Meet The GOP?s Judicial Farm Team, Part I: A Constitutional Right To Fire Women

The following is the first in a series of posts about the annual meeting of the GOP?s most influential legal group.

No organization did more to shape our federal judiciary than the conservative Federalist Society. President George W. Bush raided their membership to identify his nominees to the federal bench. Their annual lawyers? convention this week features 18 federal judges ? plus Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito. In the same year that President Bush headlined their convention, four sitting Supreme Court justices also delivered remarks.

And the Federalists are not simply the breeding ground for new Republican judges, they are also the incubator of the conservative movement?s plans to rewrite the Constitution in the GOP?s image. In 2009 the Federalists published a white paper attacking the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act that was largely ignored by reputable scholars because it?s arguments were terrible. Three years later, the Supreme Court came within a hair of taking health care away from tens of millions of Americans using reasoning similar to the Federalist Society?s paper.

So when a legal argument ? even a bad one ? is featured in a Society publication or at their national convention, the whole country should take heed. The misreading of the Constitution floated by the Federalists today is likely to wind up in an opinion by Justice Scalia tomorrow.

The Federalists picked an inauspicious moment for their annual lawyers? convention this year ? barely a week after President Obama vanquished a man who would have passed out even more black robes to their membership. So there was no lack of bitterness at their meeting this week. When one of the liberal speakers the Federalists invite as sparring partners for their conservative Illuminati suggested that state lawmakers should work with the federal government to provide health care for the least fortunate, an audience member audibly called out ?she?s a fascist.?

The biggest loser in last week?s election was probably the religious right, however, which not only saw their hated president reelected but also witnessed what is likely the beginning of the end of anti-gay discrimination by American governments. So the convention?s panel yesterday morning on ?The Future of Religious Liberty? opened with a barbaric yawp at social conservatives? recent defeat. George Mason law Professor Helen Alvar?, a speaker who literally travels the globe speaking out against the dangers of ?sexual expression by empowered women,? opened the panel by complaining about how President Obama?s reelection campaign convinced the nation that the religious right?s priorities are anti-woman ? ?women were invited to vote as if their ladyparts depended on it, but the last time I checked . . . Christians are not looking to excise those.?

Yet sitting just a few feet away from Alvar? was conservative scholar Michael Uhlmann, who suggested during the panel that current law, which exempts religious employers from parts of federal anti-discrimination law, should go much farther and exempt many for-profit companies as well. After the panel, ThinkProgress spoke with Uhlmann to give him a chance to clarify what he meant by his claim that far more companies should be able to ignore laws banning discrimination in the workplace. His response did far more to justify fears that conservatives desire a war on women than anything President Obama said during the campaign:

MILLHISER: The Catholic Church has a First Amendment right to say ?we will not hire women for certain positions.? If I start an HVAC company, I do not have a right to say I will not hire a woman.

UHLMANN: Maybe not. Maybe, maybe not.

MILLHISER: Do you think I should [have the right to not hire a woman]?

UHLMANN: Presumptively, yeah. Why not? If, in fact, as it appears to be in the case of Hercules or Hobby Lobby, these are in fact rather religiously-devoted people that are running these enterprises.

To be fair to Uhlmann, he was unwilling to say that employers absolutely have a right to refuse to hire women ? only that they ?presumptively? have that right ? but his proposed rule would, at the very least, require women unjustly fired for being women to jump over some very high legal hurdles before they could get their job back.

If the Federalist Society does not want people to think conservatives are anti-women, they should stop promoting speakers and policies that are anti-women. A good start would be disavowing the idea that companies have a constitutional right to fire someone for having a vagina.

Source: http://thinkprogress.org.feedsportal.com/c/34726/f/638931/s/25a9e411/l/0Lthinkprogress0Borg0Cjustice0C20A120C110C160C120A19210Cfederalist0Esociety0Ewomen0C/story01.htm

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Radio Ads Production Tips - Work On the Internet

It is said that stations promotion is the cinema of the brain, because the pictures created by stations come from within. It's likely that stations promotion is able to paint such a long term mental picture, as radio ads rely intensely on the creativity of its viewers. The air stations - cinema metphor jewellery especially true for those of us who engage in stations professional development. When you have 60 seconds to express a message that obliges generally preoccupied viewers to act, and you remove away all graphic helps such as eye capturing print styles or interesting photography, you are left with the interesting task of creating a cinema of the brain that not only entertains, but motivates people to take immediate action. Here are a few stations professional development tips that can help set the stage for a successful stations ad.

This is an extremely important aspect of any radio commercial production process. While radio production costs significantly less than other mediums, if you fail to cast the right voice talent for your radio ads the outcome will likely be a lot of wasted time and potentially a lot of wasted money. Studio time, direction time, and commercial production - these all cost time and money. The best way to avoid wasting time and money in the production process is to hire the right talent for the job. In order to cast the correct voice talent, you must have a strong understanding of the tone of the spot. The tone will vary based on product, target audience, etc. but there are a few qualities to look for across the board.
First, a voice must grab attention - look for voices that stand out in some way; a voice that can break through the clutter. Next, the voice needs to have authenticity. Radio listeners need to believe in the message the voice talent is trying to convey. You'll also want to understand the type of voice that will resonate the most with your target audience. Before going into a radio ads production session, it is extremely important to have the above considerations in line.
An obvious tip is that crisp, clear sound works best on the radio. Delving deeper into that advice, there are a few not-so-obvious ideas to work with. One aspect to consider for making an ad stand out is the question of music background. Often times, a voice talent is drowned out or the audience is distracted by music that is too loud or simply too "busy". In order to ensure your message is received, take time to consider whether you really need music in the spot at all. If the music isn't there for a specific reason, chances are - you do not need it. Another radio commercial production tip to chew on is to make sure the audio quality is excellent on any spot your produce. If you're editing in-house, be sure to save your working files as wav files, so you don't lose quality with each saved draft. Each time an Mp3 file is saved and re-saved, the overall audio quality decreases, so if you're working on radio commercial production yourself, make sure to keep this in mind. If you're working with a studio, ask them which specs they'll be recording at, and in which format you'll receive the files. It would be a huge mistake to put a lot of time, money, and effort into excellent copy and direction, yet end up with a radio ad that doesn't perform well because the audio sounds muffled or unclear.

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Source: http://www.workoninternet.com/business/reviews/miscellaneous/219888-article.html

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Software that keeps an eye on Grandma - O'Reilly Radar

Much of health care ? particularly for the elderly ? is about detecting change, and, as the mobile health movement would have it, computers are very good at that. Given enough sensors, software can model an individual?s behavior patterns and then figure out when things are out of the ordinary ? when gait slows, posture stoops or bedtime moves earlier.

Technology?already exists?that lets users set parameters for households they?re monitoring. Systems are available that send an alert if someone leaves the house in the middle of the night or sleeps past a preset time. Those systems involve context-specific hardware (i.e., a bed-pressure sensor) and conscientious modeling (you have to know what time your grandmother usually wakes up).

The next step would be a generic system. One that, following simple setup, would learn the habits of the people it monitors and then detect the sorts of problems that beset elderly people living alone ? falls, disorientation, and so forth ? as well as more subtle changes in behavior that could signal other health problems.

A group of researchers from Austria and Turkey has developed just such a system, which they presented at the IEEE?s Industrial Electronics Society meeting in Montreal in October.*

Activity as surmised in different rooms by the researchers' machine-learning algorithms

Activity as surmised in different rooms by the researchers' machine-learning algorithms
Activity as surmised in different rooms by the researchers? machine-learning algorithms. Source: ?Activity Recognition Using a Hierarchical Model.?

In their approach, the researchers train a machine-learning algorithm with several days of routine household activity using door and motion sensors distributed through the living space. The sensors aren?t associated with any particular room at the outset: their software algorithmically determines the relative positions of the sensors, then classifies the rooms that they?re in based on activity patterns over the course of the day.

From there, it?s easy to train software with habits ? when bedtime typically occurs, how long an occupant usually spends in the kitchen ? though these are handled generically (you don?t need to label the bedroom as the bedroom in order for the algorithm to detect that something is amiss when the occupant spends too long there).

The result is somewhat more subtle in its understanding of how a household works and when something might be out of order: if movement in the bedroom between 7 and 8 A.M. is usually followed by the opening of the bedroom door, then the same movement pattern without the door opening might suggest that someone has fallen while getting out of bed.

The researchers found that, compared to activity manually labeled by test users, their system was accurate at 81% to 87% depending on the type of algorithm used (SVM, CVS, or Hierarchical).

Networks of devices can bring intelligence out of individual machines and into centralized software that can understand an environment in its totality. That?s a central part of the philosophy of the?industrial Internet, in which networked machines feed data into sophisticated software that can solve complex optimization problems that take large systems into account.

Dietmar Bruckner, a professor at Vienna University of Technology and an author of the paper,?says his software (known by the tortured acronym ATTEND ? AdapTive scenario recogniTion for Emergency and Need Detection) is tailored to the home-monitoring case outlined in his paper, but it could eventually be generalized to other types of building-monitoring applications.

Asked about bringing the technology to market, Bruckner?said his research was being discontinued under funding cutbacks at his university. That?s unfortunate given the technology industry?s interest in using machine intelligence to deliver better health care. Might this be an opportunity for a startup to pick up where Bruckner et al. leave off?

*Available for a fee from?IEEE: C. Tirkaz, D. Bruckner, G. Yin, J. Haase, ?Activity Recognition Using a Hierarchical Model,??Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, pp. 2802-2808, 2012.


This is a post in our?industrial Internet series, an ongoing exploration of big machines and big data. The series is produced as part of a collaboration between O?Reilly and GE.

Source: http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/11/software-that-keeps-an-eye-on-grandma.html

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California Home Prices Go Up For 8th Straight Month

California homes had annual price gains for the eighth month in a row in October, the California Association of Realtors said Thursday. The year-over-year increase was the largest since May 2010.

The median price for an existing, single-family detached home was $341,370, up 23 percent from October 2011. The price dipped slightly from September's $345,000, reflecting a common seasonal drop in the fall.

October marked the fourth consecutive month of double-digit annual price gains, the Realtors' group said.

Sales were up 10 percent from last October and 12.5 percent from September. They have been up six of the past seven months, the association's data shows.

"Sales surged to the highest level since May, with demand continuing to be strong across all parts of the state," said Don Faught, incoming association president. "Sales were particularly robust in the coastal markets, but they also rose significantly in many non-metropolitan areas, as confidence toward the housing market continued to improve.

"Most counties in the Northern California region, for example, posted double-digit year-over-year sales gains in October," he said.

California's housing inventory tightened in October, at a 3.1 month supply, down from 3.7 months in September and 5.5 months in October 2011. The figure represents how long it would take to sell all existing, detached single-family homes in California at the current sales pace. In a normal market, supply is at six to seven months.

"The year-over-year price gain ... has been accelerating since early 2012, as sales of higher-priced homes continue to improve," said Leslie Appleton-Young, the association's vice president and chief economist. "With the supply shortage, especially of lower-priced homes, expected to remain an issue in the near future, we will likely see solid year-over-year price gains through the first quarter of next year, as sales of higher-priced homes grow."

In Orange County, the median price in October was at $558,680, up 15 percent from $484,390 a year ago, but down 0.6 percent from September. Sales were up 36 percent year over year and 16.5 percent from September.

DataQuick, which measures all home sales -- not just existing, detached, single family homes -- reported this week that the median price for an Orange County home was $455,000, up 12 percent from October 2011. County officials recorded 3,148 homes sold, up 40.5 percent from a year ago and the highest number for an October in seven years.

(c)2012 The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, Calif.)

Visit The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, Calif.) at www.ocregister.com

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/16/calif-home-prices-up-for_n_2144932.html

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United Airlines has another large computer outage

(AP) ? Thousands of United Airlines passengers around the globe are stranded at airports and on planes after another computer outage at the world's largest carrier.

This is at least the third major computer outage for the Chicago-based airline since June.

"Does anyone have a Radio Shack computer or abacus to help United get their system fixed?," tweeted Lewis Franck, a motorsports writer who was flying from Newark, N.J. to Miami Thursday to cover the last race of the NASCAR season.

In a subsequent phone call with The Associated Press, Franck added: "Why is there a total system failure on a beautiful day? What happened to the backup and the backup to backup?"

United Continental Holdings Inc. spokesman Charles Hobart said the airline was aware of a computer issue affecting some of its flights and was working to resolve it.

Passengers are being told by pilots and airport agents that computers are down and they don't know when the system will come back. Some fliers have been waiting nearly 2 hours to depart.

Judd Shapiro of Nashua, N.H. said he got to the gate at Logan Airport in Boston and agents told him and other frustrated fliers that planes could land but not take off.

"JetBlue is taking off, American is taking off, but United is on the ground," he said. "I was having a flawless airport experience until I got to the gate."

United has been struggling with technology problems since March, when it switched to a passenger information computer system that was previously used by Continental. United and Continental merged in 2010. That system, called "Shares," has needed extensive reworking since March to make it easier for workers to use.

Michael Silverstein, who works in finance, was supposed to be on a 6:01 a.m. flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco. The computer outage had already caused him to miss one meeting and he was worried about missing another. So he walked off the plane and bought a $195 last-second ticket on a Southwest Airlines flight to Oakland, Calif.

"I'm frustrated because I'm missing a meeting that I thought I had plenty of time for," Silverstein said.

____

Scott Mayerowitz can be reached at http://twitter.com/GlobeTrotScott and Samantha Bomkamp at http://twitter.com/SamWillTravel

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2012-11-15-United%20Airlines-Computer%20Outage/id-88e5c53cefe1431c88b03d2063fc5b3f

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HKSARG's response to United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission 2012 Annual Report on Hong Kong

??HKSARG's response to United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission 2012 Annual Report on Hong Kong

Hong Kong (HKSAR) - In response to media enquiries on the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) 2012 Annual Report on Hong Kong, a Government spokesman today (November 14) said:

"Since the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), the Region has successfully implemented the principle of 'One Country, Two Systems' and continues to enjoy a high degree of autonomy as guaranteed under the Basic Law. It also continues to operate effectively day-to-day. The concern that the report has expressed over the continued viability of the 'One Country, Two Systems' in Hong Kong is unfounded.

"Hong Kong maintains its fundamental strengths and unique characteristics that underpin its success as an international and regional trading and financial centre.

Hong Kong people continue to enjoy the fundamental rights protected under the Basic Law. Hong Kong continues to thrive as a free society, buttressed by the rule of law, our freedoms, human rights and an independent judiciary.

"Our public elections are open and clean, supervised by the Electoral Affairs Commission which is an independent statutory body chaired by a High Court Judge. In respect of complaints related to corrupt conduct at elections, the Independent Commission Against Corruption will investigate and follow up independently.

The 2012 Chief Executive Election and the 2012 Legislative Council Election continued to be conducted in a fair, open and honest manner, and in accordance with the relevant legislation.

"Under the principle of 'One Country, Two Systems', we have autonomy in operating the strategic trade control system, and administer our own control system which separates from that of the Mainland. Hong Kong has always been fully committed to maintaining comprehensive and stringent control on trade in strategic commodities through objective and transparent legislation. Hong Kong implements both import and export licensing, in contrast to most members of international strategic trade control regimes which control only export of strategic commodities.

The transit of more sensitive strategic commodities requires import and export licences. We have been enforcing the controls seriously and vigorously and has been closely co-operating with our trading partners, including the United States, on suspicious shipments.

"HKSAR is fully committed to protecting the freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and maintaining an environment in which a free and active press can operate under minimum regulation. The Hong Kong Police Force recently implemented a series of measures to facilitate media coverage, including the visits of political dignities.

The facilitation measures include setting up press areas in the security zones outside the venues where activities were held, deploying Media Liaison Teams to assist the media at press areas, setting up media hotlines, and briefing the media on the arrangements beforehand.

"The freedom and right of procession and peaceful assembly are enshrined in the Basic Law and the Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance. The operational policy of the Police is to endeavour to strike a balance by facilitating all lawful and peaceful public meetings and processions on one hand and, on the other hand, reducing the impact of such meetings and processions on other members of the public or road users and to ensure public order and public safety. From 2009 to 2011, more than 16 750 public order events were held in Hong Kong and the majority of them were conducted in a peaceful and orderly manner.

"We cannot agree with the USCC's repeated recommendation that the reporting under the United States-Hong Kong Policy Act should be re-enacted.

The implementation of 'One Country, Two Systems' according to the Basic Law is an internal affair of the HKSAR. We hope that foreign governments and legislatures will respect this fact."

Source: HKSAR Government

Published on: 2012-11-14

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Tolerance to malaria by means of iron control

[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 14-Nov-2012
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Contact: Ana Mena
anamena@igc.gulbenkian.pt
351-214-407-959
Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia

New mechanism that confers tolerance to malaria now revealed

Malaria is a life-threatening condition that exposes approximately half of the world's population to the risk of developing a severe and often lethal form of disease. In a study published in the latest issue of the journal Cell Host & Microbe*, Miguel Soares and his team at Instituto Gulbenkian de Cincia (IGC), Portugal, discovered that the development of severe forms of malaria can be prevented by a simple mechanism that controls the accumulation of iron in tissues of the infected host. They found that expression of a gene that neutralizes iron inside cells, named H Ferritin, reduces oxidative stress preventing tissue damage and death of the infected host. This protective mechanism provides a new therapeutic strategy against malaria.

Malaria is the disease caused by infection with the parasite Plasmodium through the bites of infected mosquitoes. Infected individuals activate a series of defence mechanisms that aim at eliminating the parasite. However, this is not totally efficient in terms of avoiding severe forms of the disease and eventually death. There is another defence strategy that provides disease tolerance to malaria, reducing disease severity without targeting the parasite, as recently highlighted by Miguel Soares and collaborators in the journal Science**. The study now published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe* shows that this defence strategy acts via the regulation of iron metabolism in the infected host.

It was known that restricting iron availability to pathogens can reduce their virulence, that is, their capacity to cause disease. However, this defence strategy has a price, namely the accumulation of toxic iron in tissues and organs of the infected host. This can lead to tissue damage, enhancing rather than preventing disease severity. In the experimental work now conducted Raffaella Gozzelino, a senior researcher in Miguel Soares' laboratory, demonstrates that the infected host overcomes this problem by inducing the expression of H-Ferritin, which detoxifies iron. The protective effect of H-Ferritin prevents the development of severe and often lethal forms of malaria in mice.

The researchers also investigated if there is a correlation between the severity of malaria and the expression of ferritin in humans. Together with Bruno Bezerril Andrade (currently at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH, USA), Nivea Luz and Manoel Barral-Netto (at Fundao Oswaldo Cruz and Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil) they analyzed samples from individuals infected with Plasmodium in Rondnia, a state in the north-western part of Brazil. Their results showed that, among the infected individuals, those with higher levels of ferritin presented reduced tissue damage. Together with the experimental data obtained in mice, these observations reveal that ferritin confers protection against malaria, without interfering directly with the parasite causing the disease, that is, that ferritin confers disease tolerance to malaria.

Miguel Soares says: 'Our work suggests that individuals that express lower levels of Ferritin and hence are not so efficient at sequestering toxic iron in their tissues might be at a higher risk of developing severe forms of malaria. Furthermore, our study also supports a theory that explains how protection against malaria, as well as other infectious diseases, can operate without targeting directly the causative agent of disease, namely Plasmodium. Instead, this defence strategy works by protecting cells, tissue and organs in the infected host from dysfunction, thus limiting the severity of disease.'

This study opens the way to new therapeutics that could confer tolerance to malaria.

###

This research was carried out at the IGC in collaboration with researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA, Fundao Oswaldo Cruz (FIOCRUZ), Brazil, Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC), Switzerland, and University of Brescia, Italy. This project was funded by Fundao para a Cincia e a Tecnologia (Portugal), the European Commission's Framework Programme 6, Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos/Fundo Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientfico e Tecnolgico Amaznia (Brazil), Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa e Tecnologia (Brasil), Conselho Nacional de Cincia e Tecnologia (CNPq) (Brazil) and NIH.

*Raffaella Gozzelino, Bruno Bezerril Andrade, Rasmus Larsen, Nivea F. Luz, Liviu Vanoaica, Elsa Seixas, Antnio Coutinho, Slvia Cardoso, Sofia Rebelo, Maura Poli, Manoel Barral-Neto, Deepak Darshan, Lukas C. Khn and Miguel P. Soares. (2012) Metabolic Adaptation to Tissue Iron Overload Confers Tolerance to Malaria. Cell Host & Microbe 12: 693-704.

** Ruslan Medzhitov, David S. Schneider and Miguel P. Soares. (2012) Disease Tolerance as a Defense Strategy. Science 335: 936-941.


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[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 14-Nov-2012
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Ana Mena
anamena@igc.gulbenkian.pt
351-214-407-959
Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia

New mechanism that confers tolerance to malaria now revealed

Malaria is a life-threatening condition that exposes approximately half of the world's population to the risk of developing a severe and often lethal form of disease. In a study published in the latest issue of the journal Cell Host & Microbe*, Miguel Soares and his team at Instituto Gulbenkian de Cincia (IGC), Portugal, discovered that the development of severe forms of malaria can be prevented by a simple mechanism that controls the accumulation of iron in tissues of the infected host. They found that expression of a gene that neutralizes iron inside cells, named H Ferritin, reduces oxidative stress preventing tissue damage and death of the infected host. This protective mechanism provides a new therapeutic strategy against malaria.

Malaria is the disease caused by infection with the parasite Plasmodium through the bites of infected mosquitoes. Infected individuals activate a series of defence mechanisms that aim at eliminating the parasite. However, this is not totally efficient in terms of avoiding severe forms of the disease and eventually death. There is another defence strategy that provides disease tolerance to malaria, reducing disease severity without targeting the parasite, as recently highlighted by Miguel Soares and collaborators in the journal Science**. The study now published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe* shows that this defence strategy acts via the regulation of iron metabolism in the infected host.

It was known that restricting iron availability to pathogens can reduce their virulence, that is, their capacity to cause disease. However, this defence strategy has a price, namely the accumulation of toxic iron in tissues and organs of the infected host. This can lead to tissue damage, enhancing rather than preventing disease severity. In the experimental work now conducted Raffaella Gozzelino, a senior researcher in Miguel Soares' laboratory, demonstrates that the infected host overcomes this problem by inducing the expression of H-Ferritin, which detoxifies iron. The protective effect of H-Ferritin prevents the development of severe and often lethal forms of malaria in mice.

The researchers also investigated if there is a correlation between the severity of malaria and the expression of ferritin in humans. Together with Bruno Bezerril Andrade (currently at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH, USA), Nivea Luz and Manoel Barral-Netto (at Fundao Oswaldo Cruz and Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil) they analyzed samples from individuals infected with Plasmodium in Rondnia, a state in the north-western part of Brazil. Their results showed that, among the infected individuals, those with higher levels of ferritin presented reduced tissue damage. Together with the experimental data obtained in mice, these observations reveal that ferritin confers protection against malaria, without interfering directly with the parasite causing the disease, that is, that ferritin confers disease tolerance to malaria.

Miguel Soares says: 'Our work suggests that individuals that express lower levels of Ferritin and hence are not so efficient at sequestering toxic iron in their tissues might be at a higher risk of developing severe forms of malaria. Furthermore, our study also supports a theory that explains how protection against malaria, as well as other infectious diseases, can operate without targeting directly the causative agent of disease, namely Plasmodium. Instead, this defence strategy works by protecting cells, tissue and organs in the infected host from dysfunction, thus limiting the severity of disease.'

This study opens the way to new therapeutics that could confer tolerance to malaria.

###

This research was carried out at the IGC in collaboration with researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA, Fundao Oswaldo Cruz (FIOCRUZ), Brazil, Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC), Switzerland, and University of Brescia, Italy. This project was funded by Fundao para a Cincia e a Tecnologia (Portugal), the European Commission's Framework Programme 6, Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos/Fundo Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientfico e Tecnolgico Amaznia (Brazil), Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa e Tecnologia (Brasil), Conselho Nacional de Cincia e Tecnologia (CNPq) (Brazil) and NIH.

*Raffaella Gozzelino, Bruno Bezerril Andrade, Rasmus Larsen, Nivea F. Luz, Liviu Vanoaica, Elsa Seixas, Antnio Coutinho, Slvia Cardoso, Sofia Rebelo, Maura Poli, Manoel Barral-Neto, Deepak Darshan, Lukas C. Khn and Miguel P. Soares. (2012) Metabolic Adaptation to Tissue Iron Overload Confers Tolerance to Malaria. Cell Host & Microbe 12: 693-704.

** Ruslan Medzhitov, David S. Schneider and Miguel P. Soares. (2012) Disease Tolerance as a Defense Strategy. Science 335: 936-941.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share 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/2012-11/igdc-ttm111412.php

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Obama pressing business and labor on fiscal cliff

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, center, accompanied by Justin Ruben, executive director of MoveOn.org, left, and Mary Kay Henry, International President of the Service Employees International Union, speaks to reporters outside the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2012, after a meeting between business leaders and President Barack Obama to discuss the economy and deficit. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, center, accompanied by Justin Ruben, executive director of MoveOn.org, left, and Mary Kay Henry, International President of the Service Employees International Union, speaks to reporters outside the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2012, after a meeting between business leaders and President Barack Obama to discuss the economy and deficit. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

(AP) ? President Barack Obama is lobbying business and labor groups to support $1.6 trillion in new revenue to avoid an impending fiscal cliff, telling the two sides he remains committed to requiring the wealthy to pay more in taxes.

Obama was meeting Wednesday with about a dozen business executives as the White House and Congress face a series of expiring tax cuts and across-the-board spending cuts scheduled to take effect because lawmakers failed to reach a deal to reduce the federal debt. Business groups want an agreement before the end of the year, warning that the uncertainty could roil the financial markets and harm the economic recovery.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said the president would bring to the table a proposal for $1.6 trillion in new taxes on business and the wealthy when he begins discussions with congressional Republicans, a figure that Obama outlined in his most recent budget plan. The targeted revenue is twice the amount Obama discussed with Republican leaders during debt talks during the summer of 2011.

Carney said the figure, combined with $1.1 trillion in spending cuts already signed into law, would reduce deficits by $4 trillion.

The White House meeting with CEOs follows a gathering of labor leaders and liberal groups Tuesday in which participants said Obama remained clear that he would push for his campaign pledge of making the wealthiest Americans pay more in taxes.

"We're prepared to stand up to make sure there is shared sacrifice here, so the rich actually start paying their fair share and the middle class don't get soaked for that," said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

Obama was expected to speak in greater detail on the year-ending lame-duck session of Congress at a White House news conference Wednesday. Failure to act would lead to spending cuts and higher taxes on all Americans, with middle-income families paying an average of about $2,000 more next year, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, part of the Democratic leadership team, said Wednesday that many "many Republicans believe now is the time to sit down and talk more revenue." Durbin said the number of GOP lawmakers in the Senate willing to work toward accommodation now totals 20.

But Durbin also said "there is a great distance" between Republicans in the House and Senate, "and basically it comes down to the question of whether Speaker (John) Boehner is willing to look for a bipartisan solution."

Durbin told MSNBC he thinks lawmakers should "use this fiscal cliff" to resolve a problem that has plagued Congress for four years.

The president pledged to raise taxes on the rich during his first term but backed off his stance in late 2010 after Republicans seized control of the House in the midterm election. During his meeting with labor leaders, Obama said he was not going to bend on letting tax cuts expire for top wage earners, according to a participant in the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private session. The president said the tax issue was clear during the election and said he had extended those enacted during the George W. Bush administration once and would not do so again, the participant said.

The CEOs have urged Congress to extend the Bush-era tax cuts until a tax overhaul can be reached and prevent the spending cuts from taking place. The executives say the uncertainty over the fiscal cliff is hurting the nation's business climate and preventing hiring.

Obama will meet with several CEOs, including the heads of Aetna, Honeywell, Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble and Ford.

The participants include members of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, a group founded by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles that has pushed for a long-term plan to fix the nation's debt and deficits.

Simpson, a former Wyoming senator, and Bowles, a former White House chief of staff, served as co-chairs of Obama's bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which proposed $3 in spending cuts for every $1 in additional revenues.

Among the CEOs attending the meeting are General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, who chairs Obama's jobs council, and American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault and Xerox CEO Ursula Burns, who are members of the council.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-11-14-Fiscal%20Cliff/id-7821c63a44b4470ab128207da48d8966

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