Modern genetics answers age-old question on Garrod's fourth inborn error of metabolism

Public release date: 31-Oct-2011
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Contact: Leila Gray
leilag@u.washington.edu
206-685-0381
University of Washington

Findings in Ashkenazi Jews may help elucidate historical and geographical patterns of human mutations in diasporic populations

Fifty years after participating in studies of pentosuria, an inherited disorder once mistaken for diabetes, 15 families again welcomed medical geneticists into their lives. Their willingness to have their DNA analyzed with advanced genomics technologies has solved a mystery more than a hundred years old.

Researchers from the University of Washington, Israel, and Switzerland reported the solution in the Oct. 31 Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Their findings may help elucidate historical and geographical patterns of genetic mutations -- when and how human mutations appear and are carried over generations and with migration of human populations.

Pentosuria occurs almost exclusively in Ashkenazi Jews, whose ancestors trace back to the Middle Ages in Central or Eastern Europe. Traditionally, Ashkenazi Jews have married within their religious and ethnic group.

Dr. Arno Motulsky, professor emeritus of medicine, Division of Medical Genetics, and of genome sciences at the UW, and one of the founders of the discipline of medical genetics, was the senior author of the study. He was among the geneticist sleuths who tracked down the families and the genetic mutations responsible for the metabolic condition that ran in their families.

In the early and mid 20th century, clinical testing methods did not distinguish between pentosuria and diabetes mellitus. The confusion resulted in potentially dangerous treatment errors.

Diabetic patients have problems with increased levels of glucose, a six-carbon sugar, whereas pentosuria causes high levels of a five-carbon sugar, xylulose, in urine and blood. Pentosuria itself is completely harmless. But when pentosuria patients were misdiagnosed with diabetes and received insulin, their blood glucose levels plummeted and they suffered insulin reactions.

The diagnostic errors motivated New York City biochemist Margaret Lasker to devise an accurate urine test for the five-carbon sugar that is characteristic of pentosuria. This test, and accurate tests for glucose in the urine, resolved the issue.

"People with pentosuria, which needs no treatment, no longer came to clinical attention," Motulsky said.

Lasker also conducted extensive family pedigree and survival studies of people with pentosuria. She concluded that pentosuria, which has no effect on lifespan and no clinical symptoms, was inherited as an autosomal recessive condition: a person had to inherit a causative gene sequence from both parents to have the disorder.

Pentosuria remained the last of Garrod's four inborn errors of metabolism for which the responsible DNA mutations were unknown. In 1904 Dr. Archibald Garrod of the Royal College of London had introduced the idea that certain inherited metabolic conditions were caused by a disease-specific genetic error.

Garrod surmised that the mutation disrupted a specific chemical reaction. He gave as examples albinism, cystinuria, alkaptonuria, and pentosuria. The underlying mutations for three of these traits have since been discovered.

By 2002, researchers had identified the gene that codes for the enzyme that normally rids the body of excess xylulose. Still no mutations were identified in pentosuria.

However, in the course of sequencing DNA, the UW genomics laboratory of Dr. Mary-Claire King serendipitously discovered a deletion in this gene in an individual of Ashkenazi Jewish background. King is a professor of medicine, Division of Medical Genetics, and of genome sciences at the UW.

King and Motulsky hypothesized that, because the mutated gene led to a protein missing about 50 amino acids, it couldn't produce the right sugar-busting enzyme.

King, Motulsky, their team, and colleagues from Israel and Switzerland set about to determine whether this mutation caused pentosuria. Other UW researchers involved in the study were Sarah Pierce, Cailyn Spurrell, Ming Lee, and Sunday Stray of the Department of Genome Sciences and the Division of Medical Genetics, Department of Medicine; Jessica Mandell of the Division of Medical Genetics, and Michael MacCoss and Michael Bereman of the Department of Genome Sciences.

The problem in connecting the mutation to pentosuria was that people with the condition were no longer identified in their doctors' offices. Current urine tests do not check for this trait.

Fortuitously, before her death in 1976, Lasker had entrusted Motulsky with her extensive research archives on the disorder. She had hoped that in the future Motulsky or his colleagues might be able to carry out new studies to determine the genetic cause of pentosuria.

Motulsky called and wrote to the families named in the Lasker records. Participants with pentosuria from the original studies or the children of deceased individuals with pentosuria agreed to the new study. Fifteen families enrolled.

Genetic analysis of DNA samples from the families led to the discovery of two different DCXR mutations linked to loss of function of the xylulose-breaking enzyme. In nine unrelated people with pentosuria, six had one type of mutation, one had the other, and two had both. None had the active enzyme in question in their blood cells, and all had high levels of xylulose in their blood. This confirmed the relationship between the mutations and the metabolic error.

Studies of the frequency of the two mutations in 1,067 Ashkenazi Jews showed that one mutation is more common than the other and suggested that pentosuria occurs in about 1 in 3,330 people of this ancestry. Pentosuria has also been found in a large Lebanese family, a Japanese family, and an Athabascan Canadian Indian in British Columbia, but the mutations in these individuals are not known.

The frequency of the two DCXR mutations causing pentosuria in Ashkenazi Jews follows a pattern of other rare recessive mutations in this population. The Israeli National Genetic Database shows that for most of the "Jewish genetic diseases", including Tay Sachs disease, Canavan syndrome, maple syrup urine disease and Gaucher disease, two or more mutations in the same gene have been found, with one mutation more common than the other, according to the researchers.

For conditions like cystic fibrosis and a certain inherited hearing loss that are common in Jews and other groups, two or more mutations in the same gene have been discovered, with the more common mutation found throughout Europe and the less common one specific to the European Jewish population.

Other studies have suggested that many of the "founder" mutations for Ashkenazi Jewish genetic diseases date back to three time periods: the expansion of the Jewish population in the Middle East about 100 generations ago, the entry of the Jewish population into Central Europe about 50 generations ago, and their movement into Lithuania and the Pale of the Settlement about 12 generations ago. (A human generation is about 30 years).

"It will be interesting to determine the ages of the newly identified pentosuric mutations relative to Jewish history in Europe," the researchers on the current PNAS paper noted.

Although previous studies of pentosuria indicate that it is entirely benign, animal studies on the DCXR enzyme suggest that mutations that result in a loss of enzyme function could play a role in kidney damage. If so, patients with both pentosuria and diabetes could be more susceptible to diabetic kidney disease.

###

Other researchers on the PNAS paper, "Garrod's fourth inborn error of metabolism solved by the identification of mutations causing pentosuria," were Ephrat Levy-Lahad and Sharon Zeligson of the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, and Siv Fokstuen of Genetic Medicine at the University Hospitals of Geneva, Switzerland.

The project was funded by unrestricted gifts to the Mary-Claire King Laboratory and by grants from the National Institutes of Health.

---

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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: 31-Oct-2011
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Leila Gray
leilag@u.washington.edu
206-685-0381
University of Washington

Findings in Ashkenazi Jews may help elucidate historical and geographical patterns of human mutations in diasporic populations

Fifty years after participating in studies of pentosuria, an inherited disorder once mistaken for diabetes, 15 families again welcomed medical geneticists into their lives. Their willingness to have their DNA analyzed with advanced genomics technologies has solved a mystery more than a hundred years old.

Researchers from the University of Washington, Israel, and Switzerland reported the solution in the Oct. 31 Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Their findings may help elucidate historical and geographical patterns of genetic mutations -- when and how human mutations appear and are carried over generations and with migration of human populations.

Pentosuria occurs almost exclusively in Ashkenazi Jews, whose ancestors trace back to the Middle Ages in Central or Eastern Europe. Traditionally, Ashkenazi Jews have married within their religious and ethnic group.

Dr. Arno Motulsky, professor emeritus of medicine, Division of Medical Genetics, and of genome sciences at the UW, and one of the founders of the discipline of medical genetics, was the senior author of the study. He was among the geneticist sleuths who tracked down the families and the genetic mutations responsible for the metabolic condition that ran in their families.

In the early and mid 20th century, clinical testing methods did not distinguish between pentosuria and diabetes mellitus. The confusion resulted in potentially dangerous treatment errors.

Diabetic patients have problems with increased levels of glucose, a six-carbon sugar, whereas pentosuria causes high levels of a five-carbon sugar, xylulose, in urine and blood. Pentosuria itself is completely harmless. But when pentosuria patients were misdiagnosed with diabetes and received insulin, their blood glucose levels plummeted and they suffered insulin reactions.

The diagnostic errors motivated New York City biochemist Margaret Lasker to devise an accurate urine test for the five-carbon sugar that is characteristic of pentosuria. This test, and accurate tests for glucose in the urine, resolved the issue.

"People with pentosuria, which needs no treatment, no longer came to clinical attention," Motulsky said.

Lasker also conducted extensive family pedigree and survival studies of people with pentosuria. She concluded that pentosuria, which has no effect on lifespan and no clinical symptoms, was inherited as an autosomal recessive condition: a person had to inherit a causative gene sequence from both parents to have the disorder.

Pentosuria remained the last of Garrod's four inborn errors of metabolism for which the responsible DNA mutations were unknown. In 1904 Dr. Archibald Garrod of the Royal College of London had introduced the idea that certain inherited metabolic conditions were caused by a disease-specific genetic error.

Garrod surmised that the mutation disrupted a specific chemical reaction. He gave as examples albinism, cystinuria, alkaptonuria, and pentosuria. The underlying mutations for three of these traits have since been discovered.

By 2002, researchers had identified the gene that codes for the enzyme that normally rids the body of excess xylulose. Still no mutations were identified in pentosuria.

However, in the course of sequencing DNA, the UW genomics laboratory of Dr. Mary-Claire King serendipitously discovered a deletion in this gene in an individual of Ashkenazi Jewish background. King is a professor of medicine, Division of Medical Genetics, and of genome sciences at the UW.

King and Motulsky hypothesized that, because the mutated gene led to a protein missing about 50 amino acids, it couldn't produce the right sugar-busting enzyme.

King, Motulsky, their team, and colleagues from Israel and Switzerland set about to determine whether this mutation caused pentosuria. Other UW researchers involved in the study were Sarah Pierce, Cailyn Spurrell, Ming Lee, and Sunday Stray of the Department of Genome Sciences and the Division of Medical Genetics, Department of Medicine; Jessica Mandell of the Division of Medical Genetics, and Michael MacCoss and Michael Bereman of the Department of Genome Sciences.

The problem in connecting the mutation to pentosuria was that people with the condition were no longer identified in their doctors' offices. Current urine tests do not check for this trait.

Fortuitously, before her death in 1976, Lasker had entrusted Motulsky with her extensive research archives on the disorder. She had hoped that in the future Motulsky or his colleagues might be able to carry out new studies to determine the genetic cause of pentosuria.

Motulsky called and wrote to the families named in the Lasker records. Participants with pentosuria from the original studies or the children of deceased individuals with pentosuria agreed to the new study. Fifteen families enrolled.

Genetic analysis of DNA samples from the families led to the discovery of two different DCXR mutations linked to loss of function of the xylulose-breaking enzyme. In nine unrelated people with pentosuria, six had one type of mutation, one had the other, and two had both. None had the active enzyme in question in their blood cells, and all had high levels of xylulose in their blood. This confirmed the relationship between the mutations and the metabolic error.

Studies of the frequency of the two mutations in 1,067 Ashkenazi Jews showed that one mutation is more common than the other and suggested that pentosuria occurs in about 1 in 3,330 people of this ancestry. Pentosuria has also been found in a large Lebanese family, a Japanese family, and an Athabascan Canadian Indian in British Columbia, but the mutations in these individuals are not known.

The frequency of the two DCXR mutations causing pentosuria in Ashkenazi Jews follows a pattern of other rare recessive mutations in this population. The Israeli National Genetic Database shows that for most of the "Jewish genetic diseases", including Tay Sachs disease, Canavan syndrome, maple syrup urine disease and Gaucher disease, two or more mutations in the same gene have been found, with one mutation more common than the other, according to the researchers.

For conditions like cystic fibrosis and a certain inherited hearing loss that are common in Jews and other groups, two or more mutations in the same gene have been discovered, with the more common mutation found throughout Europe and the less common one specific to the European Jewish population.

Other studies have suggested that many of the "founder" mutations for Ashkenazi Jewish genetic diseases date back to three time periods: the expansion of the Jewish population in the Middle East about 100 generations ago, the entry of the Jewish population into Central Europe about 50 generations ago, and their movement into Lithuania and the Pale of the Settlement about 12 generations ago. (A human generation is about 30 years).

"It will be interesting to determine the ages of the newly identified pentosuric mutations relative to Jewish history in Europe," the researchers on the current PNAS paper noted.

Although previous studies of pentosuria indicate that it is entirely benign, animal studies on the DCXR enzyme suggest that mutations that result in a loss of enzyme function could play a role in kidney damage. If so, patients with both pentosuria and diabetes could be more susceptible to diabetic kidney disease.

###

Other researchers on the PNAS paper, "Garrod's fourth inborn error of metabolism solved by the identification of mutations causing pentosuria," were Ephrat Levy-Lahad and Sharon Zeligson of the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, and Siv Fokstuen of Genetic Medicine at the University Hospitals of Geneva, Switzerland.

The project was funded by unrestricted gifts to the Mary-Claire King Laboratory and by grants from the National Institutes of Health.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

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

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-10/uow-mga103111.php

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Halloween stats that scare: Texas is the No. 1 state in the country for pet costumes ? and really loves candy corn Il y a 30 minutes via SocialFlow

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The Week In Culture (PHOTOS)

This week things got magical. China staged an unreal fashion week, castles appeared in the Doha sand, and Sinead O'Connor ate her dinner in a fancy restaurant.

?? BACK TO ARTICLE

"Hotel Lux" Premiere - 6th International Rome Film Festival

ROME, ITALY - OCTOBER 29: Actress Thekla Reuten attends the 'Hotel Lux' premiere during the 6th International Rome Film Festival on October 29, 2011 in Rome, Italy. (Photo by Christine Pettinger/Getty Images)

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/30/the-week-in-culture-photo_n_1066092.html

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WATCH: Ashton Kutcher Breaks Down During Speech

Ashton Kutcher had to fight back tears during a recent public appearance -- but the marital problems he's rumored to be having with wife Demi Moore were not the cause. Global sex trafficking was. Kutcher was being honored for his charity work at the GQ Gentlemen's Ball in New York City Oct. 26, when he took the stage to speak on the topic of trafficking and sexual exploitation -- and he had a tough time holding it together. Watch the video below.

Source: http://www.ivillage.com/ashton-kutcher-breaks-down-gq-gentlemens-ball/1-a-397191?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Aashton-kutcher-breaks-down-gq-gentlemens-ball-397191

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Kyrgyzstan vote shaped by interregional rivalry (AP)

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan ? The presidential election in Kyrgyzstan this weekend will be unusually free and democratic by Central Asian standards, but fears are mounting it could fuel ethnic tensions and regional divide.

Sunday's vote in the economically struggling ex-Soviet nation follows the April 2010 violent ouster of former leader Kurmanbek Bakiyev and ethnic violence in which rampaging mobs killed hundreds of minority ethnic Uzbeks in the country's south.

Kyrgyzstan, an impoverished nation of around 5 million people on China's western fringes, is home to both U.S. and Russian military air bases, making its fortunes subject of lively international interest.

Over the two decades since the country gained independence, elections have been purely formal exercises designed to lend a threadbare veil of legitimacy to the ruling elite. Bakiyev and his predecessor, mathematician Askar Akayev, only left office after being literally chased out of it by angry mobs.

President Roza Otunbayeva, a seasoned diplomat who served as ambassador in Washington and London and has been running the country as interim leader since 2010, will step down to make way for the election winner.

None of the three top contenders is likely to garner more than 50 percent of votes in the Oct. 30 election, setting stage for a runoff between the two top vote-getters.

The 55-year-old front-runner Almazbek Atambayev, a wealthy businessman who stepped down as prime minister in September to take part in the election campaign, hopes his efforts to restore economic stability over the past year will aid his chances. Raising pitifully low state salaries and pensions has certainly helped cast him as the welfare candidate.

Atambayev made his fortune in the early 1990s after setting up a printing house churning out Russian translations of Mario Puzo's Godfather series, as well as more controversial fare like Anthony Burgesses' Clockwork Orange and the works of Marquis de Sade.

Kyrgyzstan's economic fortunes are inextricably linked with Russia, where around 500,000 Kyrgyz migrant workers reside, and Atambayev has worked hard to deepen those ties. Otunbayeva, the interim leader, also said Friday that Kyrgyzstan has no choice but to join a Russia-dominated economic bloc and eventually enter a more ambitious alliance envisioned by Moscow.

Recognizing the antipathy engendered by the presence of the U.S. air base, Atambayev has pledged it will be closed by 2014, when the current lease runs out.

For all this, however, Atambayev is to many, first and foremost, distinguished for being from the north ? a fact that may prove decisive in an election that threatens to exacerbate regional antagonisms.

"There's a kind of negative connotation to these elections since they are very decisive. There's definitely the question of south and north present here," said Shirin Aitmatova, a parliamentary deputy with the left-leaning Ata-Meken party.

Indeed, the greatest challenge to Atambayev will come from two staunchly southern politicians ? 44-year old ex-Emergency Services minister Kamchibek Tashiyev and former parliament speaker and top security official Adakhan Madumarov, 46.

Tashiyev's nationalist Ata-Zhurt party stunned observers last year by easily winning the largest share of votes in parliamentary elections. That resounding success came on the back of soaring nationalist sentiments that prevailed in the wake of interethnic clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities in the south that left at least 470 people dead in June 2010 and drove several hundred thousand people from their homes, mostly Uzbeks.

Once in parliament, trained boxer Tashiyev proved a poor team-player and largely gained prominence for his violent physical assaults on fellow party members. Despite his relative lack of campaign financing, he is expected to make a respectable showing.

Ominously, he has warned that an unfavorable result will lead to a robust challenge. In Kyrgyzstan, this often means unruly crowds hitting the streets.

The southern vote will be split between Tashiyev and Madumarov, who has vowed to overturn recent constitutional reforms giving more power to parliament and restore a strong presidency.

Comments made by Madumarov during a televised presidential debate this month, when he spoke about the need to "cut off the tongues and legs" of journalists smearing his reputation, suggest his presidency would mark a rollback to a more authoritarian model of governance.

Even so, Madumarov may hope, despite his strong links to the ousted Bakiyev regime, that he can project a vision of firmness and legality.

"I will never steal from the government's coffers and I will never appoint someone to high office just because we come from the same region, they are my brother, or because they paid me money," he told students at the Kyrgyz Agrarian Institute this week.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111028/ap_on_re_as/as_kyrgyzstan_presidential_election

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Vehicle-to-Grid Technology: Electric Cars Become Power-Grid Batteries

Imagine a car that runs quietly, burns no gas, produces no emissions, stores renewable energy, and sometimes even pays you back. Seem like a pipe dream? Soon it won?t be. Vehicle-to-grid technology allows networks of electric vehicles (EVs) to function like a giant battery with an intelligent software interface feeding power from car to grid or grid to car on an as-needed basis. It?s now one step closer to U.S. commercialization.

Professor Willett Kempton

American cars sit parked and unused for an average of 23 hours per day, and the storage capacity of our current electrical grid infrastructure is limited at best. This inspired vehicle-to-grid (V2G) pioneer Willett Kempton at the University of Delaware (UD) to develop the ?vehicle as power storage? concept in 1997 with Vermont?s Green Mountain College economist Steve Letendre. Kempton has since taken V2G from idea through proof of concept to commercial pilots in both Delaware and Denmark.

Kempton sold the international license for the technology to the Danish company Nuuve in June of 2011. Now in Delaware, the U.S. license has been purchased by New Jersey-based NRG Energy. The new business partnership between NRG and the University of Delaware (UD), known as ?eV2g,? was announced with fanfare on September 26^th, and featured a visit to the UD?s Newark campus by U.S. Senator Chris Coons.

At the UD announcement, Kempton humorously referred to Thomas Edison?s famous statement that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, saying, ?I think he underestimated the amount of perspiration required?. His remark is justified. It?s been more than a decade of perspiration following inspiration for Kempton in his journey to make V2G technology a reality. Noting that Newark, Delaware, was the site of a busy Chrysler tank factory during the Korean War, Kempton says his vision is a ?post-petroleum repurposing of this facility.?

Officials sign the partnership agreement. Pictured are, from left, seated, Denise Wilson, president of NRG's Alternative Energy Services; University of Delaware (UD) President Patrick Harker; and Drew Murphy, NRG executive vice president and regional president, Northeast; and, standing, David Weir, director of UD's Office of Economic Innovation and Parternships; Nancy Targett, dean of the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment; Prof. Willett Kempton; U.S. Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.); and Alan Levin, Delaware Economic Development secretary.

Despite the announcement, the ability of EV owners to register for the eV2g service is still two to three years away, according to NRG Communications Director Lori Neuman. Initially conceived as a technological service that will be available to EV fleet operators, eV2g eventually plans to roll the service out to individual EV owners. Kempton estimates eV2g electricity regulation services could earn $10,000 per car in revenue over the lifetime of an EV, offsetting these vehicles? currently high purchase costs.

Vehicle-to-grid is a technology that promises to provide the short bursts of back-and-forth power used to correct imbalances in the electric power grid, explains Kempton, adding that in future, the technology may also prove useful in smoothing out the fluctuations inherent in renewable energy production such as wind and solar power.

Wind generated power production, for example, is often greatest at night, when demand for power is typically low. In our current power grid there is limited capacity for power storage, so any nocturnally generated wind energy above and beyond what?s used immediately goes to waste. V2G is an obvious solution, at least in part, for storing that power, and then drawing on the stored electricity during periods of high power demand.

Nobel laureate and physician Albert Szent-Gy?rgyi once said, ?Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought?. Kempton epitomizes this key to technological and scientific innovation. During the birth of the automotive industry, vehicles were never conceived of as potentially being part of a national electrical grid. ?They evolved on disparate paths and really didn?t connect,? said U.S. Senator Coons at the UD NRG announcement.

?You?ve got automobiles powered by petroleum, individually owned, highly mobile, free-standing, independent, and dramatically under-utilized, and then you?ve got the base-load mostly coal-fired national grid, that increasingly has strains and demands on it,? remarked Senator Coons, applauding the new potential for connectedness between energy and transportation.

Professor Willett Kempton next to an electric car outfitted for ev2g capability

While V2G links problem with solution, one technical challenge that remains is V2G?s impact on battery life. Putting power back into the grid rather than only one-way charging results in more battery charge-discharge cycles, which can shorten the battery?s useful life.

It?s an issue that battery manufacturers will need to address. Nevertheless, with the initial target market for both Danish and U.S. companies being frequency regulation, batteries are used for only minutes at a time to upload or download power (see illustration) a practice that has less impact than subjecting the battery to deep charge-discharge cycling.

Denmark is encouraging the transition from internal combustion to electric powered vehicles with substantial tax exemptions for EV purchasers. U.S. energy expert Benjamin Sovacool suspects that widespread acceptance of eV2g will require the same type of political support in the US, including the types of subsidies, tax breaks, and regulations the petroleum industry currently receives.? A visiting Professor at the Vermont Law School and the founding Director of the Energy Justice Program at their Institute for Energy and Environment, Sovacool thinks the eV2g initiative is a step in the right direction, but likely won?t produce real change until these issues are addressed.

?If the history of energy transitions has told us anything, barriers related to politics and social attitudes and values can be just as salient as these technical and economic ones.? People need to have faith in V2G technology and see it as complementing, rather than disrupting, their lifestyles,? Sovacool says.

That?s a sentiment echoed by Richard Hirsh, a Professor of History, Science and Technology Studies, at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. ?Too often, people just look at the potential benefits of technologies and don?t evaluate what needs to be done ? in terms of infrastructure, behavior, markets, regulation, government incentives ? to make the technologies a reality.? In the 1950s and 1960s, for example, electric utilities thought that nuclear reactors were just another way to boil water in power plants, explains Hirsch, but history has shown us that these reactors weren?t really such simple devices ? they had difficulty gaining acceptance in the U.S. and elsewhere.

The concept of V2G (PDF). (NRG Energy and the University of Delaware).

Nevertheless, Hirsch views Willett Kempton as a visionary in many ways,?noting that Kempton?s technology has already caught the attention of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. ?Thinking about a car as something beyond a transportation device is a huge intellectual accomplishment,? says Hirsch, adding that the technical potential of Kempton?s re-imagined electric vehicle is large.?Getting the car integrated into the social, political, infrastructural, and market systems will constitute the big challenge, says Hirsch, but is one he hopes Kempton and others can master.

It?s been a long road to this potentially transformative technology, and there are likely more roadblocks ahead before it becomes mainstream. Nevertheless, it?s a technology that promises many advantages. What does the future hold for vehicle-to-grid technology in the U.S. and beyond? Only time (and energy) will tell.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=7aad3a9c6fab9296097fa51dc6eff3c0

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Perry to attend at least 5 more debates

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Texas Gov. Rick Perry plans to participate in at least five more presidential primary debates.

Perry struggled through parts of his first five debate performances. But Perry spokesman Ray Sullivan told The Associated Press on Saturday that the Republican candidate will attend all of the debates currently scheduled in November as well as a Dec. 1 debate in Arizona.

Sullivan said the campaign will make decisions about other debates on a case-by-case basis.

Perry had already committed to a Nov. 9 debate in Michigan. Also added to the calendar are debates in South Carolina on Nov. 12 and Washington, D.C., on Nov. 15. He'll also attend an Iowa forum hosted by The Family Leader, a socially conservative group, on Nov. 19.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2011-10-29-Perry-Debates/id-04dd695659b24c599d2d99bf4fd67075

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Silver Investing - Options For Your Self-Directed IRA ? Bellybone ...

Those whose retirement funds are tied up in a 401k or 403b do not usually have a silver investing option. A small percentage of account holders may have a precious metals or gold mutual fund option. My wife?s 403b plan had a gold mutual fund option until last fall when the trustee ?enhanced? the plan and eliminated that option. Those with self-directed IRAs have a number of options.

Perhaps the best, safest, and easiest silver investing option for a self-directed IRA is an Electronic Traded Fund; an ETF. Silver ETFs are a relatively new silver investing vehicle. With an ETF, asset selection and management is much like a mutual fund, but it trades like a stock. That is, investors can buy and sell ETFs throughout the trading day, whereas mutual funds can be bought and sold only once each trading day. At this time there are only a handful of silver ETFs. But if you choose this method, you really only need one. Standard silver ETFs buy and hold silver. Therefore, the share value will track the change in the price of silver very closely. If you choose to invest through an ETF, I recommend you choose the one with the highest average volume of shares traded.

There is at least one super charged silver ETF. It attempts, on a daily basis, to a percentage change in share value that is 200% of the change in the price of silver. This ETF does not hold physical silver. Management utilizes options and other leveraged derivatives to achieve the 200% result. It?s been a wild ride for leveraged silver investment vehicles?which brings us to stock options. Money management experts caution that leveraged ETFs can suffer slippage in sideways markets. That is, if the price of silver fluctuates within a range for several weeks and ends up at the same price, the share value of the leveraged ETF might actually be lower.

Stock options can be purchased on silver ETFs, just as they can on other common stocks. Because the price of silver is so volatile, options on silver equities carry a very high premium. I advise all but the very experienced to stay away from options with retirement money.

Then of course, there are silver mining companies. There are only about two dozen silver mines in the world. And these mines only produce about 25% to 30% of the annual silver production. Most silver is a by-product of another type of mine; most commonly zinc or copper. When buying silver stocks, or options on silver stocks, it is best to buy companies that have proven silver reserves, not exploration companies. Mining companies that have proven reserves benefit from a rising price of silver. And, such an investment provides leverage because production cost is fairly stable. For example, if the production cost of a particular mining company is $15 per troy ounce, and the price for which it can sell bulk silver is $25 per troy ounce, they make $10 per troy ounce produced. If the selling price increases to $35 per ounce, they make a $20 per ounce profit. A 40% increase in selling price results in a 100% increase in profit. Higher expected profits pushes share price higher.

I am not aware of any silver mutual funds. But if silver continues to outperform gold by such a wide margin, I wouldn?t be surprised to see one soon.

Source: http://www.bellybone.net/33365/silver-investing-options-for-your-self-directed-ira/

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HP Reconsiders Spinning-Off PC Division, Personal Systems Group Will Remain Part Of The Company

HP caused a minor uproar when it announced just prior to Leo Apotheker's departure that it was considering splitting off its PC division. Well, after two months of internal debating, the Personal Systems Group will remain part of the company and Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard can rest in peace. The news comes from a just-issued press release where HP's new chief MG Whitman indicated that it's best for customers, partners, shareholders and employees to keep the PSG within HP. She goes on to say that ?HP is committed to PSG, and together we are stronger.?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/YaA-EZX_l20/

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11 charged in possible $1 billion rail pension probe

NEW YORK?? Eleven people, including two orthopedists and a former union official, face federal corruption charges in a long-running probe into an alleged fraud of the Long Island Rail Road's pension system that may have cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, authorities said Thursday.

Federal and state investigators made the sweeping arrests across Long Island Thursday morning.

The 11 defendants include orthopedists, consultants, pension administrators and LIRR retirees.

Investigators said the scandal could soon top a billion-dollar rip-off if reforms are not made.

Studies show that for years, more than 90 percent of LIRR employees seeking disability pensions were awarded them.

Read the original story on NBC New York

In a system that some LIRR employees jokingly dubbed "disability by appointment," employees were allowed to choose their own doctor when seeking a disability pension and it appears many workers sought out a specific few doctors for medical exams.

Three-year investigation
For nearly three years, the FBI, the New York Attorney General?s office and the MTA's Inspector General have been looking into how and why a disability pension was awarded to nearly every LIRR employee who requested one.

Federal search warrants had been executed beginning in 2008 at the Westbury offices of the Railroad Retirement Board.

Among those charged Thursday is Peter Ajemian, an orthopedist from Rockville Centre. He is accused of helping more than 700 LIRR retirees get disability benefits from 1998 to 2008. His office manager, Maria Rusin, is also charged in connection with the investigation.

Peter Lesniewski, another orthopedist, is accused of helping more than 200 LIRR employees obtain benefits.

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Messages left with the offices of Ajemian and Lesniewski were not immediately returned.

Also charged were former Union President Joseph Rutigliano and Marie Baran, who worked as consultants to help LIRR workers "game" the system, officials said. They were paid by LIRR workers for the service, prosecutors said.

LIRR workers Gregory Noone, Regina Walsh, Sharon Falloon, Gary Satin, Steven Gagliano and Richard Ehrlinger are accused of lying to get disability benefits.

A study by the General Accounting Office last year showed that LIRR workers received disability pensions at a rate 12 times higher than workers at any other railroad.

Officials said 86 percent of all LIRR disability cases went through doctors Ajemian, Lesniewski and a third doctor, who has since passed away. The doctors are accused of conducting unnecessary tests and grossly exaggerating conditions.

Disability status adds about $36,000 on average to retirees' pensions each year, according to the LIRR, which amounts to millions of additional costs to taxpayers annually.

Doctor made $2 million?
Many of the workers were still doing their jobs when doctors determined they were too sick or disabled to work. The doctors were often paid $1,200 in addition to thousands billed to insurance companies for the diagnosis.

Prosecutors said Ajemian made more than $2 million. His patients have already collected $90 million in disability benefits and expect to get $210 million more.

Lesniewski made more than $750,000. Disability payments to his patients have already totaled more than $31 million and the patients stand to receive $64 million more.

Noone, one of the accused LIRR workers, collects an annual combined retirement and disability pension of $105,000 every year. In 2008, investigators said the disabled Noone signed in to play golf at an area club on 140 different days despite his disability claim.

The federal Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) administers the disability program in addition to a regular pension program that has an age-65 retirement.

The LIRR offers yet a third pension for workers who can start collecting benefits at age 50.

Some workers charged Thursday claimed disability so they could collect both the LIRR and a RRB disability pension starting at age 50, prosecutors said.

In October 2008, the New York Times first reported hundreds of millions of tax dollars could have been misappropriated.

LIRR President Helena Williams has said a federal agency acted as a rubber stamp without consulting the railroad.

To curb abuse, the LIRR has said it would establish a disability watchdog, mandate worker ethics training and set up a fraud hotline.

The railroad also has said it wants federal legislation to mandate independent medical reviews of all disability applications.

Early morning arrests
The Times reported Thursday that the defendants faced a prison sentence of up to 20 years if they are found guilty.

It added that the charges were expected to be announced at a news conference Thursday by Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, and Janice K. Fedarcyk, head of the New York FBI office.

The paper said that its previous articles reported that "virtually every career employee of the railroad was applying for and receiving disability payments, giving the Long Island Rail Road a disability rate of three to four times that of the average railroad."

The Times investigation also found that retired railroad workers played golf regularly at a state-owned course for free, another benefit of claiming disability.

NBC New York and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45061924/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

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Ghostface Screams His Way Into MTV's Killer Halloween

Where does the 'Scream' baddie rank among other horror icons? We're polling you all week to find out!
By Eric Ditzian

Ghostface from "Scream"
Photo: Dimension Films

Ghostface better get on his cell phone and start scaring the crap out of fans, because two days into MTV's Killer Halloween, the know-it-all "Scream" psycho is trailing his blood-spilling cinematic brethren in our voter-driven, category-by-category analysis of horror-movie murderers.

In terms of weaponry, Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers trumped Ghostface's knife. And when it came to style, the "Scream" dude's black gown and oblong, am-I-sad-or-psychotic mask couldn't outdo Freddy's striped sweater, Jason's hockey mask or Michael's white-washed, blank-faced mask of terror. But perhaps today is Ghostface's day to shine, for now we turn to personality, and here this killer might just shine (or die trying).

Which horror-movie baddie has the best personality? Make your pick in our MTV Movies Blog poll!

Ghostface
Occupation: Student(s), stay-at-home-mom, filmmaker

Weapons: Knife, deep knowledge of the horror genre, irony

Archenemy: Sidney Prescott, innocent people living near Sidney Prescott

Profile: From his first ominously flirty phone call with Drew Barrymore in the 1996 original, Ghostface announced himself as a killer of unique talents and iconic potential. Ever since, the question "What's your favorite scary movie?" has taken on an entirely different meaning.

The key thing that separates Ghostface from most other horror-movie killers is that he's never the same person twice. Sometimes he's one malicious woman with a troubled sense of right and wrong; other times, he's two friends with an itch to draw blood and get famous. The only consistencies are that mask-and-gown getup, an encyclopedic knowledge of horror flicks, and a vendetta against Sidney Prescott, the teary-eyed damsel in distress played by Neve Campbell. Poor Sidney just can't catch a break.

Yes, there is always something a little nonsensical about these shifting Ghostfaces. You're telling me Sidney's boyfriend and his best pal murdered her mom and then went on a Woodsboro-wide killing spree, because why exactly? A couple of kids go from pursuing normal teenage goals like getting drunk and getting laid to wanting to be famous so badly they're willing — and able! — to become crazy-eyed killas? It sounds odd to say when we're talking about a genre in which a child molester can enter the dreams of his victims, but Ghostface always falls a bit short when it comes to believability, if only because the "Scream" franchise takes place in a pop-culture-saturated world so close to our own.

What makes Ghostface a wicked cool bad guy, then, is not why he stabs, but how. Hyper-steeped in horror-movie lore, he appropriates clichés and, in the bloody process, reinvents them. But let's not get too academic here. Ghostface has got swag. He's funny as hell, and when you least expect it, when you're still laughing from your gut, he stabs you in it.

Where do you think Ghostface falls in the scope of horror-movie psychopaths? Let us know in the comments!

Check out everything we've got on "Scream."

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1673222/halloween-scream-ghostface.jhtml

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Testing geoengineering

Public release date: 26-Oct-2011
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Ken Caldeira
kcaldeira@carnegie.stanford.edu
Carnegie Institution

Washington, DC -- Solar radiation management is a class of theoretical concepts for manipulating the climate in order to reduce the risks of global warming caused by greenhouse gasses. But its potential effectiveness and risks are uncertain, and it is unclear whether tests could help narrow these uncertainties. A team composed of Caltech's Doug MacMynowski, Carnegie's Ken Caldeira and Ho-Jeong Shin, and Harvard's David Keith used modeling to determine the type of testing that might be effective in the future. Their work has been published online by Energy and Environmental Science.

Ideas for solar radiation management include increasing the amount of aerosols in the stratosphere, which could scatter incoming solar heat away from Earth's surface, or creating low-altitude marine clouds to reflect these same rays. Clearly the size of the scale and the intricacies of the many atmospheric and climate processes make testing these ideas difficult.

"While it is clearly premature to consider testing solar radiation management at a scale large enough to measure the climate response, it is not premature to understand what we can learn from such tests," said Doug MacMynowski of the California Institute of Technology, who led the research. "But we did not address other important questions such as the necessary testing technology and the social and political implications of such tests."

Using models the team was able to demonstrate that smaller-scale tests of solar radiation management could help inform decisions about larger scale deployments. Short-term tests would be particularly effective at understanding the effects of geoengineering on fast-acting climate dynamics. But testing would require several decades and, even then, would need to be extrapolated out to the centuries-long time scales relevant to studying climate change.

Some scientists have theorized that volcanic eruptions could stand in for tests, as they would cause same types of atmospheric changes as aerosols. But they wouldn't be as effective as a sustained test.

"No test can tell us everything we might want to know, but tests could tell us some things we would like to know," Caldeira said. "Tests could improve our understanding of likely consequences of intentional interference in the climate system and could also improve our knowledge about the climate's response to the interference caused by our carbon dioxide emissions."

He added: "We conducted a scientific investigation into what might be learned by testing these proposals. We are not advocating that such tests should actually be undertaken,"

###

NCEP Reanalysis data for this study was provided by NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado from their website.

The Department of Global Ecology was established in 2002 to help build the scientific foundations for a sustainable future. The department is located on the campus of Stanford University, but is an independent research organization funded by the Carnegie Institution. Its scientists conduct basic research on a wide range of large-scale environmental issues, including climate change, ocean acidification, biological invasions, and changes in biodiversity.

The Carnegie Institution for Science (http://www.carnegiescience.edu) is a private, nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with six research departments throughout the U.S. Since its founding in 1902, the Carnegie Institution has been a pioneering force in basic scientific research. Carnegie scientists are leaders in plant biology, developmental biology, astronomy, materials science, global ecology, and Earth and planetary science.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

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

Public release date: 26-Oct-2011
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Ken Caldeira
kcaldeira@carnegie.stanford.edu
Carnegie Institution

Washington, DC -- Solar radiation management is a class of theoretical concepts for manipulating the climate in order to reduce the risks of global warming caused by greenhouse gasses. But its potential effectiveness and risks are uncertain, and it is unclear whether tests could help narrow these uncertainties. A team composed of Caltech's Doug MacMynowski, Carnegie's Ken Caldeira and Ho-Jeong Shin, and Harvard's David Keith used modeling to determine the type of testing that might be effective in the future. Their work has been published online by Energy and Environmental Science.

Ideas for solar radiation management include increasing the amount of aerosols in the stratosphere, which could scatter incoming solar heat away from Earth's surface, or creating low-altitude marine clouds to reflect these same rays. Clearly the size of the scale and the intricacies of the many atmospheric and climate processes make testing these ideas difficult.

"While it is clearly premature to consider testing solar radiation management at a scale large enough to measure the climate response, it is not premature to understand what we can learn from such tests," said Doug MacMynowski of the California Institute of Technology, who led the research. "But we did not address other important questions such as the necessary testing technology and the social and political implications of such tests."

Using models the team was able to demonstrate that smaller-scale tests of solar radiation management could help inform decisions about larger scale deployments. Short-term tests would be particularly effective at understanding the effects of geoengineering on fast-acting climate dynamics. But testing would require several decades and, even then, would need to be extrapolated out to the centuries-long time scales relevant to studying climate change.

Some scientists have theorized that volcanic eruptions could stand in for tests, as they would cause same types of atmospheric changes as aerosols. But they wouldn't be as effective as a sustained test.

"No test can tell us everything we might want to know, but tests could tell us some things we would like to know," Caldeira said. "Tests could improve our understanding of likely consequences of intentional interference in the climate system and could also improve our knowledge about the climate's response to the interference caused by our carbon dioxide emissions."

He added: "We conducted a scientific investigation into what might be learned by testing these proposals. We are not advocating that such tests should actually be undertaken,"

###

NCEP Reanalysis data for this study was provided by NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado from their website.

The Department of Global Ecology was established in 2002 to help build the scientific foundations for a sustainable future. The department is located on the campus of Stanford University, but is an independent research organization funded by the Carnegie Institution. Its scientists conduct basic research on a wide range of large-scale environmental issues, including climate change, ocean acidification, biological invasions, and changes in biodiversity.

The Carnegie Institution for Science (http://www.carnegiescience.edu) is a private, nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with six research departments throughout the U.S. Since its founding in 1902, the Carnegie Institution has been a pioneering force in basic scientific research. Carnegie scientists are leaders in plant biology, developmental biology, astronomy, materials science, global ecology, and Earth and planetary science.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

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

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-10/ci-tg102611.php

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Cardinals miss key pitches, signs, phone calls (AP)

ARLINGTON, Texas ? The Cardinals couldn't get any key hits. Then again, they hardly got much right in a World Series game that turned slapstick for St. Louis.

Matt Holliday and Co. went 1 for 12 with runners in scoring position and their average was hardly much better with signs to baserunners and calls to the bullpen.

"It's not good to be down 3-2," Lance Berkman said after a 4-2 loss to the Texas Rangers on Monday night in which the Cardinals were done in by man and machine. "We'd rather be up 3-2, but we feel good."

Albert Pujols apparently called for a hit-and-run with the score 2-all in the seventh inning, then didn't swing as Allen Craig got caught stealing second.

What could have been an inning-ending, double-play grounder by David Murphy bounced off lefty Marc Rzepczynski and rolled toward second for an infield hit that brought up Mike Napoli with the bases loaded. His two-run double in the eighth put the Rangers ahead.

Pujols struck out in the ninth as Napoli threw out Craig trying to steal second again.

"We had chances but didn't come through," Pujols said. "Nothing you can do. Day off tomorrow and get ready to play on Wednesday."

And, it turns out, the Cardinals even botched their calls to the bullpen. Twice.

"It's a really tough loss because we had the opportunity to add the runs where you can make a mistake ... and you still win the game," Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said. "So it's a very disappointing, frustrating loss."

On a night that was more Abbott & Costello than Tinker to Evers to Chance, the game will be remembered for a reach-out-and-touch-someone moment that La Russa would rather forget.

When he went to the mound to relieve Rzepczynski, he was shocked to find Lance Lynn had come in to pitch.

"I went, `Oh, what are you doing here?'" La Russa said.

So much for the email, text-message age. La Russa had called bullpen coach Derek Lilliquist to have Jason Motte start warming up. Lilliquist didn't hear La Russa correctly.

"I thought it was Lynn," Lilliquist said.

Was Napoli supposed to face Rzepczynski or Motte?

La Russa insisted it was Motte. Lilliquist said Rzepczynski would have faced Napoli anyway.

"It must be loud," La Russa said. "I give the fans credit."

When Murphy's grounder bounced away from Rzepczynski, La Russa lifted his blue hat right off his head, in amazement and frustration, arching his eyebrows.

This wasn't what he meant before the game when he said he would tip his cap to the Rangers if they proved to be the better team.

Yadier Molina hit an RBI single in the second and Skip Schumaker followed with a run-scoring groundout against C.J. Wilson as St. Louis built a 2-0 lead for Chris Carpenter.

But the Cardinals stranded 12 runners, leaving the bases loaded in the fifth and seventh.

Wilson pinned a runner at third in the third when Holliday grounded into an inning-ending double play, and the lefty got Holliday to ground out with the bases loaded and two outs in the fifth.

St. Louis left runners at second and third when Scott Feldman struck out Nick Punto to end the sixth. In the seventh, Craig walked with one out and Pujols apparently called for a hit-and-run on an 0-1 pitch.

He didn't swing, and Craig was thrown out.

"It was a mix-up, and that's all I'm going to say," was La Russa's explanation. "On our team, nobody gets thrown under the bus."

Said Pujols: "I don't want to tell you. .. That's secret. I can't tell you how I play my game."

Pujols is 0 for 12 in the Series other than his 5-for-6, three-homer, six-RBI performance in Game 3. He was intentionally walked in the seventh for the third time in the game ? this time with no one on. After a single by Holliday and an intentional walk to Berkman, David Freese flied out on the next pitch.

Then, after Allen Craig was hit by Neftali Feliz's pitch leading off the ninth, Pujols struck out as Craig was caught stealing second again.

When the Series resumes Wednesday night in St. Louis, Jaime Garcia starts for the Cardinals and Colby Lewis for the Rangers. The forecast calls for an 80 percent chance of rain. St. Louis could use some extra time to regroup.

After beating Wilson in last week's opener, Carpenter gave up solo homers to Mitch Moreland in the third and Adrian Beltre in the sixth, starting the Texas comeback. He allowed six hits in seven innings, struck out four and walked two.

It was 2-all when Texas put runners on first and second with one out in the eighth on Michael Young's leadoff double against loser Octavio Dotel and a one-out intentional walk to Nelson Cruz.

Murphy's infield hit off Rzepczynski loaded the bases for the right-handed-hitting Napoli, who drove the ball to the gap in right-center to raise his Series average to .309 with two homers and nine RBIs. The Rangers ran out of the dugout to celebrate.

Would Motte have faced Napoli had he been warmed up?

La Russa said yes, Lilliquist said no.

Rzepczynski wasn't surprised he was left in.

"Not at all, especially with the lefty being on deck. I've done that all year, where if there's a righty in between, I'm going to go out there and get the chance to get the righty out," he said.

Motte wasn't aware of the mix-up until reporters asked in the postgame clubhouse.

"I go out there. The phone rings, and we get going when we're told," he said. "I started throwing when I was told to start throwing."

Lilliquist thought the mix-up didn't make much of a difference, that La Russa wanted Rzepczynski to face Napoli.

"It's basically miscommunication. It was loud. A lot of places are like that," he said. "The phone is as good as any phone."

La Russa said the first time he called the bullpen in the ninth, he wanted two pitchers to get warm.

"They heard Rzepczynski, and they didn't get Motte. I looked up there and Motte wasn't going," he said. "So I called back for Motte, and they got Lynn up."

Rzepczynski struck out Moreland, and once Lynn came in, he intentionally walked Ian Kinsler before Motte finally relieved.

He struck out Elvis Andrus. By then, the damage had been done.

"We have nothing to be worry about," Molina said. "We're going back to St. Louis to win at home."

And perhaps La Russa will find a new method of signaling his bullpen.

"Yeah, smoke signals from the dugout," he said.

NOTES: Former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach bounced the ceremonial first pitch. ... Furcal, who turned 34 on Monday, led off the game with a liner to Beltre at third, just as he did in Game 4. This was an easier play, with the third baseman not having to leap. Furcal turned and slashed his bat through the air in frustration.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/sports/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111025/ap_on_sp_ba_ga_su/bbo_world_series_cardinals

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Microsoft Office team shares vision of the future

The Microsoft Office team has put out a video showing a vision of the future where edge-to-edge, interactive, multitouch and gesture-based panels are everywhere. We’ve seen things like this before in movies like Minority Report and Iron Man, and even ye old Bill Gates CES Keynotes of yore. Apple...

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/eZYLFf2FlDU/

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Israel closes east Jerusalem offices used by Hamas (AP)

JERUSALEM ? Israeli police say they have raided and shut down a pair of offices in east Jerusalem that were allegedly used by the militant Palestinian group Hamas.

Spokesman Micky Rosenfeld says no arrests were made in Tuesday's raid. He wouldn't say what the offices were used for. The premises were ordered closed for a month.

Israel, the U.S. and the EU consider Hamas a terrorist group because of its suicide bombings and other attacks aimed at Israeli civilians.

Israel has banned the group from operating in areas under its control, including east Jerusalem, the section of the holy city claimed by the Palestinians.

Hamas has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007, when it ousted rivals from the secular Fatah party. The Fatah-led Palestinian Authority governs in the West Bank.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mideast/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111025/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians

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Researchers ID genetic mutation associated with high risk of age-related macular degeneration

Researchers ID genetic mutation associated with high risk of age-related macular degeneration

Monday, October 24, 2011

Age- related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of severe visual loss among the elderly. Researchers had previously identified several relatively common genetic variants which together predict a person's increased risk for AMD, but a significant number of persons without the disease also have these variants. Now, for the first time, investigators have been able to clearly show a specific rare mutation called CFH R1210C that predicts a very high risk of disease and is extremely uncommon among individuals who do not have the disease. Although it is a rare variant, accounting for about 1% of the total cases, it is highly related to familial disease and earlier age of onset. This research is published online and in an upcoming print edition of Nature Genetics. The paper is a collaborative effort between investigators from Tufts Medical Center, Tufts University School of Medicine and Brigham and Women's Hospital.

"Our paper shows that there is a genetic variant that confers high risk of the development of AMD; this finding not only clearly links CFH gene dysfunction to disease, but also might help to identify people who need to be screened more closely," said first author, Soumya Raychaudhuri, MD, PhD, a researcher in the Divisions of Genetics and Rheumatology at Brigham and Women's Hospital and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School.

Prior to this publication, it was known that genetic variation within the CFH gene influenced risk of AMD in individuals. In this study, researchers conducted sequencing and genotyping of CFH in 2,423 AMD cases and 1,122 controls in the laboratory of senior author Johanna M. Seddon, MD, ScM, Professor of Ophthalmology at Tufts University School of Medicine and Director of the Ophthalmic Epidemiology and Genetics Service at Tufts Medical Center. They identified a rare, high-risk mutation resulting in an arginine to cysteine substitution in the CFH protein. This mutation is associated with loss of function of the CFH protein and its discovery suggests that loss of CFH function can drive AMD risk. It was associated with advanced AMD with visual loss and many of the patients also had numerous drusen, which are the early hallmarks of AMD.

"The discovery of this rare but penetrant variant strongly associated with disease also points the way to developing new and effective treatments for high risk individuals," said Seddon.

Collaborators in this research included investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital and Johns Hopkins University.

###

Brigham and Women's Hospital: http://www.brighamandwomens.org

Thanks to Brigham and Women's Hospital for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/114552/Researchers_ID_genetic_mutation_associated_with_high_risk_of_age_related_macular_degeneration

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Obama offers mortgage relief on western trip (AP)

LAS VEGAS ? The Obama administration offered mortgage relief on Monday to hundreds of thousands of Americans in the latest attempt to ease the economic and political fallout of a housing crisis that has bedeviled President Barack Obama as he seeks a second term.

Obama was pitching new rules for federally guaranteed loans in Las Vegas, the epicenter of foreclosures and joblessness, in recognition that measures the administration has taken so far have not worked as well as officials had expected. The housing effort represents a new emphasis on executive steps he can take to address economic ills and other domestic challenges while circumventing Republican lawmakers, who have been blocking most of his proposals.

His jobs bill struggling in Congress, Obama tried a new catchphrase ? "We can't wait" ? to highlight his administrative initiatives and to shift blame to congressional Republicans for lack of action to boost employment and stimulate an economic recovery. Later in the week, Obama plans to announce measures to make it easier for college graduates to pay back federal loans.

While Obama has proposed prodding the economy with payroll tax cuts and increased spending on public works and aid to states, he has yet to offer a wholesale overhaul of the nation's housing programs. Economists point to the burst housing bubble as the main culprit behind the 2008 financial crisis. Meanwhile, the combination of unemployment, depressed wages and mortgages that exceed house values has continued to put a strain on the economy.

"There is no silver bullet," White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One, and he acknowledged that the president's unilateral measures have their limits. "They are not a substitute to congressional action."

While the White House tried to avoid predicting how many homeowners would benefit from the revamped refinancing program, the Federal Housing Finance Administration estimated an additional 1 million people would qualify. Moody's Analytics say the figure could be as high as 1.6 million.

Under Obama's proposal, homeowners who are still current on their mortgages would be able to refinance no matter how much their home value has dropped below what they still owe.

In spelling out the plan to homeowners in in a Las Vegas neighborhood, Obama has chosen a state that provides the starkest example of the toll the housing crisis has exacted from Americans. One in every 118 homes in the state of Nevada received a foreclosure notice in September, the highest ratio in the country, according to the foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac.

Carney criticized Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for proposing last week while in Las Vegas that the government not interfere with foreclosures. "Don't try to stop the foreclosure process," Romney told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "Let it run its course and hit the bottom."

"That is not a solution," Carney said. "That is a solution that basically says to middle-class Americans who have been responsibly paying their mortgages, who, through no fault of their own, have seen their economic situation get quite desperate because of the crisis in the housing market, that `you're on your own, tough luck, I'm not going to help you.'"

The president also was using his visit to Las Vegas to promote a $15 billion neighborhood revitalization plan contained in his current jobs proposal that would help redevelop abandoned and foreclosed properties and stabilize affected neighborhoods.

The Nevada stop is the first leg of a three-day tour of western states, blending his pitch for boosting the economy with an aggressive hunt for campaign cash.

From Nevada, Obama will head for the glamor of Hollywood and the homes of movie stars Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas and producer James Lassiter for some high-dollar fundraising. On Tuesday, he will tape an appearance on "The Tonight Show" with Jay Leno, his second time on the show as president and fourth time overall. He will also raise money in San Francisco and in Denver.

Before the president addressed his mortgage refinancing plan, he attended a fundraiser at the luxurious Bellagio hotel, offering a sharp contrast between well-to-do who are fueling his campaign and the struggling homeowners hoping to benefit from his policies.

The mortgage assistance plan by the Federal Housing Finance Administration will help borrowers with little or no equity in their homes, many of whom are stuck with 6 or 7 percent mortgage rates, to seek refinancing and take advantage of lower rates. The FHFA plans to remove caps that had allowed homeowners to refinance only if they owed up to 25 percent more than their homes are worth.

The refinancing program is being extended until the end of 2013. It was originally scheduled to end in June 2012.

The administration's incremental steps to help homeowners have prompted even the president's allies to demand more aggressive action.

Rep. Dennis Cardoza, a moderate Democrat from California, gave voice to Democratic frustration on the housing front last week when he announced his decision not to seek re-election, blaming the Obama administration directly for not addressing the crisis.

"I am dismayed by the administration's failure to understand and effectively address the current housing foreclosure crisis," Cardoza said in a statement that drew widespread attention. "Home foreclosures are destroying communities and crushing our economy, and the administration's inaction is infuriating."

Obama's new "We can't wait" slogan is his latest in a string of stump-speech refrains he hopes will pressure Republicans who oppose his $447 billion jobs package. He initially exhorted Congress to "Pass this bill!" then demanded "I want it back," all in the face of unanimous Republican opposition in the Senate, though even some Democrats were unhappy with the plan.

Obama has now agreed to break the proposal into its component parts and seek congressional approval one measure at a time. The overall proposal would increase taxes on millionaires, lower payroll taxes on workers and businesses for a year, pay for bridge, road and school construction projects, and help states and local governments retain teachers and emergency workers on the job.

Divvied up, the proposals with the best chance of passage are the payroll tax cuts and extensions in jobless insurance to the long-term unemployed.

Countering Obama's criticism, GOP leaders say the sluggish economy and stubbornly high unemployment rate are the result of failed Obama administration policies, including the 2009 stimulus package and financial regulation bill.

"They got everything they wanted from Congress the first two years," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Sunday. "Their policies are in place. And they are demonstrably not working."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111024/ap_on_en_mo/us_obama

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