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Andrew Purcell, online producer
(Image: Oli Scarff/Getty Images)
The world of art and design is abuzz with talk of the spider-silk cape being shown at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Yet, despite it’s beauty, the shawl is perhaps more a wonder of nature than of fashion design.
The cape was created over eight years using silk from over one million Madagascar golden orb spiders (Nephila madagascariensis). These spiders, large enough to fill the palm of your hand, are almost completely blind. Their eyes are only able to vaguely detect changes in light. Instead, they rely on their keen sense of touch to feel vibrations on their web and quickly track down entangled prey.
Weight for weight, typical spider silk is 20 times as strong as steel and four times as tough as Kevlar. It’s also extremely flexible, stretching up to 50 per cent of its length without breaking.
Silk is also biodegradable and does not elicit an immune response, which means it could be put to a range of uses within the human body. Scientists across the globe are researching possibilities ranging from using silk scaffolds to help repair damaged musculature and broken bones to using silk to deliver ultra-thin electronics directly onto the surface of the brain.
Read more about the potential applications of silk-based technology, both inside and outside the human body, in “Stretching spider silk to its high-tech limits”.
(Image: Paul Grover/Rex Features )
The gown is on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London until 5 June 2012.
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Public release date: 27-Jan-2012
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Contact: David Garner
david.garner@york.ac.uk
44-190-432-2153
University of York
A team of biologists at the University of York has made an important advance in our understanding of the way cholera attacks the body. The discovery could help scientists target treatments for the globally significant intestinal disease which kills more than 100,000 people every year.
The disease is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, which is able to colonise the intestine usually after consumption of contaminated water or food. Once infection is established, the bacterium secretes a toxin that causes watery diarrhoea and ultimately death if not treated rapidly. Colonisation of the intestine is difficult for incoming bacteria as they have to be highly competitive to gain a foothold among the trillions of other bacteria already in situ.
Scientists at York, led by Dr. Gavin Thomas in the University’s Department of Biology, have investigated one of the important routes that V. cholerae uses to gain this foothold. To be able to grow in the intestine the bacterium harvests and then eats a sugar, called sialic acid, that is present on the surface of our gut cells.
Collaborators of the York group at the University of Delaware, USA, led by Professor Fidelma Boyd, had shown previously that eating sialic acid was important for the survival of V. cholerae in animal models, but the mechanism by which the bacteria recognise and take up the sialic was unknown.
The York research, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), demonstrates that the pathogen uses a particular kind of transporter called a TRAP transporter to recognise sialic acid and take it up into the cell. The transporter has particular properties that are suited to scavenging the small amount of available sialic acid. The research also provided some important basic information about how TRAP transporters work in general.
The leader of the research in York, Dr. Gavin Thomas, said: “This work continues our discoveries of how bacteria that grow in our body exploit sialic acid for their survival and help us to take forward our efforts to design chemicals to inhibit these processes in different bacterial pathogens.”
The research is published in the latest issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry and was primarily the work of Dr Christopher Mulligan, a postdoctoral fellow in the Dr Thomas’s laboratory.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 27-Jan-2012 Share ]
Contact: David Garner
david.garner@york.ac.uk
44-190-432-2153
University of York
A team of biologists at the University of York has made an important advance in our understanding of the way cholera attacks the body. The discovery could help scientists target treatments for the globally significant intestinal disease which kills more than 100,000 people every year.
The disease is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, which is able to colonise the intestine usually after consumption of contaminated water or food. Once infection is established, the bacterium secretes a toxin that causes watery diarrhoea and ultimately death if not treated rapidly. Colonisation of the intestine is difficult for incoming bacteria as they have to be highly competitive to gain a foothold among the trillions of other bacteria already in situ.
Scientists at York, led by Dr. Gavin Thomas in the University’s Department of Biology, have investigated one of the important routes that V. cholerae uses to gain this foothold. To be able to grow in the intestine the bacterium harvests and then eats a sugar, called sialic acid, that is present on the surface of our gut cells.
Collaborators of the York group at the University of Delaware, USA, led by Professor Fidelma Boyd, had shown previously that eating sialic acid was important for the survival of V. cholerae in animal models, but the mechanism by which the bacteria recognise and take up the sialic was unknown.
The York research, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), demonstrates that the pathogen uses a particular kind of transporter called a TRAP transporter to recognise sialic acid and take it up into the cell. The transporter has particular properties that are suited to scavenging the small amount of available sialic acid. The research also provided some important basic information about how TRAP transporters work in general.
The leader of the research in York, Dr. Gavin Thomas, said: “This work continues our discoveries of how bacteria that grow in our body exploit sialic acid for their survival and help us to take forward our efforts to design chemicals to inhibit these processes in different bacterial pathogens.”
The research is published in the latest issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry and was primarily the work of Dr Christopher Mulligan, a postdoctoral fellow in the Dr Thomas’s laboratory.
###
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/uoy-srh012712.php
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From the Annals of Otology, Rhinology, and Laryngology comes news that fashioning a strip of cured pork into a nasal tampon will help prevent nosebleeds for those suffering from chronic episodes. More specifically, it was used in the “treatment of [a] life-threatening hemorrhage.” More »
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CHICAGO ? The Illinois attorney general filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing Standard & Poor’s of misleading investors by assigning its highest ratings to risky mortgage-backed investments during the years leading up to the crash of the housing market.
The lawsuit from Lisa Madigan’s office alleges the agency compromised its independence by issuing high ratings for unworthy or risky investments as part of a strategy to boost revenue and market share. The lawsuit cites internal emails and conversations, including an instant messenger exchange in April 2007 in which an employee tells another that an investment “could be structured by cows and we would rate it.”
“Publically, S&P took every opportunity to proclaim their analyses and ratings as independent, objective and free from its desire for revenue,” Madigan said. “Yet privately, S&P abandoned its principles and instead used every trick possible to give deals high ratings in order to retain clients and generate revenue.”
Madigan’s lawsuit singled out mortgage-backed securities, saying Standard & Poor’s misrepresented the risks by giving the investments its highest rating of AAA.
A spokesman for Standard and Poor’s rejected the claims.
“The case is without merit, and we will defend ourselves vigorously,” said David Wargin.
A spokeswoman for Madigan, Robyn Ziegler, said the attorney general began investigating Standard & Poor’s in early 2010. The probe is continuing, but Madigan determined that it had progressed enough to file the suit, Ziegler said. Madigan previously had been involved in discriminatory-lending lawsuits against Bank of America subsidiary Countrywide Financial Corp. and Wells Fargo.
The financial products singled out in the Standard & Poor’s lawsuit involve the bundling of a pool of mortgages that are then sold as securities. They are backed by residential mortgages, including the subprime mortgages that have been blamed for much of the economic turmoil set off by the housing crash in 2007 and 2008.
Madigan’s lawsuit said the S&P ignored the risks of those securities in giving them ratings that were favorable to the agency’s investment bank clients and its own profits.
The performance of those investments had a significant impact on institutional investors in Illinois, including pension funds and 401(k) managers, the lawsuit said.
“The mortgage-backed securities that helped our market soar ? and ultimately crash ? could not have been purchased by most investors without S&P’s seal of approval,” Madigan said.
The lawsuit also cites testimony before Congress by a former managing director of the ratings agency who said “profits were running the show.”
Madigan has also targeted mortgage lenders she accuses of having preyed on home owners.
Her office filed suit against Bank of America subsidiary Countrywide Financial Corp. in 2010. In that suit, Madigan accused Countrywide of consistently selling African-American and Hispanic borrowers riskier loans at a higher cost than it sold to white borrowers with similar credit ratings.
In December, the U.S. Department of Justice announced a settlement of $335 million with Bank of America that stemmed from that lawsuit.
Madigan is pursuing a similar lawsuit against Wells Fargo, which she also accuses of discriminatory lending.
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By PAUL LOGOTHETIS
updated 6:38 p.m. ET Jan. 25, 2012
BARCELONA, Spain – Pedro Rodriguez and Daniel Alves scored first-half goals, and Barcelona held off a spirited Real Madrid comeback attempt to eliminate the defending Copa del Rey champion with a 2-2 tie Wednesday night.
Following the ninth clasico between the rivals in nine months, Barcelona advanced to the semifinals on 4-3 aggregate and next plays Valencia or Levante.
Pedro entered in the 30th minute after Andres Iniesta limped off and put Barcelona ahead in the 43rd off a pass from Lionel Messi, who had drawn three defenders.
Barcelona doubled the lead in the 48th when a free kick by Xavi Hernandez, who was celebrating his 32nd birthday, went off Lassana Diarra and into the path of Alves, who sent a shot into the top far corner past the outstretched Iker Casillas.
Cristiano Ronaldo started the rally attempt in the 68th with his 30th goal of the season, running onto Mesut Oezil’s through ball and rounding goalkeeper Jose Manuel Pinto. Substitute Karim Benzema tied the score in 73rd.
Madrid defender Sergio Ramos was ejected in the 88th minute for his second yellow card, and Madrid coach Jose Mourinho left Camp Nou winless in nine visits.
“We played a great team, this is a ‘clasico’ so you know right up to the end you’re going to have to suffer and hold off your rival,” Alves said. “They caused us a lot of problems by pressuring high, but we knew how to respond.”
Mourinho used a more offensive starting lineup than last week and opted to include defender Pepe, who was jeered loudly on every touch after stomping on Messi’s hand in the first leg.
Mourinho was criticized after his tactics last week, causing some to question his future with Madrid.
Madrid was unlucky over the first half hour as Oezil hit the crossbar with a superb 30-yard effort, and Pinto made several point-blank stops on Gonzalo Higuain.
Madrid had a Sergio Ramos goal waived off in the 54th for a foul.
Earlier Wednesday, Athletic Bilbao beat Mallorca 1-0 to win on 3-0 aggregate, advancing to a semifinal against third-tier Mirandes. Valencia has a 4-1 lead going into Thursday’s match at Levante.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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More newsAFP – Getty Images
Pedro Rodriguez and Daniel Alves scored first-half goals, and Barcelona held off a spirited Real Madrid comeback attempt to eliminate the defending Copa del Rey champion with a 2-2 tie Wednesday night.
The U.S. women’s soccer team was still on the field, having dispatched rival Mexico, when Abby Wambach gathered her teammates for a little speech.
Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/46139091/ns/sports-soccer/
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(Reuters) ? FileSonic, a website providing online data storage, has disabled its file sharing services following a U.S.-led crackdown on a rival website and amid heated debate over Washington’s attempts to clamp down on online piracy.
Police in New Zealand and Europe have made a number of arrests in recent days related to an investigation led by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation of the Megaupload.com website.
The group have been accused of engaging in a scheme that took more than $500 million away from copyright holders and generated over $175 million in proceeds from subscriptions and advertising. Megaupload’s lawyers have said the company simply offered online storage.
FileSonic, which describes itself as the “Unlimited Storage Company,” said in a statement on its website that it would only allow users to access their own files.
“All sharing functionality of FileSonic is now disabled. Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally.”
The firm, which lists addresses in Britain and Hong Kong, did not immediately respond to an email sent requesting further comment on the move.
The Megaupload case is being heard as the debate over online piracy reaches fever pitch in Washington where Congress is trying to craft tougher legislation.
(Reporting by Ed Davies in Sydney; Editing by Alex Richardson)
TAMPA, Fla. ? Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich’s fight for Florida and the states beyond stayed at a high boil Tuesday as Romney released tax returns showing annual income topping $20 million ? including a now-closed Swiss bank account ? and Gingrich insisted his high-paid consulting work for a mortgage giant that contributed to the housing crisis didn’t include lobbying.
After a night of mutual sniping in a debate, the two leading GOP presidential candidates tried to turn the arguments over their various business dealings to his own advantage. Romney’s release of two years’ worth of tax documents, showing him at an elite level even among the nation’s richest 1 percent, kept the focus on the two men’s money and how they earned it.
Romney’s income put him in the top 0.006 percent of Americans, according to Internal Revenue Service data from 2009, the most recent year available. His net worth has been estimated as high as $250 million.
As the former Massachusetts governor relented to pressure and released more than 500 pages of tax documents, Gingrich kept up the heat, saying Romney was “outrageously dishonest” for accusing him of influence peddling for government-backed mortgage giant Freddie Mac.
The former House speaker said Romney’s charges were ironic, given that it was revealed after Monday’s debate that Romney himself was an investor in both Freddie Mac and its sister entity, Fannie Mae.
“I don’t own any Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stock. He does, so presumably he was getting richer,” Gingrich told Fox News on Tuesday.
The specter of well-off Gingrich and wealthier Romney feuding over money matters pleased Rick Santorum, who lags in polls for next Tuesday’s Florida primary but hopes to benefit from the dust-up as the race moves on. He told MSNBC: “The other two candidates have some severe flaws.”
Striking out in two directions, Romney planned to offer advance criticism of President Barack Obama’s Tuesday night State of the Union address, then focus on Florida’s housing woes in an event sure to again highlight Gingrich’s $25,000 monthly retainer from Freddie Mac.
Gingrich, starting a busy day of campaign rallies along Florida’s Gulf Coast, also took on Obama, criticizing him on foreign policy, energy plans and other issues. “I’m not so much interested in trying to tear Obama down as I am interested in getting the country to see clearly who he is,” he said in St. Petersburg.
Records released by Romney’s campaign show he closed a bank account in Switzerland in 2010, as he was entering the presidential race. He also kept money in the Cayman Islands, another spot popular with investors sheltering their income from U.S. taxes. But Benjamin Ginsberg, the Romney campaign’s legal counsel, said Romney didn’t use any aggressive tax strategies to help reduce or defer his tax income.
“Gov. Romney has paid 100 percent of what he owes,” Ginsberg said Tuesday.
Romney paid about $3 million on nearly $22 million in income in 2010 and indicated his 2011 taxes would be about the same, $3.2 million on nearly $21 million in income.
During the debate, Romney predicted his tax information would generate chatter but not any surprises, saying what he paid was “entirely legal and fair.”
Romney had declined to disclose any tax releases until he came under mounting criticism from his rivals.
In 2010, he donated a combined $3 million to the Mormon Church and other charitable causes. His effective tax rate was about 14 percent, the records showed. For 2011, he’ll pay an effective tax rate of about 15.4 percent, a level far lower than standard rates for high-income earners, reflecting the lower rate for long-term capital gains.
The tax records may silence Gingrich and others who argued that Republican voters should know the details of Romney’s wealth before they select their presidential nominee and not after. But it also could open up new lines of attack.
After Gingrich’s overwhelming victory in South Carolina last Saturday, Romney can ill afford to lose Florida’s Jan. 31 primary, and he showcased a new aggression from the opening moments of the debate. He said Gingrich had “resigned in disgrace” from Congress after four years as speaker and then had spent the next 15 years “working as an influence peddler.”
In particular, he referred to the contract Gingrich’s consulting firm had with Freddie Mac, a government-backed mortgage giant that Romney said “did a lot of bad for a lot of people and you were working there.”
“I have never, ever gone and done any lobbying,” Gingrich retorted emphatically, adding that his firm had hired an expert to explain to employees “the bright line between what you can do as a citizen and what you do as a lobbyist.”
Rep. Ron Paul, who’s bypassing Florida in favor of smaller, less expensive states, returned to Texas after Monday’s debate. Santorum will appeal to the tea party to help revive his candidacy, appearing at two tea party events.
___
Associated Press writers Kasie Hunt in Florida and Connie Cass, Jack Gillum, Stephen Braun and Stephen Ohlemacher in Washington contributed to this report.
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KANO (Reuters) ? Gun and bomb attacks by Islamist insurgents in the northern Nigerian city of Kano last week killed at least 178 people, a hospital doctor said on Sunday, underscoring the challenge President Goodluck Jonathan faces to prevent his country sliding further into chaos.
A coordinated series of bomb blasts and shooting sprees mostly targeting police stations Friday sent panicked residents of Nigeria’s second biggest city of more than 10 million people running for cover.
The scale of the carnage makes this by far the deadliest strike claimed by Boko Haram, a shadowy Islamist sect that started out as a clerical movement opposed to western education but has become the biggest security menace facing Africa’s top oil producer.
“We have 178 people killed in the two main hospitals,” the senior doctor in Kano’s Murtala Mohammed hospital said following Friday’s attacks, citing records from his own and the other main hospital of Nasarawa.
“There could be more, because some bodies have not yet come in and others were collected early.”
The streets were quiet Sunday in Kano, a vast metropolis of wide paved highways, normally buzzing with motorbikes, and sandy alleyways where hawkers sell grilled meat and donkeys pull carts heaped with fruit and vegetables.
Churches, which would usually be filled with worshippers in the religiously mixed city, were largely empty.
Jonathan, a Christian from the south, travelled to Kano on Sunday, visiting hospitals to speak to victims.
“Our coming today is to express our condolence to the good people of Kano over the dastardly acts,” Jonathan said at the palace of the Emir, the city’s Muslim figurehead.
“Those causing havoc will never succeed … The federal government will not rest until the perpetrators are brought to book. We will not rest until these terrorist are wiped out,” said Jonathan, wearing a traditional northern Nigerian kaftan and hat.
Boko Haram has been blamed for killing hundreds of people in increasingly sophisticated bombings and shootings, mostly targeting security forces, establishment figures and more recently Christians, in the country of 160 million people split roughly evenly between them and Muslims.
MORE ATTACKS ON SUNDAY
Apart from a handful of forays into the capital Abuja, the sect’s energies have been concentrated in the majority Muslim north, far from the oil producing facilities along the southern coast that keep Africa’s second biggest economy afloat.
A further 10 people were killed Sunday in Bauchi state, which neighbors Kano, when police fought gunmen attempting to rob a bank, the police said. Boko Haram robbed several banks last year to fund its insurgency.
“In the early hours of today gunmen killed 10 people at a military checkpoint and a nearby hotel at Tafawa Balewa local government area,” police commissioner Ikechukwu Aduba told Reuters.
“One police officer, an army corporal and eight civilians (were killed) after gunmen were earlier repelled from robbing a bank.”
Explosions also struck two churches in Bauchi Sunday, witnesses said, destroying one of them completely, although there were no immediate reports of casualties.
The government has announced a dusk-to-dawn curfew in Kano, an ancient city that was once part of an Islamic caliphate trading riches on caravan routes connecting sub-Saharan Africa with the Mediterranean.
Jonathan, who helped broker a deal that largely ended an insurgency by militants in the oil-rich southeast in 2009, has been criticized for failing to grasp the gravity of the crisis unfolding in the north, and of treating it as a pure security issue that will fizzle out by itself.
Worsening insecurity has led some to question whether Nigeria isn’t sliding into civil war, 40 years after the secessionist Biafra conflict killed over a million people, though few think an all-out war splitting the country into two or more pieces is a likely outcome.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attacks and called for “swift and transparent investigations” into the killings. European powers and the African Union have also condemned the attacks.
SECT CHANGING
Boko Haram became active around 2003 in the remote, northeastern state of Borno, on the threshold of the Sahara, but its attacks have spread into other northern states, including Yobe, Kano, Bauchi and Gombe.
Boko Haram, a Hausa term meaning “Western education is sinful,” is loosely modeled on Afghanistan’s Taliban, but analysts say the anger it channels reflects a perception that the north has been marginalized from oil riches concentrated in the south.
The sect originally said it wanted sharia, Islamic law, to be applied more widely across Nigeria but its aims appear to have changed. Recent messages from its leaders have said it is attacking anyone who opposes it, at present mainly police, the government and Christian groups.
“Since 2009 it is an insurgency that has gathered pace almost in slow motion, incrementally – apparently absorbed and accommodated with no clear evidence that government has the capacity, competence or will to turn the tide,” said Antony Goldman, head of Nigeria-focused PM Consulting.
“Boko Haram was a work in progress when (former President) Obasanjo, who had a deserved ‘no nonsense’ reputation, was in power; and it was Yar’Adua, a Muslim President, who ordered a bloody crackdown in 2009. It was a difficult inheritance for Jonathan but the problems have only grown more complex.”
Boko Haram’s attacks have become increasingly deadly in the last few months.
At least 65 people were killed in the northeast Nigerian city of Damaturu, Yobe state, in a spate of gun and bomb attacks in November.
A bomb attack on a Catholic church just outside the capital Abuja on Christmas Day, claimed by Boko Haram, killed 37 people and wounded 57.
In a Reuters interview in late December, National Security Adviser General Owoye Andrew Azazi said officials are considering making contact with moderate members of shadowy sect via “back channels,” even though explicit talks are officially ruled out.
(Additional reporting by Joe Brock in Abuja; Writing by Tim Cocks; Editing by Giles Elgood)
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