MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WMBF) The Myrtle Beach International Airport, specifically MSE Branded Foods, is holding a job fair to hire 65-70 people this week.
MYR will host a job fair Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday from 8a.m.-6p.m. Applicants are asked to bring two forms of identification and expect to have an interview lasting 10-15 minutes.
Anyone who is offered a position at the airport will have to pass a federal background test.
The jobs are all food service industry based such as cashiers, cooks, servers and bartenders.
The new employees will work at one of the restaurants in the new terminal. Nacho Hippo, Caribou Coffee and Steak ?n' Shake will be by the boarding gates and the Boardwalk Caf? will be before the security checkpoint.
It was previously announced that a Dunkin Donuts and Bubba's Fish Shack would also be new additions at the new terminal, but MSE Branded Foods General Manager Andy Nicol said those restaurants aren't on the list as of now.
Nicol said brining in nearly 70 jobs is a boost for the Myrtle Beach economy.
"I think it's important for the growth of Myrtle Beach. We have an opportunity to find some great qualified people and help them get to work, it's good for Myrtle Beach," Nicol said.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Faced with the growing theft of U.S.trade secrets, the White House said on Wednesday it was stepping up diplomatic pressure and mulling tougher laws to stem the threat to American businesses and security from China and other nations.
The plan includes working with like-minded governments to put pressure on bad actors, using trade policy tools, increasing criminal prosecutions and launching a 120-day review to see whether new U.S. legislation is needed.
"A hacker in China can acquire source code from a software company in Virginia without leaving his or her desk," U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said at a White House event to unveil the strategy.
Although the White House report did not cite China by name, many see the Asian giant as the main threat. A study released this week by a private security firm accused the Chinese military of orchestrating numerous cyber attacks against U.S. businesses, a charge Beijing has denied.
The Obama administration said its strategy aims to counter what Holder called "a significant and steadily increasing threat to America's economy and national security interests."
"As new technology has torn down traditional barriers to international business and global commerce, they also make it easier for criminals to steal secrets and to do so from anywhere, anywhere in the world," Holder said.
Last week, Representative Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, said U.S. companies suffered estimated losses in 2012 of more than $300 billion due to theft of trade secrets, a large share due to Chinese cyber espionage.
The White House report listed 17 cases of trade-secret theft by Chinese companies or individuals since 2010, far more than any other country mentioned in the report.
U.S. corporate victims of trade-secret theft have included General Motors, Ford, DuPont, Dow Chemical, Motorola, Boeing and Cargill. A target company can see the payoff from research investment evaporate as a result of corporate espionage and lose market position, competitive advantage and efficiencies.
"We have repeatedly raised our concerns about trade-secret theft by any means at the highest levels with senior Chinese officials and we will continue to do so," said Robert Hormats, an undersecretary of state.
Those cases cited mostly involved employees stealing trade secrets on the job rather than cyber attacks.
Victoria Espinel, the White House intellectual property rights enforcement coordinator, said the effort aims to protect the innovation that drives the U.S. economy and job creation.
MIXED RESPONSE
Cybersecurity and intelligence experts welcomed the White House plan as a first step, but some said much more needed to be done.
"You've got a nation-state taking on private corporations," said former CIA Director Michael Hayden. "That's kind of unprecedented ... We have not approached resolution with this at all."
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's largest business lobby, offered a lukewarm statement of support, while other industry groups expressed more enthusiasm for the effort.
"We strongly endorse and applaud the administration's focus on curbing theft of trade secrets, which poses a serious and growing threat to the software industry around the world," said Business Software Alliance President and CEO Robert Holleyman.
The report that laid out the strategy repeated a 2011 White House recommendation that the maximum sentence for economic espionage be increased to at least 20 years, from 15 currently.
Another part of the solution is promoting a set of "best practices" that companies can use to protect themselves against cyber attacks and other espionage, Espinel said.
The report also said the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation was "expanding its efforts to fight computer intrusions that involve the theft of trade secrets by individual, corporate and nation-state cyber hackers."
In an interview, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said the problem of trade-secret theft in China was a factor in the decisions of some U.S. companies to move operations back to the United States.
The companies have "had very frank conversations with the Chinese, (saying) 'You know it's one thing to accept a certain level of copyright knock-offs, but if you're going to take our core technology, then we're better off being in our home country,'" Kirk told Reuters.
(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick and Deborah Charles; Editing by Tim Ahmann and Eric Beech)
If you've been wondering what all the Google this, Glass that fuss is all about, Mountain View's revealed what it'll be like to actually wear the virtual specs with a new video, now that it's announced limited availability. In it, we get to see how the search giant's integrated all its apps and functions in the upcoming wearable computer, how you're likely to use it, and what the results might be. To activate the device, users say "ok, glass," then it's off to the races.
From there, we see a hot air balloonist and ballet dancer initiate video recording and send an email or text with a voice command, which are likely to be jobs one and two for most users. Then, a (hopefully not distracted) stunt plane flyer joins a Google hangout mid-flight and sends real-time video to other members of the group, showing the Google+ and social interaction aspects of Project Glass. Image search is shown off by an ice sculptor, who selects various perspectives of a tiger for some inspiration.
The lost and confused are shown navigating their way through New York streets, the Golden Gate bridge, an airport and a ski hill to highlight Google's latest Maps and Now goodies, while a tourist all-too-happy with his Thai meal learns the word for delicious in that language using Google Translate. Finally, there's oodles of first person video from a fencer, horse jumper, trapeze artist, ping pong player and fire juggler, to name a few. All that gives us a sneak preview of the many, many YouTube videos likely to come from the device when it arrives -- though we'd hate to drop, burn or stab it by accident, given the cost. You'll find the video right after the break.
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro would comfortably win a presidential election should his boss Hugo Chavez's cancer force him out of power, according to an opinion poll.
The first survey on such a scenario, by local pollster Hinterlaces, gave Maduro a potential 50 percent of votes, compared to 36 percent for opposition leader Henrique Capriles.
Chavez returned to Venezuela on Monday after a long stay in Cuba to continue treatment at home for the disease that is jeopardizing his 14-year socialist rule of the South American OPEC nation.
He has named 50-year-old former bus driver and union activist Maduro as his preferred successor. But Capriles, 40, a center-left state governor who lost to Chavez in a presidential vote last year, would likely run again.
Chavez still has not said a word in public since his December 11 operation in Cuba, and Venezuelans were debating on Tuesday the various possible scenarios after his homecoming - from full recovery, to resignation, or even death from the cancer.
Should Chavez be forced out, Venezuela's constitution stipulates an election must be held within 30 days.
Capriles, who crossed swords with Hinterlaces at various points during the presidential election, again mocked its director, Oscar Schemel, as being biased against him.
"That man is not a pollster, he's on the government's payroll," Capriles told local TV.
"He said in December I would lose the Miranda governorship," he added, referring to his defeat of government heavyweight Elias Jaua, now foreign minister, in that local race.
Opinion surveys are notoriously controversial and divergent in Venezuela, with both sides routinely accusing pollsters of being in the pocket of the other.
Hinterlaces surveyed 1,230 people between January 30-February 9.
After many starts and stops, the day in court seemed to finally arrive Thursday for 80 investors who felt they had been hornswoggled by the husband of Assemblywoman Diane Harkey (R-Dana Point).
But now a fatal blow to the $43 million lawsuit against Dan Harkey and his Point Center Financial has likely come instead.
Bankruptcy protection Point Center Financial is filing for this week would stop the Orange County Superior Court civil trial.
"I am devastated," one plaintiff tells the Weekly.
The suit accused Dan Harkey of fraud, using investments to fund the Harkeys' lavish lifestyle, and contributions from developers of doomed projects financed by Point Center Financial to pay for Diane Harkey's political career.
The assemblywoman is not part of the fraud allegations, but what's curious is she originally campaigned three terms ago as a self-made woman who would use her own funds from her successful financial career to win office, and then apply her business acumen to legislating. It was later revealed Point Center Financial developers had actually ponied up tens of thousands to put her in her Assembly seat.
And yet, as the termed-out assemblywoman has now announced plans to run in 2014 for a seat on the State Board of Equalization (which collects California taxes), she is still pointing to her business career. Having also expressed an interest in graduating to the state Senate in 2014, Harkey has put this out to solicit interest in a March 21 fund-raiser for the Board of Equalization campaign:
Serving you in the California State Assembly since 2008, I have witnessed first-hand the difference having a strong advocate on your side can make. Skills acquired in my previous career spanning 30 years in banking and corporate finance, provided me with an in-depth understanding of finance, business, taxation, and economics. I have spent my time in the Legislature serving on all budget, finance and taxation committees. Applying real-world experience, I have argued for, drafted and supported taxpayer and business-friendly legislation, while struggling to help you, the entrepreneurs, corporate executives and hard-working taxpayers, through the Sacramento financial maze.
We have a lot of work to do to return the gold to California, and I respectfully request your support for member of the State Board of Equalization in 2014. Working together, we can make a difference!
Her husband's Point Center Financial is making a difference by seeking bankruptcy protection not because of the Orange County fraud case, but to stop a separate lawsuit in San Diego County by a builder owed millions from a court judgment against Harkey's company. The defense claims the builder was going after investor funds and had to file for bankruptcy as a strategy to stop that.
Wrap your head around that: Investors who say they've been ripped off by Point Center Financial won't get relief in court (for now) because Point Center Financial is filing for bankruptcy to protect investor funds.
That repeated popping sound you just heard was from 80 heads exploding.
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Source: www.ibtimes.com --- Sunday, February 17, 2013 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Monday the central bank's 2 percent inflation target aims not just to boost prices but to prevent them from rising well above that level. ...
Watcharapong Thongrung
The Nation February 18, 2013 1:00 am
In another measure to deal with the situation, the Electricity General Authority of Thailand will consider buying electricity from independent power producers at a unit price lower than cost and at a rate that is cheaper than bunker oil, to minimise the need to import the expensive fuel, said Pallapa Ruangrong. Factories might be asked to operate during night hours, when electricity consumption by households usually reduces, and department stores will be encouraged to turn up the thermostat on their air conditioners. Any companies cooperating with this scheme will be incentivised with a per-unit Bt2 reduction in the electricity fee, compared with a per-unit production cost of Bt6 for production relying on bunker oil, or Bt8 for diesel.
These measures will be proposed to the Energy Ministry for initial consideration, Pallapa said, adding that they could keep Thailand from consuming too much power in April. To cope with a halt in delivery of gas from Myanmar to Thailand in April, stockpiling of a large daily amount of fuel and gas for local consumption is underway, while production of electricity relying on the depleted supplies will be switched temporarily to alternative fuels, Kurujit Nakornthap, a deputy permanent secretary of the Energy Ministry, said yesterday.
The plans are similar to a halt last year, from April 8-17, but it is not yet known how many days this year's halt in operations will last, he said, adding that the annual halt, resulting from regular maintenance work, is allowed for no more than 15 days per year under deals each contractor has with PTT, which is granted concessions by the Myanmar authorities. During the 10-day break last year, LNG needed for electricity production was cut. lost at around 1.1 cubic foot each day, andThree major power plants - two in Ratchaburi and one belonging to TriEnergy Co Ltd - that rely on LNG stopped operating, while three other plants switched to alternative production methods relying on bunker oil, he added.
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Contact: David Orenstein david_orenstein@brown.edu 401-863-1862 Brown University
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] Aphasia, an impairment in speaking and understanding language after a stroke, is frustrating both for victims and their loved ones. In two talks Saturday, Feb. 16, 2013, at the conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, Sheila Blumstein, the Albert D. Mead Professor of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences at Brown University, will describe how she has been translating decades of brain science research into a potential therapy for improving speech production in these patients. Blumstein will speak at a news briefing at 10 a.m. and at a symposium at 3 p.m.
About 80,000 people develop aphasia each year in the United States alone. Nearly all of these individuals have difficulty speaking. For example, some patients (nonfluent aphasics) have trouble producing sounds clearly, making it frustrating for them to speak and difficult for them to be understood. Other patients (fluent aphasics) may select the wrong sound in a word or mix up the order of the sounds. In the latter case, "kitchen" can become "chicken." Blumstein's idea is to use guided speech to help people who have suffered stroke-related brain damage to rebuild their neural speech infrastructure.
Blumstein has been studying aphasia and the neural basis of language her whole career. She uses brain imaging, acoustic analysis, and other lab-based techniques to study how the brain maps sound to meaning and meaning to sound.
What Blumstein and other scientists believe is that the brain organizes words into networks, linked both by similarity of meaning and similarity of sound. To say "pear," a speaker will also activate other competing words like "apple" (which competes in meaning) and "bear"(which competes in sound). Despite this competition, normal speakers are able to select the correct word.
In a study published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience in 2010, for example, she and her co-authors used functional magnetic resonance imaging to track neural activation patterns in the brains of 18 healthy volunteers as they spoke English words that had similar sounding "competitors" ("cape" and "gape" differ subtly in the first consonant by voicing, i.e. the timing of the onset of vocal cord vibration). Volunteers also spoke words without similar sounding competitors ("cake" has no voiced competitor in English; gake is not a word). What the researchers found is that neural activation within a network of brain regions was modulated differently when subjects said words that had competitors versus words that did not.
One way this competition-mediated difference is apparent in speech production is that words with competitors are produced differently from words that do not have competitors. For example, the voicing of the "t" in "tot" (with a voiced competitor 'dot') is produced with more voicing than the "t" in "top" (there is no 'dop' in English). Through acoustic analysis of the speech of people with aphasia, Blumstein has shown that this difference persists, suggesting that their word networks are still largely intact.
An experimental therapy
The therapy Blumstein has begun testing takes advantage of what she and colleagues have learned about these networks.
"We believe that although the network infrastructure is relatively spared in aphasia, the word representations themselves aren't as strongly activated as they are in normal subjects, leading to speech production impairments," she said. "Our goal is to strengthen these word representations. In doing so it should not only improve production of trained words, but also have a cascading effect and strengthen the representations of words that are part of that word's network."
Much like physical therapy seeks to restore movement by guiding a patient through particularly crucial motions, Blumstein's therapy is designed to restrengthen how the brain accesses its network to produce words by engaging patients in a series of carefully designed utterances.
"We hope to build up the representation of that word and at the same time influence its whole network," she said.
Overall the therapy is designed to last 10 weeks with two sessions a week. In one step of the regimen, a classic technique, a therapist will ask patients to repeat certain training words with a deliberate, melodic intonation. The next session the therapy would repeat those words without the chant-like tone.
"Having to produce words under different speaking conditions shapes and strengthens underlying word representations," said Blumstein, who is affiliated with the Brown Institute for Brain Science.
Confronting the delicate distinctions of words in the network head-on, Blumstein asks patients to say words that sound similar. "Pear" and "Bear" for example. Explicitly saying similar words, Blumstein said, requires that their differences be accentuated, thus helping strengthen the brain's ability to distinguish them.
Finally the therapy builds upon these earlier exercises by encouraging patients to repeat words they have not been practicing. A patient's ability to correctly repeat untrained words is an important test of whether the therapy can generalize to the broader networks of the training words.
In early testing with four patients, two fluent and two nonfluent, Blumstein said she has seen good results. After only two proof-of-concept sessions one week's worth of training three of four patients showed improved precision in producing similar sounding trained and untrained words, as measured via computer-assisted acoustic analysis. The patients also produced fewer speaking errors and had to try fewer times to say what they were supposed to.
If the therapy proves successful, Blumstein said, one effect she'll be watching for is whether it allows people with aphasia to speak more, not just more accurately. That would represent the fullest restoration of expression and language communication.
###
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Contact: David Orenstein david_orenstein@brown.edu 401-863-1862 Brown University
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] Aphasia, an impairment in speaking and understanding language after a stroke, is frustrating both for victims and their loved ones. In two talks Saturday, Feb. 16, 2013, at the conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, Sheila Blumstein, the Albert D. Mead Professor of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences at Brown University, will describe how she has been translating decades of brain science research into a potential therapy for improving speech production in these patients. Blumstein will speak at a news briefing at 10 a.m. and at a symposium at 3 p.m.
About 80,000 people develop aphasia each year in the United States alone. Nearly all of these individuals have difficulty speaking. For example, some patients (nonfluent aphasics) have trouble producing sounds clearly, making it frustrating for them to speak and difficult for them to be understood. Other patients (fluent aphasics) may select the wrong sound in a word or mix up the order of the sounds. In the latter case, "kitchen" can become "chicken." Blumstein's idea is to use guided speech to help people who have suffered stroke-related brain damage to rebuild their neural speech infrastructure.
Blumstein has been studying aphasia and the neural basis of language her whole career. She uses brain imaging, acoustic analysis, and other lab-based techniques to study how the brain maps sound to meaning and meaning to sound.
What Blumstein and other scientists believe is that the brain organizes words into networks, linked both by similarity of meaning and similarity of sound. To say "pear," a speaker will also activate other competing words like "apple" (which competes in meaning) and "bear"(which competes in sound). Despite this competition, normal speakers are able to select the correct word.
In a study published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience in 2010, for example, she and her co-authors used functional magnetic resonance imaging to track neural activation patterns in the brains of 18 healthy volunteers as they spoke English words that had similar sounding "competitors" ("cape" and "gape" differ subtly in the first consonant by voicing, i.e. the timing of the onset of vocal cord vibration). Volunteers also spoke words without similar sounding competitors ("cake" has no voiced competitor in English; gake is not a word). What the researchers found is that neural activation within a network of brain regions was modulated differently when subjects said words that had competitors versus words that did not.
One way this competition-mediated difference is apparent in speech production is that words with competitors are produced differently from words that do not have competitors. For example, the voicing of the "t" in "tot" (with a voiced competitor 'dot') is produced with more voicing than the "t" in "top" (there is no 'dop' in English). Through acoustic analysis of the speech of people with aphasia, Blumstein has shown that this difference persists, suggesting that their word networks are still largely intact.
An experimental therapy
The therapy Blumstein has begun testing takes advantage of what she and colleagues have learned about these networks.
"We believe that although the network infrastructure is relatively spared in aphasia, the word representations themselves aren't as strongly activated as they are in normal subjects, leading to speech production impairments," she said. "Our goal is to strengthen these word representations. In doing so it should not only improve production of trained words, but also have a cascading effect and strengthen the representations of words that are part of that word's network."
Much like physical therapy seeks to restore movement by guiding a patient through particularly crucial motions, Blumstein's therapy is designed to restrengthen how the brain accesses its network to produce words by engaging patients in a series of carefully designed utterances.
"We hope to build up the representation of that word and at the same time influence its whole network," she said.
Overall the therapy is designed to last 10 weeks with two sessions a week. In one step of the regimen, a classic technique, a therapist will ask patients to repeat certain training words with a deliberate, melodic intonation. The next session the therapy would repeat those words without the chant-like tone.
"Having to produce words under different speaking conditions shapes and strengthens underlying word representations," said Blumstein, who is affiliated with the Brown Institute for Brain Science.
Confronting the delicate distinctions of words in the network head-on, Blumstein asks patients to say words that sound similar. "Pear" and "Bear" for example. Explicitly saying similar words, Blumstein said, requires that their differences be accentuated, thus helping strengthen the brain's ability to distinguish them.
Finally the therapy builds upon these earlier exercises by encouraging patients to repeat words they have not been practicing. A patient's ability to correctly repeat untrained words is an important test of whether the therapy can generalize to the broader networks of the training words.
In early testing with four patients, two fluent and two nonfluent, Blumstein said she has seen good results. After only two proof-of-concept sessions one week's worth of training three of four patients showed improved precision in producing similar sounding trained and untrained words, as measured via computer-assisted acoustic analysis. The patients also produced fewer speaking errors and had to try fewer times to say what they were supposed to.
If the therapy proves successful, Blumstein said, one effect she'll be watching for is whether it allows people with aphasia to speak more, not just more accurately. That would represent the fullest restoration of expression and language communication.
###
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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.
Pressure continues to build on the Guyana Government over the granting of a broadcast licence to China Central TV with the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) being the latest to voice concern on the matter,
Thus far, the private sector had been silent on the granting earlier this month of a 24-hour broadcasting licence to CCTV on dubious grounds.
The transmission building for the CCTV station in the compound of NCN (GINA photo)
In a statement today, the GCCI expressed ?considerable concerns? over the process that led to the granting of a television licence and broadcast spectrum frequency to the Chinese Government. The Chamber said that the process utilised appears to have been conducted without the necessary regulatory requirements and principles that should be followed in the issuance of such a licence.
?While the Chamber acknowledges that China is a very important development partner, the government of Guyana should ensure that due process is followed and the laws of Guyana (are) observed when brokering agreements with domestic and foreign entities. Moreover, the government has to guarantee that equitable, fair and transparent procedures are applicable to all applying for statutory licenses. Our private sector companies are all expected to follow such statutory guidelines?, the Chamber asserted.
It argued that the National Frequency Management Unit (NFMU) has the responsibility of efficiently and effectively managing the electromagnetic frequency spectrum and receiving and processing applications for licenses for broadcast services.
It also noted that the recently formed Guyana National Broadcasting Authority (GNBA) under the Broadcast Act of 2011 has responsibility for the granting of television licences.
The Chamber said that from the statements coming from the Government on the granting of the Chinese Broadcast Licence, ?it appears that none of these agencies were involved in the processing of the approved license. This represents a worrying development and one that the Chamber admonishes if it is proved that the statutory procedures were not followed.?
The Chamber said it would welcome statements from both the NFMU and the GNBA on this issue.
Broadcast expert Kit Nascimento and veteran broadcaster Enrico Woolford have queried the grounds on which the licence has been granted. Nascimento has raised the question of how, what are propaganda broadcasts from a foreign country could serve Guyana?s interests and what mechanisms are in place for content regulation among other issues. Woolford has questioned how the finite electromagnetic spectrum could be accessed by a foreign government when many locals have applied for licences and have not been granted.
Though the Act creating the GNBA has been pilloried, critics have noted that even they had been bypassed in the delivering of a licence to CCTV. This bypassing has been underscored by Head of the Presidential Secretariat (HPS), Dr Roger Luncheon who asked rhetorically at a press conference on Thursday ???But obviously if they?re instructed what do you think they would do? If you were the managing director of NFMU and the HPS called you and said we?ve just agreed with the People?s Republic of China to broadcast the signals and?, they have selected a channel to do so, could you please go ahead and assign a channel, you think he?s [the Head of NFMU] going to tell me [Luncheon] that you got to apply and all of those things? I doubt it.?
Nascimento later decried this as an admission by the government that it had broken the law in relation to the CCTV licence.
A research team from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine has discovered an approach that could make gene therapy dramatically more effective for patients.
Led by professor Eric Arts, PhD, the scientists discovered that the process of gene therapy is missing essential elements thereby reducing the effectiveness of this treatment. Re-introducing this element into their model system suggests that improvements for gene therapy areon the horizon.
The findings are detailed in the article, "A new genomic RNA packaging element in retroviruses and the interplay with ribosomal frameshifting," published today in the journalCell Host & Microbe.
Advances in gene therapy offer promising treatment for genetic abnormalities, tumors and resistance to toxic chemotherapies. Such therapy has been used to treat cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, muscular dystrophy and sickle cell anemia.
But a failure to distribute enough modified genetic information to the patient's body has prohibited gene therapy from being more widely used.
Gene therapy relies mainly on viruses?which transport genomes inside the cells they infect?to deliver genetic material into a patient's cells. The virus-driven delivery tools are called "viral vectors."
Unfortunately, the success rate of viral vectors is uneven. For instance, adenoviruses, a cause for the common cold, and lentiviruses, such as HIV-1, are routinely converted into viral vectors. But adenovirus vectors don't last long, so therapy must be frequently re-administered. And lentiviral vectors, while stable, fail to deliver genetic material to enough defective human cells.
Arts, a professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and HIV Medicine, learned that lentiviral carriers lack sufficient genetic material necessary for treatment.
HIV-1, when converted from virus to lentiviral vector, loses a specific RNA element required to pack its "container" with its own genetic material to be effective. After identifying the problem, researchers introduced the element into a lentiviral vector, successfully and significantly improving the quality and quantity of the gene therapy.
Arts and colleagues named the genetic element, Genomic RNA Packaging Enhancer element (or GRPE). During virus production, GRPE coordinates the production and filling of the container with the genetic material of HIV-1, or the desired human gene.
Delivery and success of gene therapy for human cells has the potential of increasing five to ten times with the introduction of the GRPE into the lentiviral vector.
"Using lentivirus for gene transfer appears to be a safe option," said Stanton L. Gerson, MD, director of the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Asa and Patricia Shiverick- Jane Shiverick (Tripp) Professor of Hematological Oncology at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and director of the Seidman Cancer Center at University Hospitals Case Medical Center, who is not involved in the study. "This discovery could greatly advance the recent successes ongoing in cancer and childhood congenital diseases. Improvements in the technology of gene delivery identified by Arts and his colleagues could lead to many more effective studies that help patients with many different diseases, including cancer. Its impact could be felt in a few short years."
Ultimately, introducing GRPE elements into viral vectors could enhance the ease and effectiveness of gene therapy, which typically uses transplanted human stem cells. Enhanced gene therapy and other improvements in targeted cell delivery might eliminate the need for stem cells and allow cells to be administered directly into patients.
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Case Western Reserve University: http://www.case.edu
Thanks to Case Western Reserve University for this article.
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Anchorage labor battle inches forward as mayor, unions hold firm
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Despite a show of force from unions earlier in the week, Mayor Dan Sullivan on Friday showed no signs of backing away from the major tenets of his plan to overhaul city labor law. Sullivan expects the right-leaning Assembly to approve both the no-strike and no-arbitration measures, he said. Assembly...
Today on Valentine's Day, Google has a special logo to celebrate the day but it is also remembering the man who created the Ferris Wheel, George Ferris on his 154th birthday. The wheel is interactive but here is the static version of the logo:
What an absolutely stunning Google logo/Doodle and it is interactive, which makes it more fun. Click on the heart, the wheel spins and matches up to characters. Here is an video of the Google Ferris Wheel Doodle in action:
George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. was born February 14, 1859 in Galesburg, Illinois and died at the young age of 37 on November 22, 1896 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He died from yphoid fever.
He invented the Ferris Wheel in June 9, 1892 or so and it was the main attraction at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. It held 36 passenger cars, each fitted with 40 revolving chairs and able to accommodate up to 60 people, so the wheel fit a total of 2,160 people. It took a whole 20 minutes to make two revolutions and carried about 38,000 passengers daily at that fair.
Google has some detailed on how and why they made this Doodle at the Google Doodle archive. They wrote:
We hope you enjoyed the final interactive doodle and perhaps learned a little bit about love, life and Ferris Wheels.
For other Valentine's Day logos from search engines and the industry see this story.
Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help & Google+.
Finance journalist Teri Buhl writes about getting sucked into a blog war and about what is considered "fair use" when you post something on the internet.
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It may not be on your radar yet, but at the rate of its expansion Jake's Wayback Burgers could be setting up a burger joint near you, with locations in Santa Ana and Ventura already in the works. While we're not wanting in burger options fast food or otherwise in Southern California, the chain is bringing its own piece of flair in the form of the Triple Triple.
If you're wondering about the name, it's no empty boast. That's three burger patties times three, stacked one precariously on top of another with only interspersing slices of cheese holding the whole towering operation together. The $12.99 behemoth was first introduced to diners via a burger-eating contest held last year. After 100 orders was made within a month-long test run, it was decided the Triple Triple made the cut as a permanent item on the chain's new menu.
The first Jake's Burger was opened in Newark, Delaware in 1991. They became known in the area for a well-sized handmade burger. Two years ago, the then mostly East Coast chain added 'wayback' to its name. There are now 62 locations spread out in 14 states.
And in related news: - 10 Best Burgers in Los Angeles - Best Lowbrow Burger: The Spice Table - A Salute to Burgers in Los Angeles
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Hulu's Kids Lock has already been implemented on Android, and now it's time for the children-tailored, itty-bitty feature to make its way to iOS -- well, at least to the iPad. It's rather simple, really: Kids Lock essentially comes in the form of a virtual button on the app, allowing parents -- or whoever's in charge -- to easily secure their tiny loved ones into the Hulu Kids experience. Meanwhile, getting back to the TV shows and movies watched by the bosses of the house is rather uncomplicated -- all there's to do is enter the account password and bam, all is golden and everyone can go back to watching Parenthood. Aside from Kids Lock, v2.7 doesn't add too much more, save for a few bugs being fixed and some backend enhancements to make Hulu's iOS application more stable overall.
Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times reports that the Felix Hernandex deal is done. ?Jack Zduriencik has announced it?s complete and?Hernandez is taking his physical while we speak. There will be a press conference tomorrow.
There were concerns about Hernandez?s elbow, but obviously they weren?t big ones. Baker reports that?Zduriencik praised Hernandez?s agents, which suggests that they were flexible about language in the deal to give the team some amount of protection in the event of future injury. But given that this got taken care of in the space of a couple of days, it likely wasn?t a major concession.
Hernandez, then, stands to make $175 million over the next seven years, starting in 2013. He is the highest paid pitcher in baseball both on a per annum basis and on an overall contract basis.
A disgrunted former Los Angeles police officer has reportedly shot two sheriff's deputies during a gun battle Tuesday afternoon, multiple news agencies are reporting.
Ex-cop Christopher Dorner, who has been the subject of a massive manhut, engaged in a shootout with authorities near Big Bear, Calif., the LA Times reported. The Big Bear Lake area is about 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles.
An unidentified source told the newspaper that the shooting occurred after Dorner burglarized a home, tied up a couple and stole their car.
As of 2 p.m. PT, law enforcement officers were said to be swarming an area near a cabin.
"Suspect is pinned down next to the shooting scene," a San Bernadino dispatcher said over a police radio channel.
Residents in the area were being told to stay inside and lock their doors. The California Highway Patrol has closed all highways near the scene.
Dorner, an ex-Los Angeles cop, is accused of killing three people -- including one police officer -- last week.
Yahoo News staffers Jason Sickles and Dylan Stableford contributed to this report.
We're less than two weeks away from heading off to Barcelona, Spain for Mobile World Congress, and we're starting to see more reports of what LG might have to unveil at the show. Last week we saw leaked images suggesting the Optimus G Pro might make its way to the U+ carrier in LG's native Korea with a tweaked spec sheet, and now fresh leaks suggest the device could be headed to all major Korean operators.
I have spent the past 12 years helping clients let go of unnecessary items in their homes, offices and lives -- one area at a time. This post focuses on cutting back on photo clutter.
Photos become clutter when they sit unlooked at in piles, bags, boxes or on the hard-drive on your computer.
1) The first thing you want to find out is if you like looking at the photos you take. This means past the time you first get them from the one-hour photo lab, or when you check out a photo you just took with your camera phone. Ask yourself, "Do I enjoy regularly looking at my photos?"
If you do enjoy looking at your pictures, great! But if not, it's worth noticing that the photos aren't serving you. I've worked with a lot of clients who saved bags or boxes of random photos, but never looked at them. They were hanging on to the pictures because they felt like it would be wrong to throw them out. I get it, we tend to take pictures at special moments. We end up making that photo sacred in our minds. But if it's not your nature to look at pictures, then hanging on to them will hurt you.
2) Printed photos. What if you like to look at your pictures but have large piles of them and are too overwhelmed to figure out what to do? Sit down with a stack of pictures, pick up the first photo and ask, "Do I like this picture or not?" You want to see which pictures mean something to you now. This is easier than it seems. You'll come across blurry pics, ones where you don't care for the person who's in the picture, seven photos of the same group standing in the same pose, ones where you don't like how you look, one where you can't remember who the person is, and one's you just don't like. Toss these pictures.
When you're done, either put the photos you like in an existing photo album that you like looking through, or go to the store and get a photo book that makes you happy. If you're starting from scratch, think of it as producing a one-of-a-kind book that is made just for you. Be creative!
3) Digital pictures. The thing about camera phones is that since we don't have to worry about film, we can take an unlimited amount of pictures. Often times what happens is these photos get downloaded onto the hard drive on our computer. In the long run, we end up with hundreds and sometimes thousands of photos on our hard-drive. I remember a client who scrolled down over hundreds of jpegs, not having a clue what each picture was about.
We don't do well with too many choices. We tend to shut down. What helps is to quickly go through each photo, one at a time, on your hard-drive and ask, "Do I want to use this in some way (Facebook, website, send to others, print it up on a calender or put in a picture frame) or can I delete it?" Remember, saving things and not using them creates stagnation. You're looking for a way to make a thing into an experience for you.
4) When to take a picture. The other night I heard a comedian talk about how parents compulsively take pictures when their kids perform at a school event. He said they don't even see their kid in that moment. They block out their kid with the camera so they can get the picture.
There's a powerful connection in a moment that occurs between you and what you are experiencing. It feels amazing. I know from experience that taking out my camera phone and trying to save the moment by taking a photo takes me out of the moment. I prefer enjoying the moment, knowing in a second it will be gone. It makes it more precious.
I'm not suggesting that you avoid taking pictures, but maybe let some moments be just between you and what you are experiencing.
Please write and tell me your experiences clutter busting your photos; it helps inspire people when you share.
Brooks Palmer is the author of Clutter Busting: Letting Go of What's Holding You Back (New World Library, 2009) and Clutter Busting Your Life: Clearing Physical and Emotional Clutter to Reconnect With Yourself and Others (New World Library, 2012). To schedule an over-the-phone clutter busting session, go to http://www.clutterbusting.com.
Hello everyone! I'm Tony Lehrman, president and CEO of Lehrman Group, headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. I founded Lehrman Group over 25 years ago. We offer health insurance plans to individuals, families, and businesses. The major major carriers we place our clients with include Blue Cross Blue Shield, United HealthCare, Aetna, and Cigna.
Buying a health insurance policy can be intimidating and scary. Not all health insurance policy types are right for everyone?usually the most expensive policy is the wrong policy for you. Why pay for maternity coverage if you don't need it? Do you want to be able to go to any doctor without having to get a referral? Do you travel outside of your home state often? Are you a self-employed worker or independent contractor seeking the best plan for tax savings? These are all important questions you should know before you buy a plan. I can help answer your questions about your existing plan or steer you in the right direction regarding a new plan. I'm here to help for about an hour?ask away!
Have an expert you'd like to see participate? Email us.
Feb. 11, 2013 ? A team of UCLA-led researchers has identified a protein with broad virus-fighting properties that potentially could be used as a weapon against deadly human pathogenic viruses such as HIV, Ebola, Rift Valley Fever, Nipah and others designated "priority pathogens" for national biosecurity purposes by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.
In a study published in the January issue of the journal Immunity, the researchers describe the novel antiviral property of the protein, cholesterol-25-hydroxylase (CH25H), an enzyme that converts cholesterol to an oxysterol called 25-hydroxycholesterol (25HC), which can permeate a cell's wall and block a virus from getting in.
Interestingly, the CH25H enzyme is activated by interferon, an essential antiviral cell-signaling protein produced in the body, said lead author Su-Yang Liu, a student in the department of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
"Antiviral genes have been hard to apply for therapeutic purposes because it is difficult to express genes in cells," said Liu, who performed the study with principal investigator Genhong Cheng, a professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics. "CH25H, however, produces a natural, soluble oxysterol that can be synthesized and administered.
"Also, our initial studies showing that 25HC can inhibit HIV growth in vivo should prompt further study into membrane-modifying cholesterols that inhibit viruses," he added.
The discovery is particularly relevant to efforts to develop broad-spectrum antivirals against an increasing number of emerging viral pathogens, Liu said.
Working with Jerome Zack, a professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics and an associate director of the UCLA AIDS Institute, the researchers initially found that 25HC dramatically inhibited HIV in cell cultures. Next, they administered 25HC in mice implanted with human tissues and found that it significantly reduced their HIV load within seven days. The 25HC also reversed the T-cell depletion caused by HIV.
By contrast, mice that had the CH25H gene knocked out were more susceptible to a mouse gammaherpes virus, the researchers found.
In collaboration with Dr. Benhur Lee, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and a member of the UCLA AIDS Institute, they discovered that 25HC inhibited HIV entry into the cell. Furthermore, in cell cultures, it was found to inhibit the growth of other deadly viruses, such as Ebola, Nipah and the Rift Valley Fever virus.
Intriguingly, CH25H expression in cells requires interferon. While interferon has been known for more than 60 years to be a critical part of the body's natural defense mechanism against viruses, the protein itself does not have any antiviral properties. Rather, it triggers the expression of many antiviral genes. While other studies have identified some antiviral genes that are activated by interferon, this research gives the first description of an interferon-induced antiviral oxysterol through the activation of the enzyme CH25H. It provides a link to how interferon can cause inhibition of viral membrane fusion, Liu said.
He noted some weaknesses in the research. For instance, 25HC is difficult to deliver in large doses, and its antiviral effect against Ebola, Nipah and other highly pathogenic viruses have yet to be tested in vivo. Also, the researchers still need to compare 25HC's antiviral effect against other HIV antivirals.
Additional study co-authors were Roghiyh Aliyari, Kelechi Chikere, Matthew D. Marsden and Olivier Pernet, of UCLA; Jennifer K. Smith, Rebecca Nusbaum and Alexander N. Frieberg, of the University of Texas-Galveston; and Guangming Li, Haitao Guo and Lishan Su, of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
The National Institutes of Health (grants R01 AI078389, AI069120, AI080432, AI095097, AI077454, AI070010 and AI028697), the Warsaw Fellowship, the UCLA Center for AIDS Research (CFAR), the UCLA AIDS Institute, the UCLA Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI), and the Pacific Southwest Regional Center of Excellence (PSWRCE) for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases funded this study.
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Android: Silence is a great utility or automatically toggling your sound and wireless settings based on specific times of day, and the last time we mentioned it we praised its super-simple UI. Now the app has been updated, and integrates with Google Calendar for automatic quiet hours, can toggle mobile data on or off as well as Wi-Fi, and more.
Silence 2.0 comes with a number of improvements, most notably the ability to toggle your wireless, mobile data, sound, and notifications settings based on appointments in your Google Calendar, so if you have a meeting from 9am to 10am, you can tell Silence to mute all notifications and your ringer (or set it to vibrate) during that time period. You can still set your own quiet periods too, so if you know you'll be in bed between 11pm and 7am the next morning, you can tell Silence to turn everything off while you sleep to conserve battery. Plus, the new version also?depending on your device?can toggle mobile data and airplane mode when you know you won't be using your phone.
The last time we mentioned Silence we noted that while its easy to use, many of you probably get the same effect with more advanced apps like Tasker, Llama, or Locale, but if you want a simpler, faster way to manage those settings with little fuss, Silence is a simpler way to do it. Alternatively, it's still a great app to suggest to someone who wants those features but isn't interested in paying for or getting their hands dirty with a more advanced tool.
The latest version is free (and ad-supported, there's also a $2 pro version that strips out the ads) and available now at Google Play. Make sure to read the app description?Silence supports Android 2.1 and higher, but how many of the app's features work for you depends on the version of Android your phone is running.