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Friday, March 22, 2013
A Nine-Year-Old Girl Got a New Ancient Flying Reptile Species Named After Her Because She Discovered It
Thursday, March 21, 2013
A Solar-Powered Hand-Cranked Digital Camera Laughs At Your Limited Battery Life
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Drumbeat grows louder in Congress for Obama to act on Syria
WASHINGTON - As the Syrian regime and opposition trade accusations over the use of chemical weapons, the drumbeat in Washington for the United States to get more directly involved in the two-year old conflict is growing louder.
Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain released a statement today, calling for President Obama to act against Syrian President Bashir al-Assad.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the U.S. was looking into claims that the Assad regime had used a chemical weapon in a recent attack in the opposition stronghold of Aleppo. She would not confirm whether the administration believes Syria's chemical stockpile is secure, citing intelligence reasons, but said there continues to be an increasing concern that Assad will cross that line.
"We've been very clear about our concerns that the Assad regime is increasingly beleaguered, that it finds that the violence that it is using by conventional means is inadequate, including its barbaric use of Scuds. And so we are quite concerned that they will resort to other weapons," she said. "We've made clear that this would constitute a red line for the United States. The president could not have been clearer about it."
But Graham and McCain argue that Assad has likely already crossed the line and they want to see action taken.
"President Obama has said that the use of weapons of mass destruction by Bashar Assad is a 'red line' for him that 'will have consequences,'" the statement reads. "If today's reports are substantiated, the President's red line has been crossed, and we would urge him to take immediate action to impose the consequences he has promised."
The senators are calling for the United States to provide arms to vetted rebel fighters, to launch targeted strikes against Assad's aircraft and SCUD missile batteries on the ground, and to establish safe zones inside Syria to protect civilians living in opposition controlled areas.
Graham and McCain said time was not on the side of the administration to make sure Syria's chemical weapons cache does not fall into the hands of terrorists. Graham told Foreign Policy's The Cable that securing Syria's chemical weapons needs to be America's top priority, even if it means sending in U.S. troops to do it.
"I don't care what it takes," Graham said. "If the choice is to send in troops to secure the weapons sites versus allowing chemical weapons to get in the hands of some of the most violent people in the world, I vote to cut this off before it becomes a problem."
Foreign Policy also reported that the top Senate Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, is now in support of establishing a no-fly zone in Syria.
"I believe there should be the next ratcheting up of military effort and that would include going after some of Syria's air defenses," Levin said.
America's European allies Britain and France have called for lifting the UN arms embargo against Syria so that they can legally provide more direct weapon and ammunition help to Syria's opposition army. Britain announced last week that it will begin proving armored trucks and body armor to rebel fighters.
Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters Monday that the Obama administration is still unwilling to provide anything more than the non-lethal assistance the U.S. is already giving, but will not oppose the actions of other governments.
"President Obama has made it clear that the United States does not stand in the way of other countries that have made a decision to provide arms, whether it's France or Britain or others," he said.
Kerry acknowledged, however, that the danger of Syria's chemical weapons falling into the hands of radicals on both sides of the conflict is growing.
"We have consistently said, and I say again, the longer the bloodshed goes on, the greater the prospect that the institutions of the state of Syria implode, and therefore the greater the danger is to the region and the world that chemical weapons fall into the hands of really bad actors," he said.
Kerry called the two-year conflict, which has killed an estimated 70,000 people and produced nearly 1 million refugees, a "global catastrophe," admitting that the status quo is not working.
"So as long as President Assad continues to attack his own people with Scuds, with aircraft, with tanks, there is an imbalance in this," Kerry said. "If he believes he can shoot it out, Syrians and the region have a problem and the world has a problem."
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MOVES-U.S. Bank of Naples, Canaccord Genuity, S&P Capital IQ
March 20 (Reuters) - The following financial services
industry appointments were announced on Wednesday. To inform us
of other job changes, email to moves@thomsonreuters.com.
BANK OF AMERICA MERRILL LYNCH
The company named Mary Ann Bartels as chief investment
officer of portfolio strategies of its global wealth and
investment management group. She has been with Merrill Lynch for
17 years, most recently as head of technical and market analysis
in Bank of America Corp's global markets research
division.
SWISS & GLOBAL ASSET MANAGEMENT
The firm appointed David Shanks as associate director,
discretionary sales, to support growth of its offering for UK
discretionary wealth management sector. Shanks joins from BNY
Mellon and will be based in London.
U.S. BANK OF NAPLES
The Private Client Reserve of U.S. Bancorp appointed
Heather Borelli as wealth management adviser.
CANACCORD GENUITY
The investment banking division of Canaccord Financial Inc
appointed Julian Feneley as head of healthcare
investment banking, Europe.
STANDARD & POOR CAPITAL IQ
The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc's business line
division hired seven equity analysts in New York, London,
Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. In London, Roderick Bridge joins S&P
Capital IQ as an autos and automotive supplies equity analyst
and Unai Franco joins as a capital goods equity analyst.
Robert Dezego, Eric Hugel, and Westcott Rochette, would be
based in New York. Benjamin Lee joins as an infrastructure and
building materials equity analyst in Kuala Lumpur, while Chok
Wai Lee joins as a real estate and consumer staples equity
analyst in Singapore.
GROSVENOR FUND MANAGEMENT
The company named its Chief Investment Officer James Raynor
as chief executive effective June 18. He will replace Jeffrey
Weingarten.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/moves-u-bank-naples-canaccord-genuity-p-capital-130336864--sector.html
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Can Smart Consumers Save Money on Health Insurance? | Via ...
Strange but true: the government doesn?t want you to understand how much your health care costs or make intelligent buying decisions about health insurance.
Suppose you want to know how much insurance to buy and want to research the cost of health care. Too bad. According to the?LA Times,?a new national report card on health care price transparency found that 36 states deserve either a D or an F for their efforts in helping citizens get access to information on the cost of care. The report looked at factors ranging from the availability?of price data on public websites to the ability of consumers to get an estimate on treatment before going to the hospital. Only two states got an A (Massachusetts and New Hampshire).
People are?justifiably worried:
?It should be concerning to every lawmaker in the country that 18% of the U.S. economy is shrouded in mystery,? said Francois de Brantes, executive director of Health Care Incentives Improvement Institute in Newtown, Conn.
?Without price transparency, consumers will continue to pay widely ranging amounts for the same exact services with no difference in quality,? said Suzanne Delbanco, executive director of Catalyst for Payment Reform, an employer-backed group in San Francisco.
As Delbanco suggests, the lack of price transparency is a major force driving health care costs upward today. Health care is practically the only industry that operates in almost complete contempt of the consumer. Consumers are kept ignorant of prices, constantly overcharged, denied bargaining power, and sent out the hospital door without so much as a goodbye. Regulations are just as obscure as prices, and in many respects Obamacare will only make this worse. A tracking poll?just released by the Kaiser Foundation found that two-thirds of uninsured Americans (and a majority of all Americans) don?t understand how the Affordable Care Act will affect them or their insurance.
But hidden prices and impenetrable regulatory codes aren?t the only things keeping costs high. Especially for younger Americans, health care costs so much largely because people are forced into plans that have more coverage and benefits than they need. Obamacare?s ?essential benefits? provisions, for example, require all small group plans to offer benefits in ten categories, including ?maternity and newborn care? and ?mental health and substance use disorder services.? Some Gen Yers might need or want these services; others would rather get cheaper plans that didn?t cover things they don?t need. Why should a young person who doesn?t drink be forced to buy coverage for rehabs he or she will never visit?
Fortunately, some companies are already finding ways around this. The NYT reports that some companies are trying a new way of covering their employees? health care costs. Instead of enrolling them in insurance plans, these employers are giving workers a lump sum of money that they can then use to purchase a plan in an online marketplace. Many workers are using this new freedom to choose cheaper plans with higher out-of-pocket expenses:
?When people are spending their own money, they tend to be more consumeristic,? said Ken Sperling, Aon Hewitt?s national health exchange strategy leader?. Overall, 42% of employees picked plans that were less rich than they?d had the previous year, while 26% picked pricier coverage.
This is a rational choice for younger workers, and we hope to see more companies following suit. (It?s an especially rational choice because, under Obamacare, if you later develop an expensive medical condition that your current plan doesn?t fully cover, you can always upgrade your insurance ? and you can?t be turned down.)
Give people access to good information, give them incentives to make smart decisions, and the health care system will start to reform itself. That isn?t the total answer, but it?s a start. Unfortunately, that doesn?t seem to be where we are headed.
?
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FCC Buckles on Cybersecurity
An FCC advisory group had a list of cybersecurity best practices for communications companies listed on a report and ready for approval. However, representatives of Internet service providers from the group argued against the recommendations, and they did not appear in a final version released Monday.
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Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Moroccan Singer Sarah K, a Rising International Star | Morocco ...
By Omar Bihmidine
Morocco World News
Sidi Ifni, Morocco, March 19, 2013
Recently, Morocco World News talked to Moroccan-Canadian artist Sarah Karkouch aka Sarah K, an R&B singer who has recently gained a lot of international attention. Sarah began her musical journey at age 13; drawing inspiration from her role models among R&B artists. Mariah Carey, Lauryn Hill, and Chaka Khan inspired her the most.
Born in Vancouver, Canada, she is currently leading a successful singing career. Childhood dreams of becoming an acclaimed singer/songwriter led Sarah to take part in different local and national singing competitions. Thanks to her sensual, soulful voice, Sarah has managed to attract a large number of singing talent scouts from this early age.
While she spends quality time writing music based on her journey on earth, she also works on making the acquaintances of other recording artists who are pursuing the same career. Sarah K not only sings R&B songs, but also electro-dance, neo-soul, pop, and has had her vocals requested for numerous hip-hop songs.
Later this month Sarah K will be traveling to Toronto, Canada to participate in an international music summit. She is hopeful to return with a recording contact.? 2013 has been a busy year. Sarah has performed for 5-time heavyweight boxing champion, Evander Holyfield. She flew to Cuba to film her video for, ?Runnin? Away?, and her last nightclub show was sold out for the filming of her upcoming music video for, ?High Expectations.? Sarah K has also donated her time to sing at a number of charity events.
?Fly,? the latest song released by Sarah, is about overcoming the judgments of others, bullying and inspiring people to believe in themselves. A principled philanthropist, Sarah has supported anti-bullying causes and has raised money for charities in many respects. ?One-hundred percent of all sale proceeds go to Amanda Todd Foundation and CKNW Orphan?s fund.? In 2010, she participated in the 2010 Miss BC Pageant where she hosted a ?Cops for Cancer? fundraising concert.
Despite her fame and victory as a singer, Sarah K has never forgotten her Moroccan origins. On the contrary, she frequently reminisces about her ancestral homeland. ?I typically travel back to Morocco every 5 years. My parents and my sister just got back from Morocco a few weeks ago after a three-month visit,? Sarah said.
With her tenacity that motivates her current success, Sarah K intends to realize more dreams and make herself more well-known all over the world. ?When I launch my debut album in a couple months, I would like to make a trip through Europe and North Africa to visit family and promote my album,? she said.
Out of pride and uncompromising passion for Morocco, Sarah K has set out to introduce the country to Canadians and her fans. ?Morocco is very special to me. In Canada there isn?t a large Moroccan community, so when I do interviews, or when a random person asks me what my ethnicity is, I always have fun making them guess. No one ever gets it right. I love telling people that I am Moroccan because it is a unique exotic place that a lot of people have heard of, but don?t know a lot about. Everybody is very curious.?
Out of loyalty for the traditions of Morocco, including eating habits and singing, Sarah has always done her utmost to preserve them in her life and with her family, and to practice them in recognition of her Moroccan identity.? ?I love how Moroccans embrace music in their daily lives. I can recall being at my grandparents? house in Casablanca and watching as the family gathered around to play drums and sing all together; like a well rehearsed band. It is a vivid memory that I have. I also love the food especially tagine and couscous. Mint tea is a favorite of mine. I like the way they pour the tea from high above the cup.?
Throughout her singing career, Sarah K has owed a great debt of gratitude to Moroccans for their encouragement and for their pats on her shoulder. ?Thanks to the encouragement of Moroccans, I have realized many of my dreams.?
Learn more about Sarah K at www.sarahk.ca
To book Sarah K, email chris@mercurymanagementcanada.com
? Morocco World News. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, rewritten or redistributed
Source: http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2013/03/83116/moroccan-singer-sarah-k-a-rising-international-star-2/
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Cell on a chip reveals protein behavior: In the future, artifical cells may produce complex protein structures on demand
Mar. 18, 2013 ? For years, scientists around the world have dreamed of building a complete, functional, artificial cell. Though this vision is still a distant blur on the horizon, many are making progress on various fronts. Prof. Roy Bar-Ziv and his research team in the Weizmann Institute's Materials and Interfaces Department recently took a significant step in this direction when they created a two-dimensional, cell-like system on a glass chip.
This system, composed of some of the basic biological molecules found in cells -- DNA, RNA, proteins -- carried out one of the central functions of a living cell: gene expression, the process by which the information stored in the genes is translated into proteins. More than that, it enabled the scientists, led by research student Yael Heprotein yman, to obtain "snapshots" of this process in nanoscale resolution.
The system, consisting of glass chips that are only 8 nanometers thick, is based on an earlier one designed in Bar-Ziv's lab by Dr. Shirley Daube and former student Dr. Amnon Buxboim. After being coated in a light-sensitive substance, the chips are irradiated with focused beams of ultraviolet light, which enables the biological molecules to bind to the substance in the irradiated areas. In this way, the scientists could precisely place DNA molecules encoding a protein marked with a green fluorescent marker in one area of the chip and antibodies that "trap" the colored proteins in an abutting area. When they observed the chips under a fluorescence microscope, the area in which they had placed the antibodies turned a glowing bright green. This meant that the DNA instructions had been copied into RNA molecules, which were in turn translated into fluorescent green proteins. The green proteins were then ensnared by the antibodies.
Next, the scientists asked whether their cell-like system could reproduce complex structural assemblies of naturally-occurring proteins. This time, they attached a viral gene to the chips' surface encoding a protein that can self-assemble into a nanotube. With the help of Dr. Sharon Wolf of the Electron Microscopy Unit, they observed a forest of minuscule tubes sprouting from the antibody area under an electron microscope.
The researchers then sought a way to produce and trap multiple proteins simultaneously by confining each protein in the area of its gene on the chip. On top of the chip to which the DNA encoding green proteins was bound, the scientists added a solution with a second gene encoding a red protein. The resulting red and green proteins competed for binding on the antibody traps, yielding a graded spatial separation in which the antibodies closest to the green genes had the highest concentration of green protein, with red concentrations rising farther afield. The results of this research recently appeared in Nature Nanotechnology.
Bar-Ziv: "We have shown that it is possible to build a protein 'production line' outside of the cell and use it to observe a spectrum of protein activities." In the future, such a system may move from enabling the observation of proteins to providing the basis for techniques to create complex, active protein structures on demand.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Weizmann Institute of Science.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Yael Heyman, Amnon Buxboim, Sharon G. Wolf, Shirley S. Daube, Roy H. Bar-Ziv. Cell-free protein synthesis and assembly on a biochip. Nature Nanotechnology, 2012; 7 (6): 374 DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2012.65
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.
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Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Paulina Rubio judges kids' version of 'The Voice'
FILE - In this Aug. 21, 2012 file photo, Mexico's pop star Paulina Rubio flashes the hand heart symbol during a press conference in Mexico City. Rubio will be one of three coaches of the new US program ?La Voz Kids,? announced the TV network Telemundo on Monday, March 18th 2013. The Mexican singer had previously participated as a coach for ?La Voz...Mexico? and started her career when she was a girl, like the participants of ?La Voz Kids.? (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)
FILE - In this Aug. 21, 2012 file photo, Mexico's pop star Paulina Rubio flashes the hand heart symbol during a press conference in Mexico City. Rubio will be one of three coaches of the new US program ?La Voz Kids,? announced the TV network Telemundo on Monday, March 18th 2013. The Mexican singer had previously participated as a coach for ?La Voz...Mexico? and started her career when she was a girl, like the participants of ?La Voz Kids.? (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)
MIAMI (AP) ? A children's version of "The Voice" is arriving to the U.S. "en espa?ol" with Mexican pop star Paulina Rubio as one of the coaches.
Telemundo Media named Rubio on Monday as the first of three music coaches on the network's upcoming singing competition "La Voz Kids," slated to premiere in the spring on Telemundo.
The new spinoff of the hit singing competition will feature 7- to 14-year-old contestants. The winner will receive a recording contract with Universal Music and a scholarship.
Rubio already coached "La Voz... M?xico", the edition of the show produced in her home country.
The singer said she looks forward to a new format "that will open the door to the new generation of artists."
The other two coaches were soon to be announced, the network said.
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Dunia Finance LLC 2012 full year financial results ... - AME Info
Dunia is a leading UAE headquartered financial institution created out of a strategic partnership between Mubadala Development Company of Abu Dhabi, Fullerton Financial Holdings (wholly owned subsidiary of Temasek Holdings) of Singapore and Waha Capital PJSC of Abu Dhabi, along with a prominent business group A.A. Al Moosa Enterprises of Dubai.
Dunia delivered net revenues of Dhs281m in FY 2012, up 37% on the previous year, and net profit of Dhs73m, which builds on the company's first full year of profit in 2011.
FY 2012 was marked by further growth momentum, with revenue and profit growth driven by Dunia's success in acquiring new customers, deepening relationships, driving cross-sell and focusing on providing world class service in line with its commitment to delivering value by building deeper, and more focused relationships.
The strength of this customer-centric strategy is illustrated by a 28% increase in total customer numbers, which in turn has led to a strong growth in customer assets of 36% to Dhs757m and a commensurate growth in customer deposit balances, which are up by 71% in the period versus the previous period, reaching Dhs414m as compared to Dhs242m in FY 2011.
The highlight of Dunia's robust balance sheet lies in its granularity, both on the asset and liabilities side, which helps ensure predictability of growth.
Despite a challenging macro-environment, Dunia's business fundamentals continue to trend positively, reflecting a well-designed customer focused and service driven strategy, which has led to strong process control elements and strategic risk management focus, which in turn enables it to be a low cost provider.
Together with strong customer revenue growth momentum, and a controlled strategic cost management approach, Dunia continues to deliver very positive operating leverage of 35% during the year. This helps ensure predictability and profitability of operations, which is critical for sustaining the growth momentum ahead. Dunia's cost-income ratio also has shown healthy improvement, to 48% from 65% in the prior year, highlighting greater efficiency in its operations.
Dunia's prudent strategic risk management focus is reflected in its lower cost of credit by 6% over prior year, while ensuring a healthy and adequate impairment provision of 4% of customer assets, which is substantially ahead of the regulatory requirement. This is reflective of a very healthy and robust customer balance sheet.
Dunia's capital adequacy stood at 32% at the end of FY 2012, which is significantly higher than the regulatory requirements of 15%, and underlines the company's focus on sound risk management principles and overall standards of governance. Cash and cash equivalents also grew over the period to Dhs46m reflecting prudent liquidity management.
Rajeev Kakar, Executive Director and CEO, said, "We are delighted to share the good news that Dunia once again delivered record financial performance in 2012 as it has done in previous years. While the business continues to grow in terms of profitability and customer numbers, we are particularly happy to share that our Dunia brand is now stronger, and even better recognized for our unique service standards."
"We continue to invest for the future, in line with our commitment to go the extra mile for our customers, and to keep developing our talent to effectively deal with the challenges and opportunities ahead, while ensuring predictable, sustained growth," he added.
Source: http://www.ameinfo.com/dunia-finance-llc-2012-financial-results-333765
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Kyocera Torque (Sprint)
Smartphones are always getting more powerful, but they aren't getting much stronger. Cases help, but most offer only limited protection. If you work in a rugged environment, or just have kids that like to play with your stuff, it's probably worth it to consider a more durable smartphone. But until recently, rugged smartphones have underperformed compared with their fragile counterparts.
Kyocera is helping to change that trend with the $99.99 Torque for Sprint, the first push-to-talk phone with LTE support. It's got a rugged design, a booming speaker with innovative technology that makes it easy to hear no matter where you are, and enough power to run all the Android apps and games you please. It's the best push-to-talk smartphone there is, and nabs our Editors' Choice award for rugged smartphones on Sprint.
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Design and Rugged Tests
The Torque measures 5.06 by 2.65 by 0.51 inches (HWD) and weighs 5.76 ounces. It's one big piece of kit that may be tough to wiggle into tight pockets, but will fit fine on a tool belt or in a handbag. Encased in lots of black, grippy rubber, the Torque looks better suited for construction sites than soccer moms, though you can probably let your kids kick this thing around on the field without causing too much damage.
The 4-inch, 800-by-480-pixel TFT LCD is serviceable, but not particularly impressive. It gets very bright if you turn off the automatic setting, but color saturation and details are just average. It's big enough that I had no trouble typing on the Swype-enabled on-screen keyboard, but it's small enough that it's easy to hold and operate comfortably with one hand. There are three physical function keys beneath the display. A covered 3.5mm headphone jack sits on top, flanked by Power and Speaker buttons. There's a Camera button on the right and volume controls on the left, along with your Direct Connect button, which is outlined in yellow. There's also a covered Power port on the bottom.
The phone meets U.S. military spec 810G for dust, shock, vibration, extreme temperatures, blowing rain, low pressure, solar radiation, salt fog, and humidity. It also meets IP67 for dust and water immersion, so when all of its ports are tightly closed, you can submerge the phone in up to three feet of water for 30 minutes.
The Torque survived our usual series of five-foot drops onto the rubbery material that makes up the floor of the PCMag Lab, as well drops onto the concrete outside. There's a lock on the back cover of the phone, which helps keep the plate in place, but it's so light you can unlock it with your fingernail. The cover did become somewhat dislodged, but not until after multiple drops, so it actually held up better than the AT&T Samsung Rugby Smart, which came apart much more easily. To test water resistance, I placed the Torque in a container of water for 30 minutes at a time with the screen turned on. After taking it out and drying it off it worked just fine.
Network, Call Quality, and Smart Sonic
This is Sprint's first Direct Connect phone to support the carrier's burgeoning LTE network. And while Sprint LTE is still dreadfully scarce, at least you'll be able to tap into the drastically improved speeds when it's turned on where you live. Sprint's LTE is limited in New York City, where we tested the Torque, so all of our tests were conducted over 3G.?
Direct Connect uses the same instantaneous push-to-talk of the old Nextel iDEN network. You can still make push-to-talk calls to Nextel subscribers, but Sprint is turning that network off in June. You get a lot more functionality with Direct Connect, anyway. Call Alert With Text, for instance, sends an audio alert and text message to another subscriber. Group Connect can connect 20 subscribers together at once. And you can also use the Direct Connect button to mass-message up to 200 Direct Connect subscribers in one shot, or send recorded messages to email addresses or handsets via text message.?
For this review, I tested Direct Connect between the Torque and a Kyocera DuraXT. It only takes a second to start the connection, and after that transmissions are instantaneous. Voices sound very clear, and speaker volume is positively booming. There's some crackle on the higher register when volume is set to maximum, but it's not a deal breaker, and you probably won't even notice it if you're making a call from a noisy outdoor environment. ?
This is also an excellent phone for voice calls. Reception is average, and calls sound a little thin but crisp and clear in the earpiece. Again, the speaker function booms. Calls made with the phone are outstanding?clear, rich, and bass-y, with good background noise cancellation. Calls were also clear over a?Jawbone Era?Bluetooth headset and standard Android voice dialing worked without issue.
(Next page: Processor, Apps, Multimedia, and Conclusions)
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/zPT98PDYG5M/0,2817,2416539,00.asp
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Monday, March 18, 2013
Asia stocks, euro lower before Cyprus bailout vote
BANGKOK (AP) ? Asian stock markets and the euro fell Monday as a plan to fund a bailout for Cyprus by taxing its bank deposits raised worries it could spark an exodus of capital from fragile European economies.
The tax is part of a rescue plan for cash-strapped Cyprus that was reached Saturday after talks among officials from countries that use the euro, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.
Japan's Nikkei 225 index tumbled 2.1 percent to 12,297.07. Hong Kong's Hang Seng dropped 2.3 percent to 22,028.95. South Korea's Kospi shed 0.5 percent to 1,976.74. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 fell 1.4 percent to 5,048.90. Benchmarks in Singapore, Taiwan, mainland China and the Philippines also fell.
The Cypriot bailout follows those for Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Spanish banks, and it is the first one that dips into people's savings to finance a bailout. Analysts worry the move could roil international markets and jeopardize Europe's fragile economies.
"The market is worried that it may send the wrong message on the safety of bank deposits in other EU nations, just when light appeared to be emerging at the end of the long tunnel for the peripheral nations," analysts at DBS Bank Ltd. in Singapore said in a market commentary.
In a nationally televised speech Sunday, Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades urged lawmakers to approve the tax, saying it is essential to save the country from bankruptcy. He also proposed that small depositors be exempt from paying the tax. Lawmakers are due to vote on the plan later Monday. If Parliament rejects the tax, that would put the entire rescue package in jeopardy.
In exchange for 10 billion euros ($13 billion) in rescue money, creditors would impose a one-time tax of 6.75 percent on all bank deposits under 100,000 euros ($131,000) and 9.9 percent over that amount.
U.S. stocks fell Friday, ending a 10-day winning streak for the Dow Jones industrial average, its longest in nearly 17 years. The Dow dropped 0.2 percent to 14,514.11. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 0.2 percent, to 1,560.70. The Nasdaq composite index dropped 0.3 percent to 3,249.07.
Benchmark oil for April delivery was down $1.19 to $92.26 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 42 cents to finish at $93.45 per barrel on the Nymex on Friday.
In currencies, the euro fell to $1.2898 from $1.3083 late Friday in New York. The dollar fell to 94.62 yen from 95.60 yen.
___
Follow Pamela Sampson on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pamelasampson
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/asia-stocks-euro-lower-cyprus-bailout-vote-030629982--finance.html
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Ford Hubcap Clock 1947 - 1960 Ford Wall Clock - Classic Car Clock - Pickup Truck Clock by StarlingInk
This Ford hubcap clock is made from a vintage Ford hubcap that was used on 1947 - 1948 Ford cars and on 1948 - 1960 Ford trucks. As with most vintage hubcaps, this one has a few scuffs and dings adding to its charm. It has been cleaned and polished to shine. Clock diameter is 10".
Clock runs on one AA battery - included.
Great gift for Ford fan or automotive collector!
Please read our shop policies: http://www.etsy.com/shop/StarlingInk/policy
Visit the rest of our Starling Ink shop at http://www.StarlingInk.etsy.com
Thanks for visiting Starling Ink and have a great day!
Have any questions? Contact the shop owner.
Source: http://www.etsy.com/listing/126625692/ford-hubcap-clock-1947-1960-ford-wall
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CrunchWeek: Google Kills Reader, Samsung's Galaxy S4, Dropbox's $100M Mailbox Buy
The tech industry brought a lot of drama this week, so there was lots to dig into in this episode of CrunchWeek, the TechCrunch TV show where a few of us writers give our personal takes on the stories that dominated our headlines for the past seven days.
Watch the video embedded above to hear Leena Rao, Anthony Ha, and I discuss Google?s decision to axe its RSS-powered Reader app (and the tech press? collective wailing about the decision), the new Samsung Galaxy S4, an apparently fantastic phone with a very awkward launch event, and the surprise Friday announcement that Dropbox has acquired Orchestra, the 13-person startup behind the super popular Mailbox app, for some $100 million.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/1GUQl6t1weg/
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Saturday, March 16, 2013
Obama heads to Middle East with low expectations
FILE -- In this Monday, May 18, 2009 file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, looks towards President Barack Obama as he speaks to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. President Barack Obama?s vow to take his message straight to the public during his first presidential visit to Israel next week will be a tough sell with many Israelis who consider him naive, too soft on the nation?s enemies and even hostile to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)
FILE -- In this Monday, May 18, 2009 file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, looks towards President Barack Obama as he speaks to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. President Barack Obama?s vow to take his message straight to the public during his first presidential visit to Israel next week will be a tough sell with many Israelis who consider him naive, too soft on the nation?s enemies and even hostile to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)
FILE -- In this Sunday, June 14, 2009 file photo, an Ultra Orthodox Jewish man walks past posters depicting US President Barack Obama wearing a traditional Arab headdress, in Jerusalem, Sunday, June 14, 2009. President Barack Obama?s vow to take his message straight to the public during his first presidential visit to Israel next week will be a tough sell with many Israelis who consider him naive, too soft on the nation?s enemies and even hostile to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner, File)
File - In this March 10, 2013 file photograph, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting in his Jerusalem office. Netanyahu signed a coalition deal Friday March 15, 2013, with rival parties to form the next government, a spokesman said, in an agreement that was stalled for weeks due to tough negotiations. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? When President Barack Obama steps into the Middle East's political cauldron this coming week, he won't be seeking any grand resolution for the region's vexing problems.
His goal will be trying to keep the troubles, from Iran's suspected pursuit of a nuclear weapon to the bitter discord between Israelis and Palestinians, from boiling over on his watch.
Obama arrives in Jerusalem on Wednesday for his first trip to Israel as president. His first priority will be resetting his oft-troubled relationship with now-weakened Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and evaluating the new coalition government Netanyahu laboriously cobbled together.
The president also will look to boost his appeal to a skeptical Israeli public, as well as to frustrated Palestinians.
"This is not about accomplishing anything now. This is what I call a down payment trip," said Aaron David Miller, an adviser on Mideast peace to six secretaries of state who is now at the Woodrow Wilson International Center.
For much of Obama's first term, White House officials saw little reason for him to go to the region without a realistic chance for a peace accord between the Israelis and Palestinians. But with the president's one attempt at a U.S.-brokered deal thwarted in his first term and the two sides even more at odds, the White House has shifted thinking.
Officials now see the lowered expectations as a chance to create space for frank conversations between Obama and both sides about what it will take to get back to the negotiating table. The president will use his face-to-face meetings to "persuade both sides to refrain from taking provocative unilateral actions that could be self-defeating," said Haim Malka, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The trip gives Obama the opportunity to meet Netanyahu on his own turf, and that could help ease the tension that has at times defined their relationship.
The leaders have tangled over Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories, and Netanyahu has questioned Obama's commitment to containing Iran's nuclear ambitions. Netanyahu also famously lectured the president in front of the media during a 2011 meeting in the Oval Office, and later made no secret of his fondness for Republican challenger Mitt Romney in last year's presidential campaign.
Beyond Mideast peace, the two leaders have similar regional goals, including ending the violence in Syria and containing the political tumult in Egypt, which has a decades-old peace treaty with Israel.
The president's trip comes at a time of political change for Israel.
Netanyahu's power was diminished in January elections and he struggled to form a government. He finally reached a deal on Friday with rival parties, creating a coalition that brings the centrist Yesh Atid and pro-settler Jewish Home parties into the government and excludes the ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties for the first time in a decade.
Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser, acknowledged that with a new government, "you don't expect to close the deal on any one major initiative." But he said starting those conversations now "can frame those decisions that ultimately will come down the line."
Among those decisions will be next steps in dealing with Iran's disputed nuclear program.
Israel repeatedly has threatened to take military action should Iran appear to be on the verge of obtaining a bomb. The U.S. has pushed for more time to allow diplomacy and economic penalties to run their course, though Obama insists military action is an option.
The West says Iran's program is aimed at developing weapons technology. Iran says its program is for peaceful energy purposes.
Another central difference between the allies on Iran is the timeline for possible military action.
Netanyahu, in a speech to the United Nations in September, said Iran was about six months away from being able to build a bomb. Obama told an Israeli television station this past week that the U.S. thinks it would take "over a year or so for Iran to actually develop a nuclear weapon."
Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., tried to play down any division on the Iranian issue ahead of Obama's trip. He said Friday that "the United States and Israel see many of the same facts about the Iranian nuclear program and draw many similar conclusions."
Obama's visit to Israel may quiet critics in the U.S. who interpreted his failure to travel there in his first term as a sign that he was less supportive of the Jewish state than his predecessors. Republican lawmakers levied that criticism frequently during last year's presidential campaign, despite the fact that GOP President George W. Bush did not visit Israel until his final year in office.
The centerpiece of Obama's visit will be a speech in Jerusalem to an audience mainly of Israeli students. It's part of the president's effort to appeal to the Israeli public, particularly young people.
He will make several cultural stops, all steeped in symbolism, in the region. They include the Holocaust memorial Yad Veshem; Mount Herzl, where he'll lay wreaths at the graves of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism, and the Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin; and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, a revered site for Christians.
Traveling to the West Bank, Obama will meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in Ramallah. Obama and Fayyad will visit a Palestinian youth center, another attempt to reach the region's young people.
Obama will make a 24-hour stop in Jordan, an important U.S. ally, where the president's focus will be on the violence in neighboring Syria. More than 450,000 Syrians have fled to Jordan, crowding refugee camps and overwhelming aid organizations.
The White House said Obama had no plans to visit a refugee camp while in Jordan, though he will be discussing with government officials how the U.S. can increase its assistance.
In his talks with Jordan's King Abdullah, Obama also will try to shore up the country's fledgling attempts to liberalize its government and stave off an Arab Spring-style movement similar to the ones that have taken down leaders elsewhere in the region.
The president's final will be at Petra, Jordan's fabled ancient city.
___
Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC
___
Online:
White House: http://tinyurl.com/a9r3lej
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ShaqIsDope ? Vintage Paris (Prod. By Melrose Zee) + Dirty California (Prod. By LSMi)
To provide a quick introduction, here?s couple tracks from ?20-year-old Toronto native ShaqIsDope. The kid can definitely rap and a mixtape is currently in the works, set to be released later this year. Until then, listen to ?Vintage Paris? and ?Dirty California.?
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Restore Your Natural Sitting and Standing Posture and Get Rid of Back and Neck Pain
Not only are we killing ourselves by sitting all day, we're probably sitting all wrong. Esther Gokhale, who has studied the posture of people in less industrialized places (where back pain is virtually unknown), shows us in this video what natural ("primal") posture looks like for standing and sitting.
Essentially, you want to have a "ducky butt, not tucky butt," she says in a profile of her work on SF Gate. Instead of tucking your tailbone in, stick your butt out, because good posture relies much on the pelvis.
If you don't have time for the entire video, go to the 4:25 mark to see a sitting exercise that will help you get back into your primal posture.
Back to Primal Posture | YouTube via ZDNet
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Friday, March 15, 2013
The Weirdest Thing on the Internet Tonight: A Story About Robots
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Agawi Partners With NVIDIA To Deliver Ready-To-Stream Gaming ...
Game streaming might be a common feature of ISP packages for bundled Internet, if Agawi has anything to say about it. The cloud gaming startup has outlasted rival OnLive, which still exists in name after a nasty bankruptcy, and Gaikai, which was picked up by Sony to power its?upcoming?PS4 cloud-based features, and now it wants to give ISPs and carrier networks a chance to regain their place as providers of content.
Internet providers have been demoted to dumb tubes with the advent of services like Netflix, iTunes, Spotify and others, which is not where they want to be. Serving up piping hot content to customers is the way to own a more complete relationship, one that?s likely to result in longer-term commitment and deeper revenue pockets. If you control both the channel and what?s on it, you?re winning both ways, after all.?Agawi, which has spent the past few years building its cloud gaming infrastructure, is now pursuing its plans of making that tech, code named VG36, commercially available to ISPs, with a ready-to-roll white label solution they can pass on to their customers.
Agawi is partnering with NVIDIA to make this happen, after the two worked together on building their ?True Cloud? gaming architecture in February. The combination of Agawi?s existing tech with servers based on Nvidia?s Grid processors is designed to help stream multiple games at the same time from a single server, thereby bypassing or at least?minimizing the upfront equipment costs that proved extremely troublesome to OnLive.
I spoke to Agawi executive chairman Peter Relan about the launch of the new platform, which will be opening up to general availability in July. It?s being announced now because of the long lead times a lot of Agawi?s target customers have when implementing services like this one, Relan said. The point is to make potential partners aware that Agawi is ready do deploy this tech as soon as the second half of this year, with data center partners lined up around the globe.
?Everybody has been waiting for MNVOs, MSOs, the?telecom?guys, the cable guys, to bring new services to market,? he said. ?They offer voice, they offer Internet, they offer television, so what?s the next big content area? Gaming. Almost all the major telecom operators and cable operators want to do trials this year with introducing gaming services, and the?easiest?way to bring them to market is through cloud gaming, because the alternative is to put the equivalent of an iPad inside their set-top box.?
Once Agawi begins deployments in earnest, any service provider that participates should be able to offer games direct to existing subscribers through the hardware they already have it ? be it computers, mobile devices or even connected TVs. Reland says it can also help with licensing of specific content, and will offer three tiers (casual, mid-core and AAA) to appeal to all types of gamers.
Targeting the folks who manage the pipes is a good strategy for Agawi, not only because providers are looking around for content?opportunities, but because cloud gaming has the potential to be very bandwidth-intensive for consumers. If carriers are providing the service, however, they can presumably also offer some way of making sure that bandwidth used to stream games doesn?t count across their monthly totals, the way Comcast?s video service doesn?t count against its caps. Whatever the arrangement between providers and clients ends up being, Agawi still has to sell its offering to telcos and ISPs first.
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Thursday, March 14, 2013
Will Alternative Energy Growth Tank During New Fossil-Fuel Glut? [Slide Show]
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.?The artificial leaf promised to revolutionize the world by bringing reliable modern energy to those mired in poverty. But the company founded to commercialize the research?Sun Catalytix?has found that it needs to concentrate its efforts on something likely to make money in the nearer term, namely the kind of flow batteries that might provide large amounts of energy storage on the U.S. electric grid.
The alternative energy landscape is in tumult, judging by the recent fourth annual summit of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, or ARPA?E. A glut of cheap natural gas threatens to sweep all other energy sources before it. The so-called "shale gale," as Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski put it at the recent ARPA-E energy summit, is forcing a rethink of energy strategy. "Before this so-called shale gale came upon us, groupthink had most of us focusing on energy scarcity," Murkowski noted. "The consensus now is that we have abundant energy. We can't fall into the trap of groupthink again."
Funding for alternative energy?whether from the federal stimulus bill or venture capitalists?has dried up. "We're here because it's ARPA?E, and they have some resources," says Saul Griffith of OtherLab, a research and design firm that has received funding from the agency for researching uniquely shaped tanks for natural gas. "We all suffer from a lack of resources. We all have ambitions that want to go faster and bigger." Or as retired Marine Corps Gen. James L. Jones put it as part of a talk about the link between national security and energy security: "A vision without resources is a hallucination."
More than 250 exhibitors came to show their wares alongside ARPA?E efforts ranging from Smart Wire Grid's power-flow controllers for electricity transmission lines to OPX Biotechnologies's modified microbe that builds liquid fuels from hydrogen and carbon dioxide. "After three years have there been home runs?" asked retiring Secretary of Energy Steven Chu at the summit. "Maybe not, but there are people rounding second or third base."
View a slide show of future energy efforts.
The question becomes: Will energy alternatives falter in the face of a new abundance of fossil fuels as happened in the 1970s and 1980s? "Today we have the gas," observed financier T. Boone Pickens of BP Capital Management, who has been pushing for increased use of natural gas since 1988. "We're fools if we don't use it."
Even ARPA-E has begun to shift its limited funding into projects to enhance the use of natural gas, such as the Methane Opportunities for Vehicular Energy, or the MOVE program, as well as an effort to convert natural gas to liquid fuels via microbes or chemistry. "We can meet U.S. demand for liquid transportation fuels over the next 50 years," argues biological engineer Ramon Gonzalez, ARPA?E program director.
Or is there enough momentum behind alternative energy that the renewables revolution has become unstoppable, thanks to progress in making solar power cheap and the proliferation of wind farms as well as the possibility of electric cars displacing gasoline-powered vehicles? Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander drove to the conference in his Nissan LEAF and urged scientists to work on making battery technology cost less. "We are more likely to see electric vehicles as a second car for many Americans when it's cheaper. Most of that cost is in the battery."
The goal of ARPA?E remains to encourage innovation so that sustainable energy solutions, however defined, become the cheapest and therefore most common options. But how many of these exhibitors, like Sun Catalytix, will be showcasing different wares in future? "In the energy domain, we need to get to what is right faster," added OtherLab's Griffith. "That means getting things wrong faster." Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
? 2013 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.
The alternative energy landscape is in tumult, judging by the recent fourth annual summit of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, or ARPA?E. A glut of cheap natural gas threatens to sweep all other energy sources before it. The so-called "shale gale," as Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski put it at the recent ARPA-E energy summit, is forcing a rethink of energy strategy. "Before this so-called shale gale came upon us, groupthink had most of us focusing on energy scarcity," Murkowski noted. "The consensus now is that we have abundant energy. We can't fall into the trap of groupthink again."
Funding for alternative energy?whether from the federal stimulus bill or venture capitalists?has dried up. "We're here because it's ARPA?E, and they have some resources," says Saul Griffith of OtherLab, a research and design firm that has received funding from the agency for researching uniquely shaped tanks for natural gas. "We all suffer from a lack of resources. We all have ambitions that want to go faster and bigger." Or as retired Marine Corps Gen. James L. Jones put it as part of a talk about the link between national security and energy security: "A vision without resources is a hallucination."
More than 250 exhibitors came to show their wares alongside ARPA?E efforts ranging from Smart Wire Grid's power-flow controllers for electricity transmission lines to OPX Biotechnologies's modified microbe that builds liquid fuels from hydrogen and carbon dioxide. "After three years have there been home runs?" asked retiring Secretary of Energy Steven Chu at the summit. "Maybe not, but there are people rounding second or third base."
View a slide show of future energy efforts.
The question becomes: Will energy alternatives falter in the face of a new abundance of fossil fuels as happened in the 1970s and 1980s? "Today we have the gas," observed financier T. Boone Pickens of BP Capital Management, who has been pushing for increased use of natural gas since 1988. "We're fools if we don't use it."
Even ARPA-E has begun to shift its limited funding into projects to enhance the use of natural gas, such as the Methane Opportunities for Vehicular Energy, or the MOVE program, as well as an effort to convert natural gas to liquid fuels via microbes or chemistry. "We can meet U.S. demand for liquid transportation fuels over the next 50 years," argues biological engineer Ramon Gonzalez, ARPA?E program director.
Or is there enough momentum behind alternative energy that the renewables revolution has become unstoppable, thanks to progress in making solar power cheap and the proliferation of wind farms as well as the possibility of electric cars displacing gasoline-powered vehicles? Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander drove to the conference in his Nissan LEAF and urged scientists to work on making battery technology cost less. "We are more likely to see electric vehicles as a second car for many Americans when it's cheaper. Most of that cost is in the battery."
The goal of ARPA?E remains to encourage innovation so that sustainable energy solutions, however defined, become the cheapest and therefore most common options. But how many of these exhibitors, like Sun Catalytix, will be showcasing different wares in future? "In the energy domain, we need to get to what is right faster," added OtherLab's Griffith. "That means getting things wrong faster." Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
? 2013 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/alternative-energy-growth-tank-during-fossil-fuel-glut-200100216.html
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Study shows how vitamin E can help prevent cancer
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 14-Mar-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Ching-Shih Chen
chen@pharmacy.ohio-state.edu
614-688-4008
Ohio State University
COLUMBUS, Ohio Researchers have identified an elusive anti-cancer property of vitamin E that has long been presumed to exist, but difficult to find.
Many animal studies have suggested that vitamin E could prevent cancer, but human clinical trials following up on those findings have not shown the same benefits.
In this new work, researchers showed in prostate cancer cells that one form of vitamin E inhibits the activation of an enzyme that is essential for cancer cell survival. The loss of the enzyme, called Akt, led to tumor cell death. The vitamin had no negative effect on normal cells.
"This is the first demonstration of a unique mechanism of how vitamin E can have some benefit in terms of cancer prevention and treatment," said lead author Ching-Shih Chen, professor of medicinal chemistry and pharmacognosy at The Ohio State University and an investigator in Ohio State's Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The study appears in the March 19, 2013, issue of the journal Science Signaling.
Chen cautioned that taking a typical vitamin E supplement won't offer this benefit for at least two reasons: The most affordable supplements are synthetic and based predominantly on a form of the vitamin that did not fight cancer as effectively in this study, and the human body can't absorb the high doses that appear to be required to achieve the anti-cancer effect.
"Our goal is to develop a safe pill at the right dose that people could take every day for cancer prevention. It takes time to optimize the formulation and the dose," he said.
Chen has filed an invention disclosure with the university, and Ohio State has filed a patent application for the agent.
Vitamin E occurs in numerous forms based on their chemical structure, and the most commonly known form belongs to a variety called tocopherols. In this study, researchers showed that, of the tocopherols tested, the gamma form of tocopherol was the most potent anti-cancer form of the vitamin.
The scientists manipulated the structure of that vitamin E molecule and found that the effectiveness of this new agent they created was 20-fold higher than the vitamin itself in cells. In experiments in mice, this agent reduced the size of prostate cancer tumors.
These findings suggest that an agent based on the chemical structure of one form of vitamin E could help prevent and treat numerous types of cancer particularly those associated with a mutation in the PTEN gene, a fairly common cancer-related genetic defect that keeps Akt active.
The researchers began the work with both alpha and gamma forms of the vitamin E molecule. Both inhibited the enzyme called Akt in very targeted ways, but the gamma structure emerged as the more powerful form of the vitamin.
In effect, the vitamin halted Akt activation by attracting Akt and another protein, called PHLPP1, to the same region of a cell where the vitamin was absorbed: the fat-rich cell membrane. PHLPP1, a tumor suppressor, then launched a chemical reaction that inactivated Akt, rendering it unable to keep cancer cells alive.
"This is a new finding. We have been taking vitamin E for years but nobody really knew about this particular anti-cancer mechanism," Chen said.
The gamma form was most effective because its chemical shape allowed it to attach to Akt in the most precise way to shut off the enzyme.
Because of how the various molecules interacted on the cell membrane, the scientists predicted that shortening a string of chemical groups dangling from the main body, or head group, of the gamma-tocopherol molecule would make those relationships even stronger. They lopped off about 60 percent of this side chain and tested the effects of the new agent in the prostate cancer cells.
"By reducing two-thirds of the chain, the molecule had a 20 times more potent anti-tumor effect, while retaining the integrity of vitamin E's head group," Chen said. This manipulation enhanced the anti-tumor potency of the molecule by changing its interaction with the cell membrane, so that the head group was more accessible to Akt and PHLPP1.
When mice with tumors created by these two prostate cancer cell lines were injected with the agent, the treatment suppressed tumor growth when compared to a placebo, which had no effect on tumor size. Chemical analysis of the treated tumors showed that the Akt enzyme signal was suppressed, confirming the effects were the same in animals as they had been in cell cultures.
The animal study also suggested the experimental agent was not toxic. Chen's lab is continuing to work on improvements to the molecule.
###
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Co-authors include Po-Hsien Huang, Hsiao-Ching Chuang, Chih-Chien Chou, Huiling Wang, Su-Lin Lee, Hsiao-Ching Yang, Hao-Chieh Chiu, Naval Kapuriya, Dasheng Wang and Samuel Kulp of the Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy at Ohio State. Huang and Chen also are affiliated with National Cheng-Kung University, Yang with Fu-Jen Catholic University, and Chiu with National Taiwan University, all in Taiwan; and Kapuriya with Saurashtra University in Gujarat, India.
Contact: Ching-Shih Chen, (614) 688-4008; chen@pharmacy.ohio-state.edu (Email is the best way to contact Chen.)
Written by Emily Caldwell, (614) 292-8310; Caldwell.151@osu.edu
[ | 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: 14-Mar-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Ching-Shih Chen
chen@pharmacy.ohio-state.edu
614-688-4008
Ohio State University
COLUMBUS, Ohio Researchers have identified an elusive anti-cancer property of vitamin E that has long been presumed to exist, but difficult to find.
Many animal studies have suggested that vitamin E could prevent cancer, but human clinical trials following up on those findings have not shown the same benefits.
In this new work, researchers showed in prostate cancer cells that one form of vitamin E inhibits the activation of an enzyme that is essential for cancer cell survival. The loss of the enzyme, called Akt, led to tumor cell death. The vitamin had no negative effect on normal cells.
"This is the first demonstration of a unique mechanism of how vitamin E can have some benefit in terms of cancer prevention and treatment," said lead author Ching-Shih Chen, professor of medicinal chemistry and pharmacognosy at The Ohio State University and an investigator in Ohio State's Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The study appears in the March 19, 2013, issue of the journal Science Signaling.
Chen cautioned that taking a typical vitamin E supplement won't offer this benefit for at least two reasons: The most affordable supplements are synthetic and based predominantly on a form of the vitamin that did not fight cancer as effectively in this study, and the human body can't absorb the high doses that appear to be required to achieve the anti-cancer effect.
"Our goal is to develop a safe pill at the right dose that people could take every day for cancer prevention. It takes time to optimize the formulation and the dose," he said.
Chen has filed an invention disclosure with the university, and Ohio State has filed a patent application for the agent.
Vitamin E occurs in numerous forms based on their chemical structure, and the most commonly known form belongs to a variety called tocopherols. In this study, researchers showed that, of the tocopherols tested, the gamma form of tocopherol was the most potent anti-cancer form of the vitamin.
The scientists manipulated the structure of that vitamin E molecule and found that the effectiveness of this new agent they created was 20-fold higher than the vitamin itself in cells. In experiments in mice, this agent reduced the size of prostate cancer tumors.
These findings suggest that an agent based on the chemical structure of one form of vitamin E could help prevent and treat numerous types of cancer particularly those associated with a mutation in the PTEN gene, a fairly common cancer-related genetic defect that keeps Akt active.
The researchers began the work with both alpha and gamma forms of the vitamin E molecule. Both inhibited the enzyme called Akt in very targeted ways, but the gamma structure emerged as the more powerful form of the vitamin.
In effect, the vitamin halted Akt activation by attracting Akt and another protein, called PHLPP1, to the same region of a cell where the vitamin was absorbed: the fat-rich cell membrane. PHLPP1, a tumor suppressor, then launched a chemical reaction that inactivated Akt, rendering it unable to keep cancer cells alive.
"This is a new finding. We have been taking vitamin E for years but nobody really knew about this particular anti-cancer mechanism," Chen said.
The gamma form was most effective because its chemical shape allowed it to attach to Akt in the most precise way to shut off the enzyme.
Because of how the various molecules interacted on the cell membrane, the scientists predicted that shortening a string of chemical groups dangling from the main body, or head group, of the gamma-tocopherol molecule would make those relationships even stronger. They lopped off about 60 percent of this side chain and tested the effects of the new agent in the prostate cancer cells.
"By reducing two-thirds of the chain, the molecule had a 20 times more potent anti-tumor effect, while retaining the integrity of vitamin E's head group," Chen said. This manipulation enhanced the anti-tumor potency of the molecule by changing its interaction with the cell membrane, so that the head group was more accessible to Akt and PHLPP1.
When mice with tumors created by these two prostate cancer cell lines were injected with the agent, the treatment suppressed tumor growth when compared to a placebo, which had no effect on tumor size. Chemical analysis of the treated tumors showed that the Akt enzyme signal was suppressed, confirming the effects were the same in animals as they had been in cell cultures.
The animal study also suggested the experimental agent was not toxic. Chen's lab is continuing to work on improvements to the molecule.
###
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Co-authors include Po-Hsien Huang, Hsiao-Ching Chuang, Chih-Chien Chou, Huiling Wang, Su-Lin Lee, Hsiao-Ching Yang, Hao-Chieh Chiu, Naval Kapuriya, Dasheng Wang and Samuel Kulp of the Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy at Ohio State. Huang and Chen also are affiliated with National Cheng-Kung University, Yang with Fu-Jen Catholic University, and Chiu with National Taiwan University, all in Taiwan; and Kapuriya with Saurashtra University in Gujarat, India.
Contact: Ching-Shih Chen, (614) 688-4008; chen@pharmacy.ohio-state.edu (Email is the best way to contact Chen.)
Written by Emily Caldwell, (614) 292-8310; Caldwell.151@osu.edu
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/osu-ssh031413.php
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