New genetic factor associated with lean diabetics identified

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Washington, June 2 : Lean type 2 diabetes patients have a larger genetic disposition to the disease as compared to their obese counterparts, a new study has proved.

Type 2 diabetes is popularly associated with obesity and a sedentary lifestyle. However, just as there are obese people without type 2 diabetes, there are lean people with the disease.

It has long been hypothesised that type 2 diabetes in lean people is more "genetically driven".

The study, from a research team led by the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry (PCMD), University of Exeter, has also identified a new genetic factor associated only with lean diabetes sufferers.

Using genetic data from genome-wide association studies, the research team tested genetic markers across the genome in approximately 5,000 lean patients with type 2 diabetes, 13,000 obese patients with the disease and 75,000 healthy controls.

The team found differences in genetic enrichment between lean and obese cases, which support the hypothesis that lean diabetes sufferers have a greater genetic predisposition to the disease.

This is in contrast to obese patients with type 2 diabetes, where factors other than type 2 diabetes genes are more likely to be responsible. In addition, genetic variants near the gene, LAMA1, were linked to type 2 diabetes risk for the first time, with an effect that appeared only in the lean patients.

"Whenever a new disease gene is found, there is always the potential for it to be used as a drug target for new therapies or as a biomarker, but more work is needed to see whether or not this new gene has that potential," John Perry, one of the lead authors of the study, said.

"This is the first time that a type 2 diabetes gene has been found to act in this way - we do not know why it should be associated in one sub-group of patients and not another.

"It could point to the fact that type 2 diabetes may not be one disease, but may represent a number of subgroups. Again, more work is required to prove this hypothesis.

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New genetic factor associated with lean diabetics identified

Freedom House Urges Clinton to Raise Human Rights During Caucasus Visit

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U.S.-based rights group Freedom House urged Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to make human rights and democracy shortfalls in the Caucasus region the cornerstone topic in private meetings and in public statements during her visit to Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan on June 4-6.

Encouraging and supporting democratically accountable systems in the Caucasus region is essential, David J. Kramer, Freedom House president, said. While we realize there are a range of policy interests to be discussed during the trip, Freedom House calls for a particular emphasis on the ongoing concerns about human rights and democracy throughout the region, especially in Azerbaijan and Armenia.

In case of Azerbaijan, Freedom House urged the Secretary of State to address issues of intimidation of political activists and their imprisonment in deeply flawed trials, use of force to break up antigovernment rallies, as well as freedom of press. On Armenia, Freedom House stressed that its reforms were hampered by the deep relationship between politics and business, which effectively prevents the advancement of greater accountability and transparency.

On Georgia, Freedom House said: Georgia affords some but not all of the institutional safeguards and holds promise for more meaningful reform, if the right steps are taken. The upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections in Georgia present a test for civil society in Georgia to develop more effective and mature political platforms.

Georgias indicators in an annual report by Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2012, remained unchanged and the country is still deemed partly free. In recent Freedom Houses survey on global press freedom, Georgia's ranking has improved for third consecutive year, but the country still remains in the category of partly free.

A group of Georgian election watchdog, legal advocacy and media organizations have also appealed to Secretary Clinton ahead of her visit to Georgia on June 5, calling on her to raise the need for further legislative amendments to improve electoral environment in the country ahead of the October parliamentary elections.

Secretary Clinton will hold talks with Georgian leadership, civil society and opposition representatives in Black Sea resort town of Batumi. She will arrive in Georgia from Armenia and will then travel to Azerbaijan on June 6.

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Freedom House Urges Clinton to Raise Human Rights During Caucasus Visit

Girls victimized by sex trafficking find healing at Freedom Place

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Kelly Armstrong beamed during her daughter's kindergarten graduation, celebrating the finale to her first year of elementary school.

But in the back of her mind, she was thinking about another young girl, a teenager rescued by law enforcement officials during a child pornography bust, who might be able to have a new beginning.

Armstrong, the executive director of Freedom Place, Texas' first and only safe house for domestic victims of sex trafficking, had been trading messages and phone calls with officials from the Texas Attorney General's Office all afternoon about the girl. Officials were offering her a safe place to stay, a place where she could get counseling.

"We knew we needed to act quickly," she said.

That evening, as she watched her daughter, Armstrong continued to check her cell phone, anxiously waiting to hear from authorities and hoping that teen would agree to come to Freedom Place.

Until last week, there was no place in Houston - or anywhere in Texas - dedicated to helping domestic trafficking victims. Often the options for the girls were incarceration in a juvenile facility, treatment programs that didn't meet their needs, or being placed back into the same unstable homes that may have led to them the streets in the first place, authorities said.

Even more difficult, many of the girls don't feel that they are victims, making them vulnerable to falling back into familiar patterns with abusers, said Associate Harris County Juvenile judge Angela Ellis.

"What we know is that they will return to the system if we don't offer them therapeutic services," Ellis said. She runs a "girls court," designed specifically for young girls who are sex-trafficking victims, offering them intensive supervision and therapeutic services as an alternative to placing them in detention facilities. The court has already referred three girls to Freedom Place, including one who became the program's first arrival.

"Telling someone they are a victim and then being able to do nothing but place them in a lock-down facility is not something we wanted," Ellis said. "So it's a big day."

6 horses and 2 dogs

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Girls victimized by sex trafficking find healing at Freedom Place

Mazda launches first-in-its-class CX-5

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KUALA LUMPUR, June 3 — Looking for a new crossover vehicle with eco-friendly and fuel-efficient features? Introducing the new Mazda CX-5 which offers a pleasant driving experience without compromising safety or sustainability. First in its generation, the CX-5 is using the Mazda’s newly-developed SKYACTIV TECHNOLOGY: re-engineered engines, ...

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An eco-stadium? Promises, promises

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Feelings of betrayal dividing friends, lovers, and political allies have provided grist for Shakespeare and Verdi, among other great scrutinizers of the human condition.

It's intriguing to ponder what they would have made of the breakup between the Natural Resources Defense Council and Anschutz Entertainment Group, the would-be developer of a downtown Los Angeles football stadium.

Last September, the NRDC's Los Angeles office did the stadium developers a big favor by throwing its weight behind a gift bill streamlining the environmental review process for the stadium project, and only for the stadium project. The bill, SB 292, eliminated one whole level of court review otherwise provided for by the California Environmental Quality Act. For this project alone, litigation would have to start at the Court of Appeal level, rather than in the lower courts, and the judges would face tight deadlines. That was a big giveaway to the developers, for whom time is money.

The NRDC's involvement in the stadium project grows out of its interest in promoting mass transit and energy efficiency in urban communities, and therefore in seeing that the stadium be "green" in its construction and operational phases, and not encourage more automobile traffic. But its dalliance with the developers roiled environmentalists, many of whom are concerned about the impact of the huge project and anticipated going to court, if necessary, to make sure their views would be heard. The NRDC explained that it had negotiated several safeguards into SB 292, including the commitments from AEG.

"It was our assumption that some form of this would pass whether we liked it or not," NRDC Senior Attorney David Pettit, director of its Southern California air program, said at the time. "So we made the decision to be at the table rather than just say no. At the end of the day, we got what we wanted."

Plainly, NRDC now feels it did not get what it wanted. Earlier this month, Pettit complained in a letter to the city that the draft environmental impact report submitted by AEG for the stadium project lacks numerous commitments the builders had made to the group.

Studies that AEG promised to conduct of alternatives to bringing fans to the stadium by car were missing, for instance. Promises AEG made to the Clinton Global Initiative, a climate change program sponsored by the former president, were mysteriously scaled back; AEG told the Clinton group it would recycle 90% of solid waste produced during construction, NRDC says, but the draft report promises only 50%.

"We also have concerns about air quality, health risk, green construction practices and sustainability relating to the project," NRDC wrote.

"The letter does accurately portray that we're disappointed in what we see in the [draft environmental impact statement]," Pettit told me last week, "when you compare it to what AEG promised to do in connection with SB 292." This sounds like a tactful way of saying "we got rooked," though Pettit says he still favors the stadium project.

But he also acknowledges that the absence of some studies AEG had committed to conducting for the report means leaving the public in the dark about many of AEG's environmental plans. That's something that Pettit thought he had negotiated into SB 292 in return for shutting the courthouse door to the public at the ground floor.

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LI Officials Temporarily Close Beaches

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Health officials in Nassau and Suffolk counties temporarily closed beaches after heavy rainfall, citing a risk of large amounts of bacteria in the water.

Suffolk county officials have closed nearly all of their beaches on the south and north shore, and Nassau county has closed 19 beaches, included four along the Atlantic Ocean and 15 along the Long Island Sound.

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LI Officials Temporarily Close Beaches

Bacteria levels close 19 Long Island beaches

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ASSOCIATED PRESS

Last Updated: 4:23 PM, June 2, 2012

Posted: 12:27 PM, June 2, 2012

UNIONDALE Health officials have temporarily banned swimming at 19 Long Island beaches after heavy rain raised concerns about bacteria in the water.

Nassau County's health department says it has closed 14 beaches to bathing on Long Island Sound and five on the Atlantic coast.

Storm water runoff after heavy rains can wash all kinds of things into the water, but health authorities are especially concerned about bacteria from sewage.

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Bacteria levels close 19 Long Island beaches

Nassau County Department Of Health Closes 19 Beaches For Precautionary Reasons

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Nassau County Beach (credit: Mona Rivera/1010 WINS)

UNIONDALE, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) - Due to heavy rainfall, the Nassau County Department of Health has decided to close 19 beaches on Saturday for precautionary reasons.

Storm water runoff can have a negative impact by elevating bacterial levels, the Nassau County Department of Health said, and can affect bathing water quality.

WCBS 880s Sophia Hall reports

This is routine through the bathing season, Nassau Health Department Spokeswoman Mary Ellen Laurain told 1010 WINS. We start monitoring the beaches beginning in April through September, so this is as a precautionary measure because storm water runoff can impact the water quality.

The following beaches are closed:

Nassau County North Shore beaches *Centre Island Sound *Creek Club *Lattingtown Beach *Laurel Hollow Beach *Morgan Sound *North Hempstead Beach Park *Piping Rock Beach Club *Prybil Beach *Ransom Beach *Roosevelt Beach *Sea Cliff Village Beach *Soundside Beach *Stehli Beach *Tappen Beach

Nassau County South Shore beaches *Biltmore Beach Club *Hewlett Point Beach *Island Park Beach *Merrick Estates Civic Association *Philip Healey Beach

Nassau County residents, that should put a bit of a damper on some of your days. Sound off with your thoughts and comments in the section below

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I’ve been Streamified | Bad Astronomy

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I was recently interviewed by Zane Claes and Mark Shore of "Let Us Present" and they’ve posted the segment on their site . We talk about where NASA is now and where it’s going, and how things like SpaceX play into that. I’m still trying to figure this all out myself; we’re in a funny time in the history of space exploration, where it’s hard to say exactly where we’ll be in a few years. If you ...

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8 Astronomy Mysteries

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The vastness of space and the puzzling nature of the cosmic objects that occupy it provides no shortage of material for astronomers to ponder.

To round up some of the most enduring mysteries in the field of astronomy, the journal Science enlisted help from science writers and members of the Board of Reviewing Editors to choose eight puzzling questions being asked by leading astronomers today.

As Robert Coontz, deputy news editor at Science, writes in his introduction to the series, the participants decided that, "true mysteries must have staying power," rather than being questions that might be resolved by research in the near future. In fact, while some of the topics discussed may one day be solved through astronomical observations, others may never be solved, he added.

In no particular order, here are eight of the most compelling mysteries of astronomy, as presented by the journal Science:

What is dark energy?

In the 1920s, astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe is not static, but rather is expanding. In 1998, the Hubble Space Telescope, named for the astronomer, studied distant supernovas and found that the universe was expanding more slowly a long time ago compared with the pace of its expansion today.

This groundbreaking discovery puzzled scientists, who long thought that the gravity of matter would gradually slow the universe's expansion, or even cause it to contract. Explanations of the universe's accelerated expansion led to the bizarre and hotly debated concept of dark energy, which is thought to be the enigmatic force that is pulling the cosmos apart at ever-increasing speeds.

While dark energy is thought to make up approximately 73 percent of the universe, the force remains elusive and has yet to be directly detected.

"Dark energy might never reveal its nature," Science staff writer Adrian Cho wrote. "Still, scientists remain optimistic that nature will cooperate and that they can determine the origins of dark energy."

How hot is dark matter?

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8 Astronomy Mysteries

AG agrees to DNA tests in convicted killer's case

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After more than a decade of unsuccessful efforts to obtain DNA testing of evidence collected at the scene of a 1993 Pampa murder that sent him to death row, Henry Skinner won a major battle Friday when Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott recommended to a state appeals court that the testing take place.

In a filing with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which is considering Skinner's latest request for the tests, Abbott said the state and Skinner's lawyers have reached a "preliminary understanding" to do the testing. The court still must approve the lawyers' agreed order.

Skinner, 50, was sentenced to die for the 1993 New Year's Eve murder of his girlfriend and her two adult sons. The convicted killer has argued that he had lost consciousness after consuming alcohol and codeine and, therefore, was not able to bludgeon the woman or stab her sons.

While some evidence had been subjected to DNA testing, clothing, knives and biological samples, including specimens from a rape examination, have not been tested.

Skinner has had at least two execution dates set. Last November, the appeals court issued a stay to ascertain how revised laws regarding such testing may apply to his case.

In his filing, Abbott said the state dropped its objections to testing "in the interest of justice." The attorney general also told the court the state will request testing of additional items submitted by prosecutors.

Skinner's lawyer, Rob Owen, visiting professor at Northwestern School of Law, said prosecutors had "squandered" an opportunity to test the items 12 years ago by barring defense counsel from a role in the deciding the issue.

"Texans expect accuracy in this death penalty case, and the procedures to be employed must ensure them confidence in the outcome," Owen said in an email. "To that end, all determinations about how and by whom the evidence will be handled and tested must be entirely transparent with both parties involved in every step."

allan.turner@chron.com

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Posted in DNA

Biologists construct self-assembling tiles of DNA

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Harvard biologists have brought new meaning to the term "fine print" by devising microscopic tiles made of DNA that self-assemble into letters, Chinese characters, emoticons and other shapes.

More than mere doodling, their advance, detailed this week in the journal Nature, could make it easier and cheaper to build tiny DNA devices capable of delivering drugs or aiding the study of biochemistry, scientists said.

"This technique will accelerate the research field of DNA nanotechnology," said Ebbe Sloth Andersen, a researcher at Aarhus University in Denmark who collaborated on an editorial that accompanied the report.

In its usual role as a warehouse for storing genetic information, DNA helps build humans and hummingbirds, maple trees and meerkats all sorts of complex organisms. But as a building material for machines smaller than the smallest bacterium, it has been tough to control.

Since the early 1980s, engineers have experimented with a variety of approaches to create structures out of DNA, including the use of tiles small bricks woven together out of several strands of DNA that could stick to one another and self-assemble into shapes.

But when researchers tried to construct precisely defined shapes, they ran into trouble, said Peng Yin, a systems biologist at Harvard's Wyss Institute in Boston and senior author of the Nature study. The tiles tended to stick together incorrectly, resulting in incomplete structures.

"People thought this couldn't work," Yin said.

But he and his collaborators pressed on, ultimately designing bricks out of single rather than multiple strands of DNA.

The strands each had four sequences of 10 or 11 bases, which could bind to complementary sequences of 10 or 11 bases on other tiles. If all four sequences on the edges of a tile bind with their matching counterparts on neighboring tiles, the tile assumes a rectangular shape.

The scientists programmed the tiles to stack up in a staggered formation, like a miniature brick wall. Then they created shapes by leaving out tiles at certain locations of their 64-by-103-nanometer "molecular canvas."

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Biologists construct self-assembling tiles of DNA

Grey's Anatomy's Chyler Leigh: I Made the Decision to Leave

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Chyler Leigh

Lexie Grey may have met a painful death on the season finale of Grey's Anatomy, but behind the scenes, Chyler Leigh says her departure was a peaceful one.

In a statement to TVLine, Leigh explains her shocking exit from the show after more than five years playing Meredith Grey's half-sister. The 30-year-old actress says she and show creator and executive producer Shonda Rhimes collaborated on how Lexie's story ended.

Photos: Remember TV characters we lost this season

"Earlier this year, I made the decision that Season Eight would be my last on Grey's Anatomy. I met with Shonda and we worked together to give Lexie's story appropriate closure. I am very lucky to have worked with this amazing cast and crew for five seasons. My experience on Grey's Anatomy is something that I will treasure for the rest of my life. I want to take this time to say thank you to the fans. Your unconditional love and support have made these last five years very special for me. I look forward to my next chapter and I hope you will continue to follow me on my journey."

Leigh was one of two cast members who exited the medical drama in the Season 8 finale. Rhimes confirmed that Kim Raver, whose character was fired from Seattle Grace, would not be returning for Season 9.

"I love Chyler and I love the character of Lexie Grey. She was an important member of my Grey's family. This was not an easy decision. But it was a decision that Chyler and I came to together," Rhimes wrote online hours after Leigh's on-screen death. "We had a lot of thoughtful discussion about it and ultimately we both decided this was the right time for her character's journey to end. As far as I'm concerned Chyler will always remain a part of the Shondaland family and I can't wait to work with her again in the future."

Will you miss Lexie Grey?

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Bands travel across US, world for Wakarusa festival

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Bands performing at this weekends Wakarusa festival come from all over the world all points of the United States, Israel, Scandinavian countries and more. And as a result, they also have a very complicated travel schedule.

To get artists from the various states and foreign countries to the remote festival grounds, a fleet of nine vehicles and 24 drivers are assembled for the task.

Its a 24-hour per day job, said Nina Carter, the festivals assistant artist transportation director.

Trips from local airports are coordinated to the minute to ensure that artists arrive at the mountainside site on time. A trip to Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport is 90 minutes round trip, and shuttles usually 15-passenger vans are in constant motion to get to artists to that airport or those in Fort Smith or Little Rock.

Trips are coordinated in attempt to bring as many musicians in the same shuttle as can be arranged.

We try to plan ahead as best as possible, says Carter, who has worked in the music business for years. Although shes at a festival where some 150 bands will perform about 200 sets of music, shell be lucky if she sees one act onstage.

Like an air traffic controller, constant radio updates help her plan a course of action and spreadsheets indicate which band is to be picked up from where.

Even with careful coordination, problems are common. One driver broke his foot, rendering him unable to drive and leaving the transportation team down a man. And after watching last nights first round of artists, at least one band decided to stay and party instead of catching their appointed departure time. Or, perhaps the same can be said about the volunteer drivers, who are spread out along the festival grounds.

Volunteers can oversleep, Carter said, And we dont always know where they camp.

About 50 of the festivals bands require transportation services, as many arrive in tour buses. Still even some of those travelers take advantage of the transportation services, such as the bus drivers, who often drive to the festival site and then sleep in a hotel in Ozark while their bands perform at the festival.

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Tourism in the UK contributes more to GDP than automotive manufacturing

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The Travel & Tourism industry in the UK is nearly five times the size of automotive manufacturing and supports almost as many jobs as the financial sector.(PRWEB UK) 1 June 2012 This is according to new research from the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) sponsored by American Express.The research, undertaken by Oxford Economics, shows that the sector’s direct contribution to the UK GDP is ...

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Tourism in the UK contributes more to GDP than automotive manufacturing

Massive cyber attack on Iran came from US, report says

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By Michelle Maltais

Los Angeles Times

Published: June 1, 2012

LOS ANGELES It reads like a riveting sci-fi novel, but its stunningly real: A super-sophisticated malicious computer virus burrowed its way into Irans nuclear facilities and took down several parts of the operation. Oh, and it apparently came from us.

In 2010, it was the United States who launched Stuxnet, a seek-and-destroy cyber missile so sophisticated that some briefly thought it might have an other-than-earthly origin, against Irans nuclear infrastructure, according to a New York Times report. The virus was, in fact, created jointly by the United States and Israel.

In his first months in office, President Obama covertly ordered sophisticated attacks on the computers that ran Irans nuclear facilities, upping U.S. use of cyber weaponry in a sustained attack, the newspaper said.

Early on, a programming error allowed the worm to escape Irans Natanz plant and whoosh around the world on the Internet.

Should we shut this thing down? Obama asked members of his national security team who were in the room told the paper.

Ultimately, the super worm was left to wreak its havoc, and it took out 1,000 of 5,000 centrifuges Iran was using to enhance uranium, according to the report. It was as effective as a bomb or agents infiltrating countrys nuclear facilities to plant explosives, the report said.

German cyber-security expert Ralph Langner found the worm in 2010. As his team dug deeper into the code, each new discovery left them more impressed and wondering what was coming next, he told NPR. The sophistication of the worm seemed almost alien. But it was, indeed, decidedly terrestrial in nature.

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Massive cyber attack on Iran came from US, report says

Massive cyber attack on Iran came from U.S., report says

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It reads like a riveting sci-fi novel, but it's stunningly real: A super-sophisticated malicious computer virus burrowed its way intoIran'snuclear facilities and took down several parts of the operation. Oh, and it apparently came from us.

In 2010, it was the U.S. who launched Stuxnet, a seek-and-destroy cyber missile so sophisticated that some briefly thought it might have an other-than-earthly origin, against Iran's nuclear infrastructure, according to a New York Times report. The virus was, in fact, created jointly by the U.S. and Israel.

In his first months in office, President Obama covertly ordered sophisticated attacks on the computers that ran Iran's nuclear facilities, upping U.S. use of cyber weaponry in a sustained attack, the newspaper said.

Early on, a programming error allowed the worm to escape Iran's Natanz plant and whoosh around the world on the Internet.

"Should we shut this thing down?" Obama asked, members of his national security team who were in the room told the paper.

Ultimately, the super worm was left to wreak its havoc, and it took out 1,000 of 5,000 centrifuges Iran was using to enhance uranium, according to the report. It was as effective as a bomb or agents infiltrating a country's nuclear facilities to plant explosives, the report said.

German cyber-security expert Ralph Langner found the worm in 2010. As his team dug deeper into the code, "each new discovery left them more impressed and wondering what was coming next," he told NPR. The sophistication of the worm "seemed almost alien." But it was, indeed, decidedly terrestrial in nature.

Only recently has the government acknowledged developing cyber-weapons, though it has never admitted deploying them.

Now efforts are underway to decipher the origins of another malicious program experts believe is part of government-sponsoredcyber warfare and intelligence gathering. Again, Iran is the target.

As the Los Angeles Times' Sergei L. Loiko wrote earlier this week, computer virus experts atRussia'sKasperskyLab came across this malware while searching for a villain dubbed the Wiper.

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Massive cyber attack on Iran came from U.S., report says