You've had a day to renew your membership, book plane tickets and beg, borrow or steal $1,600 from your neighbors. Now it's time to sit on the WWDC homepage and find out if you'll actually be able to attend Apple's annual software shindig. The tickets go on sale in just an hour, so here's a friendly heads-up that you should get a cup of coffee, charge that battery pack and practice hitting F5, just in case.
Update: We've just seen a new definition of fast. As developers havenoticed, Apple sold out of WWDC tickets in about two minutes -- and possibly sooner than that.
MOSCOW (AP) ? At least 38 people died in a fire in a psychiatric hospital outside Moscow late Thursday night.
Police said the fire, which broke out at about 2 a.m. local time (6 p.m. Eastern, 2200 GMT) in the one-story hospital in the Ramenskoye settlement, was caused by a short circuit, the RIA Novosti reported on Friday.
Officials from the Russian Investigative Committee later said they are looking at poor fire regulations and short circuit as possible causes.
By early Friday morning, investigators listed 38 people ? 36 patients and two doctors ? as dead. Only three nurses managed to escape. The emergency services also posted a list of the patients indicating they ranged in age from 20 to 76.
Health Ministry officials said that hospital housed patients with severe mental disorders. Vadim Belovoshin from the emergency situations ministry official told the Itar-TASS news agency that the windows in the hospital were barred but said there were two fire escapes.
Belovoshin also said that it took fire fighters an hour to get to the hospital following an emergency call because a local ferry across the river was closed and the fire fighters had to make a detour.
Deadly fires are common in Russia because of wide-spread violations of fire safety rules.
BRUSSELS (AP) ? U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged NATO on Tuesday to prepare for the possible use of chemical weapons by Syria on the same day that a senior Israeli military intelligence official said Syrian President Bashar Assad had used such weapons last month in his battle against insurgents.
It was the first time Israel had accused the embattled Syrian leader of using his stockpile of nonconventional weapons.
The assessment, based on visual evidence, could raise pressure on the U.S. and other Western countries to intervene in Syria. Britain and France recently announced that they had evidence that Assad's government had used chemical weapons.
President Barack Obama has warned that the use of chemical weapons by Assad would be a "game changer" and has hinted that it could draw intervention.
But White House spokesman Jay Carney said while the administration is continuing to monitor and investigate whether the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons, it has "not come to the conclusion that there has been that use."
"But it is something that is of great concern to us, to our partners, and obviously unacceptable as the president made clear," Carney said.
Despite the deteriorating situation, NATO officials say there is virtually no chance the alliance will intervene in the civil war. More than 70,000 people have died in the conflict, according to the United Nations. The violence also has forced more than 1 million Syrians to seek safety abroad, and more are leaving by the day, burdening neighboring countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq.
On Tuesday, Brig. Gen. Itai Brun, the head of research and analysis in Israeli military intelligence, told a security conference in Tel Aviv that Assad had used chemical weapons multiple times. Among the incidents were attacks documented by the French and British near Damascus last month.
He cited images of people hurt, but gave no indication he had other evidence, such as soil samples, typically used to verify chemical weapons use.
"To the best of our professional understanding, the regime used lethal chemical weapons against the militants in a series of incidents over the past months, including the relatively famous incident of March 19," Brun said. "Shrunken pupils, foaming at the mouth and other signs indicate, in our view, that lethal chemical weapons were used."
He said sarin, a lethal nerve agent, was probably used. He also said the Syrian regime was using less lethal chemical weapons. And he appeared to lament the lack of response by the international community.
"The fact that chemical weapons were used without an appropriate response is a very disturbing development because it could signal that such a thing is legitimate," he said.
Israel, which borders Syria, has been warily watching the Syrian civil war since fighting erupted there in March 2011. Although Assad is a bitter enemy, Israel has been careful not to take sides, partly because the Assad family has kept the border with Israel quiet for 40 years and partly because of fears of what might happen if he were toppled.
Israeli officials are concerned that Assad's stockpile of chemical weapons and other advanced arms could reach the hands of his ally, the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, or Islamic extremist groups trying to oust him from Syria.
Kerry, attending his first meeting of NATO's governing body, the North Atlantic Council, as America's top diplomat, said contingency plans should be put in place to guard against the threat of a chemical strike. Turkey, a member of the military alliance, borders Syria and would be most at risk from such an attack. NATO has already deployed Patriot missile batteries in Turkey.
"Planning regarding Syria, such as what (NATO) has already done, is an appropriate undertaking for the alliance," Kerry told NATO foreign ministers. "We should also carefully and collectively consider how NATO is prepared to respond to protect its members from a Syrian threat, including any potential chemical weapons threat."
Speaking at a news conference after the meeting, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the alliance is "extremely concerned about the use of ballistic missiles in Syria and the possible use of chemical weapons." However, he also noted that NATO has not been asked to intervene.
"There is no call for NATO to play a role, but if these challenges remain unaddressed they could directly affect our own security," he told reporters. "So we will continue to remain extremely vigilant."
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in Brussels to talk with his counterparts from NATO countries, said Russia would want any investigation of whether chemical weapons have been used to be conducted by experts and concern only the specific report being investigated.
Speaking through a translator in a press conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Lavrov said that, in March, after each side in Syria's civil war accused the other of using chemical weapons in northern Aleppo province, the U.N. investigation became politicized and overly broad. Instead of sending experts to study the specific area and the specific allegation, Lavrov said investigators demanded access to all facilities in the country and the right to interview all Syrian citizens.
In Washington, Pentagon spokesman George Little said the U.S. "continues to assess reports of chemical weapons use in Syria."
"The use of such weapons would be entirely unacceptable," he added.
Later in the day, Kerry appeared to try to soften his earlier remarks, saying he had no way of knowing what the facts were.
"I didn't ask for additional planning," he said. "I think it might have been the secretary general or somebody who commented that we may need to do some additional planning. But there is no specific request. What there was from me was a very clear statement about the threat of chemical weapons and the potential for chemical weapons generically to fall into bad hands."
He also said the Obama administration is "looking at every option that could possibly end the violence and usher in a political transition" and that plans need to be made now to ensure that there is no power vacuum when that takes place. He said increasing aid to the Syrian National Coalition and its military command, the Supreme Military Council, would be critical to that effort.
Many of NATO's 28 members also belong to the European Union, which on Monday lifted its oil embargo on Syria to provide more economic support to the rebels and is now considering easing an arms embargo on the country to allow weapons transfers to those fighting the Assad regime.
Kerry did not mention the possible easing of the EU embargo but he did say that NATO should begin to think about taking on a larger role in planning for a post-Assad Syria, particularly in dealing with the country's chemical weapons stockpiles.
The NATO ministers were also working Tuesday on defining how the alliance would support Afghan forces after 2014, when NATO will no longer have a combat role.
With next year's transition date looming, Kerry will host three-way talks in Brussels on Wednesday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and top Pakistani officials aimed at speeding possible reconciliation talks with the Taliban and improving trust and cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
On the sidelines of the NATO meeting, Kerry met Lavrov to discuss a range of issues, including Syria. He also thanked Lavrov for Russian President Vladimir Putin's statement of condolence to the U.S. for last week's bombings at the Boston Marathon blamed on two ethnic Chechen brothers.
___
Associated Press writers Ariel David in Tel Aviv, Peter James Spielmann at the United Nations, and Kimberly Dozier and Julie Pace in Washington contributed to this report.
___
Don Melvin can be reached at https://twitter.com/Don_Melvin
Apr. 24, 2013 ? A team of researchers led by Artem R. Oganov, a professor of theoretical crystallography in the Department of Geosciences, has made a startling prediction that challenges existing chemical models and current understanding of planetary interiors -- magnesium oxide, a major material in the formation of planets, can exist in several different compositions. The team's findings, "Novel stable compounds in the Mg-O system under high pressure," are published in the online edition of Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics. The existence of these compounds -- which are radically different from traditionally known or expected materials -- could have important implications.
"For decades it was believed that MgO is the only thermodynamically stable magnesium oxide, and it was widely believed to be one of the main materials of the interiors of the Earth and other planets," said Qiang Zhu, the lead author of this paper and a postdoctoral student in the Oganov laboratory.
"We have predicted that two new compounds, MgO2 and Mg3O2, become stable at pressures above one and five million atmospheres, respectively. This not only overturns standard chemical intuition but also implies that planets may be made of totally unexpected materials. We have predicted conditions (pressure, temperature, oxygen fugacity) necessary for stability of these new materials, and some planets, though probably not the Earth, may offer such conditions," added Oganov.
In addition to their general chemical interest, MgO2 and Mg3O2 might be important planet-forming minerals in deep interiors of some planets. Planets with these compounds would most likely be the size of Earth or larger.
The team explained how its paper predicted the structures in detail by analyzing the electronic structure and chemical bonding for these compounds. For example, Mg3O2 is forbidden within "textbook chemistry," where the Mg ions can only have charges "+2," O ions are "-2, and the only allowed compound is MgO. In the "oxygen-deficient" semiconductor Mg3O2, there are strong electronic concentrations in the "empty space" of the structure that play the role of negatively charged ions and stabilize this material. Curiously, magnesium becomes a d-element (i.e. a transition metal) under pressure, and this almost alchemical transformation is responsible for the existence of the "forbidden" compound Mg3O2.
The findings were made using unique methods of structure prediction, developed in the Oganov laboratory. "These methods have led to the discovery of many new phenomena and are used by a number of companies for systematically discovering novel materials on the computer -- a much cheaper route, compared to traditional experimental methods," said Zhu.
"It is known that MgO makes up about 10 percent of the volume of our planet, and on other planets this fraction can be larger. The road is now open for a systematic discovery of new unexpected planet-forming materials," concluded Oganov.
This work is funded by the National Science Foundation and DARPA.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Stony Brook University.
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Journal Reference:
Qiang Zhu, Artem R. Oganov, Andriy O. Lyakhov. Novel stable compounds in the Mg?O system under high pressure. Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, 2013; DOI: 10.1039/C3CP50678A
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Fieldrunners 2 introduces elevation to the classic tower defense formula
The sequel to one of the most widely-loved tower defense games has finally come to Android. Fieldrunners 2 expands on the cute graphics and wide strategic elements of the original with new maps, new towers, new creeps, and upgraded visuals.
The biggest change is the introduction of trenches, bridges, and tunnels. Adding elevation to the mix introduces a whole new challenge to the classic tower defense formula. Puzzle, sudden death, and time trial game modes are all available across a bunch of different landscapes.
Apr. 23, 2013 ? More carbon dioxide is released from residential lawns than corn fields according to a new study. And much of the difference can likely be attributed to soil temperature. The data, from researchers at Elizabethtown College, suggest that urban heat islands may be working at smaller scales than previously thought.
These findings provide a better understanding of the changes that occur when agricultural lands undergo development and urbanization to support growing urban populations.
David Bowne, assistant professor of biology, led the study to look at the amount of carbon dioxide being released from residential lawns versus corn fields in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. His co-author, Erin Johnson, was an undergraduate at the time of the study and did the work as part of her senior honors thesis. Their findings were published online today in Soil Science Society of America Journal.
For Bowne, the study allowed him to look beyond the obvious impact of losing agricultural fields to development -- the loss of food that was once produced on the land.
"That is a legitimate concern, but I wanted to look more at how this change could potentially impact the carbon cycle with the understanding that the carbon cycle has implications for global climate change," explains Bowne.
To begin to understand how the carbon cycle was changing, Bowne and Johnson measured carbon dioxide efflux, soil temperature, and soil moisture under the two different land uses. They found that both carbon dioxide efflux and soil temperature were higher in residential lawns than in corn fields. Additionally, temperature had the most influence on the levels of carbon dioxide efflux, followed by the type of land use.
Higher temperatures leading to increased carbon dioxide efflux was not a surprise for Bowne and Johnson as this relationship has been documented before. "As you increase temperature," Bowne explains, "you increase biological activity -- be it microbial, plant, fungal, or animal." That increased activity, then, leads to more respiration and higher levels of carbon dioxide leaving the soils.
What was unexpected, however, was that the higher temperatures found in residential lawns suggested urban heat islands working at small scales. Urban heat islands are well documented phenomena in which development leads to large areas of dark-colored surfaces such as roofs, buildings, and parking lots. The dark color means more heat is absorbed leading to an increase in temperature in the neighboring areas. Urban areas, then, are warmer than the surrounding countryside.
The interesting part of Bowne's study is that the urban heat islands in the areas he was looking seem to operate on much smaller scales than he previously thought. While heat islands are usually studied on large scales -- such as comparing a large city and its surrounding rural areas -- fewer studies have been done to work out how development may affect temperatures on small scales.
"Within a developed area, within a city or town, you could have local increases in soil temperature because of the amount of development within a really small area," says Bowne.
His research suggests that temperatures may vary even across short distances due to the influence of development. One source cited in his paper says that development within even 175 meters of a location can cause an increase in temperature. Bowne is planning further experiments to test soil temperatures over a range of development setups and sizes.
The other factor that Bowne will test in the future is the sequestration of carbon. Along with the carbon dioxide efflux data in the current study, information about carbon sequestration would give a bigger picture of carbon cycling. That picture could then help researchers determine how various land uses as well as management practices such as no-till agriculture or leaving grass clippings on lawns can change the carbon cycling.
"If we go from one land use to another land use, how does that impact carbon cycling which in turn can affect climate change? Our current study touches on one component of that cycle, and more research is needed to address this huge topic," says Bowne.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Soil Science Society of America (SSSA).
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
David R. Bowne, Erin R. Johnson. Comparison of Soil Carbon Dioxide Efflux between Residential Lawns and Corn Fields. Soil Science Society of America Journal, 2013; 0 (0): 0 DOI: 10.2136/sssaj2012.0346N
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's cabinet on Sunday approved an open skies agreement that aims to boost airline traffic to and from Europe, defying a strike by workers at El Al and two smaller airlines who fear for their jobs due to higher competition from foreign airlines.
Supporters of the open skies aviation deal - which will go into effect next April - say its relaxation of restrictions and quotas on flights between Israel and European Union countries will increase competition and help Israel's economy.
"The reform ... aims to lower air fares to and from Israel and boost incoming tourism," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said as the cabinet approved the deal by a 16-3 vote.
To help airlines El Al, Arkia and Israir prepare for the rise in competition, the agreement will be gradually phased in over the next five years.
"The open skies agreement is the only way for El Al to economies at long last and to change its approach so that it can compete in the tough world market," Transport Minister Yisrael Katz told Israel Radio.
A major complaint of Israel's airlines is high security costs compared to foreign competitors but the government said it would cover 80 percent of this. El Al spent $33 million on security in 2012.
Ofer Eini, head of Israel's Histadrut labor federation which overseas hundreds of thousands of public sector workers, said the agreement could leave Israel's airlines struggling to compete and could cost 17,000 jobs.
"The way in which (this deal) is being implemented will on the one hand bring a reduction in air fares but it will also cause Israeli companies to collapse," he told Israel Radio.
Eini had called on the cabinet to delay its vote by a month to allow further discussion on adapting the plan.
STRIKE
Workers at El Al, Arkia and Israir started an open-ended strike at 5 a.m. (0200 GMT) but the airlines brought forward most departures so that outgoing passengers could leave Israel. Incoming flights and foreign airlines were not affected.
El Al said it had initially canceled all departures from Tel Aviv planned until 9 p.m. (1800 GMT) but called on passengers to keep updated on the status of later flights.
According to the Israel Airports Authority, 53 departures carrying 8,700 passengers were scheduled for Sunday.
"We support competition and we support open skies, but in this form it brings about the destruction of the Israeli airline companies," said Asher Edri, chairman of El Al's workers' union.
The Histadrut said the strike would be expanded to include all airport workers starting 6 am on Tuesday, which could shut Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion International Airport.
Shares in El Al, which lost $26.5 million in the fourth quarter, closed 8.5 percent lower at 0.53 shekels.
El Al "estimates that implementation of the agreement in its current form is expected to adversely affect Israeli airlines, including El Al, due to worsening competition," it said, adding that Israeli airlines would have a tough time competing.
Low-cost airline easyJet , which flies to Tel Aviv from London, Manchester and Geneva, welcomed the cabinet's decision to approve the open skies agreement.
"easyJet ... has announced several times its desire to expand its service to Israel from additional destinations in Europe once the open skies agreement was signed," it said.
Finance Minister Yair Lapid said the deal was good for Israel and rejected the notion that jobs would be lost.
"It will not harm the number of jobs in the economy but do the opposite," Lapid said, citing a private study that found open skies would create 10,000 new jobs.
Katz, a member of Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party, has said the deal contained risks as well as benefits and Israel's carriers should "exploit the opportunity to compete more vigorously with European airlines".
Israel and the United States signed an open skies agreement in 2010.
Indiana University associate professor earns APS's Henry Pickering Bowditch AwardPublic release date: 21-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Donna Krupa dkrupa@the-aps.org 617-954-3976 Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology
Johnathan D. Tune, Ph.D., receives prestigious award for novel and exceptional work on the mechanisms that connect obesity, diabetes, and heart disease
BOSTONHeart disease has been the number one killer in the U.S. for several decades. Diabetes is now the seventh most common cause of death here. Obesity is a risk factor for both conditions and estimates now show that nearly 70 percent of obese, type-2 diabetics will die of cardiovascular disease.
While this much is known, exactly how obesity and diabetes affect the heart still remains largely a mystery. Johnathan D. Tune, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Cellular and Integrative Physiology at Indiana University School of Medicine, is working to find an explanation for these connections. His work, examining these conditions in living pigs, isolated blood vessels, and cells alike, is revealing targets that could eventually be used to treat heart disease or slow its progression, perhaps eventually knocking it from the top cause of death.
For this novel research, the American Physiological Society has recognized the importance of Dr. Tune's work by awarding him the Henry Pickering Bowditch Lecture Award. The award is one of the highest offered by the society and is given to scientists younger than 42 years of age whose accomplishments are original and outstanding.
When Pigs Run:
As a Ph.D. student at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Forth Worth, Dr. Tune's research focused on how to protect the heart from ischemic damagethe injury that takes place when the heart's cells are deprived of oxygen and results in a heart attack. He and his colleagues found that forcing the heart to use glucose as a primary fuel was able to protect the heart against this damage. Later, when he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington School of Medicine, he studied how the heart regulates blood flowsignals that it needs more or less oxygen.
Now, at Indiana University School of Medicine, Dr. Tune combines these interests to study how obesity and diabetes affect blood flow to the heart. He and his colleagues are examining this question in a variety of different ways. For example, one of their most useful models is obese pigs. The researchers surgically implant catheters and transducers in these animals so that coronary blood flow, blood pressure, and cardiac function can be continuously monitored while the animals are conscious and active. Part of their work involves exercising the animals, since exercise can trigger heart attacks in people.
"I always tell people that pigs don't fly, but ours do run on a treadmill," he says. "Just as physicians perform treadmill stress tests in patients suspected of having coronary disease, we use treadmill exercise to physiologically increase the workload of the heart in real time."
Dr. Tune and his colleagues also examine isolated blood vessels and smooth muscle cells in their pig model. These examinations have turned up a number of findings, including that obesity significantly decreases the function of specific potassium channels that are critical for the regulation of blood flow to the heart. Without enough of these channels, the heart may not receive enough blood and oxygen over time, which could lead to long-term damage.
Additional studies in Dr. Tune's laboratory are focused on the potential role of factors released from fat cells, including fat cells that normally surround the major coronary arteries. His recent work has shown that one of these factors, a chemical called leptin, can impair the function of cells that line blood vessels, potentially contributing to the development of coronary artery disease.
From Pigs to People:
Though much of his research takes place in pigs, his ultimate goal is to find pharmaceutical targets for treating heart disease in people. "By understanding how obesity and diabetes leads to the development of cardiovascular disease we hope to discover new targets to delay the initiation and progression of this deleterious disease," Tune says.
Presently, Dr. Tune is working to translate his work in pigs with collaborative studies in obese humans with type 2 diabetes. "At the end of the day," he says, "we're searching for novel ways to improve coronary health in the obese, diabetic heart."
Dr. Tune will discuss his research and what the findings in obese pigs can help researchers understand about heart disease in people when he presents this year's Bowditch Lecture, "Translational Insight Into Regulation of Coronary Blood Flow," on Sunday April 21 at 5:45 PM at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.
###
About the Bowditch Lecture Award
The Henry Pickering Bowditch Lecture Award is named in honor of the first president of the American Physiological Society. By tradition, the Bowditch Lecturer, who is to be younger than 42 years of age, has been named by the president of the Society for their outstanding work in the field. The Award has been given annually since 1956.
About Experimental Biology 2013
Six scientific societies will hold their joint scientific sessions and annual meetings, known as Experimental Biology, from April 20-24, 2013, in Boston. This meeting brings together the leading researchers from a broad array of life science disciplines. The societies include the American Association of Anatomists (AAA), American Physiological Society (APS), American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), American Society for Investigative Pathology (ASIP), American Society for Nutrition (ASN), and American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET). Additional information about the meeting is online at http://bit.ly/ymb7av.
About the American Physiological Society (APS)
The American Physiological Society (APS) is a nonprofit organization devoted to fostering education, scientific research, and dissemination of information in the physiological sciences. The Society was founded in 1887 and today represents more than 11,000 members and publishes
14 peer-reviewed journals.
NOTE TO EDITORS: To schedule an interview with Dr. Tune, please contact Donna Krupa at DKrupa@the-aps.org, 301.634.7209 (office) or 703.967.2751 (cell) or @Phyziochick on Twitter.
[ | 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.
Indiana University associate professor earns APS's Henry Pickering Bowditch AwardPublic release date: 21-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Donna Krupa dkrupa@the-aps.org 617-954-3976 Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology
Johnathan D. Tune, Ph.D., receives prestigious award for novel and exceptional work on the mechanisms that connect obesity, diabetes, and heart disease
BOSTONHeart disease has been the number one killer in the U.S. for several decades. Diabetes is now the seventh most common cause of death here. Obesity is a risk factor for both conditions and estimates now show that nearly 70 percent of obese, type-2 diabetics will die of cardiovascular disease.
While this much is known, exactly how obesity and diabetes affect the heart still remains largely a mystery. Johnathan D. Tune, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Cellular and Integrative Physiology at Indiana University School of Medicine, is working to find an explanation for these connections. His work, examining these conditions in living pigs, isolated blood vessels, and cells alike, is revealing targets that could eventually be used to treat heart disease or slow its progression, perhaps eventually knocking it from the top cause of death.
For this novel research, the American Physiological Society has recognized the importance of Dr. Tune's work by awarding him the Henry Pickering Bowditch Lecture Award. The award is one of the highest offered by the society and is given to scientists younger than 42 years of age whose accomplishments are original and outstanding.
When Pigs Run:
As a Ph.D. student at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Forth Worth, Dr. Tune's research focused on how to protect the heart from ischemic damagethe injury that takes place when the heart's cells are deprived of oxygen and results in a heart attack. He and his colleagues found that forcing the heart to use glucose as a primary fuel was able to protect the heart against this damage. Later, when he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington School of Medicine, he studied how the heart regulates blood flowsignals that it needs more or less oxygen.
Now, at Indiana University School of Medicine, Dr. Tune combines these interests to study how obesity and diabetes affect blood flow to the heart. He and his colleagues are examining this question in a variety of different ways. For example, one of their most useful models is obese pigs. The researchers surgically implant catheters and transducers in these animals so that coronary blood flow, blood pressure, and cardiac function can be continuously monitored while the animals are conscious and active. Part of their work involves exercising the animals, since exercise can trigger heart attacks in people.
"I always tell people that pigs don't fly, but ours do run on a treadmill," he says. "Just as physicians perform treadmill stress tests in patients suspected of having coronary disease, we use treadmill exercise to physiologically increase the workload of the heart in real time."
Dr. Tune and his colleagues also examine isolated blood vessels and smooth muscle cells in their pig model. These examinations have turned up a number of findings, including that obesity significantly decreases the function of specific potassium channels that are critical for the regulation of blood flow to the heart. Without enough of these channels, the heart may not receive enough blood and oxygen over time, which could lead to long-term damage.
Additional studies in Dr. Tune's laboratory are focused on the potential role of factors released from fat cells, including fat cells that normally surround the major coronary arteries. His recent work has shown that one of these factors, a chemical called leptin, can impair the function of cells that line blood vessels, potentially contributing to the development of coronary artery disease.
From Pigs to People:
Though much of his research takes place in pigs, his ultimate goal is to find pharmaceutical targets for treating heart disease in people. "By understanding how obesity and diabetes leads to the development of cardiovascular disease we hope to discover new targets to delay the initiation and progression of this deleterious disease," Tune says.
Presently, Dr. Tune is working to translate his work in pigs with collaborative studies in obese humans with type 2 diabetes. "At the end of the day," he says, "we're searching for novel ways to improve coronary health in the obese, diabetic heart."
Dr. Tune will discuss his research and what the findings in obese pigs can help researchers understand about heart disease in people when he presents this year's Bowditch Lecture, "Translational Insight Into Regulation of Coronary Blood Flow," on Sunday April 21 at 5:45 PM at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.
###
About the Bowditch Lecture Award
The Henry Pickering Bowditch Lecture Award is named in honor of the first president of the American Physiological Society. By tradition, the Bowditch Lecturer, who is to be younger than 42 years of age, has been named by the president of the Society for their outstanding work in the field. The Award has been given annually since 1956.
About Experimental Biology 2013
Six scientific societies will hold their joint scientific sessions and annual meetings, known as Experimental Biology, from April 20-24, 2013, in Boston. This meeting brings together the leading researchers from a broad array of life science disciplines. The societies include the American Association of Anatomists (AAA), American Physiological Society (APS), American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), American Society for Investigative Pathology (ASIP), American Society for Nutrition (ASN), and American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET). Additional information about the meeting is online at http://bit.ly/ymb7av.
About the American Physiological Society (APS)
The American Physiological Society (APS) is a nonprofit organization devoted to fostering education, scientific research, and dissemination of information in the physiological sciences. The Society was founded in 1887 and today represents more than 11,000 members and publishes
14 peer-reviewed journals.
NOTE TO EDITORS: To schedule an interview with Dr. Tune, please contact Donna Krupa at DKrupa@the-aps.org, 301.634.7209 (office) or 703.967.2751 (cell) or @Phyziochick on Twitter.
[ | 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.
Safe to say we all need a little escape at the end of this crazy week. So rest your weary eyes on some architecture and design in the most beautiful items we found this week. More »
Still waiting for Miiverse to show its hide on Nintendo's 3DS? Maybe the promise of more conventional social networking will tide you over. Thanks to a new web tool, Japanese 3DS owners can now share screenshots from Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Tomodachi Collection:New Life with their Twitter and Tumblr followers. The setup is pretty simple, giving users access to a basic upload interface through the 3DS' built-in web browser. Just pick an image, add a caption and watch your retweets roll in. Unfortunately, the tool doesn't work with just any image -- attempting to upload a shot taken with the 3DS camera gave us an error, which told us (via a rough translation) that the picture came from "incompatible software." The tool is written entirely in Japanese, but folks with a knack for Kanji can check it out at i.nintendo.net. Looking for a compatible game? We hear there's a bundle for that.
WATERTOWN, Mass. (AP) ? One of two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing is dead and a massive manhunt is underway for another, authorities said early Friday.
Residents of Watertown, a Boston suburb, have been advised to keep their doors locked and not let anyone in.
The Middlesex district attorney said the two men are suspected of killing a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer on campus late Thursday, then stealing a car at gunpoint and later releasing its driver unharmed. Hours earlier, police had released photos of the marathon bombing suspects and asked for the public's help finding them.
Authorities say the suspects threw explosives from the car as police followed it into Watertown. The suspects and police exchanged gunfire, and one of the suspects was critically injured and later died while the other escaped.
"We believe this to be a terrorist," Boston police Commissioner Ed Davis said. "We believe this to be a man who came here to kill people."
The FBI said it is working with local authorities to determine what happened.
The MIT shooting on the Cambridge campus Thursday night was followed by reports of gunfire and explosions in Watertown, about 10 miles west of Boston.
The MIT officer had been responding to report of a disturbance Thursday night when he was shot multiple times, according to a statement from the Middlesex district attorney's office and Cambridge police. It said there were no other victims.
In Watertown, witnesses reported hearing multiple gunshots and explosions at about 1 a.m. Friday. Dozens of police officers and FBI agents were in the neighborhood and a helicopter circled overhead.
State police spokesman David Procopio said, "The incident in Watertown did involve what we believe to be explosive devices possibly, potentially, being used against the police officers."
Boston cab driver Imran Saif said he was standing on a street corner at a police barricade across from a diner when he heard an explosion.
"I heard a loud boom and then a rapid succession of pop, pop, pop," he said. "It sounded like automatic weapons. And then I heard the second explosion."
He said he could smell something burning and advanced to check it out but area residents at their windows yelled at him, "Hey, it's gunfire! Don't go that way!"
MIT said right after the 10:30 p.m. shooting that police were sweeping the campus in Cambridge and urged people to remain indoors. They urged people urged to stay away from the Stata Building, a mixed-use building with faculty offices, classrooms and a common area.
Hours later, MIT, which has about 11,000 students, said the campus was clear but the shooter was still on the loose.
Apr. 18, 2013 ? Animals navigate and orient themselves to survive -- to find food and shelter or avoid predators, for example. Research conducted by Dr. Nachum Ulanovsky and research student Michael Yartsev of the Weizmann Institute's Neurobiology Department, published today in Science, reveals for the first time how three-dimensional, volumetric, space is perceived in mammalian brains. The research was conducted using a unique, miniaturized neural-telemetry system developed especially for this task, which enabled the measurement of single brain cells during flight.
The question of how animals orient themselves in space has been extensively studied, but until now experiments were only conducted in two-dimensional settings. These have found, for instance, that orientation relies on "place cells" -- neurons located in the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in memory, especially spatial memory. Each place cell is responsible for a spatial area, and it sends an electrical signal when the animal is located in that area. Together, the place cells produce full representations of whole spatial environments. Unlike the laboratory experiments, however, the navigation of many animals in the real world, including humans, is carried out in three dimensions. But attempts to expand the scope of experiments from two to three dimensions had encountered difficulties.
One of the more famous efforts in this area was conducted by the University of Arizona and NASA, in which they launched rats into space (aboard a space shuttle). However, although the rats moved around in zero gravity, they ran along a set of straight, one-dimensional lines. Other experiments with three-dimensional projections onto two-dimensional surfaces did not manage to produce volumetric data, either. The conclusion was that in order to understand movement in three-dimensional, volumetric space, it is necessary to allow animals to move through all three dimensions -- that is, to research animals in flight.
Ulanovsky chose to study the Egyptian fruit bat, a very common bat species in Israel. Because these are relatively large, the researchers were able to attach the wireless measuring system in a manner that did not restrict the bats' movements. Developing this sophisticated measuring system was a several-year effort. Ulanovsky, in cooperation with a US commercial company, created a wireless, lightweight (12 g, about 7% of the weight of the bat) device containing electrodes that measure the activity of individual neurons in the bat's brain.
The next challenge the scientists faced was adapting the behavior of their bats to the needs of the experiment. Bats naturally fly toward their destination -- for example, a fruit tree -- in a straight line. In other words, their normal flight patterns are one-dimensional, while the experiment required their flights to fill a three-dimensional space.
The solution was to be found in a previous study in Ulanovsky's group, which tracked wild fruit bats using miniature GPS devices. One of the discoveries was that when bats arrive at a fruit tree, they fly around it, utilizing the full volume of space surrounding the tree. To simulate this behavior in the laboratory -- an artificial cave equipped with an array of bat-monitoring devices -- the team installed an artificial "tree" made of metal bars and cups filled with fruit.
Measuring the activity of hippocampus neurons in the bats' brains revealed that the representation of three-dimensional space is similar to that in two dimensions: Each place cell is responsible for identifying a particular spatial area in the "cave" and sends an electrical signal when the bat is located in that area. Together, the population of place cells provides full coverage of the cave -- left and right, up and down.
A closer examination of the areas for which individual place cells are responsible provided an answer to a highly-debated question: Does the brain perceive the three dimensions of space as "equal," that is, does it sense the height axis in the same way as that of length or width? The findings suggest that each place cell responds to a spherical volume of space, i.e., the perception of all three dimensions is uniform. The researchers note that for those non-flying animals that essentially move in flat space, the different axes might not be perceived at the same resolution. It may be that such animals are naturally more sensitive to changes along the length and width axes than that of height. This question is of particular interest when it comes to humans because on the one hand, humans evolved from apes that moved in three-dimensional space when swinging from branch to branch, but on the other hand, modern, ground-dwelling humans generally navigate in two-dimensional space.
The findings provide new insights into some basic functions of the brain: navigation, spatial memory and spatial perception. To a large extent, this is due to the development of innovative technology that allowed the first glimpse into the brain of a flying animal. Ulanovsky believes that this trend, in which research is becoming more "natural," is the future wave of neuroscience. The neural basis of animal behavior will be investigated in laboratories that simulate natural conditions -- or even on animals in their natural habitats, carrying out their normal, day-to-day activities.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Weizmann Institute of Science.
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Journal Reference:
M. M. Yartsev, N. Ulanovsky. Representation of Three-Dimensional Space in the Hippocampus of Flying Bats. Science, 2013; 340 (6130): 367 DOI: 10.1126/science.1235338
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Carlos Arredondo came to the Boston Marathon to honor his son who was killed in Iraq. But after the explosions, the mourning father channeled his grief into heroism when he tended to wounds that resembled the ones that claimed his boy?s life.
Arredondo sat perched in the bleachers on Monday, American flags in hand, near the finish line with his wife to greet the National Guard runners and a suicide support group, organizations that honor his two dead sons, ABC reports.
Lance Cpl. Alexander S. Arredondo died in Iraq in 2004 in a firefight in Najaf and his other son, Brian, who battled years of depression after his brother died, committed suicide in 2011.
But once the mourning father, turned peace activist, saw the bloody carnage, he immediately ripped away the snow fence and scaffolding that separated him from the struggling victims and started helping the critically injured, the Portland Press Herald reports.
"My first reaction was to run toward the people," he told ABC. "There was so much commotion and a lot of people running away. I was one of the first to help people and God protected me. It was horrific."
In one stunning photo that?s become an iconic image of the incredible heroism that emerged, Arredondo appears to be pinching closed a severed artery from the thigh of a victim who lost both of his legs, according to NBC. He also used his clothes and towels to help keep the victims from bleeding out.
"I kept talking to him. I kept saying, 'Stay with me, stay with me,' " Arredondo told the Portland Press Herald.
Since his son was killed in Iraq, Arredondo has changed courses completely. He quit his full-time job and now believes his purpose is to honor the fallen and protest the war, according to The New York Times.
In the years following his 24-year-old son?s death in Iraq, Arredondo paraded a mobile memorial around, complete with a coffin filled with photos of Alexander and some of his favorite possessions.
?As long as there are Marines fighting and dying in Iraq,? he told The New York Times in 2007, ?I?m going to share my mourning with the American people.?
A debate among scientists about the geologic formation of the supervolcano encompassing the region around Yellowstone National Park has taken a major step forward, thanks to new evidence provided by a team of international researchers led by University of Rhode Island Professor Christopher Kincaid.
In a publication appearing in last week's edition of Nature Geoscience, the URI team demonstrated that both sides of the debate may be right.
Using a state-of-the-art plate tectonic laboratory model, they showed that volcanism in the Yellowstone area was caused by severely deformed and defunct pieces of a former mantle plume. They further concluded that the plume was affected by circulation currents driven by the movement of tectonic plates at the Cascades subduction zone.
Mantle plumes are hot buoyant upwellings of magma inside the Earth. Subduction zones are regions where dense oceanic tectonic plates dive beneath buoyant continental plates. The origins of the Yellowstone supervolcano have been argued for years, with sides disagreeing about the role of mantle plumes.
According to Kincaid, the simple view of mantle plumes is that they have a head and a tail, where the head rises to the surface, producing immense magma structures and the trailing tail interacts with the drifting surface plates to create a chain of smaller volcanoes of progressively younger age. But Yellowstone doesn't fit this typical mold. Among its oddities, its eastward trail of smaller volcanoes called the Snake River Plain has a mirror-image volcanic chain, the High Lava Plain, that extends to the west. As a result, detractors say the two opposite trails of volcanoes and the curious north-south offset prove the plume model simply cannot work for this area, and that a plates-only model must be at work.
To examine these competing hypotheses, Kincaid, former graduate student Kelsey Druken, and colleagues at the Australian National University built a laboratory model of the Earth's interior using corn syrup to simulate fluid-like motion of Earth's mantle. The corn syrup has properties that allow researchers to examine complex time changing, three-dimensional motions caused by the collisions of tectonic plates at subduction zones and their effect on unsuspecting buoyant plumes.
By using the model to simulate a mantle plume in the Yellowstone region, the researchers found that it reproduced the characteristically odd patterns in volcanism that are recorded in the rocks of the Pacific Northwest.
"Our model shows that a simple view of mantle plumes is not appropriate when they rise near subduction zones, and that these features get ripped apart in a way that seems to match the patterns in magma output in the northwestern U.S. over the past 20 million years," said Kincaid, a professor of geological oceanography at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography. "The sinking plate produces a flow field that dominates the interaction with the plume, making the plume passive in many ways and trapping much of the magma producing energy well below the surface. What you see at the surface doesn't look like what you'd expect from the simple models."
The next step in Kincaid's research is to conduct a similar analysis of the geologic formations in the region around the Tonga subduction zone and the Samoan Islands in the South Pacific, another area where some scientists dispute the role of mantle plumes.
According to Kincaid, "A goal of geological oceanography is to understand the relationship between Earth's convecting interior and our oceans over the entire spectrum of geologic time. This feeds directly into the very pressing need for understanding where Earth's ocean-climate system is headed, which clearly hinges on our understanding of how it has worked in past."
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University of Rhode Island: http://www.uri.edu
Thanks to University of Rhode Island for this article.
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AL QASR, Lebanon (AP) ? Masked men in camouflage toting Kalashnikov rifles fan out through a dusty olive grove, part of a group of Hezbollah-backed fighters from Lebanon who are patrolling both sides of a porous border stretch with Syria.
The gunmen on the edge of the border village of al-Qasr say their mission is to protect Shiites on the Syrian side who claim their homes, villages and families have come under attack from Sunni rebels.
Hezbollah chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, leader of many of Lebanon's Shiites and a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, has said his group is supporting the cadres of fighters who call themselves Popular Committees.
It is confirmation that the powerful Lebanese militant group is playing a growing role in the civil war just across the border.
Syria's regime is dominated by minority Alawites ? an offshoot of Shiite Islam ? while the rebels fighting to overthrow Assad are mostly from the Sunni majority. Assad's major allies, Hezbollah and Iran, are both Shiite.
The sectarian tensions in the civil war have spilled over to neighboring Lebanon, which has a similar ethnic divide and a long, bitter history of civil war and domination by Syria. Deadly gunbattles have broken out in Lebanon in recent months between supporters of both sides of the Syrian war.
But more broadly, Hezbollah's deepening involvement shows how the Syrian civil war is exacerbating tensions between Shiites and Sunnis around the Middle East.
Syrian rebels accuse Hezbollah of fighting alongside Assad's troops and attacking rebels from inside Lebanese territory.
In recent months, fighting has raged in and around several towns and villages inhabited by a community of some 15,000 Lebanese Shiites who have lived for decades on the Syrian side of a frontier that is not clearly demarcated in places and not fully controlled by border authorities. They are mostly Lebanese citizens, though some have dual citizenship or are Syrian.
Before Syria's uprising erupted two years ago, tens of thousands of Lebanese lived in Syria.
The Lebanese Shiite enclave on the Syrian side of the border is near the central city of Homs and across from Hermel, a predominantly Shiite region of northeastern Lebanon.
One commander of the Popular Committees said Shiite villages have been repeatedly attacked and some residents have been kidnapped and killed by rebels. He said that prompted local Shiites to take up arms to defend themselves.
"We are in a state of defense. We don't take sides (between rebels and regime forces). We are here to defend our people in the villages," said the commander, Mahmoud, who gave only his first name out of fear for his own security.
"We don't attack any area. We only defend our villages."
The border region near Homs on the Syria side is strategic because it links Damascus with the coastal enclave that is the heartland of Syria's Alawites and is also home to the country's two main seaports, Latakia and Tartus.
One of the biggest battles in the area was on Thursday when the Syrian army captured Tal al-Nabi Mindo, a village near the Lebanese border, after a day of heavy fighting.
Mahmoud said there were casualties on both sides, adding that the hilltop village overlooks several towns and villages as well as a strategically important road that links Tartus to Homs and the capital of Damascus beyond.
Mahmoud said some rebel commanders were killed in the fighting on Thursday and rebels threatened to bombard Lebanese territory in retaliation.
On Sunday, two rockets fired from Syria exploded in al-Qasr, killing one person, a Lebanese security official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters. Two more rockets landed in a nearby village of Hawsh, killing a 13-year-old boy and damaging two homes, the official said. It was unclear who fired the rockets from Syria, the official said.
The Popular Committees were set up last year with the backing of Hezbollah. But even though Hezbollah confirms backing the fighters, it denies it is taking part in the wider civil war.
Syrian rebels offer a different narrative, accusing Hezbollah of propping up the Assad regime.
"Hezbollah is involved in the war that the Syrian regime is launching against the Syrian people," said Loay al-Mikdad, a spokesman for the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA).
In the past two months, he said Hezbollah has expanded its operations in Syria, mostly in central Homs province near the Lebanese border, as well as in Damascus.
He claimed that Assad is relying on Hezbollah because his grip on the capital is weakening and he fears more military defections.
"(Assad) had to depend on militias such as Hezbollah to defend his regime," al-Mikdad said. He said Hezbollah is defending the holy Shiite shrine of Sayida Zeinab, named for the granddaughter of Islam's Prophet Muhammad's, south of Damascus. Hezbollah militants are also fighting elsewhere in the capital, he claimed.
The Popular Committees are just one indication of Hezbollah's role in the Syrian civil war.
Over the past several weeks, the group has held several funerals in Lebanon for gunmen who it said were killed while "performing their jihadi duties." It did not say where or how they were killed, but it is widely known they died fighting in Syria.
One of the biggest blows for Hezbollah in Syria came in October when a commander, Ali Hussein Nassif, also known as Abu Abbas, and several other fighters were killed. Syrian rebels said his car was hit by a bomb near the Syrian town of Qusair, close to the Lebanon border.
"The impact of Hezbollah on the conflict should not be underestimated," said Torbjorn Soltvedt, senior analyst at the British risk analysis firm Maplecroft.
"Crucially, the group is much more adept at fighting the type of irregular conflict that is taking place in Syria than the Syrian armed forces, which have been trained and equipped primarily to fight conventional warfare."
Hezbollah fought guerrilla warfare against Israel for nearly two decades until 2000 when Israel withdrew from an enclave it occupied in south Lebanon.
The militant group's staunch support for the Assad regime is a gamble. Hezbollah's image in the Arab world as a resistance force against Israel is already eroding.
Hezbollah backed the wave of Arab Spring uprisings against autocratic rulers in Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Tunisia, but publicly sided with Iran and Syria in their crackdowns on protesters.
Assad's fall would be catastrophic for the group. Any post-Assad regime led by Syria's Sunni majority would almost certainly be far less friendly ? or even outright hostile ? to the Shiite group.
Iran remains Hezbollah's most important patron, but Syria is a crucial supply route. Without it, Hezbollah will struggle to secure the weapons it needs to fight Israel.
Hezbollah maintains its own separate arsenal that is the most powerful military force in Lebanon, stronger than the national army. In addition, the country of 4 million has dozens of smaller militias allied with political factions.
Assad's fall would probably ratchet up pressure on Hezbollah at home, where the group's anti-Syrian rivals have long demanded the Shiite group disarm its militia ? tens of thousands of fighters with long-range missiles.
Hezbollah insists the weapons are necessary to defend Lebanon against Israeli attack and refuses to disarm.
Soltvedt, the analyst, said support in the form of fighters and training is unlikely to be enough to prevent Assad's eventual fall. But he said it has helped the regime hold out.
"Hezbollah's involvement in the conflict has undoubtedly strengthened the regime's ability to combat the rebels and prolonged the conflict," he said.
As a result of the tensions, hundreds of Lebanese Shiite families in Syria have fled back to their homeland.
A few months after the revolt began, Safiya Assaf, her husband and their 11 children fled Qusair near the border to safety in al-Qasr just across the frontier. They left behind three homes and three shops.
"They (rebels) sent us a threat with a person from the area ordering us to leave ... because we are Shiites," said Assaf, sitting on a mat and surrounded by some of her children, grandchildren and a daughter in law in an apartment they are renting in al-Qasr.
Bilal al-Sadr, another villager, lived in Syria for 14 years before deciding to flee with his wife, four sons and a daughter. He left after three of his friends ? a Sunni, a Shiite and a Christian ? were kidnapped and killed.
"My home and shop were burnt and family threatened," said al-Sadr, a Shiite Jordanian whose mother and wife are Lebanese from al-Qasr. "When we felt that our safety was in danger, we decided to leave."
Back on the border, a Popular Committee member said Shiite residents in Syrian border villages have no choice but defend themselves.
"Do you expect us to wait for al-Qaida to come and slaughter us?" asked the masked fighter.
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Public release date: 21-Apr-2013
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