SAVAR, Bangladesh (AP) ? The walls of the cavernous AKH clothing factory are covered in red arrows. They point to three wide emergency staircases with evacuation plans posted on every floor. They point to fire extinguishers attached to the walls and pillars throughout the factory. They point to medical kits located near designated workers with "First Aid" stitched onto their shirts.
It is the type of factory garment manufacturers hope will persuade Western brands to keep making clothes in Bangladesh despite a recent factory fire and a building collapse that killed more than 1,200 people.
But just down the road, the seamier side of the industry lives on in a tiny, stiflingly hot factory. Very young looking seamstresses sew snowsuits for export at cramped work stations. The aisles are blocked by piles of clothing. Power cords hang haphazardly along the walls.
This is the type of factory the government and the major garment manufacturers have decided must reform or die if the nation's $20 billion-a-year garment export industry is to continue to thrive.
"We have A grade (factories) and we also have D grade," said Shahidullah Azim, vice president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association. "Now is the time for survival of the fittest."
The Dhaka industrial suburb of Savar shows both sides of an industry that began just three decades ago with some sewing machines in entrepreneurs' homes and has since exploded into a global clothing manufacturing hub.
Some buildings appear ultra-modern, with outdoor fire staircases and mirrored windows. Others have bars on all the windows and gray, raw concrete exteriors that no one has bothered to paint. Many have steel reinforcing bars jutting from the rooftops, awaiting new floors yet to be added.
A government investigation blamed the April collapse of the Rana Plaza factory building, which killed 1,129 people, on its poor construction, floors that were illegally added to the building and the use of heavy equipment it was never designed to hold. Investigators said the November fire at the Tazreen factory, which killed 112, was so deadly in part because clothing was stored in the stairwell, which turned the emergency exit into a chimney billowing smoke, fire and toxic fumes from the burning fibers.
Many Western brands said they were not aware their clothes were being made at the factories because of the tangle of subcontracting deals that are routine in the garment business here. Following the twin tragedies, some brands pledged to help raise safety standards. Others, most prominently Disney, announced they were pulling out completely.
The government and the manufacturers association are taking a carrot-and-stick approach toward reforms aimed at preventing another disaster that could cause more companies to follow Disney's lead.
One target is the estimated 600 factories that perform subcontracting work for export, but don't belong to the BGMEA ? freeing them from even minimal industry oversight. The organization issued a set of guidelines this month aimed at either bringing those factories into the fold, or crushing them.
The new rules mandate that factories being given subcontracts be members of the BGMEA or a related organization for knitting factories. They need to have insurance coverage for their workers. And the company that placed the initial order has to agree in advance to have it subcontracted, eliminating confusion over where its clothing is made.Those who fail to abide by the new rules can be suspended from the organization, effectively barring them from importing fabric and exporting clothes, said the BGMEA's Azim.
The organization has also inspected 200 factories it believed were at risk and shut 20 of them, he said.
The government announced plans for a special economic zone on 532 acres near the capital, where factories located in unsafe buildings will be relocated into modern facilities with the help of cheap loans, Textiles Minister Abdul Latif Siddique said. The government has also proposed hiring hundreds of new fire safety inspectors to beef up Dhaka's current force ? just 15 people tasked with inspecting the city's 10,000 factories and warehouses.
Not far from the Rana Plaza site stands the spotless AKH factory.
Inside, rows of women and men worked at sewing machines separated by wide aisles in the giant airy factory, making dark blue men's shirts for H&M on one line, khaki shirts for Marks & Spencer on another and purple shirts for Perry Ellis on a third. Boxes of finished shirts were stacked neatly nearby.
A man using an industrial saw to cut stacks of fabric into shirt panels wore a chain mail glove on one hand for protection. Shears were tied to tables and irons strapped to overhead pipes to ensure they wouldn't fall and pierce or burn workers' feet.
In addition to the ubiquitous fire extinguishers, the 5,500-person factory had firefighting masks, helmets, shovels and buckets of sand on each floor.
Faridul Alam, a top official at the factory, said it had four fire hoses and a 40,000-liter tank to feed them. The building was constructed to withstand an 8.5 magnitude earthquake, and the generators were housed in a separate facility to ensure that their vibrations don't damage the structure, he said.
The measures, Alam said, pay off because they attract safety-conscious Western brands. But even AKH subcontracts to other factories when production lines are backed up, he said. He refused to give details about those deals.
A few kilometers away, a small factory above some shops in a market revealed the hidden, bottom layer of the industry.
Women and children who appeared to be in their early teens at best hunched over sewing machines making puffy green camouflage snowsuits with the Kidz Grow System label and dark blue snowsuits labeled Piazza Italia Man. They appeared somewhat frightened of the young men who rapidly passed the clothing they had finished sewing to the next machine in the assembly line.
There were fire extinguishers on the walls but vast bundles everywhere ? in the aisles, near the exits ? of raw materials, half-finished clothing, discarded fabric scraps and finished garments. Tangles of electric wiring hung haphazardly throughout the facility. Several boxes of clothing and a huge sack of insulation used in the snowsuits sat in a stairwell.
It is unclear whether the factory got its orders directly from brands, from a buying house that places orders on behalf of Western companies, or from an overburdened factory that needed a subcontractor. Factory officials declined to speak to The Associated Press.
Cleburne, Texas-based Walls, which owns the Kidz Grow System clothing line, said it was checking into how its clothing ended up at that factory.
"If it's going through an agent, then typically we might not know about that factory," said Walls Chief Financial Officer Bill Aisenberg.
Milan-based Piazza Italia did not respond to an email and phone call seeking comment.
The government plans to crack down on smaller subcontracting factories, but it will take time, said Siddique, the textiles minister. First, it is focused on fixing larger factories.
"We are taking this very seriously," he said.
But it can be difficult to shut down factories, even those with obvious safety issues, said Sheikh Mizanur Rahman, a deputy director of Dhaka's fire service.
Before shutting a dangerous factory, the fire department must first issue a letter demanding improvements. It can refuse to renew the annual fire safety certificates of factories that fail to comply. But factories can continue operating as they file appeals, first to the government and then to the courts.
"This is a long process," Rahman said.
Since the Tazreen fire, there have been more than 40 fires in Bangladesh garment factories, killing 16 people and injuring hundreds more, according to the Solidarity Center, an international labor rights group.
Despite the new efforts at reform, government and industry officials and activists agree that another building collapse or major fire remains a real threat.
"There is every possibility that it can happen again," said Wajed-ul Islam Khan, general secretary of the Bangladesh Trade Union Center.
___
Associated Press reporter Julhas Alam contributed to this report.
___
Follow Ravi Nessman on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/ravinessman
Allow me just a little self-congratulation. Two years ago I wrote "Why The New Guy Can't Code," about my contempt for the standard industry interview procedure for software engineers, condemning Microsoft and Google in particular for their brain-teasingriddles and binary search questions. And lo and behold, this week Google's head of HR admitted: "Brainteasers are a complete waste of time." But wait. Let's just unpack that interview a little further:
How much would a Leaf owner pay to banish range anxiety? If your answer was "$100 a month," then Nissan's got a proposition for you. The car maker is gearing up to launch a domestic battery replacement program for its EV in 2014 that'll set you back that aforementioned sum. Similar to Nissan's setup in Europe, if your battery can only hold nine out of 12 bars worth of charge, it'll replace the unit with a new or reconditioned unit. The company insists that very few will ever actually need to replace the battery, but hey, squeezing $1,200 a year out of its existing customers is a sure-fire way to inspire loyalty.
The stock market is edging lower in midday trading as investors regroup following the biggest drop of the year.
The Dow Jones industrial average slipped 42 points, or 0.3 percent, to 14,708 as of noon Eastern Daylight Time Friday.
The Dow plunged 560 points Wednesday through Thursday after the Federal Reserve said it could wind down its bond-buying program by the middle of next year if the economy continues to improve.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell eight points, or 0.5 percent, to 1,580 points. Technology stocks fell the most in the index after Oracle reported disappointing results late Thursday.
The Nasdaq composite index fell 35 points, or 1 percent, to 3,329.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.50 percent from 2.42 percent.
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While the official lineup isn?t set to be announced until April 22nd, the dates for this years ?Rockstar Energy Drink Uproar Festival? have been officially revealed. You can find them below:
08/09 Scranton, PA ? Toyota Pavilion 08/10 Hartford, CT ? The Comcast Theatre 08/11 Darien Center, NY ? Darien Lake Performing Arts Center 08/13 Saratoga Springs, NY ? Saratoga Performing Arts Center 08/14 Mansfield, MA ? Comcast Center 08/16 Bristow, VA ? Jiffy Lube Live 08/17 Holmdel, NJ ? PNC Bank Arts Center 08/18 Wantagh, NY ? Nikon At Jones Beach Theater 08/20 Toronto, ON ? Molson Canadian Amphitheatre 08/22 Tinley Park, IL ? First Midwest Bank Pavilion 08/23 Noblesville, IN ? Klipsch Music Center 08/24 Clarkston, MI ? DTE Energy Music Centre 08/27 Oklahoma City, OK ? Zoo Amphitheater 08/28 Dallas, TX ? Gexa Energy Pavilion 08/29 Woodlands, TX ? Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion 08/31 Albuquerque, NM ? Isleta Amphitheater 09/01 Englewood, CO ? Fiddler?s Green Amphitheater 09/02 Salt Lake City, UT ? USANA Amphitheatre 09/08 Ridgefield, WA ? Sleep County Amphitheatre 09/11 Mountain View, CA ? Shoreline Amphitheatre 09/13 Phoenix, AZ ? Desert Sky Pavilion 09/14 Chula Vista, CA ? Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre 09/15 Irvine, CA ? Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre
Apr. 17, 2013 ? Eggs take a long time to produce in the ovary, and thus are one of a body's precious resources. It has been theorized that the body has mechanisms to help the ovary ensure that ovulated eggs enter the reproductive tract at the right time in order to maximize the chance of successful fertilization.
New research from Carnegie's Allan Spradling and Jianjun Sun has shed light on how successful ovulation and fertilization are brought about by studying these processes in fruit flies. They found that secretions from special glands within the fruit fly's reproductive tract contribute to both ovulation and sperm function, and that this secretion is controlled by a specific hormone receptor gene, called Hr39. Their results suggest that Lrh-1, a mammalian receptor gene closely related to Hr39, also regulates ovulation by controlling reproductive tract secretions in mammals. Their findings are published by eLife.
Sun and Spradling's research provides an example of how the biological processes underlying a specific type of human tissue are often fundamentally similar to the biology of analogous tissues in seemingly very different species, such as insects. These common processes are not an accident, but rather are a consequence of the common evolutionary history of virtually all multicellular organisms on Earth. As a result of these similarities, researchers can genetically manipulate fruit flies in order to identify the genes and pathways controlling a biological process -- in this case ovulation -- and then use genome sequencing to identify the corresponding genes in other species, including humans.
Sun and Spradling began such a strategy a few years ago by characterizing how the glands within the ovary develop. Soon, they were able to tweak normal development to generate flies with anywhere from zero to the normal number of about 200 secretory cells, as well as adults in which secretory cell function could be turned on or off at will. Mice with the same properties would be a much bigger challenge to produce and would yield results much more slowly. Of course, such studies could not be undertaken with humans.
Using these special tools, the researchers confirmed that one important role of reproductive tract secretions is to protect and store sperm. At least 25 secretory cells are required, and their products attract sperm to glands where they can remain safely while bathed in the secretory fluid. Similar storage takes place in a region of the human Fallopian tube known as the isthmus. Sperm are thought to persist in the isthmus for only a few days, but can be stored for a week or more in the case of fruit flies. When production of the secretion is compromised, sperm have difficulty getting to the gland and those that can make it undergo abnormal changes.
The secretory "machinery" studied in these experiments may allow the reproductive tract to signal the ovary when it is ready to receive an egg. Waiting for such a signal before releasing an egg could reduce the chance that an egg would fail to enter the reproductive tract or arrive before active sperm were available.
Interestingly, Spradling and Sun's work shows that different secretions are responsible for ovulation from those responsible for attracting and storing sperm. Identifying the specific secretory cell products (and the corresponding genes) that are required for successful ovulation would be an important step in understanding the mechanisms of this still-mysterious process.
This research has a possible connection to one of the most common forms of ovarian cancer, which was recently shown to derive from abnormalities in reproductive tract secretory cells. The genes and pathways that cells use in carrying out their normal functions are often the targets of the alternations that drive cancer cell growth. Thus, this work should stimulate investigation of the role played by genes such as Lrh1 in this devastating disease.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Carnegie Institution.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Jianjun Sun, Allan C Spradling. Ovulation in Drosophila is controlled by secretory cells of the female reproductive tract. eLife, 2013 DOI: 10.7554/eLife.00415
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
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.
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How do I implement a frequency counter in a treenode that increases when the user enters an existing word?
I have a program where the user is asked to choose: enter string, search for string
My frequency counter is not working properly. How do I keep track of the frequencies for the left and right nodes? My frequency counter only gives for root:
public void insert(String item){ if(isEmpty()){ root = new TreeNode(item); System.out.println("inserted " + "'" + item + "'" + " into tree. Frequency: " + root.getFreq()); } // If string item already exists, do not insert another node, increase the frequency of the node containing the string else if(searchTree(root,item) == true){ root.upFreq(); System.out.println( "'" + item + "'" + " already exists! Frequency: " + root.getFreq()); //if the string does not already exists, enters string item into new node } else{ root.add(item); System.out.println("inserted " + "'" + item + "'" + " into tree! Frequency: " + root.getFreq()); } }
Replies To: count frequency of strings in java binary tree
#2 baavgai ?
Reputation: 4823
Posts:11,185
Joined:16-October 07
Re: count frequency of strings in java binary tree
Posted 47 minutes ago
Dude! How in the hell can your searchTree be static?!? Tell me TreeNode isn't public...
Your searchTree is, um, disturbing. You should be going left or right, not returning left || right. You call it and seem to expect that root has meaning. It doesn't.
After I had been running at night for more than a decade, a relatively under-the-radar startup called Nextdoor got me to start running during the day. Almost nobody likes to exercise, and for many, overcoming the motivational hump of putting on your shoes and gym clothes can be trying on even the best of days. One evening late in January I had finally overcome this initial barrier to entry, and was just about to stop blogging to do my usual 30-minute nightly sprint when I got the email. “Woman robbed at gunpoint in Dogpatch, San Francisco” the subject line screamed. Unlike many of the emails I constantly receive, this was highly relevant to me, especially because, upon further inspection, the robbery had happened one block from my house. Until this email, I hadn’t given too much thought to Nextdoor , a service that I signed up for at the Allen & Co conference last summer, where co-founder Nirav Tolia had given a talk about the local social network. The company started out as Fanbase in 2009, and was an attempt to create a user-generated content version of ESPN. Founders Tolia and Sarah Leary decided to pivot around May of 2010, and spent the next four to five months testing out different ideas. Fanbase officially pivoted to Nextdoor in September of 2010, starting out its pilot in Lorelei, a neighborhood in Menlo Park. Now a Facebook for your neighborhood, about half the Fanbase funding ended up carrying over, and Tolia and Leary ended up raising an additional $40.2 million for the new Nextdoor product. Initially enthusiastic, I had also invited my neighbors to use the platform, which had resulted in a de facto neighborhood support group (including the services of a pet psychic) when their adventurous cat Kiki went missing. I wrote a post about it for TechCrunch and then sort of forgot about it, rarely logging on to peruse the listings of free stuff and garage sales. Well I was certainly giving the service some thought now: “What if I had been that woman who was robbed?”"What if I had ventured out of my house just 15 minutes earlier?” I was still in my gym clothes, after so much effort, and feeling antsy from my day of work. Worse, I was now worried about a random stranger I had only heard about through the Internet, and I still needed a
Veterinarians at the National Zoo artificially inseminated the zoo's female giant panda Mei Xiang on Saturday after natural breeding failed to occur, zoo keepers said.
Mei Xiang was put under general anesthesia and inseminated with a combination of fresh semen and frozen semen collected from the zoo's male giant panda Tian Tian. The scientists said they planned a second insemination later on Saturday.
Veterinarians detected a rise in hormone levels on Tuesday, indicating Mei Xiang was ready to breed but said "no competent breeding" between the panda pair had occurred.
"We are hopeful that our breeding efforts will be successful this year, and we're encouraged by all the behaviors and hormonal data we've seen so far," said Dave Wildt, head of the Center for Species Survival at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute.
Scientists will continue to monitor Mei Xiang's hormone levels in the coming months and conduct ultrasounds to determine whether she is pregnant. A pregnancy lasts between 95 and 160 days, they said.
Mei Xiang has given birth to two cubs. One died a week after its birth last year. The other was born in 2005 and is now at the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda in Wolong.
(Reporting by Jane Sutton; editing by Jackie Frank)
(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2013. Click For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
The Westmoor Country Club is one of the most premier country clubs, featuring a golf course designed by expert golf architects. The club offers an olympic-sized swimming pool, tennis courts and a banquet and dining area. The executive chef and staff design delicious and creative cuisine that will make every occasion a special one.? Westmoor Country club is located across from the Brookfield Square mall, just off the I-94 interchange.
Injuries that are sustained during a home improvement project are commonly the result of people not putting safety first. If you have been hurt, consider yourself blessed if you are not actually killed, while working on a home project. Most people that get hurt do so by climbing up on a ladder and falling off of it. Roof repair work, such as laying down shingles, is very dangerous even on a low pitch roof.
If you do repairs, and if you use a ladder, you might find yourself falling if it is not properly secure. Most often, people are not setting the ladder up right or decide to reach for something which causes them to fall over. Follow these easy tips and you will be safer than ever when getting things done at home.
Power equipment often features safety accessories. Cutting and grinding power tools have one such feature, which is a safety guard. You want to avoid removing the guards just because it is more convenient. Since there is a lot of flying debris, you could end up hurting your eyes, face or hands. It is critical that you also wear safety glasses. To avoid your hands suffering an injury, you should always put on leather gloves. All this is basic common sense and not hard to remember. Many people end up injured because they choose to ignore these safety aspects.
If you are working on your home on something that involves hammering nails, then here is a nice little tip for you. This suggestion is essential for people who lack experience in working with hammers. Buy or construct something you can use to hold the nail when hammering it. A paperclip can easily be converted into a nail holder. Combs can also be used as nail holders and all you need to do is remove one or two teeth. It?s difficult to understand the pain if you have never hammered a finger.
When dealing with anything that is electrical, you need to use common sense and safety. Dealing with electrical issues in homes that are 50 years or more old can be dangerous. Because of heat and cold, screws can actually become loose via expansion and contraction. Electrical wires that are grounded may be hot or electrical which can cause physical damage if you grab them. If your installation is brittle, it could be a byproduct of lighting fixtures in the same room. If there is no longer any protective barrier between you and exposed wires, get this fixed. Use these suggestions when working with electricity to stay safe.
Most injuries occur because people refuse to implement the proper safety precautions first. If more people would think about their safety, fewer people would be hurt.
The field of regenerative medicine holds great promise, propelled by greater understanding of how stem cells differentiate themselves into many of the body's different cell types. But clinical applications in the field have been slow to materialize, partially owing to difficulties in replicating the conditions these cells naturally experience.
A team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania has generated new insight on how a stem cell's environment influences what type of cell a stem cell will become. They have shown that whether human mesenchymal stem cells turn into fat or bone cells depends partially on how well they can "grip" the material they are growing in.
The research was conducted by graduate student Sudhir Khetan and associate professor Jason Burdick, along with professor Christopher Chen, all of the School of Engineering and Applied Science's Department of Bioengineering. Others involved in the study include Murat Guvendiren, Wesley Legant and Daniel Cohen.
Their study was published in the journalNature Materials.
Much research has been done on how stem cells grow on two-dimensional substrates, but comparatively little work has been done in three dimensions. Three-dimensional environments, or matrices, for stems cells have mostly been treated as simple scaffolding, rather than as a signal that influences the cells' development.
Burdick and his colleagues were interested in how these three-dimensional matrices impact mechanotransduction, which is how the cell takes information about its physical environment and translates that to chemical signaling.
"We're trying to understand how material signals can dictate stem cell response," Burdick said. "Rather than considering the material as an inert structure, it's really guiding stem cell fate and differentiation ? what kind of cells they will turn into."
The mesenchymal stem cells the researchers studied are found in bone marrow and can develop into several cell types: osteoblasts, which are found in bone; chondrocytes, which are found in cartilage; and adipocytes, which are found in fat.
The researchers cultured them in water-swollen polymer networks known as hydrogels, which share some similarities with the environments stem cells naturally grow in. These materials are generally soft and flexible ? contact lenses, for example, are a type of hydrogel ? but can vary in density and stiffness depending on the type and quantity of the bonds between the polymers. In this case, the researchers used covalently cross-linked gels, which contain irreversible chemical bonds.
When seeded on top of two-dimensional covalently cross-linked gels, mesenchymal stem cells spread and pulled on the material differently depending on how stiff it was. Critically, the mechanics guide cell fate, or the type of cells they differentiate it into. A softer environment would produce more fat-like cells and a stiffer environment, where the cells can pull on the gel harder, would produce more bone-like cells.
However, when the researchers put mesenchymal stem cells inside three-dimensional hydrogels of varying stiffness, they didn't see these kinds of changes.
"In most covalently cross-linked gels, the cells can't spread into the matrix because they can't degrade the bonds ? they all become fat cells," Burdick said. "That tells us that in 3D covalent gels the cells don't translate the mechanical information the same way they do in a 2D system."
To test this, the researchers changed the chemistry of their hydrogels so that the polymer chains were connected by a peptide that the cells could naturally degrade. They hypothesized that, as the cells spread, they would be able to get a better grip on their surrounding environment and thus be more likely to turn into bone-like cells.
In order to determine how well the cells were pulling on their environment, the researchers used a technique developed by Chen's lab called 3D traction force microscopy. This technique involves seeding the gel with microscopic beads, then tracking their location before and after a cell is removed.
"Because the gel is elastic and will relax back into its original position when you remove the cells," Chen said, "you can quantify how much the cells are pulling on the gel based on how much and which way it springs back after the cell is removed."
The results showed that the stem cells' differentiation into bone-like cells was aided by their ability to better anchor themselves into the growth environment.
"With our original experiment, we observed that the cells essentially didn't pull on the gel. They adhered to it and were viable, but we did not see bead displacement. They couldn't get a grip," Burdick said. "When we put the cells into a gel where they could degrade the bonds, we saw them spread into the matrix and deform it, displacing the beads."
As an additional test, the researchers synthesized another hydrogel. This one had the same covalent bonds that the stem cells could naturally degrade and spread through but also another type of bond that could form when exposed to light. They let the stem cells spread as before, but at the point the cells would begin to differentiate ? about a week after they were first encapsulated ? the researchers further "set" the gel by exposing it to light, forming new bonds the cells couldn't degrade.
"When we introduced these cross-links so they could no longer degrade the matrix, we saw an increase toward fat-like cells, even after letting them spread," Burdick said. "This further supports the idea that continuous degradation is needed for the cells to sense the material properties of their environment and transduce that into differentiation signals."
Burdick and his colleagues see these results as helping develop a better fundamental understanding of how to engineer tissues using stem cells.
"This is a model system for showing how the microenvironment can influence the fate of the cells," Burdick said.
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University of Pennsylvania: http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews
Thanks to University of Pennsylvania for this article.
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Engineers at Oregon State University have developed a new interactive system to create networks of small wetlands in Midwest farmlands, which could help the region prevent massive spring floods and also retain water and mitigate droughts in a warming climate.
The planning tool, which is being developed and tested in a crop-dominated watershed near Indianapolis, is designed to identify the small areas best suited to wetland development, optimize their location and size, and restore a significant portion of the region's historic water storage ability by using only a small fraction of its land.
Using this approach, the researchers found they could capture the runoff from 29 percent of a watershed using only 1.5 percent of the entire area.
The findings were published in Ecological Engineering, a professional journal, and a website is now available at http://wrestore.iupui.edu/ that allows users to apply the principles to their own land.
The need for new approaches to assist farmers and agencies to work together and use science-based methods is becoming critical, experts say. Massive floods and summer droughts have become more common and intense in the Midwest because of climate change and decades of land management that drains water rapidly into rivers via tile drains.
"The lands of the Midwest, which is one of the great food producing areas of the world, now bear little resemblance to their historic form, which included millions of acres of small lakes and wetlands that have now been drained," said Meghna Babbar-Sebens, an assistant professor of civil and construction engineering at Oregon State. "Agriculture, deforestation, urbanization and residential development have all played a role.
"We have to find some way to retain and slowly release water, both to use it for crops and to prevent flooding," Babbar-Sebens said. "There's a place for dams and reservoirs but they won't solve everything. With increases in runoff, what was once thought to be a 100-year flood event is now happening more often.
"Historically, wetlands in Indiana and other Midwestern states were great at intercepting large runoff events and slowing down the flows," she said. "But Indiana has lost more than 85 percent of the wetlands it had prior to European settlement."
An equally critical problem is what appears to be increasing frequency of summer drought, she said, which may offer a solid motivation for the region's farmers to become involved. The problem is not just catastrophic downstream flooding in the spring, but also the loss of water and soil moisture in the summer that can be desperately needed in dry years.
The solution to both issues, scientists say, is to "re-naturalize" the hydrology of a large section of the United States. Working toward this goal was a research team from Oregon State University, Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis, the Wetlands Institute in New Jersey, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. They used engineering principles, historic analysis and computer simulations to optimize the effectiveness of any land use changes, so that minimal land use alteration would offer farmers and landowners a maximum of benefits.
In the Midwest, many farmers growing corn, soybeans and other crops have placed "tiles" under their fields to rapidly drain water into streams, which dries the soil and allows for earlier planting. Unfortunately, it also concentrates pollutants, increases flooding and leaves the land drier during the summer. Without adequate rain, complete crop losses can occur.
Experts have also identified alternate ways to help, including the use of winter cover crops and grass waterways that help retain and more slowly release water. And the new computer systems can identify the best places for all of these approaches to be used.
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Oregon State University: http://www.orst.edu
Thanks to Oregon State University for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
Finding Nemo returns to cinemas in 3D format with an added depth of vision that looks stunning
Finding Nemo 3D
John Lowdon-NEC
*****
Ten years after it was first released, Pixar?s hugely-entertaining comedy swims back into cinemas in the 3D format? ?? and it is still the cinematic catch of the day.
Eye-popping visuals and a superb script, crammed to the gills with laugh-out-loud gags, combine to stunning effect in this wildly inventive fable set beneath the ocean waves.
The conversion to 3D has been lovingly overseen by Pixar supremo John Lasseter and the underwater environments look stunning with the added depth of vision.
You can almost feel fish swimming around you as the camera glides along coral reefs or sinks into the blue beyond and a forest of deadly jellyfish.
Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks) is a neurotic clownfish who has never recovered emotionally from a barracuda attack which claimed the lives of his wife and all but one of his unborn children.
When his one surviving son? Nemo (Alexander Gould), is plucked from the Great Barrier Reef by a diver and rehoused in a fish tank in a dentist?s waiting room, Marlin embarks on an epic adventure to bring the youngster home.
The clownfish is aided by a friendly blue tang called Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), who suffers from short-term memory loss, travelling through shark-infested waters to be reunited with his boy.
Meanwhile, Nemo hatches a daring escape from the crowded aquarium with the help of the other residents, including a Moorish Idol called Gill (Willem Dafoe), a hygiene-obsessed shrimp called Jacques (Joe Ranft) and a starfish called Peach (Allison Janney).
Finding Nemo is still computer-animated perfection.
Brooks plays his compulsive-obsessive father with sensitivity and dry wit, such as when he frets that none of his children will like him and his wife replies: ?Marlin, there are 400 eggs, I?m pretty sure one of them will like you.?
The rapport between Marlin and Dory is wonderful.
DeGeneres is a hoot as the comic sidekick, repeatedly forgetting who Marlin is and swimming to the surreal conclusion: ?Are ... are you my conscience??
There are dozens of memorable supporting characters, including a surfer dude turtle and a trio of sharks keen to embrace vegetarianism.
?I am a nice, friendly shark,? they chant, ?Not a fish-eating monster. Fish are our friends, not food.?
A great white called Bruce (Barry Humphries) soon changes his tuna when he scents Marlin?s blood.
The animation is jaw-dropping.
Sly visual jokes and rich detail are crammed into every water-logged frame, including a Buzz Lightyear action figure in the dentist?s office.
Before the main feature, there is an uproariously funny new Toy Story short called Partysaurus Rex in which the fun-loving green plastic dinosaur helps a gang of bath toys to stage a rave in a bubble bath.
North Korea readies rockets after U.S. show of force
SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea put its missile units on standby on Friday to attack U.S. military bases in South Korea and the Pacific, after the United States flew two nuclear-capable stealth bombers over the Korean peninsula in a rare show of force. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un signed off on the order at a midnight meeting of top generals and "judged the time has come to settle accounts with the U.S. imperialists in view of the prevailing situation", the official KCNA news agency said.
Attempt to end Italy crisis stalls, president mulls next move
ROME (Reuters) - Center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani has failed in his attempt to find a way out of Italy's political deadlock and President Giorgio Napolitano will now seek another solution, the president's palace said on Thursday. Bersani reported back to Napolitano on Thursday night after being given a mandate almost a week ago to see if he could muster enough support to form a government after the inconclusive election in February.
Iran, North Korea, Syria block U.N. arms trade treaty
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Iran, Syria and North Korea on Friday prevented the adoption of the first international treaty to regulate the $70 billion global conventional arms trade, complaining that it was flawed and failed to ban weapons sales to rebel groups. To get around the blockade, British U.N. Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant sent the draft treaty to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and asked him on behalf of Mexico, Australia and a number of others to put it to a swift vote in the General Assembly.
U.S. debates how severely to penalize Russia in human rights spat
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a controversy underscoring continued stresses in U.S.-Russia relations, Obama administration officials are debating how many Russian officials to ban from the United States under a new law meant to penalize Moscow for alleged human rights abuses. The debate's outcome, expected in about two weeks, is likely to illustrate how President Barack Obama will handle what critics say is a crackdown on dissent in Russia and set the tone for Washington-Moscow relations in the president's second term.
Mortar kills 15 at Damascus University, Syria says
BEIRUT/ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Fifteen Syrian students were killed when rebel mortar shells hit a Damascus University canteen on Thursday, state-run news agency SANA said, as attacks intensified in the center of the capital. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitoring group, said a mortar killed 13 people at the university, without saying who fired the bombs.
South Sudan says 150 killed in battle with rebels
JUBA (Reuters) - More than 150 people have been killed in a battle between South Sudan's army and insurgents in the eastern Jonglei state, officials said on Thursday. The African country's army earlier this month launched an offensive against rebels led by David Yau Yau in Jonglei where the government hopes to search for oil with the help of France's Total.
Kenyatta apologizes for judges gaffe before Kenya poll ruling
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya's president-elect, whose victory is being challenged in the Supreme Court, apologized on Thursday for seeming to dismiss the judges as "some six people" who will "decide something or other". Uhuru Kenyatta, who also faces trial at the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity over post-election violence five years ago, made the remarks - which went viral on social media - while consulting allies at a resort.
Beleaguered Hollande to reach out to nation on TV
PARIS (Reuters) - With his approval ratings and most of his economic pledges in tatters, French President Francois Hollande will try to convince a disillusioned nation on television on Thursday to keep faith in him to restore the economy to health. Hollande will be grilled in a 45-minute interview on France 2 television, his first such appearance in several months, in a studio whose backdrop and lighting have been prepared by his media team to create a somber mood.
U.S. nominates Breedlove as top NATO commander
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama nominated U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove on Thursday to become NATO's top military commander, a key role as NATO aims to wind down an 11-year-old combat mission in Afghanistan that has tested the resolve of allies. Breedlove, whose nomination was widely expected and endorsed by ambassadors from the 28 NATO allies, would succeed Admiral James Stavridis as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe. His appointment requires U.S. Senate confirmation.
Analysis: Gay marriage rights may carry bigger U.S. tax burden for some
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - If the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down a federal law defining marriage as between a man and woman, the newfound rights for gay married couples may bear something not so welcome - a bigger tax burden. That's because with equality, gay couples will face the same tax woes of many heterosexual couples with similar incomes, including the tax hit known in America as the marriage penalty.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Departmentcivilian employees will have to take 14 days of unpaid leave this year instead of the 22 previously planned after Congress adjusted Pentagon funding in a measure signed by the president this week, an official said on Thursday.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel decided on Wednesday to reduce the number of furlough days facing most of the Pentagon's nearly 800,000 civilian employees to 14 from 22.
The Pentagon had been set to send out furlough notices to employees last week, but delayed the move after Congress passed a measure that funded the government through the end of the fiscal year on September 30. The department said it needed two weeks to see how the measure affected Pentagon finances.
The Defense Department is facing more than $40 billion in budget cuts this year under a process known as sequestration after Congress and the White House failed to reach an agreement on alternative ways to reduce deficits. The new cuts went into effect on March 1.
The Pentagon budget also has been squeezed by a temporary funding mechanism that left it with a shortfall in the main account used to pay civilian personnel.
The funding measure signed by Obama this week kept the budget cuts under sequestration intact but allocated more money to the account used to pay civilians, letting the Pentagon reduce the amount of unpaid leave.
The Pentagon has not announced how many of its nearly 800,000 civilians will have to take unpaid leave, but officials have predicted it could be in the range of 80 percent.
Officials have said civilians supporting the war effort would not be affected, but a final decision on how many other essential personnel would be exempted has not been announced.
(Reporting by David Alexander; Editiing by Vicki Allen)
Pediatric researchers, investigating the biology of brain tumors in children, are finding that crucial differences in how the same gene is mutated may call for different treatments. A new study offers glimpses into how scientists will be using the ongoing flood of gene-sequencing data to customize treatments based on very specific mutations in a child's tumor.
"By better understanding the basic biology of these tumors, such as how particular mutations in the same gene may respond differently to targeted drugs, we are moving closer to personalized medicine for children with cancer," said the study's first author, Angela J. Sievert, M.D., M.P.H., an oncologist in the Cancer Center at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
Sievert, working with co-first author Shih-Shan Lang, M.D., in the translational laboratory of neurosurgeon Phillip Storm, M.D., and Adam Resnick, Ph.D., published a study ahead of print today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The study, performed in cell cultures and animals, focused on a type of astrocytoma, the most common type of brain tumor in children. When surgeons can fully remove an astrocytoma (also called a low-grade glioma), a child can be cured. However, many astrocytomas are too widespread or in too delicate a site to be safely removed. Others may recur. So pediatric oncologists have been seeking better options---ideally, a drug that can selectively and definitively kill the tumor with low toxicity to healthy tissue.
The current study focuses on mutations in the BRAF gene, one of the most commonly mutated genes in human cancers. Because the same gene is also mutated in certain adult cancers, such as melanoma, the pediatric researchers were able to make use of recently developed drugs, BRAF inhibitors, which were already being tested with some success against melanoma in adults.
The current study provides another example of the complexity of cancer: in the same gene, different mutations behave differently. Sievert and her colleagues at Children's Hospital were among several research groups who reported almost simultaneously in 2008 and 2009 that mutations in the BRAF gene were highly prevalent in astrocytomas in children. "These were landmark discoveries, because they suggested that if we could block the action of that mutation, we could develop a new, more effective treatment for these tumors," said Sievert.
However, follow-up studies in animal models were initially disappointing. BRAF inhibitors that were effective in BRAF-driven adult melanomas made brain tumors worse?via an effect called paradoxical activation.
Further investigation revealed how tumor behavior depended on which type of BRAF mutation was involved. The first-generation drug that was effective in adult melanoma acted against point mutations in BRAF called V600E alterations. However, in most astrocytomas the mutation in the BRAF gene was different; it produced a fusion gene, designated KIAA1549-BRAF. When used against the fusion gene, the first-generation drug activated a cancer-driving biological pathway, the MAPK signaling cascade, and accelerated tumor growth.
By examining the molecular mechanisms behind drug resistance and working with the pharmaceutical industry, the current study's investigators identified a new, experimental second-generation BRAF inhibitor that disrupted the cancer-promoting signals from the fusion gene, and did not cause the paradoxical activation in the cell cultures and animal models.
This preclinical work result lays a foundation for multicenter clinical trials to test the mutation-specific targeting of tumors by this class of drugs in children with astrocytomas, said Sievert. As this effort progresses, it will benefit from CHOP's commitment to resources and collaborations that support data-intense research efforts.
The direction of brain tumor research over the past several years reflects some of those data-driven advances, says Adam C. Resnick, Ph.D., the senior author of the current paper and principal investigator of the astrocytoma research team in the Division of Neurosurgery at Children's Hospital. "For years, astrocytomas have been lumped together based on similar appearance to pathologists studying their structure, cell shape and other factors," said Resnick. "But our current discoveries show that the genetic and molecular structure of tumors provides more specific information in guiding oncologists toward customized treatments."
Earlier this year, Children's Hospital announced its collaboration with the gene-sequencing organization BGI-Shenzhen in performing next-generation sequencing of pediatric brain tumors at the Joint Genome Center, BGI@CHOP. The center's sophisticated, high-throughput sequencing technology will greatly speed the discovery of specific gene alterations involved in childhood brain cancers.
This genomic discovery program dovetails with the work of the Childhood Brain Tumor Tissue Consortium, a multi-institutional collaboration recently launched by CHOP, with support from the Children's Brain Tissue Foundation. Because even large research centers may not hold enough tumor tissue specimens to power certain research, the consortium pools samples from a group of institutions, providing an important scientific resource for cooperative studies.
"The better we understand the mutational landscape of tumors, the closer we'll be to defining therapies tailored to a patient's specific subtype of cancer," added Resnick.
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Children's Hospital of Philadelphia: http://www.chop.edu
Thanks to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
Allow me just a little self-congratulation. Two years ago I wrote "
After I had been running at night for more than a decade, a relatively under-the-radar startup called Nextdoor got me to start running during the day. Almost nobody likes to exercise, and for many, overcoming the motivational hump of putting on your shoes and gym clothes can be trying on even the best of days. One evening late in January I had finally overcome this initial barrier to entry, and was just about to stop blogging to do my usual 30-minute nightly sprint when I got the email. “Woman robbed at gunpoint in Dogpatch, San Francisco” the subject line screamed. Unlike many of the emails I constantly receive, this was highly relevant to me, especially because, upon further inspection, the robbery had happened one block from my house. Until this email, I hadn’t given too much thought to Nextdoor , a service that I signed up for at the Allen & Co conference last summer, where co-founder Nirav Tolia had given a talk about the local social network. The company started out as Fanbase in 2009, and was an attempt to create a user-generated content version of ESPN. Founders Tolia and Sarah Leary decided to pivot around May of 2010, and spent the next four to five months testing out different ideas. Fanbase officially pivoted to Nextdoor in September of 2010, starting out its pilot in Lorelei, a neighborhood in Menlo Park. Now a Facebook for your neighborhood, about half the Fanbase funding ended up carrying over, and Tolia and Leary ended up raising an additional $40.2 million for the new Nextdoor product. Initially enthusiastic, I had also invited my neighbors to use the platform, which had resulted in a de facto neighborhood support group (including the services of a pet psychic) when their adventurous cat Kiki went missing. I wrote a post about it for TechCrunch and then sort of forgot about it, rarely logging on to peruse the listings of free stuff and garage sales. Well I was certainly giving the service some thought now: “What if I had been that woman who was robbed?”"What if I had ventured out of my house just 15 minutes earlier?” I was still in my gym clothes, after so much effort, and feeling antsy from my day of work. Worse, I was now worried about a random stranger I had only heard about through the Internet, and I still needed a
