mikel.lumb: September 2012

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Police: 2 dead, 4 wounded in Minn. office shooting

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) ? A shooter opened fire Thursday at a Minneapolis sign business, leaving at least two people dead and four others wounded, including three critically, police and hospital officials said.

The shooting at Accent Signage Systems, in a largely residential area of the city, resulted in "a couple of fatalities" and at least four people being taken to hospitals, Minneapolis police spokesman Steve McCarty said.

Hennepin County Medical Center was treating three people from the scene, all in critical condition, spokeswoman Christine Hill said. She said the hospital wasn't expecting more patients with critical injuries.

Officers wouldn't release details about the shooter, including if he or she were among the victims. By Thursday evening, officers were slowly walking around the scene without their weapons drawn and interviewing neighbors.

Dozens of squad cars and police vehicles still surrounded the business, in the Bryn Mawr neighborhood on the city's north side. Traffic was stopped on a nearby bridge along Penn Avenue, where earlier in the day law enforcement officers had rifles drawn and pointed at a park below.

People from the neighborhood milled around but deputies kept them back.

Marques Jones, 18, of Minneapolis, said he was outside a building down the street having his picture taken when he and his photographer heard gunfire that sounded close.

"We heard about four to five gunshots," Jones said. "We were shocked at what happened and we just looked at each other. We all just took off running to our vehicles."

Accent Signage Systems' website says the company makes interior signage and listed its founder as Reuven Rahamim. A phone message left at the business and at a residential listing for Rahamim was not immediately returned.

"Very sad situation in Bryn Mawr," Mayor R.T. Rybak tweeted Thursday afternoon. "Please stay away and let the police do their work."

Hennepin County sheriff's spokeswoman Lisa Kiava said earlier that deputies had been called to the shooting, though she didn't have further information.

___

Associated Press writer Jeff Baenen contributed to this report from Minneapolis.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/police-2-dead-4-wounded-minn-office-shooting-232013102.html

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Immunologists find a molecule that puts the brakes on inflammation

ScienceDaily (Sep. 28, 2012) ? We couldn't live without our immune systems, always tuned to detect and eradicate invading pathogens and particles. But sometimes the immune response goes overboard, triggering autoimmune diseases like lupus, asthma or inflammatory bowel disease.

A new study led by University of Pennsylvania researchers has now identified a crucial signaling molecule involved in counterbalancing the immune system attack.

"The immune response is like driving a car," said Christopher Hunter, professor and chair in the Department of Pathobiology in Penn's School of Veterinary Medicine. "You hit the accelerator and develop this response that's required to protect you from a pathogen, but, unless you have a brake to guide the response, then you'll just careen off the road and die because you can't control the speed of the response."

The research to characterize this immune system "brake" was led by Hunter and Aisling O'Hara Hall, a doctoral candidate in the Immunology Graduate Group. Additional Penn collaborators included scientists from the Penn Genome Frontiers Institute's Department of Biology and the Perelman School of Medicine's Department of Medicine. Researchers from Merck Research Laboratories, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, Harvard Medical School and Janssen Research and Development also contributed to the work, which was published in the journal Immunity.

"Healthy people have these cells -- you have them, I have them -- that are called Tregs," or regulatory T cells, Hunter said. "If you don't have them you develop spontaneous inflammation and disease."

Different forms of regulatory T cells operate as the brakes on various kinds of inflammation, but, until now, scientists hadn't been certain of how these Tregs became specialized to do their particular jobs.

Hall, Hunter and colleagues decided to follow up on a molecule called IL-27. Scientists used to think IL-27 played a role in causing inflammation, but, in 2005, a team of Penn researchers, including Hunter, found the opposite; it was actually involved in suppressing inflammation. Thus, when mice that lack IL-27 are challenged with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, they develop overwhelming inflammation.

"We never worked out how it did that, but it was a paradigm change at the time," Hunter said.

In the new study, the researchers delved deeper into IL-27's role. They found that exposing regulatory T cells to IL-27 promoted their ability to suppress a particular type of inflammation. The Penn-led team also demonstrated that they could rescue infected IL-27-deficient mice by giving them a transfusion of regulatory T cells. This finding suggests that IL-27 is required to produce the Treg cells that normally keep inflammatory responses in check during infection.

"Very surprisingly, we were able to show that the Tregs could ameliorate the pathology in this system," Hall said. "We don't think this is the only mechanism by which IL-27 limits immune pathology, but it sheds light on one mechanism by which it could be functioning."

Further experiments showed that Tregs express a different suite of genes in the presence of IL-27 as compared to another molecule that has been implicated in this process, interferon gamma, or IFN-?. The researchers' findings indicate that the two molecules have division of labor when it comes to suppressing inflammation: IL-27 seems to be important in helping control inflammation at the site of inflammation, whereas IFN-? appears more significant in the peripheral tissues.

"At the site of inflammation, where you're getting your pathology, that's where IL- 27 is important," Hall said.

With a new understanding of how IL-27 may cause a class of Tregs to become specialized inflammation fighters, researchers have a new target for ameliorating the unwanted inflammation associated with all kinds of autoimmune conditions.

"Now we have a molecular signature that may be relevant in inflammatory bowel disease, in multiple sclerosis, in colitis and Crohn's disease, in rheumatoid arthritis, in lupus," Hunter said.

Next on tap, the team plans to study IL-27 in the context of asthma, lupus and arthritis.

In addition to Hall and Hunter, the authors included Beena John, Claudia Gonz?lez Lombana, Gretchen Harms Pritchard, Jonathan S. Silver, Jason S. Stumhofer, Tajie H. Harris, Elia D. Tait Wojno, Sagie Wagage and Philip Scott of Penn Vet's Department of Pathobiology; Daniel P. Beiting, David S. Roos and Sara Cheery of the Penn Genome Frontiers Institute Department of Biology; Steven Reiner, formerly of the Penn Department of Medicine; Cristina M. Tato and Daniel Cua of Merck Research Laboratories; Yasmine Belkaid, Guillaume Oldenhove, Nicolas Bouladoux and John Grainger of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease; Laurence A. Turka of Harvard Medical School; and M. Merle Elloso of Janssen Research and Development.

The study was supported by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Institutes of Health.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Pennsylvania.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

Aisling?O?Hara Hall, Daniel?P. Beiting, Cristina Tato, Beena John, Guillaume Oldenhove, Claudia?Gonzalez Lombana, Gretchen?Harms Pritchard, Jonathan?S. Silver, Nicolas Bouladoux, Jason?S. Stumhofer, Tajie?H. Harris, John Grainger, Elia?D.?Tait Wojno, Sagie Wagage, David?S. Roos, Philip Scott, Laurence?A. Turka, Sara Cherry, Steven?L. Reiner, Daniel Cua, Yasmine Belkaid, M.?Merle Elloso, Christopher?A. Hunter. The Cytokines Interleukin 27 and Interferon-? Promote Distinct Treg Cell Populations Required to Limit Infection-Induced Pathology. Immunity, 2012; 37 (3): 511 DOI: 10.1016/j.immuni.2012.06.014

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/YVzL_Eb6Ogg/120928125304.htm

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Monday, September 17, 2012

A look at cable, satellite TV earnings reports

Cable and satellite TV companies have been releasing their earnings reports for the latest quarter.

The second quarter is usually a weak one for pay-TV services because students cancel their subscriptions ahead of the summer holidays, and some "snowbirds" cancel their winter home subscriptions before heading to their summer homes.

Here is a summary of earnings reports for selected companies and what they reveal about the industry's prospects:

? July 19: Verizon Communications Inc. says it added 120,000 FiOS video customers to end with 4.5 million in June.

Dish Network Corp. says it lost a net 10,000 subscribers, which was smaller than analysts predicted in a typically week quarter for pay TV operators. It ended the quarter with 14.1 million subscribers in the U.S.

? July 24: AT&T Inc. says it added 155,000 U-verse TV subscribers to end with 4.1 million.

? Aug. 1: Comcast Corp. says it lost 176,000 video subscribers, though the rate of decline has slowed. It ended the quarter with 22.1 million to remain the nation's largest.

? Aug. 2: DirecTV Inc. says it lost 52,000 U.S. subscribers, the first quarter it has lost subscribers. DirecTV ended the quarter with 19.9 million U.S. subscribers, making it the second-largest provider of pay-TV signals in the country, after Comcast. DirecTV's Sky Brasil and PanAmericana added 645,000 subscribers. That was up from 472,000 a year ago and the best result ever for the company.

Time Warner Cable Inc., the second-largest cable company, says it lost 169,000 subscribers in the second quarter, a record for the company. It ends the quarter with 12.3 million.

? Aug. 7: Charter Communications Inc., the country's fourth-largest cable-TV provider, lost 72,000 TV customers in the quarter to end with 4.3 million.

Cablevision Systems Corp. has stemmed the loss of TV subscribers for the second quarter in a row, at the cost of holding its prices steady. It held the number of TV subscribers steady at 3.3 million.

? Aug. 8: Dish Network Corp. reiterated that it lost 10,000 subscribers, leaving it with 14.1 million and as the third-largest provider of pay-TV signals to U.S. homes.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/look-cable-satellite-tv-earnings-reports-230540043.html

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Snow on Mars: NASA Spacecraft Spots 'Dry Ice' Snowflakes

A spacecraft orbiting Mars has detected carbon dioxide snow falling on the Red Planet, making Mars the only body in the solar system known to host this weird weather phenomenon.

The snow on Mars?fell from clouds around the planet's south pole during the Martian winter spanning 2006 and 2007, with scientists discovering it only after sifting through observations by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The Martian south pole hosts a frozen carbon dioxide ? or "dry ice" ? cap year-round, and the new discovery may help explain how it formed and persists, researchers said.

"These are the first definitive detections of carbon-dioxide snow clouds," lead author Paul Hayne, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. "We firmly establish the clouds are composed of carbon dioxide ? flakes of Martian air ? and they are thick enough to result in snowfall accumulation at the surface."

The find means Mars hosts two different kinds of snowfall. In 2008, NASA's Phoenix lander observed water-ice snow ? the stuff we're familiar with here on Earth ? falling near the Red Planet's north pole,. [7 Biggest Mysteries of Mars]

Hayne and his team studied data gathered by MRO's Mars Climate Sounder instrument during the Red Planet's southern winter in 2006-2007. This instrument measures brightness in nine different wavelengths of visible and infrared light, allowing scientists to learn key characteristics of the particles and gases in the Martian atmosphere, such as their sizes and concentrations.

The research team examined measurements the Mars Climate Sounder made while looking at clouds ? including one behemoth 300 miles (500 kilometers) wide ? from directly overhead, and from off to the side. These combined observations clearly revealed dry-ice snow falling through the Red Planet's skies, researchers said.

"One line of evidence for snow is that the carbon-dioxide ice particles in the clouds are large enough to fall to the ground during the lifespan of the clouds," said co-author David Kass, also of JPL. "Another comes from observations when the instrument is pointed toward the horizon, instead of down at the surface."

"The infrared spectra signature of the clouds viewed from this angle is clearly carbon-dioxide ice particles, and they extend to the surface," Kass added. "By observing this way, the Mars Climate Sounder is able to distinguish the particles in the atmosphere from the dry ice on the surface."

Astronomers still aren't entirely sure how the dry ice sustaining Mars' south polar cap ? the only place where frozen carbon dioxide exists year-round on the planet's surface ? is deposited. It could come from snowfall, or the stuff may freeze out of the air at ground level, researchers said.

"The finding of snowfall could mean that the type of deposition ? snow or frost ? is somehow linked to the year-to-year preservation of the residual cap," Hayne said.

Dry ice requires temperatures of about minus 193 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 125 Celsius) to fall, reinforcing just how cold the Martian surface is.

The study will be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research. Hayne performed the research while a postdoc at Caltech in Pasadena.

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/snow-mars-nasa-spacecraft-spots-dry-ice-snowflakes-115923205.html

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Saturday, September 15, 2012

Whole Foods CEO: Here's Why We Pay Our ... - Yahoo! Finance

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One of the biggest economic problems in the United States right now is the growing disparity between rich and poor.

And one of the factors that is exacerbating that problem is the loss of good-paying middle-class jobs, which have been replaced by low-paying retail and service jobs.

Retail employees at Walmart (WMT), for example, make about $12 an hour, a wage that leaves full-time employees at one of the most successful companies in the world earning a salary that is close to the poverty line. And given the number of Americans employed in these jobs--Walmart alone employs about 1.4 million Americans, or about 1% of the adult workforce--the low wages reduce consumer spending power across the economy as a whole.

One big successful retailer that pays better than Walmart is Whole Foods (WFM).

Walter Robb, Whole Foods' co-CEO, says the company's "Team Members" make an average of $15 an hour. The majority of them also get benefits and stock options, which many retail employees don't.

This wage is more than double the national minimum wage, but it still amounts to just north of $30,000 a year, a salary that is very hard to support a family on in many parts of the country. Robb is proud that Whole Foods pays its employees more than it has to, and he says this helps reduce turnover and makes Whole Foods a much better company. He also says he wishes the company could pay its employees even more.

Unlike the big manufacturing companies that provided many middle-class jobs a few decades ago, the employees at Whole Foods, Walmart, and other big retailers do not have unions, which may contribute to the relatively low wages they are paid. (Importantly, this is not a "skill" issue. Plenty of these jobs require just as much skill as operating a particular machine on an assembly line.) For understandable reasons, these big companies are opposed to unions, and Whole Foods, at least, is trying to treat its employees well enough that they don't feel the need to unionize.

Specifically, Whole Foods is trying to practice a philosophy it calls "conscious capitalism" in which the interests of three different groups of "stakeholders" in a company are balanced: shareholders, customers, and employees. In many companies, the emphasis is almost entirely on the interests of shareholders and customers, with employees viewed as a "production cost." The problem with the latter philosophy is that, while it may produce short-term profit gains, it ultimately hurts the entire economy. This is because the most important customers in the economy, the hundreds of millions of mass-market consumers who work as employees, get starved of wages that would otherwise quickly be turned into purchasing power and, thereby, revenue for other companies.

Whole Foods' philosophy is one that many more American corporations need to adopt if the U.S. economy is to become strong again. Even Whole Foods has a ways to go, obviously--$15-an-hour jobs won't create that much purchasing power--but the company's attitude is much healthier and sustainable than that of many other American corporations.

SEE ALSO: Here's How American Companies Can Fix The U.S. Economy.

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Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/whole-foods-ceo-why-pay-employees-more-131203168.html

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Friday, September 14, 2012

Discovery of essential genes for drug-resistant bacteria reveals new, high-value drug targets

ScienceDaily (Sep. 14, 2012) ? Biomedical scientists collaborating on translational research at two Buffalo institutions are reporting the discovery of a novel, and heretofore unrecognized, set of genes essential for the growth of potentially lethal, drug-resistant bacteria. The study not only reveals multiple, new drug targets for this human infection, it also suggests that the typical methods of studying bacteria in rich laboratory media may not be the best way to identify much-needed antimicrobial drug targets.

The paper focuses on a Gram-negative bacteria called A. baumannii. It is published in the current issue of mBio, as an 'editor's choice' paper. The findings may be relevant to other Gram-negative bacteria as well.

A. baumannii is responsible for a growing number of hospital-acquired infections around the world. It can be fatal to patients with serious illnesses, the elderly and those who have had surgeries. Infections also have been seen in soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with battlefield injuries.

"Generally, healthy people don't get infected," explains lead author Timothy C. Umland, PhD, research scientist at Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute (HWI) and professor of structural biology in the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. "But what's challenging about A. baumannii is that it can survive in the hospital environment and is very hard to eradicate with common disinfectants, leading to healthcare-associated infections."

Typically, the way that essential genes for microbial pathogens are found is by growing the bacteria under optimal conditions, says co-author Thomas A. Russo, MD, professor in the UB departments of medicine and microbiology and immunology. Genes found to be essential for growth are then entered into the Database of Essential Genes (DEG), which contains genes considered essential for the sustenance of each organism.

The researchers at HWI and UB decided to try to better understand what A. baumannii needs in order to grow when infecting patients.

"Laboratory conditions create a different type of environment from what happens in patients," Umland says, "where certain nutrients the bacteria need will be present in very low amounts and where the bacteria encounter immune and inflammatory responses. We were purposely trying to test for genes that are important for growth in these more realistic environments."

The team performed a genetic screen designed to identify bacterial genes absolutely required for the growth and survival of A. baumannii in human ascites, a peritoneal fluid that accumulates under a variety of pathologic conditions.

"We found that nearly all of these 18 genes had not been identified as essential in the DEG because they weren't necessary for growth in an ideal laboratory environment," explains Russo. "This is a large set of genes that has been flying under the radar."

He adds: "The biggest concern is that quite a few strains of A. baumannii are resistant to nearly all anti-microbial drugs and some strains are resistant to all of them. To make things worse, there are no new agents being tested for human use in the drug pipeline that are active against A. baumannii. This is a huge problem."

Not only do the new genes suggest brand new, high-value drug targets for A. baumannii infections, but the genes that have been identified may be relevant to other Gram-negative infections.

"So far, our computational models show that these genes seem to be conserved across Gram-negative infections, meaning that they may lead to new drugs that would be effective for other drug-resistant infections as well," says Umland.

The researchers who collaborated on the study are now pursuing antibacterial drug discovery efforts focused on the newly identified bacterial targets.

The research was funded by grants from the Telemedicine and Advance Technical Research Center of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, an interdisciplinary grant from UB and a VA Merit Review grant from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Other co-authors are: L. Wayne Schultz, PhD, of HWI and UB, and Ulrike MacDonald, Janet M. Beanan and Ruth Olson of the UB Department of Medicine, the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and UB's Witebsky Center for Microbial Pathogenesis.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University at Buffalo.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

T. C. Umland, L. W. Schultz, U. MacDonald, J. M. Beanan, R. Olson, T. A. Russo. In Vivo-Validated Essential Genes Identified in Acinetobacter baumannii by Using Human Ascites Overlap Poorly with Essential Genes Detected on Laboratory Media. mBio, 2012; 3 (4): e00113-12 DOI: 10.1128/mBio.00113-12

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/-YaFBK4obKc/120914191649.htm

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Coach Calhoun through the years

Connecticut head coach Jim Calhoun, right, gestures as assistant head coach Kevin Ollie, left, and associate head coach George Blaney, center, look on in the second half of an NCAA college basketball game against Coppin State in Hartford, Conn., on Sunday, Nov. 20, 2011. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill) Photo: Jessica Hill, Associated Press / AP2011

Connecticut head coach Jim Calhoun, right, gestures as assistant...