Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Arizona Real Estate Partners of OZ Realty Go Flat-fee for Charity Through November 1

PHOENIX/EWORLDWIRE/Oct. 2, 2007 --- When real estate partners of OZ Realty set their sights on impacting the community they live in, in a big, big way, they did it with gusto - and at tremendous personal, financial sacrifice.

"Our biggest concern is that no one will take us seriously, but this is a legitimate business venture for us," stated Partner Sanjog Gopal. "With so much talk about trouble in the real estate market, we aim to stir things up in the Phoenix area by saving sellers a lot of money, by donating a lot of money to a good cause, and by boosting our local real estate market."

OZ Realty has instituted the "Spread Goodwill" program that includes a full service listing of any home for a $1500 flat fee until November 1, 2007. Color flyers and open houses are included. "We stand to build this area. Discount brokers charge twice as much - around $3000 - and do not provide open houses," said Gopal. "Other full service listings come with a cost equal to three percent of the purchase price of the home which can run $7500 on a $250,000 home."

OZ Realty will donate 100 percent of commissions to charity, either of the sellers' choosing or that of OZ Realty, if clients prefer. The research into local organizations Gopal has performed indicates those that would immediately benefit from the progam are the 100 Club, Boys and Girls Club of Arizona and Habitat for Humanity of Arizona.

"As wallets become thin, the funds flowing into community organizations has waned," added Gopal. "We project that if we help sell just 10 homes a month, we can save sellers $60,000 and donate $15,000 a month. The more homes that sell, the more money that is saved and the more money that is donated. It's more than just homes on the line - it's our reputation, our local economy and community charities."

The local real estate economy benefits from lower commissions from OZ Realty, because sellers can lower their asking price and entice buyers to get back in the market. "Creating awareness of our program builds recognition of our services and will help us build marketshare," concluded Gopal.

Golden Griffin Productions Wins Twice In 2007 Accolade Competition

SHERMAN OAKS, Calif./EWORLDWIRE/Oct. 2, 2007 --- Producers Anna Terra and Nancy Lamfers of Golden Griffin Productions have won two prestigious awards in the 2007 Accolade Competition. Their comedy pilot, "In The Soup," was awarded an Honorable Mention for outstanding Creativity/Originality and Television Comedy Program. This unique and wacky show has a hilarious cast of characters who continually stir up trouble in a Los Angeles soup kitchen.

"We are incredibly honored to have received awards in these specific categories because they weren't just about an individual achievement," says Lamfers. "They recognize the combined effort of our entire cast and crew who sacrificed day and night to make this show a reality." Lamfers co-authored the script with her husband, casting director, Terry Lamfers. Says Terra, "Everybody had to multitask to make this show a success. I got the opportunity to work with Nancy, producing the show and I also played Anna Maria Giovanetti, one, crazy, overbearing mother - a really fun role."

The Accolade recognizes film, television and video professionals who demonstrate exceptional achievement in craft and creativity and those who produce standout entertainment or contribute to profound social change. Entries are judged by highly qualified professionals in the film and television industry.

Proteins in Space

Malaysia will be sending its first astronauts to the International Space Station on 10 October, 2007 where they will be conducting 10 different experiments. One of the experiments is designed by Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) to understand the structure of protein under microgravity.

Proteins are essentially life’s building blocks. Understanding proteins helps us understand how living things function. The shape or structure of protein can influence its function, much like a key to fit a lock. For example, new drugs can be designed so that it is recognised by its target within our body. The UPM experiment will shed light on how proteins fold and form under microgravity, thus telling us more about the shape of proteins. This experiment was designed by Prof. Raja Noor Zaliha Raja Abdul Rahman and her team. Prof. Raja is a Microbiologist/Molecular biologist from Universiti Putra Malaysia.

Observing ultrahigh-energy cosmic particles

Ultrahigh-energy cosmic particles are an intriguing puzzle in high-energy physics. They are extremely rare—only 11 have been observed in 13 years of searching. No one knows where they come from, or how they could have that much energy left over after the long journey through intergalactic and interstellar space.

RIKEN, one of Japan’s largest research organisations is planning to observe them on board the International Space Station. To observe these rare phenomena, a telescope with an extremely wide field of view is needed. Instead of looking out into space like a conventional telescope, the telescope will look down at the Earth from space, searching for streaks of ultraviolet fluorescence and Cerenkov radiation, which cosmic particles produce when they interact with the Earth's atmosphere.

PolyU-made space tool sets for Mars again

Following the signing of space collaboration agreement between China and Russia earlier this year, scientists at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) got a new chance to design their state-of-the-art space tools for a mission to Mars onboard a Russian spacecraft. The aerospace authorities of the two nations have agreed to jointly probe Mars and its innermost moon Phobos.

It is planned that Russia will launch an explorer carrying a lander with Chinese-made device to collect samples of Phobos soil. The system, which weighs merely 230 grams and measures slightly larger than a cigarette pack, will be capable of grinding and sifting Phobos rock to the size of less than 1mm in diameter for in situ analysis by the Lander. This procedure is considered a crucial step in understanding the evolution of the universe and in searching for possible signs of life on the extraterrestrial planet.

Monday, October 01, 2007

Getting out of a jam with jellies

One jellyfish can throw a swimmer into a panic, but relentless swarms can disrupt entire economies. Recent, dramatic increases in jellyfish populations—for reasons ranging from overfishing to the impact of global warming on coastal ecosystems—have had equally dramatic effects on human communities.

Several coastal power plants in Japan have been damaged or shut down entirely by the accumulation of tons of jellyfish bodies within their cooling systems, and fishermen in the Sea of Japan now find themselves confronted by nets full of jellyfish—including one particularly massive species (Fig. 1). Removing and disposing of these jellyfish bodies in an economically feasible way represents a major challenge, but a recent discovery by Kiminori Ushida and colleagues at the RIKEN Discovery Research Institute, Wako, and Shinwa Chemical Industries, Kyoto, may offer new hope.

“I know a lot about the economic situation with waste that requires compensation for the cost of collection, transportation and disposal,” Ushida explains. “I felt that figuring out how to make money from jellyfish waste is essential for cleaning up and protecting the environment.” Ushida’s group set about performing a series of extractions on different jellyfish species, and identified a novel protein that consistently appeared in every sample (1). It turned out to be a glycoprotein—a class of proteins naturally linked to sugar molecules—from a family known as mucins.

Mucins are found in many plant and animal species, and are currently used as additives for a number of commercial applications, ranging from cosmetics to medicines. Ushida’s team named their protein ‘qniumucin’, a play on the word ‘kuniumi’; this term from Japanese history refers to the early government that arose to provide stability to a once-disorganized country. “I am worried about the terrible situation of people living in the districts where the ancient Japanese government originated, who are suffering because of these giant jellyfish,” says Ushida, “and I hope that this material will generate new industry in the district, like the ‘rebirth of the countryside’.”

Indeed, qniumucin shows a great deal of promise—its structure is simple and well-understood, making it a candidate for further engineering to enhance particular characteristics. For example, some mucins have proven to be effective as antibiotics. Accordingly, Ushida’s top priority is to make qniumucin extraction as profitable as possible. “We are developing designer mucins to enhance certain functions of our protein,” he says, “and many companies are interested in finding effective commercial uses for qniumucin.”

Fires of creation probed by quarks

Scientists have confirmed that a powerful particle accelerator has recreated the intense conditions that existed just microseconds after the beginning of the universe. The experiments have also revealed a surprise about quarks, the fundamental building blocks of every atomic nucleus.

Quarks are normally held together by gluons, but immediately after the big bang these ingredients existed as a hot quark–gluon plasma (QGP). Understanding how this soup condenses into the discrete particles that make up ordinary matter can help to reveal how the subatomic world works.

To generate quarks of various flavors—known by names such as ‘charm’ or ‘strange’—the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in Upton, US, smashes particles together at close to the speed of light.

Scientists working there conducted a series of experiments there in 2004/5 to create and study an unusual particle called J/ψ, made up of a charm quark paired with its opposite number, the anti-charm quark.

The scientists first smashed protons together, and used the PHENIX (Pioneering High Energy Nuclear Interaction eXperiment) detector to spot thousands of J/ψ particle decays1 (Fig. 1).

When they switched protons for gold atoms, the heavier missiles created more intense explosions expected to generate a quark–gluon plasma2. They saw that, as expected, some of the J/ψ particles from the initial explosion were melting in this hot bath, lowering their overall numbers.

“This supports the theoretical prediction that J/ψ will melt in a QGP, and thus provides strong evidence for QGP formation at RHIC,” says Yasuyuki Akiba of RIKEN’s Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science, Wako, who is part of the PHENIX team.

Surprisingly, they also found that the central, hotter region of the collision actually hosted more J/ψ particles than the cooler outskirts. This suggests that charm and anti-charm quarks produced at the heart of the collision can recombine into J/ψ. “This is a very intriguing explanation but, at present, the data cannot rule out other possibilities,” adds Akiba.

The team have now just finished collecting a new set of data on gold–gold collisions which will allow them to measure J/ψ much more precisely. They hope they will be able to track the characteristic motion of J/ψ particles produced by recombination of quarks, dubbed ‘elliptic flow’, which would distinguish them from existing J/ψ that failed to melt in the QGP. This would allow them to calculate the balance between melting and recombination effects, revealing more about the primordial QGP.

Towards a treatment for epilepsy

Japanese neuroscientists have clarified the molecular basis of the intractable epileptic disorder known as severe myoclonic epilepsy in infancy (SMEI). In the process they have redefined the position and role of an important protein involved in controlling the firing of nerve impulses in the brain. The work also has generated a mouse model of severe myoclonic epilepsy that the researchers hope to use to study the condition and how to treat it.

More than 200 different mutations of the human SCN1A gene are known to be associated with human epileptic disorders including SMEI. The gene itself encodes an ion-channel protein, Nav1.1, which forms a pore in the plasma membrane that controls the in-flow of electrically-charged sodium ions into nerve cells. This is a significant step in the generation of nerve impulses. There is a homologous gene, Scn1a, in mice.

In a recent paper in The Journal of Neuroscience (1), researchers from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Wako, and their colleagues, describe how they produced a ‘knock-in’ mouse, by introducing a disease-causing, nonsense mutation found in SMEI patients into the middle of the Scn1a gene. Mouse pups which inherited copies of the mutant gene from both mother and father were markedly smaller (Fig. 1), developed epilepsy and an unstable gait by the second week after birth, and died within three weeks. Pups with only one copy of the mutant gene began epileptic seizures in the third week, and about 40% had died within three months.

Previous studies suggested that the Nav1.1 protein was distributed rather evenly throughout the brain and could be found in the projections of nerve cells known as dendrites. Using three different antibodies as probes, the RIKEN-based research team corrected this picture. The Nav1.1 proteins are more likely to be found on axons and cell bodies. In particular, they are found on inhibitory nerve cells that express the calcium-binding protein parvalbumin, often in the area known as the axon initial segment where nerve impulses are generated.

By measuring and comparing the output of excitatory and inhibitory neurons in normal and mutant mice, the research team found that the Nav1.1 channel proteins were needed not to initiate firing of the excitatory nerve, but to maintain the inhibitory pulse, thus preventing epileptic seizures.

“We hope to develop effective therapies for this intractable epilepsy from further work,” says project leader Kazuhiro Yamakawa.

Approval granted for Keio University to merge with Kyoritsu University of Pharmacy

Keio University receives approval from MEXT for its merger with Kyoritsu University of Pharmacy and establishment of the Faculty of Pharmacy and Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences

Keio University has been preparing to merge with Kyoritsu University of Pharmacy and to establish the Faculty of Pharmacy and Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences within Keio University. On 28 September 2007, Keio University received approval from the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology for its merger with Kyoritsu University of Pharmacy and establishment of the Faculty of Pharmacy and Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Following the approval, on 1 April 2008, the two universities will merge, and Keio University will open the Faculty of Pharmacy and Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

New type of Bismuth oxide nanoparticles

UPM researchers have developed BiOX, a new type of bismuth oxide nanoparticle, which is cheap and ecologically friendly to produce. Bismuth oxide is important in everyday life its non-toxic properties. It can be used as a substitute for lead, eradicating peptic ulcer bacteria, in cosmetics and in solid oxide fuel cell

Bismuth oxide is becoming so important in everyday life for its non-toxic and non-carcinogenic status. Demand is rising to use the material as a substitute for lead particularly in copper alloys for plumbing fittings for water drinking system. Suggestions have also been made for including the material in tableware glazing, glasses and crystal ware.

In pharmaceutical industries, the material is proven to be the most effective ingredient eradicating bacteria responsible for inflicting peptic ulcers. The material combined with chloride gives a special pearlescent, inimitable deep luster to lipstick, nail polish, eye shadows and facial powders in addition to its lubricating qualities for smoother, silkier skin comfort.

Other technological applications of bismuth oxide are in the field of advanced ceramics, rare earth chemicals, thermal spray powders, solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) materials, catalysts, nano-magnetics, electroplating and biotechnology.

BiOX is a new type of bismuth oxide nanoparticle with distinctive bright orange colour. Its chemical symbol is Bi2O3 and its molecular weight is 466. The material particle size is 37nm with its corresponding specific surface area of 8.9m2g-1.

The oxides are of tetragonal-Bi2O3 which through controlled synthesis procedure produce materials resemble into rosette morphology (see attachment for images). The preparation method opted was rather simple and distinguished by the monophase composition of the product, ecological safety and simple operation, therefore promising low operating cost.

Mitochondrial downfall in Parkinson’s disease

The mutation of two genes associated with the development of Parkinson’s disease cooperate to regulate mitochondrial function when cells are stressed, reports a paper online in Nature Cell Biology this week. This link will help researchers understand the mechanisms underlying the neuronal degeneration seen in pathologies such as Parkinson‘s disease.

Julian Downward and colleagues investigated the mitochondrial protease Omi – the loss of which leads to a neurodegenerative disorder resembling Parkinson’s. They found that Omi is regulated by PINK1, which has been identified as an early-onset Parkinson’s disease susceptibility factor. The researchers show that, in response to various cellular stresses, PINK1 is essential for mitochondrial protection by Omi and keeps cells healthy. Strikingly, they also find that this cooperation is impaired in brain samples from Parkinson's disease patients carrying mutations in PINK1.

Finding this new interaction suggests that in the normal brain, PINK1 and Omi prevent the death of neuronal cells by protecting their mitochondria. The development of Parkinson’s disease would thus be linked to a higher susceptibility to neuronal death following stress.

HIV stuns immune cells

A known suppression factor in the immune system increases in HIV-infected individuals on critical immune cells, reports a study in the November issue of Nature Immunology. Key targets of HIV infection, CD4+ T cells show elevated levels of the suppression factor and are associated with rapid HIV disease progression.

Bruce Walker and colleagues evaluated HIV-positive people who progressed relatively fast to disease and found significant increases in CTLA-4 expression on CD4+ T lymphocytes compared to those who did not––so-called ‘long-term non-progressors’. The team also compared CTLA-4 expression on CD4+ T cells in people before and after receiving highly active anti-retroviral therapy and found higher T cell-associated CTLA-4 in those who were off therapy. Importantly, the team found that blocking the activity of CTLA-4 improved immune function.

These results suggest that decreasing CTLA-4 expression on CD4+ T cells may provide a potential therapy to improve lymphocyte function in HIV-infected individuals.

Learning in stressful times

The hippocampus is crucial for mediating the effects of stress on learning, even when this brain region is not directly involved in learning the task in question, reports a paper in the November issue of Nature Neuroscience.

The hippocampus is important for some types of learning but not others. Eyeblink conditioning, for example, does not require the hippocampus. Animals respond to a shock to the eye by blinking, and when the shock is repeatedly paired with a noise learn to respond to the noise itself with an eyeblink – irrespective of whether it is accompanied by a shock.

Tracey Shors and colleagues previously reported that after rats have been stressed, eyeblink conditioning is enhanced in males and reduced in females – stress therefore modifies learning of the association between the noise and shock. The authors now find that selective damage to the hippocampus in rats makes these stress-induced modifications disappear. Lesioned male rats do not learn eyeblink conditioning any faster when they are stressed, and lesioned female rats are no worse. Without stress, both perform just like normal animals. These results indicate that neuronal activity in the hippocampus modifies learning after stress, even when the hippocampus is not directly involved in the learning process itself.

The gene-mapper’s best friend

Genetic variants associated with dominant or recessive disease-related traits in dogs can be mapped efficiently and with high confidence, report two studies to be published online this week in Nature Genetics. As dogs and humans have a similar complement of genes, the mapping of disease-associated variants in dogs may make an important contribution to the study of human genetic disease.

There are more than 400 genetically distinct dog breeds. As each breed originated in a small number of founder dogs, there is a limited amount of genetic diversity within each breed. This sort of genome structure is ideal for the rough mapping of genes because it allows one to analyze most of the genome with a limited number of genetic markers. Kerstin Lindblad-Toh and colleagues found small regions of the genome to be associated with two traits by assessing a relatively small number of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (27,000) in only 20 dogs.

The authors identified a genomic region containing only one gene—MITF—as responsible for the absence of skin and coat pigmentation in white boxers, which also predisposes them to deafness. They also identified a region associated with the dorsal hair ridge in Ridgeback dogs, which are prone to dermoid sinus, a neural tube defect. In the accompanying paper, Leif Andersson and colleagues carried out fine mapping of the region associated with the Ridgeback hair ridge, and showed that the causative mutation is a duplication containing four different genes—FGF3, FGF4, FGF19 and ORAOV1.

The long and the short of fatty liver

Too much fat in the liver predisposes to diabetes, but a study in the October issue of Nature Medicine reports that not all types of fat are equally harmful. Changing the fat composition in the liver may therefore help obese patients who are insulin resistant and cannot lose weight.

Excessive fat intake leads to obesity and overwhelms the storage capacity of fat cells, with surplus fat being stored in the liver. Development of fatty liver can result in insulin resistance and increased glucose levels—two hallmarks of diabetes.

Hitoshi Shimano and his colleagues created a strain of mice lacking Elovl6, an enzyme that increases the length of the carbon chains of fatty acids, thereby changing the fat composition in the liver of these mutant mice, with shorter fatty acids predominating over those with longer chains. On a high-fat diet, these mice became obese and developed fatty liver, just like wild-type mice, but their insulin sensitivity and their sugar levels were not affected.

The absolute levels of fat in the liver do not therefore seem to be detrimental to maintaining normal glucose levels. Instead, the types of fat that are present seem to be a more important factor, with shorter fat molecules being healthier than longer ones. If this is also true in humans, it may be possible to help obese patients who are insulin resistant and cannot lose weight by targeting Elovl6.

Micro-managing HIV replication

Cellular microRNAs could help HIV persist by shutting off viral replication and contributing to latency, suggests a paper online in Nature Medicine this week.

HIV can hide out in cells in a dormant state called latency. Antiviral drugs target replicating virus, so latency is a large barrier to virus eradication.

Hui Zhang and colleagues identified a cluster of microRNAs that interact with a region of the HIV genome, shutting off viral gene expression. These microRNAs are enriched in so-called resting CD4 T cells—the main cell type that harbours latent HIV. The authors treated resting CD4 T cells from HIV infected patients with a combination of specific inhibitors of the microRNAs and showed that after such treatment the cells were able to generate 10 times more HIV. Interfering with the function of these suppressive microRNAs might therefore provide a new way to flush HIV out of hiding.

No end to protein modification

A new biological signalling molecule is described online this week in Nature Chemical Biology. Nitric oxide, or NO, is a common messenger in biological systems and produces a variety of physiological responses, but the precise signalling pathways involved have so far remained unclear.

Takaaki Akaike and colleagues now show that cellular NO production produces a ‘nitrated’ second messenger called 8-nitro-cGMP, which bears a chemical resemblance to a known signalling molecule, cyclic GMP (cGMP). Because of this similarity, 8-nitro-cGMP is a good mimic and can activate several of cGMP’s standard signalling pathways. However 8-nitro-cGMP has a number of additional functions including the ability to tag proteins with a cGMP tag. The discovery of these new pathways and modifications provides new insights into NO physiology and pathological responses.

Human evolution: The eastern extent of Neanderthals

Neanderthals could have spread as far east as central Asia and Siberia — more than 2,000 kilometres further than previously thought — according to new DNA evidence published online this week in Nature.

Neanderthal fossils have previously been found over a large area, stretching from the Mediterranean to as far east as Uzbekistan. Most remains are fragmentary, however, so it can be difficult to determine whether a fossil is of Neanderthal or of modern human origin.

Svante Pääbo and colleagues looked at mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences from two sets of hominid remains — one child skeleton from Uzbekistan and adult fossils from Okladnikov in southern Siberia — to find out whether they fell within the European Neanderthal mtDNA variation. The partial skeleton from Teshik-Tash in Uzbekistan is of an 8–10-year-old boy discovered in the 1930s. This fossil is thought to represent the easternmost extent of the Neanderthal range, but scientists have never been able to confirm it. The authors extracted mtDNA samples from four bones: the left femur of the Teshik-Tash child and three fragmentary pieces from the Siberian fossils.

The results show that the mtDNA fossil sequences fall within the European Neanderthal mtDNA variation, suggesting that the geographical range of Neanderthals extended farther east into southern Siberia than has generally been assumed. The authors conclude that further DNA sequences from across the Neanderthal range are needed to build up a better picture of how Neanderthals colonized different regions, and whether they ever reached as far east as Mongolia or China.
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