Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/316545572?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Wednesday, July 3, 2013
In 'golden age' of surveillance, US has big edge
FILE - This June 23, 2013 file photo shows a TV screen shows a news report of Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee who leaked top-secret documents about sweeping U.S. surveillance programs, at a shopping mall in Hong Kong. President Barack Obama brushed aside sharp European criticism on Monday, suggesting all nations spy on each other, as the French and Germans expressed outrage over alleged U.S. eavesdropping on European Union diplomats. American analyst-turned-leaker Edward Snowden, believed to be stranded for the past week at Moscow?s international airport, applied for political asylum to remain in Russia. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu, File)
FILE - This June 23, 2013 file photo shows a TV screen shows a news report of Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee who leaked top-secret documents about sweeping U.S. surveillance programs, at a shopping mall in Hong Kong. President Barack Obama brushed aside sharp European criticism on Monday, suggesting all nations spy on each other, as the French and Germans expressed outrage over alleged U.S. eavesdropping on European Union diplomats. American analyst-turned-leaker Edward Snowden, believed to be stranded for the past week at Moscow?s international airport, applied for political asylum to remain in Russia. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu, File)
LONDON (AP) ? The saga of Edward Snowden and the NSA makes one thing clear: The United States' central role in developing the Internet and hosting its most powerful players has made it the global leader in the surveillance game.
Other countries, from dictatorships to democracies, are also avid snoopers, tapping into the high-capacity fiber optic cables to intercept Internet traffic, scooping their citizens' data off domestic servers, and even launching cyberattacks to win access to foreign networks.
But experts in the field say that Silicon Valley has made America a surveillance superpower, allowing its spies access to massive mountains of data being collected by the world's leading communications, social media, and online storage. That's on top of the United States' fiber optic infrastructure ? responsible for just under a third of the world's international Internet capacity, according to telecom research firm TeleGeography ? which allows it to act as a global postmaster, complete with the ability to peek at a big chunk of the world's messages in transit.
"The sheer power of the U.S. infrastructure is that quite often data would be routed though the U.S. even if it didn't make geographical sense," Joss Wright, a researcher with the Oxford Internet Institute, said in a telephone interview. "The current status quo is a huge benefit to the U.S."
The status quo is particularly favorable to America because online spying drills into people's private everyday lives in a way that other, more traditional forms of espionage can't match. So countries like Italy, where a culture of rampant wiretapping means that authorities regularly eavesdrop on private conversations, can't match the level of detail drawn from Internet searches or email traffic analysis.
"It's as bad as reading your diary," Wright said. Then he corrected himself: "It's FAR WORSE than reading your diary. Because you don't write everything in your diary."
Although the details of how the NSA's "PRISM" program draws its data from these firms remain shrouded in secrecy, documents leaked by spy agency systems analyst Edward Snowden to the Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers said its inside track with U.S. tech firms afforded "one of the most valuable, unique, and productive" avenues for intelligence-gathering.
The pool of information in American hands is vast. Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft Corp. accounts for more than 90 percent of the world's desktop computer operating systems, according to one industry estimate. Mountain View, California-based Google Inc. carries two-thirds of the world's online search traffic, analysts say. Menlo Park, California-based Facebook Inc. has some 900 million users ? a figure that accounts for a third of the world's estimated 2.7 billion Internet-goers.
Electronic eavesdropping is, of course, far from an exclusively American pursuit. Many other nations pry further and with less oversight.
China and Russia have long hosted intrusive surveillance regimes. Russia's "SORM," the Russian-language acronym for System for Operational-Investigative Activities, allows government officials to directly access nearly every Internet service provider in the country. Initially set up to allow the FSB, the successor organization to the KGB, unfettered access to Russia's Internet traffic, the scope of SORM has grown dramatically since Vladimir Putin took power in 2000 and now allows a wide range law enforcement agencies to monitor Russians' messages.
In China, surveillance is "pervasive, extensive, but perhaps not as high-tech" as in the United States, said Andrew Lih, a professor of journalism at American University in Washington. He said major Internet players such as microblogging service Sina, chat service QQ, or Chinese search giant Baidu were required to have staff ? perhaps as many as several hundred people ? specially tasked with carrying out the state's bidding, from surveillance to censorship.
What sets America apart is that it sits at the center of gravity for much of world's social media, communications, and online storage.
Americans' "position in the network, the range of services that they offer globally, the size of their infrastructure, and the amount of bandwidth means that the U.S. is in a very privileged position to surveil internationally," said Wright. "That's particularly true when you're talking about cloud services such as Gmail" ? which had 425 million active users as of last year.
Many are trying to beat America's tech dominance by demanding that U.S. companies open local branches ? something the Turkish government recently asked of San Francisco-based Twitter Inc., for example ? or by banning them altogether. Santa Clara, California-based WhatsApp, for example, may soon be prohibited in Saudi Arabia.
Governments are also racing to capture traffic as it bounces back and forth from California, importing bulk surveillance devices, loosening spy laws, and installing centralized monitoring centers to offer officials a one-stop shop for intercepted data.
"Eventually, it won't just be Big Brother," said Richard J. Aldrich, the author of a book about Britain's GCHQ eavesdropping agency. "There will be hundreds of little brothers."
But the siblings have a lot of catching up to do if they want to match surveillance powers of the United States, and some have turned to cyberespionage to try to even the playing field. A high-profile attack on Gmail users in 2010, for example, was blamed on Chinese hackers, while suspicion for separate 2011 attack on various U.S. webmail services fell on Iran.
But even in the dark arts of cyberespionage, America seems to have mastered the field. Washington is blamed for launching the world's first infrastructure-wrecking super worm, dubbed "Stuxnet," against Iran and for spreading a variety of malicious software programs across the Middle East. One U.S. general recently boasted of hacking his enemies in Afghanistan.
In his comments to the South China Morning Post, Snowden said Americans had broken into computer systems belonging to a prominent Chinese research university, a fiber optic cable company and Chinese telecoms providers.
"We hack everyone everywhere," Snowden said.
U.S. officials haven't exactly denied it.
"You're commuting to where the information is stored and extracting the information from the adversaries' network," ex-NSA chief Michael Hayden told Bloomberg Businessweek earlier this year. "We are the best at doing it. Period."
___
Paisley Dodds in London and Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.
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Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Fishing in the sea of proteins: Composition of splicing complex in chloroplasts identified for the first time
July 2, 2013 ? To convert a gene into a protein, a cell first crafts a blueprint out of RNA. One of the main players in this process has been identified by researchers led by Dr. Jessica Jacobs at the Ruhr-Universit?t Bochum. The team "fished" a large complex of proteins and RNA, which is involved in the so-called splicing, from the chloroplasts of the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. This cuts non-coding regions out of the messenger RNA, which contains the protein blueprint.
"For the first time, we have established the exact composition of an unknown splicing complex of the chloroplasts," says Jacobs. She reports with her colleagues from the Department of General and Molecular Botany and the Work Group for Biomolecular Mass Spectrometry in the journal Molecular and Cellular Proteomics.
From gene to protein -- craftwork required
Genes, the bearers of genetic information, contain coding and non-coding regions. To convert a gene into a protein, enzymes first create a copy of the gene, the messenger RNA. A useful blueprint for a protein is only obtained, however, when enzymes cut the non-coding regions, called introns out of the messenger RNA. Scientists call this process splicing. Large complexes of RNA and proteins are responsible for the splicing.
Components of the splicing complex identified in chloroplasts
The RUB researchers examined the splicing of the gene psaA, which is found in chloroplasts. These cellular constituents of plants which carry out photosynthesis probably originated from formerly free-living cyanobacteria. According to the endosymbiotic theory, the cyanobacteria lived in symbiosis with the plants and were eventually integrated into their cells. Chloroplasts therefore have their own genetic material -- a relic from the cyanobacterial genome. However, the chloroplasts are dependent on the communication with the cell nucleus in order to be functional. The Bochum team identified the components of the protein complex that splices the chloroplast gene psaA. In the splicing complex they found 23 different proteins that are encoded in the genome of the cell nucleus. "The protein complex discovered gives us an insight into the functioning of components involved in the communication between chloroplasts and the nucleus," says Jessica Jacobs.
How to fish a splicing complex
The team carried out its investigations on the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. "We used a protein bait to fish the splicing complex out of the chloroplasts," says Jacobs. Before starting the experiment, it was known that the protein Raa4 is involved in the splicing of the psaA gene. The many interaction partners of Raa4, however, were unknown. The RUB biologists genetically altered the alga in such a way that it produced a modified form of the protein Raa4 -- with a tag, i.e. a kind of "fish hook." They isolated all the proteins of the cell and filtered them through a particular material, on which only Raa4 got caught on its fish hook -- along with all of its bound interaction partners. They determined the components of the splicing complex fished out with the aid of mass spectrometry. The researchers found a splicing complex with the same composition for various environmental conditions: in light, darkness, and in an oxygen-free environment.
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UChicago Celiac Disease Center to host international symposium
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Public release date: 1-Jul-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Matt Wood
matthew.wood@uchospitals.edu
773-702-5894
University of Chicago Medical Center
The University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center is hosting the 15th International Celiac Disease Symposium (ICDS) on Sept. 22-25, 2013 in Chicago. The symposium is the largest celiac disease and gluten-related disorders conference in the world. The meeting, which follows the 2011 conference in Oslo, Norway, is the first one being held in the United States since 2006.
The Chicago meeting seeks to address the interests of those affected by celiac disease and gluten-related disorders from physicians, researchers and clinicians to patients, their families and friends. The meeting will bring together the world's top scientists and physicians to discuss the most recent scientific advances in managing and treating celiac disease and gluten-related disorders, while a separate clinical forum will be held to further educate dietitians, clinicians, and patients.
"We are thrilled to be hosting this unique and important gathering and expect groundbreaking research to be unveiled that will directly impact the prevention of and perhaps cure of celiac disease," said Dr. Stefano Guandalini, co-chairman of ICDS 2013 and founder and medical director of the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center. "The interaction between scientists, clinicians and consumers makes for a robust and interactive forum, unlike any other meeting."
ICDS Chicago will feature two educational tracks:
- The Scientific Forum is designed for those in active research roles in the area of celiac disease and gluten-related disorders. This is a forum for these researchers and physicians to debate and discuss new theories and data on topics selected by the Scientific Committee.
- The Clinical Forum is designed for physicians, registered dietitians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurses and those living with celiac disease or non-celiac gluten sensitivity. The program will allow participants to learn about the latest research and scientific advances from leading experts. Presentations are geared for practical application in both clinical settings and everyday living. Additionally, the track will explore subjects such as public policy, psychology and the problems surrounding celiac disease in emerging countries. Sessions will allow ample time for Q&A and interactive discussion.
The registration fee for the Scientific Forum is $800 for researchers and physicians and $500 for students, residents and fellows. After July 31, 2013, rates will increase to $900 and $650, respectively. The registration fee for the Clinical Forum is $449 for dietitians, clinicians and patients and $349 for students, residents and fellows, increasing to $549 and $399 after July 31. The program is eligible for continuing medical education (CME) credits through the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine.
###
For more information on ICDS Chicago, including registration, travel, CME and abstract submission, visit icds2013.org.
About the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center
The University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center is an international center of excellence providing comprehensive patient and professional education, expert diagnosis and treatment for both children and adults, groundbreaking bench and clinical research, and active leadership in advocacy efforts. For more information, visit their website at cureceliacdisease.org.
For more news from the University of Chicago Medicine, follow us on Twitter at @UChicagoMed, or visit our Facebook page at facebook.com/UChicagoMed, our research blog at sciencelife.uchospitals.edu, or our newsroom at uchospitals.edu/news.
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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.
Public release date: 1-Jul-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Matt Wood
matthew.wood@uchospitals.edu
773-702-5894
University of Chicago Medical Center
The University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center is hosting the 15th International Celiac Disease Symposium (ICDS) on Sept. 22-25, 2013 in Chicago. The symposium is the largest celiac disease and gluten-related disorders conference in the world. The meeting, which follows the 2011 conference in Oslo, Norway, is the first one being held in the United States since 2006.
The Chicago meeting seeks to address the interests of those affected by celiac disease and gluten-related disorders from physicians, researchers and clinicians to patients, their families and friends. The meeting will bring together the world's top scientists and physicians to discuss the most recent scientific advances in managing and treating celiac disease and gluten-related disorders, while a separate clinical forum will be held to further educate dietitians, clinicians, and patients.
"We are thrilled to be hosting this unique and important gathering and expect groundbreaking research to be unveiled that will directly impact the prevention of and perhaps cure of celiac disease," said Dr. Stefano Guandalini, co-chairman of ICDS 2013 and founder and medical director of the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center. "The interaction between scientists, clinicians and consumers makes for a robust and interactive forum, unlike any other meeting."
ICDS Chicago will feature two educational tracks:
- The Scientific Forum is designed for those in active research roles in the area of celiac disease and gluten-related disorders. This is a forum for these researchers and physicians to debate and discuss new theories and data on topics selected by the Scientific Committee.
- The Clinical Forum is designed for physicians, registered dietitians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurses and those living with celiac disease or non-celiac gluten sensitivity. The program will allow participants to learn about the latest research and scientific advances from leading experts. Presentations are geared for practical application in both clinical settings and everyday living. Additionally, the track will explore subjects such as public policy, psychology and the problems surrounding celiac disease in emerging countries. Sessions will allow ample time for Q&A and interactive discussion.
The registration fee for the Scientific Forum is $800 for researchers and physicians and $500 for students, residents and fellows. After July 31, 2013, rates will increase to $900 and $650, respectively. The registration fee for the Clinical Forum is $449 for dietitians, clinicians and patients and $349 for students, residents and fellows, increasing to $549 and $399 after July 31. The program is eligible for continuing medical education (CME) credits through the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine.
###
For more information on ICDS Chicago, including registration, travel, CME and abstract submission, visit icds2013.org.
About the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center
The University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center is an international center of excellence providing comprehensive patient and professional education, expert diagnosis and treatment for both children and adults, groundbreaking bench and clinical research, and active leadership in advocacy efforts. For more information, visit their website at cureceliacdisease.org.
For more news from the University of Chicago Medicine, follow us on Twitter at @UChicagoMed, or visit our Facebook page at facebook.com/UChicagoMed, our research blog at sciencelife.uchospitals.edu, or our newsroom at uchospitals.edu/news.
[ | 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.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-07/uocm-ucd070113.php
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Protein essential for cognition and mental health identified
July 1, 2013 ? The ability to maintain mental representations of ourselves and the world -- the fundamental building block of human cognition -- arises from the firing of highly evolved neuronal circuits, a process that is weakened in schizophrenia. In a new study, researchers at Yale University School of Medicine pinpoint key molecular actions of proteins that allow the creation of mental representations necessary for higher cognition that are genetically altered in schizophrenia. The study was released July 1 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
Working memory, the mind's mental sketch pad, depends upon the proper functioning of a network of pyramid-shaped brain cells in the prefrontal cortex, the seat of higher order thinking in humans. To keep information in the conscious mind, these pyramidal cells must stimulate each other through a special group of receptors. The Yale team discovered this stimulation requires the neurotransmitter acetylcholine to activate a specific protein in the nicotinic family of receptors -- the alpha7 nicotinic receptor.
Acetycholine is released when we are awake -- but not in deep sleep. These receptors allow prefrontal circuits to come "online" when we awaken, allowing us to perform complex mental tasks. This process is enhanced by caffeine in coffee, which increases acetylcholine release. As their name suggests, nicotinic alpha-7 receptors are also activated by nicotine, which may may help to explain why smoking can focus attention and calm behavior, functions of the prefrontal cortex.
The results also intrigued researchers because alpha7 nicotinic receptors are genetically altered in schizophrenia, a disease marked by disorganized thinking. "Prefrontal networks allow us to form and hold coherent thoughts, a process that is impaired in schizophrenia," said Amy Arnsten, professor of neurobiology, investigator for Kavli Institute, and one of the senior authors of the paper. "A great majority of schizophrenics smoke, which makes sense because stimulation of the nicotinic alpha7 receptors would strengthen mental representations and lessen thought disorder."
Arnsten said that new medications that stimulate alpha-7 nicotinic receptors may hold promise for treating cognitive disorders.
Publication of the PNAS paper comes on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the death of Yale neurobiologist Patricia Goldman-Rakic, who was hit by a car in Hamden Ct. on July 31, 2003. Goldman-Rakic first identified the central role of prefrontal cortical circuits in working memory.
"Patricia's work has provided the neural foundation for current studies of molecular influences on cognition and their disruption in cognitive disorders," said Arnsten. "Our ability to apply a scientific approach to perplexing disorders such as schizophrenia is due to her groundbreaking research."
Yang Yang and Min Wang of Yale are lead author and co-senior authors, respectively. Constaninos D. Paspalas, Lu E Jin and Marina R. Picciotto are other Yale authors.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/_hxFL7g7ARo/130701151558.htm
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Monday, July 1, 2013
Iraq violence kills 761 in June: U.N.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The number of people killed in militant attacks across Iraq reached 761 in June, lower than the multi-year high hit the previous month, the United Nations said on Monday.
More than 1,000 people were killed in violence in Iraq during May, making it the deadliest month since the height of sectarian bloodletting in 2006-07.
Violence is still well below the level it was then, but al-Qaeda's Iraqi affiliate and other Sunni Muslim insurgents launch attacks on a daily basis, seeking to undermine the Shi'ite-led government and provoke wider confrontation.
The vast majority of casualties in June were civilian, with 131 policemen and 76 members of the Iraqi security forces also killed, the United Nations said in a statement.
The worst-affected region was Baghdad, where 258 people were killed and the death toll in Salahuddin, Diyala, Nineveh and Anbar provinces each exceeded 100, the statement said.
On Monday, police discovered the bodies of eight former members of a government-backed Sunni militia who had been killed execution-style and dumped near the town Tarmiya, 25 km (15 miles) north of the capital.
Sectarian tensions in Iraq and the wider region have been inflamed by the civil war in Syria, where mainly Sunni Muslim rebels are fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, who is backed by Shi'ite Iran.
A decade after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, a stable power-sharing compromise is yet to be found between Shi'ites, Sunnis, and ethnic Kurds who run their own autonomous region in the north.
Last year, a total of 4,471 civilians were killed in what rights group Iraq Body Count described as a "low-level war" with insurgents - the first annual climb in the death toll in three years.
(Reporting and writing by Ahmed Rasheed; additional reporting by Kareem Raheem; editing by Elizabeth Piper)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/iraq-violence-kills-761-june-u-n-115009087.html
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