Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/04/happy-32nd-birthday-jessica-alba/
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Monday, April 29, 2013
Sarah Palin: White House correspondents' dinner 'pathetic' (Washington Post)
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Chief Product Officer And Early Engineer Jim Patterson To Leave Microsoft-Owned Yammer
Earlier today, we heard that Yammer's Chief Product Officer Jim Patterson was planning to depart the company. We've confirmed with Yammer that Patterson is indeed leaving Microsoft-owned Yammer.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/xxjJ8WF4h6w/
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Friday, April 12, 2013
US intelligence chief: Cyberterror leading threat
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The top U.S. intelligence official says cyberterrorism is the leading worldwide threat to U.S. security.
James Clapper is director of national intelligence. He's telling Congress Thursday that cyberattacks and cyberspying can damage critical infrastructure like power grids. But in prepared testimony, he says advanced cyber-actors like Russia and China are unlikely to launch such attacks unless they are threatened by conflict.
He gives examples like last year's denial-of-service attacks on websites for U.S. financial institutions, and the attack against 30,000 computers at Saudi oil company Aramco, as typical of what's to come.
Clapper also says al-Qaida and its offshoots will continue to plot attacks on U.S. targets. He warns that the Arab Spring revolt has produced a spike in threats, and that Iran continues to present a danger.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-intelligence-chief-cyberterror-leading-threat-143815954.html
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Thursday, April 11, 2013
Burner now lets Android users have disposable phone numbers, gives iOS app a refresh
Many months have gone by since we first heard about Ad Hoc Labs' Burner application, which brought a new kind of disposable digits service to folks with an iPhone. Well, starting today, those with an Android handset can also snag throw-away phone numbers via the newfangled app on Google's flavorful platform. Naturally, Burner for Android will perform in a similar fashion to its iOS counterpart, allowing users to seamlessly choose from an array of different plans that'll determine how many minutes / texts any given number is good for -- don't worry, we're sure you'll come across one that's perfectly suited for your business.
Customers on Apple's side, meanwhile, can expect to experience some improvements within the app thanks to a recent update. Burner says its iOS offering has been enhanced in a number of ways, including "smarter" notifications as well as the ability to keep easier track of conversations by way of favoriting and archiving. And although this particular sector may be looked upon with uncertainty, Ad Hoc Labs CEO, Greg Cohen, says his team is just happy to be able to provide "an important tool for users to protect themselves by adding an extra layer of anonymity to their phones." Craigslist, anyone?
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile
Source: Google Play, App Store
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/hLExWxzKctM/
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Wednesday, April 10, 2013
US budget has NASA planning to capture an asteroid, USAF reviving DSCOVR (video)
Many have lamented the seeming decline of the US space program. While we're not expecting an immediate return to the halcyon days, the President's proposed federal budget for fiscal 2014 could see some renewed ambition. NASA's slice of the pie includes a plan that would improve detection of near-Earth asteroids, send a solar-powered robot ship (like the NASA concept above) to capture one of the space rocks and tow it back to a stable orbit near Earth, where researchers could study it up close. The agency would have humans setting foot on the asteroid by 2025, or even as soon as 2021. It's a grand goal to say the least, but we'd potentially learn more about solar propulsion and defenses against asteroid collisions.
If NASA's plans mostly involve the future, the US Air Force budget is looking into the past. It's setting aside $35 million for a long-discussed resurrection of the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite, also known as DSCOVR -- a vehicle that was scuppered in 2001 due to cost overruns, among other factors. Run by NOAA once aloft, the modernized satellite would focus on warning the Earth about incoming solar winds. That's just one of the satellite's original missions, but the November 2014 launch target is relatively realistic -- and we'll need it when the satellite currently fulfilling the role is overdue for a replacement.
Via: Space.com
Source: NASA, AP (Yahoo)
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/VzYQhZW1wFE/
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Antarctic ice samples: What do they say about global warming?
Antarctic ice core samples, up to 150,000 years old, may help scientists estimate whether it will take 50 years - or 500 years - for the Ross Ice Shelf to collapse at the current rate of climate change.
Scientist Nancy Bertler holds the final section of ice she collected from a half-mile under Antarctica's surface in a laboratory freezer, near Wellington, New Zealand. Antarctica's pristine habitat provides a laboratory for scientists studying the effects of climate change.
(AP Photo/Nick Perry)
EnlargeNancy Bertler and her team took a freezer to the coldest place on Earth, endured weeks of primitive living and risked spending the winter in Antarctic darkness, to go get ice ? ice that records our climate's past and could point to its future.
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They drilled out hundreds of ice cores, each slightly longer and wider than a baseball bat, from the half-mile-thick ice covering Antarctica's Roosevelt Island. The cores, which may total 150,000 years of snowfall, almost didn't survive the boat ride to New Zealand because of a power outage.
Bertler hopes the material will help her estimate how long the Ross Ice Shelf would last under the current rate of climate change before falling apart.
Evidence from the last core her team hauled out needs further study, but it contains material that Bertler said appeared to be marine sediment that formed recently ? at least in geological terms measured in thousands of years.
That would bolster scientists' suspicions that the shelf could collapse again if global temperatures keep rising, triggering a chain of events that could raise sea levels around the world.
"From a scientific point of view, that's really exciting. From a personal point of view, that's really scary," said Bertler, a senior research fellow at the Antarctic Research Centre at the Victoria University of Wellington.
The ice shelf acts as a natural barrier protecting massive amounts of ice in West Antarctica, and that ice also could fall into the ocean if the shelf fell apart. Scientists say West Antarctica holds enough ice to raise sea levels by between 2 meters (6.5 feet) and 6 meters (20 feet) if significant parts of it were to collapse.
Ted Scambos, the lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, said that even under the worst case scenario he thinks it would take at least 500 years for West Antarctica's ice to melt.
However, he said a discovery of sediment would indicate a significant portion of the ice shelf is under threat of becoming unstable again, and that the implications were "huge."
Bertler hopes the material she recovered will help her to estimate by the end of this year whether it will take 50 years or 500 years for the ice shelf to collapse at the current rate of climate change. Those answers should prove important for policymakers who, she said, may need to decide whether to build sea walls or move populations to higher ground.
Bertler's project is one of scores that take place on Antarctica every Southern Hemisphere summer. To scientists, the continent's pristine habitat offers a unique record of the planet's weather and a laboratory for studying the effects of climate change.
Studies indicate that while the Arctic has suffered what scientists consider to be alarming rates of ice loss in recent years, the Antarctic ice shelf has remained relatively stable despite having have lost ice in recent decades.
Research in Antarctica creates huge logistical and personal challenges.
Bertler's camp on Roosevelt Island is a three-hour flight from the nearest permanent Antarctic outposts, Scott Base and McMurdo Station. The island is surrounded by the Ross Ice Shelf, the world's largest mass of floating ice, covering an area the size of Spain.
Even during the spring and summer months when Bertler's team was working there, the temperature sometimes dropped to minus 25 C (minus 13 F) and there were frequent storms and thick fog.
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Iraqi al-Qaida and Syria militants announce merger
This photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, shows smoke rising from burned cars after a huge explosion shook the Sabaa Bahrat Square, one of the capital's biggest roundabouts, in Damascus, Syria, Monday, April. 8, 2013. A car bomb rocked a busy residential and commercial district in central Damascus on Monday, killing more than a dozen with many more injured and sending a huge cloud of black smoke billowing over the capital?s skyline, Syrian state-run media said. (AP Photo/SANA)
This photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, shows smoke rising from burned cars after a huge explosion shook the Sabaa Bahrat Square, one of the capital's biggest roundabouts, in Damascus, Syria, Monday, April. 8, 2013. A car bomb rocked a busy residential and commercial district in central Damascus on Monday, killing more than a dozen with many more injured and sending a huge cloud of black smoke billowing over the capital?s skyline, Syrian state-run media said. (AP Photo/SANA)
This photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, shows Syrians gathering beneath the shattered facade of a building damaged by a car bomb, in Damascus, Syria, Monday, April. 8, 2013. A car bomb rocked a busy residential and commercial district in central Damascus on Monday, killing more than a dozen with many more injured and sending a huge cloud of black smoke billowing over the capital?s skyline, Syrian state-run media said. (AP Photo/SANA)
BEIRUT (AP) ? Al-Qaida's branch in Iraq said it has merged with Syria's extremist Jabhat al-Nusra, a move that shows the rising confidence of radicals within the Syrian rebel movement and is likely to trigger renewed fears among its international backers.
A website linked to Jabhat Al-Nusra confirmed on Tuesday the merger with the Islamic State of Iraq, whose leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi first made the announcement in a 21-minute audio posted on militant websites late Monday.
Jabhat Al-Nusra has taken an ever-bigger role in Syria's conflict over the last year, fighting in key battles and staging several large suicide bombings. The U.S. has designated it a terrorist organization.
The Syrian group has made little secret of its ideological ties to the global jihadist movement and its links across the Iraqi border but until now has not officially declared itself to be part of al-Qaida.
Al-Baghdadi said that his group ? the Islamic State of Iraq ? and Syria's Jabhat al-Nusra will now be known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham. Sham is a name for Syria and the surrounding region.
"It is time to announce to the Levantine (Syrian) people and the whole world that Jabhat al-Nusra is merely an extension and part of the Islamic State of Iraq," he said.
He said that the Iraqi group was providing half of its budget to the conflict in Syria. Al-Baghdadi said that the Syrian group would have no separate leader but instead be led by the "people of Syria themselves" ? implying that he would be in charge in both countries.
For such a high-profile Syrian rebel group to formally join al-Qaida is likely to spark concerns among backers of the opposition that are in the global terror network's crosshairs, including both Western countries and Gulf Arab states.
It may increase resentment of Jabhat al-Nusra among other rebel groups. Rebels have until now respected Nusra fighters for their prowess on the battlefield but a merger with al-Qaida will complicate any effort to send them arms from abroad.
A website linked with Jabhat al-Nusra known as al-Muhajir al-Islami ? the Islamic emigrant ? confirmed the merger.
The authenticity of neither message could be independently confirmed, but statements posted on major militant websites are rarely disputed by militant groups afterward.
Jabhat al-Nusra emerged as an offshoot of Iraq's al-Qaida branch in mid-2012 as one of a patchwork of disparate rebel groups in Syria.
One of the most dramatic attacks by the groups came on March 4, when 48 Syrian soldiers were killed in a well-coordinated ambush after seeking refuge across the border in Iraq following clashes with rebels in their home country. The attack occurred in Iraq's restive western province of Anbar, where al-Qaida is known to be active.
A top Iraqi intelligence official told The Associated Press in Baghdad that they have always known that "al-Qaida in Iraq is directing Jabhat al-Nusra."
He said they announced their unity because of "political, logistical and geographical circumstance." The official said Iraqi authorities will take "strict security measures to strike them."
Iraqi officials say the jihadi groups are sharing three military training compounds, logistics, intelligence and weapons as they grow in strength around the Syria-Iraq border, particularly in a sprawling region called al-Jazeera, which they are trying to turn into a border sanctuary they can both exploit. It could serve as a base of operations to strike either side of the border.
Baghdad officials said last week they have requested U.S. drone strikes against the fighters in Iraqi territory. A U.S. official confirmed that elements within the Iraqi government had inquired about drone strikes. But the official said the U.S. was waiting to respond until the top level of Iraqi leadership makes a formal request, which has not happened yet.
All officials spoke anonymously as they were not authorized to give official statements to the media
Eastern Syria and western Iraq have a predominantly Sunni Muslim population like most of the rebels fighting President Bashar Assad, who belongs to the minority Alawite Sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. The Baghdad government is dominated by Shiites, who are majority in Iraq.
The announcement came hours after a suicide car bomber struck Monday in the financial heart of Syria's capital, killing at least 15 people, damaging the nearby central bank.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack but such operations were claimed by Jabhat al-Nusra in the past.
Activists reported violence in different parts of Syria on Tuesday.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported air raids on suburbs of the capital Damascus as well as the northern province of Raqqa and Idlib.
Syria's crisis, which began in March 2011 with protests calling for Assad's ouster, then evolved into a civil war. The U.N. says more than 70,000 have been killed in the conflict.
_____
Youssef reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this report from Baghdad.
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Byrd came oh-so-close, but probably didn't reach North Pole
Apr. 8, 2013 ? When renowned explorer Richard E. Byrd returned from the first-ever flight to the North Pole in 1926, he sparked a controversy that remains today: Did he actually reach the pole?
Studying supercomputer simulations of atmospheric conditions on the day of the flight and double-checking Byrd's navigation techniques, a researcher at The Ohio State University has determined that Byrd indeed neared the Pole, but likely only flew within 80 miles of it before turning back to the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen.
Gerald Newsom, professor emeritus of astronomy at Ohio State, based his results in part on atmospheric simulations from the 20th Century Reanalysis project at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The study appears in a recent issue of the journal Polar Record.
"I worked out that if Byrd did make it, he must have had very unusual wind conditions. But it's clear that he really gave it a valiant try, and he deserves a lot of respect," Newsom said.
At issue is whether Byrd and pilot Floyd Bennett could have made the 1,500-mile round trip from Spitsbergen in only 15 hours and 44 minutes, when some experts were expecting a flight time of around 18 hours.
Byrd claimed that they encountered strong tail winds that sped the plane's progress. Not everyone believed him.
"The flight was incredibly controversial," Newsom explained. "The people defending Byrd were vehement that he was a hero, and the people attacking him said he was one of the world's greatest frauds. The emotion! It was incredibly vitriolic."
Newsom was unaware of the debate, however, until Raimund Goerler, now-retired archivist at Ohio State, discovered a flight journal within a large collection of items given to Ohio State by the Byrd family at the naming of the university's Byrd Polar Research Center. In 1995, Goerler opened a previously overlooked cardboard box labeled "misc." In it, he found a smudged and water-stained book containing hand-written notes from Byrd's 1926 North Pole flight and his historic 1927 trans-Atlantic flight, as well as an earlier expedition to Greenland in 1925.
Goerler looked to Newsom for help interpreting the navigational notes. "Given the strong opinions on both sides from people in the polar research community, we thought an astronomer who had no prior opinion about the flight would have the skills to do an assessment, and the neutrality to do it in an unbiased way," he said.
In fact, Newsom had helped teach celestial navigation during his early days as a graduate student, and still had an interest in the subject. With the help of current Byrd Polar archivist Laura Kissel, he pored over copies of the notebook and other related writings, including the post-flight report by Byrd's sponsors at the National Geographic Society.
Newsom was particularly curious about the solar compass that Byrd used to find his way to and from the pole. The compass was state-of-the-art for its time, with a clockwork mechanism that turned a glass cover to match the movement of the sun around the sky. By peering at a shadow in the sun compass, Byrd gauged whether the plane was heading north.
Among the artifacts in the Byrd Polar Research Center is a copy of the barograph recording made during the flight, showing atmospheric pressure. A small calibration graph was labeled with altitudes for different pressures, allowing Byrd to determine how high the plane flew throughout the flight. Byrd used the altitude to set a device mounted over an opening in the bottom of the plane, and with a stopwatch he timed how long it took for features on the ice below to move in and out of view. The stopwatch reading then gave the plane's ground speed.
Byrd could then calculate the distance traveled, and know when he and Bennett had traveled far enough to reach the pole. He would also be able to tell if a crosswind was nudging the plane off course. And he would have had to repeat the calculations every few minutes for the entire trip north.
The partially open cockpit would have been very loud, Newsom explained, so Byrd wrote messages in the book so Bennett could read his suggested course corrections. For example, there was a note from Byrd to Bennett asking for a three-degree correction to the west, to counter a crosswind.
The problem, Newsom quickly found, is that the notebook didn't contain any calculations of ground speed, only the results of the calculations. "I would have thought he'd have pages and pages of calculations," Newsom said. "Without that, there's no way of knowing for sure, but deep down there's a worry I have -- that he did it all in his head."
Newsom found that the barograph recording and calibration graph were remarkably small. A change of atmospheric pressure of one inch of mercury would equal only one quarter of an inch on the barograph record. "That's tiny," he said. "If Byrd was off by even a tenth of an inch on the barograph recording, then his altitude would be off 18 percent, and that means his ground speed would be off by 18 percent. And he had the same chance for error every time he took a reading throughout the flight."
Changes in the atmosphere at different latitudes meant that Byrd's calibration graph lost accuracy during the duration of the flight. Newsom calculated that this could have led Byrd to believe that he had reached the pole when he was still as much as 78 statute miles away, or caused him to overshoot the pole by as much as 21 statute miles.
As he wrote in the Polar Record paper: "This type of analysis by itself will not resolve any controversy over whether Byrd reached the pole. But it does indicate that he was considerably more likely to have ended up short of his goal than to have exceeded it."
Next, Newsom decided to test whether Byrd could have experienced strong tailwinds as he claimed, and to do that, the astronomer turned to an unbiased resource of his own: NOAA's 20th Century Reanalysis dataset.
Using U.S. Department of Energy supercomputers, NOAA calculated likely atmospheric conditions all over Earth for every six hours between 1870 and 2010. The data used a computer model that calculated 56 plausible scenarios for every six-hour interval, and the results of the 56 model atmospheres were averaged together to arrive at the most likely conditions.
The model winds did not appear consistent with what Byrd said, so Newsom examined each of the 56 scenarios individually, to see if even one of them allowed for strong tailwinds during the trip. They didn't.
"For the most part, he probably had a headwind going north, and a tailwind going south. But there's no evidence of the winds shifting as much as he described. Of course, the models are NOAA's best guesses for what the conditions were that day, not an actual measurement, so Byrd could have had strong tailwinds just like he said. But the simulations suggest that if he did have strong tailwinds that day, he was very lucky."
It's easy to forget, he continued, how difficult and dangerous navigation was before modern altimeters and GPS. Byrd was under a tremendous amount of pressure: he'd overloaded the plane with fuel to make sure he and Bennett wouldn't run out over the Arctic (they would likely have died in that circumstance), but the extra load made the plane hard to control; he had to calculate the plane's location constantly for nearly sixteen hours, in a screaming-loud cockpit while worried about frostbite; and partway through the trip, one of the plane's engines sprang an oil leak and seemed likely to stop working.
"That they returned at all is a major accomplishment, and the fact that they arrived back where they were supposed to -- that shows that Byrd knew how to navigate with his solar compass correctly," Newsom said.
And, since the plane was theoretically high enough to see nearly 90 miles to the horizon, Byrd may not have reached the pole, but even in the worst-case scenario, he almost certainly saw it through his cockpit window.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Ohio State University. The original article was written by Pam Frost Gorder.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- G.H. Newsom. Byrd's Arctic flight in the context of model atmospheres. Polar Record, 2012; 49 (01): 62 DOI: 10.1017/S0032247412000058
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/LD-EWzV1Qaw/130408142642.htm
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Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Google Partners With Social Infrastructure Providers Janrain And Gigya To Bring Google+ Sign-Ins To More Sites
Google today announced a new partnership with social login providers Janrain and Gigya that will bring its Google+ sign-ins to thousands of new sites. In February, Google launched Google+ sign-ins to developers who can use it on the web and for their Android and iOS apps and starting today, all of the 400,000 sites that use Janrain to provide social logins and the 600,000 sites deployed across Gigya‘s 650 premium clients can now use all of the features that come with Google’s new and improved sign-in service. As Google product management director Seth Sternberg told me yesterday, developers obviously like the fact that they can use this service to easily enable two-factor authentication on their sites. In his view, however, there are two breakout features that so far have been more successful than Google expects: over-the-air Android installs – which check if a website user also own an Android phone and lets you install a site’s mobile app with just a click – and the interactive posts to Google+ that are made possible through the new sign-in infrastructure. While he didn’t share any concrete numbers, Sternberg said that the interactive posts have resulted in “fantastic interaction rates” and that people who see them are “disproportionately likely to interact with them.” For publishers and other website owners who use Janrain and Gigya, this new feature means that they can also pull in more information about their users. The regular Google login, after all, isn’t coupled to a social network so while they could get more information about their users from Facebook and Twitter, users who used Google’s old sign-ins remained relatively anonymous. As Janrain’s CEO Larry Drebes told me yesterday, he believes that this will be the main reason for many of the 400,000 sites in the company’s network to switch (which only takes a few clicks for companies that already use his service). About a third of Janrain’s users currently use their Google credentials to log in to its partner sites, and as Drebes told me, Google’s numbers are growing at the expense of Facebook. Some of the Janrain customers that are enabling Google+ sign-ins at launch include NPR, HSN.com and Universal Music, so Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber fans can now sign in to their idols’ websites with their Google+ credentials. On Gigya, American Idol and other Fox Broadcasting properties will enable Google+ sign-ins at launch, as well asSource: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/hvVCyPVRb9U/
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These Stacking Bins Make Separating Papers and Plastics a Cinch
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Family Tree Tuesday ? Samuel Morse
Samuel Morse
Samuel Morse was an inventor,?contributing?to the invention of a single-wire telegraph system based on European telegraphs and he was a co-inventor of the Morse code. He was also an accomplished painter.?Morse had gone to England for three years to perfect his painting techniques and by the end of 1811 he gained admittance to the Royal Academy. After observing and practicing life drawing and absorbing its anatomical demands at the academy he produced his masterpiece, Dying Hercules. To some, the painting seemed to represent a political statement against the British and also the American Federalists.?
He started pursuing a means of rapid long distance communication because he was unaware of his wife?s failing health and her lonely death for days do to the current way of communication of a horse messenger. He had witnessed various experiments with Charles Thomas Jackson?s electromagnets which helped him develop the concept of a single-wire telegraph. The original Morse telegraph is part of the collections of the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution. With the help of Professor Leonard Gale, who taught chemistry at New York University, Morse introduced extra circuits of relays at frequent intervals and was soon able to send a message?through?ten?miles?of wire instead of just a few hundred yards.?In time the Morse code would become the primary language of telegraphy in the world, and is still the standard for rhythmic transmission data.
Original Morse telegraph
Samuel Finley Breese Morse was born on April 27, 1791 in Charlestown, Massachusetts to Jedidiah Morse and Elizabeth Ann Finley Breese. Jedidiah was a preacher of the Calvinist faith and supporter of the American Federalist party. He thought it helped preserve Puritan traditions and believed in the Federalist support of an alliance with Britain and a strong central government. ?He?was a notable geographer whose textbooks became a staple for students in the United States. He made significant contributions to Dobson?s?Encyclopedia, the first encyclopedia published in the United States after the American Revolution.? He became a pastor in Charlestown, Massachusetts and served until 1820. Throughout his life he was occupied with religious controversy, and in upholding the faith of the New England church against the assaults of Unitarianism.?
Jedidiah Morse painting by Samuel Morse
Sidney Edwards Morse was Samuel?s brother who was a geographer, journalist and also an inventor. He became a contributor to the Columbian Centinel?of Boston, writing a series of articles that illustrated the danger of the American Union from an undue multiplication of new states in the south, and showing that it would give to a sectional minority the control of the government. He moved to New York in 1823 and founded the New York Observer?with his brother Richard Cary Morse. The newspaper became the oldest religious newspaper in New York and the oldest weekly newspaper in New York City. Sidney remained as senior editor and proprietor until 1858 when he retired.
Samuel?s maternal great grandfather and namesake was?Reverend Samuel Finley who founded the West Nottingham Academy and was the fifth president and an original trustee of the College of New Jersey (now known as Princeton University) from 1761-1766.
Check out Samuel Morse?s family tree and see how you may be related!
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Source: http://www.geni.com/blog/family-tree-tuesday-samuel-morse-379769.html
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Researchers find potential map to more effective HIV vaccine
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Public release date: 3-Apr-2013[ | E-mail |
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Duke University Medical Center
DURHAM, NC By tracking the very earliest days of one person's robust immune response to HIV, researchers have charted a new route for developing a long-sought vaccine that could boost the body's ability to neutralize the virus.
The research team, led by Barton F. Haynes, M.D., director of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute, and John Mascola, M.D., acting director of the NIH Vaccine Research Center, have for the first time described the co-evolution of antibodies and virus in a person with HIV whose immune system mounted a broad attack against the pathogen. Findings are published April 3, 2013, in the journal Nature.
Most vaccines work by inducing this antibody response, but the HIV virus has proved to be a difficult vaccine target. When HIV antibodies are produced, they typically have a limited range, and the virus changes rapidly to escape harm, leading to an arms race that the virus usually wins.
The current research was aided by new technologies that can detect early infection and track the subsequent immune response and virus evolution. It fills gaps in knowledge that have impeded development of an effective vaccine for a virus that has killed more than 30 million people worldwide.
"This project could only have been carried out by a multidisciplinary team working closely together," said Haynes, who led the work as a project of the Duke Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology-Immunogen Discovery (CHAVI-ID) consortium, which is funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "For the first time, we have mapped not only the evolutionary pathway of the antibody, but also the evolutionary pathway of the virus, defining the sequence of events involved that induce the broadly neutralizing antibodies."
The key to this finding was a person in Africa whose HIV infection was detected so early that the virus had not yet mutated to avoid the immune assault. The individual also exhibited a fortuitous trait that occurs in only about 20 percent of people infected with HIV an immune system that produces broadly neutralizing antibodies. These immune weapons attack vulnerable sites of the virus that are conserved despite mutations. In identifying the early viral infection, the team found the outer envelope, the viral surface glycoprotein, which triggered the start of the broadly neutralizing antibody development.
By tracking the precise virus and antibody pathways involved, the Duke CHAVI-ID and NIH teams now have a detailed road map for development of a potential vaccine, which involves immunogens with an outer envelope specifically selected to stimulate the production of broadly neutralizing antibodies.
"The next step is to use that information to make sequential viral envelopes and test them as experimental vaccines," Haynes said. "This is a process of discovery and we've come a long way with regard to understanding what the problem has been."
###
In addition to Haynes, study authors at Duke include lead author Hua-Xin Liao, plus Feng Gao, S. Munir Alam, Kevin Wiehe, Garnett Kelsoe, Guang Yang, Shi-Mao Xia, David C. Montefiori, Robert Parks, Krissey E. Lloyd, Richard M. Scearce, Kelly A. Soderberg, Yue Chen, Fangping Cai and Sheri Chen.
Additional authors include Rebecca Lynch, Tongqing Zhou, Jiang Zhu, Lawrence Shapiro, Mark K. Louder, Lillan M. Tran, Stephanie Moquin, Xiulian Du, M. Gordon Joyce, Sanjay Srivatsan, Baoshan Zhang, Anqi Zheng, Peter D. Kwong and John R. Mascola from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Thomas B. Kepler from Boston University; Scott D. Boyd, Andrew Z. Fire and Krishna M. Roskin from Stanford University; Chaim A. Schramm and Zhenhai Zhang from Columbia University; James C. Mullikin and the NISC Comparative Sequencing Program at NIH; S. Gnanakaran, Peter Hraber and Bette T.M. Korber of Los Alamos National Laboratory; Myron Cohen of the University of North Carolina; Gift Kaminga of UNC Project, Malawi; George M. Shaw and Beatrice H. Hahn of the University of Pennsylvania.
The NIAID and National Institutes of Health provided funding for the research to the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology (AI067854) and the Center for Vaccine Immunology-Immunogen Discovery (AI100645).
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Public release date: 3-Apr-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Sarah Avery
sarah.avery@duke.edu
919-660-1306
Duke University Medical Center
DURHAM, NC By tracking the very earliest days of one person's robust immune response to HIV, researchers have charted a new route for developing a long-sought vaccine that could boost the body's ability to neutralize the virus.
The research team, led by Barton F. Haynes, M.D., director of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute, and John Mascola, M.D., acting director of the NIH Vaccine Research Center, have for the first time described the co-evolution of antibodies and virus in a person with HIV whose immune system mounted a broad attack against the pathogen. Findings are published April 3, 2013, in the journal Nature.
Most vaccines work by inducing this antibody response, but the HIV virus has proved to be a difficult vaccine target. When HIV antibodies are produced, they typically have a limited range, and the virus changes rapidly to escape harm, leading to an arms race that the virus usually wins.
The current research was aided by new technologies that can detect early infection and track the subsequent immune response and virus evolution. It fills gaps in knowledge that have impeded development of an effective vaccine for a virus that has killed more than 30 million people worldwide.
"This project could only have been carried out by a multidisciplinary team working closely together," said Haynes, who led the work as a project of the Duke Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology-Immunogen Discovery (CHAVI-ID) consortium, which is funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "For the first time, we have mapped not only the evolutionary pathway of the antibody, but also the evolutionary pathway of the virus, defining the sequence of events involved that induce the broadly neutralizing antibodies."
The key to this finding was a person in Africa whose HIV infection was detected so early that the virus had not yet mutated to avoid the immune assault. The individual also exhibited a fortuitous trait that occurs in only about 20 percent of people infected with HIV an immune system that produces broadly neutralizing antibodies. These immune weapons attack vulnerable sites of the virus that are conserved despite mutations. In identifying the early viral infection, the team found the outer envelope, the viral surface glycoprotein, which triggered the start of the broadly neutralizing antibody development.
By tracking the precise virus and antibody pathways involved, the Duke CHAVI-ID and NIH teams now have a detailed road map for development of a potential vaccine, which involves immunogens with an outer envelope specifically selected to stimulate the production of broadly neutralizing antibodies.
"The next step is to use that information to make sequential viral envelopes and test them as experimental vaccines," Haynes said. "This is a process of discovery and we've come a long way with regard to understanding what the problem has been."
###
In addition to Haynes, study authors at Duke include lead author Hua-Xin Liao, plus Feng Gao, S. Munir Alam, Kevin Wiehe, Garnett Kelsoe, Guang Yang, Shi-Mao Xia, David C. Montefiori, Robert Parks, Krissey E. Lloyd, Richard M. Scearce, Kelly A. Soderberg, Yue Chen, Fangping Cai and Sheri Chen.
Additional authors include Rebecca Lynch, Tongqing Zhou, Jiang Zhu, Lawrence Shapiro, Mark K. Louder, Lillan M. Tran, Stephanie Moquin, Xiulian Du, M. Gordon Joyce, Sanjay Srivatsan, Baoshan Zhang, Anqi Zheng, Peter D. Kwong and John R. Mascola from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Thomas B. Kepler from Boston University; Scott D. Boyd, Andrew Z. Fire and Krishna M. Roskin from Stanford University; Chaim A. Schramm and Zhenhai Zhang from Columbia University; James C. Mullikin and the NISC Comparative Sequencing Program at NIH; S. Gnanakaran, Peter Hraber and Bette T.M. Korber of Los Alamos National Laboratory; Myron Cohen of the University of North Carolina; Gift Kaminga of UNC Project, Malawi; George M. Shaw and Beatrice H. Hahn of the University of Pennsylvania.
The NIAID and National Institutes of Health provided funding for the research to the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology (AI067854) and the Center for Vaccine Immunology-Immunogen Discovery (AI100645).
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-04/dumc-rfp040113.php
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Monday, April 1, 2013
Top 10 trends shaping the future of publishing | Mal Warwick's Blog ...
By?Johanna Vondeling???
1. Everyone?s a publisher
Now?that digital content is popular and relatively easy and inexpensive to produce, millions of individuals and thousands of non-book-publishing media companies have leapt into the business of creating and distributing digital content (often coupled with print-on-demand options).[i]?[ii]?The near-elimination of barriers to entry into the publishing marketplace has produced an ever-increasing flood of information and entertainment options for consumers.[iii]
Moreover, publishers? primary competition today isn?t other books, but rather other forms of media, such as social media platforms, games, and streaming media. As the presence and relevance of physical retail for books continues to decline, so too will the necessity for other entities ? including authors and other content producers ? to work with established legacy publishers to bring books to market.[iv]
2. Content comes first
All content producers now need to approach format as a secondary consideration. The innovators are designing work-flows that prioritize the development and (pre-publication) tagging of content irrespective of format, knowing that the eventual outputs could be infinite: Print book? E-book? Online course? Webinar? App? Blog? Tweet? Tagging must be ?semantic? (tagged for meaning, not just coincidence of terms), to facilitate discoverability. Content producers must make it as easy as possible for content to be re-purposed by its curators and leveraged and shared by its marketers and distribution partners.
3. Content marketing?is king
Content is still king. And content marketing (defined as ?marketing without marketing, or building soft power and social gravity for a brand through shared values and interests?) is edging out traditional push-marketing practices. By disseminating great quality and immersive content through social platforms, content producers can market themselves without interrupting consumers with more explicit advertising.[v]
Content marketing facilitates reader engagement. Engagement, in turn, produces strong brand ties, leading to increased purchasing, product loyalty, and customer advocacy. But there is no standard definition or metric for engagement, nor do most organizations fully understand the migration from engagement to revenue. The challenges are 1) understanding what?s happening within the dynamic ecosystem of content and social media and 2) being able to make tactical changes to increase conversion and revenue.
4. Big data rules
The amount of data in our world has been exploding. Analyzing large data sets?so-called big data?has become a key basis of competition, driving growth and innovation. The increasing volume and detail of information captured by enterprises, and the rise of multimedia and social media, have all been fueling exponential growth in data.[vi]?As a result, businesses now have broad and deep visibility into their stakeholders? behaviors and values. But which information matters most? Big data offers promise in making sense of this complexity.
The few businesses that have successful migrated from print-first to digital-first models have invested significantly in building in-house data and analytics teams.[vii]?While the growing importance of data analysts should not be under-estimated, the need for creative thinking in the changing world of marketing has never been greater. Note the rise in recruitment of ?data scientists,? who are savvy in computer science but ? crucially ? also able to apply creative thinking to data-driven challenges.
5. Mobile matters
The number of mobile-connected devices will exceed the world?s population in 2013.[viii] In 2012, mobile subscriptions in China surpassed 1 billion and mobile Web users overtook PC access to the web.[ix]?Millions of people in developing countries may never own a book or a computer, but they do own a mobile phone.
To move forward in ?mobile optimization? means content must be conceived of and designed explicitly for mobile devices. Every experience offered through digital channels ? every web page, shopping cart and piece of rich content ? must work well on any device in any location. Customers generally understand that concessions need to be made for the smaller screen, touchscreen input, and slower speed, but they won?t accept unnecessary hassle or delay. Apps are a part of today?s approach to mobile, but they are not a cure-all to this challenge, as use of the mobile web increases daily.[x]
6. The Internet is the classroom
The education industry is experiencing dramatic disruption. Profits and enrollment at for-profit colleges and universities in the United States are growing at a staggering rate.[xi]?We?re witnessing the proliferation of ?massive open online courses (?MOOCs?).[xii]?Education start-ups are creating and offering online study groups, flashcards, lecture notes, and a wealth of other tools for free. Investment in education technology companies increased from less than $100 million in 2007 to nearly $400 million last year.[xiii]?And while digital textbooks have been slow to gain adoption, many education providers are turning away from print textbooks in favor of digital devices in classrooms and lecture halls. In response, some publishers are diving head-first into the growing business of online education.[xiv]
The disruptive power of information technology may be our best hope for containing the soaring costs that are driving a growing number of students into ruinous debt or out of higher education altogether. It is also a potential boon to those displaced workers under pressure to become ?life-long learners.? But this disruptive power also poses a potential existential threat to many physical universities and traditional textbook publishers.[xv]
7. Get used to strange bedfellows
Legacy industries, like book publishing, are realizing that they can?t go it alone if they hope to survive and thrive. Many are forming unlikely alliances or funding start-ups to help them adapt amid the present flux and strategize for the future. In 2012, Pearson bought Author Solutions, one of the leading providers of self-publishing services. In 2013, Pearson and Kaplan have both launched incubator programs to help vet and mentor education-tech start-ups. Macmillan has been aggressively investing a fund of over $100 million in ed-tech start-ups.[xvi]?Other publishers are leveraging ties with other branded media platforms and content providers. Hyperion is selling its backlist and will focus exclusively on content tied to its sister companies Disney and ABC.[xvii]?Wiley is distributing material from (former competitor) OpenStax College, an open-source platform that makes introductory college textbooks available as free downloads.[xviii]
8. Set up high-value networks
Platforms like Craigslist and eBay engage in ?commons-creation? by establishing virtual spaces in which strangers can pool their ideas, sell products or services, and make social connections. The platforms that can provide real value gain users (and often revenue) quickly. We?re also witnessing a dramatic rise in the use digital personal assistants networks like Task Rabbit.
And Amazon successfully launched Audiobook Creation Exchange, a platform that connects freelance narrators of audio books with the owners of content who are looking to publish audio books. As workers experience less job security and turn increasingly to independent and task-based employment options, such platforms provide value by leveraging the sponsor?s ?right of way? to create credible networks that connect people seeking products and services with those eager to provide them.
9. Crowdfunding has come of age
Digital crowdsourcing platforms like Indiegogo, Kickstarter, Unbound, and Pubslush are proliferating, gaining both users and donors at a remarkable pace. Now, content curators can use these platforms to locate content that readers are attracted to and willing to pay for ? before it is produced and distributed. Combined with the boom in self-publishing, this trend means more opportunities for cultural producers to identify content with proven market demand, and more ways to identify the hardcore fan base for a particular set of content, before making the decision to invest.[xix]
10. The means of production is going hyper-local
Paradoxically, globalization is both making it easier to purchase a product on the other side of the planet and moving the production of goods closer to the site of purchase. The emergence of ?additive manufacturing? and 3-D printing holds the promise that individual creators and users can ?make? anything in their own homes. Book and magazine publishers are printing closer to their customers through globally dispersed printing operations and print-on-demand programs. Espresso machines facilitate the printing of out-of-stock and self-published books in physical bookstores.[xx]
All these developments offer the opportunity to bring production closer to the customer, facilitating just-in-time sales and providing more sustainable alternatives to current distribution practices.
Johanna Vondeling is Vice President for Business Development at Berrett-Koehler Publishers.?
Notes
i.???????? ?Shatzkin: Soon, Most People Working in Publishing Won?t Be Working at Publishing Companies.? Digital Book World. March 19, 2013.
ii.???????? ?Ecco, MLB Team Up for E-book Series.? Publishers Weekly. March 20, 2013.
iii.???????? ?The Ten Awful Truths About Book Publishing.? Steve Piersanti. March 6, 2012.
iv.???????? ?Book Publishers Scramble to Rewrite Their Future.? Wired. March 19, 2013.
v.???????? Adobe/Econsultancy Quarterly 2013 Digital Intelligence Briefing. January, 2013.
vi.???????? ?Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity.? McKinsey Global Institute. March, 2011.
vii.???????? ?The FT has ?crossed over? to become a digital business?but can anyone else replicate that feat?? paidContent. March 18, 2013.
viii.???????? Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2012-2017. February 6, 2013.
ix.???????? ?2013: The year nothing but mobile matters for any business selling in China.? MobiThinking. December 20, 2012.
x.???????? Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2012-2017. February 6, 2013.
xi.???????? ?The Rise of For-Profit Universities and Colleges.? University World News. July 15, 2012.
xii.???????? ?Massive open online courses: Time and a little money are a worthy investment.? Financial Times. March 11, 2013.
xiii.???????? ?The Siege of Academe.? Washington Monthly. September/October 2012.
?xiv.???????? ?Wiley Launches Digital Classroom, Video and Ebook E-Learning Site.? Digital Book World. March 19, 2013.
xv.???????? ?The Siege of Academe.? Washington Monthly. September/October 2012.
xvi.???????? Publishers Lunch. March 7, 2013.
xvii. ? ? ? ?Publishers Lunch. March 7. 2013
xviii. ? ? ? ??Wiley, OpenStax Team on College Biology Textbook.? InformationWeek.com. March 11, 2013.
xix.???????? ?Veronica Mars Lives again: Lessons from a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign.? paidContent. March 17, 2013.
xx.???????? ?Just Press Print.? The Economist. February 12, 2010.
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Source: http://malwarwickonbooks.com/2013/04/01/top-10-trends-shaping-the-future-of-publishing/
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April Fools' Day roundup: hamster beats, pirate's booty and Play-Doh printing
April Fools' Day is tough. Believe us. We know. It's 24 hours of fake news, bad jokes and Gangnam Style references. But not all of it is the internet equivalent to lining a toilet with plastic wrap. Sometimes, good stuff manages to slip through the proverbial cracks in the web. After the break, check out some of the holiday's highlights. If you dare.
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/01/april-fools/
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Georgia women rally to beat Stanford 61-59
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) ? Andy Landers looked down at the stat sheet on the table in front of him. The numbers were almost exactly what the longtime Georgia coach anticipated.
Yes, even the final score: Georgia 61, Stanford 59.
Jasmine Hassell scored six of her 13 points in the final 3 minutes and fourth-seeded Georgia beat top-seeded Stanford 61-59 on Saturday night to reach the NCAA women's regional finals for the first time since 2004.
Georgia overcame three major scoring droughts, including falling behind 9-0, to oust the No. 1 seed from the Spokane Regional and end Stanford's hopes of reaching the Final Four for the sixth straight year.
Jasmine James led Georgia (28-6) with 16 points, including a pair of free throws with 23.5 seconds left that gave the Lady Bulldogs a 60-56 lead. It's the 11th trip to the regional finals in Landers long tenure at Georgia.
"As we came down the stretch, our players, I think figured out that they could make some plays and really did a nice job," Landers said. "I think the thing that's so good about the comeback and going ahead is that each one of those five players did something that was really significant as we did that. And they did something really significant on each end of the floor."
Chiney Ogwumike led Stanford (33-3) with 26 points, but was held to eight points in the second half. She also had 12 rebounds.
Tiaria Griffin scored 13 points, and Shacobia Barbee added nine as the Lady Bulldogs turned in another superb defensive effort to stymie Stanford and ruin any hopes of a Pac-12 showdown with No. 2 seed California in the regional final.
Georgia will play for a trip to the Final Four on Monday night against either the Golden Bears or No. 6 seed LSU. Georgia has not made the Final Four since 1999. Georgia reached the round of 16 in 2005-07 and 2010-11, only to get ousted at that stage each time, including a 73-36 loss to Stanford in 2010.
Saturday night wasn't so much about getting even with the Cardinal, as it was about getting Georgia back to where it believes they belong.
"To finally make the next step and go to the Elite 8 and now to be going into another game to try to compete to go to the Final Four is definitely back to where Georgia basketball needs to be, trying to compete for a national championship," James said.
Whether it was the scoring droughts or the trouble slowing down Ogwumike in the first half, there was plenty of evidence that made Georgia's late rally hard to fathom. Georgia overcame a 5-minute scoreless drought to start the game, another 5 minutes with just two free throws late in the first half and another 7-minute lapse in the second half with just one basket that allowed Stanford to build a 42-34 lead with 11:50 remaining.
Still, the Lady Bulldogs were hanging around because Stanford made just 3 of 20 shots to start the second half. After Ogwumike scored 18 in the first half, Georgia made an adjustment to force more help on the Stanford star. It worked because Ogwumike's supporting cast struggled.
Amber Orrange added 17 points for Stanford, but was only 7 of 24 from the field. The Cardinal shot 29 percent in the second half and struggled to find open looks for Ogwumike. Second-leading scorer Joslyn Tinkle struggled with foul trouble in the first half and went more than 35 minutes of game time without scoring. She finished with five points.
"I think the reason that I'm not going ballistic right now is like we're 33-3," Ogwumike said. "That was a huge achievement for our program."
Then it was time for Hassell to show up in the final 8 minutes. Her basket pulled the Lady Bulldogs even at 42, and the lead went back and forth with neither team leading by more than four points. Orrange dropped in a 16-footer for a 50-46 Stanford lead with 4:22 remaining, before Georgia's closing surge.
Barbee converted a three-point play and after Ogwumike followed Orrange's miss with a basket, Anne Marie Armstrong knocked down a 3-pointer for a 52-all tie. Orrange hit a 3, but Hassell hit consecutive shots and Georgia was back in front 56-55 with 1:45 left.
Mikaela Ruef missed in close twice and was fouled on the third attempt with 1:21 left. Ruef, a 53 percent free throw shooter on the season, split the pair for the fifth tie of the game, but Hassell answered right away for Georgia for a 58-56 lead with 1:02 left. Tinkle then lost control of a pass underneath. Georgia ran the clock before Griffin missed a 3. Barbee got the offensive rebound and James was fouled with 23.5 seconds left. She hit the pair for a four-point lead.
Stanford struggled to get a good look, but Tinkle finally hit a 3 with 5.1 seconds left. Georgia threw long to James on the inbound pass and the Lady Bulldogs were able to run off all but the final 0.8 seconds before Barbee was fouled. She split her free throws for the final margin and Georgia ran off the floor celebrating the upset.
"The great thing about it is, we're really good defensively and we rarely have droughts. So if we can just hang in there until somebody hits a shot, we're going to be OK," Landers said. "That's what I think happened tonight."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/georgia-women-rally-beat-stanford-61-59-030819604--spt.html
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