Nothing taunts the North American car enthusiast like out-of-reach automotive fruit, and-- not to parse genres too finely-- but the phenomenon of pining for Europe-only wagons is a sore spot that's only exceeded by so-called hunchback-like shooting brake variants we can't get here.
?
Stoking the fires of envy, Mercedes-Benz design honcho Gordon Wagener let slip to What Car? that a shooting brake version of the $29,900 CLA is in the works, which would make it a sort of baby version of the CLS Shooting Brake you can't buy stateside-- a rare and jealousy-inspiring bird, indeed.
?
Will a Mercedes-Benz CLA Shooting Brake indeed be built, and if so, will it be available stateside? Nobody knows for sure (well, perhaps except for a few power players deep within Mercedes-Benz's hallowed halls)... but suffice to say, the triple-pointed star certainly has a reason to offer an alternative to BMW's $41,450 3-series Sports Wagon, upcoming 3-series Gran Turismo, and Audi's $39,600 Allroad wagon, making brand one-upmanship one helluva great reason for wagon aficionados to enjoy the fallout from the manufacturer wars.
It’s official! Tim Tebow has been released by the New York Jets, just a year after he was signed with the team. The cut was confirmed this morning, leaving many to speculate about the 25-year-old quarterback’s future in the NFL. The Jets head coach Rex Ryan issued a statement about Tim Tebow’s departure from the ...
Many hundreds have been rescued so far. But a fire broke out today amid the rubble of the collapsed building, ending hopes of saving a known survivor named Shahinur.
By Saad Hammadi,?Correspondent / April 28, 2013
Rescue workers search Sunday for survivors in the remains of a collapsed garment factory in Bangladesh.
Wong Maye-E/AP
Enlarge
She was the last person located and known to still be alive inside a garment factory building that collapsed last week in Bangladesh. But before rescuers could save Shahinur, who went by only one name, a fire broke out in the rubble today and the woman who captured the attention of the nation perished. The death toll now stands at 378.
Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition
Bangladesh is passing through one of its gloomiest national moments. Civilians extending help in the rescue effort were anxiously looking forward to Shahinur?s rescue, as were those away from the site, who remained glued to television and mobile phones.
Firefighters made three foxholes in the area where Shahinur was stuck and almost managed to get her out. In the meantime, public hope for her rescue led the army to hold off on its plans this morning to start using heavy equipment to clear more of the rubble, according to Masudur Rahman Akand, a deputy assistant director of the Fire Service and Civil Defense.
When the fire broke out, the failure brought tears to the eyes of many. With the fourth day of search and rescue coming to a close, victims are reluctant to give up hope, and a nation remains, for a time, united in grief and anger.?
According to information provided by relatives of those who worked in the factories, about 761 persons are still missing. A security guard rescued last night has said that a person on the seventh floor of the squeezed building was still alive.
?There could be few more people still surviving inside the wreckage,? says a local journalist present at the site.
However, preparations are underway to begin the second phase of recovery by using cranes and other heavy equipment. ?According to our estimates possibly there is no more persons alive,? says a lieutenant colonel with the Bangladesh Army. ?With [only] light equipment we cannot remove all the rubble.?
The rescue efforts have transfixed Bangladeshis, overshadowing the Shahbag protests that began in February to insist on tough punishments for Islamist leaders who committed war crimes during the 1971 war for independence. The protests spawned a broader secular movement, and touched off political tensions about the role of Islam in politics.?
For now, those tensions have receded. Bangladeshis from all walks of life, besides extending their support to the rescue efforts, are largely united in calling for the maximum punishment for the owner of the building and the factory owners ??for what many call a ?mass murder.?
Despite instructions to keep the building closed on Tuesday after an inspection team comprising of engineers identified cracks, the building owner kept it open. Factory owners threatened they would dock workers' pay unless they went to work.
Bangladesh?s elite crime busting agency Rapid Action Battalion on Sunday arrested Sohel Rana, owner of Rana Plaza ? the eight-story commercial complex ? that housed five factories, a few shops, and a private bank. Mr. Rana was arrested from Benapole, one of the border crossings Bangladesh shares with India.?
?All agencies were alerted about Rana. We were finally able to arrest him,? said Mukhlesur Rahman, director general of the Rapid Action Battalion. He had traveled to more than one district in the last four days, he added.?
Bangladesh police have also arrested four of the owners of the five factories: Mahmudur Rahman Tapas of New Wave Bottoms, Bazlus Samad Adnan of New Wave Styles, Aminul Islam of Phantom Apparels and Phantom Tac Limited, and Anisur Rahman of Ether Tex.
Yet political disagreements are already on the horizon. Bangladesh?s right-wing opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has called for a countrywide shutdown on May 2, protesting the deaths at Savar.
A BNP official noted that the day of the factory collapse, the party had called for a nationwide general strike, or hartal, on unrelated matters. Abdul Moyeen Khan, standing committee member of the BNP, implied that workers in the cracked building were forced to come to work in a political bid to prove that people defied the hartal.?
?Work was called off the day cracks were identified. What turned so important for the workers to gather during a?hartal?? he said.?You must have noticed that several survivors said that they were threatened that their pay will be docked.?
The government is now faced with trying to manage anger from a second major factory disaster within the past half year. In November, a fire broke out in a factory on the outskirts of the capital, killing more than 100 people.
So far, the government has highlighted the rescue efforts as a major success, with as many as 2,400 rescued. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said: ?This has perhaps never happened in the history that so many lives were rescued after such a disaster.?
Hello, for a wile now I have been thinking about switching to PC gaming and now that Im looking into it I have found it some what confusing. From the forums and posts I have read on the Internet people say it is cheaper to build one rather than buy a rebuilt one. the only problem is I have no idea how to! My budget is around ?500 and I want my PC to run games like fallout new Vegas with mods and good settings smoothly. I also want it to run other modern games with medium-high settings with no lag. if anyone can offer me any advise on what components to buy then it will be much appreciated. I need a list of components that you think are good for my price range but I wont be needing a key board, mouse or screen.
Tim Cook is holding an auction for coffee and conversation with himself on Apple's campus for charity. The terms of the deal state that the meeting will last between thirty minutes and an hour, and will cover two people. The auction is being run through Charitybuzz.
Bid now on this unique opportunity to have coffee with Apple CEO Tim Cook at Apple headquarters.
The bidding at this time stands at $190,000, well above the $50,000 estimated by the auction site. It?s a rare opportunity to sit down with CEO of the world?s most valuable technology company. Tim Cook often donates to charitable causes, and encourages others at Apple to do the same. The proceeds of the auction will go to benefit the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.
NIH study offers clues to making vaccine for infant respiratory illnessPublic release date: 25-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Anne A. Oplinger aoplinger@niaid.nih.gov 301-402-1663 NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Scientists see vulnerable spot on respiratory syncytial virus protein
WHAT:
An atomic-level snapshot of a respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) protein bound to a human antibody represents a leap toward developing a vaccine for a commonand sometimes very seriouschildhood disease. The findings, by scientists from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, define the vulnerable shape of a critical RSV component called the fusion glycoprotein.
The NIAID scientists determined the fusion glycoprotein's shape as it appears before its interaction with human cells. It is this pre-fusion shape that is most vulnerable to neutralizing antibodies. Progress toward an RSV vaccine has been stalled in part because researchers did not previously know about a highly vulnerable site at the tip of the pre-fusion form of the fusion glycoprotein. Now that the structure has been solved and the site of antibody vulnerability revealed, scientists can use the new structural information to design vaccines capable of eliciting potent antibodies aimed at the target on top of the pre-fusion state of the glycoprotein.
Almost everyone is infected with RSV before turning three years of age. Most children recover quickly from such symptoms as sneezing, runny nose and cough, but the virus is a leading cause of hospitalization in children under age one. In the United States each year between 75,000 and 125,000 children in this age group are hospitalized with RSV infection. Globally, RSV infection accounts for nearly 7percent of deaths among children between the age of one month and one year. The only drug available to prevent severe RSV illness is a monoclonal antibody, palivizumab, which binds to the RSV fusion glycoprotein. In their study, the NIAID researchers showed how three antibodies that potently neutralize RSV all bind to the newly revealed site on the fusion glycoprotein of RSV. Thus, in addition to new clues for vaccine developers, the NIAID findings also provide a structural basis for how these antibodies neutralize RSV. This insight could accelerate development of these antibodies into therapies to treat or prevent severe RSV disease in very young infants, who are the most vulnerable to serious illness.
ARTICLE:
JS McLellan et al. Structure of RSV fusion glycoprotein trimer bound to a prefusion-specific neutralizing antibody. Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1234914 (2013).
WHO:
NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., is available for comment. NIAID researchers Barney S. Graham, M.D., Ph.D, and Peter D. Kwong, Ph.D., NIAID Vaccine Research Center, are also available to comment on their paper.
CONTACT:
To schedule interviews, please contact Anne A. Oplinger, (301) 402-1663, aoplinger@niaid.nih.gov.
###
NIAID conducts and supports researchat NIH, throughout the United States, and worldwideto study the causes of infectious and immune-mediated diseases, and to develop better means of preventing, diagnosing and treating these illnesses. News releases, fact sheets and other NIAID-related materials are available on the NIAID Web site at http://www.niaid.nih.gov.
About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov/.
NIH...Turning Discovery Into Health
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
NIH study offers clues to making vaccine for infant respiratory illnessPublic release date: 25-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Anne A. Oplinger aoplinger@niaid.nih.gov 301-402-1663 NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Scientists see vulnerable spot on respiratory syncytial virus protein
WHAT:
An atomic-level snapshot of a respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) protein bound to a human antibody represents a leap toward developing a vaccine for a commonand sometimes very seriouschildhood disease. The findings, by scientists from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, define the vulnerable shape of a critical RSV component called the fusion glycoprotein.
The NIAID scientists determined the fusion glycoprotein's shape as it appears before its interaction with human cells. It is this pre-fusion shape that is most vulnerable to neutralizing antibodies. Progress toward an RSV vaccine has been stalled in part because researchers did not previously know about a highly vulnerable site at the tip of the pre-fusion form of the fusion glycoprotein. Now that the structure has been solved and the site of antibody vulnerability revealed, scientists can use the new structural information to design vaccines capable of eliciting potent antibodies aimed at the target on top of the pre-fusion state of the glycoprotein.
Almost everyone is infected with RSV before turning three years of age. Most children recover quickly from such symptoms as sneezing, runny nose and cough, but the virus is a leading cause of hospitalization in children under age one. In the United States each year between 75,000 and 125,000 children in this age group are hospitalized with RSV infection. Globally, RSV infection accounts for nearly 7percent of deaths among children between the age of one month and one year. The only drug available to prevent severe RSV illness is a monoclonal antibody, palivizumab, which binds to the RSV fusion glycoprotein. In their study, the NIAID researchers showed how three antibodies that potently neutralize RSV all bind to the newly revealed site on the fusion glycoprotein of RSV. Thus, in addition to new clues for vaccine developers, the NIAID findings also provide a structural basis for how these antibodies neutralize RSV. This insight could accelerate development of these antibodies into therapies to treat or prevent severe RSV disease in very young infants, who are the most vulnerable to serious illness.
ARTICLE:
JS McLellan et al. Structure of RSV fusion glycoprotein trimer bound to a prefusion-specific neutralizing antibody. Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1234914 (2013).
WHO:
NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., is available for comment. NIAID researchers Barney S. Graham, M.D., Ph.D, and Peter D. Kwong, Ph.D., NIAID Vaccine Research Center, are also available to comment on their paper.
CONTACT:
To schedule interviews, please contact Anne A. Oplinger, (301) 402-1663, aoplinger@niaid.nih.gov.
###
NIAID conducts and supports researchat NIH, throughout the United States, and worldwideto study the causes of infectious and immune-mediated diseases, and to develop better means of preventing, diagnosing and treating these illnesses. News releases, fact sheets and other NIAID-related materials are available on the NIAID Web site at http://www.niaid.nih.gov.
About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov/.
NIH...Turning Discovery Into Health
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
MUNICH, April 23 (Reuters) - Barcelona centre half Gerard Pique acknowledged his team were thoroughly second best as Bayern Munich romped to a 4-0 win in their Champions League semi-final first leg at the Allianz Arena on Tuesday. "They gave us a thrashing," he said. "We will try to turn it around in the return leg (on May 1) and put in a good performance for the fans. "They were better and faster than us. There is no point talking about the referee, there is no excuse." Arjen Robben, who sparkled on the wing for Bayern and scored one of the goals, hailed his team's spectacular performance. ...
While the Raspberry Pi is great for educating kids about computing, can it brew a mean beer? The BeagleBone Black can. Trevor Hubbard, an engineer at Texas Instruments, uses the new, next-gen board to control heat exchangers and monitors to handle beer temperature remotely.
PHOTO: Nevada State Senator, Kelvin Atkinson, D-North Las Vegas, listens to a debate during a joint budget hearing??
While the country waits for rulings from the Supreme Court on the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8, states are rushing ahead to reform their own regulations on marriage.
Several states have bills coming up on their legislative dockets that would allow gay couples to legally marry in their states. Rhode Island's Senate Judiciary Committee and Delaware's House are both set to vote on same-sex marriage bills today. Minnesota and Illinois are also engaged in fights over whether to open up marriage to gay couples.
But the biggest news this week comes out of Nevada where Monday night the state Senate voted to repeal an amendment to the state Constitution banning gay marriage and replace it with one requiring Nevada to recognize the practice.
The debate that preceded the vote brought heated, emotional appeals from members of the state legislature.
For the first time Sen. Kelvin Atkinson, D-North Las Vegas, announced his very personal connection to the debate.
"I'm black. I'm gay," Atkinson told the assembly, according to the Las Vegas Sun. "I know this is the first time many of you have heard me say that I am a black, gay male."
Atkinson, a young single father and Chicago-native, has served as a Democratic member of the state's legislature for more than a decade.
His candor on the assembly floor was in step with his outspoken social media presence. Atkinson's Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts offer glimpses of the person behind the legislator through family snapshots, sports commentary, an abundance of exclamation points and even a photo of the state senator in a hot tub with his dog.
As the bill was going to the floor, he shared a post that said, "The marriage equality bill is being heard is the Senate NOW?stay tuned for the results. *fingers crossed*"
With the bill's passage in the State senate it has begun the process of becoming approved in the state.
Stuart Gaffney of pro-gay marriage organization Marriage Equality USA sees states taking these votes into their own hands as a positive step for the nation.
"What we see all across the country is that peoples' opinions are changing very rapidly on marriage equality, actually faster than almost any other social issue of our time, and the reason is because people are getting to know their lesbian and gay friends, colleagues and neighbors - or in this case fellow members of the legislature - and realizing that the freedom to marry means the world to them but doesn't actually take away from anybody else," Gaffney told ABC News.
On the national level, several senators have recently come out in favor of gay marriage, starting with Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who cited his relationship to his gay son as the impetus for changing his mind. Gaffney noted President Obama and President Clinton also mentioned their daughters and daughters' friends as what brought them to support marriage equality for same-sex couples.
"These personal voices matter a lot whether we're talking to our neighbors or whether we're talking to our elected officials," he said.
But not all states are moving towards legalizing same-sex marriage. Tom McClusky, senior vice president of government affairs for the Family Research Council, pointed out that some, like Indiana, have opted to wait until after the Supreme Court ruling to vote.
He criticized those lawmakers who had changed their positions on the issue because of personal connections with gay Americans.
"In this case I think the legislators, in leading with their hearts and not with their minds, are making bad choices for their constituents," McClusky said.
Before Rhode Island's vote today, all five Republican members of the state Senate expressed support for gay marriage.
Their voices echoed Gaffney's thoughts on the national trend towards accepting same-sex marriage.
"Our Senate Republican Caucus is deeply committed to the values of freedom, liberty and limited government. In accordance with those values, we believe that freedom means freedom for everyone, and that every citizen of Rhode Island deserves the freedom to marry the person they love," the Republicans wrote in a statement Tuesday. "We recognize that there is a national consensus building on this generational issue, and we are glad that support for the freedom to marry is growing within the Republican Party."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than three years after the end of the global recession, sluggish activity across rich and poor economies is confounding policymakers who expected more by now and raising concerns that options for kick-starting growth are increasingly limited.
They face a sobering checklist:
The U.S. economy remains shackled by a mountain of household debt and continues to whipsaw between periods of modest growth and next to none at all.
The euro zone is mired in recession, lurching from crisis to crisis and now dealing with the latest trouble spot in Cyprus.
And even such star performers as China and Brazil have run low on gas. China in 2012 posted its weakest year of growth since 1999. Brazil's economy slowed to a near standstill; at the same time, it faces a growing threat from inflation.
Against this backdrop, the exasperation of finance ministers and central bankers attending last week's Group of 20 and International Monetary Fund meetings was palpable. The official communiques and sideline discussions reflected their frustration over the failure so far to deliver an effective mix of policies to finally get an upper hand on a long-lasting crisis that shows little sign of ending.
"We cannot unmistakably declare that the worst is behind us," Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega said on Friday. "There is a risk of a prolonged crisis, despite all our efforts in the G20 and other international forums."
Central banks across the developed world have held interest rates at rock-bottom levels since 2008 while pumping more than $6 trillion into their banking systems through loans and asset-purchase operations known as quantitative easing, or "QE." The European Central Bank has helped lower borrowing costs for the governments of Spain and Italy. Ireland, Portugal and Greece have been bailed out.
And yet a return to normalcy appears a distant dream.
The IMF last week ratcheted back its projections for world economic growth in 2013. Rich nations face a third consecutive year of growth below 2 percent, with U.S. GDP seen growing just 1.9 percent.
The IMF projects Japan's economy will be so weak consumers will bid prices just 0.1 percent higher this year, while China is seen accelerating only marginally to an 8 percent rate. Weakened demand has fueled a plunge in commodities including copper, which will hurt the economies of Latin America.
At the meetings of top finance officials in Washington, frustrations were especially evident regarding the euro zone, which is beset by a debt crisis. The IMF expects the euro zone economy to contract for a second consecutive year.
"Unless Europe gets its act together and unless the green shoots that we see in the U.S. actually flower and become solid plants, and unless Japan does the near impossible task of reflating its economy and having inflation of 2 percent - how is it that developing and emerging market economies can achieve high growth?" Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said at an event on the sidelines of the meetings.
WARILY WELCOMING JAPAN'S STIMULUS
The desire for a stronger path of growth helps explain why officials, even those in emerging markets, have had a sanguine response to Japan's new plans to stimulate its economy with $1.4 trillion in bond-buying by the country's central bank.
Mantega pointed out that unemployment remains high in large advanced economies and that more fiscal stimulus may be needed, an elixir that has been resisted in some quarters, particularly in the euro zone. He also noted that emerging markets are "inevitably affected" by tepid demand in the United States, Japan and elsewhere, as they have been unable to sustain the kind of growth rates seen in years past.
Still, it was clear officials worried advanced countries were becoming overly dependent on ultra-easy monetary policies that have become less effective over time. Years of low interest rates could even plant the seeds for the next crisis.
"Even though some advanced economies did several rounds of QEs, nothing changed," a South Korean G20 official told Reuters.
Part of the climate of frustration in global policymaking circles results from the fact the that the global economy is more interconnected in terms of finance and trade than it was a few decades ago, making it more difficult to adopt policies that help one country without hurting others.
Before the 2007-2009 financial crisis, a handful of advanced nations dominated international economic policymaking. Now the G20, which includes rich and poor countries as well as the European Union, is the principal venue for steering the global economy.
Poor nations worry that rich nations' monetary stimulus will destabilize their economies by flooding them with capital, fueling inflation or asset bubbles. Money printing by the United States, Europe and Japan also subtracts value from the currencies of the rich world, helping its exporters at the expense of factories in countries like Brazil.
This breeds tension in a large forum like the G20, where a variety of contrasting voices compete to shape consensus.
"You're not going to have a perfectly optimal set of policies for everyone in the world," said Tharman Shanmugaratnam, chairman of the International Monetary and Financial Committee, which advises the IMF on the global monetary and financial system.
Tharman said the trick was to find a mix of policies that would help economies grow without risking future bubbles. "We need a new framework," he said.
(Additional reporting By Paul Eckert; Editing by Theodore d'Afflisio)
April 22 (Reuters) - Pep Guardiola is not the only connection between Bayern Munich and Barcelona, who meet in their Champions League semi-final, first leg at the Allianz Arena on Tuesday. Both teams are dominating their leagues to an almost embarrassing extent, have won the Champions League four times apiece, share an acrimonious rivalry with Real Madrid, and owe part of their success to the flamboyant Dutchman Louis van Gaal. Both have also been in two Champions League finals in the last four years, though the Catalans won both of theirs and the Bavarians came out losers on each occasion. ...
WASHINGTON (AP) ? States could force Internet retailers to collect sales taxes under a bill that overwhelmingly passed a test vote in the Senate Monday.
Under current law, states can only require stores to collect sales taxes if the store has a physical presence in the state. As a result, many online sales are essentially tax-free, giving Internet retailers a big advantage over brick-and-mortar stores.
The bill would allow states to require online retailers to collect state and local sales taxes for purchases made over the Internet. The sales taxes would be sent to the states where shoppers live.
The Senate voted 74 to 20 to begin debating the bill. If that level of support continues, the Senate could pass the bill as early as this week.
Supporters say the bill is about fairness for businesses and lost revenue for states. Opponents say it would impose complicated regulations on retailers and doesn't have enough protections for small businesses. Businesses with less than $1 million a year in online sales would be exempt.
"I believe it is important to level the playing field for all retailers," said Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., the bill's main sponsor. "We should not be subsidizing some taxpayers at the expense of others."
In many states, shoppers are required to pay unpaid sales tax when they file their state income tax returns. However, states complain that few people comply.
"I do know about three people that comply with that," Enzi said.
President Barack Obama supports the bill, but its fate is uncertain in the House, where some Republicans regard it as a tax increase. Heritage Action for America, the activist arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation, opposes the bill and will count the vote in its legislative scorecard.
Many of the nation's governors ? Republicans and Democrats ? have been lobbying the federal government for years for the authority to collect sales taxes from online sales, said Dan Crippen, executive director of the National Governors Association. Those efforts intensified when state tax revenues took hit from the recession and the slow economic recovery.
"It's a matter of equity for businesses," Crippen said. "It's a matter of revenue for states."
The bill pits brick-and-mortar stores like Wal-Mart against online services such as eBay. The National Retail federation supports it. And Amazon.com, which initially fought efforts in some states to make it collect sales taxes, supports it, too.
"Amazon.com has long supported a simplified nationwide approach that is evenhandedly applied and applicable to all but the smallest volume sellers," Paul Misener, Amazon's vice president of global public policy said in a recent letter to senators.
On the other side, eBay has been rallying customers to oppose the bill.
"I hope you agree that imposing unnecessary tax burdens on small online businesses is a bad idea," eBay president and CEO John Donahoe said in a letter to customers. "Join us in letting your Members of Congress know they should protect small online businesses, not potentially put them out of business."
The bill is also opposed by senators from states that have no sales tax, including Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H.
"Supporters of this online sales tax bill are trying to muscle it through before senators find out how disastrous it would be for businesses in their states," Ayotte said. "I will fight this power grab every step of the way to protect small online businesses in New Hampshire and across the nation."
Baucus said the bill would require relatively small Internet retailers to comply with sales tax laws in thousands of jurisdictions.
"This legislation doesn't help businesses expand and grow and hire more employees," Baucus said. "Instead, it forces small businesses to hire expensive lawyers and accountants to deal with the burdensome paperwork and added complexity of tax rules and filings across multiple states."
But Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said the bill requires participating states to make it relatively easy for Internet retailers to comply. States must provide free computer software to help retailers calculate sales taxes, based on where shoppers live. States must also establish a single entity to receive Internet sales tax revenue, so retailers don't have to send them to individual counties or cities.
"We're way beyond the quilt pen and leger days," Durbin said. "Thanks to computers and thanks to software it is not that complex."
___
Follow Stephen Ohlemacher on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stephenatap
LogicBUY’s Deal for Sunday is a?CD Quality iPhone Microphone for only?$69.95. ?Features: Analog-to-digital converter that handles up to 125 dB SPL Attaches to iPhone’s 30-pin dock connector $89.95 – $20 savings = $69.95. ?This is the lowest price LogicBUY has found for this iPhone accessory. This deal expires April 24, 2013 or sooner. Check the [...]
It would appear that Facebook Home has just surpassed 500k downloads on Google Play since launching on the platform five days ago on April 16. The app's Google Play listing notes the milestone, and Ben Evans confirmed on Twitter. Facebook Home isn't so much of an app as a user interface for the phone, putting Facebook smack dab in the center of Android user's smartphone experience. Users with Facebook Home can post status updates and view the newsfeed straight from the lock screen, and conduct messaging without ever being interrupted thanks to Chat Heads.
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp is giving its Vios and Yaris models a major makeover for China as part of the Japanese group's make-or-break move into the no-frills entry-level segment of the world's biggest autos market.
Versions of the Vios and Yaris have done relatively well in the United States, Europe and Japan, "but we have not made sufficient progress with the car in China," Hiroji Onishi, head of Toyota's China operations, told reporters during the Shanghai auto show on Sunday.
"We tried to give (the models) a proper "daqi" stance typical of what Chinese consumers look for, and we improved fuel efficiency," he said, referring to a local phrase that Chinese use for a car's road presence.
The revamps are a key plank in Toyota's fightback strategy in a market where its sales were battered last year in the fallout from a row between Beijing and Tokyo over disputed islands in the East China Sea.
Onishi said it could take Toyota at least a year to win back business lost to that damaging territorial dispute, leveraging the new no-frills models.
The re-designs, with the new sedan version replacing the existing Vios and a hatchback replacing today's Yaris, are a recognition by Toyota that it misread the Chinese market even before last year's dispute that halved the company's sales in September. The Japanese firm will keep the existing model names for the new cars that should be in showrooms by the end of the year.
The new cars are critical to Toyota's China strategy as they are planned as high-volume models to regain momentum in the market and restore branding after the Yaris fizzled - partly through a perceived lack of 'daqi' and because it was priced too high.
The existing Vios, launched in 2002, cost from 89,500 yuan ($14,500), while the Yaris, brought to market six years later, cost from 87,000 yuan - while annual incomes for many are 50,000-60,000 yuan. Neither car really took off with a new consumer class of people who now just about earn enough to be able to afford a car.
THE ELUSIVE MILLION
A decade ago, Akio Toyoda, the founding-family scion who now heads the group, ran Toyota's China operations and set the "aspirational" goal of selling 1 million cars a year in China by 2010. It missed that goal in 2010 and again in 2011. In September last year, days before the diplomatic dispute with China, Toyota said it aimed to sell up to 1.8 million cars annually in China by 2015.
The company's 2012 China sales fell nearly 5 percent to 840,000 cars, and Masaki Taketani, Detroit-based research director at consulting firm IHS Automotive, doesn't see sales topping 1 million until at least 2015.
Much will depend on what Chinese drivers make of the Toyota models' design, style and price makeover.
"This is a live-or-die car for us," a senior China-based Toyota executive told Reuters ahead of the Shanghai show.
Crucially, General Motors' Chevrolet Sail, a China entry-level car it launched in 2010, starts at around 56,000 yuan. GM sold 218,000 Sails last year at an average of more than 18,000 a month. Sales of the Yaris averaged around 1,250 a month, while average monthly Vios sales were just 730.
Toyota China's Onishi said the remodeled no-frills cars would use more parts sourced locally in China to keep down the manufacturing cost, but it would be difficult for Toyota to bring down selling prices below 60,000 yuan. Instead, it would aim to compete in the same price range as the Nissan Motor Sunny, which starts in China at 82,800 yuan.
"That said, we're still discussing whether we could come up with a more strategic pricing," Onishi added.
IHS' Taketani said The revamp would be a test case for Toyota and other Japanese companies battling in China.
"This is a must-win car for Toyota," he said, predicting the Japanese group would do well to sell 80,000 of the new cars by 2015, well short of the 200,000 a year he believes Toyota is targeting.
($1 = 6.1776 Chinese yuan)
(Reporting By Norihiko Shirouzu; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
A bizarre twist on the usual way proteins are made may explain mysterious symptoms in the grandparents of some children with mental disabilities.
The discovery, made by a team of scientists at the University of Michigan Medical School, may lead to better treatments for older adults with a recently discovered genetic condition.
The condition, called Fragile X-associated Tremor Ataxia Syndrome (FXTAS), causes shakiness and balance problems and is often misdiagnosed as Parkinson's disease. The grandchildren of people with the disease have a separate disorder called Fragile X syndrome, caused by problems in the same gene. The new discovery may also help shine light on that disease, though indirectly.
In a new paper published in the journalNeuron, the U-M-led team presents evidence that a toxic protein they've named FMRpolyG contributes to the death of nerve cells in FXTAS ? and that this protein is made in a very unusual way.
Normally, DNA is transcribed into RNA, and then a part of the RNA is translated into a protein that performs its function in cells. Where this translation process starts on the RNA is usually determined by a specific sequence called a start codon.
The gene mutation that causes FXTAS is a repeated DNA sequence that is made into RNA but normally is not made into protein because it lacks a start codon. However, the investigators discovered that when this repeat expands, it can trigger protein production by a new mechanism known as RAN translation.
Corresponding author Peter Todd, M.D., Ph.D., notes that this unusual translation process appears to stem from a long chain of repeated DNA "letters" found in the genes of both grandparents and kids with Fragile X mutations. Todd is the Bucky and Patti Harris Professor in the U-M Department of Neurology
"Essentially, we've found that a sequence of DNA which shouldn't be made into protein is being made into protein ? and that this causes a toxicity in nerve cells," he explains. "We believe that the protein forms aggregates, and that this is a major contributor to toxicity and symptoms in FXTAS."
The U-M group went on to show how this RAN translation occurs in FXTAS and demonstrated that blocking it prevents the repeat mutation from being toxic, suggesting a new target for future treatments.
Fragile X tremor/ataxia syndrome or FXTAS was only discovered a decade ago. It may affect as many as one in every 3,000 men and one in 20,000 women, who have a repeat mutation in the gene known as FMR1. However, these patients don't usually develop symptoms until late middle age, allowing them to pass the mutation on to their daughters, who can then have children where the DNA repeat that has grown much longer. In those children, especially in boys, it can cause severe intellectual disability and autism-like symptoms as the FMR1 gene shuts down and none of the normal protein is produced.
In fact, says Todd, it's often only after a child is diagnosed with Fragile X syndrome through genetic testing that their grandfather or grandmother finds out that their own symptoms stem from FXTAS. Doctors in U-M's Neurogenetics clinic for adults, and the Pediatric Genetics Clinic at U-M's C.S. Mott Children's Hospital, routinely work together to address the needs of Fragile X families.
"We have some treatments for the symptoms that FXTAS patients have, but we do not yet have a cure," says Todd, who regularly sees patients with FXTAS and related disorders. "Better treatments are needed ? and this new discovery might help lead to novel strategies for clearing away or preventing the buildup of this toxic protein."
In addition, he says, the discovery that Fragile X ataxia results in part from RAN translation could have significance both for other diseases like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also called Lou Gehrig's disease) and certain forms of dementia that are caused by DNA repeats. It can also aid our understanding of basic biology. "This may represent a new way in which translational initiation events occur, and may have importance beyond this one disease," he notes. Further research on how RAN translation occurs, and why, is needed.
The idea that proteins can be created without a "start site" flies in the face of what most students of biology have learned in the last century. "In biology, we're finding that the rules we once thought were hard and fast have some wiggle room," Todd says.
###
University of Michigan Health System: http://www.med.umich.edu
Thanks to University of Michigan Health System for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
Research harnesses solar-powered proteins to filter harmful antibiotics from waterPublic release date: 19-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: M.B. Reilly reillymb@ucmail.uc.edu 513-556-1824 University of Cincinnati
New research, just published, details how University of Cincinnati researchers have developed and tested a solar-powered nano filter that is able to remove harmful carcinogens and antibiotics from water sources lakes and rivers at a significantly higher rate than the currently used filtering technology made of activated carbon.
In the journal "Nano Letters," Vikram Kapoor, environmental engineering doctoral student, and David Wendell, assistant professor of environmental engineering, report on their development and testing of the new filter made of two bacterial proteins that was able to absorb 64 percent of antibiotics in surface waters vs. about 40 percent absorbed by the currently used filtering technology made of activated carbon. One of the more exciting aspects of their filter is the ability to reuse the antibiotics that are captured.
Kapoor and Wendell began development of their new nano filter in 2010 and testing in 2012, with the results reported in a paper titled "Engineering Bacterial Efflux Pumps for Solar-Powered Bioremediation of Surface Waters."
The presence of antibiotics in surface waters is harmful in that it breeds resistant bacteria and kills helpful microorganisms, which can degrade aquatic environments and food chains. In other words, infectious agents like viruses and illness-causing bacteria become more numerous while the health of streams and lakes degrades.
So, according to Wendell, the newly developed nano filters, each much smaller in diameter than a human hair, could potentially have a big impact on both human health and on the health of the aquatic environment (since the presence of antibiotics in surface waters can also affect the endocrine systems of fish, birds and other wildlife).
Surprisingly, this filter employs one of the very elements that enable drug-resistant bacteria to be so harmful, a protein pump called AcrB. Wendell explained, "These pumps are an amazing product of evolution. They are essentially selective garbage disposals for the bacteria. Our innovation was turning the disposal system around. So, instead of pumping out, we pump the compounds into the proteovesicles." (The new filtering technology is called a proteovesicle system.)
One other important innovation was the power source, a light-driven bacterial protein called Delta-rhodopsin which supplies AcrB with the pumping power to move the antibiotics.
The bacterial protein system has a number of advantages over present filtration technology:
The operation of the new filtering technology is powered by direct sunlight vs. the energy-intensive needs for the operation of the standard activated carbon filter.
The filtering technology also allows for antibiotic recycling. After these new nano filters have absorbed antibiotics from surface waters, the filters could be extracted from the water and processed to release the drugs, allowing them to be reused. On the other hand, carbon filters are regenerated by heating to several hundred degrees, which burns off the antibiotics.
The new protein filters are highly selective. Currently used activated carbon filters serve as "catch alls," filtering a wide variety of contaminants. That means that they become clogged more quickly with natural organic matter found in rivers and lakes.
Said Wendell, "So far, our innovation promises to be an environmentally friendly means for extracting antibiotics from the surface waters that we all rely on. It also has potential to provide for cost-effective antibiotic recovery and reuse. Next, we want to test our system for selectively filtering out hormones and heavy metals from surface waters."
In relation to the work published in this paper, Wendell and Kapoor tested their solar-powered nano filter against activated carbon, the present treatment technology standard outside the lab. They tested their innovation in water collected from the Little Miami River.
Using only sunlight as the power source, they were able to selectively remove the antibiotics ampicillin and vancomycin, commonly used human and veterinary antibiotics, and the nucleic acid stain, ethidium bromide, which is a potent carcinogen to humans and aquatic animals.
###
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Research harnesses solar-powered proteins to filter harmful antibiotics from waterPublic release date: 19-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: M.B. Reilly reillymb@ucmail.uc.edu 513-556-1824 University of Cincinnati
New research, just published, details how University of Cincinnati researchers have developed and tested a solar-powered nano filter that is able to remove harmful carcinogens and antibiotics from water sources lakes and rivers at a significantly higher rate than the currently used filtering technology made of activated carbon.
In the journal "Nano Letters," Vikram Kapoor, environmental engineering doctoral student, and David Wendell, assistant professor of environmental engineering, report on their development and testing of the new filter made of two bacterial proteins that was able to absorb 64 percent of antibiotics in surface waters vs. about 40 percent absorbed by the currently used filtering technology made of activated carbon. One of the more exciting aspects of their filter is the ability to reuse the antibiotics that are captured.
Kapoor and Wendell began development of their new nano filter in 2010 and testing in 2012, with the results reported in a paper titled "Engineering Bacterial Efflux Pumps for Solar-Powered Bioremediation of Surface Waters."
The presence of antibiotics in surface waters is harmful in that it breeds resistant bacteria and kills helpful microorganisms, which can degrade aquatic environments and food chains. In other words, infectious agents like viruses and illness-causing bacteria become more numerous while the health of streams and lakes degrades.
So, according to Wendell, the newly developed nano filters, each much smaller in diameter than a human hair, could potentially have a big impact on both human health and on the health of the aquatic environment (since the presence of antibiotics in surface waters can also affect the endocrine systems of fish, birds and other wildlife).
Surprisingly, this filter employs one of the very elements that enable drug-resistant bacteria to be so harmful, a protein pump called AcrB. Wendell explained, "These pumps are an amazing product of evolution. They are essentially selective garbage disposals for the bacteria. Our innovation was turning the disposal system around. So, instead of pumping out, we pump the compounds into the proteovesicles." (The new filtering technology is called a proteovesicle system.)
One other important innovation was the power source, a light-driven bacterial protein called Delta-rhodopsin which supplies AcrB with the pumping power to move the antibiotics.
The bacterial protein system has a number of advantages over present filtration technology:
The operation of the new filtering technology is powered by direct sunlight vs. the energy-intensive needs for the operation of the standard activated carbon filter.
The filtering technology also allows for antibiotic recycling. After these new nano filters have absorbed antibiotics from surface waters, the filters could be extracted from the water and processed to release the drugs, allowing them to be reused. On the other hand, carbon filters are regenerated by heating to several hundred degrees, which burns off the antibiotics.
The new protein filters are highly selective. Currently used activated carbon filters serve as "catch alls," filtering a wide variety of contaminants. That means that they become clogged more quickly with natural organic matter found in rivers and lakes.
Said Wendell, "So far, our innovation promises to be an environmentally friendly means for extracting antibiotics from the surface waters that we all rely on. It also has potential to provide for cost-effective antibiotic recovery and reuse. Next, we want to test our system for selectively filtering out hormones and heavy metals from surface waters."
In relation to the work published in this paper, Wendell and Kapoor tested their solar-powered nano filter against activated carbon, the present treatment technology standard outside the lab. They tested their innovation in water collected from the Little Miami River.
Using only sunlight as the power source, they were able to selectively remove the antibiotics ampicillin and vancomycin, commonly used human and veterinary antibiotics, and the nucleic acid stain, ethidium bromide, which is a potent carcinogen to humans and aquatic animals.
###
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
NEW YORK (AP) ? Zack Hample leads the majors in hogging home run balls.
The 35-year-old New Yorker picked up Didi Gregorius' first big league homer when the Arizona Diamondbacks rookie lined a pitch into the third row of right-field seats in the third inning Thursday night at Yankee Stadium.
Then he caught a tying drive by Francisco Cervelli of the Yankees in the first row of left-field stands in the ninth.
"It's a little bit of luck, obviously. I move all over the place constantly," Hample said after Arizona's 6-2 victory over New York in 12 innings. "People don't notice the seven games I've been to this year and didn't catch a home run."
Author of the 1999 book "How to Snag Major League Baseballs," Hample is having a ball, the Cal Ripken Jr. of his hobby. Hample said he's come away from 880 consecutive games with at least one ball, a streak dating to September 1993 at old Yankee Stadium.
He caught two homers in one game for the second time after accomplishing the feat at Baltimore's Camden Yards on May 13, 2010, drives to right in consecutive innings by Seattle's Michael Saunders and the Orioles' Corey Patterson.
Hample caught Barry Bonds' 724th home run, at San Diego off Chan Ho Park on Aug. 12, 2006. He caught the first big league home runs by Mike Nickeas (April 21, 2011) and Mike Trout (July 24, 2011) and the last home run hit by the New York Mets at Shea Stadium (Carlos Beltran on Sept. 28, 2008).
By Hample's count, he's come up with 29 home run balls: 24 off the bat and five tossed to him after landing in bullpens and other areas.
He claimed he would have grabbed Martin Prado's sixth-inning homer to left had he not been speaking with a Diamondbacks television reporter at the time.
"I really just go by instinct. I don't position differently for different hitters," he said. "I had a friend sitting out in right field tonight who called me early in the game and said, 'We're over here. Say hello.' I intentionally waited for Gregorius' first at-bat. I knew he had no home runs."
A graduate of Guilford College in North Carolina, Hample works at Argosy Book Store, which was founded by his grandfather near Bloomingdales on Manhattan's East Side. He does some baseball writing and has turned ball-hawking into a business: He accompanies fans to games and guarantees each they will get a ball.
Hample has a website to track his quest, is quick to tweet pictures of himself with each newly caught ball and stores his home run records on his cellphone.
"I'm a dork, but not a big enough dork that I have it all memorized," he said.
Even though he lives in Manhattan, in a ball-filled, one-bedroom apartment, Hample was wearing a Diamondbacks cap because he's been a Heath Bell fan since 2004.
"Zack's crazy. I know Zack from when I was a rookie with the Mets," the Arizona reliever said. "He probably was a Padres fan when I was a Padre, a Marlins fan when I was a Marlin."
Hample, who gave Gregorius back his home run ball in exchange for an autographed baseball, has been to Yankee Stadium, Citi Field and Fenway Park this season and plans on going to all 30 major league parks this year.
He's being sponsored by BIGS sunflower seeds, which will donate up to $15,000 to Pitch In For Baseball, which collects and redistributes baseball and softball equipment to people in needy communities. It will donate $500 for each stadium where he gets a game-used ball ? he has to grab it on his own; he can't accept balls picked up by other fans. So far he's 3 for 3, and he hopes to give BIGS a set of 30 balls to auction off, one from each ballpark.
Hample said he's caught 153 foul balls during games and gotten 6,516 ? "that's the exact number" ? baseballs from big league ballparks, mostly during batting practice. He's caught more balls than many big leaguers in their entire careers.
"I've given away more baseballs than I can count," he said.
It’s official! Tim Tebow has been released by the New York Jets, just a year after he was signed with the team. The cut was confirmed this morning, leaving many to speculate about the 25-year-old quarterback’s future in the NFL. The Jets head coach Rex Ryan issued a statement about Tim Tebow’s departure from the ...
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 25-Apr-2013
Share ] 
While the Raspberry Pi is great for educating kids about computing, can it brew a mean beer? The 
It would appear that Facebook Home has just surpassed 500k downloads on Google Play since launching on the platform 