Low vitamin D levels a risk factor for pneumoniaPublic release date: 30-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Tomi-Pekka Tuomainen tomi-pekka.tuomainen@uef.fi 358-403-552-956 University of Eastern Finland
A University of Eastern Finland study showed that low serum vitamin D levels are a risk factor for pneumonia. The risk of contracting pneumonia was more than 2.5 times greater in subjects with the lowest vitamin D levels than in subjects with high vitamin D levels. The results were published in Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
The follow-up study carried out by the UEF Institute of Public Health investigated the link between serum vitamin D3 and the risk of contracting pneumonia. The study involved 1,421 subjects living in the Kuopio region in Eastern Finland. The serum vitamin D3 levels of the subjects were measured from blood samples drawn in 19982001, and these data were compared against reported cases of pneumonia in hospital records in the same set of subjects in 19982009. The results showed that during the follow-up, subjects with serum vitamin D3 levels representing the lowest third were more than 2.5 times more likely to contract pneumonia than subjects with high vitamin D3 levels. Furthermore, smoking constituted a significant risk factor for pneumonia. The risk of contracting pneumonia also grew by age, and was greater in men than women. At baseline, the mean serum D3 concentration of the study population was 43.5 nmol/l, and the mean age of the study population was 62.5 years.
Earlier research has shown that vitamin D deficiency weakens the immune defence system and increases the risk of mild respiratory infections. This University of Eastern Finland study was the first one to establish that vitamin D deficiency also increases the risk of contracting pneumonia in the ageing general population. According to the researchers, this finding supports earlier observations on the diverse role of vitamin D in the body, and it also calls for further research on vitamin D deficiency as a public health issue. In northern latitudes, there is enough sun exposure to maintain sufficient vitamin D levels in summer, but not during the winter season, and vitamin D supplementation is often required. The recommended daily intake of vitamin D in Finland is 20 micrograms for those over 60 years of age.
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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.
Low vitamin D levels a risk factor for pneumoniaPublic release date: 30-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Tomi-Pekka Tuomainen tomi-pekka.tuomainen@uef.fi 358-403-552-956 University of Eastern Finland
A University of Eastern Finland study showed that low serum vitamin D levels are a risk factor for pneumonia. The risk of contracting pneumonia was more than 2.5 times greater in subjects with the lowest vitamin D levels than in subjects with high vitamin D levels. The results were published in Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
The follow-up study carried out by the UEF Institute of Public Health investigated the link between serum vitamin D3 and the risk of contracting pneumonia. The study involved 1,421 subjects living in the Kuopio region in Eastern Finland. The serum vitamin D3 levels of the subjects were measured from blood samples drawn in 19982001, and these data were compared against reported cases of pneumonia in hospital records in the same set of subjects in 19982009. The results showed that during the follow-up, subjects with serum vitamin D3 levels representing the lowest third were more than 2.5 times more likely to contract pneumonia than subjects with high vitamin D3 levels. Furthermore, smoking constituted a significant risk factor for pneumonia. The risk of contracting pneumonia also grew by age, and was greater in men than women. At baseline, the mean serum D3 concentration of the study population was 43.5 nmol/l, and the mean age of the study population was 62.5 years.
Earlier research has shown that vitamin D deficiency weakens the immune defence system and increases the risk of mild respiratory infections. This University of Eastern Finland study was the first one to establish that vitamin D deficiency also increases the risk of contracting pneumonia in the ageing general population. According to the researchers, this finding supports earlier observations on the diverse role of vitamin D in the body, and it also calls for further research on vitamin D deficiency as a public health issue. In northern latitudes, there is enough sun exposure to maintain sufficient vitamin D levels in summer, but not during the winter season, and vitamin D supplementation is often required. The recommended daily intake of vitamin D in Finland is 20 micrograms for those over 60 years of age.
###
[ | 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.
Yvette Prieto and former NBA star Michael Jordan tied the knot Saturday in Palm Beach, Fla. Yvette?Prieto, a 35-year-old former model, met Jordan five years ago.
By Steve Reed,?Associated Press / April 29, 2013
Michael Jordan got married over the weekend, with Tiger Woods, Spike Lee and Patrick Ewing among those attending the NBA Hall of Famer's wedding in Palm Beach, Fla.
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Jordan married 35-year-old former model Yvette?Prieto on Saturday, manager Estee Portnoy told The Associated Press on Sunday.
The 50-year-old Jordan owns the Charlotte Bobcats.
Nearly 300 guests were present as they exchanged vows at the Bethesda-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church, ?a massive Gothic revival building in the heart of the ritzy island,? reported The Miami Herald.
Yvette?Prieto wore an ivory dress with a six-foot train while eight maids of honor wore gray.
The reception took place at a private golf club in Jupiter designed by Jack Nicklaus. Jordan owns a home near the course.
Entertainment included DJ MC Lyte, singers K'Jon, Robin Thicke and Grammy Award winner Usher and The Source, an 18-piece band.
The six-time NBA champion and Prieto met five years ago and were engaged last December.
Jordan had three children with former wife Juanita Vanoy. The couple's divorce was finalized in December 2006.
When did humans stamp our footprint on the planet? The idea that we have entered a geological epoch defined by our very presence ? the Anthropocene ? is gaining traction, but exactly when did this epoch begin? After the first atom bomb went off? At the start of the industrial revolution in the mid-18th century? Or was it a lot earlier? A new study argues that the Anthropocene began with the rise of farming or even in Neolithic times, when we took to widespread burning of the bush to hunt animals.
In a reappraisal of humanity's footprint, Erle Ellis, a geographer at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, and colleagues calculate that across much of the world ? excluding the poles ? at least a fifth of the land had been transformed by humans as early as 5000 years ago. By contrast, most previous studies conclude that this level of transformation in land use was only reached around 100 years ago. Ellis's group also argues that this degree of land use would have released enough carbon dioxide to have warmed the local climate of the time.
Even though there were only a few tens of millions of us back then, nature was on the back foot because individuals needed far more land to sustain themselves than we do today, says Ellis. Thanks to more intensive farming methods, per-capita land use in western Europe now is only around a sixth what it was 2500 years ago, while in south-east Asia it is less than a tenth.
"We often assume that early agriculturalists couldn't alter the landscape much because they lacked the technology," says co-author Steve Vavrus of the University of Wisconsin in Madison. "But their impact was great because they didn't need to be as efficient as modern farmers."
Filling all usable land
Ellis and Vavrus's study compares conventional models of past land use, which have usually assumed that the amount of land each human needs has remained largely unchanged, with their own alternative, in which early humans "expanded to fill all usable land, and then intensified land use as population densities increased". They present archaeological evidence that the real world fits their model.
Sediments in lake beds, for instance, show massive peaks in tiny particles of charcoal, starting 60,000 years ago. This coincided with hunters setting fires to catch animals by driving them in a specific direction, and using fire to stimulate the regrowth of grasslands on which their prey fed. Another example is the soils beneath modern tropical forests in both the Americas and Africa that were enriched with manure and charcoal put there by farmers at least 2500 years ago.
This prehistoric tinkering with the planet may even have altered the climate. Over thousands of years, the great clearances of forests and transformations of grasslands with fire and plough probably released enough carbon from trees and soils to raise atmospheric carbon dioxide levels by 20 or 30 parts per million, calculates co-author Jed Kaplan of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. That's equivalent to a 10 per cent rise compared to what the CO2 level would otherwise have been ? small in terms of its warming influence compared to the effect of today's human emissions of around 120 parts per million, but possibly enough to have triggered local changes.
A typical human even 8000 years ago had a lifetime carbon footprint of about 30 tonnes of CO2. That was around one tonne a year, compared to per-capita annual emissions of 2 to 3 tonnes today.
This new analysis builds on previous work by climate scientist William Ruddiman. A decade ago, when at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, he put forward the idea that greenhouse emissions from farming 8000 years ago may have raised atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations.
Steve Jackson of the University of Wyoming in Laramie, who was not involved in either study, says the new work underlines an "increasing recognition that human societies have shaped ecosystems at a much broader scale than presumed".
Not pristine but resilient
This picture of early human domination of much of the planet calls into question some common environmental assumptions, says co-author Dorian Fuller of University College London. It suggests, for example, that there is little truly pristine nature anywhere. Most apparently virgin rainforests are far from virgin; many are recovering from past clearance. This may disappoint some nature lovers, but "it shows nature is resilient", says Kaplan. Nature adapts to our activities better than we often think.
However, the new study does not give us grounds for rejecting environmental concerns, he says. Our current problems ? especially what may be runaway climate change caused by burning fossil fuels ? are real. At least the study's findings do offer important lessons for fixing those problems.
One is not to get hung up about whether ecosystems are natural. Most likely they are not, but all deserve protection. Another is to recognise that, throughout the Anthropocene, technology has repeatedly been our trump card. Through its use, intensified agriculture has allowed world populations to soar. And while some civilisations, such as the Maya and early Mesopotamians, may have wiped themselves out through environmental mismanagement, others were smarter, the new analysis suggests.
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On his show, Comedian Rodney Perry covers arts and entertainment, everything from comedy and politics to music and acting, with his signature comedic slant.
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Listeners get an earful on The Halli Casser-Jayne Show, Talk Radio for Fine Minds. Whether it?s the current political cocktail or the latest must-read award-winning book, Halli tackles all topics and likes to stir ? and sometimes shakes ? things up.
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ROME (AP) ? An unemployed bricklayer shot two Italian policemen in a crowded square outside the premier's office Sunday just as Italy's new government was being sworn in, investigators said.
The gunman's intended target was politicians but none were in the square so he shot at the Carabinieiri paramilitary police, Rome Prosecutor Pierfilippo Laviani told reporters, citing what he said were the suspect's own words.
Mired in recession and suffering from soaring unemployment, Italy has been in political paralysis since an inconclusive February election. Social and political tensions have been running high among voters divided between center-left, conservative and anti-government political parties.
Sunday was supposed to be a hopeful day when the debt-ridden nation finally got new government to solve its many problems. But shots rang out in Colonna Square near a busy shopping and strolling area shortly after 11:30 a.m. just as Premier Enrico Letta and his new ministers were taking their oaths at the Quirinal presidential office about a kilometer (half mile) away.
The suspected gunman, dressed in a dark business suit, was immediately wrestled to the ground by police outside Chigi Palace, which houses the premier's office and other government offices. The politicians went to the palace later Sunday for their first Cabinet meeting.
Laviani identified the alleged assailant as Luigi Preiti, a 49-year-old from Calabria, a southern agricultural area plagued by organized crime and chronic unemployment.
The shooting panicked tourists and locals in the square, whose centerpiece is a towering, second-century ancient Roman column honoring Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Rome was packed Sunday with people enjoying the last day of a four-day weekend.
Fanuel Morelli, a cameraman working for AP Television, said he was struck by the gunman's firm, calm stance.
"When I heard the first shot, I turned around and saw a man standing there, some 15 meters (50 feet) away from me. He held his arm out and I saw him fire another five, six shots," Morelli said. "He was firing at the second Carabiniere, who was about 4 meters (13 feet) in front of him.'"
Laviani said Preiti, who was taken to the hospital for bruises, confessed to the shooting and didn't appear mentally unbalanced.
"He is a man full of problems, who lost his job, who lost everything," the prosecutor said. "He was desperate. In general, he wanted to shoot at politicians, but given that he couldn't reach any, he shot at the Carabinieri" paramilitary police.
One policemen who shot in the neck was in critical condition. The other, shot in the leg, suffered a fracture, doctors said.
A woman passing by during the shooting was slightly injured, Rome's mayor said. It was unclear if she was grazed by a bullet or hurt in the panic sparked by the gunfire.
The 46-year-old Letta had produced a coalition deal only a day ago between two bitter political enemies ? his center-left forces and the conservative bloc of ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi. Letta will speak to Parliament on Monday, laying out his strategy to reduce joblessness while still sticking to the austerity measures needed to keep the eurozone's No. 3 economy from descending into a sovereign debt crisis. He will then face confidence votes.
A video surveillance camera on the Parliament building caught the attacker on film just before and during the shooting, Italian news reports said.
The shooter was walking at a steady pace along a narrow street that leads from the square outside Parliament's lower house to the square outside the premier's office when police officers appear to have stopped him to ask where he was going.
Shortly after police approached him, he began firing, according to the surveillance camera.
Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said the alleged gunman wanted to kill himself after the shooting but ran out of bullets. He said six shots were fired in all. The gunman used a semi-automatic pistol whose serial number had been scraped off, according to Sky TG24 TV.
The interior minister said security was immediately stepped up near key venues in the Italian capital, but added authorities were not worried about possible related attacks.
"Our initial investigation indicates the incident is due to an isolated gesture, although further investigations are being carried out," he said.
The ministers were kept briefly inside for security reasons until it was clear there was no immediate danger.
Doctors at Rome's Umberto I Polyclinic said a 50-year-old brigadier had been hit in the neck by a bullet that damaged his spinal column and was lodged near his shoulder. The doctors said it wasn't yet known if the spinal column injury had caused any paralysis.
The head of St. John's Hospital, Gianluigi Bracciale, told Sky TG24 TV the second officer suffered a broken leg from a gunshot. He said Prieti didn't appear to have any injuries other than bruises.
Preiti's uncle, interviewed by Sky, said the alleged gunman had moved back to his parents' home in Calabria because he could no longer find work as a bricklayer. "He was a great worker. He could build a house from top to bottom," said the uncle, Domenco Preiti.
The shooting sparked ugly memories of the 1970s and 1980s in Italy, when domestic terrorism plagued the country during a time of high political tensions between right-wing and left-wing blocs.
Among well-wishers for the new Italian government was President Barack Obama. The White House press office said Obama was looking forward to working closely with Letta's government "to promote trade, jobs, and growth on both sides of the Atlantic and tackle today's complex security challenges."
There was no direct reference to the shooting in the White House statement.
Few experiences in life can be as pleasurable as enjoying good food and drinks with your loved ones on a weekend. Delicious foods combined with the alcohol of your choice works wonders in relieving you from all sorts of anxieties at least for few moments and allow you indulge in real enjoyment. So, why not create such moments for yourself and present them to others too? Calgary Dial a Bottle with its promise of a range of quality liquors and snacks makes it hassle- free for you to prepare some excellent cocktails and most importantly, pair them up with the right kind of food.
While sipping a heady cocktail or gorging on a sumptuous meal is a pleasurable experience in itself, it is actually a combination of the two that you should try to strike at. Remember that while the right drink can enliven the already good experience of dining, the wrong one can actually ruin it. In fact, there are certain techniques of pairing cocktails with food and it is best to avail the assistance of the expert and professional bartenders.
Strike at the Right Combination of Food and Drinks
However, here is a list of few popular ways of pairing up cocktails and snacks or main courses:
1.? Shepherd?s Pie, which is a traditional Irish main course, comprising potatoes, lamb and cheese, goes best with Irish beer.
2.? If you are up for some Chicken Gumbos, feel free to try your hands at some new types of cocktails with the base of wine or beer. The spicy nature of the dish is complimented in a perfect way by the flavor of the wine.
3.? If you are preparing something hot and spicy, you should always go for chilled beer as the combination of two satiates taste buds to the fullest.
It is not just with respect to the main courses that you need to plan up for the drinks but also for desserts that tastes good when paired up with certain kinds of drinks.
The professionals at Calgary Dial a Bottle can help you sufficiently in this regard by offering you with a sheer range of alcohols for you to mix up. You can also get informed about bar tenders who can guide you in a house party or so.
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Tips on Pairing Up Some Heady Cocktails with Delicious Dishes, 10.0 out of 10 based on 3 ratings
In this Thursday, April 25, 2013 photo Petr Nemy, an whisky expert, tastes the single malt "Hammer Head" whisky in a bar in Prague, Czech Republic. The "Hammer Head" whisky made in communist Czechoslovakia matured in oak barrels for more than twenty years to reach surprisingly good quality before hitting the market. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)
In this Thursday, April 25, 2013 photo Petr Nemy, an whisky expert, tastes the single malt "Hammer Head" whisky in a bar in Prague, Czech Republic. The "Hammer Head" whisky made in communist Czechoslovakia matured in oak barrels for more than twenty years to reach surprisingly good quality before hitting the market. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)
In this Tuesday, April 16, 2013 photo Vaclav Sitner, chief distiller, presents the single malt "Hammer Head" whisky in a distillery in Pradlo, Czech Republic. The "Hammer Head" whisky made in communist Czechoslovakia matured in oak barrels for more than twenty years to reach surprisingly good quality before hitting the market. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)
In this Monday, April 8, 2013 photo Eva Brozovska labels bottles with single malt "Hammer Head" whisky in a distillery in Pradlo, Czech Republic. The "Hammer Head" whisky made in communist Czechoslovakia matured in oak barrels for more than twenty years to reach surprisingly good quality before hitting the market. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)
In this Tuesday, April 16, 2013 photo Vaclav Sitner, chief distiller, presents the single malt "Hammer Head" whisky in a distillery in Pradlo, Czech Republic. The "Hammer Head" whisky made in communist Czechoslovakia matured in oak barrels for more than twenty years to reach surprisingly good quality before hitting the market. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)
In this Monday, April 8, 2013 photo Eva Brozovska fills bottles with single malt "Hammer Head" whisky in a distillery in Pradlo, Czech Republic. The "Hammer Head" whisky made in communist Czechoslovakia matured in oak barrels for more than twenty years to reach surprisingly good quality before hitting the market. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)
PRADLO DISTILLERY, Czech Republic (AP) ? The Scottish peat was put on trucks and trains. The destination was Communist-era Czechoslovakia. The recipient: apparatchiks desperate for a decent whisky.
The journey beyond the Iron Curtain during the Cold War turned out to be the easy part. When the batch arrived, the Czech distillers had only a faint idea how to make whisky ? and it took years to get things right.
"It was one thing to read about it in books, but reality is something different," recalled Vaclav Sitner, a member of the team tasked with creating a premium whisky.
Now, almost 40 years on, the last batches of "Hammer Head" are winning rave reviews. And, in a historical twist, they are owned by a U.S. hedge fund that bought the beverage company that Sitner worked for.
Sitner, whose name still appears on the label, recalls the "alchemy" and "joy" as they concocted the whisky. It sold well despite its relatively high price in a communist economy.
In Czechoslovakia, living standards were higher than in most other communist nations, but only a limited variety of Western products were available at special stores for those privileged enough to have access to foreign currency. In common stores, there was a significant shortage of Western goods, from bananas to electronics.
"There were no means to import foreign whisky," Sitner said. Communist states' currencies were not convertible and the struggling command economies failed to produce enough decent goods to sell in exchange for hard currency.
The original plan was to source all the ingredients and equipment locally ? but met no luck.
"The problem was with the peat, because it didn't work," said Sitner. "The peat we had was from South Bohemia and in combination with oak shavings it created all sorts of problems."
"It was the most expensive peat in Europe. The (Scottish) peat didn't actually cost that much but the transport cost a fortune. We placed it on trucks and a train carriage. One carriage was enough for us for 5-6 years."
Sitner and his colleagues had to rely completely on their own skills since they had no chance to travel to Scotland to visit distilleries. They needed a good barley supplier and knowledge of how to grind it, a source of suitable water and new oak barrels where the product could mature for at least three years.
A small distillery in Pradlo, in the west of the country, coincidentally had a hammer mill of the kind used in Scottish distilleries. Dating from the 1920s, it was the only one in the entire country. Work started in 1976; three years of tests were needed before trial production could start ? and mass production started eight years later.
Communist apparatchiks liked it so much that the bottles became a favored present.
"The comrades liked to drink whisky, despite the fact that people (in those days) were obligated to drink vodka," Sitner said. "But comrades still liked the whisky."
The 1989 Velvet Revolution toppled the regime and the Czech whisky also vanished from sight as the market was flooded by whiskies from all over the world. Then whisky ceased to be made for good. What left had time to mature in the original oak barrels for years to improve gradually into its current level of excellence.
The liquor company that the distillery belonged to, Stock Plzen-Bozkov, was privatized. The new owners felt the drink had no future. They sold some 250 barrels for a ridiculously low price ? "barbarism," recalled Sitner.
In 2007, U.S. hedge fund Oaktree Capital Management acquired the company.
When officials from London-based Stock Spirits Group that controls the company for the fund were presented the local whisky, their first response was "impossible it was made here," Sitner remembered. After it passed a test in a tasting with some other single malt whiskies that followed, the company decided to put it on the market.
"Look at the gold," Sitner said with pride during a recent visit to Pradlo cellar where hundreds the original oak barrels are still in place. "It's a beautiful color," he said, holding a glass just taken from a barrel.
Demand for Hammer Head has been solid around the globe, but Sitner would not reveal how much was made and how much is still available. He would only said if the current sales remain at the same level of 10,000 - 15,000 bottles a year, it is expected to be sold out in five to seven years. The whisky sells for about ?45 ($59) a bottle.
Since 2011, Hammer Head has been listed in Jim Murray's Whisky Bible, an annual international whisky guide, where it scored 88.5 points out of 100 ? putting it among "very good to excellent whiskies definitely worth buying."
"This is one of Europe's maltiest drams ... if not the maltiest," the guide said.
In 2011, it won a Masters award at the 2011 Whiskeys of the World Masters.
Petr Nemy, an organizer of whisky tastings from the Scottish Club in Prague said that after more than 20 years of aging, Hammer Head "is beautifully matured. It's delicately malty and smoky with a taste of nuts and maybe, vanilla. It has a beautifully rounded taste. It's a joy to taste it."
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Latin America's growing prosperity is fueling a cancer epidemic that threatens to overwhelm the region unless governments take urgent preventive action, a study published on Friday warned.
A multinational team of researchers found the current state of cancer care and prevention in Latin America incompatible with the socioeconomic changes taking place in the region, where an increasingly urban populace faces mounting lifestyle-related cancer risks.
Writing in The Lancet Oncology medical journal, researchers said Latin Americans are enjoying the benefits of growing economic prosperity but also are leading longer, more sedentary lives, accompanied by a rise in alcohol consumption, smoking and obesity. That is not only leading to an increase in cancer rates, which are expected to rise more than 33 percent in the region by 2020, but a disproportionately high number of cancer deaths.
"If corrective action is not taken this problem will become magnitudes of order bigger than it is today, it will create massive human suffering and it will threaten the economies of the region," Paul Goss, a professor at Harvard Medical School who led the study, said at an event in Sao Paulo on Friday.
While Latin Americans contract cancer at lower rates than residents of the United States, they are nearly twice as likely to die from it, the study said.
Much of that has to do with the way cancer is treated in Latin America. More than half of those in the region have little or no health insurance and relatively few public health efforts are focused on preventive medicine. That means most patients seek treatment when they are at advanced stages of the disease and often too sick to be saved.
That type of care is not only ineffective but often very expensive, draining already scarce resources from public coffers, the study found.
IMMEDIATE CHANGES NEEDED
The study recommended Latin American nations make major changes to their healthcare policies, such as dedicating more funds to public health, widening healthcare access so cancer patients can be treated earlier and developing better national cancer plans. It also envisions shifting funds away from costly end-stage cancer treatment toward palliative care.
While researchers speaking at Friday's event acknowledged the difficulty of enacting such reforms quickly, they called on governments to start with short-term solutions, such as raising taxes on tobacco and providing families with cleaner-burning wood stoves.
The total cost of cancer to Latin American countries currently is about $4 billion per year and stands to grow precipitously, according to the study.
"If we don't put these things on the agenda now, we won't be prepared to deal with this in 10 or 15 years," said Carlos Barrios, a professor at Brazil's Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio Grande do Sul. "(At that point) the costs will be likely be exorbitant."
It's generally understood that in the Fox News and Glenn Beck breakup, Fox was the dumper and Beck the dumpee. But, in most breakups where the couple shares a social circle, neither party wants a reputation as the dumpee. Beck says he's the one who wanted to leave -- because the network was so depressing. "I remember feeling, 'If you do not leave now, you won?t leave with your soul intact,'" Beck said Friday, according to Forbes' Jeff Bercovici. Roger Ailes tried to talk him out of it. "Roger said to me, 'You're not going to leave.' And I said, 'I am. ...
IN THE NEWS: Administration believes chemical weapons used in Syria ? Boston bomb suspects planned NYC attack ? Bush feted at presidential library opening ? Exemptions for Hill staffers on insurance exchanges? ? Bill Clinton joins Twitter ? for real
THE TAKE
Obama Looking for Reasons to Delay Response on Syria
It would seem to add up to certain U.S. military action: On Thursday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the United States now believes ?the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically, the chemical agent sarin."
That finding appears to be a direct violation of the ?red line? and ?game-changer? for action that President Obama has set.
In truth, the same game is still going on, and the administration appears to be equivocating over a response while all the ?facts? are established. ?We want to continue to investigate above and beyond those intelligence estimates,? a senior administration official told reporters on Thursday afternoon, in order to gain ?a definitive judgment for whether a red line has been crossed.?
Some of the usual U.S. hawks called for immediate action, and even Obama ally Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., issued a statement indicating the administration?s credibility was at stake on the matter.
The administration remains very leery of getting directly involved in Syria, but the question is, at what cost? Read more
Michael Hirsh mhirsh@nationaljournal.com?
TOP NEWS
HAGEL, WHITE HOUSE FIND SOME EVIDENCE OF SYRIAN CHEMICAL-WEAPON USE. In a letter to lawmakers on Thursday, the Obama administration said it had seen some evidence that government forces have used the deadly chemical sarin in the Syrian civil war, Bloomberg reports. But the assessment is ?not sufficient? to take action, the letter reads. In Abu Dhabi, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel made similar statements. Intelligence officials have determined in the last 24 hours, ?with varying degrees of confidence,? that Syria has used small amounts of chemical weapons. In Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry clarified, saying there was evidence of ?two instances? of chemical weapon use. Read more
TSARNAEV TOLD AUTHORITIES: NEW YORK CITY WAS NEXT TARGET. New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told authorities that he and his brother planned to use their remaining explosives in New York City, the Associated Press reports. The answers came during the 16 hours of interrogation before Tsarnaev was read his Miranda rights, after which he stopped responding. Officials were able to question the suspect without reading him his rights under an immediate public-safety exemption.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports the CIA pushed to have Dzhokhar?s older brother and second suspect, Tamerlan, placed on a U.S. counterterrorism watch list more than a year before the attacks. Read more
FIVE LIVING PRESIDENTS ATTEND GEORGE W. BUSH CENTER DEDICATION. President Obama and the four living former presidents came together in Dallas today for the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Center on the campus of Southern Methodist University. Bush closed his remarks by saying, ?It was the honor of a lifetime to lead a country as brave and as noble as the United States.? Read more
SENATE WEIGHING END TO AIR-TRAFFIC CONTROLLER FURLOUGHS. Senate leaders are negotiating a potential solution to flight delays caused by furloughs of air-traffic controllers, Reuters reports. A measure could be attached to pending legislation on Internet sales taxes, and could come up for a vote as early as today. Possible solutions involve authorizing the Federal Aviation Administration to transfer money within its budget to fully fund the salaries of the air-traffic controllers. Read more
HOUSE, SENATE LEADERS NEGOTIATING WITH WHITE HOUSE OVER INSURANCE EXCHANGE EXEMPTIONS. Congressional leaders from both parties, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and administration officials are engaged in discussions on the possibility of exempting members and their staffs from the health insurance exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act, Politico reports. Lawmakers are concerned that the Hill will experience a ?brain drain? if the government does not subsidize staffers? insurance premiums. According to a source, ?Everyone has to hold hands on this and jump, or nothing is going to get done.? Read more
@ChadPegram: Reid spox: There are not now..nor will there ever be any discussions about exempting members of Congress (from the Affordable Care Act).
HOUSE JUDICIARY CHAIR: COMMITTEE WILL TAKE ?STEP-BY-STEP APPROACH? TO IMMIGRATION REFORM. The House is set to tackle immigration reform, but it will take a piecemeal approach rather than the comprehensive one favored by the Senate ?Gang of Eight,? The Hill reports. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said Thursday that Republicans would introduce two pieces of legislation this week -- one that would establish an employment-verification system and another to create a guest-worker program for agriculture. Read more
National Journal?s Shane Goldmacher reports that Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., believes the immigration bill needs more than 60 votes to get traction in the House.
AT FUNDRAISER, OBAMA VOWS TO KEEP REACHING ACROSS AISLE. Speaking to a group of Democratic donors Wednesday night, President Obama pledged to continue reaching out to Republican lawmakers, despite criticism he has weathered from some Democrats who think he is too acquiescent, The New York Times reports. ?Occasionally I may make some of you angry because I?m going to reach out to Republicans, and I?m going to keep on doing it,? he said. ?Even if some of you think I?m a sap, I?m going to keep on doing it because that?s what I think the country needs.? The fundraiser was held for 60 donors who paid between $10,000 and $32,400 to attend. Read more
BILL CLINTON JOINS TWITTER FOR REAL, GETS LESSON FROM COLBERT. Former President Clinton, appearing on Comedy Central?s Colbert Report via video on Wednesday, joined Twitter, adopting the handle @BillClinton. Clinton selected the moniker over the one host Stephen Colbert had chosen for him during Clinton?s trip to the show earlier this month, @PrezBillyJeff. Clinton received a tutorial from Colbert during Wednesday?s show. Read more
TOMORROW
GDP TO BE RELEASED. First-quarter gross domestic product figures will be released by the Commerce Department Friday morning. Economists are forecasting growth of about 3 percent. The Washington Post?s Neil Irwin writes that while the report is expected to be strong, ?beware its weak underbelly.? Read more
OBAMA TO ADDRESS PLANNED PARENTHOOD, HOST KING OF JORDAN. On Friday, the president will address the Planned Parenthood gala. He will also host King Abdullah II of Jordan at the White House.
APPROPRIATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE TO HOLD FDA BUDGET HEARING. A House Appropriations Subcommittee will hold a hearing on the budget for the Food and Drug Administration. FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg will be a witness, among others. Read more
QUOTABLE
"He's by far the best qualified man, but no. I really don't. I think it's a great country, there are a lot of great families, and it's not just four families or whatever. There are other people out there that are very qualified, and we've had enough Bushes." ? Former first lady Barbara Bush, on whether she wants her son, Jeb Bush, to run for president in 2016. (NBC?s Today)
BEDTIME READING
INSIDE THE KILLING OF ANWAR AL-AWLAKI. ?At the White House, President Obama was faced with a decision?not of morality or legality, but of timing. He had already sentenced Anwar al-Awlaki to death without trial,? writes Jeremy Scahill for The Nation. The United States had tracked the ?radical cleric? to a house in Jawf, Yemen. But officials knew there were children in the house, possibly including Awlaki?s son. ? ?Bring it to me and let me decide in the reality of the moment rather than in the abstract,? Obama told his advisers, according to author Daniel Klaidman.... ?In this one instance,? an Obama confidant told Klaidman, ?the president considered relaxing some of his collateral requirements.? ? Ultimately, the U.S. did go forward with an attack on the home, and Awlaki?s son was there. Both died in the attack. Scahill takes readers behind the scenes of the lead-up to -- and fallout from -- the attack, which rankled legal activists and sparked a public debate about U.S. drone strike policy. Read more
PLAY OF THE DAY
LOOKING BACK AT BUSH, LOOKING FORWARD TO MARS. In anticipation of the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, late-night hosts have been dusting off jokes from the previous decade. David Letterman spent most of his monologue on Bush, showing the audience a highlight reel of physical Bush gags. He also examined recent polling that suggests the American public misses the 43rd president and showed an illustration of what Dick Cheney?s library might look like. This week, photos of NASA?s Mars rover?s track marks on the red planet took the Internet by storm. On Comedy Central, Stephen Colbert found the craft?s suggestive pattern to be a triumph around which Americans can unite. Watch it here
TODAY?S CHART
THE ONE CHART THAT COULD SEVER OBAMA?S COALITION. What could dissolve the powerful electoral coalition that powered both of President Obama?s victories? The latest Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll points to the greatest risk: continuing economic dissatisfaction. Read more
EVANS CITY, Pa. (AP) ? A freight train struck a rural transit bus carrying senior citizens and people with developmental disabilities Friday morning, injuring 10 passengers and the driver, authorities said. At least two of the injuries were serious.
It appeared the small bus, carrying passengers ranging in age from mid-20s to 92, entered the crossing and stopped on the tracks, said Evans City police Chief Joseph McCombs. The engineer sounded a horn and tried to stop the train, but couldn't. The bus came to rest about 20 feet away but did not overturn.
Police were investigating whether dense morning fog contributed to the crash, which happened shortly after 8 a.m. in Evans City, about 25 miles northwest of Pittsburgh.
Three men and a woman were being treated in the Allegheny General Hospital emergency room in Pittsburgh, said hospital spokesman Dan Laurent. The men were 35, 38 and 75 years old, and the woman's age was not immediately available.
Brian Greenawalt, a Harmony Township paramedic supervisor, said one victim suffered "a pretty significant head injury."
Police said the Butler Area Rural Transit bus was on its way to a program known as Lifesteps.
A woman who identified herself as the granddaughter of a 90-year-old woman on the bus told WPXI-TV that her grandmother was headed to geriatric care program at Lifesteps. The woman said the bus takes adult patients of all ages to the facility for a variety of programs.
A Lifesteps official did not immediately return a call for comment, but the facility's website said it is a nonprofit that has operated since 1923. Lifesteps "services for children, families, adults with special needs and seniors are designed to encourage growth, independence, confidence and dignity," the website said.
The transit agency's website indicates it partners with the Alliance For Nonprofit Resources, a social service agency based in the county seat of Butler, to provide reduced-fee transportation for people with disabilities. Neither agency immediately returned messages left Friday.
The transit agency's website said it operates 17 wheelchair-accessible buses that make about 300 trips a day, six days a week.
Riz Ahmed (right) and Kiefer Sutherland in The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Courtesy of IFC Films
As the country struggles to understand what could have motivated two seemingly assimilated young Chechen-Americans to plant a bomb at the Boston Marathon and cut a swath of destruction through the city, the release of Mira Nair?s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, an adaptation of Mohsin Hamid?s 2007 novel about a young Pakistani man in the U.S. who?s drawn to religious terrorism after 9/11, would seem to be ideally timed. Unfortunately, you leave The Reluctant Fundamentalist, a meandering character portrait turned political thriller, with only the vaguest, most abstract sense of what might drive a disgruntled immigrant to take up arms against his adopted homeland?and almost no sense at all of what the hell went on in the movie?s hectic, twist-heavy final act.
As the film begins, Changez Khan (the British actor and rap DJ Riz Ahmed, whose sharply tuned performance and unearthly beauty are the best reasons to see the movie) is a university professor in Lahore, Pakistan, whose star is on the rise. He?s known for his rabble-rousing lectures about Pakistani political autonomy, though he stops just short of resorting to anti-American rhetoric. After an American professor is kidnapped in Lahore, Changez agrees to sit down for an interview with an American journalist, Bobby Lincoln (Liev Schreiber), to clear his name of any association with the crime. Sitting in an obscurely menacing teahouse with Bobby?who may or may not also be, as Changez suspects, a CIA operative?Changez recounts the story of his time in the U.S., which we witness in a series of flashbacks: After getting a degree at Princeton, he worked as a financial analyst for a Wall Street firm that specialized in downsizing failing companies, under the tutelage of a cutthroat boss (Kiefer Sutherland).
On a business trip during 9/11, Changez witnesses the towers fall on his hotel TV and, to his own shock, finds himself struck above all by what he describes to Bobby as the sheer audacity of the act, the spectacle of ?arrogance brought low.? In the days after the attack, Changez?s relationship to his adopted country begins to change: He?s humiliatingly strip-searched at an airport, then later held for police questioning for no other reason than walking down a New York street while being South Asian. His relationship with his girlfriend Erica, a recently widowed American photographer (an egregiously miscast Kate Hudson), becomes strained, especially when she mounts an autobiographical multimedia exhibition that makes him feel exploited and exoticized. (The audience begins to feel that Changez should break up with Erica simply for being an atrociously bad artist.)
In the movie?s last third, Nair rushes to cram in a convoluted political espionage plot that we haven?t given a thought to since that opening kidnapping scene: Will Bobby find out the whereabouts of the missing American professor before Changez?s more radical cohorts do away with him? And are we to believe Changez?s protestations that, however close he may have come to flirting with radicalism in the past, there is still something in him that resists the use of violence?
At several points, the screenplay (by William Wheeler, from a screen story by Mohsin Hamid and Ami Boghani) goes out of its way to draw an explicit parallel between the ruthlessness of Wall Street financiers and that of Islamic terrorists. Both Changez?s toxic boss at the firm (excellently played by a shark-like Sutherland) and the Pakistani radicals who later try to convert him to their cause use the same frighteningly vague word, ?fundamentals,? to describe the values that drive them. But, like Changez?s disturbing reaction to the televised destruction of the towers, this facile analogy (is financial rapaciousness, however destructive, really comparable to the slaughter of innocent people?) gets glossed over too quickly on the way to a bet-hedging and dramatically unsatisfying ending. For all the contemporary relevance of the issues it explores, there?s something morally and aesthetically muffled about The Reluctant Fundamentalist: Nair is so busy making sure we never lose sympathy for her handsome and charming protagonist that the film ultimately founders in a tangle of humanist platitudes.
It all began with a scarf. It was a simple gift from an ailing mother to her daughter, the writer Elizabeth Benedict, but over time the scarf became a symbol of their close and complex relationship. Benedict began to wonder whether other women had received similar presents from their own mothers, gifts that summed up their unique mother/daughter dynamics. The result is What My Mother Gave Me, a collection of essays by a wide range of women, including two who joined Benedict in conversation at Politics & Prose: Newsweek columnist and political commentator Eleanor Clift, and NPR special correspondent Susan Stamberg.
?Live at Politics & Prose? is a biweekly program from Slate Radio featuring some of today?s best writers reading from their new work and answering audience questions at Washington D.C.?s famous bookstore. You can subscribe for free through iTunes or with our RSS Feed to catch all upcoming episodes.
You can also scan this QR code on your iPhone and subscribe to the podcast right away:
Apr. 24, 2013 ? Researchers have identified a burst of high-energy radiation known as 'dark lightning" immediately preceding a flash of ordinary lightning. The new finding provides observational evidence that the two phenomena are connected, although the exact nature of the relationship between ordinary bright lightning and the dark variety is still unclear, the scientists said.
"Our results indicate that both these phenomena, dark and bright lightning, are intrinsic processes in the discharge of lightning," said Nikolai ?stgaard, who is a space scientist at the University of Bergen in Norway and led the research team.
He and his collaborators describe their findings in an article recently accepted in Geophysical Research Letters -- a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
Dark lightning is a burst of gamma rays produced during thunderstorms by extremely fast moving electrons colliding with air molecules. Researchers refer to such a burst as a terrestrial gamma ray flash.
Dark lightning is the most energetic radiation produced naturally on Earth, but was unknown before 1991. While scientists now know that dark lightning naturally occurs in thunderstorms, they do not know how frequently these flashes take place or whether visible lightning always accompanies them.
In 2006, two independent satellites -- one equipped with an optical detector and the other carrying a gamma ray detector -- coincidentally flew within 300 kilometers (186 miles) of a Venezuelan storm as a powerful lightning bolt exploded within a thundercloud. Scientists were unaware then that a weak flash of dark lightning had preceded the bright lightning.
But last year, ?stgaard and his colleagues discovered the previously unknown gamma ray burst while reprocessing the satellite data. "We developed a new, improved search algorithm?and identified more than twice as many terrestrial gamma flashes than originally reported," said ?stgaard. He and his team detected the gamma ray flash and a discharge of radio waves immediately preceding the visible lightning.
"This observation was really lucky," ?stgaard said. "It was fortuitous that two independent satellites -- which are traveling at 7 kilometers per second (4.3 miles per second) -- passed right above the same thunderstorm right as the pulse occurred." A radio receiver located 3,000 kilometers (1864 miles) away at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina detected the radio discharge.
The satellites' observations combined with radio-wave data provided the information that ?stgaard and his team used to reconstruct this ethereal electrical event, which lasted 300 milliseconds.
?stgaard and his team suspect that the flash of dark lightning was triggered by the strong electric field that developed immediately before the visible lightning. This strong field created a cascade of electrons moving at close to the speed of light. When those relativistic electrons collided with air molecules, they generated gamma rays and lower energy electrons that were the main electric current carrier that produced the strong radio pulse before the visible lightning.
Dark and bright lightning may be intrinsic processes in the discharge of lightning, ?stgaard said, but he stressed that more research needs to be done to elucidate the link.
The European Space Agency is planning on launching the Atmospheric Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) within the next three years, which will be able to better detect both dark and visible lightning from space, said ?stgaard, who is part of the team that is building the ASIM gamma-ray detector.
Dark lightning has remained a perplexing phenomenon due to scientific limitations and a dearth of measurements, ?stgaard explained.
"Dark lightning might be a natural process of lightning that we were completely unaware of before 1991," he noted. "But it is right above our heads, which makes it very fascinating."
A grant from the European Research Council and the Research Council of Norway funded this research.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Geophysical Union.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
N. ?stgaard, T. Gjesteland, B. E. Carlson, A. B. Collier, S. Cummer, G. Lu, H. J. Christian. Simultaneous observations of optical lightning and terrestrial gamma ray flash from space. Geophysical Research Letters, 2013; DOI: 10.1002/grl.50466
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.
Contact: Tona Kunz tkunz@anl.gov 630-252-5560 DOE/Argonne National Laboratory
LEMONT, Ill. The overuse of nitrogen fertilizers in agriculture can wreak havoc on waterways, health and the environment.
An international team of scientists aims to lessen the reliance on these fertilizers by helping beans and similar plants boost their nitrogen production, even in areas with traditionally poor soil quality.
Researchers from the Center of Plant Genomics and Biotechnology at the Technical University of Madrid (UPM) and the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory report as an advance article April 5 for the Metallomics journal of The Royal Society of Chemistry on how to use X-ray analysis to map a path to increasing the amount of nitrogen that legumes deposit into the soil.
Cultivation of legumes, the plant family that includes peas, beans, alfalfa, soybeans, and peanuts, is one of the main ways farmers add natural nitrogen to agricultural fields. Rotating bean and corn crops to take advantage of the nitrogen beans deposit in the soil has long been a global farming tradition. Legumes use iron in the soil to carry out a complex chemical process called nitrogen fixation, which collects atmospheric nitrogen and converts it into organic forms that help the plant grow. When the plant dies, the excess nitrogen is released back into to the soil to help the next crop.
But often legumes are grown in areas with iron-depleted soil, which limits their nitrogen fixation. That's where research can lend a hand. The Argonne-UPM team has created the world's first model for how iron is transported in the plant's root nodule to trigger nitrogen fixation. This is the first step in modifying the plants to maximize iron use.
"The long-term goal is to help sustainable agriculture practices and further diminish the environmental damage from overuse of nitrogen fertilizers," said Manuel Gonzalez-Guerrero, lead author of the paper from UPM. "This can be done by maximizing the delivery of essential metal oligonutrients to nitrogen-fixing rhizobia."
The research team, which included Lydia Finney and Stefan Vogt from the APS, used high-energy X-rays from the 8-BM and 2-ID-E beamlines of the APS to track the distribution of minute iron amounts in the different developmental regions of rhizobia-containing roots. This is the first high-energy X-ray analysis of plant-microbe interactions.
X-rays, such as those from the APS, provided a high sensitivity to elements and a high spatial resolution not attainable by other means. Full details can be found in the paper Iron distribution through the developmental stages of Medicago truncatula nodules.
In future studies at the APS, Gonzalez-Guerrero hopes to identify and characterize the key biological proteins responsible for iron transportation. That would give researchers targets to manipulate and screen for new legume varieties with increased nitrogen-fixation capabilities and higher nutritional value.
###
The Centre for Plant Biotechnology and Genomics (CBGP) is a joint Technical University of Madrid (UPM) and Instituto de Investigacin y Tecnologa Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA) research centre. It was created in 2005 with a double goal: to carry out the most advanced research aimed at understanding plant function, and to contribute to fulfil the needs of the economic agents within the agriculture, forestry and environment productive sectors that are potential users of this research. CBGP also has an educational role and is a reference centre for training of both scientists and technicians in the fields of plant biotechnology and genomics. Fully operative from 2008 with the opening of the new headquarters, more than 150 researchers and technicians organized into 24 research groups work there. It's located in UPM Montegancedo Campus which recently won recognition of International Campus of Excellence.
The Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory is one of five national synchrotron radiation light sources supported by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science to carry out applied and basic research to understand, predict, and ultimately control matter and energy at the electronic, atomic, and molecular levels, provide the foundations for new energy technologies, and support DOE missions in energy, environment, and national security. To learn more about the Office of Science X-ray user facilities, visit the user facilities directory.
Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation's first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.
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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.
Contact: Tona Kunz tkunz@anl.gov 630-252-5560 DOE/Argonne National Laboratory
LEMONT, Ill. The overuse of nitrogen fertilizers in agriculture can wreak havoc on waterways, health and the environment.
An international team of scientists aims to lessen the reliance on these fertilizers by helping beans and similar plants boost their nitrogen production, even in areas with traditionally poor soil quality.
Researchers from the Center of Plant Genomics and Biotechnology at the Technical University of Madrid (UPM) and the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory report as an advance article April 5 for the Metallomics journal of The Royal Society of Chemistry on how to use X-ray analysis to map a path to increasing the amount of nitrogen that legumes deposit into the soil.
Cultivation of legumes, the plant family that includes peas, beans, alfalfa, soybeans, and peanuts, is one of the main ways farmers add natural nitrogen to agricultural fields. Rotating bean and corn crops to take advantage of the nitrogen beans deposit in the soil has long been a global farming tradition. Legumes use iron in the soil to carry out a complex chemical process called nitrogen fixation, which collects atmospheric nitrogen and converts it into organic forms that help the plant grow. When the plant dies, the excess nitrogen is released back into to the soil to help the next crop.
But often legumes are grown in areas with iron-depleted soil, which limits their nitrogen fixation. That's where research can lend a hand. The Argonne-UPM team has created the world's first model for how iron is transported in the plant's root nodule to trigger nitrogen fixation. This is the first step in modifying the plants to maximize iron use.
"The long-term goal is to help sustainable agriculture practices and further diminish the environmental damage from overuse of nitrogen fertilizers," said Manuel Gonzalez-Guerrero, lead author of the paper from UPM. "This can be done by maximizing the delivery of essential metal oligonutrients to nitrogen-fixing rhizobia."
The research team, which included Lydia Finney and Stefan Vogt from the APS, used high-energy X-rays from the 8-BM and 2-ID-E beamlines of the APS to track the distribution of minute iron amounts in the different developmental regions of rhizobia-containing roots. This is the first high-energy X-ray analysis of plant-microbe interactions.
X-rays, such as those from the APS, provided a high sensitivity to elements and a high spatial resolution not attainable by other means. Full details can be found in the paper Iron distribution through the developmental stages of Medicago truncatula nodules.
In future studies at the APS, Gonzalez-Guerrero hopes to identify and characterize the key biological proteins responsible for iron transportation. That would give researchers targets to manipulate and screen for new legume varieties with increased nitrogen-fixation capabilities and higher nutritional value.
###
The Centre for Plant Biotechnology and Genomics (CBGP) is a joint Technical University of Madrid (UPM) and Instituto de Investigacin y Tecnologa Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA) research centre. It was created in 2005 with a double goal: to carry out the most advanced research aimed at understanding plant function, and to contribute to fulfil the needs of the economic agents within the agriculture, forestry and environment productive sectors that are potential users of this research. CBGP also has an educational role and is a reference centre for training of both scientists and technicians in the fields of plant biotechnology and genomics. Fully operative from 2008 with the opening of the new headquarters, more than 150 researchers and technicians organized into 24 research groups work there. It's located in UPM Montegancedo Campus which recently won recognition of International Campus of Excellence.
The Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory is one of five national synchrotron radiation light sources supported by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science to carry out applied and basic research to understand, predict, and ultimately control matter and energy at the electronic, atomic, and molecular levels, provide the foundations for new energy technologies, and support DOE missions in energy, environment, and national security. To learn more about the Office of Science X-ray user facilities, visit the user facilities directory.
Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation's first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.
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Public release date: 30-Apr-2013
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Riz Ahmed (right) and Kiefer Sutherland in The Reluctant Fundamentalist