Cancer is a result of a default cellular 'safe mode,' physicist proposes

Public release date: 30-Jun-2013
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Contact: Joseph Winters
joseph.winters@iop.org
020-747-04815
Institute of Physics

With death rates from cancer have remained largely unchanged over the past 60 years, a physicist is trying to shed more light on the disease with a very different theory of its origin that traces cancer back to the dawn of multicellularity more than a billion years ago.

In this month's special issue of Physics World devoted to the "physics of cancer", Paul Davies, principal investigator at Arizona State University's Center for Convergence of Physical Sciences and Cancer Biology, explains his radical new theory.

Davies was brought in to lead the centre in 2009 having almost no experience in cancer research whatsoever. With a background in theoretical physics and cosmology, he was employed to bring fresh, unbiased eyes to the underlying principles of the disease.

He has since raised questions that are rarely asked by oncologists: thinking about why cancer exists at all and what place it holds in the grand story of life on Earth.

His new theory, drawn together with Charles Lineweaver of the Australian National University, suggests that cancer is a throwback to an ancient genetic "sub-routine" where the mechanisms that usually instruct cells when to multiply and die malfunctions, thus forcing the cells to revert back to a default option that was programmed into their ancestors long ago.

"To use a computer analogy, cancer is like Windows defaulting to 'safe mode' after suffering an insult of some sort," Davies writes.

The result of this malfunction is the start of a cascade of events that we identify as cancer a runaway proliferation of cells that form a tumour, which eventually becomes mobile itself, spreading to other parts of the body and invading and colonizing.

Orthodox explanations suppose that cancer results from an accumulation of random genetic mutations, with the cancer starting from scratch each time it manifests; however, Davies and Lineweaver believe it is caused by a set of genes that have been passed on from our very early ancestors and are "switched on" in the very early stages of an organism's life as cells differentiate into specialist forms.

The pair suggests that the genes that are involved in the early development of the embryo and that are silenced, or switched off, thereafter become inappropriately reactivated in the adult as a result of some sort of trigger or damage, such as chemicals, radiation or inflammation.

"Very roughly, the earlier the embryonic stage, the more basic and ancient will be the genes guiding development, and the more carefully conserved and widely distributed they will be among species," Davies writes.

Several research teams around the world are currently providing experimental evidence that shows the similarities between the expression of genes in a tumour and an embryo, adding weight to Davies and Lineweaver's theory.

Davies makes it clear that radical new thinking is needed; however, just like ageing, he states that cancer cannot generally be cured but can be mitigated, which we can only do when we better understand the disease, and its place in the "great sweep of evolutionary history".

###

This month's special issue of Physics World can be downloaded free of charge from 1 July 2013 at http://www.physicsworld.com/cws/download/jul2013.

Please mention Physics World as the source of these items and, if publishing online, please include a hyperlink to: http://physicsworld.com.

Notes for editors:

1. Physics World is the international monthly magazine published by the Institute of Physics. For further information or details of its editorial programme, please contact the editor, Dr Matin Durrani, tel +44 (0)117 930 1002. The magazine's website physicsworld.com is updated regularly and contains daily physics news and regular audio and video content. Visit http://physicsworld.com.

2. For copies of the articles reviewed here contact Mike Bishop, IOP press officer, tel +44 (0)11 7930 1032, e-mail michael.bishop@iop.org.

3. The Institute of Physics is a leading scientific society. We are a charitable organization with a worldwide membership of more than 50,000, working together to advance physics education, research and application.

We engage with policy-makers and the general public to develop awareness and understanding of the value of physics and, through IOP Publishing, we are world leaders in professional scientific communications. Visit us at http://www.iop.org.

---

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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.

Public release date: 30-Jun-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Joseph Winters
joseph.winters@iop.org
020-747-04815
Institute of Physics

With death rates from cancer have remained largely unchanged over the past 60 years, a physicist is trying to shed more light on the disease with a very different theory of its origin that traces cancer back to the dawn of multicellularity more than a billion years ago.

In this month's special issue of Physics World devoted to the "physics of cancer", Paul Davies, principal investigator at Arizona State University's Center for Convergence of Physical Sciences and Cancer Biology, explains his radical new theory.

Davies was brought in to lead the centre in 2009 having almost no experience in cancer research whatsoever. With a background in theoretical physics and cosmology, he was employed to bring fresh, unbiased eyes to the underlying principles of the disease.

He has since raised questions that are rarely asked by oncologists: thinking about why cancer exists at all and what place it holds in the grand story of life on Earth.

His new theory, drawn together with Charles Lineweaver of the Australian National University, suggests that cancer is a throwback to an ancient genetic "sub-routine" where the mechanisms that usually instruct cells when to multiply and die malfunctions, thus forcing the cells to revert back to a default option that was programmed into their ancestors long ago.

"To use a computer analogy, cancer is like Windows defaulting to 'safe mode' after suffering an insult of some sort," Davies writes.

The result of this malfunction is the start of a cascade of events that we identify as cancer a runaway proliferation of cells that form a tumour, which eventually becomes mobile itself, spreading to other parts of the body and invading and colonizing.

Orthodox explanations suppose that cancer results from an accumulation of random genetic mutations, with the cancer starting from scratch each time it manifests; however, Davies and Lineweaver believe it is caused by a set of genes that have been passed on from our very early ancestors and are "switched on" in the very early stages of an organism's life as cells differentiate into specialist forms.

The pair suggests that the genes that are involved in the early development of the embryo and that are silenced, or switched off, thereafter become inappropriately reactivated in the adult as a result of some sort of trigger or damage, such as chemicals, radiation or inflammation.

"Very roughly, the earlier the embryonic stage, the more basic and ancient will be the genes guiding development, and the more carefully conserved and widely distributed they will be among species," Davies writes.

Several research teams around the world are currently providing experimental evidence that shows the similarities between the expression of genes in a tumour and an embryo, adding weight to Davies and Lineweaver's theory.

Davies makes it clear that radical new thinking is needed; however, just like ageing, he states that cancer cannot generally be cured but can be mitigated, which we can only do when we better understand the disease, and its place in the "great sweep of evolutionary history".

###

This month's special issue of Physics World can be downloaded free of charge from 1 July 2013 at http://www.physicsworld.com/cws/download/jul2013.

Please mention Physics World as the source of these items and, if publishing online, please include a hyperlink to: http://physicsworld.com.

Notes for editors:

1. Physics World is the international monthly magazine published by the Institute of Physics. For further information or details of its editorial programme, please contact the editor, Dr Matin Durrani, tel +44 (0)117 930 1002. The magazine's website physicsworld.com is updated regularly and contains daily physics news and regular audio and video content. Visit http://physicsworld.com.

2. For copies of the articles reviewed here contact Mike Bishop, IOP press officer, tel +44 (0)11 7930 1032, e-mail michael.bishop@iop.org.

3. The Institute of Physics is a leading scientific society. We are a charitable organization with a worldwide membership of more than 50,000, working together to advance physics education, research and application.

We engage with policy-makers and the general public to develop awareness and understanding of the value of physics and, through IOP Publishing, we are world leaders in professional scientific communications. Visit us at http://www.iop.org.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-06/iop-cia062513.php

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Taiwan's TSMC gets orders from Apple

Apple has struck a deal with the world's biggest contract microchip maker in what analysts see as an attempt to reduce its reliance on arch-rival Samsung, a report said.

The US tech giant forged the agreement with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) earlier this month, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited unidentified TSMC executives.

It said manufacturing of the chips, to be used in Apple mobile devices, would start early next year.

The Journal said the move is the latest in a series of efforts by Apple to lessen its reliance on parts produced by South Korea's Samsung.

But despite the deal with TSMC, Samsung will remain Apple's main supplier of high-resolution screens, memory chips and processors used in mobile devices through next year, the Journal said.

TSMC spokeswoman Elizabeth Sun declined to comment when approached by AFP.

"In line with the company's established policy, we will not comment on individual clients," she said.

Analysts see the deal as part of Apple's bid to diversify its supply chains and distance itself from Samsung, its main competitor in the mobile phone market.

"It is inevitable that Apple must move to reduce its reliance on Samsung while their legal lawsuits over patents flare," an analyst at a foreign firm in Taipei told AFP, declining to be named.

Samsung won a round in its long-running patents battle with Apple in early June when a US trade panel banned the import and sale of some older models of the iPhone and iPad.

In a separate patent fight in US federal court, Samsung was ordered last August to pay more than $1 billion for patent infringement. A judge later slashed the award to $598.9 million.

By diversifying its supply chains, Apple could also cut its costs, Kuo Ming-chi, analyst at the Taipei-based KGI Securities Investment Advisory Co, told AFP.

"This is crucial as Apple's profit margin fell to around 37 percent in the first quarter, down from a peak of around 45 percent."

Kuo said the diversification policy was also reflected in Apple's movement of some of its assembly orders away from Taiwanese manufacturing conglomerate Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn.

Hon Hai employs about one million workers in China, roughly half of them based in its main facility in Shenzhen bordering Hong Kong.

Apple and TSMC started discussing working together to build chips as early as 2010, according to the Journal report.

Apple asked either to invest in TSMC, or to have TSMC set aside factory space dedicated to Apple chips, it said.

But both requests were rejected as the Taiwanese company wanted to maintain its independence and manufacturing flexibility, the Journal said.

Explore further: Chipmaker TSMC gets tablet, smartphone boost in 1Q

? 2013 AFP

Source: http://phys.org/news291826665.html

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Crossing drug cartel territory from Pacific to Gulf, highway carves a path to Mexico's future

Mexico highway leapfrogs drug lands to link 2 seas

by KATHERINE CORCORAN, Associated Press ? 27 June 2013 12:28-04:00

ESPINAZO DEL DIABLO, Mexico (AP) ? Lavender-blue peaks of the western Sierra Madre jut as far as the eye can see, the only hints of civilization: a tendril of smoke from burning corn residue, a squiggle of dirt road.

Then out of nowhere, a flat ribbon of concrete runs like a roller coaster over giant pylons, burrowing in and out of the mountainside until it seems to leap midair over a 400-meter (1,200-foot) river gorge via the world?s highest cable-stayed bridge, called the Baluarte.

The Durango-Mazatlan Highway is one of Mexico?s greatest engineering feats, 115 bridges and 61 tunnels designed to bring people, cargo and legitimate commerce safely through a mountain range known until now for marijuana, opium poppies and an accident-prone road called the Devil?s Backbone.

Even those protesting the project say the 230-kilometer (140-mile) highway, expected to be completed in August, will change northern Mexico dramatically for the good. It will link port cities on the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific by a mere 12-hour drive, and Mazatlan with San Antonio, Texas, in about the same time. The highway will eventually move 5 million vehicles a year, more than four times the number on the old road, plus more produce and goods from Asia to the Mexican interior and southern U.S.

Sinaloa state tourism officials predict an ?explosion? for the resort city of Mazatlan, hard hit by drug violence in recent years, as the new road gives 40 million Mexicans in interior states an easy drive to the beach.

?It will change the landscape of this part of the country,? said Tourism Secretary Francisco Cordova. ?It?s an opportunity to develop these areas and diversify the local economy.?

But it remains to be seen if the $2.2 billion highway will pull the towns of wood and corrugated-metal shacks in rural Sinaloa and Durango away from their historical ties to drug trafficking. In Concordia, the municipality that abuts the Baluarte Bridge in Sinaloa state, nine people were ambushed and killed last December as they ate their Christmas Eve dinner. The prosecutor blamed the attack on a war for control of drug trafficking.

The public security chief in Pueblo Nuevo, on the Durango side of the bridge, was gunned down a year ago by armed commandos as he walked down a street in daylight.

Government officials say the new road will bring legitimate economic activity to a troubled area. Locals say it may improve access, or take what little honest business they had as trucks and buses bypass towns altogether.

?It could leave some of the communities even more isolated,? said Jose Luis Coria Quinones, spokesman for 1,800 communal tree farmers, who have an injunction suspending construction on the Durango side near the bridge while a court considers their case. They say that the federal government hasn?t paid them sufficiently for access to their property during the construction and hasn?t repaired the damage caused to pine forests, water supplies and endangered species habitat.

From a distance, the Baluarte Bridge and its triangular web of steel cables are both spectacular and wildly out of place, a Golden Gate Bridge in the middle of a moonscape. While shorter than the Golden Gate, the Baluarte crosses a canyon deep enough to fit the Chrysler Building.

Engineers pump their fists when asked who designed it: ?Puros Mexicanos.? All Mexicans.

A team of 60 to 80 experts started about 15 years ago in the Secretary of Communications and Transportation offices in Mexico City, said supervising architect Alberto Ortiz Martinez, using horseback, mule and helicopter to scope out possible routes. The entire road took 130,000 tons of steel and more than 20 times the concrete of an Olympic stadium.

Some 1,200 workers on the bridge lived for four years in a nearby encampment.

?The most complicated problem was getting there, to locations totally inaccessible, and bringing huge quantities of materials,? said engineer Jose Refugio Avila Muro, a federal subdirector of highway projects for Sinaloa state. He compared the topography to an electrocardiogram: ?Lots of peaks, and you have to find a way to get to each peak from below. You just keep going, one by one, to each new point of construction.?

The new highway will cut the drive between Durango and Mazatlan to 2.5 hours from the current six hours of hairpin turns, few guard rails and the Devil?s Backbone, a stretch of road along the spine of a mountain with drops of hundreds of meters (feet) on either side.

Coming around a blind curve, a driver may suddenly have to negotiate passage between a semitrailer barreling downhill and a handful of cows tiptoeing along a narrow shoulder. Deadly accidents are common. A bus carrying mostly retiree tourists to Mazatlan plunged off the road a year ago, killing a dozen and injuring 22.

But the old highway is not the most forbidding part of the landscape.

From December 2006 until September 2011, when the federal government stopped providing numbers, Sinaloa and Durango on either side of the Baluarte Bridge were among the deadliest states in terms of drug-related killings. Mazatlan ranked 8th among Mexico?s more than 2,400 municipalities and Pueblo Nuevo, the municipality on the Durango side of the highway, was 35th most violent up to the end of 2010.

The U.S. State Department discourages travel in both states, except for specific tourist zones of Mazatlan.

The killings spiked in townships near the new road as a group known as the Mazatlecos and the Zetas battle for territory controlled by the Sinaloa Cartel, named for its home state and headed by Joaquin ?El Chapo? Guzman, the world?s richest and most-wanted drug lord. A series of attacks around Concordia, Sinaloa, in late 2012, including the Christmas Eve massacre, caused some 250 families to flee their communities, said Concordia Mayor Eligio Medina. They have yet to move back.

Medina said the new highway could change the criminal dynamic, bringing tourism to colonial Concordia, founded in 1565 by the Spaniards as a way station between the coast and the gold mines. It?s also one of the most biologically diverse townships in the world, he said, noting that a new species of plant, the ageratina concordiana, was recently discovered there. He envisions everything from bird-watching to bungee jumping in Concordia?s Chara Pinta ecological preserve.

?The road will increase jobs and keep people busy,? Medina said. ?When there is social mobility, criminal groups are more limited.?

Medina said the area is quiet again, with the Mexican military patrolling the towns that were attacked. Mazatlan tourism officials say killings there have dropped from 307 in 2011 to 43 so far this year. Latin America security expert Samuel Logan agrees the new road could be a boost to tourism and commerce, and but also to illegal transport.

?Maybe Concordia will grow and there will be a Holiday Inn Express there,? he said. ?Will there be running daytime shootouts on this highway? Not likely. But will there be convoys of eight to 10 trucks going 90 mph (140 kph) filled with guys with guns? Probably.?

___

Associated Press writers Martin Duran in Culiacan and Karla Tinoco in Durango contributed to this report.

Follow Katherine Corcoran on Twitter, @kathycorcoran

News Topics: General news, Automotive accidents, Drug-related crime, Transportation, Transportation accidents, Accidents, Accidents and disasters, Crime

People, Places and Companies: Joaquin Guzman Loera, Mexico, North America, Central America, Latin America and Caribbean

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
This article is published under the terms of the News Licensing Group, LLC.
privacy policy, in addition to the terms of use and privacy policy for this website.

Source: http://blog.albionalliance.org.uk/2013/06/crossing-drug-cartel-territory-from-pacific-to-gulf-highway-carves-a-path-to-mexicos-future/

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Judge: Tweets OK as evidence in WikiLeaks case

FILE - In this June 25, 2013 file photo, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, left, is escorted out of a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md. A military judge is weighing the admissibility of three pieces of evidence suggesting Manning took his cues from WikiLeaks in disclosing classified information. Col. Denise Lind says she?s preparing to rule as Manning's court-martial resumes Friday, June 28, 2013. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) ? A military judge has ruled that prosecutors can introduce tweets suggesting an Army private took his cues from WikiLeaks in disclosing classified information.

However, Col. Denise Lind also ruled Friday against another piece of prosecution evidence in the court-martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning at Fort Meade, near Baltimore.

Lind allowed the admission of two tweets WikiLeaks posted in 2010 referring to material Manning allegedly sent to the anti-secrecy organization or stole from a Defense Department database.

But Lind says prosecutors have not authenticated a "most wanted" list that WikiLeaks purportedly posted in November 2009. She says prosecutors can still try to authenticate the list.

The list and tweets were offered as evidence that Manning aided the enemy by leaking documents he knew would be published online and seen by al-Qaida.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/judge-tweets-ok-evidence-wikileaks-case-151107068.html

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Line between 'cops and robbers' blurs in Bulger trial

By Richard Valdmanis

BOSTON (Reuters) - Some of accused mobster James "Whitey" Bulger's closest allies should have been his biggest enemies - the FBI agents who cooked him dinner and tipped him off about investigations into his Winter Hill crime gang in the 1970s and 1980s.

Jurors in Bulger's murder and racketeering trial will get a second day of testimony on Friday from former FBI supervisor John Morris, who has described a cozy relationship among he, another corrupt agent and the gangsters they were meant to be keeping off the streets.

Once one of the most feared men in Boston, Bulger, 83, is charged with killing or ordering the murders of 19 people as head of Boston's violent Winter Hill Gang, which ran extortion and gambling rackets for decades.

The trial, which began June 12, has given the jury a glimpse of an era when machine-gun toting mobsters shot associates who talked too much and buried bodies under bridges in a bloody struggle for control of the criminal underworld.

But it also has shown a dark side of the FBI during that period, when some former agents are alleged to have traded information with Bulger and his gang to help them elude arrest and murder "rats" who spoke to police.

Morris said on Thursday that he and fellow ex-FBI agent John Connolly - who cultivated Bulger as an informant - would invite Bulger and his associate Steven "The Rifleman" Flemmi to dinner, where they would trade information and gifts.

Connolly apparently got so rich on kickbacks that he began wearing jewelry and bought a boat and a second home on Cape Cod, Morris said, adding that he too had accepted at least $5,000 in cash directly from Bulger and provided tips.

"I felt helpless. I didn't know what to do. I felt awful about everything," he said.

Morris, who now works as a part-time wine consultant, was granted immunity from prosecution in 1998 in exchange for his testimony in hearings about FBI misconduct.

His description of Bulger as an FBI informant on Thursday caused Bulger to swear at him and call him a liar.

Bulger has adamantly denied providing any information to law enforcement officials, contending that he paid them for tips, but offered none of his own. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges. He faces possible life in prison if convicted.

Bulger's story has fascinated Boston for decades and inspired the 2006 Academy Award-winning Martin Scorsese film, "The Departed," in which Jack Nicholson played a character loosely based on Bulger.

He fled Boston after a 1994 tip from Connolly that authorities were preparing to arrest him. He evaded capture for 16 years, even though his name was prominent on the FBI's "Most Wanted" list of fugitives.

Connolly is serving a 40-year prison term for murder and racketeering.

Bulger's attorneys have spent much of the past few days attacking the reliability of the FBI's 700-page informant file on him, which they contend was fabricated by Connolly to provide a cover for his frequent meetings with the gang boss.

(Writing by Richard Valdmanis. Editing by Andre Grenon)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/line-between-cops-robbers-blurs-bulger-trial-110350697.html

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Cox flareWatch beta brings IPTV with 60 HD channels, cloud DVR for $35 monthly

While everyone tries to figure out what the future of TV looks like, Cox Cable has crossed over to offering internet TV service to customers in Orange County. flareWatch beta testers can buy a Fanhattan Fan TV set-top box for $99 (up to three per household) and sign up for a TV package that features 90 live TV channels (60 in HD) and includes the usual favorites like ESPN / ESPN2, AMC, CNN, Nickelodeon and TNT, with video on-demand coming soon. DVR recordings take place in the cloud, with 30 hours of storage available for each subscriber.

There is one notable limitation however, as with cable company provided TiVo DVRs, streaming services like Hulu and Netflix are not available. Cox already cloud based storage under the MyFlare brand name, and a report on Variety mentions the company plans to expand it with music and game services. Other providers have hinted at offering IPTV options and Comcast launched an IPTV test at MIT, but this is the first one publicly available from a major company. If you live in the area, demonstrations are available at several locations, check out the site at the link below and a preview video after the break.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

Comments

Source: Variety, watchFlare

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/29/cox-flarewatch-iptv/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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No, the Voting Rights Act Is Not Dead (Atlantic Politics Channel)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories News, News Feeds and News via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/315883296?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Lightning strikes three children at Indianapolis summer camp; one critically injured

By Daniel Arkin, Staff Writer, NBC News

A lightning strike in a field at an Indianapolis summer camp injured three children Saturday afternoon, leaving one in critical condition, police said.

Emergency crews responded to the Goldman Union Camp Institute, a reform Jewish camp near Zionsville, Ind., around 1:40 p.m. Saturday, where they learned that three children had been hit by a sudden burst of lightning, according to an Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department release.

Camp counselors had already begun lifesaving efforts when responders arrived at the scene of the strike, according to police.

The injured children were transported to local hospitals, police said. Their names have not been released by authorities.

It was not immediately clear which one of the three victims ? a 9-year-old girl from Missouri, a 9-year-old boy from Kentucky, and a 12-year-old boy from Ohio ? was in critical condition on Saturday afternoon.

When reached by phone, a representative from the camp declined to provide information about the incident but said employees are working to ensure the safety of other campers.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/663306/s/2dfb4c23/l/0Lusnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A60C290C1920A79820Elightning0Estrikes0Ethree0Echildren0Eat0Eindianapolis0Esummer0Ecamp0Eone0Ecritically0Einjured0Dlite/story01.htm

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Better antibiotics: Atomic-scale structure of ribosome with molecule that controls its motion

June 28, 2013 ? This may look like a tangle of squiggly lines, but you're actually looking at a molecular machine called a ribosome. Its job is to translate DNA sequences into proteins, the workhorse compounds that sustain you and all living things.

The image is also a milestone. It's the first time the atom-by-atom structure of the ribosome has been seen as it's attached to a molecule that controls its motion. That's big news if you're a structural biologist.

But there's another way to look at this image, one that anyone who's suffered a bacterial infection can appreciate. The image is also a roadmap to better antibiotics. That's because this particular ribosome is from a bacterium. And somewhere in its twists and turns could be a weakness that a new antibiotic can target.

"We're in an arms race with the resistance mechanisms of bacteria," says Jamie Cate, a staff scientist in Berkeley Lab's Physical Biosciences Division and a professor of biochemistry, biophysics and structural biology at UC Berkeley.

"The better we understand how bacterial ribosomes work, the better we can come up with new ways to interfere with them," he adds.

Cate developed the structure with UC Berkeley's Arto Pulk. Their work is described in the June 28 issue of the journal Science.

Their image is the latest advance in the push for more effective antibiotics. The goal is new drugs that kill the bacteria that make us sick, stay one step ahead of their resistance mechanisms, and leave our beneficial bacteria alone.

One way to do this is to get to know the bacterial ribosome inside and out. Many of today's antibiotics target ribosomes. A better understanding of how ribosomes function will shed light on how these antibiotics work. This could also lead to even "smarter" molecules that quickly target and disable a pathogen's ribosomes without affecting friendly bacteria.

Cate and Pulk used protein crystallography beamlines at Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source to create diffraction patterns that show how the ribosome's molecules fit together. They then used computational modeling to combine these patterns into incredibly high-resolution images that describe the locations of the individual atoms.

The result is the colorful structure at the top of this article. Those blue and purple halves are ribosomes. They're from E. coli bacteria, but they work in similar ways throughout nature. Ribosomes move along messenger RNA and interpret its genetic code into directions on how to stitch amino acids into proteins.

But sometimes ribosomes want to move backward, which isn't good when you're in the protein-making business. That's where that yellow-red-green squiggle wedged between the two ribosome halves comes in. It's elongation factor G. It acts like a ratchet and prevents the ribosome from slipping backward. It also pushes the ribosome forward when it's sluggish.

Scientists knew that elongation factor G performs these jobs, but they didn't know how. Now, with an atomic-scale structure in hand, they can study the chemical and molecular forces involved in this ratcheting process. Cate and Pulk found that the ratchet controls the ribosome's motion by stiffening and relaxing over and over. This is the kind of insight that could lead to new ways to monkey-wrench the ribosome.

"To create better antibiotics, we need to learn how bacterial ribosomes work at the smallest scales, and this is a big step in that direction," says Cate.

The National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute supported the research. The U.S. Department of Energy provides support for the Advanced Light Source, where this research was conducted.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/zlOztV3J4SM/130628103149.htm

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Microsoft Turns On Its First Carrier-Billing Deal For The Windows Phone Store With Bango, In Indonesia

Microsoft, unveiling a raft of product annoucements at its Build conference this week, is also making some advances further afield. Today, Bango, the UK-based mobile payments and analytics company that works with companies like Facebook, Amazon, Blackberry and Google so that app purchases can be billed directly to users' phone bills, is announcing the first implementation of its service with Microsoft, on the Windows Phone Store. Specifically, Microsoft is turning it on in Indonesia, the largest mobile phone market in South East Asia with over 50 million users. The plan is to expand it to further markets in the near future.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/WYAWd50rKsc/

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Oh Great, Wi-Fi Networks Can Be Used to See Through Walls Now

And here we thought the only privacy risk with having a Wi-Fi network at home was someone figuring out our password. Researchers at MIT felt that a stranger having access to your wireless network wasn't scary enough, so they developed a way for someone to use Wi-Fi signals as a sort of x-ray vision to track a person's movements in another room.

Borrowing similar techniques as used with radar and sonar, the Wi-Vi system?as the researchers have called it?sends out a pair of inverse wireless signals as pings. When they hit something stationary, they cancel each other out, but when an object is in motion it creates an offset between the signals that can be processed to determine where and how fast it's moving.

In its current state it's far from Superman's x-ray vision, though. The system isn't precise enough to determine exactly what someone is doing in another room, but that doesn't mean its useless. Using a smartphone as the signal source, Wi-Vi could provide a cheap way for rescue workers to search for captives in a building, or even as a way to hunt for survivors trapped under rubble, as long as they're moving. Or, as a mobile version of Kinect that doesn't necessarily need to see you to detect your gestures. [MIT via SlashGear]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/oh-great-wi-fi-networks-can-be-used-to-see-through-wal-609356785

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Judge bars Obamacare contraceptive requirement for a Christian-owned business

The federal judge issued the temporary injunction a day after a US appeals court ruled that the Obamacare requirement would create a religious burden for the Christian business owners.

By Warren Richey,?Staff writer / June 28, 2013

Customers enter and exit a Hobby Lobby store in Denver in May. A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled that Hobby Lobby stores have a good case that the federal health care law violates their religious beliefs in ordering them to provide birth control to employees.

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A federal judge in Oklahoma issued a preliminary injunction Friday blocking the Obama administration from enforcing its contraceptive mandate against the craft chain store Hobby Lobby.

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The action by US District Judge Joe Heaton came after the full Tenth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that forcing Hobby Lobby and its Christian owners to pay for certain kinds of contraceptive methods would substantially burden their religious rights.

The appeals court overturned an earlier ruling by Judge Heaton denying an injunction. The appeals court then sent the issue back to the judge.

Judge Heaton reviewed pleadings and heard oral argument via a telephone conference on Friday before issuing a two-page order.

?The court concludes plaintiffs have made a sufficient showing to warrant the issuance of a temporary restraining order in the circumstances existing here,? the judge wrote.

The health-care law with its contraceptives mandate is set to take effect on Monday, July 1, and would trigger potential multi-million dollar penalties if the company failed to comply.

Hobby Lobby has more than 500 stores and employs 13,000 workers nationwide. The injunction also applies to Mardel, Inc., which runs 35 Christian bookstores and employs 400 workers. Both companies are owned and run by the Green family, who are devout Christians.

The family believes that life begins at conception and that any interference with the implantation of a fertilized egg is intentionally causing the death of a human being.

Of 20 contraceptive methods required under Obamacare, the family objects to four, involving two versions of an IUD and two kinds of the so-called morning after pill.

Government lawyers have argued that the contraceptive mandate is no burden to the corporation?s religious rights or those of the owners because the choice to use a particular contraception method belongs to the employee, not the employer.

Lawyers for Hobby Lobby counter that the employer is being asked to subsidize an activity that violates their sincerely-held religious beliefs. They charge it violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The judge scheduled a full hearing on the injunction issue for July 19 in Oklahoma City.

?Hobby Lobby and the Green family faced a terrible choice of violating their faith or paying massive fines starting this Monday morning,? said Kyle Duncan of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing Hobby Lobby in the case.

?We are delighted that both the Tenth Circuit and the district court have spared them from this unjust burden on their religious freedom,? Mr. Duncan said.

The case is one of 60 lawsuits filed by individuals, companies, and organizations across the country challenging the portion of the president?s health care initiative that requires employers to provide a full range of contraceptive services to their employees.

The judge?s order came hours after the Department of Health and Human Services issued its final rules for contraception coverage, including by certain religious organizations.

In a statement, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the health-care law would guarantee millions of women access to preventative health services at no cost.

?Today?s announcement [of final rules] reinforces our commitment to respect the concerns of houses of worship and other nonprofit religious organizations that object to contraceptive coverage, while helping ensure that women get the care they need, regardless of where they work,? Secretary Sebelius said.

Under the administration?s rule, religious employers ? primarily houses of worship ? are exempt from providing contraception coverage in health plans for their employees.

The final rules also include an accommodation for other nonprofit religious organizations, such as church-affiliated hospitals and religious schools. Under the arrangement, such organizations that object to contraception coverage are to provide notice of their objection to their health insurance company. The insurer will then provide that portion of the coverage to the employee directly.

The final rules do not include an accommodation for for-profit companies like Hobby Lobby.

?Unfortunately the final rule announced today is the same old, same old,? said Eric Rassbach, also of the Becket Fund. ?This doesn?t solve the religious conscience problem because it still makes our nonprofit clients the gatekeepers to abortion and provides no protection to religious businesses.?

He added: ?The easy way to resolve this would have been to exempt sincere religious employers completely, as the Constitution requires. Instead this issue will have to be decided in court.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/97O7AKSf1BY/Judge-bars-Obamacare-contraceptive-requirement-for-a-Christian-owned-business

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Rokform RokDock Galaxy Dock review

One of the ways to gauge the popularity of a smartphone, and one that I’ve found quite interesting throughout the history of Android is the availability of quality compatible accessories. I started getting jealous of iPhone owners back in 2011 – I was hunting for a measly screen protector for my HTC Thunderbolt while they were rolling in thousands of cases, docks, speakers and lenses flooding the market. Times have changed and with Samsung’s meteoric rise over the past year, accessory makers have caught on to the fact that Galaxy owners love their add-ons just as much as iPhone owners do.

But that popularity and the booming market it creates brings with it the inherent rise of ridiculously unnecessary products -- enter the Rokdock by Rokform, a $100 paperweight that is the very definition of the frivolous, overpriced accessories a popular smartphone can spawn.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/LLqKGU21fzI/story01.htm

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Small Trial Yields Promising Vaccine for Type 1 Diabetes

A vaccine for type 1 diabetes has shown enough promise during a small clinical trial to excite the research team who ran the study. It's a reverse vaccine, one that works the opposite way most conventional vaccines do.

Stanford University School of Medicine researchers produced a DNA-based vaccine that turns off the portion of the immune system that controls the destruction of insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, according to Medical News Today. The findings appeared in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

All 80 patients in the trial were type-1 diabetics who received insulin injections. The National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse states that diabetes affects nearly 26 million U.S. residents, including an estimated 7 million who are undiagnosed. Of those diagnosed, around 5 percent have type 1.

According to the Mayo Clinic, type 1 diabetes was originally called insulin-dependent or juvenile diabetes. It occurs when the immune system kills beta cells in the pancreas. Betas are the only cells that produce insulin, a hormone necessary to regulate blood levels of glucose. Type-1 diabetics must receive supplemental insulin to survive.

Scientists consider the new vaccine a reverse product because it shuts down the body's immune response instead of boosting it as traditional vaccines do. The vaccine targets an individual component of the immune system while sparing the rest.

Knowing that certain immune system cells hunt for cells with unhealthy or suspicious proteins on their surface, the Stanford team wondered why these hunter cells attack the beta cells that produce insulin. To reduce the attacks, they created a vaccine that contained DNA from the gene that coded for the protein the hunter cells were seeking. In essence, the researchers developed a vaccine that causes the patient's immune system to attack the part of itself that destroys beta cells.

One group of trial subjects received weekly placebo injections for 12 weeks. The other four groups received different doses of vaccine that contained modified genetic material in the DNA used.

At the end of the trial, the researchers opted to measure subjects' levels of C-peptide, which is a piece of proinsulin, a precursor protein for insulin. Since C-peptide remains in the blood a lot longer than insulin, experts consider it the better indicator of insulin production. The team concluded that since C-peptide levels were maintained and sometimes increased during the trial, fewer beta cells were destroyed in subjects who received the vaccine instead of the placebo. In addition, the number of cells hunting the beta cells dropped in patients on the vaccine.

Benefits appeared to wane a few weeks after the last vaccine injection. The findings noted no serious side effects from the trial.

The Stanford researchers acknowledge the need for larger, longer-lasting trials using the reverse DNA vaccine. They stress that it could be years before approval of a vaccine for type 1 diabetes in humans.

Vonda J. Sines has published thousands of print and online health and medical articles. She specializes in diseases and other conditions that affect the quality of life.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/small-trial-yields-promising-vaccine-type-1-diabetes-214100977.html

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A new bizarrely shaped spoon worm, Arhynchite hayaoi, from Japan

June 27, 2013 ? A new species of the peculiarly shaped spoon worms has been recently discovered in Japan, and described in the open access journal Zookeys. These animals derive their name from their elongated and spoon-like projection (the proboscis), issuing from the barrel- or sweet potato-like roundish body proper (the trunk).

The new species Arhynchite hayaoi was discovered on a sandy tidal flat named Hachi-no-higata of the Seto Inland Sea, Japan. Like most spoon worms, the new species has the typical peculiar spoon shaped proboscis. The animal is of a pinkish-yellow colour, and its body length reaches about 10 cm in total.

Spoon worms, scientifically called Echiura, are a small group of exclusively marine animals. Although they are members of annelid worms, most of which has segmented structure, they have lost segmentation during their evolutionary history. Like the new species from Japan, most spoon worms live in shallow waters, but some are connected with deep sea waters. Most representatives are deposit feeders, which means that they use their "spoon" to collect organic particles or fragments from their surroundings.

Previously confused with a different species, the newly described spoon worm used to be in fact rather abundant and collected in great numbers from intertidal to subtidal sandy bottoms for fish bait in the Seto Inland Sea, Japan. Now that the true identity of the species is recognised, it seems to be in decline, with numbers dropping to a point where the spoon worm lost this economic importance.

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Journal Reference:

1. Masaatsu Tanaka, Teruaki Nishikawa. A new species of the genus Arhynchite (Annelida, Echiura) from sandy flats of Japan, previously referred?to as Thalassema owstoni Ikeda, 1904. ZooKeys, 2013; 312: 13 DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.312.5456

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

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/injnlGLi280/130627125321.htm

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Christian Pundits Say They're the Real Victims in the Gay Marriage Fight Now

The Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional because, in part, the court found the law was created to express disapproval of a class of citizens: gay couples. But in doing so, the court created a new class of citizens to demonize: conservative Christians. At least, that's according to some conservative commentators and the religious right.

RELATED: A Guide to the Last Anti-Gay Marriage Holdouts and What They Really Believe

"You will be made to care about gay marriage," RedState editor Erick Erickson writes, despite tweeting yesterday that he really didn't care all that much about the Supreme Court's decision on DOMA. "You must either fully embrace it or be shunned? you will not be allowed to accept that others can disagree on the issue due to their orthodox faith," he says. As Justice Antonin Scalia predicted in his dissent, Erickson thinks gay marriage will come to the states soon. He says, "Once that happens, there will be an even messier culture war designed to treat traditionalism as a noxious notion of a bygone era ? the equivalent of Jim Crow." Fox News' Todd Starnes tweeted on Wednesday, "Won't be long before they outlaw the Bible as hate speech." And: "they're going after the preachers next."

RELATED: Religious Right on Gay Marriage: 'We Will Never, Never, Never, Never Give In'

Like Erickson, The New York Times' Ross Douthat worries religious objections to gay marriage will come to look like 1960s-style Southern bigotry, unless gay-rights advocates have it in their heart to show some mercy:

Unless something dramatic changes in the drift of public opinion, the future of religious liberty on these issues is going to depend in part on the magnanimity of gay marriage supporters?? the extent to which they are content with political, legal and cultural victories that leave the traditional view of marriage as a minority perspective with some modest purchase in civil society, versus the extent to which they decide to use every possible lever to make traditionalism as radioactive in the America of 2025 as white supremacism or anti-Semitism are today.

(It might be worth noting that religious groups still have the right to exclude all kinds of people. Many churches won't marry couples if one partner hasn't converted. Some don't allow divorcees to remain in the church. Some churches don't allow nonbelievers inside their temples.)

RELATED: Chaos Looms if the Court Strikes Down DOMA and Punts on Prop 8

Naturally, it was Rush Limbaugh who really clarified the stakes. "The Supreme Court majority, in its ruling, actually uses language that insults and demonizes the people who support marriage as it's been since the beginning of time," Limbaugh said on his radio show. There's an angry mob out there, and they're going to start hunting people down. The hunted are not the usual victims of hate crimes. They're people like Rush and his listeners:

I have often said that what animates people on the left -- what motivates them, what informs them -- is defeating us. No matter how, no matter what, no matter what it means. Their hatred for us overwhelms anything else. No matter the result, victory that includes impugning and demeaning and insulting us is what they seek. It's what makes them happy.

While wallowing in his victimhood, Limbaugh is still shocked at the reversal:

Okay, so here's basically what happens. Everything's going along just fine, everything's cool, and then all of a sudden homosexuals say, "You know what? We want to be married," and the people who don't think that marriage is anything other than a man and a woman said, "No, no, no, no. Marriage is strictly between a man and a woman. That's what it means; it's what it's always meant."

So the people who want the change then attack the defenders of the status quo as being hateful bigots, and the Supreme Court took up that argument and made their decision on that basis.

Everything's cool, and then all of a sudden, gay people want to be treated like everyone else. Those gays are such bigots.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/christian-pundits-theyre-real-victims-gay-marriage-fight-141007658.html

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'Shields to maximum, Mr. Scott': Simulating orbital debris impacts on spacecraft and fragment impacts on body armor

June 27, 2013 ? We know it's out there, debris from 50 years of space exploration -- aluminum, steel, nylon, even liquid sodium from Russian satellites -- orbiting around Earth and posing a danger to manned and unmanned spacecraft.

According to NASA, there are more than 21,000 pieces of 'space junk' roughly the size of a baseball (larger than 10 centimeters) in orbit, and about 500,000 pieces that are golf ball-sized (between one to 10 centimeters).

Sure, space is big, but when a piece of space junk strikes a spacecraft, the collision occurs at a velocity of 5 to 15 kilometers per second -- roughly ten times faster than a speeding bullet!

"If a spacecraft is hit by orbital debris it may damage the thermal protection system," said Eric Fahrenthold, professor of mechanical engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, who studies impact dynamics both experimentally and through numerical simulations. "Even if the impact is not on the main heat shield, it may still adversely affect the spacecraft. The thermal researchers take the results of impact research and assess the effect of a certain impact crater depth and volume on the survivability of a spacecraft during reentry," Fahrenthold said.

Only some of the collisions that may occur in low earth orbit can be reproduced in the laboratory. To determine the potential impact of fast-moving orbital debris on spacecraft -- and to assist NASA in the design of shielding that can withstand hypervelocity impacts -- Fahrenthold and his team developed a numerical algorithm that simulates the shock physics of orbital debris particles striking the layers of Kevlar, metal, and fiberglass that makes up a space vehicle's outer defenses.

Supercomputers enable researchers to investigate physical phenomenon that cannot be duplicated in the laboratory, either because they are too large, small, dangerous -- or in this case, too fast -- to reproduce with current testing technology. Running hundreds of simulations on the Ranger, Lonestar and Stampede supercomputers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, Fahrenthold and his students have assisted NASA in the development of ballistic limit curves that predict whether a shield will be perforated when hit by a projectile of a given size and speed. NASA uses ballistic limit curves in the design and risk analysis of current and future spacecraft.

Results from some of his group's impact dynamics research were presented at the April 2013 American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics' (AIAA) meeting, and have recently been published in the journals Smart Materials and Structures and International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering. In the paper presented at the AIAA conference, they showed in detail how different characteristics of a hypervelocity collision, such as the speed, impact angle, and size of the debris, could affect the depth of the cavity produced in ceramic tile thermal protection systems.

The development of these models is not just a shot in the dark. Fahrenthold's simulations have been tested exhaustively against real-world experiments conducted by NASA, which uses light gas guns to launch 'centimeter' size projectiles at speeds up to 10 kilometers per second. The simulations are evaluated in this speed regime to insure that they accurately capture the dynamics of hypervelocity impacts.

Validated simulation methods can then be used to estimate impact damage at velocities outside the experimental range, and also to investigate detailed physics that may be difficult to capture using flash x-ray images of experiments.

The simulation framework that Fahrenthold and his team developed employs a hybrid modeling approach that captures both the fragmentation of the projectiles -- their tendency to break into small shards that need to be caught -- and the shock response of the target, which is subjected to severe thermal and mechanical loads.

"We validate our method in the velocity regime where experiments can be performed, then we run simulations at higher velocities, to estimate what we think will happen at higher velocities," Fahrenthold explained. "There are certain things you can do in simulation and certain things you can do in experiment. When they work together, that's a big advantage for the design engineer."

Back on land, Fahrenthold and graduate student Moss Shimek extended this hybrid method in order to study the impact of projectiles on body armor materials in research supported by the Office of Naval Research. The numerical technique originally developed to study impacts on spacecraft worked well for a completely different application at lower velocities, in part because some of the same materials used on spacecraft for orbital debris protection, such as Kevlar, are also used in body armor.

According to Fahrenthold, this method offers a fundamentally new way of simulating fabric impacts, which have been modeled with conventional finite element methods for more than 20 years. The model parameters used in the simulation, such as the material's strength, flexibility, and thermal properties, are provided by experimentalists. The supercomputer simulations then replicate the physics of projectile impact and yarn fracture, and capture the complex interaction of the multiple layers of a fabric protection system -- some fragments getting caught in the mesh of yarns, others breaking through the layers and perforating the barrier.

"Using a hybrid technique for fabric modeling works well," Fahrenthold said. "When the fabric barrier is hit at very high velocities, as in spacecraft shielding, it's a shock-type impact and the thermal properties are important as well as the mechanical ones."

Moss Shimek's dissertation research added a new wrinkle to the fabric model by representing the various weaves used in the manufacture of Kevlar and ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (another leading protective material) barriers, including harness-satin, basket, and twill weaves. Each weave type has advantages and disadvantages when used in body armor designed to protect military and police personnel. Layering the different weaves, many believe, can provide improved protection.

Fahrenthold and Shimek (currently a post-doctoral research associate at Los Alamos National Laboratory) explored the performance of various weave types using both experiments and simulations. In the November 2012 issue of the AIAA Journal, Shimek and Fahrenthold showed that in some cases the weave type of the fabric material can greatly influence fabric barrier performance.

"Currently body armor normally uses the plain weave, but research has shown that different weaves that are more flexible might be better, for example in extremity protection," Shimek said.

Shimek and Fahrenthold used the same numerical method employed for the NASA simulations to model a series of experiments on layered Kevlar materials, showing that their simulation results were within 15 percent of the experimental outcomes.

"Future body armor designs may vary the weave type through a Kevlar stack," Shimek said. "Maybe one weave type is better at dealing with small fragments, while others perform better for larger fragments. Our results suggest that you can use simulation to assist the designer in developing a fragment barrier which can capitalize on those differences."

What can researchers learn about the layer-to-layer impact response of a fabric barrier through simulation? Can body armor be improved by varying the weave type of the many layers in a typical fabric barrier? Can simulation assist the design engineer in developing orbital debris shields that better protect spacecraft? The range of engineering design questions is endless, and computer simulations can play an important role in the 'faster, better, cheaper' development of improved impact protection systems.

"We are trying to make fundamental improvements in numerical algorithms, and validate those algorithms against experiment," Fahrenthold concluded. "This can provide improved tools for engineering design, and allow simulation-based research to contribute in areas where experiments are very difficult to do or very expensive."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/gqW_eYMJFc8/130627131829.htm

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People prefer 'carrots' to 'sticks' when it comes to healthcare incentives

June 26, 2013 ? To keep costs low, companies often incentivize healthy lifestyles. Now, new research suggests that how these incentives are framed -- as benefits for healthy-weight people or penalties for overweight people -- makes a big difference.

The research, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows that policies that carry higher premiums for overweight individuals are perceived as punishing and stigmatizing.

Researcher David Tannenbaum of the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles wanted to investigate how framing healthcare incentives might influence people's attitudes toward the incentives.

"Two frames that are logically equivalent can communicate qualitatively different messages," Tannenbaum explains.

In the first study, 126 participants read about a fictional company grappling with managing their employee health-care policy. They were told that the company was facing rising healthcare costs, due in part to an increasing percentage of overweight employees, and were shown one of four final policy decisions.

The "carrot" plan gave a $500 premium reduction to healthy-weight people, while the "stick" plan increased premiums for overweight people by $500. The two plans were functionally equivalent, structured such that healthy-weight employees always paid $2000 per year in healthcare costs, and overweight employees always paid $2500 per year in healthcare costs.

There were also two additional "stick" plans that resulted in a $2400 premium for overweight people.

Participants were more likely to see the "stick" plans as punishment for being overweight and were less likely to endorse them.

But they didn't appear to differentiate between the three "stick" plans despite the $100 premium difference. Instead, they seemed to evaluate the plans on moral grounds, deciding that punishing someone for being overweight was wrong regardless of the potential savings to be had.

The data showed that framing incentives in terms of penalties may have particular psychological consequences for affected individuals: People with higher body mass index (BMI) scores reported that they would feel particularly stigmatized and dissatisfied with their employer under the three "stick" plans.

Another study placed participants in the decision maker's seat to see if "stick" and "carrot" plans actually reflected different underlying attitudes. Participants who showed high levels of bias against overweight people were more likely to choose the "stick" plan, but provided different justification depending on whether their bias was explicit or implicit:

"Participants who explicitly disliked overweight people were forthcoming about their decision, admitting that they chose a 'stick' policy on the basis of personal attitudes," noted Tannenbaum. "Participants who implicitly disliked overweight people, in contrast, justified their decisions based on the most economical course of action."

Ironically, if they were truly focused on economic concerns they should have opted for the "carrot" plan, since it would save the company $100 per employee. Instead, these participants tended to choose the strategy that effectively punished overweight people, even in instances when the "stick" policy implied a financial cost to the company.

Tannenbaum concludes that these framing effects may have important consequences across many different real-world domains:

"In a broad sense, our research affects policymakers at large," says Tannenbaum. "Logically equivalent policies in various domains -- such as setting a default option for organ donation or retirement savings -- can communicate very different messages, and understanding the nature of these messages could help policymakers craft more effective policy."

Co-authors on this research include Chad Valasek of the University of California, San Diego; Eric Knowles of New York University; and Peter Ditto of the University of California, Irvine.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/NltV_68swwU/130626143118.htm

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Long layover: Ecuador says it could take two months to decide on Snowden's asylum

Russian officials say NSA leaker Edward Snowden is still in a Moscow airport.

By Whitney Eulich,?Staff writer / June 27, 2013

People wait before boarding an Aeroflot Airbus A330 plane heading to the Cuban capital Havana at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport June 27, 2013.

Alexander Demianchuk/REUTERS

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? A daily summary of global reports on security issues.

Skip to next paragraph Whitney Eulich

Latin America Editor

Whitney Eulich is the Monitor's Latin America editor, overseeing regional coverage for CSMonitor.com and the weekly magazine. She also curates the Latin America Monitor Blog.

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For the fifth straight day former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden remains ?in transit? in a Moscow airport, officials there say, while Ecuador announced his political asylum bid could take up to two months to approve.

"If he goes to the [Ecuadorean] embassy, we will make a decision," Ecuador?s foreign minister, Ricardo Patino, said yesterday. He acknowledged the parallel with WikiLeak?s founder Julian Assange who has been holed up in the South American country?s embassy in London for over a year.

"It took us two months to make a decision in the case of Assange, so do not expect us to make a decision sooner than that," Mr. Patino said.

Mr. Snowden is wanted by the US government after he leaked top secret information on US surveillance programs to The Guardian, The Washington Post, and a paper based in Hong Kong where he first sought refuge. The US revoked his passport, but he managed to flee Hong Kong Sunday. Reuters reports that Ecuador denies granting Snowden special travel documents.

Snowden was expected to leave Russia on Monday on a flight to Cuba, however he did not board the plane. The Los Angeles Times writes that some speculate Snowden has already left the Moscow airport and is slowly making his way toward Ecuador?s Embassy there.

Ecuador has come under fire for offering Snowden asylum, to which embassy official Efra?n Baus told the White House, "Mr. Edward Snowden has requested political asylum in Ecuador ... this situation is not being provoked by Ecuador."

There have been calls in the US Congress to cut off aid to Ecuador.

"The fact is is that we're giving millions of millions of dollars to this country right now who may potentially be harboring somebody who could have been responsible for one of the most massive intelligence leaks in the history of both private contracting and our espionage world," national security analyst Aaron Cohen told Fox News in reference to Ecuador. "We've had trouble with these guys for a long time."?

Ecuador has received $144.4 million in US aid over the past five years, Fox reports.

Some speculate Ecuador is taking its time considering the asylum application in order to come across as seriously weighing the legal implications of Snowden?s asylum request; others point to the windfall of media attention Ecuador garners while the decision is pending.

Mr. Baus stated that Snowden?s application "will be reviewed responsibly, as are the many other asylum applications that Ecuador receives each year.? Ecuador does have an extradition agreement with the United States, but makes exceptions for political crimes, reports The Christian Science Monitor.

"This legal process takes human rights obligations into consideration," Baus said, inviting the US to submit its position on Snowden in writing so that it could be taken into consideration during the decision process.

Steve Striffler, a Latin America specialist at the University of New Orleans, wrote on CNN that Ecuador?s President Rafael Correa isn?t considering Snowden?s asylum request just to gain political points at home. He notes that after offering Mr. Assange asylum President Correa actually fueled opposition party criticism.

Politicians are always looking to score political points, and Correa has certainly had his moments. But when Correa offered Wikileaks journalist Julian Assange asylum in 2012, he had relatively little to gain politically beyond raising his international profile?.

Similarly, Correa will score relatively few political points by embracing Snowden in 2013. Correa's stance is best seen as a principled one. In broad terms, Correa's openness to Assange and Snowden, as well as his decision to close a U.S. military base in Ecuador, is part of an effort to deepen Ecuadorian sovereignty while strengthening Latin America's ability to limit the influence of the United States in the region.

This is perfectly within the rights of an independent nation, even one that has historically followed the U.S. lead.

Many have criticized Ecuador for the apparent irony in its support of freedom of information when it comes to individuals like Assange and Snowden sharing top-secret information, but deterring expression at home. The country recently passed a media law that contains "questionable or dangerous provisions" to clamp down on criticism by the press according to Reporters without Borders. Correa has called reporters there "rabid dogs" and "assassins with ink," according to the Monitor.

There could be some immediate political and economic consequences for Ecuador if it does indeed grant Snowden asylum, as well. The renewal of preferential treatment for trading certain products including roses and tuna is on the table, reports The New York Times.

Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue told the Times, ?The risks are enormous? It would bring the United States down very hard on him.?

Others, however, say preferential treatment was already at risk of not being renewed. ?The US Congress was already unlikely to renew trade preferences for Ecuador that are set to expire this summer,? according to a second Monitor story.

?The US doesn?t have too many measures it can utilize, other than to criticize,? says Jonas Wolff, a senior research fellow at the Frankfurt-based Peace Research Institute.

The Guardian?s Stephen Kinzer says Ecuador is a good choice for Snowden because even if Ecuador?s government drastically changes in coming years, the region as a whole has moved away from falling in line behind US policy.

Because President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela was the most flamboyant of these defiant leaders, some outsiders may have expected that following his death, the region would return to its traditional state of submission. In fact, not just a handful of leaders but huge populations in Latin America have decided that they wish for more independence from Washington.

This is vital for Snowden because it reduces the chances that a sudden change of government could mean his extradition. If he can make it to Latin America, he will never lack for friends or supporters.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/CLHWNQ3VFXw/Long-layover-Ecuador-says-it-could-take-two-months-to-decide-on-Snowden-s-asylum

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