Apr. 29, 2013 ? In a process one researcher compares to squeezing an elephant through a pinhole, researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology have designed a way to engineer atoms capable of funneling light through ultra-small channels.
Their research is the latest in a series of recent findings related to how light and matter interact at the atomic scale, and it is the first to demonstrate that the material -- a specially designed "meta-atom" of gold and silicon oxide -- can transmit light through a wide bandwidth and at a speed approaching infinity. The meta-atoms' broadband capability could lead to advances in optical devices, which currently rely on a single frequency to transmit light, the researchers say.
"These meta-atoms can be integrated as building blocks for unconventional optical components with exotic electromagnetic properties over a wide frequency range," write Dr. Jie Gao and Dr. Xiaodong Yang, assistant professors of mechanical engineering at Missouri S&T, and Dr. Lei Sun, a visiting scholar at the university. The researchers describe their atomic-scale design in the latest issue of the journal Physical Review B.
The researchers created mathematical models of the meta-atom, a material 100 nanometers wide and 25 nanometers tall that combined gold and silicon oxide in stairstep fashion. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter and visible only with the aid of a high-power electron microscope.
In their simulations, the researchers stacked 10 of the meta-atoms, then shot light through them at various frequencies. They found that when light encountered the material in a range between 540 terahertz and 590 terahertz, it "stretched" into a nearly straight line and achieved an "effective permittivity" known as epsilon-near-zero.
Effective permittivity refers to the ratio of light's speed through air to its speed as it passes through a material. When light travels through glass, for instance, its effective permittivity is 2.25. Through air or the vacuum of outer space, the ratio is one. That ratio is what is typically referred to as the speed of light.
As light passes through the engineered meta-atoms described by Gao and Yang, however, its effective permittivity reaches a near-zero ratio. In other words, through the medium of these specially designed materials, light actually travels faster than the speed of light. It travels "infinitely fast" through this medium, Yang says.
The meta-atoms also stretch the light. Other materials, such as glass, typically compress optical waves, causing diffraction.
This stretching phenomenon means that "waves of light could tunnel through very small holes," Yang says. "It is like squeezing an elephant through an ultra-small channel."
The wavelength of light encountering a single meta-atom is 500 nanometers from peak to peak, or five times the length of Gao and Yang's specially designed meta-atoms, which are 100 nanometers in length. While the Missouri S&T team has yet to fabricate actual meta-atoms, they say their research shows that the materials could be built and used for optical communications, image processing, energy redirecting and other emerging fields, such as adaptive optics.
Last year, Albert Polman at the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics in Amsterdam and Nader Engheta, an electrical engineer at the University of Pennsylvania, developed a tiny waveguide device in which light waves of a single wavelength also achieved epsilon-near-zero. But the Missouri S&T researchers' work is the first to demonstrate epsilon-near-zero in a broadband of 50 terahertz.
"The design is practical and realistic, with the potential to fabricate actual meta-atoms," says Gao. Adds Yang: "With this research, we filled the gap from the theoretical to the practical."
Through a process known as electron-beam deposition, the researchers have built a thin-film wafer from 13 stacked meta-atoms. But those materials were uniform in composition rather than arranged in the stairstep fashion of their modeled meta-atoms.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Missouri University of Science and Technology. The original article was written by Andrew Careaga.
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Journal Reference:
Lei Sun, Jie Gao, Xiaodong Yang. Broadband epsilon-near-zero metamaterials with steplike metal-dielectric multilayer structures. Physical Review B, 2013; 87 (16) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.87.165134
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.
BOSTON (AP) ? With the Boston marathon bombing suspect in a prison hospital, investigators are pushing forward in the U.S. and abroad to piece together the myriad details of a plot that killed three people and injured more than 260.
FBI agents have wrapped up a two-day search at a landfill near the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where 19-year-old suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was a sophomore. FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller wouldn't say what investigators were looking for or whether they recovered anything from the landfill before the search ended Friday.
A federal law enforcement official not authorized to speak on the record about the investigation told The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity on Friday that the FBI was gathering evidence regarding "everything imaginable."
Meanwhile, U.S. officials said the bombing suspects' mother had been added to a federal terrorism database about 18 months before the April 15 attack ? a disclosure that deepens the mystery around the Tsarnaev family and marks the first time American authorities have acknowledged that Zubeidat Tsarnaeva was under investigation before the tragedy.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is charged with joining with his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, now dead, in setting off the shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs. The brothers are ethnic Chechens from Russia who came to the United States about a decade ago with their parents.
Investigators have said it appears the brothers were angry about the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Two government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation, said the CIA had Zubeidat Tsarnaeva's name added to the terror database along with that of her son Tamerlan after Russia contacted the agency in 2011 with concerns that the two were religious militants.
About six months earlier, the FBI investigated mother and son, also at Russia's request, one of the officials said. The FBI found no ties to terrorism. Previously U.S. officials had said only that the FBI investigated Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
In an interview from Russia, Tsarnaeva said Friday that she has never been linked to terrorism.
"It's all lies and hypocrisy," she said from Dagestan. "I'm sick and tired of all this nonsense that they make up about me and my children. People know me as a regular person, and I've never been mixed up in any criminal intentions, especially any linked to terrorism."
Tsarnaeva faces shoplifting charges in the U.S. over the theft of more than $1,624 worth of women's clothing from a Lord & Taylor department store in Natick in 2012.
Earlier this week, she said she has been assured by lawyers that she would not be arrested if she traveled to the U.S., but she said she was still deciding whether to go. The suspects' father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said that he would leave Russia soon for the United States to visit one son and lay the other to rest.
A team of investigators from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow questioned both parents in Russia this week.
Late this week, Dzhohkar Tsarnaev was taken from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he was recovering from a throat wound and other injuries suffered during an attempt to elude police, and was transferred to the Federal Medical Center Devens, about 40 miles from Boston, the U.S. Marshals Service said. The facility, at a former Army base, treats federal prisoners.
"It's where he should be; he doesn't need to be here anymore," said Beth Israel patient Linda Zamansky, who thought his absence could reduce stress on bombing victims who have been recovering at the hospital under tight security.
Two college buddies of his ? Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev ? have been interviewed at length, twice, by FBI agents and have cooperated fully, said Kadyrbayev's lawyer, Robert Stahl, a former federal prosecutor.
They were detained April 20 after being questioned in connection with the attacks, but are not suspects, Stahl said. They are being detained at a county jail in Boston for violating their student visas by not regularly attending classes, he said.
The two, both students from Kazakhstan, had nothing to do with the attack and had seen no hints that their friend harbored any violent or terrorist sympathies, Stahl said.
Meanwhile, New York's police commissioner said the FBI was too slow to inform the city that the Boston Marathon suspects had been planning to bomb Times Square days after the attack at the race.
Federal investigators learned about the short-lived scheme from a hospitalized Dzhokhar Tsarnaev during a bedside interrogation that began Sunday night and extended into Monday morning, officials said. The information didn't reach the New York Police Department until Wednesday night.
"We did express our concerns over the lag," said police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
The FBI had no comment Friday.
___
Sullivan reported from Washington. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Rodrique Ngowi in Boston, Colleen Long in New York and Ted Bridis, Pete Yost and Julie Pace in Washington.
Preorder a 32GB version in white by May 24 to qualify for a free cradle
Sony has officially started taking preorders for its newest 10.1-inch Jelly Bean tablet, the Xperia Tablet Z. This incredibly thin, IR-sporting device was announced in late January, and shown off during the Mobile World Congress. It comes with a 'Full HD Reality Display' (1920x1200p WUXGA), 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro processor with 2GB RAM, a 2MP camera up front, and an 8MP camera in the rear.
To help up-sell those considering the $499.99 16GB black model, Sony is throwing in a free cradle accessory to customers that preorder a $599.99 32GB model in white. The 32GB version comes in black as well, but for whatever reason the free accessory offer only applies to the white version. Preorders must be in by May 24 to be eligible for a free cradle.
Republicans in Ohio last week took an important step toward broad tax reform when the state House of Representatives approved an across-the-board reduction in the personal income tax. That tax cut, however, is contingent upon Congress passing legislation that will allow Ohio and other states to have online-only retailers remit state sales tax just like any other business does. The U.S. Senate is now poised to grant states this power via the aptly named Marketplace Fairness Act. This legislation levels the economic playing field by putting small businesses on the same footing as online-only outfits. Conservatives should embrace this needed reform.
Under the current system, state governments collect sales tax from stores located in the jurisdictions if an outlet conducts an in-person sale or makes a transaction online with a state resident. When an individual makes an online purchase from a retailer outside their state, that person is supposed to report the purchase and pay the sales tax?commonly called a ?use tax??to his or her home state. As one might imagine, taxpayers rarely adhere to the requirements of use taxes.
The nationwide increase in online shopping has thus led to a sharp decline in sales tax compliance for state governments. States, which are legally forced to balance their budgets, have made up their revenue shortfalls through a mix of spending cuts, increasing marginal income tax rates and hiking other taxes or fees. The lack of a mechanism to have remote sellers collect and remit sales tax ultimately hurts small local business owners while increasing the overall tax burden on individuals and families who now pay for the higher taxes in other areas. This policy essentially amounts to a federal subsidy for online-only retailers and it threatens the creation of jobs for many local businesses.
The Marketplace Fairness Act is Congress? answer to a 1992 Supreme Court ruling that said states needed federal approval to have remote retailers remit sales tax the same way local retailers do. This legislation allows states to correct the tax imbalance and divide the burden they impose on their residents more sensibly. With the recovery of lost sales tax revenues, states will be able to reduce marginal income tax rates and other levies as they balance their budgets. Naysayers argue that this will not be done, but they are already being proven wrong.
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People can safely add a few nuts to their diet - or replace other foods with the high-unsaturated fat, high-fiber snacks - without gaining weight, a new review of past studies suggests.
Researchers combined data from 31 trials conducted across the globe and found that on average, there was very little difference in changes in weight or waist measurements between people who were put on a normal or nut-supplemented diet.
"Most of the nut-enriched studies don't show that patients gain a significant amount of weight, in contrast to what one might think," said Dr. David Bleich, head of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark.
Gemma Flores-Mateo from the Institut Universitari d'Investigacio en Atencio Primaria Jordi Gol in Tarragona, Spain and colleagues said previous research has tied nut-containing diets to a lower risk of death, diabetes and high blood pressure.
Bleich, who wasn't involved in the new report, said his own work has shown measures of insulin resistance - a diabetes predictor - were lower when people added nuts to their diets.
"One would generally think if you're increasing the ?fat content' of the diet, you might in fact make insulin resistance worse," he told Reuters Health. "It speaks to this issue of the quality of the fats that we consume."
Nuts may also suppress hunger because of their unsaturated fats, fiber and protein, the researchers noted.
In the trials they looked at, participants were randomly assigned to a normal diet or one that included extra nuts - or, more often, nuts substituted for other food items - and followed for anywhere from two weeks to five years.
At the end of follow-up, people on nut diets had dropped about 1.4 extra pounds and lost close to half an inch off their waists, compared to those in the nut-free groups. However, the differences could have been due to chance.
"Although the magnitude of these effects was modest, the results allay the fear that nut consumption may promote obesity," Flores-Mateo's team wrote last week in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
"Our findings support the inclusion of nuts in healthy diets for cardiovascular prevention."
However it's not simply a matter of "throwing additional nuts into your already poor-quality diet," Bleich said. He said heart protection comes from looking at a fuller picture of the diet - and adding fruits, vegetables and olive oil, for example, in addition to nuts.
Dr. Adam Gilden Tsai, an obesity researcher from the University of Colorado in Denver, said he wouldn't recommend people eat nuts on top of their normal diet, but that substituting them for other foods may lead to some benefits, such as on cholesterol levels.
"It's fine to eat nuts if you can still limit your calories," Tsai told Reuters Health. But he cautioned that it can be hard for people to eat just one serving.
"Normally what I would say to a patient is, ?A small handful of nuts can be a very good and filling snack, but you have to be very careful because it's high in calories.'"
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/15MepVc American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, online April 17, 2013.
The first of Nintendo's planned Wii Ufirmware updates went live just yesterday, bringing a much needed speed boost to software load times. And in that short time since, Nintendo's also made its retro-gaming Virtual Console portal available to users, effectively bypassing the need to boot into the Wii emulator for access. The downside to this new, belated convenience is that users will have to re-download any previously purchased Virtual Console titles, though that additional cost is relatively low at $1.00- $1.50 for NES and SNES games, respectively. Unfortunately, you'll still have to wait a bit longer for those beloved Game Boy Advance and N64 classics to make their way to the VC, as Nintendo plans to include those games sometime "in the future." Still, with band-aid number one out of the way for the ailing console and a host of tried-and-true classics now easily accessible, Wii U owners have a little something to tide them over until that late summer Pikmin 3 launch.
An international team of researchers have spotted the most fuel-efficient galaxy yet, which converts nearly 100 percent of its hydrogen gas into stars.
By Eoin O'Carroll,?Staff / April 24, 2013
The tiny red spot in this image is one of the most efficient star-making galaxies ever observed, converting gas into stars at the maximum possible rate. Visible-light observations from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (inset) reveal that the starlight in this galaxy is extraordinarily compact, with most of the light emitted by a region just a fraction of the size of the Milky Way galaxy.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/IRAM
Enlarge
Six billion or so light years from here, there's a galaxy that seems to take seriously the old Lakota maxim about using the whole buffalo.
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Except by "use" we mean "form stars out of" and by "buffalo" we mean "interstellar hydrogen gas."?
Hydrogen gas is the fuel that galaxies use to make new stars, and most galaxies are the equivalent of a Hummer with a broken oxygen sensor, four flat tires, and a buffalo carcass strapped to the roof. Most of the gas meant to transport you gets wasted. But a new study has spotted a galaxy that is converting gas into stars at a rate hundreds of times that of our galaxy with almost 100 percent efficiency.
An international team of scientists looked at data from?NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and spotted a galaxy that was just blazing with infrared radiation, equivalent, they say, to a trillion suns. Observations from the Hubble telescope confirmed that the galaxy, which is affectionately known as?SDSSJ1506+54, is extremely compact, with most of the infrared light pouring from an area that is a fraction of the size of our own Milky Way.?
The researchers then used data from the IRAM Plateau de Bure interferometer in the French Alps to detect the presence of carbon monoxide, which indicates the presence of hydrogen. By combining the gas measurements with the rate of star formation, the scientists found that the galaxy was forming stars out of the gas at a rate that is close to the theoretical maximum. Their paper, which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Astrophysical Letters, calls it "star formation at its most extreme."
A NASA press release explains just how this galaxy is achieving such efficiency:
In regions of galaxies where new stars are forming, parts of gas clouds are collapsing due to gravity. When the gas is dense enough to squeeze atoms together and ignite nuclear fusion, a star is born. But this process can be halted by other newborn stars, as their winds and radiation blow the gas outward. The point at which this occurs sets the theoretical maximum for star formation. The galaxy SDSSJ1506+54 was found to be making stars right at this point, just before the gas clouds would otherwise be blown apart.
"We see some gas outflowing from this galaxy at millions of miles per hour, and this gas may have been blown away by the powerful radiation from the newly formed stars," said Ryan Hickox, an astrophysicist at Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., and a co-author on the study.
Why is this galaxy so efficient at converting hydrogen into stars while all the others are such slouches? It actually comes down to timing. We just happen to be witnessing the time period, six billion years ago, when this galaxy produces lots of stars. The researchers speculate that this period could have been triggered by the merging of two galaxies into one.?
In any case, it's a bright spot in our sky. As Discovery News's Ian O'Neill points out those living on a planet on the outskirts of this prolific star factory will have a "night" sky that is actually brighter than daylight.
Apr. 25, 2013 ? Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine have figured out how to measure an infant's risk of developing autism by looking for abnormalities in his/her placenta at birth, allowing for earlier diagnosis and treatment for the developmental disorder. The findings are reported in the April 25 online issue of Biological Psychiatry.
One out of 50 children are diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder in the United States each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but the diagnosis is usually made when these children are 3 to 4 years of age or older. By then the best opportunities for intervention have been lost because the brain is most responsive to treatment in the first year of life.
Senior author Dr. Harvey Kliman, research scientist in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at the Yale School of Medicine, and research collaborators at the MIND Institute at the University of California, Davis, have found that abnormal placental folds and abnormal cell growths called trophoblast inclusions are key markers to identify newborns who are at risk for autism.
Kliman and his team examined 117 placentas from infants of at-risk families, those with one or more previous children with autism. These families were participating in a study called Markers of Autism Risk in Babies -- Learning Early Signs. Kliman compared these at-risk placentas to 100 control placentas collected by the UC Davis researchers from the same geographic area.
The at-risk placentas had as many as 15 trophoblast inclusions, while none of the control placentas had more than two trophoblast inclusions. Kliman said a placenta with four or more trophoblast inclusions conservatively predicts an infant with a 96.7% probability of being at risk for autism.
Currently, the best early marker of autism risk is family history. Couples with a child with autism are nine times more likely to have another child with autism. Kliman said that when these at-risk families have subsequent children they could employ early intervention strategies to improve outcomes. "Regrettably couples without known genetic susceptibility must rely on identification of early signs or indicators that may not overtly manifest until the child's second or third year of life," said Kliman.
"I hope that diagnosing the risk of developing autism by examining the placenta at birth will become routine, and that the children who are shown to have increased numbers of trophoblast inclusions will have early interventions and an improved quality of life as a result of this test," Kliman added.
Other authors on the study include Kaitlin Anderson, Kristin Milano, and Saier Ye of Yale University; and Cheryl Walker, Daniel Tancredi, Isaac Pessah, and Irva Hertz-Picciotto of UC Davis.
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (1 P01 ES11269 and R01 ES 015359), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency through the Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program (R829388 and R833292), the MIND Institute at the University of California, Davis, and the Yale University Reproductive and Placental Research Unit.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Yale University. The original article was written by Karen N. Peart.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Cheryl K. Walkera, Kaitlin W. Andersong, Kristin M. Milanoh, Saier Yei, Daniel J. Tancredie, Isaac N. Pessahc, Irva Hertz-Picciottob, Harvey J. Klimang. Trophoblast Inclusions Are Significantly Increased in the Placentas of Children in Families at Risk for Autism. Biological Psychiatry, 2013 DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2013.03.006
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
It looks like everyone loves stickers, because following its last update, Path is growing -- fast. The social app is now pulling in a million users a week and has recently topped nine million. It's picked up most of its new chroniclers and message-senders from English and Spanish speaking regions, particularly in South and Central America. In fact, 500,000 Venezuelans decided to start trying the app over a single weekend. According to Path's co-founder, Dave Morin, search features added at the start of the year have increased user traffic by 50 percent, while the addition of extra stickers and filter purchases has meant its making its way up the top-grossing charts too. The chief exec adds that the growth appears to be organic, with users largely split equally across iOS and Android, although there's nothing just yet on Google Glass user numbers.
(Reuters) - Shoppers Drug Mart Corp, Canada's biggest pharmacy chain, said tightened pricing controls for generic drugs will push its 2013 pharmacy same-store sales outlook to the lower end of its previous guidance.
The company had previously forecast pharmacy same-store sales growth of between 1.5 percent to 2.5 percent for 2013.
Canada's provinces and territories agreed in January to tighten caps on prices of six widely prescribed generic drugs to cut costs for private and government health programs.
Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall then told Reuters that more could be done to cut the cost of generics, among the highest in the world.
The new rules mandate drugstores charge no more than 18 percent of the price of the brand-name equivalent, lower than the previous 25 percent to 40 percent cap. The rules kicked off on April 1.
On a post-earnings conference call, Chief Executive Domenic Pilla said "there will be several impacts" of this new rule in the second quarter.
Price controls have crimped growth at Shoppers and rivals such as Jean Coutu Group Inc in recent years.
Average prescription value fell 4.8 percent in the first quarter ended March 23.
However, total sales in the quarter rose 4 percent to C$2.49 billion mostly on higher over-the-counter medications, food and cosmetics. The cough and cold season in the first half of the quarter also helped drive OTC sales.
Total same-store sales, or sales at stores open for at least a year, rose 2.5 percent. Same-store sales increased 3.3 percent at the front of the store and 1.6 percent at pharmacies.
Shoppers' net profit at C$119 million ($117 million), or 59 Canadian cents per share, was in line with analysts' estimates, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
"In the context of the current environment and the low confidence around the earnings visibility, an in-line quarter was actually a beat for Shoppers," said analyst Kenric Tyghe of Raymond James.
The company has also been expanding stores and opening new ones to boost sales.
Shoppers, which also operates the Murale luxury spas, opened seven stores and acquired four in the quarter, taking total number of stores to 1,368.
"The team is actively engaged through all parts of the country, with a focus on Ontario and Western Canada, with regards to acquisition opportunities, " Chief Financial Officer Bradley Lukow said on the call.
The company has allotted about 70 percent of its 2013 capital expenditure of about C$275 million to expanding its store network.
Shares of the company closed up 15 Canadian cents at C$44.85 on Thursday on the Toronto Stock Exchange. It hit a two-year high of C$45.44 earlier in the day.
($1 = 1.0198 Canadian dollars)
(Reporting by Krithika Krishnamurthy in Bangalore; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Anthony Kurian)
Apr. 24, 2013 ? Antibiotic resistance is a global problem. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that for tuberculosis alone multi-drug resistance accounts for more than 150,000 deaths each year. WHO warns of "a doomsday scenario of a world without antibiotics," in which antibiotic resistance will turn common infections into incurable killers and make routine surgeries a high-risk gamble.
Certain types of bacteria are a scourge of the hospital environment because they are extremely resistant to antibiotics and consequently difficult, if not impossible, to treat. This group of bacteria is classified as 'gram-negative' because their cells have a double membrane or outer layer, compared with gram-positive bacteria, which just have one outer layer.
Not only are these cells difficult to penetrate in the first instance, due to their double membrane, but they have effective 'pumps' which quickly reject anything that interferes with the activity of protein-building within the cell and the development of the protective cell wall.
This research, which was funded by the Wellcome Trust, gives for the first time a clear insight into how these protein components of the pump work together to transport an antibiotic from the cell.
Examples of gram-negative bacteria include those which cause food poisoning, meningitis, gonorrhoea and respiratory problems. Since the antibiotic is an interfering agent, many of these pathogenic bacteria use the membrane pumps to transport the medication out of the cell.
The pumps are made up of three different proteins within the cell that work together to bring about the movement. Research lead, Professor Adrian Walmsley from Durham University's School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences explained:
"Patients with bacterial infections are often treated with antibiotics, but since many strains are resistant to one or more of these drugs, clinicians often try to bring such infections under control by prescribing a combination of different types of antibiotics in the hope that they will override the resistance mechanisms. This sometimes works, but other times it does not. Pumps exacerbate this situation by reducing the effective concentration of the drug inside the cell. "
"By investigating how these pumps function, we have been able to identify the molecular events that are involved in binding and transporting an antibiotic from the cell. This advance in our understanding will ultimately aid the development of 'pump blockers'. This is important because these pumps often confer resistance to multiple, structurally unrelated, drugs; which means that they could also be resistant to new drugs which have never been used before."
Dr Vassiliy Bavro from the the Institute of Microbiology and Infection at the University of Birmingham said: "This study greatly expands our understanding of the mechanistic aspects of the pump function, and in particular challenges our previous concepts of energy requirements for pump assembly and cycling. By elucidating the intricate details of how these essential nanomachines come together, it also provides a new working model of their functional cycle in general, paving the way to development of novel approaches to disrupting their function."
Dr Ted Bianco, Acting Director of the Wellcome Trust, said: "A world without antibiotics is a world where simple surgery becomes a life-threatening procedure, where a scratch from a rose might prove fatal, and where diseases like tuberculosis return with a ferocity not seen in Britain since the Victorian era. This is why fundamental research to understand the mechanisms of antibiotic resistance is so important. Only when we know what we're up against can researchers begin to design new antibacterial agents to help us win the war against bacterial infections."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Durham University.
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Journal Reference:
Thamarai K. Janganan, Vassiliy N. Bavro, Li Zhang, Maria In?s Borges-Walmsley, Adrian R. Walmsley. Tripartite efflux pumps: energy is required for dissociation, but not assembly or opening of the outer membrane channel of the pump. Molecular Microbiology, 2013; 88 (3): 590 DOI: 10.1111/mmi.12211
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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
ROME (Reuters) - Italy's president Giorgio Napolitano is set to announce on Wednesday his choice of prime minister to form a new government and pull the euro zone's third largest economy out of a two-month political rut.
The new coalition government, which could take office in a matter of days, would be backed primarily by the rivals on the center-left and center-right, the same parties that had refused to cut a deal since national elections in late February.
The person in pole position to receive the mandate is former Prime Minister Giuliano Amato, although the mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi and center-left deputy leader Enrico Letta have also emerged as possible candidates.
Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL), the center-left Democratic Party (PD) and the centrist Civic Choice movement of outgoing premier Mario Monti have all said they would cooperate with whoever Napolitano chooses.
"Given the crisis the country finds itself in, the country needs a strong, a durable government that can make important decisions ...," Berlusconi said after meeting Napolitano.
Letta, of the badly fractured PD, said his party would back any government committed to tackling the "social-economic emergency," and enacting serious political reform, including changes to a dysfunctional electoral law.
At the election, the center-left narrowly won a majority in the lower house but failed to win control of the Senate and was not able to form a government.
Hopes that the impasse would soon be over gave a further boost to financial markets on Tuesday, with the yield on 10-year Italian government bonds dropping below 4 percent and the spread, or risk premium over German bonds, narrowing further.
Italy's economy has been the most sluggish in Europe for more than a decade and mired in a deep recession since the middle of 2011, with no recovery in sight.
POLITICAL "IRRESPONSIBILITY"
Napolitano bent the will of the uncollaborative parties on Monday when he was inaugurated for an unprecedented second term. He berated the parties for their "irresponsibility" in prolonging a political deadlock for nearly two months.
He threatened to resign unless the parties agreed to cooperate and find some middle ground on much needed reforms.
The PD has emerged the most scarred from the crisis.
Deep internal divisions forced its leader, Pier Luigi Bersani, to resign after the PD's inability to cut a deal with either Berlusconi's center-right or the shock new third political force, Beppe Grillo's 5-Star Movement.
Berlusconi has capitalized on the center-left's woes. One poll gave the center-right a clear lead of around 8 points.
The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement of former comedian Grillo, which won a quarter of the vote and speaks for millions of Italians disillusioned with an entire political class, told Napolitano it would sit in opposition and may support specific reforms.
The Left Ecology Freedom party (SEL), a former partner of the PD, and Berlusconi's allies in the Northern League also said they would not join a coalition led by Amato.
What a difference a day makes for "Teen Mom" Jenelle Evans.
By Ashley Majeski, TODAY contributor
Less than 24 hours after she told a fan on Twitter Monday that she was "doing great...and I'm sober!" "Teen Mom 2" star Jenelle Evans was arrested in Brunswick County, N.C., and charged with possession of heroin, simple possession of a Schedule II controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.
The troubled MTV star's lawyer, Dustin Sullivan, tells TODAY.com that Evans also was charged with simple assault, and failure to pay her child support payment to her mother, Barbara Evans.
Evans' husband, Courtland Rogers, was also arrested Tuesday, and has been charged with possession of heroin, as well as assault on a female.
"Courtland is currently on probation for the assault on a female charge that Jenelle filed against him in January," Sullivan said. "He recently pleaded guilty to that charge and was on probation for it when he was arrested today."
Sullivan said that Evans' charges were split up and that she received two separate court dates: one in May for the misdemeanor charges, and one in June to deal with the felony drug charges.
"She was very upset when I saw her in court," Sullivan tells TODAY.com. "She was crying in court and she denies having any involvement with the drugs that were found."
Evans, who has made two trips to rehab in the past two years, was shown on Monday night's episode of "Teen Mom 2" discussing her drug use, and took to her Twitter account Monday night to defend herself.
Sullivan said that while Evans has been bonded out of jail, Rogers was still behind bars when Evans left jail. Coincidentally, Evans' former fiance, Gary Head, turned himself into the Brunswick County Jail today to begin serving a sentence for a DWI charge.
"At one point today, Gary, Jenelle and Courtland were all in the jail behind bars at the same time," Sullivan said.
According to Sullivan, Evans wasn't on probation at the time of her arrest, but is currently prohibited from having any contact with Rogers.?
We were intrigued with the prospects of Western Digital's 5mm Blue drive when we saw it last summer: finally, a 2.5-inch spinning disk thin enough to rival slimmer SSDs without the price premium of a hybrid like the WD Black SSHD. If you shared the same curiosity, you'll be glad to hear that the finished product is shipping as the WD Blue UltraSlim. Device builders can now stuff 500GB into spaces that would exclude 7mm disks, yet pay just $89 for the privilege -- a price low enough to let even frugal Ultrabooks shed some bulk. The 5mm disk reaches its miniscule dimensions through the use of a tiny edge connector that mates both power and a SATA interface, leaving more room for the drive machinery. We can't guarantee that you'll find a Blue UltraSlim in your next PC or set-top box when Western Digital hasn't named any of its customers, but we wouldn't be surprised if the wafer-like drive is commonplace in the near future.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Republican lawmaker escalated a partisan fight over the new consumer protection watchdog on Monday, saying the bureau's leader was not welcome to appear before a congressional panel that oversees financial regulators.
Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas, a Republican who leads the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, said Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray could not appear before the panel because he has not been confirmed to his position by the U.S. Senate.
Lawmakers have battled over the bureau since it was created in 2010. President Barack Obama appointed Cordray in January 2012 to lead the consumer watchdog on a temporary basis, but Senate Republicans have refused to confirm him for a full term until Democrats agree to change the bureau's structure.
The bureau's critics argue a recent court ruling proves that Cordray's position is invalid, though Democrats and the consumer watchdog dispute that conclusion because the case did not deal directly with him.
Cordray is scheduled to appear before a Senate committee on Tuesday to present a semi-annual report on the bureau's activities, but Hensarling said he would not be asked to deliver the report to the House panel.
"The Committee on Financial Services stands ready to accept the testimony of the director of the CFPB on the semi-annual report as soon as an individual validly holds this position," Hensarling said in letters to Cordray and to bureau general counsel Meredith Fuchs.
The CFPB, formed after the 2007-2009 crisis to protect Americans from financial scams, oversees mortgages, credit cards and student loans.
Obama used a controversial maneuver known as a "recess appointment" to install Cordray temporarily while most lawmakers were out of Washington, after Senate Republicans refused to confirm him to a full term. They say the bureau should be run by a bipartisan board and not a single director.
Republicans said Cordray's appointment, as well as three additional appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, was invalid because lawmakers were not technically on recess at the time.
A court earlier this year threw out the three labor board appointees for that reason.
The ruling did not directly involve Cordray, and a separate challenge to his appointment has not been decided in court, but lawmakers and financial industry groups have said the same reasoning could be applied to invalidate his appointment.
The Obama administration wants the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on the appointments issue.
Consumer bureau spokesman Moira Vahey confirmed that the CFPB had received Hensarling's letter. She said the court ruling does not apply to the bureau and that it would continue to work on behalf of consumers.
"Mr. Hensarling's own letter concedes that no court has addressed the legitimacy of the president's appointment of Richard Cordray to be the director of the CFPB," Representative Maxine Waters of California, the top Democrat on the financial services committee, said in a statement.
"I suggest that Chairman Hensarling allow Director Cordray to appear before the committee to deliver his report as required by law," she said.
Hensarling said that his committee would only hear testimony from a confirmed director but that his panel would continue to oversee the consumer bureau, and CFPB staff still could be asked to appear before the committee.
(Reporting by Emily Stephenson; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
NEW YORK (AP) ? Hackers compromised Twitter accounts of The Associated Press on Tuesday, sending out a false tweet about an attack at the White House.
The false tweet said there had been two explosions at the White House and that President Barack Obama was injured. The attack on AP's Twitter account and the AP Mobile Twitter account was preceded by phishing attempts on AP's corporate network.
The AP confirmed that its Twitter account had been suspended following a hack and said it was working to correct the issue.
The false tweet went out shortly after 1 p.m. and briefly sent the Dow Jones industrial average sharply lower. The Dow fell 143 points, from 14,697 to 14,554, after the fake Twitter posting, and then quickly recovered.
A Securities and Exchange Commission spokeswoman declined comment on the incident.
AP spokesman Paul Colford said the news cooperative is working with Twitter to investigate the issue. The AP has disabled its other Twitter accounts following the attack, Colford added.
The Syrian Electronic Army claimed responsibility for the hack. This couldn't be corroborated.
The FBI has opened an investigation into the incident, spokeswoman Jenny Shearer said. She declined to elaborate.
The SEA has taken credit for a string of Web attacks on media targets it sees as sympathetic to Syria's rebels. Among the targets the group claims to have hacked are Twitter feeds of Al-Jazeera English and the BBC.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said the president was fine. "I was just with him," Carney said at a news briefing.
Montana Democratic Sen. Max Baucus (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Montana Democratic Sen. Max Baucus will not seek re-election next year, the Washington Post reports.
Baucus plans to fulfill his sixth term in the chamber and will step down before the next session in 2015, according to the report. The lawmaker chairs the powerful Senate Committee on Finance, and he played an influential role in writing the federal health care law that passed in 2010.
Baucus had deeply angered the White House in recent days, first by opposing bipartisan legislation to enhance background checks of would-be gun purchasers. Baucus? ?no? vote helped kill the background check measure, and he was among the lawmakers President Barack Obama targeted with a blistering Rose Garden tirade against ?shameful? inside-the-Beltway politics.
?There were no coherent arguments as to why we wouldn?t do this,? Obama said. ?It came down to politics?the worry that the vocal minority of gun owners would come after them in future elections. They worried that the gun lobby would spend a lot of money and paint them as anti-Second Amendment.?
Baucus also warned at a recent hearing with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that implementing the federal health care law would be a ?train wreck? over the next few years, a comment that angered both liberals supportive of the law and conservatives who pointed out that he helped shepherd it to passage.
Baucus will be the sixth Democrat to announce plans to retire at the end of the current term. His absence will pave the way for yet another competitive Senate election in which Republicans will seek to bolster their numbers in the chamber.
Despina and Pete Patselikos serve New Orleans diner fare at Leni's Restaurant.
New Orleans restaurant culture is abuzz with different flavors, new fashions and even a new lexicon. But then there are restaurants that ignore trends altogether, and in some cases stand apart by essentially standing still.
??One exemplar of this last type is Leni's Restaurant, an unfussy, never extraordinary but eminently reliable diner hidden in plain sight in the Warehouse District. It's a place where taking in the details can be as satisfying as eating the food.
??There's the clanking, vintage cash register ringing up meals that rarely exceed $10 and the stainless steel milk cooler on the counter. Visiting the washroom means edging yourself past the sputtering griddle, and faded New Orleans Saints posters hanging all around the dining room evoke the era when bleeding Black and Gold actually hurt.
??The menu is almost as dated, but unlike many of those old Saints squads, it still gets the job done. Pastel-colored plastic plates are loaded up as if by an indulgent aunt. Paneed veal covers the better part of a plate. Beef erupts from stuffed bell peppers and gets worked into a hamburger steak coated in the same gravy that drips from the roast beef po-boy. Sides like canned beets or hammy greens are wedged in just to make sure you get some vegetables.
??Places like Leni's were common downtown in the past, but their numbers are dwindling. Gregory & Pete's, for instance, was a very similar restaurant nearby on Baronne Street that closed in 2011 after a 40-year run. Its old address is being turned into a pan-Asian restaurant called Lucky Rooster, and a Jimmy John's franchise is opening next door.
??Gregory & Pete's and Leni's shared more than a format. Their owners, related by marriage, are part of a tradition of Greek immigrants who reached America and went straight into the restaurant business. Pete Patselikos bought Leni's Restaurant in 1978 from another Greek man who had run it since the 1950s and claimed it had been a restaurant dating back to World War I.
??Patselikos kept the diner's name, and he's changed little since. He says that's because his customers come for a particular notion of New Orleans comfort food that was codified long before he arrived, and it still runs through his daily specials schedule like clockwork. It's a mix of anywhere-America diner fare, such as meatloaf and chicken noodle soup, and specific New Orleans staples, including hot sausage with butter beans and a Friday seafood platter.
??The kitchen usually gets cracking by 6:30 a.m., stacking up malty pancakes the color of egg yolks, superlative hash browns griddled to crisp sheets of crunch (also available at lunch on Fridays) and grits and biscuits that all arrive buttered by a very heavy hand.
??In the morning and afternoon, most patrons at Leni's look and act like regulars. But then, it's easy to feel at home here even on the first visit.
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