NEW YORK -- A former Mexican state governor was sentenced to 11 years in prison in the United States on Friday after pleading guilty to conspiring to launder millions of dollars in bribes from a notorious drug cartel.
With credit for time served and good behavior, Mario Villanueva, 64, could be released from U.S. custody in two to three years, his lawyer, Richard Lind, said after the hearing. He faces another 23 years in prison in Mexico stemming from similar charges, Lind said.
Mexico's drug war is also part of a drug culture with roots in music, movies and even religion
From 1993 to 1999, Villanueva was governor of Quintana Roo, a state on the Yucatan Peninsula that is home to the popular tourist destination Cancun.
While in office he conspired to launder millions of dollars in bribery payments from the Juarez drug cartel through accounts and shell corporations in the United States and elsewhere, prosecutors said.
He was extradited to the United States in 2010 after serving a six-year sentence in Mexico for money laundering.
"This defendant violated the public trust to enrich himself," Assistant U.S. Attorney Glen Kopp told U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in New York on Friday.
In a plea agreement last year, Villanueva pleaded guilty to one charge of money laundering conspiracy; he faced a maximum of 20 years in prison.
"I ask for your compassion and your clemency," Villanueva told Marrero, as several of his family members, including his wife and son, looked on.
The Juarez cartel transported more than 200 tons of cocaine into the United States in the 1990s, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan.
Prosecutors said Villanueva reached an agreement with the cartel soon after it established operations in Quintana Roo in 1994. He received payments of between $400,000 and $500,000 for each cocaine shipment that went through the state in exchange for ensuring law enforcement would not interfere.
By late 1995, he began transferring the money to bank and brokerage accounts in the United States, Switzerland and elsewhere in an effort to hide the funds, prosecutors said.
Consuelo Marquez, a Lehman Brothers investment broker, helped set up several offshore corporations for Villanueva to shelter the bribe proceeds, according to the indictment against Villanueva. She also established brokerage accounts for him and conducted a series of wire transfers at his direction, according to the indictment.
Marquez was sentenced to three years of probation and fined $10,000 in 2006 after pleading guilty to money laundering charges.
Villanueva, while under investigation in Mexico, disappeared in March 1999, just before his term as governor expired. He was discovered by Mexican authorities in 2001.
While a fugitive, Villanueva tried to transfer funds in the Lehman accounts to third-party accounts with Marquez's help, according to the indictment.
With his sentence, Villanueva "completes his descent from elected government official to corrupted official to incarcerated felon," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement.
The case is USA v. Mario Ernesto Villanueva Madrid, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 01-cr-021.
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? A petition asking President Barack Obama to pardon admitted state secret leaker Edward Snowden has passed 100,000 signatures.
The petition posted on Whitehouse.gov calls the former National Security Agency contractor a "national hero." It says he should immediately be pardoned for any crimes in "blowing the whistle" on classified government programs to collect phone records and online data.
White House policy is to respond to any petition that gets 100,000 signatures within 30 days. The Snowden petition crossed the threshold in two weeks.
The White House wouldn't say when its response will come. But it routinely declines to comment on petitions regarding law enforcement matters, including pardon requests. And the ultimate answer is the administration's pursuit of Snowden on espionage charges.
Apr. 10, 2013 ? Researchers found that the brain breaks experiences into the "events," or related groups that help us mentally organize the day's many situations, using subconscious mental categories it creates. These categories are based on how the brain considers people, objects and actions are related in terms of how they tend to ? or tend not to ? pop up near one another at specific times.
Your brain knows it's time to cook when the stove is on, and the food and pots are out. When you rush away to calm a crying child, though, cooking is over and it's time to be a parent. Your brain processes and responds to these occurrences as distinct, unrelated events.
But it remains unclear exactly how the brain breaks such experiences into "events," or the related groups that help us mentally organize the day's many situations. A dominant concept of event-perception known as prediction error says that our brain draws a line between the end of one event and the start of another when things take an unexpected turn (such as a suddenly distraught child).
Challenging that idea, Princeton University researchers suggest that the brain may actually work from subconscious mental categories it creates based on how it considers people, objects and actions are related. Specifically, these details are sorted by temporal relationship, which means that the brain recognizes that they tend to -- or tend not to -- pop up near one another at specific times, the researchers report in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
So, a series of experiences that usually occur together (temporally related) form an event until a non-temporally related experience occurs and marks the start of a new event. In the example above, pots and food usually make an appearance during cooking; a crying child does not. Therein lies the partition between two events, so says the brain.
This dynamic, which the researchers call "shared temporal context," works very much like the object categories our minds use to organize objects, explained lead author Anna Schapiro, a doctoral student in Princeton's Department of Psychology.
"We're providing an account of how you come to treat a sequence of experiences as a coherent, meaningful event," Schapiro said. "Events are like object categories. We associate robins and canaries because they share many attributes: They can fly, have feathers, and so on. These associations help us build a 'bird' category in our minds. Events are the same, except the attributes that help us form associations are temporal relationships."
Supporting this idea is brain activity the researchers captured showing that abstract symbols and patterns with no obvious similarity nonetheless excited overlapping groups of neurons when presented to study participants as a related group. From this, the researchers constructed a computer model that can predict and outline the neural pathways through which people process situations, and can reveal if those situations are considered part of the same event.
The parallels drawn between event details are based on personal experience, Schapiro said. People need to have an existing understanding of the various factors that, when combined, correlate with a single experience.
"Everyone agrees that 'having a meeting' or 'chopping vegetables' is a coherent chunk of temporal structure, but it's actually not so obvious why that is if you've never had a meeting or chopped vegetables before," Schapiro said.
"You have to have experience with the shared temporal structure of the components of the events in order for the event to hold together in your mind," she said. "And the way the brain implements this is to learn to use overlapping neural populations to represent components of the same event."
During a series of experiments, the researchers presented human participants with sequences of abstract symbols and patterns. Without the participants' knowledge, the symbols were grouped into three "communities" of five symbols with shapes in the same community tending to appear near one another in the sequence.
After watching these sequences for roughly half an hour, participants were asked to segment the sequences into events in a way that felt natural to them. They tended to break the sequences into events that coincided with the communities the researchers had prearranged, which shows that the brain quickly learns the temporal relationships between the symbols, Schapiro said.
The researchers then used functional magnetic resonance imaging to observe brain activity as participants viewed the symbol sequences. Images in the same community produced similar activity in neuron groups at the border of the brain's frontal and temporal lobes, a region involved in processing meaning.
The researchers interpreted this activity as the brain associating the images with one another, and therefore as one event. At the same time, different neural groups activated when a symbol from a different community appeared, which was interpreted as a new event.
The researchers fashioned these data into a computational neural-network model that revealed the neural connection between what is being experienced and what has been learned. When a simulated stimulus is entered, the model can predict the next burst of neural activity throughout the network, from first observation to processing.
"The model allows us to articulate an explicit hypothesis about what kind of learning may be going on in the brain," Schapiro said. "It's one thing to show a neural response and say that the brain must have changed to arrive at that state. To have a specific idea of how that change may have occurred could allow a deeper understanding of the mechanisms involved."
Michael Frank, a Brown University associate professor of cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences, said that the Princeton researchers uniquely apply existing concepts of "similarity structure" used in such fields as semantics and artificial intelligence to provide evidence for their account of event perception. These concepts pertain to the ability to identify within large groups of data those subsets that share specific commonalities, said Frank, who is familiar with the research but had no role in it.
"The work capitalizes on well-grounded computational models of similarity structure and applies it to understanding how events and their boundaries are detected and represented," Frank said. "The authors noticed that the ability to represent items within an event as similar to each other -- and thus different than those in ensuing events -- might rely on similar machinery as that applied to detect clustering in community structures."
The model "naturally" lays out the process of shared temporal context in a way that is validated by work in other fields, yet distinct in relation to event perception, Frank said.
"The same types of models have been applied to understanding language -- for example, how the meaning of words in a sentence can be contextualized by earlier words or concepts," Frank said. "Thus the model and experiments identify a common and previously unappreciated mechanism that can be applied to both language and event parsing, which are otherwise seemingly unrelated domains."
Schapiro worked with second author Timothy Rogers, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Natalia Cordova, a Princeton neuroscience graduate student; Nicholas Turk-Browne, a Princeton assistant professor of psychology; and Matthew Botvinick, a Princeton associate professor of psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute.
The work was supported by grants from the John Templeton Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the James S. McDonnell Foundation.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Princeton University. The original article was written by Morgan Kelly.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Anna C Schapiro, Timothy T Rogers, Natalia I Cordova, Nicholas B Turk-Browne, Matthew M Botvinick. Neural representations of events arise from temporal community structure. Nature Neuroscience, 2013; 16 (4): 486 DOI: 10.1038/nn.3331
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.
Apr. 9, 2013 ? In a development that could make the advanced form of secure communications known as quantum cryptography more practical, University of Michigan researchers have demonstrated a simpler, more efficient single-photon emitter that can be made using traditional semiconductor processing techniques.
Single-photon emitters release one particle of light, or photon, at a time, as opposed to devices like lasers that release a stream of them. Single-photon emitters are essential for quantum cryptography, which keeps secrets safe by taking advantage of the so-called observer effect: The very act of an eavesdropper listening in jumbles the message. This is because in the quantum realm, observing a system always changes it.
For quantum cryptography to work, it's necessary to encode the message -- which could be a bank password or a piece of military intelligence, for example -- just one photon at a time. That way, the sender and the recipient will know whether anyone has tampered with the message.
While the U-M researchers didn't make the first single-photon emitter, they say their new device improves upon the current technology and is much easier to make.
"This thing is very, very simple. It is all based on silicon," said Pallab Bhattacharya, the Charles M. Vest Distinguished University Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and the James R. Mellor Professor of Engineering.
Bhattacharya, who leads this project, is a co-author of a paper on the work published in Nature Communications on April 9.
Bhattacharya's emitter is a single nanowire made of gallium nitride with a very small region of indium gallium nitride that behaves as a quantum dot. A quantum dot is a nanostructure that can generate a bit of information. In the binary code of conventional computers, a bit is a 0 or a 1. A quantum bit can be either or both at the same time.
The semiconducting materials the new emitter is made of are commonly used in LEDs and solar cells. The researchers grew the nanowires on a wafer of silicon. Because their technique is silicon-based, the infrastructure to manufacture the emitters on a larger scale already exists. Silicon is the basis of modern electronics.
"This is a big step in that it produces the pathway to realizing a practical electrically injected single-photon emitter," Bhattacharya said.
Key enablers of the new technology are size and compactness.
"By making the diameter of the nanowire very small and by altering the composition over a very small section of it, a quantum dot is realized," Bhattacharya said. "The quantum dot emits single-photons upon electrical excitation."
The U-M emitter is fueled by electricity, rather than light -- another aspect that makes it more practical. And each photon it emits possesses the same degree of linear polarization. Polarization refers to the orientation of the electric field of a beam of light. Most other single-photon emitters release light particles with a random polarization.
"So half might have one polarization and the other half might have the other," Bhattacharya said. "So in cryptic message, if you want to code them, you would only be able to use 50 percent of the photons. With our device, you could use almost all of them."
This device operates at cold temperatures, but the researchers are working on one that operates closer to room temperature.
The paper is titled "Electrically-driven polarized single-photon emission from an InGaN quantum dot in a GaN nanowire." The first author is Saniya Deshpande, a graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science. The work is supported by the National Science Foundation. The device was fabricated at the U-M Lurie Nanofabrication Facility.
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Journal Reference:
Saniya Deshpande, Junseok Heo, Ayan Das, Pallab Bhattacharya. Electrically driven polarized single-photon emission from an InGaN quantum dot in a GaN nanowire. Nature Communications, 2013; 4: 1675 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2691
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? Schools across the nation should train selected staff members to carry weapons and should each have at least one armed security officer to make students safer and allow a quicker response to an attack, the director of a National Rifle Association-sponsored study said Tuesday.
Republican former Rep. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas made the remarks as a task force he headed released its report, which included a 40- to 60-hour training program for school staff members who are qualified and can pass background checks.
"The presence of an armed security personnel in a school adds a layer of security and diminishes the response time that is beneficial to the overall security," said Hutchinson.
Asked if every school would be better off with an armed security officer, Hutchinson replied, "Yes," but acknowledged the decision would be made locally.
"Obviously we believe that they make a difference," he said.
Hutchinson said the security could be provided by trained staff members or by school resource officers ? police officers assigned to schools that some districts already have.
The report was released a week before the Senate plans to begin debating gun control legislation.
The NRA opposes the main feature of the legislation, an expansion of background checks to cover nearly all gun purchases. But the group has long said the school safety study would be an important response to last December's massacre of first-graders and staff members at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.
At the White House, press secretary Jay Carney said administration officials were working with lawmakers to try to reach a compromise on legislation that could be supported by both parties.
"The president has always recognized that this is something that would be a challenge but that in the wake of the horrific shootings in Newtown was an obligation of all of us to work on and try to get done," Carney said.
The spokesman commented as the White House revealed the president plans a trip next week to Connecticut, scene of the horrific shooting that spurred the new push for gun-control legislation. The aim of Obama's trip is to build pressure on Congress to pass legislation.
Obama also plans to focus on firearms curbs in a trip Wednesday to Denver, not far from last summer's mass shooting in a movie theater in Aurora, Colo.
Obama and his allies ? mostly Democrats ? are trying to bolster prospects that Congress will approve gun legislation. Chances of such action on Capitol Hill have waned since the Newtown shootings.
The 225-page NRA study, which Hutchinson said cost more than $1 million, made eight recommendations. They included changing state laws that might bar a trained school staff member from carrying a firearm, NRA-provided online assessments that schools could make of their safety procedures and better coordination with law enforcement agencies.
The study drew immediate opposition from the American Federation of Teachers, which represents 1.5 million teachers and other workers.
"Today's NRA proposal is a cruel hoax that will fail to keep our children and schools safe," said AFT President Randi Weingarten. "It is simply designed to assist gun manufacturers" to flood the nation with more guns and large magazine clips.
Hutchinson said the NRA dropped an earlier recommendation that retired police officers and other volunteers be armed to provide school safety. He said the idea encountered "great reluctance" from school superintendents.
The NRA had suggested the retired officer idea just days after the Newtown killings.
Several NRA-supplied security guards were at Tuesday's event ? unusual for an announcement at the National Press Club, a building that houses offices for many news organizations.
Hutchinson said the NRA did not interfere with his task force's work. In a written statement, the NRA said the report "will go a long way to making America's schools safer."
The Mideast peace process may not be at the top of Obama's agenda, but analysts say Secretary Kerry, who is accompanying the president in Israel, is eager to tackle the challenge.
By Howard LaFranchi,?Staff writer / March 19, 2013
Palestinian activists throw shoes at a poster of US President Barack Obama in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Monday. Obama?s trip to Jerusalem and the West Bank is scheduled for March 20th to the 22nd, and it is the US leader?s first trip to the region as president.
Nasser Shiyoukhi/AP
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President Obama is not expected to announce any major initiative to relaunch the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process when he visits the region beginning Wednesday. But his top diplomat, Secretary of State John Kerry, is known to be anxious to tackle an issue that some say has become almost a third rail in the president?s second term.
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The question now is whether Mr. Obama, who is considered by many Washington policy experts to be the most controlling president of the nation?s foreign policy since perhaps Richard Nixon, will be willing to loosen the reins enough to give Secretary Kerry, and peace, a chance.
Tackling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ?does not appear to be a priority for the second [Obama] term, [but] it is a priority for John Kerry,? says Martin Indyk, a former US ambassador to Israel who is now director of the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Ambassador Indyk, who was an adviser to President Clinton on the Middle East peace process, says Obama ?would rather turn away from this region,? but he adds that it is clear Kerry feels ?the opposite,? and in particular is anxious ?to take on the Israeli-Palestinian challenge.?
Obama set out as a new president launching an ambitious Mideast peace bid, and tried again in May 2011 when he used a major speech on the peace process to declare that the 1967 borders should serve as the starting point for negotiating land issues. But neither attempt got the president ? or the peace process ? very far.?
A clue as to whether Kerry is going to be allowed to do that should come this week ? as Obama visits Israel and the occupied West Bank with his secretary of state at his side ? if it is going to happen at all.
?It?s important that the president publicly empower Secretary Kerry on this visit,? Indyk says, noting that leaders in the region ? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the top of the list ? see that Kerry has the president?s full backing.
They need to know that ?Kerry is empowered,? he says, ?and that the president will be behind him in every way.?
Speculation about a Kerry stab at reviving the peace process has risen in the context of Obama?s trip despite the mixed signals coming from the conflict?s key players.
Both the Israelis and the Palestinians insist they are ready to return to negotiations, even as many regional analysts list the reasons why neither side is really ready.
Prime Minister Netanyahu went so far as to declare Israel ready to reach a ?historic compromise? with Palestinians as he introduced his new coalition government to the Knesset, the national parliament.
Microsoft has been busy on the Windows Azure front. Earlier this week, the division announced it had acquired the startup company MetricsHub. This week, Microsoft VP Scott Guthrie posted up word of a number of new additions and features for users of the cloud server service.
Guthrie's blog post states that the Mobile Services portion of Windows Azure has added support for Android apps, after previously supporting iOS, Windows Phone and Windows 8. He states:
To create a new Android app or connect an existing Android app to your Windows Azure Mobile Service, simply select the ?Android? tab within the Quick Start view of a Mobile Service, and then follow either the ?Create a new Android app? or ?Connect to an existing Android app? link below it
Windows Azure customers in the East Asia region can now access the Mobile Services support with this new update. Microsoft has also added SQL Reporting Services inside the Windows Azure management portal. The company has also launched a preview version that will let customers monitor their web applications. Guthrie states, "Web availability monitoring helps you understand the response time and availability of your web application from different locations around the world."
Source: Scott Guthrie's blog | Image via Microsoft
As Greece's painfully desperate fight to collect tax revenue, any tax revenue, using traditional methods meets failure after grotesque failure, driven by such unconventional stumbling blocks as running out of ink with which to print tax forms, striking tax collectors, and repossessed (or stolen) tax department computer equipment, the necessity to prove to Europe that Greece is doing something to fill the income side of its reformist ledger has forced it to turn to the glaringly illegal. As Greek Reporter notes, "Greece?s General Secretariat for Information Systems has completed an application that will allow the state?s monitoring and collection mechanism to access the country?s banking system via an online connection and let the government have access to depositor bank accounts. The application, which will let the Finance Ministry troll through the accounts of all depositors suspected of tax evasion means online inspectors can scour through records of deposits, loans, credit card use and other data without permission from the account holder."
What is troubling is that while this happens in the US on a daily basis, at least the NSA has to dig through data illegally, and can't use what it finds against citizens in court.
In Greece, however, any trace of personal privacy in the insolvent state is now gone, and in a way that is made very public and clear to all citizens. The result will be an even greater hit to all forms of electronic spending (remember that all bulk cash transactions are prohibited), and a collapse in all economic transactions, leading to an even more acute depression, and an even greater need to yet another "bailout" from Europe (this one will be the last surely, as it will be after this it will be different).
From Greek Reporter:
Until now, the law did not allow even investigators to check bank records, but Greece is under intense pressure from international lenders putting up $325 billion in two bailouts to find tax cheats and up tax revenues.
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The system is ready and some virtual checks on accounts have already been conducted successfully, also helping with the training of the employees who will handle and store all bank data in the ministry?s server, the newspaper Kathimerini reported.
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The bill that will allow monitoring mechanisms, police and anti-money-laundering authorities to use the data will be tabled in Parliament next month and the System of Bank Account Registers will be in full operation as of September.
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The aim is to reduce the time needed to investigate significant cases with a direct benefit for the state budget and public coffers, officials said. Those using the system will be able to search through accounts and loan transactions simply using the tax registration number of the person being investigated.
The Chiefs did a lot of business in the hours before the franchise tag deadline, signing wide receiver Dwayne Bowe and punter Dustin Colquitt to long-term deals, and tagging left tackle Branden Albert.
Now they have something even more valuable than good players ? they have options.
While many will immediately assume this takes them out of the market for a left tackle (specifically Luke Joeckel) with the first pick in a quarterback-less draft, that doesn?t seem wise.
First, they should create the full impression that it?s still a possibility, if only to create a trade market that might not otherwise exist.
But the realities of their line wouldn?t preclude drafting him anyway.
Even though they just tagged Albert (keeping him there for a year, at $9.828 million), there?s no reason they can?t draft Joeckel, and have one of them play right tackle. While Eric Winson has been solid, he?s also entering his 30-year-old season, and isn?t so good that you?d bypass a potential left tackle because of him.
And Albert?s back injury, which coach Andy Reid referred to as a ?fairly significant injury? at the Combine, might also give them pause. At the very least, the uncertainty over Albert?s long-term health or contract status would make it wise to keep Joeckel as an option. Many also thought Albert was better suited to play guard when he entered the league, which creates another layer of possibility.
With the chance at a solid offensive line in front of an average quarterback (the recently acquired Alex Smith), along with a good run game, a solid receiving threat in Bowe and a coaching staff that knows how to move the ball, it gives the Chiefs the chance at a new look on offense.
And it gives them more options for the first pick, which makes it more valuable by definition.
(Editor's note: An earlier version of this article led to a correction)
Eight armed and masked men made a hole in a security fence at the international airport in Brussels, Belgium, drove onto the tarmac and snatched millions of dollars' worth of diamonds from the hold of a Swiss-bound plane without firing a shot, authorities said Tuesday.
The gang used two vehicles in their daring raid Monday, dragged the cache of stones and sped off into the darkness, said Anja Bijnens, spokeswoman for the Brussels prosecutor's office.
Police found a burnt-out vehicle close to the airport later Monday night and said they were still looking for clues.
The heist was estimated at some $50 million in diamonds, said Caroline De Wolf of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre.
"What we are talking about is obviously a gigantic sum," De Wolf told VRT network.
An airport spokesman said the robbers made a hole in the perimeter fence and drove up to the Swiss passenger plane, which was ready to leave.
The robbers got out of the car, flashed their weapons and took the loot from the hold, said airport spokesman Jan Van Der Crujsse. Without firing a shot they drove off through the same hole in the fence, completing the spectacular theft within minutes, he said.
Van Der Crujsse could not explain how the area could be so vulnerable to theft. "We abide by the most stringent rules," he said.
The Swiss flight, bound for Zurich and operated by Helvetic Airways, was canceled. Swiss, an affiliate of Germany's Deutsche Lufthansa AG, declined to comment on the heist, citing the ongoing judicial investigation.
The insurance for air transport ? handled sometimes by airlines themselves or external insurance companies ? is usually relatively cheap because it's considered to be the safest way of transporting small high value items, logistics experts say.
Unlike a car or a truck, an airplane cannot be attacked by robbers once it's on its way, and it is considered to be very safe before the departure and after the plane's arrival because the aircraft is always within the confines of an airport ? which are normally highly secured.
Philip Baum, an aviation security consultant in Britain, said the robbery was worrying ? not because the fence was breached, but because the response did not appear to have been immediate. That, he said, raised questions as to whether alarms were ringing in the right places.
"It does seem very worrying that someone can actually have the time to drive two vehicles onto the airport, effect the robbery, and drive out without being intercepted," Baum said.
That amount of time would also allow someone to board the plane, he said.
A decade ago the Belgian city of Antwerp, the world capital of diamond-cutting, was the scene of what was probably one of the biggest diamond heists in history, when robbers took precious stones, jewels, gold and securities from the high-security vaults at Antwerp's Diamond Center, yielding loot that police in 2003 estimated to be worth about $100 million.
Antwerp's Diamond Center stands in the heart of the high-surveillance diamond district where police and dozens of cameras work around the clock, and security has been beefed up further since the spectacular 2003 robbery.
This story was originally published on Tue Feb 19, 2013 4:13 AM EST
? 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
A new pen that allows doodlers to doodle in the air aims to open the door of 3-D printing to anyone old enough to handle a pen with a scorching hot tip. No software or computers required. Even messy scribbles take on new dimensions.
The 3Doodler was launched today on the crowd-funding site Kickstarter by toy company WobbleWorks. As of this writing, $75 buys a pen and two bags of plastic ?ink.? For the sake of comparison, the MakerBot Replicator 2, a popular model among 3-D-printing hobbyists, retails for $2,199.
The new pen looks like a blackened cucumber and has the heft of an apple. It extrudes heated plastic that cools quickly and solidifies in the air. So, for example, draw a box on a piece of paper and then lift then pen upwards from the corners to make a 3-D cube.
Users can also doodle on paper then lift their designs off the page and keep adding to it. For those who need a guide, the company is releasing print-out stencil kits that allow users to trace designs such as an Eiffel Tower and then join the pieces together with the pen.
One word of caution: The pen?s tip can get as hot as 518 degrees Fahrenheit. The plastic is safe to touch once it leaves the pen, but WobbleWorks recommends the pen be kept out of reach of children under the age of 12.
To learn more, visit the Kickstarter page and check out the promotional video below.
? via The Next Web
John Roach is a contributing writer for NBC News. To learn more about him, check out his website. For more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.
MOSCOW/VIENNA (Reuters) - What can man do to prevent Earth being hit by meteorites and asteroids?
Russia has found, to its cost, that it has no answers. But U.S. and European experts may be able to help with a few ideas that at first glance seem straight out of science fiction, including smashing spacecraft into asteroids, using the sun's rays to vaporize them, or blasting them with nuclear bombs.
That should come as some relief to the many worried Russians who want something done immediately, even though scientists say the explosion of a meteor over central Russia on Friday was a once-in-a-lifetime event.
"We must create a system to detect objects that threaten Earth and neutralize them," Dmitry Rogozin, a first deputy prime minister in charge of the defense industry, wrote on Twitter.
For all their nuclear missiles, he said that neither the United States nor Russia could shoot down such meteors. Even President Vladimir Putin held up his hands, saying no country was able to protect against such events.
But there is hope for Russia as it looks for a solution. Last week's near miss from an asteroid half the size of a football field, the same day as the meteor explosion, has heightened awareness of the dangers Earth faces.
At a conference in Vienna on Monday, scientists said it was time for man to do more to spot objects hurtling towards the planet and to counter their threat.
LASER BEAMS AND GRAVITY TRACTORS
The European Union-funded NEO Shield consortium, whose aim is to investigate the best ways to deal with an object hurtling towards Earth, outlined some of its ideas in Vienna.
These included creating a "kinetic impactor" to fire a huge spacecraft into an asteroid to alter its path; another was making a "gravity tractor" by parking a big spacecraft near an object and using thrusters to lead it away by using the weak gravitational force as a cosmic tow-rope.
Exploding a nuclear device on or near an asteroid would be a method of last resort, it said.
A U.N. "action team" for dealing with near-Earth objects (NEOs) proposed setting up an International Asteroid Warning Network, plus advisory groups on mounting space missions to handle threats and planning for an impact disaster.
Timothy Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center (MPC) at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory which collects asteroid data, called for "rapid all-sky search capacity" using a space-based infrared survey to detect objects much faster than now.
The U.S. and European space agencies, NASA and ESA, warned that man should also prepare for impacts that are unavoidable - such as having procedures in place for wide-scale evacuations.
Detlef Koschny, responsible for near-earth object activity at the ESA's Space Situational Awareness program, said separately that it was now possible to determine possible impact zones with just a few hours' notice.
He cited the example of an object that hit the Sudan desert in 2008. It was spotted only 20 hours before it hit and the initial estimated impact zone of 2,000 km was narrowed down to an area of the desert within a few hours.
"In a similar case in the future, civil authorities would be able to tell the population in the narrowed-down area to stay away from windows, glass or other structures and stay indoors," he said in emailed comments to Reuters.
ESA experts in Darmstadt, Germany, plan to set up a survey to monitor the night sky using automated telescopes capable of spotting objects before they enter the atmosphere, he added.
"NOT OUT OF STAR TREK"
In California, scientists are working on a system to harness the power of the sun and convert it into laser beams that can destroy, evaporate or change the course of asteroids.
"This system is not some far-out idea from Star Trek," said Gary B. Hughes, a researcher and professor from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.
"All the components of this system pretty much exist today. Maybe not quite at the scale that we'd need - scaling up would be the challenge - but the basic elements are all there and ready to go."
A University of Hawaii team of astronomers is also developing a system with small telescopes called ATLAS that would identify dangerous asteroids before their final plunge to Earth.
The team predicts the system will offer a one-week warning for a 50-yard (45-metre) diameter asteroid known as a "city killer" and three weeks for a 150 yard (137 meter)-diameter "county killer."
"That's enough time to evacuate the area of people, take measures to protect buildings and other infrastructure, and be alert to a tsunami danger generated by ocean impacts," said astronomer John Tonry.
Russian experts said, however, that constructing an early warning system would hardly be worth the money as such events are so rare - the last known meteorite strike on such a scale in Russia was reported in 1908.
One Russian expert estimated the cost of such a system would be $2 billion. Others put it higher.
"Also, spotting is one thing, but preventing impact is yet another thing," Igor Marinin, editor of a space journal published by Russian space agency Roscosmos, told Reuters.
Referring to the injury toll of almost 1,200 after Friday's meteor explosion, most of them cut by glass, he said: "Compared to the number of victims of car accidents or cancer every year, this affected relatively few people."
Back in Russia, some people are simply trusting in fate.
Konstantin Tsybko, a legislator from the city of Chelyabinsk in the Ural mountain region, said on Monday: "Chelyabinsk residents may feel safe because nothing like this will happen in the next few hundred years."
"This is the first town in the history of our civilization to come under a space attack, survive this attack, and survive it successfully," he said.
(Additional reporting by Victoria Bryan in Frankfurt, Irene Klotz in Miami and Sonia Elks in Moscow; Writing by Michael Shields and Timothy Heritage; Editing by Jason Webb)
Futurelearn, the U.K.'s first large-scale alliance between traditional higher education institutions aimed at testing the waters of MOOCs (massively open online courses), has bolstered the number of partners signed up to offer free courses. Five more universities are joining the original 12 announced last December, along with the British Library.
A spoon-billed sandpiper. One of the world's most critically endangered species, the 6-inch-tall (15 centimeters) bird faces extinction within 10 years.
By Becky Oskin LiveScience
This could be the first and last high-definition video of a spoon-billed sandpiper chick emerging from its nest.
One of the world's most critically endangered species, the 6-inch-tall (15 centimeters) bird faces extinction within 10 years, according to a statement from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which released the video. Only about 100 pairs were counted at its breeding grounds in the Russian Far East last year, and the population has declined 25 percent annually in recent years. (There were also 100 juveniles.)
The Cornell Lab sent videographer Gerrit Vyn to Chukotka, Russia, to document the sandpipers' sounds and behavior at a remote nesting site in 2011. The lab recently released the videos online to draw attention to the species' plight.
"The spoon-billed sandpiper is one of the most remarkable little birds on Earth, and it may go extinct before most people even realize it was here," John Fitzpatrick, executive director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, said in the statement. "We hope that with this priceless video footage we quickly connect people, conservation organizations and governments to these amazing birds, and galvanize an international conservation effort."
First moments of life One video captures the first moments of life as the tiny, fluffy, brown-and-white chicks stumble out of the nest, pecking for food. "They feed themselves from day one," Vyn said in the video. [Watch the chick hatching.]
Vyn camped out in?a tent and a blind, with only a sleeping bag for warmth, waiting for the eggs to hatch. "It was an incredibly exciting time for me, exciting and nerve-wracking waiting for three days in this windstorm for these four eggs to hatch," he said. Vyn filmed the only nest with eggs in 2011: The other 20 eggs were bred in captivity and the chicks released in Russia to make their 4,971-mile (8,000 kilometer) migration to Southeast Asia.
Much of the?bird's decline is due to habitat loss from development?and subsistence hunting along its migratory path and winter home in Southeast Asia seacoasts, scientists think. For example, the 20-mile-long (32 km) Saemangeum seawall in South Korea cut off 170 square miles (440 square km) of estuary and tidal flats, feeding grounds for hundreds of thousands of migratory birds and a primary stopping site for spoon-billed sandpipers. And shorebirds are a food source for people living along the coastal mudflats of Myanmar and other nearby countries, the Cornell Lab said in a statement.
Documenting a disappearing species Common foraging behaviors here on the breeding grounds are surprisingly different from the way they feed on the wintering grounds, according to the Cornell lab. On the breeding grounds, the birds feed on insects, especially midges, mosquitoes, flies, beetles and spiders, as well as grass seeds and berries. On the wintering grounds and during migration, they eat marine invertebrates, including polychaete worms and shrimp.
Another video?by Vyn shows a mated spoon-billed sandpiper pair foraging along the edge of a snowmelt pond in Chukotka.
Vyn also captured rarely seen courtship behavior between adult spoon-billed sandpipers. This video, shot during the first few days of a pair's seasonal courtship, includes an attempted copulation and a nest scrape display.
The spoon-billed sandpiper population in Russian has been tracked since 1977, when a survey estimated 2,500 breeding pairs in Chukotka. By 2003 the population had dropped to around 500 pairs. In 2008, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature listed the species as critically endangered on its Red List.
Reach Becky Oskin at boskin@techmedianetwork.com. Follow her on Twitter @beckyoskin.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Democrats have pushed four of their gun control measures through a final vote in the House and on to the State Senate.
The day began with the Democratic-led House voting to ban large-capacity magazines, placing a limit of 15 rounds for firearms, and eight for shotguns. Lawmakers also passed a requirement for background checks on firearm sales between private parties.
Later in the afternoon, the House passed a bill to require gun buyers to pay for their own background checks and another to eliminate the concealed carry of weapons on college campuses.
Read full article
This article was posted: Monday, February 18, 2013 at 4:48 pm
The business ties between South Carolina and China will be the focus of a panel discussion this week in Columbia.
The third annual Sino-American Business Forum will take place from 2 to 5:30 p.m. Thursday in Lumpkin Auditorium at the University of South Carolina?s Darla Moore School of Business.
The theme: ?Global Communication in Business Across China and North American Markets.?
The event, which is being co-sponsored by USC?s Confucius Institute, is free and open to the public.
David Hudgens, regional director of the Asia Pacific region of the Moore School?s Office of International Activities, said panelists will share personal insights on how communication serves as a bridge between two cultures and is a key to building stronger, more reliable business ties.
?We?re bringing together many different communities within South Carolina and the U.S. Southeast ? communities that are having greater and greater interaction with China as a marketplace and as a significant cultural influence shaping the contemporary global landscape,? Hudgens said in a statement.
South Carolina honorary trade ambassador Vivian Wong, founder and chairwoman of Pacific Gateway Capital, is among the scheduled speakers, Other panelists include: Luke Chan, a finance and economics professor at McMaster University in Ontario; Ke Liu, dean of the International Business School at the Beijing Language and Culture University; Michelle Wang, restaurateur and president of the M Gourmet Group in Columbia; Dirk Brown, director of the Moore School?s Faber Entrepreneurship Center; and Renee Matthews, principal of Eastpoint Academy in Columbia.
Jared Purcell | japurcell@mlive.com, February 16, 2013 5 a.m.
When the final buzzer sounded on the MLive.com Metro Detroit Game of the Week on Friday night, the Grosse Pointe South girls basketball team was a league champion for the fifith-straight time after its 56-42 over Utica Ford.
As impressive of a feat that is, South did not start receiving recognition has a top program until last year when it went all the way to the Class A state championship only to fall short by a single point.
The main the reason why South wasn't taken too seriously in the years prior was because it had spent years crawling up through the ranks of the various Macomb Area Conference divisions to ultimately become a team of envy.
How did that happen??A lot of that credit goes to South coach Kevin Richards.
When Richards took over the program for the 2007-08 season, the Blue Devils were coming off a 6-17 record the year prior and did not win a single game as part of the MAC White Division.
Quite simply, no one cared to pay attention to the Blue Devils. But almost immediately, a turnaround?occurred.
"When we took over at South, we were struggling," Richards said.??We went 11-10 in our first year and then we haven?t gone a season with less than 15 wins since. We?ve had some great kids. We?ve been very lucky.?
It?s not all luck, coach.
After the 11-5 campaign, South moved down to the MAC Blue Division and won two league title there. Then, Richards brought the program back up to the MAC White only to see the winning continue, taking two league titles in a row once again, along with a trip to the state title game.
After moving the program up the MAC Red, the highest division within the conference, South has shown that it is not done growing as a program after wrapping up the league title on Friday night. In fact, it is almost a been-there-done-that mentality for this once lowly program.
?You know, winning the league is nice,? Richards said. ?But we have set bigger goals.?
Still, with an 18-1 overall record and going 11-0 in the league so far with just one more division match left on Tuesday next week, even Richards can still be impressed by what his program accomplishes.
With division foes like Macomb Dakota and Utica Ford receiving votes in the Associated Press poll rankings, even peaking into the top 10 at certain times, South had its work cut out for it this season. But throw in a non-league schedule that included state and area powers Woodhaven, Canton, and Livonia Ladywood, South was going to make it hard on itself either way. South?s only loss of the year came to a team from Chicago (Whitney Young).
?It?s especially a nice accomplishment with how hard (it has been),? Richards said. ?We?ve had almost two or three teams every week in the AP top 10. That says a lot as far as out league. For us to be able to go through that, right now we?re 11-0 (in the league) with one game left.
?It says a lot about our kids and how hard they worked.?
It sure does, coach. In the bigger picture, it says much more about you.
When Sen. Orrin Hatch voted Thursday on the nomination of Chuck Hagel to be defense secretary, his decision showed a surprising note of ambivalence lurking beneath the confrontational stance that Senate Republicans have taken to President Barack Obama's cabinet nominees.
Republicans stalled the Hagel nomination Thursday, using procedural move that has rarely been applied to cabinet choices. Democrats called it a historic act of obstruction.
Mr. Hatch, a Republican from Utah, said neither "yea" nor "nay" on the procedural motion, instead voting "present." Had he voted "yes," Mr. Hatch would have been the deciding vote to end debate on the ...
Just hours after the Carnival Triumph was towed in from the Gulf of Mexico and finally docked in Mobile, Alabama, Congress began asking questions of the U.S. Coast Guard on the incident, trying to find out whether there is a larger safety issue that needs to be reviewed involving large passenger vessels.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, fired off a letter to the Coast Guard Commandant, asking for a review of the incident and others that may be similar in the last six years involving large passenger vessels.
February 14, 2013
Admiral Robert J. Papp Jr. Commandant United States Coast Guard 2100 Second St. SW Washington, DC 20593
Dear Admiral Papp,
I write to share with you my deep concern regarding the currently unfolding incident involving the large passenger vessel Carnival Triumph. It is my understanding that on Sunday, February 10, 2013, as the Triumph was transiting Mexican waters roughly 100 to 150 nautical miles north of Merida, the vessel experienced an engine room fire and subsequent loss of power which has left more than 4,000 passengers and crew members adrift in the Gulf of Mexico. I have been horrified to read and hear the many accounts of unbearable living conditions aboard the ship, including lack of food and water, nonfunctioning and overflowing toilets in the ship's cabins, exposure of passengers and crew to raw sewage, an intolerable ship-wide stench of human waste, and blazing heat that has caused many passengers to seek refuge in makeshift shelters on the top deck.
This unfortunate situation is just the latest example in a long string of serious and troubling incidents involving cruise ships. As you are aware, last March in the wake of the Costa Concordia grounding off the coast of Giglio, Italy, I conducted a Commerce Committee oversight hearing to examine deficiencies in the cruise line industry's compliance with federal safety, security, and environmental standards, and to better understand the Coast Guard's role in conducting safety inspections and responding to marine incidents that occur aboard cruise ships. At that hearing, a clear pattern emerged with respect to how the cruise line industry conducts itself. As I remarked then, they seem to have two lives: one is at port, where the Coast Guard can monitor their operations; the other is at sea where, it appears, once they are beyond three nautical miles from shore the world is theirs. The Carnival Triumph incident only serves to further validate this view.
The incident also serves as a stark reminder of the importance of vigorous inspection and enforcement of cruise ship safety, security, and environmental requirements by the Coast Guard, in order to protect the lives of those onboard. I understand that the Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board have already launched an investigation into the cause of the engine room fire that occurred onboard the Carnival Triumph. I look forward to the findings of this investigation and expect to be fully briefed as soon as the Coast Guard is able to do so.? In the interim, I ask that the Coast Guard provide this Committee with the following information:
How much do you anticipate the Coast Guard will spend in resources (including but not limited to a dollar amount and labor hours), to respond to and investigate the Carnival Triumph marine casualty?
How much has the Coast Guard spent in resources (including but not limited to a dollar amount and labor hours) to-date, to respond to and investigate the November 8, 2010, Carnival Splendor marine casualty, in which that ship suffered a similar engine room fire in Mexican waters that knocked out onboard air condition and water supply, and was subsequently towed under Coast Guard escort to port in San Diego, California?
When can we expect to receive a copy of the Coast Guard?s final report on the Carnival Splendor marine casualty investigation?
Please provide a detailed list of the number of large passenger vessel marine casualty investigations the Coast Guard has conducted or is conducting in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.? Please include vessel owners, operators, and names in this list.
Can and will the Coast Guard seek to be reimbursed by Carnival Corporation for the cost of responding to either the Carnival Splendor marine casualty or the Carnival Triumph marine casualty?
After a German privacy watchdog ordered Facebook to allow the use of fake usernames "immediately," an appeals court has said nein. While the protection body in the tiny state of Schleswig-Holstein argued that Facebook's ban on pseudonyms breached the nation's privacy laws, an administrative court in the region ruled that those laws don't apply to the company, since its European HQ is located in less-stringent Ireland. Facebook argued that requiring the use of real names protects its users, but the regulator said it'll appeal the decision all the same -- thus prolonging the social network's long-running Germanheadache.
Today's incident involving a falling meteor in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia has resulted in an estimated 500 injuries, and while people are scrambling to figure out exactly what has happened in this remote area of the country, 900 miles from Moscow and near the Ural mountains, some of the more remarkable footage so far has been video shot by ordinary people, specifically with dashboard cameras.
RICHMOND, Va. -- Washington Redskins general manager Bruce Allen said Thursday the team isn't considering a new nickname, adding that it's "ludicrous" to suggest that the franchise is trying to upset Native Americans.
"There's nothing that we feel is offensive," Allen said. "And we're proud of our history."
Opposition to "Redskins" has gained momentum following last week's symposium at the Smithsonian that was heavily critical of the use of the word, citing its history as an offensive term. Local columnists and commentators have called for the team to change its name in recent days.
The Redskins have responded with website postings featuring interviews with officials from the 70 high schools they say still called themselves "Redskins."
Speaking at the ceremonial groundbreaking for the team's new training camp facility, Allen also told reporters that Robert Griffin III was "progressing well" in rehabilitation from knee reconstruction surgery, but that the team doctors will ultimately decide whether the franchise quarterback will be ready in time for the start of the season.
Allen said the Redskins are still fighting the $36 million salary cap penalty levied by the league last year for excessive spending during the uncapped 2010 season. The first $18 million was docked last year, with the other $18 million hit coming when free agency starts next month.
"I think the penalty was wrong and it was unfair," Allen said. "There are plenty of things we can do."
He declined to go into specifics.
Allen also said the team is coming up with a plan to improve the Redskins' stadium field, which was torn up by the end of the season and prompted criticism from opposing players. He said the team missed an opportunity to re-sod during the season and would plan differently this year.
New submitter dovf writes "The Bad Astronomer analyzes incoming reports about the apparent meteoric fireball over Russia: 'Apparently, at about 09:30 local time, a very big meteor burned up over Chelyabinsk, a city in Russia just east of the Ural mountains, and about 1500 kilometers east of Moscow. The fireball was incredibly bright, rivaling the Sun! There was a pretty big sonic boom from the fireball, which set off car alarms and shattered windows. I'm seeing some reports of many people injured (by shattered glass blown out by the shock wave). I'm also seeing reports that some pieces have fallen to the ground, but again as I write this those are unconfirmed." This is the best summary I've found so far, and links to lots of videos and images. He also clarifies something I've been wondering about: 'This is almost certainly unrelated to the asteroid 2012 DA14 that will pass on Friday.'"
Leading RSV researcher publishes work at Le Bonheur Children'sPublic release date: 14-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Hillary Welton hillary.welton@lebonheur.org 901-287-6030 Le Bonheur Children's Hospital
Memphis, Tenn. Studies at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., are advancing our understanding of how viruses, including RSV, replicate in humans, mutate to avoid the immune response and can be effectively treated.
John DeVincenzo, MD, medical director of Molecular Diagnostics and Virology Laboratories at Le Bonheur, and professor of Pediatrics and Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Biology at The University of Tennessee Health Science Center, has recently published three papers on this topic. DeVincenzo's lab is one of only two of its kind in the United States. His work has focused on respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), the most common cause of infant hospitalization, and his findings are leading the way towards the development of antiviral treatment strategies against the disease.
Summaries of the studies' findings include:
Complete viral RNA genome sequencing of ultra-low copy samples by sequence-independent amplification.
Nucleic Acids Research, 2012
Viruses change and mutate at rapid rates in virtually random fashion. These high mutation rates of viruses always occur while they replicate within their human hosts. Detecting these changes has been difficult, because mutations that do not help the virus survive and replicate are overwhelmed by mutations that do help. Therefore, it is necessary to be able to detect minute populations of viruses that have mutated and to differentiate these small subpopulations from the majority populations of these viruses. This study outlines new advanced methods and techniques to detect minute sub-populations of viruses within clinical samples obtained from humans. These new techniques can open up areas of research in these viruses and how they mutate to avoid detection and control by our immune systems. Researchers capture 96 to 100 percent of the viral protein-coding region of HIV, respiratory syncytial and West Nile viral samples from as few as 100 copies of viral RNA. Methods are scalable to large numbers of samples and capable of generating full or near full-length viral genomes from clone and clinical samples with low amounts of viral RNA, without prior sequence information and in the presence of substantial RNA contamination from the surrounding human cells.
Assessing modeled CO2 retention and rebreathing of a facemask designed for efficient delivery of aerosols to infants.
International Scholarly Research Network, 2012
New medicines for infant lung diseases, such as RSV, might require deposition of these medicines directly into the lung by infants breathing an aerosol. However, efficient masks that allow the safe delivery of these aerosols without causing the infants to re-breathe their own exhaled CO2 have not previously been developed. The researchers developed a new infant aerosol delivery mask. They then evaluated the mask using computational fluid dynamic models to see if it would both efficiently deliver aerosols and whether there was retention of exhaled CO2. Because RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) primarily is an infant disease, this device could be used for delivery of aerosol treatments of RSV in infants and children.
The promise and progress of RNA interference-based antiviral therapy for respiratory viruses.
Antiviral Therapy, 2012
In this invited review, DeVincenzo discusses the science behind RNA interference (RNAi) and the potential practical issues in applying this novel treatment technology against various respiratory viral diseases. DeVincenzo was the first to demonstrate that RNAi-based therapies could work in humans. One of his recent studies showed that RSV-infected lung transplant patients treated with the novel RNAi therapy improved long term lung function significantly better than did those treated with placebo, even when the patients were analyzed as long as six months later. This marks the first effective treatment of RSV in this vulnerable immune-suppressed population. Ongoing research directed by DeVincenzo is now moving experimental RSV therapies into children.
###
About Le Bonheur Children's Hospital
Le Bonheur Children's Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., treats more than 250,000 children each year in a 255-bed hospital that features state-of-the-art technology and family-friendly resources. Nationally recognized, Le Bonheur is ranked by U.S. News & World Report as a "Best Children's Hospital." Serving as a primary teaching affiliate for the University Tennessee Health Science Center, the hospital trains more pediatricians than any other hospital in the state. For more information, please call (901) 287-6030 or visit lebonheur.org. Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/lebonheurchild or like us at Facebook at facebook.com/lebonheurchildrens.
About the University of Tennessee Health Science Center
As the flagship statewide academic health system, the University of Tennessee Health Science Center is focused on a four-tier mission of education, research, clinical care and public service, all in support of a single goal: to improve the health of Tennesseans. Offering a broad range of postgraduate training opportunities, the main campus is located in Memphis and includes six colleges: Allied Health Sciences, Dentistry, Graduate Health Sciences, Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy. UTHSC has additional College of Medicine and College of Pharmacy campuses in Knoxville, and a College of Medicine campus in Chattanooga. For more information, visit www.uthsc.edu.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Leading RSV researcher publishes work at Le Bonheur Children'sPublic release date: 14-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Hillary Welton hillary.welton@lebonheur.org 901-287-6030 Le Bonheur Children's Hospital
Memphis, Tenn. Studies at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., are advancing our understanding of how viruses, including RSV, replicate in humans, mutate to avoid the immune response and can be effectively treated.
John DeVincenzo, MD, medical director of Molecular Diagnostics and Virology Laboratories at Le Bonheur, and professor of Pediatrics and Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Biology at The University of Tennessee Health Science Center, has recently published three papers on this topic. DeVincenzo's lab is one of only two of its kind in the United States. His work has focused on respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), the most common cause of infant hospitalization, and his findings are leading the way towards the development of antiviral treatment strategies against the disease.
Summaries of the studies' findings include:
Complete viral RNA genome sequencing of ultra-low copy samples by sequence-independent amplification.
Nucleic Acids Research, 2012
Viruses change and mutate at rapid rates in virtually random fashion. These high mutation rates of viruses always occur while they replicate within their human hosts. Detecting these changes has been difficult, because mutations that do not help the virus survive and replicate are overwhelmed by mutations that do help. Therefore, it is necessary to be able to detect minute populations of viruses that have mutated and to differentiate these small subpopulations from the majority populations of these viruses. This study outlines new advanced methods and techniques to detect minute sub-populations of viruses within clinical samples obtained from humans. These new techniques can open up areas of research in these viruses and how they mutate to avoid detection and control by our immune systems. Researchers capture 96 to 100 percent of the viral protein-coding region of HIV, respiratory syncytial and West Nile viral samples from as few as 100 copies of viral RNA. Methods are scalable to large numbers of samples and capable of generating full or near full-length viral genomes from clone and clinical samples with low amounts of viral RNA, without prior sequence information and in the presence of substantial RNA contamination from the surrounding human cells.
Assessing modeled CO2 retention and rebreathing of a facemask designed for efficient delivery of aerosols to infants.
International Scholarly Research Network, 2012
New medicines for infant lung diseases, such as RSV, might require deposition of these medicines directly into the lung by infants breathing an aerosol. However, efficient masks that allow the safe delivery of these aerosols without causing the infants to re-breathe their own exhaled CO2 have not previously been developed. The researchers developed a new infant aerosol delivery mask. They then evaluated the mask using computational fluid dynamic models to see if it would both efficiently deliver aerosols and whether there was retention of exhaled CO2. Because RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) primarily is an infant disease, this device could be used for delivery of aerosol treatments of RSV in infants and children.
The promise and progress of RNA interference-based antiviral therapy for respiratory viruses.
Antiviral Therapy, 2012
In this invited review, DeVincenzo discusses the science behind RNA interference (RNAi) and the potential practical issues in applying this novel treatment technology against various respiratory viral diseases. DeVincenzo was the first to demonstrate that RNAi-based therapies could work in humans. One of his recent studies showed that RSV-infected lung transplant patients treated with the novel RNAi therapy improved long term lung function significantly better than did those treated with placebo, even when the patients were analyzed as long as six months later. This marks the first effective treatment of RSV in this vulnerable immune-suppressed population. Ongoing research directed by DeVincenzo is now moving experimental RSV therapies into children.
###
About Le Bonheur Children's Hospital
Le Bonheur Children's Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., treats more than 250,000 children each year in a 255-bed hospital that features state-of-the-art technology and family-friendly resources. Nationally recognized, Le Bonheur is ranked by U.S. News & World Report as a "Best Children's Hospital." Serving as a primary teaching affiliate for the University Tennessee Health Science Center, the hospital trains more pediatricians than any other hospital in the state. For more information, please call (901) 287-6030 or visit lebonheur.org. Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/lebonheurchild or like us at Facebook at facebook.com/lebonheurchildrens.
About the University of Tennessee Health Science Center
As the flagship statewide academic health system, the University of Tennessee Health Science Center is focused on a four-tier mission of education, research, clinical care and public service, all in support of a single goal: to improve the health of Tennesseans. Offering a broad range of postgraduate training opportunities, the main campus is located in Memphis and includes six colleges: Allied Health Sciences, Dentistry, Graduate Health Sciences, Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy. UTHSC has additional College of Medicine and College of Pharmacy campuses in Knoxville, and a College of Medicine campus in Chattanooga. For more information, visit www.uthsc.edu.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
As Greece's painfully desperate fight to collect tax revenue, any tax revenue, using traditional methods meets failure after grotesque failure, driven by such unconventional stumbling blocks as running out of ink with which to print tax forms, striking tax collectors, and repossessed (or stolen) tax department computer equipment, the necessity to prove to Europe that Greece is doing something to fill the income side of its reformist ledger has forced it to turn to the glaringly illegal. As Greek Reporter notes, "Greece?s General Secretariat for Information Systems has completed an application that will allow the state?s monitoring and collection mechanism to access the country?s banking system via an online connection and let the government have access to depositor bank accounts. The application, which will let the Finance Ministry troll through the accounts of all depositors suspected of tax evasion means online inspectors can scour through records of deposits, loans, credit card use and other data 
Futurelearn, the U.K.'s first large-scale alliance between traditional higher education institutions aimed at testing the waters of MOOCs (massively open online courses), has bolstered the number of partners signed up to offer free courses. Five more universities are joining the original 12 announced last December, along with the British Library.
Today's incident involving a falling meteor in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia has resulted in an ![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 14-Feb-2013
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