R2D2 greets the crowd at this year's WonderconANAHEIM, CA - The power of the Force may be elusive outside the fictional Star Wars universe but fans of R2D2 can take home their very own astromech droid if they have the time and money to build it.
Hundreds of potential droid crafters waited in line to hear from a panel belonging to the R2D2 Builders Club, a group of hobbyists who have been assembling their own functional Star Wars robots out of aluminum, plastic and even wood since 1999.
But how much time does it take to build a bleeping and whirling R2 lookalike?
"Thats the magic question," said Victor Franco, who has been building his own droids for over a decade. "It's the one you don't want your spouse to know the answer to."
And the answer varies, depending on just how detailed and capable you want your droid to be, with the final price ranging from as little as $500 up to $10,000.
"The average cost is a little over $5,000," Franco said. "A single small aluminum part can cost $100. It's not for the faint of heart."
Not surprisingly, a large variety of parts and electronics go into replicating one of the droids, with potential parts including plywood, aluminum, resin, styrene, transmitters and receivers speed controller servo motor and circuits.
"There's no one way to make an R2 unit," said William Miyamoto. "The plus side of using plastic is you pretty much can just use an cacti knife and glue."
At the other end of the spectrum, a finished R2 unit made from aluminum can weight more than 200 pounds and forces the creators to decide if they want their droid to be remote controlled or less mobile.
"I did run over a kid once," deadpanned Chris Romines.
But the four R2 builders said it is a project worth both their time and money. And when a droid is complete, it is almost immediately put into service, appearing at conventions and events for children. The droids have even starred in television commercials for companies like Verizon and ESPN and cruised across the red carpet at movie premiers.
When a pair of the hand crafted R2 units took to the stage on Friday at Wondercon, They were greeted with the type of "oohs and ahhs" normally reserved for cute animal videos or small children performing adorable tricks.
"I was poor when I was a kid so I took my toys apart and put them back together," fellow builder Mike Senna said of how he first became inspired to join the R2 club.
The R2-D2 Builders Club had humble beginnings when creator Dave Everett first launched the club as a Yahoo group, posting the blueprints showing how other aspiring builders could follow his lead.
Today, the club has thousands of members around the world and brought dozens of their robots to the most recent, annual Star Wars Celebration event.
" At the StarWars Celebration we even have droid races, including a mouse droid race," said Michael McMaster. "But when I started I was electronics illiterate."
Even as Democratic lawmakers rush to announce their support for gay marriage, a look back at the congressional debate over the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 shows they haven't always championed the rights of same sex couples.
In historic gay marriage arguments before the Supreme Court this week, justices noted comments made by congressional Republicans about DOMA, which bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage. Justice Elena Kagan quoted the House report on the law at the time, which said its purpose was to express "moral disapproval" of homosexuality. She suggested that if lawmakers were "infected" by animus toward an unpopular minority group when they passed the law, it could put DOMA on constitutionally shaky ground.
McClatchy has collected some of the more virulent comments made at the time by Republican lawmakers. But Democrats weren't exactly gay marriage champions at the time either, and while they avoided the rhetoric espoused by their conservative colleagues, few took to the floor to argue that the bill was discriminatory.
Then-Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., spoke against DOMA, saying it was unnecessary and an intrusion into states' rights to define marriage. But he emphasized his own opposition to gay marriage before expressing reservations about the bill.
"I am not for same-sex marriage. I have said that publicly. I would not vote for same-sex marriage," Kerry, now U.S. secretary of state, said.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California made a similar point. "I personally believe that the legal institution of marriage is the union between a man and a woman," she said. "But, as a matter of public policy, I oppose this legislation."
Republicans were definitely more forceful in their opposition.
Then-Rep. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma said he and his constituents believe "homosexuality is immoral, that it is based on perversion, that it is based on lust." Coburn was elected to the Senate in 2004.
"Homosexuality has been discouraged in all cultures because it is inherently wrong and harmful to individuals, families and societies," then-Rep. David Funderburk of North Carolina said.
A few lawmakers suggested American civilization would collapse if it accepted homosexuality.
DOMA passed Congress with large, bipartisan support: 85 votes in the Senate and 342 votes in the House. Democratic President Bill Clinton, facing re-election, signed it into law in the middle of the night. (Earlier this month, he disavowed the legislation.) At the time, the vast majority of Americans opposed same-sex marriage.
Seven years later, when Republicans launched an effort to amend the U.S. Constitution to exclude same-sex couples from the definition of marriage, Democrats argued against the move while stressing their belief that marriage should be reserved for heterosexual couples.
In the video from Slate's Dave Weigel, above, Democrats Hillary Clinton and Dick Durbin, who both recently endorsed same-sex marriage, said they were opposed to taking a drastic step of amending the Constitution. But they both elaborately declared their opposition to same-sex marriage, with Clinton praising "the fundamental bedrock principle that it exists between a man and woman going back into the mists of history."
Democrats' position has changed extraordinarily fast since then, with President Barack Obama announcing his own support for gay marriage during the 2012 election campaign and calling for equality for "our gay brothers and sisters" in his inaugural address. Only 10 of the 55 Democratic senators now do not back gay marriage.
Republican lawmakers have been far slower to embrace gay marriage. Rob Portman of Ohio became the first sitting Republican senator to support gay marriage earlier this month, when he revealed in an op-ed that his position changed after his son came out as gay. Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski may be next: She said earlier this week that her position is "evolving."
The shift has dovetailed with a dramatic reversal of public opinion on the issue. Recent polls show a majority of Americans support same-sex marriage, compared with less than 30 percent in 1996.
Mar. 28, 2013 ? In some of the first results from a federally funded initiative to find new ways of capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from coal-fired power plants, Rice University scientists have found that CO2 can be removed more economically using "waste" heat -- low-grade steam that cannot be used to produce electricity. The find is significant because capturing CO2 with conventional technology is an energy-intensive process that can consume as much as one-quarter of the high-pressure steam that plants use to produce electricity.
"This is just the first step in our effort to better engineer a process for capturing CO2 from flue gas at power plants," said George Hirasaki, the lead researcher of Rice's CO2-capture research team. The researchers hope to reduce the costs of CO2 capture by creating an integrated reaction column that uses waste heat, engineered materials and optimized components. Hirasaki's team was one of 16 chosen by the Department of Energy (DOE) in 2011 to develop innovative techniques for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
The team's first findings appear in two new studies that are available online this month in the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control.
Power plants fired by coal and natural gas account for about half of the CO2 that humans add to the atmosphere each year; these power plants are prime candidates for new technology that captures CO2 before it goes up in smoke. Each of these plants makes electricity by boiling water to create steam to run electric turbines. But not all steam is equal. Some steam has insufficient energy to run a turbine. This is often referred to as "waste" heat, although the term is something of misnomer because low-grade steam is often put to various uses around a plant. Rice's new study found that in cases where waste is available, it may be used to capture CO2.
Hirasaki, Rice's A.J. Hartsook Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, said employing waste heat is just one example of a number of ways that Rice's team is looking to improve upon a tried-and-true technology for CO2 capture. That technology -- a two-phase chemical process -- has been used for decades to remove naturally occurring CO2 from natural gas.
In the first phase of the process, gas is piped upward through a vertical column while an ammonia-like liquid called amine flows down through the column. The liquid amine captures CO2 and drains away while the purified natural gas bubbles out the top of the column. In the second phase of the process, the CO2-laden amine is recycled with heat, which drives off the CO2.
"The CO2 that comes out of the ground with natural gas is under high pressure, while the CO2 at power plants is not," Hirasaki said. "There's also a greater volume of CO2 per unit mass at a power plant than at a natural gas well. For these reasons and others, the amine process must be re-engineered if it is to be cost-effective for CO2 capture at power plants."
A major challenge in adapting two-phase amine processing for power plants is the amount of heat required to recycle the amine in the second phase of the process. Using existing amine processing technology at power plants is impractical, because amine recycling would require as much as one-quarter of the high-pressure steam that could otherwise be used to drive turbines and make electricity, Hirasaki said. This phenomenon is known as "parasitic" power loss, and it will drive up the cost of electricity by lowering the amount of electricity a plant can produce for sale.
"It has been estimated that the use of current technology for CO2 capture would drive up the cost of electricity by 70 to 100 percent," said Rice graduate student Sumedh Warudkar, a co-investigator on the Rice University team. "In our study, we examined whether it would be possible to improve on that by using lower-value steam to run the amine recyclers."
To test this idea, Warudkar used a software package that's commonly used to model industrial chemical processes. One variable he tested was tailoring the chemical formulation of the liquid amine solution. Other variables included the type of steam used, and the size and pressure of the reactor -- the chamber where the flue gas flows past the amine solution.
"There's a great deal of optimization that needs to take place," Warudkar said. "The question is, What is the optimal amine formula and the optimal reactor design and pressure for removing CO2 with low-value steam? There isn't one correct answer. For example, we have developed a process in which the gas absorption and solvent heating occurs in a single vessel instead of two separate ones, as is currently practiced. We think combining the processes might bring us some savings. But there are always trade-offs. The Department of Energy wants us to investigate how our process compares with what's already on the market, and these first two studies are the first step because they will help us identify an optimal set of operating conditions for our process."
The results are encouraging. The research suggests that two elements of Rice's design -- optimized amine formulation and the use of waste heat -- can reduce parasitic power loss from about 35 percent to around 25 percent.
Additional research is under way to develop and test novel materials and a single integrated column that the team hopes can further economize CO2 capture by increasing efficiency and reducing parasitic power loss.
Study co-authors include Michael Wong, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and of chemistry, and Ken Cox, professor in the practice of chemical and biomolecular engineering. The research is supported by the Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Rice University. The original article was written by Jade Boyd.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal References:
Sumedh S. Warudkar, Kenneth R. Cox, Michael S. Wong, George J. Hirasaki. Influence of stripper operating parameters on the performance of amine absorption systems for post-combustion carbon capture: Part I. High pressure strippers. International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control, 2013; DOI: 10.1016/j.ijggc.2013.01.050
Sumedh S. Warudkar, Kenneth R. Cox, Michael S. Wong, George J. Hirasaki. Influence of stripper operating parameters on the performance of amine absorption systems for post-combustion carbon capture: Part II. Vacuum strippers. International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control, 2013; DOI: 10.1016/j.ijggc.2013.01.049
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.
ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) ? Trey Burke never doubted he could lead Michigan to its deepest NCAA tournament run since the Fab Five era.
Not after a scoreless first half. Not when the Wolverines trailed top-seeded Kansas by 14 with less than 7 minutes left ? or by 5 with 21 seconds left.
And definitely not when he got the ball in his hands and the seconds draining away.
Burke scored all 23 of his points in the second half and overtime, including a long, tying 3-pointer in the final moments of regulation as Michigan rallied to beat Kansas 87-85 in the South Regional semifinals Friday night.
"We never lost faith out there," Burke said. "We stuck it out together."
Ben McLemore had 20 points to lead the Jayhawks (31-6), who looked to be on their way to a third straight regional final before Michigan's improbable rally. Instead, they became the third No. 1 seed to fall in this tournament, joining Gonzaga and Indiana.
"Well, this will certainly go down as one of the toughest games that obviously we've been a part of and I've been a part of," Kansas coach Bill Self said. "But props to Michigan for making all the plays late."
That's for sure.
The fourth-seeded Wolverines (29-7) were down five when Tim Hardaway Jr. missed a 3-pointer with 35 seconds left, but Glenn Robinson III won a scramble for the ball and hit a reverse layup to force Kansas to win the game at the free throw line.
The Jayhawks couldn't do it. Burke's tying shot ? he pulled up from well beyond the arc just left of the key ? came with 4.2 seconds left after Elijah Johnson missed a free throw and Michigan got the rebound.
Moments earlier, with 21 seconds remaining, Johnson had hit two from the line to keep the Kansas lead at five. Burke had scored on a layup to get Michigan back to within three.
"We never had the mindset that we were going to lose the game," Burke said. "When we were down 14, we knew anything could still happen. It's March, anything can happen."
Michigan went to back-to-back championship games a generation ago with the Fab Five led by Chris Webber, Juwan Howard and Jalen Rose. But the folks in Ann Arbor will be talking for years about the shot by Burke under the huge video board Cowboys Stadium, just down the road from where Howard and Rose played their last game together with Ray Jackson and Jimmy King in a regional final loss to Arkansas in 1994.
The Wolverines will play Florida in the regional final Sunday. The third-seeded Gators beat 15th-seeded Florida Gulf Coast 62-50.
"Just to be able to get this program back to the Elite Eight, it feels good," Burke said. "But we want to go further."
The lead changed hands five times in overtime ? the first OT game of the tournament ? the last when Mitch McGary, who led Michigan with 25 points and 14 rebounds, hit a short jumper with Johnson in his face to put Michigan ahead 83-82.
The Jayhawks got a stop and had about 9 seconds to tie or win, but a jumbled possession ended with Naadir Tharpe missing a running jumper at the buzzer.
"We played like we were trying to hold onto something instead of just continuing to play," Johnson said.
Burke had eight points in the closing 14-4 run that tied the game, then gave Michigan its first lead since early with another long 3-pointer to make it 79-78 early in overtime. He hit a jumper on the next possession as well. After failing to score in the first 20 minutes, Burke ended his drought by scoring eight straight points early in the second half to momentarily cut the deficit to two.
"In the second half, coach told me to be more aggressive so I looked for my shot more," he said.
But Kansas restored a 10-point lead built on controlling the paint, this time with a 3-pointer and a tomahawk dunk on a breakaway by McLemore and a three-point play from Johnson.
Johnson, who picked up three fouls in just three minutes of playing time in the first half, gave Kansas its biggest lead at 68-54 with a 3-pointer from the corner with just under 7 minutes left.
Travis Releford had 16 points for the Jayhawks, while Jeff Withey had 12 points and eight rebounds.
McLemore didn't score again after going to the bench with his fourth foul with 8 minutes remaining.
"We had chance to seal the game, but we made some bonehead plays late," Releford said.
Kansas pushed out to a 10-point lead early by dominating around the basket. McLemore's first basket was the first outside the paint as the Jayhawks scored 34 of their 40 first-half points from inside while shooting 69 percent.
Withey put Kansas ahead 29-19 with a turnaround shot that had McGary shrugging at a teammate and saying, "I'm trying."
McGary wasn't having nearly as much trouble on the offensive end, leading the Wolverines with 11 points and five rebounds in the first half. He picked up where he left off in the third round against Virginia Commonwealth, when he had season highs of 21 points and 14 rebounds.
Michigan pulled within 40-34 at the half when Nik Stauskas hit a 3-pointer and had chance for a four-point play when McLemore bumped him on the shot. But he missed the free throw.
No matter. In the end, Burke was Fab-u-lous and the Wolverines are one win away from the Final Four.
TANJUNG BENOA, Indonesia (Reuters) - CT Corp, one of Indonesia's emerging conglomerates, has proposed an all-cash deal for a controlling stake in media firm PT Visi Media Asia, valued at up to $1.8 billion, to strengthen its position in the media business in Southeast Asia's biggest economy.
The founder and chairman of CT Corp, Chairul Tanjung, told Reuters that his firm wanted to purchase Visi Media, a unit of Indonesia's powerful Bakrie family, without any partners.
"We are one of the preferred bidders. Our proposal is we want to buy it all ... my pocket is still deep," the 51-year-old billionaire said in his hotel room on the resort island of Bali, shortly after meeting with the president and cabinet ministers in his role as head of the president's economic advisory body.
"(It is) only us that can pay cash one hundred percent ... but the deal is not done yet."
CT Corp is already a major player in the Indonesian media business and controls two local TV stations. Tanjung said he would take out a new loan to buy the Visi Media stake. He declined to say how much the company would borrow for the deal.
This is the first time any bidder has publicly announced that it was offering to buy the company.
Indonesia's politically influential Bakrie family has been in talks to sell its majority interest in Visi Media to help finance a plan to buy back coal assets from London-listed Bumi Plc , sources with direct knowledge have said.
The Bakries are offering around a 51 percent stake in Visi Media, which the family controls via its vehicle CMA Indonesia. The process has been going on for the past three months with local bidders, including CT Corp and MNC Group, the sources said.
The Bakries had been looking for a valuation of $1.2 billion to $2 billion for the unit, although Visi Media's current market capitalization is only around $800 million, the sources said.
Visi Media has two national TV stations and a news website.
The sources said the stake would be worth up to $1.8 billion.
Tanjung, who trained as a dentist before becoming a businessman, also plans to build a $3 billion theme park on Indonesia's Java island and make it one of the biggest theme parks in Southeast Asia when it opens in 2016.
"We will build a city, not only a theme park, as I want to make many Indonesians feel happy," Tanjung said, adding that the land for the park would be around 200 hectares and the construction would start by the end of this year.
The group, which was founded by Tanjung, currently operates two theme parks and has plans to add another 20 theme parks across Indonesia over the next few years.
Tanjung is Indonesia's fifth-richest man with a net worth around $3.4 billion as of march, according to Forbes.
(Editing by Jonathan Thatcher and Chris Gallagher)
Mar. 27, 2013 ? A new look at conditions after a Manhattan-sized asteroid slammed into a region of Mexico in the dinosaur days indicates the event could have triggered a global firestorm that would have burned every twig, bush and tree on Earth and led to the extinction of 80 percent of all Earth's species, says a new University of Colorado Boulder study.
Led by Douglas Robertson of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES, the team used models that show the collision would have vaporized huge amounts of rock that were then blown high above Earth's atmosphere. The re-entering ejected material would have heated the upper atmosphere enough to glow red for several hours at roughly 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit -- about the temperature of an oven broiler element -- killing every living thing not sheltered underground or underwater.
The CU-led team developed an alternate explanation for the fact that there is little charcoal found at the Cretaceous-Paleogene, or K-Pg, boundary some 66 million years ago when the asteroid struck Earth and the cataclysmic fires are believed to have occurred. The CU researchers found that similar studies had corrected their data for changing sedimentation rates. When the charcoal data were corrected for the same changing sedimentation rates they show an excess of charcoal, not a deficiency, Robertson said.
"Our data show the conditions back then are consistent with widespread fires across the planet," said Robertson, a research scientist at CIRES, which is a joint institute of CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "Those conditions resulted in 100 percent extinction rates for about 80 percent of all life on Earth."
A paper on the subject was published online this week in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Biogeosciences, a publication of the American Geophysical Union. Co-authors on the study include CIRES Interim Director William Lewis, CU Professor Brian Toon of the atmospheric and oceanic sciences department and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and Peter Sheehan of the Milwaukee Public Museum in Wisconsin.
Geological evidence indicates the asteroid collided with Earth about 66 million years ago and carved the Chicxulub crater in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula that is more than 110 miles in diameter. In 2010, experts from 33 institutions worldwide issued a report that concluded the impact at Chicxulub triggered mass extinctions, including dinosaurs, at the K-Pg boundary.
The conditions leading to the global firestorm were set up by the vaporization of rock following the impact, which condensed into sand-grain-sized spheres as they rose above the atmosphere. As the ejected material re-entered Earth's atmosphere, it dumped enough heat in the upper atmosphere to trigger an infrared "heat pulse" so hot it caused the sky to glow red for several hours, even though part of the radiation was blocked from Earth by the falling material, he said.
But there was enough infrared radiation from the upper atmosphere that reached Earth's surface to create searing conditions that likely ignited tinder, including dead leaves and pine needles. If a person was on Earth back then, it would have been like sitting in a broiler oven for two or three hours, said Robertson.
The amount of energy created by the infrared radiation the day of the asteroid-Earth collision is mind-boggling, said Robertson. "It's likely that the total amount of infrared heat was equal to a 1 megaton bomb exploding every four miles over the entire Earth."
A 1-megaton hydrogen bomb has about the same explosive power as 80 Hiroshima-type nuclear bombs, he said. The asteroid-Earth collision is thought to have generated about 100 million megatons of energy, said Robertson.
Some researchers have suggested that a layer of soot found at the K-Pg boundary layer roughly 66 million years ago was created by the impact itself. But Robertson and his colleagues calculated that the amount of soot was too high to have been created during the massive impact event and was consistent with the amount that would be expected from global fires.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Colorado at Boulder.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Douglas S. Robertson, William M. Lewis, Peter M. Sheehan, Owen B. Toon. K-Pg extinction: Reevaluation of the heat-fire hypothesis. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 2013; DOI: 10.1002/jgrg.20018
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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
A London and Geneva-based anti-spam group is claiming that for the last week it has been sustaining an attack from a?Dutch Internet hosting company. The attack has been called the largest ?in the history of the Internet.?
BBC reported the spam-filtering non-profit Spamhaus added Cyberbunker, a company that hosts everything except child pornography and terrorism-related content, to is blocklist. Spamhaus now alleges that Cyberbunker with Russian ?criminal gangs? is issuing a consistent distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. The attack was launched, Cyberbunker?s spokesman?Sven Olaf Kamphuis said, because Spamhaus was wrong in using its spam-blocking powers to police content on the Web.
?Nobody ever deputized Spamhaus to determine what goes and does not go on the Internet,? Kamphuis said, according to the New York Times. ?They worked themselves into that position by pretending to fight spam.?
The fight between the two goes back to 2011, when Spamhaus accused Cyberbunker of hosting spammers and requested its Internet Service Provider, A2B, take it down. A2B didn?t completely comply and Spamhaus listed A2B on its blacklist. A2B filed police reports in 2011 accusing Spamhaus of blackmail. Now the issue is coming to a head further since Cyberbunker was added to Spamhaus? blacklist in March 2013.
A DDoS attack is one where a large influx of traffic is sent to overload servers, denying service to actual visitors to the site. Attacks like this are frequently what those in the hactivist collective Anonymous have used to down websites temporarily in the past.
?If you imagine it as a motorway, attacks try and put enough traffic on there to clog up the on and off ramps,? BBC reported University of Surrey professor Alan Woodward saying as he described this type of attack. ?With this attack, there?s so much traffic it?s clogging up the motorway itself.?
Spamhaus Chief Executive?Steve Linford said the attack is directed at 80 Domain Name System servers and that it would be strong enough to take down a government?s Internet infrastructure, BBC reported. The New York Times explains further how the attack on DNS systems is more forceful, compared to a DDoS attack on just a website:
A typical denial-of-service attack tends to affect only a small number of networks. But in the case of a Domain Name System flood attack, data packets are aimed at the victim from servers all over the world. Such attacks cannot easily be stopped, experts say, because those servers cannot be shut off without halting the Internet.
?The No. 1 rule of the Internet is that it has to work,? said Dan Kaminsky, a security researcher who years ago pointed out the inherent vulnerabilities of the Domain Name System. ?You can?t stop a DNS flood by shutting down those servers because those machines have to be open and public by default. The only way to deal with this problem is to find the people doing it and arrest them.?
Still, although service has been slowed because of the attack ? streaming services like Netflix have been impacted, as could email and banking services ? Spamhaus said they have not been completely knocked off thanks to the work of the non-profit?s engineers.
BBC went on to report Linford saying sites like Google, which use Spamhaus to filter malicious content, have devoted resources to help take on all the attack?s traffic. CloudFlare was enlisted to help mitigate the attacks as well.
With some Internet users getting stuck in the middle of the feud with slower service, who is in the right here ? Spamhaus or Cyberbunker? The New York Times reported?Patrick Gilmore with digital content provider?Akamai Networks saying Cyberbunker is mad because ?they got caught.?
?They think they should be allowed to spam,? Gilmore continued, confirming it to be the ?largest publicly announced DDoS attack in the history of the Internet.?
The attack is so large that innocent bystanders online have been affected as well.
The majority of job descriptions are a waste of space. Potential candidates read job titles, look at the renumeration, the location, and then many throw their resume out hoping it will stick. Most simply do not read all that text between the job title and the apply button. So is it time to rethink the job description? What is wrong with the job description? Why is it ignored by so many??
The job description is too long. Internet consumption has trained people to read snippets of text. At the same time the Internet has made is cost effective for job descriptions to grow. These two trends run counter to each other, resulting in a negative impact.
The first two or three paragraphs of almost all job descriptions feel the same. This rapidly becomes noise to the job seeker, who soon learns to ignore them. Ask yourself: what actual value do your job description offer? Are the same buzzwords over used? Does the job description differentiate your role from all the other roles the job seeker is reading? Or is the entire copy noise?
The job description frequently is at odds to reality. The truth is out there ? on Glassdoor and social media ? so job descriptions should stick to reality.
Instead of improving the text, it is time to re-invent the job description. It is out of date, does not work, and fails to make use of todays technology.
There have been some great thinking around job descriptions, but how can we push the boundaries further? If a picture speaks a thousand words, then a video (which is 25 pictures a second) must speak millions of words. Visual job descriptions could be a big hit for candidates on smartphones and tablets.
Stats from ComScore show that 37% of all minutes spent online are spent via smartphone or tablet. Video consumption via mobile is through the roof. Mobile is a personal and very private viewing device which is ideal for candidates looking at jobs. But reading long job descriptions is not mobile friendly.
Could mobile devices and rich media be the perfect marriage for delivering engaging information on vacancies? Can companies deliver authentic content that actually delivers value? Or will the same obsession for filling job descriptions with meaningless noise be repeated in a different medium?
Smartphone and tablet innovation has reinvented how we consume media. For example, using FlipBoard I get a visual and high-level summary of news stories and it?s a pleasant experience. If I want to go deep into a story I can, but usually I don?t. Visual job descriptions coupled with key data points wrapped in an easy to browse interface would revolutionize today?s job seeker experience.
The aim of ?job description 2.0? should be to engage the candidate and have key information jump out of the screen. It must be easy to consume and clear to understand. Today the purpose of the job description is a mixture of providing information for the candidate to self filter and selling the company or role. More often than not the job description fails to deliver its purpose.
In the world of retail we have comparison websites helping consumers choose the right TV or automobile. Job description 2.0 can enable such comparisons for the job seeker. The ?meta data? for a job ad should make it easy for candidates to compare different job opportunities. Job description 2.0 should make it easier for the job seeker to compare against their ideal job.
Imagine if all job ads included such meta data, so candidates could easily select and compare jobs from companies of a certain type, or companies with certain fiscal performance, or roles needing certain skills, or roles with travel, or roles involving lots of meetings, or roles with various industry challenges, etc. Couple the power of such a ?meta job description? with a visually rich presentation, and honest video or photos of your new desk, and now it has meaning.
So with the vision painted, what?s the first step on the journey to a job-description-free world?
I discussed this topic with Jim Stroud, and we prepared a fun YouTube video to share the message.
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This article is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended to offer specific legal advice. You should consult your legal counsel regarding any threatened or pending litigation.
Never one to let herself go unnoticed, Kim Kardashian made a point of changing her outfit not once, not twice, but three times in the course of just one day in NYC on March 26.
Once buried and left for dead, the electric vehicle (EV) has been gaining ground at a slow, yet steady pace in the automotive market. With a growing middle class globally, and climate change concerns is helping to revitalize EVs in recent years.
Now Ford?s new Chief Operating officer?suggests EVs could make up one-quarter of their sales by the end of this decade.
Image Credit: C-Max Energi via WikiCommons (Public Domain)
In an interview with Green Autoblog last week, Ford Chief Operating officer Mark Fields said Ford?s fleet of electric vehicles (battery, electric, plug-in and hybrids) could make up 10-25% of their sales by 2020.
Fields also said to help reach that goal will involve ?electrifying?platforms? as compared to electrifying single vehicles.
?And our manufacturing strategy will allow us to flex. For example, our Wayne [MI] Plant will produce the regular gas-powered Focus, the electric Focus and the C-Max hybrid,? he said.
With fuel CAFE standards coming into focus, Fields believes the companies base of electric vehicles will help reach CAFE targets. However, he also suggests firm consumer interest is vital in?reaching fuel economy targets.
Currently, Ford has the EV Ford Focus, C-Max hybrid, and C-Max Energi on the green car/EV market. However, they are now behind other well-known electric cars in EV sales, including the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf. In February, there were 1,626 Volts sold, an increase of more than 59% from the previous year, while the Nissan Leaf sold 653 Leafs, a 37% increase from the previous year.
Ford sold 119 Fusion Energi vehicles in February, while 158 Ford Focus Electric units and 175 C-Max Energis left car dealer?s lots.
While Ford?s number may be small for its EV and hybrid sales, it was the first month for the Fusion Energi on sale to the public, so there is lots of time for the Detroit manufacturer to boost its EV sales well ahead of their ambitious 2020 target.
Mar. 25, 2013 ? Researchers have identified areas off southern California with high numbers of whales and assessed their risk from potentially deadly collisions with commercial ship traffic in a study released today in the scientific journal Conservation Biology.
Scientists from NOAA Fisheries, the Marine Mammal Commission and Cascadia Research Collective analyzed data collected over seven years by NOAA on marine mammal and ecosystem research surveys in the Southern California Bight. Maps predicting the density of endangered humpback, fin and blue whales were developed by merging the observed whale sightings with oceanographic conditions to identify the habitat preferred by the different whale species.
"We know several endangered species of whales occur in the waters off southern California," said Jessica Redfern, a NOAA Fisheries marine mammal biologist and lead author of the paper. "What we didn't know, and what this study helps provide, is an understanding of the areas with the highest numbers of whales."
Knowing where whales are more likely to be found in the ocean environment is vitally important to reduce human impacts. Although this information could be used to assess any number of human impacts, the study specifically looked at current and alternative shipping routes to and from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and the risk to humpback, fin and blue whales from ship strikes.
Researchers selected four routes to study; the shipping route in the Santa Barbara Channel, which is the current shipping route; a Central route south of the northern Channel Islands; a Central Fan route, or just the eastern part of the Central route; and a Southern route, a course south of the Central route and constrained by the protected areas around Santa Barbara, Santa Catalina, and San Nicolas Islands.
By overlaying the routes with the predicted whale densities, researchers found the route with the lowest risk for humpback whales (Southern route) had the highest risk for fin whales and vice versa. However, risk may be ameliorated for both species in one of the Central routes. Blue whales, however, were at approximately equal risk in all routes considered because of their more even distribution throughout the study area. The authors' estimate of the number of blue whales likely killed by ships exceeds levels established by the Marine Mammal Protection Act to ensure sustainable populations. This result suggests that it is important to find ways to reduce the risk of ships striking blue whales.
"The Southern California Bight is an incredibly complex system with a diverse set of users, including the military, shipping industry and fishing industry. All users have specific needs and their input is necessary to plan the best and safest uses of these waters," said Redfern, "This paper helps to incorporate whale habitat use in the planning process so that their needs can be considered as well."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service.
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Journal Reference:
J. V. Redfern, M. F. Mckenna, T. J. Moore, J. Calambokidis, M. L. Deangelis, E. A. Becker, J. Barlow, K. A. Forney, P. C. Fiedler, S. J. Chivers. Assessing the Risk of Ships Striking Large Whales in Marine Spatial Planning. Conservation Biology, 2013; 27 (2): 292 DOI: 10.1111/cobi.12029
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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Contact: Hilary Hurd Anyaso h-anyaso@northwestern.edu 847-491-4887 Northwestern University
New research agenda could help shed light on early language, cognitive development
EVANSTON, Ill. --- Researchers are digging deeper into whether infants' ability to learn new words is shaped by the particular language being acquired.
A new Northwestern University study cites a promising new research agenda aimed at bringing researchers closer to discovering the impact of different languages on early language and cognitive development.
For decades, researchers have asked why infants learn new nouns more rapidly and more easily than new verbs. Many researchers have asserted that the early advantage for learning nouns over verbs is a universal feature of human language.
In contrast, other researchers have argued that early noun-advantage is not a universal feature of human language but rather a consequence of the particular language being acquired.
Sandra Waxman, lead author of the study and Louis W. Menk Professor of Psychology at Northwestern, shows in her research that even before infants begin to produce many verbs in earnest, infants acquiring either noun-friendly or verb-friendly languages already appreciate the concepts underlying both noun and verb meaning.
In all languages examined to date, researchers see a robust ability to map nouns to objects, Waxman said, but when it comes to mapping verbs to events, infants' performance is less robust and more variable. Their ability to learn new verbs varied not only as a function of the native language being acquired, but also with the particular linguistic context in which the verb was presented.
Based on new evidence, a shift in the research agenda is necessary, according to Waxman and her colleagues.
"We now know that by 24 months infants acquiring distinctly different languages can successfully map novel nouns to objects and novel verbs to event categories," Waxman said. "It is essential that we shift the research focus to include infants at 24 months and younger, infants who are engaged in the very process of acquiring distinctly different native languages."
Waxman said the implications are clear. "Rather than characterizing languages as either 'noun friendly' or 'verb friendly,' it would be advantageous to adopt a more nuanced treatment of the syntactic, semantic, morphologic and pragmatic properties of each language and the consequences of these properties on infants' acquisition of linguistic structure and meaning."
###
In addition to Waxman, co-authors include Xiaolan Fu, Sudha Arunachalam, Erin Leddon and Kathleen Geraghty. The article "Nouns before verbs? Fresh insights and new cross-linguistic evidence" will appear online in the next issue of Child Development Perspectives.
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: Hilary Hurd Anyaso h-anyaso@northwestern.edu 847-491-4887 Northwestern University
New research agenda could help shed light on early language, cognitive development
EVANSTON, Ill. --- Researchers are digging deeper into whether infants' ability to learn new words is shaped by the particular language being acquired.
A new Northwestern University study cites a promising new research agenda aimed at bringing researchers closer to discovering the impact of different languages on early language and cognitive development.
For decades, researchers have asked why infants learn new nouns more rapidly and more easily than new verbs. Many researchers have asserted that the early advantage for learning nouns over verbs is a universal feature of human language.
In contrast, other researchers have argued that early noun-advantage is not a universal feature of human language but rather a consequence of the particular language being acquired.
Sandra Waxman, lead author of the study and Louis W. Menk Professor of Psychology at Northwestern, shows in her research that even before infants begin to produce many verbs in earnest, infants acquiring either noun-friendly or verb-friendly languages already appreciate the concepts underlying both noun and verb meaning.
In all languages examined to date, researchers see a robust ability to map nouns to objects, Waxman said, but when it comes to mapping verbs to events, infants' performance is less robust and more variable. Their ability to learn new verbs varied not only as a function of the native language being acquired, but also with the particular linguistic context in which the verb was presented.
Based on new evidence, a shift in the research agenda is necessary, according to Waxman and her colleagues.
"We now know that by 24 months infants acquiring distinctly different languages can successfully map novel nouns to objects and novel verbs to event categories," Waxman said. "It is essential that we shift the research focus to include infants at 24 months and younger, infants who are engaged in the very process of acquiring distinctly different native languages."
Waxman said the implications are clear. "Rather than characterizing languages as either 'noun friendly' or 'verb friendly,' it would be advantageous to adopt a more nuanced treatment of the syntactic, semantic, morphologic and pragmatic properties of each language and the consequences of these properties on infants' acquisition of linguistic structure and meaning."
###
In addition to Waxman, co-authors include Xiaolan Fu, Sudha Arunachalam, Erin Leddon and Kathleen Geraghty. The article "Nouns before verbs? Fresh insights and new cross-linguistic evidence" will appear online in the next issue of Child Development Perspectives.
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.
Michigan hospitals national leaders in preventing common and costly urinary tract infectionsPublic release date: 25-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Beata Mostafavi bmostafa@umich.edu 734-764-2220 University of Michigan Health System
Michigan hospitals saw 25 percent fewer catheter-associated UTIs in hospitalized patients compared to 6 percent decrease in UTI rates at other US hospitals
ANN ARBOR, Mich. Patients at Michigan hospitals are less likely to experience a urinary tract infection caused by a catheter than at other hospitals in the country, according to a new study by the University of Michigan.
Michigan hospitals lead the way in using key prevention practices to reduce the number of catheter-associated UTIs and also have lower rates of UTIs which are one of the most common hospital-acquired infections in the nation according to the new findings that appear in the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine.
"Hospitals recognize that UTIs are a common, preventable and costly health issue but many still don't routinely use practices proven to prevent them," says lead author Sanjay Saint, M.D., MPH, the University of Michigan's George Dock professor of internal medicine and the associate chief of medicine at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.
"Michigan hospitals, which have taken the lead in applying low-tech practices aimed at timely removal of urinary catheters, are also proving to be leaders in reducing the risk of patient harm from UTIs."
UTIs, which often arise from catheters used to empty bladders for hospitalized patients, are responsible for 35 percent of infections related to hospitalization and can, lead to serious complications. Aiming to cut expenses and improve care, a 2008 Medicare policy stopped paying hospitals for the cost of treating preventable urinary tract infections that develop in hospitalized Medicare patients.
Michigan's Keystone "Bladder Bundle" Initiative has focused on a significantly higher use of practices aimed at timely removal of urinary catheters in Michigan hospitals. The study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, funded by a $1.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health four years ago, supports efforts by UMHS and the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System to help hospitals find the best ways to prevent UTIs.
Saint and his colleagues found that Michigan hospitals were more likely to participate in efforts to reduce catheter-associated infections by using bladder-scanners as well as reminders or stop-orders to ensure catheter use was discontinued at an appropriate time. More frequent use of preventive practices coincided with a 25 percent reduction in UTI rates at Michigan hospitals compared to a 6 percent overall decrease experienced by other U.S. hospitals.
"These data reinforce the significance of appropriately maintaining and removing catheters in the effort to prevent catheter-associated UTIs," says Saint, who is also the director of the U-M/VA Patient Safety Enhancement Program, and leader of several other studies on infection prevention including some taking place in Italy and Japan.
"The Keystone Bladder Bundle project in Michigan provides an effective model for implementing strategies to lower patients' risk of developing a UTI in the hospital. There is clearly a need to identify strategies to help hospitals in other states and even other countries enact similar practices to improve care and reduce healthcare costs."
The findings coincide with another U-M-led study in the same issue of JAMA Internal Medicine that identifies the barriers some hospitals face in implementing strategies to reduce urinary catheter use. Common barriers included difficulty engaging nurse and physicians to change their practice styles, patient and family requests for indwelling catheters, and emergency departments' customary process on catheter use.
"Every hospital has its own approach to catheter use that's become ingrained into that specific institution's culture of care," says lead author of the second study Sarah Krein, Ph.D., R.N. research associate professor, U-M Department of Internal Medicine, research scientist, VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System; and of the U-M School of Nursing.
"Changing those expectations and customs won't happen overnight. We hope to identify ways to make the transition to new effective practices smoother and easier in order to reduce UTIs in hospitals across the country."
Krein and Saint are on the national leadership team of a nationwide project funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) that aims to reduce catheter-associated UTIs by 25 percent in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. So far, approximately 800 hospitals are participating.
###
For more information on the Michigan Health and Hospital Association Keystone Center and its activities, visit http://www.MHAKeystoneCenter.org.
Additional Authors: Todd Greene, Ph.D., MPH, of U-M; Christine P. Kowalski, MPH, of the V.A.; Sam R. Watson, MSA, MT, of the MHA; Timothy P. Hofer, M.D.,MSc, of the U-M; Krein, of the U-M.
Disclosure: Saint has received honoraria and speaking fees for lectures about catheter-associated UTIs.
Funding: This project was sponsored in part by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Nursing Research (Grant 5 ROI NR010700).
Reference: "Preventing Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infection in the United States," a national comparative study, online March 25, JAMA Internal Medicine, DOI: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.101.
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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.
Michigan hospitals national leaders in preventing common and costly urinary tract infectionsPublic release date: 25-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Beata Mostafavi bmostafa@umich.edu 734-764-2220 University of Michigan Health System
Michigan hospitals saw 25 percent fewer catheter-associated UTIs in hospitalized patients compared to 6 percent decrease in UTI rates at other US hospitals
ANN ARBOR, Mich. Patients at Michigan hospitals are less likely to experience a urinary tract infection caused by a catheter than at other hospitals in the country, according to a new study by the University of Michigan.
Michigan hospitals lead the way in using key prevention practices to reduce the number of catheter-associated UTIs and also have lower rates of UTIs which are one of the most common hospital-acquired infections in the nation according to the new findings that appear in the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine.
"Hospitals recognize that UTIs are a common, preventable and costly health issue but many still don't routinely use practices proven to prevent them," says lead author Sanjay Saint, M.D., MPH, the University of Michigan's George Dock professor of internal medicine and the associate chief of medicine at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.
"Michigan hospitals, which have taken the lead in applying low-tech practices aimed at timely removal of urinary catheters, are also proving to be leaders in reducing the risk of patient harm from UTIs."
UTIs, which often arise from catheters used to empty bladders for hospitalized patients, are responsible for 35 percent of infections related to hospitalization and can, lead to serious complications. Aiming to cut expenses and improve care, a 2008 Medicare policy stopped paying hospitals for the cost of treating preventable urinary tract infections that develop in hospitalized Medicare patients.
Michigan's Keystone "Bladder Bundle" Initiative has focused on a significantly higher use of practices aimed at timely removal of urinary catheters in Michigan hospitals. The study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, funded by a $1.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health four years ago, supports efforts by UMHS and the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System to help hospitals find the best ways to prevent UTIs.
Saint and his colleagues found that Michigan hospitals were more likely to participate in efforts to reduce catheter-associated infections by using bladder-scanners as well as reminders or stop-orders to ensure catheter use was discontinued at an appropriate time. More frequent use of preventive practices coincided with a 25 percent reduction in UTI rates at Michigan hospitals compared to a 6 percent overall decrease experienced by other U.S. hospitals.
"These data reinforce the significance of appropriately maintaining and removing catheters in the effort to prevent catheter-associated UTIs," says Saint, who is also the director of the U-M/VA Patient Safety Enhancement Program, and leader of several other studies on infection prevention including some taking place in Italy and Japan.
"The Keystone Bladder Bundle project in Michigan provides an effective model for implementing strategies to lower patients' risk of developing a UTI in the hospital. There is clearly a need to identify strategies to help hospitals in other states and even other countries enact similar practices to improve care and reduce healthcare costs."
The findings coincide with another U-M-led study in the same issue of JAMA Internal Medicine that identifies the barriers some hospitals face in implementing strategies to reduce urinary catheter use. Common barriers included difficulty engaging nurse and physicians to change their practice styles, patient and family requests for indwelling catheters, and emergency departments' customary process on catheter use.
"Every hospital has its own approach to catheter use that's become ingrained into that specific institution's culture of care," says lead author of the second study Sarah Krein, Ph.D., R.N. research associate professor, U-M Department of Internal Medicine, research scientist, VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System; and of the U-M School of Nursing.
"Changing those expectations and customs won't happen overnight. We hope to identify ways to make the transition to new effective practices smoother and easier in order to reduce UTIs in hospitals across the country."
Krein and Saint are on the national leadership team of a nationwide project funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) that aims to reduce catheter-associated UTIs by 25 percent in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. So far, approximately 800 hospitals are participating.
###
For more information on the Michigan Health and Hospital Association Keystone Center and its activities, visit http://www.MHAKeystoneCenter.org.
Additional Authors: Todd Greene, Ph.D., MPH, of U-M; Christine P. Kowalski, MPH, of the V.A.; Sam R. Watson, MSA, MT, of the MHA; Timothy P. Hofer, M.D.,MSc, of the U-M; Krein, of the U-M.
Disclosure: Saint has received honoraria and speaking fees for lectures about catheter-associated UTIs.
Funding: This project was sponsored in part by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Nursing Research (Grant 5 ROI NR010700).
Reference: "Preventing Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infection in the United States," a national comparative study, online March 25, JAMA Internal Medicine, DOI: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.101.
[ | 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.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- South Korea and the United States have signed a new military plan that lays out how the allies will communicate with each other and react to any future North Korean aggression.
The signing comes amid North Korean threats to attack the allies over their joint military drills and recent punishing U.N. sanctions aimed at Pyongyang's latest nuclear test.
Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday that the plan is designed to counter a future limited attack by North Korea, but details weren't released. Work on the plan began after a North Korean artillery attack on a South Korean island in 2010 killed four.
The allies also have a separate plan in the case of a full-blown war on the Korean Peninsula.
There are 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea.
(Copyright (c) 2013 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
Mar. 24, 2013 ? A key building block of life, actin is one of the most abundant and highly conserved proteins in eukaryotic cells.
First discovered in muscle cells more than 70 years ago, actin has a well-established identity as a cytoplasmic protein that works by linking itself in chains to form filaments. Fibers formed by these actin polymers are crucial to muscle contraction.
So it came as a surprise when scientists discovered actin in the nucleus. Labs have been working for the past few decades to figure out exactly what it's doing there.
A new study published this week in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology reveals that actin has a new and fundamental nuclear function, and that surprisingly, it accomplishes this task in its single-molecule (monomeric) form -- not through polymerization.
Senior author of the study Xuetong "Snow" Shen, Ph.D., associate professor in The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Department of Molecular Carcinogenesis, has been fascinated by the mystery of nuclear actin. In collaboration with researchers from Colorado State University, his lab developed a unique model system to nail down actin's function in the nucleus by studying the actin-containing INO80 chromatin remodeling complex.
In 2000, as a postdoc at NIH in Carl Wu's lab, Shen identified actin as a component of the INO80 complex, adding to the growing list of evidence that actin indeed has a life in the nucleus. However, how actin actually works in the nucleus remains fuzzy due to lack of clear experimental systems.
"Our model system opened up a new opportunity to look in depth at the function of nuclear actin as it relates to gene regulation, genome stability, and ultimately cancer," Snow said.
A nuclear role for monomeric actin
Because yeast have only a single actin gene, the authors reasoned that studying INO80 in yeast cells would allow a direct assessment of the protein's nuclear function. In contrast, mammals have at least six forms of actin coded by separate genes, making their study more difficult.
The researchers used both genetic and biochemical methods to dissect actin's role in the INO80 complex. The INO80 complex normally functions in the nucleus to rearrange chromatin ?- the intertwined proteins and DNA that are packaged into chromosomes -- regulating the expression of many different genes.
The authors found that a mutant form of actin impairs the ability of INO80 to function correctly, implicating actin in the process of chromatin remodeling -- an exploding field of research with applications in cancer diagnosis and treatment.
In the cytoplasm, actin functions primarily as a polymer. Cytoplasmic actin is a component of the cytoskeleton and the muscle contractile machinery, and is essential for cell mobility, including cancer metastasis. Actin inside the INO80 complex is arranged in a clever way such that it cannot polymerize; instead, actin's monomeric form appears to interact with chromatin.
"Our study challenges the dogma that actin functions through polymerization, revealing a novel and likely a fundamental mechanism for monomeric nuclear actin," Shen said.
New findings for an ancient complex
Because actin and several of the other INO80 components are so highly conserved, even in human cells, this mechanism likely represents an ancient, fundamental role of actin, which has been preserved through evolution.
Shen's group is now teasing out the exact mechanism by which nuclear actin interacts with chromatin. They also hope to extend the results to human cells and to identify potential ways by which nuclear actin could be involved in cancer.
Chromatin is critical for maintaining the delicate balance between gene activation and repression, Shen said. "Disrupting this regulation can lead to cancer, and it remains to be seen whether nuclear actin has a role in this process."
Lead authors of the study are Prabodh Kapoor, Ph.D., and Mingming Chen, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellows in Shen's lab. Co-authors are Duane David Winkler, Ph.D., and Karolin Luger, Ph.D., of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Colorado State University. Shen, senior author, also is a member of the Center for Cancer Epigenetics at MD Anderson.
The research was funded by grants from the National Cancer Institute (K22CA100017) and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (RO1GM093104), both of the National Institutes of Health, the Center for Cancer Epigenetics, the Theodore N. Law Endowment for Scientific Achievement at MD Anderson and by MD Anderson's Odyssey postdoctoral program to Kapoor.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Prabodh Kapoor, Mingming Chen, Duane David Winkler, Karolin Luger, Xuetong Shen. Evidence for monomeric actin function in INO80 chromatin remodeling. Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.2529
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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Pfc. Chance P. Shaffer, son of Wendy Hanshaw and stepson of Jerry Hanshaw, both of Spring Lake, has graduated from Army basic training at Fort Jackson, Columbia, S.C. He is a 2012 graduate of Pine Forest High School.
Pvt. Sidney Hunt, son of Scot Hunt and Stephanie Locklear, both of Lumberton, has graduated from Army basic training at Fort Jackson, Columbia, S.C. He is a 2011 graduate of Lumberton High School.
National Guard Pvt. Rebecca R. Wahl, daughter of Jena Owen of Angier, has graduated from Army basic training at Fort Jackson, Columbia, S.C. She is a 2012 graduate of Harnett Central High School.
Pvt. Curtis M. Curry, son of Jennie Butler and stepson of John Butler of Fayetteville, has graduated from Army basic training at Fort Jackson, Columbia, S.C. He is a 2006 graduate of Seventy-First High School.
Pvt. Jennie N. Gahagan, daughter of Mary French and George Gahagan, both of Fayetteville, has graduated from Army basic training at Fort Jackson, Columbia, S.C. She is a 2012 graduate of Douglas Byrd High School.
Pfc. Jaclyn D. Codiga, daughter of James and Denise Rieger of Fayetteville, has graduated from Army basic training at Fort Jackson, Columbia, S.C. She is a 2008 graduate of Cornerstone Christian Academy, Fayetteville.
Pfc. Marquetta S. Hemingway, daughter of Vennie Hemingway of Whiteville, has graduated from Army basic training at Fort Jackson, Columbia, S.C. She is a 2012 graduate of Whiteville High School.
Pvt. Eddie Lampkin III has graduated from Army basic training at Fort Jackson, Columbia, S.C. He is a 2012 graduate of Seventy-First High School.
Pvt. Myles J. Keyser, son of Jennifer Flynn of Cameron, has graduated from Army basic infantry training at Fort Benning, Columbus, Ga. He is a 2012 graduate of Western Harnett High School.
Pvt. Jeffery Drew, son of John and Bettie Drew of Hope Mills, has graduated from Army basic training at Fort Jackson, Columbia, S.C. He is a 2000 graduate of South View High School.
Reserve Pvt. Joshua D. Chubbs, son of Clara Chubbs of Sanford, has graduated from Army basic training at Fort Jackson, Columbia, S.C. He is a 2012 graduate of Lee County High School.
Pfc. Jacorica S. Bristow, daughter of Laura McKoy of Lumberton, has graduated from Army basic training at Fort Jackson, Columbia, S.C. She is a 2012 graduate of Lumberton High School.
Pfc. Amber N. Searing, daughter of Lisa McNair of Eastover, has graduated from Army basic training at Fort Jackson, Columbia, S.C.
Items on local soldiers and airmen come from the Army and Air Force Hometown News Service in San Antonio. Items on local members of the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard come from the Fleet Home Town News Center in Norfolk, Va.
R2D2 greets the crowd at this year's WonderconANAHEIM, CA - The power of the Force may be elusive outside the fictional Star Wars universe but fans of R2D2 can take home their very own astromech droid if they have the time and money to build it.
The majority of job descriptions are a waste of space. Potential candidates read job titles, look at the renumeration, the location, and then many throw their resume out hoping it will stick. Most simply do not read all that text between the job title and the apply button. So is it time to rethink the job description? What is wrong with the job description? Why is it ignored by so many??
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Public release date: 25-Mar-2013
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