If you're still balking at the cost of download-to-own e-books, and would rather stick to the tried-and-true library lending system, then this Hachette news is for you. Come next Wednesday, the entirety of Hachette's ebook catalog -- over 5,000 titles -- will be made available to nonprofit libraries throughout the US. The announcement and finalized pricing model follows two years worth of pilot testing, during which the publisher examined ebook consumption and lending habits at select libraries. Under the currently set terms of sale, e-books that bow in tandem with print editions will run three times the price of their physical counterparts for "single-user-at-a-time circulations, " with prices falling to just one and a half that of the hard copy one year later. By Hachette's own admission, this pricing scheme is not entirely set in stone -- the company plans to continually reevaluate the model on a per-year basis. So, there's hope yet the publisher will gouge libraries a bit less for the perks of e-borrowing.
What is it that you want to know about the RAM in your mobile device? Usually, how much of it there is, and if you're a little more demanding of your hardware, maybe what type it is, too. Well, folk in the latter category might interested to know that Samsung has started production of 20nm 4Gb LPDDR3 mobile DRAM. As is the nature of smaller, more efficient components, the new chips promise to be faster (2,133 Mbps per pin, over LPDDR2's 800 Mbps), and -- so claims Samsung -- a 20 percent drop in power consumption. With just four of these new chips, OEMs can have a 2GB offering that's still just a slick 0.8mm in height.
In the study of natural disasters?be they tornadoes, hurricanes, snowpacolyses, or Florida on a weekday?the event?s magnitude is just as vital to our understanding as its duration and frequency. Hurricanes and tornadoes are measured by class, blizzards along the Winter Wonderland-Killstorm demarcation. Earthquakes, of course, are measured by how much energy they release?a system better known as the Richter Scale.
Cloherty Packing Co.?makers of Dod??ger Stadium?s famed ?Dodger Dogs? frankfurters?has agreed to settle federal charges it discriminated against women at its Los Angeles plant.
The U.S. Department of Labor?s Office of Federal Contract Com??pli??ance Programs (OFCCP) investigated the packing company?s hiring practices from 2007 through 2009 and determined that it systematically refused to hire women, most of whom were Latina, for laborer positions. The OFCCP has labor-law compliance authority over Cloherty because its parent company, Minnesota-based Hormel Foods, is contractor to the federal government.
Under the settlement, Cloherty will pay $439,538 in back wages, including interest, to 1,988 qualified but re??jected female job applicants. It must also offer 700 jobs to affected women as positions become available.
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Mast cells give clues in diagnosis, treatment of denguePublic release date: 30-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Rachel Harrison rachel.harrison@duke.edu 919-419-5069 Duke University Medical Center
DURHAM, N.C. -- A protein produced by mast cells in the immune system may predict which people infected with dengue virus will develop life-threatening complications, according to researchers at Duke Medicine and Duke-National University of Singapore (Duke-NUS).
Their study also found that in experiments in mice, a class of drugs commonly used to treat asthma by targeting the mast cells could help treat vascular symptoms associated with dengue infections. The findings were published in the online journal eLife on April 30, 2013.
Dengue virus is spread by mosquitoes and infects as many as 390 million people worldwide each year, according to new estimates published in the journal Nature. It is a significant health issue in tropical areas of the world including parts of Latin America and Asia, but Florida residents have reported cases in recent years.
No treatments are available for dengue virus, and serious cases can result in widespread vascular leakage and hemorrhaging.
In 2011, Duke researchers reported that mast cells, which help the body respond to bacteria and other pathogens, play a role in attacking dengue virus and halting its spread. This finding presented new avenues for research, given the existing classes of drugs that target mast cells or the products of mast cells once they are activated.
In one experiment in the current study of dengue virus in mice, the researchers found that certain classes of drugs commonly used to treat asthma are effective in limiting vascular leakage associated with dengue.
"It may not seem intuitive how asthma and dengue infection would be related and would respond to the same types of drugs, but because both diseases are promoted by mast cells, the cellular targets of the class of drugs is quite effective," said lead author Ashley L. St. John, PhD, assistant professor of emerging infectious diseases at Duke-NUS.
The researchers continued to investigate the role of mast cells in attacking dengue virus in humans, and identified a biomarker a mast cell-derived product that appeared to predict the illness' most severe cases in human patients.
Most patients infected by a dengue virus develop a high fever, dubbed dengue fever, and recover on their own. However, a small number of these cases develop into dengue hemorrhagic fever, a dangerous condition marked by serious complications, including bleeding, respiratory distress and severe abdominal pain.
Until now, doctors have not been able to predict who will develop dengue hemorrhagic fever. When the researchers studied blood serum samples from patients with dengue infection, they found that the levels of a protein produced by mast cells, chymase, were significantly higher in the patients who developed dengue hemorrhagic fever compared to those who recovered after dengue fever.
"In addition to revealing a potential new way to diagnose and treat dengue infections, these findings may have much broader applicability for other infectious diseases where vascular leakage is a major pathologic outcome," said senior study author Soman N. Abraham, PhD, professor of pathology, immunology, and molecular genetics and microbiology at Duke Medicine and professor of emerging infectious diseases at Duke-NUS.
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Other coauthors include Abhay P. S. Rathore, Raghavan Bhuvanakantham and Mah-Lee Ng of the department of microbiology at the National University of Singapore.
Funding was provided by the National Institutes of Health (R21 DA029731 and R01 DK077159), the National Medical Research Council of Singapore and the Duke-NUS Signature Research Program funded by Singapore's Ministry of Health.
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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.
Mast cells give clues in diagnosis, treatment of denguePublic release date: 30-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Rachel Harrison rachel.harrison@duke.edu 919-419-5069 Duke University Medical Center
DURHAM, N.C. -- A protein produced by mast cells in the immune system may predict which people infected with dengue virus will develop life-threatening complications, according to researchers at Duke Medicine and Duke-National University of Singapore (Duke-NUS).
Their study also found that in experiments in mice, a class of drugs commonly used to treat asthma by targeting the mast cells could help treat vascular symptoms associated with dengue infections. The findings were published in the online journal eLife on April 30, 2013.
Dengue virus is spread by mosquitoes and infects as many as 390 million people worldwide each year, according to new estimates published in the journal Nature. It is a significant health issue in tropical areas of the world including parts of Latin America and Asia, but Florida residents have reported cases in recent years.
No treatments are available for dengue virus, and serious cases can result in widespread vascular leakage and hemorrhaging.
In 2011, Duke researchers reported that mast cells, which help the body respond to bacteria and other pathogens, play a role in attacking dengue virus and halting its spread. This finding presented new avenues for research, given the existing classes of drugs that target mast cells or the products of mast cells once they are activated.
In one experiment in the current study of dengue virus in mice, the researchers found that certain classes of drugs commonly used to treat asthma are effective in limiting vascular leakage associated with dengue.
"It may not seem intuitive how asthma and dengue infection would be related and would respond to the same types of drugs, but because both diseases are promoted by mast cells, the cellular targets of the class of drugs is quite effective," said lead author Ashley L. St. John, PhD, assistant professor of emerging infectious diseases at Duke-NUS.
The researchers continued to investigate the role of mast cells in attacking dengue virus in humans, and identified a biomarker a mast cell-derived product that appeared to predict the illness' most severe cases in human patients.
Most patients infected by a dengue virus develop a high fever, dubbed dengue fever, and recover on their own. However, a small number of these cases develop into dengue hemorrhagic fever, a dangerous condition marked by serious complications, including bleeding, respiratory distress and severe abdominal pain.
Until now, doctors have not been able to predict who will develop dengue hemorrhagic fever. When the researchers studied blood serum samples from patients with dengue infection, they found that the levels of a protein produced by mast cells, chymase, were significantly higher in the patients who developed dengue hemorrhagic fever compared to those who recovered after dengue fever.
"In addition to revealing a potential new way to diagnose and treat dengue infections, these findings may have much broader applicability for other infectious diseases where vascular leakage is a major pathologic outcome," said senior study author Soman N. Abraham, PhD, professor of pathology, immunology, and molecular genetics and microbiology at Duke Medicine and professor of emerging infectious diseases at Duke-NUS.
###
Other coauthors include Abhay P. S. Rathore, Raghavan Bhuvanakantham and Mah-Lee Ng of the department of microbiology at the National University of Singapore.
Funding was provided by the National Institutes of Health (R21 DA029731 and R01 DK077159), the National Medical Research Council of Singapore and the Duke-NUS Signature Research Program funded by Singapore's Ministry of Health.
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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.
While we've seen supercomputers break records before, rarely have we seen the barrier smashed quite so thoroughly as by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Sequoia supercomputer. Researchers at both LLNL and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have used planet-scale calculations on the Blue Gene/Q-based cluster to set an all-time simulation speed record of 504 billion events per second -- a staggering 41 times better than the 2009 record of 12.2 billion. The partnership also set a record for parallelism, too, by making the supercomputer's 1.97 million cores juggle 7.86 million tasks at once. If there's a catch to that blistering performance, it's not knowing if Sequoia reached its full potential. LLNL and RPI conducted their speed run during an integration phase, when Sequoia could be used for public experiments; now that it's running classified nuclear simulations, we can only guess at what's possible.
Apr. 30, 2013 ? Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have developed a unique integrated motor drive and battery charger for electric vehicles. Compared to today's electric vehicle chargers, they have managed to shorten the charging time from eight to two hours, and to reduce the cost by around $2,000.
Saeid Haghbin, doctor of electric power engineering, undertook his doctoral studies in order to develop the optimal electric vehicle charger. The result is a novel high-power integrated motor drive and battery charger for vehicle applications, where a new power transfer method has been introduced involving what is known as a rotating transformer.
"The ideal scenario would be to have a charger powerful enough to charge a car in five to ten minutes, but this would cost over $100,000, which is more expensive than the car itself," says Saeid Haghbin. "The question we posed was: how can we reduce the size, weight and price of the on-board charger."
Since the electric motor and the inverter are not used during battery charging, the researchers looked into the possibility of using them in the charger circuit and building some kind of integrated motor and battery charger. In other words, would it be possible to use the motor and inverter in the charger circuit to increase the charging power at a lower cost?
"Instead of having a separate isolated battery charger, we introduced a new concept for the power transfer, the rotating transformer, which was developed to transfer electric power while rotating," says Saeid Haghbin. "The battery is charged through the transformer and a split-phase electric motor that was especially designed for this purpose."
The Chalmers integrated charger is, from a university perspective, still on laboratory level. To achieve a more optimal system, further investigations and experimentation are necessary. However, the product has resulted in both a Swedish and an international patent. Chalmers is trying to find a potential industrial user, and Volvo AB is working on the concept for further enhancement to be used in its system.
"Electric cars have been discussed as a possible solution to reduce carbon emissions for a long time, but scientists debate whether this mode of transportation is the future or not," says Saeid Haghbin. "If we manage to solve the main problems with the battery and the battery chargers, I think the electric vehicles will succeed. And in general, I think electric transportation will become more common in the future, for example trains, trams and plug-in hybrids."
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Public release date: 30-Apr-2013
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