and Middle East peace talks.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Angus MacSwan)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/israel-turkey-discuss-compensation-ship-raid-victims-093601614.html

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Five days of fear: What happened in Boston

FILE - This Monday, April 15, 2013 file photo provided by Bob Leonard shows second from right, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was dubbed Suspect No. 1 and third from right, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, who was dubbed Suspect No. 2 in the Boston Marathon bombings by law enforcement. This image was taken approximately 10-20 minutes before the blast. Since Monday, Boston has experienced five days of fear, beginning with the marathon bombing attack, an intense manhunt and much uncertainty ending in the death of one suspect and the capture of the other. (AP Photo/Bob Leonard, File)

FILE - This Monday, April 15, 2013 file photo provided by Bob Leonard shows second from right, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was dubbed Suspect No. 1 and third from right, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, who was dubbed Suspect No. 2 in the Boston Marathon bombings by law enforcement. This image was taken approximately 10-20 minutes before the blast. Since Monday, Boston has experienced five days of fear, beginning with the marathon bombing attack, an intense manhunt and much uncertainty ending in the death of one suspect and the capture of the other. (AP Photo/Bob Leonard, File)

FILE - In this Monday, April 15, 2013 file photo, an emergency responder and volunteers, including Carlos Arredondo, in the cowboy hat, push Jeff Bauman in a wheelchair after he was injured in one of two explosions near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Since Monday, Boston has experienced five days of fear, beginning with the marathon bombing attack, an intense manhunt and much uncertainty ending in the death of one suspect and the capture of the other. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)

FILE - In this Monday, April 15, 2013 file photo provided by Ben Thorndike, people react to an explosion at the 2013 Boston Marathon in Boston. Since Monday, Boston has experienced five days of fear, beginning with the marathon bombing attack, an intense manhunt and much uncertainty ending in the death of one suspect and the capture of the other. (AP Photo/Ben Thorndike, File)

FILE - In this Monday, April 15, 2013 file photo, Bill Iffrig, 78, lies on the ground as police officers react to a second explosion at the finish line of the Boston Marathon in Boston. Iffrig, of Lake Stevens, Wash., was running his third Boston Marathon and near the finish line when he was knocked down by one of the two bomb blasts. Since Monday, Boston has experienced five days of fear, beginning with the marathon bombing attack, an intense manhunt and much uncertainty ending in the death of one suspect and the capture of the other. (AP Photo/The Boston Globe, John Tlumacki, File) MANDATORY CREDIT: THE BOSTON GLOBE, JOHN TLUMACKI

FILE - In this Tuesday, April 16, 2013 file photo, Tammy Lynch, right, comforts her daughter Kaytlyn, 8, after leaving flowers and some balloons at the Richard home in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. Kaytlyn was paying her respects to her friend, 8-year old Martin Richard who was killed in Monday's bombings at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Since Monday, Boston has experienced five days of fear, beginning with the marathon bombing attack, an intense manhunt and much uncertainty ending in the death of one suspect and the capture of the other. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)

(AP) ? In the tight rows of chairs stretched across the Commonwealth Ballroom, the nervousness ? already dialed high by two bombs, three deaths and more than 72 hours without answers ? ratcheted even higher.

The minutes ticked by as investigators stepped out to delay the news conference once, then again. Finally, at 5:10 p.m. Thursday, a pair of FBI agents carried two large easels to the front of the Boston hotel conference chamber and saddled them with display boards. They turned the boards backward so as not to divulge the results of their sleuthing until, it had been decided, they could not afford to wait any longer.

Now the time had come to take that critical, but perilous step: introducing Boston to the two men responsible for an entire city's terror.

"Somebody out there knows these individuals as friends, neighbors, co-workers or family members of the suspects," said Richard DesLauriers, the FBI agent in charge in Boston. As he spoke, investigators flipped the boards around to reveal grainy surveillance-camera images of the men whose only identity was conferred by the black ball cap and sunglasses on one, the white ball cap worn backward on the other.

"Though it may be difficult, the nation is counting on those with information to come forward and provide it to us."

Photographers and TV cameras pushed forward, intent on capturing the images, even as people in the lobby stared into computers and smart phones, straining to recognize the faces. In living rooms and bars and offices across the city, and across the country, so many people looked up and logged on to examine the faces of the men deemed responsible for the bombing attack of the Boston Marathon, that the FBI servers were instantly overwhelmed.

At the least, Bostonians told each other, the photos proved that the monsters the city had imagined were responsible for maiming more than 170 were nothing more than ordinary men. But even as that relief sunk in, the dread that had gripped the city since Monday at 2:50 p.m. was renewed.

If everyone had seen these photos, then that had to mean the suspects had seen them, too.

What desperation might they resort to, marathoner Meredith Saillant asked herself, once they were confronted with the certainty that their hours of anonymity were running out?

On the morning after the marathon, Saillant had fled the city for the mountains of Vermont with three friends and their children, trying to escape nightmares of the bombs that had detonated on the sidewalk just below the room where they'd been celebrating her 3:38 finish. Now, she put aside her glass of wine, reaching for the smart phone her friend offered and scrutinized the photos of the men who had defeated her city on what was supposed to be its day of camaraderie and strength.

"I expected that I would feel relief, 'OK, now I can put a face to it,' and start some closure," Saillant says. "But I think I felt more doom. I felt, I don't know, chilled. Knowing where we are and the era in which we live, I knew that as soon as those pictures went up that it was over, that something was going to happen ... like it was the beginning of the end."

There was no way she or the people of Boston could know, though, just when that end would come ? or how.

___

Marathon Monday dawned with the kind of April chill that makes spectators shiver and runners smile ? the ideal temperature for keeping a body cool during 26.2 miles of pounding over hills and around curves. By the four-hour mark, more than 2/3 of the field's 23,000 runners had crossed the finish line, and the crowds of onlookers were beginning to thin a little. But the growing warmth made it an afternoon to relish.

Passing the 25-mile mark, Diane Jones-Bolton, 51, of Nashville, Tenn. picked up the pace, relishing the effort and the sense of accomplishment of her 195th marathon.

Near the finish line, Brighid Wall of Duxbury, Mass. stood to watch the race with her husband and children, cheering on the competitors laboring through the race's final demanding steps.

In the post-race chute Tracy Eaves, a 43-year-old controller from Niles, Mich., proudly claimed her medal and a Mylar blanket, and took a big swig from a bottle of Gatorade.

And at the corner of Newberry Street and Gloucester, cab driver Lahcene Belhoucet pulled over, relishing the overabundance of paying passengers on an afternoon that traditionally gives almost as much of a boost to Boston's economy as it does to the city's spirits.

But the blast ? so loud it recalled the cannon fire heard on summer nights when the Boston Pops plays the 1812 Overture ? brought the celebration crashing down.

"Everyone sort of froze, the runners froze, and then they kept going because you weren't sure what it was," Wall said. "The first explosion was far enough away that we only saw smoke." Then the second bomb exploded, this time just 10 feet away.

"My husband threw our kids to the ground and lay on top of them," Wall said. "A man lay on top of us and said 'Don't get up! Don't get up!"

From her spot beyond the finish, a "huge shaking boom" washed over Eaves.

"I turned around and saw this monstrous smoke," she said. She thought it might be part of the festivities, until the second blast and volunteers began rushing the runners from the scene.

"Then you start to panic," she said.

Back in the field, Jones-Bolton noticed runners turning around and coming back at her. Then she realized most were wearing the blankets given to those who'd already completed the race. Suddenly the race came to halt, but nobody could say why. When word began to spread, Jones-Bolton panicked at the thought of her husband standing at the finish line, but was reassured by other runners.

At the finish, Wall, her husband and children raised their heads after a minute or two of silence. Beside them, a man was kneeling, looking dazed, blood dripping from his head. A body lay on the ground nearby, not moving at all. But in a landscape of blood and glass and twisted metal, they were far from alone.

"We grabbed each other and we ran but we didn't know where to run to because windows were blown out so another man helped me pick up my daughter," and they ran into a coffee shop, out the back door into an alley and kept going.

Meanwhile, the instincts of Dr. Martin Levine, a Bayonne. N.J., physician who has long volunteered to attend to elite runners at the finish line, told him to do just the opposite. Looking up at the plume of smoke, he estimated it was about two storefronts wide and quickly calculated how many spectators might be located in such an area.

"Make room for casualties ? about 40!," he yelled into the runner's relief tent. "Get the runners out if they can!" And he took off. Just then the second bomb went off. He reached the site to find a landscape resembling a battlefield, littered with severed limbs.

"The people were still smoking, their skin and their clothes were burning," he said. "There were lower extremity body parts all over the place...and all of the wounds were extreme gaping holes, with the flesh hanging from the bones ? if there was any bone left."

Back in his cab, Belhoucet said he mistook the first blast for an earthquake. Fearing that a building might collapse, he considered running. But then people came pouring down the street and he beckoned a family into the car. He grabbed the wheel, then turned momentarily to ask where they wanted to go.

Only then did he notice the man's face, dripping with blood.

___

Now, three days after the bombing, investigators had made significant headway in deciphering the method behind the terror.

Armies of white-suited agents had spent many hours sifting through the evidence littering Boylston Street, climbing to nearby rooftops to make sure no clue would go overlooked. Their efforts revealed that the bombers had constructed crudely assembled weapons, using plans easily found on the Internet, from pressure cookers, wires and batteries popular at hobby shops. But investigators still did not know why. And, more importantly, they had only the haziest idea of who to hold responsible.

It all came down to the photos, culled after a painstaking search of hundreds of hours of videotape and photographs gathered from surveillance cameras and spectators. But if they were unable to identify the men, that left the investigators with a difficult choice: They could keep them to law enforcement officers who so far had had no luck, prolonging the search and risking letting the men slip away or attack again. Or they could ask the public for help. But then, the suspects would know the net was closing in.

When they decided to release them, it would only put Bostonians further on edge.

"There was this kind of strange tension," said Brian Walker of Boston. "You walk by people and you just kind of look at them out of the corner of your eye and check them out. I was conscious that I didn't feel comfortable walking around with a backpack. It was like I just want to be safe here and everybody is kind of jumpy."

But as investigated pored over tips in the hours before the photos were made public, the city, at least, was struggling to right itself.

On Monday, the bombs had exploded just a half-block before Brian Ladley crossed the Marathon finish line. But, feeling lucky to be alive, he was out at 7 a.m. Thursday to join the line at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, hoping to hear President Barack Obama speak at an interfaith service to honor the victims. The event was still hours away, but when tickets ran out, authorities spotted his marathon jacket and plucked him and some other runners out of line to watch the service in a nearby school auditorium.

"If they sought to intimidate us, to terrorize us ... It should be pretty clear right now that they picked the wrong city to do it," Obama told the crowd of more than 2,000 inside the church. "''We may be momentarily knocked off our feet. But we'll pick ourselves up. We'll keep going. We will finish the race."

After it ended, Ladley found himself shaking hands with the president, too awestruck to remember their conversation. But what meant the most was the camaraderie of the crowd.

"It was wonderful to have a moment with other runners and be able to share our stories," he said.

Less than a mile away, 85-year-old Mary O'Kane strained at the bell ropes in the steeple of historic Arlington Street Church, imagining the sounds spreading a healing across her city ? and the land. Sprinkled amid hymns like "Amazing Grace" and "A Mighty Fortress," patriotic tunes like "America the Beautiful" and "God Bless America" wafted down from the 199-foot steeple and over Boston Common across the street.

"I feel joyful. I feel worshipful. I feel glad to be alive," she said. The city's response to the bombing had revealed its strength and brotherhood, attributes she was certain would carry it through. But her belief in Boston was tinged with sadness. Now she understood a little bit about how New Yorkers who experienced 9/11 must feel.

"I mean, it happened ? it finally happened," O'Kane said. "We were feeling sort of immune. Now we're just a part of everybody...The same expectations and fears."

___

In the hours after investigators released the photos of the men known only as Suspect (hash)1 and Suspect (hash)2, the city went on about the business of a Thursday night, a semblance of normality restored except for the area immediately surrounding the blast site. Restaurants that had closed in the nights just after the bombing reopened for business. At Howl at the Moon, a bar on High Street downtown, the dueling pianists took the stage at 6 p.m., almost as if nothing had changed.

But across the Charles River in Cambridge, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his brother Dzhokhar, 19, were arming up.

Later, friends and relatives would recall both as seemingly incapable of terrorism. The brothers were part of an ethnic Chechen family that came to the U.S, in 2002, after fleeing troubles in Kyrgyzstan and then Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim republic in Russia's North Caucasus. They settled in a working-class part of Cambridge, where the father, Anzor Tsarnaev, opened an auto shop.

Dzhokhar did well enough in his studies at prestigious Cambridge Rindge and Latin to merit a $2,500 city scholarship for college.

Tamerlan, though, could be argumentative and sullen. "I don't have a single American friend," he said in an interview for a photo essay on boxing. He was clearly the dominant of the two brothers, a former accounting student with a wife and son, who explained his decision to drop out of school by telling a relative, "I'm in God's business."

It's not that Tamerlan Tsarnaev didn't have options. For several years he'd impressed coaches and other as a particularly talented amateur boxer.

"He moved like a gazelle. He could punch like a mule," said Tom Lee, president of the South Boston Boxing Club, where Tsarnaev began training in 2010."I would describe him as a very ordinary person who didn't really stand out until you saw him fight."

But away from the gym, Tamerlan swaggered around his parent's home like he owned it, those who knew him said. And he began declaring an allegiance to Islam, joined with increasingly inflammatory views.

One of the brothers' neighbors, Albrecht Ammon, recalled an encounter in which the older brother argued with him about U.S. foreign policy, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and religion. The Bible, Tamerlan told him, was a "cheap copy" of the Quran, used to justify wars with other countries. "He had nothing against the American people," Ammon said. "He had something against the American government."

Dzhokhar, on the other hand, was "real cool," Ammon said. "A chill guy."

Since the bombing, the younger brother had maintained much of that sense of cool, returning to classes at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth and attending student parties.

On the day of the bombing, he wrote on Twitter: "There are people that know the truth but stay silent & there are people that speak the truth but we don't hear them cuz they're the minority."

But by Tuesday, when he stopped by a Cambridge auto garage, the mechanic, accustomed to long talks with Dzhokhar about cars and soccer, noticed the normally relaxed 19-year-old was biting his nails and trembling.

The mechanic, Gilberto Junior, told Tsarnaev he hadn't had a chance to work on a Mercedes he'd dropped off for bumper work. "I don't care. I don't care. I need the car right now," Junior says Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told him.

Now, with the photos out, it was time to move. Already, one of Dzhokhar's college classmates had taken to studying the photo of Suspect (hash)1 ? nearly certain it was his friend, although others were skeptical. It wouldn't take long for others to notice.

___

The call to the police dispatcher came in at 10:20 p.m. Thursday: shots fired on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus in Cambridge. Ten minutes later, when police arrived to investigate, they found one of their own, university officer Sean Collier, shot multiple times inside his cruiser at the corner of Vassar and Main.

The baby-faced 26-year-old, in just a year on patrol, had impressed both his supervisors and the students as particularly dedicated to his work. Just a few days earlier, he'd asked Chief John DiFava for approval to join the board at a homeless shelter, in a bid to steer people away from problems before they developed. Now he was being pronounced dead at the hospital.

Witnesses reported seeing two men. Fifteen minutes later, another call came in of an armed carjacking by two men, not far away on Third Street. After half an hour, the carjackers had let the owner go, but not before using the victims' bank card to pocket $800 from an ATM and telling the man they'd just killed a police officer and that they were responsible for the bombing, Watertown Police Chief Edward Deveau said.

Investigators had their break.

The carjacking victim had left his cellphone in the Mercedes SUV, enabling police to track its location via GPS, Deveau said. It was past 11 p.m. now, and as the car sped west into Watertown, one of Deveau's officers spotted it and gave chase, realizing too late he was alone against the brothers driving two separate cars. When both vehicles came to a halt, the men stepped out and opened fire. Three more officers arrived, then two who were off-duty, fending off a barrage. When a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority officer, Richard Donohue, pulled up behind them, a bullet to the groin severed an artery and he went down.

"We're in a gunfight, a serious gunfight," Deveau said. "Rounds are going and then all of the sudden they see something being thrown at them and there's a huge explosion. I'm told it's exactly the same type of explosive that we'd seen that happened at the Boston Marathon. The pressure cooker lid was found embedded in a car down the street."

In the normally quiet streets of Watertown, residents rushed to their windows.

"Now I know what it must be like to be in a war zone, like Iraq or Afghanistan," said Anna Lanzo, a 70-year-old retired medical secretary whose house was rocked by the explosion.

As the firefight continued, Tamerlan Tsarnaev moved closer and closer to the officers, until less than 10 feet separated them, continuing to shoot even as he was hit by police gunfire, until finally he ran out of ammunition and officers tackled him, Deveau said. But as they struggled to cuff the older brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev jumped back in the second vehicle.

"All of the sudden somebody yelled 'Get out of the way!' and they (the officers) look up and here comes the black SUV that's been hijacked right at them. They dove out of the way at the last second and he ran over his brother, dragged him down the street and then fled," he said.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was rushed to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

A few blocks over, Samantha England, was heading to bed when she heard what sounded like fireworks. When she called 911, the dispatcher told her to stay inside, lock the doors and get down on the floor. She reached for the TV, trying to figure out what was going on.

"As soon as they said it on the news, that's when we started to freak out and realize they were here," England said.

But after all the gunfire, the younger Tsarnaev had vanished. Officers, their guns drawn, moved through the neighborhood of wood-frame homes and cordoned off the area as daylight approached.

At Kayla DiPaolo's house on Oak Street, she scrambled to find shelter in the door frame of her bedroom as a bullet came the side paneling on her front door. At 8:30 a.m., Jonathan Peck heard helicopters circling above his house on Cypress Street and looked outside to see about 50 armed men.

"It seemed like Special Forces teams were searching every nook and cranny of my yard," he said.

Unable to find Tsarnaev, authorities announced they were shutting down not just Watertown, but all of Boston and many of its suburbs, affecting more than 1 million people. Train service was cancelled. Taxis were ordered off the streets. Filming of a Hollywood movie called "American Hustle" ? the tale of an FBI sting operation ? was called off. In central Boston, streets normally packed with officer workers turned eerily silent.

"It feels like we're living in a movie. I feel like the whole city is in a standstill right now and everyone is just glued to the news," Rebecca Rowe of Boston said.

But as the hours went by, and the house-to-house search continued, investigators found no sign of their quarry. Finally, at about 6 p.m., they announced the shutdown had been lifted.

At the Islamic Society of Boston, Belhoucet, the cab driver who'd fled the bombing scene, arrived for evening prayer only to find it shuttered. But he told himself the city's paralysis could not continue much longer. "Because there is no place to hide," Belhoucet said. "His picture is all over the world now."

Across Watertown, people ventured out for the first time in hours to enjoy the day's unusually warm air. They included a man who took a few steps into his Franklin Street backyard, then noticed the tarp on his boat was askew. He lifted it, looked inside and saw a man covered in blood.

He rushed back in to call police. And again, the neighborhood was awash in officers in fatigues and armed with machine guns. Hunkered down inside the boat, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev traded fire with police for more than an hour, until at last, they are able to subdue him.

Just before 9 p.m., police scanners crackle:

"Suspect in custody."

On the Twitter account of the Boston police department, the news is trumpeted to a city that has been holding its collective breath over five days of fear: "CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won."

With that, Boston pours into the streets. In Watertown, officers lower their guns and grasp hands in congratulation. Bostonians applaud police officers and cheer as the ambulance carrying Tsarnaev passes. Under the flashing lights from Kenmore Square's iconic Citgo sign, Boston University sophomore Will Livingston shouts up to people hanging out of open windows: "USA! USA! Get hyped, people!"

But on Boylston Street, where the bombing site remains cordoned off, there is silence even as the crowd swelled, and tears are shed.

"I think it's a mixture of happiness and relief," said Matt Taylor, 39, of Boston, a nurse who drove to Boylston Street as soon as he heard of the arrest.

Nearby, Aaron Wengertsman, 19, a Boston University student, who was on the marathon route a mile from the finish line when the bombs exploded, stands wrapped in an American flag. "I'm glad they caught him alive," Wengertsman says. "It's humbling to see all these people paying their respects."

They include 25-year-old attorney Beth Lloyd-Jones, who was 25 blocks from the bombings and considers them deeply personal, a violation of her city. She is planning her wedding inside the Boston Public Library, adjacent to where the bombs exploded.

"Now I feel a little safer," she says. But she can't help but think of the victims who suffered in the explosions that started it all: "That could have been any one of us."

___

EDITOR'S NOTE ? This reconstruction of events is based on reporting and interviews by Associated Press journalists across Boston and elsewhere from Monday through Saturday. AP writers Bridget Murphy, Michael Hill, Allen G. Breed, Denise Lavoie, Jeff Donn, Meghan Barr, Jay Lindsay, Katie Zezima, Pat Eaton-Robb, Rodrique Ngowi and Bob Salsberg in Boston; Marilynn Marchione in Milwaukee; Michelle Smith in Providence, R.I., Michael Rubinkam in Scranton, Pa.; and Trenton Daniel in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, contributed to this report. Follow Adam Geller on Twitter at http://twitter.com/AdGeller

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-04-21-Boston%20Marathon-Five%20Days%20of%20Fear/id-53514aec5c6b48689a4206c234918e4e

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Refresh Roundup: week of April 15th, 2013

Refresh Roundup week of April 15th, 2013

Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging for an update. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it's easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix. To make sure they don't escape without notice, we've gathered every possible update, hack, and other miscellaneous tomfoolery we could find during the last week and crammed them into one convenient roundup. If you find something available for your device, please give us a shout at tips at engadget dawt com and let us know. Enjoy!

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Author Dennis Lehane Praises Heroic Reaction to Boston Bombings (ABC News)

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Hundreds of potential drug targets to starve cancer tumors identified

Apr. 21, 2013 ? A massive study analyzing gene expression data from 22 tumor types has identified multiple metabolic expression changes associated with cancer. The analysis, conducted by researchers at Columbia University Medical Center, also identified hundreds of potential drug targets that could cut off a tumor's fuel supply or interfere with its ability to synthesize essential building blocks. The study was published today in the online edition of Nature Biotechnology.

The results should ramp up research into drugs that interfere with cancer metabolism, a field that dominated cancer research in the early 20th century and has recently undergone a renaissance.

"The importance of this new study is its scope," said Dennis Vitkup, PhD, associate professor of biomedical informatics (in the Initiative in Systems Biology) at CUMC, the study's lead investigator. "So far, people have focused mainly on a few genes involved in major metabolic processes. Our study provides a comprehensive, global view of diverse metabolic alterations at the level of gene expression."

Cell metabolism is a dynamic network of reactions inside cells that process nutrients, such as glucose, to obtain energy and synthesize building blocks needed to produce new cellular components. To support uncontrolled proliferation, cancer needs to significantly reprogram and "supercharge" a cell's normal metabolic pathways.

The first researcher to notice cancer's special metabolism was German biochemist Otto Warburg, who in 1924 observed that cancer cells had a peculiar way of utilizing glucose to make energy for the cell. "Although a list of biochemical pathways in normal cells was comprehensively mapped during the last century," said Dr. Vitkup. "We still lack a complete understanding of their usage, regulation, and reprogramming in cancer."

"Right now we have something like a static road map. We know where the streets are, but we don't know how traffic flows through the streets and intersections," said Jie Hu, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia and first author of the study. "What researchers need is something similar to Google Traffic, which shows the flow and dynamic changes in car traffic."

Drs. Hu and Vitkup's study is an important step toward achieving this dynamic view of cancer metabolism. Notably, the researchers found that the tumor-induced expression changes are significantly different across diverse tumors. Although some metabolic changes -- such as an increase in nucleotide biosynthesis and glycolysis -- appear to be more frequent across tumors, others, such as changes in oxidation phosphorylation, are heterogeneous.

"Our study clearly demonstrates that there are no single and universal changes in cancer metabolism," said Matthew Vander Heiden, MD, PhD, assistant professor at MIT, and a co-author of the paper. "That means that to understand transformation in cancer metabolism, researchers will need to consider how different tumor types adapt their metabolism to meet their specific needs."

The researchers also found that expression changes can mimic or cooperate with cancer mutations to drive tumor formation. A notable example is the enzyme isocitrate dehydrogenase. In several cancers, such as glioblastoma and acute myeloid leukemia, mutations in this enzyme are known to produce a specific metabolite -- 2-hydroxyglutarate -- that promotes tumor growth. The Columbia team found that isocitrate dehydrogenase expression significantly increases in tumors with the recurrent mutations. Such an overexpression may create an efficient enzymatic factory for overproduction of 2-hydroxyglutarate.

The analysis also led the researchers to an interesting finding in colon cancer. In several other cancers, mutations in two enzymes -- succinate dehydrogenase and fumarate hydratase -- can promote tumor formation as a result of efflux from mitochondria and accumulation of their substrates, fumarate and succinate. The researchers found that in colon cancer, accumulation of these metabolites may be caused by a significant decrease in the enzymes' expression. This was confirmed when metabolomics data from colon tumor patients showed significantly higher concentrations of fumarate in tumors than in normal tissue.

"These are just several examples of how cancer cells use various creative mechanisms to hijack the metabolism of native cells for their own purposes," said Dr. Vitkup.

For cancer researchers looking for new drug targets, Dr. Vitkup's team also found hundreds of differences between normal and cancer cells' use of isoenzymes. This opens up additional possibilities for turning off cancer's fuel and supply lines. Isoenzymes often catalyze the same reactions, but have different kinetic properties: Some act quickly and sustain rapid growth, while others are more sluggish. In kidney and liver cancers, for example, a quick-acting aldolase isoenzyme -- suitable for fast cell proliferation -- was found to be more prevalent than the more typical slow-moving version found in normal kidney and liver tissue. Although a few examples of differential isoenzyme expression in tumors were already known, the Columbia researchers identified hundreds of isoenzymes with cancer-specific expression patterns.

"Inhibiting specific isoenzymes in tumors may be a way to selectively hit cancer cells without affecting normal cells, which could get by with other isoenzymes," said Dr. Hu.

In fact, a recent study from Matthew Vander Heiden's laboratory demonstrated the potential of targeting a specific isoenzyme, pyruvate kinase M2, expression of which often increases in tumors. "The comprehensive expression analysis suggests that a similar approach could potentially be applied in multiple other cases," said Dr. Vander Heiden.

Targeting metabolism may be a way to strike cancer at its roots. "Cancer cells usually have multiple ways to turn on their growth program," said Dr. Vitkup. "You can knock out one, but the cells will usually find another pathway to turn on proliferation. Targeting metabolism may be more powerful, because if you starve a cell of energy or materials, it has nowhere to go."

The paper is titled, "Heterogeneity of tumor-induced gene expression changes in the human metabolic network." The other authors are Jason W. Locasale (Cornell University), Jason H. Bielas (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Wash.; and University of Washington, Seattle, Wash.), Jacintha O'Sullivan (St. Vincent's University Hospital, Dublin, Ireland), Kieran Sheahan St. Vincent's University Hospital, Dublin, Ireland), and Lewis C. Cantley (Harvard Medical School).

Dr. Vander Heiden is a consultant and advisory board member, and Dr. Cantley is a consultant and founder, of Agios Pharmaceuticals. The authors report no other financial or potential conflicts of interest.

This work was supported by National Institutes of Health grant GM079759 to Dr. Vitkup and National Centers for Biomedical Computing grant U54CA121852 to Columbia University. Dr. Locasale is supported by an NIH Pathway to Independence Award R00CA168997. Dr. Bielas is supported by an Ellison Medical Foundation New Scholar award AG-NS-0577-09, a National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences grant R01ES019319, and New Development Funds from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Dr. Vander Heiden acknowledges support from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, the Smith Family, and the National Cancer Institute.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Columbia University Medical Center.

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Journal Reference:

  1. Jie Hu, Jason W Locasale, Jason H Bielas, Jacintha O'Sullivan, Kieran Sheahan, Lewis C Cantley, Matthew G Vander Heiden, Dennis Vitkup. Heterogeneity of tumor-induced gene expression changes in the human metabolic network. Nature Biotechnology, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/nbt.2530

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

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.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/NxLu-Y1ENBQ/130421151616.htm

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