Matthew McConaughey Rumored for Christopher Nolan's Next

Posted 10:36 PM March 28th, 2013 by Binh Ngo

After an award-winning performance in Magic Mike, Matthew McConaughey may be ready to go Interstellar. Deadline heard that the actor has been offered the lead role in Christopher Nolan's sci-fi movie.

If McConaughey accepts, he'll play a character named Cooper.

Not much is known about the plot of Interstellar other than that it may center on a group of scientists/explorers who went through a wormhole and ended up in alternate dimensions. These characters may be doing some time travel as well.

The script is written by Nolan's brother Jonathan, but Christ is doing a rewrite to incorporate in some of his own ideas so the details above may have changed.

Interstellar was originally Steven Spielberg's, but it fell to Nolan when Spielberg cleared his slate to focus on developing a more personal telling of Robopocalypse.

The movie is a joint production between Paramount and Warner Bros, and the release date has been set for November 7, 2014.

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1927140/news/1927140/

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China's urbanization drive leaves migrant workers out in the cold

By Lucy Hornby and Jane Lee

BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Twenty minutes' drive from Shanghai's glitzy financial district, dozens of migrant workers are preparing to abandon homes in old shipping containers, as one of the more unusual solutions to China's housing shortage faces the wrecking ball.

Cheap but crowded neighborhoods are being cleared across China as part of a stepped-up "urbanization" campaign by China's new leaders. The country aims to spend an estimated $6 trillion on infrastructure, including housing, as a projected 400 million people become urban residents over the next decade.

But in an ironic twist, the clearance of so-called "villages within cities" removes cheap housing stock for the very people targeted to fuel that migration, without providing sufficient replacement units. The land is sold by municipalities to developers who generally erect expensive apartment towers.

That throws into question how the government can achieve its ambitious goal.

"On the one hand, the law doesn't allow former farmers to expand housing for migrant workers, on the other hand local governments don't have the money to build affordable housing either," said Li Ping, senior attorney for Landesa Rural Development Institute in Beijing.

About 130 million Chinese migrants live in tiny, sub-divided rooms rented out by former farmers whose villages have been swallowed by sprawl, according to government surveys.

Policies to provide government-built housing while razing these shabby "villages within cities" result in a net loss of housing units, according to urban planners and academics, while choking off the private rental market that for decades has enabled China's massive urban migration.

The dilemma poses harsh choices for those who have made lives in the cities on the slimmest of margins, such as the migrants in the converted shipping containers in Shanghai.

"They can't just come and ask me to move. I have so many products here that I sell. So much stuff worth at least tens of thousands of yuan," said Li Yanxin, a migrant from nearby Anhui Province who runs a small convenience store out of his container. His profits - and therefore his ability to pay for his teenager's education - depend on the low rent he found in the container village.

Local officials put muscle behind a policy of clearing such sites, often declaring these dwellings illegal by noting non-agricultural land allocated to villagers cannot be used for commercial purposes. Land reclassified as "urban" can be sold at a huge profit.

"Not everyone can live in a high rise. Especially those of us who work in the recycling business," Zhang Baofa, who rented out the used shipping containers in one of the more creative solutions to Shanghai's shortage of cheap housing.

Local officials, embarrassed by photos of the container village circulating on the Internet, have vowed to remove the site within days. On Thursday, after four years of operation, they declared Li's store to be unregistered.

"This is zoned as village land. I borrowed the land. I bought the containers. I rented it out. I would know if it were illegal," Zhang said.

SEPARATE AND UNEQUAL

Chinese cities lack the visible slums of other developing countries, thanks in part to communities such as Xinzhuang in Beijing that collectively house about 3.4 million migrants just within the capital.

A high whitewashed wall and strip of green lawn hide Xinzhuang's 10,000 residents from surrounding luxury apartment blocks. Three black chickens scratch along a filthy gutter of blue-grey water next to the public latrine. Rooms of about 12 square meters each house families of three, for an affordable 500 yuan ($80) a month.

"A regular apartment would be more comfortable, but it's about 2,000 yuan a month. That's too much for the type of people who live here. They want to save what they can. We fill the lowest niche," said landlord Dong Gang, whose former farmhouse is now a two-story concrete structure divided into about 30 makeshift rooms.

One of the 1,000 original residents of Xinzhuang, he has been renting to migrants for 20 years. Complicated zoning laws mean that Dong can't expand beyond the footprint of his original home, hindering investments that might improve housing quality.

"In Beijing over the last two years they've been 'cleaning up' crowded tenements - that raises rents and forces many out," said Hu Xingdou, a specialist in migrant issues at the Beijing Institute of Technology.

Within the next two years, Beijing city is expected to allow migrants to rent but not buy city-built housing units. Even so, many migrants won't qualify to rent, and the number of government-built units often falls short of the number of migrants displaced.

"There is going to be less of this type of housing, because almost all cities have policies now to demolish 'villages within cities'," according to estimates by Tom Miller, author of "China's Urban Billion".

URBAN VILLAGES

For two decades, Chinese local governments have been able to ignore the problem of housing migrants, thanks to the makeshift villages and other arrangements that accommodate about 40 percent of migrants. The remainder live at factory dormitories or tents and pre-fab housing set up on construction sites.

As China's cities and export industries boomed, cheap private housing helped keep down the cost of labor, says Li Jinkui of the China Development Institute in Shenzhen. He estimates Shenzhen would have spent 25 years' worth of annual revenues to house the people who were renting in its "villages" in 2000 - a population now estimated at 5 million people.

Of 1.35 billion Chinese, 690 million are estimated to live in cities, but only about half of those can claim urban residency status due to an archaic national registration system that ties all citizens, and public benefits, to their hometowns.

City governments often lack figures for how many people live in neighborhoods targeted for demolition, but they can document their destruction with precision. Beijing's most recent city plan notes that 171 "villages within cities" had been "cleaned up" in the previous five years, but as of 2011, there were still 100 left.

The loss of affordable housing could accelerate, according to a Beijing plan released Thursday to catalogue "illegal" buildings on collectively owned land and then destroy them next spring. Coal briquettes burned in unheated slum villages contribute to Beijing's choking winter pollution.

European and American cities had huge programs to replace slums with public housing, Miller said. "The question is what happens when they are demolished in China?"

(Additional reporting by Langi Chiang in BEIJING; Editing by Ken Wills)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/chinas-urbanization-drive-leaves-migrant-workers-cold-012351130--business.html

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New study aims to prevent sports-related brain injury in youngsters

Mar. 28, 2013 ? Ice hockey accounts for nearly half of all traumatic brain injuries among children and youth participating in organized sports who required a trip to an emergency department in Canada, according to a new study out of St. Michael's Hospital.

The results are part of a first-of-its-kind study led by Dr. Michael Cusimano that looked at causes of sports-related brain injuries in Canadian youth and also uncovered some prevention tactics that could be immediately implemented to make sports safer for kids.

"Unless we understand how children are getting hurt in sport, we can't develop ways to prevent these serious injuries from happening," said Dr. Cusimano, a neurosurgeon and the lead author of the study. "One would think that we know the reasons why kids are having brain injuries in sports, but until know, it was based mainly on anecdotes."

The study used data from The Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Program to look at the almost 13,000 children and youth aged 5-19 who had a sports-related brain injury between 1990 and 2009. The results appeared in the journal PLOS ONE today.

The researchers categorized injuries by players' ages, what sport they occurred in and what mechanisms had caused them -- "struck by player," "struck by object" (such as net or post), "struck by sport implement" (such as ball or stick), "struck by playing surface" and "other."

Hockey accounted for 44.3 per cent of all injuries and almost 70 per cent of them occurred in children over 10 as a result of player-to-player contact or being hit into the boards.

Dr. Cusimano said they expected to see high numbers in hockey because it's Canada's "national sport."

"This shows that body contact is still an area where we need to make major inroads to preventing brain injuries," Dr. Cusimano said. "For example, enforcing existing rules and making more effective incentives and disincentives about checking from behind could make huge improvements."

Nineteen per cent of the youth who suffered brain injuries got them during soccer, with most in the 10 to 14 or 15 to 19 age group. In these age ranges, the most common cause of injury was being struck by another player, kicks to the head or head-on-head collisions. In the younger group, age five to nine, players were more likely to suffer a traumatic brain injury from striking a surface or a goal post than those in older groups.

"There's a really straightforward solution here," Dr. Cusimano said. "Padding the goal posts could have potentially prevented a large number of these brain injuries in young children."

The results also found that the youngest age group was at the highest risk for getting seriously injured in baseball. Most of the 15.3 per cent of injuries occurred in children under the age of 14, with 45 per cent of them in children under nine.

Ball and bat injuries were most common, with the majority of injuries caused because the players stood too close to the batter or bat and were not supervised by an adult.

"These results give us a very specific prevention message for kids under nine who play baseball: make helmets and supervision a mandatory," said Dr. Cusimano. "The younger the child, the more supervision they need when using things like bats and balls. Simple rules around not being close to the batter can be taught to children and adults."

Football and rugby accounted for 12.9 per cent 5.6 per cent of injuries respectively, and the majority of them were caused by tackling.

Basketball made up 11.6 per cent of injuries, mostly caused by player-to-player elbowing, which increased as players got older.

"There is a real opportunity for prevention here," Dr. Cusimano said. "Having educational programs, proper equipment, rules and other incentives that support a culture of safety in sports should be a mandate of parents, coaches, players, sports organizations, schools, sports sponsors, and other groups like governments."

Funding for the research was provided by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by St. Michael's Hospital, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Michael D. Cusimano, Newton Cho, Khizer Amin, Mariam Shirazi, Steven R. McFaull, Minh T. Do, Matthew C. Wong, Kelly Russell. Mechanisms of Team-Sport-Related Brain Injuries in Children 5 to 19 Years Old: Opportunities for Prevention. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (3): e58868 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0058868

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/mind_brain/child_development/~3/3M3mmJkKrl8/130329125301.htm

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Obama to pitch more jobs in public works in Miami

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama will promote a plan to create jobs by attracting private investment in highways and other public works during a visit Friday to a Miami port, the White House said.

The president will flesh out details of his proposals in a speech at the port, which is undergoing $2 billion in upgrades paid for with government and private money. Obama, in the quick trip to South Florida, will try to show that the economy remains his top priority in the midst of high-profile campaigns on immigration reform and gun control.

Among the proposals Obama will call for:

?Higher caps on "private activity bonds" to encourage more private spending on highways and other infrastructure projects. State and local governments use the bonds to attract investment.

?Giving foreign pension funds tax-exempt status when selling U.S. infrastructure, property or real estate assets. U.S. pension funds are generally tax exempt in those circumstances. The administration says some international pension funds cite the tax burden as a reason for not investing in American infrastructure.

?$4 billion in new spending on two infrastructure programs that award loans and grants.

?A renewed call for a $10 billion national "infrastructure bank" ? a proposal from his first term that gained little traction.

The president made private-sector infrastructure investment a key part of the economic agenda he rolled out in his State of the Union address last month. He also called in his address for a "Fix-It-First" program that would spend $40 billion in taxpayer funds on urgent repairs.

Obama's focus on generating more private sector investment underscores the tough road new spending faces on Capitol Hill, where Republican lawmakers often threaten to block additional spending unless it is paid for by tax cuts or other measures.

Any increased spending associated with the proposals Obama was outlining Friday would not add to the deficit, a senior administration official said. The official was not authorized to discuss the plan in advance of Obama's announcement and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official did not detail how the costs would be paid for, saying only that more information would be included in the president's budget.

Obama will release his budget April 10.

___

Follow Josh Lederman on Twitter: http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP

Follow Julie Pace on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-pitch-more-jobs-public-works-miami-120516263--finance.html

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Researchers engineer plant cell walls to boost sugar yields for biofuels

Mar. 29, 2013 ? When blessed with a resource in overwhelming abundance it's generally a good idea to make valuable use of that resource. Lignocellulosic biomass is the most abundant organic material on Earth. For thousands of years it has been used as animal feed, and for the past two centuries has been a staple of the paper industry. This abundant resource, however, could also supply the sugars needed to produce advanced biofuels that can supplement or replace fossil fuels, providing several key technical challenges are met.

One of these challenges is finding ways to more cost-effectively extract those sugars. Major steps towards achieving this breakthrough are being taken by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI).

"Through the tools of synthetic biology, we have engineered healthy plants whose lignocellulosic biomass can more easily be broken down into simple sugars for biofuels," says Dominique Loque, who directs the cell wall engineering program for JBEI's Feedstocks Division. "Working with the model plant, Arabidopsis, as a demonstration tool, we have genetically manipulated secondary cell walls to reduce the production of lignin while increasing the yield of fuel sugars."

JBEI is a scientific partnership led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) whose mission is to advance the development of next generation biofuels that can provide the nation with clean, green and renewable transportation energy that will create jobs and boost the economy. Loque and his research group have focused on reducing the natural recalcitrance of plant cell walls to give up their sugars. Unlike the simple starch-based sugars in corn and other grains, the complex polysaccharide sugars in plant cell walls are locked within a robust aromatic polymer called lignin. Setting these sugars free from their lignin cage has required the use of expensive and environmentally harsh chemicals at high temperatures, a process that helps drive production costs of advance biofuels prohibitively high.

"By embedding polysaccharide polymers and reducing their extractability and accessibility to hydrolytic enzymes, lignin is the major contributor to cell wall recalcitrance," Loque says. "Unfortunately, most efforts to reduce lignin content during plant development have resulted in severe biomass yield reduction and a loss of integrity in vessels, a key tissue responsible for water and nutrient distribution from roots to the above-ground organs."

Lignin has also long posed problems for pulping and animal feed. To overcome the lignin problem, Loque and his colleagues rewired the regulation of lignin biosynthesis and created an artificial positive feedback loop (APFL) to enhance secondary cell wall biosynthesis in specific tissue. The idea was to reduce cell wall recalcitrance and boost polysaccharide content without impacting plant development.

"When we applied our APFL to Arabidopsis plants engineered so that lignin biosynthesis is disconnected from the fiber secondary cell wall regulatory network, we maintained the integrity of the vessels and were able to produce healthy plants with reduced lignin and enhanced polysaccharide deposition in the cell walls," Loque says. "After various pretreatments, these engineered plants exhibited improved sugar releases from enzymatic hydrolysis as compared to wild type plants. In other words we accumulated the good stuff -- polysaccharides -- without spoiling it with lignin."

Loque and his colleagues believe that the APFL strategy they used to enhance polysaccharide deposition in the fibers of their Arabidopsis plants could be rapidly implemented into other vascular plant species as well. This could increase cell wall content to the benefit of the pulping industry and forage production as well as for bioenergy applications. It could also be used to increase the strength of cereal straws, reducing crop lodging and seed losses. Since regulatory networks and other components of secondary cell wall biosynthesis have been highly conserved by evolution, the researchers feel their lignin rewiring strategy should also be readily transferrable to other plant species. They are currently developing new and even better versions of these strategies.

"We now know that we can significantly re-engineer plant cell walls as long as we maintain the integrity of vessels and other key tissues," Loque says.

A paper describing this research in detail has been published in Plant Biotechnology Journal. The paper is titled "Engineering secondary cell wall deposition in plants." Loque is the corresponding author. Co-authors are Fan Yang, Prajakta Mitra, Ling Zhang, Lina Prak, Yves Verhertbruggen, Jin-Sun Kim, Lan Sun, Kejian Zheng, Kexuan Tang, Manfred Auer and Henrik Scheller.

This research was supported by the DOE Office of Science.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Fan Yang, Prajakta Mitra, Ling Zhang, Lina Prak, Yves Verhertbruggen, Jin-Sun Kim, Lan Sun, Kejian Zheng, Kexuan Tang, Manfred Auer, Henrik V. Scheller, Dominique Loqu. Engineering secondary cell wall deposition in plants. Plant Biotechnology Journal, 2013; 11 (3): 325 DOI: 10.1111/pbi.12016

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/VnUOT6b1alA/130329161247.htm

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Pilot ejected while diving small airplane near Chattanooga; search under way

By Gil Aegerter, Staff Writer, NBC News

A student pilot was ejected from a small aircraft above an area east of Chattanooga, Tenn., in a freak accident Friday evening, and authorities were searching for him.

The accident occurred when the owner of the Zodiac 601XL plane was taking lessons from an instructor, NBC station WRCB of Nashville reported, citing police. A malfunction caused the plane to nose dive and the canopy flew open -- and neither man was wearing a seat belt, WRCB reported.

The accident occurred at about 2,500 feet,?the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported.?

The instructor was able to land the aircraft back at Collegedale Municipal Airport, operations manager Chris Hancock confirmed to NBC News. He directed further questions to a Collegedale police spokesman who could not immediately be reached.

---

A ground search was under way in Bradley County, WRCB said. The Times Free Press said the owner-pilot had a cell phone with him and rescuers were pinging it in an attempt to find him.

Neither of the men was identified publicly by authorities.

WRCB said the plane had been owned by a man killed in a December crash and then was sold to the current owner, described as an experienced pilot who wanted more training in the Zodiac.

The Zodiac 601XL is a single-engine kit aircraft offered for home builders. Its two seats are side by side under a large domed, canopy.

?

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653381/s/2a254763/l/0Lusnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A30C290C175217240Epilot0Eejected0Ewhile0Ediving0Esmall0Eairplane0Enear0Echattanooga0Esearch0Eunder0Eway0Dlite/story01.htm

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Fly in formation ? Business Management Daily: Free Reports on ...

You want to improve teamwork. So you reward group performance, praise any signs of collaboration and prod loners to become joiners.

That?s a good start, but why stop there?

Raising teamwork to the next level doesn?t mean you must hire team-building consultants and send employees on Outward Bound. Take these simpler steps:

Campaign against an enemy. People will band together if they see themselves as fighting a formidable adversary, especially if they view themselves as the underdog. Focus a group?s attention on a fierce rival. If you run a small retail chain, build team spirit by calling for your troops to trounce the big national department stores.

Publish a ?team book.? Ask every employee to prepare a one-page biography. It can include a photo, a list of hobbies, personal interests and family information. Collect their responses and assemble them in a bound volume that you distribute to everyone, or create a simple web page.

As employees read through the bios, they?ll become better acquainted with their co-workers. They?ll also bond more readily when they learn what they have in common.

Exchange praise. Play the ?anonymous praise? game in which everyone lists what he admires about a specific co-worker. Collect the responses and summarize the highlights in a memo to each team member.

This way, employees see a compilation of praise based on what their peers think of them. By keeping it anonymous, the compliments count even more because the messages?not the messengers?stand out.

Unclog team communication channels. You want teammates to share ideas, but if they?re scattered in field offices or different floors, they may lack ?face time? to update each other. Solution: Use your company?s networking capabilities so that employees can inform each other of new developments. For a low-tech option, designate a centrally located bulletin board as the place for team members to post notices, give progress reports and pose questions.

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Scientists create robo-ant colony

28 March 2013 Last updated at 21:09 ET By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC News

On its own, each robot would 'just get lost' but as a colony they can navigate

Scientists in the US have built and tested robotic ants that they say behave just like a real ant colony.

The robots do not resemble their insect counterparts; they are tiny cubes equipped with two watch motors to power the wheels that enable them to move.

But their collective behaviour is remarkably ant-like.

By being programmed simply to move forward toward a target and avoid obstacles, the robot colony finds the fastest way through a network or maze.

The secret, the researchers report in the open access journal Plos Computational Biology, is in their ability to take cues from one another - just like an insect swarm.

"Each individual robot is pretty dumb," said Simon Garnier from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, lead researcher on the study. "They have very limited memory and limited processing power."

"By themselves, each robot would just move around randomly and get lost... but [they] are able to work together and communicate."

This is because, like ants, the robots leave a trail that the others follow; while ants leave a trail of chemicals - or pheromones - that their nest mates are able to sniff out, the robots leave a trail of light.

Continue reading the main story

?Start Quote

You don't need something as complex as choice to get some of the behaviour you see in ants?

End Quote Dr Paul Graham University of Sussex

To achieve this, the researchers set up a camera to track the path of each robot. A projector connected to the camera then produced a spot of light at regular intervals along their route, leaving a "breadcrumb trail" of light that got brighter every time another robot tracked over the same path.

Dr Garnier explained: "[The robots each] have two antennae on top, which are light sensors. If more light falls on their left sensor they turn left, and if more light falls on the right sensor, they turn right."

"It's exactly the same mechanism as ants."

The researcher explained how both the robots and ants worked together, describing their navigation skills as a "positive feedback loop".

"If there are two possible paths from A to B and one is twice as long as [the other], at the beginning, the ants [or] robots start using each path equally.

"Because ants taking the shorter path travel faster, the amount of pheromone (or light) deposited on that path grows faster, so more ants use that path."

Learning from nature Continue reading the main story

Superorganisms

• There are an estimated 20,000 species of ants in the world
• Ant colonies have structured social system, with different castes - worker, soldier, queen and drone - all of which carry out specific tasks for the colony
• Ant colonies are sometimes referred to as "superorganisms" because ants appear to operate as a single entity

There are many other research and engineering projects that take inspiration from nature to solve problems or design robots, as Dr Paul Graham, a biologist from the University of Sussex, explained.

"The classic example," he said, "is the way in which we design information networks to move packets of data around.

"Ants don't have someone in charge telling them where to go, so you can [mimic this].

For instance - in a complex network, there may be a junction with different possible routes that packets [of data] could take. Packets would leave messages for each other at the junction to give information about which routes were quick."

This, he explained, is the basis of an algorithm called ant colony optimisation which has already been used in telecoms networks.

And although Dr Graham doesn't see an immediate practical use for these particular robotic insects he says the study demonstrates an important and interesting piece of biology.

"Lots of animal behaviour gets described using words like 'choice'.

"This shows that you don't need something as complex as choice to get some of the behaviour you see in ants.

"And these things look pretty cool, too."

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/21956795#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

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Do adults text and drive more than teens?

A new survey claims adults text more while driving than teens. (Yahoo!)As adults continue to mirror the social media habits of the nation?s youth, it appears some of the bad behaviors are being adopted as well. In fact, the grown-ups have apparently become the greater offenders when it comes to one particularly dangerous behavior: Texting while driving.

That's according to a new study conducted by AT&T, reported in USA Today, that shows adults text more while driving than their teenage counterparts.

The study finds that nearly half of all adults admit to texting while driving, with 98 percent of them saying they know the practice is dangerous. Conversely, 43 percent of teenagers admit to texting while behind the wheel.

"I was a little bit surprised," Charlene Lake, AT&T's senior vice president of public affairs, told USA Today.

But why do adults text while driving if they know it's unwise? The answers are complicated, but according to some adults who told Yahoo News about their own distracted driving, they feel shame, guilt and stubbornness when texting.

AT&T surveyed 1,011 adult drivers for its It Can Wait campaign, which seeks to educate drivers about the risks of distracted driving. The company has launched a free app that sends an automated and customizable reply text message to incoming texts when the vehicle is moving at 25 mph or more.

A similar study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 31 percent of all drivers in the U.S. text while driving, despite the practice being illegal in 39 states and the District of Columbia. In that same CDC study, 69 percent of all drivers admitted to using their cellphone while driving.

So, how bad is texting compared with other driving distractions? Virginia Tech Transportation Institute researchers say that sending or receiving a text breaks a driver?s concentration for an average of 4.6 seconds. And as USA Today notes, at 55 mph that?s enough distance to cover the length of a football field.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/adults-text-more-while-driving-teens-205717149.html

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Dana White?s latest video blog shows he is a fan of shooting guns, riding motorcycles and apple-picking

With no fight this week, UFC president Dana White released a video blog that shows what he and his "idiot friends" do when visiting his place in Maine. Yes, there's plenty of NSFW language. Take a look and see what White and his friends are up to, including:

1. Talk one friend into trying the spiciest hot sauce ever.
2. Blow things up.
3. Shoot guns while calling each other a nickname for a cat.
4. Apple-picking, though it doesn't look like they're picking honeycrisp apples, the finest of all apple varieties.
5. Milk goats in a way that looks pretty uncomfortable for the goat.
6. Drive motorcycles.

[Also: Nick Diaz can cry foul all he wants, but he's not getting a rematch with GSP]

And a little advice for Nick the Tooth. I was once told at an Indian restaurant, after eating very spicy food, that beer or soda pop are your best bets to cool a burning mouth.

Memorable Moments from Yahoo! Sports:

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Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/dana-white-latest-video-blog-shows-fan-shooting-164921000--mma.html

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Actress Ashley Judd won't run for US Senate

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) ? Actress Ashley Judd announced Wednesday she won't run for U.S. Senate in Kentucky against Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, saying she had given serious thought to a campaign but decided her responsibilities and energy need to be focused on her family.

The former Kentucky resident tweeted her decision.

"Regretfully, I am currently unable to consider a campaign for the Senate. I have spoken to so many Kentuckians over these last few months who expressed their desire for a fighter for the people & new leader," Judd wrote.

"While that won't be me at this time, I will continue to work as hard as I can to ensure the needs of Kentucky families are met by returning this Senate seat to whom it rightfully belongs: the people & their needs, dreams, and great potential. Thanks for even considering me as that person & know how much I love our Commonwealth. Thank you!"

Her publicist Cara Tripicchio confirmed Judd's decision.

The 44-year-old Judd had hinted last week that she was nearing a decision about the race.

Now living in suburban Nashville, Tenn., Judd has said little publicly about her intentions. However, she has been meeting with several Democratic leaders, including Gov. Steve Beshear, to discuss a possible run.

Defeating McConnell would be the Democrats' biggest prize of the 2014 election. His seat is one of 14 that Republicans are defending while Democrats try to hold onto 21, hoping to retain or add to their 55-45 edge.

The star of such films as "Double Jeopardy" and "Kiss the Girls" is known for her liberal political views and she would have been running in a largely conservative state where Republicans hold both Senate seats and five of the six seats in the U.S. House.

Former State Treasurer Jonathan Miller, a Judd supporter, said she would have been a strong candidate.

"As a Kentuckian and someone who was really enthusiastic about her as a candidate, this wasn't the news I was hoping for," Miller said. "But as her friend, from the first time we talked about the race last summer, I was very candid about the grueling nature of politics. It's become a very unpleasant business and running against Mitch McConnell would be an extraordinarily difficult and grueling experience."

McConnell, who spent some $20 million on his last election and who has already raised $10 million for the next one, had already been taunting would-be Democratic challengers in a comical online video intended to raise second thoughts about taking on a politician known as brawler. The video plays on the fact that Judd lives in Tennessee.

Republican-leaning group American Crossroads in its own online video also plays on the Tennessee angle and ties her closely to President Barack Obama, who is unpopular in Kentucky.

University of Louisville political scientist Laurie Rhodebeck said Judd certainly wasn't frightened out of the race.

"She doesn't strike me as a shrinking violet," Rhodebeck said. "I think the real issue would be how much disruption she wanted in her life. This was the kind of thing that she would have to throw herself into 100 percent in order to make it worthwhile."

Judd and three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Dario Franchitti separated early this year after marrying in his native Scotland in 2001.

Judd's decision not to enter the race leaves the Democratic Party in search of a candidate. Many of Kentucky's top Democrats, including Beshear, have said they won't run. However, a rising star within the party, Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, hasn't ruled the race out. Grimes declined comment Wednesday evening through her spokeswoman, Lynn Sowards Zellen.

___

Associated Press writer Janet Cappiello contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/actress-ashley-judd-wont-run-us-senate-213309573--politics.html

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Paul plans another filibuster -- this time on guns (CNN)

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Obama presses Congress to act quickly on immigration reform

By Mark Felsenthal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama urged Congress on Monday to summon the "political courage" to quickly pass immigration reform.

Speaking at a naturalization ceremony for 28 new U.S. citizens at the White House, Obama said he was pleased with steps made toward reforming immigration laws, he wants the process to be complete within months.

"I expect a bill to be put forward. I expect the debate to begin next month," he said. "I want to sign that bill into law as soon as possible."

Obama pointed to the accomplishments of many of the 28 people who had just become U.S. citizens and said immigrants had reinvigorated the labor force and benefited businesses.

"If we want to keep attracting the best and brightest the world has to offer, we need to do a better job of welcoming them," he said.

Reforms making it easier for undocumented foreigners to become citizens have gained momentum in Congress since Hispanic voters overwhelmingly supported Obama in November's presidential election. Recent polls show strong support for creating a way for undocumented foreigners to become U.S. citizens.

Congress is on two-week recess but is expected to look more closely at immigration and other domestic issues after being consumed for weeks with budget matters.

A group of eight Democratic and Republican senators is working on a plan that would create a 10- or 15-year process that leads to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants who are in the United States illegally.

The path to citizenship may be called a path to a "green card" to soften opposition among Republicans, although Senate aides have characterized that as a semantic distinction.

The so-called green card - which is no longer green - allows a foreigner to live and work in the United States and ultimately to apply for citizenship.

Lawmakers are trying to produce a bill by next month. A Senate vote could be held in June or July. One obstacle is the divide between business and labor organizations over how to manage the flow of unskilled labor into the United States.

Obama urged lawmakers to push through to a conclusion.

"We've got to finish the job, because this issue is not new," he said. "We've just got, at this point, to work up the political courage to do what's required to be done."

(Editing by Christopher Wilson)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-presses-congress-act-quickly-immigration-reform-173034096.html

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Meeting broad, varied, competing priorities in conservation

Mar. 25, 2013 ? Solutions that meet the broad, varied, and often competing priorities of conservation are difficult to come by. Research published in the March 28 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences takes a hard look at why, in an effort to find ways to resolve the issue.

"People often think of conservation solutions that are effective, cost-efficient, and equitable -- the so-called triple bottom line solutions -- as the holy grail, the best possible outcome," said Ben Halpern, researcher at UC Santa Barbara's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), and the lead author of the paper titled, "Achieving the triple bottom line in the face of inherent trade-offs among social equity, economic return and conservation."

As stakeholders, conservationists, and governments work diligently to achieve cost-efficient and effective conservation solutions that are also fair, it becomes obvious that reaching one goal often comes at the expense of another.

"We developed and tested methods for discovering these ideal solutions and found a surprising result," said Halpern. "As you increase the equity of how conservation benefits are distributed to people, you compromise your ability to maximize conservation outcomes."

To examine the relationship of equity, which relates to how a person or group perceives the relative availability (or deprivation) of resources, to the other conservation goals in the triple bottom line, the researchers used three very different case studies dealing with marine conservation to test their ideas: the process to create marine protected areas (MPAs) off the central coast of California; the southeast Misool MPA in Raja Ampat in eastern Indonesia; and the Coral Triangle in southeast Asia. In each case, as conservation scores and outcomes were increased (usually the result of limiting access to certain areas or the amount and/or species that can be taken from those areas), equity declined.

Meanwhile, the study also showed that both equity and conservation could be achieved, but by raising total budgets, sacrificing the goal of cost-efficiency.

Although triple bottom line outcomes are touted as ideal, said Halpern, the reality is that few people probably actually want such outcomes.

"Different people have more or less invested in managed systems and so don't necessarily expect to receive equal benefits," he said. "For example, if I've fished a place for 40 years and based my entire livelihood on that, whereas my neighbor just moved to town and fishes once a month recreationally, why should we be treated equally when it comes to making decisions about managing fisheries?"

Carissa Klein, a co-author from The University of Queensland, pointed out that "although equity can compromise conservation outcomes, it plays a significant role in conservation." Highly inequitable solutions, according to the study, decrease the likelihood of success because those disenfranchised have little motivation to adhere to conservation programs. But, while increased equity increases the likelihood of self-enforcement, it is also likely that ignoring a vocal and powerful minority will lower the chances of success.

So are there any decisions that can guarantee achieving the triple bottom line of effectiveness, cost-efficiency, and equitable conservation outcomes? Yes and no, said Klein. "It depends some on how one defines equity, and people have different types of equity that they care about. It may be easy to have equity in stakeholder engagement, i.e. all affected parties engaged in the process of making a decision, even if the outcome is inequitable. This may ultimately satisfy all the stakeholder groups."

"There's no single way to achieve triple bottom line outcomes," said Halpern. "Instead, we provide a tool for transparently and quantitatively understanding where, why, and how one can increase the chances of achieving these outcomes, and in which cases it is not likely possible," he said.

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Journal Reference:

1. Benjamin S. Halpern, Carissa J. Klein, Christopher J. Brown, Maria Beger, Hedley S. Grantham, Sangeeta Mangubhai, Mary Ruckelshaus, Vivitskaia J. Tulloch, Matt Watts, Crow White, and Hugh P. Possingham. Achieving the triple bottom line in the face of inherent trade-offs among social equity, economic return, and conservation. PNAS, March 25, 2013 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1217689110

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/-OljYiPYlow/130325160630.htm

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BracketRacket: Dickie V and dolphins, oh my!

FILE - In this March 24, 2013, file photo, Florida Gulf Coast's Sherwood Brown, center, celebrates with teammates after their 81-71 win over San Diego State in a third-round game in the NCAA college basketball tournament in Philadelphia. Florida Gulf Coast became the first No. 15 seed to make the Sweet 16. (AP Photo/Michael Perez, File)

FILE - In this March 24, 2013, file photo, Florida Gulf Coast's Sherwood Brown, center, celebrates with teammates after their 81-71 win over San Diego State in a third-round game in the NCAA college basketball tournament in Philadelphia. Florida Gulf Coast became the first No. 15 seed to make the Sweet 16. (AP Photo/Michael Perez, File)

FILE - In this March 24, 2013, file photo, Miami head coach Jim Larranaga celebrates with fans after their 63-59 win over Illinois in a third-round game of the NCAA college basketball tournament in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

Welcome back to BracketRacket, the one-stop shopping place for all your NCAA needs.

Today's edition includes a social media bracket, a touching moment between competitors and a little dance called the Larranaga Shuffle. Oh, and we've got Dickie V and his new rival, dolphins. Not the Dolphins, just dolphins.

___

SOCIAL MEDIA BRACKET

The advent of social media has added to the NCAA tournament experience, allowing fans to comment before, during and after every game, creating an extra buzz to March Madness.

But can social media have an impact on the games?

The answer is, maybe.

Using an algorithm it calls "Prime Buzz," the digital marketing company Prime Visibility tracked the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament to see if the buzz created on Twitter, Facebook and other social media channels reflected how the teams did on the court.

In other words, do teams with the greater amount of buzz win more games?

It seems so.

After tracking social media conversations from 24 hours before the start of games until the end of games in the first round, Prime Visibility found that 25 of the 32 teams with more buzz won, as did 11 of 16 in the second round.

The team that generated the most buzz was Florida Gulf Coast University, the first No. 15 seed to reach the Sweet 16, and the lowest was Northwestern State, which didn't make it out of the first round.

The highest discrepancy between teams was FGCU's 95.48 percent to 4.52 percent for San Diego State.

Check out the bracket here: http://bit.ly/16dYAEf

___

TOUCHING MOMENT

In the moments after Florida Gulf Coast knocked off San Diego State to reach the Sweet 16, Aztecs guard Jamaal Franklin didn't race off the floor. Instead, he tracked down FGCU's Sherwood Brown to give him congratulations in one of the weekend's more heartfelt moments.

Franklin hugged Brown as he gave him some words of encouragement, tapped him on the chest as he kept talking and hugged again before separating.

Here's the moment http://goo.gl/ZJrc4 and what Franklin had to say about it after:

"I just told him just keep being the leader that he is, make sure the ball is in his hands, make sure he does what he has to do to keep his team rolling," Franklin said during San Diego State's postgame news conference. "And just make sure they stay together because those guys we played against right now are just like us, they all love each other and they all play together. They just want to win. And you can see at the end of the game, a lot of teams win games and just leave the court, but they embraced it. They embraced it together, not just one another."

___

THE HEADLINES

The day after Florida Gulf Coast's victory over San Diego State to reach NCAA tournament's Sweet 16, the News-Press in Fort Myers, Fla., ran a large photo of the 15th-seeded Eagles celebrating with the headline: "SWEET 15!"

Turns out, sweet was a common theme in many headlines on Monday ? at least for teams that won ? as you can see in this link from Sports Illustrated's Extra Mustard showing selected front pages from around the country: http://bit.ly/13q4FzT

Fox Sports also unleashed this headline: OMFG-CU! And no, it's not text-speak for something crass. It stands for Oh My, Florida Gulf Coast University!

___

DOIN' THE LARRANAGA

Miami coach Jim Larranaga asked his players to be fighters and they came through, clinching a spot in the Sweet 16. Once they did, Larranaga celebrated by his own version of the Muhammad Ali Shuffle, something we've dubbed "The Larranaga Shuffle." See his moves in this clip: http://bit.ly/10bC4Yz

And some more Hurricanes video, of senior Justin Gamble pulling off a video bomb: http://bit.ly/XChjE2

___

DICKIE V vs. DOLPHINS

ESPN analyst Dick Vitale did a lot of trash talking to some dolphins as he picked against them in a bracket challenge. http://bit.ly/YDgv1Q

OK, we know it's TV schtick, part of a promotion with Allstate.

Still, Dickie V has to be looking over his shoulder at this point.

The dolphins, from Atlanta's Georgia Aquarium, have picked 30 games correctly in this what's-going-to-happen-next tournament, just one behind Vitale. Among the dolphins' gets were Wichita State over top-seeded Gonzaga, Florida Gulf Coast over Georgetown and La Salle over Kansas State.

To be fair, Vitale is in better shape for the rest of the bracket. He has Louisville beating Indiana in the title game while the dolphins' Final Four teams have all been eliminated.

___

STAT OF THE DAY

You're bracket may be busted, but you're still watching.

Ratings for the NCAA tournament are the highest in 15 years and up 27 percent from last year. The broadcasts on CBC, TBS, TNT and truTV averaged a 5.8 household rating and 12 share, the highest rating for the tournament's first week since 1998. That year, the rating was 5.9 and 15 share.

The broadcasts also had the highest viewership since 1993, averaging 8.9 million total viewers ? a 9 percent increase from a year ago.

___

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"Well, I'm glad I'm 62 instead of 42 right now. I think I can speak for all the commissioners ? this is something that I don't think any of us enjoy. However we react is going to impact somebody else, and, look, it's been going on all the way to just about all the leagues. I don't think any of us think this is the highlight of our career experiences by any stretch." ? Colonial Athletic Association Commissioner Tom Yeager after George Mason became the latest team to switch conferences by announcing it was leaving for the Atlantic-10.

___

Follow John Marshall on Twitter at http://twitter.com/johnmarshallap

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-03-26-BracketRacket/id-159a366b08d0463f834a559bbebdb249

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T-Mobile's new no-contract rate plans now available

T-Mobile has been planning on moving solely to no-contract plans for several months now, and today is the day they go into effect. Clicking on over to T-Mobile's website reveals no-contract plans as your only option to receive service, with some seriously competitive pricing. The default plan setup is one that offers 1 line of service, with unlimited talk, text, and data -- which is throttled (to 2G speeds) after 500MB -- for $50 per month. You can then slide up the scale of data in 2GB increments from 500MB to 12GB. Each bump in data adds $10 to the monthly plan, so the range is $50 for 500MB up to $110 for 12GB of data, with hotspot/tethering included in the price at each level. Hit the break for more details

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Opening round of women's NCAA tourney goes to plan

Baylor's Kimetria Hayden (1), Jordan Madden (3), Brittney Griner, rear, and Odyssey Sims, right, celebrate a score in the second half of a first-round game against Prairie View A&M in the women's NCAA college basketball tournament, Sunday, March 24, 2013, in Waco, Texas. Baylor won 82-40. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

Baylor's Kimetria Hayden (1), Jordan Madden (3), Brittney Griner, rear, and Odyssey Sims, right, celebrate a score in the second half of a first-round game against Prairie View A&M in the women's NCAA college basketball tournament, Sunday, March 24, 2013, in Waco, Texas. Baylor won 82-40. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

Baylor's Jordan Madden, left, and Brittney Griner (42) watch as Odyssey Sims (0), right, blocks a shot-attempt by Prairie View A&M guard Jeanette Jackson (1) in the first half of a first-round game in the women's NCAA college basketball tournament on Sunday March 24, 2013, in Waco, Texas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

Baylor's Brittney Griner (42) dunks over Prairie View A&M in the second half of a first-round game in the women's NCAA college basketball tournament, Sunday, March 24, 2013, in Waco, Texas. Griner had 33-points in the 82-40 Baylor win. (AP Photo/The Waco Tribune-Herald, Rod Aydelotte)

Duke's Allison Vernerey, right, and Hampton's Nicole Hamilton struggle for possession of the ball during the second half of a first-round game in the women's NCAA college basketball tournament in Durham, N.C., Sunday, March 24, 2013. Duke won 67-51. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

Penn State guard Dara Taylor (2) stumbles and flips the ball up for two-points in front of Cal Poly's Nikol Allison, left, and Ariana Elegado (5) during the first half of a first-round game in the women's NCAA college basketball tournament at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center in Baton Rouge, La., Sunday, March 24, 2013. (AP Photo/Bill Feig)

The opening round of the women's NCAA tournament went true to form.

Stars Brittney Griner and Elena Delle Donne shined. The top seeds cruised. There was a thriller or two, just not too many upsets.

Unlike the bracket-busting that happened over the first four days of the men's tournament, the women's field remained stable. The higher seeds went 28-4, including blowout victories by No. 1 seeds Connecticut, Baylor, Notre Dame and Stanford.

"Maybe that's just because the committee seeds well," said Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer. "Maybe they really have a good handle on it."

It's hard to argue with that theory.

Over the past six seasons, only once has a team seeded 13 or lower been victorious in the tournament ? and that came last year when No. 13 Marist upset Georgia. There was the 1998 tournament in which No. 16 Harvard stunned No. 1 seed Stanford 71-67, but the 14s and 15s are a combined 0-152 since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1994.

There is no Florida Gulf Coast, which became the first men's team to reach the regional semifinals Sunday night. The women's talent pool isn't deep enough yet to see that sort of upset happen.

"I watch the men's games and I love it," said Baylor coach Kim Mulkey after her team beat Prairie View A&M by 42 points in its opener. "I don't compare. It's like comparing apples to oranges. The games are different. There's obviously more parity, more guys across the country that can play this game.

"There is more parity in the women's game, but you can't compare it to the men's game. There are so many guys who can flat out play, who can go to schools and can change programs."

Griner certainly has been a program-changer for Baylor. The 6-foot-8 senior, who is the second all-time leading scorer in NCAA history, had the 15th dunk of her career in the Lady Bears' easy victory.

Delaware needed a huge effort from Delle Donne to advance to the second round. The senior scored 33 points and led a second-half surge that carried the Blue Hens past West Virginia 66-53 on Sunday. Playing on their home floor before a sellout crowd, the sixth-seeded Blue Hens trailed 33-26 at halftime before bouncing back to extend their school-record winning streak to 26 games.

There were 4,532 fans in attendance, most of them clad in blue or yellow and cheering for Delaware. Not only were the parking lots jammed, but several people were pleading to purchase tickets from those waiting to enter the arena.

The Blue Hens did not disappoint.

"To win a game like this in front of our home crowd, which was electric, there's no other way to describe it other than I'm just totally thrilled for my players, this program, for the state of Delaware," coach Tina Martin said.

Ever since Delle Donne began playing at Delaware in 2009, interest in the program has soared. It reached its zenith Sunday in what might have been the most important basketball game played in the nation's first state.

"This was actually better than I could have even imagined," Delle Donne said. "Our fans were absolutely crazy. The atmosphere was amazing."

The game of the weekend though was in New York. Seventh-seeded Dayton outlasted St. John's 96-90 in double-overtime ? the first game in the NCAA tournament since 2000 that went that long.

"I'm going to enjoy this win," Dayton coach Jim Jabir said. "I'll be savoring this for a long time. It's one of the most complete games I've been a part of."

While St. John's fell short of pulling off the upset as a 10-seed, two other 10s did win. Creighton beat Syracuse and South Florida topped Texas Tech by one point in a thrilling game that no one saw the end of.

Viewers watching the final few minutes of the game on ESPN missed the end when the network's feed cut out. A fuse blew in the production truck, according to a statement put out by Texas Tech and the network.

Announcer Cara Capuano called the final 30 seconds over the phone. The feed finally came back after the final buzzer sounded, showing South Florida's cheerleaders celebrating the victory.

The only other lower seeds to win were ninth-ranked Iowa, which won on its home floor against Miami, and Kansas. The 12th-ranked Jayhawks won in Colorado. Despite the seeding, the Jayhawks weren't intimidated by the Buffaloes. After all the two schools had played many times when they were both members of the Big 12.

There is hope that the predictability of the tournament could end in the next round. In three of the past four seasons, at least one of the top eight teams hasn't advanced to the round of 16.

___

AP Sports Writers David Ginsburg in Newark, Del., and Janie McCauley in Stanford, Calif., contributed to this story.

___

Follow Doug on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/dougfeinberg

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-03-25-BKW-NCAA-Opening-Round/id-2635337ae05c4ff2aaf01593a4e0f990

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Molecular roots of Down syndrome unraveled

Mar. 24, 2013 ? Researchers have discovered that the extra chromosome inherited in Down syndrome impairs learning and memory because it leads to low levels of SNX27 protein in the brain.

What is it about the extra chromosome inherited in Down syndrome -- chromosome 21 -- that alters brain and body development? Researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) have new evidence that points to a protein called sorting nexin 27, or SNX27. SNX27 production is inhibited by a molecule encoded on chromosome 21. The study, published March 24 in Nature Medicine, shows that SNX27 is reduced in human Down syndrome brains. The extra copy of chromosome 21 means a person with Down syndrome produces less SNX27 protein, which in turn disrupts brain function. What's more, the researchers showed that restoring SNX27 in Down syndrome mice improves cognitive function and behavior.

"In the brain, SNX27 keeps certain receptors on the cell surface -- receptors that are necessary for neurons to fire properly," said Huaxi Xu, Ph.D., professor in Sanford-Burnham's Del E. Webb Neuroscience, Aging and Stem Cell Research Center and senior author of the study. "So, in Down syndrome, we believe lack of SNX27 is at least partly to blame for developmental and cognitive defects."

SNX27's role in brain function

Xu and colleagues started out working with mice that lack one copy of the snx27 gene. They noticed that the mice were mostly normal, but showed some significant defects in learning and memory. So the team dug deeper to determine why SNX27 would have that effect. They found that SNX27 helps keep glutamate receptors on the cell surface in neurons. Neurons need glutamate receptors in order to function correctly. With less SNX27, these mice had fewer active glutamate receptors and thus impaired learning and memory.

SNX27 levels are low in Down syndrome

Then the team got thinking about Down syndrome. The SNX27-deficient mice shared some characteristics with Down syndrome, so they took a look at human brains with the condition. This confirmed the clinical significance of their laboratory findings -- humans with Down syndrome have significantly lower levels of SNX27.

Next, Xu and colleagues wondered how Down syndrome and low SNX27 are connected -- could the extra chromosome 21 encode something that affects SNX27 levels? They suspected microRNAs, small pieces of genetic material that don't code for protein, but instead influence the production of other genes. It turns out that chromosome 21 encodes one particular microRNA called miR-155. In human Down syndrome brains, the increase in miR-155 levels correlates almost perfectly with the decrease in SNX27.

Xu and his team concluded that, due to the extra chromosome 21 copy, the brains of people with Down syndrome produce extra miR-155, which by indirect means decreases SNX27 levels, in turn decreasing surface glutamate receptors. Through this mechanism, learning, memory, and behavior are impaired.

Restoring SNX27 function rescues Down syndrome mice

If people with Down syndrome simply have too much miR-155 or not enough SNX27, could that be fixed? The team explored this possibility. They used a noninfectious virus as a delivery vehicle to introduce new human SNX27 in the brains of Down syndrome mice.

"Everything goes back to normal after SNX27 treatment. It's amazing -- first we see the glutamate receptors come back, then memory deficit is repaired in our Down syndrome mice," said Xin Wang, a graduate student in Xu's lab and first author of the study. "Gene therapy of this sort hasn't really panned out in humans, however. So we're now screening small molecules to look for some that might increase SNX27 production or function in the brain."

This research was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (National Institute on Aging grants R01AG038710, R01AG021173, R01AG030197, R01AG044420; National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke grants R01NS046673, P30NS076411; Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development grant P01HD29587; National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences grant P01ES016738), Alzheimer's Association, American Health Assistance Foundation, National Natural Science Foundation of China, 973 Prophase Project, Natural Science Funds for Distinguished Young Scholar of Fujian Province, Program for New Century Excellent Talents in Universities, Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, and Fok Ying Tung Education Foundation.

The study was co-authored by Xin Wang, Sanford-Burnham; Yingjun Zhao, Sanford-Burnham and Xiamen University; Xiaofei Zhang, Sanford-Burnham; Hedieh Badie, Sanford-Burnham; Ying Zhou, Sanford-Burnham; Yangling Mu, Salk Institute; Li Shen Loo, Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Singapore; Lei Cai, Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Singapore; Robert C. Thompson, Sanford-Burnham; Bo Yang, Sanford-Burnham; Yaomin Chen, Sanford-Burnham; Peter F. Johnson, National Cancer Institute-Frederick; Chengbiao Wu, University of California, San Diego; Guojun Bu, Xiamen University; William C. Mobley, University of California, San Diego; Dongxian Zhang, Sanford-Burnham; Fred H. Gage, Salk Institute; Barbara Ranscht, Sanford-Burnham; Yun-wu Zhang, Sanford-Burnham and Xiamen University; Stuart A. Lipton, Sanford-Burnham and University of California, San Diego; Wanjin Hong, Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Singapore and Xiamen University; and Huaxi Xu, Sanford-Burnham and Xiamen University.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute.

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Journal Reference:

1. Xin Wang, Yingjun Zhao, Xiaofei Zhang, Hedieh Badie, Ying Zhou, Yangling Mu, Li Shen Loo, Lei Cai, Robert C Thompson, Bo Yang, Yaomin Chen, Peter F Johnson, Chengbiao Wu, Guojun Bu, William C Mobley, Dongxian Zhang, Fred H Gage, Barbara Ranscht, Yun-wu Zhang, Stuart A Lipton, Wanjin Hong, Huaxi Xu. Loss of sorting nexin 27 contributes to excitatory synaptic dysfunction by modulating glutamate receptor recycling in Down's syndrome. Nature Medicine, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/nm.3117

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/9u0EdzWrArI/130324152305.htm

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