In order to provide our users with a better overall experience, we ask for more information from Facebook when using it to login so that we can learn more about our audience and provide you with the best possible experience. We do not store specific user data and the sharing of it is not required to login with Facebook.
Every parent's favorite line about how money doesn't grow on trees just became a little more irrelevant, thanks to a fascinating find down under. Researchers in Australia recently found gold—yes, real gold—in eucalyptus trees growing in the outback.
An ATM sits next to a rack of marijuana clone plants that are used to grow medical marijuana on Wednesday at The Joint, a medical marijuana cooperative in Seattle. Last week Washington became the second U.S. state to adopt rules for the recreational sale of marijuana.
Ted S. Warren/AP
An ATM sits next to a rack of marijuana clone plants that are used to grow medical marijuana on Wednesday at The Joint, a medical marijuana cooperative in Seattle. Last week Washington became the second U.S. state to adopt rules for the recreational sale of marijuana.
Ted S. Warren/AP
A record number of Americans are in favor of legalizing marijuana, according to a new Gallup poll released Tuesday.
The poll, which was conducted Oct. 3-6, reports that 58 percent of the public support the legalization of marijuana, while 39 percent oppose it.
The tide of public opinion appears to be rapidly turning in favor of legalization. In November 2012, Gallup found that 48 percent of Americans favored marijuana legalization compared to 50 percent who did not. Just over a decade earlier, in 2001, only 31 percent supported legalization while 64 percent opposed it.
The first time Gallup recorded a majority of Americans in favor of legalization came in 2011, when 50 percent said they supported it and 46 percent said they opposed it.
The issue remains a fairly partisan one: 65 percent of Democrats support legalizing marijuana, compared to 35 percent of Republicans. Meanwhile, 62 percent of independents say they are pro-legalization, up from 50 percent last year.
Every age group Gallup tested was in favor of marijuana legalization except for those 65 and older. Fifty-three percent of respondents in that group said they were against legalization, while 45 percent were in support.
Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 are still the most likely to back legalizing marijuana. Of that age group, two-thirds — 67 percent — favor legalization while 31 percent would like to see the drug remain illegal.
The results follow some major victories for pro-legalization forces. Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize the recreational use of marijuana last year, and the Justice Department announced in August it would not challenge the laws.
Advocates are also moving forward with efforts to put a marijuana legalization referendum on the ballot in 10 other states over the next four years.
TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — Libya marks two years since the fall of Moammar Gadhafi on Wednesday, but instead of the freedom and development Libyans had hoped for, the country has fallen deeper into anarchy. Rival Islamist and Western-backed factions are melding with the country's dizzying array of militias, turning political feuds into armed conflict.
Militias that include Islamic extremists are lining up with Islamist politicians in parliament, who have been trying to remove Western-backed Prime Minister Ali Zidan and bring stricter Islamic rule. Other armed groups support Zidan's non-Islamist allies. The result is a fractured system where political rivalries have the potential to erupt into civil war.
In recent months, the militia chaos has only escalated.
Zidan was briefly kidnapped by militiamen this month. Over the summer, eastern militias seized control of oil exporting terminals, sending production plunging from 1.4 million barrels a day to around 600,000, robbing the country of its main revenue source. Other militias in the south cut off water supplies to the capital for days.
Zidan's office manager, the defense minister's son and several judges have been kidnapped. Activists and clerics who speak out against militias have been gunned down, as have at least 100 security or military officers.
At the same time, al-Qaida-inspired militias are spreading. The group Ansar al-Shariah, which is believed to be behind last year's attack on a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi that killed the ambassador and three other Americans, is increasing its strength not only in Benghazi, but in cities further west like Sirte and Ajdabiya.
"We are not a state by the normal definition of the word," Zidan acknowledged to reporters in Tripoli on Sunday. "The government is rowing against the current, and this is very hard."
Since Gadhafi's fall, hundreds of militias have run rampant. They originated in the rebel bands that fought against the longtime dictator in the 8-month war that toppled him. Originally locally based, drawing their loyalties from a particular city, neighborhood or tribe, they have since mushroomed in size.
Too weak to disarm the militias, the military, police and government have tried to co-opt them, paying them to play security roles like guarding districts, facilities, even polling stations during elections. But the policy has backfired, empowering the militias without controlling them.
"This is a disaster," said Husni Bey, a prominent businessman. Investors are fleeing the country, he said, blaming the government for "stuffing the mouths of militias."
The tight interweaving of militias and politics has escalated since Libya held its first post-Gadhafi elections just over a year ago. A non-Islamist bloc won a plurality in parliament, a defeat for hard-liners who have ridden elections to power in other Arab countries since the Arab Spring revolts of 2011.
Since the election, the democratic transition has gone nowhere. Efforts by parliament to create a body to draw up a new constitution have foundered. The non-Islamist bloc in parliament has fragmented and Islamist lawmakers have grown more aggressive in trying to unseat Zidan — even as both sides collect militia allies.
"In Libya now, there is an armed wing for each politician," said Abdel-Hakim al-Balazi, spokesman for the Anti-Crime Department, a militia umbrella group that includes Islamic radicals. Al-Balazi himself has been accused by Zidan of involvement in his abduction and was placed at one point under house arrest.
"I am afraid that if there is no wisdom, the war will be unstoppable," al-Balazi said.
Nothing illustrates the mingling of militias and politics better than Zidan's Oct. 10 abduction, following a U.S. special forces raid that snatched an al-Qaida suspect from Tripoli, enflaming divisions between Islamists and Zidan, who was accused of allowing the operation.
Dozens of gunmen swarmed into the Tripoli hotel where Zidan lives and dragged him off to a detention facility for seven hours until he was rescued by other militias. Zidan has depicted the abduction as the work of his Islamist opponents in parliament, accusing two ultraconservative lawmakers of plotting it. The two denied any role.
The group implicated in the abduction is the Libya Revolutionaries Operations Room, a collection of militias headed by hard-line Islamist commanders — and tied closely to Islamists in parliament. It was created by parliament president Nouri Abu Sahmein, an ultraconservative, and given the official task of keeping security in Tripoli.
A day before Zidan's abduction, a leader was appointed for the Operations Room — Shabaan Massoud Hadiya, a jihadi preacher who lived in Yemen for years until returning home in 2011 to join the fight against Gadhafi.
The drama illustrates the dangerous geographical dimension of Libya's factionalism.
The militias of Benghazi, Misrata and Zawiya, Libya's second-, third- and fifth-largest cities, back the Islamist parliament bloc. Hadiya and many members of the Operations Room hail from Zawiya.
They are counterbalanced by powerful local militias backing Zidan's camp. The most prominent are the al-Qaqaa and Saaqa militias, with commanders from the western mountain region of Zintan; others hail from neighborhoods of Tripoli.
The Saaqa and Tripoli militias converged on the building where Zidan was being held, forcing his release. Other militiamen were on standby, ready to drive to the capital to fight for his release if need be, said Hashim Bishr, commander of the Supreme Security Committee, another umbrella group of militias.
Zidan's quick release shows the rival lineups of militias have kept a balance of terror that has prevented the political situation from exploding.
Wary of sparking an outright confrontation, Zidan has blamed members of the Operations Room and the Anti-Crime Department for abducting him but has underlined that parliament president Abu Sahmein — the Operations Room's top commander — was not involved.
There are signs of an emerging coalition against Zidan made up of Islamist militia commanders, former jihadi fighters and politicians.
In parliament, the main anti-Zidan force is a grouping of Islamist lawmakers known as the "Loyalty to the Martyrs" bloc that includes Abu Sahmein, as well as Abdel-Wahhab al-Qaid, the brother of senior al-Qaida figure Abu-Yahia al-Libi, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan in 2012. The two lawmakers Zidan accused of plotting his kidnapping also belong to it.
The bloc works closely with lawmakers from the Muslim Brotherhood, together making up about half of the 200-member parliament. So far, that is not enough to vote out Zidan. Days before Zidan's abduction, lawmakers tried but failed to pass a no-confidence motion against him.
On the ground, Islamist-leaning militias have also been pressing for Zidan's removal.
Last summer, a group of militias known as the Supreme Council of Libya's Revolutionaries besieged government ministries and parliament with pickup trucks mounted with heavy machine guns demanding Zidan's resignation and the passage of sweeping legislation that would ban a broad swath of Gadhafi-era officials from politics.
The law was passed at gunpoint, forcing a number of non-Islamist lawmakers out of parliament, as well as the then-president, Mohammed el-Megarif. He was replaced by Abu Sahmein, who then repackaged the militias of the Supreme Council of Libya's Revolutionaries into the Revolutionaries' Operation Room under Hadiya.
"Libya now is passing through a complete defragmentation on the political and security level," said Hassan al-Amin, a leading rights advocate who fled abroad after receiving death threats for speaking against the militias. "The thing is, there is not a single force on the ground that can deal the decisive blow."
Al-Amin, like others in Libya, says he's even open to a new NATO intervention involving airstrikes against militias — "before we lose our country."
The University of Miami's failings "enabled a culture of noncompliance," the NCAA said Tuesday, in announcing penalties for the school and its football and men's basketball coaches. Here, Miami athletic director Blake James walks to an NCAA Committee on Infractions hearing in Indianapolis this past June.
Michael Conroy/AP
The University of Miami's failings "enabled a culture of noncompliance," the NCAA said Tuesday, in announcing penalties for the school and its football and men's basketball coaches. Here, Miami athletic director Blake James walks to an NCAA Committee on Infractions hearing in Indianapolis this past June.
Michael Conroy/AP
The University of Miami "lacked institutional control" and didn't notice multiple violations by a booster who for years gave cash and gifts to athletes, the NCAA said. But the organization says the school's football team can play in the postseason, stopping short of the harshest punishment available.
The Miami Hurricanes football program will be stripped of three scholarships a year for three years, the NCAA said Tuesday. The men's basketball team will also lose one scholarship a year during that probationary time. Describing the NCAA's decision Tuesday, The Miami Herald called it "a gift."
Other penalties include a five-game suspension for the school's former head basketball coach, Frank Haith, who is now at the University of Missouri. Several assistant coaches from the football and basketball teams are also being punished.
The forbidden activities involved members of several divisions of the school, from the football and basketball programs to the athletics department itself. The school's failings "enabled a culture of noncompliance," the NCAA said Tuesday.
"These staff members had a poor understanding of NCAA rules or felt comfortable breaking them," the NCAA said in a news release announcing the penalty. "Furthermore, some of the coaches provided false information during the enforcement staff and university's investigation."
The NCAA's Committee on Infractions held a hearing this past summer with the university, which had imposed its own punishments on the football program, including a two-year ban on postseason play.
"The case involved numerous, serious violations of NCAA rules, many of which were not disputed by the university," the NCAA says. "Overall, it involved 18 general allegations of misconduct with 79 issues within those allegations."
The case included revelations made by Nevin Shapiro, a disgraced financier who is currently serving a prison sentence for running a $930 million Ponzi scheme. Two summers ago, Shapiro told Yahoo Sports that he had entertained or helped school athletes and potential recruits for years.
"At a cost that Shapiro estimates in the millions of dollars, he said his benefits to athletes included but were not limited to cash, prostitutes, entertainment in his multimillion-dollar homes and yacht, paid trips to high-end restaurants and nightclubs, jewelry, bounties for on-field play (including bounties for injuring opposing players), travel and, on one occasion, an abortion," Yahoo Sports reported.
Shapiro has been called a "rogue" booster. But the committee, which refers to Shapiro not by name but only as "the booster," says that he also had a public involvement with the school, from his donating $500,000 to the athletic program over several years to his hosting a fundraiser to benefit the men's basketball program. A student athletes' lounge was also named after Shapiro — a detail mentioned in the report that helps remove any lingering doubt about "the booster's" identity.
And it seems that when Shapiro began to fall on hard times, he sought help from school officials — including the return of a $50,000 gift. And the NCAA found that matters seemed to escalate along with Shapiro's legal troubles.
"After the booster was incarcerated in 2010, he began to threaten the former head men's basketball coach and assistant coach and demand money," according to the NCAA report. "The committee determined the former head men's basketball coach and the former assistant men's basketball coach worked together to make sure the booster received $10,000 to end the booster's threats."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. employers added far fewer workers than expected in September, suggesting a loss of momentum in the economy that would likely add to the Federal Reserve's caution in deciding when to trim its monthly bond purchases.
Nonfarm payrolls increased 148,000 last month, the Labor Department said on Tuesday. While the job count for August was revised to show more positions created than previously reported, employment gains in July were the weakest since June 2012.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected the economy to add 180,000 jobs in September.
"This report on the labor market will soften people's assessments of current conditions," said Cary Leahey, a senior economist at Decision Economics in New York.
But there was some silver lining in the report, with the unemployment rate dropping a tenth of a percentage point to 7.2 percent, the lowest level since November 2008.
The jobless rate is derived from a separate survey of households, which showed an increase in employment last month.
U.S. Treasury debt prices rose on the report, while the dollar fell against the euro and the yen.
The closely watched monthly employment report was released more than two weeks later than originally scheduled because of the partial shutdown of the federal government earlier this month.
Signs the economy lost steam even before the acrimonious budget fight could convince the Fed to hold off any decision on scaling back its bond buying until the extent of the economic damage from the fiscal standoff is clear.
Economists estimate the 16-day government shutdown shaved as much as 0.6 percentage point off annualized fourth-quarter gross domestic product, through reduced government output and damage to both consumer and business confidence.
Fed officials will meet next week to discuss monetary policy, on October 29-30. They surprised markets last month by sticking to their $85 billion per month bond-buying pace, saying they wanted to see more evidence of a strong recovery.
Now, many economists think the Fed will hold off on scaling back economic stimulus until next year.
"With the possibility of a replay of the budget showdown as early as mid-January, why would the Fed want to pull any levers now? It's hard to expect any tapering of the Fed's bond purchases until the budget mess straightens itself out," Leahey said.
There are fears lawmakers will engage in another bruising round early next year when Congress must agree on a budget to fund the government and once again raise the nation's borrowing limit.
Employment gains in September were mixed last month, with government payrolls increasing 22,000 jobs after rising 32,000 in August. Both state and local governments added jobs last month, offsetting the decline in federal employment.
There was surprise weakness in the leisure and hospitality industry, which has been adding jobs consistently over the past years. The industry shed 13,000 jobs, the most jobs since December 2009.
The information sector failed to recoup all the jobs lost in August as the motion picture industry shed workers, with payrolls only rising 4,000 last month.
But there was good news in the construction industry, where payrolls increased 20,000, which could ease fears of a leveling off in home building. Construction employment had barely increased over the prior two months.
The manufacturing sector added a meager 2,000 jobs as automobile assemblies shed some jobs. Retail employment increased 20,800, slowing somewhat from the solid gains seen for much of this year.
Average hourly earnings increased three cents in September. They have risen 49 cents or 2.1 percent over the past 12 months. The length of the average workweek held steady at 34.5 hours.
(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Additional reporting by Ellen Freilich in New York; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
LONDON (Reuters) - Consumer goods group Reckitt Benckiser is reviewing options for its pharmaceuticals unit, it said on Tuesday, effectively putting up for sale its prescription medicine for heroin addiction, which faces cheap, copycat competition.
Shares in the British company rose over 4.5 percent in early trading. Bank of America Merrill Lynch has valued the pharmaceuticals unit at about 2 billion pounds ($3.2 billion).
The business centers around the drug Suboxone, which Reckitt sells as a film that dissolves in the mouth. It is used to treat addiction to opioids like heroin. In the third quarter, its revenue fell 14 percent to 191 million pounds.
The company, which also sells cleaning products and over-the-counter medicines, had said before that the right time to consider options for the pharmaceutical business would be following the launch of cheap, generic Suboxone tablets.
In February, U.S. regulators approved two generic versions of the drug.
It expects the review to take some time, and said it would update shareholders during the course of 2014.
Reckitt also reported a 5 percent rise in third-quarter revenue, which brought year-to-date revenue above analysts' estimates.
For the first nine months of the year, total revenue, excluding the pharmaceuticals business, was 6.95 billion pounds. Analysts on average were expecting 6.93 billion pounds, according to a company-provided consensus.
Reckitt cited strength in emerging markets.
Looking ahead, the company nudged up its target for full-year net revenue growth, excluding the pharmaceuticals business and including the impact of acquisitions and divestments.
It now expects a rise of at least 6 percent, whereas it earlier forecast growth at the high end of the 5 to 6 percent range. The company cited strength of its recent acquisitions for the increase.
I’m officially Mrs. Blackstock We got married yesterday at Blackberry Farms in TN, the most beautiful place ever!
Awww, I love this so much. Even tho we knew that Kelly and Brandon were planning to elope, we didn’t know when the couple were planning to say their I Dos. I love that they got themselves hitched on their terms, in the setting they wanted and without any outside intrusion. Kelly makes a beautiful bride and Brandon, a handsome groom. I am just so happy for the both of them. Kelly Clarkson (ahem, Mrs. Blackstock) is truly one of my faves and I am thrilled at her happiness. Let’s send the newlyweds all of our love and heartiest congratulations on their happy nuptials :)
In case you missed it, late Friday afternoon Microsoft pulled the Windows RT 8.1 update. Enough customers complained about BSODs and completely bricked machines -- including, notably, Microsoft Surface RT machines -- after applying the RT-to-RT 8.1 upgrade, that the update was yanked entirely.
There's also been a steady stream of complaints about the Win8-to-Win8.1 update, including an inability to connect with Remote Access Website connections. Here's an overview of what we know so far has happened, and how you may be able to recover.
Microsoft released the Windows 8.1 upgrade early in the morning (U.S. time) on Oct. 17. For consumers and others who don't have Volume License agreements with Microsoft, the update was directly accessible through the Microsoft Store. Volume Licensees had access through the VLSC. And, of course, MSDN and TechNet members have had access to the Windows 8.1 Enterprise (but not the Windows RT 8.1) bits for a month.
Windows RT customers (those with retail copies of Windows RT, not volume licensees) encountered unresolved Blue Screen 0xc000000d errors with notification that "Your PC needs to be repaired / The Boot Configuration Data file is missing some required information / File: \BCD". On Oct. 19 -- two days after the update was released -- Microsoft MVP Wesley_P posted on the Answers Forum: "Why isn't the Windows RT 8.1 upgrade available in the Microsoft store?"
Apparently it took Microsoft about 48 hours to pull the upgrade. In a post without a time stamp, on a rather obscure site , Microsoft issued this advisory:
Microsoft is investigating a situation affecting a limited number of users updating their Windows RT devices to Windows RT 8.1. As a result, we have temporarily removed the Windows RT 8.1 update from the Windows Store. We are working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and apologize for any inconvenience. We will provide updates as they become available.
I have seen no further comment from Microsoft, no acknowledgment or description of the problem, and certainly no fix.
Ozzie Scott Williams, on his technical blog kickthatcomputer ("Annoying stuff I figured out / I really hate computers"), has come up with an ingenious workaround. Big problem: the method requires a USB recovery drive for your Windows RT computer, and few people have one sitting around.
However, following the steps he outlines, if you trust him (disclaimer: I don't know Williams), you can create a Windows RT recovery USB drive. Using the recovery USB drive, there's a way to bring up an old-fashioned command prompt, and type in a one-line command to rebuild the trashed BCD. Once the BCD is fixed, apparently Windows RT 8.1 will boot.
Score one for the DOS command line. Hard to believe it would bring a borked Surface RT back to life.
The other major, solvable Windows 8.1 bug I've seen makes it impossible to connect Internet Explorer to a Remote Web Access website running on a Small Business Server 2011 server. Poster Yves describes it on the TechNet forum:
Announcing the recipients for the Accelerating Science Award Program
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
21-Oct-2013
[
| E-mail
]
Share
Contact: David Knutson dknutson@plos.org 651-260-8288 Public Library of Science
Washington, DC October 21, 2013 The three award recipients for the Accelerating Science Award Program (ASAP) were announced today in Washington, DC at the Open Access Week kickoff event hosted by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and the World Bank. ASAP recognizes the use of scientific research, published through Open Access, that has led to innovations benefiting society. Major sponsors include the Wellcome Trust, PLOS and Google.
The award recipients, along with the challenges they address and their innovative approaches, include:
Global Collaboration to Fight Malaria (Matthew Todd, PhD):
At least one child dies of malaria every minute of every day, mainly in Africa and Asia. According to Matthew Todd, who leads the Open Source Malaria Consortium, given minimal financial incentives for pharmaceutical companies to develop new treatments and a high degree of suffering among the affected communities, a large-scale and open collaborative research model provides a solution. Todd turned publicly available data into a global effort to help identify new anti-malaria drugs. He did this by creating an open source collaboration involving scientists, college students and others from around the world. They use open online laboratory notebooks in which their experimental data is posted each day, enabling instant sharing and the ability to build on others' findings in almost real time.
"This recognition may help enlist more people into the collaborative effort to fight malaria," said Dr. Matthew Todd. "If we succeed with these efforts, the approach could be extended to fighting other diseases such as cancer."
HIV Self-Test App Empowers Patients (Nitika Pant Pai, MD, MPH, PhD, Caroline Vadnais, Roni Deli-Houssein and Sushmita Shivkumar):
To increase awareness, knowledge and access to a convenient HIV screening option, and to expedite connections to treatment in nations hardest hit by the disease, Dr. Nitika Pant Pai and medical staff at McGill University and McGill University Health Centre, Montreal, developed a smartphone application as part of a self-testing strategy that synergized the Internet, an oral fluidbased self-test and a smartphone. This integrated approach included HIV education, an online test to determine HIV risk level, instructions to self-testing and interpreting the results, and confidential linkages and resources for referrals to trained counselors. The personalized smartphone application, developed on the basis of original research published in multiple Open Access journals, helps circumvent the social visibility associated with HIV testing in a healthcare facility. The application could alleviate fears of stigma and discrimination and make HIV detection simple, non-judgmental and confidential while empowering individuals with distilled scientific knowledge.
"Being an award recipient will help shine light on the fact that open access acts like a catalyst by allowing unrestricted knowledge sharing it exponentiates the power of knowledge to transform and impact lives beyond borders, boundaries, languages, and regions; facilitates creation of novel innovations, improved practices and policies," said Dr. Nitika Pant Pai. "With our synergistic innovation (application), we created a patient desired non-judgmental, private option that empowers proactive individuals to self-educate, stage, and seek linkages for HIV."
Visualizing Complex Science (Daniel Mietchen, PhD, Raphael Wimmer and Nils Dagsson Moskopp):
Many aspects critical to understanding science, experiments and the natural world are hard to convey using only words and diagrams. Good quality multimedia can help make that understanding easier. Daniel Mietchen and his group created the Open Access Media Importer (OAMI), a bot that can find and download supplementary multimedia files from reusably licensed Open Access research articles deposited in PubMed Central and uploads them to Wikimedia Commons, the media repository used by the Wikipedias and their sister projects. To date, the bot has uploaded more than 14,000 files that are being used in more than 200 English Wikipedia articles and many more in other languages that together garner about three million monthly views.
"We want people to play around with scientific materials and to engage with scientific processes," said Dr. Daniel Mietchen. "Scientific research should play a more public role in our society, and open licenses greatly facilitate that. We are glad that the award highlights the value of reusing, revising, remixing and redistributing Open Access materials."
As award recipients, these individuals and teams are being honored for addressing a real-world challenge by reusing previously published Open Access research to make a difference in science, medicine, business, technology or society as a whole. Open Access is the free, immediate online availability of articles, coupled with the rights to use these articles fully as long as the author and the original source are properly attributed.
###
Photos and video interviews of the winning recipients and honorable mentions can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/asaptoolkit/ . Additional information on ASAP can be found at http://asap.plos.org/
The ASAP program sponsors share a commitment to affect policy and public understanding to support the adoption of Open Access. They include the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Co-Action Publishing, Copernicus Publications, Creative Commons, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Doris Duke Charitable Trust, Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL), eLife, Hindawi, Health Research Alliance (HRA), Howard Hughes Medical Institute, ImpactStory, Jisc, Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, Mendeley, Microsoft Research, the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), Research Councils UK (RCUK), Research Libraries UK (RLUK), Social Science Research Network (SSRN), the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), SURF (Netherlands), the World Bank, and major sponsors Google, PLOS and the Wellcome Trust.
About the Public Library of Science
The Public Library of Science (PLOS) is a nonprofit publisher and advocacy organization founded to accelerate progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication. PLOS engages in outreach activities that promote Open Access and innovations in the communication of research. 2013 marks PLOS's tenth anniversary as an Open Access publisher, reaching an international audience through immediate and free availability of research on the Internet. PLOS publishes a suite of journals: PLOS ONE, PLOS Biology, PLOS Medicine, PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS Genetics, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases and PLOS Pathogens. PLOS ONE publishes research from more than 50 diverse scientific fields and is the largest peer-reviewed journal in the world.
About the Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust is a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in human and animal health. It supports the brightest minds in biomedical research and the medical humanities. The Trust's breadth of support includes public engagement, education and the application of research to improve health. It is independent of both political and commercial interests. http://www.wellcome.ac.uk
[
| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Announcing the recipients for the Accelerating Science Award Program
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
21-Oct-2013
[
| E-mail
]
Share
Contact: David Knutson dknutson@plos.org 651-260-8288 Public Library of Science
Washington, DC October 21, 2013 The three award recipients for the Accelerating Science Award Program (ASAP) were announced today in Washington, DC at the Open Access Week kickoff event hosted by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and the World Bank. ASAP recognizes the use of scientific research, published through Open Access, that has led to innovations benefiting society. Major sponsors include the Wellcome Trust, PLOS and Google.
The award recipients, along with the challenges they address and their innovative approaches, include:
Global Collaboration to Fight Malaria (Matthew Todd, PhD):
At least one child dies of malaria every minute of every day, mainly in Africa and Asia. According to Matthew Todd, who leads the Open Source Malaria Consortium, given minimal financial incentives for pharmaceutical companies to develop new treatments and a high degree of suffering among the affected communities, a large-scale and open collaborative research model provides a solution. Todd turned publicly available data into a global effort to help identify new anti-malaria drugs. He did this by creating an open source collaboration involving scientists, college students and others from around the world. They use open online laboratory notebooks in which their experimental data is posted each day, enabling instant sharing and the ability to build on others' findings in almost real time.
"This recognition may help enlist more people into the collaborative effort to fight malaria," said Dr. Matthew Todd. "If we succeed with these efforts, the approach could be extended to fighting other diseases such as cancer."
HIV Self-Test App Empowers Patients (Nitika Pant Pai, MD, MPH, PhD, Caroline Vadnais, Roni Deli-Houssein and Sushmita Shivkumar):
To increase awareness, knowledge and access to a convenient HIV screening option, and to expedite connections to treatment in nations hardest hit by the disease, Dr. Nitika Pant Pai and medical staff at McGill University and McGill University Health Centre, Montreal, developed a smartphone application as part of a self-testing strategy that synergized the Internet, an oral fluidbased self-test and a smartphone. This integrated approach included HIV education, an online test to determine HIV risk level, instructions to self-testing and interpreting the results, and confidential linkages and resources for referrals to trained counselors. The personalized smartphone application, developed on the basis of original research published in multiple Open Access journals, helps circumvent the social visibility associated with HIV testing in a healthcare facility. The application could alleviate fears of stigma and discrimination and make HIV detection simple, non-judgmental and confidential while empowering individuals with distilled scientific knowledge.
"Being an award recipient will help shine light on the fact that open access acts like a catalyst by allowing unrestricted knowledge sharing it exponentiates the power of knowledge to transform and impact lives beyond borders, boundaries, languages, and regions; facilitates creation of novel innovations, improved practices and policies," said Dr. Nitika Pant Pai. "With our synergistic innovation (application), we created a patient desired non-judgmental, private option that empowers proactive individuals to self-educate, stage, and seek linkages for HIV."
Visualizing Complex Science (Daniel Mietchen, PhD, Raphael Wimmer and Nils Dagsson Moskopp):
Many aspects critical to understanding science, experiments and the natural world are hard to convey using only words and diagrams. Good quality multimedia can help make that understanding easier. Daniel Mietchen and his group created the Open Access Media Importer (OAMI), a bot that can find and download supplementary multimedia files from reusably licensed Open Access research articles deposited in PubMed Central and uploads them to Wikimedia Commons, the media repository used by the Wikipedias and their sister projects. To date, the bot has uploaded more than 14,000 files that are being used in more than 200 English Wikipedia articles and many more in other languages that together garner about three million monthly views.
"We want people to play around with scientific materials and to engage with scientific processes," said Dr. Daniel Mietchen. "Scientific research should play a more public role in our society, and open licenses greatly facilitate that. We are glad that the award highlights the value of reusing, revising, remixing and redistributing Open Access materials."
As award recipients, these individuals and teams are being honored for addressing a real-world challenge by reusing previously published Open Access research to make a difference in science, medicine, business, technology or society as a whole. Open Access is the free, immediate online availability of articles, coupled with the rights to use these articles fully as long as the author and the original source are properly attributed.
###
Photos and video interviews of the winning recipients and honorable mentions can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/asaptoolkit/ . Additional information on ASAP can be found at http://asap.plos.org/
The ASAP program sponsors share a commitment to affect policy and public understanding to support the adoption of Open Access. They include the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Co-Action Publishing, Copernicus Publications, Creative Commons, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Doris Duke Charitable Trust, Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL), eLife, Hindawi, Health Research Alliance (HRA), Howard Hughes Medical Institute, ImpactStory, Jisc, Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, Mendeley, Microsoft Research, the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), Research Councils UK (RCUK), Research Libraries UK (RLUK), Social Science Research Network (SSRN), the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), SURF (Netherlands), the World Bank, and major sponsors Google, PLOS and the Wellcome Trust.
About the Public Library of Science
The Public Library of Science (PLOS) is a nonprofit publisher and advocacy organization founded to accelerate progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication. PLOS engages in outreach activities that promote Open Access and innovations in the communication of research. 2013 marks PLOS's tenth anniversary as an Open Access publisher, reaching an international audience through immediate and free availability of research on the Internet. PLOS publishes a suite of journals: PLOS ONE, PLOS Biology, PLOS Medicine, PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS Genetics, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases and PLOS Pathogens. PLOS ONE publishes research from more than 50 diverse scientific fields and is the largest peer-reviewed journal in the world.
About the Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust is a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in human and animal health. It supports the brightest minds in biomedical research and the medical humanities. The Trust's breadth of support includes public engagement, education and the application of research to improve health. It is independent of both political and commercial interests. http://www.wellcome.ac.uk
[
| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Amid news reports of groups paying users to write Wikipedia entries, the online encyclopedia has blocked or banned more than 250 accounts, the site announced Monday.
A number of user accounts, "perhaps as many as several hundred," may have been paid to write Wikipedia articles promoting groups or products, Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, said in a blog post.
[ Get the skinny on the state of the cloud with InfoWorld's "Cloud Computing Deep Dive" special report. Download it today! | For a quick, smart take on the news you'll be talking about, check out InfoWorld TechBrief -- subscribe today. ]
Wikipedia editors continue to investigate allegations of suspicious edits and so-called sockpuppetry, the practice of using online identities for purposes of deception, she wrote.
Editing for pay has been a "divisive topic" at Wikipedia for years, Gardner said. "Unlike a university professor editing Wikipedia articles in their area of expertise, paid editing for promotional purposes, or paid advocacy editing as we call it, is extremely problematic," she added. "We consider it a 'black hat' practice. Paid advocacy editing violates the core principles that have made Wikipedia so valuable for so many people."
With the uncovering of alleged sockpuppet accounts, editors "have expressed shock and dismay," Gardner wrote. "Our readers know Wikipedia's not perfect, but they also know that it has their best interests at heart, and is never trying to sell them a product or propagandize them in any way. Our goal is to provide neutral, reliable information for our readers, and anything that threatens that is a serious problem."
Using sockpuppet accounts or misrepresenting your affiliation with a company is against Wikipedia policy and prohibited by its terms of use, Gartner added. "We urge companies to conduct themselves ethically, to be transparent about what they're doing on Wikipedia, and to adhere to all site policies and practices," she said.
Grant Gross covers technology and telecom policy in the U.S. government for The IDG News Service. Follow Grant on Twitter at GrantGross. Grant's email address is grant_gross@idg.com.
Maternal smoking may impair infant immunity, causing a broad range of infections
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
21-Oct-2013
[
| E-mail
| Share
]
Contact: Debbie Jacobson djacobson@aap.org 847-434-7084 American Academy of Pediatrics
Smoking cessation, even during pregnancy, may reduce infant hospitalizations and death
ORLANDO. Fla. Maternal smoking is associated with both respiratory and non-respiratory infections in infants, resulting in increased risk for hospitalization and death, according to an abstract to be presented Sunday, Oct. 27, at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference and Exhibition in Orlando.
In "Maternal Smoking During pregnancy and Infant Infectious Disease Morbidity and Mortality," published earlier this year in the journal Pediatric Infectious Diseases, researchers reviewed hospitalization records and death certificates of 50,000 infants born in the state of Washington between 1987 and 2004. The case-control study assessed infant hospitalizations and deaths due to respiratory and non-respiratory infectious disease.
The infants of mothers who smoked were 50 percent more likely to be admitted to a hospital or die from any of a wide variety of infectious diseases than babies of mothers who did not smoke.
"We've known for a long time that babies born to mothers who smoke during pregnancy are at high risk for serious medical problems relating to low birth weight, premature delivery and poor lung development," said lead study author Abigail Halperin, MD, MPH. "While respiratory infections have been recognized as a common cause of these sometimes life-threatening illnesses, this study shows that babies exposed to smoke in utero also have increased risk for hospitalization and death from a much broader range of infectionsboth respiratory and non-respiratorythan we knew before."
The findings were largely independent of birth weight and gestational age, "thus even full-term babies with normal weight are at increased risk for hospitalization or death from multiple types of infections if their mother smoked," said Dr. Halperin. The results suggest that exposure to smoke during pregnancy harms infants' immune responses more generally, not just within the respiratory system, she said.
The study also found that when mothers cut back on their cigarette smoking or quit part way through their pregnancy, it seems to lower their child's risk of infection, said Dr. Halperin. "Counseling pregnant women to reduce their smoking, if they are not able to quit completely, may help reduce infant hospitalizations or death," she said.
###
The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of 60,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults. For more information, visit http://www.aap.org.
[
| E-mail
| Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Maternal smoking may impair infant immunity, causing a broad range of infections
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
21-Oct-2013
[
| E-mail
| Share
]
Contact: Debbie Jacobson djacobson@aap.org 847-434-7084 American Academy of Pediatrics
Smoking cessation, even during pregnancy, may reduce infant hospitalizations and death
ORLANDO. Fla. Maternal smoking is associated with both respiratory and non-respiratory infections in infants, resulting in increased risk for hospitalization and death, according to an abstract to be presented Sunday, Oct. 27, at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference and Exhibition in Orlando.
In "Maternal Smoking During pregnancy and Infant Infectious Disease Morbidity and Mortality," published earlier this year in the journal Pediatric Infectious Diseases, researchers reviewed hospitalization records and death certificates of 50,000 infants born in the state of Washington between 1987 and 2004. The case-control study assessed infant hospitalizations and deaths due to respiratory and non-respiratory infectious disease.
The infants of mothers who smoked were 50 percent more likely to be admitted to a hospital or die from any of a wide variety of infectious diseases than babies of mothers who did not smoke.
"We've known for a long time that babies born to mothers who smoke during pregnancy are at high risk for serious medical problems relating to low birth weight, premature delivery and poor lung development," said lead study author Abigail Halperin, MD, MPH. "While respiratory infections have been recognized as a common cause of these sometimes life-threatening illnesses, this study shows that babies exposed to smoke in utero also have increased risk for hospitalization and death from a much broader range of infectionsboth respiratory and non-respiratorythan we knew before."
The findings were largely independent of birth weight and gestational age, "thus even full-term babies with normal weight are at increased risk for hospitalization or death from multiple types of infections if their mother smoked," said Dr. Halperin. The results suggest that exposure to smoke during pregnancy harms infants' immune responses more generally, not just within the respiratory system, she said.
The study also found that when mothers cut back on their cigarette smoking or quit part way through their pregnancy, it seems to lower their child's risk of infection, said Dr. Halperin. "Counseling pregnant women to reduce their smoking, if they are not able to quit completely, may help reduce infant hospitalizations or death," she said.
###
The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of 60,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults. For more information, visit http://www.aap.org.
[
| E-mail
| Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Measuring less than 1mm thin, Incipio's Ultra Light Feather Case is ideal for the iPad mini user seeking inconspicuous, first-class protection. This case is made of an ultra light, ultra strong polymer for light as a feather, form-fitting durable protection without the added bulk. Available in a variety of colors!
Tweetbot maker Tapbots has just posted an entry to their blog stating that an updated version for iOS 7 has been submitted to the App Store and should be available in the coming weeks. According to Tapbots, they think we'll be just as excited as they are about the update:
We were aiming for the iOS 7 launch date, but unfortunately we didn’t make it. We’ve been working night and day for the last 4 months to re-design and develop an app that took over a year to build. The good news is that we are extremely happy with the results and can’t wait to share it with everyone.
Tapbots goes on to explain some of where their thought process and planning is with some of their other apps such as Weightbot, Convertbot, and Calcbot so if you own any of those apps, make sure you hit the Tapbots blog to read more on what's going on with them too.
For all the Tweetbot fans out there, your wait shouldn't be long now.
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Share
