17-08-2012 12:47 California Congressman Darrell Issa weighs in
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Monthly Archives: August 2012
Funding for health will still grow
Re: Ottawa grades poorly in CMAs annual report card on health care, Aug. 13
In response to your news article, I would like to point out several factual errors.
Your article incorrectly claims that Economic Action Plan 2012 contains a bevy of federal health-care spending cuts. This could not be further from the truth. As Minister of Health my priority was to protect frontline health-care services and health transfers. In fact, federal funding for health care will continue to grow from a record level of $27 billion in 201112 to a minimum of $38 billion by 201819.
This is an increase, plain and simple.
In December 2011, we set the future growth path of transfers to the provinces and territories to provide sustainable and predictable funding to support the provision of health care for all Canadians. The Canada Health Transfer will continue to grow by 6 per cent per year for the next five years, and in 2017-18, growth will be linked to nominal gross domestic product growth, but with a guarantee that it will increase by at least 3 per cent per year.
While respecting provincial and territorial jurisdiction, our government plays a leadership role in health and health care, including these major transfers and by investing more than $1 billion per year in health research and innovation. There are currently more than 10,000 health research projects underway that will help improve health care across Canada.
Furthermore, we continue to make targeted investments in priority areas that will help the provinces and territories meet their responsibilities of delivering health care. For example, I recently announced renewed funding of $238 million over three years for the Canadian Institute of Health Information to continue to provide accurate and comparable health data across Canada.
Leona Aglukkaq, Minister of Health, Ottawa
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Convergence CT Deploys Advanced Clinical Data Warehouse at Advocate Health Care
HONOLULU--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
Illinois based Advocate Health Care, one of the nations top health systems, has successfully completed implementation of its Clinical Information System, a consolidated information source that brings together patient-linked longitudinal data from diverse hospital systems. Utilizing Convergence CTs (CCT) Clinical Data Warehouse (CDW) technology and services, working with Advocates subject matter experts, data is converged into a single, easily accessible resource for clinical research, data reporting and operational studies. This affords Advocates medical and quality staff the ability to perform detailed, deep queries necessary to satisfy complex protocols without requiring additional Information Technology resources or impacting operational database systems.
We feel its our responsibility to utilize health care dollars in a socially responsible and financially sustainable manner, said Lee Sacks, MD, executive vice president and chief medical officer. Through our focus on prevention, optimal treatment of diseases and care coordination across the continuum, we are confident our efforts will continue to create value and reduce avoidable costs.
Encompassing details on over one million annual in-patient visits spanning Advocates organization, which includes 10 adult hospitals, 2 integrated childrens hospitals, and more than 250 sites of care, the growing CDW warehouse includes electronic medical records, patient demographics, diagnoses, laboratory test schedules and results, operating room statistics, and details of prescribed medications.
After consolidation in the CDW, data can be summarized for a wealth of reporting requirements, becoming the basis for detailed queries and statistical analysis using a number of commercial analysis applications including SPSS, Cognos, MS Excel, and Convergence CTs own products.
Clinical [data] integration is really leading us down the path of evolving into a highly reliable organization that develops the right care model to get the best possible outcomes, said Michael McKenna, MD, vice president of medical management at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital.
The term medical research frequently evokes images of scientists seeking a cure for cancer in a laboratory or patients participating in clinical trials out of their doctors offices; a partial picture, at best. That kind of research is necessary, but not sufficient, says Advocates vice-president of research, W. Thomas Summerfelt, Ph.D., one of the visionaries driving the project. Yes, we need to come up with new treatments, but we can arguably save even more lives by improving the delivery of care that most physicians already provide and most patients already receive.
Lambert Onuma, chief executive officer at CCT adds, From an analytics perspective, real improvements in patient care, benchmark performance and efficiency will only stem from the use of evidence-based medicine. CCTs CDW solution and analytics delivers this type of critical information.
About Advocate Health Care
Advocate Health Care, named among the nations top health systems, is the largest health system in Illinois and one of the largest care providers in the Midwest. Advocate operates more than 250 sites of care, including 10 acute care hospitals, two integrated childrens hospitals, five Level I and two Level II trauma centers, one of the areas largest home health care companies and one of the regions largest medical groups. Advocate Health Care trains more primary care physicians and residents at its four teaching hospitals than any other health system in the state. As a not-for-profit, mission-based health system affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the United Church of Christ, Advocate contributed $571 million in charitable care and services to communities across Chicagoland and Central Illinois in 2011.
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Convergence CT Deploys Advanced Clinical Data Warehouse at Advocate Health Care
Catholic Health Initiatives, PeaceHealth Agree to Form Integrated Regional Health Care Network to Serve Northwest U.S.
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. & VANCOUVER, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
Catholic Health Initiatives and PeaceHealth, two nonprofit health care systems, have signed a nonbinding letter of intent to create a new regional health care system with the ability to improve care and access for individuals, employers and communities across the northwest U.S.
The partnership will create an integrated health system in the region, combining seven Catholic Health Initiatives hospitals in Washington and Oregon with nine PeaceHealth hospitals in Washington, Oregon and Alaska. The new organization will include nearly 26,000 employees and about 950 employed physicians serving in hospitals, physician clinics, outpatient care clinics, long-term care facilities, laboratories and private homes across the region.
The new organization, with annual revenues of almost $4 billion, will build on the strengths of both organizations to better manage care and resources in a rapidly changing health care environment.
Catholic Health Initiatives and PeaceHealth share common cultures and values, said Kevin E. Lofton, president and chief executive officer of Englewood, Colo.-based CHI, the nations second largest faith-based health system. We see this as a natural evolution a perfect way to share economies of skill and scale, improve health services and reinforce our common mission to create and nurture healthier communities.
Alan Yordy, president and chief mission officer of Vancouver, Wash.-based PeaceHealth, said, PeaceHealth and Catholic Health Initiatives have long traditions of serving communities throughout the Northwest and providing health services to all people. Our shared mission and combined strengths will allow us to better serve individuals with safe, high quality networks of care built upon more than a century of service in the Northwest.
The nonbinding letter of intent is the first step in the partnership process. Leaders of Catholic Health Initiatives and PeaceHealth expect to form the new system before June 30, 2013, after completing the due diligence and approval process. The two organizations will be equal partners in the fully integrated health care system serving the northwest region.
Discussions were prompted by a rapidly changing health care environment that demands a more coordinated, integrated approach to the way health and wellness services are delivered to individuals and communities. It also demands the ability to accept more financial risk in caring for defined populations, such as Medicaid recipients. The size and scale of the new organization will allow it to form additional collaborations and networks of care that will include physicians, hospitals, insurers and other caregivers, increasing access to high-quality health services while reducing costs. The partners will reduce costs by making infrastructure investments more efficiently as a single organization in areas such as information technology systems.
The integration of the two organizations is expected to take place over time.
The new organization will include two CHI hospitals in Oregon Mercy Medical Center, Roseburg; and St. Anthony Hospital, Pendleton and five facilities in Washington that comprise Tacoma-based Franciscan Health System: St. Joseph Medical Center, Tacoma; St. Francis Hospital, Federal Way; St. Clare Hospital, Lakewood; St. Anthony Hospital, Gig Harbor; and St. Elizabeth Hospital, Enumclaw. Also included are Franciscan Medical Group and Franciscan Hospice and Palliative Care.
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Leaked: The GOP's Proposed New Position On Internet Freedom
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., leads a hearing on Capitol Hill.
The Republican party may be ready to take a new position on Internet freedom, according to a document obtained by Whispers.
California Rep. Darrell Issa's proposal calls for the Republican party to take a stance on the Internet that limits the role of government and allows Americans to "participate where and how they choose on the Internet."
According to sources familiar with the Republican party platform process, the GOP has been increasingly discussing Internet freedom, and could be ready to officially roll out its stance later this month at the Republican convention.
[Photos:Online SOPAProtests]
Kirsten Kukowski, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, writes in an E-mail that Issa's is "one submission of many on the subject."
But don't expect another showdown between Issa, who favors a lighthanded approach to Internet legislation and Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, who introduced the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill that spurred widespread Internet blackouts and protests earlier this year.
Kim Smith, Lamar Smith's press secretary, tells Whispers that the Congressman "did not submit any language pertaining to the Internet for the GOP platform."
[Four ThingsAmericansHave Learned From the SOPAFight]
Sources familiar with ongoing discussions say they are "hopeful" that Issa's proposal will make it into the final party platform, and that "conversations that have occurred [on Internet freedom] have been well received" and that the Republicans hope "not to over-regulate the Internet."
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Steve Forbes on the Freedom Manifesto
2011's Top Domestic Stock Picker Shares His Strategy
Artisan Funds' Jim Kieffer talks with Steve Forbes about how his team conquered the market in 2011.
2010's Top 5 Financial Pornographers
Forbes Publisher Rich Karlgaard on why you shouldn't believe all market forecasters.
A Major League Contraction?
The Oakland A?s and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays might feel the effects of a shrinking MLB.
A Comeback For Bonuses
Reform in executive pay unlikely as Washington looks elsewhere.
$100 Million Dollar Pink Panthers
Jewel robberies rise in Europe. Suspects arrested in Harry Winston heist.
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Beaches to have reduced staffing, hours for season's end
There will be a reduced number of lifeguards on duty at Fairfield's beaches for the remainder of the season, the Parks and Recreation Department has announced, because some of the staff will be returning to school.
There also will be reduced hours for Penfield Pavilion and the boat houses at Penfield and Jennings beaches.
Lifeguards will be on duty at Jennings and Penfield beaches and Lake Mohegan through Sunday, Aug. 26, but there will be no lifeguards from Monday, Aug. 27, through Friday, Aug. 31. Lifeguards will be on duty at these beaches from Saturday, Sept. 1, through Monday, Sept. 3, for Labor Day weekend, but there will be no lifeguards for the remainder of the season after Labor Day.
Southport, Sasco and South Pine Creek beaches will not be staffed for the rest of the season starting Monday, Aug. 20, and the swimming areas will be reduced to between red flags posted at the shoreline.
Swimming will be "at your own risk" at beaches where no lifeguards are on duty, officials said.
Penfield Pavilion will be open full-time from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., with lockers closing at 7:45 p.m., through Sunday, Aug. 26. Hours will then change to 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with lockers closing at 5:45 p.m., from Monday, Aug. 27, through Friday, Aug. 31, and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., lockers closing at 6:45 p.m., from Saturday, Sept. 1, to Monday, Sept. 3, for Labor Day weekend.
The pavilion will be open on weekends only after Labor Day Weekend from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., lockers closing at 5:45 p.m., through Sunday, Sept. 16.
All lockers must be emptied and keys returned by Sunday, Sept. 16. Any locker with materials left in it will be emptied and the contents put in storage. There is no guarantee of security over the winter.
The boat houses at Penfield and Jennings beaches will operate on a regular schedule through Sunday, Aug. 26, and then will be open from noon to 5 p.m. from Monday, Aug. 27, through Friday, Aug. 31. They will be open on weekends only after that from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. from Saturday, Sept 1, through Monday, Sept. 3, and Saturdays, Sept. 8 and 15, and Sundays, Aug. 9 and 16.
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Presque Isle State Park releases list of open beaches
Fewer Presque Isle State Park beaches will be open for swimming as some of the park's lifeguard staff goes back to school.
The following beaches are scheduled to be open from this Monday through Thursday: Beaches 6, 7 (Waterworks Beach) and 11 from 10 a.m. until 7:30 p.m.; and Beaches 8 (Pettinato Beach) and 10 (Budny Beach) from noon until 7:30 p.m.
The following beaches are scheduled to be open on Aug. 24: Beaches 6, 7 and 11, from 10 a.m. until 7:30 p.m.
Beachfront concession stands at Beaches 6, 8, 10 and 11 will remain open. For updates and/or beach information, call lifeguard headquarters at 833-0526, or refer to signs at the park entrance for daily updated information.
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Bacteria closes 8 South Shore beaches
QUINCY, Mass. -
Eight Quincy beaches have been closed to swimming after tests showed higher-than-normal levels of bacteria.
According to the Department of Public Health's website, Quincy's Avalon Beach, Chikatawbot Beach, Heron Beach, Delano Avenue Beach, Broady (Baker) Beach, the beach at the Germantown Fire Station, Orchard Beach and Nickerson Beach were all closed to swimming on Thursday.
The beaches were retested on Thursday and results were expected Friday.
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Two McHenry County beaches closed
Article posted: 8/17/2012 1:50 PM
Two beaches in McHenry County have been closed after tests conducted by the McHenry County Department of Health found elevated bacteria levels.
The two closed beaches are Indian Trails at Woods Creek Lake in Lake in the Hills, and Wonder Woods 4, 5200 Wonder Woods Drive, in Wonder Lake. Also, Veterans Park beach, 332 W. State Road in Island Lake is under advisory status, health department officials said.
The beach water samplings were conducted Wednesday at 37 licensed beaches. These beaches will be re-sampled. To prevent illness associated with swimming, all licensed beaches on the 13 lakes in McHenry County are tested every two weeks for E. coli throughout the summer to determine water quality. Additional and more frequent sampling is done when elevated bacterial levels are found.
All beach water results and locations are readily available at the MCDH webpage http://www.mcdh.info (click Environmental Health, quick links, beach testing results.) Call (815) 334-4585 for more information.
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Initial Public Statement From AUI and NRAO on the Report of the NSF's Astronomy Portfolio Review Committee
Associated Universities Inc. (AUI) and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) have made a preliminary examination of the report released today from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Astronomy Portfolio Review Committee (PRC). Among the recommendations of that report are that the NSF's Green Bank Telescope (GBT) and Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) be fully divested from the NSF Astronomy Division's portfolio of research facilities in the next five years, with no further funding from the Astronomy Division.
AUI and NRAO recognize and acknowledge the need to retire obsolete facilities to make way for the state-of-the-art. However, both the GBT and the VLBA are the state-of-the-art, and have crucial capabilities that cannot be provided by other facilities. Separately the two telescopes provide unparalleled scientific access to the universe. When their information is combined, the instruments provide the highest sensitivity and resolution available for any astronomical instrument in the world.
The Green Bank Telescope
The GBT, located in Green Bank, West Virginia, is the largest and most capable fully steerable single-dish radio telescope in the world. It is a cutting-edge research instrument at the height of its powers, and it is continually growing more capable through the introduction of low-cost upgrades to its light detecting and processing electronics. It is the only world-class astronomical telescope in the eastern United States and has been in full scientific operation for less than 10 years.
Weighing sixteen million pounds, and able to precisely point its 2.3 acres of light-collecting surface area anywhere within all but the southernmost 15 percent of the celestial sphere, the $95 million GBT is an engineering and scientific marvel unlikely to be recreated, much less surpassed, by American astronomy for decades to come. Indeed, astronomers in other parts of the world are at work trying to build their own telescopes of similar concept and design to the GBT, but none of those telescopes will exceed its performance.
The GBT is used by astronomers and students around the world for important research. It is a powerful tool for searching out the molecular building blocks of life in space, for probing the nature of matter at extreme densities, for mapping diffuse clouds of intergalactic gas that are invisible to other telescopes, for finding beacons in space that can serve as mileposts for calibrating our understanding of cosmic distance scales and the characteristics of dark energy, for detecting gravity waves first predicted by Einstein, and for pioneering and experimenting with new observational tools and techniques.
The GBT's annual cost of operation is about 0.7 percent of the annual federal budget for astronomy and astrophysics, but the cost of replacing it, once it's gone, would be enormous. In an era of constrained budgets, leveraging and improving the existing state-of-the-art through low-cost technology upgrades (the development of which often involves students) is a cost-effective way to keep science moving forward. Today's GBT, because of such improvements, is 10 to 100 times more powerful than the original telescope, which entered full science operations in 2003. With small upgrades, the GBT has substantial potential to continue on this upward arc of increasing scientific power.
The Very Long Baseline Array
Comprising ten radio dish antennas distributed across 5,351 miles from Hawaii to the U.S. Virgin Islands -- a span equal to two-thirds Earth's diameter -- the VLBA is astronomy's sharpest tool, the world's largest, highest-resolution dedicated telescope (of any kind). It is capable of creating detailed images of portions of the sky so tiny that they are covered by but one pixel of a Hubble Space Telescope camera.
Commissioned in 1993, the VLBA is now up to 5,000 times more powerful than it was originally, thanks to new state-of-the-art receivers and a data processing supercomputer installed in 2010.
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US Astronomy Facing Severe Budget Cuts and Facility Closures
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The US astronomy budget is facing unprecedented cuts with potential closures of several facilities. A new report by the National Science Foundations Division of Astronomical Sciences says that available funding for ground-based astronomy could undershoot projected budgets by as much as 50%. The report recommends the closure called divestment in the new document of iconic facilities such as the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) and the Green Bank Radio Telescope, as well as shutting down four different telescopes at the Kitt Peak Observatory by 2017.
Divestment from these highly successful, long-running facilities will be difficult for all of us in the astronomical community, reads the AST Panel Review, Advancing Astronomy in the Coming Decade: Opportunities and Challenges. We must, however, consider the science tradeoff between divesting existing facilities and the risk of devastating cuts to individual research grants, mid-scale projects, and new initiatives. The National Science Foundation funds the majority of ground-based astronomy facilities and research in the US. Every ten years, the astronomy community puts out a Decadal Review, which reviews and identifies the highest priority research activities for astronomy and astrophysics in the next decade, recommending important science goals and facilities.
With the budget trouble the US has encountered since the 2010 decadal survey, called New Worlds, New Horizons, (NWNH), the money available through the NSF for astronomy is much less than hoped for. Experts say that the Fiscal Year 2012 astronomy budget is already is $45 million below the NWNH model, and predictions say and the gap may grow to $75 million to $100 million by 2014.
In response to these projections, the US astronomy community convened a new panel to go through NWNH to come up with a set of recommendations of how to live within the means of a smaller budget basically what to cut and what to keep.
The federal budget looks nothing like it did when NWNH was underway, said Dr. Debra Elmegreen from Vassar College in New York, and a member of the 2010 Decadal Review Committee, and I really hope nondiscretionary defense spending will not be slashed beyond repair. Congress needs to understand that the nations leadership in science is at risk if science funding is not maintained at an adequate level. But Elmegreen told Universe Today she was impressed with the new panels review.
The committee faced a very difficult task in trying to allow implementation of the Decadal recommendations while maintaining the strong programs and facilities that NSF has been supporting, in the face of extremely bleak budget projections, she said, and I am impressed with their report. The committee seemed to take great care in considering what resources grant programs, facilities, instrumentation, technological and computation development would be necessary to achieve progress in each of the very exciting primary science drivers outlined in NWNH.
The new panels came up with two possible scenarios to deal with the projected budget shortfalls. The more optimistic of the two scenarios, Scenario A, sees funding at the end of the decade at only 65% of what was expected by NWNH. The less optimistic scenario, B, predicts only 50% of projected funding.
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US Astronomy Facing Severe Budget Cuts and Facility Closures
Frank Mulligan: Nutrition for dummies
I recently took a Nutrition IQ Test in a magazine and scored slightly lower than moron.
In my defense, though, the test failed to accurately reflect some of my rather innovative, complex and, well, insightful views on nutrition. Therefore, and to wit, I have devised my own Nutrition IQ Test that has been dumbed down to a level I find more within reach.
Give it a try. Scoring is completely subjective. As in T-ball, there are no losers.
1. True or False: Buffalo chicken sauce can cure the common cold. a) True b) False c) Only if its the extra hot kind
2. List the five major food groups: a) stuff from McDonalds, stuff from Burger King, stuff from Taco Bell, stuff from Kentucky Fried Chicken, and stuff from Papa Ginos b) deli meats, sub rolls, mayonnaise, dill pickles, and Cheez-Its c) the five things you like best in a poo-poo platter d) all of the above, plus two things deep fried
3. What are the virtues of tofu: a) Its got a funny-sounding name b) Its trustworthy c) You can roll it in a ball and hurl it at pursuers d) You can make fun of people who eat it
4. What is a good source for minerals: a) pie b) cake c) cake-pie d) a quarry
5. Its a known fact that garlic can: a) lower cholesterol b) lower blood pressure c) ward off vampires d) prevent unwanted kissing
6. Whats the difference between simple and complex carbohydrates: a) complex carbohydrates are more insightful b) simple carbohydrates are easy to fool c) complex carbohydrates come from animals or vegetables containing more than two syllables, like alligator or zucchini d) simple carbohydrates dont like to brag about themselves
7. How many kinds of nutrients are there: a) lots b) kind of a lot c) it depends on what you mean by nutrient d) it depends on what time of day it is
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Frank Mulligan: Nutrition for dummies
Synthetic Biology Book Published in DNA
The data storage project represents the largest piece of non-biological data ever stored in this manner
By Monya Baker and Nature magazine
Image: dna, synthetic biology
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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From Nature magazine
A trio of researchers has encoded a draft of a whole book into DNA. The 5.27-megabit tome contains 53,246 words, 11 JPG image files and a JavaScript program, making it the largest piece of non-biological data ever stored in this way.
DNA has the potential to store huge amounts of information. In theory, two bits of data can be incorporated per nucleotide the single base unit of a DNA string so each gram of the double-stranded molecule could store 455 exabytes of data (1 exabyte is 1018 bytes). Such dense packing outstrips inorganic data-storage devices such as flash memory, hard disks or even storage based on quantum-computing methods.
The book, which is fittingly a treatise on synthetic biology, was encoded by geneticists George Church and Sriram Kosuri at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering in Boston, Massachusetts, and Yuan Gao, a biomedical engineer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. They report their work in Science1 this week.
It marks a significant gain on previous projects the largest of which encoded less than one-six-hundredth of the data but organic flash drives are still many years away. There are a number of reasons why the method is not practical for everyday use. For example, both storing and retrieving information currently require several days of lab work, spent either synthesizing DNA from scratch or sequencing it to read the data.
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Synthetic Biology Book Published in DNA
Harvard Scientists Write Book In DNA And Accurately Copy, Read It Back
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online
DNA, the building block of life, is now home to more than just the worlds living creatures. Scientists from Harvard University report that they have written an entire novel in DNA, a feat that could revolutionize our ability to save data.
Our genetic code packs billions of gigabytes into a single gram. That is significantly more information that a single microchip could even think about storing. In fact, a single milligram of genetic code could encode the entire Library of Congress and still have room to spare.
Long held as only a theory, the storage of data in DNA has now tipped the genetic scale and has become a reality. George Church of Harvard Medical School and his colleagues stored an entire genetics handbook in less than a picogram trillionth of a gram of DNA.
The experiment, reported in Thursdays edition of the journal Science, could pave the way for eventual data-storage systems that can handle vast amounts of data, perhaps millions of times more data than a single hard drive can handle. Using next-generation sequencing technology, the Harvard team, were not only able to encode the book in DNA, but also were able to accurately copy and read it.
A few other teams have tried to write data into the DNA of living cells. But because the approach carries some disadvantages, it may not prove feasible. Because cells die, writing data into genetic code could mean that you are going to ultimately lose your work. And because cells also replicate, there would be the possibility that new mutations could change the data.
To work around these possible scenarios, Church and his colleagues created a DNA information-archiving system using no cells at all. Instead, they utilized an inkjet printer to embed short fragments of chemically synthesized DNA onto the surface of a tiny glass chip. To encode the file, the team divided it into tiny blocks of data and converted it not into typical digital storage 1s and 0s, but rather DNAs four-letter alphabet of As (adenine), Cs (cytosine), Gs (guanine) and Ts (thymine).
The team explained that each DNA fragment also contains a digital barcode that records its location in the original file. Reading the data requires a DNA sequencer and a computer to put back together the DNA puzzle of fragments in order to convert them into digital format. The computer also corrects for errors; each block of data is replicated thousands of times so that any chance glitch can be identified and fixed by comparing it to the other copies.
To demonstrate the technology, the team used the DNA chips to encode a genetics book co-authored by Church Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves in DNA. After converting the book into DNA and translating it back into digital form, the teams system only produced a rate of two errors per million bits of information, and only amounted to a few single-letter typos, which is on par with DVDs and far better than magnetic hard drives.
However, the impracticability of such a system is not there right now. Sequencing DNA is a costly procedure and is not feasible for general use, according to Daniel Gibson, a synthetic biologist at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland. However, he noted, the field is moving fast and the technology will soon be cheaper, faster, and smaller.
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Harvard Scientists Write Book In DNA And Accurately Copy, Read It Back
DNA: The Ultimate Hard Drive
By John Bohannon, ScienceNOW
When it comes to storing information, hard drives dont hold a candle to DNA. Our genetic code packs billions of gigabytes into a single gram. A mere milligram of the molecule could encode the complete text of every book in the Library of Congress and have plenty of room to spare. All of this has been mostly theoretical until now. In a new study, researchers stored an entire genetics textbook in less than a picogram of DNA one trillionth of a gram an advance that could revolutionize our ability to save data.
A few teams have tried to write data into the genomes of living cells. But the approach has a couple of disadvantages. First, cells die not a good way to lose your term paper. They also replicate, introducing new mutations over time that can change the data.
To get around these problems, a team led by George Church, a synthetic biologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, created a DNA information-archiving system that uses no cells at all. Instead, an inkjet printer embeds short fragments of chemically synthesized DNA onto the surface of a tiny glass chip. To encode a digital file, researchers divide it into tiny blocks of data and convert these data not into the 1s and 0s of typical digital storage media, but rather into DNAs four-letter alphabet of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts. Each DNA fragment also contains a digital barcode that records its location in the original file. Reading the data requires a DNA sequencer and a computer to reassemble all of the fragments in order and convert them back into digital format. The computer also corrects for errors; each block of data is replicated thousands of times so that any chance glitch can be identified and fixed by comparing it to the other copies.
To demonstrate its system in action, the team used the DNA chips to encode a genetics book co-authored by Church. It worked. After converting the book into DNA and translating it back into digital form, the teams system had a raw error rate of only two errors per million bits, amounting to a few single-letter typos. That is on par with DVDs and far better than magnetic hard drives. And because of their tiny size, DNA chips are now the storage medium with the highest known information density, the researchers report online today in Science.
Dont replace your flash drive with genetic material just yet, however. The cost of the DNA sequencer and other instruments currently makes this impractical for general use, says Daniel Gibson, a synthetic biologist at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, but the field is moving fast and the technology will soon be cheaper, faster, and smaller. Gibson led the team that created the first completely synthetic genome, which included a watermark of extra data encoded into the DNA. The researchers used a three-letter coding system that is less efficient than the Church teams but has built-in safeguards to prevent living cells from translating the DNA into proteins. If DNA is going to be used for this purpose, and outside a laboratory setting, then you would want to use DNA sequence that is least likely to be expressed in the environment, he says. Church disagrees. Unless someone deliberately subverts his DNA data-archiving system, he sees little danger.
This story provided by ScienceNOW, the daily online news service of the journal Science.
Image: Scientists have found a way to store an entire textbook in the code of DNA. (JohnGoode/Flickr)
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DNA: The Ultimate Hard Drive
Synthesizing Synthetic Biology
PLOS One has launched the Synthetic Biology Collection a set of more than 50 papers that the journal has published since 2006 on DNA synthesis and assembly, the development of libraries of biological parts, protein engineering, network and pathway analysis, and the like.
The PLOS One Community Blog notes that "the heavily interdisciplinary nature" of synthetic biology research "can make it difficult to publish in traditional discipline-specific journals," but the broad scope of PLOS One "allows for the publication of work crossing many traditional research boundaries, making it an ideal venue for many different types of synthetic biology research."
The collection will be updated as relevant articles are published in the journal.
An overview of the collection, authored by Jean Peccoud and Mark Isalan, says that the papers are organized into broad categories: DNA synthesis and assembly; biological parts; protein engineering; networks and pathways; synthetic life; software and modeling; and instruments.
They add that "since many synthetic biology papers cited in this review span more than one category, it was sometimes difficult to assign them to one category rather than another. Nonetheless, this structure should aid in navigating the 50+ papers currently included in the collection."
Lessons learned in creating biomedical nanoparticles for human use
Over the past six years, the National Cancer Institutes (NCI) Nanotechnology Characterization Laboratory (NCL), a key component of the NCIs Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer, has characterized more than 250 different nanomaterials developed by over 75 research groups. This extensive experience has given NCL staff a unique perspective on how to design safe and biocompatible nanomaterials for human use. In a paper published in the journal Integrative Biology, the NCL team shared some of the lessons they have learned.
The NCL performs and standardizes the pre-clinical characterization of nanomaterials intended for cancer therapeutics and diagnostics developed by researchers from academia, government, and industry. The Lab serves as a national resource and knowledge base for cancer researchers, and facilitates the development and translation of nanoscale particles and devices for clinical applications. Scott McNeil, the NCLs director, and seven colleagues compiled the common pitfalls that nonmaterial developers encounter on their path from basic research, to products that will be tested as agents for imaging or delivering drugs to tumors in humans.
One important lesson for nanomaterial developers, who tend to be academic researchers with little experience developing products intended for clinical use, is that they need to focus more on ensuring that the materials they develop for testing in animals, and eventually humans, are sterile. A recent review of 75 samples arriving at the NCL for testing found that more than one-third showed evidence of bacterial contamination.
Another important lesson was that commercially available materials, whether they are nanomaterials or chemicals used to make nanomaterials, are not always what they appear to be. In some cases, these raw materials are contaminated with bacterial toxins, in other cases the products do not meet the specifications advertised by the manufacturers. Dr. McNeil and his colleagues note that it is in the researchers best interest to always characterize materials before proceeding with synthesis and more expensive functionalization and biological testing.
NCL staff also found that investigators need to do a better job purifying their nanomaterials of residue remaining from the processes they use to manufacture their nanoparticles and other formulations. In some cases, nanomaterials that appeared to be toxic were in fact biocompatible. Instead, it was production impurities that were causing toxicity issues. Additionally, NCL studies have shown that nanomaterial toxicity can often be eliminated by choosing slightly different starting materials that are incorporated into the final product but that do not play a role as an imaging agent or anticancer drug.
The last two lessons have to do with the importance of developing the right methods for assessing a nanomaterials stability in the body and the rate at which it releases its cargo at the intended target, the tumor. NCL team leaders recommend that nanomaterial developers employ multiple assays before beginning animal studies to determine these characteristics of their nanomaterials because single assays can often paint an incomplete picture that can lead to wasted time and money.
The work that produced these findings is described in more detail in a paper titled Common pitfalls in nanotechnology: lessons from the NCIs Nanotechnology Characterization Laboratory. An abstract of this paper is available at the journals website.
More information: Abstract: DOI: 10.1039/C2IB20117H
Journal reference: Integrative Biology
Provided by National Cancer Institute
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Lessons learned in creating biomedical nanoparticles for human use
'Heroes of Chemistry' award to hepatitis C team from Merck
The American Chemical Society will hold its 224th national meeting in Philadelphia starting Sunday and the five-day gathering kickoffs with a dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel to honor "Heroes of Chemistry."
The 2012 honorees include a group of scientists who developed the hepatitis C drug Victrelis, while working at Schering Plough and then Merck after it acquired Schering Plough in 2009.
Merck researchers in North Wales and Kenilworth, N.J., were among the hundreds who worked on the drug, which doctors hoped would be an improvement on a two-drug cocktail that had been used for more than a decade.
The five scientists honored include F. George Njoroge (one of the patent holders who has since moved to Eli Lilly and Company), Srikanth Venkatraman, Stephane Bogen, Frank Bennett and Ashok Arasappan.
Companies nominate a scientist, or teams of them, for the award. According to the ACS website, the award "has recognized chemical scientists whose work in various fields of chemistry and chemical engineering has led to the successful innovation and development of commercial products based on chemistry. The Heroes of Chemistry program highlights the vital role of industrial chemical scientists and their companies in improving human welfare through successful commercial innovations and products. It presents an ideal opportunity to enhance the public image of the chemical and allied industries."
The World Health Organization said in 2011 that the hepatitis C virus affects 130 million to 170 million people worldwide - about four times the number with HIV/AIDS - and kills about 350,000 people a year because of damage to the liver.
In its second-quarter earnings report, Merck said it sold $126 million of Victrelis. (Bocepravir is the chemical name.) It is approved in 43 countries and has launched in 23 of those markets, Merck said.
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'Heroes of Chemistry' award to hepatitis C team from Merck
Marketing is not the only answer for UK tourism, says WTTC
17 August 2012
New plans announced to boost UK tourism are unlikely to have the desired effect unless much more fundamental reforms are implemented, says the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC).
Reacting to plans from Jeremy Hunt, the UK Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, for an 8m extension of the "GREAT" marketing campaign, and a further 2 million to promote domestic tourism, David Scowsill, President & CEO, WTTC said:
"Jeremy Hunt should be congratulated for recognising the huge economic and social potential of Travel & Tourism in the UK. His plans to invest in a new domestic marketing campaign to draw on the legacy of the London 2012 Olympics and to specifically target the high-spending Chinese market are sensible options. Figures from VisitBritain show that the average spend per visit of Chinese visitors to UK is 1677, compared to the average spend per visit from all countries of 563.
But, the UK is beckoning tourists with one hand and pushing them away with the other. The UK has the highest air tax of any country in the world. Heathrow and Gatwick are effectively full and there is no discernible long-term aviation policy that will provide the routes to China on the scale being provided by other European countries. UK's visa policy which requires visitors from key growth markets, such as China and India, to go through an expensive, time-consuming and cumbersome process to obtain visas is also a clear deterrent.
Jeremy Hunt is right to want to "turbo-charge" UK tourism, but a much more fundamental reform of visa, taxation and aviation policy is required to make a real difference."
According to WTTC figures, the Travel & Tourism industry is expected to directly contribute 35.6 billion and almost 950,000 jobs to the British economy during 2012. When the wider economic impacts of the industry are taken into account, Travel & Tourism is forecast to contribute over 100 billion to the UK economy and generate 2.3 million jobs or 1 in 13 of all jobs in the UK.
The World Travel & Tourism Council is the global authority on the economic and social contribution of Travel & Tourism. It promotes sustainable growth for the industry, working with governments and international institutions to create jobs, to drive exports and to generate prosperity. In 2011 Travel & Tourism accounted for 255 million jobs globally. At US$6.3 trillion (9.1% of GDP) the sector is a key driver for investment and economic growth. For more than 20 years, the World Travel & Tourism Council has been the voice of this industry globally. Members are the Chairs, Presidents and Chief Executives of the world's leading, private sector Travel & Tourism businesses. These Members bring specialist knowledge to guide government policy and decision-making, raising awareness of the importance of the industry as an economic generator of prosperity.
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