US Senator Brian Schatz of Hawai?i participated in his first committee hearing in his official congressional capacity today.
The hearing, entitled, ?The Power of Transparency: Giving Consumers the Information They Need to Make Smart Choices in the Health Insurance Market,? was hosted by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
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Sen. Schatz joined Chairman Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia in expressing that transparency in health insurance policies is needed for consumers to better understand policies and carefully select a health care plan.
?It is critical for Hawai?i families to have access to the right information when making important decisions about their health insurance,? said Sen. Schatz.
?Whether it?s individuals that are Limited English Proficient or lower income households that don?t have the means to access the internet to research health care plans, we must ensure that all consumers have access to the information they need,? said Sen. Schatz.
Relevant information, he said, helps consumers better understand complicated health insurance policies so that they can select a plan that is appropriate for their family.
Life is fragile, use it roughly. Wrest from it all you can. Love in it what you?ve got. For once it begins to end, the greens in your fridge will rot less quickly than you do.
I know because it?s just happened to my dad.
On Jan. 1, my father announced with some pride that he was the only one in our small family who?d made it through the holidays without getting sick. On Jan. 2, he awoke with a fever. On Jan. 3, he was dead.
By the time the coroner sent his body back to the mortuary two weeks later, it was so severely decomposed that the funeral directors beseeched my mother and me not to see it. We were just beginning to sort through vegetables he had bought to make ?my little girl fresh juice that day. Most of them were still good.
Wolfgang Nehring was a scholar and a gentleman, a stoic and a romantic, a handsome devil who kidnapped the woman he loved out of the home of her boyfriend in 1964 and married her immediately thereafter. He was an impassioned lover of German literature; a powerful hiker, swimmer, and prose stylist; an idealistic and demanding university professor; and?surely to his shock?an ?unparalleled grandfather to his exceptional little grandchild, Eurydice.
When Eurydice contracted acute leukemia at age 1, my dad searched high and low for medical advice and visited her in the hospital every day for seven months until she healed. His own hospital experience was less successful: After being wheeled into the emergency room by his general doctor in response to sudden back pain that left him unable to walk, a high fever, vomiting, and a loss of balance, he was sent home without any treatment and died within four hours.
Had this swiftest of exits occurred 20 years down the line, it might, in fact, have been graceful. But my dad stood at the brink of a new life when he was felled by a 20-hour infection and failed by the medical profession. His body was in the best shape it had been in 20 years?100 percent cancer-free, as the coroner intoned to me on the phone: Every organ was apparently healthy. (It is only, ironically, a coroner who can give you so clean a bill of health: No other doctor can conduct as thorough an examination without putting the patient at high risk.) ?Moreover, his horizons were widening, his imagination deepening, and his spirit filling with a fresh kind of love.
Death, it turns out, does not respect our plans for personal improvement. It does not rank us as human beings or decide who?s deserving of its favors and who isn?t.
?Often it repulses those who flirt with it daily and who long?half or whole-heartedly?for its embrace. Often it rapes those who ignore it or spend years engaging its enemy, life. We must get away from the idea that there is justice. We must get away from the idea that the universe is benevolent?either to the good or to the ?healthy.? The only person to whom the universe is benevolent is the person who squeezes all life into a chestnut in his palm and squeezes its juice?the one who grabs quality regardless of quantity.
In the Italian and English Renaissance, this was a clich?: ?Carpe diem,? they called it, ?Seize the day for tomorrow you shall die.? Princes and poets alike used it to get their heartthrobs to sleep with them more quickly: ?The grave?s a fine and private place, but none, I think, do there, embrace,? coaxed the 17th-century lyricist Andrew Marvell. But the transience of our lives is not just an argument for lovemaking. It is an argument for loving. An argument for loving children. Experiences. Tragedies. Destinies we may not have thought intended for us, but which we can make our glory. My dad, when he died, was still director of graduate studies in UCLA?s German Department, but he had begun to plan a new existence in Berlin or Paris, a life of philosophical writing?the Montaigne chapter of his career. His relationship with my mother was the most tender and gentlemanly I recall seeing it. His relationship to my daughter was a thing of resplendent beauty.
(Reuters) - Barnes & Noble Inc reported a net loss for the holiday quarter, hurt by a sharp decline in sales in its Nook device and e-books business, at the same time that Chairman Leonard Riggio is trying to buy the company's profitable bookstore unit.
The company said earlier this week that Riggio plans to make an offer for the bookstore business, but not its Nook and e-book business and its college bookstores.
Revenue at its Nook business, including e-books and devices, fell 25.9 percent to $316 million in the fiscal third quarter that ended January 26, as it sold fewer e-readers and tablets and had to cut prices. The loss on the Nook business more than doubled to $190.4 million.
The poor results put into question Nook's long-term viability.
"It simply doesn't have the assets to make its tablet a useful productivity tool the way Apple and Google do," Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey said in a note.
Still, Barnes & Noble Chief Executive William Lynch said the company "remains committed" to the Nook devices.
Last year Barnes & Noble carved out Nook and its college bookstore business into a new unit called Nook Media. That has attracted investments from Microsoft Corp and Pearson LLC, but Barnes & Noble still owns 78 percent.
The Nook and college bookstore business has been financing itself since October, rather than needing cash from the retail business, helped by the Microsoft and Pearson investments and cash from the college bookstores, Lynch told analysts on a conference call. That business has about $240 million in cash and no debt, he said.
Digital content sales rose 7 percent in the holiday quarter even though Nook device sales fell, and Barnes & Noble is in discussions for partnerships to sell the digital content it owns, he said.
The company's shares fell in early trading but were up 7 percent after the conference call.
Barnes & Noble, the largest U.S. bookstore chain, launched the first iteration of the Nook e-reader in 2009. At first the device was a hit, winning the retailer as much as 27 percent of the U.S. e-books market.
But more recently, the tablet version of Nook has struggled against rival devices from Amazon.com Inc and Google Inc, which offer far more apps and content and have improved their e-reading functions.
The disastrous holiday performance puts additional pressure to find other investors for Nook.
"The window of opportunity to sell Nook is closing," Morningstar analyst Peter Wahlstrom told Reuters.
Barnes & Noble said that at its namesake book superstores, sales at stores open at least 15 months, excluding Nook products, slipped 2.2 percent in the latest quarter.
At its college bookstores, same-store sales fell 5.2 percent.
The company posted a net loss of $6.1 million, or 18 cents per share, compared with a profit of $52 million, or 71 cents, a year earlier.
Revenue was down 10.3 percent to $2.23 billion, below the $2.4 billion Wall Street was projecting, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
(Reporting by Phil Wahba in Toronto; additional reporting by Brad Dorfman in Chicago; editing by John Wallace)
U.S. Supreme Court members (first row L-R) Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, Chief Justice John Roberts, Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, (back row L-R) Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, Associate Justice Samuel Alito and Associate Justice Elena Kagan.
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By Pete Williams, NBC News Justice Correspondent
The U.S. Supreme Court this week will consider whether a landmark civil rights law, the Voting Rights Act, remains constitutionally valid, given the growth in the political power of minority voters and candidates.
Civil rights groups fear the court's conservatives are prepared to gut what the ACLU calls "the most important piece of civil rights legislation Congress has ever enacted."
The justices will hear oral arguments in the case Wednesday and rule sometime before the current court term ends in late June.
Passed by Congress in 1965 and renewed four times since then, most recently in 2006, a key provision of the law requires states with a history of discrimination at the polls to get federal permission before making any changes to their election procedures ? from congressional redistricting to changing the locations of polling places.
The law was at the core of last year's successful efforts to block strict voter photo ID laws in Texas and South Carolina and to prevent Texas from redrawing its legislative and congressional boundaries in a manner that challengers claimed would have discriminated against minority voters.
"The last election vividly showed that voter suppression and voting discrimination are not just problems of the past. They continue to undermine our democratic process," says the ACLU's Steve Shapiro.
The challenge to the law comes from Shelby County, Alabama, a mostly white suburb south of Birmingham.? It argues that the pre-clearance requirement ? which covers nine entire states and 66 counties or townships in seven others ? is unconstitutional.
The areas covered by the law, it says, include some localities that have made substantial reforms but leave out other parts of the country that have failed to root out discrimination at the polls.
"Florida has been forced into pre-clearance litigation to prove that reducing early voting from 14 days to 8 is not discriminatory, when states such as Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania have no early voting at all," says Bert Rein of Washington, DC, the lawyer for the county.
While the history of blatant discrimination at the polls justified renewing the law in the past, Shelby County says, Congress failed to marshal enough evidence in 2006 to justify extending it for another 25 years.? "At most, the 2006 legislative record shows scattered and limited interference with voting rights, a level plainly insufficient" to sustain the pre-clearance requirement, Rein says.
Since 1990, adds Alabama?s Attorney General, Luther Strange, African Americans in the state have registered and voted in larger percentages than in states outside the South.
?African Americans hold seats in the legislature at percentages that are roughly commensurate with Alabama?s 26 percent African-American population,? Strange says.
But the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund says the current map is a close enough fit to cover the areas of greatest concern.? "Congress is not a surgeon with a scalpel when it acts to legislate across the fivty states, but it can reasonably attack discrimination where it finds it," the group says.
If the law were struck down, civil rights groups fear the areas covered by the law would revert to their old habits.
Warns the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human rights, ?There is a significant risk of backsliding and a likelihood that millions of minority voters will face new barriers to the exercise of their most fundamental human right.?
President Obama expressed a similar sentiment in a radio interview last week. If covered jurisdictions no longer had to defend their electoral changes in advance, Obama said, civil rights groups would be forced to file lawsuits after voting changes were already in place.
?There are some parts of the country where obviously folks have been trying to make it harder for people to vote. So generally speaking, you?d see less protection before an election with respect to voting rights,? Mr. Obama said.
The Justice Department, which is defending the law before the Supreme Court, argues that the coverage formula is flexible, allowing local governments to bail out of the pre-clearance requirement if they can demonstrate they have not discriminated against minority voters for at least ten years.
During the past three decades, 38 bailouts have been granted, freeing 196 local jurisdictions of the preclearance requirement, the Justice Department says.? They include the first ever granted from parts of Alabama, Georgia, Texas, and Virginia, four of the states that are otherwise covered by the law.
Four years ago, the Supreme Court strongly suggested that several justices had doubts about its constitutionality, given recent electoral reforms. "Things have changed in the South," the court said in 2009.? "Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare."
The court then went on to reject a constitutional challenge to the pre-clearance requirement, but it strongly suggested Congress should update the coverage formula.? Because, however, no changes have since made, the court may prepared to go the rest of the way this time.
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Transforming Cities with Transit explores the complex process of transit and land-use integration in rapidly growing cities in developing countries. As one of the most promising strategies for advancing environmental sustainability, economic competitiveness, and socially inclusive development in fast-growing cities, transit and land-use integration is increasingly being embraced by policy-makers at all levels of government.
This book focuses on identifying barriers to and opportunities for effective coordination of transport infrastructure and urban development. Global best-case practices of transit-oriented metropolises that have direct relevance to cities in developing countries are first introduced. Key institutional, regulatory, and financial constraints that hamper integration and opportunities to utilize transit to guide sustainable urban development are examined in selected cities in developing countries. For this, the book analyzes their Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems and their impact on land development. The book formulates recommendations and implementation strategies to overcome barriers and take advantage of opportunities.
It asserts that unprecedented opportunities have and will continue to arise for the successful integration of transit and land development in much of the developing world. Many cities in developing countries currently exhibit the pre-requisites ? e.g., rapid growth, rising real incomes, and increased motorization and congestion levels ? for BRT and railway investments to trigger meaningful land-use changes in economically and financially viable ways. Recommendations for creating more sustainable cities of the future range from macro-level strategies that influence land development and governance at the metropolitan scale to micro-level initiatives, like Transit Oriented Development (TOD), that can radically transform development patterns at the neighborhood level.
The book will be of interest to a wide and diverse audience, including mayors, council members and other national and local policy makers, urban and transportation planners, transit-agency officials, and developers and staff of development financial institutions and others involved with TOD projects in rapidly growing and motorizing cities of the developing world.
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Type: Book
Year: 2013
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A primer on policies for jobs is based on materials and input provided during the labor market courses conducted during the past 10 years. Its objective is to provide government policy makers, researchers, and labor market practitioners and other specialists with a practical guide on how to strengthen labor market institutions, especially in light of the global financial crisis. This primer emphasizes six pillars of labor market institutions: global trends, job creation, labor market policies, education, entrepreneurship, and globalization. Chapter one addresses current labor market trends and job creation, particularly in tough conditions. Chapter two examines channels of job creation and ways to strengthen labor market institutions to ensure sustainable job growth, considering factors such as investment climate, job policy, industrial policy, social protection, and other labor market issues. Chapter three focuses on labor market policies in developing countries. Chapter four highlights the impact of education and skills on labor market outcome. Chapter five discusses entrepreneurship along three key dimensions: development and growth, job creation, and female entrepreneurship. Finally, chapter six addresses the relationship between jobs and globalization.
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Type: Book
Year: 2013
?This book is divided into seven chapters. Chapter one is an overview. Chapter two reviews South Asia?s recent track record with regard to the quantity and quality of job creation. It traces the relationship of such job creation mostly to overall economic growth and attempts to answer what needs to be done to meet South Asia?s employment challenge. Chapter three discusses the key features of labor markets in South Asia, including where the better jobs are, who holds them, and the implications for the employment challenge ahead. Chapter four reviews the business environment constraints affecting, in particular, those firms that have expanded employment and discusses policy options for overcoming the most binding business constraints in South Asia. Chapter five analyzes the dimensions of the education and a skill challenge in the region and discusses policy priorities for improving the quality and skills of graduates of education and training systems. Chapter six reviews the role of labor market policies and institutions in encouraging job creation and protecting workers in the formal and informal economy and discusses possible directions for labor market policies, including options to increase the access of informal sector workers to programs that help them manage labor market shocks and improve their future earnings potential. Finally, chapter seven reviews the key constraints to job creation and the policy priorities for creating more and better jobs in conflict-affected areas.
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Type: Guides
Year: 2013
This handbook is intended to help professionals involved in programming, preparing, and implementing activities financed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to effectively address the poverty and social dimensions of ADB?s operations aligned with Strategy 2020?s inclusive growth agenda, thereby enhancing ADB?s efforts to reduce poverty in Asia and the Pacific.
Guidance is provided in three main areas of ADB operations:
?regional and country programming,
?project conceptualization and design, and
?project implementation.
The handbook does not introduce any new or additional policy or procedural requirements. Rather, it provides a road map to specific ADB policies, strategies, and procedures related to poverty reduction and inclusive development.
This handbook complements other ADB sourcebooks and guides on participation, involuntary resettlement and indigenous peoples, and sector-specific gender checklists.
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Type: Papers and Briefs
Year: 2013
?Among the world?s developing regions, Asia has undoubtedly seen the most dramatic overall transformation since 2000. Assessed against the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets, Asia?s success in areas like health, education, and access to drinking water all stand out globally. At the same time, Asia?s progress is far from complete. It still has huge poverty challenges and its environmental challenges are growing rapidly.
This paper discusses key challenges faced throughout the Asia and the Pacific region as a number of its developing economies graduate from low-income status to middle-income status at the same time as the region remains home to the majority of the world?s poor people and a number of fragile states. The region is gaining increased influence in the world economy but is still grappling to overcome interrelated challenges of poverty and sustainable development, so its priorities will be of significant importance in informing the contents of any post-2015 global development framework. Drawing from the ongoing lessons of the Millennium Development Goal process, this paper suggests a conceptual framework for setting a new generation of goals and, informed by these concepts, proposes an intergovernmental approach to implementation. The ?ZEN? framework stresses the distinct challenges of achieving zero extreme poverty (Z), setting country-specific ?Epsilon? benchmarks for broader development challenges (E), and promoting environmental sustainability both within and across borders (N).
For good reason, every woman feels over the moon and elated when she is asked ?the big question.? It is common to immediately start choosing a date, dreaming of the perfect dress, deciding on a guest list etc. While every aspect that goes into a wedding is special and exciting, it is important to remember that the well-planned details and the celebration last only a day while the commitment made to one another lasts a lifetime. Often, when in a long-term relationship, couples assume that they are on the same page regarding some critical issues without taking time to actually converse about them. Here are some important topics to consider and discuss prior to walking down the aisle in order to minimize conflicts in the future.
Finances and Spending: ?Typically, before you are married, whether you live together or alone, finances are kept separate so that each of your assets and earnings are your own. When you want to spend money, you are free to do so without having to consult one another in reference to what it is or how much it costs. Once you are married, however, the financial arrangements are likely to change. Some couples maintain separate accounts for assets prior to the wedding and have joint accounts for subsequent earnings, some merge all finances and yet others keep everything individually. It is imperative that you and?your fianc??agree on this issue before your wedding as finances are one of the most prevalent sources of difficulty and discord in a marriage.
Building a Family: ?Usually, as people progress in relationships and in age, it is simply assumed (and perhaps not discussed) that you both want to and will have children. However, some people are not interested in following that path. The number of children each of you want, the lengths you are both willing to go to in order to make that happen and the point at which you are ready to start a family are among the topics that must be addressed. They should be approached with complete honesty and an open mind because differences regarding family can quickly cause resentments that can be nearly impossible to overcome.
Roles and Responsibilities: ?Another issue that many couples don?t address prior to their wedding is the role that each partner will assume. When in a dating relationship, most people work in order to take care of life?s necessities and are financially independent. However,? sometimes expectations of a partner shift after you are married. Who will make dinner? Which one of you will be responsible for taking the dog out or making sure the bills are paid? Think of all the things that each of you take care of on your own and talk about how those will be divided so that neither one of you is solely in charge of everything.
Family:??It is important to consider what role each of your respective families will play in your relationship. While where you will spend Thanksgiving or Christmas may seem like a minor (or even unimportant) detail, surprisingly, it can easily become a source of contention and lead to arguments and/or resentment. How much weight?and influence will their opinions have? Do you want to live close to them or?have a little distance? It can be very important that,?especially in the beginning of your marriage, the two of you create a?bit of space so that you have the time and?are able to?focus on?adjusting to the new chapter?in your lives and seeing how?all of the pieces fall into place.
While it?takes work?to find the one person you are meant to spend the rest of your life with, once you have, the work is not over.?Being married doesn?t mean that you no longer have to put in at least the same amount, if not more, effort. However, it is the most rewarding work you will ever do. It is easy to overlook or not address some very important issues when you are dating, but for every conversation you have in order to fully understand where each of you stands and come to an agreement on, the more likely you are to have a happy and successful marriage with fewer conflicts.
If Samsung likes an open playing field, it'll not be best pleased by this latest announcement from Japanese chip maker Renesas. Uncannily named the "APE6", it directly copies the same big.LITTLE design of ARM cores found in Sammy's Exynos Octa. The are four Cortex-A15s paired with the same number of Cortex-A7s, allowing a phone or tablet to switch between the two quad-core configurations depending on its workload. Interestingly, whereas the Exynos Octa's GPU has been rumored to contain a last-gen PowerVR Series5 GPU similar to that found in the iPad and PS Vita, the APE6 will come with a more future proof Series6 "Rogue" design. We've already spent some time with this GPU and it'll be a good day when we can finally try it out in a finished device and stack it up against a rival bearing Samsung internals.
FILE - In this aerial file photo madeWednesday, April 21, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico, more than 50 miles southeast of Venice on Louisiana's tip, an oil slick is seen as the Deepwater Horizon oil rig burns. Nearly three years after the deadly rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico triggered the nation's worst offshore oil spill, a federal judge in New Orleans is set to preside over a high-stakes trial for the raft of litigation spawned by the disaster on Monday Feb. 25, 2013. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, file)
FILE - In this aerial file photo madeWednesday, April 21, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico, more than 50 miles southeast of Venice on Louisiana's tip, an oil slick is seen as the Deepwater Horizon oil rig burns. Nearly three years after the deadly rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico triggered the nation's worst offshore oil spill, a federal judge in New Orleans is set to preside over a high-stakes trial for the raft of litigation spawned by the disaster on Monday Feb. 25, 2013. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, file)
NEW ORLEANS (AP) ? Nearly three years after a deadly rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico triggered the nation's worst offshore oil spill, a federal judge in New Orleans is set to preside over a high-stakes trial for the raft of litigation spawned by the disaster.
Barring an 11th-hour settlement, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier will hear several hours of opening statements Monday by lawyers for the companies involved in the 2010 spill and the plaintiffs who sued them. And the judge, not a jury, ultimately could decide how much more money BP PLC and its partners on the ill-fated drilling project owe for their roles in the environmental catastrophe.
BP has said it already has racked up more than $24 billion in spill-related expenses and has estimated it will pay a total of $42 billion to fully resolve its liability for the disaster that killed 11 workers and spewed millions of gallons of oil.
But the trial attorneys for the federal government and Gulf states and private plaintiffs hope to convince the judge that the company is liable for much more.
With billions of dollars on the line, the companies and their courtroom adversaries have spared no expense in preparing for a trial that could last several months. Hundreds of attorneys have worked on the case, generating roughly 90 million pages of documents, logging nearly 9,000 docket entries and taking more than 300 depositions of witnesses who could testify at trial.
"In terms of sheer dollar amounts and public attention, this is one of the most complex and massive disputes ever faced by the courts," said Fordham University law professor Howard Erichson, an expert in complex litigation.
Barbier has promised he won't let the case drag on for years as has the litigation over the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, which still hasn't been completely resolved. He encouraged settlement talks that already have resolved billions of dollars in spill-related claims.
"Judge Barbier has managed the case actively and moved it along toward trial pretty quickly," Erichson said.
In December, Barbier gave final approval to a settlement between BP and Plaintiffs' Steering Committee lawyers representing Gulf Coast businesses and residents who claim the spill cost them money. BP estimates it will pay roughly $7.8 billion to resolve tens of thousands of these claims, but the deal doesn't have a cap.
BP resolved a Justice Department criminal probe by agreeing to plead guilty to manslaughter and other charges and pay $4 billion in criminal penalties. Deepwater Horizon rig owner Transocean Ltd. reached a separate settlement with the federal government, pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge and agreeing to pay $1.4 billion in criminal and civil penalties.
But there's plenty left for the lawyers to argue about at trial, given that the federal government and Gulf states haven't resolved civil claims against the company that could be worth more than $20 billion.
The Justice Department and private plaintiffs' attorneys have said they would prove BP acted with gross negligence before the blowout of its Macondo well on April 20, 2010.
BP's civil penalties would soar if Barbier agrees with that claim.
BP, meanwhile, argues the federal government's estimate of how much oil spewed from the well ? more than 200 million gallons ? is inflated by at least 20 percent. Clean Water Act penalties are based on how many barrels of oil spilled.
Barbier plans to hold the trial in at least two phases and may issue partial rulings at the end of each. The first phase, which could last three months, is designed to determine what caused the blowout and assign percentages of blame to the companies involved. The second phase will address efforts to stop the flow of oil from the well and aims to determine how much crude spilled into the Gulf.
The trial originally was scheduled to start a year ago, but Barbier postponed it to allow BP to wrap up its settlement with the Plaintiffs' Steering Committee.
Barbier, 68, was nominated by President Bill Clinton and has served on the court since 1998. He had a private law practice, primarily representing small businesses and other plaintiffs in civil cases, and served as president of the New Orleans Bar Association before he joined the bench.
Dane Ciolino, a Loyola University law professor who has represented criminal defendants in Barbier's court, described him as a "no-nonsense" but even-tempered judge.
"He's very good at getting down to the pertinent issues," Ciolino said. "Some judges could be described as impatient, short or gruff. He is none of that."
Despite the bitter disputes at the root of the case, Barbier has maintained a collegial atmosphere at his monthly status conferences with the lawyers, cracking an occasional joke or good-naturedly ribbing attorneys over their college football allegiances.
Cordial with each other in the courtroom, the competing attorneys have saved their harshest rhetoric for court filings or news releases. Despite its settlement with BP last year, the Plaintiffs' Steering Committee attorneys won't be allies at trial with the London-based oil giant. And they still haven't resolved civil claims against Transocean or cement contractor Halliburton.
"These three companies' reckless, greed-driven conduct killed 11 good men, polluted the Gulf for years and left the region's economy in shambles. Any statement to the contrary is self-serving nonsense," Steve Herman, a lead plaintiffs' attorney, said in a recent statement.
A series of government investigations has exhaustively documented the mistakes that led to the blowout, spreading the blame among the companies. Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange said witnesses scheduled to testify at trial will reveal new information about the cause of the disaster.
"I think you're going to learn a lot, particularly about the culture that existed at BP and their priorities," Strange said.
March of the pathogens: Parasite metabolism can foretell disease ranges under climate change Public release date: 25-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Morgan Kelly mgnkelly@princeton.edu 609-258-5729 Princeton University
Knowing the temperatures that viruses, bacteria, worms and all other parasites need to grow and survive could help determine the future range of infectious diseases under climate change, according to new research.
Princeton University researchers developed a model that can identify the prospects for nearly any disease-causing parasite as the Earth grows warmer, even if little is known about the organism. Their method calculates how the projected temperature change for an area would alter the creature's metabolism and life cycle, the researchers report in the journal Ecology Letters.
[Images can be seen at http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S36/12/94E59. To obtain high-res images, contact Princeton science writer Morgan Kelly.]
Lead author Pter Molnr, a Princeton postdoctoral researcher of ecology and evolutionary biology, explained that the technique is an all-inclusive complement to current methods of predicting how climate change will affect disease, which call for a detailed knowledge of the environmental factors a specific parasite needs to thrive. But for many parasites, that information doesn't exist.
The more general Princeton model is based on the metabolic theory of ecology. Under this premise, all biological organisms need a balance between body size and body temperature to maintain the metabolism that keeps their organs functioning. Like any cold-blooded creature, disease-causing parasites rely on external temperatures for this balance. Scientists with knowledge of a parasite's body size and life cycle could use the Princeton metabolic model to predict how the organism would fare in altered climates.
"Our framework is applicable to pretty much any parasite, and utilizes established metabolic patterns shown to hold across a wide variety of species," Molnr said.
"It would be impossible to ever gather enough data to develop a separate climate-change model for each existing and emerging disease in humans, wildlife and livestock," Molnr said. "With our physiological approach, many of the parameters for a specific pathogen can be predicted based on what is known about metabolic processes in all parasites, so that the model remains applicable to new and less-studied species as well."
The Princeton model estimates the "fundamental thermal niche" of a parasite, the area between the lowest and highest temperature in which a specific parasite prospers. The researchers show that an organism already kicking around the high end of that range could die out when things heat up, while a parasite lingering at the low end could lead to novel epidemics in host populations and extend to new areas.
Because global temperatures will still differ by elevation and distance from the equator, some parasites also might "migrate" from their previous territory rendered inhospitable by higher temperatures to one more inviting. That could expose human and animal populations to new diseases to which they may have little natural resistance. Thus, having an idea of which areas a parasite might transition to is important, Molnr said.
"As metabolism varies with temperature, parasite life-cycle components such as mortality, development, reproduction or infectivity may also vary with temperature," Molnr said. "If, for a specific parasite, we know the temperature dependence of its metabolism, or the temperature dependence of its life-cycle components, our model allows using these temperature effects to evaluate the impact of climate change on parasite fitness, and thus the regions in which the parasite may occur in the future."
Ryan Hechinger, a biologist at the University of California-Santa Barbara, said the framework adds to recent research tempering the fear that infectious diseases will uniformly flourish as global temperatures rise. Hechinger, who focuses his research on parasite ecology and evolution, is familiar with the work but had no role in it.
"There has been quite a bit of a 'the sky is falling' attitude from people claiming that infectious diseases are only going to get worse," Hechinger said. "We can't forget that most infectious diseases are caused by living agents. Like most living things, these agents may be negatively or positively affected by climate change. The modeling in this paper clarifies that infectious diseases may increase or decrease under climate change, specifically under global warming."
In addition, Hechinger said, the Princeton technique applies to any parasites that venture outside of a warm-blooded host, including organisms that plague humans, such as Plasmodium, the microorganism that causes malaria.
"If the parasites have stages when they are loose in the environment, they will be impacted by temperature. This goes for parasites with developmental stages in cold-blooded hosts because those hosts are affected by environmental temperatures," Hechinger said.
"So, the modeling framework can work for human malarias because there are parasite stages in cold-blooded mosquitos, or human schistosomiasis [most common in children in developing countries], where the parasite has stages in cold-blooded snails and free-living stages in the open environment," he said.
The Princeton model could potentially appertain to those disease carriers as well, Molnr said. The framework could predict the future ranges of cold-blooded animals for use in combating invasive species, or even in the conservation of such animals as reptiles and amphibians, he said.
Molnr worked with senior researcher Andrew Dobson, Princeton professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, as well as with second author Susan Kutz, an associate professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Calgary, and Bryanne Hoar, a graduate student in the Kutz lab.
The researchers tested their model on Ostertagia gruehneri, a species of nematode, or roundworm, that lives in the Arctic. Among the world's most widespread parasites, the larval stages of parasitic roundworms are free-living in the environment or utilize a cold-blooded intermediate host, while the adult stages live within their final hosts, and may cause conditions such as trichinosis.
Hoar and Kutz had reared O. gruehneri larvae in various temperatures, and recorded their development and survival. Molnr and Dobson found that these observations correlated extremely well with how their metabolic model predicted the species would respond to increased Arctic temperatures. Under future conditions, the parasite's infectious season could split from what is now a continuous spring-to-fall transmission season into two longer fall and spring seasons separated by a hot, unlivable summer.
While the seasonal life of a nematode might seem trivial, what affects the parasite affects the host, Molnr said. The researchers are broadening their model to gauge how O. gruehneri's new active seasons would alter the relationship with its primary host, the caribou. They also are investigating the recent range expansion of a nematode with a penchant for the lungs of muskoxen, a wooly bovine native to the Arctic.
Molnr and his colleagues want to know what further population growth could be expected from these parasites as the Arctic climate continues to warm, and the eventual toll that would have on caribou and muskoxen herds.
###
The paper, "Metabolic approaches to understanding climate change impacts on seasonal host-macroparasite dynamics," was published in Ecology Letters. The work was supported by grants from the James S. McDonnell Foundation, Alberta Innovates and the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
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March of the pathogens: Parasite metabolism can foretell disease ranges under climate change Public release date: 25-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Morgan Kelly mgnkelly@princeton.edu 609-258-5729 Princeton University
Knowing the temperatures that viruses, bacteria, worms and all other parasites need to grow and survive could help determine the future range of infectious diseases under climate change, according to new research.
Princeton University researchers developed a model that can identify the prospects for nearly any disease-causing parasite as the Earth grows warmer, even if little is known about the organism. Their method calculates how the projected temperature change for an area would alter the creature's metabolism and life cycle, the researchers report in the journal Ecology Letters.
[Images can be seen at http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S36/12/94E59. To obtain high-res images, contact Princeton science writer Morgan Kelly.]
Lead author Pter Molnr, a Princeton postdoctoral researcher of ecology and evolutionary biology, explained that the technique is an all-inclusive complement to current methods of predicting how climate change will affect disease, which call for a detailed knowledge of the environmental factors a specific parasite needs to thrive. But for many parasites, that information doesn't exist.
The more general Princeton model is based on the metabolic theory of ecology. Under this premise, all biological organisms need a balance between body size and body temperature to maintain the metabolism that keeps their organs functioning. Like any cold-blooded creature, disease-causing parasites rely on external temperatures for this balance. Scientists with knowledge of a parasite's body size and life cycle could use the Princeton metabolic model to predict how the organism would fare in altered climates.
"Our framework is applicable to pretty much any parasite, and utilizes established metabolic patterns shown to hold across a wide variety of species," Molnr said.
"It would be impossible to ever gather enough data to develop a separate climate-change model for each existing and emerging disease in humans, wildlife and livestock," Molnr said. "With our physiological approach, many of the parameters for a specific pathogen can be predicted based on what is known about metabolic processes in all parasites, so that the model remains applicable to new and less-studied species as well."
The Princeton model estimates the "fundamental thermal niche" of a parasite, the area between the lowest and highest temperature in which a specific parasite prospers. The researchers show that an organism already kicking around the high end of that range could die out when things heat up, while a parasite lingering at the low end could lead to novel epidemics in host populations and extend to new areas.
Because global temperatures will still differ by elevation and distance from the equator, some parasites also might "migrate" from their previous territory rendered inhospitable by higher temperatures to one more inviting. That could expose human and animal populations to new diseases to which they may have little natural resistance. Thus, having an idea of which areas a parasite might transition to is important, Molnr said.
"As metabolism varies with temperature, parasite life-cycle components such as mortality, development, reproduction or infectivity may also vary with temperature," Molnr said. "If, for a specific parasite, we know the temperature dependence of its metabolism, or the temperature dependence of its life-cycle components, our model allows using these temperature effects to evaluate the impact of climate change on parasite fitness, and thus the regions in which the parasite may occur in the future."
Ryan Hechinger, a biologist at the University of California-Santa Barbara, said the framework adds to recent research tempering the fear that infectious diseases will uniformly flourish as global temperatures rise. Hechinger, who focuses his research on parasite ecology and evolution, is familiar with the work but had no role in it.
"There has been quite a bit of a 'the sky is falling' attitude from people claiming that infectious diseases are only going to get worse," Hechinger said. "We can't forget that most infectious diseases are caused by living agents. Like most living things, these agents may be negatively or positively affected by climate change. The modeling in this paper clarifies that infectious diseases may increase or decrease under climate change, specifically under global warming."
In addition, Hechinger said, the Princeton technique applies to any parasites that venture outside of a warm-blooded host, including organisms that plague humans, such as Plasmodium, the microorganism that causes malaria.
"If the parasites have stages when they are loose in the environment, they will be impacted by temperature. This goes for parasites with developmental stages in cold-blooded hosts because those hosts are affected by environmental temperatures," Hechinger said.
"So, the modeling framework can work for human malarias because there are parasite stages in cold-blooded mosquitos, or human schistosomiasis [most common in children in developing countries], where the parasite has stages in cold-blooded snails and free-living stages in the open environment," he said.
The Princeton model could potentially appertain to those disease carriers as well, Molnr said. The framework could predict the future ranges of cold-blooded animals for use in combating invasive species, or even in the conservation of such animals as reptiles and amphibians, he said.
Molnr worked with senior researcher Andrew Dobson, Princeton professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, as well as with second author Susan Kutz, an associate professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Calgary, and Bryanne Hoar, a graduate student in the Kutz lab.
The researchers tested their model on Ostertagia gruehneri, a species of nematode, or roundworm, that lives in the Arctic. Among the world's most widespread parasites, the larval stages of parasitic roundworms are free-living in the environment or utilize a cold-blooded intermediate host, while the adult stages live within their final hosts, and may cause conditions such as trichinosis.
Hoar and Kutz had reared O. gruehneri larvae in various temperatures, and recorded their development and survival. Molnr and Dobson found that these observations correlated extremely well with how their metabolic model predicted the species would respond to increased Arctic temperatures. Under future conditions, the parasite's infectious season could split from what is now a continuous spring-to-fall transmission season into two longer fall and spring seasons separated by a hot, unlivable summer.
While the seasonal life of a nematode might seem trivial, what affects the parasite affects the host, Molnr said. The researchers are broadening their model to gauge how O. gruehneri's new active seasons would alter the relationship with its primary host, the caribou. They also are investigating the recent range expansion of a nematode with a penchant for the lungs of muskoxen, a wooly bovine native to the Arctic.
Molnr and his colleagues want to know what further population growth could be expected from these parasites as the Arctic climate continues to warm, and the eventual toll that would have on caribou and muskoxen herds.
###
The paper, "Metabolic approaches to understanding climate change impacts on seasonal host-macroparasite dynamics," was published in Ecology Letters. The work was supported by grants from the James S. McDonnell Foundation, Alberta Innovates and the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
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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.
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DETROIT ? GOP Chairman Bobby Schostak pulled off a narrow re-election in Lansing Saturday, setting the stage for 2014 ? when the governor, attorney general, secretary of state and Legislature are up for grabs.
Republicans have controlled all three branches of state government for more than two years.
Party chairs raise money, recruit candidates and coordinate get-out-the-vote efforts.
During Democrat Mark Brewer?s 18-year tenure, the Republican Party has had six different chairs.
Schostak, a real estate developer who took the helm two years ago, fended off a challenge from conservative attorney Todd Courser of Lapeer, 52 percent to 48 percent.
Supporters credited Schostak for helping Republicans hold onto the state House and Supreme Court in November despite President Barack Obama?s and U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow?s lopsided wins in Michigan. Detractors said the GOP had a lousy year.
Gov. Rick Snyder, who is expected to seek re-election, supported Schostak?s candidacy.
?It?s time for us to stand up and say we?re reinventing Michigan,? the governor told thousands of delegates in the Lansing Center. ?It?s time to sweep the ticket again in 2014.?
(Recasts, adds witness and driver quotes, details) Feb 23 (Reuters) - A fiery pile-up at the Daytona speedway on Saturday injured at least 28 fans and a driver after the 10-car crash sent car debris, including a tire, flying into the crowd in the final lap of the Nationwide NASCAR race. Race officials said 14 fans were sent to nearby hospitals and another 14 were treated at the Florida track, which will host the prestigious Daytona 500 race on Sunday. "Stuff was flying everywhere," spectator Terry Huckaby, whose brother was sent to the hospital with a leg injury, told the ESPN sports network. ...
CAIRO (AP) ? Egyptian opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei called Saturday for a boycott of parliamentary elections, drawing immediate criticism from some within his movement who said it was a hasty decision.
The dispute showed the fragility of a fairly new opposition front forged after the deeply fragmented movement found little success at the polls since it led the 2011 uprising that ousted autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
Opposition infighting would only help ensure that the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood group remains Egypt's dominant political force after the next vote.
"(I) called for parliamentary election boycott in 2010 to expose sham democracy. Today I repeat my call, will not be part of an act of deception," Nobel laureate ElBaradei, who leads the opposition National Salvation Front (NSF), wrote on his Twitter account.
The comment reiterated a frequently heard opposition sentiment that democratically elected President Mohammed Morsi is acting like Mubarak.
Elections under Mubarak's three-decade rule were widely rigged and parliament was dominated by members of his ruling party.
Morsi called for the elections in a decree late Thursday night ? a four-stage vote starting at the end of April and concluding in June.
On Friday, ElBaradei said holding elections during this time of deep political polarization "is a recipe for disaster."
Morsi's Brotherhood accused the opposition of running away from the challenge.
The deputy head of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, Essam el-Erian, responded to ElBaradei's call on his Facebook page.
"Running away from a popular test only means that some want to assume executive authority without a democratic mandate," he said of the opposition. "We've never yet known them to face any election or serious test."
The mutual recriminations reflected a new escalation in political tensions that could spill into even wider strikes and protests ahead of the elections.
The opposition has accused Morsi and his Brotherhood backers of using election wins to monopolize power in tactics similar to the former regime.
They accuse Morsi of reneging on a promise to form an inclusive government representative of the Christian minority, women, and liberals.
In the country's last major vote, a hotly disputed constitutional referendum in December, ElBaradei urged his supporters at the last minute to participate and vote "No" after a debate within the opposition over whether to boycott.
The referendum was mired in controversy and rights groups criticized unchecked voting irregularities.
The Islamists, accused of ramming the charter through a drafting panel that they dominated, won passage by more than 60 percent, but turnout was low around 30 percent. Critics said the document opened the way for imposing Islamic law more strictly in Egypt.
Tensions soared in the run-up to the vote, with violent clashes between pro- and anti-government protesters that led to bloodshed outside the presidential palace.
Almost immediately after ElBaradei's boycott call, rifts began to emerge in the opposition. Even members of his opposition bloc, the NSF, said the group had not yet decided on a boycott.
Some activists criticized the call, saying it would alienate the masses and allow the Brotherhood free rein over the lower house of parliament, which writes laws and is supposed to monitor the president.
The Brotherhood already has the most seats in the upper chamber of parliament, largely an advisory body currently serving as an interim parliament. And it also successfully fielded Morsi as its candidate for president.
In Egypt's first free elections in 2011, the Brotherhood won nearly half of seats in parliament and the more conservative Islamists known as Salafis won a quarter.
A splinter Salafi party has emerged since then and competition for seats is expected to be fierce, particularly in Egypt's vast rural areas and poor city slums.
Within months of being elected, the lower house of parliament was disbanded in June of last year after the Supreme Constitutional Court ruled that a third of the chamber's members were elected illegally.
The upcoming elections are to reinstate the legislature.
Liberal and secular parties have trailed significantly in all elections since Mubarak was toppled. Their outreach across Egypt, while growing, is still dwarfed by the Islamists' well organized network of charities and programs that assist the poor.
But at the same time, since Morsi's election as Egypt's first civilian and Islamist president last summer, his popularity has eroded.
Blogger and commentator Mahmoud Salem, a longtime activist who now opposes Morsi, said he disagreed with a boycott because it offers no real alternative to the political impasse.
"Where's ElBaradei's party, its plan, its economic vision? Let's say a boycott is the right answer. What will they do so that they can be competitive in the next election?" Salem said.
He accused ElBaradei of calling for a boycott in part because the opposition has been unable to win significantly at the polls.
"In reality, it will end up as a parliament composed of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafis, or members of the ex-regime," he said.
Others have said they may enter elections, but are criticizing Morsi's timing.
Shadi Taha, a leading figure of al-Ghad al-Thawra party led by former Mubarak rival Ayman Nour, told The Associated Press that the country should be focused first on more pressing issues like the economy, education and health care.
The party has not yet decided if it will boycott.
"The last thing we need is to enter a new cycle that further polarizes and splits the country," Taha said. "First there should be stability. ... Elections should have been delayed to deal with bigger priorities."
On the second anniversary of the Jan. 25 uprising this year, anger at police impunity for abuses and an array of other social woes spilled out onto the streets and violence again engulfed the nation.
About 70 people died in a wave of protests and riots since then ? more than half of them in the restive Suez Canal city of Port Said alone.
A civil disobedience campaign in Port Said entered its seventh day on Saturday. The protesters are demanding retribution for those killed during the recent unrest. There have also been near daily protests in Cairo and in the textile producing city of Mahalla.
Former lawmaker Mostafa al-Naggar, a centrist, said boycott calls will be ineffective unless there is unity among the opposition.
He wrote on Twitter that a boycott "will clear the arena for the ruling party and its allies to dominate the legislative and executive branches."
ElBaradei's opposition coalition, which was only formed late last year, had warned for weeks it could boycott if certain conditions were not met first.
The NSF said it wants a real national dialogue that leads to the formation of a more inclusive government, changes to the constitution and stability.
Egypt's new constitution, approved in late December, says that procedures for elections should begin within two months of the charter being ratified but does not set a deadline for the vote.
Egypt's Coptic Christians complained that elections start around Palm Sunday and Easter, prompting Morsi to review the timing of the vote. Minority Christians have consistently voted against the Brotherhood.
On Saturday, Morsi changed the start of voting to April 22 instead of April 28.
Morsi's supporters say that delaying elections, protesting and boycotting are affecting Egypt's ability to lure foreign investors and tourists again as the economy deteriorates.
Egypt's oldest opposition party, al-Wafd, steered clear of immediately supporting a boycott. Instead, the party said it will file a lawsuit against elections being announced before laws governing the vote are approved.
Former liberal lawmaker Amr Hamzawi , part of ElBaradei's NSF group, told the AP that a boycott might be a good option but ElBaradei's unilateral call may have come prematurely.
"I don't think we need to decide today. But we need to enter a process of collective reflection," he said. "It takes time" for any opposition to translate its movement into societal change and elections victories.
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Mosaad el-Gohary in Port Said contributed to this story.
This image from a NASA space shuttle mission shows the International Space Station in orbit. The space station is the size of a football field and home to six astronauts.
By Charles Q. Choi Space.com
The weightlessness of outer space can make germs even nastier, increasing the dangers astronauts face, researchers say.
These findings, as well as research to help reduce these risks, are part of the ongoing projects at the International Space Station?that use microgravity to reveal secrets about microbes.
"We seek to unveil novel cellular and molecular mechanisms related to infectious disease progression that cannot be observed here on Earth, and to translate our findings to novel strategies for treatment and prevention," said microbiologist Cheryl Nickerson at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute. Nickerson detailed these findings on Monday?at the annual meeting of the American Association for Advancement of Science in Boston.
In space, researchers encounter greatly reduced levels of gravity, often erroneously referred to as zero gravity. This near-weightlessness can have a number of abnormal effects on astronauts, such as causing muscle and bone loss.
Although microgravity can distort normal biology, conventional procedures for studying microbes on Earth can cause their own distortions.
Experiments on Earth often involve whirling cells around to keep them from settling downward in a clump due to gravity. However, the physical force generated by the movement of fluid over cell surfaces causes great changes to the way cells act. This property, known as fluid shear, influences a broad range of cell behaviors, and the shear that experiments on Earth introduce could twist results. [6 Coolest Space Shuttle Experiments]
In microgravity, researchers do not need to constantly disturb cells to keep them from clumping, as gravity is not pulling down on the cells to any significant degree. As such, experiments in microgravity can attain low fluid shear, and thus better reflect what normally happens with germs and cells inside bodies, Nickerson explained.
For example, the most common sites of human infection are the mucosal, gastrointestinal and urogenital tracts, where fluid shear is typically low.
Salmonella in space In an earlier series of NASA space shuttle and ground-based experiments, Nickerson and her colleagues discovered that spaceflight actually boosted the virulence,?or disease-causing potential, of the food-borne germ Salmonella.
"Does microgravity alter how Salmonella behaves? You bet it does, in a profound and novel way," Nickerson said.
This aggressive bacterium infects an estimated 94 million people globally and causes 155,000 deaths each year. In the United States alone, more than 40,000 cases of salmonellosis are reported annually, resulting in at least 500 deaths and health care costs in excess of $50 million, scientists said.
"By studying the effect of spaceflight on the disease-causing potential of major pathogens such as?Salmonella, we may be able to provide insight into infectious disease mechanisms that cannot be attained using traditional experimental approaches on Earth, where gravity can mask key cellular responses," Nickerson said.
These findings are of special concern for astronaut health?during extended spaceflight missions. Space travel already weakens astronaut immunity, and these findings reveal that astronauts may have to further deal with the threat of disease-causing microbes that have boosted infectious abilities.
Microgravity apparently causes many genes linked with Salmonella's virulence to switch on and off in ways not seen in Earth-based labs. The same appears to happen with bacterial genes linked to resistance against stress and to the formation of fortresslike structures known as biofilms. A better understanding of which genes spaceflight alters could help design therapies to fight or prevent infection, helping protect people both in space and on Earth.
"We need to outpace infectious disease because we're losing the fight to the pathogens," Nickerson told Space.com.
Better vaccines Microgravity research could also help lead to novel vaccines. In a recent spaceflight experiment aboard space shuttle mission STS-135?(the last-ever shuttle flight), researchers brought along a genetically modified Salmonella-based vaccine designed to protect against pneumococcal pneumonia. Analysis of the effects of microgravity on the behavior of the vaccine could help reveal how to genetically modify it to improve it.
"Recognizing that the spaceflight environment imparts a unique signal capable of modifying Salmonella virulence, we will use this same principle in an effort to enhance the protective immune response of the recombinant, attenuated Salmonella vaccine strain," Nickerson said.
Experiments aboard the space station are now permitting microbial studies over prolonged time frames, ones not available during shuttle-based experiments. These studies in space are carried out in conjunction with simultaneous analyses on Earth using the same hardware as those in orbit, so researchers can compare the behavior of bacterial cells under normal Earth gravity. [Top 10 Mysterious Diseases]
In addition, researchers hope to simulate microgravity using machines such as rotating wall vessel bioreactors, which grow cells in ways that mimic how cells float in outer space. Such research helped confirm that a protein called Hfq plays a key role in the Salmonella response to spaceflight conditions. Still, these bioreactors can only replicate about 70 percent of the effects seen in spaceflight.
"Seventy percent is good, but we've missed 30 percent," Nickerson said.
Weightless nematodes Nickerson was the first to study the effects of spaceflight on pathogen virulence and the first to profile the infection process in human cells in spaceflight. In her PHOENIX experiment, the capsule will mark the first time a whole, living organism will be infected with a germ, and simultaneously monitored in real time during the infection process under microgravity conditions. PHOENIX will fly on the SpaceX Dragon capsule traveling to the space station later this year, and will infect a nematode worm with Salmonella.
"Nematodes are wonderful for studying Salmonella.They're basically one long gastrointestinal tract from one end to the other," Nickerson said.
The significance of the results Nickerson and her colleagues have uncovered extends to more than just Salmonella. The researchers' experiments on the protein Hfq show that it apparently serves as a key regulator of gene responses to spaceflight conditions across a number of other bacterial species, including Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a common hospital-acquired infection.
"It is exciting to me that our work to discover how to keep astronauts healthy during spaceflight may translate into novel ways to prevent infectious diseases here on Earth," Nickerson said.
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Wolfgang Nehring 
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Public release date: 25-Feb-2013
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