Libertarian gov candidate plans Saturday visit to Cedar Falls

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CEDAR FALLS | Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Lee Hieb is not just mounting a challenge against an incumbent and his Democratic challenger.

She also is running against taxes, regulation and the increasing burdens of government.

The reality is if you keep voting the same way, youre going to get the same results, which is government growth, said Hieb, adding that she has been a lifelong Republican until about a year ago when she came to the realization that neither major party would shrink government.

Hieb, 61, was selected as the partys gubernatorial candidate last month. She and her running mate Ryan Ketelsen will be bringing their message to Cedar Falls.

The meeting is open to the public and will be held from 2 to 4:30 p.m. Saturday at the Cedar Falls Public Library, 524 Main St.

The message they will share will not be confined to reducing taxes and regulations within the state border. Hieb said the message also will be about how the governor can play a role in reducing the role the federal government plays in the state.

Hieb, a physician in Lake City, said she repeatedly tried to get incumbent Gov. Terry Branstads attention during the state debate on whether to sign on to the Affordable Care Act.

In every way I could, I tried to get him not to do that, Hieb said. It will drag us down. It will drag us down economically so fast.

Aside from opposing the increased bureaucracy in health reform, Hieb opposes the education standard known as common core and a state income tax. As a rural Iowan, she also has a laundry list of burdensome regulations she has heard about from small business owners.

Overall, though, the policies have a common theme of reducing the size and scale of state government. Hieb said her family is fourth-generation Iowans and each generation has seen state government grow, which she says comes at the expense of the private sector.

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Libertarian gov candidate plans Saturday visit to Cedar Falls

Coachella 2014: Future Islands goes late at Pappy & Harriet's

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Early Friday morning in the high desert outside of Palm Springs, menacing Baltimore synth pop band Future Islands was responsible for a memorably challenging, if ultimately victorious, sold-out gig.

Drawing a wild bunch of uber-fans to journey up a winding, moonlit road to Pappy & Harriet's, the far-out roadhouse at the edge of cellphone coverage, the quartet performed one of its typically rambunctious shows.

Featuring the magnetic, polarizing vocalist/growler Samuel T. Herring prowling the stage, pumping his chest and priming the crowd like a football coach, the band played songs, many from its new album "Singles," to a room packed so tight that at one point a bouncer trying to calm the chaos near the front just stopped and shook his head in defeat.

FULL COVERAGE: Coachella 2014

That part I was forced to witness on the video feed, which offered a less obstructed view -- as in, you could see more than the top of the bands' heads without getting squished or gobbled up.

The group is in the area for its two gigs down the road at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, riding a wave of newfound popularity due to a breakout display of its "Seasons (Waiting for You)" on "The Late Show With David Letterman" that has since gone viral.

If you haven't seen the clip, you should, as the four minutes of airtime explains the varied responses to Herring's bold approach as a lead singer. He did the same at Pappy & Harriet's -- and the other times I've seen the band over its eight-year life. Fearless, focused, passionate in both vocalizing and performance, the singer grooved to the catchy synthesizer, beat and bass-powered songs with a joyous defiance.

Shuffle-stepping his feet with knees bent and rubbery, Herring did this little chicken-head thing with his neck in time with the high-hat while grunting out lines like a death metal singer. Other times he glided his torso to and fro, his arms gesticulating in time while nailing difficult melodic runs. He bent like a parenthesis. He popped his eyes wide, acting out lines he was singing.

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During "A Dream of You and Me," he grabbed a woman's hand, crooning in perfect pitch lines of affirmation straight to her: "All that glitters is gold -- don't believe what you've been told," he sang. "People lie, people love, people go/Beauty lies in every soul."

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Coachella 2014: Future Islands goes late at Pappy & Harriet's

Future Islands is weird, wonderful at Beauty Bar

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Researchers Have Fully Sequenced The Deadly Human Pathogen Cryptococcus

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Image Caption: Scanning electron micrograph shows infectious spores produced by the deadly fungi Cryptococcus neoformans. Credit: Duke University

By Marla Vacek Broadfoot, Duke University

Ten-year effort yields map for finding weaknesses in the fungus

Within each strand of DNA lies the blueprint for building an organism, along with the keys to its evolution and survival. These genetic instructions can give valuable insight into why pathogens like Cryptococcus neoformans a fungus responsible for a million cases of pneumonia and meningitis every year are so malleable and dangerous.

Now researchers have sequenced the entire genome and all the RNA products of the most important pathogenic lineage of Cryptococcus neoformans, a strain called H99. The results, which appear April 17 in PLOS Genetics, also describe a number of genetic changes that can occur after laboratory handling of H99 that make it more susceptible to stress, hamper its ability to sexually reproduce and render it less virulent.

The study provides a playbook that can be used to understand how the pathogen causes disease and develop methods to keep it from evolving into even deadlier strains.

We are beginning to get a grasp on what makes this organism tick. By having a carefully annotated genome of H99, we can investigate how this and similar organisms can change and mutate and begin to understand why they arent easily killed by antifungal medications, said study coauthor John Perfect, M.D., a professor of medicine at Duke who first isolated H99 from a patient with cryptococcal meningitis 36 years ago.

The fungus Cryptococcus neoformans is a major human pathogen that primarily infects individuals with compromised immune systems, such as patients undergoing transplant or those afflicted with HIV/AIDS. Researchers have spent many years conducting genetic, molecular and virulence studies on Cryptococcus neoformans, focusing almost exclusively on the H99 strain originally isolated at Duke. Interestingly, investigators have noticed that over time, the strain became less and less virulent as they grew it in the laboratory.

Virulence, or the ability of this organism to cause disease in mice or humans, is not very stable. It changes, and can rapidly be lost or gained. When the organism is in the host it is in one state, but when we take it out of the host and begin growing it in the laboratory it begins mutating, said Fred Dietrich, senior study author and associate professor of molecular genetics and microbiology at Duke University School of Medicine.

Dietrich and his colleagues decided that the best way to investigate how the virulence of this pathogen could change over time was to develop a carefully annotated genomic map of the H99 strain, both in its original state as well as after it had been cultured. In an effort that took ten years and dozens of collaborators, the researchers sequenced the original H99 and nine other cultured variants, analyzing both the genome, the genetic code written in the DNA, as well as the transcriptome, the RNA molecules that occupy the second step in the flow of genetic information from DNA to RNA to protein.

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Researchers Have Fully Sequenced The Deadly Human Pathogen Cryptococcus

Rising to the Challenge: Bending the Cost Curve in Health Care and Education – Video

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Rising to the Challenge: Bending the Cost Curve in Health Care and Education
Join us for our April Fuqua Faculty Conversation as Ronnie Chatterji, Associate Professor of Strategy, presents: Rising to the Challenge: Bending the Cost Cu...

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Rising to the Challenge: Bending the Cost Curve in Health Care and Education - Video

Clinton sought GOP support for health care

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Washington President Bill Clintons advisers estimated early in his term that passing a health care overhaul would require a delicate balance of Democratic and Republican support, needing at least eight moderate Republicans in the Senate and 15 or more in the House to win approval, according to documents released Friday.

New records released from the Clinton White House show how the presidents team tried to build support for the ill-fated legislation, led by former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, in setting up a schedule to achieve passage before the 1994 midterm elections. Democrats were routed in the election after the overhaul failed. They lost control of both the House and Senate.

A strategy memo from 1993 argued the plan would require support from enough conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans without alienating too many liberal Democrats. But the bill never cleared a House committee.

The complexity of our bill undermines our chances for success but without complexity, success is impossible, the unsigned memo said.

The documents were among about 7,500 pages of records released through the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Ark., on Friday, covering a wide range of topics including the former first ladys work on health care, the administrations promotion of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

The records are being closely scrutinized as former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton considers a second presidential campaign in 2016.

The documents show parallels between the Clinton era and the current White House under President Barack Obama. Obamas health care overhaul is expected to be a major deciding point in the 2014 midterm elections and Republicans have assailed the White House for approving the 2010 legislation without a single GOP vote.

Preparing for an August 1994 news conference, Clinton discussed the teetering health care overhaul at length. A lot of them want to know they can keep their own plan if they like it, the president told his aides. That point would be heard again, years later.

At the start of the enrollment period for the Obamacare plan, the government website for new signups was riddled with technical problems. A spate of private policy cancellations forced Obama to recant his pledge that all Americans who liked their health insurance plans could simply keep them.

In 1993, Clintons team aimed to put together a diverse coalition in Congress to overhaul health care. The winning congressional majority for health care reform depends on holding almost all liberal and moderate Democrats, winning a significant number of conservative Democrats and attracting 8-10 moderate Republicans in the Senate (assuming we need 60 votes) and 15-20 in the House, the memo said.

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Health care site flagged in Heartbleed review – NBC40.net

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By JULIE PACE AP White House Correspondent

WASHINGTON (AP) - People who have accounts on the enrollment website for President Barack Obama's signature health care law are being told to change their passwords following an administration-wide review of the government's vulnerability to the confounding Heartbleed Internet security flaw.

Senior administration officials said there is no indication that the HealthCare.gov site has been compromised and the action is being taken out of an abundance of caution. The government's Heartbleed review is ongoing, the officials said, and users of other websites may also be told to change their passwords in the coming days, including those with accounts on the popular WhiteHouse.gov petitions page.

The Heartbleed programming flaw has caused major security concerns across the Internet and affected a widely used encryption technology that was designed to protect online accounts. Major Internet services have been working to insulate themselves against the problem and are also recommending that users change their website passwords.

Officials said the administration was prioritizing its analysis of websites with heavy traffic and the most sensitive user information. A message that will be posted on the health care website starting Saturday reads: "While there's no indication that any personal information has ever been at risk, we have taken steps to address Heartbleed issues and reset consumers' passwords out of an abundance of caution."

The health care website became a prime target for critics of the Obamacare law last fall when the opening of the insurance enrollment period revealed widespread flaws in the online system. Critics have also raised concerns about potential security vulnerabilities on a site where users input large amounts of personal data.

The website troubles were largely fixed during the second month of enrollment and sign-ups ultimately surpassed initial expectations. Obama announced this week that about 8 million people had enrolled in the insurance plans.

The full extent of the damage caused by the Heartbleed is unknown. The security hole exists on a vast number of the Internet's Web servers and went undetected for more than two years. Although it's conceivable that the flaw was never discovered by hackers, it's difficult to tell.

The White House has said the federal government was not aware of the Heartbleed vulnerability until it was made public in a private sector cybersecurity report earlier this month. The federal government relies on the encryption technology that is impacted - OpenSSL - to protect the privacy of users of government websites and other online services.

The Homeland Security Department has been leading the review of the government's potential vulnerabilities. The Internal Revenue Service, a widely used website with massive amounts of personal data on Americans, has already said it was not impacted by Heartbleed.

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Health care site flagged in Heartbleed review - NBC40.net