OIL THEFT? South Sudan's oil minister accused northern neighbor Sudan of stealing massive amounts of the South's oil. The accusation comes the same day the two sides begin another round of negotiations over their formerly unified oil industry.
DIVERSION: South Sudan's Minister of Petroleum and Mining says Sudan is each day diverting about 120,000 barrels of oil pumped from the south through a recently constructed "tie-in" pipeline. That's nearly 75 percent of the oil of South Sudan being pumped through the line, he said.
STILL GROWING: Despite the difficulties, South Sudan is trying to expand its oil industry. Last week it signed its first post-independence oil deals with the state petroleum companies of China, India and Malaysia.
Los Angeles, CA (January 17, 2012) While children who suffer from attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) struggle with hyperactive-impulses and have trouble maintaining attention, a recent study found that a structured physical activity program may help to improve their muscular capacities, motor skills, behavior assessments, and the ability to process information. This new exploratory study was released in the recent issue of the Journal of Attention Disorders (published by SAGE).
Authors Claudia Verret, Marie-Claude Guay, Claude Berthiaume, Phillip Gardiner, and Louise Bliveau enrolled ten children in a physical activity program that included a warm-up, aerobic activity, muscular and motor-skill exercises, and a cool-down. The objective of each session was to maintain moderate to high-intensity activity throughout each session as observed by a heart-rate monitor.
"A main finding of this study is that both parents and teachers observed better behavioral scores in the physical activity group," wrote the authors. "This could mean that positive effects of physical activity may occur in different settings of the children's life."
The authors monitored ten children with ADHD who were participating in the physical activity program three times a week and eleven different children with ADHD as part of a control group.
The authors wrote, "Considering the beneficial effect of physical activity participation on some important ADHD-related variables, schools and parents of children with ADHD should look to maximize opportunities for structured group physical activity in their children's life."
###
The article entitled "A Physical Activity Program Improves Behavior and Cognitive Functions in Children with ADHD: An Exploratory Study" from the Journal of Attention Disorders is available free for a limited time at: http://jad.sagepub.com/content/16/1/71.full.pdf+html.
The Journal of Attention Disorders (JAD) focuses on basic and applied science concerning attention and related functions in children, adolescents, and adults. JAD publishes articles on diagnosis, comorbidity, neuropsychological functioning, psychopharmacology, and psychosocial issues. The journal also addresses practice, policy, and theory, as well as review articles, commentaries, in-depth analyses, empirical research articles, and case presentations or program evaluations. http://jad.sagepub.com/
Impact Factor: 2.955
Ranked: 39 out of 128 in Psychiatry (Science Citation Index), 23 out of 110 in Psychiatry (Social Science Citation Index), 16 out of 66 in Developmental Psychology
Source: 2010 Journal Citation Reports (Thomson Reuters, 2011)
SAGE is a leading international publisher of journals, books, and electronic media for academic, educational, and professional markets. Since 1965, SAGE has helped inform and educate a global community of scholars, practitioners, researchers, and students spanning a wide range of subject areas including business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technology, and medicine. An independent company, SAGE has principal offices in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC. www.sagepublications.com
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Physical activity program leads to better behavior for children with ADHDPublic release date: 17-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Los Angeles, CA (January 17, 2012) While children who suffer from attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) struggle with hyperactive-impulses and have trouble maintaining attention, a recent study found that a structured physical activity program may help to improve their muscular capacities, motor skills, behavior assessments, and the ability to process information. This new exploratory study was released in the recent issue of the Journal of Attention Disorders (published by SAGE).
Authors Claudia Verret, Marie-Claude Guay, Claude Berthiaume, Phillip Gardiner, and Louise Bliveau enrolled ten children in a physical activity program that included a warm-up, aerobic activity, muscular and motor-skill exercises, and a cool-down. The objective of each session was to maintain moderate to high-intensity activity throughout each session as observed by a heart-rate monitor.
"A main finding of this study is that both parents and teachers observed better behavioral scores in the physical activity group," wrote the authors. "This could mean that positive effects of physical activity may occur in different settings of the children's life."
The authors monitored ten children with ADHD who were participating in the physical activity program three times a week and eleven different children with ADHD as part of a control group.
The authors wrote, "Considering the beneficial effect of physical activity participation on some important ADHD-related variables, schools and parents of children with ADHD should look to maximize opportunities for structured group physical activity in their children's life."
###
The article entitled "A Physical Activity Program Improves Behavior and Cognitive Functions in Children with ADHD: An Exploratory Study" from the Journal of Attention Disorders is available free for a limited time at: http://jad.sagepub.com/content/16/1/71.full.pdf+html.
The Journal of Attention Disorders (JAD) focuses on basic and applied science concerning attention and related functions in children, adolescents, and adults. JAD publishes articles on diagnosis, comorbidity, neuropsychological functioning, psychopharmacology, and psychosocial issues. The journal also addresses practice, policy, and theory, as well as review articles, commentaries, in-depth analyses, empirical research articles, and case presentations or program evaluations. http://jad.sagepub.com/
Impact Factor: 2.955
Ranked: 39 out of 128 in Psychiatry (Science Citation Index), 23 out of 110 in Psychiatry (Social Science Citation Index), 16 out of 66 in Developmental Psychology
Source: 2010 Journal Citation Reports (Thomson Reuters, 2011)
SAGE is a leading international publisher of journals, books, and electronic media for academic, educational, and professional markets. Since 1965, SAGE has helped inform and educate a global community of scholars, practitioners, researchers, and students spanning a wide range of subject areas including business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technology, and medicine. An independent company, SAGE has principal offices in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC. www.sagepublications.com
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Japanese car manufacturer Nissan has announced that it will soon be launching a line of self repairing cases for the iPhone. The Nissan Scratch Shield iPhone cases will use a
It?s Cervical Cancer Awareness Month and officials in New Jersey are urging all sexually active women to have routine screenings for the preventable disease. About 390 cases of Cervical Cancer are expected to be diagnosed in New Jersey this year alone and more than 12,000 cases will be diagnosed nationwide.
?We are making strides in fighting this preventable disease, but women need to continue getting their routine screenings which should include a pelvic exam and pap smear once a year,? said Dr. Arnold Baskies, Chairman of the American Cancer Society of New York and New Jersey. ?Those exams should begin about three years after a woman first has intercourse.?
The primary cause of cervical cancer is infection with certain types of human papillomavirus (HPV). There are now two vaccines approved for the prevention of the most common types of HPV. Gardasil is recommended for use in females 9 to 26 years of age and Cervarix in females between 9 and 25. Gardasil is also approved for use in males 9 to 26 years of age to prevent anal cancer.
?We strongly advocate the vaccines in both girls and boys. The same virus that causes cervical cancer in girls and women can cause anal cancer in boys and men,? said Baskies.
Since 2004, rates have decreased 2.1% per year for women younger than 50 and by 3.1% per year in women 50 and older.
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While there wasn't much to say about the recently announced Droid RAZR MAXX to begin with (it's essentially the Droid RAZR with a bigger battery and more storage), Motorola and Verizon decided to leave out one key bit of detail: the launch date. That, it seems, has been fixed.
NEW YORK (Reuters) ? Stocks dropped on Friday, snapping a four-day winning streak, after news reports that Standard & Poor's would downgrade credit ratings on several euro-zone countries.
The ratings agency was reportedly set to downgrade euro-zone countries, including France and Austria, but leave the ratings of Germany and the Netherlands unchanged. French Finance Minister Francois Baroin said the country has been notified of a one-notch cut.
After the market's close, S&P followed through with downgrades of France and Austria as well as seven other members of the 17-nation euro zone bloc.
"This is going to destabilize a lot of those funding packages because they are all based on the AAA rating, and now you are going to have AA+ for France and Austria, and maybe down two notches for Italy," said Alan Valdes, director of floor operations for DME Securities in New York.
Friday's slide came as investors' focus shifted back to the euro zone's debt crisis.
In recent days, the S&P 500 had reached five-month highs on the back of solid U.S. economic data. The tight relationship between U.S. stocks and the euro has broken down in recent weeks, a sign investors have placed less emphasis on the euro zone's woes.
The Friday selloff shows Europe's debt problems can still make U.S. investors skittish. However, it is notable that the major U.S. stock indexes finished well off the day's lows.
Banks led the decline, as the impending downgrades and lackluster earnings from JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) drove those shares lower. The S&P financial index (.GSPF) fell 0.8 percent, making it the worst performer of the 10 major S&P sectors.
The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) dropped 48.96 points, or 0.39 percent, to 12,422.06 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (.SPX) lost 6.41 points, or 0.49 percent, to 1,289.09. The Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) fell 14.03 points, or 0.51 percent, to 2,710.67.
For the week, the Dow rose 0.5 percent, while the S&P 500 advanced 0.9 percent, and the Nasdaq gained 1.4 percent.
Investors will look to earnings next week for insight on how the euro zone's debt woes may affect profits. <.N/O>
"If you get a weak recession or deep recession in Europe, it is going to hurt our companies and bring our market right back down," Valdes said.
JPMorgan Chase slid 2.5 percent to $35.92 after the bank said fourth-quarter profit fell as the European debt crisis weighed on trading and corporate deal-making. Chief Executive Jamie Dimon expressed renewed concerns about the euro-zone debt crisis.
The KBW index of bank stocks (.BKX) slipped 0.4 percent, following a streak of gains. The index was still up more than 10 percent for the year.
Bank of America (BAC.N) shares fell 2.7 percent to $6.61. Goldman Sachs (GS.N) lost 2.2 percent to $98.96.
Volume was light with about 6.39 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE Amex and Nasdaq, below the daily average of 6.68 billion.
Declining stocks outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by 1,941 to 1,036, while on the Nasdaq, decliners beat advancers 1,666 to 804.
(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Kenneth Barry)
The Aedes aegypti spreads dengue fever.Image: Wikipedia
Genetically engineered mosquitoes developed by British biotech firm Oxitec as an approach to controlling dengue fever have been caught up in controversy since 6,000 of them were deliberately released to an uninhabited forest in Malaysia in a trial in December 2010.
The move took many local people and international observers by surprise. For the most part, the problem was not that the mosquitoes were GM or ineffective?previous trials in the Cayman Islands were very successful. Rather the locals took aim at the lackluster efforts made by Oxitec and the Malayan government to consult and notify the public about the trials (see "GM mosquitoes wipe out dengue fever in trial"?and "Letting the bugs out of the bag").
Unsurprisingly anti-GM campaigners went for the company?s jugular over the incident, and have been trying to bring them down since. In the latest thrashing, green groups including GeneWatch and Friends of the Earth say Oxitec tried to hide results showing the GM mosquitoes could survive in the wild (Daily Mail).
Oxitec engineered the males so that they will die unless they are given the antibiotic tetracycline which is not generally available once they are released into the wild. The green groups obtained a study showing that 15 percent of the offspring of lab-bred GM mosquitoes survived when fed on cat food which contains low levels of tetracycline. Tetracycline can sometimes be found at low levels in the environment. This represents a "failure of the technology," they say.
The green groups have made "inaccurate public assertions" with the purpose of causing "anxiety" about GM technology and its the regulatory process, counters Oxitec. Given how the?Daily Mail?covered the story, Oxitec has a point.
The green groups' claims have "no substance as they could have known had they asked us about any part of it," Luke Alphey co-founder and chief scientist of Oxitec told?Nature.
In further studies Oxitec investigated whether the tetracycline levels that can be found in the environment are likely to lead to survival of our mosquitoes.
?While tetracycline can be found in the environment in isolated areas it is not present in sufficient quantity to ensure survival of the mosquitoes,? the company says.
About two-fifths of the world?s population are at risk of contracting dengue fever. The green groups "risk undermining the chance of a real solution coming to cultures who have a real problem," the company says.
The fight continues.
This post is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on January 12, 2012.
Newt Gingrich thinks Mitt Romney?s linguistic skills are a big deal. Mr. Gingrich is hoping a new French-themed ad appeals to conservative voters in South Carolina.
Is it a problem for Mitt Romney that he speaks French? We mean that in the context of the presidential election, of course ? not his ability to impress the cashiers at Au Bon Pain.
Skip to next paragraph
Newt Gingrich thinks Mr. Romney?s linguistic skills are a big deal, all right. The ex-speaker has a new ad up called, ?The French Connection,? that does its best to link Romney to failed Democratic presidential candidates Mike Dukakis and John Kerry. One way in which it does this is to play the French theme, hard.
The ad?s background music is accordions, the kind of thing they use in the soundtrack of low-budget films to say ?Paris at night.? It puts up the famous clips of Michael Dukakis in a tank, looking like a chipmunk, and John Kerry windsurfing. (Is windsurfing a French sport?) It ends with this line: ?Massachusetts moderate Mitt Romney will say anything to win, anything... And just like John Kerry, he speaks French too.?
Then there?s a quick clip of Romney saying ?bonjour,? followed by him announcing his name in French.
First off, we?ll say that if Romney speaks French, it?s only barely. In the ad it?s hard to tell if he?s saying his name or ordering a croque monsieur.
But European links indeed are a bad thing, at least to many in the GOP base. Europe is the home of European social democracies, which is what President Obama wants to turn the US into, which is why he?s a socialist. (We?re just repeating the argument.)
You?ll hear ?Europe? and ?France? invoked as negatives by many speakers at the GOP convention later this year. Just wait.
Plus, to link a US politician to Europe is to say implicitly he?s not the sort of person you could sit down at a sports bar with and have a discussion about whether Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis should retire.
Tablets powered by Android -- Google's open-source operating system for smartphones and tablets -- failed to make much of a splash in 2011. The iPad simply eclipsed them all put together, and then HP won the sales race for also-rans when it put its TouchPad on sale for $99.
Only the Kindle Fire and Nook Color/Nook Tablet managed to sell very well against the iPad. Both are powered by Android "under the hood," but neither run Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of Android, which introduces many new features and solves most of the bugs that Honeycomb had.
Here are three confirmed tablets that will run the "full" Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android, and will be available soon.
Acer Iconia Tab A200
What does the new Iconia Tab have going for it, to put it ahead of the pack? A 10.1-inch screen and a $349 price tag for the standard 16 GB version. (An 8 GB version will also be available for $329.)
According to Geoff Duncan of Digital Trends, it will come with Android 3.2 Honeycomb when it launches on Jan. 15, but will be "upgradable" to Ice Cream Sandwich in February. Its other stats are typical of last year's high-end Android tablets, except for its full-size USB port.
Toshiba Excite X10
Cameron Summerson of Android Police had a hands-on preview of this upcoming tablet, which is "expected to be available" sometime in the first quarter. It will have a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, 1 GB of RAM and a 10.1-inch display. MicroSD and miniHDMI ports are standard. Prices will start at $530 for the 16 GB model, and it will come with Android 3.2 and be "Ice Cream Sandwich ready."
So what makes the Excite X10 worth its price tag? That's debatable, but at only 7.7 millimeters thick it'll be the thinnest tablet in the world when it comes out.
Lenovo IdeaTab K2
Brandon Lancaster of Android Police summarizes Engadget's hands-on: This 10-inch behemoth has a 1,920-by-1,200 IPS display, with more than twice the resolution of a normal 10-inch tablet and full non-washed out color from any angle. It also has a Tegra 3 quad-core processor and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box, plus a fingerprint scanner that can be used as a mouse-style pointing device (or will be once it's ready).
According to Engadget's Richard Lai, however, the IdeaTab K2 will be released in China first. There's no word yet on when it will reach the States or how much it will cost. But with those specs, it will probably be expensive, as it's "aimed at high-end business users".
Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
New information on the waste-disposal units of living cells Public release date: 11-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Lynn Yarris lcyarris@lbl.gov 510-486-5375 DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Berkeley researchers provide detailed look at proteasome's regulatory particle
Important new information on one of the most critical protein machines in living cells has been reported by a team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley. The researchers have provided the most detailed look ever at the "regulatory particle" used by the protein machines known as proteasomes to identify and degrade proteins that have been marked for destruction. The activities controlled by this regulatory particle are critical to the quality control of cellular proteins, as well as a broad range of vital biochemical processes, including transcription, DNA repair and the immune defense system.
"Using electron microscopy and a revolutionary new system for protein expression, we have determined at a subnanometer scale the complete architecture, including the relative positions of all its protein components, of the proteasome regulatory particle," says biophysicist Eva Nogales, the research team's co-principal investigator. "This provides a structural basis for the ability of the proteasome to recognize and degrade unwanted proteins and thereby regulate the amount of any one type of protein that is present in the cell."
Says the team's other co-principal investigator and corresponding author, biochemist Andreas Martin, "While the biochemical function of many of the proteasome components have been determined, and some subnanometer structures have been identified, it was unclear before now which component goes where and which components interact with one another. Now we have a much better understanding as to how the proteasome machinery works to control cellular processes and this opens the possibility of manipulating proteasome activity for the treatment of cancer and other diseases."
Nogales, who holds appointments with Berkeley Lab, UC Berkeley, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Martin, who holds appointments with UC Berkeley and the QB3 Institute, are the senior authors of a paper describing this work in the journal Nature. The paper is titled "Complete subunit architecture of the proteasome regulatory particle." Other co-authors were Gabriel Lander, Eric Estrin, Mary Matyskiela and Charlene Bashore.
At any given moment, a human cell typically contains about 100,000 different proteins, with certain proteins being manufactured and others being discarded as needed for the cell's continued prosperity. Unwanted proteins are tagged with a "kiss-of-death" label in the form of a polypeptide called "ubiquitin." A protein marked with ubiquitin is delivered to any one of the some 30,000 proteasomes in the cell barrel-shaped complexes which act as waste disposal units that rapidly break-down or degrade the protein. The 2004 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to a trio of scientists who first described the proteasome process, but a lack of structural information has limited the scientific understanding of the mechanics behind this process.
Nogales, an expert on electron microscopy and image analysis, and Martin, who developed the new protein expression system used in this work, combined the expertise of their respective research groups to study the proteasome regulatory particle in yeast. The particle features 19 sub-units that are organized into two sub-complexes, a "lid" and a "base." The lid contains the regulatory elements that identify the ubiquitin tag marking a protein for destruction, and the base features a hexameric ring that pulls the tagged protein inside the chamber of the proteasome barrel where it is degraded.
"The lid consists of nine non-ATPase proteins including ubiquitin receptors that accept properly tagged proteins but
prevent a protein not marked for degradation from engaging with the proteasome," Nogales says. "Since degradation is irreversible, it is critical that only ubiquitin-tagged proteins engage the proteasome. Interestingly, the ubiquitin tag has to be removed before the protein can be translocated into the proteasome's destruction chamber, so the lid also contains de-ubiquitination enzymes that remove the tags after the protein has engaged with the proteasome."
The proteasome regulatory particle's base contains six distinct AAA+ ATPases that form the hetero-hexameric ring, which serves as the molecular motor of the proteasome.
"We predict that the ATPases use the energy of ATP binding and hydrolysis to exert a pulling force on engaged proteins, unfolding and translocating them through a narrow central pore and into the degradation chamber," Martin says. "The steps in the proteasome process from protein recognition to de-ubiquitination and degradation have to be very highly coordinated in time and space. Locating all of these components and identifying their relative orientations has been very telling about how the processes are coordinated with each other."
Nogales credits the protein expression system developed by Martin and his research group, in which proteins are expressed and assembled in bacteria, as being critical to the success of this research.
"Until now researchers had to work with purified protein complexes from the cell, which could not be manipulated or modified in any way," she says. "Andy Martin's new heterologous expression system allows for the manipulation
and dissection of protein functions. For our studies it was crucial to generate lid sub-complexes that had one marker at a time in each of the subunits so that we could determine the position of each protein within the lid. With this new system we generated truncations, deletions and fusion constructs that were used to localize individual subunits and delineate their boundaries within the lid."
###
This research was supported by funds from UC Berkeley, Berkeley Lab, the National Institutes of Health, the Searle Scholars Program, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, the American Cancer Society, the National Science Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit www.lbl.gov.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
New information on the waste-disposal units of living cells Public release date: 11-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Lynn Yarris lcyarris@lbl.gov 510-486-5375 DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Berkeley researchers provide detailed look at proteasome's regulatory particle
Important new information on one of the most critical protein machines in living cells has been reported by a team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley. The researchers have provided the most detailed look ever at the "regulatory particle" used by the protein machines known as proteasomes to identify and degrade proteins that have been marked for destruction. The activities controlled by this regulatory particle are critical to the quality control of cellular proteins, as well as a broad range of vital biochemical processes, including transcription, DNA repair and the immune defense system.
"Using electron microscopy and a revolutionary new system for protein expression, we have determined at a subnanometer scale the complete architecture, including the relative positions of all its protein components, of the proteasome regulatory particle," says biophysicist Eva Nogales, the research team's co-principal investigator. "This provides a structural basis for the ability of the proteasome to recognize and degrade unwanted proteins and thereby regulate the amount of any one type of protein that is present in the cell."
Says the team's other co-principal investigator and corresponding author, biochemist Andreas Martin, "While the biochemical function of many of the proteasome components have been determined, and some subnanometer structures have been identified, it was unclear before now which component goes where and which components interact with one another. Now we have a much better understanding as to how the proteasome machinery works to control cellular processes and this opens the possibility of manipulating proteasome activity for the treatment of cancer and other diseases."
Nogales, who holds appointments with Berkeley Lab, UC Berkeley, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Martin, who holds appointments with UC Berkeley and the QB3 Institute, are the senior authors of a paper describing this work in the journal Nature. The paper is titled "Complete subunit architecture of the proteasome regulatory particle." Other co-authors were Gabriel Lander, Eric Estrin, Mary Matyskiela and Charlene Bashore.
At any given moment, a human cell typically contains about 100,000 different proteins, with certain proteins being manufactured and others being discarded as needed for the cell's continued prosperity. Unwanted proteins are tagged with a "kiss-of-death" label in the form of a polypeptide called "ubiquitin." A protein marked with ubiquitin is delivered to any one of the some 30,000 proteasomes in the cell barrel-shaped complexes which act as waste disposal units that rapidly break-down or degrade the protein. The 2004 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to a trio of scientists who first described the proteasome process, but a lack of structural information has limited the scientific understanding of the mechanics behind this process.
Nogales, an expert on electron microscopy and image analysis, and Martin, who developed the new protein expression system used in this work, combined the expertise of their respective research groups to study the proteasome regulatory particle in yeast. The particle features 19 sub-units that are organized into two sub-complexes, a "lid" and a "base." The lid contains the regulatory elements that identify the ubiquitin tag marking a protein for destruction, and the base features a hexameric ring that pulls the tagged protein inside the chamber of the proteasome barrel where it is degraded.
"The lid consists of nine non-ATPase proteins including ubiquitin receptors that accept properly tagged proteins but
prevent a protein not marked for degradation from engaging with the proteasome," Nogales says. "Since degradation is irreversible, it is critical that only ubiquitin-tagged proteins engage the proteasome. Interestingly, the ubiquitin tag has to be removed before the protein can be translocated into the proteasome's destruction chamber, so the lid also contains de-ubiquitination enzymes that remove the tags after the protein has engaged with the proteasome."
The proteasome regulatory particle's base contains six distinct AAA+ ATPases that form the hetero-hexameric ring, which serves as the molecular motor of the proteasome.
"We predict that the ATPases use the energy of ATP binding and hydrolysis to exert a pulling force on engaged proteins, unfolding and translocating them through a narrow central pore and into the degradation chamber," Martin says. "The steps in the proteasome process from protein recognition to de-ubiquitination and degradation have to be very highly coordinated in time and space. Locating all of these components and identifying their relative orientations has been very telling about how the processes are coordinated with each other."
Nogales credits the protein expression system developed by Martin and his research group, in which proteins are expressed and assembled in bacteria, as being critical to the success of this research.
"Until now researchers had to work with purified protein complexes from the cell, which could not be manipulated or modified in any way," she says. "Andy Martin's new heterologous expression system allows for the manipulation
and dissection of protein functions. For our studies it was crucial to generate lid sub-complexes that had one marker at a time in each of the subunits so that we could determine the position of each protein within the lid. With this new system we generated truncations, deletions and fusion constructs that were used to localize individual subunits and delineate their boundaries within the lid."
###
This research was supported by funds from UC Berkeley, Berkeley Lab, the National Institutes of Health, the Searle Scholars Program, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, the American Cancer Society, the National Science Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit www.lbl.gov.
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?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Start sharing video updates with your friends with Shoutz, a mobile-based social network getting some brand new content starting this month. It?s leads our Fresh Apps today, followed by Scribe, a no-nonsense text-editor that lets you save straight to the cloud through Dropbox or iTunes. Tongue-Tied! is our first game offer today, which has you controlling a pair of dogs with their tongues tied together, followed by Walkabout Journeys, in which you?ll need to rotate your device to keep the path clear for a group clowns traveling through a crazy world.
Shoutz (iPhone, iPad) Free
Social network Shoutz is all about sharing videos among mobile users. Rather than posting text updates to the Internet as you would on other social networks, Shoutz has users making short videos that they can post to the Internet. You?ll see your friends? videos and they?ll see yours. Then you can comment on each other?s posts.
Shoutz is designed for mobile users to view, so it makes shooting videos easy. It?s also easy to comment quickly, ?Re-Shoutz? with your friends through the network and more. Shoutz also plans to roll out fresh new content in an update this month, and if you sign-up now, you can get updates for when the new content is available.
Scribe (iPhone, iPad) $1.99
Editing text when you?re out in the world can be a really handy function for your iPhone to have, which is why snagging Scribe can be pretty useful. The app is a minimalist text editor designed for the iPhone and iPad, giving you the ability to write text and save it when you need to, without a lot of other functions to get in the way.
Scribe supports both iCloud and Dropbox to let you save your work using an Internet connection, and you can also save files locally. It uses iOS?s cut-and-paste functions to make it easy to do HTML editing, if that?s your thing, and includes useful bits like undo and redo functions, word counts and AirPrint support.
Side-scroller Tongue Tied! has you controlling a pair of dogs with an interesting relationship ? their tongues are tied together. Despite the implications, both canines seem fine with the situation, and even use their elastic tongues to gather bones and work their way through the game?s levels. That?s where you come in. As the two dogs walk the path from one side of the level to the other, you pull one or the other to launch him into the air, using the second dog as an anchor and gathering coins from all over the place.
Tongue Tied! has a cool cartoon art style and atmosphere, giving it the air of the Saturday morning shorts from years gone by, and 50 levels of goofiness to play through. It contains 30 special challenges to up the difficulty, and there?s also Game Center support so you can track how well you manage your tongue-tied dogs as compared to players all over the world.
Another side-scroller with a unique art style, Walkabout Journeys stars a strange group of clowns (apparently) out on a stroll together. Trouble is, the screen tracks forward but the terrain doesn?t always cooperate, which is where you come in. You?ll need to rotate your iOS device in order to open paths forward for the group so they can keep moving. Send them too far back or forward, however, and you?ll lose them, and lose points, too.
Walkabout Journeys has 16 levels that cover each of the seasons and a great look about it. Its gameplay is pretty simple, but different levels can require fast reactions in order to keep your group alive and moving forward. Walkabout Journeys also just picked up a few new Christmas-inspired levels for the holidays, as well.
Got questions about Pantech's line of mobile devices? Marketing Director Erin Magee's got answers. And demos? Yeah, she's got some of the those too. She'll be joining us today on the Engadget stage at 2:30PM ET. Follow along after the break.
The IdeaTab S2 and IdeaTab K2, a pair of tablets showcased at CES 2012, are both set for 2012 release.?
The tablet market these days isn't so much a horse race as an absolute rout ? there's the high-end iPad, the low-end Kindle Fire, and then there's everyone else. But Apple can't hold the coveted top spot forever, and in recent months, an increasing number of competitors have announced or unveiled Android-powered tablets, including Google itself.
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The latest such device is the IdeaTab S2, the 10-inch tablet introduced by Lenovo at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2012) this week. Computerworld is reporting that the S2, set for release this year, will ship with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and in a few different memory configurations:?16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB, just like the iPad. Look for 1 GB of RAM, a?Snapdragon MSM 8960 processor, rear- and forward-facing cameras, and a svelte, 1.3-pound body ? also much like the iPad.?
Best of all, the IdeaTab S2 is a "transformer." With a little work (and a couple hundred bucks), it becomes a full-fledged laptop.?
"As is common with most 10-inch tablets, the [S2] can operate for approximately 9 hours on a charge," Lance Ulanoff writes over at Mashable. "However, you can double the battery life if you add the $200 keyboard dock, which includes a second battery, full-sized keyboard and touchpad and adds two USB ports and a storage card reader. In other words, it turns the IdeaTab [S2] into a laptop."?
Also at CES, Lenovo took the wraps off an IdeaTab-branded tablet called the K2, which will ship with?Nvidia's quad-core Tegra 3 processor and Google's Android 4.0 OS, IDG News is reporting. Details on the K2 are pretty murky: Lenovo appears to be positioning the device as a "gaming and multimedia" tablet with HD graphics, as opposed to the more utilitarian S2.
The K2, certainly won't get a budget price, Tech Radar reports, but it will get a fingerprint reader for extra security, and a super-high resolution screen, for watching plenty of videos and playing plenty of games. The device is slated to launch in China this year, but unlike the S2, it has not yet been confirmed for a US release, which is too bad. The thing's apparently?a real powerhouse.?
For more tech news, follow us on?Twitter @venturenaut. And don?t forget to sign up for the weekly?BizTech newsletter.
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Bitte solange RT bis es stimmt. Gewinner erhalt ipad free Giftklingeltoncard signed by @mogelpony RT @zurvollenstunde: Es ist jetzt 16 Uhr.Il y a environ 5 heuresvia TweetCaster for Android
KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 7 -- Malaysia Airlines (MAS) is offering an additional 32 flights from January 17 to February 1, to cater to the additional demand from customers during the forthcoming Chinese New Year holidays.
In a statement issued Saturday, MAS said the offer of additional flights for the year of the dragon was to enable Malaysians to return home or take the opportunity to go on a short holiday during the festive season.
"MAS will continue to monitor the situation and add more capacity on sectors where there is further demand," it added.
For now, there will be additional of 14 flights using the 144-seater Boeing 737-400 aircraft from to and from Kuala Lumpur to Sibu, seven times to and from Kuala Lumpur to KotaKinabalu, six times to and from KotaKinabalu to Taipei, and three times to and from KotaKinabalu to Hong Kong.
The national carrier is also offering two flight times using the 294-seater Airbus A330 aircraft for the Kuala Lumpur-Kunming route.
Customers can call MAS' toll free number 1-300-88-3000 or log on to www.malaysiaairlines.com for bookings and best deals for travel. They can also book via MH Buddy on http://facebook.com/malaysiaairlines. - Bernama
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*HOT and NEW* Free Crystal Light Energy Sample Pack ? Working Again!!: ? UPDATE: Working Again!! Be the first t... bit.ly/xrsXjbIl y a environ 7 heuresvia twitterfeed
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Public release date: 17-Jan-2012
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While there wasn't much to say about the recently announced Droid RAZR MAXX to begin with (it's essentially the 
Social network Shoutz is all about sharing videos among mobile users. Rather than posting text updates to the Internet as you would on other social networks, Shoutz has users making short videos that they can post to the Internet. You?ll see your friends? videos and they?ll see yours. Then you can comment on each other?s posts.
Editing text when you?re out in the world can be a really handy function for your iPhone to have, which is why snagging Scribe can be pretty useful. The app is a minimalist text editor designed for the iPhone and iPad, giving you the ability to write text and save it when you need to, without a lot of other functions to get in the way.
Side-scroller Tongue Tied! has you controlling a pair of dogs with an interesting relationship ? their tongues are tied together. Despite the implications, both canines seem fine with the situation, and even use their elastic tongues to gather bones and work their way through the game?s levels. That?s where you come in. As the two dogs walk the path from one side of the level to the other, you pull one or the other to launch him into the air, using the second dog as an anchor and gathering coins from all over the place.
Another side-scroller with a unique art style, Walkabout Journeys stars a strange group of clowns (apparently) out on a stroll together. Trouble is, the screen tracks forward but the terrain doesn?t always cooperate, which is where you come in. You?ll need to rotate your iOS device in order to open paths forward for the group so they can keep moving. Send them too far back or forward, however, and you?ll lose them, and lose points, too.
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