Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/295606313?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Monday, April 1, 2013
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Curry sends Duke past Michigan St. 71-61
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) ? Seth Curry shot Duke right into the regional finals ? and put Mike Krzyzewski on the verge of another major milestone.
Curry scored 29 points to lead the second-seeded Blue Devils past third-seeded Michigan State 71-61 on Friday night and into the Midwest Regional final.
If Duke (30-5) beats top-seeded Louisville (32-5) in Sunday's regional final, Krzyzewski would tie John Wooden's record with 12 Final Four trips.
Michigan State (27-9) just couldn't keep up with Curry and Duke's shooters. The Spartans were led by Keith Appling with 16 points and Adreian Payne with 14.
Curry's sixth 3 of the game broke a 38-38 tie early in the second half, sending Duke on a 9-0 run. It never trailed again.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/curry-sends-duke-past-michigan-st-71-61-042125230--spt.html
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Thursday, March 28, 2013
New way to lose weight? Changing microbes in guts of mice resulted in rapid weight loss
Mar. 27, 2013 ? Scientists at Harvard may have new hope for anyone who's tried to fight the battle of the bulge.
New research, conducted in collaboration with researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital, has found that the gut microbes of mice undergo drastic changes following gastric bypass surgery. Transfer of these microbes into sterile mice resulted in rapid weight loss. The study is described in a March 27 paper in Science Translational Medicine.
"Simply by colonizing mice with the altered microbial community, the mice were able to maintain a lower body fat, and lose weight -- about 20% as much as they would if they underwent surgery," said Peter Turnbaugh, a Bauer Fellow at Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Center for Systems Biology, and one of two senior authors of the paper.
But as striking as those results were, they weren't as dramatic as they might have been.
"In some ways we were biasing the results against weight loss," Turnbaugh said, explaining that the mice used in the study hadn't been given a high-fat, high-sugar diet to increase their weight beforehand. "The question is whether we might have seen a stronger effect if they were on a different diet."
"Our study suggests that the specific effects of gastric bypass on the microbiota contribute to its ability to cause weight loss and that finding ways to manipulate microbial populations to mimic those effects could become a valuable new tool to address obesity," said Lee Kaplan, director of the Obesity, Metabolism and Nutrition Institute at MGH and the other senior author of the paper.
"We need to learn a good deal more about the mechanisms by which a microbial population changed by gastric bypass exert its effects, and then we need to learn if we can produce these effects -- either the microbial changes or the associated metabolic changes -- without surgery," Kaplan, an associate professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, added. "The ability to achieve even some of these effects without surgery would give us an entirely new way to treat the critical problem of obesity, one that could help patients unable or unwilling to have surgery."
While the results were exciting, Turnbaugh warned that it may be years before they could be replicated in humans, and that such microbial changes shouldn't be viewed as a way to lose those stubborn last 10 pounds without going to the gym. Rather, the technique may one day offer hope to dangerously obese people who want to lose weight without going through the trauma of surgery.
"It may not be that we will have a magic pill that will work for everyone who's slightly overweight," he said. "But if we can, at a minimum, provide some alternative to gastric bypass surgery that produces similar effects, it would be a major advance."
While there had been hints that the microbes in the gut might change after bypass surgery, the speed and extent of the change came as a surprise to the research team.
In earlier experiments, researchers had shown that the guts of both lean and obese mice are populated by varying amounts of two types of bacteria, Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes. When mice undergo gastric bypass surgery, however, it "resets the whole picture," Turnbaugh said.
"The post-bypass community was dominated by Proteobacteria and Proteobacteria, and had relatively low levels of Firmicutes," he said. What's more, Turnbaugh said, those changes occurred within a week of the surgery, and weren't short-lived -- the altered gut microbial community remained stable for months afterward.
While the results may hold out the hope for weight loss without surgery, both Turnbaugh and Kaplan warned that future studies are needed to understand exactly what is behind the weight loss seen in mice.
"A major gap in our knowledge is the underlying mechanism linking microbes to weight loss," Turnbaugh said. "There were certain microbes that we found at higher abundance after surgery, so we think those are good targets for beginning to understand what's taking place."
In fact, Turnbaugh said, the answer may not be the specific types of microbes, but a by-product they excrete.
In addition to changes in the microbes found in the gut, researchers found changes in the concentration of certain short-chain fatty acids. Other studies, Turnbaugh said, have suggested that those molecules may be critical in signaling to the host to speed up metabolism, or not to store excess calories as fat.
Going forward, Turnbaugh and Kaplan hope to continue to explore those questions.
"We think such studies will allow us to understand how host/microbial interactions in general can influence the outcome of a given diet," Kaplan said. "To some degree, what we're learning is a comfort for people who have an issue with their weight, because more and more we're learning that the story is more complicated than just how much you exercise and how much you eat."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Harvard University. The original article was written by Peter Reuell.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- A. P. Liou, M. Paziuk, J.-M. Luevano, S. Machineni, P. J. Turnbaugh, L. M. Kaplan. Conserved Shifts in the Gut Microbiota Due to Gastric Bypass Reduce Host Weight and Adiposity. Science Translational Medicine, 2013; 5 (178): 178ra41 DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3005687
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/living_well/~3/55s2_HYwLsA/130327144124.htm
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Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Arab League summit showcases Qatar's swagger
Emir of Qatar Sheik Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, center, attends the opening session of the Arab League Summit in Doha, Qatar, Tuesday, March 26, 2013. Syrian opposition representatives took the country's seat for the first time at an Arab League summit that opened in Qatar on Tuesday, a significant diplomatic boost for the forces fighting President Bashar Assad's regime. (AP Photo/Ghiath Mohamad)
Emir of Qatar Sheik Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, center, attends the opening session of the Arab League Summit in Doha, Qatar, Tuesday, March 26, 2013. Syrian opposition representatives took the country's seat for the first time at an Arab League summit that opened in Qatar on Tuesday, a significant diplomatic boost for the forces fighting President Bashar Assad's regime. (AP Photo/Ghiath Mohamad)
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, center, attends the opening session of the Arab League summit in Doha, Qatar, Tuesday, March 26, 2013. Syrian opposition representatives took the country's seat for the first time at an Arab League summit that opened in Qatar on Tuesday, a significant diplomatic boost for the forces fighting President Bashar Assad's regime. (AP Photo/Ghiath Mohamad)
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, center, attends the opening session of the Arab League summit in Doha, Qatar, Tuesday, March 26, 2013. Syrian opposition representatives took the country's seat for the first time at an Arab League summit that opened in Qatar on Tuesday, a significant diplomatic boost for the forces fighting President Bashar Assad's regime. (AP Photo/Ghiath Mohamad)
Khaled Saleh, a spokesman for the Syrian National Coalition, speaks during the opening session of the Arab League Summit in Doha, Qatar, Tuesday, March 26, 2013. Syrian opposition representatives took the country's seat for the first time at an Arab League summit that opened in Qatar on Tuesday, a significant diplomatic boost for the forces fighting President Bashar Assad's regime. (AP Photo/Ghiath Mohamad)
Saudi Crown Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, left, attends the opening session of the Arab League Summit in Doha, Qatar, Tuesday, March 26, 2013. Syrian opposition representatives took the country's seat for the first time at an Arab League summit that opened in Qatar on Tuesday, a significant diplomatic boost for the forces fighting President Bashar Assad's regime. (AP Photo/Ghiath Mohamad)
DOHA, Qatar (AP) ? Qatar's emir looked over an assembly of Arab leaders Tuesday as both cordial host and impatient taskmaster. His welcoming remarks to kings, sheiks and presidents across the Arab world quickly shifted to Qatar's priorities: Rallying greater support for Syrian rebels and helping Palestinians with efforts such as a newly proposed $1 billion fund to protect Jerusalem's Arab heritage.
No one seemed surprised at the paternal tone or the latest big-money initiative. In a matter of just a few years, hyper-wealthy Qatar has increasingly staked out a leadership role once held by Egypt and helped redefine how Arab states measure influence and ambition.
Little more than a spot to sink oil and gas wells a generation ago, Qatar is now a key player in nearly every Middle Eastern shakeout since the Arab Spring, using checkbook diplomacy in settings as diverse as Syria's civil war, Italian artisan workshops struggling with the euro financial crisis, and the soccer pitches in France as owners of the Paris Saint-Germain team.
As hosts of an Arab League summit this week, Qatar gets another chance to showcase its swagger.
With power, however, come tensions. Qatar has been portrayed as an arrogant wunderkind in places such as Iraq and Lebanon where some factions object to its rising stature, and Qatar's growing independent streak in policy-making has raised concerns among its Gulf Arab partners. It also faces questions ? as do other Gulf nations and Western allies ? over support for some Arab Spring uprisings while remaining loyal to the embattled monarchy in neighboring Bahrain.
"The adage that money buys influence could very well be the motto of Qatar," said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a professor of regional politics at Emirates University outside Abu Dhabi. "But it goes beyond that. Qatar also has learned the value of being flexible and, at the same time, thinking big."
It's hard these days to find a point on the Mideast map without some link back to Qatar.
In recent years, Qatar mediated disputes among Lebanese factions and prodded Sudan's government into peace talks with rebels in the Darfur region. Qatar's rulers even broke ranks with Gulf partners and allowed an Israeli trade office ? almost a de facto diplomatic post ? before it was closed in early 2009 in protest of Israeli attacks on Gaza. And Doha has been atop the Arab media pecking order as headquarters of the pan-Arab network Al-Jazeera, which was founded with Qatari government money in 1996 and is now expanding its English-speaking empire into the United States.
But it was the Arab Spring that opened the way for Qatar to stake out an even bigger role in regional affairs, filling the vacuum for regional powerhouse Egypt as that country was mired in turmoil after the revolution that ousted longtime leader Hosni Mubarak.
Qatar was among the few Arab states offering active military assistance to NATO-led attacks against Moammar Gadhafi's regime in Libya and, at the same time, was a key arms-and-money pipeline for Libyan rebels. In Egypt, Mubarak's fall offered Qatar's rapid-reaction outreach a head start over other Gulf states because of its longstanding ties with the now-governing Muslim Brotherhood.
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, who attended the Doha summit, has turned to Qatar to help prop up the country's stumbling economy.
"We expect that financial pledges will be respected," Morsi said in a message to Qatar and other Arab countries that have promised money for Egypt.
Almost nothing happens in the Syrian opposition without a voice from Qatar, which has played matchmaker for a broader political coalition against Syrian President Bashar Assad and leads appeals to provide rebel fighters more heavy weapons in attempts to turn the tide in the 2-year-old civil war. On Tuesday, Qatar led the official transfer of Syria's Arab League seat from the Assad government to the opposition Syrian National Coalition.
The New York Times reported Monday that the CIA has helped Turkey and Arab governments, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia, to sharply increase military aid to Syria's opposition in recent months with secret airlifts or arms and equipment. The Associated Press also reported, citing American officials and others, that the U.S. is training secular Syrian fighters in Jordan in a bid to stem the influence of Islamist radicals in the splintered Syrian opposition.
To view Qatar's rise as purely a triumph of extreme wealth gives an incomplete picture, analysts say. True, Qatar's pockets are deep. The most recent budget surplus swelled to $26 billion and Qatar has one of the world's most well-heeled sovereign wealth funds whose acquisitions include stakes in luxury brands such as Tiffany and the Valentino fashion house as well as David Beckham's new club, Paris Saint-Germain.
But Qatar represents a shift in Arab clout toward a new style: A country squarely in the Western-leaning camp, but far more willing to embark on policies and plans that could ruffle the U.S.
"Qatar believes it doesn't have to wait for others to try to shape the direction and conversation in the region," said Theodore Karasik, a security and political affairs analyst at the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis. "That kind of confidence opens up all kinds of new political equations."
A clear example was a centerpiece of the Arab League summit welcoming address by Qatar's ruler, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who pledged $250 million toward a proposed $1 billion fund to defend the Arab identity and history of Jerusalem against an expanding Israeli presence in traditional Arab districts.
"The Palestinian, Arab and Muslim rights in Jerusalem are not negotiable, and Israel must realize this," the emir said after telling other Arab states that it is their responsibility to kick in another $750 million.
Such Qatar-led initiatives are likely to deepen its influence among Palestinians and, indirectly, appear to further challenge Washington as the main outside policy-shaper in Israel-Palestinian disputes. Last year, Qatar's emir traveled to the Gaza Strip with promises for funds and assistance that also sought to undercut Iran as the principal backer for Hamas.
Hamas on Tuesday welcomed the emir's invitation to meet in Cairo with the rival Palestinian Authority for another round of reconciliation talks, which began last year in Qatar.
"Qatar has money to spend and the political will to use it as an extension of its foreign policy," according to Karasik, the analyst. "That's a powerful combination."
The Qatar government guest book is a case in point.
Qatar has offered debt-battered Italy and Greece separate 1 billion euro ($1.29 billion) funds for small businesses and traditional workshops if the countries match the amount. In the past few months, the prime ministers of Italy and Greece have come calling in Doha with words of thanks.
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Cleverly designed vaccine blocks H5 avian influenza in models
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Until now most experimental vaccines against the highly lethal H5N1 avian influenza virus have lacked effectiveness. But a new vaccine has proven highly effective against the virus when tested in both mice and ferrets. It is also effective against the H9 subtype of avian influenza. The research is published online ahead of print in the Journal of Virology.
The strength of the new vaccine is that it uses attenuated, rather than "killed" virus. (Killed viruses are broken apart with chemicals or heat, and they are used because they are safer than attenuated viruses.) Killed virus vaccines against avian influenza are injected into the bloodstream, whereas this vaccine is given via nasal spray, thus mimicking the natural infection process, stimulating a stronger immune response.
The danger of current attenuated virus vaccines is that they might exchange dangerous genetic material with garden variety influenza viruses of the sort that strike annually, potentially rendering a lethal but very hard to transmit influenza virus, such as H5, easily transmissible among humans. To mitigate those dangers, the study authors, led by Daniel Perez of the University of Maryland, came up with an ingenious design. Influenza viruses carry their genetic material in eight "segments," explains coauthor and University of Maryland colleague Troy Sutton. When viruses reassort, they exchange segments. But each segment is unique, all eight are needed, and the viruses are unfit if they contain more than eight segments.
The vaccine is based on an attenuated version of the H9 virus, with an H5 gene added into one of the H9 virus' segments, to confer immunity to the H5 virus. Segment 8, which is composed of the so-called NS1 and NS2 genes, was split apart, and the NS2 gene was moved into segment 2, adjacent to the polymerase gene, which copies the virus' genetic material during replication. Placing NS2 next to the polymerase gene slowed its function, interfering with the virus' replication. That makes the vaccine safer.
The next step was to engineer the H5 gene into the vaccine. It was inserted into segment 8, where the NS2 gene had been.
Another aspect of the new vaccine's design makes it safer still, by rendering successful reassortment less likely. Both NS1 and NS2 are needed for viral replication. Since the two genes are now separated into different segments, any reassortment will have to include both segments, instead of just segment 8, in order for a reassortant virus to be viable. This greatly reduced the probability of successful reassortment.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes avian influenza subtypes H5, H7, and H9 as potential pandemic viruses, because they all have in rare instances infected humans, and because they circulate in wild birds. Single reassortants could be sufficient to breach the species barrier, and since they do not circulate among us, we lack any immunity. Moreover, H5 is unusually lethal, having killed roughly half of those few it is confirmed to have infected.
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American Society for Microbiology: http://www.asm.org
Thanks to American Society for Microbiology for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127454/Cleverly_designed_vaccine_blocks_H__avian_influenza_in_models
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Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Spotify may be taking a cue from Netflix | SiliconBeat
Mar 25, 2013 - 1 day ago 
Mike Murphy is a web producer at the Mercury News, and also writes for Good Morning Silicon Valley and 60-Second Business Break.
Spotify is reportedly gearing up to challenge Netflix as a streaming-video provider.
According to a report by Business Insider?s Nicholas Carlson, the Sweden-based streaming music giant is seeking partners to help fund original ? and exclusive ? video content.
Entering the streaming video field already dominated by Netflix, Amazon and Hulu appears to be a daunting task at first glance, but it may be a profitable option for Spotify. According to the report, the high cost of licensing rights for streaming music makes Spotify?s profit margins razor thin, and the music labels can dictate their terms ? much like the problems Netflix has faced with streaming video. So instead of competing with rival services for studio-produced movies and TV shows, Spotify would create a new revenue stream by producing original content.
It?s a strategy that seems to be working for Los Gatos-based Netflix. After years of costly negotiations with studios and competing with cable channels for streaming rights, Netflix last year launched an effort to develop its own original content, and with it add more subscribers. Its first venture into original content, the David Fincher-Kevin Spacey drama ?House of Cards,? has proven to be a hit, and Netflix is betting on repeating that success with a new season of the cult-favorite sitcom ?Arrested Development? later this year.
Spotify is not the only one taking notice. YouTube, the home to billions of free online videos, is also considering adding subscription channels to create new revenue streams, according to a recent report by the Wall Street Journal. While still in the planning stages, subscription channels could be a boon for video makers with ?passionate but very narrow audience segments,? Lucas Watson, head of YouTube?s global sales, told the Journal.
Launched in the U.S. in 2011, Spotify already has more than 6 million subscribers and is launching an aggressive effort to land more with? its first major advertising campaign, according to a report by The Verge. By first solidifying its place as a leader in streaming music, the company could be in good position to branch out into new video ventures as home entertainment moves from the living room to the smartphone.
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Mike Murphy is a web producer at the Mercury News, and also writes for Good Morning Silicon Valley and 60-Second Business Break.
Source: http://www.siliconbeat.com/2013/03/25/spotify-may-be-taking-a-cue-from-netflix/
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