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Saturday, November 5, 2011
Francona-Theo reunion a bad idea
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Friday, November 4, 2011
Gaining Time: Cystic Fibrosis Drug Shows Rapid Benefits
News |
Health
A rigorous study concludes that experimental medication improved lung function and weight gain
?| November 2, 2011
People with an uncommon form of cystic fibrosis started gaining weight and were better able to breathe than their untreated counterparts after just two weeks on an experimental drug, according to a study published November 2 in The New England Journal of Medicine. If approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the drug, once known as VX-770 and now called ivacaftor, would be the first medication to target the underlying protein defect that causes the disease.
The findings are particularly compelling because the drug's benefits lasted for the duration of the 48-week randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled trial (the most rigorous type of scientific investigation that can be conducted).
In addition, clinicians have long known that cystic fibrosis patients with stable lung function who do not lose weight are more likely to live longer. That does not necessarily prove that ivacaftor can improve lifespan, but the possibility is tantalizing. "I've been involved in clinical trials for 30 years," says the study's lead author Bonnie Ramsey, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. "I've never seen this kind of change that has been sustained this long."
An estimated 70,000 individuals around the globe suffer from cystic fibrosis (CF), which interferes with the normal function of the respiratory and digestive systems. The particular protein defect that the drug is designed to counteract affects about 5 percent of all CF patients. With good preventive care and treatment, the majority of all CF patients are able to live to their late 30s or early 40s.
To learn more, read Scientific American?s feature "A Breath of Fresh Air" (preview), about the research behind ivacaftor and several other compounds that may someday address more common forms of cystic fibrosis.
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=5557c01df442eda89e4b43c8897e6204
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Thursday, November 3, 2011
BP agrees to pay Texas $50 million for pollution (Reuters)
HOUSTON (Reuters) ? BP Plc's U.S. subsidiary has agreed to pay $50 million in civil penalties to the state of Texas for pollution from its Texas City refinery, including the deadly March 2005 explosion, state Attorney General Greg Abbott said on Thursday.
The fine is equal to the amount BP Products North America paid in 2009 to the federal government for pollution from the explosion, which killed 15 workers and injured 180 other people.
The agreement comes as BP is marketing the 406,540 barrel-per-day (bpd) Texas City refinery, which accounts for 2.2 percent of U.S. refining capacity.
In addition to the $100 million in fines paid for pollution stemming from the refinery, BP has paid the U.S. Occupational and Safety Administration $71.6 million for worker safety violations and over $2 billion settling legal claims from the explosion.
"The agreement reflects the state's commitment to protecting air quality and holding polluters accountable for illegal emissions," Abbott said.
The agreement must be approved by a state court judge in Austin, Texas, before it will take effect. The court must wait 30 days after the agreement is made public before it can act.
Unlike the federal penalties, which were paid after BP pleaded guilty to violating the U.S. Clean Air Act, the London-based energy giant admits no liability for the pollution, which also includes emissions made five years after the explosion.
"BP does not admit liability and enters into this judgment because of the uncertainty and costs of litigation," according to the agreement to be submitted to the court.
In a statement, the company said it was pleased with the agreement.
"BP has maintained a steady focus on improving safety and compliance at Texas City, and this agreement is an important milestone in the progress of operations at the facility," the company said in a statement.
In 2007, after a two-year investigation, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board found BP had failed to maintain critical safety systems due to budget cuts imposed to meet corporate financial
goals after a wave of mergers, and had ignored warnings of a catastrophic disaster at the refinery in the years before the 2005 explosion.
Since the blast, BP has spent over $1 billion upgrading the refinery and drawn praise for efforts to improve safety at its U.S. refineries.
A spokeswoman for the United Steelworkers union, which represents hourly workers at the BP refinery, said the fine BP agreed to pay on Thursday should serve as a warning for refiners to focus on process safety.
"BP learned this lesson the hard way," said USW spokeswoman Lynne Baker. "Since then BP has made improvements in its safety systems, but the continued emissions violations show it still needs to keep focusing its attention on process safety."
In February, BP said it wanted to sell the Texas City refinery along with its 265,000 bpd Carson, California, refinery.
In addition to the 2005 explosion, Thursday's agreement covers more 72 emissions in excess of BP's operating permits, including a 40-day breakdown in 2010 during which 500,000 pounds of pollutants were released.
Of the $50 million, $500,000 will go directly to the attorney general's office for costs of bringing a lawsuit against BP in 2009 and the rest will go to the state treasury.
(Reporting by Erwin Seba; editing by Jim Marshall and Marguerita Choy)
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Plex releases new mobile and desktop clients, gets Flash and Silverlight support to go with a fancy new UI
Plex releases new mobile and desktop clients, gets Flash and Silverlight support to go with a fancy new UI originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/AdchehKaMcA/
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Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Panasonic posts loss, forecasts full year red ink (AP)
TOKYO ? Panasonic Corp. stayed in the red in the latest quarter and projected a huge annual loss due to slumping TV sales and a strong yen.
The company, which makes consumer electronics such as Viera TVs and Lumix cameras, on Monday reported a loss of 105.8 billion yen ($1.34 billion) for the July-September quarter.
Panasonic now expects a loss of 420 billion yen ($5.3 billion) for the fiscal year through March 2012, down sharply from an earlier projection of a 30 billion yen ($380 million) profit.
Panasonic had slumped to a 30.4 billion yen loss in the April-June quarter, hit by damages and lost sales from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan's northern coast and killed nearly 20,000 people.
Despite signs of recovery from the disaster, the company faces new challenges, including the global economic slump, slowing demand in emerging markets and the strong yen. Sales were down in flat panel TVs, auto electronics, cellphones as well as electronics parts and components.
Earlier Monday, Japanese authorities intervened in the currency market to weaken the yen against the dollar and ease pressure on Japanese exporters. That caused the dollar to jump nearly 5 percent to above 79 yen after earlier touching a post World War II-low of 75.32 yen ? a level that is excruciating for exporters.
Panasonic said its sales dropped 6 percent to 2.08 trillion yen ($26.3 billion) during the July-September quarter from a year earlier.
Panasonic suffered a loss of 136.2 billion yen ($1.72 billion) during the first six months of the business year, compared to 74.7 billion yen profit a year earlier. Its sales fell by 8 percent to 4 trillion yen ($50.6 billion). Overseas sales fell more than those at home, the company said.
The loss for the half-year period was largely due to restructuring of flat-panel TV operations and other efforts related to cost cutting.
Panasonic stock fell 2.1 percent to 809 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, which closed just before the earnings report was released.
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Tuesday, November 1, 2011
In Some States You Must Tell Buyers Your House Is Haunted [Laws]
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Spy Satellite Engineer's Top Secret Is Revealed
Roger Guillemette/SPACE.com Phil Pressel designed cameras for the government's top-secret Hexagon project. He's only recently been able to speak about his life's work.
Every day for decades, engineer Phil Pressel would come home from work and be unable to tell his wife what he'd been doing all day.
Now, Pressel is free to speak about his life's work: designing cameras for a top-secret U.S. government spy satellite. Officially known as the KH-9 Hexagon, engineers called it "Big Bird" for its massive size.
Until the government declassified it last month, Hexagon had been a secret for 46 years.
"The challenge for this satellite, to design it, was to survey the whole globe," Pressel tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz.
It was a grand challenge for Pressel. Born in Belgium, he survived the Holocaust as a young boy when a French family hid him from the Nazis. Pressel says he never expected to come to America, much less become an engineer on a top-secret American spy satellite.
Hexagon's main purpose was, in a way, to prevent wars. It was designed to spot Soviet missile silos and troop movements.
"It permitted President Nixon, in the early 1970s, to sign the SALT-1 treaty, the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty," Pressel says. Photos sent down from Hexagon enabled the U.S. to verify the Soviet Union's claims about its weapons stockpiles.
Those photos themselves were a technological marvel. Pressel says that even 40 years after its original launch, Hexagon is still one of the most complicated vehicles ever to orbit the earth because it used film.
"It was the last film-recovery system used for reconnaissance," he says. Each Hexagon satellite launched with 60 miles worth of film and an immensely complicated electromechanical system that controlled the cameras.
Once a reel of film was finished, it was loaded into a re-entry pod and sent back to earth. "And then at around 50,000 feet, a parachute would slow it down, and a C-130 airplane caught it in midair over the Pacific," Pressel says.
After all the film was sent back to earth, the satellite was abandoned, and a new one launched, he says. Nineteen of them went up before the program ended in 1986.
Pressel says he's immensely proud of the work he and his colleagues did on Hexagon. "We did all of this incredibly complicated work with slide rules, without microprocessors, without solid state electronics," he says.
"We used old technology, and it worked!"
Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/10/29/141824562/spy-satellite-engineers-top-secret-is-revealed?ft=1&f=1007
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