Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/155345919?client_source=feed&format=rss
matt dodge matt dodge jon jones snl lost in space yahoo sports halloween costumes
Monday, October 31, 2011
Lunch With Donald Keene
The ordering done, I steer Keene back more than 70 years to when, as an 18-year-old, he came across a translation of The Tale of Genji in the Astor Hotel in New York. At the time, Keene was studying French and Greek literature at Columbia University, having won a scholarship to study there at the age of 16. He bought the book because, at 59 cents, the epic story, written 1,100 years ago, contained more words per dollar than any book in the store. That was how the love affair began.
Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=960c77ec33b617a38d10ae11eadd81ba
the others vitiligo los angeles weather portia de rossi portia de rossi herman cain for president herman cain for president
Attorney General Holder to face lawmakers on gun sting (Reuters)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? Attorney General Eric Holder will testify in December to a congressional panel about a botched operation to track guns smuggled from the United States to Mexican drug cartels, officials said on Friday.
Holder has agreed go before the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on December 8 which could lead to a fierce volley of accusations by congressional Republicans who have harshly questioned what the attorney general knew and when.
The debacle stemmed from an attempt to crack down on guns being smuggled to the violent drug cartels in Mexico, but agents failed to track the guns after their initial purchase.
Some have since been found at crime scenes on both sides of the border and complicated ties between the two countries.
Two weapons from the operation, dubbed "Fast and Furious", were discovered at the scene of a shootout in which a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed.
It is not known whether those guns fired the fatal bullets, but that incident led to some agents from the Justice Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to blow the whistle on the operation.
The attorney general has said he was unaware of the operation or its tactical details until after the scandal erupted earlier this year. The bungled operation has become a headache for the Obama administration.
Holder's planned congressional testimony was confirmed by spokeswomen for Holder and the committee.
The chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Republican Representative Darrell Issa, has repeatedly called on Holder to testify, seeking to sort out when he became aware of the operation and details on who approved it.
Issa, also a Judiciary Committee member, has been leading an inquiry by his own committee into the affair. He has accused Holder and other Justice Department officials of knowing earlier about the operation and its tactics, pointing to memos addressed to them that broadly referred to it.
No evidence has emerged that they knew specifically of the operation or its tactics before this year. The Justice Department's inspector general is also looking into it.
The scandal led to the resignation in August of the chief federal prosecutor in Arizona, Dennis Burke, whose office was running the operation in conjunction with the ATF.
The acting director of the ATF at the time, Kenneth Melson, also was removed from his job.
(Reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky in Washington, editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Doina Chiacu)
chargers cake boss san diego chargers san diego chargers bengals cincinnati bengals twin towers
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Qantas cleared to fly again after fleet grounding
Idle Qantas planes are reflected in a window at Sydney Airport in Sydney, Sunday, Oct. 30, 2011. Qantas Airways grounded all of its aircraft around the world indefinitely Saturday due to ongoing strikes by its workers. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
Idle Qantas planes are reflected in a window at Sydney Airport in Sydney, Sunday, Oct. 30, 2011. Qantas Airways grounded all of its aircraft around the world indefinitely Saturday due to ongoing strikes by its workers. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) ? Australia's air safety authority cleared Qantas Airways to return to the skies Monday after an Australian court ruled on a bitter labor dispute that had prompted the world's 10th-largest airline to ground its entire fleet.
Civil Aviation Safety Authority spokesman Peter Gibson said the agency had given Qantas the OK to resume flying.
The safety authority's decision means the "Flying Kangaroo," as the Australian flag carrier is known, can restart flights by Monday afternoon, as Qantas CEO Alan Joyce had predicted earlier in the day. Joyce has said the airline's flight schedule will return to normal by Tuesday.
The three-day grounding disrupted the travel plans of tens of thousands of people across the world, and Qantas passengers were gathering at airports in Australia and Los Angeles in the hopes of finally getting to their destinations.
The airline's expected resumption of flights comes around 12 hours after an emergency ruling by an arbitration court ended weeks of strikes and canceled a staff lockout.
The court ruling was a major victory in the airline's battle with unions representing pilots, aircraft mechanics, baggage handlers and caterers, whose rolling strikes have forced the cancellation of 600 flights in recent months, disrupted travel for 70,000 passengers and cost Qantas 70 million Australian dollars ($75 million).
But some aviation experts said the surprise grounding of all 108 planes on Saturday, at a cost of $20 million a day, has hurt the Australian flagship carrier's reputation around the world. Moody's Investors Service said it could downgrade the airline's credit ratings as the weekend's events could hurt bookings, profits and the value of the Qantas brand.
Still, the stock market welcomed the weekend developments as allowing the airline to focus on its long-term strategy. Qantas shares on Monday jumped almost 5 percent to AU$1.62 on the stock exchange in Sydney.
Henry Harteveldt, an airline industry analyst in San Francisco, predicts the shutdown will do long-term damage to the Qantas name by hurting its reputation for reliability.
"A lot of travelers won't take a chance and will book away to Virgin Australia, Air New Zealand and other airlines," Harteveldt said. "Brand loyalty in the airline business is very low, and there is so much competition."
Before the court ruling, Virgin Australia said it was scheduling extra flights and offering 20 percent fare discounts to help stranded Qantas passengers through Thursday.
If Qantas loses customers, that could also hurt partners in its alliance of global airlines, including American Airlines. A rival alliance that includes Air New Zealand and is led by United Continental Holdings Inc. could benefit, as could a third group of airlines that includes several major Asian carriers and is led by Delta Air Lines Inc. and Air France-KLM.
CEO Joyce praised the court ruling, which prevents unions from taking any further strike action over their demands for pay hikes and job security clauses under news contracts being negotiated. The strikes have been blamed for a sharp decline in the airline's future bookings.
"The important thing is that all industrial action is now over and we have certainty," Joyce told reporters in Sydney.
"We will be returning to business as usual over the next 24 hours," he said.
Other industry veterans said the lockout was a daring move that will pay off for Qantas, which wants to expand the low-cost, low-fare model that it uses at its Jetstar Airways subsidiary.
Jetstar has extensive routes to Southeast Asia and Japan, and lower costs than Qantas. But Qantas unions fear that expansion of low-cost airlines will result in Australian jobs being sent overseas. Joyce hopes to bend the unions closer to the company's vision for growth by tapping into Asian markets.
"It was a very shrewd move by their CEO to force the issue and stop the potential deterioration of the brand," said Mo Garfinkle, an airline consultant who has worked for Qantas rival Virgin Australia. "In the end, it will benefit Qantas financially."
Garfinkle said the short duration of the fleet grounding will help Qantas get back up to full speed quickly, cutting its losses.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Monday described the grounding as "extreme," while Transport Minister Tony Albanese has sharply criticized Joyce for giving the government only three hours notice of his plans.
The Australian government, angered by a lack of warning of the grounding, had called an emergency court hearing on Saturday night to end the work bans for the sake of the national economy.
The three judges heard more than 14 hours of testimony from the airline, the government and unions. Workers have held rolling strikes and refused overtime work for weeks out of worry that some of Qantas' 32,500 jobs would be moved overseas in a restructuring plan.
The unions wanted the court to temporarily suspend the employee lockout so that strike action could resume if negotiations in the labor dispute failed to progress. But the airline said the strikes had devastated the airline's reputation for reliability and that the threat needed to be removed permanently before customers would return.
Tribunal President Geoffrey Giudice said the panel decided that a temporary suspension would still risk Qantas' grounding its fleet in the future and would not protect the tourism and aviation industries from damage.
Qantas is the largest of Australia's four national domestic airlines, and the grounding affected 108 planes in 22 countries.
About 70,000 passengers fly Qantas daily, and would-be fliers this weekend were stuck at home, hotels or airports, or even had to suddenly deplane when Qantas suspended operations. More than 60 flights were in the air at the time but continued to their destinations, and Qantas was paying for passengers to book other flights.
Qantas infuriated unions in August when it said it would improve its loss-making overseas business by creating an Asia-based airline with its own name and brand. The five-year restructure plan will cost 1,000 jobs.
The airline also said in August that it had more than doubled annual profit to AU$250 million but warned that the business environment was too challenging to forecast earnings for the current fiscal year.
Qantas is the 10th-largest airline in the world by passenger miles flown, according to the International Air Transport Association, an airline trade group.
_____
Associated Press writers David Koenig from Dallas, Texas, and Andrew Dalton from Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Associated Presscreature us open mens final go daddy tmobile johnny cash serbia spongebob squarepants
Yankees pick up options on Cano and Swisher (AP)
NEW YORK ? The New York Yankees have exercised contract options for next season on second baseman Robinson Cano and right fielder Nick Swisher.
The moves were announced Saturday night.
The decision on Cano's $14 million option was a mere formality, but there was some thought that the Yankees might consider parting ways with Swisher because of his postseason struggles. The AL East champions chose to pick up his $10.25 million option rather than pay him a $1 million buyout.
A three-time All-Star, Cano signed a four-year, $30 million contract before the 2008 season that includes a pair of club options. The 29-year-old slugger hit .302 with 28 homers and a career-high 118 RBIs this year. New York, which could have paid him a $2 million buyout, holds a $15 million option for 2013.
The effervescent Swisher batted .260 with 23 homers and 85 RBIs during the regular season. But he was 4 for 19 (.211) with one RBI in a first-round playoff loss to Detroit, his third postseason flop in three years with the Yankees.
red ribbon week much ado about nothing sean hayes ndamukong suh ndamukong suh caroline manzo caroline manzo
A look at action in hurricane headquarters
MIAMI ?? There's only one building in Florida that can withstand the biggest and baddest of all hurricanes ? the Category 5, with winds of at least 165 mph (266 kph) ? and it's a concrete bunker along an unglamorous stretch of road in South Florida called the National Hurricane Center (NHC).
The NHC never closes. Here, weather forecasters work around the clock, 365 days a year, tracking threatening storms in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. They watch radars, issue storm warnings and command their airplane? named Miss Piggy ? on airborne hurricane hunter missions.
OurAmazingPlanet recently toured the NHC just as forecasters here were becoming concerned about the storm that would become Hurricane Rina (which has since weakened into a tropical storm). In the center's main forecast room, seen on TV during press briefings, one forecaster was just about to issue the latest tropical warning as reporters walked in.
"Done!" he shouted, as if on cue.
Forecasters sit in front of banks of computer monitors, poring over the latest storm data, doing their best to predict where the storm will go, and how strong it will be when it gets there. But as seen with Rina, which was predicted to become a major hurricane ( Category 3 or higher ) only to quickly fizzle, forecasters are constantly struggling to make accurate forecasts.
"It's not unusual for our intensity and wind speed forecast to be off," said Chris Landsea, science and operations officer for the NHC's Tropical Analysis and Forecast Branch. "Sometimes we're too high, sometimes we're too low."
Into the heart of the storm
One way that the forecasters get information to plug into the forecast models is from ocean buoys ? as long as the hurricanes don't destroy them.
"The storms have been buoy hunting this year, which doesn't happen very often," said Daniel Brown, the NHC's warning coordination meteorologist.
The 2011 hurricane season has seen six hurricanes and 17 named storms. ( Storm names are given when a system becomes a tropical storm.)
Another way to observe hurricanes is by flying airplanes and drones over, in front of and into the storms. This brand of hurricane hunting began decades ago with a few brave military pilots.
"A couple of Army pilots decided to see if they could go fly that thing," said John Papone, who flew missions in the Pacific years ago, and has been working in the "war room" since it opened in 1968.
Today's pilots fly out of MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., where they patrol the tropics, except for a rectangular "no fly zone" extending from Venezuela into the Caribbean.
They fly an airplane affectionately named Miss Piggy, or P3, (they also have planes named Kermit and Gonzo) at about 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) in a full-blown storm. Once over a storm, the planes deploy instruments called dropsondes, which are biodegradable slender tubes that float into the storm while hanging from a tiny parachute. The dropsondes, at $700 each, collect reconnaissance on the storm, including wind speed, temperature and precipitation. The information is sent back to the NHC in real-time.
"It's on Google within minutes of the time we get it," Papone said.
The P3 flies in a figure-four pattern over a storm and the pilots "pepper the storm" with dropsondes, said Shirley Murillo, the hurricane field program director for the 2011 season. Missions can be up to 8 hours long.
The NHC also relies on a Gulf Stream jet, the G4, which flies in front of storms to see what the conditions are like in the storm's path. The Gulf Stream looks for things such as dry air, which can break up a storm. Another plane, the unmanned Global Hawk, can fly directly into a storm and loiter there for a full day.
Best laid plans
Once the storm data is gathered, staffers in the Hurricane Liaison team work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to brief communities and states on the latest threat. The NHC director, Bill Read, will teleconference the White House from the NHC's TV studio.
Inside the NHC's Storm Surge Unit, forecasters try to gauge how waters will rise along the coasts and where the most serious flooding could develop.
-
More science news from MSNBC Tech & Science
-
Want $50,000? Read these shredded messages
Science editor Alan Boyle's Weblog: DARPA's latest tech challenge is offering $50,000 for a task worthy of secret agents ? piecing together messages that have been shredded into thousands of bits.
- Warming may push seaweeds over the edge
- Long-gone woodpecker lives again ... on film
- Pythons may help get grip on heart disease
-
Want $50,000? Read these shredded messages
"Essentially we are the first step in setting evacuation zones," said Jamie Rhome, the unit's leader.
The Storm Surge unit does not order evacuations; they only say what areas may need to flee. Still, as seen during Hurricane Irene, the unit often faces serious scrutiny when their worst-case scenario predictions don't materialize. But Rhome said he believes the Hurricane Irene evacuations were done "about as good as you can do it," pointing out that no deaths were caused by storm surge, which he called "an amazing feat."
"There's no such thing as a perfect evacuation," Rhome said. "You have to overreact so that you don't lose a life."
But even if the NHC nails their forecast, a major landfalling hurricane will still cause severe devastation to the overdeveloped U.S. coastline.
"Maybe we should change what we allow to be done and built," said NHC director Read. "This is risk, folks."
You can follow OurAmazingPlanet staff writer Brett Israel on Twitter: @btisrael. Follow OurAmazingPlanet for the latest in Earth science and exploration news on Twitter @ OAPlanet and on Facebook.
? 2011 OurAmazingPlanet. All rights reserved. More from OurAmazingPlanet.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45079854/ns/technology_and_science-science/
tom brady emmy nominations desean jackson monsters vs aliens jeremy maclin nascar news emmys 2011
Saturday, October 29, 2011
ICC fears son of Libya's Gaddafi may flee justice (Reuters)
TRIPOLI/BEIJING (Reuters) ? The International Criminal Court said on Saturday that Libya's Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was in contact via intermediaries about surrendering for trial, but it also had information mercenaries were trying to spirit him to a friendly African nation.
U.S. military and government representatives held security talks in neighbouring Niger with local officials in Agadez, which has been a way station for other Libyan fugitives, including another son of Muammar Gaddafi, Saadi. A Reuters reporter saw a U.S. military plane at Agadez airport.
A top Agadez regional official declined to say what the talks with the Americans were about, but spoke of escape plans by Saif al-Islam and former Libyan intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, both wanted by the ICC for crimes against humanity.
"Senussi is being extricated from Mali toward a country that is a non-signatory to the (ICC) convention. I am certain that they will both (Senussi and Saif al-Islam) be extricated by plane, one from Mali the other from Niger," said the official, who asked not to be named.
He said there were at least 10 airstrips in the north of Niger near the Libyan border that could be used to whisk Saif al-Islam out of the country.
However, a member of parliament from northern Mali, Ibrahim Assaleh Ag Mohamed, denied Senussi or Saif al-Islam were in his country and said they would not be accepted if they tried to enter.
The arrival of the U.S. delegation followed remarks by Mohamed Anako, president of Agadez region, who said he would give Saif al-Islam refuge. "Libya and Niger are brother countries and cousins ... so we will welcome him in," he said.
The ICC has warned Saif al-Islam, 39, apparently anxious not to be captured by Libyan interim government forces in whose hands his father Muammar Gaddafi was killed last week, that it could order a mid-air interception if he tried to flee by plane from his Sahara desert hideout for a safe haven.
INDIRECT CONTACTS
The ICC's comments offered some corroboration of reports from Tripoli's National Transitional Council (NTC) leaders and African neighbours that he has taken refuge with Tuareg nomads in the borderlands between Libya and Niger.
"There are some people connected with him that are in touch with people connected with us ... it's through intermediaries," ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told Reuters in an interview during a visit to Beijing.
"We have some information that there is a mercenary group trying to help him to move to a different country, so we are trying to prevent this activity," said Moreno-Ocampo.
"We are also working with some states to see if we can disrupt this attempt. Some of them are South Africans allegedly."
Moreno-Ocampo said the ICC was not making any deal with Saif al-Islam but was explaining through the contacts that he had to face trial because he had been indicted for war crimes. "He says he is innocent," said the prosecutor.
However, surrender is only one option for Saif al-Islam.
The Gaddafis befriended desert tribes in Niger, Mali and other poor former French colonies in West Africa. Other African countries received Libyan largesse during the 42-year rule of Gaddafi, a self-styled African "king of kings".
France, a backer of February's revolt against Gaddafi, reminded African states of their obligations to hand Saif al-Islam over to the international court.
"We don't care whether he goes on foot, by plane, by boat, by car or on a camel, the only thing that matters is that he belongs in the ICC," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero.
Niger, Mali, Chad and Burkina Faso, a swathe of arid states to the south of Libya, are all signatories to the treaty that set up the ICC. Algeria, which took in Saif al-Islam's mother, sister, brother Hannibal and half-brother Mohammed, is not a signatory. Nor is Sudan or Zimbabwe.
AFRICAN MERCENARIES
As well as enjoying protection from Tuareg allies who traditionally provided close security for the Gaddafis, Saif al-Islam may be in the company of mercenaries from elsewhere in Africa, including possibly South Africa, NTC officials say.
A South African newspaper, in an unconfirmed report, said South African mercenaries were working to fly him out.
A bodyguard who saw Saif al-Islam as he fled last week from one of the last pro-Gaddafi bastions near Tripoli told Reuters that he seemed "nervous" and "confused". He escaped even though his motorcade was hit by a NATO air strike as it left Bani Walid on Oct. 19, the day before his father died in Sirte.
Three of Saif al-Islam's brothers were killed in the war.
The arrest or surrender of Saif al-Islam would bring a new prominence for the nine-year-old ICC, whose highest profile suspect to date is Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who remains defiantly in office, defended by many fellow Africans.
Following Gaddafi's killing, probably by fighters who filmed themselves battering and abusing him, Western allies of Libya's new leaders urged them to impose respect for human rights.
NTC leaders would like to run their own trials, but acknowledge that their writ barely runs in the deep south.
NATO countries, now winding up a mission that backed the revolt, have expressed little enthusiasm for hunting a few individuals across a vast tract of empty continent.
Saif al-Islam was once seen as a liberal reformer, architect of a rapprochement with Western states on whom his father waged proxy guerrilla wars for decades. But he responded with belligerent rhetoric after the revolt erupted in Libya.
The ICC accuses him of hiring mercenaries to carry out a plan, worked out with his father and Senussi, to kill unarmed protesters inspired by "Arab Spring" uprisings elsewhere.
Niger's government in the capital Niamey has vowed to meet its ICC commitments. But 750 km (400 miles) north in a region where cross-border allegiances among Tuareg nomads often outweigh national ties, the picture looks different.
Some of the tens of thousands of people who eke out a living in the Sahara, roamed by smugglers and nomadic herders, say there would be a welcome for the younger Gaddafi.
"We are ready to hide him wherever needed," said Mouddour Barka, a resident of Agadez. "We are telling the international community to stay out of this business and our own authorities not to hand him over -- otherwise we are ready to go out on to the streets and they will have us to deal with."
A U.S. military aircraft flew 25 wounded NTC fighters out of Tripoli on Saturday for medical treatment in the United States. Britain has also taken in wounded fighters.
(Additional reporting by Sara Webb and Aaron Gray-Block in Amsterdam, Samia Nakhoul in London, Mark John in Dakar, Ibrahim Diallo in Agadez and Nathalie Prevost; Editing by Alistair Lyon)
pearl harbor the guard the guard osu osu 9 11 conspiracy theories 9 11 conspiracy theories
No Certification Without Verification ? Liberty Legal Foundation
Neither lawsuit discuss Obama?s place of birth or his birth certificate. These issues are completely irrelevant to our argument. LLF?s lawsuit simply points out that the Supreme Court has defined ?natural-born citizen? as a person born to two parents who were both U.S. citizens at the time of the natural-born citizen?s birth. Obama?s father was never a U.S. citizen. Therefore, Obama can never be a natural-born citizen. His place of birth is irrelevant.
Despite numerous legal challenges, no case to date has been able to get a hearing on the merits related to Obama?s natural-born status. We have studied all of these cases in order learn from the rulings and avoid the pitfalls that stopped those lawsuits. We learned that the only entity remaining that can be held responsible for vetting a candidate?s qualifications to hold office, is the political party that nominates the candidate. All states rely upon the truthfulness of representations by the political parties, that their candidates are qualified to hold the federal office for which they are nominated. By naming the National Democratic Party as the defendant we not only target the entity responsible for vetting their candidate, we also avoid taking on any state or federal government. The Democratic Party is a private entity, without any government immunities or government procedural advantages.
We also learned that Presidential candidates that are registered with the Federal Election Commission have standing to ask a court to keep another candidate off the ballot. That?s why two of our lead plaintiffs are FEC-registered Presidential Candidates.
Because we have lead plaintiffs that are Presidential Candidates, and because those plaintiffs are also Liberty Legal members, Liberty Legal has standing to sue as well. If one plaintiff has standing to sue, all plaintiffs have standing to sue.
You can join our lawsuit as a class member and be part of this challenge! We have a class for all people that object to having a Presidential candidate appear on the ballot who is not Constitutionally qualified to hold the office. If you agree that the Constitution should be followed, please add your voice to ours. Please join our class action lawsuit to protect the legitimacy of the ballot.
To learn more about our strategy, go to this link: http://www.libertylegalfoundation.net/certification-class-action/the-cca-strategy/
Get to know our Presidential Candidate Lead Plaintiff
John Albert Dummett Jr.
http://www.johndummett.us/
Source: http://www.libertylegalfoundation.net/1209/no-certification-without-verification/
susan g komen whats your number whats your number eastman kodak eastman kodak melissa gorga melissa gorga
Engadget Podcast 262 - 10.28.2011
Hosts: Tim Stevens, Brian Heater
Guest: Myriam Joire
Producer: Trent Wolbe
Music: Try It Out
01:30 - The Nokia World 2011 keynote liveblog!
02:00 - Nokia announces the Lumia 800, the 'first real Windows Phone' (video)
02:30 - Nokia Lumia 800 vs. Nokia N9: the tale of the tape
05:00 - Nokia Lumia 800 unboxed: we shed some light on what's inside
14:40 - Nokia's Lumia 710 Windows Phone announced alongside the 800, hitting select markets by end of year
23:30 - Nokia Asha 200, Asha 300 and Asha 303 hands-on (video)
32:00 - Nokia's kinetic future: flexible screens and a twisted interface (video)
36:30 - Future Nokia phones repellent, says water (video)
41:05 - Richard Kerris moves from HP to Nokia, becomes Global Head of Developer Relations
42:00 - HP will keep PC division, hope alive
45:50 - Mythical snow-white N9 spotted at Nokia World
50:05 - Sony to buy out Ericsson's stake in joint venture, call it quits after ten years
50:39 - Motorola Atrix 2 review
53:02 - Porsche Design P'9981 BlackBerry provides a long-awaited design jolt, compensates for a lot
55:05 - Amazon focusing on 'lifetime' Kindle revenue, anticipating record device sales for Q4
01:01:30 - HTC Rhyme review
01:03:00 - Listener questions
Hear the podcast
Subscribe to the podcast
[iTunes] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes (enhanced AAC).
[RSS MP3] Add the Engadget Podcast feed (in MP3) to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically.
[RSS AAC] Add the Engadget Podcast feed (in enhanced AAC) to your RSS aggregator.
[Zune] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in the Zune Marketplace
Download the podcast
LISTEN (MP3)
LISTEN (AAC)
Contact the podcast
Send your questions to @tim_stevens.
Leave us a voicemail: (423) 438-3005 (GADGET-3005)
E-mail us: podcast at engadget dot com
Twitter: @bheater, @timstevens, @tnkgrl
Filed under: Podcasts
Engadget Podcast 262 - 10.28.2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Oct 2011 13:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/uiI_A89GAtQ/
person of interest james spader james spader speed of light susan powell jonah hill neutrinos
Business Advice From Drug Dealers | Investing Featured ...
article_investing
- |
?Cart?(0)
-
MARKETS
INVESTING
SPECIAL FEATURES
VIDEO
- Hoofy & Boo
- Pop Biz
- T3 Live
- Todd Harrison TV
- Specials
BLOGS
PRODUCTS
- Buzz And Banter
- Gary K's Equity Trading Setups
- Housing Market Report
- TechStrat Report
- The Stock Playbook
- MPTrader ETF Diary
- Cooper's Market Report
- Active Investor
- OptionSmith
- Ad Free Minyanville
- Minyanville Book Store
BUZZ & BANTER
khloe kardashian traffic adam smith john galliano afi elk elk
Friday, October 28, 2011
7 dead after semi-truck slams into minivan in Ind.
BRISTOL, Ind. (AP) ? A tractor-trailer slammed into the back of a packed minivan in northern Indiana late Thursday, killing at least seven people and sending four other to hospitals, authorities said.
Indiana State Police reported that the minivan was carrying 10 people when it was hit along the Indiana Toll Road near Bristol, just south of the Michigan border. Police said witness accounts suggest that the minivan may have hit a deer, then slowed or stopped in the eastbound lanes before it was hit from behind by the tractor-trailer.
Seven of the minivan's occupants died at the scene and the other three were taken to hospitals, including two who were airlifted. The driver of the tractor-trailer was also hospitalized.
None of the victims' names has been released. The conditions of those who survived also haven't been released.
Both vehicles ended up in the center median, blocking traffic in both directions. No other vehicles were involved in the accident, which was reported shortly before 8 p.m. The crash shut down the roadway in both directions until after midnight.
Other details weren't immediately available, police said.
Associated Pressbad lip reading gilad shalit gilad shalit ny jets ny jets new york jets santonio holmes
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Libyans seek further NATO help (Reuters)
TRIPOLI (Reuters) ? Libya's interim leader urged NATO on Wednesday to maintain its involvement in the country until the end of the year, though the Western military alliance that helped topple Muammar Gaddafi is keen to wind up its formal mission within days.
With Gaddafi's son and heir-apparent believed still at large and seeking to flee following his father's killing last week, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, chairman of the National Transitional Council (NTC), said he wanted NATO help in stopping Gaddafi loyalists escaping justice.
But at the Brussels headquarters of the alliance, whose air strikes and intelligence backed the motley rebel forces for eight months at substantial financial cost, NATO officials recalled that their U.N. mandate was to protect civilians, not target individuals.
A meeting of NATO ambassadors, postponed from Wednesday to Friday to allow for further discussion with the NTC and United Nations, was still due to endorse a preliminary decision to halt the Libya mission on October 31, a spokeswoman for the bloc said.
Speaking in Qatar, the most active Arab backer of the Western move against Gaddafi, Abdel Jalil told reporters: "We look forward to NATO continuing its operations until the end of the year."
He added: "We seek technical and logistics help from neighboring and friendly countries."
The Libyan war, which saw Gaddafi's power extinguished in late August at a cost of no casualties for NATO forces, has been proclaimed a triumph for Western intervention. But the expense of thousands of air strikes, led by French and British jets with U.S. logistical support, has left NATO governments keen to end it now.
Asked if NATO ambassadors on Friday would stick to the decision to end the mission at the end of the month, spokeswoman Carmen Romero said: "That is the preliminary decision ... The formal decision will be taken this week."
She added that, for the time being, "NATO continues to monitor the situation on the ground, and retains the capability to respond to any threats to civilians."
"NO RISK"
Romero said NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen was in consultations with the United Nations and the National Transitional Council about plans to conclude the mission.
NATO states took their decision last week based on military recommendations. The commander the Libya mission Lieutenant-General Charles Bouchard said on Monday he saw virtually no risk of forces loyal to Gaddafi mounting successful attacks to regain power and NATO believed NTC forces were able to handle security threats.
NATO states have been keen to see a quick conclusion to a costly effort that has involved more than 26,000 air sorties and round-the-clock naval patrols at a time when defense budgets are under severe strain due to the global economic crisis.
NATO has said it does not intend to keep forces in the Libyan region after concluding its mission and has repeatedly stated that its U.N. mandate is to protect civilians, not to pursue individuals -- although Gaddafi himself was captured after his convoy was hit in a NATO air strike.
On Tuesday, NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs and Security Policy James Appathurai said he expected the alliance to confirm its decision to end the mission. "I don't expect that there will be a change to that decision," he said.
NATO has already begun winding down the mission, and diplomats have said the majority of NATO equipment, including warplanes, has already been withdrawn.
A NATO statement on Tuesday said operations in the interim would involve intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, although NATO would retain the capability to conduct air strikes if they were needed.
SAIF AL-ISLAM
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, long seen as his father's heir-apparent, was believed to be in the southern desert near Niger and Algeria and was set to flee Libya using a false passport, an NTC official said.
Like his father, he is wanted by both the new Libyan leadership and the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
Military experts stress, however, that even NATO's extensive aerial and satellite power has little chance of detecting fleeing convoys across the expanses of the Sahara, while the remote desert is also out of realistic range for any mission to strike such a group of vehicles, even if NATO's mandate were interpreted to allow it.
(Reporting by Regan Doherty in Doha and David Brunnstrom in Brussels; Writing by Alastair Macdonald)
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111026/wl_nm/us_libya
chuck liddell chuck liddell dancing with the stars brandi glanville kristin chenoweth tim tebow beanie wells
Climate known: Sea level is going to rise many metres
* Required fields
Password must contain only letters and numbers, and be at least 8 characters
brad pitt brad pitt us constitution us constitution articles of confederation articles of confederation current events
Can Slingshot Marbles Kill You? [Video]
Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/vITs7x-nOoI/can-slingshot-marbles-kill-you
dylan ratigan dylan ratigan occupy occupy midnight madness midnight madness john henry
Cancun area resorts empty as hurricane approaches (AP)
CANCUN, Mexico ? Tourists abandoned Cancun and other resorts while Mexican authorities evacuated hundreds of residents from low-lying areas ahead of a weakened Hurricane Rina's pass along Yucatan's Caribbean coast Thursday.
Civil protection officials moved some 2,300 people from Holbox, an island where the Caribbean meets the Gulf of Mexico, and the federal government closed the archaeological sites that dot the coast. NASA cut short an undersea laboratory mission near Key Largo, Florida, bringing the crew back to land.
Lines snaked from ticket counters in Cancun's crowded airport Wednesday as jumbo airliners heading to Canada and Europe waited in pouring rain. Many travelers said they were already scheduled to leave on Wednesday. But Janet Gallo, 41, of New York City decided to cut short her five-day trip to the town of Playa del Carmen.
"At the hotel, they told us they would make a decision whether to evacuate later today, but we didn't want to wait. We would rather be home when it hits," Gallo said.
Ports closed to navigation for recreational, fishing and small boats in the state of Quintana Roo, home to Cancun, and neighboring Yucatan state, while the island of Cozumel was closed to larger vessels, including the ferry that connects the island and Playa del Carmen.
Rina was forecast to remain a hurricane as it swept along Mexico's most popular tourist destinations of Cancun, Cozumel and the Riviera Maya, though forecasters predicted it would continue to weaken.
Rina's maximum sustained winds were clocked at 85 mph (135 kph) late Wednesday, down from 110 mph (175 kph) earlier in the day. It was about 140 miles (225 kilometers) south of the island of Cozumel and was moving northwest at about 6 mph (9 kph).
About 275 people living in the fishing town of Punta Allen, south of Tulum, were moved to emergency shelters and a smaller group was evacuated from the atoll of Banco Chinchorro.
Luh McDevitt, 56, a furniture and interior designer in Cozumel, said her family was fitting hurricane shutters to the house and securing furniture.
"I am not really scared," said the Cincinnati, Ohio, native who has lived in Cozumel since 2000. "Hurricane Andrew in 1992 was a Category 5. The worst part of the hurricane is after. We didn't have electricity in our house for three weeks."
Mexico's government said it was sending nearly 2,400 electrical workers plus cranes, vehicles and generators to repair and maintain services as quickly as possible after the storm.
Jorge Arturo Cruz, spokesman for Quintana Roo's education department, said schools were ordered closed in communities along the coast and on Cozumel in anticipation of the storm.
The coastal area around Tulum is dotted with Mayan ruins and farther north is Playa del Carmen, another popular spot for international tourists and the departure point for ferries serving Cozumel.
State Tourism Director Juan Carlos Gonzalez Hernandez said there had been about 83,000 tourists in the state, with about 28,000 of them in Cancun and 45,000 more on the stretch of coast south of Cancun that includes Tulum and Playa de Carmen.
He estimated 10,000 tourists had left by Wednesday night. There were only about 1,719 tourists on Cozumel, and many of them had left, he said.
At least eight cruise ships were changing itineraries away from the storm's path, said a spokesman for Carnival Cruise Lines, Vance Gulliksen.
The area was badly damaged by Hurricane Wilma in 2005, when Cancun's white-sand beaches were largely washed away. Insurance officials estimated total damage at $3 billion.
A hurricane warning was in effect for the east coast of the Yucatan Peninsula from north of Punta Gruesa to Cancun.
The projected track showed Rina curving east toward Cuba and the Straits of Florida after crossing the eastern tip of Yucatan, though the U.S. National Hurricane Center cautioned "there is great uncertainty as to where Rina will be located by the weekend."
___
Associated Press writer Adriana Gomez Licon in Mexico City contributed to this story.
megamind megamind human centipede 2 san diego weather mla format regis philbin resistance 3
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
A Decade On, Windows XP Is Still the World's Most-Used Desktop OS [Techniversary]
tampa weather pat buchanan susan sarandon susan sarandon motorola razr camille grammer camille grammer
Spotted: Jon Heder and His Gabba Girl
Jon Heder and daughter Evan Jane, 4?, hang with the Yo Gabba Gabba! gang at the Vans x Yo Gabba Gabba shoe launch, held Thursday at Kitson Kids in Los Angeles.
Source: http://feeds.celebritybabies.com/~r/celebrity-babies/~3/Ne2vc9B3mAU/
the walking dead season 2 milwaukee brewers will power will power indy 500 martin luther king memorial walking dead season 2
Geoscientists find key to why some patients get infections from cardiac implants
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vqNKGPvi34KKcRI9rTCe0SQttStAmiW35VzoQPpoTDxsyuATtz0Cv0Tqxs0Ir5VwKW0E83U7F4RsUSR2e1fwr8YXeifpheCqRqNsgXgHQ=s0-d){kind=small}
Public release date: 25-Oct-2011[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Cheryl Dybas
cdybas@nsf.gov
703-292-7734
National Science Foundation
Bacterial cells have gene mutations that allow them to 'stick' to the devices
New research suggests that some patients develop a potentially deadly blood infection from their implanted cardiac devices because bacterial cells in their bodies have gene mutations that allow them to stick to the devices.
Geoscientists were the major contributors to the finding.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published the study results online this week.
"Geobiologists, key to these results, use atomic force microscopy to study the forces with which bacteria adhere to mineral surfaces," said Enriqueta Barrera, program director in the National Science Foundation's Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the research.
"These scientists have adapted this approach, along with molecular dynamics simulations, to gain a better understanding of the strength with which the proteins of infectious bacteria adhere to cardiac implants," said Barrera. "Such results might have implications for the development of medication to treat this type of infection."
Patients with implants can develop infections because of a biofilm of persistent bacteria on the surfaces of their devices.
A biofilm is a community of bacterial cells that lives on the surface of a solid substrate. Biofilms are the most common mode of life for all bacteria, whether they reside in the environment or in the human body.
The scientific principles governing the formation of bacterial biofilms on cardiac devices are strongly linked with those of biofilm formation on mineral surfaces, hence the connection with geobiology.
Scientists found that some strains of the bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus, have just a few genetic variants in the proteins on their surfaces that make them more likely to form these biofilms.
The research seeks to get to the heart of a medical paradox: devices such as pacemakers, defibrillators and prosthetic cardiac valves save lives, but they cause infections in about 4 percent of the estimated 1 million patients receiving implants each year in the United States.
Because biofilms resist antibiotics, the only treatment is surgery to remove the contaminated device and implant a new one. This adds up to thousands of surgeries and more than $1 billion in health care costs every year.
A team led by scientists at Ohio State University and Duke University Medical Center used atomic force microscopy and powerful computer simulations to determine how Staph bacteria bond to the devices in the process of forming these biofilms.
The findings offer clues about potential techniques that could be employed to prevent infections in patients who need these devices to stay alive.
"We're probing the initial step to that biofilm formation," said Steven Lower, scientist at Ohio State and lead author of the paper reporting the study's results.
"Can you shut that down somehow? If that bacterium never sticks, there's no biofilm. It's that simple. But it's not quite that simple in practice."
Using Staph cells collected from patients--some with cardiac device-related infections--the researchers examined how these bacteria adhere to implants to create a biofilm.
The bond forms when a protein on the bacterial cell surface connects with a common human blood protein coating an implanted device.
But an estimated half of all Americans have Staph bacteria living in their noses, and not every cardiac implant patient develops an infection.
So why do some strains of these bacteria cause infection while others remain dormant?
The researchers discovered that Staph surface proteins containing three genetic variants, or single-nucleotide polymorphisms, formed stronger bonds with the human proteins than did Staph proteins without those variants.
The presence of these genetic variants was associated with the strains of bacteria that had infected implanted cardiac devices.
The finding is a first step toward preventing the bacteria from bonding to the devices.
"It will be useful to explore this in more detail and see if we can understand the basic science behind how these bonds form, and why they form," Lower said. "Perhaps then we can exploit some fundamental force law.
Lower, a scientist with a background in geology, physics and biology, collaborated for a decade with Vance Fowler, a scientist at Duke's Medical Center and the study's co-lead author.
Lower specializes in atomic force microscopy and molecular dynamics simulations to explore molecular-level relationships between inanimate surfaces and living microorganisms.
Fowler, who specializes in infectious diseases, assembled a rare library of hundreds of Staphylococcus aureus isolates collected from patients.
Fowler hopes his samples might help answer a broader question related to varied patient responses to the blood infection bacteremia.
"I believe that our research is a critical first step towards understanding, and eventually preventing, cardiac device infections caused by Staphylococcus aureus," Fowler said.
The researchers used 80 Staph isolates from three different groups: patients with a blood infection and a confirmed cardiac device infection, patients with a blood infection and an uninfected cardiac device, and Staph from the noses of healthy subjects living in the same area.
Single-cell studies of bacteria are complicated by their tiny size, one millionth of a meter, so an atomic-force microscope is required to visualize their behavior.
Co-author and Ohio State researcher Nadia Casillas-Ituarte performed these experiments, connecting single Staph bacteria to a protein-coated probe to allow bonds to form, and then rupturing the bonds to measure the strength of each connection.
Casillas-Ituarte simulated the human heartbeat, allowing bonds to form over the course of a second and then pulling the probe away.
By doing this at least 100 times on each cell and verifying the work on hundreds of additional cells, she generated more than a quarter-million force curve measurements for the analysis.
"The first step is to determine how a bacterium 'feels' a surface," she said. "You can't stop that process until you first understand how it happens."
The researchers coated the probe with fibronectin, a common human blood protein found on the surface of implanted devices.
Staph bacteria can create a biofilm by forming bonds with this protein through a protein on their own surface called fibronectin-binding protein A.
To learn more about the bacterial protein, the scientists then sequenced the amino acids that make up fibronectin-binding protein A in each isolate they studied.
This is where they found the single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, pronounced "snips"), which were more common in the isolates collected from patients with infections related to their heart implants.
To further test the effects of these SNPs, the team used a supercomputer to simulate the formation of the bond between the bacterial and human proteins.
When they plugged standard amino acid sequences from each protein into the supercomputer, the molecules maintained a distance from each other.
When they altered the sequence of three amino acids in the bacterial surface protein and entered that data, hydrogen bonds formed between the bacterial and human proteins.
"We changed the amino acids to resemble the SNPs found in the Staph that came from cardiac device-infected patients," Lower said. "So the SNPs seem to have a relationship to whether a bond forms or not."
Fibronectin-binding protein A is one of about 10 of these types of molecules on the Staph surface that can form bonds with proteins on host cells, Lower noted.
It's also possible that fibronectin, the human protein on the other side of the bond studied so far, might contain genetic variants that contribute to the problem.
What the scientists do know is that bacteria will do all they can to survive, so it won't be easy to outsmart them.
"Bacteria obey Charles Darwin's law of natural selection and can evolve genetic capabilities to allow them to live in the presence of antibiotics," Lower said.
"Most physicists would tell you there are certain laws of physics that dictate what happens and when it happens, and you can't evade or evolve ways around those.
"If you understand the basic physics of it, can you exploit a fundamental force law that bacteria can't evade or evolve a mechanism around?"
###
This work was also supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development/Brazilian National Science and Technology Institute, and the Swiss National Science Foundation/Swiss Medical Association.
Additional co-authors include Supaporn Lamlertthon and L. Barth Reller of Duke; Roberto Lins of the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recipfe, in Brazil; Ruchirej Yongsunthon, Eric Taylor, Alex DiBartola and Brian Lower of Ohio State; Catherine Edmonson and Lauren McIntyre of the University of Florida; Yok-Ai Que of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland; and Robert Ros of Arizona State University.
[ | 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.
Public release date: 25-Oct-2011[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Cheryl Dybas
cdybas@nsf.gov
703-292-7734
National Science Foundation
Bacterial cells have gene mutations that allow them to 'stick' to the devices
New research suggests that some patients develop a potentially deadly blood infection from their implanted cardiac devices because bacterial cells in their bodies have gene mutations that allow them to stick to the devices.
Geoscientists were the major contributors to the finding.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published the study results online this week.
"Geobiologists, key to these results, use atomic force microscopy to study the forces with which bacteria adhere to mineral surfaces," said Enriqueta Barrera, program director in the National Science Foundation's Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the research.
"These scientists have adapted this approach, along with molecular dynamics simulations, to gain a better understanding of the strength with which the proteins of infectious bacteria adhere to cardiac implants," said Barrera. "Such results might have implications for the development of medication to treat this type of infection."
Patients with implants can develop infections because of a biofilm of persistent bacteria on the surfaces of their devices.
A biofilm is a community of bacterial cells that lives on the surface of a solid substrate. Biofilms are the most common mode of life for all bacteria, whether they reside in the environment or in the human body.
The scientific principles governing the formation of bacterial biofilms on cardiac devices are strongly linked with those of biofilm formation on mineral surfaces, hence the connection with geobiology.
Scientists found that some strains of the bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus, have just a few genetic variants in the proteins on their surfaces that make them more likely to form these biofilms.
The research seeks to get to the heart of a medical paradox: devices such as pacemakers, defibrillators and prosthetic cardiac valves save lives, but they cause infections in about 4 percent of the estimated 1 million patients receiving implants each year in the United States.
Because biofilms resist antibiotics, the only treatment is surgery to remove the contaminated device and implant a new one. This adds up to thousands of surgeries and more than $1 billion in health care costs every year.
A team led by scientists at Ohio State University and Duke University Medical Center used atomic force microscopy and powerful computer simulations to determine how Staph bacteria bond to the devices in the process of forming these biofilms.
The findings offer clues about potential techniques that could be employed to prevent infections in patients who need these devices to stay alive.
"We're probing the initial step to that biofilm formation," said Steven Lower, scientist at Ohio State and lead author of the paper reporting the study's results.
"Can you shut that down somehow? If that bacterium never sticks, there's no biofilm. It's that simple. But it's not quite that simple in practice."
Using Staph cells collected from patients--some with cardiac device-related infections--the researchers examined how these bacteria adhere to implants to create a biofilm.
The bond forms when a protein on the bacterial cell surface connects with a common human blood protein coating an implanted device.
But an estimated half of all Americans have Staph bacteria living in their noses, and not every cardiac implant patient develops an infection.
So why do some strains of these bacteria cause infection while others remain dormant?
The researchers discovered that Staph surface proteins containing three genetic variants, or single-nucleotide polymorphisms, formed stronger bonds with the human proteins than did Staph proteins without those variants.
The presence of these genetic variants was associated with the strains of bacteria that had infected implanted cardiac devices.
The finding is a first step toward preventing the bacteria from bonding to the devices.
"It will be useful to explore this in more detail and see if we can understand the basic science behind how these bonds form, and why they form," Lower said. "Perhaps then we can exploit some fundamental force law.
Lower, a scientist with a background in geology, physics and biology, collaborated for a decade with Vance Fowler, a scientist at Duke's Medical Center and the study's co-lead author.
Lower specializes in atomic force microscopy and molecular dynamics simulations to explore molecular-level relationships between inanimate surfaces and living microorganisms.
Fowler, who specializes in infectious diseases, assembled a rare library of hundreds of Staphylococcus aureus isolates collected from patients.
Fowler hopes his samples might help answer a broader question related to varied patient responses to the blood infection bacteremia.
"I believe that our research is a critical first step towards understanding, and eventually preventing, cardiac device infections caused by Staphylococcus aureus," Fowler said.
The researchers used 80 Staph isolates from three different groups: patients with a blood infection and a confirmed cardiac device infection, patients with a blood infection and an uninfected cardiac device, and Staph from the noses of healthy subjects living in the same area.
Single-cell studies of bacteria are complicated by their tiny size, one millionth of a meter, so an atomic-force microscope is required to visualize their behavior.
Co-author and Ohio State researcher Nadia Casillas-Ituarte performed these experiments, connecting single Staph bacteria to a protein-coated probe to allow bonds to form, and then rupturing the bonds to measure the strength of each connection.
Casillas-Ituarte simulated the human heartbeat, allowing bonds to form over the course of a second and then pulling the probe away.
By doing this at least 100 times on each cell and verifying the work on hundreds of additional cells, she generated more than a quarter-million force curve measurements for the analysis.
"The first step is to determine how a bacterium 'feels' a surface," she said. "You can't stop that process until you first understand how it happens."
The researchers coated the probe with fibronectin, a common human blood protein found on the surface of implanted devices.
Staph bacteria can create a biofilm by forming bonds with this protein through a protein on their own surface called fibronectin-binding protein A.
To learn more about the bacterial protein, the scientists then sequenced the amino acids that make up fibronectin-binding protein A in each isolate they studied.
This is where they found the single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, pronounced "snips"), which were more common in the isolates collected from patients with infections related to their heart implants.
To further test the effects of these SNPs, the team used a supercomputer to simulate the formation of the bond between the bacterial and human proteins.
When they plugged standard amino acid sequences from each protein into the supercomputer, the molecules maintained a distance from each other.
When they altered the sequence of three amino acids in the bacterial surface protein and entered that data, hydrogen bonds formed between the bacterial and human proteins.
"We changed the amino acids to resemble the SNPs found in the Staph that came from cardiac device-infected patients," Lower said. "So the SNPs seem to have a relationship to whether a bond forms or not."
Fibronectin-binding protein A is one of about 10 of these types of molecules on the Staph surface that can form bonds with proteins on host cells, Lower noted.
It's also possible that fibronectin, the human protein on the other side of the bond studied so far, might contain genetic variants that contribute to the problem.
What the scientists do know is that bacteria will do all they can to survive, so it won't be easy to outsmart them.
"Bacteria obey Charles Darwin's law of natural selection and can evolve genetic capabilities to allow them to live in the presence of antibiotics," Lower said.
"Most physicists would tell you there are certain laws of physics that dictate what happens and when it happens, and you can't evade or evolve ways around those.
"If you understand the basic physics of it, can you exploit a fundamental force law that bacteria can't evade or evolve a mechanism around?"
###
This work was also supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development/Brazilian National Science and Technology Institute, and the Swiss National Science Foundation/Swiss Medical Association.
Additional co-authors include Supaporn Lamlertthon and L. Barth Reller of Duke; Roberto Lins of the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recipfe, in Brazil; Ruchirej Yongsunthon, Eric Taylor, Alex DiBartola and Brian Lower of Ohio State; Catherine Edmonson and Lauren McIntyre of the University of Florida; Yok-Ai Que of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland; and Robert Ros of Arizona State University.
[ | 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.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-10/nsf-gfk102511.php
espn body issue ijustine visionary guy kawasaki jani lane the exorcism of emily rose the exorcism of emily rose
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)